For now, there was hope. Until the fertiles took flight, every male was a father to a successful line, and every female was a queen who would spread the range of the Colony to new lands. Their people would build, farm, hunt, and protect. They would move tons of earth, construct massive cities, and produce an endless supply of crops, bending nature to their collective will. This mating day would help to redeem all life in the wake of the human scourge.
A signal started as a whisper and soon turned into a siren. The workers released their grip on the females. The shiny black angels took flight. The Queen, though buried in her lair, flew with them. The island dropped from beneath her. All around her, wings flapped, pushing the clean air onto her face, brushing it through her antennae. The sun passed through the clouds to ignite the horizon. The convoy moved away from the light and toward land in the west.
Then the males ascended to join them. Rather than launching, they wobbled as they rose, like bubbles climbing to the surface of a pond. They were more delicate, and a slight breeze would tip them sideways. They bumped into one another and yet kept rising, an airborne colony unto themselves. The Queen flew among them as the safe ground lowered out of sight. And then it happened, the music of their species. The two masses intertwined in midair. Claws dug into carapaces. Strong females shrugged off the unworthy, sending them tumbling. The most determined, desperate males alighted on the lead females. Some were so aggressive they bit into the females’ necks to keep them still. And then they united, their bodies coiled against one another. Every successful union resulted in both partners remaining still, not flapping their wings. They plummeted. There was a terrible yet beautiful moment when almost all of them stopped flying at once and dropped to the water. Blissful spirits, no longer afraid of death, falling, the shimmering sea welcoming them. Until at last the act was done, and the females spread their wings again, knocking away the hapless, exhausted males. Some of the drones were so spent that they continued to dive until they splashed down in the salt water, belly up, legs shaking. The females glided west to land. Toward the future.
The chemical trail faded away for the Queen. Her antennae begged for more. Her maids had nothing left to offer. It always ended like this, with the most ecstatic moment disintegrating too soon. Even if these new queens died, every last one of them, they were still the lucky ones. They could escape this place and choose their own destinies. They could unite with another in a moment of madness. They would never feel the responsibility of Hymenoptera.
The frantic noise, the thick scents, all ceased, replaced with the familiar smell of the chamber, the sound of the workers moving about, cleaning her, plucking eggs from her abdomen. Life continued.
SOME TIME PASSED. It was getting harder to tell how much. She could always confirm simply by concentrating and accessing the right memories, but the motivation for it sometimes waned. Especially in the days after a mating, when the Colony returned to its daily business of conquest.
A steady stream of chambermaids delivered reports throughout the day. There was a reliable method to this. These specialized workers would spend hours cleaning off the Queen’s exoskeleton before moving toward the rear of her massive body, where they would take care of the constant supply of eggs that fell from her, large and small. Once they collected and prepared enough eggs, the chambermaids transported the cargo to the nurseries. On the way back, they gathered information from the others. Upon reentering the Queen’s lair — which required a special scent to get past the guards — the chambermaids would commune with the Queen, sharing the latest news. Then they would repeat the cycle by again going to work on the Queen’s relentlessly decaying carapace. She had endured hundreds of moltings by then, and it was getting more painful each time. The last molting required her daughters to pry away the dead skin, scale by scale, flake by flake, like the stubborn shell of a hard-boiled egg. Her old exoskeleton was brittle, and yet it clung to her fresh skin. Her maids, in their zeal to remove the old shell, sometimes pulled off chunks of living flesh. The smell of her blood sent alarm signals throughout the room, summoning all the Queen’s attendants to the afflicted area. They circled around the wound and protected and cleaned it until it healed — yet another bodily function that was not as reliable as it used to be. The Queen resigned herself to the possibility that she would never molt again. No matter what she did, her skin would never be truly clean. It would be only functional enough to keep her from dying when the final victory over the humans was so close.
The most recent reports focused on the maintenance of the island’s tower, the hub of the hypersonic signals that fed information into the brains of the surface dwellers. Within a few years, the upgraded animals would breed a new generation, and the towers would not be necessary. The surfacers would pass along their perfected genes, and all the unevolved traits would be phased out. But for now, the Queen needed to make sure the towers worked. Allowing them to fail and running the risk of having prewar animals roaming the surface was too dangerous. It would only confirm fears of EMSAH and a return to the previous way of life.
The island’s tower linked with others that were strategically placed around the globe, spreading the Queen’s message in the same way that a human cell phone network transmitted signals. The tower was built from dirt, magnetic stones harvested by the miner caste, and random organic materials, including the brain tissue of the interpreters, the ones who had been bred to translate human language. At the top of the tower rested a transmitter, a sphere pocked with convex indentations, like a massive golf ball. From here, the signal reached every surface creature who had been exposed to the hormone, impregnating their growing minds with the knowledge that would allow them to subdue and overcome the human menace.
The Queen concentrated on incoming news concerning the towers and filtered out the rest. A new report indicated that several of the structures had been compromised by hurricanes in a region designated with the number forty-seven and a combination of scents. The humans called the place Guatemala.
The problem working with organic material was that it required constant maintenance. Moreover, the ants who worked on the towers had to be frequently replaced. Being so close to the signal interfered with their antennae, driving them to insanity. Their minds would be overwhelmed with data, like a deluge bursting a levee. At that point, survival mechanisms implanted in their species would kick in. Some would bite off their own antennae, like a human extracting a rotten tooth. Others would simply freeze in place while their sisters crawled around them. Still others would become violent, which would require the soldiers stationed nearby to pluck them from the tower before they hurt the others or, worse, damaged the transmitter, which was worth more than all their lives combined.
True to form, the reports grew more positive later in the day. A crew of specialized workers had been dispatched. The towers would be repaired by the time the sun was two ant-lengths above the ocean.
Though there had been another failed settlement that needed to be quarantined, the Queen foresaw success with the surface dwellers. There would be harmony. Nature was seemingly designed for a master race to step forward and seize control. If not the ants, who else? Certainly not the humans. The animals still had promise, even though they would take years to realize their potential. Everything her mother told her would come true. The Colony would be the North Star in an eternally spinning constellation.