The Black Bees

This is the final countdown. The Saurornithosaur scientists had prepared for years. Only ten minutes remain for the scanner wave to come to its final focus on the spinning knowledge cube. Nathaniel watches the monitor in rapt attention. “How is it you come to Vodufix at just the right time?” he is asked.

“I always seem to arrive at turning points in history. I’m just lucky I guess,” Nathaniel answers. The Saurornithosaurs were seekers of that greatest treasure of all – knowledge. They were traveling from planet to planet and scanning them using their latest hypercomputer technology, sending scanning pulses reflecting off every part of the planet inside and out, timed so as to collect in one point in space and time. A levitating cube in this spot records the information before being retrieved and stored. They had recently finished scanning the twin planet of Vodufix, Ivvifix, orbiting a mere two hundred thousand kilometers away. Both planets have intense tides due to their proximity, requiring months of preparation to time the scanning wave correctly. However, their ecology is very different. Ivvifix is wet and cloudy. Much of its surface is cloud forest or glaciers. Vodufix is largely brown grasslands. High oxygen levels mean periodic forest fires on a global scale. As the wall of fire spreads, plants rapidly regrow in its wake in time for the same wave to continue burning around the planet.

The process is complete. The Saurornithosaurs have merely to retrieve the cube. Four of them exit the shuttle parked one kilometer away. “Any equipment too close to the cube while it’s operating can interfere with its operation. Also, it can never be teleported. That would wipe its memory,” the scientist explains.

The four scientists pass by some short, lumpy towers that resemble termite mounds. Some sort of flying insects zip around them. Some of them start to land on the outside of their space suits. “They look like some sort of black bees. Fascinating. Well, we’ll know all about them down to the atomic scale once we retrieve the cube.” Suddenly, one of the scientists screams and stiffens up like a statue. The others rush to check on him, but he is nonresponsive. Then they see black bees crawling around the inside of his face plate. They chew on his face with their tearing mandibles, replacing what they eat with cells of black wax. Another scientist screams and then another. The fourth tries to run back to the ship, but only makes it halfway.

The others watch from the ship through their scanning scope as their comrades are rapidly converted into wax statues filled with bees. “We need to get the cube!”

“Maybe set up in a safer location next time,” Nathaniel suggests.

“No! There won’t be a next time. If we don’t get this knowledge back to Pengo, it will bankrupt the company,” the Saurornithosaur says.

Another explains. “We have a knowledge-based currency, but for the past couple decades we have started to run out of new facts not already known by nearly everyone. Our expedition to scan and store the total state of twelve nearby planets cost us our entire reserves. If we succeed, we keep the economy afloat for another half century. If we fail, it all collapses and we revert to cannibalism.”

“Each knowledge cube costs almost as much as a third of a planet. We need it back,” yet another Saurornithosaur says.

The other scientists start to suit up. “Wait, we need a plan first or you’ll never make it,” Nathaniel objects.

“There’s no time,” another scientist says. “Without being plugged into a power source, data stored in the cube deteriorates rapidly. We have only minutes to get to it.”

Nathaniel turns to his Stuffians and runs outdoors. They follow him back to his ship. “We need to get a better space suit. Invent new material if we have to.”

“There isn’t time,” Doctor Bill says.

“There will be,” Nathaniel says as he walks through the force field to his bed.

Several days later, once the new space suits are ready, Nathaniel’s time-traveling bed ship appears in orbit around the planet. Still invisible, it lands next to the Saurornithosaur shuttle just before the final countdown. “How is it you come to Vodufix at just the right time?”

“I always seem to arrive at turning points in history. I’m just lucky, I guess,” Nathaniel says.

When the process is complete, the first four scientists stroll toward the knowledge cube to retrieve it. Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill run ahead. Bees zip past them at first. Then they seem to take an interest in landing on them. Nathaniel successfully takes hold of the spinning, levitating cube with one hand and proceeds back to the shuttle. The bees cover him now, weighing him down. He repeatedly wipes them off his face plate.

