Colliding Worlds: An anthology of Hive Stories

By Blaze Ward and Leah R Cutter

The initial Hive stories written by Blaze Ward (Myrmidons, Moonshot, and Menelaus) introduced the world to an ant hive who was not only intelligent, but who could dream and actually see the future.

 

Then Leah R Cutter took the idea of Hive and her daughters, and cast them several thousand years into the future, until each individual in the Hive is larger and more evolved. She also wrote three stories about these future Ahnht.

 

For the first time, all these stories are collected together into a single "shared world" anthology. The beginnings of Hive, as well as her future daughter Hives and Ahnhts. Truly a special edition, for those who enjoy a more literary take on their science fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Feb 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781644702543

Blaze Ward

Blaze Ward writes science fiction in the Alexandria Station universe (Jessica Keller, The Science Officer,  The Story Road, etc.) as well as several other science fiction universes, such as Star Dragon, the Dominion, and more. He also writes odd bits of high fantasy with swords and orcs. In addition, he is the Editor and Publisher of Boundary Shock Quarterly Magazine. You can find out more at his website www.blazeward.com, as well as Facebook, Goodreads, and other places. Blaze's works are available as ebooks, paper, and audio, and can be found at a variety of online vendors. His newsletter comes out regularly, and you can also follow his blog on his website. He really enjoys interacting with fans, and looks forward to any and all questions—even ones about his books!

Book preview

Colliding Worlds

Colliding Worlds

An Anthology of Hive Stories

Blaze Ward

Leah R Cutter

Knotted Road Press

Contents

A Technically True Story

Myrmidons

Blaze Ward

Moonshot

Blaze Ward

Menelaus

Blaze Ward

The Great Trail

Leah R Cutter

Ahnht Army

Leah R Cutter

Dreams of Alien Waves

Leah R Cutter

About Blaze Ward

About Leah R Cutter

About Knotted Road Press

A Technically True Story

The Best Kind of True

It was the weirdest damned thing.

At the time I met her again, my fiancé and future wife was living up on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Old 1915 Craftsman that had been completely renovated by some flippers, possibly as their own home, before having to sell in the aftermath of the housing crisis and such in 2011.

I was living in Renton (suburbs south east of Seattle) at the time, but had purchased the land out near Ravensdale where I would eventually build the house we now share.

At that point, I frequently spent the weekend at her house in the city, since I worked in downtown. (One hell of a long commute that got twice as long in 2015.) One Sunday morning, I walked downstairs to get ready as we were going to walk down the hill to have breakfast at one of our favorite joints. (Sadly, no longer there, but great breakfasts.)

Except that when I walked into the little entry foyer, just inside the front door, there was a conga line of ants. They had come in under the door, WALKED RIGHT BY a 10 pound bag of bird seed, and then right to where my shoes were kinda in the middle of the floor. (I don’t remember now why they weren’t back against the dry sink like normal, but they were in the middle of the entry.)

I picked them up and carried them back to the dining room to sit down and put them on, only to find that they were covered with ants. Just like in the first of the Hive stories. So I went on a killing spree, killing the ones on my feet, on my legs, on the floor deep inside the house.

Then I moved around front with the ant spray and went to town. Old Craftsman. Lots of hollow spaces where insects could get, so she had an ongoing problem with several species of ants in the warm months.

I brought the chemical warfare.

I won, because I was willing to become a mass murderer of ants that day. Sprayed down everything, including the conga lines out onto the porch and down to where they vanished into the yard and under a feral rose bush out front.

Then I had to get cleaned up, so we were an hour later getting to breakfast. In real life, there was no accident at the restaurant that might have hurt anyone. You’d have to get through parked cars on Cap Hill (very little parking, so constantly filled up) in order to run into the place, but we got to talking about how generally weird it had been that they’d ignored the seed to swarm my shoes.

To this day, I have no clue why. Or what kind of chemical signature I had brought in that made them act that way.

But I’m a writer. A science fiction writer, at that. It got me to wondering. And dreaming.

So I looked at it from the standpoint of the hive itself, and wondered what might cause that sort of behavior.

The result was the story Myrmidons, where I got to explore a truly alien mindset. A precognitive ant nest looking at potential catastrophe that needed to be averted. That’s the interesting part of precognition. Is there such a thing as free will if the future is set?

