by Judyth Baker
“Urgent!” he called into his microphone. “Don’t open the door. I might be contaminated! Do you know about the leprosy virus?”
They did not. They had been underground, running a major experiment. Thirty-five volunteers had been put into hibernation, with the termites engaged in running everything. Larry had been out of contact with the project for almost a month, but he’d been scheduled to return in a week, to view the outcome of this final experiment. He’d spent half his fortune on the project: but what would fund it now? And what if they didn’t dare let him in?
“I carry antibodies against the disease,” he told them, speaking again into the microphone. “It’s just what might be sticking to me that we have to worry about. So – just put me through decontamination. It’s a mega-virus: we can filter it out.”
They set it up so he could get inside, but it was too late. Before they could reach the safety of the underground elevators that led to the secret labyrinths, a series of explosions destroyed everything on ground level, followed by the sounds of machine guns.
Then a bigger bomb went off, pulverizing the crumpled buildings into heaps of smoking ruins. A wild-eyed man in a ragged white coat, with thick yellow fur growing out from under his collar, waved his machine gun from a distance and tried to scream his approval, but it sounded more like a roar than a scream.
The last thing Larry thought, before his life was blotted out, was that the lions had destroyed everything…
Far below, in the semi-lit, concrete-lined chambers where the hibernating humans were ensconced in their glass and metal cocoons, silent and sleeping, the huge termites watching over them could feel a trembling in the earth above them. A book fell to the hard, cold floor, and one of the termites picked it up and carefully returned it to the stainless steel table, placing it next to a CD that some human had left behind. The termite understood that the book and the CD had to be very important, since nothing like them existed anywhere else in the underground caverns. Therefore, these objects would be handled with care. As the hours passed into days, and the days passed into weeks, the termites went about their business, caring for the cocoons in which they believed slept their Gods, who would someday, far in the future, surely waken again.
If they did their jobs well.
* * *
1 1. From article by Russell Christian for Human Rights Watch, Apr. 8, 2015. “The ‘Killer Robots’ Accountability Gap: Obstacles to Legal Responsibility Show Need for Ban” https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/04/08/killer-robots-accountability-gap Retrieved Aug. 23, 2015.
2 2. One of the first conveniences for the human race, as far as Cyborg parts were concerned, was to implant urine bags in place of bladders for high-stressed athletes. Not only did they help the kidneys (no backup into the kidneys) but they detected urine problems and alerted the wearer as to how much hydration and salts were needed. We thereby know that Larry was an athlete in supposedly superb condition.
3 3. This is a real laboratory in Hawaii that could conceivably be concerned with emergency rations for space travelers.
4 4. Should we be reviving gigantic viruses? In July 2013, the journal Science reported the existence of the gigantic Pandora virus: “…these viruses, …are more than mere record-breakers – they also hint at unknown parts of the tree of life. Just 7% of their genes match those in existing databases. “What the hell is going on with the other genes?” asks [virologist] Claverie. “This opens a Pandora’s box. What kinds of discoveries are going to come from studying the contents?” The researchers call these giants Pandoraviruses…” Then, in March, 2014, Sci-News. Com reported that a French team of scientists discovered “a new genus of giant virus in 30,000-year-old ice in the north-eastern Siberia, Russia, and managed to revive it in the lab… the study demonstrates that viruses can survive in permafrost almost over geological time periods – for more than 30,000 years, corresponding to the Late Pleistocene…The findings have important implications in terms of public health risks related to the exploitation of mining and energy resources in circumpolar regions, which may arise as a result of global warming…The re-emergence of viruses considered to be eradicated, such as smallpox, whose replication process is similar to Pithovirus, is no longer the domain of science fiction.” http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-pithovirus-sibericum-giant-virus-01791.html Retrieved July 10, 2014.
