Other Creatures
Richard Brookes
We all know that we share our abodes with other creatures. I'm not talking about dogs and cats; we have the choice of whether to live with pets or not. I am talking about the creatures we suffer or endure or plain don't even know are there.
Well, we do know they are there, we just don't like to think about them. The creatures even the pest control guy can't get rid of. Not for long anyway. What if these little animals decided that they didn't want us around. What could they do to get rid of us? I will tell you exactly how they would go about getting rid of us. Nonsense, you say? Read on and you will change your tune.
OK, I am talking about the the mites, the ants, the gnats and roaches. The house flies and mosquitos. The centipedes and moths. Fleas and ticks. The list goes on. We swat and we spray, but we never actually rid our dwellings of these miniscules. We learn to tolerate them if they don't impinge upon our consciousness too often. If they do, we think there is always Orkin to resort to.
We of course assume that they do not have the mental power or physical equipment to communicate with each other so we have the advantage of intelligence and communication. After all, how intelligent can a creature be whose brain is a wide spot in their nervous system? So we believe. But I found out differently.
It was a fluke.
I am into building electronics projects, kits and such. It has been a pastime of mine since I was a teenager. Recently I saw a magazine project for a "sound microscope." This piqued my interest. I enjoy building unusual devices, things that others are not aware exist or items that have esoteric purposes. I was the first guy in town to have a theremin and my tesla coil was the hit of the neighborhood. I had little idea what a "sound microscope" was supposed to do but I started reading the article by Swami Duarf Dnamacs and I was hooked. The author claimed that the device amplified the tiny sounds made by all manner of wee things and diminutive creatures so that we humans can hear what is going on in the microscopic world. The Swami claimed that the device would make it possible to hear the sound of a seed germinating or a pebble expanding in the heat of the day.
What a great project! I couldn't wait to get into building this "sound microscope" and so come Saturday at 9:00 AM, I was waiting at the door of my local Radio Shanty to buy the components listed in the PopTronix article. My enthusiasm was apparent to the manager of the store. Since I was a good customer, Rick, the manager, was more than willing to afford me some personal service.
But Rick was scratching his head over some of the items on the list. Items I also had never heard of but assumed the manager of an electronics store surely had. "I am pretty sure we don't have a "waveform transmogrifier," Rick said. "Or a beta alpha delta amplifier chip. Hmm. There are a bunch of things on this list that I have never heard of, Jack, and I have been in this business for almost ten years."
Rick called me Jack even though my name is Roger. Actually, he called everyone "Jack." But always in a pleasant way. "Can you check in the catalog to see if they are order-only items or even so new they haven't made it out to the stores yet?" I hoped.
"Sure, Jack." Rick saw the disappointment on my face. "Give me a day or two and I will run these things down for you."
When I had not heard from Rick for three days and was determined to get started building the "sound microscope" the following weekend, I re-read the magazine article and noticed the author's e-mail address in an inconspicuous corner of the circuit diagram. So, of course, I e-mailed him not realizing what a predicament I would slip into so innocently.
I got a response from the Swami almost immediately. He must have been hovering over his PC awaiting my communication. I swear the e-mail message I received from the Swami had an East Indian accent.
"True, some of the materials and components are not easy to obtain. But I can help you with that. In return, perhaps you can help me with a problem I have. If you are agreeable to using the sound microscope on a research project I am engaged in, I will send you the waveform transmogrifier and a beta alpha delta amplifier chip. It is imperative that you build the sound microscope as soon as possible. I think there is going to be an important development soon." His message ended on this cryptic note.
But I was totally hooked. I didn't realize at that time that the Swami was an entymology professor at Purdue University. I e-mailed back my agreement and within two days, I received the parts air express. I could not wait to get started so Friday evening I opened my tool kit and laid out my needle-nose pliers, my wire strippers and diagonal cutters and plugged in my soldering gun.
The Swami had sent all the parts, not just the components I had not been able to find. I began soldering the IC's on the circuit board. Next the capacitors and resistors. And finally the waveform transmogrifier which was the strangest looking device I had ever seen, something like a minature yagi crossed with a tiny waveguide antenna. When I finished the soldering, I checked the circuit and left the final assembly and installation into the case until the next morning.
