“Blessings on thee, Sun Scarab, who rolls into life every day, kicking six legs and humming a shining beetle song.
This world is but a small patch of ground you travel without rushing.
The sun bursts upon the land, yellow light-dust alighting on the heads of Ra's tears.
The gods rejoice! They are drunk on sun and song, and one after another crown each other king.”
“On her rare shopping expeditions she would see with horror the casual contempt with which her khepri sisters treated male khepri, kicking and crushing the mindless two-foot insects. She remembered her tentative conversations with the other children, who taught her how her neighbours lived; her fear of using the language she knew instinctively, the language she carried in her blood, but that her broodma had taught her to loathe.”
Miéville, China. (2003). Perdido Street Station. Random House Publishing Group.
__________
Jacob was stunned – literally and figuratively.
His own father had just brought down upon him the swift wrath of a smiting god: smashing down a mass of glossy wood pulp upon Jacob's fragile, arthropod exoskeleton and sending him hurling to the soil below the fence, gravely wounded.
Dying.
“Help me!” Jacob chittered in vain, his miniscule ladybug mandibles clicking out a futile plea for succor.
Inside the human habitation, the original ladybug (now in possession of Jacob's human body) was seeking to perform normal human actions. She was hungry: where in the nest did her brood keep aphids? She would eat several of them, and then attend contact Matt, letting him know she would indeed attend the mass gathering planned by Hannah. She had not yet made up her mind about mating with Hannah or any of the other human females. It might be necessary to maintain her cover as a normal, human male. Her surrogate father-figure certainly seemed to be implying as much with his admonition against “video games” and suggestion to attend the “party.” Perhaps if Jacob met this Hannah in person, thing would be different? Maybe Jacob would not be so envious of her feminine ability to carry eggs. If Jacob could sire some offspring with Hannah, the other humans would undoubtedly accept her as a normal, ordinary male of their own species. Then she would be secure and could live without fear of being relegated once more to a pathetic, insect existence in the garden.
Outside in that very garden, her former body was slowly dying, crushed in an unknowing, casual act of filicide worthy of a Greek tragedy.
At the moment, the real Jacob didn't care that his former body wanted to blend into human society by mating, or that she nursed a covetous sense of resentment towards Hannah Robinson concerning her weird capacity for mammalian placental viviparity. Right now, Jacob didn't really give a fuck about his old body's inner conflict: desiring to be inseminated and lay many clutches of eggs, but equally wanting to maintain her cover as a simple human male by (bizarrely enough) brazenly impregnating many of the disgusting, soft, hairy human women.
Presently, all the real Jacob cared about was Not Dying.
And as his tiny, suddenly fragile feeling shell shuddered with a paroxysm of pain, he cried out one last time: “Help me!”
Surprisingly enough, help came.
From somewhere behind and beyond the blinding glare of the sun, a radiant white figure loomed.
Jacob's arthropod brain recognized the silhouette immediately: a fellow beetle.
“I'm not a beetle,” he moaned, twitching and flexing his antennae with each wave of white-hot, needles of pain that shot through his tiny, bug body.
The approaching white shadow, apparently emanating from the sun itself, was definitely that of a titanic beetle though. Jacob was too far gone to argue with what he had become. It was a fellow bug descending upon him … likely a predator, keen to devour Jacob's remains. He would die here, below the garden fence, killed by his own father while a female insect usurped his life.
“I am αυτογενής,” said the glowing white shadow emanating from the holy disc of the sun. “My name is Kheper-djesef. I am the One who Creates Himself, the autogenous god, originating from my own will alone: I am the miracle of genesis, coming into being and emanating from nothing but my own vital spirit. I am Regeneration – yours and mine – and I alone roll the solar ball of lifegiving warmth everywhere but the antipodes. I am the Most Sacred God of Scarabaeus sacer – Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and weep with Joy!”
“I'm dying!” gasped Jacob, his mandibles snapping and ticking away with a sick, metallic sound. “Puh-Puh-Puh-Please help me!”
“You are dying,” confirmed Kheper. “I come to take you to the Duat. It is a long, perilous journey over rivers, lakes, mountains, and canyons. Beyond the walls of iron, the lakes of fire, and the forests of turquoise must you go. Then you will face the demons, devils, and beasts of the after-desert. And in the end, just Anubis will weigh your heart. It must be so.”
“I don't want to die!” sobbed Jacob.
“Few do,” clicked the massive, glowing scarab beetle hovering above Jacob. “Our destinies are ordained by Shai – decreed as fate that none can ignore. You will die, daughter of the garden. I will escort you up-steps, to a new realm.”
“I'm not a 'daughter of the garden,'” Jacob insisted. “I'm not a ladybug at all. I'm a human boy – transformed against my will into being an insect. I don't deserve this!”
“You are a female beetle,” said Kheper.
“My name is Jacob, I am human, and I am male!” shouted Jacob with his tiny mandibles. “If you're really some sort of crazy beetle god, then use your magic powers. You should be able to tell whether or not I'm lying.”