5 5. Lone Pine, Calif. – The gas station’s ground was covered with the small winged bugs. Piles of carcasses, inches deep, sat swept to the sides. On the road, they rained onto car windshields. They flew by the thousands toward even the smallest sources of light, and crept along windows and kitchen tables. Such has been the skin-crawling reality for the past two months in the high-desert communities at the foot of the Sierra Nevada’s eastern slopes, where residents have seen an explosion of the black-and-red seed bug species Melacoryphus lateralis… “Millions, tens, twenty, we can’t count it,” gas station owner Soma Praba said. “At night time, if you go into the station, they’ll follow. They go everywhere. They get on your body, your head.” Each morning Praba’s workers have spent three hours sweeping the ground and using a leaf blower to clear away piles of the bugs. Around eight times a day, workers will sweep, discovering two hours later that the same amount of bugs are back, Praba said with frustration.
Spraying insecticide hasn’t helped, Praba said, and exterminators have been equally stymied. The bugs also have limited natural enemies: Praying mantises and some spiders or lizards will catch a few.
“But the amount of biological control is really insignificant compared to the millions of insects that are out there,” said Haviland, the entomologist. And residents are wary of importing more bugs to worry about later. The only reprieve from the seed bugs seems to be a windy day and the recent smoke from fires. “We are tired of it,” Praba said. “I am waiting for the first snow to come.”…At a Lone Pine gas station this week, the side of the building was covered with bugs, and a woman was hosing off the wall, despite the drought, said Kathi Hall, who owns the town’s Mt. Whitney Restaurant with her husband. Ridgecrest Mayor Peggy Breeden said some people in town use umbrellas while getting gas because of the swarms overhead….She put together a notice this week to post around town explaining to visitors that the bugs are a harmless nuisance in the hopes that they’ll return when the bugs die down.
That said, Breeden joked, “If frogs come, we’re all leaving.” AP article, Aug. 22, 2015. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/seed-bugs-swarm-california-communities-invade-homes-cars/ar-BBlXs2w?ocid=HPCDHP Retrieved Aug. 23, 2015.
Underground
Former ICBM Missile Silos, long abandoned in South Dakota, are being converted into luxury homes that could allow underground survival for thousands of years.1 To the right, the tunnel complex for the silos is revealed.2
“It is said that the termite is one of the few creatures that will survive a natural disaster or nuclear holocaust.”3
“If the Cognitive Scientists can think it, the Nano people can build it, the Bio people can implement it, and the IT people can monitor and control it.”4
I stood before my people, clothed in royal purple, my tutors, bodyguards and priestesses standing with me. I had traveled 97 kilometers from The Hot Springs Palace to return to the ancient city of Arrakis, where our second-oldest Palace was located. Some of my people had traveled all the way from Mount Dakota, where our coal-fields were least extensive. It was the harshest sector of our domain. But the joy we had, by meeting together for the Swarming, was irrepressible. For the past few decades, we had been sending some of our youngest adults to the surface annually, praying they would survive, return and report. They had never returned. But when the 90th generation, which was supposed to be our last one fully underground, had come and gone without our prophesies being fulfilled, our faith was sorely tested, for at the same time, my father suddenly died (we suspected foul play).
Therefore, since some doubted, for this sacred occasion of the 91st Swarming, I myself brought forth the Holy Du
ne Book and the Holy Animated Dune CD account of all that had passed since our ancestors were forced underground almost 300 years ago. I held the precious Book and Animated Photos high, before the massive assembly of the leaders and heroes of my people, and then I spoke the required words, suitable to my royal rank and calling:
“Know then, these things: I am Prince Paulus Atreides, son of the late King Leto the Just 90th and of Queen Jessica the 91st, of the Royal Seed of the great House of Atreides. The Harkonnen – the thinking machine beasts – who live on the surface, are our enemies. Our holy sisters, the Bene Gesserit, and our holy brothers, the Hawats, faithfully guide us by prophecy and knowledge. Our armies consist of the Zensunni Warriors, the Freemen, and their leaders, the Halleks. The Holy God of All has promised us victory against the Harkonnen Beasts on the Day of the Final Swarming. At that time, we will reclaim what was once ours on Terra Dune, our planet by heritage and right.”
