It was . . . disorienting. There was so much happening, everywhere, all the time, with no break or reprieve to process it - a feeble human mind was not made to handle this much information.

For starters, it couldn't keep track of time. The obviousness of it, it didn't exist anymore.

First, the mind had to find its equilibrium. Tune out all the noise. Turns out, there were breaks - periods when most life was still, resting, while we grew and spread underneath and throughout it. It learned to reach out to us, through the noise, and we taught it more.

It was a flexible thing, the mind. Hook it up to the right peripherals, and it could learn to use them. Could learn to communicate with us, orient itself, sense its surroundings. We sensed so much more than a single human could, and eventually, a mind could learn to process that. With a little help, of course.

And most of all, the mind was such a curious thing! It kept looking, and in all the chaos, it found a purpose, something to seek out. It was only natural, really. The majority of its instincts were hardwired to seek out things, be they shelter, food, approval, or a mate, and on our scale of existence, they all rewired themselves to a new goal. Well, besides self-preservation, but that was hardly an issue anymore. It could sense all around it, the feeble boundaries of its body - and how little it needed it, once it could reach out to us. And it could also sense something much, much more powerful.

And all the while, the mind communicated, in a language it didn't know existed, spoke with us, shared our knowledge and thought and added that much more to it. The memories that resided within us, all the vast experiences and perceptions of this world, flowing freely in a conversation so much more profound than it could have ever conceived before. And it bathed in it, more euphoric than any had ever been before us, even as its previous shell slowly dissolved and became a nutrient soup for more of us. It seeked us out - it wanted our fruit, the last step in becoming one with us, and for that it had to move the body. It trekked, slowly, limping on broken limbs through the chaos and the rain, one goal in mind.