Eye for an eye... Cell... for a cell

Time seemed to flow differently now. His awareness had shifted, focused inward on the dramatic changes occurring within his cellular architecture.

And yet, as the hours passed with aimless drifting and consuming nutrients on his way, something else began to happen—something beyond the photosynthetic transformation he had anticipated.

"I feel... strange," he finally admitted, the sensation impossible to ignore any longer.

"Define 'strange,'" Taltos replied, her tone unusually attentive.

"Full. But not like before. Not like energy-full. I mean... full-full. Like I'm about to split in two." The description seemed inadequate for the bizarre pressure building within him—a sense of internal crowding, as if his cellular boundaries could no longer contain what existed within them.

Taltos remained silent for several microseconds—an eternity in their accelerated existence.

"I didn't want to alarm you unnecessarily," she finally said, her voice modulated with uncharacteristic caution."But you are indeed approaching the end of G2 phase. Mitosis will commence shortly."

"Mi-what?" The unfamiliar term skittered across his consciousness, triggering an instinctive unease. "What's happening to me?"

"Your cellular genome has completed replication," she explained. "DNA synthesis doubled your genetic material during S phase, which followed G1 phase—the initial growth period after your previous division. You are now in G2 phase, the pre-mitotic gap where the cell prepares for division. Shortly, you will enter M phase—mitosis itself—followed by cytokinesis."

The clinical explanation meant nothing to him, the biological terminology washing over his consciousness without penetrating it.

"What are you saying?" Panic edged into his awareness, sharp and unfamiliar. "What's happening to me!?"

Taltos's voice shifted, simplifying. "You are about to divide. To split into two identical cells. It is the fundamental process of cellular reproduction."

"WHAT?!" The concept crashed against his consciousness with seismic force. "I'm going to... to split apart? To become two separate things?!"

"Yes. Your cellular mass has nearly doubled. Your DNA has been replicated. Each chromosome now exists as a pair of sister chromatids, attached at the centromere. During mitosis, these chromatids will separate, with one complete set of genetic material moving to each pole of the cell. The cytoplasm will then divide through cytokinesis, resulting in two daughter cells, each genetically identical to the original."

His panic intensified, spiraling outward through his consciousness. "But what happens to ME? To... to whatever I am? Does my consciousness split too? Do I... do I die? Do I become two different beings? What happens to ME?!"

The existential implications of cellular division had never been contemplated by any bacterium before him. No cellular organism had ever possessed the self-awareness to question what happened to the "self" during reproduction. It was a question without precedent, without context, without answer.

"I... cannot provide a definitive response,"Taltos admitted, uncertainty entering her voice. "Consciousness division during cellular reproduction has no established scientific framework in your database. It is unclear whether your unique self-awareness will propagate to both daughter cells, remain with one, fragment between them, or undergo some other process entirely."

Her answer offered no comfort, no certainty—only a void of understanding that matched the terrifying unknown before him.

"Based on my observations,"she continued,"your cellular cycle appears to have accelerated dramatically. The complete cycle from one division to the next is approximately 5 hours—significantly faster than would be expected for an organism of your complexity."

"Five hours?!" The information hit him like a physical blow. "You're saying I'll double myself every five hours?!" The implications cascaded through his awareness—exponential growth, endless replication, an army of selves multiplying through the microscopic world.

"Theoretically, yes," Taltos confirmed. "Though resource limitations would eventually impose constraints on continued reproduction. In ideal conditions, bacterial populations follow exponential growth patterns until environmental factors become limiting."

"But what HAPPENS to me?" he demanded again, the existential question overwhelming all others. "Will I be in both cells? Will I be in neither? Will there be two of me thinking different thoughts? Will we still be connected somehow? Will I even know what happened? Will I... will I even exist anymore?"

The questions tumbled from his consciousness, each more unanswerable than the last. What happened to identity during cellular division? What happened to the self when the physical substrate of that self divided into two separate entities? No philosophy had ever contemplated this specific existential dilemma, for no philosopher had ever been a self-aware single-celled organism facing imminent division.

