“El-y-tra.”
Zarah smiles while Layna’s lips struggle with the word. “That’s right, sweetie. Elytra.” She taps her four-year-old daughter on the nose and zips up Layna’s desert suit, a beige, velour crime against every fashion trend that has ever existed. Functional, though. The ribs in the smart fabric hide microscopic hydrophilic grooves. A marvel of material science, the suits are based on the elytra of the Namib desert beetle.
Layna huffs and scowls at the bland outfit her mother has coaxed her into.
Zarah rolls the breather mask over Layna’s mouth and tucks the final reluctant strands of unruly hair under the turban. Only the scowl remains. She takes her daughter’s gloved hand and rolls up her own breather mask. “Are you ready, sweetie?”
A nod, severe and serene enough to be forty instead of four years old.
The climate-control doors open with a hiss, and the glaring sun meets the desert sand. The optical assault turns Layna’s scowl into a squint. A freight train of unmitigated heat hits mother and daughter when they step onto the sand. Paradoxically, it’s movement that will cool them down. As their suits pull rare moisture from the air, walking pushes the water through the tubes that circle the suits’ torsos, providing cooling and hydration at the same time. Meanwhile, Zarah’s smart lenses have adapted to the brightness.
Before starting their trek, Zarah squats and puts a finger against her masked lips and then against her ear. “Can you hear it, sweetheart?”
Layna’s squint deepens even more until, suddenly, the big brown eyes Zarah loves so much open up. “Whistles!”
“That’s right. And do you know why?”
“The wall whistles. Because of the termites.” A frown. Then, slower, “Ter-mites.”
“You’re right again, sweet girl. Very clever.” Zarah stands up and looks at a wall full of small holes that open and close with self-monitoring sphincters, the pockmarked skin of a sleeping dragon. The tunnels and air chambers in the city’s barrier are based on those in a termite mound, also known as the most efficient aircon the world has ever seen. That and the hanging gardens of gencrops keep the city cool and shaded inside its calibrated microclimate. Not to mention that the gardens provide plenty of fresh food.
Zarah inhales. It’s all here, all the wisdom and knowledge needed to heal the world. “Mahmoud, are you there?”
It’s all here, all the wisdom and knowledge needed to heal the world.“Good morning, Zarah. How are you today?”
Layna doesn’t even look up. She is used to her mother talking to ghosts. In this case, the ghost is an AI assistant that speaks to Zarah through a bone conduction chip grafted onto the zygomatic process at the base of her left ear.
Zarah faces the desert. What if her ancestors were right? What if Jinn have always been real but humans just lacked the technology to interact with them? “Good, thanks. Can you locate the herd, please?”
Bright blue topographic lines twirl in Zarah’s vision before they settle on the sand dunes like a pattern on a Berber rug. A smattering of green dots near the horizon to the northwest indicates where the scarabs are burrowing. Her other babies. Changing rain patterns have greened the south edge of the Sahara, but that’s not enough. Zarah will pull the green into the desert and build lush corridors of flora and fauna to connect the walled cities.
She can see it: a desert not speckled with rare oases but invigorated with a green grid. To get there, her scarabs will drill down into the subterranean aquifers and—via a system of underground tunnels and dams driven by solar pumps on the surface—bring the water to the desert. That’s how her ancestors did it for millennia, mobility and water management. It’s her turn now, her generation’s turn.
That’s how her ancestors did it for millennia, mobility and water management.Mother, daughter, and technological Jinni crest another dune.
“You okay, sweetie?”
Grunt. Terse, just as Zarah taught her. Even with the suits, they have to be careful not to get their throats parched.
Zarah squeezes Layna’s hand. What a resilient daughter she has. Who does she get that from? Certainly not Dean, who left—no, not that, not now. She pushes down the pang of hurt. Tears would evaporate anyway, like the memories they hold.
“Mommy, look.” Layna points at the horizon, a shimmering cut that divides the universe into bright blue steel and sandy marble.
“But I want to see the bugs!”“I know, sweetie, but they’re too far today. Next time.”
“Always next time,” Layna grumbles.
