Saving Democracy

Cindi Camponotus is a carpenter ant. In Saving Democracy, Cindi reports on her mission, commanded by her Queen, to discover threats to their colony's democracy. When Cindi discovers that her species is at risk of extinction, she and her partisans declare war against humans. Hundreds of millions of Americans die in a nationwide pandemic for which they are ill-prepared.

Saving Democracy is a fable. It is a combination of satire, allegory, humor, and a liberal amount of natural history.

The fable begins when Cindi is rescued from a murderous spider by a queen bumblebee. Cindi repays the bumblebee colony by convincing a flock of swallows to escort the bumblebees home from their meadow, while ridding the sky of predatory flies. In subsequent adventures the queen bumblebee helps Cindi discover how lies, conspiracies, and corrupt actors can destroy democratic communities with catastrophic consequences.

The stakes rise when Cindi realizes that the danger to her colony goes beyond threats to its democratic process. Cindi discovers that all efforts to control global warming and protect the biosphere are being abolished by MAWAs in America. This will cause the worst extinction in earth's history. And it has already started. Hearing this, Cindi's queen aligns with a vindictive fire ant queen and the war against humanity begins.

The queens create a symbiosis of biosphere species that is inconceivable and thus invisible to humans. They exploit America's increasing vulnerability to pathogens. Even though the resulting pandemic is swift and lethal, the queens finally realize that humans won't become extinct.

Failing extinction, the queens convene a biosphere convention and use their democratic process to create commandments for humanity to live in harmony with the biosphere and to reverse global warming. Alas, humans are in no mood to accept the commandments in the midst of a pandemic. The partisans decide their next best solution is to create a quasi-religious movement that rewards stewardship.

Cindi recruits many diverse partners. She gets strategic help from a praying mantis and Anglican priestess versed in religious crusades. From her human interlocutor she learns the value of social media to create political power. She creates a congregation of living biosphere saints. She learns how to extract payments from her congregation, amassing a fortune to fund political campaigns in every corner of America. A band of geeks, fired from the former cybersecurity agency, in exile at the Port of Baltimore, program stolen cell phones and set up an internet site called AntBlog. AntBlog uses artificial intelligence to manage Cindi's growing congregation and AntiLie to keep it honest. Cindi learns the concept of money and uses her exponentially increasing crypto currency account to finance AntBlog. AntBlog is the link between humans and the biosphere.

As the pandemic wanes, AntBlog influences public opinion. Sentiment shifts against anti-science politicians and their financiers who are blamed for the pandemic. Backlash against oligarchs is fueled by an ill-fated Starship2 journey to Mars.

Living Saints are canonized at the Capital Mall on July 4th, 2027. They determine the outcome of the 2028 presidential election. American politics is fundamentally changed. Humans remain clueless about who is really in charge and why only MAWAs were infected on January 20, 2027.