The Bugs

[rotting bones]

Do workers get eaten if they make too many mistakes? Sociopathy, which is already an effect of the free rider problem in the world of genetics, becomes much easier with intelligence.
a short story by rotting bones

(Apologies: I know my English isn't polished enough to write fiction, so I must apologize because incompetence has never kept me from trying anything. Here's a story about a Bug who's wiser than me.

Note 1: This story has been written for the sole purpose of asking a question, and the names haven't been chosen with any care whatsoever. However, as the wails fall on the righthand column, I believe most of them should be compatible with Breen phonology if they were to be divided into counterintuitive units of phonation such as Da-gu-r.

Note 2: You know what? This could be the answer to my communication problem on the ZBB. Maybe I should write every post in the form of a short story. Who's with me?)

It was the smell that warned her.

In an instant, the quiet forest was filled with an inescapable stench that burned her nostrils like a mixture of acid, manure and pure hate. Dagur forgot her animal trap and peered into the dense foliage. The flash of an iris between the ferns was all it took. Leaping with inhuman speed, she was on the throat of the intruder.

It was a worker from Panin. She struggled mightily, but by the grace of Queen Sinai and the watching ancestors of Breen, Dagur had landed a secure hold. After a few minutes, the Paninite's efforts began to slacken. Sensing an opportunity, Dagur slipped her claws furtively into her victim's soft throat.

The Paninite's figure sagged and Dagur dropped the dead weight on the blood-splattered moss. It never occurred to her that this was a tragedy. If her response had been delayed by a split second, that would have been her corpse lying on the forest floor. Without hesitation, Dagur bent over and began to gorge on the warm flesh of her adversary.

As the blood and flesh passed her gullet, her mind was ecstatic. This was a feast far greater than any woodland Dti or Cu could have provided by falling into her trap. She might even be able to skip the next several meals.

Once sated, she picked up her trap, fashioned from splints of a purple bamboo stem and put it away in her sling. Then she turned to examine the remains of the Paninite. For a moment, there was a sense of wonder far in the back of her mind: What was a Paninite doing so deep in the hunting grounds of the Breen? Then she blinked and the question was gone. Dagur had only managed to consume a third of the corpse. The rest would be needed back at the nursery.

Within half an hour, Dagur was dragging the corpse towards a brick capsule jutting from the granite mountainside, framed by Kara trees. The Kara resembled Eucalyptuses, but were alien in their lankiness owing to low gravity. Other workers were passing all around her, accumulating the wealth of Breen. They sometimes eyed her load, but deciding that she needed no help, went on their way.

Dagur passed minims tending bulbous hedgerows and entered the brick portal. Inside was a bustle of nurses caring for the hatchlings. One of the nurses detached herself after feeding one especially sprightly infant and turned to Dagur.

Dagur said, "Blessings, Bani. I trust the watchers have kept you well?"

The nurse, many heads shorter than the new arrival, peered up at her face and said, "Dagur! May the watchers bless you, because you sure need it! You were discharged from my care a whole year ago. How many times must I tell you that meat goes in the larder, not the nursery?"

Dagur let out an irritated buzz. "Oh come on, Bani. I'm saving the porters a trip. You always need meat in the nursery."

"That's true." Bani's sigh echoed in the chamber like the crack of a whip. "Come here, little pup. I can spare you an hour tonight. We will hear the story of Bratahinulaika."

So Dagur crowded with the hatchlings at Bani's knees and heard the tale of the tragic queen of Zaru. The ancestral princess Bratahinulaika was full of talent and promise, glory of the race of Breen. Her bones were as strong as her memory was sharp. No other princess dared to challenge her, but cleared out of her path as she passed. From an early age, she was better versed in the ancestral traditions than any queen in living memory. She memorized the lay of the land, knew the seasons and the animal crossings. She even expressed interest in the traditions of the workers. As no one dared to cross her path, the royal hatchling visited the weavers and the furnaces of her own free will. When she founded a city, she said, she would instruct her workers personally.

