Later, Thea discovered that Briggs was afraid of rats, too. It disgusted the Queen whenever she came across a phobia such as this. Rats had reason to be afraid of the humans, not the other way around. She could feel the boy’s fear in the chambers of his mind.
Thea later moved Charlie’s cot down to the basement. She took out the light bulb at night and left him with a flashlight that required him to smack it every now and then for it to work. The failing glow turned the room into a house of horrors. Old blankets became ghosts. The rake leaning against the wall was a skeleton. The wheelbarrow was a creature large enough to swallow him whole. The rats doubled in size, and their eyes glowed red.
The basement would be the perfect meeting place for the Queen and Briggs. Using the translator, she was able to amplify this memory until the man’s weak mind had no choice but to place him there as a boy sitting on the cot, clutching a dull flashlight.
When the Queen walked down the wooden stairs, she took the form of Aunt Thea. Her boots left muddy footprints, tracking dirt from the unpaved driveway where she parked her truck.
With quaking hands, Briggs shone the light on her face. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Killing you,” the Queen said, speaking in Thea’s voice.
“What do you mean?”
“You are using the translator,” she said. “It is shorting out your brain as we speak. The synapses are breaking. Neurons are pulsing and then burning out. But I am holding back. If I wanted to, I could dig out your entire mind with a mere thought.”
“Then do it already.”
“You do not want me to, so why bluff?”
She controlled this memory now, this hidden chamber of the mind. She summoned the image of a rat, one the size of the fat pigs that Briggs had to slaughter. The creature poked its head over the wheelbarrow. Briggs swiveled and aimed the flashlight at it, making its eyes glow. It continued to watch him even after it had been discovered. It appeared ready to smile at him. Maybe even laugh.
Briggs turned to the Queen. “It’s not real,” he said.
“No, it is not,” the Queen said. With that, the rat was gone. This human was tough, she thought. Even in the world of the translator, Briggs had an idea of what to expect. She was glad now that she was taking her time with this one.
“You’re not real, either,” Briggs said.
“Incorrect.”
“Thea’s dead.”
“She lives,” the Queen said. “In your mind.”
Briggs’s refusal to respond conceded the point.
“Just like your god,” she said.
“No, not like my—”
“And your messiah.”
Briggs folded his arms and rolled his eyes. “So this is the end?” he asked. “I die debating with another skeptic. I suppose this is what I deserve.”
“Because you are a sinner. Is that how it works?”
“Because I’m human. We get what we get.”
“Would you like to know the truth about your savior? And your prophet?”
“Not from you,” Briggs said.
She could dump it all into his mind and watch him convulse like a dying cockroach, both here in this dream world and outside. Simply telling him the truth was not enough. That was the way with these humans—they could erect walls in their minds, sealing off entire catacombs. This ability had served them when they were first standing upright in the savanna, on the lookout for predators. Now it was a mutation that brought about their doom.
“Thea used to smoke cigars,” Briggs said. “I could use one now. Maybe you could fetch me one?”
Before he could finish, a lit cigar materialized in his hand. The Queen held one, too, grinning behind the smoke.
“I’m impressed,” Briggs said, taking a long pull that made the embers flare red.
“I am not,” the Queen said.
“Aunt Thea never was.”
“Even watching you die leaves me disappointed,” the Queen said. “You think there is something noble about it.”
“We didn’t have to be enemies,” he said. “You could have reached out to us.”
“You could have refrained from killing us.”
Briggs responded by taking another long puff. He exhaled with a sigh, sending up a column of smoke.
“Tell me about the messiah,” the Queen said. “You met him.”
“Don’t you already know? You can read my mind. This cigar is even the right brand.”
“I told you; if I wanted to carve out your mind, I would have done it by now. I am giving you this opportunity to speak. Maybe you will even repent. I would like that.”
“No, thank you,” Briggs said. “The warrior Sebastian is everything the prophet said he would be. Everything the prophet foretold has come true. You spoke of nobility. Sebastian is noble. You know it when you see it.”
The Queen had already gleaned a few memories of the encounter with Mort(e). Briggs saw the cat as a beacon, a light spreading outward, calling others toward it. But to her, Mort(e)’s quest mirrored the basest desires of the humans: an escape from death, an exemption from suffering, a chance to live like gods themselves. Love was a word these mammals used to make up for the fact that they could not join as one, as the ants could with each other, as the Queen had once done so completely with her mother. Love was an illusion, a smoke screen that masked the humans’ capacity for hatred.
“You can do all this,” Briggs said, motioning to the walls of the basement. “You can enter my mind and manipulate it. But you can’t figure out why the warrior loves his friend, or why he’ll never give up on her, or why it means so much to us.”
“I know what it means to you,” the Queen said. “It is a longing that drives your species. You think this longing is always good. Billions of your victims say otherwise.”
The Queen had heard enough. She put the cigar firmly in her mouth and walked over to Briggs. He clutched the flashlight in both hands, biting hard on the cigar. A fake Aunt Thea scared him more than the real Queen.
“We—” He removed the cigar. “We see love as a way of rising above all this death.”
