We Are the Ants (2 page)

One of the sluggers remained behind after the others disappeared into the shadows. The exam room was the only section of the ship I'd ever seen, and its true shape and size were obscured by the darkness at the edges. The room itself was plain—a gray floor with swirls that gave it the impression of movement and that was illuminated by four or five lights beaming from the shadows. The slab, which had become a chair, was obsidian black.

My limbs tingled, and that was how I realized I could move again. I shook them to work out the pins and needles, but I couldn't shake the impotence that rattled in my skull, reminding me that the aliens could flay me alive and peel back my muscles to see how I functioned, and there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do to stop them. As human beings, we're born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.

My throat was scratchy. Even caged rats are given water bottles and food pellets.

“If you're testing my patience, I should warn you that I once spent three weeks in a roach-infested RV with my family on the antiquing trip from hell. Twenty-one days of Dad getting lost, Mom losing her temper, and my brother finding any excuse to punch me, all set to the glorious song of Nana's deviated septum.”

Nothing. No reaction. The slugger beside me waggled its eyestalks, the glassy marbles taking in a 360-degree view. They were like one of those security cameras hidden under a shaded dome; it was impossible to know where they were tracking at any given moment.

“Seriously, it was the worst trip of my life. Every night we all had to lie still and pretend we couldn't hear Charlie polishing his rifle in the overhead bunk. I'm pretty confident he broke the world record for the most number of times a kid's masturbated while sharing breathing space with his parents, brother, and grandmother.”

A beam of light shot over my shoulder, projecting a three-dimensional image of Earth in the air a few feet in front of me. I turned to find the source, but the slugger sprouted an appendage and slapped me in the neck.

“I really hope that was an arm,” I said, rubbing the fresh welt.

The picture of the planet was meticulously detailed. Feathery clouds drifted across the surface as the image rotated leisurely. Tight clusters of defiant lights sparkled from every city, as bright as any star. A few moments later, a smooth pillar approximately one meter tall rose from the floor beside the image of the earth. Atop it was a bright red button.

“Do you want me to press it?” The aliens had never given me the impression that they understood anything I said or did, but I figured they wouldn't have presented me with a big shiny button if they hadn't intended for me to press it.

The moment I stood, electricity surged up my feet and into my body. I collapsed to the floor, twitching. A strangled squeal escaped my throat. The slugger didn't offer to help me, despite its ability to grow arms at will, and I waited for the spasms to recede before climbing back into the chair. “Fine, I won't touch the button.”

The projection of the earth exploded, showering me with sparks and light. I threw up my arm to protect my face, but I felt no pain. When I opened my eyes, the image was restored.

“So, you definitely
don't
want me to press the button?”

Under the watchful eyes of my alien overlord, I witnessed the planet explode seven more times, but I refused to budge from my seat. On the eighth explosion, the sluggers shocked me again. I lost control of my bladder and flopped onto the floor in a puddle of my own urine. My jaw was sore from clenching, and I wasn't sure how much more I could take.

“You know, if you just told me what you wanted me to do, we could skip the excruciating pain portion of this experiment.”

They restored the planet again; only when I tried to sit, they shocked me and blew it up. The next time the image was whole, I scrambled to the button and slammed it with my hand. I was rewarded with an intense burst of euphoria that began in my feet and surged up my legs, spreading to my fingers and the tips of my ears. It was pure bliss, like I'd ejacu­lated a chorus of baby angels from every pore of my body.

“That didn't suck.”

  •  •  •  

I lost track of how many times I pressed the button. Sometimes they shocked me, sometimes they dosed me with pure rapture, but I never knew which to expect. Not until I saw the pattern. It was so simple, I felt like an imbecile for not seeing it sooner. Being shocked until I pissed myself probably hadn't helped my problem-solving abilities.

Those shocks and bursts of euphoria weren't punishments and rewards, nor were they random. They were simply meant to force me to see that there was a causal relationship between whether I pressed the button and whether the planet exploded. The sluggers were trying to communicate with me. It would have been a much more exciting moment in human history if I hadn't been wearing soggy underwear.

I decided to test my theory.

“Are you going to blow up the planet?”

SHOCK.

“Am I going to blow it up?”

SHOCK.

I finally gave up and stayed on the floor. “Is
something
going to destroy the earth?”

EUPHORIA.

“Can you stop it?”

HALLELUJAH!

My eyes rolled back as a shiver of bliss rippled through me. “How do we stop it?” I looked to the slugger for a clue, but it hadn't moved since slapping me. What I knew was this: when I pressed the button, Earth didn't explode. When I didn't, it did. It couldn't be that simple, though. “Pressing the button will prevent the destruction of the planet?”

UNADULTERATED RAPTURE.

“So, what? All those other times I pressed it were just practice?”

BABY ANGELS EVERYWHERE

“Great. So, when is this apocalypse set to occur?” I wasn't sure how the aliens were going to answer an open-ended question, especially since they'd never answered me before, but they were capable of interstellar travel; providing me with a date should have been cake. A moment later the projection of the earth morphed into a reality TV show called
Bunker
, and a hammy announcer's voice boomed at me from everywhere at once.

“This group of fifteen strangers has been locked in a bunker for six months. With only one hundred and forty-four days remaining, you won't want to miss a single minute as they compete for food, water, toilet paper, and each other's hearts.”

“You guys get the worst stations up here.” The commercial faded and Earth returned. “So, one hundred and forty-four days?” It took me longer than I'll admit to do the math in my head. “That means the world is going to end January twenty-­ninth, 2016?”

SWEET EUPHORIA.

I never got tired of being right.

When my head cleared, I came to the conclusion that the sluggers were screwing with me. It was the only logical explanation. I refused to believe that they had the power to prevent the world's end but had chosen to leave the decision up to a sixteen-year-old nobody.