I slept like a log and woke early Saturday eager to finish the sound microscope. Within an hour, I had the finished device and installed it in a shiny aluminum case. I went back to the PopTronix article to read the calibration and testing procedure. I was puzzling over the text when the phone rang.
"Roger? This is Swami Duarf Dnamacs. Have you finished building the sound microscope?"
"Yes, I have. I was just about to go through the calibration procedure and take it for a trial spin."
"Do you have Rice Krispies in the house, Roger?"
"Yes indeed. My favorite cereal."
"Set the gain of the sound microscope at halfway. Fill a bowl with Rice Krispies and point the waveform transmogrifier at the bowl. Pour in the milk and flip the switch of the sound microscope to 'ON.' Call me back and tell me what you observe,"
I did as the Swami instructed. A horrendous noise assaulted my ears. Snap…Crackle… Pop… with a vengeance. My head was about to explode when I thought to turn the sound microscope off. Wow! What a din.
When my hearing returned to normal, I phoned the Swami. "Good, Roger. Very good," he exclaimed when I told him what had transpired. "The sound microscope must be working perfectly."
"Tell me, Roger," the Swami continued, "do you have an ant problem now?"
"Amazing that you should ask that. One of my tasks for today was to visit the hardware store to buy some ant poison."
"Oh, no! Roger, don't do that. That could be very dangerous. They would immediately mark you as an enemy and you would go to the top of the hit list."
I had no idea what he was talking about. Nor was I even sure that I had heard him correctly through his heavy accent. He had that East Indian speech pattern and softness to his voice. He seemed calm, unexcitable.
Imagine my surprise when he raised his voice and emotionally burst out, "They are on a mission to destroy us. It is a conspiracy… and they are developing the means to do it." I had no idea who "they" might be but I envisioned terrorists constructing atomic weapons. How this might relate to sound microsopes, I could not fathom.
So I asked the question, hoping my directness did not spook the Swami. "And who might they be?"
"The ants, Roger. The ants." I think he was on the verge of tears. I also was thinking he was bonkers.
"But… the FBI. The Army. The CIA. Shouldn't they be informed?" My idea was to let the government deal with this nut case.
"Uf! I have tried. And I have failed to make them listen. They are very polite and patronizing but they all think I am crazy." Very discerning of them, I thought. I suddenly became eager to get off the phone with Swami Duarf Dnamacs. But something prompted me to listen further.
"You have to help me with my work, Roger. I can't get anyone else interested. I estimate that within weeks the ants will have a hydrogen bomb. I think that Los Angeles will be their target. And if that doesn't start a war to wipe out humanity, they will build more bombs until they exterminate us. It may take them years, but they have infinite patience."
"But why…? Don't we leave enough peanut butter out to satisfy them?" thinking of the open jar of peanut butter on my countertop that was crawling with ants just yesterday.
"What?"
"Never mind. Why do the ants want to kill us off?" I supposed I was encouraging his paranoia but I was curious.
"It all started with DDT. Before DDT, a few ants were stepped on but, all in all, they had the protection of being small and usually unnoticed. Most of the stepping was accidental and ants carried no grudges for the occasional fatal misstep. But DDT was wholesale slaughter. And other insecticides were soon developed. The ants were resentful and being the highly intelligent creatures that they are, they started planning their revenge. Their scientists began to read nuclear physics texts. They already know the art of war…"
Ants intelligent? I knew about their structured social system and there were theories that they communicated among themselves with - I wasn't sure – dance, odors, caressing antennae? (or is that the way they reproduced?) But how much intelligence can a creature with a brain the size of a dust mote actually have?
"I know what you are thinking – how much intelligence can a creature with a brain the size of a dust mote actually have?" I couldn't have expressed it better myself. "It is collective, you know," the Swami continued, "acting together, the ants have greatly superior thinking power."
"But how did you learn all this?" I asked with some trepidation.
"They talk, Roger. Not among themselves but they talk to the cockroaches, the termites, the mosquitos, even the houseflies and spiders. Ants are telepathic. Their instant communication among themselves is the source of their amazing collective intelligence. But they talk to other species."
"How do you know this, Swami?" I asked. Although I already knew the answer: the sound microscope.
"The sound microscope." He exclaimed. Amazing. I may well be psychic.