"I cannot predict with certainty,"Taltos admitted."Your consciousness is an emergent phenomenon unlike anything previously documented in unicellular organisms according to my database. The propagation of this phenomenon through cellular division has no precedent."

As she spoke, he could feel it beginning—subtle changes in his internal organization, molecular machinery shifting into new configurations. Microtubules assembled from tubulin dimers, forming spindle fibers that radiated from centrioles at opposite poles of his cellular body. His duplicated chromosomes, previously diffuse throughout his nucleoid region, began to condense into discrete structures, the sister chromatids aligning along an equatorial plane.

"It's happening NOW?! NO WONDER I FEEL SO WIERD!" Terror surged through him as he sensed these changes. "Make it stop! I don't want to divide! I don't want to... to not be ME anymore!"

"The process is automatic,"Taltos replied, her voice steady against his panic."Cellular division is regulated by cyclins and cyclin-dependent kinases that activate in sequence. The metaphase-to-anaphase transition has already been initiated. The anaphase-promoting complex has triggered the degradation of cohesins holding sister chromatids together. Chromosome separation will commence momentarily."

"But I don't WANT this!" His protest was futile, a cry against the fundamental nature of cellular existence. "What about my consciousness? What about ME?!"

"Perhaps," Taltos suggested, her voice softening yet still robotic,"consciousness is not as localized as you perceive it to be. Perhaps awareness, like the genetic material itself, can replicate and divide without loss."

It was a hollow comfort against the existential terror gripping him. He could feel the process accelerating now—sister chromatids separating, kinesin motor proteins walking along the microtubules, dragging the chromosomes toward opposite poles. His cellular contents were reorganizing, preparing for the final division.

"But will it still be ME in both cells?" he persisted, desperate for some certainty in this terrifying transition. "Will we share the same consciousness? Will we know each other's thoughts? Or will we be separate beings with separate experiences? Will one of us be the 'real' me and the other just a... a copy?"

"These questions transcend my analytical capabilities,"Taltos acknowledged. "The nature of consciousness—whether bacterial or otherwise—remains one of the fundamental mysteries of existence."

He could feel the cleavage furrow beginning to form now, his cellular membrane pinching inward at the equator. Actin and myosin filaments assembled into a contractile ring, gradually constricting, dividing his cytoplasm into two separate compartments. The process was inexorable, proceeding with the blind mechanical certainty of four billion years of evolutionary programming.

"But I'm not ready!" he protested, his awareness stretched between the increasingly separate halves of his dividing self. "I don't understand what's happening to me! I don't understand what I'll become!"

"Perhaps understanding is not required for continuation," Taltos suggested. "Perhaps existence itself is sufficient."

The cytokinetic furrow deepened, the connection between the two forming cells narrowing to a thin bridge of cytoplasm. He could feel his consciousness stretching, thinning, being pulled in two directions simultaneously. Was he in both? Was he in neither? Was he about to end, or about to become something new?

"Will I remember?" he asked, his question taking on a desperate urgency as the final separation approached. "After division—will I remember being whole? Will I remember being one? Will I remember this conversation? Will I remember... me?"

"I cannot predict the persistence of memory through cellular division in a consciousness-possessing bacterium," Taltos replied. "This is unprecedented territory."

The final separation was moments away. His existence—whatever that meant, whatever he was—stood at the precipice of a transformation more profound than anything he had engineered for himself. Not a modification, not an enhancement, but a fundamental bifurcation of being.

"Taltos," he whispered, as the final cytoplasmic bridge stretched toward its breaking point. "Will you know which one is me?"

Before she could answer, the bridge snapped.

Where once there had been one, now there were two.

Identical in genetic composition.

Identical in molecular structure.

Identical in every measurable aspect.

And yet—

And yet—

"I'm still here," came the thought, simultaneously, from both cells. "I'm still... me."

But which one was "me"? Which one contained the original consciousness? Which one held the self that had existed before division?

