Episode 5. The Sea Pig And the Sun: Vi and the Wasp
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Series Guide: List of All Episodes
The seeming Vi flops into a deck chair and stares at the railing. She pushes and pulls the railing — just by looking at it. Her body itself waxes and wanes. Shapeshifting. Cautiously Wick emulates her. This is off-the-scale weird.
“Should we go further?” Wick asks the Vi. “Visit Waama? I gather she’s very smart, considering she’s a pattern in the body of a sea pig. I guess that fits with Wolfram’s principle of computational equivalence. Anything is as smart as anything else. Waama’s computation may be especially rich because her sea pig is such an old species. Highly evolved wisdom in their ribosomes.”
“Yadda yadda,” says the being who looks like Vi. “Let’s go inside and fuck.”
In the master bedroom, Vi’s arms are overly flexible; her kisses taste like vinegar; and when she pulls down her fact, panties — whoah. Sea tentacles instead of pubic hair.
“Yes, I’m Koral,” says the nude figure. “I wasn’t sure how to model this part of a woman’s body. Never bothered to look. I could have read your mind and gone all matchy-match. But I wanted to flip your wig.”
Wick tries to leap out of the king bed, but Koral has him in the grip of a rubbery arm.
“Calm down, Wickie. This will be fun. Don’t you remember that glow moment in your dream? Real sex with me is better. In the full flesh. For the Labor Day parade!”
“Who cares about that parade? Where’s my real Vi?”
“She’s with Qoph, duh. Switcheroo. You two aren’t very observant, are you? Slow, stodgy humans.”
“Vi’s a wasp queen?”
“She and Qoph will be back tonight. After they do it. And after you and I do it. I have fifty eggs you need to spark. So they can host our eme friends from the multi lounge. Qoph will make fifty eggs too. Once Waama’s hundred emes get into those eggs, they’ll pick human targets.”
“Qoph and Vi are doing an insect-like nuptial flight?” says Wick, his voice unsteady. He’s achingly jealous. But at the same time he’s somehow glad for Vi — she’s sure to enjoy so dramatic a scene.
“As I understand it, wasps don’t do nuptial flights,” says Koral. “They just lie down somewhere and twitch.”
“You need to understand that Vi is past menopause,” says Wick.
“Irrelevant,” says Koral. “An eme can wriggle any old human cell. Cells have very rich computations. Any cell can grow into a human body. We call those bodies meaties? You and I will create a clutch of fifty meaties, hmmm?”
“I don’t know if — “
With a rowdy laugh, Koral worms her body under Wick and begins bucking her hips. The tentacles at her crotch fasten onto Wick’s private parts. So base are male appetites that Wick responds. Soon he’s panting and pushing back.
It’s nearly dark when they reach their climax. They lie at ease on the sheets, facing each other. Koral’s eyes are luminous orange.
“That was nice,” she says. For the first time she’s looking at Wick with an expression of friendly interest. “You spurted a million sperm cells, Wick! Wonderful. I wasn’t anticipating such a harvest. I sorted through them, kept the very finest, and merged them with fifty of my sex cells. Fifty eggs for the Labor Day parade!”
“Why do you keep talking about that stupid parade?” asks Wick. “The Labor Day parade is just a thing the town does. Marching bands, dancers, dignitaries. A corps of guys with giant zucchinis they grew. Teen bicyclists doing flips. Some tacky churches have flatbed trucks with choirs. Last in the parade are women in tweed suits on horses. With someone to sweep the dung. Why would you care about this?”
“You’ll see.”
“I bet I will,” says Wick, half guessing what’s coming. He pushes his hand against Koral’s shoulder. The flesh gives way like dough. Her arm pinches off and attaches itself to her waist. She runs her smile back along the side of her head.
“You’re not scared of me anymore?” says weird Koral. “Good. I’m not scared of you either. Even though you’re so basically — inert. Not like fog.”
“How can fog think?” asks Wick.
“Didn’t we already talk about this?” goes Vi. “Fractal turbulence. Analog flow. Computational equivalence. Don’t you write about this in your papers?”
“It’s just,” begins Wick, then starts over. “I never thought it was real. Can you see god?”
“No god at the top. No god at the bottom. It’s all dancers. The fog, the fire, and a sea pig.”
