And just as I concluded, things were relatively quiet for the next couple of weeks. The supplies and reinforcents reached Malevolence’s position, and she resud cleansing the Hatha territories with redoubled vigor.
It felt like she didn’t consider a day well-spent if she couldn’t bring news about another established outpost or conquered village of barely surviving humans. She even spread the "holy word" of hygiene among them, adding to the bits of the bee-centered religion they heard already.
Malevolence and her soldiers also killed a lot of murder hornets alongside countless other insects—but still didn’t discover a single nest. They still had thousands and thousands of square kiloters of land to search, but the tendency was still alarming.
Another hindrance was Malevolence’s inability to capture any hornets alive. Her soldiers went as far as putting several of them in steel chains, but they managed to chew and tear their way even through that!
Malevolence didn’t give up yet—she already made plans to tear the teeth and claws from the next hornet they will successfully capture before chaining her. I even considered traveling closer to search for a wild hornet–but then there was always sothing more important to deal with elsewhere.
And while I waited, my administrative duties continued as usual. This included reading reports from all my Advisers—or when they had sothing especially important to say, listening to them in person.
Today, it was Science Adviser Researchina who wanted to speak with .
At first, her report was nothing too special. She described minor advances we had in existing technologies—like distillation of ethanol that fueled our chas. The tallurgy and engineering were also improving daily...
But I didn’t understand why Researchina was telling all this instead of writing a ssage until she gave the last report.
"And we’ve finally could make a working prototype of a radio. Without using telepathy, two bees could talk to each other from different rooms," she said proudly. "Father, it’s a true scientific miracle, and I hope you will want to see it yourself. Because I brought the prototypes with ."
I rose from my seat and grinned from ear to ear.
Finally! This was sothing I had been waiting for ages now! This technology... It felt much less useful than before because of the telepathic advances of the Beehounds, but I knew this wasn’t true.
Because the radio was a gateway to an incredible amount of other amazing technologies! Things like radars, remote electronic controls, video broadcasting... Hell, if we had computers, we could’ve tried to make our own Internet! If we had satellites, we could’ve had GPS!
The potential was too great to dismiss.
"Of course I want to see it, Researchina! Let’s go!"
***
I didn’t expect that the first radios would fit into the palm of my hand, but the one shown to was even bulkier than I expected.
It was a wooden box that took an entire table it was placed on and was covered in mysterious buttons and levers—way too many of them for such a simple device. On the edge of the table was a sound dynamic, attached to a large, flower-shaped iron gaphone.
Several Researchers were hanging around in this laboratory room, but they all moved toward the walls when Researchina led to the radio.
"So did you solve the cable isolation problem? How do you feed it electricity?" I asked Researchina, looking around the gaphone. It had a cloth-insulated cable snaking away from it and going sowhere I couldn’t see.
Researchina pinched her lips.
"Sadly, not really. We improved the cloth used for cable winding, but it still shouldn’t be used in places that could be flooded. These radios work from a small ethanol electric generator we built just for them. We also had a coal one, but it’s too smoky to use indoors."
My shoulders slumped in disappointnt.
Electricity in every house would’ve been such an amazing advance... But no.
"What about batteries?"
Batteries were relatively easy to make, and the materials for them were so tals and minerals that the Bee Empire had access to. Researchina had already told before that her people had made so progress on this...
However, she shook her head.
"The batteries we have are too... unrefined. This will surely change, but we’ve had a few explosions already. For now—generators."
I nodded.
"I sure don’t want anyone working with a radio to explode! Glad that you rembered about workplace safety." This wasn’t always the case in the past. "Alright, show how this bad boy works!"
I lightly patted the radio, then quickly put my hand aside, hoping that I hadn’t broken anything. Researchina didn’t bat an eye at my gesture as she approached the device, which I took as a good sign.
The radio also looked very solid.
Researchina touched a few knobs and levers, checking them, then began to explain:
"There’s a Researcher waiting with the other radio—I already sent her an order to turn her radio on. When she receivers a transmission, she will repeat it back." Researchina pressed a button and held it. "This button lets you send ssages."
She let it go. A few monts later, a scratchy and distorted voice ca from the tal flower:
"This button lets you send ssages."
My eyes widened. The Researchers in the room, who had been watching with bated breath, began quietly smiling to each other.
"It works!" I exclaid. "I an. Of course it would, or you wouldn’t have called !"
"Yes. Although the signal gets much weaker with distance, especially indoors..."
"Doesn’t matter! Well, it does—but..." I grinned. "This is a weakness that could be overco. I just recalled an amazing thing that will surely help us a lot."
Researchina blinked and looked up at with confusion that swiftly changed to anticipation and curiosity.
I raised a finger to the air—a movent followed by a dozen hungry for knowledge eyes.
"Now we can point our efforts at creating a ground-penetrating radar! This way, we could search even more effectively for buried minerals, tals, oil—and even hornets!"
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