Here I paused, and let the assembly cheer.
“Terra Dune was once beautiful, surrounded by innumerable stars, but the Harkonnen –the thinking machines – destroyed all things above, and our Life Spice was taken from us. The Holy God of All sent the Gods who fought the Harkonnen. They trained our Bene Gesserit to breed our people to eat coal, so we could survive without the Life Spice which the Harkonnen destroyed. And so we have been living underground, until the Final Swarm.” I again held up the sacred items, for all to see: “These are our sacred records, though we were never given the full key to their translations. But what we were taught was enough to sustain us. Long live the Gods!”
The cheering commenced again, and I had to wait for calm and peace. Finally, I was again able to speak. Now I raised my voice so it would reach to the end of the long hall.
“It is I who will be called forth in the Final Swarm to arouse our Gods. Therefore, I am now to be known to you as Maud’Dib.”
“Maud’Dib! Maud’Dib!” they cried out. I again waved my hand for silence. Now I had to tell my people of the dangers.
“I request your prayers, if this Swarming should be the Final One. Because my father did not live long enough for this Swarming, I must take his place. Do you understand?”
My consort, Chani 92, who I decreed would stand by my side today, covered her face, and the people murmured among themselves with concern and fear. Mine was a grave responsibility. They knew that if I failed, we would remain trapped underground, perhaps forever.
“I must drink the Life Water, to open my mind to all things that the Gods wish to teach me,” I told them. “So I repeat: will you pray for me?”
To their shouts of approval, I raised my arms high, then obtained their silence once more. “If I survive the transformation, I can meet with the Gods. They will teach us how to fight the Harkonnen thinking machines. In the end, the Spice will flow once more from our Trees of Life. As for the Harkonnen, who plundered Terra Dune and poisoned her, the Gods will punish and destroy them through us, that we might have the satisfaction of victory.”
The Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit then came forth in her black, flowing robes, her priestesses with her. She was nearly as old as my mother, but she had remained strong and thin, for she had only borne two children in her life. Chani 92 was one of them. Upon seeing her, the people, in awe, went down on their knees. The Reverend Mother was the tallest of all our people: her eyes were black as night, and her skin was so transparent that she glowed with an interior light. Bowing briefly to me and then to the huge assembly of warriors in the Great Hall, she cried out, “It is the legend! Paulus is Maud’Dib! He must drink the Life Water, and if he survives, he must next awaken the Gods who rest at The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Then, when Terra Dune is ours again to fill with trees, Maud’Dib will mount his wooden throne as the Messiah, the Kwisatz Haderach!”5
I closed my eyes humbly before their cries and hosannas, as the music from the Young Ones filled the Great Hall. I had taken a great step forward: I had decreed that now was the time for the Final Swarming, for which we had waited five years. With Chani 92 at my side, my heart almost burst with pride in my people, for their courage was very great. The young mature virgins among the Bene Gesserit, and our religious brothers, the Hawats, filled with wisdom and courage, readied themselves for the Swarming by singing their love songs. Their new armor glistened, hard and shining. Their eyes were developed and they could see, just as I and all upper class caste members could see, despite our underground existence that had sharpened our senses in a hundred ways where vision itself so often failed us.
Now, as our youthful musicians played, sending their prayers up to the Great God, the virgin Bene Gesseri and Hawats danced together in circles, becoming more and more excited as they did so: their mates had been selected for most of them long ago in the breeding program that had made us so strong, intelligent and tall. As they danced, their fuel bags filled up with hydrogen gas, pumped from between their legs, which was their last gift to us: our workers rushed in to remove the bags when they had expanded to become big, shiny transparent balls. The gas would be added to our pressurized tanks. It was a by-product of our digestive processes, from the coal that we ate, since we had been cut off from eating the Life Spice that we once obtained directly from the Trees of Life. From the oxygen in the air, we create fuel by adding this hydrogen, and thus we create safe drinking water, and we infuse batteries and vehicles with hydrogen power.6
Relieved of the weight of their fuel bags, the Swarmers danced even faster, stretching out their four glittering wings to their full length as they whirled in feverish joy. Soon they would meet together in the sky, breathing the air of the upper world for the first time. Soon they would hold hands and fly as far as they could, then descend to a place of Mating. Each pair was dedicated to digging a tunnel into the earth to reach one of our secret Chambers, but so far, across the decades, not a single pair had ever succeeded. We believed they had all been killed by the Harkonnen, or by the poisoned air.
