Ladybird Chapter 2, Scene 3

Libel was rather astonished by all of this. The future was so different. So wild and spicy! She could have never fathomed how things would turn out. But here was Nellidae, living proof of it all! Of course, she could still be a lying alien invader from a technologically advanced race, but Libel was a trusting person. She had decided to trust Nellidae. For a moment, she looked at her hand, where she’d touched the small steel hole in the girl’s head. She’d felt so smooth, like an insect carapace. I wonder if her port would even work anymore, after all she’s changed.

But just how had Nellidae changed? Aside from growing wings, what was she like now that she wasn’t before, as a human?

Somebody had to determine these things, and Libel was ready for the task. She drew out a pen and pad from her backpack and began writing down questions to be answered. Her interest in the future had dwindled. This was the present and Nellidae needed her help even if she didn’t know it. Though, she was ashamed to admit, personal curiosity also played a part. She had never inspected a bug as big as Nellidae.

“You’re probably thinking of me as a bug again!” Nellidae shouted. “That pisses me off! I’m a person!”

“Sorry!” Libel said, shying away from Nellidae. “Wait, how did you know that?”

“I inferred! It’s not hard to do with you!”

“Well, I only think of you as a bug in purely scientific terms.”

“Yeah? Well, guess what else is thought of in purely scientific terms? ROBOTS.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’M NOT A ROBOT.”

“Did you just make a non-sequitur joke?”

“I have human rights!”

Nellidae settled against her seat, crossing his arms and turning her head. She stared outside, at the large corporate buildings they were passing by. Libel sighed and turned her attention to the televisions on the bus. There was literally nothing to see – the pictures were dark.

With a clicking sound, all the screens in the bus began to shift ever so slightly, rotating being the only movement they were capable of. Libel stared at them – why were they moving? They were adjusted well for the seats beforehand. She was about to point this out to Nellidae, but she wouldn’t have understood the significance of this.

Then, she looked aside – as they were passing by the digital ticker on the side of the Slump Corporation building in Central, the ticker went dark too. It flashed once, showing garbled letters, before going dark for good. The bus turned a corner, with the driver oblivious to these problems. Libel quickly made for the opposing side of the bus, in time to stare out the window at a hardware store just off the corner – all their TVs had gone dark too.

“Nellidae, I’m a little worried.” Libel said.

Having been staring out the window herself, Nellidae chuckled. “Why? I’d expect your primitive machines to break down numerous times, being so old and stuff.”

“No, but this really isn’t–”

Their bodies were wracked by a powerful, primal shuddering as they heard a voice suddenly address:

“PEOPLE OF AMERA–”

The voice paused. It seemed to stutter a bit.

“Err…PEOPLE OF ANCIENT AMERA.”

Nellidae went straight and stiff as a nail. Libel stood to face the screens inside the bus. At first she thought they were still blacked out, but she saw an outline of a person within the black. Long-haired, with a protruding chest and curved figure.

“I have hijacked all of your communications to deliver an important message!”

The outline and the voice suggested this was a woman. She was in shadows and seemed like she would remain that way. Libel squinted her eyes but could not make out much more than a grin on her face. Nellidae whispered something to herself and watched the screens, then turned her head outside and stared at the televisions on the street corners and stores. Her eyes had gone wide and her teeth were chattering.

“Hi!” The woman said. This seemed to be her important message. She waved her hand, moving it closer to the screen. “My name is Dr. Coulter! I have a list of demands I will make of you. If you do not comply within the hour, my C/S Gun Nightmare’s futuristic computing power will sledgehammer your digital infrastructure into oblivion. I will send your entire country into the dark ages, then begin leveling it city by city on my own until my demands are met. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Nellidae kicked the side of the bus. “Coulter! I can’t believe this! She can’t take a break from ruining everything, can’t she?”

Libel was partially distracted from Coulter’s address, by the hole Nellidae had almost kicked into the side of the bus.

Nellidae herself did not notice – she was too angry and focused on the screens.

Coulter’s hands clapped together, now mostly visible coming out of the shadows. “Your government will formally agree to collect all Verdite crystals on this planet and deliver them exclusively to me. This agreement must come within the hour. Then, your government will have 72 hours to collect all the Verdite and bring it to a location I will specify. You are not to attempt to study the verdite nor handle it in any way except to collect and deliver it to me.”

“Umm, Nellidae, you–”

Nellidae grabbed hold of her own hair in frustration, interrupting Libel. “That Coulter, this is just amazing! I have to find her and get her to take us back! Before she ruins the world as you know it!”

