We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson Page A

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    Mom didn’t talk to me until we were in the car. She’d come straight from work, still in her uniform, her apron stained with ketchup and potato soup. After I buckled my seat belt, I examined my bloody, bruised knuckles. My hand hurt when I flexed it, but it was a good hurt. An anchor.
    Because Adrian had started it with the nickels, Principal DeShields opted for a month of Saturday detentions rather than suspension. I would have preferred the suspension.
    â€œDo you want to tell me what’s gotten into you, Henry Jerome Denton?”
    â€œThat asshole had it coming.”
    Mom slapped me across the face. My cheek stung, and I touched my jaw while she glowered at me. “You sound like your father.” She cranked up the radio and peeled out of the parking lot, headed for home. My mom had never hit me before, but I think I deserved it.
    â€œIt’s true, you know.”
    â€œWhat is?”
    I turned down the music. “That Adrian deserved it.”
    â€œThat doesn’t excuse fighting.”
    â€œI know.”
    Mom sighed, shook her head. “It’s been rough for you, Henry, I know, but you can’t do this. You’re flunking three classes, getting into fights. I hardly see you because you’re always locked in your room.”
    I wanted to tell her she’d know what was going on with me if she ever bothered to ask, but she was so concerned with Charlie and Nana, or too tired from working to bother with me. Aliens abduct me, and she pretends I’m sleepwalking. My boyfriend killed himself, and we don’t even talk about it. Like my father, Jesse’s name just disappeared from her vocabulary. I would have told her anything, everything, if she had asked, but I knew she wouldn’t.
    â€œIf the world were going to end, but you could stop it, would you?”
    Mom drove for a while without answering. I thought she hadn’t heard me, and I leaned my head against the window. Finally she said, “Some days I think I would. Other days, probably not.”
    â€œWhat about today?”
    Mom’s shoulders bowed downward. “What do you think, Henry?”

Nanobots

    They’re hailed as a marvelous breakthrough in modern medi­cine. Their inventors, two scientists from South Africa, are awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work. The tiny robots are too small to see with the naked eye, but are capable of cooperating to eradicate any disease and to repair any damage done to the human body. The Fixers, as they’re called, usher in what many refer to as the Golden Age of Humanity.
    Despite warnings from paranoid extremist groups, governments around the world approve Fixers for widespread use. Billionaire philanthropists donate their entire fortunes to fund efforts that bring Fixers to impoverished nations, making certain that every human on the planet in need is able to receive treatment.
    Within one year, cancer becomes little more than a ­nuisance—­curable with one treatment and no side effects.
    Within two years, HIV, cerebral palsy, Huntington’s disease, blindness, polio, and male pattern baldness are eradicated. They become footnotes in history.
    Genetic defects are repaired in utero.
    Two years, nine months, seven days, and two hours after Fixers are approved for public use, the world experiences its first full day without a single death. It is the day humanity becomes God.
    It begins on 26 January 2016 at 7:35 a.m. EST at a Starbucks in Augusta, Georgia. Donald Catt, already irritated over having to wait in line, completely loses his cool when the barista doesn’t know how to make his drink the way he likes it. Despite the barista’s attempts to calm him, Donald refuses to leave until he gets what he wants, prepared exactly the way he wants it.
    The store manager eventually calls the police. Donald Catt resists, and the officers have no choice but to Taser