"You want to see what will happen with us after we stop being a hive mind," the bee who was speaking for them said. The hive mind was smart enough that this wasn't a question—especially since the bees in it were informed beforehand what was expected of them.
Despite this, right now I felt a wave of anxiety coming from the hive mind, and it made me anxious together with them.
"What's wrong, girls?" I asked. "The predictions said that it's harmless. If you like staying this way so much, you will be able to do it later…"
The idea that someone would want to remain part of a hive mind when given other choices was bizarre to me, but I could accept it. I could!
No matter how much time I spent living as a bee, my girls were all born bees. There were always cultural differences that came from it. I could understand and accept the fact that sometimes my daughters just had wildly different priorities in life from anything I could empathise with.
