Chapter 550: The Sound
The Precio-Us bee who entered my office a few minutes later was smiling.
"Hello, dear," I greeted them warmly, endeared by that smile. Hive-minded or not, my daughters were adorable! "You had a report? You can sit and tell me."
"Father, hello! Yes, I do," she replied, almost dancing toward my table, but not sitting in the chair. Not that I really expected her to...
Joy and prideful satisfaction were radiating from the entire hive-mind. I was sure that all the bees in it were grinning right now from their anticipation of sharing their successes with me.
It made me appreciate the efforts of their socialising tutors even more. Only a short while later, Precio-Us wouldn’t have even thought to greet anyone in this hive upon meeting. Nor wouldn’t they have bothered to send someone to bring me a report that could only be spoken through telepathy, anyway.
Not because they were so rude, but because they heard thoughts from so close at all times anyway. For a hive mind, we were all neighbours brushing arms even when in separate buildings.
’Father, ever since you gave us this task, we have been listening to the Champion Tree’s instructions and thinking about them. We also spoke a lot with the Oracles...’
I nodded.
Precio-Us even asked to let some Oracles join their hive mind, but I refused.
Technically, it was possible. ’Gestalt Thinking’ was a base gene, available to bees without morphotypes, which meant bees that could chaotically evolve the ’Prescience’ gene and become Oracles.
These bees also only had ’Telepathy I’—telepathy with a range of 10 meters. With strategic placement, they could be grown in brood cells removed from any other cell that had a bee with ’Gestalt Thinking’ inside by more than 10 meters.
This way, the newly emerging bees won’t immediately join a hive mind with someone and could join other hive minds.
It could—and had!—also grant my new genes to existing Oracles.
However, I didn’t want to specifically grow and train Oracles to join hive minds—it didn’t feel necessary. As for the existing ones, they all felt (or foresaw) that they would be happier and do a better job working as they were.
Which didn’t stop Precio-Us from watching the prophetic visions of Oracles right in their minds and analysing them on the go. They were helping each other a lot—so much so that I dedicated another hive mind entirely to assisting Oracles. It was an Oracle hive mind that didn’t have prescience.
’They were a lot of help, I know,’ I told Precio-Us. ’But what exactly have you found?’
’Listen, Father.’
The Precio-Us bee closed her eyes, and I felt the mental presence of the hive mind thicken. It was like they were focusing on something thought-intensive.
Then I heard a sound. No, I FELT this sound. And it wasn’t even a sound—it was a thought of one that Precio-Us were sending in my mind.
It was hard to describe. It wasn’t melodic or monotone. I thought I felt a rhythm in it, but when I tried to focus on it, it was gone.
The sound was many things and none of them at once. And it had a vague resemblance to what I heard from the Champion Tree.
<ERR-ERR-ERR-ERR-ERR->
The hypnotising sound was interrupted by a nails-on-a-chalkboard screech in my head. I jolted away from the Precio-Us bee, closing my mind shut, and only then realised that the screech was coming in the system’s voice.
A moment later, the screech ended, and a system window appeared in front of me instead.
〔Error: unknown error.〕
〔OK〕
Amazing.
I closed the panel—not like it was giving me a choice—and checked my status and that of Precio-Us. Thankfully, everything was showing correctly.
"Father! Are you alright?" the bee asked me, looking alarmed. "The Oracles told us that you will be, but..."
"I’m fine," I said, rubbing my head.
Now that I stopped listening to it, the sound was rapidly vanishing from my memory—almost like a dream would vanish upon waking. It was a terribly disturbing feeling, because my memory was perfect for a long time now.
I could, if I focused, remember sucking on my mom’s teat. I never wanted to focus on something like THAT, but it just proved how good my memory was!
But it was weaker than this sound. To my relief, Precio-Us stopped making it.
’How did you do THAT?’ I asked them. ’It’s... Impossible! I can’t even tell now what exactly you did...’
’This is how far we understand The Sound. It’s far from full,’ Precio-Us said. ’It’s as close to the true nature of gods as we can approach, I think. Words can describe only a tiny facet of it, but this sound can tell us much more. Surely even how to defeat them—just as you wanted to find.’
I rubbed my forehead, feeling shell-shocked.
Were gods so powerful that even their metaphysical description could make my system and myself go all glitchy?
Was it going glitchy because of The Sound’s power or because it was made by gods to protect their interests?
’Other bees couldn’t remember The Sound either, Father. We had difficulties remembering it, too. The Champion Tree can only remember the shallow copy that the Usnea God told it. But we learnt how to remember this sound—a part of us thinks about it constantly. It takes us all to think it properly, like we showed you—it’s too complicated for a single bee.’
So this was a knowledge that was impossible to achieve without a hive mind... Did my patron gods consider this when they gave the system the hive mind gene as one of the possible options I could get?
’And, Father,’ Precio-Us were exuding joy again, ’we found a way to put even our current understanding of The Sound to a practical use! Not only it might have not yet studied effects on the minds and bodies of living creatures, but we are sure it could be used in the military!’