“Yes,” she said. “And it has failed.”
She took out her cigar, leaned over, and blew smoke in his face. And with that, she allowed the truth about the messiah and the prophet to seep into his mind like the particles of burnt tobacco entering his lungs and bloodstream.
Briggs slumped his shoulders. The flashlight slipped from his hands, darkening the room, blotting out his face. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
The Queen headed for the stairs, her work in this shattered mind complete.
“Do you know what I told Thea the last time I saw her?”
“Of course.”
“Shut up,” Briggs said. “I’m telling you, anyway. She came to my high school graduation. First time I had seen her in six years. She came to congratulate herself on the man I had become. And I told her to go to hell. Right in front of my mom.”
“I know.”
“I’m saying the same thing to you,” Briggs said. “Go to hell. The games you’re playing here don’t even matter. The prophet doesn’t even matter. Sebastian loves his friend. He’s coming for her. And then he’s gonna kill you.”
“You do not believe that.”
“Yeah, but I’m working on it,” he said. “That’s what makes us better than you. I will believe it before I’m gone. And so will you.”
The Queen dropped the cigar and stamped it out under her filthy boots. And then she began releasing the memories of her daughters into the man’s brain. In the span of a few seconds, he experienced all their deaths. He deserved to see them. If only she could kill all the humans this way. They would understand at last what they had done as their minds imploded.
She climbed the stairs, leaving Briggs shuddering in his dungeon, a little boy afraid of the unknown.
SHE RETURNED TO the real world to find the workers hauling off the carcass. Her daughters continued grooming and primping her
as though there were no enemy in their midst. Briggs was now another slab of protein for them. Soon all the humans would join him. And their little fantasy of love would be dispersed among the Colony—processed, digested, and disposed of.
Mort(e) and Wawa pulled themselves onto the deck of the Vesuvius, a small balcony where two humans helped them to their feet. Mort(e) could not discern their gender because both were dressed in the same bug-like outfits that the first one wore, the one who had sacrificed himself. From here, Mort(e) could get a better look at the ship. The three main balloons supporting the cabin were coated in a shimmering silver material that reflected the ground, the sky, and the sun all at once. It could mimic the colors around it like the skin of a chameleon. And it must have absorbed the sunlight, providing a solar energy source so that the ship never needed to land. Mort(e) recalled a photo someone had once shown him, taken from a battle in a city called Chicago that no longer existed. A group of animal soldiers had taken the picture in front of some silvery blob, a metallic sculpture. That was what the blimp resembled. It took Mort(e) a moment to recall that this memory came from his own past and not from the translator.
Mort(e)’s eyes followed the reflective skin to the stern, where the propellers spun in blurred circles, powered by the largest engines he had ever seen. Encased in the reflective metal, the turboprops were each the size of a yacht, and yet the only sound they made came from slicing through the air. There were two engines for each balloon—Mort(e) could see the bottom four from his perch on the balcony. This was not one ship but several, lashed together to support the gondola, the pressurized incubator of human civilization.
The humans gave Mort(e) and Wawa a few more seconds to take it all in. Then they led the two fugitives to a metal door with a giant wheel in the center of it. One of the humans spun the wheel, releasing the air lock. This opened to a cylindrical chamber lined with track lights. While one human closed the door behind them, shutting out the wind, the other opened the next lock. When the door released, to Mort(e)’s surprise, the smell of trees and wildlife greeted him, a humid breeze filled with the spice of pine needles and soil. It made no sense. The humans motioned for them to proceed. Wawa hesitated. “It’s better than waiting outside,” he told her.
They entered an enormous oval room, some kind of promenade, with dozens of circular windows that let in the daylight. In the middle of the room was a fountain surrounded by trees and manicured grass. Plastic pipes interlaced the little garden, leading to the bubbling oasis at the center. Mort(e) figured that they had constructed a renewable source of oxygen, clean water, and vegetables, probably adapted from Colonial technology. The humans had turned this amazing aircraft into a small Eden in the clouds, though it remained a poor imitation of what the ants had accomplished.
The rear of the room featured a small amphitheater, a meeting area with benches and chairs surrounding it. Stairways and elevators led to other levels of the cabin—Mort(e) assumed these levels included living quarters, supplies, an engine room, and maybe even a house of worship, the transmitter of EMSAH.
Dozens of humans stood about, perhaps even a hundred, some in olive military uniforms, others in blue jumpsuits. They all gasped when he entered. A few even broke down crying. There were several mothers with their children. They whispered into the little boys’ and girls’ ears, saying, That’s him. That’s Sebastian.
There was a bald man with glasses who seemed hypnotized by Mort(e)’s medallion. The man held his hand to his own chest, clutching a St. Jude necklace that wasn’t there.
A woman in a black robe stepped out of the crowd. She was middle-aged, of East Asian descent, with silver hair and wrinkles. Her robe flowed down to her feet, making it appear that she could float rather than walk. A white collar held the robe in place on her thin neck. “What happened to the man who was with you?” she asked.
“He sacrificed himself to save us,” Mort(e) said.
