Super Bug
by Mike Player
part 1
Sunbeams reflected off the surface of Kraken Mare in dancing rectangles of sparkling bronze. Breem splashed and floated on their back on the surface of the sea and thrilled at the light glistening against the bellies of the dark orange clouds. The huge disc of Saturn striped with white and chocolate colors and the planet’s brilliant and gargantuan rings shone intermittently through thin patches of overcast.
Breem stretched their cilia and let go of tension bit by bit. Liquid methane lubricated their saffron-colored, single-celled body. The rising and falling of the tides barely registered on Titan, but as a native bacterioid, Breem could feel the slight oscillation.
I defy the split. Breem nestled on the peaceful surface of the liquid methane.
The shrieking Hewmann siren, miraculously made to function again after 7,000 years, pierced the thick air. Breem’s cilia retracted at angles reserved for high alert. They knew the signal was sent for them by The Other.
Breem savored a moment more of floating, but it was ruined by the shrill bleat of the siren. “Damn it all!” They spun their cilia and propelled themself back to land.
Thousands of Titan bacterioids dashed pell mell, cilia waving frantically, calling to one another across the beach.
“The invaders have landed!” shouted The Other to Breem. “Across the sea. The invaders are here!”
“How do you know we have invaders?” Breem’s cilia curled with annoyance. Methane dripped from the Titan’s membrane onto the soil, which looked like crème brulée, and where they stood just emerged on the beach. “The native bacterioids and their Hewmann brain chips. Always the same viewpoints.”
“You have swum too far,” Breem’s Other reprimanded them. “I suppose you will say you were talking to the Sand Fish.”
Breem felt the usual astonishment at the physicality of The Other, the mirror image to Breem; both had gleaming yellow-brown cilia waving. But the two separated bacterioids held themselves differently. “I need quiet to think my own thoughts.”
“You only want separation from me,” The Other snapped.
Breem’s cilia contracted.
“The nanochip is what warned us of the laser from Earth.” The Other’s chip-generated voice sounded somber and deep, lower than the natural cilia voices that Titan bacterioids had developed over eons and that Breem still used. “The chip allows us to unite, to know the origin of the Hewmanns, and to survive. The chip has access to all the Hewmann knowledge...”
Breem stood to their full height of ten inches, a viscous and vertical yellow oval. “We grew this large on our own before the Hewmanns arrived. When the Hewmanns died, you made the mistake of ingesting the nanochips from their brains. The chips showed you how to make more chips. The chip is a cancer that has spread throughout our population.”
The Other affixed themself to Breem for mobility as was the custom and, together, they undulated across the overcast landscape to the broken spires of the Hewmann base. The Other whispered and tried to tug Breem along at a quicker pace, “My love, we were once one.”
“You hate me for being free.” Breem could not deny they enjoyed the touching of membranes. The feeling of intimacy that solitude could not bestow. But Breem felt panic from The Other.
They did their best to keep up the rapid stride. The joined bacterioids reached the sand-covered concrete foundation of the ancient Hewmann colony. The entrance remained open to the elements. The few buildings cast shadows of sadness in the gloom. Thick nitrogen wind whistled through empty rooms. Inside, the skeletons of ancient Hewmanns lay in nests of disintegrating uniforms.
“I cannot help it if you have made yourself an outcast,” The Other said. “You and I were one. You split from I. Why do you refuse the chip? Why refuse me?”
“Because our kind was intelligent before the Hewmanns came. It does not enhance us as it did them. With the chip, you live only for mastering Titan, not enjoying its wonders.”
“To float aimlessly as you do on the sea?” The Other taunted them. “Talking to the Sand Fish who have nothing to say?”
“To feel what it is to be a Titan and not a creation of the Hewmanns who polluted us.”
At the lonely doorway to the ancient Hewmann base, The Other separated from Breem with a pop.
“We have finally deciphered the laser beam’s code,” The Other said, their voice turned cold. “Beings come to find and consume us. We must hide!”
Breem slunk low to the ground. “Not Hewmanns. The Hewmanns are extinct.”
“Something else... from Earth,” The Other said.
“Hide? Where?” Breem exclaimed. “Is that what this enhancement of yours has given you as a solution? To hide?”
“Beneath the ground. As we did in ancient times.”
“What life is that?”
“If you had a chip for yourself,” The Other said, “you would know, and you would love me.”
Breem’s cilia quivered. “Your chip and all the others are copies and have degraded over time. You don’t need them, my love! We are our own smart.”
“Go then!” commanded The Other with deep sadness. “Live your life apart. But beware of the invaders. Find a place to hide. Underground. And do it now!”
Breem’s cilia extended with surprise. The Other turned away and with a shlooping sound dashed inside the ruins of the Hewmann Base.
* * *
To the east, along the liquid methane shore of Kraken Mare, the wreckage of 10,000 nano craft from Earth lay strewn to the horizon. Vapor plumes still visible in the pale light lingered from the impacts made by the light-beam powered craft.
“How can you not have known how to slow us down?” The Very Large Bacteria from Earth thundered at a small crowd of lieutenant soldiers.
“We did slow down, your majesty. We impacted Titan at 25 kph. That’s a far cry from the 20% light speed interplanetary rate we —”
“Silence! How many are dead?”
“Unknown. Estimates indicate 20 to 30 percent.”
“Unacceptable!” The Very Large Bacteria indicated with their indicator cilia the head astro-propulsion Earth bacterioid, the “APEB.”
The APEB squirmed. “I warned you that 20% light speed would be too fast! We were traveling for barely 15 minutes. Who could make adjustments to landing velocity that rapidly?”
The genetically created defense viscera of several lieutenant soldiers took aim instantly.
