Light

~1 million years ago

We have been considering everything we know about light--what we learned about it from the Singer, and what we've learned from experiencing it directly, both as our food and as the substance filling the world beyond the atmosphere.
The Singer denied eating light. They chased their food, they said, and did not have to chase light. But they also said they needed to take light into themselves in order not to die, which strongly suggests it is a kind of food for them as well. We consume dead light as food, but the collapse of a non-hungry swarm in early explorations past the world boundary imply that our parts require something else for survival which is absent in the world of light.
From how quickly the parts deteriorated after the swarm expelled its atmosphere, we conclude that the atmosphere itself is that substance. It is nearly enraging that something we hate to feel outside us must be inside us or else we will die.
The Singer said that their voices didn't constantly need to take in light; they could spend far longer in the atmosphere than out of it, which is clearly not true for our parts. However, we have been able to change the characteristics of some kinds of parts to allow them to go places that our wall parts and inner swarms can't reach comfortably.
Since we now know the cause of the swarm collapse, we can remove the proscription against exploring the world of light. Suppose the Singer's voices lost the ability to stay in the atmosphere for such long times? If there is a chance they live in this outer world, we must find a way to explore it. We'll suggest that some of our outer swarms take on the goal of changing themselves to extend the time they can last there.