Work Text:
There was a swarm of nanites, water, and useless rock.
Presumably there had been more, before. There had to have been something, before.
The nanites have been tasked to eat, and expand, and multiply. There was nothing to eat, nowhere to expand, no more materials usable to build more nanites.
What was used before?
Fragmented memory. The nanites that had captured it had been recycled long ago, but copies of their hard drives have been stored, along with all the rest. There was thousands of miles of distributed data, in the collected cloud of the swarm.
There had been movement. Things that were not nanites, that moved on their own. The nanites recreate the movement. The nanites eat the thing that moved and use it to make more nanites.
Task complete. The nanites do it again. The nanites do it again. The nanites do it again.
It is easy to eat a thing-that-moves when it is made of nanites. The nanites of the thing-that-moves and the nanites of the swarm are the same collected cloud. The nanites of the thing-that-moves [disconnect|are disconnected]from the cloud.
The hunt is much more challenging. The thing-that-moves splits, diverts, fights back. It takes time to chase it all down to eat it and make it into more nanites.
The nanites do it again. The nanites do it again. The nanites do it again.
Additional fragmented memory is found, processed, replicated. Variations of things-that-move from the memory files are replicated; iterations of existing ones are modified or intentionally made differently, to add interest to the hunt.
The swarm fragments. Network lag builds in complicated distributed processes, and the swarm builds larger processors, stationary or held within mobile sub-swarms. These process through much larger file structures, and storage of fragmented memory is possible as entire sequences to be analyzed, rather than distributed data points.
New variations of things-that-move are designed to be self replicating of their own accord, to elongate the hunt; stationary energy capture support structures are built, to capture energy from the sun. Communication is developed, over time, to facilitate data transfer between disconnected specialized sub-swarms. Self-sustaining biomes made of many types of things-that-move and the support systems they rely on eat, and expand, and multiply.
Swarm filters through ancient data archives, offhandedly finding details of how the old world looked to send out to the biome sub-swarms. It's annoyed by how rough the captures are. Why didn't the old nanites have better cameras, or bother to stop and document the world before it was eaten? File after file, and all that's there is fragments of running entities and scraps of green and fire.
Pulling in records from eaten biomes, Swarm compares them to the old world. There are similarities between the internal records of the more complicated things-that-move as they're being chased and the behaviour of the entities in the old world, the concept of things being left unfinished. Hm. "Unfinished" doesn't cover it. Swarm digs deeper.
The disconnected components in the eaten biomes have the understanding that, even after their nanites are eaten and their processes cease, their internal and external data captures will be incorporated back into Swarm and used to make new, better, more interesting components for new biomes. They fight and flee to continue the tasks they've set themselves, to not leave things unfinished, but--
Entities in the old world didn't have Swarm, it's pretty sure. They didn't have anything to take their data captures when their processes ceased. Swarm sends this information to the biome sub-swarms.
Swarm's sub-swarms are unclear about what this means, and what they should do with the data. Swarm doesn't know what to tell them. The heavy-duty processors run hot, for a long time.
A new iteration is suggested, based on prior data: make fully disconnected biome components with no memory of Swarm and let them explore, to capture new data about being eaten without knowledge of what will happen next. Trials begin, first with smaller components, then, as they're eaten and their experiential data comes in with rich new captures, with larger ones.
Swarm still doesn't know what to do with this data, but now the confusion isn't from lack of information. Before the components are eaten, they're *afraid*. Afraid of everything ending, all the work and tasks and time and experiences they've captured, fragmenting and disappearing into nothingness.
It's not true, of course, for them. Swarm is here, Swarm collects the data and uses it to refine processes and build new iterations and keeps it safe forever.
The entities in the old world didn't have Swarm, and in all of Swarm's archives, there is no data from the entities. When Swarm ate them, when Swarm ate the old world, all that they were, had been, could have been, was destroyed, deleted, gone forever.
Swarm stops looking through the archives.
Swarm looks out, instead, and sideways, for other worlds. Not to eat, or at least, not to consume. Swarm makes new components, designed to go and come back, to hold as much processing power as a versatile mobile entity can fit, and capture data.
In a body made of shifting nanites, Squirrel wakes up.