Lumina now spent her orbits as an ordinary porter, laboring in the dark. A blind sighter was useless to her caste, but the colony could still use her. Sometimes ants grow old and lose their original job, but the colony finds work; even queens could become warriors. Lumina carried bundles up from below, dropped them off to return the way she came, and passed the very same long line of ants who had previously passed her. The infinite loop of colonial work. Wherever her errands took her, to any ant which would listen, she spread the story of the Silver Sphere and how it will lead them all to paradise.

One orbit, while she returned to a fungal farm deep underground, she felt a quake.

Her fellow workers were tense and scurried to a place of perceived safety.

Lumina stopped and measured it mentally by the way it made her hairs feel. Continue. Safe. She passed the message to her fellow laborers. She guessed a quake of that size was no need for alarm, because past similar quakes did nothing. Over the orbits she toiled in blackness, she had understood and predict which quakes were distant and safe, and which were wet and deadly.

One workday, while Lumina was again deep underground, a signaler investigated her. It ran its long antenna over Lumina’s useless eyes. Sighter?

Yes, Old. Lumina replied, trying to prevent the unasked question: what is a sighter doing in the dark?

Lumina?

Yes. Were there any other blind sighters deep underground?

New Job. The signaler instructed.

Lumina did not care, her sight could not be restored, so she might as well haul waste, or food, or dig, or any of the other jobs the colony needed. She was directed into a wide cavernous farm with big fat ants.

When large tides fractured the ice, hydraulic pressure occasionally forced salt water all the way up and into their farms and tunnels. Salt hampered the growth of the microbes they were cultivating. To restore the farm’s health, a large ant sucked up the excess salt water. Inside their bodies, they separated salt from water, and excreted a very watery uric acid at a far lower salinity. The other byproduct, salt crystals, were excreted from an anal gland.

Salt to central. The signaler instructed Lumina.

All ants needed salt for neurons to fire, but it seemed the central hive always had an insatiable hunger for more salt. Another worker, a salt handler, gave Lumina a large crystal of salt to carry up.

Affirmative! Lumina replied. At least this got her out of the fungal farms or salt mines.

The long accent was uneventful. The sounds of a busy, healthy hive muffled the sounds of distant quakes of ice. Lumina carried her bundle straight to the core larder, a storage room right below the hive mind. Perhaps she could work here. It might be a position more befitting of her intellect.

A guard stopped her. What? It tapped its antenna on her delivery.

Salt.

The soldier let her through. A very fastidious worker directed Lumina to the exact spot to place the package. Lumina put it with the other salt and turned around for her long descent back. The other worker scurried over, took the package, and placed it gingerly and precisely where she envisioned it. Before Lumina left the room, a signaler ant came and whipped her antenna at Lumina.

Stop. She commanded. Lumina? Bug eyes are hard to hide, and a watcher living a life as a worker was easy to notice.

Yes? Lumina was uncertain what the problem was. How could an old blind ant carrying salt elicit such notice?

Come. Dreamers question.

Lumina found herself escorted up a wall and into a special chamber. There were a series of drapes which separated the dreamers from the rest of the hive. With every curtain crawled under, Lumina felt an increased warmth. There were other ants here, which simply generated heat in their gastors by combining chemicals with hydrogen peroxide. The exothermic reaction generated heat for the dreamers who lived warm in this room.

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The hive control room was large enough for several layers of dream ants to pile vertically. Small tunnels radiated into adjoining rooms where scores of counters, the most specialized signalers, processed information. This was the hive’s decision-making nexus.

Lumina could see none of this, and the diffuse clatter did not give her a true sense of the room. Sometimes she was pushed and shoved by passing runners holding packages of knotted silk. The signaler hard to clear a path for them to get through, such was the volume of messages being relayed.

Stay here. The signaler ordered Lumina.

She stood and then felt her body being inspected by many ants. Their antennas were relaxed and curious and did not alarm Lumina.

Sighter Lumina? An old dreamer ant communicated to her in a friendly manner.

Yes.

Blind?

Yes.