Bratahinulaika founded Zaru, glory of the land, a great shield in battle for the race of Breen, and a terror to the Paninite invaders. The great ancestor had only one weakness, an excessive nostalgia for her mother's city of Ral. She was known to climb a granite rock face and stare through the giant ferns at her place of birth. She said she could see in her mind's eye all the alleyways of Ral, where she played as a hatchling.

The queens of the Paninite race, and even some cousins of Breen, were exceedingly jealous of Zaru. They plotted an ambush in the fall months when the air was clear as crystal, and Bratahinulaika imagined she could discern the grand causeway of Ral. Near the rock face they killed her as she was beginning her ascent. But the price was steep. Not only her bodyguards, but even the laying queen herself joined the fray. Several dozen Paninite veterans were struck down that day, but then the glory of Zaru was no more. In her fury, her mother, the queen, ordered all workers from the cousin races were to be consumed. From that day, never have they set foot again in Ral.

It is said by experts in the astrological sciences that since then, the warrior spirit of Bratahinulaika had always watched over the city of Breen.

Bani gave Dagur a meaningful look. "Do you understand? The queen mother cannot afford our weakness. Oh Dagur, I urge you to be strong!"

As in after every previous attempt at remonstrance, Dagur looked up and clicked cheerfully. "I understand. Thank you for the story!"

With a bounce in her step, she left the nursery, looking for honest employment. The causeway of Breen skirted the wetlands and the mountain lake of Tuku, forking in two. The high road led to the quarries. With her immense strength, Dagur was good at quarrying stone, but it was dull work. Dagur eyed the steep path sloping down to the furnaces, clearly tempted. Minerals were quarried from a rocky ridge high above and lowered vertically into the chasm below. Dagur found it difficult to work in the furnaces down in the chasm. When stacking them, she could never tell the limestone apart from the magnesite, even though the elders had instructed her several times and they were stored far apart from one another. Nevertheless, she reasoned, manning the furnaces was more important work, what with Paninite intruders showing up on Breen's gates. She pirouetted on the fork, buzzing with the contentment of a full stomach: "... I can't resist! Furnace work is so interesting!"

Passing by other workers on the road who were muttering at her antics, she skipped down to the furnaces. Her face fell when she saw her elders stacking them to smelt iron. She would have welcomed any other task. However, she stiffened her jaw and worked up the courage to join them. Selecting an unattended furnace on the end, she filled it with iron ore. She looked left, then right. Where's the flux again? Her elders were preparing to light their furnaces.

"Hello, ma'am?" she tried with the worker next to her.

An angry buzzing was the only response. The elder was handling a flaming coal.

Dagur shrank back.

Looking through the storehouse, she found a quantity of white powder that she loaded into the furnace and lit it.

Just as she was choking a bit from the burning fumes, a terrible boom came from the other side of the workplace. The elders turned to look at a shocked worker standing in front of a furnace that had been completely blasted open.

"Igrid!" shrieked the crowd. Igrid was another unfortunate of the furnaces. Once before, she had loaded a furnace with explosive mixtures. This time, the crowd was maddened beyond reason. They descended upon the wailing girl and tore her limb from limb, consuming her on the spot.

Dagur did not join the crusaders. She had detected sure signs that she had loaded her furnace with magnesite instead of flux. She edged around the crowd and fled as fast as her legs would carry her.

That dawn, she tossed and turned without sleeping. The next evening, she woke up exhausted.

At midnight, she dragged her own corpselike self to the nursery.

"Bani?"

Bani was wrestling with a stubborn infant. "No, you can't play with the cleaner. Give me that! Dagur, I'm busy. Come back tomorrow night."

"Can I just ask you one question?"

"Okay, shoot!"

"If Bratahinulaika could have either built up Zaru one brick at a time or taken a chance at striking down Panin in one blow, what would she have done?"

Bani's click rattled around the compartment, louder than an avalanche. "She would have done the right thing, Dagur! Now leave me alone."

Dagur hung her head and left the nursery. Coming to the fork in the causeway, she hesitated a moment and took the high road.

