Well, this was only one of the physical-chemical oddities Prime installed in his heat-life-form contrivance. The other which I shall describe at this time was the so-called brain, or seat of intelligence. By a rather sluggish and clumsy system of electron-flow, the human's brain controlled physical activities, stored memories and managed a perverted form of thinking that was too intimately involved with sub-conscious, bodily interferences ever to amount to much.
Nevertheless, this outrageously complicated thought-organ was the seat of Prime's catastrophe, and also, it has proved to be the source of the subject of this report.
Early in Prime's animal-evolution, he explained, his animal's brain developed what he described as an instinct for survival. I interpret this as meaning simply an excessive desire to remain in a state of self-awareness.
Please note, this is quite aside from a secondary instinct, that of reproduction or survival of the race, which is not unheard of elsewhere.
But in Prime's humans, this tremendous desire for survival of the individual grew into a virtual obsession. I tested Prime, himself, on this factor, and found him quite normal. He had no feeling at all on the subject of remaining self-aware. I had thought this unseemly human characteristic might have been a perversion from his unhealthy egotism, but patently it was not.
Therefore, I had to conclude that the human's high drive to self-preservation was of a spontaneous nature, deriving as one of the random results of Prime's unique heat-life-forms.
Anyway, Prime had been so intent in accomplishing his earlier purpose that he gave it little thought until it was too late. This purpose, incidentally, was the only shred of amusement I could salvage from this last trip.
It developed that Prime and his fellow diamonds bred this whole life-strain principally to satisfy their insatiable egos. You see, they finally inculcated into their humans a great love and admiration for diamonds—so much so that they were declared the prince of gems and valued most highly for their ornamental value.
Entirely ignorant that diamonds contained a self-awareness of their own, humans toiled and strained to dig them from deep mines just to fashion them into baubles for their own adoration.
Here again, Prime asserted a crude genius. Not only did he create a whole life-form and induce its members to worship him, but also he insinuated the desire and skill into humans to cut and polish their diamonds in a manner to provide a maximum of light refraction. Prime and many others of his Terra kin, enjoyed high stimulation from being so cut, polished, transported and worshipped.