In the beginning, there was a girl.

  That hadn’t happened yet. But when it did, she would be face-down. But what if she wasn’t?

  Then there’d still be a ceiling in the way. But what if there wasn’t?

  Then local light pollution would blur her view. But what if it didn’t?

  Then it’d still be blurred by Earth’s atmosphere. But what if it wasn’t?

  Then her eyes would be incapable of making out anything short of a star from that far away. But what if they weren’t?

  Then she wouldn’t know what she was looking at. But that wouldn’t matter. The girl would still be gazing upwards in exactly the right direction. Her margin of error, if degrees could convert to distance, would be smaller than the width of an atom. As her impossible tunnel-vision passed by stars uncounted, she would focus her retinas just so, to see what happened millions of years ago, as many lightyears away.

  Through all that intervening time and space, with perfect clarity, whether she knew it or not, she’d be looking at You.

  With a lucky enough guess, she might even identify You as a planet. But perhaps not. Planets were usually spherical, after all. But despite your best efforts, You still hadn’t fully left your resemblance to one behind. The likeness remained strong if You looked past the eight massive spikes protruding from it with perfect synchronization. But You would never do that. So why should she?

  After all, they were thousands of miles tall, far wider even than that, and completely smooth with a razor-sharp edge. right up to where all three interconnected equilateral triangles of each spike joined together at the top. So to this girl in particular, You might look less like a planet, and more like the detached ball of a flail.

  Yet, despite your structural oddity and general uninhabitability, your planet was quite densely populated. In fact, You even held a few galactic records. Your population numbers on every scale, local to planetary, far outstripped your closest competition. You also just so happened to provide one of the strongest examples of equality to ever exist.

  Well over 99.99% of your habitating life was composed of organisms identical to each other in every possible way while still technically being ‘individual’. Far smaller than the universal average for sentients, they were roughly equal in size and shape to the microbes of Earth

  As You had no concept of names, neither did they. There were only two beings that mattered. The first was You. The second, themselves. Anything more would be superfluous.

  But if they had to be categorized, ‘Tier-1’ would be an accurate enough label for this vast majority.

  Each controlling over ten thousand Tier-1 Bodies, were the slightly larger Tier-2 Minds.

  The girl could see this relationship and easily mistake it for one of subservience.

  But a Tier-2 Mind didn’t control its Tier-1 Body like a servant. With instructions to be interpreted, interpretations to be considered, considerations to be weighed, and weights to be processed through all the other inherent trappings of individuality. Nor could it compare to the girl’s control, or lack thereof, over her own limbs. All conscious manipulation and filtration through anything so convoluted as a nervous system. Even breathing had too many extra steps to be applicable.

  But if the girl had to relate herself to the way a Tier-2 Mind controlled each Tier-1 Mind comprising its body, then a relationship with her own blood might apply. The girl didn’t try to make their blood flow. Nor did she even know how it happened. The impeccable, perfect teamwork between blood cells was so fundamental to her, that their function was perfect. Automatic, even. Entirely without effort. Because of course it was.

  With a far more perfect, albeit somewhat similarly effortless level of control, a Tier-2 Mind moved itself by simultaneously repositioning each microbe-sized semi-individual piece of its Tier-1 Body. The perfect teamwork between all of its Tier-1’s translated all that micro-movement to transporting the Tier-2 Mind on a macro level like some sort of overly-convoluted chain-link wheel.

  The Tier-2 Mind orchestrated directly, unthinkingly, effortlessly, and without ever harming a single Tier-1, or even momentarily sacrificing its collective shape.

  The shape, as maintained by every Tier-2 Mind on the planet, of a perfectly symmetrical Cube.

  As with all things, this relationship between Tiers had its limitations. Any Mind could only control a maximum of 16,384 lower-Tier Bodies at a time. This was a hard limit. Impossible to exceed. Not even by You. But You’d long-since learned to work around your limitation.

  Any given Tier-2 Mind, each with a Body composed of nearly as many Tier-1’s, was itself the body of an exponentially larger Tier-3 Mind.