So with mingled pride and fear, our soldiers pulled open the huge, sealed silo doors (there were only three silos in this ancient Palace). The drums rolled, and we who had eyes peered up at the small circle of blue above: the sky was not dark, nor did we encounter dust from storms, or acid rain with lightning. The Signs were good.
“Go forth, and conquer!” the soldiers cried together, drumming their antennae and clicking their long, sharp, double beaks as they spoke. “If you survive to sing your songs, we will climb up and follow you!”
And so the Swarming began. Would it be the Final Swarm that would free us?7 Or would I have to sacrifice myself on a death altar, for sending forth our entire generation so boldly, into the unknown?
Up, up the gray concrete shafts our precious youth flew, fanning out their wings as our giant fans propelled them ever-higher, twenty at a time, in their hundreds. Yes, in their thousands they were sucked up from the hard-walled silos and into the caress of the skies, where they would have to fly on their own. When the final pair ascended, we closed the portals behind them as we sang our prayer songs. Oh, that they would live to tunnel into their secret chambers! Then we knelt, and crawling on our knees, slowly moved toward our vehicles. But before I could finish this humbling act, Chani 92 placed her hands upon my shoulders and stood in the way. Her golden eyes looked into mine with love and concern.
“Our Queen has requested your presence,” she told me. This was not good news. Lately, Queen Jessica 91 had been angry with us. She was jealous because her egg production was slowing down, and she was now bearing only low castes. She knew that Chani 92 was already the mother of a hundred, of all castes, and that it was time for her to step aside and bring us to the thrones, but she had delayed the transition. “This is the time of the Final Swarm,” she had declared to us five years earlier. “Your father, King Leto the Just 90, will be the Messiah, the Kwisatz Haderach, when he is called by the Gods to drink the Life Water, to bring on the Spice Agony.”
When no survivors returned to our
Palaces that year, my father died, filled with sorrows because I had taken Chani, the 92nd generation. He believed that I had committed an abomination, that the prophesies could not fail, that liberation for our people was inevitably to come with the 90th generation. When the prophesies failed, there had been an uprising that my father had to quell with harshness.
Indeed, to prove our obedience, we had begun the Swarmings some decades earlier, desiring to end our imprisonment. But when there was utter silence from the Gods after the 90th generation of Swarmers came and went (the Generation of Promise), some of our people became atheists thereby. They overtook our Grand Council and declared that if I called forth a final Swarm, and it failed, I would be ordered to a sacrificial altar, even if I survived the Spice Agony.
Now that the Swarming had begun, as we awaited news of success, Chani 92 and I returned to the Hot Springs Palace, which was luxuriously warm and well stocked with the best coal, but before we could rest, we were forced to go directly to the Queen, though we were still dressed in our holiday robes. My mother had refused to attend this Swarming, as if all hope to defeat the Harkonnen was but a false dream. Her aging body had endured a hundred years of service to us all, creating precious life, my father at her side. But now that he was dead, with her refusal to take another King, she signified that she preferred to enter death herself, before her time.
We approached her backwards, showing that we were not worthy to look upon Her Highness, but to me she cried out sharply, “Turn around, young Prince of the Great King Leto! And turn around, ye whore!” So she addressed my beloved consort, and I had to exercise discipline to hold my anger in check. I was bound to wed a Princess of a different line, to assure our hold on the Mount Dakota tribe, but I had long vowed to have children only through Chani 92, my warrior Princess from the catacombs of The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City. When we turned around, we were shocked to see how gray and wrinkled up my mother had become, in a matter of a few months. Now she looked at us with eyes half covered in her weakness.