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?

And then aliens invaded. Plant aliens.

I never saw so much grant money being flung around in my life. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know more about how plants worked, and we realized that for all that we knew, it was only really enough to know how little we had dug into it.

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.

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.

“Like cloning?”

No. It’s far, far less efficient. It will essentially create hundreds of models with random mutations made from splicing recreated genes into the original model seed. Most of these will be entirely non-functional. On occasion, with one chance in several hundred thousand, a model will be born with a useful new trait or adaptation, and that model will be consumed so that future models can mimic this new change. You have encountered new Model Threes already, the larger, more tiger-like ones.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “One in a hundred thousand sounds like bad odds. Even if they’re eating the failures and starting over.”

The Antithesis thrive in magnitude above all else. This hive is about as small as a hive can be while still being fully functional. It can likely produce some hundred Model Threes an hour. One thousand hours at its current size to produce one useful mutation. Most hives can produce thousands to tens of thousands of Model Threes an hour. That is assuming there are beneficial mutation in the local wildlife.

I nodded and moved on. I didn’t plan on letting this place stand for a thousand more hours.

Walking a bit faster, I moved past the giant worm as it headed back out, only slowing down enough to get another bomb and tuck it next to the hole it had come out of. I’d need a dozen bombs all around the room if I wanted to burn it all, I figured, and with the current diameter of it, just having some on the edges might not be enough.

I had no idea how flammable the hive itself was.

Stop!

I froze, one foot raised. Then I looked down and noticed the little vines across the ground. Was that it? I’d been stepping on roots and stuff already.

That’s a vine from a Model Thirteen. It would alert it.

It didn’t take much to notice the huge, flower-like body nearby, still clinging onto the side of a tree-like pillar.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

This place wasn’t safe. For some reason, it was hard to keep that in mind. Maybe it was because I wasn’t actively fighting anything.

If the hive goes on alert, you will have a much harder time moving across it.

I nodded and kept low, only pausing to kneel down over a spot where two roots met and order another bomb to tuck away. I noticed some leafy plant wavering in the air at my passing. Was the hive sensing something?

I chose not to find out.

The first passage wasn’t very profound. It ended some hundred metres in, a huge machine wedged into the tunnel, with some lights on around it and plenty of signs that the hive had been poking at the device.

“They can’t use tech, right?” I asked.

No. Though they can, on rare occasions, observe and replicate the effects of technology, especially the more mechanical parts.

“Great, that’s all we need. Aliens pedaling bikes around.”

They don’t do wheels very well.

I left a bomb next to the mining machine. It was huge, and probably cost more money than someone like me-- someone like I used to be would see in ten lifetimes.

Sucked for the company that I’d be burning it down.

The next passage was a lot more interesting. More of those fin leaves, hundreds of them, all lined up against the walls. The tunnel here seemed to be moving upwards a little bit too. It was hot, hot and humid.

“Think there might be an exit down this way,” I said. It was just a gut feeling, but when Gomorrah and I came back down to investigate, this was the path we’d take.

I knelt down and placed a canister next to some of the leaves, then another some thirty or so metres deeper into the mine.

I got up, patted my pants down, then turned right into the waiting tentacles of a monster.

***