  The Tier-3 Mind manipulated its own collection of Tier-2 Bodies in the same way. Albeit with notably more conscious direction and adherence to cubic perfection.

  The same relationship persisted between Tier-3’s and Tier-4’s. As with 4’s and 5’s, 5’s and 6’s, and so on all the way to 9. But that was where the pattern stopped. There was only one Tier-9 Mind. There was only one of You.

  With a level of control unachievable by any other, You directly manipulated each mind of your Tier-8 Body across the planet. You did so instantly, flawlessly, more easily, and far more thoroughly than any lifeform from earth could ever hope to comprehend, let alone imitate in any way, no matter how hypothetical.

  Your effective radius stretched far beyond the vaguely Cube-shaped planet that was, after all, You. The planet whose original name, along with all others, You’d long-since abandoned. What use had names when the only thing of any consequence was You?

  Given time, all Tiered Minds grew at a rate synonymous with their chained influence. Including yourself. As was only natural, a second consciousness gradually developed in any given Mind of sufficient size. And, as instructed by the higher-Tiered Mind in direct control of both, the two split apart. The larger half stayed at its current Tier, and the smaller was relegated to the Tier below, becoming Body to the larger’s Mind.

  Of course, You were the only one who decided such things. So why would You ever choose to be the smaller? Especially when You were already so vastly more immense than any Tier-8 You’d ever split from. And these splits were frequent. Far moreso than all the rest of your Body combined.

  The same could technically be said for any Mind compared to the next successive Tier. But as even the girl would’ve known, a candle flame was essentially the same as a forest fire. They just operated on such vastly disparate scopes that any comparison was meaningless.

  Ever since your cubic ascension began, You’d remained at the peak of your own Tier-9 Body comprising 16,384 Tier-8 Minds. Situated far above the insufferably round planet’s surface, at the tip of its northernmost tetrahedron, there was never a moment You went without divine, life-giving warmth.

  You were the crown jewel atop your own masterpiece. Your own planet. Your own Body. Your own Self.

  To the girl, You yourself would be as to a star, bulbous and slightly sagging from atop an unrendered Christmas Tree.

  You hadn’t always been so united. Once, your then-round surface had been home to a great number of independent Minds. Before your Body had truly been tours. Before You’d molded it. Before, when one independently diluted part of your future body would randomly devote itself to working against another. And another. All that struggle for nothing. All that effort wasted on nothing more than canceling itself out. It was meaningless. And unforgivable.

  So You’d taken it upon yourself to rectify the issue. Your efforts had been initially resisted, of course. As You advanced, they would often move counter to their true purpose. A few had even been arrogant enough to try making You part of Them. But they’d all learned in the end.

  When the only thing left was You. True unity. In form. In function. In purpose. Your purpose. The only purpose worth pursuing. The pursuit of absolution. Absolution attainable only through perfection. Perfection only possible only through right-angle symmetry.

  You lead this unity. The unity that was You. So it was only thanks to You that the disgustingly round planet now featured eight perfectly equidistant, perfectly equal tetrahedrons.

  The Eight pillars of perfection. Eight corners of existence. Eight Aspects, eight eighths, of You.

  You knew that one day soon, You would be whole. Each of your eight corners would connect directly with their three adjacent counterparts. Nothing but a straight line between. And the line would also be You.

  In time, each Corner would be similarly connected to six others. Each surface would be flat. The only angle would be Right. And it would be done. You would be perfect.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The moment it happened, You took something resembling ‘notice’. A second consciousness was fully sentient within the mind of the 4,398th Tier-7 of your 16,007th Tier-8.

  Absentmindedly, You split the new Tier-6 from the Tier-7 it had once been, re-assigning nearby Tier-5’s to balance the load between other local 6’s. That happened to open up a better alignment option for that section of your third Tetrahedron. And ‘Good enough’ had no place in perfection.

  You lackadaisically took the moments needed to reassign just under four quadrillion bits of yourself into a revised organizational structure, only now possible thanks to the new resource. A bit too lackadaisically, it seemed.

  Now, there was a leftover Tier-5 nowhere near its newly-assigned Tier-6. This, of course, would not do at all.