“Me?”

“I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT!”

“I take it you know this person, and you do not get along.”

Nellidae frowned. “Gee, what gave you that idea? Coulter and I are best buddies. We do each other’s hair while she points a gun at me.“

* * *

Outside the bus, the world was in chaos.

People gathered in front of stores, beneath news tickers, in the middle of the street. They stared at screens large and small, including the massive screen at the Century Tower communications building near which Nellidae’s bus had been stopped.

Across from them, a woman explained to her child that the world was over and there was no God. A man ran naked down another street, waving his pants in the air and shouting that they were all going to die. In a nearby taxi, an older gentlemen produced a revolver and contemplated playing Russian Roulette. One last shot for the good old boys, time to join the country club in the sky, he thought. First shot – he was still alive.

Seeing all this, the lady on the screen became quite alarmed herself.

“Excuse me.”

Coulter’s silhouette tapped her screen, causing slight ripples over the image on the downtown televison screens. Below her, the streaking man stood in place. The mother told her child to look up at their new Goddess-Empress. The old man in the car paused before the second shot. A platypus strode across the street and squeezed into a sewer drain.

Chaos held for a moment, giving way to silence.

“Please do not panic yet.” Coulter said, “I am not destroying your society until an hour. I may even consider giving extensions. I have a lot of time on my hands. So reserve your panic for later. I mean, it was a good panic. Good for a morass of worthless primates, anyway. But stow it for now so you won’t be too tired to panic later. Thanks!”

The silhouette waved jovially at the crowd.

People turned their heads, looking to each other for approval. They sighed, turned back to the streets and to their cars, proceeding with their menial nights as normal. The old man asked his driver to take him to the corner of Diamond and Blanks so that he might buy some fine wine. The mother told his son that Joseph Crost was love and Crostianity was the one true religion. The streaker put on his pants, scratched his hair, and walked away with his eyes cast down.

Astonished, Libel and Nellidae watched them all go as though nothing had happened.

“Your time is stupid.” Nellidae said.

“Very mature observation.” Libel replied.

Once the crowd had dispersed, Nellidae clenched her fists and closed her eyes. She tried pushing up her forehead, where tiny stubs of broken antennae occupied the holes previously there. Noting this, Libel wondered when they had grown back without her noticing.

Light crackling sounds issued from Nellidae. Her skin parted, hemolymph dribbled down anew. There was a shift; the black stubs pushed outward, began to curve. Layer after layer of a new antennae sprouted from the girl’s head. Curving in a vague “S”-shape, the antennae began to twitch almost immediately.

Covering her mouth at first, not knowing whether to be glad or disgusted, Libel then said “Nelly–”

“She’s around here.” Nellidae interrupted. She turned her head every which way, searching with her eyes as her antennae tasted the air and felt the sounds. Like many-jointed arms the antennae twisted, curled and lapped at the atmosphere. Nellidae scanned around the street level, turning around completely twice. She looked up at the glass faces of the buildings, reflecting the moon and the streetlights. Her antennae swung back and forth – Libel looked around herself, feeling quite exposed with the two of them being on the street like that. She did not even know what to look for, or why Nellidae was behaving this way now.

Libel put a hand on Nellidae’s shoulder, trying to catch her attention. “Nellidae, if there was anyone around who wasn’t holding back the urge to collapse in a fetal position, they would be crying things like ‘alien’ and ‘monster’ right now.”

Nellidae’s antennae suddenly straightened out.

“FOUND HER!”

The antennae turned, bending it shapes like tiny arrows, pointing towards an office building a few blocks away, which could be seen rising above the others as one of the few truly massive buildings in this landscape of giants. This office building belonged to Gardensoft, makers of the Berry line of computers. Libel stared closely at where the antennae were pointing.

She spotted the odd shadow over the building’s face, where subtle light of the moon was blocked.

Libel gasped, wondering if Nellidae’s antennae could do anything else, such as spell rude words by curving around.

“You stay here!” Nellidae said, “When I knock Coulter off the building, you–”

Nellidae looked at Libel, with her orange-brown ponytail, glasses, sweatervest and light girlish figure. Libel smiled.

“–Do nothing.” Nellidae finished saying. “In fact, you could cower and panic with everyone else.”

“I can do that.” Libel said. “Question – are you running on heroic buggy instincts now? Is it like Beetleman’s Beetlesense?”

“I don’t know anything about that. Maybe.”

“Is that your answer to everything?”

“Maybe!”