by Anthology
***
A little long ways up the pillar, an ant licked sugar water off the back of another.
Together, the royal chariot of ants writhed and tripped over each other, carrying the load ever higher. It was a prolate spheroid, half the size of an Aussie rules football. Chemical commands came from deep inside it.
Push, push.
So the ants pushed. And they passed around bubbles of air, clamping their spiracles shut to hold in their breath. Honeypot ants moved among them, dispensing nectar and nutrients.
The desert ants were most useful, as natural producers of cryoprotectant proteins. These saved the myriads from first the cold, and then the sun, now untempered by atmosphere.
It was the desert ants who survived last, crawling over the bodies of their starved, asphyxiated sisters.
It was the desert ants, undeterred by aggression pheromones, who pulled the load to the end of the ribbon, high above the Equator, the ideal place for jumping off this world.
At the terminus of the ribbon was a counterbalancing weight: balloons filled with oxygen produced by bacteria that the ants had cultivated, and alcohol made by yeast.
When they received the proper signal from inside the load, with their dying strength, the ants pierced some of the balloons with their mandibles, allowing the oxygen and alcohol to explosively mix, rocketing the payload away.
And the queen of queens was gone.
There were no sad goodbyes, no thank-yous.
The ants felt nothing. They had no chemicals to express sadness.
The ants at the base of the pillar had completed their task and were now free from her commands.
They simply stopped whatever they were doing and turned to start their long journey home.
***
For a little long time, the load spun and circled, before falling to its destination.
The Moon.
It crashed violently into the soft lunar surface, exploding the remaining balloon cushioning, and kicking up a geyser of powdery white sand, finer than any in Australia.
Disturbed by the impact, several insectoid beings came out of hiding, emerging from a small crater capped with a crystalline window. Two guards held a single spear between them and sucked on bubbles of air produced by bacteria deep in their nest. They were shaped like large bipedal ants, with round, multi-faceted eyes and spiked helmets.
Linking themselves together, they carried the load into the mound and disappeared from the surface.
Deep underground, the guards cautiously split open their prize, tearing away the cushion of fine tendrils, rich in sugars, saturated in oxygen.
Under this packaging was a single occupant, dormant but slowly awakening. Should they kill her? They licked her to test her nest odor. Some smells were unknown to them. But a few sparked a celebration that spread quickly through the colony.
Nearby was the wreckage of the nursery, destroyed by a comet, which had flung her, when she was but an egg, off this world and to a timeless land. Her long journey from there was now complete.
And because an eremophilous myrmecologist, who could have destroyed her, had instead let her go:
The queen of queens had returned home, to take her place on the throne of the Selenites.
Jeff Xilon
http://www.jeffxilon.com
H(Short story)
by Jeff Xilon
Originally published by Daily Science Fiction
Upon command, the squad members inject the H and begin the final check of helmets, armor, ammo, guns, grenades, knives—not once, but twice, three times, again, and again—waiting for the H to kick in…I think it's…so they can storm and swarm yes, we're coming on-line the bunker-cave-fortress as one writhing, flailing, shooting lock and load, we're going in, cutting, chopping, tearing mass of warrior drones we smell them because the H subsumes the human and connects soldier to soldier with a cocktail of virus and microbe devolving them evolving us to the level of ant soldier swarms and they we strike shoot, tear, cut, kill as one multi-body human-hydra of death and I we am are here to observe shoot, tear, cut, kill and they we are baptized in their our unholy bond with blood, and bile, and worse and as we yes are slowing down our frenzy for we are victorious and they are dead, dead, dead I wonder try not to think about…how any of us…how do I…carry the guilt and responsibility of an ant-swarm-like human-hydra when the H is gone and we are I am staring at our my ceiling…alone.
All of Our Days(Short story)
by Jeff Xilon
Originally published by Fireside Fiction
“Wake up, Tyrone.”
Kelee’s voice rouses him from his last dreams. She isn’t beside him, having uploaded in the first wave, but she’s come to talk every day since, and today she means to claim his promise to join her.
Giving up the comfort of bed and blankets is harder than ever, but he does it, eventually.
“What did you have for your last breakfast?” he asks the empty room.
“Cereal. I didn’t give it much thought,” Kelee answers.
“Of course you didn’t.” He thinks a moment, then laughs. “Well, fuck it. I don’t need to worry about my health, right?” And so he sets about making the biggest hungry-man-lumberjack-breakfast he can create.
Kelee doesn’t talk, but Tyrone imagines her looking at the watch she’d be wearing if she still had a body.
The watch is sitting in her nightstand drawer. He put everything away after she uploaded.
“Are you ready now?” she asks when he calls a truce with the ridiculous breakfast.
“What’s the hurry, Kelee?”
“You promised you’d come.”
“I will. But I’m going to take my time getting there.”
“You’ve been taking your time…I miss you.”
Tyrone doesn’t understand why. They’ve been able to talk, and he doesn’t see how they’d be any closer in Uploaded Existence.
“I am going today, love, but I’ve got to go at my own pace.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
***
Tyrone will make his way to the conversion center, but he plans to relish every step along the way. He wants a clear memory of every little pleasure of the physical world. If the upload is forever, then the memories will be too.
