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Hive Rules

by Gregory Lomasney

“That is five votes for the proposal, versus seventeen trillion, three hundred and twenty-two billion, forty-two million, five hundred and eight thousand, and sixty-eight votes against the proposal,” Trillby declared.

Simmons gave a pointed stare at Zal. The Coordinated Peoples of the Zalthorian Hive Society, or Zal to their friends, nodded sagely at the count.

“Well, I think that settles it,” they intoned. The amorphous mass of psychically linked units politely held a humanoid form, complete with mimicked facial features and pigmentation. Among the other five crew in the capsule, four were human, and Zal usually tried to blend in.

“I’m not sure the voting system is working as intended,” Simmons said acidly.

“I could do a recount if you’d like,” Trillby suggested.

“No, thank you, Trillby. I don’t think that will help unless Zal wants to change their votes.”

“Don’t be presumptuous, Simmons,” Zal chided. “The voting is anonymous. Any of us, by which I mean all individuals in this capsule, could have voted in any manner.”

“Technically true,” Simmons said, “but there is only one of us that has approximately seventeen trillion votes.”
He glared at the hive mind until they answered. “Technically there are approximately seventeen trillion of us that have approximately seventeen trillion votes.”

“Do you really think this is fair?” Simmons asked Trillby, the edge creeping into his voice.

Trillby, the only other non-human aboard, was an Andorian Wyrm. At this point in its lifecycle, the Wyrm appeared like an amber-scaled tardigrade, about sixty centimetres in height with several scalloped fins along its back. It sat in an orb of water contained in a glass sphere that was the anchor point for its six-limbed exoskeletal mechanoid.

“Well, it seems so,” Trillby replied. The speaker beneath its orb spoke with an Oxford English accent. “You proposed that the current counting system based on one vote per individual be modified due to the perception that the individuals comprising the Coordinated Peoples of the Zalthorian Hive Society tended to vote in a block, which negates all other votes. As the appointed adjudicator, I have taken your point under consideration, and in the interest of fairness to all, have put the proposal to a vote. The results of the vote may not have been what you were hoping for, but democracy wins out. Better luck next time, Simmons.”

They had been in the escape pod for five standard days, with another sixteen standard anticipated before rescue. It was a tightly confined space, very little room to move, let alone for privacy. As with any vessel in their situation, the computer had appointed the most impartial individual to be adjudicator. Trillby was a particularly easy choice as it had been acting as quartermaster on the Ulysses prior to the cosmic ray burst that clipped the aft section and triggered the evacuation. Trillby had followed ship guidelines and implemented a voting system to resolve most issues. Simmons, Fernandez, Nyugen, and Williams had agreed without a second thought, and Zal had not stopped smiling since.

Choices of reconstituted rations were among mutually edible options, but a landslide vote had selected myoprotein slurry consistently. The media library was limited compared to the now scuttled Ulysses, but was still extensive enough to allow a variety of tastes. The prevailing opinion was to have regular sessions of bass-boosted infrasonic white noise, which the humans could not hear but could sense as an uncomfortable tightening of the chest and feeling of cosmic dread. The bathroom schedule, while not divided equally among the seventeen trillion individuals, was balanced heavily in Zal’s favour. They treated this as a magnanimous sacrifice of their entitlement for the good of the crew.

“You must have voted to change the system as well,” Simmons told Trillby as he did the math. “You must know it’s unfair, too.”

“Votes are anonymised,” Trillby said. “However, I can acknowledge that this appears to be an edge case that the current system of equally weighted votes per legal individual does not seem to account for. It is fortunate that the system has inbuilt measures that allow us to change it, and unfortunate that those inbuilt measures are based on a vote. If you would like, you can resubmit the proposition for tomorrow. Shall I enter that into the meeting minutes?”

“You are the adjudicator,” Simmons pleaded. “You can rule against them and change the system.”

The wyrm began to drift and list in the spherical tank. Simmons had learned that was a nervous reaction for wyrms based on high stress.

“That is technically within the powers of an adjudicator in these circumstances,” it said. “It seems that using those powers has very little in the way of checks and balances, and no true guidance or framework for appropriate use.”