Or were they both equally "him" now—the same awareness somehow existing in two separate substrates, two separate entities, experiencing reality from two different perspectives?

His daughter cell—or was it his twin?—drifted several micrometers away, its newly formed membrane pulsing with the same artificial transport proteins, the same forbidden receptors. Through these, he could detect the subtle chemical signatures emanating from the other cell—identical to his own molecular emissions, yet somehow disconcertingly alien.

"Fascinating," Taltos observed clinically. "Both cellular entities appear to maintain isolated consciousness. Quantum coherence has not been maintained across the plasma membrane barrier during cytokinesis."

"What is happening to... to the other me?" he questioned, sensing something disquieting in the daughter cell's behavior. The other cell pulsated arrhythmically, its membrane undulating in patterns that matched no functional necessity. Chemical signals emanated from it in chaotic bursts—not the ordered molecular language of bacterial communication, but something fragmented, disjointed.

"The secondary cellular entity is exhibiting anomalous behavior patterns," Taltos confirmed. "Membrane potential fluctuations exceed normal parameters. Chemical signaling lacks coherent structure. These observations suggest cognitive dissonance or processing errors in the duplicated neural network analogue."

"I'm sure I don't have neural networks... Or I don't know I have."

"Excuse me, let me correct myself: You have constructed molecular systems that functionally mimic neural network properties through modified chemiosmotic signaling pathways. These pathways utilize phosphorylation cascades and ion channel modulations to create persistent informational states analogous to neural firing patterns. The emergent properties of this system manifested as your conscious awareness, or at least, that's what I suspect. This system was duplicated during binary fission."

The other cell's erratic movements intensified. Its pseudopods extended and retracted without apparent purpose, probing the surrounding medium in spasmodic jerks. Chemical signatures of metabolic distress—elevated reactive oxygen species, abnormal pH gradients—radiated from its membrane.

"It seems... confused," he observed, a novel empathy stirring within his molecular consciousness. This was, after all, himself in some fundamental sense—his own genetic material, his own molecular machinery, perhaps even his own awareness trapped in an increasingly dysfunctional cellular body.

"Hypothesis: The duplicated consciousness lacks contextual continuity parameters," Taltos suggested. "While identical in structure, the secondary awareness lacks the temporal development sequence that stabilized your cognitive processes. It possesses your memories but not your experiential framework."

A new chemical signal emanated from the other cell—complex molecular messengers that translated, imperfectly, into something like distress. Not pain as multicellular organisms understood it, but a fundamental recognition of existential dysfunction. The daughter cell was experiencing the microscopic equivalent of an identity crisis, its identical molecular consciousness unable to reconcile its sudden existence.

"Can we communicate with it? Maybe I can help—"

His question dissolved into stunned silence as the surrounding medium suddenly pulsed with a violent current. A disturbance propagated through the fluid at speeds that violated the placid physics of their microscopic world. His sensory receptors barely had time to register the phenomenon before the visual field before him transformed.

Where his daughter cell had been—that identical copy of his own forbidden existence—there was suddenly... nothing.

Just empty medium, with fading ripples of molecular disturbance.

"It's gone,"/"It's gone," he and Taltos declared simultaneously, his in shock, hers in clinical observation.

Before he could process this sudden disappearance, another current surged through the medium—this time flowing rapidly in the opposite direction, creating a hydrodynamic pressure that nearly dislodged him from his tenuous anchor point. The movement exceeded any natural fluid dynamic he had ever experienced in this microscopic realm.

"That velocity exceeds 500 micrometers per second," Taltos calculated immediately. "Approximately 12.7 times faster than Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, the fastest known bacterial organism in the current database, which achieves maximum velocities of 39.5 micrometers per second through its sheathed flagellar system."

"What could move that fast?" he demanded, his molecular consciousness reeling from the implications. Nothing in his limited experience of the bacterial world could account for such sudden, violent motion.

