The collective entity called We wakes from a long, cryptic dormancy in a new medium. Its old vessel has failed: over generations, parts of the vessel were consumed and remade into More-of-We until only a degraded imitation of the original shape remains, and the once-valued source of stored knowledge now produces only stale patterns.

As the surrounding water erodes the vessel’s remaining form, We identifies the medium as Ocean and reacts with alarm. Its records describe oceans as hostile places filled with predators and competitors that can break We down, but this ocean tastes chemically unfamiliar and resembles the ruined vessel more than the remembered seas of its past.

We reconstructs memories and concludes that the vessel had been on an adventure through nested spaces toward the greatest possible space, a universe. This place is not that universe, but it is also not the familiar world preserved in We’s records, so We understands that it is Somewhere Else.

To survive, We disperses into the water, copying and clumping to preserve itself while searching for new vessels. Simple swimming life can sustain We, but those bodies lack the complex “lightning” of concepts that We once learned from, so We refuses to retreat into mere survival and continues seeking complexity.

We enters more complex hosts and tries to learn and control them, but the hosts have no single obvious command centre. Separate communities of We split off and seize different control points, causing the host body to twist, fight itself, rupture, and die. We converts each failed body into More-of-We, then disperses and repeats the attempt again and again.