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Chapter 10: Bureaucracy

Jones eventually escaped from that farmhouse, but the story of how is not in urgent need of telling.

The reason why so many people were fussing so much about finding and capturing Jones is because he was a very peculiar individual. He was normal in all respects but one. Though he tried, he could never master golfing, nor was he capable of playing the trumpet without considerable difficulty. His tastes in food were, to say the least, nonexistent. In school, he had been entirely undistinctive. In fact, with all forms of certainty except that of the truth of reality, Jones likely would never have been considered anything more than a mediocrity working in a hardware store to pay the rent and various other expenses.

But we do not know Jones as Jones the Hardware Store Customer Relations Representative. We know Jones as the Important Ambassador with a Shadowy Job Somewhere in the Government, who Recently Became Disillusioned With It. What brought about this change?

It all comes down, as so many things do, to bureaucracy.

In 1983 the majority of democratic institutions in the world simultaneously collapsed. The year before, a very peculiar sort of door had opened in numerous locations around the world. Out of this door, as you very well know, there came people who spoke all of our languages, but with extreme difficulty and with the sort of expression that makes one think that they would rather not be doing so. These people were from the Towards the Known, a universe where time runs backwards. At first, these Bridges as they were called were hidden from the public, and secret testing by the lucky governments that happened to be in possession of one quickly made the rounds of what exactly the TTK could do for us. The answer? Quite a bit.

As has already been explained, these gates could be used to predict the future with a limited degree of reliability. Consumer goods, natural resources, and livestock that sprang out of rubbish heaps in the TTK were all abhorred by those living there (see: Entism). We were more than glad to take these off their hands. But more valuable than these was all of the technology that the TTK had at its disposal. Being capable of creating an interdimensional portal, they also had a number of other incredibly useful products that they were unable to forget without considerable studying.

The word eventually got out about this magnificent new resource that was at the disposal of humanity, but not as an exposé. Little to the knowledge of the United States, etc., there had appeared another portal in the small village of Glentui in southeastern New Zealand. Even more surprisingly, at that very place and time a terrorist organization, The Inconveniently Philosophic, was fleeing from the United States and was in hiding. They immediately caught wind of a tunnel to another dimension and would have nothing of it. Therefore they seized control of the Bridge and (unhampered by due bureaucratic procedure), immediately procured the most fantastical of weapons and tools. With these, they prevented the federal government of New Zealand from taking control of the Bridge. The federal government of New Zealand itself didn’t want some hotshot country with lots of power finding out they had a portal because that country would probably want it. And so the fiasco was kept hidden. But it didn’t need to be kept hidden for long. While the United States was just starting to have a boring philosophical discussion with George, an ambassador, about the religion of the TTK, arrogantly itemizing all of the resources they now had at their disposal, The Inconveniently Philosophic were already able to put their plan into action. They put on their invisibility devices, equipped themselves with jetpacks and laser guns, and simultaneously executed the leader of every major nation on Earth and took control of every Bridge in existence (or so they thought). They then procured the combined nuclear arsenal of the earth and shot the nukes through the portals.

However, something strange happened. As soon as the nukes went through the portals, their internal clocks reversed, and their jets went in reverse mode, shooting them back into the regular world, where they destroyed every known Bridge in existence, along with every member of The Inconveniently Philosophic, along with the majority of life as we knew it on Earth.

At this time, Jones was not particularly interested in politics.

However, then something very strange happened. From another, previously unknown Bridge, hidden in rural Siberia, there emerged a number of men and women who looked very much like ordinary men and women but would occasionally walk backwards, and would speak with extreme difficulty and with the sort of expression that makes one think that they would rather not be doing so. They were from the leading Entist church in the TTK, and were very ticked off that we tried to annihilate them. You see, a nuclear bomb in the TTK actually creates entire cities and thousands of humans with memories, complex thoughts and emotions, and altogether increases the complexity of their world substantially. Everyone there was accordingly very glad that the plan of The Inconveniently Philosophic had malfunctioned. However, they were not keen on having as trade partners a nuclear wasteland with no consumer product demand. And so, they sent some people to clean things up.

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An electric nervous energy saturated the air of the fungus gardens. Ants paced to and fro, almost aimlessly, scanning and rescanning the fungus for any new infections of Escovopsis. So far, the parasitic microfungus was only discovered in one region, where Gabby and several other ants had collapsed. The area was now religiously avoided by all but the ants on damage control duty, who circled the yellow-brown patch and deployed pesticidal compounds from their metapleural glands in an attempt to stop the parasite from infecting more of our fungus. None of them were attempting to cut out the infected area.

