This is the latest entry in a series of short stories. You can read the last one here.

Our last story ended with protagonist Jeff Boudreaux's new landlady Anastasia Demoupoulous inheriting a mysterious box and highly detailed notebook from her delusional grandfather. Anastasia believes there just might be something to his claim about talking ants after all...

The Little Speakers

“Okay, I know this sounds crazy,” said Anastasia, “but something really weird is going on. Just follow me.”

She led Jeff into the garage. “I read George’s book cover to cover the night you first showed it to me. I thought it was pretty crazy too, but there was something that pulled at me. This ‘Humantish’ – well, it’s a real, genuine, honest-to-God language. It has grammar, syntax, vocabulary, the whole nine yards. The whole talking to ants thing completely aside, George at the very least created a perfectly coherent constructed language.”

“You mean like what Tolkien did with Elvish in Lord of the Rings? Or Klingon from Star Trek?” asked Jeff.

“Exactly,” said Anastasia. “I’m a huge language nerd, so I’m a bit of a sucker for this kind of stuff. Anyways, these messages—”

“Yeah, they were pretty disturbing,” said Jeff. “My working theory is they represent George essentially ‘talking to himself,’ or with the voices in his head, or whatever.”

Anastasia nodded. “That’s what I thought too, at first. I read all the ones you originally transcribed from the machine’s memory – the machine stores every message that’s ever been sent or received, along with a timestamp. The thing is, the last message you transcribed was recorded two days after George’s heart attack. Isn’t that weird?”

Jeff pulled up the machine’s message log. “You’re right. Man, that is weird.” He looked back at Anastasia, “This doesn’t prove he was talking to ants, though.”

“I never said he was talking to ants. I said I thought his ‘little speakers’ are real, whatever they are. Clearly, George was talking to somebody. Not just voices in his head, we can see the messages for ourselves, sent after he was incapacitated. Is someone pulling an elaborate prank on us? Should we suspect foul play in his death? You’re a computer guy, Jeff. Could these boxes be connected to the internet?”

Jeff shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. A while back I pulled one of his spare units apart component by component and they’re surprisingly simple. There’s no wireless networking device in any of them. No transmitters or receivers, no Bluetooth, no wi-fi, not even radio; they’re all simple, hard-wired components. There’s some circuitry and electronics and a couple of microchips, but honestly my best guess is they’re mostly repurposed guts from musical keyboards.”

“Well, the other side of this unit is buried in an ant colony,” said Anastasia. “Maybe there’s a wireless receiver on that end?”

“I don’t think wi-fi would travel well through a physical barrier like that,” said Jeff. “And besides, there’s no such component in any of the ant-side terminals from the spare units.” He fished one out from a box and showed it to her.

“That leaves us with two possibilities,” said Anastasia. “Either George was ‘talking to himself’ in the most elaborate and complicated way possible, or he was talking to somebody else. I’m leaning towards the latter.”

“I mean, he could have programmed in some kind of automatic response, pre-loaded it with messages.” said Jeff. “Remember that TempleOS guy I was telling you about? His ‘talking to God’ programs were basically just fancy random number generators.”

“Well, then you’d better look at this. After a period of silence following the last message you recorded, I checked yesterday and noticed a whole bunch of new messages.”

“Wait, what? When did they start?” asked Jeff.

“The same day we brought George back and put him in home hospice,” said Anastasia. “Take a look.” She keyed up the message log and displayed the new messages.

Big speaker, we smell you.
Big speaker, you are here, yes/no?
Big speaker, speak to little speakers, please.

“That’s it. The same basic message with minor variations, two or three times a day, every day.”

Jeff scratched his chin and gave her a playful look. “You know, I don’t know you very well.”

Anastasia leaned back in her chair and adjusted her glasses. “You think I’m trying to pull one over on you?”

“You tell me, you’re the one trying to keep me in town,” he said, flashing a casual grin.

“Honey, if you think I want you to ask me on a date you should be able to figure that one out entirely by yourself.” she said with a smirk. “But I’m serious here, Jeff! I’m genuinely concerned my grandfather might have been the victim of some weird stalker or something. And I figured you’d at least find the computer angle of this weird mystery interesting. Are you gonna help me or not?”

