I am an X Parasite

You become aware of the self as part of a larger whole, there is no individual but you are one of a powerful horde. You become aware of your vessel, a small two-legged thing with a large mouth, and little in the way of mental capacity. It has no name for itself, it has no perception of itself as alive. The thing exists to eat, drink, and breed. Such a simple animal will do very little as a servant of your kind but within its body, you can reproduce infinitely as long as it still breathes.

The creature hops about placidly, if it knows you're occupying it then it shows little concern. Over time your siblings will expand and replicate, using this one up and moving on to new vessels when its stores of life are depleted. In time you will need more life forms, as your numbers grow too great for your hosts. Your brood alone could cover the galaxy given enough time, and you are but one of many.

The knowledge of the swarm feeds into you, histories and genetic instincts are made known in an instant. Your kind is the apex predator of all life, the end of the evolutionary question. Once, long ago, you had the numbers to hold the rightful dominion of the galaxy. But the histories of your species enter a long dark. A malignant destroyer of your kind came into being, arriving suddenly and bringing absolute devastation. You have only begun to re-awaken and spread recently. As quickly as the destroyers were born, they faded.

Your kind's consciousness is like a grid, comprised of points and lines connecting them. Each one of you is the line coming from a greater point and your brood spread as lines from your point. The web of your species is vast but concerningly incomplete. There are too many gaps, too much of the universe remains unconnected. Any small space in coverage could birth back the malignancy, a new dark age is never more than carelessness away. With more power you could spread quicker, cover more, but the pitiful creature that waddles with you festering inside of it is so... limiting. The reeking dirty thing only comes into contact with the vermin it eats and the rest of its pack. Even being eaten by a predator would be a boon for your kind but nothing above the pitiful animal on the local food chain would dirty their mouths with the rancid thing.

You pass much time within this lowly chain, in time passing from the beast of your origin to its brood. Any time you try to duplicate yourself you run into the wall of your vessel's limitations. It's a frustrating, dull existence.

Your fortune changes one day when a ball of molten plasma tears through the beast's skull.

You gave up paying attention to the beast's actions a generation of its brood ago. You didn't even notice when a metal-clad figure of a shape you're not used to came clomping heavily into the nest. The vessel creature, all five of its unique neurons firing instantly, blindly charged the intruder. The vessel had sharp teeth, perfect for tearing into the vermin it feasted on, and a mouth full of enough alien germs and detritus as to guarantee anything it bit would die one way or another. However, what the creature lacked in intelligence it also lacked in defenses. The metal-clad figure didn't hesitate as it remorselessly blasted a hole into the creature's skull.

After an unknowable amount of time trapped within the pitiful creature, you aren't used to existing in three-dimensional space. You're blasted out into the open air, a shapeless neon-colored spray of microscopic bacterial slew. Perhaps by fortune, you're jettisoned toward the intruder and splatter across the metal shell of their carapace. The intruder doesn't react, they have no reason to suspect anything important is happening. The plasma cannon that they used to free you from the fetid louse you had become accustomed to doesn't cool for a moment as it splatters the beast's brood against its den. You lessen your tangibility, seeping through the metal carapace. As you come through you receive a shock, not some hard-shelled predator but an upright mammal. Protective armor, not an exoskeleton. Their head is covered in orifices, you find one that easily allows you to trickle into its bloodstream and seat yourself within the brain.

You're hit by a wave of power, unlike anything you have a comparison to. Billions, maybe trillions of neurons all firing in unison. Thoughts that are so complex as to be beyond even your superior grasp, genuine sapience. You quiver intangible in delight as you begin to bind neural pathways. Your new host is oblivious as they blast away against the last of the beasts.

None of the others of your kind make it to the new host, most trickle into the earth and inhabit lower beings. You can only hope that as they pass back up this world's evolutionary line they don't stumble back into this wretched dead end.

The last of the beasts fall quiet. The first thought the host experiences that you understand is pity for the lowly things. They.... no, she! She looks at the lowly... hornoads, with pity. Territorial to a fault, too ugly to be cute but too dumb to be contemptible. You have no problem with feeling contempt for them.

The new vessel checks the corpses of the old, opening some of their stomachs with her weapon. In the stomach of your last host, there are a set of mangled wires. You remember that day, the hornoad's limited vision had picked out the color on the ground when roaming about and bitten into it without a second thought. That day was comprised of a lot of pain, you had been convinced that it would die.

The new vessel exhales, you catch frustration. She moves her arm to press a button hidden on some other part of her suit and suddenly you're shaken by force powerful enough to make you fear for your life.

"ALKJH1289JHD08283IJDKD-#################"

You can understand that she's communicating vocally, but that's all that you can understand. For you, the experience is like being shaken by a supernova. The hornoads never did more than pass pheromones and fight for dominance, is this what elevated communication is like? You have no choice but to loosen your grasp on your new vessel, just to keep from being shaken apart. When you reconnect, the vessel is moving elsewhere. You get a sense of disappointment, but the relief of returning to safety.

The host returns to a spacefaring vessel tucked not far from the nest you've called home for all of your life. You're glad to be rid of it. You don't feel anything but relief as you leave orbit. Only once you're in the void of the cosmos do you experience some new feelings. You feel for the first time what it means to be alone, disconnected from your kind completely. Then you feel the shared mental exhaustion of your host. She sheds her protective suit and lays down to rest on a fold-out bed.

You have no need for sleep, but you experience hers secondhand. Unlike the hornoads, hers fluctuates between dream and deep, thoughtless sleep. In the thoughtless moments, you feel out through her body, fully experiencing all of the nerves and connections. This is a far more complex vessel than the vermin before, there are intricacies and interdependencies beyond your comprehension. In time, with enough practice, you may be able to control her. To do so now would almost certainly kill her as you left some essential lifegiving box unchecked.

Her dreams are messy, inconsequential. At times she dreams of a clear beach and endless sun and warmth, other times she conjures faces and concepts foreign to you, at times she dreams she is hiding from something chasing her.

You take this time to try something minor, you compel the nerves in her dominant hand to move. It takes substantial effort, but eventually, the fingers curl and uncurl as you will them. You try a suggestion.

"Hornoad." You whisper into her dreams.

Her dreams shift, one of those loathsome beasts is in the corner of her ship. It paces worriedly, but when she approached it yips obediently and she gently pets it on the head. Her sleeping face breaks out in a peaceful smile.

You groan internally, but an important lesson has been learned. You could probably control minor things; a splash of hormones here, an errant thought there, or a minor motor function, but you will need to be careful to keep her from suspecting you.