We Are the Ants(63)

Diego’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I read about it online.”

“You Googled me? What the hell, Henry?”

“Forget it. This was a mistake.” I pulled my knees to my chest and tried to wipe the feel of Diego’s lips off my mouth.

I waited for him to leave, but he didn’t. “Why does the past have to matter? Can’t now be enough? Can’t this be enough?”

“I want it to be.” If Jesse had asked me to read to him from my journals when he was alive, I would have. Maybe if I’d shared my secrets with him, he would have told me how much pain he was in. I’ll never know. I lost my chance with Jesse, but Diego was sitting right in front of me. One of us had to blink, and I had nothing to lose. “Sometimes I write about how the world might end. Sometimes I write about the abductions. . . . You know, for science. I forget the details otherwise.”

“What’re they like?” Diego spoke softly, like he was afraid he’d spook me if he spoke too loud.

“It’ll be easier if I read you something.” I reached past Diego and retrieved the notebook. The pages were filled with my cramped hieroglyphics, a byproduct of being born a lefty. I cleared my throat and began to read before I lost my nerve.

“Last night I was created from light. Stoplights and patio lights and campfire lights and Christmas lights still up in summer. Sunlight and moonlight and starlight and light that’s taken a million, million years to arrive. I was made of them all.

“It happened like always: the shadows, the urge to pee, the helpless paralysis. The dark room. I love and loathe that room. It’s there that they deconstruct me, study me, and rebuild me. It’s there that they probe me, searching for answers to the mystery of Henry Jerome Denton. I try to tell them there is no mystery. I am not special, not unique, not even a little important. They never listen. As they perform their experiments, which make little sense to my primitive intellect, my mind wanders. It wonders. Why me?

“Do mice ask the same questions when scientists study them? Do they believe in their uniqueness as they are injected with syringes of experimental drugs? When a hand reaches into a cage, grabs one by the tail, and vivisects it, do they marvel at their specialness? Will the sluggers kill and cut me open one day?

“Tonight something unusual occurred. The tallest slugger touched my forehead, and I ignited like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. Shards of dazzling light rippled under my skin. I was the constellation Grus. The Trifid Nebula. I was the Big Bang, expanding endlessly through time and space forever.

“I thought I was dying. That I was going to expire on a cold slab, trapped inside a UFO, my body filled with every light that had ever existed. I couldn’t imagine a better way to die.

“But I didn’t die. The lights rose to the surface of my skin, through it and into the air where they hovered over me, maintaining the form of my body. I was no longer filled with light; I was light. My photonic heart beat, pushing my glittering blood through my glowing veins.

“This was probably a routine procedure for the aliens—no more wondrous than a CT scan or an X-ray is to us—but seeing that twin of myself created from heavenly particles made me believe that I was special to them in some way.

“One by one, the lights began to fade and slowly die. Not with the big bang that birthed them, but with a whimper and a gasp.

“They returned me to Calypso shortly after, I think. I woke up in Mr. Haverty’s backyard. I really wish they’d stop taking my pants.”

My throat was scratchy, so I drank the rest of my water while I waited for Diego’s reaction. His mouth hung open, and his eyes seemed unfocused. I couldn’t read his expression, but I felt exposed under it.

“That was a dumb one, I can find you one where they cut—”

Diego grabbed the back of my head and pulled me to him, kissing me like I was the only water in the desert. He sucked the air out of me, but it was okay because he breathed for both of us—his heart pumped blood for us too. We were a closed system, complete.

“Read me more.”

“It’s bullshit.”

“It’s beautiful, Henry. You’re beautiful.”

Diego never did answer my question, and after a while, I wondered if it even mattered.





Midnight Sun




When scientists at NASA first observe the sun dimming, a small division is funded to study the phenomenon, but the consensus is that the anomaly will self-correct.

A year later a secret conference of scientists is convened to debate the dimming of the sun, which many now believe presents an imminent threat to life on Earth. Already the effects are noticeable. Colder, longer winters and more glacial ice than has been seen in decades. Conservatives in Washington, DC, claim these phenomena are proof that global warming is and always was a sham. While most scientists at the conference agree that the global cooldown is being caused by the dimming of the sun, none can offer a viable solution to halt or reverse it.

Over the next two years, the pace of climate change rapidly increases. Glaciers form over Canada, snows fall regularly in Florida and Central America. People flee the northern-most states to more temperate climates.

The sun is dying. That’s what people say.

Unable to hide the truth any longer, the world’s leaders announce that the sun is experiencing a cycle of dimming, and that its light and heat will continue to diminish. Eventually the dimming will reverse itself, but scientists predict all multi-cellular life on Earth will perish long before that occurs.