WHAT IT IS
In some circles, in some very small circles, she had become some what of a legend after her dust up with INSECT’s prototype nano mechanical pollinator that left the robot at the bottom of a water filled mud hole at the edge of a Missouri corn field. The wasp did not ask for this random event to be thrust upon her and she did not relish in the retelling of the story. Those who are infused with courage when fear is the weight at the end of the outstretched arm are compelled to practice fulfillments to the fearful, so their courage towers as a statement to worthiness. That fear could overtake them, that randomness could collapse their world and dissolve a cloak of attained integrity, was not a realistic story line given the rarely mentioned reasons why some are chosen and why randomness is never the invited guest. Once we have given back, performed service, and laid out the appropriate illusion, we place the politics of the facts on a back burner so far from reality that even the likes of a Kelly Clarkson would never find it, or her way back.
The wasp can be anything if it fits into the confines of a contour where the dictates of the natural world are both predictable and trustworthy and randomness does not get to glance through the window where invited guests are not. This wasp, summoned by No.1, had greatness flowing from every body hair along her exoskeleton but her desire to exist among the wild plants was a randomness she could not control, and her fate was sealed by a chance encounter with a mechanical robot.
WHAT IT IS NOT
He was on the top rung of an eight foot ladder, both feet firmly covering the THIS IS NOT A STEP label meant to discourage such individuals from a debilitating fall. The object of his mission was a cracked fuel pump on his crop duster that dripped small amounts of the precious liquid whenever he reached heights greater than a thousand feet. A small crescent wrench in his back pocket, a #2 Philips screwdriver in his left hand, a tube of Hysol patch-all wedged between his teeth, and a soft rubber mallet were the initial weapons enlisted for this most critical assignment. As all reasonable generals will attest, the first attacks are often tweaked to accommodate circumstance, some things added, others taken away, and it was no different with the pilot/mechanic as the screwdriver was ditched, the rubber mallet replaced with a ball-peen hammer and more fortifying tubes of patching compound was hauled up the ladder. As the fifteen minute repair mutated into an afternoon ordeal, the top of the ladder and nearby engine compartment became infested with more and more tools, deemed necessary to effect the repair. Now on his third tube, the mechanic had to reach a particularly difficult spot at the bottom of the fuel pump, and to accomplish this, he braced himself along the edge of the engine compartment, rose up on his toes on the top rung of the ladder and reached deep inside the engine compartment to apply the patch on the precise spot on the fuel pump. Predictably, the strenuous pressure the toes placed on the top of the ladder caused it to topple over leaving the mechanic dangling off the side of the aircraft.
As he sized up his predicament and noodled scenarios of escape, a wasp landed on a spent tube of patching compound, then casually walked across the tools spread throughout the engine compartment. At some point the two locked eyes, the hunter, and the hunted and at some point the mechanic had to let go and fell to the ground. The wasp too, let go, but did not fall to the ground.
WHAT IT IS/WHAT IT IS NOT 