Micro

“Please, stop this!” Amar Singh said. He couldn’t stand conflict. First there had been all the fighting between Rick and Karen, and now Rick was getting into a hassle with Danny. “Rick, people have different styles. You need to be more tolerant of Danny…”

“Cut the crap, Amar. That guy is going to be the death of us all, with his stupid-”

Peter Jansen could feel the situation spiraling out of control. The one thing that would certainly destroy them would be conflict within the group. They had to become a team, Peter thought, or they would soon be dead. Somehow, he had to get this quarrelsome, catty group of intellectuals to understand that survival required cooperation. He stood up and went to the head of the table, and waited for silence. Eventually they quieted down.

“Are you done squabbling?” he said. “Now I have something to say. We’re not in Cambridge anymore. In the academic world, you guys got ahead by cutting down your rivals and proving you’re smarter than everybody else. In this forest, it’s not about getting ahead, it’s about staying alive. We have to cooperate to survive. And we have to kill whatever threatens us or we will be killed.”

“Oh, it’s kill or be killed,” Danny said dismissively. “An outmoded pseudo-Darwinian philosophy dating back to Victorian times.”

“Danny, we have to do whatever it takes to survive,” Peter said. “But there’s more to survival than just killing. Think about who we are as humans. A million years ago, our ancestors survived on the plains of Africa by operating in teams. Bands is a better word for it-we were bands of humans, back then. A million years ago, we were not at the top of the food chain. All kinds of animals hunted us-lions, leopards, hyenas, wild dogs, crocodiles. But we humans have been dealing with predators for a very long time. We survive with brains, weapons, and cooperation-teamwork. I think we were built for this journey. Let’s think of it as the chance of a lifetime to see incredible things in nature no one has ever seen before. But whatever course of action we decide on, we will have to work together or we’ll die. We’re only as strong as the weakest member of our team.” Peter stopped, wondering if he’d gone too far, if he had sounded too preachy to these grad students.

There was a period of silence as they digested Peter’s speech.

Danny Minot was the first to speak. He turned to Peter. “By ‘weakest member,’ I assume you mean me.”

“I didn’t say that, Danny-”

Danny cut him off. “Excuse me, Peter. I am not a slack-lipped hominid with a beetling brow, clutching a chunk of stone in my hairy-knuckled fist and cheerfully bashing in skulls of leopards. In fact, I am an educated person used to an urban environment. It is not Harvard Square out there. It is a green hell crawling with ants the size of pit bulls. I will stay in this bunker and wait for help.” He rapped on the wall. “It’s ant-proof.”

“Nobody’s going to help you,” Karen said to Danny.

“We’ll see about that.” He went off and sat by himself.

Amar spoke to the others. “Peter is right.” He turned to Peter. “I’m on the team.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, as if he was thinking about something.

Karen said, “I’m on the team, too.”

Erika Moll finally agreed. “Peter is right.”

“I think we need a leader,” Jenny Linn said. “I think Peter should lead us.”

“Peter is the one person here who gets along with everybody in the group,” Rick said, and turned to Peter. “You’re the only person who can lead us.”

It was confirmed quickly by a vote; Danny refused to take part.

Now it was a question of getting the team’s act together.

“First we need to eat. I’m freaking starved,” Rick said.

Indeed, they all felt ravenously hungry. They had been up all night, without food. And there had been that mad dash from the ants.

“We must have burned a lot of calories,” Peter said.

“I have never been so hungry in my life,” Erika Moll said.

“Our bodies are tiny. We probably burn calories a lot faster. Like a hummingbird, you know?” Karen said.

They took out the instant food packets, tore them open, and devoured them, sitting at the table and sprawled around the room. There wasn’t much food, and it vanished in moments. They found a giant block of chocolate, and Karen hacked it up seven ways with her knife. The chocolate disappeared quickly.

Searching the bunker for anything that might be useful on their journey to the parking lot, they found a number of plastic lab bottles with screw lids, and piled them on the table. The bottles could be used as canteens for water, and to store any chemical compounds they might be able to gather. “We’re going to need chemical weapons, just like insects and plants have them,” Jenny Linn said.

“Yeah, and I’ll need a jar to hold my curare,” Rick added.

“Curare,” Karen said. “Right.”

“It’s wicked stuff,” Rick said.

“If you know how to make it.”

“I do!” Rick said huffily.

“Who taught you, Rick? A hunter?”

“I’ve read papers-”

“Papers on curare.” Karen turned to something else, while Rick fumed.