Birds/arrows flying reminded me of...
a chapter in a Finnish novel Mehiläispaviljonki by Leena Krohn, and the name of the chapter is ‘Parvien humina’ (which means Hum of swarms/flocks). Krohn has written more than twenty novels, of which many have been translated. Some recurring themes have been “borders between reality and illusion, and the problem of life, especially through observing different kinds of artificial intelligence.”
Three chapters of Mehiläispaviljonki online.
My rough translation of part of the chapter ‘Parvien humina’
“Just like the flocks of birds, bees and boids, also flocks of people behave according to laws that their individuals don’t know but still act according to. Within this city there are other cities and within them again other, ever smaller and denser. I am a city too, because my figure consists of billions of flocks of cells and molecules. They act according to simple rules and create incredible complexity.
Each flock resembles a hologram in the sense that each of its components give information about the whole. The individual is the embryo of a group but each individual contains the whole of the group.
I am we.”