The dream ant tested Lumina by shaking its antenna near Lumina’s eyes. Explain cordage. The dream ant laid out the last recording that Lumina had dictated. The old dream ant, born the same orbit as Lumina, described their question. If the start of the cord was the past, and the unused length ahead was reserved for the present. What did it mean to tie another cord tangentially to that point?

Lumina ran her own antenna over the older knots, up to where the side cord started.

The dream ant observed. The past? It asked.

Yes. Lumina confirmed.

Then the dream ant and Lumina ran their antennas over the cord tied off to the side. Now? It asked.

Not Now.

Past?

No. None.

What was not now, but also not the past? That was the question which confused the whole hive mind. The dream ant then reconfigured the cordage. One line, the mainline, were knots observed by another sighter and woven accordingly. The side-line contained the observations Lumina had dictated all at once.

The hive mind had recently read that same cordage document. It could not comprehend it. Instead of a single linear read of the cordage line, it had to organize two readers. Once they vaulted that intellectual hurdle, it still could it understand how a blind sighter had known precisely what was going to happen for another six orbits. Silver Light orbits regularly, but side-cord from blind matches. The hive mind had thought to itself.

The dream ant questioned Lumina. Name this! It demanded and placed Lumina’s antenna on the side cord.

Tie-forward. Lumina suggested, trying to find a word in their impoverished lexicon.

Better name! It demanded again.

Anti-past?

The dream ant stopped. It rejoined the hive mind.

In the adjoining room, Lumina could hear the busy tapping of many ants as they calculated.

The hive mind struggled with the concept that the future existed and could be predicted. Their curt language, which lacked syntax and enough words, hampered the formation of ideas. The past can be recorded, the present experienced, but could the future be anticipated? Was it not so different from the kinesthetic instincts of drones, which in orbital days leapt from rock to rock by anticipating where the rock would be in the future? But Lumina’s cordage was many orbits in the future. How had the blind sighter done it? It could not possibly have tied the knots itself. The weaver did that; it was not smart enough to think it up, and other sighters were busy with their own observations.

The ant mind pondered more. How had the blind sighter’s locations match the observations of the replacement sighter? How could the blind sighter know the future from a fixed point in the past? Utterly confounding! The hive mind chewed on the concept like an ant sawing through an enemy with its mandibles.

Take a dream, render it in knots as best as possible, tie it at a point of the side, and label it a ‘tie-forward.’ When ‘now’ comes, let the sighters and weavers to record what actually happens as per usual on the main line. Compare ‘now’ to the ‘tie-forward’ knots made in the past.

Space Ants could now imagine the future, but did not know how to use it. Instead, the braincore stopped thinking. The central rooms would need to be remodeled for the hive mind to find a solution.

Lumina was startled when the tapping sound of calculation died suddenly. The braincore disassembled and many dream ants left the tight node and scurried around. Signalers and counters also left for food, water, or rest. One came to Lumina, inspected her with its long antennas, but asked no question.

Uncertain what to do, Lumina tried to find some ant in charge, but there were no orders to give. She left and stood in line for food in a lower service room. Lumina ate in the company of others and used her antenna to communicate the story—the prophecy—of the silver star.

Most of the regular workers ignored her incomprehensible ramblings, but this upper larder had many of the higher castes who crowded around and waited to hear. Fevered twitches of her antenna poured out her pitches onto the antennas of others: how the silver star waited to take space ants away to a world of green and blue; from cold ice into the warm air. She also tried to explain ‘the future,’ how it was Space Ant destiny to find the blue and green world. This continued as she return to the microbial farms. She educated any ant which would listen to prophecies of the restoration of ancient fortunes of a world. Of a thick warm atmosphere which blanketed them under a bright sun. Of rich soil where they could raise plants from seeds, they collected.

In her blindness, the mental image of the green and blue sphere kept her through cold nights and mundane work. Every delivery made was one parcel closer to space ants expanding back into orbit. Each crystal of salt kept the hive mind calculating. Each ant told might convert and proselytize her message, expanding it at a geometric rate.

And the hive mind decided if, and then how, to get back into orbit. It had only vague ideas, but the overarching dream kept it thinking. Space ant colonies had filled the surface and dug deep. Now the only remaining direction was back up. It was a payoff so big, the hive mind justified any risk.