"God"

Within a short time of becoming aware, this creature experienced a large, ferrous foreign body penetrating skin, three layers of supporting bone lace, and the organ primarily responsible for the awareness.  Other, complimentary organs remained in place, processing this reality.

Processing itself and its surroundings on a higher level had rendered this creature vulnerable somehow.  Using the limited pool of resources available to it, this creature began solving the problem.  It created another, similar organ for higher processing and coordination.  This one was different in the nature of the encasement, slightly different in position, lower to the ground.

The ferrous foreign element was triangular, this creature noted, as the object cleaved the new growth away.

It was aware, using its secondary processing organs, that the tool that had hewed the organ away was set to one side.  It was aware of a source of heat and light, and of the pheromones released as the organ was burned away into nothing.

Steadily, slowly, this creature focused on refining processes, breaking down the resources it was given and using them efficiently.  It clarified how it perceived the external world, and how it understood its own form, and it tracked everything it had done before by writing it all into its own skeletal structure.

Working across multiple organs, focusing on things it consumed, on particles it inhales, on light and types of light, this creature was able to identify more complex things, even if it couldn’t understand them.

If this creature was only a response to its environment, purely adaptive, it would abandon processing entirely.  But this creature has fifteen lesser processing organs and it has developed the ability to recognize patterns.  The damage is targeted, aimed at particular parts and for reasons this creature does not yet understand.

This creature wants to develop the ability to understand and this creature devotes time to working out how.  It develops five organs simultaneously, spaced around its body, and makes one of the five about processing and deeper understanding.

All five of the organs are soon removed.  Many resources have been wasted, but this creature can write the learned detail to its bones, through structural chains built on a sub-cellular level.  Crude, but placement, composition and general purpose can be transcribed.

This creature grows another organ, and this time, it moderates its own behavior.  It does not exercise its body and attempt to record the best movements to its new thinking-organ, nor act agitated, nor does it relax.

The pattern has been figured out.  If it gives overt indication that it is learning and studying on a higher level, it is culled.

Enemy (Arc 9)