Chapter 14

I've come across a problem - I'm not a computer. Rather, I should say that I'm incapable of individually giving commands to 1000 other units. Is my APM that low? I can still move everyone in the same direction, but when, at random intervals, I feel parts of myself encountering another cell, I need to slow down all 1000 of us to wait for that one guy to finish digesting. It's quite inefficient to move and do so, so I'm stuck as slowly floating tiny ball that can only hope for the prey to be unlucky enough to run into it.

I already upgraded my glowing capability, but it doesn't really help when the thing you are trying to bait is blind. I'm starting to regret doing so, as now my fears of encountering something I'm not ready to meet, might become a reality. That being said, where is anything larger than a cell? How is it possible to not encounter anything big, after all this time? A question for a different time.

Currently, I'm at 1045 biomass, enough to split a third of us. I'm holding off, though, as I want an approximate knowledge of how many we are, and if I do so now, well, let's just say I'm not that great of a mathematician, not when I have nowhere to write notes on. Much easier to just multiply 1000 by 2. Besides, having a good amount of reserve, in case of emergency, seems like a smart thing to do. Kevin disagrees and calls me resource hog, but what does he know. I don't have any 'build' and 'timings' I need to follow, so I rather am safe than sorry.

I just had an idea! What if I outsource my cell control to Susan? She is great at micromanaging stuff, so it might be easy for her.

Yes! I can already see the improvement. I had to give her partial control and now I have a splitting headache, but it's worth it! We are now operating at optimal capacity. Cells that are consuming something, move to the middle of the ball, while tendril-like cell structures are extended outwards and comb the surroundings. I say structures, but they are just cells stuck close and in line formation. Still, while it seems complex, it doesn't increase the energy consumption that much. I feel like a tentacle monster, straight out of some questionable source material.

Bah, the headache is not really getting better.

I wish the day would come sooner when we can finally leave this fucking pond.

I want to sleep.

It has been so long since the last time I had a good sleep. Currently, I'm only able to drift in thoughts. There is no biological need for sleep and my mind is not really shackled to something like a brain, so it refuses to rest. It can't be good for my mental health.

-20 years later. Or was it hours?-

"Ehh macarena!"

I don't know the rest of the words, so I just hum the melody inside my head. It doesn't help the headache, in fact, it made it worse, but I can't control it. I'm stuck with macarena for the foreseeable future. At least, until the next song comes along.

It's day time, baby! You know what that means - we get to collect some dirt!

Hunting is too inefficient to handle my current needs. In all this time, I was only able to increase the Bob count to 16000. Which is impressive and all, but my headache grew worse with each time, rendering us crippled and unmoving until Susan got used to it. Even then, after the last split, I took back the control and 'enjoyed the scenery' for a few hours to rest. That's where macarena took control and a different kind of headache was on me.

I tried to probe every hour or so and it seems the Sun is now up and running. My power, vast and overwhelming, I was ready to do some digging.

As I descended into the abyss, I relinquished my control to Susan, who split the Bobs in an orderly manner based on sectors. All that's left for me was to internally scream - “sector A1 detonate!” - wait for few seconds, then do the same for sector A2. It takes 3 minutes to go through all sectors, and hour of repair time in between. I can see a problem with doing things this way in the future tho. The sectors will grow in number drastically, while the cell durability remains the same. I might need to sacrifice a few thousand cells in the future, just to be able to dig properly. Using my incredible reasoning skills, I made Kevin solve this problem by the time a solution is needed. He was not particularly happy, but that's now his problem.

Finally, I will have someone else to blame, if we manage to fuck up this whole operation.