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  The day her grub pupated was the proudest of her life, but also filled her with melancholy. She worked with the other teachers and gingerly rolled each chrysalis out to the ledge. She spent her last day gently touching and remembering each and every one. Finally, she made her way to an active nest and lay on her back to pass away and give of herself to the new generation one last time.

  ~o0o~

  Digger flexed his carbon-fiber pincer and unsheathed his stinger. He felt strong and full of energy. He had a choice to make, whether to join the artisans, the architects, or the sappers. He doubted he had the patience and attention for detailed scrollwork and embellishments, which eliminated the first choice. He had the cleverness for designing and constructing roadways and buildings, but that held no special interest. Which left sappers. The brute strength and investigative work required to survey and locate potential nest sites seemed particularly appealing. He recalled the new territory he helped acquire in his previous incarnation as a flier and headed for the site.

  Along the way, he came across a digger crew constructing a new wing for a Masters Hall. The geodesic dome was set half into a mountainside with a view that looked out over half the city. The building was only half complete but already a tremendous work of art. He decided to give architecture a try and was put to work terracing anchor points along the base.

  He braced with all six legs and thrust his stinger half a pincer’s reach into the ground, then inserted one pincer into the hole and squeezed to cut a proper angle. A Master supervised the work but needed only to tap the desired outcome and Digger instinctually performed his work to exacting standards. He discovered that he much preferred solo tasks to those requiring teamwork, so when the foundation was finished, he gave his resignation and continued to the new nesting grounds.

  The newest cavern construction followed a parabolic arch in line with the richest coal seams as they worked up the mountain into bare rock. The new line came perilously close to the new border and that made Digger nervous. He received permission from the site Master and worked his way downhill. He followed the side of a dry riverbed, a direction no one else had yet investigated. Most diggers preferred to stay above the tree line in the hard rocks as it was much harder to excavated test holes in areas of thick soil. Digger felt drawn to an area he dimly remembered seeing as a flyer so chose the harder path.

  An ancient waterfall had carved a deep canyon between a series of rolling hills, but from the construction site no one saw anything but thick stands of trees. As Digger made his way along the raw cliff face, he cleared some underbrush and discovered some of the richest coal deposits since ancient times. The seam began nine hundred feet below ground, but the old waterfall gave easy access from the vertical side. He returned to the main work site and humbly approached the Master. The Master was so pleased he appointed digger as Supervisor of the new nest, with all resources redirected towards his find. He worked to the end of his days feeling fulfilled.

  ~o0o~

  Breeder had plenty of time to decide on a nesting location, but even this early in her gravidity felt the life inside her growing. Just as did her “siblings” Teacher and Digger, she remembered the new nesting territory from her days as a flyer. With all the excitement of her previous life, though, she decided to seek someplace quiet and well established. She flew in the opposite direction of the new territories towards some of the oldest nests near the border between the city and the hated Red enemy.

  With only a third of her previous body weight, she felt as if she floated rather than flew. Most of the nests were long abandoned since the coal mostly depleted. She spent days exploring established incubator chambers, hoping she could find a sufficient seam.

  She found a series of interconnecting chambers and tunnels stacked one atop the other and thought she detected an intact space of overlooked rock between the two. She flew back to the city to recruit a cadre of diggers and tapped directions to the location. When they arrived later in the week, the sappers immediately went to work. They found a missed offshoot of high-quality coal that would last many generations.

  Once they excavated the seam, there was little further work for diggers. Breeder dismissed them and flew once again to the city to recruit new teachers. With everything and everyone in place, she laid her egg sac. Breeder was ready to depart to the top of the highest mountain peak to join other breeders in the final metamorphosis of the Dhosu life cycle. The forefront of the Catastrophe hit and she was buried without hope of rescue.

  ~One Thousand Years Later~

  Scout continued his journey while riding his albino mopis for nearly three months. His multi-legged mount was capable of keeping a straight line up and over increasingly high mountain peaks, but Scout was not in a hurry and kept to a slow, methodical pace. The environment had changed dramatically from the constant sunshine, heat, and low humidity of the Pink Desert, so his genetically programmed adaptability kicked in. His skin lost the reflective, moisture enclosing scales, and his pigment changed from a pinkish hue to a mottled brownish-red.. As the average temperature dropped with elevation, he also developed a body-covering curly white fur.

  A day/night cycle returned the moment he passed through a crack in the invisible barrier, including a triplet of moons to light the night. His personality, memories, and worldview transmogrified, lightly overlaid with his original Imuqi memories but still retained wisps of Sephian. Scout’s goal was to continue searching for his human heritage, but he had no detailed plans. He inadvertently crossed an unmarked border in the middle of one afternoon, when a Dhosu flyer suddenly dropped from the sky and cut his magnificent mopis in half. Scout was knocked to the ground and could only watch as it disappeared North with the prize.

