Chapter Seventy-Three – A Walkabout

Chapter Seventy-Three – A Walkabout

“It was actually something of a blessing. Botany as a science was taken seriously, but it was always treated as… dare I say, inferior. The less intelligent cousin of biology. Who cares about people concerned over stuff like plants?

Let me tell you, having the president ask you where a tree has its brain is a trip.”

–Excerpt from Leafy Me – A Memoir, 2028

***

I hesitated for a while as I considered what to do. There was a lot of hive, and there were a lot of aliens moving around. Though, I guess pointing out a difference between the two was kind of useless.

The big egg sacs… seeds? The big things, in which the aliens I was familiar with spawned, grew fast. I could tell that some of them had grown in the ten or so minutes since I arrived. How long did it take the hive to grow a Model Three?

It didn’t matter, I guess. In the end, they’d all need to be burned down one way or another. I eyed some models that were jumping around from branch to branch, often stopping by a sac that looked ready to be harvested and helping it down.

A couple of them gathered around each fresh alien murder machine and lowered it down, then they tore off the wrapping, as it were, and quickly brushed down the fur or whatever of the Antithesis they uncovered.

“What are those?” I asked. My helmet kept my voice from escaping any.

Model Tens. Though they should by all rights be called Model Ones. They are one of the original Antithesis models, with very little by means of changes even across centuries of evolution. They are mostly harmless, and will only attack if something threatens the hive directly, and even then, it will usually be an attempt to distract and win time for other combat-models to be born. The back of their palms has a small bill that is sharp; it is their only natural weapon other than their grip.

They looked like weird monkeys. Headless, six-limbed monkeys. Their face was where anything else’s neck and clavicle would be, and their limbs all ended in strange hands. Three fingers, and two thumbs on either end. They moved by springing and bouncing forward and swinging along on the many vines and branches sticking out of the hive.

“Neat,” I said. It was, in a sort of academic way, I guess. “Where’s the hive’s brain?”

An Antithesis hive has no brain.

“How does it think?” I asked.

The same way any other plant does. It grows, expands, and evolves to suit its environment. It is not intelligent in any traditional sense, but it is infinitely persistent. You will never see an Antithesis surrendering, or tiring in the face of adversity.

That somehow made it worse.

“So I burn the whole thing down, got it.”

I wasn’t going to just fling canisters onto the Hive and hope none of the models crawling on it noticed me. Looking past the main, forest-like body of it revealed some other mine shafts, three of them. The hive had grown that way too, at least from what little I could see with the bioluminescent light coming off some of the stalks.

If I wanted to burn the whole thing out in one go, I’d need to cut off all the paths around it, not just this one big lump.

Which meant actually going there.

I started walking near the edge of the room, moving slowly, and keeping an eye on all the models moving around in little packs. They seemed to be gathering in little groups, mostly by size.

A few flowers had blossomed here and there, with some sort of liquid sitting in them. The Antithesis models came to those flowers and would drink up some of that juice before moving on. I guessed that was how they fed?

I stopped when a big worm slithered out of a wall and started moving across the room. It halted some half-dozen metres ahead, then started to contract and expand while making a deep, disgusting retching noise.

I almost gagged when the worm vomited on a bed of large, lily-pad like leaves. Blood and gore, some sort of mulch and the recognizable remains of something meaty. Not a human, some sort of… deer, maybe? It had hoofed feet, at least. I noticed a dog in there, or maybe it was some poor fox.

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Some Model Tens rushed over and started grabbing chunks out of the mess, and then leapt away; others formed up and lifted the heavier bits, three to a side.

“What are they doing with that?”

The parts will be brought to a digestion chamber where they will be broken down for nutrients, with some of the smaller pieces being broken down further and absorbed into the Antithesis’ genetic banks. Given enough resources, it may try to recreate whatever creature that was, or modify a current model.