DAYS SURVIVED: 150
COLONY SIZE: 15
DAYS UNTIL FLOODS: 40
The argument started over something trivial.
Dig had been excavating a new storage chamber when the project intersected with one of Twitchy's alarm systems. A carefully balanced stone array that would alert the colony to tunnel collapses—except Dig's tunneling had destabilized it, making it hypersensitive. False alarms every hour.
"You're compromising security for storage we don't even need," Twitchy accused.
"We need storage for post-flood supplies," Dig countered. "Security systems can be rebuilt. Food caches can't be replaced if we don't have space to store them."
"Security keeps us alive long enough to use the food—"
"Both of you, stop," Shadow intervened. "Dig, you check with Twitchy before excavating near existing security infrastructure. Twitchy, you identify which alarms are critical versus nice-to-have. We compromise. We adapt. We don't fight each other forty days before extinction."
Both kits backed down, but the tension remained.
It was the fourth inter-colony dispute that week.
Kai noticed the pattern: stress fractures. The kind that appeared in groups under sustained pressure. Everyone was on edge. Everyone was exhausted. Everyone was starting to snap at each other over minor provocations.
"We need a break," Patch said during the evening medical review. "I'm treating more injuries from colony members bumping into each other than from external threats. Strike and Spike got into an actual fight yesterday. Over nothing. Just stress and proximity and too much time in tight quarters."
"We can't afford a break," Kai said. "Forty days—"
"We can't afford not to break," Patch interrupted. "Another week at this pace and we'll fracture. Cohesion is dropping. Colony bonds are straining. The stress markers I'm seeing are catastrophic."
"What do you recommend?"
"One day of rest. No projects. No drilling. Just... existing. Let everyone decompress before we push the final sprint."
Kai wanted to argue. They didn't have time. Every day counted. Every hour mattered.
But Patch was right. A fractured colony wouldn't survive the floods no matter how well-prepared they were.
"Tomorrow," Kai decided. "Full rest day. No mandatory activities. Everyone does whatever they need to do to stay sane."
DAY 151: REST DAY
The colony responded to the announcement with visible relief.
Dig immediately stopped excavating and slept for fourteen straight hours—the first real rest the constructor had taken in weeks.
Twitchy spent the day reorganizing alarm systems, not because it needed to be done, but because the routine was comforting. Familiar. Safe.
The hunters—Guard, Strike, Spike, and Bitey—went on a recreational hunt. Not for food. Just for sport. Hunting for the joy of it rather than survival. They came back bloody and grinning, tensions resolved through coordinated violence against prey that couldn't retaliate.
Quick explored. Ranging far beyond their territory, mapping areas they'd never needed to map, just for the satisfaction of knowing what was out there.
Tank sat in the defensive position and didn't move. When Patch checked on the heavy defender, Tank explained: "This is relaxing. No threats. No combat. Just standing watch over things worth protecting. This is what I was made for. This is peace."
Flick rotated through everyone, helping where help was needed, coordinating where coordination was lacking. Even on rest day, the coordinator coordinated.
The Watchers continued observing. They didn't understand the concept of rest. Mission was constant. Purpose was eternal.
Shadow spent the day with the carved stones, trying to decode patterns in the warnings they still didn't fully understand. Looking for answers from people who'd been dead for millennia.
And Kai...
Kai found himself alone in the deep tunnels, near the sealed vault, wrestling with the question that had been haunting him since the colony confession:
Could the Watchers be fixed?
He'd promised to research it. Promised to find a way to give them more choice. But the genetic encoding was complex—woven throughout their DNA, interconnected with critical systems. You couldn't just remove the loyalty programming without destabilizing everything.
Or could you?
Kai spent six hours running theoretical models in his genetic memory. Testing scenarios. Building hypothetical modifications.
THEORETICAL MODIFICATION: AUTONOMY ENHANCEMENT
Approach: Gradually reduce mission constraint intensity over multiple generations
Risk: Behavioral instability during transition
Success probability: 34%
Side effects: Potential loss of specialized capabilities, identity confusion, increased emotional distress
Thirty-four percent. Barely better than a coin flip. And success wasn't guaranteed to produce better outcomes—the modified Watchers might be more confused and distressed than the current versions.
He tried different approaches:
MODIFICATION 2: CHOICE INSERTION
Add decision-making capability while maintaining mission awareness
Success probability: 19%
Risk: Psychological fracture between desire and duty
MODIFICATION 3: GRADUAL AWAKENING
Slowly introduce self-awareness across generations
Success probability: 41%
Risk: Existential crisis, potential suicide ideation
Every scenario had risks. Every approach could make things worse.
"What do I do?" Kai whispered to the sealed vault. To the forty pods inside. To Keeper-Alpha standing its eternal vigil.
The vault didn't answer. But Kai knew what his conscience was saying: Try anyway. Even if you fail, trying is better than leaving them enslaved forever.
He was composing his research notes when Shadow found him.
