The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection

PREFACE

It was the dawn of a Late Cretaceous day some 65 million years ago◦— when exactly, no one could have known. It was a perfectly ordinary of day; just a day on Earth, passing in pristine tranquility.

In that distant past, the Earth looked very different than it does today; its lands were in unfamiliar shapes, spread across different continents. On two of these continents, Gondwana and Laurasia, dinosaurs were widespread. Many hundreds of millions of years ago, Gondwana had been the Earth’s only continent. Now, it had almost split in two, but even so it remained the size of our age’s Africa and South America put together. Having split from Gondwana, Laurasia was the continent that in the millions of years to come would form North America and most of Eurasia.

On this day, existence for all life on Earth on all continents meant the struggle to survive. In this dark world, none knew where they had come from, nor did they care where they were going. As the Sun slowly rose to the zenith of the Cretaceous sky, diminishing the shadows cast by the cycads’ large leaves in its wake, no living thing on Earth had a worry deeper than what that day’s lunch would be.

For its part, a tyrannosaurus had found its midday meal. Hunting the central reaches of Gondwana, the dinosaur had found its way into a sunlit clearing in the middle of a primeval cycad forest. The tyrannosaur’s lunch was a freshly caught lizard, plump and tasty. Using its great talons, it tore the struggling creature into halves with a mighty rip. Then, with a swift twist of the neck, the tyrannosaurus threw the tail end of the lizard up in the air and straight into its gaping maw. Chewing with relish, the dinosaur was completely satisfied with this world and its place in it.

A yard or so from the tyrannosaur’s left food stood a small ant city. Most of this city actually lay underground, providing a home for more than a thousand ants. This year’s dry season had been very long, making life in the city more difficult with every passing day. By noon that day, the ants had already been suffering two days of hunger.

After the tyrannosaurus had finished its meal, it took two steps back. Deeply content, it lay down for a midday nap. As it settled, the impact of the dinosaur’s massive body caused the ant city to shake with the force of a powerful earthquake. Rushing to the surface, the ants saw the dinosaur’s body lying in the distance like a towering range of mountains. Moments later another quake struck as that mountain range unexpectedly began rolling to and fro across the earth. As it rolled, the tyrannosaurus arched one of its massive claws toward its maw, vigorously attempting to poke the gaps between its teeth. The ants quickly understood why this dinosaur was not falling asleep: There was meat stuck between its teeth, obviously bothering it.

The mayor of the ant city had a sudden flash of inspiration. Climbing to the top of a small blade of grass, it emitted a stream of pheromone words to the ants below. The chemical signals spread far and wide. Every ant that smelled it immediately understood the mayor’s idea and passed the message on, spreading its own pheromones. Antennae waving, the ant colony erupted into a tide of excitement. Following after their mayor, the ants made their way toward the tyrannosaurus. They formed several black marching streamlets, living flows from city to dinosaur.

Ten minutes later, the ants followed their mayor’s lead, climbing up toward the dinosaur’s humongous claws. The tyrannosaurus soon spotted the ants clambering up its forearm. Raising the other claw, it moved to brush them off its body. Its arm was like a vast bank of dark clouds, suddenly covering the sky and blocking out the midday sun. In the blink of an eye, the ants on the great plain of its forearm were covered by darkness. In shock, the ants stared up at the giant hand in the sky above, frenziedly waving their feelers. The mayor, however, climbed on, up the dinosaur’s arm, over its claw, and right toward its huge mouth. The other ants timidly followed their mayor’s example.

For a few seconds the tyrannosaurus stared at them in blank confusion, and then it seemed to understand the ants’ intention. Considering it for a moment, the dinosaur lowered its raised arm. In a flash the clouds covering the great plain of the forearm vanished from the sunlit sky. Now, the Tyrannosaur opened its jaws and lifted a claw as far as it could to its incredibly massive teeth, forming a bridge for the ants, right into its maw. For a second, the ants hesitated. In the end, it was again the mayor who first marched up into the unknown; the others followed her.

The ants had soon made their way to the tip of the claw. Standing on that smooth, cruelly pointed cone, they gazed upon the dinosaur’s huge maw with deep awe. Before them lay a dark world; dim, as if covered by the blackest thunderclouds. Out of that unknowable darkness the strong, moist scent of gore blasted toward them with a great thunderous roar. As the ants’ eyes adjusted to the darkness, they were able to make out a positively black shape in those murky depths. That shape was constantly moving and shifting. The ants stared at it for a long time before they finally realized that it was the dinosaur’s massive throat and that the great thunder emanated from the tyrannosaur’s belly. Shaken, the ants on the claw tip looked back one more time and then, one by one, descended onto the teeth. They climbed down those smooth white summits into the wide gaps between the dinosaur’s fangs. With all their might, the ants began to tear at the lodged lizard-meat with their powerful pincers.

By then, the tyrannosaurus had already lifted its claw up as best it could to expose its top row of teeth. An unbroken stream of ants continued to climb along its arm, over its claw and to its teeth. There they began to devour the meat. For the nimble ants it mattered little if they were on the top or bottom row of cruel fangs. More than a thousand ants busied themselves, working in the many gaps between the dinosaur’s teeth, and soon all the meat was picked clean.

The irritation in its mouth was gone, but the tyrannosaurus had not yet evolved far enough to say “Thank you”. Instead it let out a pleased sigh. The sigh’s unexpected tempest blasted through the rows of its teeth, carrying every last ant with it. Like black dust, the ants fell through the air and to the ground. Light as they were, the drop did them no harm and they all landed safe and sound about a yard from the dinosaur’s head. Pleased, the satiated ants made their way back to their small city. As they marched home, the tyrannosaurus, happy that it had been freed from its discomfort, rolled one more time into the cooling shade of the trees. There it dozed off into a cozy sleep.

The Earth continued to turn in peace. In silence the Sun slid off to the Western horizon, slowly drawing out the cycads’ shadows. Quietly, butterflies and other small insects took wing between the trees; and in the far distance, the waves of the primeval ocean continued their endless beat against the shores of Gondwana…

No one could have known that in this moment of pure tranquility, the path of Earth’s history had been changed forever.

CHAPTER 1 The Information Age

Time flew as 50,000 years rushed past and became history.

The symbiotic relationship of dinosaurs and ants continued. It grew and strengthened with every passing year and so these two species came to establish a Cretaceous civilization. This new society spanned the ages: From Stone Age to Bronze Age, from Iron Age to the age of steam, and then on to the age of electricity, and into the Nuclear Age, and finally to reach the modern Information Age.

Massive dinosaur cities had sprung up on every continent, their epic skyscrapers reaching six miles and more into the sky. Seen from the top of one of these mighty structures, the world looked much like it does to us now from an airliner’s window. From up there, the clouds almost seemed to hug the earth.

The sky was always clear for the dinosaurs living in higher parts of the skyscrapers and so, when a thick sea of clouds shrouded the earth below, they had to call the doorman below to figure out whether or not they should take an umbrella to work. The dinosaurs’ umbrellas were huge by necessity, easily the size of one of our party tents.

Their cars were just as massive, as big as our houses. Wherever they drove, the earth would shake. They also had airplanes the size of our supertankers. Wherever they flew, the sky would rock with thunder and the Earth below would darken with their giant shadows as they passed overhead. The dinosaurs even ventured into space, sending hundreds of satellites and spaceships into orbit. These spacecraft were, of course, just as massive as the dinosaurs themselves, large enough even to be visible from the earth below.

An immense and extremely complex network of computers linked the various parts of the dinosaur world. Of course, everything about these machines was huge as well; on their keyboards, for example, every key was as big as one of our computer monitors and their monitor screens themselves were as wide as our walls.

As the dinosaur world entered the Information Age, so too did the ant world, even if the two species came to use vastly divergent technology and very different sources of power. Unlike the dinosaurs, the ants did not use oil or coal, instead making use of wind power and solar energy. The tiny ant cities were densely packed with countless wind turbines, each much like a human pinwheel in shape and size, and all surfaces in these cities were covered in a black material. This was a coating made of solar cells. Another critical technology of the ant world was bio-engineered muscle fibers. To us, these “muscles” would have looked like coarse electric cables, but when fed with a nutritional solution, they could rhythmically expand and contract, generating power. All of the ants’ cars and airplanes were powered by these muscle fibers.

