As a child I read science fiction and spent a good deal of time with insects. Insects were the closest thing to science fiction that was available to me. Had I said something to this effect to an adult, they would almost invariably misconstrue it, and think I meant that the insect was less than science fiction.

The adults were really that confused. Almost all of them still are. What I meant was that a single insect was more than the sum of all science fiction. And it went, indeed, far beyond that. Of course, the adults largely ignored the insects, much as, I imagine, the gods now ignore humanity. And when they didn’t, well, it rarely fared well for the small ones.

They seemed to think the insects were little dangerous nothings. In fact, they are living doorways into a network. But don’t tell the humans, or they might start to understand -where their own intelligence comes from-.