“I will, I will,” he said. “Or I wouldn’t still be here. Here’s a thought – have you ever written anything back to ‘the little speakers,’ whoever they are?”

“No.” said Anastasia. “Have you?”

“Nope,” replied Jeff. “And this could be a good way to rule things out. If what we’re seeing are stored messages, then whoever or whatever is talking shouldn’t be able to respond appropriately to new messages from us. I mean, here we are in the year 2015 and the greatest minds in computer science still haven’t been able to build an AI that can genuinely beat the Turing test. And even if they could, I kind of doubt ol’ George here somehow whipped up a state-of-the-art natural language processor that runs on hardware no more powerful than a pawn shop synthesizer.”

“So we just talk to the ‘little speakers’ and see if the conversation makes any sense? Then we can know for sure that it’s not just something George rigged up himself?”

“It won’t prove we’re talking to ants, but it would make me confident we’re talking to somebody who’s alive, yeah. What should we say?” asked Jeff.

“How about: ‘Hello’ ?” she suggested.

“Works for me. Is that one of the words in George's dictionary?"

Anastasia nodded, keyed in the message, and hit ‘send.’ After some time the communicator’s light blinked.

Hello!
Hello!
Hello hello hello hello hello!
Big speaker! Big speaker!

“That’s a pretty generic reply,” said Jeff.

“Yeah,” said Anastasia, flipping through the notebook’s pages. “I’m improvising a bit, but I think this is how you ask them how they’re feeling today.” She typed in some symbols and hit send.

Back came the reply. Anastasia transcribed:

We are healthy.
We are scared.
We are confused.
Big speaker smells strange.
Big speaker smells new.
Big speaker smells two smells.
Please say more.

Jeff looked at Anastasia. “‘Big speaker’ means us, right? As in humans? At least according to the notebook?”

“Technically the ‘ants’ only ever used that word to refer to George. George had plans for explaining the concept that he was only one ‘big speaker’ among many–there’s a whole chapter on that–but there’s no record he ever sent those messages.”

“And now ‘they’ are saying we smell?” said Jeff.

“Let’s entertain the possibility that we’re really talking to ants here for a second,” said Anastasia. “We’d be towering otherworldly giants to them. They can’t see us, we’re too big and their vision is too poor. But they could certainly hear us, we must be like titanic forces of nature from their perspective. And they could certainly smell us. Imagine a bear the size of a mountain walking right past your house.”

“Sure, but what’s with the ‘smell two smells’ bit?” asked Jeff.

“Sorry, that transcription was sloppy.” said Anastasia. “Smell as in the verb and smell as in the noun – see the different symbol for each of those? It’d be more accurately rendered Big speaker emits two odors. They’re saying there’s two of us. Two big speakers, two smells. Different smells. Smells that are different from the only big speaker they’ve smelled before, which would be George.”

They both paused in silence for a moment.

“There’s no way we’re actually talking to ants.” said Jeff.

“Of course not.” said Anastasia.

“That would be ridiculous,” said Jeff.

“Absolutely ridiculous.” agreed Anastasia.

Jeff fidgeted for a moment. “You know, there is a way we could know for sure,” he finally said.

“I’m listening,” said Anastasia.

“Wasn’t George always talking about making little trades with the ants? Like giving them a sugar cube in exchange for making them march from here to there, or something.”

Anastasia nodded. “Yeah, the notebook describes that in great detail.”

“Well, what’s something you wish you could get ants to do for you? Let’s make a deal with whoever’s on the other side and see if the ants actually do it. If they don’t, we’re back to square one. But if they do…”

“Ooooh, I like that.” said Anastasia. “What sort of deal should we make?”

“That's the thing...” said Jeff, thinking. “And even if we could come up with something, how sure are we that we could encode it properly?”

“Wait!” said Anastasia, thumbing to the back of the book. “There’s some draft agreements here, I think George never got around to testing them before his accident. Here’s a ‘respect my turf’ treaty, we could try this.”

“Like, just literally pay the ants to get off our lawn?” said Jeff.

“That’s the idea… he describes using chemical scent markers paired with specific messages that basically says, ‘X marks the spot.’ Then you give them something in exchange for staying away from X.” Anastasia paused for a moment and tapped her pencil against the desk. “I wonder…” she said. “There’s been a ton of these same ants in the house lately, especially in the bathroom. What if we tell them to get out? Then we just use this draft agreement as our template.”