“I can’t move!” complains Doctor Bill. Nathaniel frees him but then finds he has to free Haticat too.
More bees arrive. They begin covering them with wax. Nathaniel’s feet stick to the ground and he wrenches them free. “I can’t see!” Haticat screams. He and Fred are covered in wax from the waist down, holding them in place. Black bees coat their face plates with black wax faster than they can scrape it off. Only Nathaniel has the superspeed necessary to keep his vision clear.

“Oh! They’re inside!” Fred yells.

Nathaniel turns just in time to see the swarm of bees rip a long tear in the back of Fred’s spacesuit and pour in. Nathaniel runs. It was too late for the others. It was too late for the cube, which the bees knocked from his hand. He runs back to his bed as fast as he can. The following Saurornithosaurs have already been converted into hives. He runs past them. He rolls on the ground, hoping to knock off the bees before he enters the force field. It doesn’t work. He ends up zapping them all with his electricity power. This stuns them and Nathaniel rips off his spacesuit. He sees the bees on the ground begin twitching and standing up before he steps through.

OW! Just as he enters the safety of his ship, he is stung on the elbow. He electrocutes the bee so hard it pops like popcorn. The pain is beyond anything he has ever experienced. He collapses on the bed just in time for the convulsions to take over. After a minute, the pain subsides and paralysis sets in. He watches as hundreds of bees bounce off the force field while he lies in bed unable to move. Five minutes later, the poison stops his heart.

Several minutes after that, the earlier bed materializes right next to this one, force fields touching. This allows Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill to walk straight from their ship to this one in safety. “What were we trying to do?” Haticat asks.

“I’ll download the computer logs,” Doctor Bill announces.

Nathaniel looks over his dead body, eyes bloodshot and staring at the sky. “Whatever it was, it must’ve been important.”

“It looks like we were after something called the knowledge cube and we thought tougher space suits would protect us from the black bees, so we went back in time to before we just arrived now,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Apparently it didn’t work,” Haticat says.

Nathaniel nods. “Let’s hop backwards a bit so we can ask the inhabitants of the nearby shuttle what was going on while they were still alive.” Haticat returns the nod.

“How is it you come to Vodufix at just the right time?” the Saurornithosaur asks.

“I always seem to arrive at turning points in history. I’m just lucky, I guess,” Nathaniel answers.

When the process is completed, the first four scientists stroll towards the knowledge cube to retrieve it. “I finished my analysis. Here’s the exact path we each took.” Doctor Bill hands Nathaniel a tablet.

Nathaniel looks it over. “There are fewer hives on this side of the cube. If we were fast enough, we could get in and out before the bees notice us. I could do it.”

“I’m not sure. It only takes one sting to kill,” Doctor Bill says.

“Then I’ll have to be very fast and have eyes in the back of my head.” Nathaniel hands Doctor Bill the tablet back. “Keep scanning the area and warn me by radio whenever anything comes within five meters. Nathaniel runs out onto the surface of Vodufix. High-oxygen air fills lungs. Brown grass crunches under his feet. He runs around to the far side of the hill and then runs for the cube.

“Incoming bee on your two o’clock,” Doctor Bill reports.

“Um…” Nathaniel stops and tries to imagine a clock. Which direction to clocks move, again?

“Sixty degrees to your right,” Doctor Bill says.

Nathaniel ducks and swerves and then out runs the fast insect on the way up the hill. He finally gets to the cube, stops, and grabs it. Then the ground rolls up on him. An oval rug-like organism captures him and rolls up like a burrito, suffocating him and breaking his ribs.

Haticat and Fred run towards him. “You’ll never make it!” Doctor Bill warns.

As they approach the hill, a swarm of bees descends on them and converts them into hives while they are still standing. Haticat’s finger permanently holds the trigger on his laser pistol, sending a beam of coherent light across the landscape. The Saurornithosaurs succumb next. “We have to get the cube!” the others say.

“No you don’t; it’s certain death,” Doctor Bill warns.

“We have to try,” they reply. Doctor Bill watches in great apprehension, recording everything as the scientists die one by one. Without a host to support his life essence, he soon collapses into dormancy then the bees come for him too.

A few minutes later the tablet is safely teleported out of Doctor Bill’s wax hand. It materializes in Nathaniel’s hand as he leans back against his headboard. “What were we trying to do?” Haticat asks.

