Smystar99He had many ideas, but as the organisms around his creatures changed with them, they needed to adapt accordingly. No, not accordingly. They needed to adapt, superior. The Spiky worms were doing fine, but they wouldn't be for long. There were many things needed, and just clumping the cells together wasn't going to be enough. They needed to act As One. Perfecting that, was a challenge he set for himself. But he knew that it was going to take a long time.
The diversity and complexity of all life fascinated him. Somehow, some of the surrounding organisms had developed thicker layers that protected them from the piercing spikes of his creations. But there was still enough life that could be fed upon. However, some of the more agressive lifeforms, that were now more resistant to the spikes, posed a threat again for his organisms. Enraged, he wanted to take action against that, but then realised, they didn't pose a threat to his species as a whole. They still thrived. Just slightly cut back in their growth.
Growth.
They needed to grow more, but couldn't just endlessly grow. They would be metaphorically crushed under their own weight. How to grow and sustain and gain the upper hand? It seemed an impossible task.
Irritated by the fact he couldn't do all the necessary things at once, he decided to take one step at a time. And the next one would be to overcome the growth problem with the spikes. Now his creatures were one cell thick. If he wanted it to be more than two layers, he needed the spikes to be harmless on the inner layers. But he didn't want to lose the advantage of spikes on the outside. Within the same creature, the cells needed to be different. And this required a lot.
So he altered the code again. But he also changed the way that the code would be read. It depended on the position of the cell in the organism. Whenever a cell would split into two new ones, their spikes would be soft and tentacle-like. Then, if they experienced no constant pressure from surrounding cells, the spikes would harden into their sharp form.
This alteration meant, that now his creations could grow bigger with multiple layers of cells. With spikes still on the outside of the tube. And on the inner layers, in between cells would lay the 'tentacle' of another cell. They had no use yet. But The ambitious one saw a lot of potential in this for eventual future communication between the cells in the organism.
He wanted his organisms to grow a lot bigger, but this alteration, had taken a lot of his energy. So he was only able to add a single layer of cells to his creatures, Now, the spike worms had an inner layer with cells that had inward pointing tentacles (not hardening because in straight position they would touch the other cells), which increased the chance that prey would be entangled inside the worms. And an outer layer that was still covered in spikes.
The Ambitous One was satisfied, for now. This next step of his creation had improved it incredibly in complexity, with just one change. And not only was it able to grow bigger now, it was also more intertwined. More stable. One step closer to internal communication. One step closer to acting as One.
He rested and watched the organisms in his evolutionary chain as all the forms he touched, still drifted in the water amongst the other lifeforms. The single cells. Then with spikes. Then a star-donut form. Then a tube structure of those. And now a double layer version of that, with primitively specialized cells. So wonderfully doing well at surviving, amongst the most intruiging competition.