Intellectually he knew there was a positive side to these insects, but this was not the time to look for the balance in nature. Instead he focused on the sounds he was hearing to be sure they were truly bees.
If they were truly bees, their wrath seemed to be focused on the two travelers, flying at their faces from time to time. As the chorus cacophony became louder, the swarm’s harassment increased in kind. While Desiree accepted these bees as a part of nature something strange was happening to Harry. For him, the convincing natural music took on a surreal quality, losing its buzz and replaced it with the sound of vibrating violin string blades. The natural music became unreal, too, Harry thought, and familiar. He’d heard this music before in his collection. “The Flight of the Bumble Bee?”
Makr was telling him the bees weren’t real. Why?
True bees were thought to be extinct. Harry knew that they had become extinct in the last few decades when the Bio-polluted atmosphere prevented many flowering plants from attracting their biggest pollinator—bees. Eventually, the flowers adapted, producing an even stronger fragrance, but not soon enough. Both the flora and insects died out, but flowers weren’t the problem now.
Harry thought, maybe they’d bounced back. It had happened before when a species was thought to be wiped out. It only takes a few hardy individuals re-start the population. There could have been some hardy individuals that survived. Like Desiree, he smiled, as he playfully swatted at the bees. But something was definitely not right!
The symphony crescendos and the swarm of bees darting in and out, faster and faster, continuing to assail the two Bios; some bees harassed and retreated, while others seemed to be hovering just slightly out of reach.
“Bees!” Harry picked up his walking pace. “Very large bees.”
“I can see that!” Desiree snapped back as she batted as many away from her as she could. “What do they want? Why are they following us?” She increased the speed of her gait, too, while thrashing her arms about to keep them at a safe distance.
“I don’t know,” Harry said, taking her cue and flailing his arms as well. “Wait a minute…” His thought-blink confirmed what he already knew. They weren’t bees at all, but tiny flying cyberts! “Makr knows we’re here.”
“How do you know that, Harry? Have you seen these before?”
“No, but I can see them as they really are. What do you see?”
“I see bees! Why? What you see!” With a wide-eyed, puzzled look, she answered him as she kept trying to wave the bees away! “Bees!”
“Not bees! Not bees! Cyberts! Tiny cyberts!” Harry froze, powerless to wave or slap at the tiny attackers now that he saw them as flying metal insects. Something held him back. Fear. Sadness. He stopped thought-blinking and saw bees again. Bio bees. He could swing at them now, even batted a few to the ground. They kept bouncing back after he knocked them to the ground. The few that fell were stunned and seconds later crept away unhurt and unnoticed.
“Whatever you’re doing, Harry, is working.” Desiree was gaining respect for this ordinary Bio as he kept battling the swarm of “bees” to the ground. Together, they pelted the bees with their hands, slamming them hard to the ground. More were staying on the ground while others keep flying back at them.
“Gotcha!” Harry exclaimed as he knocked two at once to the ground. As he tried to step on them, they suddenly became metal again. He froze again, unable to crush them under his feet.
A flicker of bright light, a low audible roar and both Harry and Desiree sensed the ground shake. Harry saw his picture of the world change slightly for an instant; for a second, he saw a dreary gray reality in his mind’s eye. It left him feeling uneasy. He was positive Desiree had not noticed it. Why didn’t she notice the shaking, the shudder of their reality? Makr!
The cyberts were bees again. While they were bees, he was happy he was able to knock them down; however, this time, he didn’t dare try to crush them. Some of the bees appeared dead on the ground. At that moment, the rest of the swarm shifted position, moving up and away from them as if withdrawing. The swarm hovered for a moment as if to take one last look before heading away from the duo to the north across the city skyline. Neither Harry nor Desiree saw two of the “bees” that had fallen to the ground and were pretending to be immobilized. These “bees” waited for Harry and Desiree to continue their journey before they flew upward and followed them, staying several yards behind.
While it wasn’t the “Attack of the Killer Bees” that bothered Harry so much, it was the fact that he was powerless to fight them as cyberts—tiny or otherwise, and yet he could fight them if he saw them as Bio creatures. Does that mean he was capable of destroying his fellow man—or woman and not a machine? Not even a toaster. The idea is preposterous but the evidence was overwhelming. Rather than sounding foolish he decided not to share this insight with Desiree. She might send him back Inside and he wasn’t ready for that yet. Not even if he was one of Makr’s pawns.
Shaw's Reality 