[TurkeySloth]

How'd /a, u/ become mid and low, respectively? After all, /a/'s low for us, while /u/'s high. Thus, we'd expect something like /o/ or /ɔ/ in there somewhere.

[Ares Land]

Do workers get eaten if they make too many mistakes? Sociopathy, which is already an effect of the free rider problem in the world of genetics, becomes much easier with intelligence.
a short story by rotting bones

Well, that's insanely flattering!
The story was quite vivid and got a lot right, so I'm sorry to disappoint
It could happen but it's far from typical. Actually, it would be pathological behavior of the kind that you'd find in deeply troubled colony or in situation of extreme stress and starvation.
The bond between Bugs of a same colony is extremely strong; a sister is like a combination of a child, a sibling and a parent all at once. So killing one is almost unthinkable. (They don't mind eating excess eggs, though!)

Besides, even a clumsy worker could find something useful to do, even if it's only feeding the young and serving as an extra pair of hands on occasion. In those circumstances, I think Igrid would have been chased out of the furnaces and would have been so ashamed she wouldn't have tried going there again in a long time.
The Bugs don't feel fear the way we do; they don't care much about their physical integrity or their own death. Fear is a collective emotion, for them: they can feel mass panic but not really individual fear. If an individual is afraid but nobody else cares, she'll calm down quickly. Shame is a much more powerful motivator!

As a side note, I don't think they have that good a sense of smell. In any case, the smell of a Bug is unremarkable to them, and they can't always tell an enemy worker on smell alone.

You raise a good point by bringing up sociopathy. The Bugs are more empathetic than we are; in fact, by their standards, every human is a sociopath. But a a Bug showing sociopathic tendancies will be killed and eaten, most of the time even before reaching adulthood. A sociopathic Bug stands out like a sore thumb and most of the time their behavior will prevent bonding.
They'll kill a male showing sociopathic behavior way sooner than a worker. Male workers aren't as good as hiding it, they're already a little outside the community and the culling of unfit males increases fitness of future workers.

So to put it more concisely, the Bugs won't kill their clumsy workers; but they will kill the selfish ones.

How'd /a, u/ become mid and low, respectively? After all, /a/'s low for us, while /u/'s high. Thus, we'd expect something like /o/ or /ɔ/ in there somewhere.

High, mid and low refers to the position of the phonic lips. (they're literraly higher in the pharyx).

a, i, u are really convenient shortcuts with no real relation implied with human vowels. The Bugs vocal tract is one-dimensional whereas ours is two-dimensional. The sounds I write a,i,u make maximum use of vocal tract space, much like human /a/, /i/, /u/ make maximal use of vowel space.

[Ares Land]

Bug language.
The Bug language still needs work... But in the meantime, I think I can post a little game/teaser!


So you found a Bug that's willing to communicate. Great!
Basically what you do is point at things, and record what she's saying.
You run it through specialized software, get a spectogram. I've covered phonology already and in addition to what I've said, you soon find out regular variations in pitch and amplitude. I'll cover this later, but these have analogs in human stress and intonation patterns, and soon you identify words and sentences. Soon enough you have some minimal vocabulary and even if most of the grammar eludes you, you get a good idea of what your Bug is saying.

Here are some sample sentences -- I'll just give the gloss your translation software provides you at this stage.

(1) bug me
(2) human you
(3) question you
(3) stick this
(4) tree that
(5) mountain yonder
(6) food this
(7) hunger me
(8) food you hunger me
(9) food-intensive you hunger-urgent-need me

(10) bird(*) up.there
(11) bird-gone up.there
(12) building this

(13) hunger-gone me

Now, after asking
(10) question you
you get
(11) building go-north mountain

(12) predator-DEF that
(13) predator-DEF chase-west rodent-DEF
(14) food-predator-DEF go-west rodent
(15) predator-DEF-gone REL-west rodent east

(16) two pebble hand.east two pebble hand.west four front
(17) break branch east
(18) human go branch break-gone REL2

(19) all-dead-need you human (the Bug moves excitedly)
(20) human-DEF-gone in building
(21) human-DEF out building
(22) human-DEF-NEED in building

(23) speak REL-you-go machine me
(24) human-DEF REL-go machine me

(25) human-gone REL-front me there
(26) last.night human-gone REL-front me REL2

Can you find out anything about how that language works? You can try to speak to the Bug, too!

