Invasive Read Free Page A

indoors when the weather is cold or rainy.” Like the mailbox from her memory: it had rained the night prior, hadn’t it? “They have no food and choose him as their meal. But then, of course, nobody’s feeding the pellet stove. The stove goes out. The chill creeps in. Cold snap. Frost. The ants perish. And here we are.”
    â€œSensible. And still doesn’t give us the answer to the question.”
    Is this a crime scene? Or is it something else entirely?
    â€œThe ants,” she says. “They might hold the key. Ants have two stomachs. Crops, they’re called. One for food for themselves, one for food for the colony.”
    â€œSo, the ants might have forensic value.”
    â€œIt’s something. Obviously you’re going to do further analysis—a tox screen and all that.”
    â€œWe will. I’ll contact someone in the Bureau who might be able to help on the forensic side.” He flinches. “It’s pretty nasty in there. Ants pulling all that skin off. At least he was dead when they did it.”
    She thinks but doesn’t say: We assume he was dead when they did it.
    Maybe he had a heart attack or a pulmonary embolism. And along come the creepy crawlies. What’s that old song? The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah . . . The ants go marching one by one, hurrah! hurrah! . . . The ants go marching one by one, the little one stops to suck her thumb, and they all go marching down to the ground to get out of the rain . . .
    Then they start to bite.
    Even in the cold, she starts to sweat.
    What she says to Hollis is “I’d like to handle it.”
    â€œYou’re not in forensics, I’ll remind you.”
    â€œNo, but I have a friend who’s a forensic entomologist.”
    â€œYou sure? I thought I was interrupting a vacation.”
    Visiting my parents is about as far from a vacation as Pluto is from Earth. “It’s fine. Put together a package ready for travel—ants, fungus, skin sample—I’ll book a flight to Tucson. Ez Choi teaches bug science at the state university.”
    â€œThat Arizona State?”
    â€œNo, it’s—” She tries to draw it up from memory. “The other one. University of Arizona.”
    â€œWe’ll have to ship the package separately, if that’s amenable.”
    â€œIt’s fine by me, thank you.”
    â€œThen go forth and do the work of the law, Ms. Stander.”
    â€œWill do, Agent Copper.”

3
    S he sleeps in the rental car because it’s too late to get a room anywhere and her flight to Tucson is early. Her sleep is restless—she’s shaken by forces unseen, the threat of the future, the threat of the open door. The threat of anything and everything. A sword above everyone’s heads, held by a thread. A plane hacked by hackers, crashing. Terrorists using homemade drones as bombs. A world pinned by global warming, the lack of resources plunging the planet into another Cold War—or worse, an active global conflict.
    Hannah moves her hips. She bangs one knee on the stick. She bangs her other knee on the underside of the steering wheel. It’s 4:00 A.M. This is my job, she thinks. To imagine the worst. To look far down the road to see what’s coming: What technology, what social system, what change to nature will humans face? Will it elevate and evolve us? Or will it destroy us?
    Or worse—and here is the crux of her work— Will we use it to destroy ourselves? Her brain follows the yellow brick road all the way to Oz—except this Emerald City is shattered, with spires of broken glass, skyscrapers like jagged shards. She looks ahead to see what risks await: the threat of artificial intelligence, the danger of hackable cybernetic implants, the permutations of robots as part of daily life. Will they put us out of work, will we rely too much on them, will the laws be fast enough to catch up with what they can do, will