by Cixin Liu
“Argh, those accursed ants!” the dinosaur technician swore under his breath as he rubbed his aching eyes.
As he lifted his huge head he saw the engineer transfixed, his frozen eyes ogling at all too real ants! It was a small contingent of about a hundred or so, rapidly advancing over the white surface of the operator's console.
As they approached, the ants' leader shouted, “Hello! We have come to help you repair your equipment! We have come to reconnect the wires! We have come ...”
The dinosaurs unfortunately did not turn on their pheromone translators and thus heard nothing at all; but even if they had, they would not have believed. At that moment their hatred of ants was all-consuming. After a stunned moment, the dinosaurs brought their claws to bear, smashing and skewering the ants on the console.
His teeth clenched in rage, the engineer muttered, “Leave those thunder grains, will you? Destroy our equipment, will you?”
Soon the white top of the console was stained by a black smudge of broken and crushed ant bodies.
“High Archoness, I report that the dinosaurs in the signal station have attacked the repair team! We were completely wiped out on the command console!” a returning member of the repair team almost shouted, sucking air between each burst of pheromones. They were standing in the shadow of a small blade of grass, some 150 feet from the signal station. Almost the entire Ant Coalition High Command was in attendance.
“High Archoness, we must attempt to communicate with the dinosaurs in the signal station and explain our intentions!” Joyah insisted.
“But how can we communicate? They cannot even hear us! They won't turn on their translators!” the exhausted and frightened member of the repair team breathlessly reminded.
“How about the telephone?” an ant suggested.
“We tried earlier,” another replied. “All of the dinosaurs' communication systems have been disabled and have lost all contact with the Ant Coalition's telephone network. There is no way we can get through to them!”
Rulley stepped forward. “Let us think back and consider the ants' skills of old. Remember that in the countless years before the Steam Age, our ancestors communicated with the dinosaurs by arranging formations of ants into letters.”
“How many troops do we have assembled here?” Kachica quickly asked.
“Ten military divisions, a total of about one-hundred-fifty ants,” an officer immediately advised.
“How many letters could we form out of that?” Kachica continued.
“That depends on how big you want them to be. If we want to ensure that the dinosaurs can read them at a good distance, I would say fifty letters at most,” Rulley said, quickly calculating in her head.
“Good,” Kachica said. “Let us form the following sentence: We come to repair your station, it can save the world.”
“The ants are coming back! And this time there are lots of them!” one of the dinosaur sentries shouted.
The dinosaur soldiers stood firm in front of the signal station's gate, watching a square formation of ants march toward them. The sides of the ants' square were about a dozen feet in length, expanding and retracting as the formation approached. From the distance it looked much like a black flag, fluttering in the wind.
“Are they coming to attack us?” a dinosaur soldier wondered.
“It does not appear so; this formation looks very strange to me,” another noted, staring at the advancing ants.
As the ant formation slowly drew closer and closer, a sharp-eyed dinosaur shouted, “What the ... There are words in there!”
Another haltingly read: “We…Come…To...Repair…Your…Station…It…Can…Save…The…World.”
“I have heard that in ancient times the ants communicated with our ancestors like this, and now we get a chance to see it with our own eyes!” one of the dinosaurs exclaimed in fascination.
“Rubbish!” their lieutenant snapped with a swipe of his claw. “Don't fall for their tricks. Go get basins of boiling water from the water heater.”
The dinosaur soldiers descended into a cacophony of voices: “What are they saying? How is this station supposed to save the world?”, “Whose world? Ours or theirs?”, “This installation's signal is probably incredibly important.” and “Yes, why else would the Emperor himself personally command us to send it every day?”
“Idiots!” the lieutenant scolded. “Do you now trust the ants? It was our naivety that allowed them to destroy our Empire in the first place! They are the most treacherous, most despicable bugs to ever walk the Earth and we will certainly never play the fool for them again! Quick, get that boiling water!”
It did not take long for the dinosaur soldiers to emerge with five large basins of boiling water. Five guards each picked up a basin and quickly advanced on the ant formation that was still desperately attempting to communicate. Together the soldiers splashed the water onto the ants. The burning hot spray splattered across the ground as steam filled the air.
The black words were scattered and more than half of the ants that had formed the message killed within seconds.
“Communication with the dinosaurs remains impossible,” Kachica solemnly said as she watched the plumes of steam rise in the distance. “Now, only one option remains; we must take the station by force. Then we can repair the equipment and send the interrupt signal ourselves.”
“Ants take a dinosaur structure by force?” Rulley stared at Kachica, not sure if she could possibly be serious. “From a military standpoint, I can only call such a plan madness!”
“It can not be helped,” Kachica calmly replied. “This is a mad world. The installation is relatively small and highly isolated; it will not receive reinforcements on short notice. If we can gather a large enough concentration of forces, we will be able to capture it!”
“What is that in the distance? It looks like a group of ant super-walkers!” a dinosaur sentry shouted.
