THE ORGANIZER

[ by jorge machado ]

A sexless thing waist-deep in a steel platform that circles its massive belly and back. From the rim of the platform I see many descending offshoots � maybe tubes, maybe not. Air vents?

The organizer sits at the center and organizes the lives of the colony. It is a hive. It is a city made of wax. Hard wax. Hard creatures without hearts. They work. That is what they do. They do not think. They have forgotten how to, and are happier as a result. There is no more pain now, no more misery, no more confrontation, only work. Live for the hive. Die in the hive, for the hive. The organizer knows everything in the flesh, so to speak. The organizer is always dying. Decomposing: re-composing. The organizer appears to be immortal.

There are millions of drones that you cannot see right now. They�re toiling underneath the steel platform. The open sky is for the organizer, that it may breathe. The organizer�s drones carry food directly into its belly. They crawl into the spongy skin, drill holes in it that won�t take long to heal. They crawl in and deposit the food in drooping organic pouches that will absorb it and carry the nutrients into the core. The organizer�s body is a construct of massive galleries. The organizer itself does not know where the hive ends and its body begins. The organizer does not know whether the eggs inside its body are hatching or not. The organizer is a mother that has lost all feeling. The organizer is the hive. The organizer�s life is a constant stupor, a never-ending stasis. Its primary function is to breathe so it can maintain the hive. The organizer supplies the hive with oxygen. It doesn�t do anything else, and doesn�t know any other life.

The steel platform that secures its body was secreted and built by the organizer�s drones. Upon close inspection it reveals an hexagonal structure. Hard creatures without a soul that regurgitate red-hot steel. They have no eyes. They have a radar. They recognize one another by means of an electromagnetic signature. This signature would say, for instance, �hive.� It doesn�t say anything else. They all have the same signature. The same electromagnetic resonance. Accidentally they may bump into a stray individual whose signature says �alien� to them. They promptly choke him: seal him up in a coccon of steel.

The organizer doesn�t know any of this anymore. Once upon a time the organizer was a larva. The organizer was one of the latest hatchlings back then. So it received a surplus of nourishment. The last ones to hatch always do. When it came out of its sponge coccoon � bursting out of the skin of another organizer , one that had existed beforehand � it was strong, and flexible, and had lean nylon wings that shone in the sun. It pierced through the skin of its mother and stood by the rim of the steel platform. The wings were dry, and it flew away. A good spot to land became apparent. When the organizer landed its blind brown body the changes began. It became fatter and fatter, swelling up as it ate whatever was at hand. The first new drones came out, and they were pathetic, minute things the size of a flower. But these minute beings began to secrete the framework of steel: a resting place for their mother, the new organizer. And they built a scaffolding the folds of the organizer could latch onto, like tentacles, like tendrils. They built and built and the organizer grew along their framework, their steel tubing. Creating a system of living galleries. A massive tunnel building. The organizer is less and less aware of pain � of anything at all � as the construction proceeds.

The drones are bigger now. The latest drones get started on the final platform. The one that will provide a launchpad for the new organizer. Another life. Another hive. And the eggs are beginning to hatch. Soon enough.