The Cricket Apocalypse

As I began my nightly shower a few days ago, something dark skittered across my peripherals. Without my glasses I couldn't tell what the thing was, so my brain froze and ran through the options: kill it, or die naked in the shower. I took the appropriate karate stance, then managed to squint a bit harder and saw my foe for what it was: a large cricket.

More precisely: a camel cricket, for you entomologists out there.

Immediate danger past, I splashed water at the thing in an attempt to wash it down the drain. Only it was actually too big to fit down the drain, so the two of us just ended up wet and at opposite ends of the shower, glaring at each other.

I couldn't leave and cede my territory; what man runs away from a bug? So I continued with the shower, keeping a wary eye on Jiminy; he just sat there, wet and probably half-drowned. I laughed at myself: what a first-world impasse this is - where else would killing a bug be an issue because you don't want to touch it or step out of your hot shower? And what a miserable hell for the cricket - surrounded by rising water, impassable walls, and a giant two hundred times its size.

Then I thought - I, too, am like this cricket. Do I not also jump into life full of ideals and hopes, yet without forethought and preparation? And have I not found myself stuck in many a metaphorical prison, trapped by my own choices and unable to do anything but beg for mercy as the waters of time rise? Or perhaps the cricket meant to jump in, finding his small brain pleasantly stimulated by the moisture in the bathtub. And I, too, often find myself stumbling meekly after the wafting promises of pleasure, only by grace kept from falling  where I can't clamber out.

I'm sorry, Dave. The bugs won't let you do that.

But crickets don't have a brain, so that paragraph is moot. Yet I hear some bugs do - like cockroaches - which might justify the previous paragraph if a roach was in the shower. What if a cockroach could muster thought? More importantly - what if cockroaches became aware of their potential to create panic? It'd be like the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey when Dave realizes that HAL is not only self-aware but malevolent. Except it'd be with insects instead of computers - which is only worse. Insects not only have that robot "coldness" but also possess a natural reproductive system, with an innate creepiness as an added bonus.

Then I started thinking: what if the insect world suddenly became self-aware? My guess is that the bugs' minds would process it all quite predictably:

1. Wonder: wow, I'm a bug!
2. Deep thought: why am I a bug?
3. Depression: I'm...a bug...
4. Observation: There are other bugs.
5. Panic: THE OTHER BUGS ARE BIGGER

And as so many bugs possess incredible physical and chemical weaponry, it'd be a textbook case of Darwinistic elimination. Perhaps the smartest might get the concept of strength in numbers and organize others into bands, prompting an arms race of organization and cooperation. Soon, insect nations would rise, all with different species and views on morality. My bet is that human relations would be the hot-button issue of the bug world. Some insects would argue for isolation, others would push for co-existence and equal rights, but eventually they'd all cave in to demands for war.

The scary thing is - they'd win. Every self-respecting man knows where he'll go in a zombie apocalypse - a cave, a prison, the CDC, etc. But if bugs tried to take over? They can dig, swim, fly; there's nowhere we could run. You're in a steel bunker? There are insects that eat metal. You decide to take the offensive and become an insecticide-shooting Rambo? Due to their short life cycle, insects can and will adapt to all forms of insecticide. And then they'll strike back - just take ants. They'd become what they already are: perfect, selfless soldiers. Bullet ants alone are known for their ability to give the most painful insect stings on earth.

Zombies? They're just impractical, slow slabs of meat with no sense of self-preservation - the insect apocalypse is what we should be worried about. And now that I think of it, it's even predicted in the Bible:

"...then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth...they were allowed to torment [mankind] for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them."

                   - Revelation 9:3-6, emphasis added (ESV).

Google's answer for "Revelation locust."

An insect apocalypse so bad that the entire world will beg for the sweet mercy of death? I would run to NASA right now and beg them to start funding space exploration again, if I wasn't sure insects could figure out a way to populate other planets. Oh wait, they already have.

Back in the shower. With all this running through my mind, I decided to give my cricket friend a chance. He could be the next bug Gandhi, for crying out loud! I couldn't deprive the insect kingdom of that. So I decided to give him a choice - to somehow provide the bug with a choice between life and death, that I might either be a stepping stone to its enlightened existence or kill it with a clear conscience. But how? How might I give this bug free choice? I was envious of him now, crouching in the corner of the bathtub - completely ignorant of both the mental exercise and moral dilemma his existence created.

So I grabbed a few squares of toilet paper, and tentatively extended them towards the cricket. Instantly, he gripped the edge of the paper with a voracity rarely seen in a starving panther. I had extended life to him, and he clung to it. But that's hardly a choice - I'd only given him the possibility of life, not death. So I stood and suspended him above the gaping maw of the toilet. Now, the scenario was complete: climb up, choose life. Let go, choose death.

But nothing happened. He just dangled there, clutching the toilet paper to his quivering breast, neither climbing nor letting go. I glanced discreetly around the room and...shook the toilet paper. But he clung. I shook harder, and still he hung on. My mind began to hurt from analyzing the metaphorical implications. My shoulder hurt from holding my arm out there for so long. But choice, life, the pursuit of one's own happiness - what have we become if we deprive others of these innate rights?

I dropped him in. It was a huge cricket, what did you expect me to do?

This is one of the more inane writings. STD Gun and Reverse Cookie are two other posts like that on this blog, and are both personal favorites.