Fiction:Manifold Bees/Original

Colony Collapse Disorder
''As images flicker of humanities past, my attention was caught by an insect Humans and their relatives were quite familiar with, the bee, the great pollinators of humanities biosphere. In their early 2000's, the bee population was declining and no one really knew why. Scientists were quick to point our pathogens, and to blame human causes as was common at the time, the species was still very anthropocentric in its ideals. Their decline may one day mean the collapse of this advancing civilization. Who would have thought, the sixth dimensional geometry of their dance had something to do with it...'' Unknown

''But what did this society know about higher dimensions? They were still on the edge of advancement, and beyond popular culture, very few took serious note. My memories include a 17 mile of ring of metal and superconductors, a large Synchrotron, and of a balanced system of lasers designed to detect waves of reality. ''But there was those who did dare to read the "Mind of God" as some of their thinkers declared at the time. Within years of its construction, the Synchrotron, their best attempt their economy would allow, searched for missing energy signatures, by accelerating protons to a speed tracing behind light itself, and find them it did, however, the particle was not gravitic in nature, it was of a different breed, the tachyon. On their second decade of the 21st century, tachyons condensate out of the void. The field, for a brief window time, caused symmetry of the surrounding Higgs field to decay, within this mass asymmetry, the dimensions unfurled, from the twisted manifold too small for daily experience, of hexagonal geometry, and gravity itself sank through, sending the ATLAS detector squawking. Only years before, the wave detector they called GEO 600 discovered noise of quantum jitter, spacetime itself, a boiling soup of the bits that make the universe. Unfortunately, the general population showed lack of interest, the stresses of modern life was enough to distract them from the ramblings of the scientists and visionaries. Unknown

''Just like how the general populous generally ignored these discoveries, so did they ignore growing problems rising on their world. Everyone knew about global warming, and fuel prices running high, but not enough cared to take action. However, even though the world's overall temperature was rising, this was only made known because it shaded worse problems harder to solve... The soil that is essential to life itself was eroding by tons everyday, while even clean water itself was getting less affordable. Even the Earth's protective geomagnetic field was decreasing. But even more rapidly was the bees. In their 8th year of the 21st century, bees were discovered to dance with six dimensional geometry projected to a two dimensional plane. No one took the discovery seriously, the superiority of human intelligence over all other species was still rampant in their society.'' Unknown

''Half a decade passed, it was now 2012, an end to an ancient calender, and the source many conspiracies. The year passed without much unusual incident, but the Mayans were correct in some ways, the new calender would be times of great change, as was the 20th and 21st centuries, but as those speculated about fictional end time, more insidious problems were waiting to be revealed. The absence of the bees was only now becoming more recognisable every year. Another two years passed in the wind. Businesses dependant on bees were the first to be hit, and only now was there more concern. The theory that parasites were to blame had now been debunked. Another year passed and bees were an endangered species. The ecosphere began to collapse, the flowering plants began to dwindle, the birds that fed on the bees and higher trophic organisms were the hardest hit. The spring of 2015 never came. Within months, humanity was brought to its knees in a world without flowers...'' Unknown

''Of course there was other pollinators, the ants, beetles, birds and butterflies, but with the prime pollinator gone even they struggled to keep up with the diminishing flowers. Humans reacted, the poorer nations began to starve first of all, however, relief was sent, but as the larger countries began to lose stock, other food sources were researched, such as seaweed and algae farms. These were mainly set up around China, Japan and the South Indian ocean, these were rising powers during these times and soon they would hold monopoly on the new major food source. Over fifty per cent of what humans ate and one third of their every mouthful was lost. Seeds and genes were stored in banks, such as Biobank, while research into genetic modification and artificial pollination (as seen in space) was now the prime centre of investigation. The public were told not to worry, the media blurted their usual "it will all be fine, we have it all under full control, this is nothing to be concerned about", but what happens to people taken out of their comfort zone? Panic struck the masses. The final bees on Earth were put under full surveillance and protection. Within another year, millions were dead, not just from starvation, but from the chaos ensued.'' Unknown

''In order to subdue the panic and sharp rise in crime, the worlds governments were forced to suppress their populations with brute force. But another cataclysm had begun. The San Andreas Fault, a tectonic boundary 820 miles long shifted with the strongest seismic wave on record. California and surrounding states were reduced to rubble, and the Yellowstone Supervolcano had some worrying tremors. However, all the nearby nuclear reactors were disabled, causing meltdowns on a vast scale. Nuclear material had to be dumped into the oceans, which followed the North-Equatorial current into the algae farms of the East Pacific. Now poisoned, there was even less food. With the USA now picking themselves up, and even the Far East's new economic power wrecked, it seemed as if the world was coming to an end for civilization. Meanwhile, research into the last bees on Earth continued. They had been genetically modified, but still their numbers reduced. Some bees were separated and placed aboard the now very large ISS. Their dance had been scrambled, and it seemed as their numbers had been on the increase.'' Unknown

''It took some perceptive people to work out what was going on. They had seen the link between the disappearance of the bees and their dance. The year was 2017. The world's food sources not reliant on pollination were heavily rationed and was a police state, in order to forcefully constrict chaos. Genetically modified wasps, ants beetles and plants had been seeded around the world, they were now programmed to pollinate all year, however, it was not nearly at original levels. Wasps were everywhere, the replacement was far more aggressive than their more gentle cousins. However, aboard the ISS and other space habitats, the bees flourished in zero gravity. Back on Earth some bees were placed in superfluid chambers, disabling their dance. But why was this happening? The discovery 9 years before was remembered once more, the bees were more than just dancing in rhythm to the quantum fields that permeate the aether, they could also calculate and perceive the sixth dimension, a spacetime of a landscape of probabilistic outcomes. And soon it became clear...'' Unknown

''Humans, ignorant of their affect on their world, were harming the bees in subtle ways. The use of pesticides, pretty obvious one at that, was poisoning their workers and larvae, of course the parasite Varroa was spreading pathogens and even the radiation from mobile phones and Wifi was scrambling the bees. In order to combat this threat, the bees were able to perceive a world without these afflictions. As they were dying in humanity's world, they could perceive quantum wave functions, probabilities where they could survive in an alternative reality. So they were changing it, and that meant the extinction of humanity. This was quantum suicide. To humans, bees were decohered points, which could only state in one state at a time, to be bee, the world was of many states that can coexist, and they were migrating to a better probabilityverse. And for the first time, this fringe theory wasn't scoffed at, it was obvious and within the laws of physics. People, in desperation, now had no other choice to accept this theory. In order to restore the world as it was nearly a decade ago, the scientists had to act fast, as only a few thousand bees forced by suppression were still in existence.'' Unknown

''Pesticides, were utterly replaced by their more environmentally friendly alternatives, and as for electromagnetic radiation, new technologies were invented to capture it, as well as using lower frequencies such as radio waves instead of microwave frequencies. A vast program to recycle the copper wiring nearby the natural environment as quickly as possible was undertaken, to be replaced by optical fibre. The seeds saved in the biobank were replanted around the world and everyone held their breath as the final bees were released back into the world. Luckily, they began to rise quickly, with no need to make a quantum jump, filling up the old niche. Within a few years the biosphere began to reach homoeostasis. But humanity had been changed possibly forever. It had created a paradigm shift in the judgement of other organisms, the world was more environmentally friendly. But more importantly, humans began to spread off-world, one world was just not enough, this was clear now. The worldline of the two species was symbiont once more.'' Unknown

The end.