The story:

Centuries ago, humanity have been incorporated into an alien hive mind, spread by a bacterial-like infection. The "bacteria" infects the blood and brain and allows the infected to join their minds together, there is no alien overlord, just an interplanetary community of spirit. Everyone is happy.

The problem is that our immune system starts to fight back. More and more babies are born with little to no space-bacteria in their brain, and need daily injections to stay "normal".

Even worse, the space-bacteria signal strength is globally diminishing.

We can barely feel the presence of the other infected species outside the solar system, soon we'll only be able to share our thoughs with the people in our immediate vicinity.

Teams of space-travelers are send to other planetary systems in hope to find new strains of the bacteria to re-infect everyone. They are humanity last hope to be happy again.

My story explores two facets of this terrible, terrible situation:

• One part is about people who stayed on earth. They are trying to find a cure against our immune system, struggle to maintain social order and try to cope with the loss of happiness.

• The other is about a team send to space, they travel around, meet infected and non-infected civilizations, ask for information on the bacteria in space-taverns, learn the concept of money and hire a few space-mercenaries to help them in their noble quest.

Additional information:

In this universe, a hive-minds is kind of like a single mind (with some psychological issues) controlling numerous bodies at the same time. Each of the body have different preferences (their senses perceive the world differently) and the hive mind, like most creatures, try to live its life in the most agreeable way possible.

One part of the story is told from the earth collective mind POV, another from a smaller collective mind POV, formed by the ship crew, and the POV of other hive minds they'll meet on their journey (I haven't decided yet on how these other collectives will be structured).

I was thinking about writing in a first view perspective, while using "we" and "us". But the first scenes I have written are super-annoying to read.

My Questions:

How can I write a story from a collective mind perspective without being confusing or obnoxious? Should I use a first or third person narrative?

Are there well-written stories told from a hive mind POV?