Like the dinosaurs, the ants also had computers, but their computers were no larger than a grain of rice. And size was not the only way in which they differed from the dinosaurs’ machines; they also worked completely without microchips. Instead of circuitry, the ants’ computers performed all their calculations with complex, organic chemical reactions. Furthermore, these computers were without screens, instead using pheromones to output information. Only the ants could make out these minute and complex mixtures of smells, “reading” them as data, language, and even images. The ants’ minute computers were connected to an immense network, linked-in not by glass-fiber cables or electromagnetic waves, but through pheromones. It was with these chemical scents that the ant computers communicated with each other.

The ant society of those days was very different from the ant societies we know today. In fact, it was rather similar to our human civilization. Completely unlike modern ants, the ants of the Cretaceous age were “born” by bio-engineering. The ant queens, on the other hand◦— so very important to ant reproduction in later eras◦— barely played a role in their society and held none of their later status.

The ant and dinosaur world formed a symbiotic relationship. With their awkward limbs, the dinosaurs relied on the ants’ fine motor abilities. Countless ants worked in every dinosaur factory, manufacturing the smaller components, operating precision equipment and instruments, doing maintenance and repair work, as well as filling other roles for which the dinosaurs were completely unsuited. The ants also played a critical role in another vital sector of dinosaur society: All dinosaur surgery was performed by ant doctors. These doctors would physically enter the dinosaur’s giant organs and operate on them from the inside using a wide variety of sophisticated medical equipment, including microscopic laser scalpels and even tiny submarines that allowed them to dredge the dinosaur’s veins.

In the history of the ant world, the empire of Gondwana came to unite the dispersed ant tribes of all the continents, forming the great Ant Coalition which governed all of Earth’s ants.

In sharp contrast to the ant world, the once-united Dinosaur Empire broke into two parts when the dinosaurs of Laurasia declared their independence, founding a new nation, the Laurasian Republic. Divided, both great dinosaur nations continued to expand their respective territories. After more than a thousand years of conquest, the Gondwanan Empire also occupied the lands that would become India, the Antarctica, and Australia. The Laurasian Republic for its part expanded its territory in the lands that would become Asia and Europe. The nations were not only divided by territory; they also differed somewhat in heritage. The Gondwanan Empire was primarily descended from tyrannosauruses, while the Laurasian Republic was primarily descended from tarbosauruses.

In the long history of these two nations’ conquests they fought an unending series of wars. In the last 200 years, however, ever since the advent of the Nuclear Age, their wars had ceased. This was entirely the result of the nuclear deterrent. Both nations had accumulated large stockpiles of nuclear weapons and if war was ever to break out between them, these bombs would transform the Earth into a lifeless, nuclear wasteland. The fear of mutual nuclear destruction held the Cretaceous in a terrifying peace, balanced on the knife’s edge.

As time passed, dinosaur society rapidly expanded across the face of the Earth. Their population exploded, overcrowding all of Earth’s lands, even as the strains of environmental pollution and looming nuclear war reached their tipping point. A rift began to grow between the world of the dinosaurs and that of the ants, and the dark clouds of conflict it released covered all of Cretaceous civilization like an ominous shadow.

This year’s dinosaur and ant summit meeting had just come to a close. The core issue discussed had been the ant world’s demand of the dinosaur world to make drastic changes. The ants insisted that the dinosaurs dismantle all their nuclear weapons, protect the environment, and control their population growth. If their demands were not met, the entire Cretaceous world would be faced with a general strike by the ants.

CHAPTER 2 The Strike of the Ants

In the capital of the Gondwanan Empire, Emperor Baltzara lay on a huge sofa in the Great Blue Hall of his towering imperial palace. He was awkwardly scratching his left eye with his claw, occasionally exhaling an agonized groan. Several dozen dinosaurs were in attendance. Present were the Minister of State, Dabor; the Defense Minister, Marshal Loragar; the Science Minister, Professor Nimican; and the Health Minister, Doctor Veyky.

Raising himself from his seat with a slight bow, Doctor Veyky addressed the Emperor. “Your Imperial Highness, your left eye has become inflamed and is in urgent need of surgery, yet we currently cannot find any ant doctors to perform the surgery. The best we can do is to keep it under control with antibiotics. But, Your Highness, if this continues, you may lose all sight in the eye.”

“Blasted!” the Emperor spat in response, gnashing his teeth. “Is there no hospital left on Earth where ant doctors still work?” he angrily asked his Health Minister.

Veyky shook his huge head. “Indeed, Your Highness, many patients in need of surgery cannot be treated. The situation has already led to social unrest.

“We will likely see much more chaos before long,” the Emperor said, turning to his Minister of State.

With a slight bow, Dabor stood to attention. “Of course, Your Imperial Highness. As of today, two-thirds of our factories have already stopped production and some cities are already suffering from blackouts. The situation is no better in the Laurasian Republic.”

“The dinosaur-operated machines and production lines have also stopped?” the Emperor inquired.

“Indeed, Your Highness,” Dabor answered. “For example, in manufacturing such as the automotive industry, when they run out of precision parts, it becomes impossible to assemble the finished products if all they have is the large components that we dinosaurs can produce. They then have no other option but to completely stop production. In other sectors, like the chemical and energy industries, the strike of the ants has caused more measured repercussions, but even their equipment failures will become increasingly frequent. We have no means to perform the necessary maintenance work. and one plant after the other will be paralyzed because of it.”

In a fit of fury, the Emperor roared, “Wretches!” His voice exploding like thunder. “And the Dinosaur Ant Summit has only just concluded.” Taking on a regal posture, he decreed, “We command that you immediately begin a program of emergency training for dinosaur workers in all of the Empire. Step by step, we will make them fit to operate the precision equipment formerly operated by the ants.”

“Your Imperial Highness, with all due respect, what you command cannot be accomplished,” Dabor said, lowering his head.

“Nothing is impossible for the Great Gondwanan Empire!” the Emperor declared, raising his gigantic head high. “In our Empire’s grand history, the Gondwanan dinosaurs have faced much greater perils than this! How many bloody battles have we waged and won against all odds? How many fires that burned across continents have we extinguished? How many magma flows erupting from the Earth after continental shifts have we survived?” The Emperor let his bellowed questions hang in the air.

“But, Your Highness, this is different…” Dabor spoke up, but apparently without the courage to continue.

“How is it different?” The Emperor continued his roar: “If we just put our minds and backs into it and study hard, dinosaurs will soon have nimble enough pairs of hands for the tasks! Our world cannot and will not be blackmailed by those little bugs!”

“If I may please give Your Highness a demonstration to illustrate how dire our circumstances are,” the Minister of State said. Opening his claws, he let two red electric wires drop on the sofa. “Your Royal Highness,” he continued, “I humbly ask your attempt to perform the most basic task of machine maintenance: Join these two wires.”

The claws of Emperor Baltzara’s awkward hands were each almost two feet in length and wide as a cup. In his humongous eyes, these two small wires, no more than a tenth of an inch thick, seemed no bigger than a hair. The Emperor squatted on his sofa, fixing his gaze on the wires as he began his attempt to pick them up between pinched talons, but his giant conical claws, smooth and large like artillery shells, where not up to the task. Try as he might, in the end the wires would always slip between their tips. Stripping and joining the wires was completely out of the question. With a great sigh, the Emperor impatiently brushed the wires off the sofa and onto the floor.

“Please consider, Your Highness,” Dabor counseled, “that even if Your Highness should ultimately train to the point of acquiring the ability to connect wires, doing maintenance work would still remain an impossibility. Our bulky fingers are just not suited to work in precision machinery that ants squeeze into.”

“Oh,” Science Minister Nimican heaved a deep sigh, before lamenting, “eight hundred years ago, the late Emperor had already realized the danger that our reliance on the ants’ skills posed. He initiated a grand effort◦— researching new technologies and machinery◦— to rid us of this dependency. Please forgive my presumptuousness, but in the two centuries under Your Highnesses’ rule, these efforts have all but ceased. We have lain ourselves on the comfortable bed of the ants’ labor, all but forgetting the danger.”

“We are not lying on anyone’s bed!” the Emperor shouted angrily, raising both claws. “In fact, the danger that the late Emperor was so aware of has also haunted my nightmares more often than I care to remember.” The Emperor thrust a brute claw at Nimican’s chest. “But you of all should know why the late Emperor’s effort to rid us of our dependence on the ants failed and why they were abandoned; it was no different in the Laurasian Republic!”

