The Decameron 2.0

Day 7.7 Humor - BEE, AGGRESSIVE AaronRubicon

People always said that the future was a mystery. But it wasn't. Not for me. For as long as I could remember, I knew exactly what my future would be. It was waiting for me in a city called Palo Alto, at a University called Stanford. The best university in the world. My destiny.

See, I was that kid. The one to which parents unfavorably compared their own children. The one with the 4.95 weighted GPA. The one with a perfect score on the ACT. The one with more extracurriculars and more awards than seemed humanly possible. The one the other kids wanted to beat up, but didn't, because one of his extracurriculars was Kenpo Karate and one of his awards a third degree black belt.

I was working on my Stanford application when he showed up. It was nearly five a.m. My eyes were dry from staring at my laptop and my head felt weird and floaty from too much Red Bull. An insect appeared at my bedroom window. A honeybee. Rapping insistently on the glass. I didn't give it much thought; the affairs of insects held little interest for me.

But then it started shouting.

"Hey, you! Hominid!" I turned to the window, astonished. "Let me in!"

It's interesting how our brains react when we encounter something thoroughly at odds with our understanding of reality. I found myself thinking, That's weird. Bees don't generally fly at night. My brain, apparently, thought it best to gloss over the whole talking bee thing.

"Come on!" it urged. "I'm freezing my nuts off!"

I pressed my face to the glass to get a better look at my visitor. My brain decided to completely skip over the fact that this bee was wearing a tiny metal helmet with a chin strap (or proboscis strap or whatever). Instead I found myself thinking, Huh. I'm not sure I've ever seen a bee this big. It was a few inches in length, a giant among bees.

"Don't be an asshole!"

Interesting. I didn't know bees liked to swear.

"Just open the damn window!"

"But... I'm allergic to bee stings."

"And I'm allergic to fucking idiots!" Seeing me bristle he grudgingly added, "Relax. I'm not the kind of bee that stings."

I unlatched the window and was about to open it when something occurred to me. "How do I know that you're not just saying that to trick me?" The bee rolled its five eyes at me, making his gesture 2.5 times more potent than the average human teenager's.

So I opened the window and he made a beeline (sorry, but he did) to my desk lamp. He lay down on my A.P. Calculus textbook and bathed in sixty luxuriant watts of incandescent warmth.

"Better?"

"Oh, yeah," he sighed.

"I'm Kyle, by the way."

"Did I ask?" For a talking bee he was not much of a conversationalist.

"And what's your name?"

"I don't have one."

"How do you distinguish yourself from other bees?"

"Pheromones. And bar codes." He indicated his thorax, which did indeed have that familiar crew cut silhouette stamped on it.

"Is it OK if I call you Bee?"

"I truly don't give a crap." It was like pulling teeth with this guy, but I soldiered on.

"So... how is it that you can talk? Wait, let me guess: Monsanto, right? Those bastards and their GMO's!"

"No, stupid. I'm a time traveler from two million years in your future."