Margarineflies

I wrote this short story for Burning Water magazine after randomly having the idea that fake butterflies should be called “margarineflies.”

It spiralled into a fantasy about mechanical bees (called “cees”) and the difficulties of living in a famous relative’s shadow.

Margarineflies

         The Arboretum was always busy in autumn. People came from all across the city to pick fruit, to visit their ancestors, or just to see the leaves. They were every colour of orange and yellow and pink. They were deep umbers and searing crimsons and gentle mauves. They shimmered in countless hues yet to be named. Every so often a slight breeze would shake the branches, dislodging a few more flecks of pigment.

         The leaves fluttered down onto hundreds of people who lounged under rainbow-hued branches. I’d assumed that everyone had left after the security perimeter had gone up this morning. But here they were, unconcerned. They felt safe. They were waiting to see what we would do to fix the problem. Or else they were just too wrapped up in their own picturesque lives to care about anything else.

         As I crossed the Arboretum’s Great Lawn, heading towards the High Tree, I noticed people looking my way. A mother was teaching her daughter how to pick only the ripest apples, exquisitely engineered to be firm as a fist and red as a ruby. A young man was on one knee, folding a flower from his family tree into his boyfriend’s hand. A club of old men sat on a checkered picnic blanket, playing games on some ancient clunky touchscreen tablets. My passing disrupted all of these tranquil, idyllic scenes. Dozens of people looked up, their eyes grew wide, and then they looked away.

         I tried not to meet their eyes. They shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have to see them—lowering their eyes with deference, or gazing up at me with awe. It made my stomach turn. I didn’t deserve that. Even after all these years, I wasn’t used to it.

         I’m not what they think I am. I’m not the genius they’ve heard so much about. You made sure I understood that, even if I never could understand anything else.

         I turned to my latest apprentice, a young, serious, strong-jawed woman named Rabensbroke (none of the Greys seemed to have first names, and I’d learned long ago not to ask for them). She was just like all the others that the Conservation Authority assigned to study under me. When she’d introduced herself a month ago, she’d rattled off her credentials and achievements. The higher-ups at the Conservation Authority sang her praises, telling me how she’d bent whole swarms of juneflies and astroturfhoppers to her will with a couple eloquent lines of code. Her young eyes were focused and clear and her young mind was sharp as a razor blade.

         She’s who I should’ve been, all those years ago. That would’ve made you happy. That would’ve made you proud.

         “Next time,” I said, “make sure they clear the area before I arrive.”

         “Yes,” she stammered. She was still starstruck, even now. All of them were. She wouldn’t learn anything from me, and she would blame herself.

         “Yes, of course.” She pulled out her pane and sent her fingers sprinting across its immaculate surface.

         Halfway across the Great Lawn, we reached the security perimeter. Some low-ranking Greys kowtowed to me and waved us through. It didn’t take long for us to see the problem.

         Now what are your little monsters up to this time? Even for you this is a bit dramatic.

         The High Tree, like all the trees in the Arboretum, was planted on top of a body. They buried everyone here—stripped them, washed them, lowered them naked into the ground, cradled in the roots of a young sapling. As they grew, the trees drew their building blocks from the bodies. As they decomposed, the corpses were reorganized into trees. Cherry trees, pine trees, aspen cedar oak and elder. I have no idea how many species are represented, or who decides which tree each body gets. The arbourists must know.

         Some families carved names or faces into the bark. Some never even attempted to carry on this tradition from the days when graves were made from stone. But nothing compared to what the arbourists had done with the High Tree. Over the last five decades, hundreds of grafts and transplantations had turned the tree into an enormous kaleidoscope of colour. Dozens of species of fruits and flowers hung from its thick branches.

         Unlike the individual trees around the Arboretum, anyone could come and pick from the High Tree. Artists ground up the leaves and used the dust as pigments for their masterworks. Bakers harvested the pineapples and peaches and pears, organizing festivals where everyone could enjoy their pastries. People kissed under the High Tree, and had sex, and gave birth, and died, and met each other for the first time. The body under this tree belonged to everyone.

         The High Tree was normally the focal point of the Arboretum, with hundreds of people spread out beneath its sprawling arms. But now they were all gone. At least the Greys had got that right. Or maybe people had fled of their own accord, when they saw what was happening. Now, they gathered at the perimeter, waiting for me to perform a miracle.