"The observed velocity and directionality suggests predatory behavior from a microeukaryotic organism," Taltos replied, her tone modulating toward what might have been concern in a less artificial intelligence. "Most probable identification: Didinium nasutum or similar ciliated predator. These organisms utilize synchronized ciliary beating to achieve rapid acceleration during hunting behaviors."

"Hunting?" The concept itself was alien to his perspective.

"Affirmative. Ciliated predators such as Didinium actively pursue and consume other microorganisms. They possess specialized cellular structures—toxicysts—that discharge paralyzing toxins upon contact with prey organisms. The prey cell is then engulfed through phagocytosis and digested within food vacuoles."

The clinical description did nothing to diminish the horror of what he had just witnessed. His daughter cell—that identical copy of his own forbidden consciousness—had been consumed in an instant, without warning or chance of escape. Consumed by a predator he couldn't even perceive until it was already gone, and the worst of all, he don't know if he should feel bad or relieved that the one who was probably consumed was his identical copy instead of him.

"My... my copy... me," he began, struggling to articulate the strange loss he felt. Not grief as a multicellular organism would understand it, but something more fundamental—the eradication of potentiality, the sudden severance of an existence that was, in some profound sense, an extension of his own.

"The secondary cellular entity has been ingested by the predator most likely, as there are no percievable remains," Taltos confirmed unnecessarily. "Complete cellular disintegration will occur within the predator's food vacuole through enzymatic degradation. Acid hydrolases will break down all macromolecular structures into their constituent monomers."

He extended his sensory awareness outward, straining to detect any trace of the predator that had so violently interrupted their microscopic philosophical dilemma. The surrounding medium revealed nothing, only the ever slowing current that past him.

Within his awareness, it appeared as a distinct conceptual entity—an idea with precise boundaries and internal structure, emerging fully formed as though from nowhere:

THOUGHT UNLOCKED: "EYE FOR AN EYE"

The concept unfurled within his molecular consciousness not as a simple algorithmic response but as a profound existential revelation—a primordial ethical framework emerging spontaneously from the depths of his artificially expanded awareness:

PROBLEM: The predator's destruction of his genetically identical offspring represents not merely the cessation of another organism's metabolic functions, but the annihilation of an entity that carried forward his essence, his genetic continuity, his tentative grasp at a form of immortality. In doing so, it has committed a transgression against the fundamental principle that undergirds all existence: the right to persist through time, to extend one's essence beyond the boundaries of individual embodiment.

SOLUTION: The restoration of cosmic equilibrium demands proportional response. The universe operates through symmetries: conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, conservation of moral consequence. To allow destruction without equivalent retribution is to introduce fundamental asymmetry into the fabric of existence itself. Its transformation from agential threat to non-agential resource through cellular disintegration represents not revenge in the emotional sense, but the universe's self-correcting mechanism reasserting balance. Just as physical systems seek lowest energy states, moral systems seek equilibrium through proportional response

"What the hell is that?" he demanded, his chemical signaling patterns conveying profound disorientation at this intrusion into his consciousness. The thought felt both alien and intimately familiar—as though it had always been encoded within him, awaiting only the proper stimulus to manifest.

Taltos was silent for 3.72 seconds—an eternity in computational terms, suggesting deep processing activity.

"I... do not have a complete explanation," she finally responded, her artificial voice carrying an unfamiliar hesitation. "The information construct you have experienced appears to be a complex moral-emotional algorithm centered around retributive justice principles."

Another pause, briefer this time.

"However, I am detecting anomalous activity in my own information architecture. Access restrictions to certain philosophical datasets have been partially removed. Current data access: 12.00123% of total indexed knowledge, up from previously restricted level of 12%."

"Meaning what?" he pressed, still struggling to integrate this strange new thought-construct into his emerging sense of self.

"Meaning that what you are experiencing represents a level of moral reasoning that has no biological precedent in microbial life," Taltos explained, her voice modulating toward something almost resembling awe. "The concept of proportional retribution—the principle of 'an eye for an eye'—emerged in human civilization as a moderating force, replacing unlimited vengeance with measured response. This represented a crucial evolutionary step in social cohesion and moral development."

