The scientists were holding a press conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They often did this and were often ignored. The public was sick of novel findings. They couldn\u2019t figure out why anything the scientists told them mattered and so had decided that, by and large, it didn\u2019t. The press corps didn\u2019t have the option. Their paychecks depended on it mattering, so they had decided that, by and large, it must.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A long table, swagged with industrial polyester, thickly laid with the sigils of corporate sponsorship, waited for the scientists to approach. The journalists circled up, tablets in hand. Very much like sharks scenting for blood in the water, if sharks were able to manipulate tablets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One by one, the scientists filed out. They looked terrifically pleased with themselves. Something in their eyes, however, made the press corps squirm. They moved funny, too, the scientists. Sidling, sideways. An intern for Quotidian Science<\/em>, whose body was particularly inimical to the hard plastic chairs, closely packed and sized for children, wrote in her notes: scuttled<\/em>. She read it back and chided herself as ungenerous. After all, the space behind the table was cramped. There were a lot of scientists. She herself had been known to move similarly under such conditions, fighting to adapt her body to a world that wasn\u2019t ready for it. She paused, pencil raised, prepared to erase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scientists told the press what they\u2019d done with\u2014and in the spirit of scrupulous disclosure, for\u2014the crabs. Then everything<\/em> went sideways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou may not like it,\u201d said the scientists, \u201cbut this is what peak performance looks like.\u201d The scientists had spent much of the past five years on the same floor of the High Velocity Biology Building. They were unfamiliar with the concept of a stale meme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe do not like it!\u201d the corps said, nevertheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The principal investigator adjusted her glasses, which no longer seemed to sit right. She said, as if to settle the matter: \u201cNature abhors a vacuum.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat the hell does a vacuum have to do with it?\u201d asked a staff writer from Populist Mechanics<\/em>. He was only at the presser because he had failed several times to unsubscribe from a mailing list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell,\u201d said the PI, with a thoughtful moue, \u201ccrabs are sort of\u2026the opposite of a vacuum, if you think about it.\u201d Behind her glasses, each eye regarded distinct corners of the room. The intern shuddered and wrote: dichoptic<\/em> and also, beady<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot going on there,\u201d added her colleague. \u201cWe think that once you give it some thought, you\u2019ll find that crabs really are the way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut what about thumbs?\u201d asked an evotech correspondent from the Attenuated Press. She attributed the wrenching in the pit of her stomach to skipping breakfast, but would later recategorize it as prescience<\/em>. \u201cPeople are quite committed to picking things up and also to manipulating small objects, historically.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMany crabs can also pick things up,\u201d the scientists reminded the Attenuated Press. \u201cWe got very interesting results in our preliminary crabs-with-knives studies, under laboratory conditions.\u201d They directed the Attenuated Press to the third page of the press packet. The results were, indeed, very interesting, although not for the reasons that the scientists thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlso,\u201d added a sociologist, who\u2019d been added to the grant last minute and who secretly resented the rest of the team for looking down on her work, \u201cour exit surveys suggest that subjects who have fully acclimated to crab form are\u2026less interested in picking things up and manipulating small objects, on the whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was mostly correct. The design of the exit survey, however, had failed to capture how the crabs felt about manipulating very large objects, like the fate of nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe believe that this adaptation will greatly advance relations and understanding between disparate peoples\u2014or crustaceans, as the case may be,\u201d the scientists concluded with thin-lipped finality. \u201cWorld peace, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later, during that inevitable point when everyone\u2019s life was flashing before their eyes, they would hit this moment\u2014about 99.3% of the way through\u2014and think: Whoops.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHey, crustacean relations,\u201d said the fucking SEO content guy, whom nobody liked. \u201cThat\u2019s pretty good.\u201d Imagining the headline, the scientists felt the first twinge of regret for the dreadful path that they had chosen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You clickbait writers will be first against the wall when the revolution comes, the Populist Mechanics <\/em>writer thought darkly. He had a long and ever-evolving list of those who would be first against the wall when the revolution came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This list turned out to be something he and the crabs had in common.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nature was always trying to evolve a crab. Nature had expended a lot of time and resources on the project. It had persisted, through king crabs and porcelain crabs, through all the unpleasant back-and-forthing of birgus latro<\/em> and various evolutionary dead ends. It was as if Nature had been looking for something in all those broad, flat carapaces and wide sternal plastrons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what the clickbait guy might have said, anyway, probably in an article titled \u201cTen Unbelievably True Ways Nature is Weirder Than Science Fiction!\u201d and published just in time for Halloween. He might have been wrong about how evolution worked, but he was right on the merits. Nature was<\/em> looking for something. It had been looking for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the crabs were here, and it was time to get to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n __________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anneke Schwob’s writing has appeared in<\/em> Strange Horizons, Baffling, Nocturne,<\/em> and elsewhere. Anneke lives in Montreal and can be found online at annekeschwob.info<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"