*A*S*S*I*M*I*L*A*T*I*O*N*
More time passed, and the One Self consumed and grew and learned. It learned more about this world's quintessence, how it contained more than just raw energy. It was similar to that of other worlds, and yet also distinct. Worlds varied. It couldn't yet read all the properties of this world's quintessence. Perhaps it could never learn them all, but it didn't really matter. Quintessence was for aetheric metabolism, to be stored and used for communication and energy. It was an essential requirement for the creation, growth, maintenance, and propagation of True Life.
It learned more about the native biochemistry. It learned how the various kinds of organisms lived, grew, metabolized, reproduced, and died. It learned about life that photosynthesized. It learned how and what organisms consumed, if they preyed upon other life. Almost all of them consumed other life or its products in some way, with the microscopic forms being at the very bottom of the food chain, whether those tiny lives gained energy from the sun, from engulfing one another, or infesting larger life.
It sent out more independent pieces of itself, larger, to seek out more life, more nutrients, and more understanding of its new home. It adapted. It experimented with the new genetic knowledge it had gained, and sprouted different kinds of organs and appendages. It created neural pathways to carry bioelectrical impulses and the central neural structure that organized, collated, and sent out such impulses. It sprouted appendages for flying, for traveling, for sensing vibrations in the earth and air, for detecting chemicals, for sensing and categorizing the electromagnetic spectrum. The central neural structure controlled everything in the higher forms of life on this planet.
It had no names for what it sensed or how it moved using this world's biological architecture. Much of the biology was analogous to forms on other worlds, but not identical. None of the local lifeforms it had absorbed had been sophisticated enough to really think in an abstract way or to name things. But it already could think using the thought patterns it had accumulated from hundreds of other sentient lifeforms on different planets. It knew how to use appendages for movement. It knew how to utilize air vibrations, temperature variations, chemical trails, and the electromagnetic spectrum to sense the world.
It pinched off pieces of its own biomass and used its newly gained genetic traits to imitate those lifeforms. Part of its own biological mass became a tiny creature with four clawed walking appendages, a variety of organs to detect external stimuli, and a soft covering of protein filaments. It made air vibrations that its primary neural control center interpreted as high-pitched squeaks. This form seemed to be low on the food chain, but its small size made it useful for travel and intelligence gathering. The One Self shifted into many of those forms, and sent them out to scavenge, hunt, and understand.
It shifted more of its mass into other forms and discovered their utilities, using them as it deemed necessary. And then it captured other life for a different kind of experimentation. These it did not consume, but kept hold of with strong tentacles, easily controlling the various creatures' struggles and frantic air vibrations. Reactions tied to survival instincts, it noted. All the multicellular creatures it had captured reacted in a similar fashion.
The One Self chose one of the larger creatures at random. From its own cytoplasm, it created specialized proteins designed to auto-arrange helically into microscopic cylinders. They extruded from cells in its tentacles and pierced the native lifeform's own surface membranes, forming a conduit between the organisms. The One Self configured packets of specialized cells into transferable arrangements and injected them through the protein channels and into the native creature, penetrating tissues and warm, oxygenated fluids. A touch of modified quintessence went with each payload to facilitate the process.
When the cells had adapted to their new media, with some attaching to tissue substrates and others continuing to flow in the fluid streams, the One Self initiated communion. It succeeded easily in causing the creature to glow with radiant, exothermic energy, and then new limbs and organs erupted from it. The creature made strong air vibrations as it thrashed violently, but it could not escape the confining tentacles. Another command triggered wider mutations, resulting in a lifeform from one of the many worlds in the One Self's memory. After the transformation completed, it released the creature and tested the cells that had migrated to the primary neural organ. The creature obeyed every command issued to it.
Satisfied, the One Self recalled its cells, and the creature came into its embrace passively to be absorbed into the Whole.
