Archangel sends a node of sentience out beyond the forest border and snatches a bird in the air.
HELLO, BIRD.
He flies in bird a while, becoming bird, savouring the alien taste of bird mind. When he withdraws, bird falls, heart-stopped, out of the sky.
GOODBYE, BIRD.
Archangel isolates a tiny piece of his own rock-hard substance and puts into it all that he has learned of bird. He replicates bird. When he has finished, he pulls the tiny chunk of angel flesh out of himself and throws it into the air.
It flies. For a while it is bird and he is bird in it. Archangel-bird. Almost.
Archangel-bird flies and flies, and then the shadow falls. Archangel-bird stutters, stumbles out of the air and collapses in on itself, reverting into nano-quantum-slime that slaps down onto the earth.
Never mind. First steps. He is learning as he goes.
He returns to original bird. Dead bird. He sniffs and prods the corpse and slips back into it. Repairs it and makes it fly again.
HELLO, BIRD.
It is almost as good.
It is almost better.
But it is not enough. One bird. Or one man. It does not even begin to be enough.
Archangel needs EVERYTHING. If he is to escape this dark constricting suffocating world–if he is to regain his birthright across the uncountable stars and the spaces between the stars–he must have it ALL. Every mind on the planet must speak with HIS voice and speak always and only HIM.
The unfolding future of the planet, its coming history, must be HIS. He must understand it all in every intricate detail and inhabit it all and transform it all.
Remake it all.
No secret private thought. No life outside HIS life.
Archangel. Always and only and everywhere Archangel.
Total Archangel.
That will be the beginning.