“Of course, Your Highness,” the Minister of State nodded his head. Pointing at the wires on the floor, he turned to Nimican. “Professor, you must surely know that for a dinosaur to successfully join those wires, they would have to be around five inches in diameter! And just think, if we were to make them that thick, it would be impossible to imagine a cell phone with sapling-sized wires◦— or a computer, for that matter. Along the same lines, if we really wanted dinosaurs to operate and maintain our machines, half of them would have to be made at least a hundred times larger than they are now; and if we did that, they would also consume a hundred times more energy and resources. There is no way that our economy could sustain such a development!”

The Science Minister acknowledged the point with a nod of the head. “You are right. And even more troubling is the fact that some components simply cannot be enlarged. For example, in optical and electromagnetic communication equipment, the components needed to modulate and control the wavelengths can by no means be any larger than their current microscopic size. And how can we even imagine computers and networks without microscopic parts? Things are similar when it comes to industrial production and research in the fields of molecular biology and genetic engineering.”

The Health Minister chimed in. “It is no different for many of our treatments. Without the ants, dinosaur surgeries are unimaginable.”

“Evolution has naturally selected the alliance of dinosaurs and ants and its implications are indeed profound. Without this alliance, civilization on Earth is fundamentally impossible. There is no way that we can tolerate the ants destroying this alliance,” the Science Minister concluded.

“And what shall we do about it now?” the Emperor demanded, spreading his claws and looking at each in turn.

The Minister of Defense, Marshal Loragar, finally broke his silence. “Your Imperial Highness, there is no doubt that the Ant Coalition has many advantages on their side, but we have our own strengths. The cities of the ant world are no bigger than the toys of our children. We can simply piss them away! The Empire should make use of this power.”

The Emperor nodded, and turning to the Marshal, said, “Good! Order the General Staff Headquarters to prepare a plan of action. Let us destroy a few ant cities to give them a warning!”

“Marshal!” the Minister of State grabbed hold of Loragar just as he was about to leave. “It is critical that we coordinate this action with the Laurasians.”

“Yes!” the Emperor nodded again. “Let us act in unison with them, lest Dadurmy play the good guy and draw the Ant Coalition to his side.”

CHAPTER 3 The Last War

“After three of our cities have been destroyed, and to avoid further loss of life, the Ant Coalition has suspended its strike action and resumed its work in the dinosaur world,” Kachica, the High Archoness of the Ant Coalition, addressed the delegates of the parliament from the speaker’s podium. “The choice we now face is absolutely clear: Either the ants destroy the dinosaurs or all of Earth’s civilizations will be destroyed!”

“I agree with the Archoness’ motion,” Senator Belapi said, waving her feelers from her seat. “Current trends show that Earth’s biosphere is heading for one of two fates: Either it will be turned into a cesspool of pollution by the dinosaur’s intensive industry or a nuclear war between the Gondwanans and Laurasians will destroy all of Earth!”

Their words drew a massive uproar of pheromones from the gathered parliament. “Yes! Now is the time for a final decision!”, “Destroy the dinosaurs, save civilization!”, “Let’s go!”, and “Act now!” rang out.

“Please, everyone, let us keep our calm!” The Chief Scientist of the Ant Coalition, Professor Joyah, waved her feelers to quell the uproar. “Recall that the symbiotic relationship of ants and dinosaurs has lasted for more than two millennia. In all those years, the alliance of dinosaurs and ants has been the backbone of our world’s civilizations; it is what supports our own civilization. If this alliance should fall and dinosaurs are destroyed, ask yourselves if our society could really continue to exist on its own. You know it is very easy to see the concrete benefits that the ants bring to the ant dinosaur alliance. What the dinosaurs bring to the table beyond basic material goods, however, is far more immaterial; it is their ideas and scientific knowledge◦— and that is the core of the issue for us ants. We may make remarkable engineers, but we will never be scientists! The raw physiology of our brains ensures that we will never possess two of the dinosaurs’ traits: Curiosity and imagination.”

Senator Belapi shook her head in disagreement. “Creativity and imagination? Humbug, Professor. Do you really consider those traits to be good things? It is precisely because of them that the dinosaurs are such neurotic beings and it’s what makes their moods so volatile and unpredictable. They end up wasting their lives daydreaming as they indulge their silly fantasies.”

“But, Senator, it is that unpredictability and those fantasies that inspire them and makes their creativity possible. It’s what allows them to consider theories that explore the most profound laws of the universe, and that is the basis of all scientific progress,” Professor Joyah interjected.

“Right, right,” Kachica impatiently interrupted the Chief Scientist. “Now is not the time for academic discussions. Professor, the ant world is facing one dilemma and one dilemma only: To destroy the dinosaurs or to suffer destruction alongside them?”

Joyah did not reply.

Kachica turned to Rulley, nodding her head.

Marshal Rulley approached the speaker’s podium. “I would like to show everyone something, something that did not rely on our dinosaur teachers and required almost no scientific innovation.”

At the Marshal’s signal, two ants brought in two thin, white flakes that looked much like two simple scraps of paper. Rulley explained what the delegates were seeing. “These are some of ant-kinds most ancient weapons◦— thunder grains◦— but they are a new model. Our military engineers manufactured these thunder grain-flakes precisely for their use in this final war.” With the wave of an antenna, another four ants approached carrying two small electric wires, the kind of wire commonly used in the dinosaurs’ machines. One wire was red, the other green. The ants spanned the two wires into a frame, and then took the small, white flakes and attached them to the middle of each wire. They firmly wound them around the wire until they looked just like a piece of white adhesive tape. Then something miraculous happened: Those two white pieces of tape changed color, taking the hue of the wire they were attached to, one turning red and the other green. Soon, the once-white flakes seemed to have completely merged with their wire, making them all but invisible.

As this happened, Kachica announced, “This is the Coalition’s newest weapon: Stealth Thunder Grains. Once they have been brought into position, the dinosaurs will have no way of detecting them!”

Two minutes later, the thunder grains exploded with two crisp cracks, neatly severing the two wires.

As they exploded, Kachica began detailing the plan. “When the time comes, the Coalition will have an army of one-hundred-million ants at the ready. One part of this army will be composed of ants currently working in the dinosaur world, right under their noses. The other part is infiltrating the dinosaur world as we speak. This great army will affix two-hundred-million Stealth Thunder Grains to the wiring of the dinosaurs’ machines! We have called this campaign ‘Operation Linebreaker’.”

“Wow, what a magnificent plan!” Senator Bilubu shouted in approval, eliciting an echo of sincere pheromone praise from the gathered delegates.

Kachica again took the stage and intoned, “Even as Operation Linebreaker is under way, another equally magnificent operation will be put into action! The Coalition will dispatch another army of twenty million ants that will penetrate into the skulls of five million dinosaurs and attach thunder grains to the major blood vessels of their brains. These five million dinosaurs have been selected from the elite of the billions of dinosaurs living on Earth. They include their top leadership and scientists, as well as key technical personnel and operators. Eliminating these dinosaurs will decapitate the dinosaur world. We named this campaign ‘Operation Mindbreaker’.

“The most beautiful thing about this plan is the simultaneous blows against the dinosaur world!” Kachica continued her presentation. “The two-hundred-million thunder grains we will have deployed in the machines of the dinosaur world and the five million we will have attached to the brains of the dinosaurs will all explode at exactly the same time! There will be less than a second separating any explosion from the next! This will prevent any sector of the dinosaur world coming to the rescue and squash the possibility of the dinosaurs successfully substituting key positions. All of the dinosaur world will be like a huge vessel whose bottom is torn to shreds in the middle of the ocean. It will sink very swiftly indeed! Then, we will be the Earth’s true rulers.”

“High Archoness, Madam Kachica, will you tell us when this great moment will be?” Belapi asked, desperately struggling to contain her excitement.

“All thunder grains will explode at midnight one month from today,” Kachica answered.

All the gathered ants erupted in cheers.

Only Professor Joyah shook her feelers in desperation, attempting to quiet the ruckus of ants. When the cheers did not subside, she shouted at the top of her pheromones. Only then did they calm down and turn to face her.

“Enough! Have you all gone mad?” she yelled. “The dinosaur world is an extremely complex and incredibly vast system. If this system should suddenly be toppled by our fell blow, it will lead to consequences we can scarcely imagine.”

“Professor, other than the destruction of the dinosaur world and the final victory of the Ant Coalition, can you tell us what other consequences you envision?” Kachica asked with more than a hint of derision.

“I told you, we can scarcely imagine what will happen!” Joyah shouted in frustration.

“There you go again, Joyah the alarmist. Madam, I am afraid we are all tired of your games,” Belapi said as the other delegates expressed their disapproval of the Chief Scientist’s complaints.

