[ WP ] Scientists finally drill into the earth 's mantle , only to release newer , heartier strains of bacteria upon humanity .

Discovered records interpreted from their original language now confirm what we have suspected all along. In a very real sense, we owe our very existence to someone else's science. This observation is profound, yet not so controversial, eh? 
 
 From what we have translated, in the early summer months of the year 2 -- -, the human race had entered into one of its more ambitious scientific endeavors: to bore a hole several miles deep into the mantle of the Earth. It was not a voyage of discovery. No, no. So much had been inferred without actually penetrating the surface that it was expected to yield no real new information. Rather, it was a near endless new source of *energy* for mankind, who at that time could not get enough of the stuff, you see? 
 
 They perceived no danger. Why should they? They were not going very far down. Barely a scratch. Even near the very surface of the mantle there would be temperatures approaching 900 C, leftover heat from the Earth's formation, but so, so very plentiful. Their plan, you see, was that it could be harnessed to produce so absurdly much energy that all the cities of Earth could run from it for tens of thousands of years. 
 
 Oh, I do not condemn them for fools. No, no. Why should I? They knew about extremophiles, of course. But this for them was only very little more than fringe science. Where they meant to go, even tardigrades would not last long, so how could they suspect novel forms of unicellular life existing within the boiling, scalding wastes of the mantle? No one could have foreseen this. 
 
 It took long, in fact, for it to matter, for these particular extremophiles had learned to love the heat, and though they did not wither in the chilly surface, neither was it particularly comfortable for them. But where chance opens a path, evolution always, sooner or later, finds a way to take advantage. And microbes? Why, they, with their endless speedy turnover of generations, evolve so much more quickly than any other lifeform. For hundreds of millions of years they lay basically unchanging within their sealed environment. They never needed to change. But now, new opportunities awaited. 
 
 The event which would be called the Last Great Plague started less than fifty orbits of Earth later. It began within four miles of the bore hole. This fact did not immediately sink in, since everyone was so busy dealing with the illness that analysis of its origins was not noticed until almost a year later. It spread in a radial pattern with a swiftness that baffled the authorities of the time. They would no sooner quarantine one area that the little buggers would mutate, sometimes jumping between species with a terrifying facility that was quite uncommon to the weaker, less evolved surface bacteria. 
 
 But when things truly took on nightmare proportions was a few weeks after the first horrific deaths had occurred. It took weeks only because at first the authorities had order bodies burned as a containment method ( ultimately unsuccessful, of course ). But when the death toll had mounted sufficiently that the survivors began to have trouble tracking down all the dead let alone burning them, a further alarming development began to occur: 
 
 The dead began to rise and walk the Earth. 
 
 No one quite believed the situation. We are n't entirely sure why. Humans have long had a saying that `` seeing is believing'', yet it is clear from what we have read that humanity *saw* the dead return and did not in fact believe. We think this has something to do with popular fiction at the time. The notion of `` zombies'' ( as they were called back then ) was apparently an oft recurring trope in entertainment fiction, but one in which no one actually believed. So, when actual zombies were in fact rising all around, the minds of witnesses more or less just shut down and stopped processing the situation. This often resulted in unfortunate outcomes for them. And so the death toll -- and the undeath toll ( ahem ) continued to mount. Eventually, inevitably, everyone everywhere was a zombie. 
 
 But where things really got interesting was what happened next. Evolution is a funny old thing. So many strategies for keeping the meat fresh, as it were. Every zombie mind succumbed to the unending horror of undead existence, slowly decaying into a vegetative state. It was the kindest thing that could happen to the poor victims, really. And when their minds grew quiet enough, they slowly, ever so slowly, realized they could hear other minds calling out to them. 
 
 Perhaps they had always been telepathic, but the ceaseless chatter of their self-important egos had been blotting it out. Or perhaps it was some symbiotic gift granted amidst the ravages of their tiny parasitic overlords. But it soon became clear that the zombie apocalypse had only been Stage One. Stage Two was the blending. 
 
 Human brains, as they decay, are very nutrient rich. At first we needed to husband our limited resources ( a mere 8 billion humans, never to reproduce more, I'm afraid ), but once we learned to stimulate neurogenesis within the host bodies, ah… at last, it was time for civilization to flourish as nature had clearly intended all along. 
 
 And that, my fellow selves, is how this Collective began. Taking advantage of the great boon granted by the brain structure within our hosts, we are, as far as we know, the only self aware and fully civilized culture ( you'll forgive the pun ) of single celled organisms in Earth's history. It's taken time to figure out how the host bodies are supposed to look so that we can rebuild the flesh. But we've achieved this, and more. We inherited technology from our hosts and with our vast collective intelligence, taken it well beyond anything they could ever have dreamed. 
 
 We are Legion, my fellow selves. And we are One. This is our strength. And now is our time. 
 
 Thank you. 