Hearing this cry, the lieutenant raised his telescope to scan the wilderness. He quickly spotted a long row of black somethings moving in the distance. Taking a closer look, he confirmed the sentinel’s suspicion.
Most of the ants' vehicles were very small; the requirements of some specialized military functions, however, had also lead to the development of comparatively enormous war machines – the super-walkers. These vehicles were about the size of one of a modern day scooter and in the eyes of the ants they must have looked truly colossal, much like giant supertankers would look. As their name suggested, these vehicles had no wheels, instead using six mechanical legs to walk like an ant and allow them to traverse even the most difficult terrain with ease. Every one of these super-walkers could carry hundreds of thousands of ants.
“Fire! Take down those walkers!” the lieutenant commanded.
The sentries used their one light machine gun to open fire on the walkers approaching in the distance. The first volley of bullets sent a line of bursting dirt plumes cutting across the wasteland. Walking the bullets in, the dinosaurs scored a hit on one of the walker's front legs, ripping it in half. In an awkward stumble, the walker fell over, its remaining five legs continuing to twitch and claw at the air. As it twitched, a hatch opened in the walker's carapace. Numerous black balls immediately began to roll from this opening, each one about the size of a soccer ball except made entirely of ants!
After rolling onto the ground, the balls quickly dispersed like coffee dissolving in water. Another two walkers were hit by the machine gun's bullets and stopped, but still the volleys penetrating the compartments could not kill many ants. Instead, ball after black ball rolled from the downed walkers.
“Drat, if only we had an artillery cannon!” one of the dinosaur soldiers spat in frustration.
“Yeah, some grenades would do the trick as well,” another noted.
“A flamethrower would be best!” a third chimed in.
“Enough of that! Stop your jabbering and get a count of the walkers!” The lieutenant called his troops to order as he lowere
d his magnifying glass and pointed straight ahead.
“Heavens, there must be at least two hundred of them!” a sentry shouted.
“I would wager that every last walker of the Ant Coalition stationed on Gondwana is coming right at us,” another agreed in shock.
“It means that they have amassed more than one-hundred-million here!” the lieutenant surmised. “It is clear now; the ants want to storm our signal station!”
“Lieutenant!” a sentry shouted, “we must charge them and crush those bug's walkers!”
“No way; our machine guns and rifles don't have enough stopping power against them,” the Lieutenant said, assessing the situation.
“We still have the oil for the generator. Let's charge and burn them!” the sentry now suggested.
The lieutenant shook his massive head. “That would just incinerate a part of them. Our prime objective is to guard this instillation. Listen up soldiers, I have a plan ...”
“High Archoness, General, our reconnaissance air assets have just sent a report: The dinosaurs have begun digging two rings of trenches around the central station,” a High Command staffer reported. “They have redirected a small local stream into the outer trench. They have also rolled out a number of large oil barrels and begun pouring oil into the inner trench!”
“Begin the attack now!” Rulley immediately commanded.
The armies of ants began to move in on the signal station. They were a black mass, almost as if storm clouds were gathering on the signal station, casting gloomy shadows in their wake. To the dinosaur sentries it was like a nightmare unfolding, shaking them to the core of their giant dinosaur hearts.
As the vanguard of the ant swarm reached the far side of the first water-filled trench, it made no effort to stop; instead they climbed straight into the water. The ants marching behind them climbed over their comrades’ bodies, making it a tiny bit farther across the water and the trench. Soon, they formed a thick, black membrane floating on the water and soon began to span the trench.
The dinosaur soldiers had all donned sealed helmets to protect them from ant invasions into their bodies. They now stood on the far side of the trench, scattering the ants in the trench with repeated blows from metal spades and with splashes of boiling water from large basins. But they were largely unsuccessful and soon the ant membrane came to cover the entire width of the trench. The swarm used this membrane like a bridge, surging onward and over it. The dinosaurs now withdrew behind the second trench, lighting the oil after they had crossed. The station was surrounded by a ring of raging flames
As the ant swarm approached the burning trench they began to pile up upon each other, forming a living dam of ants. This dam grew with every passing second, ultimately and quickly forming a black wall more than six feet in height. Then, the entire wall began to close in on the blazing trench, its living surface twisting and writhing under the intense heat like an immense black python. Scorched by the blaze, the ant wall began to smolder, green tendrils of acrid smoke rising from its front. A tiny avalanche of incinerated ants tumbled from the wall and continued to tumble for many, many horrible moments to follow. As the ants plummeted into the trench's fire, its outer rim began to glow in strange green flames. The ants avalanching from the wall's front were instantly replaced by a new layer of soldiers, leaving the wall itself standing strong and firm at the inferno's edge.
As more and more ants fell to their fiery death, a large group began climbing the wall from its rear. They gathered on its top, forming another group of black balls, again resembling the dimensions of soccer balls. Each of these ant balls contained an entire division of ant troops. The spheres then rolled down the wall's crest, completely disappearing into the blaze below. Only the blink of an eye later, however, most of these balls emerged on the other side, their momentum carrying them through the flames. As they passed through the fire, the outer layer of ants had been scorched to crisp, but even in death these countless warriors had held on to each other, not letting go. Their sacrifice formed a burnt shell around the ball, protecting the ants inside.