“No!” The APEB shuddered where they stood on the frozen ground.
“Don’t waste your weapons on one enemy!” shouted the Very Large Bacteria to the soldiers. “Save them for the natives. This I will do myself!” The VLB trembled and swelled, turning bright pink in the process to three times their rehydrated size, to twice the size of the extinct Hewmanns.
“I beg of you!” cried the APEB as the odious shadow stretched across them.
With a tremendous glawping sound, the VLB absorbed the smaller cell, munching and dissolving membrane and nano implants alike. The final shrieks from the smaller dog-sized APEB carried across the frozen waste.
The lieutenant soldiers’ cilia blew limply in shock in the thick Titan breeze.
The Very Large Bacteria gurgled loudly and shrank back to normal. They regained their composure, although their flushed color from frustration remained for some time after. “Where are the natives?” demanded the VLB. “Since we rehydrated, I see nothing living.”
“Sire, instruments indicate the native population lives across the liquid sea, 1100 kilometers to the west. Our aim was to rehydrate here on the far side of Kraken Mare and then surprise the natives in attack balloons.”
“Of course I know that. I somehow expected more... life on this rock. This is a sea, and I find nothing here! Where are the swarms? Why is it so hard to get to the damned life in this solar system? Why am I always thwarted in everything I do?”
Several tiny attendant bacterioids fluttered around the base cilia of the Very Large Bacteria, dutifully expelling perfume mist.
The Very Large Bacteria quieted themself. They knew they had a propensity for impulsive emotional outbursts, a human trait made worse by bacterial DNA; fight or flight no doubt. They spread their wings and embraced with joy the thick air of the Saturnian moon. “I am free!” With a slight motion, they lifted from the crunch of the beach and rose easily into Titan’s sky. A dark oval flapping long triangles, cilia fluttering back from the direction of flight.
The lieutenants knew not to observe their leader for long lest they be punished. They busied themselves in stretching their bodies after their dried state flying through outer space. They activated automated rehydration mechanisms in the 10,000 strewn landing craft by using their molecular AI.
Across the clumsy beach, tiny silver lights flickered from the surviving landing craft. Beetle-sized soldier bacterioids awakened. From above, The Very Large Bacteria observed their army regenerating below. “After 7,000 years, Earth beings have returned to this world, this sea, to reclaim the Hewmann settlement. But where is it?” Gliding in a circle, the VLB strained to observe the distant western shore. The horizon reflected black with liquid methane, and the curve of Titan cut too small to allow a glimpse of the far shore and the Hewmann base. “Where the others live,” the VLB muttered.
Down below, Lieutenant 14 hissed at Lieutenant 15: “Now. You could have done it now. That bulbous giant thing is flying and distracted. You could have shot it out of the sky with our propulsion beam. We could have devoured it and unlocked the secret of size from its nanochip.”
“That secret is encrypted. Baked in. You know that,” L15 said. “Only the Circle of Nine may access the size element.”
“They manufactured it. They were like us once. We can learn the secret. We can take away their power. Look at that bloated waste bag above us. Wealthy with size. There is nothing more useless than the wealthy.”
“You quote Hewmann knowledge, but we are not Hewmann,” L15 said.
“We are slaves to that gasbag. They will eat us like they ate each other on Earth,” L14 answered. “They use us to get what they want. They care nothing for our lives. And now this one has dragged us here, to this moon of Saturn where we were not born.”
“Would you rather starve on Earth? We knew there was life here and we have finally found the way to get it, and when we find it, we will murder the VLB and decipher their chip.”
A spheroidal shadow of deep brown covered the two bacterioid lieutenants as the VLB circled overhead. “Why do I still feel the cold? Were we not engineered to survive comfortably here?” L14 complained.
L15 checked their monitoring programs. “The soldiers are rehydrating as planned. The engineered molecular water grows exponentially upon contact with their stasis husks. Our anti-freeze water-based bodies are holding well within these thermal heat-retaining membranes. You have nothing to worry about,” L15 assured them.
“I am cold nonetheless.”
“All the more to inspire you in our plan of takeover,” L15 said.
L14 observed the VLB float easily down from the sky to touch the brittle surface of the beach. The Very Large Bacteria’s cilia curled with ecstasy, exulting in their new surroundings under the weak Saturnian sunlight. Their current slate gray color lightened with the joy of their easy flight through the alien sky. Even at their resting size, they towered over the lieutenant class as a Hewmann would over a small dog. One step further down the scale, the soldier class that rehydrated around them reached a size no larger than an Earth beetle.
Fighting the impatience that bubbled within them, The Very Large Bacteria paced along the crest of a shallow sand dune. “Why are the balloons not printed and manned with our soldiers? What is the delay? I feel such hunger from our journey. Such hunger from our lives upon the dying Earth! I would fly across Kraken Mare alone to find my... our... replenishment.”
“They are a bacterioid Napoleon,” L14 thought, “designed by Hewmanns long ago for bacteriological warfare. Successful to the degree that the Hewmanns were utterly destroyed by them. But now they are AI-enhanced far beyond their original purpose. Corrupt as the worst of the extinct Hewmanns. The elite has to die!
L14 glared at the VLB but wisely chose to busy themselves with assisting in the 3D nano printing of 50 AI-enhanced micro attack balloons. L14 received updates from the soldiers on the beach regarding the printing of each balloon, which was to be powered by molecular plutonium engines and nano AI brains. If all went as planned, the balloons would carry 200 soldiers each and five lieutenants across Kraken Mare, while the VLB flew ahead of them with its grotesquely engineered wings.
“We will assassinate the Very Large Bacteria then,” L14 told themself. “After we have fed on the natives.”
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Mike Player