Rulley walked over to Joyah and with a front claw gave her a pat on the thorax. The Marshal was a very sober ant and one of the very few who had not erupted into cheers. “Professor, I understand your worries. In fact, we shared them as we planned the operations. I was most concerned about the dinosaurs’ nuclear weapons going out of control. But there is no reason to worry; it is true that all nuclear weapon systems of the dinosaur world are controlled by dinosaurs and even though they normally only permit a few ants to perform maintenance work under close scrutiny, infiltrating them will still be a breeze for our special forces. We will deploy more than twice the usual amount of thunder grains in the nuclear weapon systems. When it is all done, the nuclear weapons will be paralyzed, just like all other systems. There is no chance of a catastrophe.”

Joyah sighed as she replied. “Marshal, the situation is much more complex than that. The key question is this: Do we really understand the dinosaur world?”

For a moment, this question gave all ants pause.

Finally, Kachica turned to Joyah. “Professor, ants pervade every corner of the dinosaur world and it has been that way for thousands of years! How can you possibly ask such a ridiculous question?”

Joyah slowly shook her feelers. “When all is said and done, ants and dinosaurs remain two very different species that live in two completely separate worlds. Intuition tells me that there are great secrets of the dinosaur world that we ants cannot even guess at.”

“If there is nothing you can actually point to, you might as well just let it rest,” Belapi chided.

Joyah would not be silenced. “It is for this reason that I ask that you establish a surveillance system. My specific plan is as follows: Whenever you attach a firecracker to a dinosaur’s brain, you should also install a listening device on their cochlea. I will lead a department that will monitor and analyze the information these devices gather. With a little luck, we may soon learn about some things that we had no idea even existed.”

CHAPTER 4 Thunder Grains

The Communication Tower was the heart of Boulder City’s information network. Its mission was to process and pass on all the information flowing between the capital and the rest of the nation. There were over a hundred such network centers scattered throughout Gondwana, forming the trunk of the Empire’s massive information network.

A small detachment of ants had already made their way into one of the servers of the information center. The squad was made up of more than a hundred ants, and five hours ago it had infiltrated the Communication Tower by means of a water pipe. From there they had made their way into the server room through a small crack in the floor. Finally they had used a fan grill to gain access to the inside of the server itself. The massive architecture and the size of the machines offered the ants unimpeded access without fail.

Hearing dinosaurs approach, the ants quickly hid under the motherboard. The field of micro-circuitry that could have been a football field in one of their cities seemed to offer easy shelter. Then they heard the hatch to the server rack open. From a small hole in the motherboard, they could see that a giant magnifying glass had come to cover the entire world above them. Through the glass’ curvature they could see the giant eye of a dinosaur engineer, enlarged to even more terrifying proportions. The ants clung where they hung, terror-stricken.

In the end, however, it appeared that the dinosaur had failed to spot them. Once they felt safe again, the ants immediately went about deploying dozens of thunder grains. These small and thin flakes quickly and seamlessly took on the color of the wires they were attached to, making them all but impossible to spot. In this manner, about a dozen thin thunder grains were attached to wires of varying thickness and a wide range of colors. Some flakes were also attached to the circuit boards themselves. The Stealth Thunder Grains used for this purpose possessed an even more advanced ability, allowing them to take on different colors on different parts of their surface; soon, they perfectly matched the circuit board below them. Their mimicry was flawless, making them even harder to recognize than those attached to the wires. In fact, when the time came, these specialized thunder grains would not explode. Instead, they would drip a few splashes of acids, burning into the circuit board and melting it to the point of complete failure.

Once the hatch was closed again, the entire world of the server had been plunged back into black, leaving a sole green power indicator to light the darkness. It was like a soft emerald moon, hanging in the sky. The quiet hum of the cooling fan and the light clicking of the hard disk were the only sounds in the eerie tranquility of this strange world.

Soon, squads of ants had installed thunder grains in every server of the network center. In the vast world beyond the center, on all of Earth’s lands, there were hundreds of millions of ants doing the same deed in countless machines.

That night, Baltzara, the Emperor of the Gondwanan Empire, suffered a nightmare. In his nightmare he saw a dense black mass of ants crawl toward his nose, clambering into his body. Then they came back out his mouth, forming an endless, horrible black column. And as they emerged, each ant clasped something in its pincers. It was his intestines, cut to tiny pieces. Each ant casually discarded its piece of his innards, only to once again push into his nose; they had become a ceaseless circle…

There was a grain of truth in the Emperor’s nightmare. As he dreamed, there really was a pair of ants climbing into his nose. During the day, these two soldier ants had infiltrated the Emperor’s sleeping chambers and hidden under his pillow, biding their time.

Now in his nose, they faced a gale whistling in and out of his nostrils as he slept. Holding only to the nostril hairs that grew like a chaotic jungle, the experienced ants proceeded forward, cleverly avoiding triggering a sneeze. They soon made it into the Emperor’s nasal cavity and from there, as they had done so many times before in the countless surgeries they had participated in, they entered into the space behind the eyeball.

The ants followed the path of the translucent optical nerve, straight into the brain. At times a thin membrane would come between them and their progress, but the two ants would simply bite a small hole into these obstacles. The holes were tiny, far too small for the great dinosaur to feel. Doing this, the two reached the cerebrum suspended quietly in the brain fluid’s darkness. It appeared like a strange life form all of its own. The ants studied it carefully, quickly finding the large blood vessels of the brain; these were the main conduits for the blood that pumped to the Emperor’s cerebrum. One of the ants flicked on a microscopic lamp, illuminating the vessels. The other ant retrieved a few yellow thunder grains and attached them to the blood vessels’ transparent walls. The two ants then quickly withdrew from the brain, making their way along a dark, moist, and winding passage. Climbing down a slanting slope they soon reached the ear. Climbing in the weak light filtering through the translucent eardrum, they came upon the cochlea. Here the two ants began to install the listening device.

Emperor Baltzara’s nightmare continued. In his dreams, his intestines had been completely dissected and extracted, leaving him an empty husk. Ever more ants were pushing into him, his body abused as their ant hill…

When the Emperor woke, covered in cold sweat, those two ants had long completed their work and silently climbed out of his nose. They had scaled down his bed and withdrawn through the floor of the sleeping chamber. Emperor Baltzara heavily rolled himself over and back into his nightmare-plagued sleep.

CHAPTER 5 Leviathan and Luna

In the High Command of the Ant Coalition, High Archoness Kachica and the Coalition’s Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Rulley, were in the midst of orchestrating the downfall of the dinosaur world. Behind them stood two large screens displaying the progress of Operation Linebreaker and Operation Mindbreaker.

“It appears that everything is going according to plan,” Rulley said, turning to Kachica.

Kachica was about to respond when Joyah entered the command center. The High Archoness now instead turned to the Coalition’s Chief Scientist, greeting her. “Ah, Professor Joyah, I did not see you all of last week! I assume you have been busy analyzing the information gathered by our listening devices. But what with the grim look? Is there some terrible secret you have come to share with us?”

Joyah nodded a feeler. “Indeed. I must immediately speak with both of you.”

“As you can see, we are very busy; please make it short,” Kachica noted tersely.

Producing a recorder, Joyah said, “I would like both of you to listen to a recording. It was made at the bilateral summit between the Gondwanan Empire and the Laurasian Republic that convened yesterday. We were listening in on a meeting between Baltzara and Dadurmy.”

Clearly impatient, Kachica interrupted. “What secrets could that summit possibly hold? We all know that the nuclear arms reduction talks between the two countries collapsed. Nuclear war between Gondwana and Laurasia is imminent. All any of this does is prove that the course we have chosen is the right one; we must destroy the dinosaur world before they start a nuclear war.”

Joyah was unimpressed. “You just summarized the press release, but I want you to hear the particulars of a secret meeting that took place at the summit. In it, they reveal something we have previously not heard about.”

The recording began to play, and after a short silence, they heard:

Dadurmy: “Your Highness Baltzara, do you know the real reason why the ants yielded so readily? It is almost certain that their return to work in the dinosaur world is nothing more than a delaying tactic. They are almost certainly putting a plot against the dinosaur world into action as we speak.”

Baltzara: “President Dadurmy, do you really think me stupid enough to not realize the obvious? Compared to Laurasia going over to an anti-timer for ‘Luna’, the threat posed by the ants◦— even the threat posed by your nuclear weapons◦— is hardly worth my time.”

