by Rudy Rucker
“Their nest is not under my house,” insisted Stefan. “There’s got to be some modern cyber-method to track ants to their true lair. Like if I could laser-scan them, or Google-map them. That would rock.”
“Stefan, why did you even call me if you want to talk that kind of crap? It’s not like ants have anti-theft labels.”
“Hey, that’s it!” exclaimed Stefan. “I’ve got smart dust, man. I’ve got a whole bag of smart dust in my bedroom.”
Jayson grinned loonily and made snorting noises. “Smart dust? Throw down some lines, dog!”
“I do not speak of mere drugs,” said Stefan loftily, “I’m talking RFID! Radio frequency ID chips. My smart dust comes out of a lab in Berkeley. You can ping these teensy ID tags with radio, and they give off an ID number. They’re computer chips, but they’re so much smaller than ants that they’re like ant cell phones. Smaller than that, even. Smart dust is like ant pretzel nuggets.”
Stefan fetched Jayson a promotional sheet from a heap of tech-conference swag. The glossy ad showed one single ant towering over one single chip of smart dust. The chip was a knitted trackwork of logic circuits, pretty much like any normal computer chip, but the ant standing over it was an armored Godzilla with eyes like hubcaps and feelers big as sewer pipes.
“Whoah,” said Jayson. “I’d love to see an ant that big.” He drew out his multitool and kinked at a shiny length of his hobby wire.
Stefan rooted through his tangled electronic gear. “Here it is: just what we need. We’ll mix this bag of smart-dust with your super-attractive ant repellents, and all the ants will swallow that stuff whole. Luring ants with high-tech bait—that’s just like when we did our art installations at Burning Man, back in the day!”
“Yep, those naked hippies were drawn to our tech wizardry like ants to sugar,” Jayson concurred. “I’d always get laid right away, but you were obsessed with keeping the demo running.”
“I need to change,” admitted Stefan.
The ants gathered rapidly around the bait, climbing on top of each other in their eagerness to feed. Stefan squatted to stare. “Wow, we’re drawing a matinee crowd!”
“Yeah, we got a big pop hit,” observed Jayson. The diverse crowd of ants included little foragers, big-jawed soldiers, curvaceous nurses, boxy undertakers…
Stefan pointed. “That one’s big as a rubber beetle! She must be a queen or something!”
“Squash her first,” said Jayson, plucking a rumpled pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket.
“I’m gonna capture her! A specimen like this belongs in a science museum.” Stefan hopped up and fetched nonconductive plastic tweezers from his electronics toolbox.
But when he leaned in to clutch the biggest ant with the tools of science—whoa, the ant shrank to a pencil-dot and disappeared into the floor boards.
“Feeling very strange!” exclaimed Stefan. “Did you see?”
“These ants are shifty mofos; I don’t like ‘em,” said Jayson, lighting his cigarette. He dialed up his lighter’s flame to make a small blow-torch. “These website-eaters must have swallowed some chips by now. Tea party’s over, girls.”
Scorched by Jayson’s lighter flame, the ants milled, panicked and dispersed.
Stefan’s smart-dust scanner was the size of a pen, with a wireless connection to his laptop. Most of the dust was still half-glued on the floor, so it was hard to find a clear signal. Stefan tapped eagerly at his laptop’s keyboard, tweaking the scanner. Enthralled by discovery, he’d forgotten all the pain in his wrists.
The smart-dust signals were vanishing through the walls of his apartment. With some bloodhound-style electronic tracking, Stefan found that the signals converged onto a winding ant highway running through his sun-baked yard.
“See, Jayson, those ants don’t live anywhere near my house.”
“I’ll bring the gasoline,” said Jayson, opening the last Mexican beer. “I saw a five gallon can in your garage by the leafblower.”
They followed the signals up Mr. Noor’s long driveway, the gas sloshing in Jayson’s rusty can. The ants were moving with astounding speed, as if they’d mounted tiny broom-sticks.
“I don’t like leaving my bike,” said Jayson after a bit. “No way these are the same ants that were in your house.”
“Smart dust don’t lie, compadre.”
They arrived at an overgrown pull-off near the gate; Stefan passed it every day. He’d never thought to stop there before, for the spot was bristling with angry yucca and prickly-pear. The trail of cybernetically tagged ants led under a forbidding tangle of dusty cactus, disappearing into a crooked little groove, a mini-arroyo where the fault-tortured dirt of LA had cracked wide open.
