Story Excerpt

Piotr shared the curiosity all children on Nova Moskva felt for the planet's abundant alien insects. Apart from a few crab species, all living creatures were six- or eight-legged bugs. No fish. No mammals. No reptiles or birds.

Where other children eventually tired of their novelty, Piotr's fascination had calcified into obsession. Two older neighbor kids, Dawid and Sasha, showed him how to focus a magnifying glass to burn things. They spent an hour incinerating various plant and insect specimens before declaring the activity boring and wandering off.

Not Piotr.

For three consecutive days, he experimented with ways to slice, cauterize, and melt bug bodies with concentrated sunlight. Through the magnifying glass, he watched a beetle with serrated pincers crawl across his front yard.

The lens focused into a searing needle of white light, burning through each hip joint of the scavenger's six legs. The insect thrashed, immobilized by the loss of its legs. He shifted the lens's aim point. The heat cleaved off the thorax, cauterizing a neat line across the creature's waist. A thin wisp of acrid smoke curled upward, smelling of burnt chitin and something sickly sweet.

The scent attracted a bug resembling a black ant. Piotr steered the beam to amputate its legs, like he had the beetle. The polished surface of its exoskeleton reflected most of the light away. The heat, though diluted, was enough to send the ant-thing scurrying.

Piotr pursued it with his beam. It slowed to change direction, allowing the beam to catch up. What happened next transformed a depraved pastime into a passion.

In milliseconds, the ant-thing's internal fluids flashed into steam. The plump abdomen exploded with a faint popping sound. Hot bug guts sprayed across Piotr's face.

I need to find more ants!

Piotr scoured the ground for others.

There—a group of ant-things clustered around a decomposing leaf. "You," he whispered, pointing at a robust specimen near the cluster's edge, "have been chosen."

He crouched, face inches from the ground, and brought the lens to bear. The ant-thing froze, antennae twitching—sensing something. Piotr watched the beam narrow to a pinpoint of incandescent white against the creature's carapace.

Pop.

The thorax detonated, spraying viscous fluid outward. Piotr squealed in delight as the steam rose in a thin plume. The smell made his eyes water.

The ants scattered, but Piotr was already tracking the next target. His victim was carrying a cut leaf.

It wheeled about and brandished the leaf like a shield.

"Fire beats paper," Piotr murmured as concentrated light scorched a hole through the leaf. "You lose."

Its abdomen whistled like a tea kettle before popping like a kernel of corn.