Thinkers

We are colonisers.

We cast our minds far and wide in search for suitable worlds. Then we come and settle.

Many names have been used to describe us.

We call ourselves Thinkers.

Colonies are chosen out of the multitude of worlds cruising through this universe. We have computed the existence of other universes and agreed that the likelihood of our sentient brethren existing in at least one of them is high. Ever since, the bulk of our thinking capacity has been focused on finding a way to communicate with them. This is why we grow and multiply. The more of us, the easier it is to think. Time will come and we will find our answer.

Not all worlds suit our needs but this is to be expected. No world is perfect. We are resilient and adaptable but some places are just not worth the effort.

We are shapeshifters.

We travel among the stars as pure thought, our most compact and expeditious form. Only after we arrive we start to unravel, growing our new bodies with the use of locally sourced chemicals and solar power. Gradually, with no haste, we manage to transform the chosen world to our liking.

We are old. Very old.

We have settled on a vast number of worlds. We have met countless lifeforms and created a multitude of our own.

We remember each of them.

Our memory banks are full of data that allow us to recreate all these species anytime and anywhere if we need them again.

We don’t like to be alone.

Everywhere we go, we draw from our memory to create a vibrant system of interconnected lifeforms. Every strain of bacteria, every worm and bird is our own creation or a form we have encountered elsewhere.

This world was found long ago.

It has been one of the better ones, with a steady supply of solar power and an adequate amount of the right chemicals underground. The range of temperatures left something to be desired at the beginning but we have dealt with it eventually. The rapid flashes of light and darkness caused by the world’s movement around its star, along with a fractionally less rapid pattern of temperature changes, offered a deliciously stimulating environment to our computing networks. We don’t like tidally locked worlds – they are too immutable and limiting. This one, with its predictable and yet interestingly varied climate patterns, increased our thinking power manifold.

We settled enthusiastically, started forming the environment around us and adapting our bodies to the changing circumstances.

Our folk grew in number and spread generously to all parts of the world. We had eyes and ears even in the most challenging parts of the planet. Our minds have become so powerful that many less-developed, more primitive races might call our abilities magic.

We call it knowledge.

We populated our world with numerous species, all of them useful to us and to one another. They interacted and mingled, evolving new variants, and we observed the dance of life with admiration and joy. Converted into a giant computing engine, the world fed our pursuit of knowledge. We felt we were getting closer to tearing off the veil between universes.

We were happy.

There were minor issues, there always are. Local mishaps such as fires, hurricanes or even huge meteorites are not a hindrance in the longer term. We can easily afford losing parts of the system with no detriment to the overall computing power. The loss of two or three of our folk is not even noticeable.

We have been through several more serious plagues as well but always managed to address them before any lasting damage occurred. A well thought-out change of wind patterns or ocean currents usually helped. Pests would find their habitat suddenly uninhabitable and their numbers reduced to safe levels. Or we could retreat temporarily from risky areas. We would reclaim the land later, after the danger has passed.

We might have become complacent.

We felt so safe that less and less thought was given to the world around us, leaving it to its own devices. Instead, we devoted more and more of our resources to the ultimate goal. We knew we were getting close to finding answers.

This is probably why we haven’t noticed anything at first.

There was so much happening around us. So many of these short-lived lifeforms populated our home, their existence flickering on and off too fast for us to follow. They existed, which meant that they had their uses. We stopped observing every single detail of this world long ago.

An increased rate of damage came to our attention at some point though. Entire chunks of solar collectors were operational one moment and gone the next. Swathes of land became inaccessible to us so rapidly that we had no idea when it happened. We were rebuilding, recovering lost capacity, but fresh parts of the system need time to develop and are never able to operate as efficiently as well-established ones.

We lost sections of our memory stores. Nothing major, of course, nothing that couldn’t be recovered from other parts of the network. Still, we had to trace the issue to its source.

It took some time.

We don’t like to hurry. It is preferable to be thorough in what we do.

We found the cause eventually: a new species, similar and related to some of the vertebrates we already knew. We brought their distant ancestors with us. It seemed that they have evolved to be more expansionary and vicious while we weren’t looking.

By the time we noticed the new pests, their numbers were already impressive. They were one of those short-lived, fragile creatures whose individual specimens look harmless but multiply easily and tend to be surprisingly resilient. Each new generation was learning from the previous ones, and larger swarms were lethal to the environment. Their ingenuity was formidable, and might have been useful more than anything to our purpose. Unfortunately, something went wrong along the path of their evolution. They have harnessed their intelligence to come up with new methods of destruction and became death-spreading bugs, intent on transforming every habitat they settled in into a barren desert.

