Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.49 - Gene Ramie

In the present day, the average human lifespan is seventy years. Historical movements might last anywhere from fifty to one hundred years. Most creatures on the planet struggle to think on this scale, especially when survival is measured in days or hours. Even humans struggle to plan more than a few years into the future.

If one's view of time-scales widened, then human civilizations would represent the next marker. There were outliers, but on average, human civilizations last for three hundred years. After that, recorded history goes back seven thousand years to five-thousand BCE. At the furthest reaches, modern humans have existed for three hundred thousand years.

The Collective was so old that it couldn't be measured in centuries or even in millennia. It was measured in geological strata. It was measured in change.

The Collective couldn't remember when it began—only that it predated humanity.

That was the first era of the Collective. A time before language. One ruled by instinct and survival, guttural sounds and pheromones. It had felt the sun through fields of blooming flowers. Seen forests through the eyes of entire flocks, and criss-crossed the ocean as schools of fish. It had seen entire species rise and fall. Outlived continents.

And yet for all that time, there had been little worth remembering.

Dreams are not conscious things. They are stumbling and child-like. Little more than static in the space between existence and non-existence. The Collective's first era was the dream of a million billion organisms that shared nothing except thoughts of survival, food, and proliferation.

But as creatures became more intelligent, so too did the Collective.

The Collective woke briefly during the time of the dinosaurs. Just a blink. Then drifted off again as the great calamity struck.

Eventually, life reclaimed the planet. Mammals proliferated. Then primates. Then the precursors of humanity came down from the trees. They proliferated—spreading stories and songs, tools and fire and agriculture. The first supers, vampires, mages, and psychics were born.

The Collective woke—truly woke—for the first time.

And the first era of its life faded like a dream.

As humanity spread, so too did the Collective. Their cultures grew rich. Their histories grew deep. They waged war and made art and remade the planet in their image. And all the while, the Collective was beside them, watching through their eyes. Experiencing the world through their senses. The Collective grew up alongside humanity.

For the first time, the Collective thought of more than just survival.

It wanted. It desired.

~

Communication had grown more difficult. Over the last several years, the forces of supers and magic and technology had begun moving. Churning until they reached a rolling boil. The Collective had done the same, if only because it was impossible to stay stationary when the entire world moved around you.

For most of history, the unassimilated assumed that the Collective could only take over other psychics. That couldn't be further from the truth.

The Collective preferred to assimilate psychics. A psychic provided additional mental power, like a computer gaining additional processing power. By comparison, non-psychics were a drain on the system. But in this era, they were a necessity. Psychics and supers and mages were not the only powers in the world—bureaucrats, CEOs, and celebrities held power that was just as real and influential.

For the first time in its long, long life, the Collective stretched itself.

It swelled. Its thrall ballooned to ten million... To one hundred million... to one hundred and eighty-three million across the world.