Black Skull 8
< << > …
66.08.09 04:20
From: The Board
To: You
Dear valued BLOOM employee,
Hey friends,
Today's wild update comes from 642.817 who works in our wasp department.
The reason the jewel wasp is my absolute favourite is the way it reproduces. It lives in hot tropical and subtropical climates where there are always plenty of cockroaches. What the wasp does is it gets a cockroach and injects it with a special venom that doesn’t kill it, just paralyses its front legs so it can’t run away or fight back. Then the jewel wasp injects another special venom into the cockroach’s brain. This venom takes control of the cockroach’s mind. Can you believe it? The cockroach becomes like a zombie – in a docile, submissive state, totally under the jewel wasp’s control. Now the jewel wasp can safely lay her eggs inside the incapacitated cockroach’s belly. And the cockroach doesn’t even do anything to try to stop her. Once the eggs are laid, the jewel wasp leaves the cockroach in a safe place where it just sits there – waiting. After a little while, the eggs hatch – and guess what? They have their first meal right there!
It's our absolute privilege, one of the reasons we love what we do, when we get to share these sweet stories about Mother Nature and all her badassness.
Yours truly,
The Board.
< << > …
66.08.09 21:49
From: You
To: The Board
Hey you parasitic wasp fuckers
Oh the sweet sweet irony. You love telling us stories about ways nature can fuck you up, all the while exploiting millions of humans for your own personal gain. The more I see of this company's territory, the more I see people struggling just to survive.
I thought the city was bad, with its homeless camps, refugee townships, and crumbling infrastructure. I remember catching the skytrain to hospital; hot, cramped, late-running trains covered in graffiti and smelling like piss. Everyone sullen and silent, quick to snarl if someone stood on their toes, cocooned in argumentative, augmented realities.
I'd be there too, staring into the middle distance, consuming some lecture or Masters symposium, ignoring everyone and everything around me until I could get back to my dark underground office with the bank of screens, the familiar hum of electronics and reassuring smell of disinfectant.
It's way different out hear. In a weird way it's a lot cleaner. Nature's a mess with no straight lines and too much colour, but I like sitting on the ground, sweeping the rubble of pinecones under my fingers. The sap smells pungent in the hot, dusty air. The air’s a lot thinner up at this altitude but I've gotten used to it now.
I could see all the way back, across the prairie to the city, glittering like a cluster of diamonds off to the south. Sunlight sparkled on 10,000 windows and it hurt to look directly at it. A movement to the left caught my eye. Further south, an amorphous blob of brown liquid compressed and dilated on the green grass.
It looked like a blob of brown mercury or a raindrop traversing a car window. A thin cloud of dust lifted behind it, and I watched for what felt like an hour as the blob continued pressing onwards, rolling northwards over the slight rises and falls of the steppes. I got the binoculars out of the truck and glassed the blob and guess what I saw.
Bison. Hundreds. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands pouring over the plain as the stream turned into a mighty river. They came on and on. The animals in the midst of the pack were a seething mass of eyes, noses and tongues. A collage of bison pieced together to make one many-headed beast, pressing ever onwards.
The forerunners, a line of young, strong, independent males pumped their legs like pistons. Mechanically their heads went up and down. The very leader, a huge-headed monster with a purple tongue foamed furiously from the mouth. Flecks of foam flicked off his beard tip and went under his pummelling hooves.
Then one hoof went over the edge and the torrent bore him out into the clear. I watched them all, every last single one of them stampede over the edge of a cliff to their deaths. A pile of screaming buffalo at the base looked like a steaming heap of dogshit and it made me feel sick to my stomach.
Employee 531.448