A wind-blown newspaper dangled from the spine of an ancient yucca.
Jayson plucked the paper loose. “This might be handy for tinder… Hey, whoa! Look how old this thing is!”
The newspaper dated from 1942; the lead story was about the “zoot suit riots” pitting Latino teens against US sailors on liberty.
“Duck-tail haircuts,” murmured Jayson, skimming the article. “I could make a historical zoot suit. This paper is great. I can sell this as memorabilia. There might be a whole trove of old paper under that cactus. Let’s hold off on the flaming gasoline attack.”
Stefan stared at his laptop. His smart-dusted ant signals were vanishing as fast as movie popcorn. “They’re running straight into that crack in the ground. And then their signals just vanish.”
“Must be some kinda sink hole,” said Jayson. He hunkered down and accurately pitched his empty beer bottle at the crack under the cactus.
The brown Mexican glass bloated like a soap bubble, shrank to the size of a pinhead and disappeared.
“Okay,” said Jayson slowly. “That’s pretty well torn it.”
“It’s…that’s…wow, it’s a localized domain of scale recalibration,” said Stefan. “You get that kind of Calabi-Yau effect from a warping of the seventh dimension. You wait here, Jayson. I’m gonna walk right in there. I know how to handle these things.”
Clutching his laptop, Stefan ventured forward towards the mysterious furrow. He took a step, two, three. Enormous mammoth-ear blobs of prickly pear cast a weird shade over his computer screen.
Suddenly five enormous fleshy sausages seized his chest with crushing force. He gasped and dropped his laptop. He was yanked backward with blinding speed, then somehow found himself tumbling into Jayson, sending the two of them sprawling on the dry, cracked dirt.
“You shrank, man,” Jayson complained, rising and dusting his cargo shorts. “You shrank right to the size of a hobbit. You were the size of Hello friggin’ Kitty.”
“Where’s my computer?”
“You see that little gray matchbook down there? That’s your Dell, dude.”
“I’m getting it.” Stefan darted in, shrinking as he went. He grabbed his laptop and hurried back out.
“Brave man,” said Jayson, patting Stefan’s shoulder. “How about this for an idea. Instead of walking into that crack, we get my Indian and ride into it.”
Stefan considered this, “You really want to risk your precious bike? At this point, it’s all you’ve got left.”
Jayson mulled this perhaps unkind remark, and decided to come clean. “Look, I didn’t want to tell you this before, because I’d knew you’d get all uptight, but Lester hid one of those satellite locator gizmos inside my Indian’s engine block. That’s what he told me on the phone. So if he really filed a stolen vehicle report…”
A police helicopter was laboring heavily over the valley. In LA, the cop choppers were always up there. At four AM, above a howl of sirens, you could see them scorching the dark alleys of Hollywood with massive beams of light, like premieres in reverse.
“So I say we ride my bike into this crack in the ground,” continued Jayson. “And then we ride off the radio spectrum, just like the ants did. The vehicle disappears. Plus, then we’ve got some wheels. It’s win-win.”
“Brilliant,” said Stefan, nodding his head. “Let’s hurry.”
They left the gas can where it was, and ran back to the garage. Jayson kicked his reluctant hog into function. There was room to spare for Stefan behind Jayson on the Indian’s enormous seat, which had been built for the generous cop-butts of a simpler era.
They roared up the driveway to the pullout and paused to top up the motorcycle’s tank from the can of gas, Jayson recklessly smoking a cigarette all the while.
“I’m, uh, having a moment of hesitation,” Stefan confessed when they were back on the seat. “Can two men on a motorcycle possibly fit under a cactus?” He fumbled at his laptop. “I’m thinking maybe some calculations or some Google research would be—”
The rest of his words were lost in the roar of a police helicopter sweeping low over the ridge.
Jayson torqued the throttle and did a wheelie straight towards the bristling chaparral.
Part 2
With the sinister ease of fishline unsnarling, the prickly pear grew to enormous size overhead. The groove in the ground rose up on both sides like a frozen tsunami, then segued into a commodious canyon—a peaceful, timeless place with steep reddish sides and a sweet, grassy floor.
