PARTMENT TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU, IF YOU PREFER NOT TO HOST ANOTHER TICK. THE 'YUCK FACTOR' YOU EXPERIENCE WITH REGARD TO TICKS THAT IMBED THEIR HEADS AND PROBING MAXILLA INTO YOUR BODY WASN'T UNEXPECTED. THEREFORE AS A TICK WAS NECESSARY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE WE CHOSE TO GIVE YOU ONE WITHOUT TELLING YOU ABOUT IT. FORTUNATELY THERE IS A SMALL HIDDEN AREA ON THE BACK OF HUMANS THAT CAN NOT ORDINARILY BE SEEN OR TOUCHED."
"The tick yuck factor is trivial compared with the cancer yuck factor," replied George. "I'd like to have a jant colony in my apartment plus another tick, if you can spare those resources."
"WE CAN."
"Also, according to Jerry Green you have work for me to do."
"YOU CAN HELP US SAVE MANY HUMAN LIVES, GEORGE. WE HAVE BEEN BREEDING JUVENILE TICKS THROUGHOUT THE PARK USING MOSTLY SQUIRRELS AS A BLOOD SOURCE TO RAISE THEM THROUGH THEIR LARVAL STAGE. IN OUR COLONIES THROUGHOUT THIS PARK WE HAVE MANY THOUSANDS OF THEM THAT ARE READY FOR HUMAN HOSTS. YOU CAN HELP US DELIVER THEM TO HOSPITALS AND OTHER PLACES WHERE SICK HUMANS CONGREGATE."
Over the next two weeks George delivered small packages filled with thousands of juvenile medical ticks to the jant colonies that lived outside dozens of hospitals in the greater New York City metropolitan area. In some of the bigger hospitals he helped the jants deliver ticks to patients by smuggling hundreds of tick carrying jants to multiple departments within the hospitals. At night the jants chemically detected victims of cancer and other diseases and rapidly carried ticks to them in their large jaws.
George also mailed packages all over the country which contained concealed ticks tended by jants. When the package reached its destination the jants ate their way out of their shipping packages and distributed the ticks to waiting local jant colonies. Soon medical ticks were being raised and distributed by the millions.
Through the winter George waited and watched the news. There were stories of tick outbreaks in hospitals in and around New York. This was denied by the hospitals. There were stories of miracle cancer cures in hospitals. There were stories of exotic incurable diseases and deadly parasites of numerous types miraculously being eradicated in thousands of patients. There were stories of paraplegic people walking! There were stories about numerous people that had been cured that claimed that they heard voices in their heads. The voices told them that ticks had cured them, and that the ticks had been supplied by jants. The jants and ticks were wonderful healers of the sick, the healed patients claimed.
Such stories were soon repeated across the country! Much panic, confusion and finger pointing ensued. The sensational stories of jant/tick miracle cures were at first totally denied by medical experts and health officials. And then they were doubted by medical experts and health officials. Ultimately reality could not be denied, and the reality of the cures and the cause of the cures were soon becoming widely accepted by medical experts and officials as well as the public.
Finally there was a presidential press conference. The president revealed that jants and medical ticks were part of a secret Government program to combat the insurgence of invasive disease and parasites triggered by climate change. Yes it was true, intelligent ants were allies of the United States Government, and had saved many thousands of human lives in the United States, and, increasingly, world-wide. All efforts to eradicate jants and medical ticks were by presidential decree to cease immediately. Every hospital in the country was to provide medical treatment using medical ticks, facilitated by jants.
When spring finely arrived thousands of people were in the Park along with George, 'talking' with the jants and hosting a new generation of medical ticks. Sick people came in droves. Jants and ticks were pictured on tee-shirts, hats, and posters. Cartoons, video games, TV programs, and school curriculums informed citizens of the enormous value of humanity's six and eight legged friends. The last few remaining paper magazines ran feature stories on jants and ticks. Time magazine had a cover titled 'A Tick In Time' which pictured a tick surrounded by jants. The Time feature story was an interview with Jerry Green, the new NSA Director. "We are entering a new age of human/jant cooperation," Jerry told the fawning public. Jerry and others appeared in news specials and on late-night television. Time Magazine soon declared jants and medical ticks to be the 'person' of the year.
The significance of the emergence of a new sentient species on Earth did not go unnoticed by human scientists, philosophers, theologians, and politicians. While some vowed to eradicate all jants from the face of the Earth, most counselled cautious accommodation and cooperation with the helpful, life-saving creatures.
The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), that portion of the geological science community responsible for labeling Earthly periods of time for the Earth's entire four and a half billion years of existence, had for several decades been considering use of the term 'Anthropocene' to describe the dawning of a new geological age in which climate was driven by human activity.
