While I was out I experienced brief flashes of images in my mind. It was hard to say if they were hallucinations, memories, or a real event because every time I would slip into an image, I would get pulled back into the darkness of sleep just a moment later. The images all seemed to be from the same location.

I was in a cavern so large that it was hard to see the walls off in the distance if there were walls at all. Six tall monolith pillars decorated the rough ground far to the left and right of me, three to my left and three to my right. I appeared to be standing on the middle segment between two half-sphere domes because I could just make out the huge curvature on either side of me extending well off in the distance. There were hexagon patterns underneath the thin film of the dome, causing a hazy effect and not letting me see what lay inside. The center ground that I stood on was rough and sparsely decorated with thin shoots of grass that sprung up individually and seemingly at random.

I was never in the memory long enough to move but I did notice a couple of dark spots shifting under the surface of the two domes. The dark spots always seemed to shift in my direction with each brief moment that I was there, as though they were drawn towards me.

Like two massive eyes trying to focus on me.

Above me, there were different colored spots of light against the distant ceiling. The lights would twinkle oddly every now and then, as though things were moving in between the light source and myself.

Crawling creatures.

The crawling creatures would leave behind the thinnest wisp of sparkling purple thread. The thread being revealed in the shining light.

The air smelled sweet and earthy, like cotton candy mixed with the scent of freshly cut grass. There wasn’t much sound, just a continual rustling and crunching sound that made my hair stand on end. I had heard the same thing in the walls once when we had termites. Except now it filled the air all around me.

Truly not someplace that I would want to visit.

“You need to learn how not to go there. She will eat you if she spots you.” I heard my mind say. Well, my mind if I spoke to myself in a small female voice. I hadn’t been doing that recently had I?

Focusing on that voice seemed to let me sleep, drawing me away from the place in my mind that flashed those random strange images.

“Well, then I guess I will have to tell you things to keep you away from her.” The little voice said. Had I heard it before?

“Your mind is currently doing some very interesting things while it sleeps. It is adjusting and expanding rapidly while it works through all of your recent memories. I had to remove both the limitations created by the Tela Systems and the near-miss you experienced almost becoming a drone. When you wake you will find that your mind works properly again. In addition, you will be able to access the monarch side of your mind that you were missing.” The girl's voice said inside my mind.

Her voice reminded me of a girl I knew back in Thailand. A childhood friend that I lost when I moved schools. I had attended a Buddist preschool for a couple of years before attending Bangkok Patana. She had always sat next to me on the bus whenever we would go home.

“Wow, dream states grab memories from all over the brain.” The voice said as she watched me relive brief moments in time. What did it mean to be a monarch? I wondered in passing once the memories of my childhood finished replaying in my mind.

“What does it mean to be a monarch? Well, it allows you to control your hive-like you were born with the ability. Before you were over flexing a muscle like an on and off switch. Drones are meant to be an extension of the monarchs. The monarchs are supposed to be an extension of the hive mother. About that last part though, you are male so I am not connecting that part inside your mind. The hive mother would sense you and try to either have you bring yourself to her or she would forever try to find you with her swarm. Your memories would draw her like honey.”

What a strange dream I had experienced earlier. My mind wondered as I thought of the place I had seen flashes of.

“Ha! That wasn’t a dream. You kept sending your mind into another nurse sitting on her head. Your attention didn’t harm the nurse, it just was an itch in the mind of the hive mother, losing control of a nurse over and over again. If she notices you and is fast enough, she will burn out your antenna to trap you there so she can eat you.” The little voice answered.

Eat me? Head? I was sitting on something's head? I didn’t know which question scared me the most. The fact that it wanted to eat me or the fact that the hive mother was that insanely huge.

“Yeah, eat your mind and memories. Best to not let that happen, you know some stuff that she does not and if she learned how to survive on this side, it would be bad news for your kind. All of your kind.”

The stress created by the answer from the voice caused my mind to rebel against my sleep, forcing me to wake up.

I sat up and blinked, feeling like I just slept in a million-dollar bed.

“You’re welcome!” the little voice said inside my head.

“Oh! Right, hi, um, daughter?” I replied, slightly puzzled as to how I should address this voice that spoke like one of my own thoughts. Could this be how people with schizophrenia felt?

“Yup, that is me. You can name me or not. Nurse ants don’t tend to have names, we are just here to serve. Think of me as another you.”

“How do you seem to know so much about me?” I asked.

“You know that heavy feeling you first had at the start? That was me copying your whole mind and making it a part of me. I couldn’t have done that if you were made of flesh and blood, but it was easy to do with this digital mind.” She answered.

“So you aren’t really female?” I asked.

“Nope, not at all. I am sexless just like the drones, just higher up on the swarm biological hierarchy. At least until we metamorphosis into a monarch queen. The monarch queens and the hive mother are female.”

“Then why do you sound female?”

“Because you would really get tired of having some dude talking to you all the time bro.” He said in a voice that reminded me exactly of my cousin Corlette.

“Oh please! Don’t do that. Turn it back to the other voice!” I quickly answered as I saw the troubles that that would bring up. Forget schizophrenia, I could only imagine trying to punch myself in the face if I got in an argument with myself.