“You might be mad,” replied Kheper. “Not all who speak untruths do so knowingly.”
“Pretty nifty case of insanity I've got here,” answered Jacob. “You're right: I'm a bug who only thinks he's a human boy changed into an insect and killed by his own stupid, clumsy dad! You're right: the decade-and-a-half worth of human memories I have are all a lie. You're right: there's no such thing as magic transformations. Oh, invisible ghost-beetles from the afterlife – well, that's real. And your walls of turquoise, forests of fire, and lakes of iron are all real. But my story: yeah, that's pure fiction.”
“It has been known to happen,” conceded Kheper slowly.
“What has?”
“That men might be changed to beasts,” answered Kheper. “I have heard these tales before, but it has been many billions of beetle deaths ago. Stories such as yours do not frequently occur. I remain skeptical.”
“Use your magic bug powers on me!” yelled Jacob. “If you're really the Ancient Egyptian version of the Angel of Insecticide, use your magic on me and tell me what you see!”
“I have heard these claims before,” Kheper said slowly. “Sometimes it is true. Often it is a lie. More often, it is mere madness.”
“I'm not a ladybug and I don't want to die as one and ascend into bug paradise!” snapped Jacob.
Both beetles were silent for a long while.
Jacob began to fear he had already passed away. The world around him had grown dim, grey, and still. He lacked the strength to even twitch a single feeler. Yet the jagged, sharp cracks in his exoskeleton still pulsed with pain – the only sign his corporeal form remained technically alive.
“There has been an interference,” Kheper finally announced. “You are an aberration: not one of my kingdom at all. Wherefore have you taken the shape of a daughter of the garden?”
“It wasn't my choice!” growled Jacob. “And thanks a lot for taking your time. Now I am going to die.”
“I am preventing that,” Kheper replied evenly. “You will hover on the edge of this world and the world up-steps … until I have decided what is to be done with you.”
“Put me back in my own body!”
“No,” answered Kheper. “Such is not within my bailiwick.”
“So you'll just keep like this – tortured, forever in pain?”
“No,” replied Kheper. “Such is also not my bailiwick.”
“What happens to me?” cried Jacob.
“The last time this happened – many, many billions of beetle deaths ago – I simply harvested the human soul and brought him to Duat. In that instance, it was Ma'at that he undergo transformation into an insignificant, female bug. Justice was served. And his eternal afterlife became that befitting a she-beetle, forever after through all time.”
“No!” sobbed Jacob.
“But your five-part soul speaks differently,” answered Kheper. “Your jb is a massive, hot, hemocoel – oddly quartered. Your šwt is small, feminine, light as a feather, and primed to lay many eggs. Your bꜣ, however screams with impressive power that it rejects insecthood and demands nothing less than personhood. Your kꜣ is a masculine essence, replete with sapience. But your rn is unequivocally “Coccinelle,” as your pheromones firmly attest. You are an intriguing mixture of both manly insect and maidenly hominid. But most crucially, your five-part soul is blamelessly innocent. And I will not condemn you to the afterlife of arthropods waiting up-steps from this three-dimensional realm.”
“Well, what the hell are you going to do for me, then?” cried Jacob. “Can you put me back in my human body?”
“No,” said Kheper flatly. “Such soul-switching as was inflicted upon you came from unholy technomagic, originating in faraway dimension of godless depravities. I am powerless to intervene; and further, I caution you against involving yourself ever again with such evil artifacts.”
“How can I do anything 'ever again' if I'm about to die?” moaned Jacob.
“I am not without means,” answered Kheper. “If you desire rebirth, that path is easily made accessible through me. Would you have your man-girl/bug-ape soul transmigrated into an egg that you might be born again? Such sorcerer is permissible.”
“Reincarnation as another insect?!” shrieked Jacob. “No, thanks!”
“Rebirth, to be sure. But the chosen larval form need not be that of a lowly crawler in the leaf litter,” said Kheper evenly.
“What are my other choices?” asked Jacob.
“Transmutation is possible – in a limited sense,” replied Kheper. “But I cannot restore your former shape. Would you be an ibis, a cat, an asp?”
“No. I 'would be' a human guy again!”
“That may prove beyond my capabilities,” answered Kheper. “My alchemy could reshape you into a human; however, you would be the human equivalent of Coccinelle – a young maiden, vaguely reminiscent of a ladybug in all likelihood, perhaps even with the scars of non-life threatening injury lingering from your present wounds.”
“I don't want to be a crippled, bug-girl!” cried Jacob.
“Then you desire reincarnation instead?”
“No … I – I – I guess I don't have many options here, do I?”
“I am omnipresent through the realm of my kind and possess infinite patience,” replied Kheper. “Even now, I in an attendance upon the funerary rituals of millions of beetles. I hear their confessions and guide them to the land of Duat, just as I offered to do for you. I am eternal. If you desire contemplation, please: take your time and reflect upon your choices. Urgency is for the living; you are verged on the edge of the world up-steps. You and I have the luxury of time. I will bask in the garden and await your decision.”
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