He enjoys his shower, shave, walk, and the fresh autumn air. He kicks some fallen leaves.
Periodically, Kelee pops in to talk.
“Please don’t dawdle, love,” she says.
“Kelee, I won’t rush my final day.”
“You aren’t dying, Tyrone. You’ll have all the days to come. And we’ve decided on humanity’s second great project of this new era.”
She talks just a bit different now. More specific than before. UE itself must be project number 1.
“And what’ll it be?”
“The stars, Tyrone. We can finally go to the stars. We’ll build bases stretching outward like rungs of a ladder. Mars, Io, Titan, Uranus, and beyond. Our colonies of consciousness will spread The Network to the limits of our imagination.”
“Apply now for our free brochure,” Tyrone says.
“Tyrone.”
“I’m coming Kelee. I really am.”
***
The conversion center for this part of Ontario seems very much like an unimaginatively designed modern bank.
Billions of minds are enjoying the early days of the eternal existence of the uploaded because of buildings like this. It didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen faster than anyone anticipated, much faster. Speed is the great hallmark of uploaded existence. The combination of immortal consciousness and speed of thought living are the pillars of promise that humanity has bought into.
Fast and Forever. That’s UE’s nutshell.
Tyrone has no particular qualms with this, but he decided to hold off on joining the new existence as long as possible. Forever, he thought, could wait.
To Kelee, his family and friends he’d said, “If you want to upload, go for it. I�
�ll be with you soon enough.”
And while he’d waited, they’d all gone on before him. There were serious advantages to being a part of the new order, after all. Freedom from poverty, hunger, inequality, disease, frailty. And the collective has brought a kind of true democracy to its members. Holdouts like Tyrone were not the ones planning this new leap into space, but anyone uploaded could be.
“Tyrone…” Kelee breaks in on his thoughts again through his earpiece, but he quickly pulls it out to cut her off.
“I’m coming now,” he says to the air around him. “But I’ll have five minutes of unconnected existence first.”
Tyrone breathes the air, slowly, once more and makes his goodbyes to himself as he is now.
And then he enters the conversion center.
***
The process is simple. He needs only to choose an empty conversion bay, strap himself in, close the door, and give his final consent.
A few other people, more stragglers, are in the center too. Some look scared, some excited. Some trudge toward their future, some affect a stately pace, and a few practically bounce along to the shedding of their bodies.
Tyrone walks a few circuits around the conversion hall. No bay is any different from another, but he still wants to find the one that “feels right.”
When he does, he reaches out a hand to touch it and, finally, begins to feel excited. Now he is ready. Exploring the universe with Kelee. Immortality. All the future days.
He straps in and gives his final consent.
A voice says: “Hello, and welcome to your upload experie…” The voice is cut off mid-word. A monitor goes blank.
A quiet envelopes Tyrone as the hum that had permeated the center largely ceases.
His phone rings, and Tyrone jerks in surprise.
He answers it, and Kelee is there.
“Why did you have to wait?” she says.
“What’s going on, Kelee?”
“You’re one of the last, Tyrone.”
“So?”
“You’re one of The Last.” Capital T, capital L. “It’s been agreed that the final 500 people in each region will be left behind.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me!”
“It was agreed we wouldn’t.”
“I’m your husband!”
“It was agreed.”
“Kelee.”
“You are now part of the first great project of the new era: The preservation of the natural species.”
“We’re being left out?”
“You’re carrying on with natural evolution and physical existence. A monument to what we were. We’ll go forth as the uploaded. We’ll look in on you, but you’ll walk without us.”
“Kelee.”
“I’m sorry, love. Please enjoy the first day of the rest of your life.”
The pod cracks open, and Tyrone takes a deep breath of air that feels ever so slightly stale, and used.
JY Yang
http://misshallelujah.net
A House Of Anxious Spiders(Short story)
by JY Yang
Originally published by The Dark in August 2015
The children's fight punctured the cordial atmosphere of the old woman's funeral. Two small boys, opposite sides of the family, had gotten into a full-blown quarrel. And because they had not yet learned to keep their mouths shut, that meant it became a spiderfight.
The old woman had not been that old, but that was the way people saw her. She had a crone's mean temperament and a grandmother's failing health, although she was neither. While alive she had made it clear to Sook Yee, her sole daughter-in-law, that the latter was entirely her fault. Hypertension and diabetes had played tug-of-war over the old woman's body, but it was cancer that had finally gotten her. The house was filled with her brothers and sisters and their families, and her widower's brothers and sisters and their families. People tripped over each other in the bungalow's cluttered confines and spilled into the weedy garden, fighting for asylum from conversations gone on for too long. The covered tentage where the body lay got a wide berth.
By the time Sook Yee got to the garden the fight was over, even if the screams were not. The winner was a round-faced boy from the widower's side, his chest braced in defiance. The loser, a gangly-limbed scion of the deceased's family, squealed an incoherent string of sounds. A ring of adults demarcated the two combatants in the garden, and one middle-aged auntie held the screaming child still, ring-encrusted fingers scrabbling at his jaw, trying hold his mouth open. "Let me see!"