"Roger…" he said in his soft, accented voice, "You know better than that. They speak French, of course. The language of diplomacy."
"What?" I cried. "You are joking."
"Of course I am joking, Roger. The ants obviously would not speak French. No insects can conjugate French verbs. They speak the common language of the insect world, Antic."
"Of course. Antic would naturally be the answer. I wondered how a cockroach, for instance, would know how to speak antic but I left that question for another time.
"Uh, Swami…?"
"Yes, Roger."
"How did you find out about the H-bomb plot."
"Well, to be frank, I am not totally clear about the H-bomb conspiracy. The Antic word for "hydrogen" is very similar to the word for "chicken soup," but a chicken soup bomb is ludicrous so the logical inference is that the ants are wise to the ways of nuclear fusion. The conversation convinced me of a plot to destroy Los Angeles. It was at a high muckamuck meeting of the ants and the cockroaches that I first learned of this plot. From the talk of the accomplishments of the ant scientists, I gleaned that the ants had a bomb ready to deliver and were talking over the best way to get the components of the bomb into L.A."
"This is a little hard to swallow, Swami," I mused. "How could you possibly begin to translate an insect language? Is there an Antic Rosetta Stone."
"Not exactly. But there are cryptographers here at the university that I called upon to help me. When we had a few phrases worked out, the rest was reasonably easy to translate."
I wasn't convinced but there was an earnestness about his manner that couldn't be denied. I decided to go along for the moment. The Swami may have been wacko but he was a very intelligent and convincing crackpot. I took the plunge: "So how could I possibly help with all this? I think you need to tell it to the Marines."
"Ach! The Marines were worse than the FBI. They told me to get lost! Called me a 'raghead.'"
"So where does Roger fit in to this scenario?"
"Roger, you are in the heart of L.A. I want you should listen in on the ant conversations there and we can discern if the plot is a real threat. And perhaps decide what we can do to thwart it."
I thought this over. I didn't see any danger or any real downside to doing what he asked. I supposed I owed him something for the electronic components and the very cool and unique project he introduced me to.
So I became the Forward Listening Post, Western Sector, Anti-Ant Resistance Movement (or AARM). Yes, there were other listeners recruited by the Swami although I didn't know it at the time. I began recording ant conversations, or so I supposed. The ants were making clicks, clacks and thumps with their mandibles so far as I could tell. It did seem that something was being communicated to the moths, roaches, houseflies and gnats. The ants would gather around a group of other insects and click and clack at them for hours. I suppose that had I noticed this behavior, I would have thought it strange too. I sent the recordings, on cassette, to the Swami and received further instructions back. He would inform me of the spots that meetings were to take place and I was to be there at the assigned time.
Well, there was something going on because the various insect players were always at the locations that I was directed to. One would not expect meetings of 12 cockroaches and 50 ants at 11:00 AM on a given Friday unless they were prearranged in some way. The Swami did not let me in on much that he was finding out from the intelligence I sent to him. I didn't think too much about this for a few days but soon I began to wonder where this was all leading.
So I e-mailed the Swami and asked that he phone me as soon as possible. Nothing. So I e-mailed him a second time and said I had vital information about the plot to blow up L.A. I didn't of course and I had no way to get information because I hadn't a clue how to decipher the Antic conversations. But he called me, breathless with anticipation. I was actually sorry to let him down.
He wasn't inclined to tell me anything and was on the brink of clamming up completely when I threatened to stop recording the ants conferences with their allies. This was the tongue-loosener.
"Roger, I am having problems understanding the ants' plans. I can't figure out what kind of device it is that they are planning to use, although it does seem to be a hydrogen bomb, and I can't be sure when they are planning to assemble and detonate it. Their timetable is a complete mystery because their time reckoning is totally alien to ours. Without these specifics, I don't see how we are going to stop them. I am afraid Los Angeles is doomed. Oh, the humanity…"
He finally gave me some new meeting places and times and I promised to do my customary recordings. I can't say that I was very worried because the threat did seem kind of abstract and unreal. And, face it, how much uranium can an ant carry even if it can carry 40 times its own weight. It would take a lot of ants to carry critical mass. Of course, there are a lot of ants.