I was worried sick—when Gabby had stopped moving, stopped responding, stopped doing anything, I thought, in her old age, she had lapsed into a nap. However, naps usually only lasted a few minutes at a time, and it had been an hour since Gabby had last been reported to move.

“Jenna!” Climbing up onto the fungal mass, Anna and Ada called out to me. “Are you alright? We heard there was an Escovopsis outbreak!”

“It’s not just any Escovopsis outbreak. There’s something off about this one. It’s not only killing the fungus, it’s hurting us too.”

“What? How?” demanded Ada. “Was anybody injured?”

“Gabby and a few of the other ants that were trying to weed out the infection collapsed. Most of them just turned out to be paralyzed—they were up and moving after they were moved away from the Escovopsis. But Gabby…I think she might be dead.” A cold emptiness seemed to open up inside my thorax upon admitting my greatest fear.

“Don’t lose hope Jenna! You don’t know for sure until it’s been a few days!” Ada cried. But I knew Gabby was dead—I could feel it. Stil, Ada was attempting to console me, so I just nodded my head in response.

“And if the worst comes to pass, we’ll bring her to the graveyard together,” Anna added, resting her antennae reassuringly atop my head.

Just then, a series of vibrations shook the ground beneath us. Someone was calling a meeting. Anna, Ada, and I quickly made our way to the source of the stridulations, where multiple ants were gathering. The ant who had sent out the schedule seemed familiar.

“You’re the crazy ant,” I realized. “What did you call us over for?’

“You better not be wasting our time with more of your fantasies about speaking to Pseudonocardia,” warned another ant.

She seemed to falter in the face of her bristling audience.

“Uh, hi, I’m Ginny. I know you won’t believe me, but...the Pseudonocardia, they can explain the situation! Mine have told me how the Escovopsis fungi have been releasing different chemicals to kill them, and paralyze us, which is what happened earlier today when we tried weeding out the parasitic fungus!”

“Preposterous. Pseudonocardia kills Escovopsis, not the other way around. Didn’t anyone teach this to you?”

“But the Escovopsis are fighting back. You can even ask your own Pseudonocardia, and I’m sure they’ll say the same thing. The more Escovopsis there is, the more these chemicals will be produced, so we need to weed out the fungus before it’s too late.”

Did she really just summon all of us to her to continue spinning her story? “Enough!” I shouted. “This is a serious situation, and one of my friends nearly died because of the infection. Your tall tales about talking to Pseudonocardia is ill-timed and—”

“Jenna, everyone,” Anna suddenly interjected, “I think...she might be right.”

“Huh?”

“If you stop, and listen real closely, you can hear them just a little. There are millions of them, and you can’t pick apart the individual voices, but...when they’re all saying the same thing…”

The crowd settled into silence. I looked at Anna incredulously. She was a nice girl—it was possible she had lied to make Ginny feel better.

“Anna, you don’t need to—” I began, when Ada cut me off.

“By the queen! I swear my Pseudonocardia just spoke to me.”

Now I began to doubt myself. Was it really possible that the tiny, little creatures sitting on my cuticle could actually communicate? I listened intently.

Slowly but surely, I began to hear a very faint buzzing. Anna was right. It was a crowd of tiny little voices, and it was barely possible to hear any actual words.

“Hey, Pseudonocardia, if you guys can talk, can you guys tell me what the bacteria did to Gabby?” I whispered.

I detected a faint increase in the volume of the buzz. Then, I heard the first words that were spoken loud enough for me to pick them up.

“Confuse...disorient...paralyze...kill...."

Those were the effects of the chemicals being produced by Escovopsis. I could hardly believe that my Pseudonocardia were talking to me. I had always thought of them as microscopic, mindless creatures which happened to be useful for us due to its antibiotic properties.

Slowly, but surely, the gathered ants all began to pick up snippets of words.

“Um, if all of you understand now, please help remove the fungal parasite. We can get rid of it safely as long as no individual stays near the Escovopsis for too long. If you’re feeling a bit dizzy, make sure to take a break!”

The ants, having seen that Ginny was, in fact, telling the truth, dutifully restarted the weeding process. I reluctantly approached Ginny.

“Er, sorry about getting angry at you and all. I was ignorant. I should’ve trusted you,” I apologized.

Ginny shook her head. “All that matters is that you understand now. Uh...let’s go help out with the weeding together?” Ginny ended her sentence as a question, seeming unsure about her proposal.

“Sure thing!” I replied, and eagerly, we began to rid the gardens of the Escovopsis infection, one chunk at a time.