We Are the Ants(33)

“What?”

From my supine position on the metal slab, the sluggers had all looked the same, but this one was close enough that I could distinguish fractal patterns on its skin in a million shades of green and brown. The deeper I followed, the farther they led. And they weren’t static, either. The intricate designs changed in subtle ways. I sat up, swung my legs around, and slid off the edge of the slab.

“Is that how you communicate with one another?” I wondered aloud as I observed the body markings swirl and transform in an endless dance. They were beautiful. I shed my anger standing there, sloughed off the dead weight of it.

“Do you want me to press the button?” The slugger didn’t respond. It simply lingered, motionless except for the designs on its skin and its round eyes floating on their stalks. “If you want me to press it, I will, but you’ve got to promise never to send me back.”

Without my anger to support me, I faltered. My legs trembled, and I collapsed to the floor. I searched for the horizon but saw nothing. Without my anger, I was adrift and drowning. Marcus had attacked me and Nana had Alzheimer’s and Jesse had killed himself and Charlie was having a baby. I was helpless to stop any of it; I’d been robbed of hope as surely as Nana was being robbed of her memories.

“Please don’t send me back.”

The alien turned and crawled toward the darkness. I thought it was abandoning me, but it stopped at the edge of the shadows and waited. This behavior was new, and I watched it curiously. After a moment, a floppy appendage grew out of the upper half of its body and waggled in the air, almost like it was waving at me.

“Do you want me to follow you?” My voice was thick with mucus, and I scrubbed away my tears with the back of my hand. The slugger waved until I stood up, and then its arm melted back into its body.

The slugger led me into the shadows. I’d always imagined there were walls behind the dark, and I was surprised when there weren’t. The shadows enveloped me, and I stopped and held my hand an inch in front of my face. It wasn’t simply dark; it was the complete absence of light. My heart began to race, but I walked on. I was prepared to spend my life in a cage as the centerpiece of their intergalactic zoo if it meant never returning to Calypso.

The farther I walked, the more confident I grew. I kept my hand extended in front of me to avoid stumbling into anything. I didn’t even know if the slugger was still there; I just kept walking. I wondered how it could see without light, and it dawned on me that the darkness was probably natural to the aliens. The lights in the exam room were for my benefit. The possibilities were endless and exciting. Did their eyes perceive heat? Radiation? Maybe they could see my atoms, and I was merely bits of organic code for them to manipulate. The sluggers were so fundamentally different from humans that it was a wonder they understood me at all. How ugly we must look to them, spilling light into every dark corner to push back the shadows, blinding ourselves to the true beauty of emptiness.

Thank God for nipples.

My hands brushed against something smooth, and I halted. I searched for a door or handle but found nothing. “What now?” As if to answer, a hole appeared in the wall, and a narrow beam of light struck my face. I threw up my arm to cover my eyes. I’d been in the dark so long, the light hurt. When I lowered my arm, I screamed, thinking the sluggers had jettisoned me into space. I stood surrounded by stars. I dropped to my knees, comforted by the solidity of the floor even though I couldn’t see it, expecting at any moment to be sucked into the gelid void, frozen and dead. It took a moment for my brain to process that I wasn’t floating in space. I perceived no walls, no ceiling, no floor, yet that I was alive proved that some kind of barriers protected me. The slugger who’d led me into the darkness was gone, as was the hallway from which I’d come. It shouldn’t have been possible. I was surrounded by heaven. The sun, the moon, the earth, and all those living stars. They weren’t static like in pictures taken from impossibly far away—they breathed, they glowed. They were future and past, possibility and memory. They were beautiful.

“I never knew there were so many,” I whispered. We are merely pieces of a grander design, even more insignificant than I imagined. When the earth ceases to be, all those stars will shine on. Our deaths will mean nothing to them.

“I feel so small.” No one replied. I wondered as I watched the stars, really seeing them for the first time, whether they could see me, too.





Time Travel




It begins a thousand years from now. Dr. Jiao Hatori discovers time travel.

A new and exciting industry emerges from the breakthrough. Those willing to pay the exorbitant fees are shifted backward in time to view history firsthand. Time tourists can finally discover the truth of who shot JFK, they can watch the first majestic performance of Hamlet, they can dine with Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth I or Amelia Earhart the evening before her ill-fated flight. Future humans infest history like cockroaches.

The problems begin when the North American Alliance’s prime minister sends soldiers to the year 2213 to prevent the Texas uprising that turned much of what was once known as the United States into an atomic wasteland. The plan succeeds, which is the problem.

History becomes fluid. Factions with varying agendas fight to rewrite the events of the past to their advantage. The government that controls the past controls the future.

The Guilde Immuable, an anti-time travel organization, forms in response to the deconstruction of the past. Citizens applaud its goals while condemning its methods. Its members destroy art and literature, kill famous figures throughout history, demanding time travel cease or they will dismantle the whole of time. They sow chaos to bring attention to the plundering of humanity’s history.