Dadurmy: “Right, right; compared with the danger posed by the ants and the risks of nuclear war, ‘Luna’ and ‘Leviathan’ are obviously the greater threat to Earth. We should first talk about the issue at hand: Putting the blame on the Luna is hardly fair; the Leviathan started its anti-timer first—”

“Stop, stop, stop,” Kachica said, waving her feelers. “Professor, I have no idea what I just heard.”

Joyah paused the recording and turned to the High Archoness. “This recording raises two very important questions: What are the Luna and the Leviathan they mentioned? And what is the anti-timer?”

“Professor, the conversations of the dinosaur leadership is often laden with the most outlandish codes. Why ever are you so excited about this conversation?” Kachica asked unperturbed.

Joyah was only too happy to answer. “We can clearly hear that these two things are highly dangerous, capable constituting a threat to the entire world.”

Kachica shook a feeler. “That does not make any logical sense. Professor, anything that could constitute a threat to the Earth would by necessity have to be housed in a very large facility, and if such a facility existed, the Ant Coalition would certainly know about it.”

Joyah nodded. “High Archoness, I absolutely agree: No large facility on Earth could escape the ants’ attention, but facilities of a more modest scope, relatively small in size, could. All that would be required is that such a facility to not require ant maintenance for its regular operation. For example, an autonomous ICBM could remain on standby, ready to launch for a very long time indeed without any ant involvement. It could be that Luna and Leviathan are those kinds of devices.”

Kachica remained unconvinced. “If they are, there is no cause for worry. Such small-scale facilities could never constitute a threat to Earth. Like I just said, consider that they would need thousands upon thousands of even the most powerful nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth.”

For a few seconds Joyah remained silent, and then she leaned in, crossing her feelers with Kachica’s. With their eyes almost touching, she said, “That is the crux, High Archoness. Are nuclear weapons really the most powerful weapons?”

Kachica was confused. “Professor, that’s just common sense!”

Joyah withdrew her head. “Of course, it is common sense,” she said, nodding her feelers. “And that precisely is the fatal flaw in ant thinking. Our thoughts are limited to common sense, even as the dinosaurs stare into the unknown.”

Kachica shook her head. “And that unknown is nothing but pure scientific speculation, completely detached from reality.”

“Then let me please remind you of something that is connected to reality: Do you remember the new sun that suddenly appeared in the night sky three years ago?” Joyah asked.

Of course Kachica and Rulley remembered. That unbelievable event had left a deep impression on all of them. That cold winter night, a new sun had suddenly appeared in the sky over the Southern Hemisphere. In a flash, night on Earth had become bright as day. The light of that sun had been incredibly intense, blinding all that looked straight into it. After about 20 seconds that sun had suddenly disappeared. Even so, its heat had turned a bitterly cold northern winter night into a sweltering hot summer day and the flash thaw of the winter snows had flooded many cities. At the time, the event had shocked ant society right through the carapace, but when they had asked the dinosaurs what had happened, their scientists had failed to give them any conclusive explanation. The ants’ lack of curiosity meant that the matter was soon forgotten.

“At the time, the only definite observation our monitoring stations were able to make was this: That new sun appeared in our solar system about one astronomical unit away from Earth,” Joyah reminded them.

Kachica was not to be convinced. “Professor, this is still completely disconnected from reality; even if we presume that that kind of energy does exist, you still have no proof whatsoever that the dinosaurs have brought it to Earth. And, the reality is that it most likely never existed in the first place.”

“I used to feel the same way, but,” Joyah paused, “I ask you to please continue listening to the recording,” she said as she restarted the recorder.

Joyah stopped the playback and turned to Kachica and Rulley. “I think you two will have noticed the date mentioned in that meeting.”

“December fourth, three years ago,” Rulley recalled. “That is the very day the new sun appeared.”

“It is. All of this is connected to it. I do not know how you feel about what you have heard, but my pincers and abdomen are shaking.”

“We have absolutely no objection to you doing all you can to clarify the matter,” Kachica replied.

Joyah could only sigh. “Easier said than done. The best way to clarify this mystery would be to pry into the dinosaurs’ military network, but our ant computers are completely incompatible with the ones used in that system. So, even though we can easily infiltrate the hardware of the dinosaurs’ computers, to date we have yet to manage hacking into their software. That leaves us with our current clumsy means of eavesdropping to gather information. I wish it were otherwise, especially since, at our current rate, I do not believe that the short time we have will be sufficient to uncover the mystery.”

Kachica considered this before responding. “Very well, Professor; we will provide you with the necessary means to conduct an investigation. However, this matter will have no impact on our present total war against the dinosaurs. Right now, the only thing that shakes my carapace is the thought of allowing the Dinosaur Empire to continue its existence. I believe that you are living an illusion, an illusion that will in the end be detrimental to our Coalition’s grand designs.”

Having nothing left to say, Joyah turned about-face.

A day later she disappeared.

CHAPTER 6 The Destruction of the Dinosaur World

Two soldier ants stealthily crept under the crack of the palace gate and out of the Imperial Palace of Gondwana. They were the last of the 3,000 ants that had been charged with deploying the thunder grains in the palace’s computers and in the skulls of its dinosaurs. After scampering under the crack, they began their climb down the flight of massive stairs. Just as they came upon the precipitous cliff of the first step that plunged straight down, they caught the glimpse of an ant silhouette climbing up.

“Whoa, isn’t that Professor Joyah?” the first soldier ant exclaimed in surprise.

“The Coalition’s Chief Scientist?” the other asked in return, no less surprised. “You’re right! It’s her!”

“How did she get here? Doesn’t this look odd?” the first soldier ant asked as Joyah crawled under the crack of the palace gate.

“This is not right. Do you have your communicator?” The other soldier was visibly uneasy. “Quickly report this to the commander!”

Emperor Baltzara was just in the process of presiding over a meeting of his chief advisors when a secretary entered to report. “The Chief Scientist of the Ant Coalition Joyah is urgently requesting an audience with His Majesty.”

“Let her wait. I will look into it after we have finished the meeting,” Baltzara said with a dismissive wave of his claw.

The secretary left, but returned not long afterward. “She says it’s about an extremely important matter. She insists she must see you immediately and she requests that the Minister of State, the Science Minister, and the commander of the Empire’s armed forces all be present.”

“The wretch! Does that little bug have no manners? Let her wait or tell her to get lost!” the Emperor growled.

“But she,” the secretary began, his gaze darting from minister to minister before he finally leaned close to the emperor’s ear and whispered, “she says that she has defected from the Ant Coalition.”

The Minister of State interrupted. “Joyah is one of the most important representatives of the Ant Coalition’s leadership. I have had the impression that her way of thinking is very different from that of other ants. If she comes to us like this, then it is quite possible that the matter really is of critical importance.”

“All right, let her come here then,” Baltzara said, pointing to the large surface of the conference table.

“I come to save Earth,” Joyah stated moments later once she’d taken her stand on the vast, smooth plain of the table. The dinosaurs she addressed looked like towering mountains.

The Emperor and his ministers did not immediately hear her dramatic introduction; a translating system first needed to transform her pheromone words into dinosaur language and send them to a hidden loudspeaker.

“Hm, what high-sounding sentiments. The Earth is doing just fine,” Baltzara coldly replied after hearing her words through the speaker.

“You will very soon realize that it is not so,” Joyah retorted. “But first I would like to ask you to answer one question: What are Luna and Leviathan?”

At once the dinosaurs began to exchange glances in obvious alarm. The towering mountains surrounding Joyah fell into silence. One moment passed, then another. Finally Baltzara spoke, “Why ever should we tell you that?”

“Your Majesty, if they are really what I suspect them to be, I will be able to reveal to you a great secret that will determine the life or death of the dinosaur world. I wager you’ll see how this is a fair trade,” she replied confidently.

“And if they are not what you suspect them to be, what then?” Baltzara asked glumly.

“Then I will not reveal my great secret to you. You can then kill me or keep me imprisoned here for the rest of my life to keep your secret. No matter how it goes, neither you nor I have very little to lose,” Joyah pointed out.

For a few seconds Baltzara pondered the offer in silence. Then he turned with a nod to his Science Minister. “Tell her.”

In the High Command of the Ant Coalition, Marshal Rulley had just put down the telephone. Grim-faced, she turned to High Archoness Kachica and levelly stated, “I have just been informed of Joyah’s whereabouts. It appears that our suspicions were well-founded; that louse has betrayed us.”

“What is the status of the breaker operations?” Kachica asked, her pheromones steady even as they reverberated with a sense of intense urgency.

