Nature Futures 2 (29 page)

Dave was ecstatic. He'd made contact. He was now sure to the point of bursting with excitement that he was talking to actual alien entities here on Earth. He was on the verge of finding out their plan. And it never hurts to ask.

@littlegreybuddies: #countdown So when's D-Day? More to the point … what's D-Day?

The reply was almost immediate.

@saucerzrus: #countdown Watch the skies @littlegreybuddies Keep watching the skies LOL

Much to Dave's dismay things went quiet. Nobody posted to the hash-tags for a week, and
@saucerzrus
and
@weegreenmen
came back as discontinued when sent direct messages. He tried to force the issue by posting to the hash-tags, but he was a lone voice in the wilderness, tumbleweed blowing through his posts. No one replied.

Dave got desperate. He hacked his way into secure military installations, searching for a secret that would unlock his contacts' silence. He didn't find it.

What he did find was a growing disquiet in the military with the state of the upper atmosphere. Something was going on up there that had the top brass very worried. Dave was about to send a general tweet to see if anything was trending when he got a personal message. There was no sender identified, but he guessed who had sent it.

Time's up. Switch on the news.

He did as he was told.

“An unusual phenomenon is being reported all along the East Coast tonight. It is snowing in a zone stretching from New England to Labrador. Nothing unusual for this time of the year, except for the colour — the snow is green.

“Reports are also coming in that this snowfall is having strange effects on plant life in some areas. Scientists have taken samples of the substance for analysis, but as yet there is no official confirmation as to the cause of these events. All we can say for certain is that this is a deadly attack, from a source as yet unknown. FEMA has issued a preliminary statement asking people to remain indoors with doors and windows locked until the storm has passed, and we can only reiterate the importance of that advice. From what we have seen here, this country may never be the same again.”

His laptop beeped.

A new tweet had just been posted to the hash-tags.

@saucerzrus: ROFLMAO Take us to your leader! PLS RT. #ufo #aliens #invasion #countdown = 0

William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with 20 novels published in the genre press and more than 300 short story credits in 13 countries. He has books available from a variety of publishers and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he's not writing he dreams of fortune and glory.

Picnic With Ants

Mark W. Moffett

I'm Gerry Blandsides and this is recording tape 18 for my postdoctoral grant 978-2023,
The Geopolitical Significance of the Ants in Namibian Mud Wallows: An Übersynthesis
. It's day nine of my observations on the
Pheidole
‘big-headed' ant colony nesting east of Otjiwarongo in warthog splash puddle and latrine 62Ω.

07:00
71 ants passed by along their foraging trail in the last minute. Their diet remains unclear, though as before they transport bits of blackened material.

07:02
No change.

7:04
Nothin'.

7:06
Nada.

7:08
Yawn.

7:10
Zzz.

7:12
Kill me.

07:14
I count 69 ants this last minute. An occasional ant hauls a pebble to one of the rings of sand they've let accumulate near the trail border. (Note to self: this pointless activity makes me imagine that the ants are as bored as I.
C'est la vie
! For ultimately, I shall triumph with my unifying concept of post-Jurassic hypertrophy of ant neosocial metastructure under conditions of intense swine excreta interactivity and its effects on antennal waving dynamics.)

07:16
73 ants per minute. One ant stops, grooms itself. Fly lands on my nose.

07:18
67 ants. (Note: trail usage remains stable, contrary to the conjectures of those bohemian Yale intellectuals with their fancy graph paper. At least this prediction from Appendix 142 of my grant will be borne out? Finishing my count, I give the grooming ant a cheery salute as it turns in my direction.)

07:20
I slap the fly. The ant stops grooming, runs to the moribund bug. It pauses to look at me, then looks at the fly, then at me again, before scurrying off.

07:22
Six ants gather around the fly, start a small fire under it within one of those rings of sand they had deposited earlier. (Note: fly wings crackle as they burn.) The team rotates the fly so that it roasts evenly, turning from a golden dipterous brown to a deep smoky grey. (Another note: isn't cooking unique to humans? Follow-up grant assured if this finding is reproducible.)

07:24
The charbroiled scent is driving me crazy. The ants have taken herbs from nearby shrubs, adding the redolence of oregano, but with more vibrant undertones! I pull a sandwich from my field vest, but the baloney disappoints.

07:26
Ants remove fly from fire, carve the smoked meat. (Note: salivating! And if I recall correctly, insects have less fat and more protein than steak.)

07:28
The ant that had been grooming itself — and I'm
certain
it is the same individual — has returned with six others. (Note to self: as with other
Pheidole
ant species, this recruitment of assistance was doubtless accomplished by use of chemical scent that the leader ant releases into the air. The authority on such pheromones is Professor E. O. Wilson — might he support a fieldwork project on this?) The newly arrived ant workers lug half the butchered fly in my direction, then they gaze up at me and back away slowly.

Tastes delicious, I knew it would.

[
Long interval of static on recording tape
.] … need a seductive marketing name, like the ones restaurants give ugly game fish. Arthrofowl? Miniquail? Souperfly? Kosherbug? Chicken Little? MicroMcNuggnats? Flying lobster?

17:56
313 ants/minute. 87 little bonfires flicker at my feet in the last glow of sunset. A steady supply of swatted flies — now including crepuscular mosquitoes of the genus
Anopheles
— keeps my ant colony busy. Their recipe improves each time I squash an ant who overcooks. (Note: natural selection in action? I should write a grant on this topic also. Then again, forget the science — boring, boring! Ants that cook, who cares? Future is assured if I replicate this — succulant? aphrodisiant? antbrosia? — recipe without them.)

