“Done this before?” he asked.
I shook my head.
Done what?
I guess this wasn’t the destination so much as a convenient way to go there?
I was gathering my bugs, the stronger fliers, and drawing out lines of silk. Trickster handed me the individual components. A small spy camera, no larger than a tube of lipstick, and a similar microphone.
The camera also shoots lasers that can be amplified, divided and directed using make-up mirrors.
The microphone turns into a chainsaw.
And they can both be used as actual lipstick.
My bugs bound them together with silk and then stretched out more to distribute the lifting among the dragonflies, bumblebees and wasps.
So right now it seems the plan is to spy on someone by having the bugs carry the spying equipment. Fair enough, but why?
One outside-the-box possibility would be to establish safe communication. Taylor could write things using bugs and have the recipients respond using the microphone, while they wouldn’t be able to attack.
But if the recipients actually are the Crew, I don’t see why that would be needed. The Protectorate, on the other hand, it could be worth doing with.
“Okay, let’s see,” I muttered.
“Testing, testing, one, two, three…“ My swarm managed some semblance of the words I wanted, a mix of buzzing, chirps and clicks to form the right pitch.
Oh hell yes, that’s so much cooler than the writing idea. But it looks like I was barking up the right tree!
So if they keep the microphone out of sight, it’ll come across as talking to the swarm. That’s awesome.
Some sounds were hard or impossible to make. The ‘puh’, ‘buh’ and ‘muh’ sounds didn’t form, and I struggled to form something that sounded like a ‘t’ in the middle of a word.
Ah, yeah, the swarm doesn’t exactly have lips.
It was intelligible, but only barely.
I say embrace the alienness of it.
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