As soon as they received enough energy from the Sun, the diehard bacteria had reproduced and propagated onto the entire surface of Eris.

The ark had correctly guessed that they would also find vital chemicals under the surface of Eris. So it had engineered the bacteria DNA to generate an innate behaviour. The bacteria were programmed to absorb enough light and therefore energy on the surface and then dig to find the necessary material to reproduce itself.

Each generation, though unaware, facilitated the work of the next. The bacteria dug larger recesses which in time became visible holes scattered on the surface. Soon after, the holes turned into deep vertical veins that, like roots, reached for always more material. The ark had included a way for the bacteria on the surface to propagate the collected energy to its cousins below the surface. Some trend of bacteria got used to travel up and down those veins. The population eventually evolved in different species of bacteria, some collecting energy, some collecting the raw matter, and the remaining ones intermediating.

With time, the bacteria had effectively created an unthinkingly large network of channels on the entire surface. Each channel looked like a neuron connected to many others. Specialised bacteria roamed along them carrying matter, energy and therefore and somehow also information.

As a whole the system actually proved to be an effective communication mechanism, with the emerging ability to indicate the direction of the incoming light. The light-collecting type of bacteria tended to concentrate on the hemisphere facing the sun. As the planet spin very slowly on itself, the bacteria moved using the horizontal channels.

Over time, the bacteria reacted precisely to the presence of light and could actually follow the course of the Sun in their sky. It became a planet-size sunflower. Said otherwise, the bacteria had produced a primitive but accurate eye.

The Sun was of course the brightest source of light.

The minor source of light, but moving faster in the sky of Eris, was Dysnomia.

Later on, Eris was able to spot and follow a multitude of light sources. It was somehow able to see. Over the centuries of staring at the sky, it had observed the moves of the planets, the stars and even some asteroids and had developed the ability to anticipate their orbits.

It observed and deduced logically but it couldn't be given the title of intelligence, not even of life form.

That was, until it was hit by a comet. It had spotted the comet only a few years before the impact. And then it realised the comet was in fact composed of three separate segments. It calculated the course and anticipated the collision of two segments with Dysnomia. It was somehow satisfied to have calculated correctly, and definitely astonished to observe that the lights were appearing as three-dimensional objects. So far, it had observed and assumed that the lights were moving in 2 dimensional universe - the inside surface of a balloon. The equations required to calculate the trajectories were complex and better fit a 3 dimensional universe, but that did not make sense because it did not match with its single sense: vision.

The collisions on Dysnomia were so close that they were precisely detailed and it understood that maybe for the first time it was observing the third dimension.

The third segment of the comet, it calculated, would come later on and would pass Dysnomia. But the equations in two dimensions told Eris that the comet would become infinitely large, or said otherwise that it would approach a mathematical singularity.

Eris did not solve the issue in time.

When the comet hit Eris square, it wiped out a patch of land and all the bacteria with it. Eris featured a blind spot.

But with that event Eris realised it had been hit.

An object had come for the very first time into the very centre of its universe. And that act meant a part of its vision had been lost. Eris realised its viewing ability was localised in space. And then it made the conceptual jump that the universe was not formed of two but three dimensions. Indeed a 2 dimension universe could not explain the presence of something at its core.

The second conceptual jump was the realisation that the "something" in the core was itself: the viewer, the thinker.

That sensibility, or feeling, was usually called by the scholars self-awareness or more commonly conscience.