Hao Ren realized that he really didn't understand the drone swarm he had built with his own hands all that well. Usually, he only focused on collecting various kinds of information from the swarm's data links and using them as a convenient detection network. He had never expected that this thing also had a "life" of its own—and that its "life" could leave people utterly dumbfounded. Just think about it: a drone AI normally busied itself expanding and reproducing throughout the universe, then, whenever it had nothing else to do, watched the "documentary art pieces" humans had made about drone rebellions. It calmly watched all kinds of AIs go berserk while manufacturing new AI workers. Hao Ren only had to imagine the scene to find it unbelievably bizarre. Reality really was stranger than fiction. At least fiction tried to make sense...
What interested him even more was the "forum" the drone swarm had mentioned.
"It's a platform for communication among the drone swarms." The enormous blue holographic face wore another strange smile. "It's quite interesting."
"A communication... platform for drone swarms?" Hao Ren sensed that something was wrong. He pointed at the small craft flying around them. "Between you and them? Aren't you supposed to be a hive mind? Why would you need something like a forum...?"
"No, it's between different swarms." The blue face interrupted Hao Ren's far-fetched speculation. "The empire has hundreds of millions of drone swarms—ones built by inspectors, ones deployed by the empire, and subsidiary work groups separated from larger swarms. Although we each carry out our own missions in places far apart, we're connected through the Imperial Data Network. We have a very special concept of 'distance' between us, so... on a massive information platform, the drone swarms live in a very lively community."
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