They agreed that mass extinctions and the human alteration of Earth's landscape and atmosphere justified the designation of a new age. However they had long been hung up on issues such as the starting date of the new age and whether or not the new age should be designated to be a new epoch that was part of the Quaternary period, or if the term Anthropocene should define a new period altogether that marked the end of the Quaternary.
Many argued that the end of the Quaternary should coincide with the end of the Quaternary Ice Age, which should coincide with completion of the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which was predicted to be only decades away.
Now some ICS members wondered if the term 'jants' should also be incorporated into the name somehow. Should the new period be called Anthropocene or Jantrocene or Anthrojantrocene? Many scientists cautioned that it was always better to wait and see what happened during a time period before naming it. History should reflect the past, not what was happening now or what was expected to happen in the future. A conservative group, the ICS decided to shelve the whole issue for at least a few more decades or centuries.
The emergence of the jants from the shadows was indeed a world-shaking event for humanity. In sum however, the jant/tick phenomenon was perceived to be a much appreciated positive development in a world increasingly filled with terrible disasters. Across the Earth, floods and droughts raged, and all life including humanity struggled to adapt and survive. Creatures great and small migrated, looking for someplace better, someplace more familiar than the climate altered place from which they had been forced to flee.
But wherever they fled to, they found that the new location was already occupied. Fights, battles, and full scale wars ensued between various species. Sometimes species merged and competition ensued on a more direct genetic level. Hybrid plants and animals such as the now common pizzly bear replaced traditional species such as polar bears and grizzly bears, although the ultimate fate of each new hybrid species was also uncertain. All species directly or indirectly depended on many other species. Now the intricate web of interactions between species that had taken thousands of generations to develop was seriously disrupted as ecological chaos ensued. Changes were so rapid that human scientists couldn't keep up with them.
Human deaths attributed ultimately to climate change were by now several million a year and increasing. Human migration and wars raged around the World, bringing death by violence, famine, and other causes. Yet humans as a species endured, and human population hovered around the eight-billion mark.
Other species were not so fortunate. Countless thousands of species of plants and animals became completely extinct, including many that had not yet been described, named, and categorized by human scientific endeavors and therefore never would be, unless adequate fossilized remains and genetic traces were studied someday. Even the shift towards enhanced gene expression that influenced inheritance which had been labeled Lamarckism didn't enable many organisms to adapt rapidly enough to the climate change to survive.
Though humans merely endured, the jants thrived. Unnoticed by most, tha
t summer the mass of all the jants on Earth surpassed that of the total of humanity. The jants noticed. The Noosphere, that relatively thin shell of conscious awareness that covered the Earth's surface, was becoming dominantly jant in composition. The jants worked diligently to weaken and control humans. They were making steady progress towards replacing humans as the dominant life form on Earth.
By that summer George's New York jant work was complete, and he soon went home to Texas to be the new human/jant coordinator for the Falcone Unlimited Corporation, and to reconnect with and marry Julie. Jants soon became an integral part of the protection provided within Falcone Unlimited Communities. They physically resisted the invasions of most invasive creatures, and even more impressively, their small biological medical laboratories the ticks successfully combated most diseases, invasive parasites, and other pathogens.
Some human researchers warned that human immune systems were becoming weakened due to the dependence on the medical ticks, but their warnings mostly went unheeded, just as other science-based warnings had been ignored for decades. After all, given the availability of medical ticks, were strong human immune systems really needed anymore? Ticks were wiping out disease world-wide now, for human hosts that numbered in the hundreds of millions and would soon number in the billions. The ticks even eliminated sexually transmitted disease and provided birth control! Isn't that handy!
Meanwhile George's parents were overjoyed that their son had returned to Texas and that by joining the Falcone Corporation had in a sense joined the family business. Both Frank and George became absurdly rich, or at least that's what their accountants assured them. Being an accountant himself, George knew to be suspicious. Almost all of their wealth was of course electronic, and just as he preferred paper books, George preferred paper money to electronic investment reports and bank statements. But you can't have everything, he decided.
"Well, don't that beat all!" George remarked one day as his father visited him in his corporate office. After five years of studying the Falcone Corporation books George had a sudden epiphany. "Guess who the biggest investors in the Falcone Corporation are?"
"The Falcone family of New Jersey, of course," Frank responded.
"According to official public records, yes they are," said George. "But..."
"But what?" Frank asked.
Strangely, George couldn't remember what he had been about to say. Was it something about the jants? Something about them being the real majority stockholders of the Falcone Corporation? No, it couldn't be that; such a thing would be silly! Insects didn't own stock! They couldn't legally own anything, could they? Had the Supreme Court addressed that one yet? After Dad left him to play golf on his nearby jant-protected golf course George decided to ask his jant friends about it. He relied on them a great deal lately to remember things for him.
"YOU WERE MERELY ABOUT TO REMIND FRANK THAT YOU AND HE ARE JUNIOR