17:58
The 50/50 split that the ants are giving me seems fair. But still, I calculate I will require thousands of flies to maintain the diet. What must it be like for an elephant to depend on peanuts, handed out one at a time by children? So no more bug repellant for me! Let Bugs Come Hither. Anyway, DEET gives each morsel a decided bitterness — makes the ants queasy as well.

Hold on. More ants are watching me. It seems a fly has landed on my ear, and now there's a mosquito on my forehead. Back in two minutes.

[
Another interval of indecipherable static.
]

19:22
Too many ants are arriving to count — 4,000 a minute? No matter how many flies I swat, I can no longer keep up with their needs. Worse, the flames below me have merged into a single conflagration that is singeing my hair. My face is blistering; eyes water from the heat. (Note: Stupid ants, how can they cook anything now? Setbacks like this could cause delays if I decide to approach the Food Network. Wait, look at
that
! The ants swarm my legs, some of them carrying herbs. It's a recruitment response a thousand times more intense than they show to a fly! Is a different pheromone involved? I will take copious notes, but first I must figure out why I can't move.)

[
Recording ends.
]

Mark W. Moffett is a Smithsonian entomologist who has won the Lowell Thomas Medal from the Explorers Club and the Bowdoin Medal for writing from Harvard. After completing a PhD under E. O. Wilson, he spent years watching ants for his book,
Adventures Among Ants
.

Be Swift, My Darling

John Moran

When you wake and start reading this, head fuddled by the cold sleep that crosses the stars, then you're in what the Kree call the saddle (don't worry who the Kree are, my lover, I'll get to that shortly).

For now, just realize that the ring beside you opens an airlock. You'll need to wear the suit because the first two metres are vacuum, but when you jump the gap, and operate the far side by pulling what looks like a purple orchid, you'll find yourself in the alien spacecraft I discovered on my shift three weeks ago (without waking you my darling, I'm sorry).

You'll find this hard, as you enter the glass-smooth tunnel and follow its crimson undulations into the darkness, but you'll also remember this note and tell yourself, as you have all your life, that there's no such thing as fate. You're wrong, my dear, but until the end you won't believe me.

At the end of the tunnel you'll find a tall insect of bilateral symmetry and upright gait, its chest etched with orange glyphs and its screech itching your skin like nails on metal even as one arm turns what appears to be a piece of bamboo in your direction. The shot will miss you, my darling, but shock will drop you to one knee before you reply with the gun on your suit.

This is a Kree, and when you stand again and cross its dying body, your breath will catch as you remember this note.

There are two tunnels. (You think you won't, but you will) take the left-hand one and creep into a red oval that pulsates like a heartbeat. Containers lie here, and some of the Kree survey equipment, but there's no point being wantonly destructive. Just shudder at the way they lie like melted flesh from a Dalí, then make your way through the middle to the heart of the hive.

The Kree are older than us, my darling, and their technology is organic, but through your helmet you won't smell the pheromones keeping the nest viable, or hear the million-pulse beat that shivers from the queen. Instead you'll rush through hanging veils of flesh to a distant glow, amazed that a ship with hundreds of corridors should be so empty, until you remember that I've arranged the timing exactly to give you free access.

You'll panic, then, when you remember what lies in wait, and want to turn back, but you're brave, my darling, so you'll bite your lip and continue even though you'll need the suit's medication to stop you throwing up.

At the limit of your explorations you'll think you've entered a cul-de-sac, but you'll remember this note and stretch your fingers into the long, brown grass of the inner ship to discover a hidden passage leading down and know that you've reached the end of your journey.

This last corridor will go by slowly. You'll imagine that each hiss and switch of your intake valve can be heard by the Kree and your skin will feel clammy and then cold as you sweat beyond the capacity of air-conditioning. You'll even begin to tremble when the rippling corridor opens into a damp space filled with black mounds that remind you of eggs.

They aren't, of course, although you won't be able to help your reaction, born of a lifetime of wildlife programmes, till you enter and notice that where the first is leathery, the second is crystalline. The Kree are scavengers, you'll see, and although their technology includes genetic modification, they've added the life of a dozen worlds to the mix. Before you, will be a root from Satir-4, a lizard from Rigus and two clams from the oceans of Ligellan. You'll imagine the traces of what they once were, and shudder at the idea that creatures can know the Kree from the inside even as they are known.

At this point you'll remember your mission and run once more, past half-molten creatures still wailing into the thin air, past fish failing to swim through organic glue, to an open space waiting for more samples. And in the last mound you'll find me.

Don't judge me harshly, darling, as you raise your gun to my pleading eyes, for the Kree give as well as take. From them I've learned that time is organic, growing immovable branches of reality from nodes of choice.

That chittering you'll hear as you aim is just part of my proof. I'm connected to the Kree now, and I've done the mathematics so many times I know that there was no way to bring you in and let you out safely.

Instead, a saddle point. Shoot us both, or let the Kree bind us together in a transformation stranger than you can imagine. I know you expect to put me out of my misery, but here at the end I can only say that you'll have to decide for yourself.

Just begin. Put on the suit and enter the airlock. Be swift, my darling. I'm waiting.

John Moran has been a chemical analyst, nuclear physicist and art-shop owner. He currently works as a security consultant for a UK bank.

Can of Wormholes

Neale Morison

I wish to make a complaint.

Select Department:
Sales/Billing, Technical Support, Pre-purchase

Technical Support.

Product:
Eternitizer 3000, Alternatron D11, MixWhizz 98

Alternatron D11.

Priority:
Low, Medium, High, Critical

Critical.

Problem Area:
Response time, Scan precision, Matter transfer integrity, None of the above

None of the above.

Briefly describe the problem.

Like the manual says, I scan for an alternate and when one comes up green I press Transfer, Enter but nothing happens. Submit.

Your enquiry is being assigned. Please wait.
My name is Troy. How may I help you today?