         They shouldn’t hold their breath. As you delighted in telling me, I’m not you. If only you’d found as much joy telling everyone else about the dumb, ungifted girl.

         The problem was that the High Tree was covered in bees. Not just a few dozen here and there, feasting on late-blooming flowers. It was crawling with them. Thick and churning with a buzzing mass of yellow and black on every branch.

         The reports had started coming in early this morning. Some spyders had been dispatched to assess the seriousness of the situation. When the first wave went offline, more units were ordered to investigate. When they disappeared, sat-cams were used to scope out the scene. The Conservation Authority sent in some Greys, who stabbed fruitlessly at their panes for a few hours before it was decided that my presence was required. To work my magic. To solve the unsolvable problem.

         “Have you ever seen anything like it?” asked Rabensbroke, not quite repressing the wonder in her voice. “This must be every unit in the city.”

         I’d seen plenty of strange things over the years, and I’d never been able to explain any of it. They all thought I always knew exactly what was wrong and exactly what to do. But truth be told, I never had a clue. Sometimes I’d be able to convince a faulty mockroach colony to leave a residence tower. Sometimes I’d be able to stop a swarm of gentlemanbugs from sunbathing on solar panels. But mostly their behaviour is as opaque to me as it is to the general population.

         Because I am a fraud. Because I could never be as smart as you. But when people want to believe in something, they’ll go to any lengths to ignore all the contradictory evidence.

         The bees in the High Tree were not bees. They were, in fact, cees. Not quite bees, but their artificial successors. Fully mechanized, fully programmed, self-teaching and adaptational. A revolution in drone technology, brought on by the near extinction of the original Apis mellifera.

         The story goes like this: there once was a woman named Vera Lang. She grew up in a world far different from our own. That world was sick, and its cities were dead and square, cracked and crumbling (like tombstones). The people were destroying their bodies in these prison cities, and everything else was dying too. Habitats were erased. Ecosystems imploded. Entire species just disappeared.

         Most of them went unmourned, but when the bees started dying people finally started to care. There would be no more apples or oranges or plums or sweet delicious fruits or fragrant flowers. There would be no more leafy greens or hearty roots. There would only be more death, more oblivion. The creeping collapse of the food chain was accelerating. The disappearances dominoed in ever-expanding networks of extinction.

         So Vera Lang decided to save the world. She fought and fought and tried to preserve the tiny pieces of life that were left, that were capable of surviving those times. And she failed. Over and over. Again and again. And eventually she gave up her efforts to save the world and decided she would just change it.

         She created cees. To integrate with collapsing colonies and recover them. To pollinate the flowering plants and keep them from total extinction. Fertility, maintained by artifice. But cees were only the beginning. For, as the story goes, Vera Lang’s genius knew no bounds. She began to design other microdrones for the fledgling Conservation Authority. Outsects, they called them. Poor substitutes, to be sure. But necessary to slow down the rate of mass extinction. At least until the biosphere could recover itself. 

         And why stop there? Vera Lang made peace. She built komodoflies, which flew around the world dismantling every arsenal, building more of themselves from the parts they deconstructed, monitoring forevermore for weapons of war. Vera Lang made safety. She designed carpenter uncles, which were deployed to erect habitats overnight and house every human in want of a home. She made sodabugs, to strain all the microplastics from the ocean. She made muleflies, to filter all the excess carbon from the atmosphere. No problem could not be solved. All it took was a new species of outsect, fuelled by the brilliance of Vera Lang.

         The Conservation Authority understood the tremendous power that lay in the outsects, and they took all necessary measures to maintain their control over it. Terrorists and anarchists had been trying to gain control of the microdrones for decades. Only a very small group of people were allowed to carry on Vera Lang’s great work, fixing mix-ups and learning how to make slight variations to her original programming. They took their oaths till death and wore their Greys for life. If they were ever captured, they died silently with pride.

         Every time the outsects started behaving strangely, the Conversation Authority became alarmed. They sent some Greys to investigate. They fought tooth and nail to reestablish control over the rogue drones. And if all else failed, they turned to me. The secret weapon. The genius, locked away in her laboratory, leading the most crucial research. The measure of last resort.

         Do you know what they say? “She’s just as cold and aloof as her mother.” “Of course she never explains anything—as if we could understand!” “She must be so busy all the time, doing such important work. No wonder she delegates all but the most monumental of interventions.” They think I’m something I’m not. They never listened to me, never looked when I tried to show them again and again how incompetent I truly am. All they can see is the second coming of their saviour. Because of you.

