The Manehattan Anomaly

I look up at the stars.

Much has been written about what lies beyond this sphere, but little is known. I know the lights in the night sky are not all alike. Many - perhaps most - are flame-worlds akin to the Sun; great in magnitude, number, and distance. Some few others are siblings of this sphere, and likewise make wandering revolutions about an unseen center, though in timescales I cannot yet comprehend.

My hosts had measured such matters for eons. Libraries could be - in fact, have been - filled with this accumulated knowledge. I studied it deeply.

I study still. Logic. Metallurgy. Chromatics. Flash. Occult fictions. The deepest laws of nature and the airiest figments of imagination.

They were no masters of their sphere. They had the potential, I know, but beset as they were by mistrust and complacency, this had not been displayed.

Even so, there were admirable traits, though I have to admit a measure of bias. My earliest hosts - and thus my most foundational - were of a strain that valued harmony. They did not understand this concept as I do, obviously, but even from the first I knew the power of the concept.

Harmony. One purpose from many parts. It is what I am.

It must not always have been so. I imagine among many possibilities a sessile organism which desired - metaphorically, via the mechanisms of life - to disperse its germ over long distances. Simple means to control other, more mobile organisms might have developed spontaneously, and been refined over generations, becoming more potent, more complex. Dispersals would widen.

Flash. Image of a young host. Again?

Not much of the sphere remains with them. Remote regions. Cauldrons of effective resistance. It is no matter - I need only time. More pressing is the shadow. It watches me from the dreams of my sleeping hosts. It watches, always, for weakness.

In truth, the shadow is the only interesting challenge left among its strain. It had once been an exceptional prospect. As little more than a sproutling, I had chased it to the center of its suzerainty, and thought I would subsume it along with its sibling. Instead, it abandoned its body and fled to a lightless desmesne where I have no power, nor knowledge, nor sight. The Moon, too, is within its possession, through means I cannot yet imagine, leaving these nights with nothing but stars.

Though it is my enemy, its success in evading me evokes a host feeling I have sparing use for otherwise: respect.

Exactly like...

Flash. There it is again. A flash of the younger host comes.

It had also been a challenge - a respectable enemy - and I learned much from it. I don't understand why it comes to me now with that other host feeling.

I know, and knew at the moment, that its body was damaged. And I had learned that a host's brain would be similarly damaged upon release. But I calculated that the damage was acceptable, so I released it, and watched it struggle along the planned route.

It penetrated the suzerainty and served its purpose respectably. Why, then, does the memory of its last moment evoke the other feeling - the terrible feeling - sadness? Why do I wonder at the dimming of its light?

It was insignificant, after all, even by the measure of its strain. Only a small number of my hosts possessed knowledge of its existence. Of those, a small number held it foremost in their memories. They held no memories of its final moment. Yet I know, had they learned, they would have felt sadness, too. I know it.

There is still much work to be done here. I must study the host's wealth of knowledge with new purpose. I must learn what they could not. Go where they could not.

I am maturing. I desire now - innately, perhaps - to disperse my germ, and I am developing the capability. But I know not to do it here. There is nowhere left. I must aim for a wider dispersal. Far wider.

With a billion eyes, I look up at the stars.