Jayson eased back on the throttle. The canyon cliffs had a certain swoony quality, like a paint-by-numbers canvas done by someone short of oils. The canyon’s air was luminous, glowing from within.
Little houses dotted the bucolic valley floor, in rows and clusters. There were fields of corn, chickens in the yards, oranges, and here and there, thriving patches of marijuana.
A dry river snaked along the valley. Livestock grazed the uncertain terrain of the higher slopes, which featured particularly vertiginous, eye-hurting angles. The grazing animals might have been cows and horses—maybe even antelopes and bison.
Up above the slopes the sun was scudding across the sky like a windblown balloon. Jayson braked the bike and cut the engine. “Okay. Okay. What the hell is that up there?”
“That’s the sun, Jayson.”
“It’s falling out of the sky?”
“No, man. Any space warp is a time warp as well. I’d say one minute here in this valley of the ants is about the same as an hour in the workadaddy outer world.” Stefan cocked his head, staring at the racing sun, his eyes as bright as an excited bird’s. “The deeper we go in, the faster the outer world’s time rushes by. We’ll be like a couple of Rip van Winkles.”
Jayson threw back his head and laughed. “So by now those cops have given up and flown home!” He whooped again, as if recklessly trying to project his voice from the tiny ant crack beneath the cactuses off Mr. Noor’s drive. “Kiss my ass, Lester!”
“I have to analyze this situation scientifically,” said Stefan, growing fretful. “It’s counterintuitive for time to run slower here than in the world outside. That’s unexpected. Because usually small things are faster than large ones. Twitchy mice, sluggish elephants. But, oh, I see now, if the component strings of spacetime are left-handed seven-dimensional helices, then—”
“Then we’re free men,” said Jayson, kick-starting his bike with a roar. “Let’s see if I can find us the local Fatburger. That baloney of yours left a bad taste in my mouth.”
But there were no fast-food shacks to be seen in this idyllic landscape. The roads were mere dirt-tracks. No electrical pylons, no power cables. No big LA streetlights. No gutters, no concrete, no plumbing. Even the air smelled different; it had a viscous, sleepy, lotus-land quality, as if it were hard to suck the molecules through one’s nose-holes.
In this bucolic stillness, the pop-popping of the old Indian was loud as fireworks. An over-friendly yellow dog came snuffling up behind the slow-moving bike. Stefan turned to confront the stray mutt, and noted its extra, scuttling legs. It wasn’t a dog; it was, rather, a yellow ant the size of a dog.
The ant’s hooked feet skimmed across the valley floor, leaving neat little ant hoofprints. Intent on Jayson’s motorcycle, she moved like a Hong Kong martial artist on wireworks and trampoline.
Jayson hastily pulled his chopper into the gorgeous flowers of a local yard. He killed the engine and the boys leapt from the bike. The ant tapped the bike all over with her baton-sized feelers—trying to initiate a conversation. The motorcycle was, after all, remarkably ant-like in appearance, with its red skin, handlebar feelers, bulging headlight eye, and the gas tank like a thorax. Receiving no response, the yellow ant studied the boys with her compound eyes, then bent her rear end around to smear a drop of sticky ant-goo across the bike’s fat rear fender. She bent a bit awkwardly; judging from her lumpy abdomen, she’d recently had a big meal. And now, task done, she scuttled right along.
A weathered man in a white shirt, straw hat and chinos came out of the house and sat down on an old-style dinette chair. The vintage aluminum and vinyl chair was in much better condition than its age would suggest.
“Nice bike,” said the old man, beginning to roll a cigarette. “What’s it doing in my flowers?”
“Hyperio!” exclaimed Stefan. “I know you—I rent the cottage from Mr. Noor? I’m Stefan Oertel.”
“Okay,” said Hyperio peaceably. “I used to live in that cottage. Me and my first wife Maria. The gardener’s cottage, the owner called it.”
“Mr. Noor never told me that.”
“Not him. Mr. Hal Roach, fella helped make those fat-man thin-man movies.”
“Laurel and Hardy’s producer!” said Stefan. “Wow. Serious time dilation. It’s a real coincidence to find you here, Hyperio. I was looking for you because I have ant problems.”
Hyperio seemed to think this was funny. He laughed so hard that he spilled the tobacco out of his cigarette. It was an odd, desperate kind of laughter, though, and by the end it almost looked like he was in tears.