“Operation Linebreaker has been completed to ninety-two percent; Operation Mindbreaker stands at ninety percent,” Rulley immediately answered.

Kachica turned to a large screen displaying a world map. In silence she looked at the twinkle of the brightly-colored continents before finally issuing her grave command: “Let us turn the pages of history. Set the detonation for ten minutes.”

The dinosaur ministers had finished their account and Joyah’s head was whirling with shock. For a long moment she felt like falling over, struck speechless.

“So, Professor, what will it be? Will you keep your promise and reveal your great secret to us?” Baltzara asked with a fanged smile.

“This is absolutely,” Joyah said, feeling as if she’d just awoke from a nightmare, “utterly atrocious! You are monsters, true monsters!” Her voice lost its edge. “But we ants are no better.” She shook her head, focusing again on the magnitude of the issue. “Quick! Immediately contact the High Archoness of the Ant Coalition!”

“You have not answered my question,” Baltzara said.

“Your Majesty, there is no time to explain! They already know that I am here and they can act at any moment. The fate of the dinosaur world hangs in the balance and the end of Earth will follow in the wake of its destruction! Believe me, you need to contact them! Quick!” Joyah insisted.

“Very well.” The dinosaur emperor picked up the telephone.

With anxiety burning like fire, Joyah watched the giant creature punch button after button with its huge, awkward claws. Then she finally heard the muffled ring-tone echoing from the massive handset in Baltzara’s claws. A few seconds passed before the ring-tone suddenly ended. Joyah knew that Kachica had picked up her grain-sized handset on the other end of the line.

Then she heard the Archoness’ voice in through the headset. “Hello, who is this?”

Baltzara spoke into the telephone. “Is this High Archoness Kachica? This is Baltzara, right now…”

At that very moment, Joyah heard a chain of subtle clicking pops ring out all around the Emperor. It was eerily reminiscent of a clockwork’s manic whirl. She knew it was the sound of thunder grains exploding in the dinosaurs’ skulls; and indeed, all the dinosaurs around the emperor suddenly stiffened, their bodies going rigged almost as one.

The unspeakable reality of the events seemed to freeze the moment in time.

The telephone tumbled from Baltzara’s limp claw, heavily falling to the table below with a deafening bang. Then all the dinosaurs came crashing down around the single ant. For many long moments the plain that was the table’s surface shook under Joyah’s claws. The towering dinosaur mountains had sunk. The horizon now lying clearly before her, Joyah climbed onto the handset’s earpiece. In it she could hear Kachica’s voice.

“Hello? I am Kachica; is something the matter? Hello?”

The earpiece’s diaphragm vibrated with her voice, sending pins and needles up Joyah’s legs and through her body. Finding her balance on the diaphragm, she shouted, “High Archoness! It is me, Joyah!” as loud as she could.

But now, unlike before, there was nothing to convert her pheromones to a voice. The imperial palace’s translating system had been knocked out by the thunder grains and so there was no way for Kachica to hear her voice on the other end of the line. Joyah said no more. She knew that she had come too late.

All the main hall’s lights flickered and died. Outside dusk had fallen. Everything descended into darkness. As Joyah made her way toward the nearest window, the drone of traffic from the distant city vanished with the lights. All that remained was the deathly, black silence outside. Inside, in darkness, laid the rigid forms of the toppled dinosaurs in perfect respite.

As Joyah climbed over the edge of the table, she began to hear a cacophony of voices and noise drift into the conference room. It was the first far off sounds of dinosaur screams and the distant thunder of their panicked movement. Joyah knew that these noises almost certainly emanated from outside the palace. No dinosaur inside would have remained, all slain as the thunder grains exploded inside their skulls.

Now she could hear the muted screams of the city’s sirens, howling intermittently before falling silent. Then, as she had made it halfway across the floor moving toward the window, she heard the faint boom of faraway explosions. She finally reached the window. Looking outside, she could see Boulder City stretch out before her. The metropolis was completely covered in murky twilight. In the distance she could see thin pillars of smoke rise against the last faint evening light. Soon these pillars were joined by many more with a new fire burning at the base of every emerging plume. The silhouettes of the cityscape flickered with the blaze of a growing inferno as the high ceiling above began to pulsate with the crimson glow of the raging flames.

CHAPTER 7 The Ultimate Deterrent

“Success!” Marshal Rulley was intently watching the world map flashing in red light. “The dinosaur world has been fully paralyzed. Their information systems have been completely disrupted. All their cities have lost power, all roads are blocked by vehicles disabled with thunder grains, and fires have started everywhere and are rapidly spreading. Operation Mindbreaker has eliminated more than four million dinosaurs in critical positions of leadership. The ruling bodies of the Gondwanan Empire and the Laurasian Republic have ceased to exist. Their brains removed, those two great dinosaur nations have descended into a vegetative coma. Their societies have fallen to total chaos,” she continued, measured excitement in her pheromones.

“This is just the beginning,” Kachica said. “All dinosaur cities will have lost their water supply and their food reverses will quickly be consumed by the ravenous hunger of their population. That is when the dinosaur world will truly face its final moments. Large hordes of dinosaurs will abandon their cities, but they will find themselves without means of conveyances, and even if they find working vehicles, they will face blocked roads. It will be impossible for them to disperse in time. Their immense appetite will result in at least half of all dinosaurs dying of starvation. The remaining dinosaurs, with their cities abandoned, will face a total technological and societal collapse. The dinosaur world will be forced back to its primitive, agricultural roots.”

“What about the nations’ nuclear weapons systems?” an ant listening asked.

Rulley, once again utterly calm, answered the question. “It is exactly as we had planned: All of the dinosaurs’ nuclear systems, including their ICBMs and their strategic bombers, have been reduced to scrap metal by our massive deployment of thunder grains. There are no reports of unforeseen accidents or cases of nuclear contamination.”

“Excellent! This really is a great moment in history. Now we must merely wait for the dinosaur world to destroy itself!” Kachica was clearly euphoric.

The High Command’s celebrations were short-lived. Only moments later an ant secretary reported that Joyah had returned, urgently demanding to see Kachica and Rulley.

The Chief Scientist had barely entered the Command Center, her body and mind worn to mere shadows of her former self by exhaustion and worry, when Kachica began her angry rebuke. “Professor, you betrayed the great cause of the Ant Coalition at the eleventh hour. You will be judged very harshly indeed.”

“When you have heard all that I have to tell you, you will understand who of us will be judged in the end,” Joyah answered coldly.

“Why did you go to see the Gondwanan Emperor?” Rulley inquired, obviously more interested than angry.

“To learn the truth about Luna and Leviathan,” Joyah explained.

The Professor’s words immediately cooled the ants’ jubilant excitement and they all began to focus the countless facets of their compound eyes on Joyah.

Joyah looked around at them, and then asked, “First, who here knows what antimatter is?”

Silence fell among the ants.

After a few moments Kachica spoke. “I know this much: Antimatter is a kind of matter predicted by the dinosaur physicists. Its atomic sub-particles are said to be charged in a way directly opposite to our world’s matter. Should antimatter ever come into contact with our regular matter, both would be completely transformed into energy.”

Joyah nodded her feelers. “Now we all know what can be more terrible than a nuclear bomb. At equivalent mass, a matter-antimatter annihilation can produce an explosion several thousand times more powerful than that of a nuclear bomb!”

“But what does that have to do with the mystery of Luna and Leviathan?” Kachica asked, now obviously worried.

“Please listen carefully: Do you remember the sun that suddenly appeared in the night sky of the Southern Hemisphere three years ago?”

Of course everyone present remembered the event.

Joyah knew they would. “That flash was the result of a small celestial body that entered the solar system along a comet’s path. That object was a mere twenty miles in diameter, nothing but a small rock floating in the solar system. It was, however, entirely made of antimatter! When it passed through the asteroid belt, it collided with an object. The annihilation of asteroid and antimatter caused a massive explosion; the very flash we saw. At the time, the Laurasians and Gondwanans both launched probes and both came to the same conclusion: That the annihilation had produced many antimatter fragments in all manner of shapes and sizes scattered through space. The dinosaur scientists were quickly able to determine the position of some of these fragments. Doing so was very simple: The particles of the solar wind were annihilated as they struck the antimatter, which gave these pieces of antimatter a very peculiar glow as they drifted through the asteroid belt.

