I once worked in a cave. It was there that companies kept a great deal of
their legacy parts and equipment. This was for when they couldn’t sell them,
couldn’t reuse them, or just didn’t know how to get rid of them. It was a
convenient way to hold onto these things without them clogging up their
normal warehouses. Very, very occasionally, one of our clients would
send a request for a part to be picked, and it was my job to go do that. It
was an entirely different team that stored them on the racks in the first
place, but honestly, I don’t know why my specific job existed. Most of the
time, I just sat in the office, reading a good book. It was the easiest job
I had, comparatively speaking, and I only quit, because I needed to start a
family and the pay wasn’t enough to support this goal. It was perfect for me
alone, but not me with children. Besides, there were other reasons for me to
seriously consider a career. One day, I was finished with the only book I
brought with me that day, so I decided to go on a walk. It was surprisingly
clean for a cave, and set to a comfortable temperature, unlike what you may
be imagining. I ended up in a corner that I didn’t go to very often, because
the client who rented out that space didn’t ever need anything. I looked
down at my feet and saw an anthill in the crack of the cement. I looked over
a little, and saw another. And another, and another. The place was littered
with anthills, and rivers of ants traveling between them. I wanted to leave
them there, but taking care of the grounds was technically part of the job
description, so I had to report it. An exterminator came out to kill
everything, but what we learned he didn’t do was clean them up. So those ant
rivers were still there, they just weren’t moving. It was an army of dead
ants, and seeing their lifeless bodies lying there felt like an appropriate
metaphor for life. We were the ants.
They didn’t know that they were going to be wiped out, but they had a
concept for death. Or at least they had a concept for failure, or otherwise,
they would not have pursued their goals. When the spray came for them, they
didn’t scurry into their tunnels, or hold a conference about what to do.
They didn’t study the spray, or try to clean it off. They just kept going
until they succumbed to the toxin. I guess I don’t know that, I don’t know
how fast the spray worked. I just remember it being so surreal, staring at
that pile of death. Combined, the ants wouldn’t even make up the mass of a
single person, but from their perspective, it was a slaughter. It was
genocide. I started thinking about what sorts of things could come for the
human race. What kind of proverbial spray could wipe us out? Climate change?
Maybe. An asteroid, sure. Then I realized that the spray was a disease,
which could probably pretty easily spread from an infected ant to one which
had originally escaped the wrath of the nozzle. That could happen to us,
godlike exterminator not required. A pathogen could destroy us all, and
while doing it, leave everything we created intact. Even our bodies would
still be there, littering the streets, and our homes. So I went back to
school to ultimately seek a degree in epidemiology, so I could do everything
I could to prevent this eventuality. Though it started as a desperate whim,
it was the best decision I ever made. It’s where I met my future wife, and
an army of colleagues who all wanted the same thing. Once we graduated, we
went off to fight against what we believed to be the greatest threat our
species faced. Because we didn’t want to not see it coming. We didn’t want
to be ants anymore.
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