The Lone Ant

To protect the identity of the eminent entomologist I shall simply called him ‘E’

W: “What do you know about a paper called ‘The Lone Ant’ by Dr. Abdul Jibril?”

E: “Yes I do know the paper although I only scanned it when it came in, I do get an awful lot of papers it is hard to keep track of them all. I’ve got it here somewhere. Then again I think it might have been in the stack of papers that got taken when they broke in.”

W: “Broke in?”

E: “I was burgled about month ago now, they didn’t take much a laptop and a bundle of papers nothing really important really.”

W: “Obviously they thought it important enough to steal them in the first place, I mean to pick a stack of papers out of the rest?” I indicated the rest of the room which was almost floor to ceiling filled with files and loose papers.

E: “Now that I think about it you do have a point there, I mean the paper in question is considered to be a little bit on the fringes of science but I hardly think it warrants being stolen. I mean it was published and it is in the public eye.”

W: “That is what I thought but I cannot find it anywhere on the Internet or in any academic circles involved in this area of study.”

E: “Well that is odd indeed!

W: “And the good doctor appears to have vanished from Cairo University, nobody has seen him since Bill went missing.”

E: “Bill?”

W: “The reason I am speaking to you is that my friend and Cambridge Professor William Rouke went missing quite recently. He was writing a book with Dr. Abdul Jibril called ‘What is Component Theory?’ In my search to find Bill I have been trying to understand what his theory is about in the hopes that I will able track his movements. Bill and Jibril were working together on the book, his paper ‘The Lone Ant’ has been mentioned.”

E: “As I said I only really scanned it but the name of the paper says it all really.”

W: “You will have to be a little more specific than that, the only thing I know about insects is getting spiders out of the bath when my friend Louise asks.”

E: “Well technically spiders are not insects, they are arachnids but they are related. It is a common misconception by the public, I assume your friend doesn’t like spiders then?”

W: “It is not that she does not like them, she says she gets a cold chill down her spine when looking at them. Perhaps you could clarify a little regarding the paper?”

E: “Yes! Of course, I tend to forget that people don’t know everything I do. A bit of a character flaw but then I find a lot of scientists have this flaw, living in a little world of our own as it were. Now you may not be aware that ants are social insects in the fact they work together to complete common goals, the title of paper obviously suggests that perhaps there was a time in the past when ants were individuals and didn’t work as a group. From what I remember this was the core of what the paper was about, his introduction was about a new discipline called ‘Pollution Interference’.”

W: “Yes I have heard of it someone on the web has written about it, what do you know about it?”

E: “Well actually it looked set to be the next hot scientific subject, they were very keen on it in the states and then just like that it all went very quiet. It happens all the time with new disciplines some survive and some don’t.”

W: “So how was Pollution Interference involved in his paper?”

E: “Well it all comes back to the increase in Colony Collapse Disorder, don’t you see?”

W: “I am sorry Doctor you have lost me again.”

E: “Sorry I’d thought you might have heard of CCD it has made the news several times over the last few years. Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD is a mechanism which is causing the death of worker bees and the corresponding, sudden collapse of the bee colony/hive. I assume you at least aware that bees pollinate the majority of our flowering food crops?”

W: “I understand that they play part in our farming are you saying without bees all our crops would die off?”

E: “Well about seventy percent of the plants on the planet are pollinated by bees, so unless something is done to stop CCD or replace the bees you are looking at the possibility of a planet without much plant life left. Albert Einstien said 'if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man,' But I wouldn't worry too much mankind has proved to be very adaptable, at least so far.”

W: “But what has CCD to do with Pollution Interference?”

E: “From I what understand PI could be one of the reasons for the increase of CCD, effectively man's increasing pollution is interfering with the natural order of the planet.”

W: “How does this relate to ants?”

E: “You will have to remember I didn't read all of the paper but Dr. Jibril made reference to experiments whereby ant colonies were cut off from all forms of known radiations even the air was purified. The ants became disorganized and acted more like individuals, sorry but I didn't read as far as the timescales that were involved in his experiments so I don't know how long it took before this occurred.”

W: “So what you saying is at some point in the distant past ants became social because of some form of increased radiation?”

E: “I think that would be the gist of the paper although what this radiation is or if it be a radiation at all, I do not believe Dr. Jibril has thus far determined the nature of the actual cause as yet.  Some scholars would say that this radiation created a mutation within the ants causing them to be more social, more evidence for the theory of evolution.”

W: “Could bees be also have been non-social in the past as well?”

E: “It is possible, however CCD is more about worker bees dying as opposed to them not working together.”

Basically I now have two partial theories which are probably linked by an event that happened in the distant past and what is echoing back is what Bill said when he went missing: 'The Zone is the source.'

This ongoing effect in the past whatever it was somehow made ants social and Sumerians violent! What sort of thing could achieve that? I know I have simplified both theories somewhat which makes the whole thing somewhat fanciful in nature and obviously there is so much more to both theories.

What else has been affected?

I do know one thing for sure Bill is hardly ever wrong he was once compared to James Lovelock.