Anastasia wrote down some notes and handed them to Jeff. “Get the lemon juice from the fridge and an eyedropper from the medicine cabinet. Put one drop of lemon juice everywhere I’ve sketched out on this piece of paper.” Jeff ran into the house and did as she directed.

Meanwhile, Anastasia fetched George’s glass naming dish, dropped a single drop of lemon juice on it, and placed it in front of the ant colony. Then, leaning heavily on the template from George’s book, she typed a message into the communicator.

Jeff came back and looked at the screen. “What’s all that mean?”

“Roughly, speaking, it means:

Hello!

Big speaker proposes a new treaty with the little speakers.
Come see a new smell. 
I call this smell lemon.
I mark a location with this smell. 
The location belongs to me.

I speak the treaty:
- Little speakers leave this location now
- Little speakers stay away from this location after now
- If you agree I will pay you every day

Please say what you want me to pay

“That’s a mouthful. You’re really saying all that?” said Jeff.

“I’m rendering it in plain English for your sake, you can see the Humantish symbols over here on the terminal. I'm also not sending it all at once–we have to do each piece in stages, at least according to the recipe. We introduce the smell, we wait for them to come and get it and send an acknowledgement, then we move on, etc.”

“I see, think it'll work?” said Jeff.

Anastasia shrugged. “I mean it’s not exactly the Magna Carta, but according to the notebook it should be clear enough. We don't even deviate from the template's wording, the only thing we're changing is the location we're marking.”

Anastasia waited a few minutes. Her heart began to pound when she saw a few ants crawling towards the dish. “Look Jeff!” she cried, pointing. The ants sucked up the lemon juice and returned to the nest. After a short wait the communicator blinked:

Hello big speaker!

We hear you.
We are happy.
We smell lemon in water.
We will search for your location.
Wait, please.

A few hours later another reply came back:

Hello big speaker!
We found many smells of lemon in water.
We found location.
We smell your treaty.

A slight pause, and then:

Your treaty is difficult.

“I think that means they don’t like the terms. What should we say back?” asked Anastasia.

“I dunno, what would George say?” replied Jeff.

“Right,” said Anastasia, as she keyed in: 

Please say more.

The reply came back:

We have a name for your location.
Our name is ‘cool water land.’
Cool water land is precious to us.
We did not know cool water land was your territory.
Cool water land is always cool, and always has water.
It is hot now and we need a lot of water.
Water is hard to find elsewhere.
We need water.
We do not want to fight with you.
Please say more.

“That’s it? Water? They’re just thirsty?” said Jeff.

“Well think about it Jeff, it’s the middle of a hot Texas summer and the drought’s so bad there’s a burn ban in effect. It’s not like they can just turn on the tap and the air conditioning like we can.”

“Yeah, but there’s a creek right over there,” he pointed across the street.

“A muddy puddle this time of year at best. And even so, on their scale it might as well be miles away. Meanwhile, my bathroom is right next door.”

“Man, just listen to us right now,” said Jeff. “What is even happening?”

“I know, I know, but we’re in too deep now. Let’s just run with it and worry about whether we’ve gone completely insane later. What should we tell them next?”

“I mean, water’s cheap, right? How much water does an ant even need?” asked Jeff.

“I don’t know, why don’t you google it?” said Anastasia. “Wait, can you even google a question like that?”

Jeff grabbed the laptop and pulled up an entomology blog. “Apparently so,” he said. “According to Paul & Roces 2003, Camponotus mus, a mid-sized ant, can drink about 6-8 microliters of sugar water in a single sitting.”

“Are these ants Camponotus mus?” asked Anastasia.

“I doubt it, but we just need a ballpark figure anyways. Micro means one millionth. So a two-liter bottle of coke is equivalent to about a quarter million ant sips.”

“Okay, and how many ants are in a typical nest?” asked Anastasia. “I don’t know a ton about ants, but these little guys look like carpenter ants. Those are the kind you usually see indoors, right?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Jeff. “Here’s a site from Texas A&M University, they’ve got a whole bunch of pages on urban entomology. Looks like you might expect 15,000 workers in a typical colony of black carpenter ants.” 

