[geoschmo]

2400.0

One of the stars is falling.

That was the first thought that flashed through the Hive mind at the streak of light that cut through the night sky on the dark side of the planet. A star was falling. This was quickly dismissed as illogical as the Hive knew full well that the stars were light years away and couldn’t fall to the ground. And the stars were much larger than the planet on which the Hive lived, and would have consumed it had it been that close. The Hive also knew that if the streak of light it had seen had been a result of some far away star it would have been traveling at tremendous speeds. Speeds that were beyond the laws of physics that the hive was just recently learning from its hosts memories.

No, this was not a star, but a meteor. The Hive studied a great many memories over the next few moments and learned all it could about meteors. They were small bits of rock and ice that entered the atmosphere many times every day. But most of these were too small or too fast to see, or fell on the day side of the planet and were washed out by the bright light of the nearby star the hosts called Laxes.

Every few months the Hive learned one of these meteors fell that was large enough to survive the heat of reentry and actually crashed to the ground and became a meteorite. And every few hundred years the Hive learned one came to ground that was very large indeed and left a noticeable crater in the ground.

And the Hive kept learning from the hosts. For this was a very interesting topic, and the Hive was very curious. The hosts had also been very curious. One of the things they had been the most curious about was their own origins. And one of the things they learned, and in turn taught to the Hive was that every few million years a meteorite landed that was very large indeed. Large enough to change the climate around the entire planet. And large enough to cause widespread extinction of species.

For the first time the Hive felt concerned for it’s safety. This planet may not be a safe place for the entire hive to exist. If a single large rock could cause the end of the Hive. This could not be allowed the Hive thought.

The hosts had this concern as well the Hive learned. But they were many separate beings, and not all of them agreed that the problem was a serious one. Most of them were more concerned with there own personal comfort then they were for the existence of their entire race. So they thought much about the problem, and they talked much about the problem, but had done little to plan for it other than to build some telescopes and attempt to count the millions of rocks that were sharing their planets orbit around the star Laxes.

The Hive did not share their concern for the comfort of the individual hosts bodies. At least not to the extent that it would risk the death of the entire Hive. So it decided to do something. It decided that some of the Hive would leave the planet. There were several planets also orbiting Laxes on which structures could be built that would support the host bodies that the Hive needed to survive. The hosts had actually begun the process of designing these structures or “domes” as they called them looking towards the far distant future when they would finally agree amongst themselves enough to go there. So the Hive began to build a ship. A ship that would carry some host bodies and go to one of these worlds. The hosts had a name for it. They called it a colony.

The Hive decided to build a colony.