There were many of us who’d never played video games. We now lowered our goggles and sat with our ears cradled in headsets as we fought our government, faced firing squads, and respawned to fight again. Among the new heroes were shop owners and schoolteachers, pastors and firemen, mothers and fathers who hid grasshoppers in the basements of their online homes and offered sanctuary within immersive churches and monasteries.

In response, we were bombarded by more invective from the White House, praising the gamers who were amassing insect casualties, and extolling the virtues of the president’s militiamen who were squashing the intruders online. As for the traitors who would protect them, the president announced he was sending real troops to kick in the doors of the Silicon Valley offices that housed the black hat anarchists. His hackers were already breaking through our firewalls; they were coming for our sanctuary sites.

We attempted to herd the creatures back through the virtual rifts, but like crickets jumping away from an open door they refused to leave, resisting as if fighting death itself. They turned instead toward the open borders of our immersive worlds and cocked their heads, listening to the sound of the approaching tanks.

INTERGALACTIC SONGS

It was then that the creatures began to sing. The mantises, whose legs our doctors had mended, lifted their wings and rubbed them together, and their melodies rose above the gunfire with the sound of crickets on a summer evening. Their music reverberated across the rooftops of our blasted landscapes and set meditation bowls ringing, filling our bodies with a soft vibration that tasted like honey to our eardrums.