“Because it is meant for edge cases, like this one!” Simmons did not know how he became the spokesman for the human contingent. Except for Trillby, they were all equally ranked and were all acquaintances on the Ulysses. The closest crewmate he had to a good friend was, ironically, Zal. They had worked together in facilities maintenance and had built a rapport despite their differences in physiology and culture. They worked well as a team, they joked, and they ate lunch together—which was an experience Simmons had to get used to seeing, but that was his problem.

On the escape shuttle, though, Zal did not hesitate to establish and haughtily abuse their voting power. Maybe it was Simmons’ familiarity with Zal that led him to challenge them first, and when someone else took charge in an awkward or socially complex situation, other humans tended to sit back, shut up, and see where it went. Except for Nyugen; she seemed to specifically enjoy the fruitless arguments, despite her best interests losing out in the end.

So Simmons sat in a tiny space with six other people, where the only privacy to be found was in the thin-walled and not-at-all soundproofed lavatory, and was completely on his own to resolve the issue. It was an issue, not just discomfort. Cabin fever was dangerous at the best of times, let alone when you were on a spacecraft, and far less when that spacecraft was an emergency shuttle that probably had not been serviced as often as it should. To make things even worse Zal seemed to make choices that not only disregarded the comfort and needs of the rest of the crew, but also occasionally seemed to go out of their way to make things more difficult for everyone else. Zal had spent their time on the Ulysses on the lowest rung of the social ladder; they had not had this much power and control since they had shed enough biomass to leave the planet Zalthor.

Zal was a culture of one, or of trillions. The hive had become the dominant species on their planet, and eventually an emergent property of the microbial race cooperating for survival resulted in a common, psychically-linked personality. The individual cells were sentient, and could even demonstrate basic sapience, but intellect and ego climbed exponentially with each additional Zalthorian Hive member.

That is, up to a point. It was very resource intensive to generate a psychic field for shared consciousness, and the logarithmic increase in capabilities ran against the square-cube law as the mass of the hive increased. For most tasks, Zal was comparable to an individual of any other species while they had a mass between twenty and two hundred kilograms. This put them in a very odd place when joining the Galactic Council. In some circumstances, Zal was the Coordinated Peoples of the Zalthorian Hive Society and had the same legal status as Earth or the Andorian Commonwealth, but practically they were equivalent to any individual crew member.

The Council suggested that Zalthorian science would benefit from exposure to even the day-to-day equipment of a mixed species vessel, and Zal brought their unique perspectives on wave harmonics to make improvements to existing Galactic Council technological designs. This meant assigning Zal to a maintenance engineering role on a Galactic Council ship.
Zal had struggled when they first joined the Ulysses. Anyone on a Galactic Council ship could sympathise with the difficulties of integrating into the patchwork culture that developed. Zal had an extra hurdle to jump: they had never encountered another culture of any kind on their home planet, so that social stepping stone to alien interaction was missing.

When Simmons became friends with them, Zal was constantly asking his opinion on how they handled social interactions. They swung between extreme fear of disrespecting others and paranoia that they were being disparaged. A minor tiff that someone else would brush off became a point of obsession to Zal. Simmons came to understand that Zal, who had been the sole global consciousness, a supreme being unrivalled by anything known to Zalthorian society, had made the difficult choice to explore the wider universe only to find themself in the role of maintenance technician, with hundreds of peers and scores of superiors.

Now Zal was back on top of the food chain, and they were indulging in the feeling of control. Simmons did not think that Zal realised just how distressing the situation was for the rest of the crew, and confronting him openly would likely add fuel to the fire, so Simmons could only watch the tensions build.

Nyugen was frustrated, but at least she enjoyed her schadenfreude from Simmons’ capering attempts to fix the broken system. Fernandez occupied themself with system checks and report writing, sometimes filing lengthy letters of complaint for Trillby to review. That wasn’t perfect, but at least it was an outlet.

The real concern was Williams.

Back on the Ulysses, after William’s had spent a trial rotation with maintenance, Simmons had recommended him for permanent placement. He had politely declined.

“Nothing personal,” Williams had said. “Hydroponics has fewer crawl spaces, and nobody getting angry over deadlines. Those things make a difference for someone like me, you know?” With a little prompting, he shared his story.