  He lost all of his supplies along with his mount but had no choice other than to follow on foot. Scout knew he was designed as the ultimate self-contained survivor so took the slight irritation in stride. As he traveled, Scout noticed more of the fliers hunted the area around him, but thankfully they did not seem to recognize him as edible prey. He followed a dry riverbed upstream as the easiest route North and eventually came to a collection of caves set into a sheer cliff side. He approached close enough to see the ledges and view the fliers as they dropped their catches.

  He could not make out details because of the distance, so decided to climb and investigate further. Oval-bodied creatures nearly as long as he was tall scurried along on six legs. They spat out a gelled liquid from a flexible snout which semi-liquefied the meat. They sucked up the slurry and returned to the darkness of the caves. He decided to take a look inside so made his way up the cliff. His eyes quickly adjusted when he pulled himself over the lip of the staging area, and he saw nearly one hundred grubs feeding on regurgitated pap and warm coal magma.

  Two of the oval creatures snuck up behind him, but he reacted just in time to avoid a dual stream of acid. He retreated and crawled back down to the riverbed, but the creatures lost interest once he left the nursery. Scout figured he now had enough information to search his internal heliobee database but did not look forward to the process. He spent the next two days building a secure rock igloo, fattened himself on local wildlife, and settled in to meditate. He dived deep into the memories.

  Scout’s Imuqi brain was designed to hold and catalog a nearly infinite amount of knowledge, but a last-minute decision to include human DNA meant he only could access chaotic bits at a time. The Imuqi heliobees were all destroyed during the catastrophe, so the data was recorded an unknown length of time in the past but in many that ways that were irrelevant. Despite the drawbacks, including severe disorientation to Scout’s psyche, the information often proved a useful tool if only as background knowledge.

  The process took less than an hour, but it was a full week before Scout could function at full mental capacity. He grasped at various highlights of his newfound knowledge and tried to make a linear collage. He was in the land of Dhos, an insect-like race with a complex cycle of physical metamorphosis. The duty-speci
fic juvenile phases were moderately intelligent but limited in interests according to their social function. The final adult phase was extremely intelligent, philosophical, and artistic. They gave direction to the entire culture and built a society that would be the envy of any race.

  Scout now understood and spoke the Dhos language, a system of antenna taps on or near the intended recipient to feel the vibrations. He felt he would be welcomed in any of the city’s Hall of Masters since he would not be of interest to the drone workers but would be a curiosity to the Masters. He continued North and made his way past a second, older series of nests until he finally crested into the city proper. He immediately realized something was seriously wrong.

  The once magnificent city, carved out of living rock, lay in ruins. Bridges had tumbled, arches and roofs caved in, and walls lay in piles. Strangely, there were countless inhabitants, which mostly milled about aimlessly or just sat at random leisure. Stranger still, he could not find any sign of a Master. He approached a digger, a form similar to a teacher but with a wicked set of pincers that surrounded a retractable stinger. Digger sat alongside the edge of a pitted road, doing absolutely nothing.

  Scouts tapped the question, “Can you tell me where to find the Hall of Masters?”

  Digger grew animated, tapped an assent, and eagerly walked down the road, frequently pausing to ensure Scout followed. They headed to an upward winding road and ended at a huge pile of rubble on an incredible overview.

  “This is the Hall of Masters?”

  “Yes, so I have been taught.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Where are the Masters?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When was the last time you saw a Master?”

  “I have never seen a Master. Are you a Master? You are not as Teacher described them, but you speak like a Master.”

  Scout grew frustrated, but there was little point in taking it out on Digger.

  “No, I am not. Can you take me to a teacher who has not yet been assigned to a nest?”

  “Certainly. Thank you for the task. Please, follow me!”

  ~o0o~

  The Memorial of Transition looked similar to what the heliobee information indicated and bustled with activity even though as much in ruins as the rest of the city. Digger approached a teacher at random, who was delighted to converse. Scout learned that no master had been seen in many generations. Procreation continued as always, so Teacher was not overly concerned. Digger architects and artists lived their lives with neither purpose nor achievement, but that was not a teacher’s concern. Dhos simply had not evolved to take an initiative. Teachers understood this, but it was not their concern, nor would they know what to do about it if it were.

  ~o0o~

  Scout wandered the city for several weeks but found no clue to explain the mystery. Breeders laid their egg sacs and flew to the top of the mountain as always, but no Master ever returned as tradition said they should. As a last resort, he decided to make the arduous climb to the top of the highest peak to see if an answer might lie there.

  As always when he engaged in extreme climbing, tiny cilia extruded from his palms and soles that provided a safe, if not always easy, journey. He followed the direction of the breeders as they flew on their one-way trip, but when he breached the lip of the huge tabletop Mesa, he became more confused than ever.

  He found the ground piled with countless generations of dead breeders while hundreds of live ones continuously walked around in connected pairs, asking the same question.

  “Have you seen a Green? Where are the Greens? Is there a Green nearby?”