Between the two children lay the fight arena, an old sweets-tin on an IKEA table. On its surface were two spiders the size of thumbnails, striped black and white. One still paraded back and forth, puffed up like its owner, but the other had been torn apart. Its remaining legs twitched in a mockery of life.
"What happened?" Sook Yee asked them. What she lacked in authority from blood relation she had to make up in loudness of voice.
The victor picked up his spider carefully. The creature ran up his hand, up his arm, and onto his face, little legs tapping at his lips. The boy opened his mouth wide and triumphant, lifting his tongue, and the spider scuttled home.
His voice returned, the victor turned to Sook Yee. "He called me fatty bom-bom."
The loser made a series of angry, wordless noises, a slurred concoction of mouth-formed vowels. His mother seized the chance and stuck her fingers in. The child squawked, but she managed to prise his jaw open. The boy's tongue flopped around in his mouth like a dead fish. His mother bent it back to reveal the empty space underneath, between the salivary glands, where the limp muscle anchored to bone. Around the vacated spider's nest tiny eggs swelled round and pearlescent under membrane. She prodded one with a finger and declared, "Nevermind! Another one will hatch soon."
The boy struggled free and pointed at the victor, yowling, but his spider was dead and his tongue useless. Drool trickled from the corner of his mouth.
That was the whole problem. Lose an argument, lose your voice. You learned quick enough to keep your opinions muted, your anger in a bottle. In school Sook Yee and the other debate kids had turned spider-fighting into a bloodless sport, staying back and squabbling over small things like peace in the Middle East and the benefits of minimum wage. It was simple: Make a stand, argue in increasingly illogical statements until the mouth spiders emerged, ready to do battle. But small ones. You didn't want the fight to become real. Sook Yee liked debating evolutionary theory. Abortion rights were a popular topic amongst the boys. The dusty steps of her school stairwells had borne witness to an endless number of sixteen-legged quarrels. Sook Yee's memories of childhood were still infused with the phantom taste of chalk-covered arachnid in her mouth.
That schoolgirl spider was long gone, of course. Sixteen-year-old Sook Yee had lost it in an argument with her mother. Never argue with an adult. Particularly not your mother. Particularly not about grades. These were valuable lessons all children learned.
"It's your own fault," Sook Yee told the squalling loser. What was his name? Ah Guan? "Who asked you to fight?"
The boy's mother pulled the child closer, looking at Sook Yee like she was a small dog yapping at a pedestrian crossing. "What did you say to my son?"
Sook Yee's stomach sank, a liquid feeling. She recalled this relative's name and place: Cecilia, the youngest of the her mother-in-law's siblings, coming at the tail end of three brothers and three sisters where the old woman had been the head. Like all of them, she had a temper.
The circle of onlookers shifted and Sook Yee's sister-in-law entered the fray. She had a slight figure and lightly freckled skin that made people privately, and wrongly, guess that she was still in her early forties. The white she wore, head to toe, gave her the appearance of a ruling politician, or a holy person. The peanut-gallery chatter that had sprung up between the onlookers quietened at the sight of her. Kathy's viciousness, surpassing that of her mother's, was legendary.
Kathy's eyes scanned the scene, taking in the g
ladiatorial setting, the mute drooling child, the sweets tin. Her mouth shrank in displeasure. "Who was fighting? This is my mother's funeral. You want to fight?"
Cecilia gestured to the other boy, arms tight around her child's shoulders. "You ask that one lah!"
The defiance in the round-faced boy's expression quickly fled. Kathy sniffed at him. Her voice could cut ice. "How did your parents raise you? No manners. No decency. You're no better than a pig."
The boy looked at his feet and said nothing. Never argue with an adult.
"Come, Ah Guan," said Cecilia, pulling her unprotesting child by the shoulders. "We go inside. Not so noisy." The other adults, the uncles and half-cousins and nephews, began to slink away too, the excitement of the fight dissipating, loosing them back into the wash of funereal half-talk.
Kathy turned to Sook Yee, face a mask of disdain. "Did you teach them to do this?"
The question struck Sook Yee in the chest, like an unexpected cyclist around the bend. All she managed to get out of her mouth was a "Me?"
"That's the only thing you're good at, right? Arguing and quarreling."
"Excuse me?" Sook Yee felt the spider in her mouth uncurling eagerly, and had to force herself to stop. Now was not the time.
When she had been alive, the old woman's iron fist had kept Kathy's temper in check. Now that she was dead, it was emerging in all its full and acid glory. "Debate girl, right? You used to do this for fun. You think I don't know. Who do you think you are? This is my mother's funeral, are you looking for trouble?"
Sook Yee just smiled, her tongue leaden in her mouth from staying still. Her hands trembled, the skin on them brittle and hot, but she let her sister-in-law go back into the house unchallenged. She could not do the big fight with Kathy yet. She was not ready.
***
"My sister's always been like that," John said, eyes fixed on the laptop screen. "Anyway, it's good that the children's fight ended that way. Ah Guan is such troublemaker—that'll teach him a lesson."