I find it more fun where the precog can see a handful of options, and must choose among them. Usually all bad choices and you must try to find least-bad.

Thus, Myrmidons. Sacrifice. And exploration to create a daughter Hive that inherits the mutation of precognition that makes Hive a new thing in the universe.

I had fun with that story. So much so that I wrote a second one, called Moonshot, where I got to contemplate Hive as a Bond Villain making its own rocket to reach into space, as a way to escape Earth, where Humanity would not be prepared to share the land with another intelligent species. (Cetaceans have the ocean. Corvids generally have the sky. We have the land.)

Finally, I wrote Menelaus, envisioning that day when Hive built itself a spaceship and moved out to the asteroid belt to escape. I mean, dream bigger, right?

Later, Fabulous Publisher Babe™ had an assignment to write a story for an anthology called No Humans Allowed. At the time she didn’t see herself writing SF, and wasn’t sure what to write. I suggested she could write a Hive story, somewhat flippantly, but she liked it for the same reasons I like Hive.

Alien mindset. Alien visions of the universe different.

The editor didn’t select her story, but Issue 009 of my own Boundary Shock Quarterly had the theme Alien Dreams, and she submitted that. I took it. Always enjoyed that story, because it takes the basic Hive concept and pushes it forward into a galactic exploration with a species that is of Earth, but alien.

Later, she wrote a second story for Issue 014: Space Marines. That was the Ahnt Army. Again, loads of fun, because so radically different from everything else everybody is writing.

One day, we looked up and realized that Knotted Road Press, Inc. (her publishing house—I just work here) was going to be publishing title number 400 soon. Then it became a question of what book should be that special one. (500 will come along in a couple of years at the rate she and I write.)

She wanted to write a third Ahnt story to go with the three Hive stories, and we would put it together as our first ever joint collection.

That’s the book you have in your hands, and I hope you enjoy it. I’m looking forward to more Hive stories and more Ahnt stories one of these days, because you can go so many places and have such fun.

Now, on with the show!

Myrmidons

Blaze Ward

Myrmidons

Hive dreamed.

The world, the vision, was larger than simple dirt and grass. All tomorrow’s roads stretched out before it, endless ribbons of bronze and chrome.

Some ended in fear. Others in winter. A few in the great sunlit distance of time itself.

Hive awoke troubled.

Before it, beyond the maze, an ending made of terrible, apparently-random chance, invisible to the workings of the simple creatures, had suddenly appeared. Hive could not deflect it, much, but perhaps enough.

The shadow was itself cast in shadow. But Hive saw the outlines in the middle distance. They were cast in concrete and steel, trench warfare and chemical munitions. What man/builder, the humans, mistook for progress. Hive had dreamed down that road and woke in tears, as only Hive could cry.

Hive composed itself before the tears could upset the harmonic of the Nest. Workers needed direction. Warriors needed purpose. Queens needed love. Thinkers needed dreams. Hive had dreamed.

Hive selected a Thinker, tasked her with advocacy. Hers to counter the case against future dreams. Hive selected a second Thinker, tasked her with prosecution. Hive put the case to both, went back to dreaming.

There was time before decisions needed to be cast into chemical communiqués for the Workers. It might be possible yet to deflect the river of time.

Hive returned from future dreams. Magnetic poles of opinion flowed back and forth between advocacy and prosecution, slow motion ripples of chemical tête-à-tête moving in semi-forgotten tides, responding to unseen celestial bodies.

Hive remembered the sea. Thinkers tasked with memory contained salinity, motion, destruction. Thinkers tasked with observation had mapped the celestial mechanics of the greater and lesser orbs. Hive had incorporated their theories of movement and ascended well above the Inner Sea that was not the barely-remembered Terrible Sea to escape the constant motion and occasional aquatic sublimation.

Hive was a grand-daughter of survivors.

Hive considered advocacy and prosecution. There were myriad long-term benefits to the dream. The pain, the sacrifice, would be exquisite. Hive would be without hands.

Short-term, stochastic probability could be trumped by black swans. Edge-probability dreams could be made manifest in windows too short to react meaningfully. Both advocacy and progress proposed contingencies and mitigations for the unthinkable as part of executing the greater dream.

Fulfillment