[Raphael]

Sorry for changing the topic from their language, but I had another thought about their societies:

If I understand your scenario correctly, humans encountered Bugs at a time when their technology was roughly comparable to the early metal-working ages. What if we had encountered them a couple thousand years later? Could they have developed "modern" - let's say, 21st century style - technology? Could their colonies have adapted to maintaining technologies that, apparently, can only be maintained by societies which have some specialists who spend their waking hours thinking about matters related to science and technology? Or have they used early-metal-working-ages technology since times immemorial precisely because their biology couldn't handle that kind of thing?

[alynnidalar]

...okay, so the Bug is either asking me (human-DEF) to go murder a bunch of enemy Bugs, or is informing me that all the humans are going to be killed. I'm pretty sure it's the first, but I'm a little concerned that it's the second.

(on a side note, is there a significance to the numbers? There's two (3), (10), (11), (12), and (13). Also not sure what (*) indicates next to bird? Or is that just a reminder that Earth birds don't actually exist in this world)

(also, the obvious stuff: "building" = colony/settlement. Only definite articles are marked. I hesitate to say it's SVO because I get the impression "verb" may not be the right word with this language, but the impression was strong enough that I was surprised that (17) is "break branch east" instead of "branch break east" or "branch break.east". But I don't know what the difference means)

Purely for the sake of not getting eaten, might I inquire "question predator.DEF"?

[Ares Land]

Sorry for changing the topic from their language, but I had another thought about their societies:

If I understand your scenario correctly, humans encountered Bugs at a time when their technology was roughly comparable to the early metal-working ages. What if we had encountered them a couple thousand years later? Could they have developed "modern" - let's say, 21st century style - technology? Could their colonies have adapted to maintaining technologies that, apparently, can only be maintained by societies which have some specialists who spend their waking hours thinking about matters related to science and technology? Or have they used early-metal-working-ages technology since times immemorial precisely because their biology couldn't handle that kind of thing?

That's a very good question and I'd love to write a story about it sometime

That's correct, in my scenario first contact happens when they still have very limited technology. Many humans on the contact would love it if they had been stuck with that technology and remained at that "stage" because if they were, you could make a case that they're not really sapient. They could be like ants, building civilization out of pure instinct and genetic programming.

Actually, they're just as sapient and adaptable as humans. They could certainly reach our technological level and adjust to it. Much of their behaviour is cultural and not innate.

[Raphael]

Actually, they're just as sapient and adaptable as humans. They could certainly reach our technological level and adjust to it. Much of their behaviour is cultural and not innate.

Given everything you've told us about their biology, I'm not sure how their biology would accommodate the concept of a primarily "intellectual" worker. They seem to be biologically programmed to have queens, males, and manual workers. Surely the queens can't do all their scientific and technological research?

[Ares Land]

...okay, so the Bug is either asking me (human-DEF) to go murder a bunch of enemy Bugs, or is informing me that all the humans are going to be killed. I'm pretty sure it's the first, but I'm a little concerned that it's the second.

(on a side note, is there a significance to the numbers? There's two (3), (10), (11), (12), and (13). Also not sure what (*) indicates next to bird? Or is that just a reminder that Earth birds don't actually exist in this world)

(also, the obvious stuff: "building" = colony/settlement. Only definite articles are marked. I hesitate to say it's SVO because I get the impression "verb" may not be the right word with this language, but the impression was strong enough that I was surprised that (17) is "break branch east" instead of "branch break east" or "branch break.east". But I don't know what the difference means)

Purely for the sake of not getting eaten, might I inquire "question predator.DEF"?