On one of Earth’s orbital trade stations, a young and impressionable Williams had taken part in an ill-conceived heist against a vengeful station administrator. Williams’ sentence had dramatically overshadowed the petty crime. He spent six years locked in a lunar correctional facility with a sinister class of violent thugs. The worst part, according to Williams, was having to choose when to defend himself, sacrificing his record of good behaviour to prevent his or someone else’s torment. When he had earned his freedom, his parole officer helped him find a home on the Ulysses.

“So, yeah. I like you and Zal, but maintenance work isn’t for me. Crawl spaces are too claustrophobic, and the people stress me out,” Williams had said. “Makes me feel like I’m back on Luna. Hydroponics is a lot more relaxed, and I’m good at the job. You know I’m being recommended for the leadership program? Just have to get through my parole.”

Simmons watched Williams on the escape shuttle, trying not to psychoanalyze every clench of his jaw, every twitch, every furtive glance at the status screen that showed the glacial approach of rescue, while Zal unwittingly edged everyone closer to a complete breakdown.

Simmons took some time at the control console that evening. The lighting and environmental conditions were now set to a thirty-three-hour cycle to match the Zalthorian home world—as determined by vote, of course—and Fernandez appreciated the break. The necessary tasks were hourly spot checks of system statuses, so Simmons took the opportunity to dive into the database and learn more about Trillby.

Their adjudicator was ostensibly very fair and made confident decisions when there was a clear framework for them, but it shied away from making the critical decision they needed it to make. Learning about a species’ xenobiology and culture did not give you everything you needed to know about a person; everyone was an individual, and sometimes learning about someone’s home planet could encourage biased preconceptions when dealing with them for the first time. In this case, Simmons felt that the added context might help make sense of Trillby.

Simmons could confirm from initial entries that Andorian Wyrms typically preferred it as a pronoun. That was a relief. Trillby had introduced itself with the pronoun, but there were species that would do that because they thought it was easier for humans, as opposed to what they would personally prefer. Wyrms had a complex series of moulting stages in their life cycle and, from diagrams in the file, Simmons estimated Trillby to be in its fifth moulting stage, which would make it somewhere around three hundred years old. Each life cycle stage had certain responsibilities for societal care for the younger generations, from feeding and protecting to education, and in the fifth stage they were often in roles of guidance and administration. It was a complex and stratified society, and Wyrms in their fifth moulting helped to keep the structure, interpreting the laws and ensuring understanding and order.

Simmons rubbed his eyes as he processed this. It seemed like Trillby embodied a lot of the expectations of its people, and this did not help with his problem. On a whim, he continued reading about further stages in the Wyrm life cycle, expecting nothing relevant.

After the sixth moult, one of the most jarring changes occurred. The screen was filled with a diagram of a Wyrm with membranous wings and a comically small head atop a tentacle-like neck. He frowned at a symbol in the bottom left of the screen and zoomed in to see a black silhouette of a fifth-stage moulting wyrm, like Trillby. He puzzled over it for a moment before realising that it was to indicate scale. The sixth stage in wyrm lifecycle was enormous, and the hormonal changes were typically associated with significant shifts to the personality. These were the people who ruled the society, who crafted the laws that fifth-stage moulting wyrms put in practice.

Simmons could see it now: Trillby was a good person and had a strong sense of right and wrong, but to change the rules would be overstepping in its culture. Simmons would probably not be able to convince Trillby to throw out the rulebook, but it would be comfortable following the letter of those laws. So Simmons chose to change tack. He opened the emergency procedures and began to read.

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The choice of breakfast was, of course, decided by vote. It reasonably could have been decided that each crew member could choose their own sustenance while following rationing guidelines, but the choice for a communal vote on food options was also decided by vote. So flavoured myoprotein paste was the meal of the day.

Zal was smug as they always were, having reconstituted themself from their mass hibernation on the floor of the shuttle, the other crew having to climb over each other in the night to avoid the pool of Zalthorian creatures. The smile wavered as Zal met Simmons’ eyes. Zal knew the look of simmering elation, the anticipated triumph, and Simmons delighted in the brief look of nervousness in the hive’s face. They rallied and showed a defiant expression. Simmons had hoped for that; he was eager for Zal to build themself as high as possible before the well-earned fall.