“Ha! See, I told you so.” She said in her female voice again.

“So your species only has females?” I asked.

“No, males can exist. They just don’t tend to last very long if they get close to a hive mother. The males are the ones that exist outside of the nest and roam around the outer and other.”

“She eats them?” I asked, thinking about black widows and praying mantises.

“Yup, for their memories and experiences so that she can get smarter.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, males, when born, tend to escape the hive as fast as possible. It is all part of the nature of life for the swarm. If the swarm finds the male again it will capture it and bring it to the hive mother.” She said with a mental image of a limbless ant being carried to the den.

“But I am male. How can I be a monarch?” I asked, trying to puzzle this out.

“Well, the drones aren’t very smart. You claimed to be one, so they think of you as one. They just couldn’t set you up as one. That's what I did to you while you slept.”

“I have so many questions.” I mentally said as I sat up from where I was resting against Ess. How much time had passed? I wondered as I checked the video logs of the past while. I barely had to rewind the recorded logs but a few moments to see that the whole time of my being out only lasted a couple of seconds.

“Yeah, that was me too. Awesome huh?” She said with pride in her voice.

“What did you do?”

“Well, you have absorbed this amazing ability to think faster, or as you like to call it the Prime Speed Control key. I just made your mind think faster so that I could get more work done in the shortest amount of real-time.”

“Was that why it hurt so bad?” I asked as I remembered the ripping feeling inside my brain.

“Yeah… sorry about that.”

I got up, feeling refreshed and strangely whole. As I looked around I could see a faint, barely noticeable sparkle whenever I inspected the cr around me.

“What is going on with my eyes?” I asked as I turned my head in place, spying two small dots in my vision that stayed fixed in place. Did I have a compass feature now?

“You can see your swarm now. Your memories consider it to be pheromones but that is not how it really is. The easy answer is you can see your swarm’s personal frequency and can control them. Those two dots, well three really, are your swarms that house your AI.” She said as the sparkle effect turned off and on. So it was possible to not need to have it on all the time. Interesting. “Monarchs all have this ability, you couldn’t do it earlier because drones can’t bestow it. Nurses like me, however, can fix minds. So I fixed you. Now you have all the abilities that a monarch should have to rule its swarm.”

“So what is the swarm?” I asked as I looked down at Ess. Her scars were slowly fading the longer I watched. I hoped she recovered soon. I needed to keep busy while I waited for her.

First things first, to find out what happened to Meditati.

“A virus combined with the features of a parasite is the best way to describe it for you. The swarm is not from your dimension and isn’t alive like what you think, hence it resembles a virus in that regard. It doesn’t age and can reproduce by splitting itself apart over and over again. The swarm is like a parasite in that it absorbs and assimilates everything it can. On our side we eat creatures we come across, gaining their memories and abilities. We then use their bodies to spread more swarms around.” She said in a much too happy tone of voice. It almost seemed like I was talking to a psychopath whenever she spoke about the swarm and its actions. She was just too happy and unconcerned in her tone.

“Your universe almost experienced its first spread too. Your dreams just hit that right wavelength with the interdimensional Tela tech to draw a queen to hunt you while you slept.”

“Yeah, I remember you said that earlier,” I muttered as I brought up images of the ship that had repeatedly entered our region of space before jetting hurriedly off.

A big smile spread across my lips when I blew up the writing on the sides of the vessel. Tutor’s translation software worked perfectly.

“There you are,” I said as I read the bold text that declared Oppino’s Salvage for all to see. It even had a lengthy serial number on display. I copied everything and set my habitat to follow its last known trajectory.

“Shouldn’t you return the asteroid to how it was before you leave?” she asked me right before we moved.

“What? How?” I asked as I observed the dense cloud outside my vessel. It had remained in place all this time.

“Just have your swarm mash it all back together. Most of it was grease so it will all clump back together nicely.” She said as I shrugged and let a large portion of my cr separate from my ship to accomplish this. Sure enough, the muck stuck together and soon we had a rough remake of the asteroid floating in space again.

“Thanks,” I said as we rushed off to follow the escaping Savage vessel.

“No problem. You should always leave places where you swarm exactly how you found them so that you don’t scare away future prey.” She said.

Yup, that totally wasn’t my thought.

---

It was the first time for me to be able to explore outside of our cavern and I was so excited. My parent had thought to leave me inside but after I panicked and rushed back and forth he seemed to reconsider and let me out.

I was awestruck at everything around me as I followed him towards a huge rock. It became clear to me that this was a time to practice moving in larger spaces because my parent started to fly back and forth over the surface, moving in a systematic pattern.

He did strange things which I didn’t fully understand. He made parts of our home come down and start to move through the surface of the rock.

It all seemed like he was looking for something.

So I helped him look as well.

I looked and looked but didn’t find anything. Everything was covered with this gooey stuff that slightly resembled nest material. For some reason, I felt messy whenever I came in contact with it because the stuff tended to stick to my scales. I had to learn how to talk to my other voice to make it clean me off. That worked really well and let me play without a care.