By the time Zarah thunders over the dunes in a buggy, the sun is setting. At the edges of the sky, stars glitter like old jewelry given a second life. She drops Layna in the nest, the shared house where her polycule of six adults and their four children lives. Five adults, she reminds herself.
Which reminds her of something else. “Mahmoud, why do you sound like Dean?”
Can virtual assistants hesitate? Because the reply takes too long to arrive. “I… thought it would help.”
The buggy—a big-wheeled skeleton of a car—leaps over a dune and jostles Zarah in her cup seat. The self-driving vehicle neatly rumbles along the trajectory Mahmoud mapped out in sparkling blue lines on dark sand, almost like the burgeoning Milky Way above. “You thought? Independently?”
“It was suggested.”
“By whom?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say.”
“What?”
“She’ll be upset.”
She? Can’t be. And yet… “Layna?”
“Your daughter is clever.”
Zarah gets out of the buggy, careful about where she places her feet. The desert might seem empty and barren to those who do not know her, but when the tyranny of the sun wanes, she comes alive. Snakes and scorpions leave their burrows, as do jerboas and fennec foxes. “She’s also four years old.”
The desert might seem empty and barren to those who do not know her, but when the tyranny of the sun wanes, she comes alive.“Four and a half.”
“You have been talking to her. Via her tablet?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
The scarabs are murky zits on slate-gray sand. The apex of their shields reaches the curve of Zarah’s hips. With their burrowing rostrums in the sand, they look sort of cute, like sleeping puppies. Puppies shaped like metal beetles with diamond-tipped drills as mouthpieces, but still. Layna’s going to love them. Layna and Mahmoud. That is a conversation for later. “Change your voice back, please. And tell Layna she’s not allowed to change any of your settings next time she tries.”
Silence.
“Mahmoud?”
“Understood.”
Back to artificial beetle business. Zarah taps the back of two scarabs. “Wake up these two, will you?” She shuffles back to the buggy, opens its trunk, and picks up a sports bag.
The two chosen ones have risen onto three pairs of segmented limbs that end in shovel feet. From the corner of her eyes, Zarah watches a scorpion scuttle away as she opens her bag and takes out metal tubes that fit onto the scarabs’ drill mouths. Tiny sensor channels etched into the tubes’ insides will analyze the crumbs of whatever the scarabs burrow into. “That should do it. Send them down to the anomaly.” She shakes her head. Sounds like a plot twist in a horror movie.
The two scarabs vibrate and sink into the sand.
Silence, again. On her AR view, two green dots sink into the desert.
“One more thing,” her jinni says.
Zarah presses the bridge of her nose. “Do I even want to know?”
“The scarabs sent a message. An encrypted burst. I missed it first.”
Groan. “What?” Is that why they surfaced, to send a ping? So the scarabs had been hacked. But who could get past their customized firewall? And send an encrypted message? She doesn’t like where this is going, and she certainly doesn’t like the suspicion that is scratching the back of her skull. “Can you decrypt it? Where did it go?”
“I can’t,” Mahmoud says, “and to a proprietary satellite.”
“Proprietary to whom?”
“SeeThrough, a subsidiary of Earth Monitor. Subsidiary of… I can keep going.” Through previous interactions, Mahmoud knows that Zarah prefers cutting to the chase.
Fuck. Mahmoud doesn’t need to keep going. It has his paws all over it.
“The scarabs reached the object,” Mahmoud continues in his now-resurrected, gravely jinni voice. “Data incoming.”
“On lens, please.” Numbers and graphs roll across Zarah’s field of vision followed by a subterranean map of the river delta she’d envisioned, only now with the addition of a big chunk of… “Iridium? Mahmoud, am I looking at a buried meteorite?” It wouldn’t be unprecedented. The Erg Chech 002 meteorite was discovered in 2020 in the Algerian part of the Sahara. Why would it be the only one?
“That seems to be the most logical inference indeed.”
Iridium, the second densest metal known. Incredibly rare on earth. Scattered across the geological strata of epochs marked by meteorite hits. Rare equals valuable. “How much?”