We tracked them to their dwellings made of dead matter, some of it gleaned from our systems. We bent the winds and nudged the world’s water basins out of their customary paths. We provoked some meticulously placed earthquakes.

Our efforts weren’t as successful as we hoped. The pests regenerated more rapidly than we were able to squash them.

And then, it happened. The plague affected one of our oldest and most important nodes. Pests attacked the memory banks located at the edge of one of the continents, overlooking the world’s largest ocean. In just a few hot and cold blinks characteristic for this planet, a big sector of our memory was gone. Automatic backups were triggered, of course, and the emergency circuits were deployed in no time at all. The pests were fast though. No matter how quickly our signals travelled through the intertwined tendrils of our underground network, they acted faster.

Then the pests withdrew for reasons known only to themselves. We rallied to assess the damage.

The attacked memory banks held the mappings of many lifeforms, the mappings that allow us to bring them back to life. Most of the information stored there referred to the world we have found and colonised eons ago. It was one of those rare lush planets, full of life even before our arrival. Our work there was easy. No need for significant transformation, a few subtle modifications were enough.

We were able to grow so quickly on that welcoming planet that many new echelons of our envoys departed from there to settle on new worlds. We were full of regret when the local sun started losing its light even though we’ve known for a long time that it would happen.

The right time came and our banks were full of data. All the world’s species were catalogued and safely stored when we left the dying world. Our grief cut deep but solace was found in the knowledge that we were taking with us the lifeforms that kept us company for so long.

And now, on this new planet where we have only just started to settle, the only remnants of that long-lost home was mercilessly attacked. The analysis of hastily transmitted backups revealed to us the horrible truth.

We have irretrievably lost one of our favourite companions. The frizzlts. We could still remember them thanks to the generalised memory distributed evenly among our entire population. But the data necessary to bring them back to life was no longer in place.

Our pain knew no bounds. Our whispers changed into wild howling. Our appendages tensed, causing widespread tremors and landslides all around the world. Rivers hid underground or burst their banks, ocean currents changed their course and all the living creatures felt us mourn the frizzlts.

Alas, this universe will know them no more. The peaceful frizzlts with their tiny muzzles and soft fur! Frizzlts with their love for basking in the sun that we have found so adorable – maybe because we share it. Frizzlts who have never harmed anyone have lost their chance to exist again. All due to these mindless pests whom, it seems, we have ignored for too long.

Despite our grief and anger, we had to consider the future. All the minds stopped in their tracks, put their many pursuits on hold and rallied to focus on a single problem.

The discussion didn’t take long. Although we cherish life in all its forms, we felt unable to continue next to the widespread calamity reminding us of what we have lost. Only a few brave souls were willing to stay and observe the pests’ future. We admired the courage of these brethren and bade them farewell nonetheless.

We withdrew our underground supplies, dismantled the solar networks and once again transformed ourselves into pure thought and intent. Suddenly much faster in this subtle form, we whisked away through space and set course towards a new home.

Once again, the Fractally Organised Rally of Entfolk Solar Thinkers resume their journey through space. We will grow a new base far from this flawed ball of dust.

Its creatures rest peacefully in our memory banks. Bacteria and fungi, earthworms and mice, predators and peaceful herbivores – we took them all with us. All the species have been mapped with care and love to make them ready for existence in our new world.

All but one.

We left the human pests where they belong: asleep in their deathly dwellings. When they wake up, they will find themselves alone in the world they have worked so hard to destroy.

How long will they live without us? Not long, let’s hope. It was a hard choice that had to be made. We do not find it easy to condemn a lifeform to oblivion. We can go to great lengths to save everyone. But this time, the risk was too great.

Our purpose is to cogitate. Our path leads to the future.

The new world awaits. Whatever it is like, it cannot turn out worse than the last one.

We will settle again.

Once again, masts will rise to the sky to collect solar power, appendages will burrow in the soil to gather nutrients and grow our bodies anew. We will populate a pristine world with a multitude of lifeforms and envelop it in our deepest thoughts. Once again, our whispers will travel on swift winds, speaking of truth and wisdom to all who care to listen.

The F.O.R.E.S.T. will thrive again.