The Coming
It was a young planet, barely 350 million years old. The atmosphere, high in Carbon Dioxide, was weak, harsh, offering little protection from a young sun, white with heat as it blossomed. Giant storms swirled, lacing the sky, thunder claps shaking the rocks into slides of debris. Sheets of lightening, linked earth to sky in pyrotechnic displays of electric light.
On the surface, frequent volcanoes belched and spewed their thick fog of yellow sulphur and molten rock high into the air, a continuous torrent, turning the rains that fell into acids that trickled back into fledgling oceans.
Into this thick maelstrom of activity a meteorite sped, not a massive piece of planet shattering junk, like many of those formed in the cataclysmic creation of this new solar system, but one of the smaller and older rocks formed by the death throes of another, older, world.
Briefly it glowed in the friction, until many thousands of metres above the surface it split and from its hollow shell hundreds of cocoons the size of a child's fist emerged. The cocoons continued their uncontrolled descent spreading as they were caught in the gales.
Many landed in water, drowning their small occupants as they were crushed in ocean depths. Others struck prommetry's of rock, shattering instantly, destroying their precious cargo of fledgling life before they could seek shelter. Yet out of the carnage, one struck soft earth, burying itself a metre below the surface before splitting open.
Perhaps a day later, from out of the wreckage a young queen, mother to countless millions of generations to come, crawled. Blind and with limbs designed for running over surface, she began to dig deeper, dragging the remains of the cocoon behind her, anxious to find more protection for her own precious cargo from the rigours of the surface.
Many hours later she found her spot, nestled under a shelf of rock. The earth was warm and damp, yet it had filtered away much of the impurities in the water. Here, with infinite care, she formed a cavern, carefully laying spores over its surface. Those spores would feed and protect the millions who would follow her.
Satisfied that her labours would bear fruit, the queen settled to yet another task, the laying of seven eggs.
It was her final act. Her sacrifice.
Exhausted, she settled beside her eggs and died, a short life of eight days on a world without time after thousands of years of gestating in a cocoon travelling in timeless space. The end of a race, millenniums of years old and the beginning of another that might grow and flourish, carrying the genetic memories of what had come before.
That first two of the new generation emerged from their nest many days later. They also had their duties encoded into their genetic make-up, driving them in their goal. They began to tend the growing forest of fungus, gently teasing away the dead to give more room for the living. They chewed the dead husk of the queen in their small mandibles, mixing it with the detritus of fungus, creating compost to feed back into their small farm.
From the living plants they took a little sap to feed themselves. From their own bodies they span a fine silk with which they fashioned silken bags light and strong, to contain more sap when harvesting began.
The air in their cave was better now. The fungus, locked in its own constant battle against hostile elements, was producing live preserving nitrogen and oxygen as by-products of survival, unconsciously aiding those solitary workers that ceaselessly tended them.
Two more eggs hatched, adding to the burdens of the workers. Theses two newcomers task in this new society was different. They would be larger, stronger. But new born they were helpless, unable to lift their grotesquely large heads or even raise the strength to stand on powerfully broad legs. Until they could, they were fed by the two tireless farmers, taking on the role of nurse, carrying their sacks of sap and returning to the farm, sacks depleted and refilled with bodily waste, more compost.
Once strong enough the two new workers launched upon their allotted task; they began to carve into the walls, ceilings and floors of the cave, creating new caverns and interlinking tunnels. The walls of these excavations were lined as they worked. A mixture of stone and saliva coated them, making them stronger and waterproof.
At first their work appeared uncoordinated, mindless, each working in their own preferred direction until the fifth and sixth eggs hatched.
From the first of these came a smaller creature, it automatically took the task of feeding the two industrious miners, carefully selecting sacks of unadulterated saps, blending them with the care of the finest whisky maker to provide exactly the right vintage for their needs. Nurse and master chef.
The sixth was a male. No larger than the farmers, he would be Her consort, a king in name only. In future generations he would need the wings he was born with; to compete with others of his sex and nature in an aerial battle to the death for Her affections. Here, without competition, they were a nuisance, so they were shed, dragged from his body by the nurse to be recycled.
Upon his six legs, the King performed his first task. He examined the scrapings of the two miners, brushing the walls with antennae. Those walls were now offering a faint luminance from lichen finding a home, bringing a ghostly light that lit nothing to a dark world. Satisfied the monarch gave the first command to be received in this otherwise monastic order, a mixture of clicks and dance macabre, the bodies of the miners his floor.
Orders given, the miners returned to work, their goal more focussed, driving a new tunnel horizontally out from their workings. From this tunnel they prepared a new cavern with infinite care. The walls were lined as before, but the floor was left bare a scalloped dais raised in the centre; the royal bed chamber, a place of comfort where She would spend the rest of her life.
It was to this chamber that the King guided his maiden, when she emerged and performed his second and last task, the mating. He was too exhausted to object when she crushed his body under her huge girth.
As his body was dragged from the chamber, She turned her thoughts to her own duty, the production of the first eggs. There was to be no break in the continuity of the line now: Workers must be produced to replace the fast ageing first generation. New types produced to perform specific functions. A replacement Queen and consorts to replace herself when her time came, even to extend the empire.
Thus continued the colony, for a thousand generations, slowly growing, enlarging its underground caverns to house an increasing population.