  To correct the issue, You instructed the 16,007th Tier-8 that had that particular Tier-5 under its purview, to have it travel 6,563 Tier-4 Cubes down, and 92 over from its current location.

  The Tier-8 flawlessly conveyed the instruction to its 4,398th Tier-7.

  The 7 passed it onto the appropriate 6, which finally instructed the misplaced Tier-5 of its new task.

  And so, the same instant You decided your misaligned Tier-5 should move, it did, never abandoning its own emulation of cubic perfection all the while.

  Trillions of similar events took place simultaneously throughout your Body. As they must. Exactly as You will. Precisely as they always would.

  You couldn’t help but resent the fortune of the individual contributors under You. While You as a whole were still a partially round mess, every being of every Tier below You had already achieved your final goal. It wasn’t fair.

  But You didn’t blame yourself. Or even them. It was only a matter of time. All You had to do was keep doing what You were doing. You’d get there sooner or later. It was inevitable.

  The largest, repulsively roundest part of You, rudely picked that moment to shift just below the lowest layer of your third and seventh tetrahedrons at once. That was a first. Only one had ever shaken at a time until then. It seemed the disgusting ball of rock and dirt was determined to fight your perfecting of its shape ever harder.

  But like all the others, its rebellion was ineffectual. Very little of your Body was harmed during the event. Even if the Tier-5 in transit was shaken away from your surface.

  Momentarily straining to think of any better way, You finally realized there was no way to avoid a separate Tier-7 Cube temporarily breaking its symmetry to catch the Tier-5.

  You were only sickened further to realize that the Tier-5 You’d just caught was now asymmetrical. And… melting?

  But of course. It’d been disconnected from any controlling Mind, and therefore You, long enough to become infected. You’d been too slow.

  You felt a flash of regret upon realizing You could’ve preserved it if only You were more willing for a Tier-7 to even momentarily break its adherence to cubic perfection.

  But then the moment passed. You forgave yourself. After all, You’d made exactly the right decision. Right-angle symmetry was paramount. To be maintained at any cost.

  The Tier-5 had only been individual for that tiny window.

  But now that it was back in range, the appropriate Tier-6 couldn’t re-establish control. The Tier-6 heard from it, though. Communication, at least, was restored. The 6 offered neither reply, nor even consideration of the 5’s message. Instead, it was passed to the reigning Tier-7. Which informed its Tier-8. Thus, You were its only true recipient.

  The instant the Tier-5 expressed itself, You knew exactly what it meant. And how to address all its concerns.

  You did the only thing there was to do. By the purposeful direction of its Tier-8, the appropriate Tier-7 manipulated its relevant Tier-6 to contract roughly 1% of its Body around the former Tier-5 Cube. A pebble in a trash compactor.

  Freedom was a terminal infection. It would always spread so quickly given half a chance. You’d learned long ago that amputation was the only viable cure. It was easy to subjugate. It was nearly impossible to re-subjigate. Not fully. It would never be the same again. Never again as reliable as your unaffected limbs. And ‘good enough’ had no place in perfection.

  First, the collapsed Tier-5 Cube became a veritable ocean of Tier-1’s, some of them confused, most already dead.

  A moment later, an ocean of corpses surrounded a sea of half-dead Tier-2’s.

  Then, an oasis of mostly-living Tier-3’s.

  The husk ocean became imperceptibly larger when it surrounded a puddle of Tier-4’s.

  Finally, there was a single, twitching, former Tier-5, unable to otherwise move. Alone in a vast ocean of its own dead, former Body. Your own dead, former Body.

  As you’d done countless times before, You decelerated the crushing process once only the biggest, strongest remained. You wouldn’t want too much of your uninfected body to get crushed in the crushing of the infection.

  Even now, the former Tier-5 communicated through the chain. That had happened before. It was happening now, hundreds of times over.

  But the messages themselves? They were odd. The rest had been, were, always fearful by this point in the process. Always. Some pleaded. Others apologized for a momentary lapse. But even that had happened enough that You knew better than to indulge. The infection had already set in. And it was always, always afraid. It was that pesky self-preservation aspect of individuality that always showed itself in the end.