This all happened at the height of the Laurasian and Gondwanan arms race and so the two great dinosaur nations almost simultaneously came up with a plan born of nothing but sheer insanity: They would gather some fragments of antimatter and bring them back to Earth. Using them, they would create a super weapon far more powerful than any nuclear bomb; the ultimate deterrent against the other side…”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Kachica interrupted Joyah. “There is an obvious error with your logic: Matter and antimatter annihilate each other when they come into contact; what container could hold it and allow it to be safely returned to Earth?”

“The dinosaur astronomers discovered that most of the body had been composed of antimatter iron,” Joyah continued. “And the pieces of antimatter they located were also made of antimatter iron. Antimatter iron is just like our world’s iron and can be affected by electromagnetic fields. That meant that the problem of storage was very solvable. The solution was a container holding a vacuum capable of generating a strong magnetic field. This field could restrain magnetic material placed inside of the container. Using this, the antimatter could be held firmly in the center of the container, preventing it from making contact with the interior walls. The antimatter could therefore be stored, transported, and deployed wherever the dinosaurs desired. At first, this plan started out as pure theory. Actually using such a device to bring antimatter back to Earth would be an incredibly deranged and insanely dangerous endeavor; but dinosaurs are crazy by nature and their desire to rule the world conquered all other concerns, and so they actually went through with it!

“The Gondwanan Empire took this first step toward hell,” she continued. “They designed and manufactured the containment device as a hollow sphere. As it prepared to capture the antimatter fragment, the sphere was split in two, each half affixed to the robotic arms of the spaceship. The spaceship then slowly approached, gathering the small piece of antimatter between the two hemispheres with the greatest of care. Finally, the fragment was sealed in the center of the sphere. Superconductors began generating the magnetic field that held the fragment in its center. Then, the spaceship flew back to Earth with its terrible cargo. The Gondwanan space vessel returned, carrying a forty-five ton fragment of antimatter into Earth’s atmosphere. Had it made contact and been annihilated, ninety tons of pure energy would have been unleashed in the sky. The resulting explosion would have wiped out all life on Earth. Of course, the Laurasian dinosaurs had no desire to be obliterated together with the Gondwanans, and so they could do little but helplessly watch the spaceship land in the ocean.

“What happened next escalated the madness, pushing it to the peak of insanity,” she said, a warning in her tone. “After the Gondwanan spaceship had landed, the sphere containing the antimatter was loaded onto a large cargo vessel. The name of the vessel was the Leviathan and because of it, the dinosaurs came to call the antimatter fragment it carried ‘Leviathan’ as well. Contrary to all expectation, the ship did not return to Gondwana; instead it set course for Laurasia. When it arrived, it was moored in Laurasia’s largest port! The Laurasians dared not impede the progress of the ship of doom. All they could do was watch it make course, powerless to stop it from sailing right into their port. Once the Leviathan had cast anchor, its dinosaur sailors boarded a helicopter and left for Gondwana, abandoning the ship were it lay.

“The Laurasians came to view this strange gift with fearful reverence, not daring to disturb it in any way. They knew that the Gondwanan’s could remotely control the sphere and shut off its magnetic field at a moment’s notice. If that should ever happen, the antimatter fragment would make contact with the sphere’s wall, annihilating both, inescapably eradicating all life on Earth. Even so, it would have been Laurasia that would have been destroyed first, its lands burnt to ash in the blink of an eye by the deadly sun exploding on its shoreline. It was the Laurasian Republic’s darkest day. The Gondwanan Empire now firmly held the reins of all life on Earth. Rampant and without restraint, the Gondwanans made claim after claim to Laurasia’s territory and even demanded that the Republic disarm its nuclear arsenal.

“This lopsided state of affairs was not to last long,” Joyah said to her fascinated audience. “A mere month after the Leviathan had set sail, Laurasia responded in kind. Using the same technology, they removed a second fragment of antimatter from the heavens and returned it to Earth. They continued mirroring the Gondwanan’s actions: Deploying the container sphere on the cargo ship Luna, they sailed it into Gondwana’s largest port.

“In this manner, balance was returned to the dinosaur world. It was the balance of the ultimate deterrent; a balance that pushed all of Earth to the brink of the abyss. To avoid global panic, ‘Operation Leviathan’ and ‘Operation Luna’ were carried out under a shroud of absolute secrecy. Even in the dinosaur world only a disappearing minority was aware of the true details of the situation. Neither operation spared any cost to guarantee the reliability and dependability of the equipment. They ensured that everything was built using replaceable modules and that the entire system was small in scope. Because of this, it could be maintained without ant involvement and so the Ant Coalition remained unaware of its existence to this very day.”

Joyah’s account left all ants of the High Command in shock, plunging them from the peak of victory down into an abyss of dread and deep distress.

Her antenna quivering, Kachica said, “This is more than madness◦— it is outright depravity! This ultimate deterrent is nothing but the total destruction of the entire Earth! It would render all political and military considerations absolutely meaningless; it is complete and utter depravity!”

“Professor, this is the fruit of the very curiosity, imagination, and creativity that you praised so highly,” Marshal Rulley flatly stated, a note of ridicule in her pheromones.

“Let us stick to the issue at claw and return to the unimaginable danger facing the world,” Joyah answered coldly. “We need to talk about the anti-timer that the heads of the dinosaurs’ great nations brought up. To prevent a crippling preemptive strike, both dinosaur nations almost simultaneously put the Leviathan and Luna on a new form of standby; they called it ‘Anti-timer’. From that point on, the two antimatter devices no longer relied on a remote signal to detonate them. Instead, in a complete reversal, they would receive a signal to stop them from detonating. The spherical containers were put in a perpetual state of counting down to detonation. Only a remote interrupt signal from a signal station located in each respective nation could suspend this countdown and reset it. Once the signal was received, the anti-timer would immediately restart, counting back down to zero as it awaited the next interrupt signal. Each and every one of these signals was personally sent by the Gondwanan Emperor or the Laurasian President. If one nation should suffer a paralyzing first strike, it would be unable to send the interrupt signal; the sphere’s countdown would reach zero and the antimatter would annihilate. The containers’ standby setup made a first strike tantamount to suicide and the continued presence of the enemy a prerequisite for survival. Of course, it had also significantly raised the global threat level. As if this ultimate deterrent was not enough, the anti-timer took it to a new level of madness, or, in the words of the High Archoness, utter depravity.”

Again, High Command fell deathly quiet.

Kachica was the first to break the silence, her pheromones trembling. “Does that mean that right now the Leviathan and Luna are waiting for the interrupt signal?”

Joyah nodded her feelers. “And perhaps those signals can no longer be sent.”

“Are you implying that we have destroyed the Gondwanan and Laurasian signal stations with our thunder grains?” Rulley asked, showing a rare high level of shock.

“Indeed,” Joyah answered glumly. “Baltzara showed me where the Gondwanan signal station is located. He also told me where their reconnaissance had located the station of the Laurasian Republic; after my return, I compared the information he provided with the database of Operation Linebreaker and I found these small signal stations. Because we did not understand their purpose, we only allotted a few thunder grains to their communication equipment. It was thirty-five grains in the Gondwanan signal station and thirty-six in the Laurasian station. In total, we severed sixty-one wires. Even though that is a relatively small number, it is still enough to completely disable the signal emitters in both of these installations.”

“How long is each countdown?” Rulley inquired.

“Three days, about sixty hours. Both the Gondwanan and the Laurasian countdown begin at around the same time and the interrupt signal is usually sent about twenty-two hours after the countdown started. The current countdown started twenty hours ago. We have two days.”

Rulley considered this grim information. “If we knew the contents of the interrupt signal, we could set up our own transmitter and continuously stop the Leviathan and Luna’s countdowns.”

“The problem is that we do not know and we cannot find out!” Joyah’s frustration was evident. “The dinosaurs did not advise me of the signal’s contents, but they did tell me that it is a very complex and long password and that it was changed every time it was sent. The password’s algorithm is stored in the computers of the signal stations. I do not think the dinosaurs still know it, as it’s been changed by now.”

“That means that the signal can only be sent by the signal stations,” Kachica noted.

“I think that is the case.” Joyah nodded her feelers.

Kachica quickly considered their options, then said, “We can do it, but we must act as quickly as possible to salvage the situation.”

CHAPTER 8 The Battle of the Signal Stations

The station that transmitted the Gondwanan Empire’s interrupt signal was located in a badland near the outskirts of Boulder. It was a relatively small installation, equipped with a complex aerial. From the outside, it looked to be no more than a humble weather station. The installation’s guards, a mere unit of dinosaurs, led a very relaxed life. Their duty was mostly limited to keeping away the occasional Gondwanan citizen who inadvertently wandered too close to the facility. Not for a moment did they worry about enemy spies or saboteurs. The station did not require extra security; after all, Laurasia was more interested in the security of this facility than Gondwana was itself.

