by [email protected]
A computer built from living brains has one problem: no one can prove where the computation ends and the mind begins. At the Lakebridge Center for Collective Cognition, neural-systems engineer Noah Mercer has linked a herd of research pigs into a biological network. Each animal receives only part of a maze. None sees the whole task. Together, they solve what no individual pig can. Then a supposedly redundant pig is disconnected. The network stops. Restore her, and it produces a valid route the model cannot explain. Management calls the trial a success. Noah records an anomaly. With a consortium review approaching and a human program waiting behind it, every interpretation has a price. A hardware fault could end years of work. A hidden dependency could invalidate the architecture. And if the network is doing more than routing signals, its creators may no longer know what they are testing—or what counts as an individual inside the system. Collective Mind is an institutional hard-SF thriller about evidence, responsibility, animal cognition, and the dangerous gap between a result and the story people need it to tell.
