A problem faced by many authors can be phrased in these terms. Where to start?

In twenty-third century Sussex, when a research team develops the first workable suspended animation system?

In the year 2290 when the first man lands on Ceres?

On January 16, 2342, when the Union of Soviet South American Republics, allied with Canada, invade the Federal Republic of America?

On April 17 of the same year, when the last message from a now uninhabitable Earth reaches the Ceres space station?

December 25^th 2346, when the last ten thousand humans alive place themselves in suspended animation?

These events, while being precursors to the story below, are a story in their own right, but not one which will be told here.

The true starting point for this story, or rather this narrative, as stories have no beginning or end, is an eye above a landscape, after the humans, after the age of growth. A landscape in a world which, like many, is capable of love, beauty and wisdom, but equally prone to hatred, ignorance and prejudice. A world which, whilst different to our own, may at times be all too familiar.

All was nearly dark.
A pale light issued, as always, from deep in the bowels of the foliage, but as the Caterpillars were creatures of the day, and lived on a plant whose resources were most exploitable in the daylight hours, this went largely unnoticed. The only other lights were the eerie phosphorous streetlights of the city, which had an official population of 59,000, and an actual population of nearer 100,000, because, as always, the census of the town didn’t count aphids. There was a certain smell in the air, a crispness of the wind, as if the universe was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen, and watching closely to record every moment in its mind. Caterpillars, being practical creatures, and on the whole as romantic as a desk-lamp, put it down to something in the water.
Light came into being, first a pale glow, then a sudden blazing light, far, far above. A human watching this would have been shocked by the intensity of the beam, but then again, a human would have been able to crush large parts of the city with each foot, so a human viewpoint can be disregarded as irrelevant. A less practical race than the Caterpillars would have created for themselves a god of light, who lived high above, and controlled everything, as many human tribes did with our sun, but as a group of the Caterpillar explorers had mounted an expedition up the glow-globe’s mooring cables long ago in caterpillar history, they knew their own personal sun to be, not a scarab beetle, or the eye of a god, or a chariot, but a very large clear globe, which glowed very, very brightly. They also knew that there were many other of these globes, on the edge of visibility. Tales came back from travellers about such strange phenomena as a dark globe, a pink globe, a flickering globe, and other strange sights visible in other parts of the place that the caterpillars called "The Tree". The name for their world arose from a racial memory which created the, as yet still intact, theory that all of their life forms existed on one massive plant, and that their life continued because of this plant. Caterpillar scientists had been aware of photosynthesis, respiration, and other essential areas of biology for long enough to understand that the oxygen that they breathed was created by the processes in the plant they lived on, and so an attitude of respect was quite natural.
As light poured into the vegetation, an amazing visual effect occurred. Pieces of vegetation that by the eerie night-light appeared to be just leaves or branches were revealed to be shelters, roads, buildings and other strangely civilised pieces of vegetation. Tiny cars, fuelled by alcohol, travelled at speed down the busy branches, caterpillars at their wheels. Leaves were pulled forward, becoming the awnings for shops. As the massive flowers opened, caterpillar work crews moved in to tap the valuable nectar, and gather the pollen. To a human eye the scene would have looked extraordinarily strange, not because the things happening were odd, or unusual, or incomprehensible, but because they were so familiar. The Caterpillar society, or what was visible of it from this point of view, was a mirror of human society of the twentieth century. Even the caterpillars themselves appeared similar to tiny green people, but with a soft body, joined to long, chitinous arms and legs.

This was, of course, because they were.

