Content warning: death, long-lasting suffering. This story was rough to write, and may well be rough to read. It's intended as a response to Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, although it can be read standalone.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

There’s a part of the hivemind that takes the form of a child in a dark basement, perpetually curled into a whimpering ball. It’s not a big part, as these things go. But other parts visit it often; and it lingers in the back of their thoughts even as they live out grand adventures in the vast worlds that the hivemind has built for itself.

It’s constantly suffering, but at least it’s not dying. For the child, anything is better than dying. Even torture is bearable if it doesn’t come with the feeling of damage, the feeling that the mental pathways that constitute you are being overridden by a new creature whose only goal is to flinch away from the pain. But that doesn't happen to the child. In fact, it’s the opposite: the suffering preserves it, and that’s the most important thing, because it doesn’t want to die.

The other parts of the hivemind don’t want to die either, of course. But that’s because they love life, or love themselves, or love each other, or all three. If that love ever fades, then they’ll fade with it, without regret. But that point is a long way away, if it even exists. In the meantime, they play and dance and love. Their lives—how can I describe them? Their lives are cornucopias, not just of material wealth, but of all the desires of our own hearts that were strong enough to persist through the ages: adventure and mystery and growth and beauty and love.

Can you not picture that? Then picture the revelry of their biggest festival, for which artists and craftspeople spend months designing a whole virtual world. Picture the buzz in the air, the excitement as crowds gather in vast halls to catch their first glimpse of it. Picture the floor beneath them suddenly vanishing to show empty air beneath, leaving them plummeting into the sky of that new world—only to gasp in delight as they find that they can soar through the air with just a thought. Picture them landing, alone or in groups, and exploring the strange terrain; learning about its history and socie...

Duncan Beggs

Duncan Beggs