Page 48 of Butterfly Effects

“The collective.”

“What is the collective?”

Annalist sighed heavily. “Queens are rare. Too few survive the final instar. It seems less make it through the transition with every year that passes. At the current time, the collective is five queens, no more. It has not been this weak in centuries. You can overcome it with a well-placed strike. You can become the collective, and then you can abandon Johrlar, and our region will have no collective. If a new collective must arise, it will rise according to the old ways, naturally, without a predetermined queen to guide it, and we will be able to determine how we want our lives to be lived, not how we are to be ordered to live them.”

I paused, trying to order this in my mind. Finally, I said, “So you want me to go up against the central hive mind that controls your culture, destroy them, and leave you without anyone at the top of the food chain? Is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Annalist. “That is what we are asking of you.”

I stared at him for a moment, then finally reached for the salad. I didn’t want to sit and eat. I wanted to rush off and rescue Arthur so we could go back to Earth and resume never looking at or speaking to each other. It was a painful penance. It was the one I’d earned.

But at the same time. Annalist was right: I needed to keep my strength up if I was about to get into a psychic battle with a five-person hive mind. There was only one of me. That meant victory was going to be a narrow thing if it was possible at all, and I really did need to be ready for a fight.

I didn’t like the idea of traveling to another dimension to destabilize their government, but the Johrlac had shown that they could reach me on Earth without difficulty, and the collective had shown they were willing to do it. Worse, they’d touched Arthur. He wasn’t Artie, was never going to be Artie, but he was all I had left of Artie, and for that, I loved him. For that, I owed him all the protection and comfort I could possibly offer.

When Dr. Frankenstein’s creation woke up, he ran away and abandoned it to whatever existence it could manage without him. When my creation woke up, I didn’t do too much better. I ran, as fast as I could, from the stranger with my Artie’s memories. It was harder on Elsie and the others: for them, Arthur was a stranger with Artie’s face. I couldn’t see that part. For me, they looked totally different and always had. The mind was its own thing. But I understood one thing Dr. Frankenstein never did: I understood that running away didn’t absolve me of my responsibility. Arthur wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for me. Arthur wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for me.

I had to fix this, no matter how much I disliked what that involved. And if these people wanted to arrest me for crimes I couldn’t possibly have known I was committing, they started it. Whatever happened next was well and truly on their shoulders.

Annalist winced, putting a hand to his temples. Fortunately for me, that gave me the chance to set my salad—still untouched—aside before the wave he was reacting to could reach me.

I had been hit by Johrlac telepathy before. It had broken upon and overwhelmed me, leaving me stranded in the caverns of my own mind. This was something different. It slammed down, and I understood why they were all so afraid of the collective, why they were willing to gamble everything on a stranger from another dimension when it meant that there was a chance this overwhelming force would be removed.

It was the mental equivalent of having a weighted wool blanket dropped on my head while it was being carried to the dryer: hot, wet, and absolutely smothering. I gasped, struggling to breathe through the bulk of it. If I tried to stand up, I would fall; I was certain of that much. All I could do was sit frozen, the presence pressing down harder and harder, heavier and heavier, until I thought I would be crushed under its weight.

Be aware, boomed a voice, and I had just enough presence of mind remaining to wonder how overwhelming it would have been if I hadn’t been in a house with dampening fungus in the walls. Fetch and Carry weren’t here. What was this going to do to them?

Be aware, the voice repeated. A prisoner has escaped from our custody, a cuckoo who claims to have achieved the forbidden instar and ascended into queendom. She lies. She will lead your mind astray, denying you the ability to properly serve your hive. Her corruption, if it taints you, will make ascension impossible: your own chances to achieve collective will be unmade if you assist her. She is disorganized and untidy of thought. She does not know the proper addresses offered by a person of manners. She does not know how to speak without disrupting. You will know her by her uncivility of thought, and by her strange dress. She does not know our systems. If she is able to acquire a proper uniform, it will be incorrect for the position she is trying to embody: you will easily uncover her for the pretender she is. Do not attempt to apprehend. Do not make direct contact. She will be apprehended, she will be tried for her crimes, and she will be destroyed.

As quickly as it had come, the presence receded. I sat up straighter, reaching for my salad with shaking, unsteady hands. Annalist looked like he was on the verge of passing out completely.

“Well,” I said, with forced lightness. “I guess physical descriptions don’t make a lot of sense when you’re talking about a world where everyone looks basically the same. Does the collective realize they’ve just declared open season on their own people? Once you say ‘Oh she might be wearing the appropriate uniform, but she won’t be who you think she is,’ everyone becomes a potential target.”

“The collective is aware that we find ways of maintaining our individuality in the face of their authority,” said Annalist. “They were us once, before their apotheosis. They were happy as us, but they resented them. Now that they are them, they will make any effort they can to keep us from becoming them.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t … What?”

“To become the collective, you must reach the queen’s instar. To reach the queen’s instar, you must— Wait, I’m sorry. You are a cuckoo. Do you know the path to queendom?”

“I know how it was explained to me, but it was explained to me by another cuckoo,” I said. “Can you explain it as you understand it, and I’ll tell you if my understanding matches your own?”

I finally picked up the odd wooden fork, stirring it through the salad bowl before taking a bite.

This wasn’t the first time I’d eaten food from another dimension, and as with before, I found I didn’t have any way to describe the flavors filling my mouth. How do you describe an apple to someone who’s never tasted one? The greens were spicy and sweet at the same time, the chunked-up vegetables rich and savory, and the meat more like the fleshy parts of a lobster’s claw than anything else. It was like I was being given food for the first time after a lifetime of being asked to eat those hard little pellets that pet owners feed to their captive animals, and in addition to being delicious, it made me so angry I could barely focus my eyes.

This wasn’t my world, but it should have been. Whatever my ancestors did or didn’t do, I’d had no part in it, and no opportunity to decide where I ended up. Earth was my home now, always would be: it was where I kept my stuff, where I knew what types of tomato I liked best, and where I had my family. But my choices should have been different, and this salad, which spoke to my hunger as nothing else had ever done, should have been commonplace.

Annalist was watching me, waiting for me to swallow and come back to the conversation. I finished chewing, unwilling to rush even for the sake of what he had to offer me, and turned my attention back to him.

“You like it?” he asked, almost slyly.

“I need you to tell me how someone can become a queen.”

“Very well.” He inclined his head. “The first instar, the universal zero, comes for us all. We are born to it, innocent nymphs, and from there will proceed to one of two paths. Most will mature, crack the egg of their buried memories, and become productive members of society. In some, that egg will be absent or malformed, refusing to hatch. They will continue on as nymphs until something triggers them to enter their second instar, and then they will mature stronger than they might have been otherwise. Zero is all, first is most, second is those who are challenged to it. Those are the easy changes, the worker stages. Most can survive them.”

I made a noncommittal noise and took another bite of salad, watching him carefully.

“The third instar must be triggered from the outside, when another mature Johrlac puts pressure upon the mind of the one who seeks maturity. It leaves the individual stronger and more able to access their natural gifts. Some will begin to show flickers of potential at three that indicate what type of queen they would be. In the earliest days, only the queens were allowed to populate the hive.”