"I think we found out the most important parts, girls—creating hive minds is not something to be taken lightly. They shouldn’t be broken apart after they are created! So when we create the next hive mind, I want us to have a plan for their continued existence and work in the Empire."
After this declaration, I gave all bees from the late Hive Mind Wonderful-15 a pat on their heads and another word of gratitude for their help, and the Council moved on to our Council Chamber.
There, we worked on creating the plan I mentioned.
Since the hive minds were telepathy-based, they could only exist when every member of a hive mind was within the telepathy range of every other member of the hive mind.
Although this would take more tests, I believed that a temporary loss of a single mind from it wouldn’t harm a hive mind as badly as its full dispersion... But a hive mind could lose cohesion after losing too many minds.
Regardless of my guesses and even the Oracles’ predictions, it was clear that all members of a hive mind had to live and work in the same hive. We made a plan to let some bees from the generation of Hardbees that will have the ’Gestalt Thinking’ gene to form a small hive mind, then let more people join it and see if this is more effective than making several smaller hive minds.
Slowly and carefully... After what we found about the life of hive minds, this sounded like such a good idea.
Of course, this couldn’t be so easy...
Twenty days later, the latest brood of the young bees was scheduled to emerge in Hive Supremo. The broods that carried new genes were always special. Amby and I often went to see them firsthand and make sure there weren’t any complications.
We took our seats in an observation chamber with a clear view of the brooding cells on the opposite wall and waited patiently, chatting about various things.
This time, it felt like things were going as they should—at first. Ordinary bees, Beemarines, Beehounds and Hardbees all clawed their way from their brooding cells and spread their wings in childhood wonderment and some confusion while Nurse Bees flitted about with towels, clothes and food.
The Jellybee royal cells were built a distance away, and the girls inside were still growing. The Queens always grew slower than everybody else, since they had to be bigger and stronger.
And as I was thinking about this, I felt a colossal mental presence appearing nearby!
Shocked gasps of the Nurses and young bees alike were audible even over the constant buzzing of wings. Bees were looking around in shock and alarm, trying to understand what this was.
But I and Amby already knew.
She was already standing from her seat.
In front of us, hundreds... No, thousands! All four thousand Hardbees that were morphotyped in this generation now all carried the same synchrony as the bees in Hive Mind Wonderful-15 carried before. They had the united minds and memories of four thousand newborn bees now... Which meant that they were still clueless and merely stood in place, not very different from their sisters.
I couldn’t see them all at once from my spot, of course—there were too many brood cells here. But I could feel with my telepathy that all bees who could enter a hive mind entered it at once.
"Yes, they have become a hive mind. But WHY? Why would they do it like that?" Ambrosia shook her head. "No, we must think about what to do with them first. They are alarming the nearby bees. Even the hive guards might decide to interfere if someone doesn’t tell them to stand down."
"I will do it. Calm the bees here—you are better at being a calming presence, and these Hardbees will listen to you instinctively," I said. "Then we can think about ’why’."
Amby nodded and flew to the brood cells. Her scent alone made everybody pause and listen, and together with her royal and graceful presence, I knew that she would easily ensure that the situation didn’t go out of control.
Meanwhile, I began sending telepathic messages to the Advisers and directly to various commanders and leaders, explaining to them that they shouldn’t be worried and tell their subordinates to do the same. I messaged nearby hives, too—everybody I could reach with my range of telepathy.
People in the distant hives that also had ’Telepathy X+I’ would sense and be alarmed by the new hive mind just as those in the nearby hive. They won’t even know if the hive mind was in their hive, another hive, or anywhere else.
While these messages went down the chain of command, I watched how things at the brood cells returned to normal. At least, things looked normal if you didn’t look twice.
The Nurses returned to tending to bees, and bees—including Hardbees—accepted both their care and their instructions. Hardbees just did it in a more organised manner, and understood instructions much, much faster.
I finished calming down my part of the bees at the same time Amby finished with hers and returned to me.
"The hive knows that for the colony’s sake, they should follow my and my Nurses’ instructions," Amby said, standing near me. "They know just as little as other bees, but they are so smart that it felt almost like talking to a newly emerged Oracle. But I found out why they have united."
"Huh? Did you just ask them?"
"Yes. They said they felt they were able to do it, and they wanted to do it. Bees with the ’Gestalt Thinking’ gene seem to be driven to use it... This is it."
I groaned and rubbed my forehead.
"Well, shit. Good thing that only Hardbees here had this gene, but... This means that every new generation of them will become a hive mind before we can even try to explain why they shouldn’t!"
And what was I to do about it? Ask them to kindly kill themselves?!