The Town of Ants

TW: nuclear radiation, slight gore (radiation sickness), mention of quarantine.

“This…is not…a place…of…horror—or is that honor?” Casik squinted at the text he was trying to translate. Time had worn away the sign. “That can’t be right.” At the sound of footsteps, he swiveled his head around to see his boys running into his office.

“I’ll show him the tape!”

“No, I will!”

“All right, children, what have you found,” Casik asked. He swept some dangling feathers away from his ears. His wings were drawn inward, a casual tunic covering his body. His sandals rested by the door to his office. They were modeled after one of the many the ancient styles of this planet. He found the post between the toes to be ridiculous. But, being a historian, he needed to have as much first hand experience as he could possibly get.

“We want to hear what we found,” his boy’s voices took Casik out of his musings about ridiculous shoes.

“All right then,” he said, “let me see what you found.”

The device was something he’d seen before. This was the type of phones the species native to this planet had carried. But something had happened that had rendered the planet abandoned. Casik and his colleagues had not discovered what it was yet.

“All right, I should have…yes, I have the charger right here.” It was a marvel what modern technology could do with converting ancient information into something that could be preserved. One charger now worked with every device, no matter what model or how old the device was.

The device was charged instantly. After a moment of static, words filled the air.

“This place is a message…and part of a system of messages…pay attention to it!” The words were spoken in a croaking voice. “Sending this message…was important…to us…”

“Oh fuck off!” Another voice interrupted the first one. “We don’t need to put that recording on every single tape we make!”

In the background there was a sound of something smashing.

“Look,” the second voice continued. “We are making these recordings for ourselves, because we’re detained here for God only knows how long! It’s not like anyone is going to listen to this ten thousand years in the future. ” There was a pause. “And now you’ve gotten coffee all over Karen’s stockings.”

“Well she shouldn’t have taken fucking fishnets on a jungle expedition, now should she? And she shouldn’t have left them out to dry—”

“We’ve returned to find San Antonio a radiation dump, and you’re worried about my stockings?” A woman’s voice entered the recording.

“They could be valuable to future societies—”

“Shut up, all of you,” Karen said.

The recording clicked off. Casik sat back in his chair. The leather creaked as it accepted his weight.

“San Antonio,” he said quietly.

“The Town of Ants,” his son asked.

“As you call it, I suppose.” The word ANT was the only words on the sign that could be read. The rest of the letters had worn away with time. Ten thousand years, Casik marveled.

“Can we have cookies?”

“Yes, go ahead,” he said.

As the children running steps faded in the direction of the kitchen, Casik pondered what he had heard. Was there more to be found in this San Antonio? What had become of the explorers, he wondered, and why had they been detained?

###

Towers of densely packed soil loomed before him. All the children knew of this area was the miles of soil. The ground was ruined. No life grew there. Yet the children played in the area, building imaginary games. Cities filled with long lost treasure. Whole worlds waiting to be discovered.

What if those treasures and worlds were not the imaginings of children after all?

Casik approached the towers that blocked out the sun. His steps were quiet in the abandoned lot. He shifted his body, squeezing into the gaps between the towers. Soil pressed in on him from all sides. Casik tried to take a breath, and found he could not do so. Not easily. He inched sideways. The soil felt as through it wanted to embrace him. Then he would be just as lost as those explorers.

Then he was laying on his back, gazing up at a sky so blue it hurt to look upon.

Something pierced the edge of his vision. It was a thorn, like on his wife’s roses. But it was like no thorns that Casik had ever seen.

He raised himself to his knees. He saw that for endless miles, there was nothing but thorns growing from the ground. What sort of plant was this, he wondered.

He slowly rose to his feet, and approached. His steps crunched under the gravel beneath him. When he was at the base of the thorn he began to reach out to touch it.

At a second thought, he pulled a pair of thin gloves from his bag. It was best not to touch strange objects. Let alone strange objects that might be alive in ways he could not see.

The material beneath his fingers was unnaturally smooth. It was cold. It did not move to his touch. It did not have any pulse that he could feel. When he pressed down on it, the material was unyielding.

Had this great creature died along with the explorers? Were these thorns the last of its defense mechanisms? If he dug down into the soil, could he wake this great creature from slumber?

This place is a message, the words on the recording came back to him. If the place was a message, then what did it mean? What message was he supposed to take from this?

###

Casik slowly took the steps up to the entrance to his home. He was covered in dirt and specks of whatever material those massive thorns were made from. He needed a bath. But first, he needed to document what he’d found.

He slipped the second recording in the machine and pressed play. This time, an image popped up. It was a hologram. All that could be seen was a window. Outside was piles of soil. Those same piles that Casik had forced his body through just hours before.

“This…is not…a place…of…honor.” The words were spoken between gasping breaths. “If you’ve found this video, it’s too late for you.”

So those were the words for the translation, Casik thought. Honor, not horror. That made a bit more sense.

“They took me off the plane,” the voice continued. “You can’t see my face because you—you don’t want to.” A hand flashed in the screen. The skin was sliding away. Muscles and bone could be seen.

“Who are you,” Casik whispered.

“Chris was lucky. Him and his friends were a bunch of campers on an adventure when all this happened,” the voice continued. “But it must have been a shock to come home and be detained. And to find everything dead…or mutilated.”

A fit of coughing filled the room. The deep, hacking sounds made Casik want to cover his ears. But he did not. History had to be witnessed.

“I don’t know how far in the future you’re watching this. But if you find a place with thorns sticking up out of the ground? Don’t go near it. It’s where we buried the radioactive material. It’s…a bad thing. A very bad thing.”

The image on the screen shifted again, to show the sun outside the window.

“See that light,” the man’s voice said, “I can’t go into that light again.”

The screen turned black.

THE END