“Given the approximate size of the meteorite and the fraction in the scarabs’ samples… close to a metric ton.”
“Price?”
“Over five thousand dollars per ounce and rising due to its use in fertilizer, electrolyzers, screen technology, and antimatter engines.”
Antimatter engines? “Stake the claim. Right now!” Zarah leaps into the buggy. “Firewall the scarabs’ neural nets again, and send them down. Cordon the meteorite until the claim’s ratified.”
Zarah enables manual control and revs the buggy. She’s in a hurry but doesn’t know where she’s going. All she knows is that she needs to move, needs to do something.
“There’s a competing claim on InterChain.”
Of course there is. Dean. Fuck. “Dispute it. Quickly, before it’s approved. Add my ownership certification for the scarabs. And evidence of the hack.” Zarah can’t tell whether the buggy’s big wheels still touch the sand; she’s flying.
“Mahmoud?” The city’s whistling walls are a harsh rectangle in the rising sun, a black gaping mouth Zarah races toward.
“Done. Both claims are pending, as is the dispute. Also, you have a message from Selina.”
Zarah growls.
“Dean’s here.”
After leaving the buggy in one of the underground parking lots at the city’s edge, Zarah stomps through narrow cobblestone streets. Seething, she doesn’t feel the coolness of the shadows, nor does she smell the floral aromas falling from the hanging gardens. She is angry and hungry and tired, and she doesn’t know which one of those feelings to address first.
How could Dean already be here? She thought he was on the other side of the globe. Had he been planning this all along?
By the time she barrels through the door of her polycule’s home, she knows the emotion to lean into first. Anger. Zarah recognizes him from the back, the strong shoulders curled inward, the shorn neck.
Dean faces Selina, who probably also misses him, and Layna, who hugs Selina’s leg while looking at her father with a cautious glimmer of hope that breaks Zarah’s heart. The wisdom of children often goes unseen, yet it is the fairest balance upon which to weigh the world.
The wisdom of children often goes unseen, yet it is the fairest balance upon which to weigh the world.Thankfully, the other nestlings are still asleep, or it would be even harder to kick Dean out. “You asshole.” No time for pleasantries. “What are you doing here?”
Dean turns. Haggard, squinting, three-day stubble. “Zar…”
Zarah crosses her arms. You shall not pass. “Don’t. Why are you here?”
“To ask you to let it go.” He frowns; emotions dance across his features. “The scarabs, I mean. I know you figured it out.”
“How are you even here?” Layna almost knocks over Zarah when she scampers from Selina’s leg to her mother’s.
“Suborbital jet.”
That is the nail in the coffin of Zarah’s suspicion. “Fuck you. Build your antimatter engines another way. Don’t look at me like that. How could I not know? You already gave up on earth, on u– ” Not here. Not in front of Layna.
Tempting both fate and the fury of a woman scorned, a smile flickers on Dean’s tired face. “You were always the smart one.”
“Leave.”
“I staked a claim on InterChain first.”
“By hacking my scarabs. I’ve already disputed your claim. You’ll have no choice but to admit the hack, and that will land us in a legal quagmire for who knows how long.” She wants to hit and kiss him at the same time. She wants to shout at him. How could you? How could you leave? How could you come back like this? How could you how could you how could you…
“Zar…”
“No.” She untangles Layna, steps forward, and pushes Dean, who barely budges. They’re equals in height, but he’s always been more solid than he looks. “No. You can’t do this. You can’t—” A deep breath to steel herself. “No. You get to wait in line, and maybe, if you behave, you can have some of the leftovers.”
He tries to hide it, but Zarah sees it, the glance at Layna, the flicker of doubt. “Its… humanity has stagnated, Zar. You can see that, don’t you? Plodding along since the superstorms of 2050. Plugging holes, patching gaps. The engines are the next leap forward. Finally.”
“Coward,” Zarah snarls. “That’s running away, not leaping forward. This is not a lost cause. We are not a—” She curls her fists. They’ve had this argument before. “Get out.”
