Stop [FICTOID]

“What does it say?”

“It says ‘Stop’.”

“But what does it mean?”

As the sun set, the last rays of light glinted off the gossamer thin strands keeping millions of spiders aloft above the city.

Humans were long aware spiders could become airborne by using long strands of webbing to carry them aloft, but only in recent decades did they learn it was not wind currents that bore the arachnids but subtle shifts in the Earth’s electromagnetic field.

Wind was chaotic, but electromagnetic fields could be channeled, regulated, and put to practical use.

Of what practical use was a giant signed reading “Stop” over the city?

“Stop what?” someone asked.

“Stop what we’re doing,” someone else answered.

“But what is it we’re doing they want stopped?  Breathing?  That’s unacceptable.”

“Maybe they want us to stop killing spiders.”

“I hate spiders.”

“That’s no reason to kill them.”

“It is for me.”

“Then maybe you’re part of the problem.”

“Boys, boys, boys, stop arguing,” a third someone said.  “Surely this is a divine message and the spiders are merely instruments to bring it to our attention.”

“Divine, huh?  Okay, which divinity?  Zeus?  Woten?  The flying spaghetti monster?”

“Do not mock the Lord.”

“Oh, Abrahamic monotheism, eh?  Are we talking Yahweh, Jehovah, or Allah?”

“None of this bickering tells us what they want us to stop doing.”

“You presume there is an actual intelligence behind this.  It could be like AI, it only duplicates a pattern without really knowing what that pattern represents.”

“Somebody somewhere needed to articulate that message even if AI randomly copied the pattern.”

“Wait a minute, you just assumed AI is behind this with no more proof than the argument it’s of divine origin.”

“Shut up, this doesn’t concern you, holy man.”

“There’s no reason to assume spiders are telling all of us to stop.  For all we know, this message may be addressed to a single individual.”

“I’d think there would be more efficient ways of sending a message than filling the sky with flying spiders.”

“Why?  The spiders are going to fly anyway, it’s part of their breeding cycle.  Why not shape their migration into a communication?”

“Oh, I dunno, maybe because text messages are so much more efficient?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.  How could spiders send a text message?  They lack sufficient body pass to push a key down.”

“They could use a touch screen.”

“Boys, you’re missing the point.  We don’t need to ascertain what this ‘Stop’ message means until we figure out who is responsible.  Once we know that, the motive -- and meaning -- will be obvious.”

“What if it’s just the spiders themselves, not some divine entity or manipulative human?”

“Spiders never communicated with us before -- Charlotte’s Web not withstanding.”

“Maybe they have but we just couldn’t understand them.”

“Can you really call it communication if one side doesn’t understand the other?”

“Based on this conversation, no.”

“Wait…is that a ‘no-you-can’t-really-call-it-communication’ no or a ‘no-not-based-on-this-conversation’ no?”

High above, the spiders -- having said what they wanted to say -- moved on.

© Buzz Dixon