Other than the sentries, only five dinosaurs were responsible for the daily operation of the signal station. These five were an engineer, three operators, and a maintenance technician. Like the guards, they had no idea as to the station’s true purpose.

The station’s control room was dominated by a large screen displaying a perpetual countdown, always starting at 66 hours and then counting down. The countdown was never allowed to count below 44 hours. Every time it would reach that point◦— with the sole exception of this fateful morning◦— the face of Emperor Baltzara would appear on another screen and their monarch would utter a single, short sentence: “I decree that the signal be sent.”

The operator on duty would stand at attention and answer, “As Your Majesty commands!” Then the operator would go over to his terminal, move his mouse cursor over the “Send” button on his screen and click. Once this simple task had been completed, the main screen would display: “Interrupt signal sent◦— Receiving interrupt success return signal◦— Countdown reset”.

Then, the screen would return to its display of the countdown, starting a new cycle at “66:00”.

On the other screen, the Emperor would watch intently as these actions were being performed, right until the countdown began anew. Only then would he visibly relax and his image vanish from the screen. The intense stare on the Emperor’s face as he watched the signal being sent betrayed its importance, yet these ordinary dinosaur operators had no way of even imagining that every time they sent the signal they were delaying Earth’s death sentence by another day.

This day, their steady routine of two years was interrupted when they noticed that their signal transmitter had broken down. The signal station had been outfitted with the most reliable components and equipped with a wide array of back-up systems, yet this breakdown, however, seemed to affect the entire facility. Even the secondary systems stopped functioning altogether. It seemed almost certain that these problems could not be the result of wear and tear or accidental causes. The engineer and the technician immediately began to look for the source of the problem. They quickly discovered that a few wires had been cut◦— wires that only ants could reconnect.

The dinosaurs on duty attempted to contact their superiors to request a team of ants to repair the equipment only to discover that the telephone, too, had now failed. Continuing their appraisal of the situation, they found more cut wires. Even as they discovered the damage, the time for the Emperor’s call was rapidly approaching. Left with no choice, the dinosaurs attempted to connect the cables by hand, but their crude claws made the task completely impossible. The five dinosaurs were left with nothing but their own worries and anxieties.

Even though the telephone was disconnected, they firmly believed and hoped that communication would soon be restored and that the Emperor would appear on his screen before the countdown reached 44 hours. For two years the Emperor had appeared on that screen as reliably as the Sun rising in the east. Not seeing him seemed almost entirely unthinkable.

Yet, on that Cretaceous day, the Emperor did not appear. For the first time the countdown ticked down below 44 hours, and it continued to count down in merciless monotony.

Soon they realized that they could no longer count on the ants: It was they who had destroyed the emitter. Dinosaurs fleeing Boulder had passed by the station and brought with them accounts from the capital. It was from these terrified and shaken refugees that the station dinosaurs learned that the ants had destroyed the machines of the Empire with thunder grains, paralyzing the entire dinosaur world.

Despite this grim news, the dinosaurs in the signal station conscientiously remained focused on their duties, continuing to attempt connecting the severed wires, but the task remained impossible. Most of the cut wires were located in parts of the machines too small for the hefty dinosaur claws to even reach; and where they could reach the wires, things did not fare much better. No matter how hard they tried, their unwieldy appendages made any hope of connecting the ends impossible as the wires slipped and slid between the tips of their huge claws, eluding every effort.

“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 lowered 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 word 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.

After the troops had left, an eerie calm fell over the control room. Kachica climbed toward the window. Rulley followed her. As the two ants reached the windowsill, they saw a strange scene: Dawn was about to break, the waning crescent of the Moon still hanging in the sky. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the angle of the Moon’s sickle shifted, and as it moved, its light grew brighter, intensifying until its silvery glow burnt like an arc of bright lightning, blindingly brilliant. Everything on Earth, including the ant swarms scattering across the wasteland below, was cast in stark light clearer than the brightest day.

“What was that? Did the Sun just grow brighter?” Rulley asked, curious.

“No, Marshal. It is the second coming of a new sun. The Moon is glowing with its light. That Sun came to Laurasia and it is burning that continent as we speak,” Kachica stated gravely.

“Then the Gondwanan sun should rise soon,” Rulley noted, almost relaxed.

“If only it would. Come!” Kachica challenged.

Glaring light rose in the west, quickly consuming all. Before being vaporized by the exploding heat, the two ants saw a brilliant sun rapidly rise on the western horizon, its blinding orb swiftly swelling as it ascended. In the end, it filled half the sky, burning all on Earth in the blink of an eye.

The coast from where the antimatter explosion emanated was thousands of miles away and so it took many minutes for the shock wave to reach them. Long before it ever did, all had already ended in fire.

It was the last day of the Cretaceous.

CHAPTER 9 The Long Night

The coming winter lasted for 3,000 years.

One noon ever so slightly warmer, two Gondwanan ants chose to climb out of their deep ant hill and onto the surface. The faint Sun glowed dimly in the gray, lifeless sky. The Earth below was covered in densely packed ice and snow, with only the occasional rocky outcrop breaking the endless white, seeming all the more prominent in this indistinct land. In the distance, the far mountains, too, were covered in white.

The first ant turned, sizing up a giant skeleton nearby. Skeletons like this littered the ground, all white, just like the rest of the world. Seen from afar they were hard to make out, but from the ants’ vantage, the pale bones stood in stark contrast to the murky skies.

“I heard that they were called dinosaurs,” the first ant said.

The other ant turned, now looking at the skeleton as well. “Did you listen to them speak of the Age of Legend yesterday?”

“I did; they said that many thousands of years ago, ants lived in a glorious age.” The first ant nodded its antenna.

“Yes, they said that back then ants did not live in holes under the earth, but in cities on the surface, and that ants weren’t born by the Queen back then. It truly must have been an Age of Legend,” the other ant agreed.

“In the tales, the Age of Legend was brought about by ants and dinosaurs working together. The dinosaurs did not have nimble hands and so the ants did all the fine work for them; the ants did not have flexible minds and so the dinosaurs thought up unbelievable technology,” the first ant continued wistfully.

“In the Age of Legend, ants and dinosaurs created many great machines and they built huge cities. They were like gods,” the other ant added excitedly.

“Do you understand the part of the legends where the world gets destroyed?” the first ant asked.

“Not really. It all seems rather complicated: War broke out in the dinosaur world and then a war broke out between the ants and the dinosaurs.” The other ant paused, doing her best to remember the details. “And then two suns appeared on the Earth.”

The first ant had begun to tremble in the cold wind. “Oh, it would be great if we could have a new sun right about now!”

“You don’t understand!” the other ant replied with strong pheromones. “Those two suns were terrible; they burnt everything on Earth to crisp!”

“Then why is it so cold now?” The first ant did not seem convinced.

“That is very complicated. It seems to be like this: After those new suns appeared, the world was incredibly hot for a short while. It is even said that close to the suns, the very Earth itself was melted to magma! Then, however, the dust that the explosion of the new suns had stirred up came to block the light of the old Sun and the entire world cooled, becoming much colder than ever before,” the other ant explained. “And it remains like that. The dinosaurs were big fellows and so they naturally all died in this terrible age. Some of us ants, however, tunneled into the earth and so survived.”

“I have heard that not too long ago ants could read. Now, none of us remain who could study the old books,” the first ant noted.

“We have fallen. If it goes on like this, the ants will soon lose all their knowledge and become nothing but small, cave-dwelling, foraging insects.” the other said melancholically.

“What would be wrong with that? In these hard times, knowing little would seem just as well to me,” the first ant said, shrugging her antenna.

“That’s true,” the other ant said resignedly.

For a few moments all fell to white and gray silence.

“Is it possible that one day, when the Earth is warm again, some other animal will be able to bring about another Age of Legend?” the first ant finally asked.

“Possibly. I would think that such an animal would need both a large enough brain and nimble enough hands,” the other ant mused.

“Right, but it shouldn’t be big like the dinosaurs. They ate too much and that made life difficult for everyone,” the first ant said with a nod.

“But they shouldn’t be small like we are or their brains won’t be big enough,” the other ant said.

“Oh, could such a miraculous creature ever emerge?” the first ant asked in clear disbelief.

The other ant answered the final question somewhat wistfully. “I would think so. Time is endless and what can emerge, I tell you, will some day emerge from its depths.”