Scorched Earth, Alien Wonders

The days passed slowly, without much happening in sleepy Suburbia, and there wasn’t a single human in sight. The only people we saw were on the entertainment screens, because every prairie dog in town gathered at night in Daisy’s Community Center to watch movies or TV shows for entertainment. It had become the highlight of their tedious existence, which basically consisted of hunting for scant pieces of food every day, getting moisture from an occasional weed-root, and being entertained by human actors every night. PD’s had their own complex language, so it wasn’t a stretch that over time they had figured out how to interpret the action and speech from each performance on the screens.

“Every generation of prairie dogs has learned and deciphered more and more of the human language just by studying them, and watching the shows,” Daisy explained one night, when I asked how the town-folk could understand what was going on. “On many levels, animals have always been smarter and wiser than humans have given us credit for.”

That would turn out to be an understatement. Every night my team and I would return to our temporary burrow near the edge of town after entertainment at the Rabbit Hole.

Every. Single. Sweltering. Night.

We would hunker down and talk about the day’s events and the night’s entertainment. Then we would compare notes and brainstorm strategies. Our burrow was dimly lit by one of Daisy’s computer devices.

“I am beginning to wonder if Qualdron’s intel is accurate,” I said one night. “Because he made it sound like humans trooping through Suburbia was a common event. But maybe humans aren’t even living near this town anymore.”

“Hell, we don’t even know if they are still on the planet, for that matter, much less hanging out near the festive town of Suburbia,” responded Moore.

“I got the impression the PD’s here don’t venture any further from town than they have to,” said Brown. “The search for food often involves digging for dead roots, organic morsels and grubs underground, because the landscape above is just a barren stretch of dirt.”

That is probably why they wouldn’t have a clue how close humans might be living to them,” said Davis.

Since it was hard for bot-shifters to remain in stasis for more than 24 hours, I would let grumpy Torie change from the mini-binocs to another form while we talked every night. Sometimes he would be a spider or a lizard or a mouse, but he would most often choose to be a blue dragonfly.

Later, Torie would shift back to the mini-binocs and we would all go to sleep on fluffy, dirt beds positioned around the edge of our burrow, which was thankfully a few degrees cooler than topside.

That night, I couldn’t help pondering what miraculous event would have to befall us to get the mission done and over with, but it was increasingly clear I wasn’t going to be home in time for the rollerball tournament.

Dammit...

As I dozed off that night, I wondered what was so special about Torie’s preference for the blue dragonfly, and I never would have guessed it in the decades of my entire life.