Hive Mind

[WP] As humans evolve they develop a form of telepathy. Slowly the telepathy grows stronger and more widely used. Humans grow closer to one another and privacy and individuality are voluntarily discarded. Humanity is in the process of turning into a hivemind.

*****

When Roman Gorshun heard an embassy from earth was coming to Gamma K, he couldn’t quite believe it. His title was Governor of the Colony, but it could have just as easily been mayor: there were perhaps thirty thousand humans on the one continent where nine hundred had landed more than a century ago, and of those only about a thousand lived in the sole urban development. The seat of government was just an old prefab that had once served as the first colonist’s general store—what could the suits from the homeland possibly want?

The communique arrived three days before they showed up, just enough time for him to gather the half-dozen representatives of the population that spent its time hunting, trapping, and farming in the hinterlands. Probably there were plenty of voyagers, the people who traded with the world’s near-hominid locals, who wouldn’t know about the embassy for months, when they returned with those ornate mind-altering stones the aliens quarried. Now, Gorshun and the closest thing Gamma K had to bigwigs stood on the edge of their world’s only landing pad, and watched a shuttle descend in early dawn light.

Shuttles had changed plenty since Gamma K was first settled. This vessel did not have the functional, bare-bones brutalism of the few orbit-capable ships Roman had seen. It was covered in baroque designs, flowing lines that turned into striated spires, arched view ports, no retrorockets but rather a grille from which there pulsed a faint blue light. It touched down without a sound, towering over the pad looking for all the galaxy like a church spire. Its airlock sluiced open and a ramp deployed—from within, three people emerged in a sort of compromise between a sari, a suit, and a toga. All three were perfectly hairless, without even eyebrows.

“Hello,” The one in the center said in a strangled accent Roman couldn’t place, “I am Ambassador Helva.”

“How’d you do?” Roman held out his hand. For a moment Helva showed just the faintest hint of shock, and then shook it lightly.

“We wish to speak to your people.”

“Well, what do you want to speak to them about?”

“It will be easiest if we can do this publicly, before the whole colony.”

Roman did his best to explain that this was simply not possible, most of Gamma K’s population was spread out over the entire continent, but Helva was insistent. With a shrug, he led the envoys into town, down the duckboards of the main drag, onlookers joining them the entire way. They arrived at the town square, a patch of white stone quarried miles away and built over the original gravel square almost forty years ago. Along the way the representatives jabbered on about their duties and how they’d come to be civic leaders to the ambassadors, who barely deigned to respond. Roman went on the town cryer and called for anyone who was able to come to the square as well, and after an hour or so the place had filled up, just about every person in a two-mile radius crowded in that small space like it was time for the pig sacrifice on Harvest Day.

The ambassadors stood before the podium, looking not at all uncomfortable though the three of them filled a stage meant for one, and Helva held out their hands for silence. It worked—first time Roman had ever seen that happen—and they spoke.

“People of Gamma K, what we are about to tell you may horrify some, as it did on earth and each colony to which envoys like us were sent. But we must assure you, once you open your minds and accept this new reality, your lives will be infinitely improved.”

Roman stood by the stage, arms crossed over his chest, and realized with a start that Helva’s lips weren’t moving.

“As some of you may know, human beings were discovered to possess latent telepathy some two hundred years ago. At first, it was believed this was no more than a small curiosity, something that had always been which we were barely able to access. But, not long after Gamma K’s colonists first left earth, it was learned that this had only recently evolved—and it was becoming stronger in each person. The larger the population, the more profound the effect. In the last thirty years, the forty billion people of earth have become so telepathic that conversation is hardly necessary. The greatest cities our species has ever built are nearly silent.

“Now, I tell you, we have learned of a further development. Telepathy transcends the confines of space and time. I am, right now, in contact with all the people of earth, able to pick and choose whomever I wish to communicate with. They are all watching this speech through my eyes, just as I am watching a similar speech to the people of Hydra happening this very moment.

“Our mission is simple: to connect all of humanity as one entity. Each person will be a working part in the gestalt, to lead us to a better future, to end petty conflicts and focus solely on the propagation of our species throughout the universe. I will do this for you—in a moment, you will all be brought into the fold, and then you will be able to bring the rest of this world’s population into it, as well.”

Almost the moment Helva stopped speaking a flood of voices slammed into Roman’s ears with the force of a sledgehammer. He heard more talking, screaming, laughing, moaning, ordering, and whatever else than he’d ever known in his life. It was a blur of human noise, so vast and overpowering it may have been the gods trumpeting the end of all life. He fell to his knees and perceived, dimly, everyone else doing the same.

He could feel, truly feel, someone else’s will crashing down on him, pushing him to accept this, pushing him to enjoy it. The effect was nauseating, and made worse when he saw through someone else’s eyes, the painted nails and slender hands of a woman somewhere in the square retching. It was nightmarish—he searched for himself, tried to find his own eyes again, focused on this more than anything else, pushing back the willpower of someone he could not name as though it were a torrent of freezing water, looking for the branch that was his own mind and could drag him back.

His own hands now, he saw, flat on the white cobbles of the square. He knew what he had to do—looking up, Helva and their two comrades were staring at him with a look of mixed anger and horror too intense for their gentle features. He drew his revolver, took aim. They did not move—the pressure for him to put the gun down became painful, a white-hot sting behind his eyes. He fired once, and Helva dropped. The other two kept up their stare—his skin was on fire now, he felt like a million tiny insects were biting every square centimeter. He fired again and one of the ambassador’s brains blew out.

The force of will broke, then. Almost instantly the entire crowd got to its feet and jumped the last envoy, dragging them to the ground and beating them furiously. After a few minutes of this, the voices in all their heads vanished. The last ambassador was dead.

“Are you all right?”

Roman looked up—he was the only one who had remained on their knees, the pain only now subsiding. The hand on his shoulder had the same painted nails he’d had just a moment before.

“Yeah…I think so. Gods, what the hell was that?”

“I don’t know, but if that bastard was telling the truth, we can expect more of it soon.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve got enough bullets for another embassy, I’ll tell you that much.”

*****

THE END