  He followed the red-striped sub-species of Dhosu from the city and saw a bright blue striped variety that arrived one hundred twenty degrees the other side of the mesa. The Red and Blue breeders marched towards each other, and after mixing a few minutes, paired off with an opposite color and connected their bodies. Scout could not find a direct reference in his scattered memory, but it was fairly evident that the green variety had gone missing from the equation.

  ~o0o~

  Before he had left his native Imuq, Scout had risen to be the prominent leader among his people, and that characteristic prevented him from just walking away from Dhos and her decline. He mulled over the problem during the long descent from the Mesa. He assumed the third variety had flown from an equal distance and direction compared to the other two. There should, therefore, be a city, or at least the ruins of one, on the backside of the mountain. It would have been quicker and easier to descend on that side, but he wanted to recruit an army of diggers.

  Word spread among their community, and nearly all begged to come with him. The logistics of a million workers were beyond one person’s oversight so Scout limited the recruits to one thousand since they would be living off the land as they went. Getting out of the city proved the hardest part of the journey. Those in the lead needed to remove debris, and in some cases build temporary bridges, but once they exited the city proper they made steady headway.

  He knew they had reached the border between the Greens and the Reds by the picket line of fliers. There were no nests currently used on this side, nor had there been an enemy sighted in memory, but tradition dictated vigilance so generations ground on. The fliers needed only the slightest persuasion and were happy to hunt and help provide provisions. They were reluctant to cross the border at first, but Scout couched it in terms of advance intelligence gathering. The fliers, as well as the diggers, were thrilled to use their lives for a purpose.

  Scout could not find any sign of the city. The entire upper half of the mountain gave way during the Catastrophe to slide down and covered the entire civilization. The diggers found the mechanics of the slide interesting, but unlike Scout, the horror was outside of their world perspective. He continued having nightmares the rest of his life, and only hoped it had been a swift ending.

  Scout decided to search for a nesting compound outside the assumed city limits and following long streaks of overturned coal that tumbled down the mountain during the massive avalanches. At the bottom of the series of such streaks, he found a huge debris field of carbon-fiber body elements. He worked his way up the hill and set his diggers excavating. In only three days, they found a network of deep-set caves. Interestingly, a few of the deepest caverns had been hermetically sealed and still contained egg sacs and cocooned teachers.

  Scout examined a cocoon, which was more akin to a hardened jelly than woven silk, and tried to open it. The outer layer was hard and brittle, but beneath was pliable enough to leave an indent. He soaked a section with water, working on a hunch. Not only did it soften, but soon the whole covering began to disintegrate, leaving an intact and live teacher. A small dribble of acid ran out of the proboscis to pool on the floor and created a soft spot. Teacher began to twitch, spat out a big gob of jellified acid, and coughed, miraculously alive.

  It took several hours before Teacher was coherent, and even then she had little to say other than there was an earthquake followed by complete darkness. Scout assumed that her body responded to the diminishing oxygen levels and entered a state of suspended hibernation. More than half of the remaining teachers recovered when rehydrated, but more importantly, the egg sac became pliable and soon showed internal activity.

  Scout directed the diggers to continue searching, and out of the hundreds of nests, thirteen provided the optimum conditions for survival. Over twelve hundred grubs eventually hatched and gave hope for a restored species. The red fliers continued to provide food, at least until the green fliers transformed and had taken to the skies. Even then, without a Master to direct them, both sides simply manned their routes and glared at each other. Just as a safety measure, Scout had sent the diggers home before the fliers emerged from their chrysalis. Before they left, he had them build a charming village to help their so-called enemies along their way to recovery.

  To Scout’s delight, and in the fullness of time, new egg sa
cs settled into new nests and the full cycle was restored. Scout made his way to the mesa top before the Green breeders laid their egg sacs and followed. Within the first minutes of each Green’s arrival, they successfully courted and joined to a Blue and a Red.

  Scout was not sure whether the design was random or followed a biological imperative, but the center color of each triad seemed equally distributed. Overnight, the previous breeders on either end of each new singular triad shed their wings, lost their color stripe, and subsumed their individual consciousness into the collective.

  Each new Master contained the memories and wisdom of each phase in the life of each member, as well as retaining the different strengths of the three cultures. One by one, they came before Scout and honored him for his part in the salvation of their history. By colored sub-species, the mature Dhosu returned to their respective cities to begin the long, arduous process of restoration. Before they left they assured Scout that should he ever have a need, they were his to command. Unfortunately, any knowledge their race had of humans had been lost in the Catastrophe, which was all Scout really wanted.

  Touched by their offer, he felt honored to have had such an impact but it was time to leave. He turned his sights west to the sea and continued his quest.

  ~end~

  Chapter 6: Scout & The Vissou

  ~Part 1~

  Scarlet smiled at her wife Burgundy as she and her four spouses finished the last touches on a portable gold-extraction prototype. At least that was the emotional content of a series of colored lights along her biochromatic band. The extractor was only one-tenth the size of the standard model, and small enough to hold and operate in two tentacles, which left the other two free. It only processed half as much volume as the larger model, but that still gave a potential of a five hundred percent increase given the same resources.