Word of God

Other bugs leveraged matches out of the box the woman had dropped, gripping the matches in their mandibles, sometimes two or three bugs to one match.  Like a relay, they touched one match to another, passing on the flame from the beetle’s match to each of the others.  It wasn’t long before there were more than thirty beetles each with a lit match in its mandibles.  Some died from the heat their own matches generated, but most were able to stand it.  I could imagine the visual of it; kind of like a small sea of tiny flames like lighters at a concert.  Or maybe it was closer to a lynch mob, a crowd holding torches, radiating with an imminent threat of violence.

It was a shame it was closer to noon than midnight.  I imagined the effect would have been even more exaggerated in the darkness.

The woman stepped away, pulling off one of her wet shoes.  She threw it at the bugs, and it rolled over a few.  A heartbeat later, it burst violently into flame.  It didn’t make a difference.  The swarm that was armed with matches was already too spread out for one shoe and one small fire to slow them down at all.

The woman’s attempts to remove her other shoe made her fall over, and she suppressed a grunt of pain as she landed.  She successfully kicked off her other shoe, and then began simultaneously fumbling with her belt while trying to crab-walk backwards away from the advancing sea of tiny flames.

—Worm: Infestation 11.3



>It just occurred to me–how is Taylor aware of things like the woman falling over and throwing her shoe if she can only “see” through her bugs?

There are some bugs on the woman. A small bug on either hand, the top of her head & her feet, at a bare minimum, would give Taylor a picture of what’s occuring.

—Word of God: Wildbow, John Charles McCrae
	Source: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/infestation-11-3/#comment-2263
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