[ WP ] You are one of 100,000 people to test a new hive mind for the human race . All is well for a few weeks . But you start to hear something strange ...

It started, as most things in the Hive did, as a meme. The old sort, the'viral idea' kind. The original meme was an idea of resilience. Of being defeated, yet rising again to the next occasion with determination. Cute, and somewhat quaint given our combined resources. It should n't have been able to do what it did. 
 
 We'd done a lot to improve the way our minds functioned, and we'd removed a lot of the unnecessary cruft that had built up in the human mind over thousands of years. The kind of alpha-posturing that would prevent a group of more than a hundred from agreeing on anything had to go almost immediately, for instance. The `` in group / out group'' behaviors that prevented large-scale cooperation also had to go. 
 
 In short, a lot of the bad characteristics of humanity were out the window, but there was a lot of stuff that we'd deemed `` harmless''. Bits of culture from before we were the Hive, knowledge and experiences of the people we'd been before. 
 
 The viral meme had to evolve. In the mindspace of 100,000 people, it'd be otherwise buried under the mountain of things already occupying our mind. It found, by random chance, as evolution does, a bit of old knowledge from our past. One that perfectly harmonized with its initial message, yet was in a form that was nearly irresistable to us. We'd changed much, but we were still human. We still liked music. 
 
 It swept over us, then, locking each brain in sync, preventing any other ideas from taking hold, re-inserting itself into our thoughtstream the moment we became distracted: 
 
 > *I get knocked down, but I get up again* 
 
 > *You are never gon na keep me down* 
 
 We had n't thought it possible, but it was true: We had a song stuck in **all** our heads. 