Jeff fished out a piece of paper and a calculator. “Let me do some math. That’s 15,000 workers times 8 microliters on the high end, so about… 120 milliliters of water? How many sips do they need a day? And what about the queen, and the larva?”

“Eh, we're already close enough,” said Anastasia. “Let’s just give them a quarter liter and see if they ask for more.”

“Works for me, but how are they supposed to get it?” said Jeff. “If we just give them a glass of water to drink they’ll drown inside it.”

“Hmmm,” thought Anastasia. “We probably want to leave out a bunch of flat plates and cover them with very thin layers of water they can drink without drowning in it. That might take some figuring out.”

Jeff fiddled with the calculator some more.

“What are you working out now?” asked Anastasia.

“The annual cost of our treaty. Within city limits, municipal water charges are $3.10 per 100 cubic feet. 100 cubic feet is 748 gallons. 748 gallons is 2,831 liters and change. If we solve for daily water charges in cents per milliliter and multiply by 365, it all comes out to…” 

He turned the calculator around with a flourish. “...0.099 dollars a year.”

Anastasia chuckled. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, let me send them our offer.” She keyed in a message that meant approximately, what if we just give you a lot of water, and hit send.

The “little speakers” were very interested in that. After a few rounds of negotiation, the treaty was complete. The little speakers sealed the deal with a final message:

We smell and feel your treaty.
We will not trespass on cool water land.
Please give us water now.

“Smell and feel the agreement?” said Jeff.

“Appendix four. That means they understand and accept,” said Anastasia.

“Weird turn of phrase, if you ask me.”

“Is it, though?” said Anastasia. “Think of the etymology of our own English word, ‘under-stand.’ Isn’t that a weird way to say you know what something means? To stand underneath it, like you’re holding it up or something? But, turns out that’s not even the true etymology…no, the true etymology comes from Old English and actually means ‘to stand in the midst of.’ Isn’t that neat? And other Germanic languages went in different directions, if you look at Old Norse forstanda, which…”

“Uh huh,” said Jeff politely, engrossed in another calculation.

“...anyways,” she said, reigning herself back in. “Ants have bad vision. The main way they sense the world is through feeling and smelling it. So for them to smell and feel something really well, at least according to George, means ‘to get to know something intimately’, to fully grasp what it is. Kind of like how in the science fiction book Stranger in a Strange Land, the word ‘Grok,’ the Martian word for ‘drink,’ also means ‘to deeply grasp, to fully understand.’”

“Oh, is that where the word ‘grok’ came from?” said Jeff.

“I guess you never read Heinlein?”

“I was always more of an Asimov guy.”

“In any case, it means the ‘little speakers’ understand. If it’s really the ants we’re talking to, they just agreed to respect the borders of the bathroom, as long as we hold up our end of the bargain with daily deliveries of water. Ants are territorial creatures, so territorial integrity is probably something they have a deep intuitive grasp of.”

“Well, let’s see where this goes.” said Jeff. He got some shallow dishes from the kitchen and measured out the agreed upon daily ration of water. He placed the dishes close to the nest and carefully spread out a thin layer of water on each with a bulb syringe.

Anastasia sent:

Come see treaty water.

Sure enough, the ants came and began to drink up the water. As soon as the last drop was consumed, they left the plates behind and returned to the nest.

“This still isn’t proof,” said Jeff. “Ants coming to investigate resources plonked right next to their nest is perfectly natural behavior. This could still just be the most elaborate prank of all time.”

“Well, check this message out,” said Anastasia, pointing at the communicator.

We will respect your territory, big speaker.
Thank you.
Please trade with us again.

Jeff and Anastasia silently walked to the bathroom and paused before the door. “Moment of truth,” said Anastasia, grasping the door knob. “The last time I was in here, it was crawling with carpenter ants.”

She opened the door. Not a single ant was in sight.

The next day, Jeff brought the ants their daily dose of water. Anastasia’s bathroom remained free of ants. The same thing happened the next day, and the next, and the day after that, and each and every day thereafter for as long as Anastasia owned the house. Eventually Jeff repurposed a drip-feed irrigation system to automate the water deliveries.

Thus was sealed the first lasting pact between humans and an alien intelligence. For less than ten cents a year, Jeff and Anastasia secured a mutually beneficial and enduring peace with the ants that hundreds of dollars in poisons, baits, traps, and extermination fees could not.