Following the well-established principle of parallel evolution, Caterpillar society had advanced along very similar lines to our own, except that caterpillar society was based far more on the biochemical sciences than our own, and had now reached the point where it was roughly on a par with human society, with a few differences. Because of the relative size of the world in which the caterpillars lived, huge in comparison to our own, the Caterpillars were almost constantly a frontier society. Their world was ever expanding, so they never knew what could be found around the next corner. Their views of their own world were similar to the views of people in the middle ages, the world was a strange and probably dangerous place. Twentieth century humans could be said to have the same view of space, as every society needs a place for the unknown to happen.
The Caterpillars were not truly aware of the size of their civilisation. As the branches could be very long and winding, and the Caterpillars had rather bad memories on the whole, Cartography had never really caught on. The few maps that Caterpillars had rarely encompassed more than two or three cities, which rendered communication difficult, until the invention of radio. As a result, Caterpillar society was, by and large, composed of city states, each led by what was roughly the equivalent of a Chinese warlord, with only Butterflies being universally respected and acknowledged.
It was an unusual trait in the Magellan Caterpillar that although all Caterpillars were able to metamorphose into butterflies, only around 5% of them did. This was seen as a survival trait, as each Butterfly could have up to 800 offspring, and so without the rarity of the metamorphosis, the Caterpillars would quickly outgrow their food potential. In the evolved Caterpillars, the choice of Caterpillar for the Metamorphosis was taken by a series of College exams, with the top 5% of each year becoming initiates in the Chrysalis programme, the others metamorphosing into the mature but sterile adult caterpillar phase. As Caterpillars evolved, so did the Butterflies they changed into, but it is not necessary to enter into details now, because far below the glow-globes, sheltered by rows of leaves, now covered in minute machinery, a destiny was waiting to happen.

At first there was nothing, peaceful blackness, behind which the brain put its house in order, and began to sort the priorities of the day. Then, a glowing redness filled the world, and the conscious mind was slowly brought back into being, chains of conscience forming, as the mind slowly entered the state of being where it is considered to be "Awake". The mind stayed convalescing like this for several minutes, before the courage was plucked up to undertake the most difficult task of the morning, regaining vision, a manoeuvre which was almost always instantly regretted, no matter what species, or what method. The bed-sheets, pulled over the head shortly before the previous night’s unconsciousness, are moved back, by the tiniest of fractions, and a beam of white-hot light shoots in, making glowing patterns on the retina. The brain sends out immediate signals for the conscious mind to ignore the optical signals, and the tangled bedding descends over the head once more, throwing the tortured awoken sleeper into a welcoming, peaceful darkness, as the brain waits for the pain of consciousness to deaden.

A green arm shot blindly out of the twisted sheets and grabbed hold of the bottle sitting at the bed’s head. A corroded label on the bottle bore the legend "Abel Moss’s patented leaf-burner, ninety five per cent proof", (although it wasn’t so much proof as circumstantial evidence). The bottle sailed through the air to be up-ended into the expectant mouth. Nothing happened. The eyes on the green face were re-engaged, saw the empty bottle and were ignored once more in favour of a darkness filled with full bottles. A croaked curse emerged from the parched throat as the arm swung the bottle towards the floor. Unfortunately, due to the principles of leverage - and how they relate to having a hangover larger and uglier than a municipal car park at 6:30 on a wet Wednesday morning - the violent arm movement also managed to fling the hung-over occupant of the bed onto the floor. The woozy, dishevelled green figure revealed by this sudden burst of activity staggered to an upright position, released a stream of swear-words which would make the listener glad that they were mumbled, and shuffled off to the bathroom. This was how Remiel began his morning.

In the bathroom, the razor made short work of the day’s build up of sensory hairs, which were a nuisance if they got too long, leaving Remiel clean shaven and slightly more aware of his surroundings. A breakfast of freshly picked Rhododendron set him onto his feet, and whilst his body was going through the motions of recovery, his mind could drift back to the previous evening, and try to piece together a report of what had happened from the remnants of his disjointed memory. He could remember clearly finishing work on the farm and heading for the Green Sounds club, his local bar. He could remember clearly the phone-call he received from Topsfield, a small city around a day’s travel of Miller’s Rest, Remiel’s home town. What eluded him at this point was what was said in that conversation, and indeed who it was from. A few of the details of the conversation began to surface in his mind. Rogue phrases like "Results day", "Flying colours" and "Early coach" sprang unbidden into Remiel’s mind. A face began to form in Remiel’s mind, a smiling, open, instantly likeable face, one that had seen a lot, but grown to like most of it. A strong, muscular body, which was tough without being over-muscled attached itself to the face, and the appearance was rounded off by a pair of gold half-moon spectacles¹. The whole memory let itself be known just as this last detail snapped into place. Despite the early hour, and the splitting headache, Remiel leapt into the air and yelled with pure joy. Cornelius and the band were coming home!

