Antuna's Story

By Terry Birdgenaw

What reviewers say about Antuna's Story: absolutely riveting, adventureful, appealing, astounding, beautiful, blew-me-away

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cyborg Insect Books
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781778151613

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Terry Birdgenaw

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author’s prior written permission, except with brief quotations within critical articles and reviews permitted by copyright law.

While reading this book, you will come to know historical arthropod fictional figures whose names, words, or actions may resemble people here on Earth, either from the present or past. The resemblance is only implied for humoristic purposes and is not meant to reflect literal, thematic, or chronologic historical accuracy, as the novel epitomizes political satire or parody. Except for public or famous historical figures whose statements appeared in the public domain, any resemblance of the insect and insectoid characters to persons living or dead is coincidental. The views and opinions expressed by these rhyming insects, or the insectoid historian narrator, are their own and should not be attributed to the author.

ISBN: 978-1-7781516-0-6 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-7781516-1-3 (ebook)

Legal deposit, Library and Archives Canada, May 2022

This book is dedicated to the victims of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian aggressors, and casualties in all wars throughout human history.

MAPS AND CHARTS

1.jpg

MAP OF POO-PONIC’S FIRST COLONY

Character chart.jpg

CHARACTER HIVE FOR ANTUNA’S STORY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Opening Podcast [Interview]

Chapter 1: Where Are We?

Chapter 2: Can’t We Work Together?

Chapter 3: Banishments Begin

Chapter 4: Friendship Lost

Chapter 5: Bountiful Brains Beget Brawn

Chapter 6: Not All Is Lost

Closing Podcast [Interview]

Appendices

Acknowledgments

About The Author

About The Series

PROLOGUE

Yucatan Peninsula, Earth, late Cretaceous period (~65 million years B.C.)

THE LONG GRASS swayed in the gentle breeze, casting a shimmering picket fence-like silhouette that dappled the bright sunlight from the parched ground. A small ant appeared to struggle very little while carrying a deceased wasp on her back across the sward-covered plain. The solar light piercing through the wasp’s translucent wings intensified the hues of the ant’s caramel-colored cranium, thorax, and shiny, licorice-black abdomen. The wasp’s glassy sails magnified the candy apple-red flecks splattered across the ant’s thorax, giving her a distinctive glow.

Out of nowhere, a threatening termite challenged her for the quarry, and six of the ant’s comrades appeared to encourage its retreat. A spider witnessed the encounter on overhanging arid sagebrush, but since he had recently devoured an enormous meal, his interest waned, and he returned to weaving his spiraling web. Further overhead, two honeybees flew by, buzzing to each other on their good fortune that they were not the objects of the pall-bearing ant. While fixated on the departed wasp, the bees needed to veer their course to avoid a flying swarm of houseflies headed south, following the pungent aroma of a decaying mouse carcass calling them to breakfast. Due west, a possi of wood-boring beetles gnawed through a broken but live sequoia limb, tasting the sweet sap as ample sawdust littered the meadow floor. As the litter rained down, roaches rustling in a bed of dried leaves below indulged in the free buffet falling upon them and bouncing off their slippery shells. The ant vibrated and stumbled when an earthworm surfaced from an underground expedition next to her. Unfazed by the tremor, the ant continued along her way.

In the surrounding hectares, countless other scenes like this mirrored the ant’s journey in the complex yet unsophisticated intertwining of insect life. But a few hexutes before the ant arrived at her nest, as the bees neared their hive and the flies only moments before had reached their scavenged feast, it happened. A powerful force ripped rhododendrons and fledgling apple trees from their loamy moorings. Coconuts and green cones were heaved like metal shards drawn to a powerful magnet. The gravitational energy pulled honey-laden beehives as a vacuum cleaner sucks dust bunnies into its bagged belly. Termite-filled deadwood was tossed like flotsam sailing towards a broken shore on hurricane-lashed waves. With a deafening boom, the turbulence gobbled up insects, grasses, plants, and soil for miles around, like a tornado drawing shoddily constructed dwellings towards the heavens. Then, as fast as it began, it was over.

Without understanding their fate, a group of Earth insects was displaced from their comfortable habitat to a new reality on a planet they never knew existed. They did not choose to migrate to an unknown world—this life-changing event was thrust upon them. The story of the small wasp-laden ant, Antuna, is only known because she barely survived the wormhole passage. Her descendants kept a pheromonal history of the account on Earth and what followed. The insects later recorded the story with chemical structures for their pheromonics, written either on clay tablets or papyrus. Below is the tale of Antuna’s arrival and survival, what she remembered, and what her new friends told her. The account taught us a lot about the insects’ ancient history on their new planet—their struggles, growing pains, accomplishments, and how circumstances realized or squashed their dreams.

OPENING PODCAST [INTERVIEW]