"I've been looking for you for three hours," Shadow said. "It's rest day. You're supposed to be resting."
"I am resting. I'm researching instead of running drills. That's basically rest."
"That's you lying to yourself." Shadow sat beside Kai, looking at his genetic modeling. "The Watchers. You're trying to fix them."
"Trying. Failing. The encoding is too complex. Every modification I simulate has worse outcomes than the current state."
"Maybe there's no fix. Maybe some things, once broken, stay broken."
"I can't accept that. I broke them. I have to at least try to fix them."
"Why? Not because it makes practical sense—fixing them might make them less useful. So why?"
Kai thought about his mother. About Chicago. About the person he used to be.
"Because it's the right thing to do. Even if it costs me. Even if it makes things harder. Because that's the only way I can look at myself without hating what I see."
Shadow pressed against Kai's side. "You're not a monster. Monsters don't care about fixing their mistakes."
"Then what am I?"
"Someone desperate who made terrible choices trying to save people he loves. That's different."
"Is it? Or is that just what monsters tell themselves?"
Shadow didn't answer. They sat together in silence, surrounded by sealed pods and moral debts and research that suggested some mistakes couldn't be fixed.
Finally, Shadow spoke: "Keep trying. Even if it takes years. Even if it never works. Keep trying. Because the effort matters, even when success is impossible."
"That's irrational."
"That's ethics. Ethics are almost always irrational. That's what makes them worth having."
DAYS SURVIVED: 152
DAYS UNTIL FLOODS: 39
The colony returned to work refreshed. Cohesion improved. Tensions eased. Patch's stress markers dropped to manageable levels.
The rest day had worked.
But the countdown continued. Thirty-nine days. Five and a half weeks.
Kai accelerated preparations. Shadow coordinated logistics. The Watchers provided threat analysis. The hunters trained. Dig built. Twitchy secured. Patch healed. Everyone moved with purpose.
The alliance with Scar-Mandible's colony remained strong. They ran joint drills. Shared intelligence. Practiced evacuation scenarios together.
Other colonies in the region watched nervously. The World Cat-ant alliance was unprecedented. Powerful. Potentially threatening.
The scorpions tested their boundaries twice. Both times, the combined defensive response convinced them to try elsewhere.
The spiders stayed neutral. Built their web networks. Prepared in isolation.
The beetles fortified their territories. Watched everything. Said nothing.
And in the deep places, in the old tunnels where water was already starting to seep through cracks, something moved. Something large. Something that had survived the last floods and would survive these too.
The Watchers detected it on day 155.
Unknown entity. Deep territory. Size: Massive. Classification: Unknown. Threat level: Uncertain. Behavior: Preparing for floods. Conclusion: Another survivor. Potential ally or enemy. Requires investigation.
"How massive?" Kai asked.
Vibration analysis suggests 200+ times our individual mass. Possibly more. Scale difficult to determine from current data.
Two hundred times. That wasn't a predator. That was a force of nature.
"Do we investigate or avoid?"
The command council debated. Guard voted investigate—know your neighbors before disaster strikes. Twitchy voted avoid—don't poke things that might eat you. Shadow suggested middle ground—monitor but don't approach.
They compromised: long-range observation. The Watchers would track the entity. Document behavior. Build a threat profile. But no direct contact unless necessary.
Acceptable. Beginning surveillance protocols.
The Watchers vanished into the deep tunnels, moving with their characteristic silent efficiency. They'd report back in three days.
Kai hoped they'd survive that long.
DAYS SURVIVED: 157
COLONY COUNCIL MEETING
The Watchers returned on schedule. All four intact. But they brought disturbing news.
Entity identified: Tunnel Keeper. Ancient species. Pre-dates current surface ecology. Purpose: Geological maintenance. Behavior: Non-aggressive unless provoked. Assessment: No immediate threat.
"Tunnel Keeper?" Shadow asked. "That's what it's called?"
Designation derived from carved markers found in entity's territory. Same style as your seven stones. This species created them. This is the Maker species.
The colony went silent.
Kai moved to his seven carved stones. Looked at them with new understanding.
"They're not extinct," he breathed. "The species that carved these. They survived. At least one of them survived."
Correction: One surviving specimen detected. No evidence of others. Likely lone survivor. Assessment: Functionally extinct species. Last representative.
"I want to meet it," Kai said immediately.
"That's insane," Twitchy protested. "It's two hundred times your size. It could kill you by accident."
"It's also the only source of information about what happened to its civilization. About how they failed. About how to avoid repeating their mistakes."
"Or it's senile and dangerous and will crush you because it doesn't recognize you as intelligent," Shadow countered.
"I'm going," Kai said. "Not negotiable. Shadow, you're in command if I don't return. The colony evacuates to high ground in thirty-five days regardless of whether I'm back."
"Kai—"
"Not negotiable," Kai repeated. "This matters. Understanding what killed them might be the thing that saves us."
The council reluctantly agreed. Kai would go. But not alone.
"I'm coming with you," Shadow said.