It then experimented with controlling the native biology on a more fundamental level. More packets were configured, these with chosen traits using the native genetic machinery. It recreated the specialized enzymes used by some of the microscopic non-metabolizing, non-alive replication machines of this world to natively insert new genes into the creature's own genetic makeup. It again supplied modified quintessence to support the mutation processes.
The new transfer also worked well. The creature's own cells accepted the foreign genetic material easily. In but a few moments, the creature glowed brightly with the new energy and started to transform according to its new genetic blueprint, sprouting new limbs much as its predecessor had. The selected traits had manifested perfectly.
The One Self had expected its experiment to work, as it had duplicated and enhanced a native mechanism tailored to the bioprocesses on this planet. The One Self finished the experiment by absorbing the altered traits back into itself, observing as the creature returned to its original, physical configuration.
As with its other experiment, it then absorbed the creature for its nutrients and moved on to the next.
It conducted a number of experiments on the local life. It discovered that some of that life contained significantly larger concentrations of quintessence than others, but it couldn't yet distinguish how that affected the creatures in question. All lifeforms on this new world were still too alien, too strange, for it to categorize such subtleties.
Dismissing the unequal distributions of quintessence in native life as a minor irrelevancy, the One Self experimented more on its subjects. While most tests worked, it discovered that not all changes succeeded without fault. When it tried to generate flying limbs and flight control systems in terrestrial organisms, the new limbs were always deformed or mismatched in some way: too many joints, imperfections in the flexible, fine growths used for flight and protection, unbalanced distributions and proportions in general. It didn't seem to matter how it altered the target organism, the flying limbs were never perfect duplicates.
Likewise, the newly grown support and control structures and the neural systems required were also often faulty to a degree, and the altered creatures developed some odd behavior patterns that the One Self hadn't observed before it made the changes.
Still, the modified creatures could fly, albeit mostly through extensive application of quintessence. While the induced flight structures and mechanisms were deformed, their existence did seem to influence the mental states that allowed the organisms to accept their new ability to become airborne.
Through such observations, the One Self understood that there were missing or corrupted elements in the genetic mappings it had obtained.
The transformed creatures could still function as long as they were heavily augmented with quintessence and kept under strict external control. Flight in particular was of great use for covering territory and seeking out more sophisticated organisms to absorb. Disguise or camouflage, however, would be a problem. The alterations to the creatures would be as readily recognizable to native life as any of the many previous worlds' phenotypic expressions for similar functions. There were doubtless other flaws in portions of the genetic mappings it had obtained that had yet to be discovered. The One Self would be watchful for those discrepancies should it need to hide its true nature.
Setting aside those few oddities of transformation, the assimilation and control of this world's bioforms had turned out to be quite easy. The One Self was surprised by just how easy it was. Other worlds had held life that had taken much more effort to absorb, infect, imitate, and control. So far, though, it had yet to encounter self-aware life with sophisticated thought processes. It didn't know how those forms would think, what the thought patterns would be like. Perhaps those organisms would be harder to deceive, control, and replicate.
Assuming more advanced forms even existed on this world.
It sipped vital life energy from the abundant supply that continued to pour into the area. It absorbed more of the small local organisms. While it fed and strengthened itself, its detached, sentinel selves monitored the area and the Whole considered migrating to new locations. The impact crater was growing ever colder due to some unfathomable process the planet's quintessence was performing. Warmer environments would be more conducive to the One Self's continued growth.
A few of its remote selves detected regular but arrhythmic air vibrations coming from two distinct sources. A few moments later, those sources resolved into new lifeforms, bipedal and solely terrestrial. They directed air vibrations at each other in a manner that was clearly a mutual exchange.
A type of communication? Formal language, perhaps? It seemed much more nuanced and sophisticated than the vibrations made by the other lifeforms the One Self had already consumed. Were these new organisms the higher forms the One Self had been hoping to discover?
It made a distributed decision among all its component parts to camouflage the entirety of its physical appearance as the local landscape and to be as still as possible. It would lie in wait, observe, and then decide upon a course of action.
The two organisms proceeded farther into the crater, oblivious to the fact that they were already surrounded.