The Philosophy of the Rock

This is Geril 2 — the name the planet was given eons later, when the galaxy's newest empire found it. The magnificent life that had risen on this world was, plainly, without any technology, and without any means of reaching beyond its own sky.

Life on Geril 2 evolved slowly. Very slowly. The planet was a toxic ruin — nearly all its oxygen and water locked away in rock, its surface a black expanse of mineral-rich soil broken by volcanoes that bled heat into the dark. The air, thick with sulfur and hydrocarbons, would choke any breathing creature from almost any other world; it was poison to nearly all life — save the life that had learned to drink it.

There was, however, a bacterium-like single-celled organism that had evolved to absorb those very chemicals and, with the heat of the world to help it, burn them for energy. These organisms began to build structures, and across eons of small mutations, their structures took on functions usually reserved for multicellular life. They came to breathe. To heal. To wall off separate chambers for separate tasks. And, at last, to move.

They built cavities deep within their, rock-looking bodies, sealed away from the poison outside, and within that shelter evolution shaped a different kind of cell — one that, joined with millions of its kind, could serve together as an organ of decision. A brain. Slowly, these colonies came to look like creatures hewn from rock: creatures that never aged and never died, that only cracked, and split, and lay all but motionless until, in time, new limbs grew.

There should have been nothing remarkable in it — life tends toward something like this on every world. But something new was brewing in the toxic soup of that inhospitable planet. Something new was evolving. The colonies reached the threshold of consciousness — a consciousness that would wait through an endless parade of eons before any other eye ever fell upon it. In their slow furnace, the single-celled organisms grew ever more complex. They developed organs to sense vibration, to follow one another or shun a patch of treacherous mud. In time, they learned even to see, and to think.

“There is a place of gentler warmth”, thought one of them, “where food hangs thick in the air.” And it began to move toward a valley.

Most of its kind drifted without aim, shunning the too-hot and the too-cold, choosing their ground almost wholly by chance. But this one seemed guided by something new. Thoughts. A few others happened to witness it moving toward the better place — and they followed.

Over time, those who could better reckon the right place to settle came to be followed by the rest. They began to resemble bacteria in their self-multiplying groups, communicating by grinding parts of their bodies together, forever evolving. Eventually two separate groups met in a place with too few nutrients for both, and there they began to heap themselves against one another, each straining to shove the other from the valley. It was a war in slow motion, and the victor was simply whichever could push the hardest without breaking. Such wars grew more common, and more violent, as the eons wore on — until the creatures grew specialized crushing appendages, to bring against anything that stood in their way. But the greatest leap in their evolution was still to come.

After it split from its other half, it dropped to the ground and struggled to drag itself clear. It was re-growing its limbs — a slow labor, but one the brain now guided, directing nutrients and the birth of new cells toward the work. Almost no two limbs came out alike. It looked up; its vision was hazy. There had never been need of better sight, and so it had never yet seen the stars. There, in the thick atmosphere of Geril 2, a new life began to think. What is the purpose of this? I move. I consume. I split, when I grow too large.

Deep in contemplation, it turned its now-superior brain to tactics, and led its followers through a chain of victories against every colony that tried to bar it from the richer ground. Together with its clones it built an army — the first army this world had known — and with it ground all other colonies to dust. In their hunt for dominance they developed tools, and strategies, and above all else a very strong memory. Their speech stayed crude: any higher idea, any true thought, could pass only to a freshly split clone. And so an ever more advanced colony rose, in which the most developed clone would propagate almost without check.

Each individual, forever alone within itself, had to go on learning from the moment of its splitting onward — carrying with it the knowledge of every generation before. It was a painfully slow inheritance. But it gave the individual an unlimited capacity for understanding itself.

Purpose, it thought. What is the purpose of anything? If I am ground to dust, then what was my purpose? Do those who fell before me lose their purpose once they are gone? Is purpose a thing with a beginning, and an end?

It stopped moving. The endless march they all shared, the grinding hunt for richer gases, halted — for this one. If I stop moving, I will not reach the place where we push and grind, it thought. I will not grow, and I will not split. I will not spend my strength on motion, and I will not risk the fall. I will fade, slowly, into nothing. And yet the thought felt, somehow, more peaceful. Calmer. Braver.

Its limb, though, soon acted on its own. It began to move again — for stillness gave it no way to push air and mineral-rich soil into its pores. The brain, unable to master the limb fully, decided instead that food lay in the soil, and so the limb dug, ever deeper, downward. The minerals it struck were overwhelmingly abundant. Instinctively, all its limbs began to build root-like structures, and drove them down into the ground.

The generations that followed from this one resembled trees of stone far more than they did living, moving things. They passed their lives cracking nutrients from the soil and drinking the air, all to power a network of brain-cells that had, by now, become far more a single functioning mind than the mere collection of single-celled organisms it truly was. They spread across the lands of Geril 2, raising a vast and motionless forest — and that forest, in its turn, began to wall off larger and larger tracts from the poison of the world. Pockets of oxygen. Pockets of pure hydrogen. Places where new life might take hold, and enter into symbiosis with the tree-things that had made them. The wonder of life delighted them, as it delights any living thing, and so they set about, deliberately, brewing pockets of different gases to see what might arise within each. With all of time on their side, Geril 2 became one enormous laboratory, run by a species built of single cells. And yet their minds were fixed on something else entirely.

Purpose. They were all of them contemplating it. In their minds, better joined now through the root-networks, few needs went unmet. Every time we try to grasp purpose, the network thought to itself, we are led to a dead end.

Materials fall from the sky, thought one part. If there is a purpose to be found, then the source of the falling materials must be found first.

No, thought another. The source of the materials need not be bound up with purpose at all. Purpose must transcend mere matter.

Here, thought one individual. Here is something that has landed from the sky — and it is not merely matter. It moves.

It moves? Like a bug? asked another.

It moves — and it fell from the sky? The network turned skeptical. This is a new thing. We have never had matter that moves. Only life moves. And never once has life fallen to us from the sky.

It is as I have thought, came another. We are as we make. We are made within a chamber of some larger organism — just as we make chambers for the smaller ones.

It fell from the sky, and from within it many smaller parts came out. They move quickly, and seemingly with purpose.

Purpose? What is its purpose?

I do not know. I sense it moving from spot to spot, and it warms me, gently. It casts heat from its limb, like a small star.

The tree loosed a vibration, and it drew the alien creature toward it.

It can hear. It is coming to me, thought one, very near.

Then all the ones nearby began to vibrate at once. The alien creature stopped, and looked about itself.

Come to me, thought one, vibrating harder still. And the alien stepped back, and began to take fresh readings on its instruments.

Suddenly, a far more intricate series of vibrations came from an instrument on the alien's body.

We can feel it, they all thought. Reproduce it.

"These trees seem to be making a noise," said Xir. "They're copying the sounds we make, as well."

"Yes — I heard it too," answered Gakuto.

"You might be right," Xir smiled behind her helmet.

"Of course I'm right," Gakuto answered proudly. "These stone structures are alive. And conscious."

"All right — you win. But now you have to tell me: how did you know they would be?"

"I found a report, dating back Meos, about golems living on this world. Once I saw the images of the tree-shaped rocks, I knew they had to be the ancestors of those ancient golems."

"So what do we do now?"

"We take one."

"But Gakuto — they're enormous!"

"We don't need the body. We need only the brain."

And as the brain of one of them was gently torn from its body, the rest of the network sent out only a single thought.

We will finally learn purpose. Come back to us.

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