Reportage from the Frontline of Biological Mutation

As I sit here resplendant with my heady mix of gin and pills my thoughts turn to those frightful societies who have developed mass-conciousness. Fine and dandy for them, but their sports teams are annoyingly efficient and spoil competition. These deals only ever work out well for the people involved. As a bystander or neighbour they can be frustrating.

A few years ago I undertook a trip to a planet where mass conciousness was in its early stages. Planets in these states are well renowned for being one of the universes most amazing sights. It was a fairly typical awakening, the culture was already travelling space, eating synthetic food, ruling itself through a virtual democracy. Actually, their virtual democracy was pretty poor, they'd worked out the "silent voting" implant technology but the subject of the polls were still decided upon by a central government. They'd worked out a hairbrained system where 200,000 of the populace had their implants removed and became the Government for a few months or so, before returning to their work. Cavemen.

Maybe this was why they underwent their biological changes. Centuries of imperfect virtual democracy will drive any culture stupid. First reports came within seconds of the mutation from their news agencies, which shortly after shut down. Immediately several Edenhoppers and myself where on our way to watch the fun.

And what can I say, it was fantastic. The textbook migration happened so smoothly that it was eerie to see from orbit, like a mass of mould moving around the outside of an apple. People re-orded themselves through cities and continents. Ex-pat ships returned back from wherever they had gone. Within a day the planets manufacturing systems were pumping out new structures like they were toys. Large areas of cities were reconstructed. It was a great sight, like watching someone else play SimCity.

The global media shutdown was a bit depressing, they made some great comedy shows. The entertainment industry honed itself for export, an entire planets worth of ideas condensed down to one movie every few months. These films are highly sought after in some parts of the universe, myself I find them a bit bland and rigid.

I stayed in orbit for a few days before becoming bored. The migration is all well and good but after a while the planet settled down to a monotonous level of perfect efficiency. Tedious. I was hoping for a situation along the lines of one I heard about whilst on Station Valentine. A planet went mass-concious, and its neighbour objected. It's very hard to compete in terms of trade with such an efficient planet. They unleashed an ill-judged war against the mass-concious planet only to find exactly what a mass-concious army could do. Brief.

Yeah, these planets are fun, but only during the setup. When they're up and running you might as well be watching one of those cheap perpetual motion machines you can buy at flea markets.