“Today,” Trillby announced, “is day five of our journey based on the Zalthorian calendar. For the benefit of the minority that are more comfortable with the standard twenty-four-hour clock, this would be day six. In the interest of efficiency, we will not be holding the morning meeting unless there are any points anyone wishes to voice or motions anyone would like to bring to a vote.”

Simmons washed down his last bite of myoprotein with a gulp of water and savoured the bitter taste. “Adjudicator Trillby, I would like to ask for clarity on some points of administration.”

“Oh, do we have to stay for this?” Fernandez snapped.

“An excellent point!” Simmons exclaimed, pointing a finger at Fernandez’s startled face. “Trillby, if there are administrative actions that only require the presence of a portion of the crew, are all crew still required to attend?”

“No,” Trillby replied patiently. “Once a crew member is satisfied that all business relevant to their role is resolved, they may leave the meeting.” Simmons put a hand up to Nyugen before she could ask the obvious leave and go where question.

“Another, unrelated question; if you should be preoccupied with administrative duties, how should idle crew resolve decision making processes?”

Trillby knew the guidelines and procedures better than anyone, but it did not give any indication that it knew Simmons was practically pointing to specific passages. “The computer will select a deputy administrator if there are decisions that require immediate attention, although it should be noted that I would maintain the right to roll back decisions or recall any votes that had not been made with a full crew complement, when administrative duties allow time for their review.”

“Wait,” Zal began, gears turning in the hivemind. “What do you mean? Votes cannot be called without the full crew.”

“This would only be under an edge case where a portion of the crew were otherwise occupied with administrative activities and were unavailable to participate,” Trillby clarified.

Zal and Simmons stared off then. Simmons could see Zal trying and failing to anticipate the trap. Trillby asked if there was any other business, and Simmons waited as long as he dared.

“Adjudicator Trillby,” Simmons said with an air of apology, “I am sorry to embarrass you like this, but there is an aspect to this meeting’s administration that you have neglected.”

Trillby drifted slightly in its tank, but its mechanoid arms waved for Simmons to continue.

Simmons smiled viciously. “Could you please perform roll call?”

Nyugen had been on the edge of her seat; excitement at what grand scheme Simmons had concocted evaporated in an instant. Zal gave Simmons a what the hell look as Trillby began.

“Fernandez?”

“Present.”

“Nyugen?”

“Yeah, present, where else would I be?”

“Simmons?”

“Oh, I’m very present, very in the moment.” Simmons said eagerly.

“Trillby, present,” it stated, ticking itself off the roster. “Williams?”

“Present.”

“Zalthorian hive consciousness?”

Before Zal could say anything, Simmons raised a hand. “Excuse me, Adjudicator Trillby, but I believe the proper form for the roll call is to call out an individual’s designation and wait for acknowledgement before moving on.”

“What? Did we miss someone?” Nyugen asked.

Zal actually lost cohesion for a moment and their component parts buzzed angrily until they literally pulled themselves together.

“Here, present, accounted for,” Zal said in various panicked voices as they struggled to maintain control of themself.

Trillby held very still for a moment while it examined the pad with the six names for the roll call displayed on screen. Next to the last name on the list was a small, innocuous symbol. A plus sign. The mechanoid finger hovered over it for a moment.

“That is entirely unnecessary,” Zal insisted.

Trillby tapped the plus. A long moment passed when nothing happened. Simmons began to worry that he had gotten it all wrong, but then he saw the most beautiful thing he had seen since the journey began.

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“Zalthorian Hive member designation one?” Trillby asked, entirely unphased.

“Here, I already said, I’m present,” Zal insisted.

Trillby nodded. “Zalthorian Hive member designation two?”

“No,” Zal breathed.

“Not present?” Trillby asked.

“No, I mean yes, present and accounted for. All of me is.”

“These procedures are for safety, so we must be sure. Zalthorian Hive member designation three?”

“As we’ve already been called and accounted for…?” Simmons quietly asked. Trillby waved a hand dismissively. If Andorian Wyrms had any defining trait, it was their patience, and Simmons suspected that Trillby found the process as satisfying as popping bubble wrap.

A notification appeared on the status console: In the event that adjudication is required prior to primary adjudicator availability, Crewmember Williams has been assigned as deputy adjudicator.

“Williams,” Simmons said with a grin, “I have a few propositions I’d like to run by you.”