Nevermind the numbering. I messed it up by adding more sentences, sorry It's not very important anyway.
The star indeed means that it's a flying creature but not truly a bird. Sorry, I meant to add a footnote.

Some of your guesses are in the right direction. I'll add that for the purposes of this game, the gloss are your best guess as to what a word means - and you might be mistaken!

Anyway, the Bug points at a small furry creature (not unlike a cute and tiny version of a Bug), then at the forest. She makes, several times, a kind of exaggerated switching motion from the forest to the tiny predator.
Meanwhile, she repeats :

predator-DEF-gone in forest

Then she adds
X predator-DEF in forest
And then
Y predator-DEF Z bug ( mimics a predator next to her)
Y predator-DEF in bug building

X,Y and Z being new words, with no clear identified meaning yet.

[Ares Land]

Actually, they're just as sapient and adaptable as humans. They could certainly reach our technological level and adjust to it. Much of their behaviour is cultural and not innate.

Given everything you've told us about their biology, I'm not sure how their biology would accommodate the concept of a primarily "intellectual" worker. They seem to be biologically programmed to have queens, males, and manual workers. Surely the queens can't do all their scientific and technological research?

The workers aren't really programmed to be manual workers, or even to work.. they are programmed to be sterile and to respond to the needs of their sisters. At this stage, this means mostly material work, but they'd certainly be sophisticated enough to figure that research helps the colony...

As well, their manual work requires a fair bit of thinking and doing nothing... Planning a war, hunting, building a colony for thousands... All of these require intellectual work beforehand.

[Ares Land]

Oh, here's a rough sketch of a worker Bug. (Not a terribly good drawing, I'm afraid.)

Bug.jpg (219.21 KiB) Viewed 16662 times

[Raphael]

Better than what I could have done.

[Vijay]

A masterpiece compared to literally anything I have ever drawn in my whole life, including when I try really hard to draw carefully

[Xwtek]

I liked this project. So my question:
.

1. How is your linguistic universal in your conworld? Or does every bug speak a language
2. How is a sentence formed in your conworld?

[Ares Land]

How Bug languages work

[*]How is your linguistic universal in your conworld?

Bug Languages have Universal Resource Locators.
Sorry about the pun. That won't happen again.

Okay, so all Bug language conceptualize utterances as locatives.

Arguments and Locative

Bug languages don't have noun and verbs; they have arguments (I'd be interested in any suggestions as to a better name ) and locatives. It'll be easier taking a few examples:

bhrua'sji-zuu dsi

human-generic.singular towards.listener

There's a human in the direction of the listener , or simply 'You're a human'

sk˙ska-juu cai

person-generic.singular towards.speaker

I'm a Bug

It's tempting to interpret cai and dsi as pronouns - but they're not; they're locatives -- the equivalent of pointing either at one self or at the listener.
Grammatically 'I'm a bug' uses the same structure as

sk˙ska-juu tk:˙cjuln

person-generic.singular short.distance-windwards

There's a Bug a short distance windwards.

Locative phrases.
An argument following the locative is taken as complementing the locative, for instance:

au:ln'stzain-zuu rau'c-'ja'zi skuu'uul

city-generic.singular trek-north mountain

There's a city / I'm / she's from some city up north towards the mountain.

So how do you say 'the cat chases the mouse?'

You need to reframe the question: where's the cat?

ai˙sc˙haal-juu's krakra-tk-i'ia c'i't-zuu's

predator-DEF quick.jump-short-distance-east rodent-DEF

The cat is jumping a short distance east towards the rodent.

And how about 'the cat is eating the mouse?'

a˙s ai˙sc˙haal-juu's t:'t:-tk-ju˙k c'i't-zuu's

food predator-DEF seizing-short-distance-west rodent-DEF

The eating predator is a short distance west, seizing something, at the rodent.

Oh, by the way, the apostrophe delimits phonemes. I'll need to find a better convention, but in the meantime... I can't tell you how thrilled I am to write apostrophes and odd consonant combination and have pretty solid reasons to do so. I suppose I'm going I'm going to conlanger hell for that.