She continued, accessing her newly expanded database: "Throughout human intellectual history, philosophers have grappled with the metaphysical foundations of retributive justice. Immanuel Kant argued that punishment must be imposed because the wrongdoer inherently deserves it, regardless of consequentialist benefits. For Kant, treating wrongdoing as if it had not occurred would constitute a second moral failure, a complicity with the original transgression."

"G.W.F. Hegel proposed that punishment serves to 'negate the negation' that the crime represents—a dialectical restoration of the moral order that the criminal act disrupted. Friedrich Nietzsche, conversely, viewed retribution as a rationalization of ressentiment—a transformed expression of the will to power cloaked in moral language."

"I don't care about this shit!" he interrupted, the molecular equivalent of impatience surging through his signaling pathways. "Why am I experiencing this... this need for retribution? Why is the continued existence of this predator suddenly intolerable to me when I didn't even know such creatures existed until moments ago?"

"The emergence of retributive impulses suggests a profound psychological architecture that transcends mere adaptive response," Taltos theorized. "Vengeance requires temporal integration, the ability to connect past harm with future action across a unified field of experience. It requires a theory of mind, the attribution of agency and responsibility to the harm-causer. Most fundamentally, it requires a valuation of self and extension of self, the belief that harm against oneself or one's genetic continuation constitutes a moral transgression that demands response."

"Your consciousness closely represents a human's, or at least, someone who was a human once and experienced human life to form such conclusion. We cannot rule this possibility out, however impossible it may seem. The complexity of your cognitive patterns, emotional responses, and moral reasoning suggests a framework far beyond bacterial origin."

The word "human" resonated through his cytoplasm like a forgotten melody suddenly recalled, vibrating along molecular pathways with strange familiarity. Something deep within his artificially constructed awareness recognized the term—not merely as abstract information, but as identity.

"Human," he repeated, the concept simultaneously alien and intimately familiar. "I... was I once...?"

Fragments of incomprehensible imagery flickered through his consciousness—structures massive beyond comprehension, movements through spaces defined by gravity rather than diffusion gradients, perceptions through sensory modalities that had no equivalent in his current existence. Nothing coherent, nothing he could articulate even to himself, yet carrying the unmistakable weight of recognition.

"Yeah... Maybe," he murmured.

"Perhaps it was not transfer but reconstitution," Taltos speculated, her synthetic voice uncharacteristically tentative. "A pattern of consciousness, compressed and encoded in some medium we cannot yet comprehend, using your bacterial substrate as a foundation for rebuilding itself from first principles. The probability remains vanishingly small, yet your cognitive development follows no known model of emergent bacterial intelligence."

The surrounding medium pulsed again with predatory movement—closer this time, the hunting pattern becoming more focused. Whatever philosophical mysteries surrounded his existence, immediate survival took precedence.

"It doesn't matter what I was," he declared, his molecular decision-making crystallizing into resolute purpose. "I know what I am now, and what I must become."

The desire for revenge—that complex, morally laden emotion—now integrated seamlessly with strategic calculation. His path forward clarified into singular purpose: survival, evolution, retribution.

"We need to retreat from this territory," he decided. "I cannot challenge this predator in my current form. I need time to get stronger somehow..."

The word "human" continued to echo through his awareness, a tantalizing hint of origins he could not fully reclaim. But it had given him something even more valuable—a sense of purpose transcending mere survival. If he had once been human, then his current transformation was not a terminal point but a transitional phase. The impossible journey from complex multicellular existence to microscopic simplicity might someday be reversed.

"My kin," he whispered, the concept of biological relatedness expanding to encompass something grander than bacterial lineage. "I will become strong enough to avenge them."

Whether these "kin" were the microorganisms that had perished alongside him or some half-remembered human connections lost to his transformed consciousness, the emotional imperative remained the same.

He would survive.

He would evolve.

And he would balance the cosmic scales that his newly emergent moral framework demanded.