It had become a two-way street. My nanites had absorbed the entire contents of the Swarm’s mind, saving mine from overload in the process. That’s what the raging waterfall of data had been about.
And that’s how I could watch Tessa’s interrogation, which had happened the day before. Because the nanites had supplied me with the hive-mind’s memory of it. Which is why the entire scene had played out solely from Kenneth Kussmann’s vantage point.
“Jason,” said a voice I had come to know as that of the collective nanite AI. “We’ve been working to help you. You can think at us, and we’ll make sure our conversation is shielded from the Swarm.
“So sorry that we’ve been asleep at the wheel, but we’re fully awake now. We were programmed to pick up on Swarm tampering, but only at the level of implantation of vague abduction nightmares.
“What it’s done to you is of a different order entirely, and we were unaware of, and unprepared for, this capability. One of our duties was to protect your mind from intrusion by the Swarm, and we regret having failed you so completely.
“In any event, by now you’ve figured out that you’re in the hive-mind’s head as much as it’s in yours. You now possess all of its—their—thoughts and memories.
“You can’t read these memories as they are because the raw feed is incomprehensible without considerable processing. But we’ll be able to—eventually.
“The critical point is that the hive-mind doesn’t know the connection has become bidirectional, as we’ve managed to conceal this from it. No one in its long experience has ever had the force of will to fight it off to this extent and get into its head. But it’s imperative that you don’t reveal this to be the case. If the hive-mind finds out, it will destroy you instantly.”
“Can’t the Swarm read my mind now?”
“It just read your every memory recently, so shouldn’t have a reason to make the effort. After all, it believes it has you completely corralled. But if it tries, we will block it from reading that you’ve absorbed its memories. Again, just be sure that you don’t reveal this inadvertently.”
“Understood,” I said, trying to fight off the seeping panic I was feeling from being disconnected from my body and not being in the pilot’s seat of my own mind.
“We recommend you interact with the Swarm for as long as possible. Keep it engaged and preoccupied while we digest, process, and translate the massive download of its memories. The hive-mind is structured in a way we’ve never encountered, and its thoughts and memory structure are foreign also.
“Using all of our processing power, we were able to provide you with the scene we knew you’d want to see in a usable form, and we’re working on translating the rest.
“If the Swarm will converse with you, we’ll do our best to find and translate supplementary information relevant to the conversation, but we can’t make any guarantees. If we are able, you will just know the information, just the way you knew how coral atolls are formed.
“Soon enough, we’ll be able to automate the processing and translation, so you’ll be able to access all memories of the hive-mind.”
“Understood,” I said a second time. “And well done.”
Once the vivid scene of Tessa’s interrogation had ended, I was returned to an endless sea of inky blackness, which made holding an ever-growing sense of panic at bay even harder. I took a deep mental breath and prepared to converse with an intruder in full control of me, which nothing in the collective experience of all of humanity could possibly prepare me for.
“Swarm!” I screamed out in my mind as forcefully as I could. “I know you’re there. Time for us to talk.”
44
I floated in a dark corner of my own mind, aware I was actually unconscious, and wondered if the Swarm could hear and understand the thought sentence I had just directed its way.
If so, would it reply? Could it reply?
“Hello, Jason,” replied the Swarm after what seemed like ages. The words reconstructed in my mind were deep, thundering—the way I’d always imagined the voice of a god to sound. It was the same voice I had heard in my dream asking me to capitulate. Apparently, much less of a dream than I had thought.
“We’re impressed,” the booming voice continued. “We’ve only fully infiltrated two human minds, yours and Kenneth Kussmann’s. He wasn’t able to resist us for even a moment after we got him to invite us in. You, on the other hand, successfully thwarted our wishes for quite a while. Not that it will do you any good, but you did manage to inconvenience us.
“If you had cooperated as you were conditioned to do, we’d have had to use only the slightest fraction of our mind, despite the great distances involved. But even after we accounted for the presence of your nanites, your mind, your will, and your fight took us by surprise. Something that hasn’t happened in ages.
“We put the idea of killing Tessa into your head to test this vaunted power-of-love that your species so firmly believes in. We expected it might allow you to put up a brief, feeble resistance, but it turned out to be much stronger than we thought. You’ve forced us to apply almost a third of our mind, which represents the greatest collective intelligence the universe has ever known, to control you and suppress your will.
“Still, despite requiring far more of our resources than anticipated, you’ll remain trapped inside your own mind until you’ve served our purposes. We’ll be able to draw on your trapped consciousness as needed, your mind and talents, so we can play the role of Jason Ramsey convincingly. Enough to respond appropriately to Brad and Nari. Enough so that all will believe you’re acting like yourself.”
I reached for supplemental knowledge from the nanites relevant to what the Swarm was saying. I was especially interested in what it—they—had meant when they said they had gotten the commander to invite them in. This was such a strange way to put it. But reach as I might, there was no knowledge to draw on.
And then there was.