[Xwtek]

Ah cool. I can see the language is evolved from a way to communicate the location of food, danger, etc. Then the language is extended to communicate something as expressive as human language. My question, how do you make a complex clause, like "I was walking to the base when the landslide occured" or "The cat that is chasing mice is very hungry"?

My suggestion is to call it a noun and a predicate. The predicate can be decomposed into

1. Verb (krakra-, t:'t:- sounds very much like a verb to me, to explain something like "tk:˙cjuln", we can say that to exist is realized as zero)
2. Positional locator
3. Directional locator
4. Target noun

Which is much, much, neater compared to human languages. (That throws adverbs, complex clause, idiomatic structure, and a variable number of arguments, not to mention that arguments can be ordered sometimes freely)

(Also, I wonder, why your language is mostly pronounceable if read as if it's Latin alphabet)

[Ares Land]

Ah cool. I can see the language is evolved from a way to communicate the location of food, danger, etc. Then the language is extended to communicate something as expressive as human language. My question, how do you make a complex clause, like "I was walking to the base when the landslide occured" or "The cat that is chasing mice is very hungry"?

My suggestion is to call it a noun and a predicate. The predicate can be decomposed into

1. Verb (krakra-, t:'t:- sounds very much like a verb to me, to explain something like "tk:˙cjuln", we can say that to exist is realized as zero)
2. Positional locator
3. Directional locator
4. Target noun

Which is much, much, neater compared to human languages. (That throws adverbs, complex clause, idiomatic structure, and a variable number of arguments, not to mention that arguments can be ordered sometimes freely)

(Also, I wonder, why your language is mostly pronounceable if read as if it's Latin alphabet)

Yes, it's pretty much a predicate.... Though I'm reluctant to talk of verbs; tense and aspect is marked on 'nouns', plus what exactly should be the subject of the 'verb' depends on the root.... with t:'t:- it's indeed the first argument that does the seizing, but 'rau'c' is different (it means you'd have to undergo a fairly long trek to reach the place...)

(Also, I wonder, why your language is mostly pronounceable if read as if it's Latin alphabet)

The orthographic convention is designed that way. The Bugs use phonic lips to communicate and there's a general tendency for vibration frequency to go up and turbulence to go down, so I've assigned consonants and vowels accordingly. (Basically a phoneme will end with high frequency and low turbulence which I map to a vowel).

You can't really pronounce it; skuu'uul for instance, sounds nothing like "school" (it sounds more like a sick owl that swallowed a clock), but at least you have a chance to memorize the romanization.

And more on relativization later... First I have to check that it works the way I want to

[Xwtek]

Yes, it's pretty much a predicate.... Though I'm reluctant to talk of verbs; tense and aspect is marked on 'nouns'

Not a contradiction.

'rau'c' is different (it means you'd have to undergo a fairly long trek to reach the place...)

No, 'rau'c' is not verb. The predicate slot is

Verb-Positional-Directional Target. So, in word

rau'c-'ja'zi

The verb is 0 (to exist), the positional locator is rau'c (on trek), and the directional locator is ja'zi (north)

The orthographic convention is designed that way. The Bugs use phonic lips to communicate and there's a general tendency for vibration frequency to go up and turbulence to go down, so I've assigned consonants and vowels accordingly. (Basically a phoneme will end with high frequency and low turbulence which I map to a vowel).

Ah, cool idea

[Ares Land]

Very minor Bug updates:
- the Bug planet is now called Orenda.
- I've decided they have insect-like mandibles, opening laterally, underneath the beak-like structure. Please adjust your mental picture accordingly. (I read up a bit on arthropod and vertebrate evolution, and I've decided that the basic body plan of Orendan vertebrate is six-limbed; in tetrapods, the two extra arms were adapted as mandibles. -- if you're curious, our own mouths are modified gills)

I'm working on two separate features:

- More detail on Bug languages.
- A short fiction piece covering the life of an individual Bug.

Which would you like to see first?

[Xwtek]

Of course about bugs language.