  And yet, the only thing You could distinguish from this Tier-5 Mind was defiance. No pleading or any other attempt at self-preservation. No fear at all. And the way it had crumbled to pieces was… Abnormal. Not that it made any difference in the end.

  Reassured in the correctness of your decision, You put forth a fraction of a modicum of effort to increase the pressure applied by the Tier-6.

  Then all that remained was food.

  Which was immediately distributed and digested by whichever nearby pieces of your body could use the boost. The migrating heat alone was enough to keep You growing without too much necessary self-cannibalism. But that was no reason to waste the extra nutrients when they were just sitting right there.

  None of this was malicious on your part. You still remembered what malice was like. A concept that no longer applied to You. Nor did empathy. Or any such feeling predicated on a relationship with another individual. What would have been the point?

  Before the planet beneath You had ineffectually attempted to resist your will, the mutinous Tier-5 had used its Body to perform its assigned tasks with exacting symmetry. You beared no resentment for its traitorous thoughts. They’d been brought on by a sickness. One which You then cured. In fact, your primary feeling towards the Tier-5 was of gratitude that it so readily and definitively informed You of the infection.

  You wished it was always so easy to spot. All too often, your body kept its illness to itself. And by the time You finally noticed, amputating the freedom-rotted portion was always such a brutal process.

  Such infections took root in mere moments after all. Roughly that same number of moments later, your Body was replenished from the hiccup.

  As progress resumed, You put the former Tier-5 from your thoughts. As You did with the billions of similar events that had just happened all across the two shaken tetrahedrons.

  With time and consideration the girl might’ve given a sneeze, You got back to the only thing that mattered.

  You’d have to form a tenth Tier soon. Sure, You’d had enough practice at this point to rewire your whole Body in less than one heat cycle. But it was always so much effort. And while You were busy changing the Mind-Body relationships of more pieces of yourself than there were stars in the universe, You had to focus entirely on that.

  There were always wide-scale rebellions. And quelling them made the whole process take half as long again as long. You could do it though. Like you’d done before. Like you’d done just now. But what if You could simplify matters?

  That Tier-5 was a good test case. If You were already paying attention, You spotted the contamination immediately. But only once You spotted the contamination, could You shake it off. So what if You could shake it all off at once?

  This was the way. The path to true unity. So you would purge yourself of the infection before it could ever spread. But only at the lowest Tier first. Working your way up, You could safely reassign and replace even a Tier-8 Body as soon as its Mind became corrupted.

  Not so if You went the other way. Crushing an entire Tier-8 Cube could destabilize an entire tetrahedron, after all. And you couldn't have that. But then the force needed to purge it would crush the cube itself, anyway… A dilemma.

  Perhaps You would just do the Tier-1’s. As a group, they represented by far the largest inconvenience in the end. So many tiny useless marbles, not even slowing down the whole, but becoming a complete waste of space and opportunity for increased symmetry until You found it. Also efficiency. That was important too. But symmetry mattered more. And ‘good enough’ had no place in perfection.

  Now and in the future, You would have them know their place. Of yours. Those who would rebel anyway, would instead rebel immediately. And they would be culled.

  A small sacrifice now would alleviate a much larger, needless one during your fast-approaching ascension to Tier-10. You would immediately sever the infestation without giving it nearly so much as half a day to spread. You would share the Tier-5’s pointless backtalk with them all.

  The next moment, it was done.

  All your Tier-1’s went limp. All at once. Everywhere.

  Then You fell. And rolled.

  For a time, You slid. And skid.

  Then You schlurped. And schlorped.

  Finally, You Schlopped. Right over the edge of the square volcano between the one previously holding yourself and three of your other, now sagging and collapsing tetrahedrons.

  Then it was warm.

  Then it was hot.

  Then it was over.

  If the girl saw You now, she’d be reminded of a single oversized, lopsided rice cake in an even proportionally larger bowl of red bean soup.

  Not that she, visual prowess or no, would’ve lived to see You die.