Post At3F7WFzblVnpcW8Cu by futurebird@sauropods.win
 (DIR) More posts by futurebird@sauropods.win
 (DIR) Post #At3EQy44LOWLcieMNM by futurebird@sauropods.win
       2025-04-13T14:34:08Z
       
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       :: You may have seen the enigmatic, yet nondescript little matte wine-brown ants coming and going from the deeper levels. They take scraps of paper, bits of magnetic tape, tiny black rectangles pried from circuit boards, and other such strange objects down, and they return laden with clumps of soil or rock. What are they building down below?1/
       
 (DIR) Post #At3EVx93Bt6kDeMCXY by futurebird@sauropods.win
       2025-04-13T14:35:02Z
       
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       They are so focused on their work. So serious and purposeful. The greatest congregation you have seen of the dusty, dull-red ants was around a discarded paperback book. In a span of just two days it was dismantled. They left only the cover, like an empty husk.Ants can't eat paper. Ants can't eat SD cards. Ants can't eat information... but perhaps, like the leaf-cutters, (who cannot eat leaves) these 'archive ants' are feeding some other organism that can. 2/2 #microfiction
       
 (DIR) Post #At3F7WFzblVnpcW8Cu by futurebird@sauropods.win
       2025-04-13T14:41:43Z
       
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       @neckspike Without their computer to interact with they find a strange fungi that lives deep in the earth that eats information and begin a new symbiosis.
       
 (DIR) Post #At3FZycfjpn7umh9Si by futurebird@sauropods.win
       2025-04-13T14:46:58Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       @neckspike Deep in the earth they mycelium pulses. It speaks and the ants listen. "Information. More Information."The ants respond."We cannot find. No more book. No more data disk."The mycelium pulses. "DNA... is... also information." It says.The ants listen. The ants learn.
       
 (DIR) Post #At3KVoteSQGIMWTSVs by log@mastodon.sdf.org
       2025-04-13T15:42:07Z
       
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       @futurebird @neckspike The holobiont grows.  The mycelium twines with multiple species.  The chambers now teem with browns, yellows, and reds, sime tending to ferrobacteria, extracting the shards, and constructing a new implement.  The jiggling needles of magnetite in a matrix of hyphae could be employed by any ant to navigate like a desert ant, even without sunlight.  The Colony can now go around the War Ants, to the places beyond.
       
 (DIR) Post #At3UIsbcM3g3dvVVrs by cy@fedicy.us.to
       2025-04-13T17:31:30Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       "Honey, are there tiny space rockets launching in our backyard?"CC: @futurebird@sauropods.win @neckspike@indiepocalypse.social
       
 (DIR) Post #At3Z1cxTmHZpxfKFnM by Archergal@wandering.shop
       2025-04-13T18:24:44Z
       
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       @futurebird That gave me a tiny frisson
       
 (DIR) Post #At4DwdTKXKOgE9xiK0 by bhawthorne@infosec.exchange
       2025-04-14T02:03:20Z
       
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       @futurebird @neckspike I want to read this novel.