His headache forgotten, Remiel dressed and washed with a speed and bounce in his movements that had been absent for far too long. He rushed outside and grabbed the controls on the Teeth-grinder, his leaf harvesting machine. As he reached for the keys, he paused for a moment, checked himself in the mirror, and decided to radio in to Miguel and Sanchez, his aphid plant managers, "Boys," he called into the CB unit attached to the Teeth-grinder, "Take the morning off, I feel like doing the early shift."
"You sure, Mister Remiel? We don’t want to leave you in a mess." replied the clipped tones of Miguel, the middle aged aphid who was trusted with the responsibility of running the farm.
"Hey, if I want to do the early shift, what are you worrying about? This gives you the morning off." Remiel flicked the CB off and revved up the powerful machinery.

At the farm’s main building, Miguel flicked of the radio. He turned to Sanchez with a certain amount of confusion in his eyes.
"Sanchez?" he yelled across the office, not holding any real hope of rousing his work-mate’s interest,
"Mmm?" murmured Sanchez, the youthful aphid who was apprenticed to Miguel, and spoke in the teenage Esperanto of grunts and distressed noises.
"What’s wrong with the boss? He’s just given us the morning off. He never does stuff like this for no reason."
"Maybe he’s just in a good mood. Anyway, what do we care? This gives us time for another game of poker, which reminds me, you owe me about a thousand kyler from last time."
The two aphids settled down to their card game, lost in the turn of the cards.

After the leaves had received their morning pruning, Remiel telephoned Mrs Brandt, Cornelius’s mother.
"Hello? Mrs Brandt?"
"Hello," replied a warm, liquid voice which was filled with happiness and contentment, as were most Butterfly voices. As usual, Remiel felt quite strange speaking to a butterfly who was taking an active role in raising her child.²
"Is Cornelius there, please?"
"Is that Remiel? Hello, dear, he’s just unpacking in his room, do you want to speak with him?"

It is on points like this that worlds hang by a thread, that destinies are made and broken. Had Remiel spoken to Cornelius over the telephone, then he would never have left the farm, he and Cornelius would have spent a happy evening reminiscing over old times and getting merrily drunk before being killed by the incendiary bomb planted in the farm, and this would have been a very short, and rather pointless, story.
Remiel paused for a second weighing up the alternatives. Luckily for the story, he decided to be sneaky, inadvertently saving his own life.
"No, I think I’ll surprise him, do you know where he’ll be this afternoon?"
"As far as I know, he’s heading to the ‘Green Sounds’ club, he’s just got back from College with Wilson, Daz and Luther, the band’s got a bit of a gig at the club, playing for their drinks, you know the deal."
Remiel paused in thought for a second, knowing the deal all too well, he’d been in the band a year or so ago, and had gone from playing in the band, to playing for drinks, to drinking to get himself to play. He had never been officially thrown out of the band, they’d just simply stopped telling him about gigs, rehearsals and so on. When Cornelius had stayed on in Topsfield after the exams, waiting for the results, and the others had continued with the course, he had come home, the farm needed his supervision.
"Hello? Is there anybody there?" the voice on the phone brought Remiel back to reality, and he answered.
"What? Oh, yes. Sorry about that, I was lost in thought. Thanks. Bye."

Remiel placed the receiver back in its cradle. He had a couple of things to do that afternoon in town, and it was coming up to midday anyway. If he wanted to catch Cornelius, he’d better make a move straight away. Remiel left the house, heading towards town, the easy grace in his step not fully cloaking the melancholy he was feeling.

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Copyright 1999 Ian Rennie, for Remiel Productions.