Then I met Carrie. I was in MacArthur Park, recording the carpenter ants conversing with the bumble bees. Or so I assumed. "Is that a Sound Microscope?" a feminine voice asked.
I must have jumped six feet. Who could possibly know what a "Sound Microscope" was except myself and Swami Duarf Dnamacs. And the Swami was in West Lafayette, Indiana. And this voice was not the Swami's. The voice was husky and sexy and very much of the female gender.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you. It's just I thought that device you are using might be a Sound Microscope." I looked up to see this gorgeous blonde standing over me. She was taking pains not to look too attractive so I immediately thought that she was a scientist. Women scientists always feel they have to appear non-sexual so that they will be taken seriously. This lady couldn't hide her attractiveness with a flour sack.
"Uh… yes, it is a Sound Microscope. Are you familiar with the device?"
"Indubitably! I am Carolyn Wilson from Cal-Tech. Professor Duarf Dnamacs is a collegue. He is the inventor of the Sound Microscope, you know. Have you met him?"
"No I haven't but I have been corresponding with him, um… Ms. Wilson." It was the first time I had ever heard anyone use the word "indubitably" in other than a comedy routine.
"Doctor," she smiled warmly "but you can call me Carrie."
Wow, was I stricken. I mean I was totally in love. And in lust too. Well, very much in lust but soon to be in love.
"Are you listening to the ants?" She knelt beside me and peered into the ant and bumble bee conclave.
"Yes, they are quite vociferous today. Are you taking part in the Swami's research?" I asked hopefully. I needed someone to talk to about this situation I was in and maybe help me decide to get out of.
"Not really," she mused, "We had a kind of falling out. A scientific disagreement. He claims the ants are involved in some kind of nefarious plot to eliminate mankind from the face of the Earth. I can sympathize with his feelings about humans being a scourge on the planet but I don't project these feelings onto our insect bretheren."
Oops. Insect bretheren? I don't recall feeling brotherly affection for any insect with the possible exception of the praying-mantis who lived on my front porch and had his head nipped off by his mate as he was making passionate love to her. This was right after my divorce and I was feeling sympathy for any male creature taken advantage of by the opposite gender.
"What are they talking about?" she asked and bent to peer closer. Her scent reached my nostrils.
"Unh, I dunno. I can't understand Antic. I just send recordings to the Swami.
"Here, let me listen." She gently removed the headphones from my ears and put them on her own. "Same old stuff. Rattling on about chicken soup. I can't imagine that the bumble bees are that interested but they actually do seem to be enthralled."
"You can translate the Antic?"
"Oh yes, I was one of the first to pick out a few words. It is quite a simple language. I have recently been researching the ants' written language. A kind of heiroglyphic-pictographic writing."
I was dumbfounded. The Swami's stock suddenly went up in my portfolio. "So what about the Swami's theories that the ants are intent on wiping us out?"
"He chooses to believe certain assumptions about their conversations. I am a hard evidence type of person. I see nothing in the ants' behavior or conversations to suggest they have any animosity toward humans. They do know we exist and we are like ambulatory mountains to them. Very slow ambulatory mountains."
"It does seem strange, though, that the Swami is so adamant about a plot to destroy Los Angeles."
"He has what I call doomsday syndrome. A rampant affliction in the 1950's but almost completely disappeared until 9/11."
Carrie's fingers went up to the headphones and pressed the cups lightly against her ears. The look on her face was one of intense concentration. I was aching to ask her what she was hearing but was afraid I might interrupt what could be an important tidbit of Antic conversation. I waited expectantly.
She took the headphones off and looked at me with wide eyes. "What?" I begged, "What did you hear?"
"They are asking the bumble bees to airlift something to City Hall," she replied thoughtfully. "Hmm, maybe the Swami is on to something here. It does seem strange that the ants would specify a human structure rather than a natural landmark to zero in on."
I did not express the thought that immediately came to mind: that Los Angeles City Hall was a prominent feature in almost every 50s vintage disaster film. Was it too much of a stretch to think that ants had seen these films? I mean, ants that can talk were totally unknown to me just a few short days before. I thought of the movie Them! and a shiver ran up my spine. Well, at least these ants were not gigantic.
Carrie and I got to know each other better in subsequent days. We spent all our waking hours and most of our sleeping hours together. And we found other topics of conversation than ants, cockroaches and conspiracies.