She gazed at the floor for a moment and cleared her throat. “I am the Archon,” she said. “We must speak alone.”
Taking his hand, she led him toward an elevator shaft. Mort(e) was so entranced by the strangeness of it all that he almost forgot about Wawa. When he searched the room for her, the Archon squeezed his hand and told him that the dog would be okay. He had already seen Wawa attack an acid-shooting Alpha with nothing more than a fireman’s axe. These humans were no match.
As the Archon guided him past the disciples, each one took a turn placing a hand on his shoulder and muttering some prayer. It took a few times before Mort(e) understood what they were saying: We are delivered. We are delivered. Seconds later, he was in the elevator with her. The Archon herself was leading him into the inner sanctum of the humans. The elevator lifted them through a transparent tube to the cabin attached to the ship’s upper chamber.
The doors slid open, revealing the Archon’s command center and personal quarters. A table was in the center of the room, draped with old yellowed maps. To the side, near a row of bookshelves, was an odd piece of artwork: a glass case with sand in it. Spaces in the sand had been carved out, like tunnels.
“I knew you would find this interesting,” she said. “It defies everything you know. It may be the last of its kind in existence.”
Mort(e) detected movement in the little tunnels. He drew closer. The motion turned out to be ants, hundreds of them, thousands, all living in a miniature version of the Colony.
“An ant farm,” the Archon said.
“How did you do this?”
“We were created to have dominion over these creatures, not the other way around. We could scoop them up from the dirt and use them for our amusement, if God willed it.”
The ants went about their business of harvesting, digging, tending to eggs. In the floating cocoon of the Vesuvius, they were mere exhibits in a zoo.
The Archon offered him a drink, pointing to a pitcher of water and a bowl on a nearby countertop. He accepted. She poured the water and handed him the bowl. Mort(e) lapped up as much as he could with each gulp.
“You remind me of a cat I used to have,” she said. “She’s gone now.”
“You had dominion over her?”
“Yes, but only after rescuing her from a pack of dogs. She lost a leg, poor thing. You see, we were not the slaveholders you think we were. We cared about you. You were our friends. We were your guardians.”
“Tell that to the dog I came here with,” Mort(e) said after finishing up the last few drops. “Her guardian kept her in a cage. Made her fight to the death.”
The Archon nodded.
“The ants are our guardians now,” he said. “That’s not working out too well, either. So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not that excited to be here. I’m curious about what you have say. But I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“I like to think that we always have choices,” she said. “But I know how it feels when it looks like we don’t.”
She took his empty bowl and placed it on the counter. “The Colony told you that EMSAH is an acronym, right?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“I may have briefly,” Mort(e) said.
“It’s a corruption of the word messiah, first spoken by an animal who was learning how to read.”
This word sounded familiar to Mort(e). He took it to mean some kind of revolutionary. A troublemaker. But the Archon’s reverence for the term seemed to give it a different connotation.
“You, Sebastian,” she said, “you’re the messiah for the Colony, for the animals, and for us. You will deliver all three into the hands of the Lord.”
She reached out and squeezed his St. Jude medallion. Her nails were painted silver, like the hull of the ship. “It’s been a while since I’ve see one of these.”
“Listen,” Mort(e) said, “I’m not exactly sure why you picked me, but you’re mistaken. The Queen knows about your prophecy. She wants to see if I’ll decide to be your messiah or whatever you c
all it.”
“She has foreseen this.”
“You don’t get it,” he said. “She’s been in control the whole time. You think it’s a prophecy, but it’s another one of her experiments. It’s a test. Nothing more.”
“Has it occurred to you that the Queen fears our prophecy because it might be true?”
“That’s not how she thinks.”
“The human resistance is a testament to the power of belief,” she said. “This belief is a weapon more dangerous than any the Queen has invented. It is something that she cannot understand.”
“Like death-life?”
This made her pause for a moment. “Let me show you something,” she said. “This might put things in perspective.” From a deep pocket in her robe, she pulled out a glass tube. Unscrewing the lid, she revealed an eyedropper filled with an oily liquid. She held it close to Mort(e). The liquid gave off a soapy odor.
“Do you recognize that smell?” she asked.
“No.”
She unscrewed a cap on the side of the ant farm. The opening was large enough for her to fit the eyedropper into it. She placed the point over a worker ant, who sensed the intrusion. As the ant probed the object, the Archon dripped the substance onto the insect. She withdrew the dropper and put it back into its vial. Meanwhile, the worker shuddered. Her sisters nearby went into a frenzy, first feeling one another’s antennae in consultation, then charging toward their drenched comrade, who remained still, awaiting her fate. The ants bit into her legs and thorax and dragged her toward the opening in the case, pulling so hard that Mort(e) thought they would rip her apart. The mass of ants exited the farm, so intent on removing their infected sister that they did not notice that they were free at last.
The Archon’s skeletal hand slammed down on top of them. With her other hand, she removed a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the remains of the ants from her palms. Then she screwed the cap into place, sealing the ant farm shut.
“That substance is called oleic acid,” the Archon said. “The ants use it as a signal to indicate that something is dead and needs to be discarded from the colony.”
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