"No. You're heir. We don't both go."
"Then Guard comes. Or Tank. Someone who can protect you if things go wrong."
"Tank can't fit through the tunnels to deep territory. Guard needs to stay with the combat unit."
Logical solution: Watcher accompanies creator, Watcher-1 suggested. We are expendable. Our death does not significantly impact colony survival. We can provide documentation if creator dies.
The casual way the Watcher discussed its own expendability made Kai's stomach hurt. But it was right. Watchers were the logical choice.
"Watcher-1 comes with me. We leave at dawn. If we're not back in four days, assume we're dead and proceed without us."
Shadow looked like they wanted to argue more but recognized the futility.
"Four days," Shadow said. "Then I'm taking command and making sure we survive. Even without you."
"Good. That's exactly what I trained you for."
They pressed together briefly—affection and fear and trust all mixed into one gesture.
"Don't die," Shadow said.
"I'll do my best."
DAYS SURVIVED: 158
THE DESCENT
Kai and Watcher-1 descended into territory no one from the colony had explored. Past the moss gardens. Past the hunting grounds. Into tunnels that predated the current geological age.
The carved stones appeared more frequently here. Dozens of them. Hundreds. All with different patterns, different warnings, different messages.
Watcher-1 documented everything, its perfect memory recording every detail.
This was a city, the Watcher observed. Population estimated in thousands. Sophisticated infrastructure. Advanced culture. Then sudden collapse. Timeline suggests approximately 8,000 years ago.
"What killed them?"
Unknown. No obvious catastrophe markers. No volcanic activity. No meteor impact. Just... absence. As if the population simply ceased to exist.
They descended deeper. The temperature dropped. The air tasted different—older, somehow. Ancient.
And then they found it.
The Tunnel Keeper.
It was massive. Armored like a beetle but shaped like nothing Kai had ever seen. Six legs, each one the size of Kai's entire body. A head that looked almost crystalline, faceted and reflective. Mandibles designed not for eating but for moving earth.
It was carving.
Creating a stone tablet with precise, deliberate marks. The same style as the seven stones in Kai's den.
The Tunnel Keeper noticed them. Stopped carving. Turned its massive head.
For a long moment, nobody moved.
Then the Tunnel Keeper produced a sound—not quite speech, not quite pheromones, something in between. A vibration that carried meaning directly into Kai's genetic memory.
You are small Maker. New generation. First to return in eight thousand years.
Kai found his voice. "You can communicate?"
I maintain. I remember. I warn. This is purpose. This is all that remains.
"What happened? What killed your people?"
The Tunnel Keeper resumed carving, its movements precise and practiced.
We grew too fast. Made too many. Consumed too much. The balance broke. The deep waters rose. But that was symptom, not cause. We died because we forgot we were part of system, not masters of it. We thought survival meant domination. We were wrong.
The Tunnel Keeper turned the stone to show Kai the carving. A new pattern. Different from the others.
A small figure. Surrounded by many figures. All connected. All dependent.
Learn from us. Build different. Survive better.
"The floods are coming again," Kai said. "In thirty-five days. We're preparing. But we might not be ready."
You have allies. I saw colony movements. Many species cooperating. This is good. This is what we should have done. Learn from our failure. Do not repeat.
"I've made mistakes," Kai admitted. "Created things I shouldn't have. Crossed lines I can't uncross."
All Makers make mistakes. Question is: do you learn? Do you adapt? Do you try to fix what you break?
"I'm trying. I don't know if I can."
Then you are better than we were. We never tried. We assumed dominance was sufficient. We were wrong. You are wrong differently. This is improvement.
The Tunnel Keeper returned to its carving, the conversation apparently over.
But before Kai left, the ancient creature added one more thing:
When floods come, deep places safer than high ground. But you are too small for deep places. Stay high. Stay together. Stay humble. This is path to survival we never found.
Kai and Watcher-1 made the climb back to colony territory in silence.
When they emerged, Shadow was waiting.
"Well?" Shadow asked. "What did you learn?"
Kai thought about the Tunnel Keeper. About a species that had dominated its world and died anyway. About mistakes and learning and trying to be better.
"I learned that survival isn't about being strongest," Kai said. "It's about being smart enough to know you're not as strong as you think."
"That's it? You risked your life for philosophy?"
"No. I risked my life to understand what kills civilizations. And now I know: They kill themselves. Through arrogance. Through assuming they've conquered nature. Through forgetting they're part of the ecosystem, not above it."
He looked at his colony. Fifteen kits. Forty sealed pods. One allied ant colony. Thirty-five days until the floods.
"We're not going to make that mistake," Kai said. "We're going to survive by remembering we're small. Vulnerable. Dependent on each other and our allies. No dominance. Just cooperation and adaptation and humility."
"That's remarkably healthy perspective from someone who made genetic slaves," Shadow pointed out.
"Yeah. Working on that too. One mistake at a time."
They had thirty-four days left.
The countdown continued.