         Rabensbroke held up her pane and tried to run a diagnostic on the swarm of a million cees, but the characters on the glass had no meaning. She frowned and darted her eyes towards me, embarrassed. And expectant.

         “It’s okay,” I sighed. “I know what to do.”

         I didn’t know what to do. I’d never known what to do. But I started walking towards the swarm anyways, into the High Tree’s long shadow.

         I hate this place. I hate you, and this monument to you, and the cult that worships you.

         Vera Lang saved the world. And now her body lay under this tree. Its flowers, like all the flowers across all the world’s blossoming cities, were fertilized by her cees. Still carrying on their original mission after all this time. Incorruptible. A product of her genius.

         You weren’t a genius, though. You were just a selfish, impatient woman who had no love for anything ordinary.

         Like every other time I got called in to solve a problem, I prayed that the outsects would ignore me. Reveal to everyone the true extent of my genius. But they always responded to me, in a way that I couldn’t explain. They listened to me. They obeyed me. They knew it was me, and they never failed to carry on the great charade.

         All this because you couldn’t stand the thought of tarnishing your legacy. All these little monsters are just actors, pretending I’m somehow exceptional. It’s not because I’m gifted and it’s not because I’m special. It’s because you were ashamed.

         As I neared the High Tree’s massive trunk, some of the cees broke away from the swarm and descended on me. I shivered as they covered my hair and bare skin. They started to eat away at my greys, tattering them until they fell awake like flakes of ash. The cees caressed me, crawled over me, filled me with artificial warmth. They lifted me off the ground, carried me up into the sprawling branches. I could seen nothing but a blur of yellow—their microfibre exoskeletons, dusted with pollen.

         Until, suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of blue. Surrounded by cees, at the heart of the High Tree, another outsect perched.

         No. It’s not possible.

         Everyone tells the story of Vera Lang and her cees. Nobody tells the story of what came first. A project for herself, back when she was still an outcast, an eccentric, an itinerant tinkerer, and not yet the Messiah. Back before she decided to change the world, and changed herself as well. Back when we were poor, and it was okay not to be perfect. I barely remember those times. But I do remember her first and greatest creation.

         She built butterflies out of garbage, out of anything she could find. She gave them to me when I was sad. When we were freezing in a doorway. When we were going hungry for yet another night. Toys. That was all. She had a sense of humour then, so she called them margarineflies—artificial, never as good, but good enough for a little girl who had never known any better. Who had never lived in a world with real butterflies.

         The Conservation Authority took her life story and built it into a mythology that she embraced. Cees. Pollination. Plugging up gaps in the ecosystem so the whole thing wouldn’t come crashing apart. Margarineflies were never important. She didn’t want to look back on that prologue to her real life.

         I’d thought she had destroyed all of them. I knew she’d even created some outsects to hunt them down. I’d always imagined there must be some out there, running on after all this time on their iridescent solar-cell wings. Flapping in the Andes and causing hurricanes across the Pacific. But never remembered, never acknowledged. It was all about the cees.

         They say you never even had a lover. That your cees made love to you, and you made me. Margarie Lang. Your most disappointing creation.

         The cees set me down on a thick branch. They swirled around the two of us. Me—shrivelled, dry, older than she was when she died. The margarinefly, as blue and beautiful as the day it was made. It waved its glittering wings as if in greeting.

         It’s not you. That’s stupid. You’re dead and in the ground.

         And then it launched itself off the bough. It fluttered over to me, and for the first time in a very, very long time I felt a flicker of hope.

         It survived you. It survived all your clever plans and tricks, all your attempts to control it from beyond the grave. And look what it’s done. Look at all the havoc it’s played on this perfectly orchestrated system.

         I knew what was going to happen the instant before it did. Or maybe I just hoped, prayed with every fibre of my being.

         It’s over. You’re finished. I’m free.

         The margarinefly landed on my hand.

         The moment it touched my skin, the cees around me stopped. Completely. They fell from the sky like rain, skittering down onto Rabensbroke far below.

         The margarinefly flexed its wings and they raced through the full spectrum. I heard Rabensbroke’s panicked shrieks knifing up from the ground, imagined her staring at her pane, seeing outsects pouring to the earth all across the city. All across the earth.

         Then, as gently as it had landed, the margarinefly took flight. I watched it launch itself into the sky, I felt the sun on my face, and I smiled.