It is the first year without cicadas. You walk through the arboretum and plunge into the flowerless shrubs, whistling to cover up the silence. Dead leaves crunch underneath your feet. You hold the case gingerly, stretched away from your body as if it is a bomb. Maybe it is. You can never tell with technology.
You unclasp the case and prop open the lid. Inside sit a hundred cicadas, polished and machine-painted in painstaking detail.
You make a phone call.
—In position.
—Two minutes before activation.
—Okay.
You sound like a sniper ready to murder someone from a mile away. The murder already happened though. You didn’t mean to kill off the cicadas. You didn’t mean to slowly drain the life out of the earth. If it makes you feel better, you were just another 3-D printed replacement part in the machine.
Two minutes in the sunshine last a long time, but finally they rattle by and the cicadas whir to life. The unexpected noise catches you by surprise and you jerk around, half-expecting to find a demon whispering behind you. But it is only the cicadas testing their wings before lifting flawlessly into the air. It would be a glorious sight except for the unnatural shine sparkling off the mechanical little bodies, as if the sunlight has transformed them into fairies.