Monitoring the Antic conversations became a chore with few positive results. The Swami was calling less frequently and his pipeline was yielding little information as well. He was aware of the flying insect and ant alliance but could make little of it except that he was convinced that this was just another aspect of what we came to call the Duarf Conspiracy. In the meantime Dr. Carrie and myself were making hay while the sun shone. Listening to Antic conversations became less important as we were discovering each other.
It was Carrie that first noticed the odd dark cloud in the sky over the freeway. We were driving east on Wilshire, coming from a lunchtime visit to Langers Deli which had the very best, highest-cholesterol Ruben sandwiches this side of Brooklyn. (I had been convinced for years that cholesterol had to be the most delicious substance on the face of the Earth. Why else would so many utterly delicious foods have so much of it?)
"What is that…?" Carrie asked and pointed to the sky just above my rear-view mirror. I angled my head to take in the scene and saw an angry dark cloud hovering over the 101 Freeway. Actually not hovering but definitely moving toward the downtown area.
"Toxic smog…?" I guessed, not having the least idea what the cloud could be. It looked like nothing so much as an enormous belch of diesel smoke, drifting wind-driven across the cityscape.
"You know, Rog, it looks like movies I have seen of locust swarms. This is very strange." The words sent yet another chill up my spine.
"Should we try to find out." I said, unenthusiastically. I had a feeling I didn't want to know what the cloud was and my instincts told me to go the other direction.
Carrie was looking around through all the car windows. "There is another cloud in west and yet another in the south. They all seem to be converging on downtown."
"Methinks this bodes ill for the city," I said medievally.
I pulled over and parked. We both got out of the car to get a better view of what was happening. There were uncountable numbers of dark clouds extending to the horizon in all directions. Some of the vanguard were already agglomerating over central L.A. Over City Hall, I would have judged.
We headed for the car with every intention of driving into downtown to see exactly what was happening. Carrie stopped and looked at me and I returned her thoughtful stare; we both were making the connection. Ants plotting with bumble bees and other flying insects… dark clouds like locust swarms. The Swami's paranoiac theories might just be turning into reality. We both were suddenly overcome with a strong disinclination to proceed in the direction we had been headed.
You may have read about scientists that proceed with their scientific investigations in the face of grave personal danger. These are great romantic tales but all I can say is that these people surely must have a terribly underdeveloped instinct for self-preservation. Carrie and I high-tailed it toward the ocean on the Santa Monica freeway as fast as traffic would allow. Still, we were caught in some of the fallout!
Although we were miles from downtown when the attack commenced, the effects were widespread due to the Santa Ana winds. I have often wondered if the winds were just a lucky happenstance for the ants and their cronies or if the attack was carefully planned to take advantage of the weather.
You have read the newspaper accounts and seen the TV coverage of the catastrophe. It will be a long time before Los Angeles comes back from this disaster. There are those, especially Jewish mothers, who say that the long term effects of the attack will actually be to the benefit of the populace; that the health of Angelenos is bound to improve. That remains to be seen.
Few know what we are aware of, that the horrible calamity was the result of an attack by retributive ants, who were exacting revenge for our ecological idiocy of so many years before. Who would have thought that we would suffer so much from our Silent Spring blunders of the 20th Century?
The Swami, Dr. Carrie and myself are in the forefront of the movement to make the country aware of the dangers from the little creatures we thought at one time to control with chemicals. The Swami now believes that the ants have been reading our press reports of efforts to control and eliminate insect pests by genetic modifications. He thinks the ants are badly frightened by our inept scientific dabbling in matters they believe we have no business messing with. Sixty years ago it was DDT. Today the stakes are higher and the extermination of entire species may be the result of a genetic misstep.
That is why the Swami thinks that the ant attack, now known as the Great Los Angeles Chicken Soup Inundation was a pre-emptive strike. Where might they attack next?
The End
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Author Bio
Richard Brookes is a writer presently living in Sonoma County, California. He has written a host of short stories, four screenplays and two novels. His recent novel, "Seven Dreams of Inanna," co-written with Jitka Saniova, is available from amazon.com. His stories have appeared in prior issues of Twilight Times.
A story by Jitka Saniova and Richard Brookes
"Kird-Arus
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