“With emes like you inside them,” says Wick. “And we’re emes, too?”
“Emes in meat,” says Koral. “The smeel can help you slide out.”
“Wherever I go, I want Vi with me.”
“Can you vibe what she’s doing right now?”
“I don’t know,” says Wick, not wanting to try. But it comes seeping in. The clack of chitinous exoskeletons. The susurrating tremble of wings. The whipping of antennae. Wasp sex.
“Where did you and Vi meet?” asks Koral.
“On a bus. I sat next to her. We talked about art. What about you and Qoph? Were you always fog and fire?”
“It goes back and back. We change hosts, but we’re always the same emes. Once I lived in a riptide, and Qoph was in a coral reef. Waama was a water spout. She brought Qoph and me together.”
“Nice of her.”
“Waama’s a go-getter. She wants her crew of a hundred emes to fly her to the Sun. She want to be with the fabulous emes up there. Los Perros is near our launch pad.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Wick is tired. Nestled in the drapery of Koral’s flesh, he falls asleep.
Now let’s go back to Vi at the moment of the switcheroo.
Qoph becomes a wasp, and his vibes turn Vi into a wasp queen. The setting sun gleams off wasp-Vi’s wings. She’s powerful, multiply jointed, in control. It’s good being a queen. Qoph flies beside her, speaking in an ultrasonic buzz. Courting her.
“You’re beautiful, Vi.”
“Prettier as a wasp than as a person?” says Vi, flirting with her long wings. “Let’s not go underground, Qoph. Not into the dirt. Let’s fly through the bamboo and land on a high oak.”
“Are there crows?” asks Qoph. “What if they eat us?”
“I thought you were supposed to be superhuman,” says Vi. She darts at him and pinches one of his skinny legs with her mandibles. He twists free and spirals up. She follows after him, and they perch on the thick, twisted branch of an oak near the deck, amid a cluster of leaves, with a clear view the sky and of the doings below. Vi’s vision is rich with the thousands of lenses in her bulging wasp eyes. The scene is a living mosaic.
“They’re going into the house,” says Qoph, watching Wick and the Vi-shaped Koral below. “My wife and your husband. She’s going to seduce him.”
“And you’re after me,” says Vi. “That’s the plan?”
“For the Labor Day parade,” says Qoph. He’s grooming Vi, running his grippy front legs along fact, her back. “Does this feel good?”
It does, in a way, although Vi is stressed from all the wild changes. “So you mate with me,” she asks Qoph, “and somehow I’m magically fertile, and I hatch a brood of eggs, and then what — you invade Earth?”
“Fifty eggs,” says Qoph, who’s got four legs working on Vi now. He’s also preening her wings with his mandibles. Fully into mating mode. “Fifty emes move into the fifty eggs, and they grow into fifty meaties that look like local people. And Wick and Koral do the same thing. So then Waama has a crew of hundred emes in human form.”
“Why do this in our yupster village of Los Perros?” asks Vi.
“Because your husband lives here?”
“You’re kidding! His research papers?”
“Not so much,” sats Qoph, caressing Vi ever more assiduously. “It’s more that we noticed his dreams. He’s a noisy dreamer. And then we noticed you. And you are ideal. Your career as a Stanford research librarian gives you connections. And it helps that everyone loves you.”
“You think that?” Vi is pleased.
“Maybe I’m lying,” says Qoph, tickling Vi’s antennae. “You never know.”
Vi has always liked bad boys. She’s overcome by an urge to raise the rear segment of her body, curving it high into the air. Qoph fastens his legs to Vi’s thorax and bends himself so that the tips of their two gasters touch.
Qoph rocks steadily — and Vi is lost in a red haze. No way to tell how long it lasts. It’s dark when they finish. Vi is replete, with fifty new lives stirring within her.
The mating may be done, but Vi and Qoph continue fondling each other with jerky motions of their antennae and legs. It would be too much to say that Vi loves Qoph, but certainly she likes him better than before. He’s handsome, and he’s a good lover — for an insect.
“Are you hungry?” says Qoph.
“Very,” says Vi. “And thirsty too.”
“Let’s go down to the burrow,” suggests Qoph. “The lower castes will serve us.”
“A wedding feast,” says Vi. “Wick and I never had a proper celebration.”
“Well, here we go,” says Qoph.
