The sun on the surface had become a familiar sight once more for the Enclosing One, who had been devoting much time and care to its hardy growth on the wave-beaten rocks, watching the shapes and links adjust themselves for continued growth on the harsh places, driven by simple survival. The thin, tightly clinging layer of cells, meager though they were by necessity, had filled its mind with thoughts about future possibilities. The dry surface could be inhabited. Changed, even, to be kinder to life. Presently, it would give very little nourishment... None, certainly, of the sort that the Shore-Dwellers were used to, already packaged up as simple cells and brought in by opportune currents. If ever there was a time for the Enclosure to become self-sufficient at last, it was now. Having observed for enough time the drifting collections of sun-driven cells and the queerly bubbling hemispheres it spotted sharing the Fractal shallows now and again, the Entity began incorporating constructs into the plasma of the cells that imitated the earliest work of the little beings. The alteration brought the Entity great satisfaction. Its joy seemed to reverberate in its adopted progeny as the colour gave a distinctive green tint to the rocks.
...Like the ocean, now. Have I not worked well? Perhaps with an excess of haste... Some among the number still wait, patiently, for sustenance from the current. They are not self-provident. No matter, no matter. Should they live, it is by their own devices now.The splitting apart of the shore species brought concerning thoughts to mind about the future of the patterned growth. The colonies, by now little resembling the amoebae they had descended from, had spread far through spores and outwards expansion, and the Enclosing One had watched as their genetic code separated into subtly different species with distance.
There is potential to do better, here. The patterns are spread far and split apart. Their spores travel, but do not interact with what they descend into... What must take place is exchange across distance. How can this occur? Surely there is no exchange without... Loss. The problem was puzzling, and it did not occur to the Enclosing one to turn attention to the grazers and predators for inspiration, for they lived and reproduced in their own way.
The solution, it believed, was still in the spores. While the functional cells required the full DNA code, the spores only drifted after their birth, so the Enclosing One decided to change how they were produced. Rather than by the usual division, the living units within the protective casing were left with only a single set of the packaged DNA every cell carried within itself in identical pairs, for division. when they split away from their parents. Should they drift to the seabed as intended without interaction, the set would replicate into an identical pair of chromosomes again, and the tiny spore would grow as its like had always done. A new type of drifting fragment now accompanied them in the water, however.
Where the pattern of growth produced a spore-fertile region, it now gave itself a limited lifespan. The fertile cells would die slightly faster than they divided, but their death left behind chemical messengers demanding replacement. When the growing mass responded to the message, they became fertile regions again, but produced a multitude of even smaller fragments in the place of large ones, simple things that fit into and fused with the spores, bringing with them the second set of code. Small spores were created until the region died away, leaving behind the original instruction to produce the primary spores.
The new system was crude, the Entity noted. The protection on the growth spores often prevented the fragments from fusing, and even then, only one of the handful of growing cells would have received the addition. Growing, mothering spores were produced at a much lower rate now, and the contributing fragments were small enough to often fall prey to the colony's own looped traps. Unstable. The Enclosing One regretted the flaws.
I have further harmed what I have intended to heal. There will be... Renovations, to this system. There is a little exchange going on, at least... I am but learning, even now. Time will bring solutions.
18% - Fractal Colonies
14% - Shore Colonies
3% - Unused
65% - Undeveloped
The shore colonies now provide for themselves via photosynthesis, however, the change has broken off rogue species of clinging cells that still thrive off residue brought in by the tide. The patterned growth now forms male-type and female-type spores, determined by a repeating cycle within the fertile growth, alternating between male and female. The former are numerous, and act like sperm, tiny bodies that can only fuse with the slightly larger spores if the two collide. There are, however, no actual sex chromosomes, so though the system is technically sexual, the fractals are all hermaphrodites.
Vec,
Timemaster