“That’s running away, not leaping forward.”“Everything alright here?” Adil walks into the living room, shielding his and Selina’s twelve-year-old son, Sem, with his bare barrel chest. From behind Adil, Sem nods at Dean, who returns the gesture.
“Sem,” Dean says, “Adil. How are you both?”
“Get out, Dean,” Zarah says. This is not going to turn into a family catch up. “You walked away. You stole my data. You are not welcome here. Leave.” Layna hugs her mother’s leg tighter, which gives Zarah the strength she needs not to crumble into pieces.
Dean’s eyes narrow, and for a moment, Zarah hopes he pushes back. She hopes he finally pushes back, finally fights for them.
“Fine,” he sighs. He gets down on his haunches and looks at Layna. “Bye, Bean.”
Layna sucks her lips.
Dean gets up. “Fine.”
When the door slides closed behind him, Zarah releases a shuddering breath.
It takes one week for Mahmoud and the scarabs to map the meteorite and two weeks for the goliath beetles to arrive. They, too, are Zarah’s design, and they, too, are based on real beetles. Evolution, after all, is rather fond of the elytra-covered arthropods for a reason. Close to seven feet tall and twenty feet long, the goliaths’ coppery thoraxes are bloated with stacks of hydrogen fuel cells.
Evolution, after all, is rather fond of the elytra-covered arthropods for a reason.Zarah holds Layna’s hand as they watch the harnessed goliaths lurch into motion. The beetle bots are arranged in a circle around a lake of sand that swallows their reins.
The entire desert groans against the goliaths’ might.
The lake of sand begins to churn.
Layna quivers along with the sand, buzzing with excitement.
Concentric waves ripple outward, lapping at the goliaths’ sturdy, segmented legs, which strain as the beetles try to move the world.
Amid the churning sand, scarab elytra appear like the dorsal fins of chunky desert sharks circling their giant prey. The sand funnels into the tunnels dug by the scrabs, and the goliaths march ahead as one, as if they have finally gotten the better of their burden.
Layna jumps up and down with the unbridled excitement only children allow themselves. Zarah shakes along, clutching her daughter’s hand. “Mom, look. Look, mom. Look look look. The desert is alive!”
“I know, sweetie. I see it.” Does she, though? Is she a fool with her plans for a network of desert gardens? Is Dean right? Are her efforts the pointless dying throes of a doomed population?
Zarah knows the meteorite is not going to be a shiny block of iridium, but still, the mountain that rises from the Sahara is darker than she expected. Here and there, the setting sun glitters on lighter streaks. Some of her colleagues—or should she say employees?—whoop.
“Mahmoud, send a picture to Dean. Along with a quote for a hundred-kilo package.”
“Of course. Any message?”
“No, but Mahmoud?”
“Yes?”
“Make the quote exorbitant. At least twice what we offer other interested buyers.” The first orders are already rolling in. Soon, she’ll have an entire army of scarabs. The timeline of her plans has jumped forward significantly.
Her jinni chuckles–the deep, rolling sound of an ancient spirit, of a rockslide, of a world in motion. Earth turning, as it always has.
“Mom, I want to go see the beetles. See their elytra.” Layna jerks Zarah’s hand. “Mom!”
“Okay, but be careful, sweetie. Don’t get too close to the meteorite.”
Layna wriggles her hand out of her mother’s. “Mee-tee-iorite.” And she’s off.
“Mahmoud, keep an eye on her.”
“Always. Picture sent. I’ve quoted just over double.”
“You’re too kind.”
The jinni grunts. “We lead by example so that our children can be more than we ever were.”
“We lead by example so that our children can be more than we ever were.”“Didn’t know you were a poet.”
“It’s the song of the desert and its beetles.”
Zarah doesn’t know what to make of that. Frankly, she doesn’t know what’s going on with Mahmoud. She harbors the uneasy feeling that the jinni has long since escaped his programmed chains. She also doesn’t know why she felt the need to send the picture and quote directly to Dean. To gloat? To boast? Offer an olive branch? Tell him that he needs to fight for them, for Layna?
Zarah looks at her beautiful daughter, laughing and dancing among giant robotic beetles. So strong, so resilient.
Humanity will be just fine.
