Chapter 1
Growth
~<(0)>~
It did not know much. It knew that it was surrounded. By what it did not know, it did not possess the ability to know. It did not possess the ability to inquire about it, nor did it possess the ability to even find an answer. What it did know about what surrounded it, was that it was everywhere, surrounding every side of the entity, and it fed on what surrounded it. Well, that was technically a lie. It did not possess the ability to know what feeding was, nor did it possess the capability to feed. In truth, it was not feeding at all, though that was, perhaps, the simplest way of describing what was happening. The entity was slowly absorbing what surrounded it. It could not say it was slow, for even if it could possess an understanding of time, the deep cavern in which it ultimately was suspended within knew no passing of days nor changing of the seasons.
It grew. It had an understanding that it was larger, though it could not fully comprehend how it came to know this fact. It did not enjoy being larger, for it did not possess a capacity for emotion. But it was driven by something… not instinct exactly, but perhaps the knowledge that something had changed. So far in its existence, it knew it existed, and it knew it had grown larger. This change had signified, to it at least, an accomplishment, proof that, while it knew so incredibly little, and did not even know that it knew so little, it had caused something new to happen. It did not realize the significance at this time, but the entity had discovered time.
It was greater now. Larger, far larger. Though, it could not exactly quantify how much larger compared to… any point in its existence. It had discovered something new, however. What seemed to be the center of it… where its…. Rudimentary consciousness existed, it could pull what it had collected of itself into this… center space. It seems it had been doing this to some small degree since it had known of its existence, perhaps even before. By doing this it could reduce the size of its existence. Of course, it was aware that its size did not actually decrease, it simply went…. Elsewhere… beyond the center of its existence. Trying to give meaning to these realizations was difficult for the entity, yet it still tried, even as it grew larger.
Something was wrong. What had surrounded it for… well… ever since it had known its own existence had ceased to be. It didn’t understand the meaning of comfort but was quickly coming up with its own discoveries towards that matter, considering the void that existed where it expected the… comforting surrounding to be… was. After some investigation, it realized that the comforting surrounding wasn’t entirely gone. There was simply something else in a certain direction. It felt similar but... structured in a way that the entity and its surrounding… material was not. It wondered if it could absorb this as well and attempted to. Its attempt wasn’t exactly successful, but neither was it unsuccessful. It had gleaned valuable information about it. And, as it continued to grow larger, it would try different methods to absorb it into its being. It had a feeling that it could absorb it, after all.
As it turned out, this ordered, hard material was not just in one place. As it had expanded, growing larger as it desired, it found more and more in an expanding surface, a hard, ordered wall. It was trying to absorb this material continually, dedicating an increasing amount of its being to trying different methods, in the hopes that it would achieve its short term goal. With its discovery of time, it had been able to prioritize its goals, understanding its greatest goal, and the one that would take the longest due to no end in sight, came last, and its goal that involved a single, definite outcome was something that hopefully it would attain relatively soon.
Stolen novel; please report.
It had nearly been caught by surprise. A small piece of the hard-ordered material had broken off and had been drawn up into its main mass. It did not know if this was a success of its myriad attempts or not, but some progress had been made it seemed. This shard was more easily analyzed, and it could wrap more of its being around it to test its absorption attempts on it.
It had succeeded. Already, the shard was being absorbed into the entity, ordered structure being disassembled with extreme care, the entity missing no chance to better itself by understanding something new in greater detail. Eagerly, it replicated this structure within its own being, and wanting to try something new, it struck the hard ordered material wall with its own, artificial hard ordered material. It sheared off a piece of the material similar to the one that had naturally detached preciously. The entity attacked it with the same vigour it had the original shard, and though it learned less, it still gained a lot from the experience.
It had cleared out all it could currently reach of this hard-ordered material and added it to its being. It kept itself mostly in a state of disorganized substance, except where it was dismantling the wall of hard ordered material. Of course, it had discovered something new beyond the wall of hard-ordered material. A hard…. Disordered material. It was solid, and much more uniform than the hard ordered material was. And, due to being disordered the entity had far less of a desire to absorb it. So, it didn’t. It spread outwards still, along the wall of hard ordered material, expanding within the abundance of soft, disordered material that it had absorbed since it could remember.
It had reached another absence of the material it surrounded itself with. The opposite direction from the wall of hard ordered material was another wall of hard ordered material, and it set to absorbing that too. All the while it continued to grow. Unsurprisingly, behind the other wall of hard ordered material was a wall of hard disordered material, which the entity ignored. While there was still material that interested it to absorb, it would spend little time investigating the hard disordered material.
It did not know any time, but it knew the order and chain of events, and knew that for all it had done, it had been around for what it considered a long time. During its expansion, it had discovered more things it was eager to learn about. At one point absorbing one of the walls of hard ordered material, it had discovered soft disordered material that was completely different to the soft disordered material it surrounded itself with. It didn’t do it justice to consider it soft, as it was so soft to seem like it wasn’t even there for the entity. It also couldn’t absorb it for some reason. Or, well, that wasn’t exactly true. It could, but it served no purpose that the entity could see, so it didn’t waste time absorbing it, and just pushed it aside to get to the hard ordered material that was beyond it. It had also discovered a new wall of hard-ordered material. It actually connected to both the other walls, meeting at two edges of the new wall. The entity didn’t know what to do with this information, besides file it away in the place it stored information in case it ever needed this discovery for some reason.
The entity was almost surprised as it absorbed the last bit of hard ordered material. The last portion of soft disordered material had been absorbed some time previously. Now, despite searching all across the length and width of its being, it could find no more of anything it wanted to absorb. It could, of course, start attacking the hard disordered surface that seemed to be behind every wall of hard ordered material it had absorbed, but it turned out there was another option it hadn’t considered. At one end of the massive space that the entity now fully occupied, there was a pool of soft disordered material, of the kind it had previously ignored. It had tried pushing into that space but found it difficult due to its size. So, it did what it had learned to do in the past and pushed a greater portion of its being into that beyond center space. It didn’t seem to do it any harm, simply decreased its effective size. With that accomplished, the entity left the space it had existed in since the start of its existence and headed outward.