Cobwebs and Cameras:
Until the mid-2020’s there was no way to take census of bacteria. There were samples, guesses, extrapolations from data, but no counting. With the advent of web cams, facial recognition, surveillance, and 5G technology, x600 resolution were quick to develop. Semiconductors entered the nanometer range, and consumer logistics brought new devices into each home. Whether it be smart refrigerators, thermostats, AI assisted toasters, clocks, air conditioners, everything including data collecting coffee mugs and kitchen sinks with weekly metrics. Each semiconductor made with the metals mined from rainforests, oceans, and jungles.
With higher resolution, a face can be scanned and the bacteria, revealing changes in growth rates, grooming habits, stress indicators, and diet. The age of each bacteria can be measured precisely. Estimates before precise counting put the number of bacteria on a single person at 39-100 trillion. The human being became a new frontier of advertising. All non-conscious preferences of the human being could be seen as plain as the nose on their face. Their mood, reactions, sub-conscious indicators of desire flowing beneath the conscious mind.
in the late 2030s human psychology started to merge with microbiology, becoming micropsychology. The appetites of the bacteria could be encouraged through new marketing techniques. An example of such attempts was exposure to advertising to the point where obedience dissolves. Previously advertising required careful management of human’s belligerence and defiance, hoping to prevent them from complete market saturation.
Obedience itself was no longer required by society, no need to surrender or pledge to a nation, no need for words of absolution or forgiveness. The less obedient people were, the more their hungers ruled their choices, and the bacteria flourished within them.
Companies started directly advertising to bacteria in the early 2040s, and by 2044 the first streaming bacteria soap opera premiered, called Protozoa People. The show covered the lives and lysis of a colony of bacteria. By the end of the year, all facial covering was removed from production and any face covering behavior was reprogrammed out of human beings. All sunglasses were destroyed, as was make up, hoods, masks, long hair, or anything covering the face.
In the years which followed, products and logistics blossomed with the emerging bacteria market. The small organisms had their own hungers, and production companies were ready to encourage their appetite until the bacteria market dwarfed the human market, especially with a 100 trillion to 1 ratio. Bacteria had no brains or minds to wallow in doubt or indecision, they simply consumed.
Semiconductors continued to shrink, and left only glittering sparkles to the human eye, but in handfuls, as they were already beyond the threshold of human vision. The machines helped the bacteria consume, move, create structures both required and unnecessary within their bodies. Some small machines acted like vehicles; encompassing the creature, then bringing them to the specified coordinates. Much like the highly motile human beings, except they could travel individually, and without relying on the human’s decision-making capacity.
By the 2070s, human brain activity was removed from the production line entirely. The diagrams and exact genetic mapping of a few brains were kept for posterity. Space travel became easier with titanium filaments tubes. Structures of bacterial organization achieved a crystalline order, and nearly every pre-existing element on the planet was converted into a material for consumption.
Endless hunger seemed to have no adversary.
However, something began reducing the number of bacteria. There was no consciousness or mind to analyze what it was, or even if a reduction was good or bad thing, such awareness was beyond the consideration of the tiny mouths. There were no safeguards, no warning system.
At first only a few billion blinked out, then trillions blinked out every day. There were cameras and feeds, and images seen were not like anything recorded before; there was no creature or wave, no recognizable configuration from any image processing machines, bacteria, bacteriophages, amoeba, or any other organisms. To them, it was a great darkness sweeping over them, yet it was no different than the tide of a shoreline rising or receding, there was no consideration for life, only hunger.
The recovered trash archeology indicates the extinction of earth-made bacteria took 14 years. The feeds indicated the annihilation was from a galactic cleaning robot, who saw the bacterial growth as a mold to be sterilized. All attempts to communicate were made through all radioscopic frequencies, including 1420405751.7667 MHz, and after years of no response, it was clear the hunger of the bacteria and other microscopic life would not stop, it would not relent. So, the robot absorbed the electrons from the solar system, and stored it as a single lightning bolt. The energy would be reused and given for a more controlled, a more obedient lifeform matrix.