“I don’t know exactly, but it has to do with something called a knowledge cube,” Nathaniel says.

“What’s that?” Doctor Bill asks.

“Let’s hop backwards a bit so we can ask the inhabitants of the nearby shuttle what was going on while they were still alive,” Nathaniel suggests.

“How is it you come to Vodufix at just the right time?” the Saurornithosaur asks.

“I always seem to arrive at turning points in history. I’m just lucky, I guess,” Nathaniel answers.

When the process is completed, the first four scientists stroll towards the knowledge cube to retrieve it. “I finished my analysis. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time we had tried. Here are the paths we took.” Doctor Bill Hands Nathaniel the tablet.

“It looks like the eastern approach was the right one, but I should’ve run around to the west at the end to avoid the rug worm,” Nathaniel says.

Thus begins the tale of 197 iterations of trial and error as Nathaniel and his crew avoid carnivorous rug worms, venomous bark-skinned cats that smell like gasoline, and swarms of hypervenomous black bees. They try sending others ahead to draw the attention of the bees. They try arriving earlier. They try convincing the scientists to choose a different spot. They carefully calculate best possible paths. They learn that bees never travel more than 112 meters from a hive and that hives are abandoned after two minutes. One path tried involves waiting in place for several seconds surrounded by bees just out of range until one of the nearby hives empties. Every time they fail, their younger selves first arrive on the planet to learn from their mistakes, hop backwards a bit, materializing on top of and knocking their older selves out of the timestream, and trying again.

Eventually, Haticat realizes that if so many versions of him failed, the game might not be winnable. He tries to convince Nathaniel to give up, but Nathaniel convinces him that even if they fail, the data gleaned will be of use for the next run. “We either live as heroes or die as heroes, but we will not live as cowards.”

Finally, Nathaniel successfully returns the cube to the shuttle. He races at top speed, gasping for breath as millions of bees chase him. “Shut the door!” he calls into the radio.

“You’re too far away,” a Saurornithosaur replies.

“Shut the door now!” Nathaniel yells. The Dinosaur pulls a switch and the shuttle door descends. Nathaniel runs faster than he ever has, pushing himself to the limit. He throws the cube under the still-descending door. Then he slides underneath after it in the nick of time. The shuttle shakes as the bees cover it. It struggles to take off. Finally it rises ever faster into the air, but the bees hold on. They cling to each other to form a solid blanket of doom. By working together, they multiply their strength to take hold of the hull and start to tear it open.

“We’ve got a breach! We’ll never make it back to the mothership before we run out of air!” a scientist yells.

“This ship won’t ever make it back at all,” another Nathaniel says, standing on a king-size bed that has just materialized behind them. Nathaniel turns to look at the new Nathaniel behind him who continues talking. “You three grab the cube and get on board. You four get this shuttle into space as fast as you can. You…” He then looks at himself. “Sleep.” Not sure what is going on, everyone follows orders.

Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill climb onto the bed and it promptly vanishes, returning to the point in time it left several years in the future to pick up the orbiting pillows, cloth sheds, and air pocket it left behind. “What is going on?” Haticat asks.

Nathaniel explains. “The bees tear the shuttle into pieces once it exits the atmosphere. The cube is lost. Everyone inside is stung before the bees can die. At the last minute I use the emergency ejection system to escape, surviving the vacuum of space by putting myself into suspended animation. I needed the Saurornithosaurs to not give up and keep going faster so that I would reach escape velocity and not return to Vodufix and burn up in the atmosphere. After several years in a coma, I was discovered by some Hammer-Faces and revived. I then returned to Vodufix to get my spaceship and travel back in time to rescue you – and the cube.”

“Wow,” Haticat says.

“And now we can deliver it to the Saurornithosaur mothership and save the economy,” Nathaniel declares.

“If we didn’t have a time machine, what might’ve happened?” Doctor Bill asks.

“Cannibalism, plague, and a civil war that drags in other countries and spreads across the galaxy,” Nathaniel says. “I’ve seen it.”

“Well, let’s get the cube where it belongs and keep that from happening,” Haticat says, holding it up and admiring its little lights and complex grooves.

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