But if it wasn't a joke, if the choice was mine, then I held the fate of the world in my sweaty hand. The aliens probably didn't care one way or another.

“Just to be clear: I have until January twenty-ninth to press the button?”

EUPHORIA.

“And if I do, I'll prevent the planet's destruction?”

EUPHORIA.

“And if I choose not to press it?”

The earth exploded, the projection disappeared, and the lights died.

I darted across the dawn-drenched lawn in front of my duplex, gushing sweat in the muggy Florida heat and shielding my privates with a trash can lid I'd stolen from a house a couple of streets over, hoping Mr. Nabu—who sat on his patio, reading the newspaper every morning—was too busy scouring the obits for names of friends and enemies to notice my pasty white ass scramble past.

After my second abduction, I began hiding a duffel bag with spare clothes behind the AC unit under my bedroom window. The sluggers don't always return me totally naked, but when they do, I assume it's because it amuses them to watch me attempt to sneak from one end of Calypso to the other without being arrested for indecent exposure.

As I dressed, I tried to wrap my brain around the possibility that the world was going to end, and the absurd notion that aliens had chosen me to determine whether the apocalypse would happen as scheduled or be delayed. I simply wasn't important enough to make such a crucial decision. They should have abducted the president or the pope or Neil deGrasse Tyson.

I don't know why I didn't press the button for real when I had the chance other than that I don't think the aliens would have given me such a long lead time if they hadn't wanted me to consider my choice carefully. Most people probably believe they would have pressed the button in my situation—nobody
wants
the world to end, right?—but the truth is that nothing is as simple as it seems. Turn on the news; read some blogs. The world is a shit hole, and I have to consider whether it might be better to wipe the slate clean and give the civilization that evolves from the ashes of our bones a chance to get it right.

I used the spare key under the dead begonia by the front door to sneak into my house. The smell of cigarette smoke and fried eggs greeted me, and I sauntered into the kitchen like I'd come from my bedroom, still bleary-eyed and sleepy. Mom glanced up from reading her phone. A cigarette hung from the tips of her fingers, and her curly bleached hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. “About time. I was calling you, Henry. Didn't you hear me calling you?” My mom is shaped like an eggplant and often sports bags under her eyes of the same color.

I leaned against the door, not planning to stay. Alien abductions always make me feel like I need a boiling bleach shower. “Sorry.”

Nana smiled at me from the stove. She slid a plate of pepper-­flecked fried eggs onto the table and set the mayo beside it. “Eat. You're too skinny.” Nana is gritty and hard; she wears her wrinkles and liver spots like battle scars from a war she'll never stop fighting. She's the gristle stuck between Time's teeth, and I love her for it.

Mom took a drag from her cigarette and jabbed it in my direction. “I called you a hundred times.”

Before I could reply, Charlie stomped into the kitchen and swiped my plate. He ate one egg with his hands as he flopped into a chair, and then set to work on the rest of my breakfast. Sometimes it's difficult to believe Charlie and I come from the same parents. I'm tall, he's short; I'm skinny, he used to be muscular, though most of it turned to fat after high school; I can count to five without using my fingers. . . . Charlie has fingers.

“Henry didn't hear you because Henry wasn't home.” Charlie smirked at me as he grabbed a fistful of bacon from the plate in the middle of the table. He grimaced at Mom. “Do you have to smoke while I'm eating?”

Mom ignored him. “Where were you, Henry?”

“Here.”

“Liar,” Charlie said. “Your bed was empty when I got home from Zooey's last night.”

“What the hell were you doing in my room?”

Mom took a drag off her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. Her mouth was pursed and tight like a bright pink sphincter, and her silence spoke louder than any slammed door. The only sounds in the kitchen belonged to the eggs frying on the stove and Nana whistling the
Bunker
theme song.

“I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk. What's the big deal?”

Charlie coughed “bullshit” under his breath; I replied with one finger.

“You're not . . . sleepwalking . . . again, are you?”

“I was walking, Mom, but I was definitely awake.”

Charlie whipped a toast wedge that struck me below my eye. “Two points!”

“Did you just try to blind me with toast? What the hell is wrong with you?” I grabbed the toast off the floor to throw it away, but Charlie held out his hand and said, “Don't waste it, bro.”

Mom lit another cigarette. “No one would blame me if I smothered you both in your sleep.” I think my mom might have been pretty once, but the years devoured her youth, beauty, and enthusiasm for anything with an alcohol content of less than 12 percent.

Nana handed me a paper bag stained with grease. “Don't forget your lunch, Charlie.”

I peeked inside the bag. Nana had dumped two fried eggs, three strips of bacon, and hash browns at the bottom. Broken yolk oozed over everything like sunny pus. “I'm Henry, Nana.” As soon as she turned her back, I tossed the sack lunch into the garbage can.

“Do you need a ride to school, Henry?” Mom asked.

I glanced at the clock on the microwave. If I hurried, I'd have enough time to shower and walk to school. “Tempting. I've read that beginning your day by doing something absolutely terrifying is good for you, but I'm going to pass.”

“Smartass.”

“Could you drop me off at Zooey's?” Charlie mopped up the last of
my
eggs with the projectile floor toast and stuffed it into his fat mouth.

“Don't you have class this morning?” I asked, knowing full well Charlie had withdrawn from all his classes but still hadn't told Mom.

“I can swing you by the community college on my way to work,” Mom said.

“Thanks. Great.” Charlie faked a smile with gritted teeth, but I knew he was dreaming up a hundred ways to cause me excruciating pain, most of which likely involved his fists and my face—my brother isn't terribly creative, but he is consistent.

For the record: if the sluggers ever abduct Charlie, I'm certain he'll earn the anal probe.

“Henry, I need you home right after school today.”