Multitude

Vibbert (Gallatic Hellcats) nimbly takes on the trope of an otherworldly hive mind seeking to understand, or perhaps take over, the human world in this clever novella. Rising from the ocean floor, the hive starts to colonize “the up-world.” It learns to build “domes that push against the sky” and “to harden clay with bone and spit” and wreaks metaphysical havoc as it crafts “new concepts to understand the ocean of the universe.” The first human to observe the hive is Debbie Jabrowski, an astronomer who notices some weird signals in a dataset and alerts colleagues that something extraterrestrial is trying to communicate with Earth. Soon the nightly news is abuzz with speculation and tourists flock to the supposed alien landing site. Chapters toggle between the first person plural perspective of the hive mind (“Do we remember the pink sunset on bone-white columns? Or do we merely remember our progenitor remembering their progenitor remembering it?”) and human witnesses to it, including a street vendor, Osvaldo, who willfully ignores rumors of the invasion. Vibbert uses this structure to build a sense of ambient dread as she contrasts the experiences of individuals and the collective. The result is biting social critique with a hopeful slant. (Apr.)