Within moments more than a thousand balls of ants had crossed the trench and reached the far shore. Then the spheres' burnt shells split open, releasing the ant swarms inside. The emerging, dense black mass soon encircled the stairs into the signal station.
The morale of the dinosaur soldiers assigned to guard the station was finally and completely broken. Pushing past their desperate lieutenant, the soldiers burst out through the installation's gate. Running to the rear of the building, they madly rushed toward one of the few spots around the signal station not yet completely covered by ants. Through this opening they fled in panic.
The ants surged into the signal station's ground floor and up the stairs, right into the command center. As armies of ants invaded the inside of the installation, other contingents climbed the structure’s outside walls, pouring in through the windows. In a flurry of tiny legs, the entire lower half of the signal station had been transformed into a writhing black mass.
Six dinosaurs remained in the control center; they were the lieutenant, the engineer, the technician, and the three operators. Frozen in horror, they watched the ants crawl in – under the door, via the windows, and through every crack and crevice. It seemed as if an ocean of ants had come and now its black waters and waves were rushing in to drown everything and everyone in the installation. As they looked out the window, the dinosaurs realized that this ocean was a terrifying reality. As far as the eye could see, the ground was submerged under endless numbers of black ants. The signal station remained as a lonely island, stranded in these treacherous ant waters.
All too soon the flood of ants had swept over most of the control center, leaving only a small circle around the control console free of crawling insects. The six dinosaurs stood squeezed in this circle. Finally the engineer picked up the translator. He had barely turned it on when a voice began talking to him through the machine.
“I am the High Archoness of the Ant Coalition and we do not have the time to explain the details to you, but you must understand that if this station does not send its signal in the next ten minutes, the world will end.”
The engineer turned, looking at the black mass of ants all around. Following the translator's direction indicator, he finally found three ants standing on the command console. One of those ants was speaking to him.
Shaking his giant head, he told the three ants, “The transmitter is broken.”
“Our technicians have already reconnected the wires and repaired the equipment. Please immediately activate the emitter!” the ant called up to him.
The engineer continued to shake his head. “We have no power.”
“Do you have no backup generators?” An edge crept into the voice coming through the translator.
The lieutenant answered the question. “We do; we have been using them ever since the power grid went down, but we are out of oil. We poured all we had into the trench outside and set it ablaze.” He paused before finally asking the question: “Will the world really end in ten minutes?”
Kachica's answer came through the translator: “If we do not send the signal, it will!”
Looking out the window, she could see that the flames outside had already burned themselves out. It was just like the lieutenant had said; no oil remained in the trench. Turning to Rulley, she inquired, “How much time do we have left on the countdown?”
Looking at his watch, he calmly answered, “We still have five minutes and thirty seconds, High Archoness.”
Joyah turned to both of them, her pheromones dejected. “I just got off the com. All is already lost in Laurasia; the dinosaurs guarding the signal station reacted to the ant assault by blowing it up. We will not be able to send the interrupt signal to the Luna. It will detonate in five minutes.”
Rulley maintained her composure. “It is the same for the Leviathan, High Archoness. It is all over.”
The dinosaurs in the control room did not understand a wo
rd of what the three ants of the High Command of the Ant Coalition were saying. Still, the engineer offered, “We can source some oil from the surrounding area. There is a village about three miles from here. If we go quickly we can be back with the fuel in twenty minutes.”
Kachica feebly waved her antenna. “Go, all of you, go. Go wherever you want to go.”
As the six dinosaurs filed through the door, the engineer stopped and turned on the threshold. On the dinosaurs' way out, he repeated the question: “Will the world really end in a few minutes?”
The High Archoness of the Ant Coalition gave him what appeared to be a faint smile. “Engineer, one day everything will end.”
“Oh, I never heard an ant be philosophical before,” the engineer said. He turned and left for good.
Making her way back to the edge of the console, Kachica addressed the mass of ant soldiers gathered below. “Quickly relay my orders to the armed forces: All troops in the vicinity of the signal station should immediately take cover in the basement of the installation. Troops farther afield should proceed to find crevices and holes to shelter their bodies. Furthermore, the government of the Ant Coalition issues this final statement to all its citizens: 'The end of the world has come. Everyone must now ensure their own safety.'”
“High Archoness, Marshal, we too should quickly make our way into the basement!” Joyah urged.
“No. But you must go quickly, Professor. We are responsible for the worst mistake in our civilization's history. We have no right to live,” Kachica replied, her pheromones flat.
“Indeed, Professor,” Rulley added calmly, “although we recognize that the chance is slim, we can only hope that you manage to preserve the embers of civilization.”
Joyah touched her antennas to those of Kachica and Rulley. This was the most ardent expression of respect and affection known in the customs of the ant world. Then she turned and left, disappearing into the flood of ants quickly receding from the control room.