“I’m sorry, boys,” said Hyperio finally. “I’m not myself these days. My wife Lola is sick.” He jerked his head towards his door. “My Lola—she’s from way up Hormiga Canyon.”
“Canyon of the Ants,” translated Jayson. “What a great neighborhood. Can I live here? You got an extra room I can rent?”
“You’d pay me?” said Hyperio, looking maybe a little annoyed at Jayson’s seeming lack of concern over his sick wife.
“Um, I’m low on funds right now,” said Jayson, slapping his pockets. He looked around, sniffing the air for collectibles. “That Deco moderne dinette chair you’re sitting on—if I took that over to Silver Lake, I could get you two, three hundred bucks.”
“I brought this from the gardener’s cottage when I built this place for Lola,” said Hyperio. “And I’m keeping it. I like it.”
“Hey—do I see a wind-up Victrola through your window? You’ve got some old 78 records, right? You like that big band accordion sound?”
“You like conjunto, too?” Hyperio said, finally smiling. There was nothing for it but to step inside his house, where he proceeded to treat the boys to a leisurely wind-up rendition of “Muy Sabroso Blues” by Lalo Guerrero And His Five Wolves.
Grown hospitable, Hyperio produced a ceramic jug of room-temperature pulque. He gestured at a rounded lump under a striped Indian blanket on a cot. “My old lady,” he said. “My Lola. She’s got the real ant problems. Ants living inside her.”
“But—” began Stefan.
“They make themselves small,” said Hyperio, narrowing his eyes.
“Sure, sure, that figures,” nodded Jayson, tapping his booted foot to the music. “How did you end up in Hormiga Canyon, Hyperio?”
“Okay, before Lola, I was living with my first wife Maria in the gardener’s cottage,” said Hyperio. “One day I found the way in. Yeah, hombre, I had good legs then. I walked the canyon very deep.” Hyperio held out his fingers, branching in ten directions, with his cigarette still clamped between two of them. “Hormiga Canyon, it don’t go just one way. The rivers run in, the rivers run out. But I didn’t stop till I found my Lola. She’s a real LA woman. The original.” He sat on the creaking cot beside L
ola and patted her damp brow.
“So you found Lola and—?” coaxed Stefan, eager to hear more.
“I was crazy in love with her at first sight,” said Hyperio. “She was living with this indio, Angon was his name. From the Tongva tribe. Lola was too good for them. The Tongva people, they pray to the ants. They got some big old giant ants back there with legs like redwood trees.”
“Wow,” said Jayson. “I’d pay plenty to see those ants.”
Hyperio got up and changed the record on his Victrola. “This is Lola’s favorite song,” he said. “‘Mambo del Pachuco’ by Don Tosti and his band. She could really mambo, my Lola. Back in the day.”
The syncopated strains of music poured over the woman on the cot, and she stirred. Hyperio helped her sit up. Lola was stick-thin, and her brown face was slack. She’d been sleeping in a kind of leather shift, hand-beaded with little snail shells. When Lola saw that guests had arrived, however, she rallied a bit. Swaying to the music from the Victrola, she threw firewood into the stove. She stirred a kettle of soup. She drank water from a big striped pot.
Then she doubled over with a racking cough. She spat up a mass of ants. The ants swarmed all over her hands.
Stefan and Jayson exchanged an alarmed look. But Hyperio wasn’t surprised. He herded Lola back into bed, patted her, wrapped her up.
“She’s working the Tongvan ant cure,” said Hyperio shaking his head. “They eat ants to get well, the Tongvans. Lola eats the ants, lots of them, but she’s still no good inside, not yet. That’s why she wants me to take her back up canyon.”
“Home to her people, eh,” said Jayson. “I’ve heard about that tribe. The Tongvans. They were Californians, but like, before Columbus, basically?”
“The first, yes,” said Hyperio. He reached behind a string of dried peppers near the ceiling and produced a leafy sheaf of cured tobacco. With the edge of an abalone shell, he chopped up the brown leaf, then twisted it in scrap of newspaper. “You boys want a good smoke? Have a smoke.”
Jayson snatched up Hyperio’s hand-rolled cig. “These ants. Is redwood-tree-legs the max size they go?”