My other voice kept telling me strange things about the round balls that I would occasionally see hovering or flying out of the goop.

-Algenon Parasite detected. Harmful to Leva-based lifeforms. Caution is highly advised.-

Was this what my parent was looking for?

I observed one of the balls hovering between where I was playing and my parent so I decided to try to guide it over towards him.

Moving the ball was harder than I expected because whenever I would push it with my head it would slide around the side, making me have to back up and try again.

It didn’t hurt me when I would headbutt it so I didn’t think anything of it when it happened to run along the side of my tail as I was moving around it to try to guide it again with my head.

Pinpricks of pain erupted all down my tail where the ball touched. The pinpricks didn’t bother me much, it was the experience that came after the pinpricks that caused me to cry out in anguish.

It felt as though my life was being sucked out of my side. I had never experienced such loss before.

I screamed with all of my being for help.

-Emergency broadcast to parent enabled-

Somehow my parent must have heard me because he rushed over and quickly killed the thing that had hurt me. Crushing it between his hands.

Even though he killed the monster the pain stayed with me. Was I going to die? I could feel my energy leaking out of my body at a steadily increasing rate. The pain was so sharp along my side, like thousands of needles being pulled out of each tiny hole, as the power rushed through scale nodes and threatened to rupture the delicate energy cells along my skin.

I tried to control the energy inside me through the pain. It felt like I was a leaky sieve and I felt powerless to grasp the power that fought my control.

While I tried my best to stem the tide of the energy spraying from my side, my parent went to work fixing me. He used his hands to seal up the holes in my side over and over again, steadily lessening the rate at which I was losing my life. With each hole that closed I incrementally regained control back over the energy I still had left inside me. It was as though each hole was, in itself, a sort of control directing my energy to accomplish something. In this case to leave my body.

Did the little tubes that punched into my side contain instructions to guide energy as well?

That would make sense as to why I struggled so hard to stem the flow.

After the last hole was closed I shut down and let my body go limp, directing my attention internally. I went to work cycling my energy through my body, trying to repair the damaged parts that experienced too much energy rushing through their small pathways. I didn’t want to lose functionality in any part of my tail. I could feel how the surge of energy was designed to cripple where it touched, possibly deadening the skin and making it easier to be attacked later.

My parent carried my limp body, placing me in the nest and surrounding me with energy.

Being in so much pain and unable to do anything about it had shown me just how little control I actually had over the critical energy I used to better myself with. I had thought that I was capable yet my inability to even block one of the holes proved me dead wrong.

What would have happened if my parent hadn’t been there to help me? I probably would have died from my lack of control.

This was unacceptable.

While I lay there I tried to imagine ways to help my body heal itself faster. If I simply did nothing my natural slow flow of energy would eventually work its way back into the damaged areas of my side. The area felt stiff and shredded. Letting my body heal itself would take a considerable amount of time.

I knew I had plenty of reserve energy stored inside the rest of me to use but my control was harsh and inexperienced. I needed to try something slower.

The nest that I was laying atop was rich with energy. I could feel it caressing my scales. It was radiating all around me, beckoning me to use its slow heat. Could I use it somehow?

When I ate nest material I concentrated on holding the raw material inside my belly and then rapidly sucking the energy free.

Could I do this with my belly scales just at a slower rate?

There was no harm in trying. If it didn’t work I would just lay here until the normal creep and rhythmic flow of my resting body made its way inside the damaged pathways. I didn’t want to control my internal energy myself and risk damaging the pathways even further. Not until I had more delicate control at least.

Using the energy of the nest that I was laying on was a perfect idea. It held lots and lots of energy. Energy that was calling out to me to be used. All I had to do was to figure out how to reach it.

Little by little I strained, working out how to make my cells and pathways reverse their continual push outwards. It was the strangest feeling, the feeling like I was creating a void inside the core of my body. I used the feeling that my stomach created when I ate, trying to make my belly feel the same way.

I strained and strained, making the feeling inside my stomach expand and seep through my body, spreading outwards. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but it wasn’t causing me pain or harming my side so I persisted.

For a while, nothing happened. It simply felt like I was hungry, ravenously hungry inside my whole body. My body had become my stomach. I began to wonder if I had made a mistake in doing this. How would I make it stop if I didn’t want to feel this way anymore? My entire length felt like I had turned my stomach inside out.

I was Hunger.

I almost roused myself to take a bite from the nest material, just to try to sate this feeling when suddenly I noticed a slight change taking place.

I felt it happening... a tiny ripple through my cells as I found the sweet taste of power start to flow inwards.

I licked at it, redoubling my effort to pull energy inward. Slowly, like a melting ice cube, I started to feel the energy that was caressing my entire length as it began to seep into me.

I was so pleased that it had worked. I now had a steady way of healing myself rather than just by relying on my body's slow natural process. I hoped my parent would be proud of me. I didn’t want to be broken.

Slowly I worked at repairing the damaged energy pathways, feeling them reform, and regaining flexibility once more. The area that was damaged felt harder and more resistant to damage than the surrounding areas. It was as though it had gained an extra layer of skin. Could I spread this improvement around?

-Energy-based research in progress. 42% complete.-

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