The Hologram Hypothesis

By Pamela Love

Their footwork was flawless. Their abdomens vibrated at just the right rate. They executed each turn with precision. Every eye was on the golden dancers, mine most of all.

I was halfway to proving my hypothesis about bee communication. PhD, here I come.

Dr. Young shrugged. “At least this bee hologram stunt of yours has gotten the hive’s attention, Haley.”

Ignoring his comment, I leaned closer to the view screen. “That waggle dance is perfect, Paul. No bee could have choreographed it better.”

“It should be perfect, after all the time I spent on it.” Paul gave me a high five. “Getting our hologram to map out the location of the new food source was the toughest coding I’ve ever done. But it paid off. Looks like every bee in all three hives is watching.”

“Don’t get over-confident, you two,” Dr. Young said, running a hand through his graying ponytail. “Even if you prove Haley’s hypothesis, there’s not much to be gained from this research. The decline in honeybee population has tremendous implications for the world’s food supply. You should focus on that.”

Paul turned to me, puzzled. “Yeah. Why aren’t you studying that, Haley?”

“Out of the mouths of engineers…” muttered Dr. Young.

As my thesis advisor, Dr. Young had discouraged my project from the start. I took a deep breath. Don’t annoy him more than necessary. “Because bees dance to communicate locations of food or places to build a new hive. Using holograms, we can communicate with bees on their level. We could get them to avoid areas with heavy pesticide use, for example.”

Dr. Young crossed his arms. “Don’t be so sure they’ll cooperate, Haley, or even understand. Dancing is only part of how they communicate. Your hologram’s missing pheromones and the pollen a worker normally brings back from foraging. Even the sound of their wings—”

“Plus, the bees can’t touch the holograms,” interrupted Paul. “Wonder how their bee brains are processing that. They’ve already quit trying to sting them.”

I bit my lip. “My point is that bees have developed such a perfect visual display that the rest of the sensory input isn’t necessary.” I hope.

“Let’s reserve judgment until the data’s in.” Dr. Young said. “Shut it down.”

I nodded to Paul. After the holograms disappeared, a worker bee in each hive went through the paces of her own dance. Then, one by one, the bees left. Eagerly, I watched the cameras we’d set up by my new food source.

And watched, and watched. Not one member of the test hives approached it.

So much for my hypothesis. I groaned and shut my laptop, resisting the urge to slam it down. There goes close to a year’s worth of work. Well, who wants to be a PhD anyway? I could get a job as an adjunct professor with a master’s. Maybe. But I’d never pay off my student loans that way.

“Too bad,” said Paul. “Uh, you did say you’d write a favorable review for my hologram business, even if…”

I tapped my fingers on the desk. “Sure.” I wish I could blame you. If only it were the hologram’s fault…

“Unfortunate, but I did say your work was on a shaky foundation.” Dr. Young stood up. “While you’re developing another thesis, continue monitoring the hives for my study on hive mortality.”

Dead bees. Yippee.

Instinct drives the majority of bees to die outside the hive. When they do expire inside, the undertaker bees remove their corpses. Dr. Young kept track of the number of deaths within the university’s hives, including the three he’d grudgingly let me use for my hologram research.

The next day, I ran through the hive footage to count bee deaths. When I checked my first hologram test hive, I stopped the video at one point, leaning closer and squinting at the screen. After replaying it twice, I saw two more examples of bizarre behavior. I called Dr. Young, stammering through a report I hardly believed myself.

Half an hour later, he hauled his bike into the lab, breathing hard from his frantic ride over. “You’re sure?”

“Watch.” I reran the footage.

Undertaker bees, in good weather, fly the corpses a substantial distance from the hive before dropping them.

Today, they were tearing the wings and legs off the bodies first.

It was the first time I’d ever seen or heard of this behavior. Judging by the look on my advisor’s face, it was new to him, too. It was also happening in the other hives where I’d used the hologram. Whether it was because the holograms were silent-winged, or because they couldn’t be touched or smelled, the honeybees now considered their dead a threat, and were ensuring they couldn’t return.

“There’s more.” I bit my lip, my heart pounding. “Remember the bees that danced after the holograms? I checked. There’s no food source where they indicated. I think those were undertakers, not foragers. The ones that left after they danced weren’t collecting pollen. I think they went back to the bees that died just before the hologram began, and removed their wings and legs, too.”

“It seems I was wrong about your hypothesis. You did communicate with the bees, Haley,” Dr. Young said, wiping sweat off his face. “You taught them to believe in ghosts.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After graduating from Bucknell University, Pamela Love worked as a teacher and in marketing before turning to writing. Her science fiction and fantasy stories have appeared in Cricket, Beyond Centauri, and Spaceports & Spidersilk, among other magazines. Her fantasy novel, The Pegasus Potential, is available on Amazon and Smashwords. She is also working on a new fantasy novel.

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