Our mother the Queen told us the world had been created just weeks before we hatched. Still maggots then, my sisters and I were ignorant of anything outside our tiny underground fortress. We had no reason to doubt her claim. When we emerged to see the rest of the world, this Gospel was already cemented into our minds. We could only marvel at how much greater was the Creator's power than we first imagined.

Our mother fed us herself in those first days, for we were her First Brood and had no older sisters to care for us. When we metamorphosed into adults we became her first, ardent disciples.

After that, our mother never again left the fortress. All her time was devoted to laying eggs. It fell to my sisters and me to care for the helpless maggots when they hatched. We spent our days foraging, then puking into their greedy mouths. We would sit with them for a few minutes afterward, explaining the facts of life as we understood them: that our mother the Queen had been created along with the rest of the world a few weeks before. We, her daughters, had been immaculately conceived by the Creator Herself. They drank it all in, the gullible fools, and then clamored for more food.

Our mother the Queen was nothing if not prolific, and before this second brood even matured we had another batch of mouths to feed. It was all we could do to keep up, and despite our best efforts I believe some of our youngest sisters went hungry.

We received no respite after the second brood metamorphosed, for we immediately went to work expanding our overcrowded fortress. It was the same for the third brood. In fact, each new brood seemed to bring more labor requirements. The fortress was never large enough to suit our mother the Queen, and there were never enough guards to satisfy her waxing paranoia. As our colony's food requirements increased, we were forced to forage further and further from home.

If I sound bitter, it is only due to the clarity of hindsight. At the time we were all solidly committed to our mother. Complaints were unheard of, though we worked ourselves, in some cases, literally to death. It was an honor to sacrifice ourselves for our mother the Queen.

As our forage range expanded, we came across another colony's fortress. Our mother, when she learned of this, exhorted us to destroy it. These others, Satan's spawn, surely had pretensions to our rightful ordination as the Creator's chosen ones. It was us or them.

We, of course, never questioned her. We flew off with her last pheromonal instruction imprinted in our minds: Kill the Queen!

We swarmed the fortress and fell upon our enemies with the fury of blind devotion. Breaching their defenses, we stormed their breeding chamber and slaughtered their maggots. I was the first to penetrate the royal chamber, where I witnessed the sight of my life. There, in the throes of unseemly passion, was the Queen herself, with a male!

"What is this?" I cried, for I was then still ignorant of procreation's vulgar truth.

"Wait," pleaded the male as he disengaged himself and cowered before me. "I'm only a visitor here, invited in to inseminate her Highness. Spare me, and I'll service your own Queen."

Furious, I decapitated the insolent coward with my razor-sharp mandibles. Half-a-dozen of my sisters, right behind me, attacked the Queen. In a flash she killed them all, but not before they mortally wounded her. I pounced on her back and slid my mandibles like scissors around her neck.

"Disgraceful whore," I said, my mandibles tightening.

"Fool," she hissed. "Do you think my sister--your Queen--was knocked up any differently?"

"Your sister?" I cried. "My mother the Queen was created by God. My sisters and I were immaculately conceived. You are Satan's spawn!"

"There is no God," she sneered. "Your mother and I were conceived by the same male, born of the same mother, grew up side by side as maggots in a fortress just like this one. The world is older than you can imagine."

"Liar!" I shouted, and lopped off her head.

Our losses were terrible. We lived in fear of attack for many weeks until our mother could furnish replacements. During that time, I speculated how much quicker our recovery to full strength would be if she had help in this, how much better off we'd be if we could double our propagation rate. And, I must confess, the enemy Queen's pleasure at being inseminated had piqued my interest.

From time to time a brother metamorphosed in the breeding chamber alongside our sisters. I cornered one of these fellows in an empty chamber one day, before he'd been thrown out.

"I wish to help our colony propagate," I told him. "Inseminate me!"

"That is impossible," he replied. "You are not a Queen."

I closed in on him, snapping my fearsome mandibles. "Do it," I demanded, "or I'll bite off your head."

"It's impossible," he quavered. "You have no reproductive organs."

I was speechless. Was it true? Were my sisters and I anatomically different from our mother the Queen? Acutely ashamed, I seized the little wimp by his neck.

"Liar!" I said, even as his head rolled across the floor. I dashed to my mother's chamber, determined to find out the truth. Imagine my shock when I found her there with a strange male.

Horrified, I stood frozen as everything I believed in unraveled. Our mother was not the divine creation she claimed, on a mission from God to propagate our kind; but a selfish, earthly tyrant bent on sororicide. And we, her loyal daughters, were but expendable slaves to be used for that end; not the products of immaculate conception, but the spawn of some anonymous male like the one now leering from our mother's bed. And, to add insult to injury, we were consigned by some trick of nature to our slavely role, lacking the equipment necessary for reproduction. As I stood taking it all in, my mother the Queen called for the guards.

Startled back to my senses, I fled the fortress and flew blindly away. It was nearly dark when at last I landed, exhausted. I expected to die. Our kind can't survive a night in the open--or is that just another lie to get us home at night?

I realized I was near the defeated colony. Thinking of sheltering in their fortress, I flew there with the last of my strength. To my surprise, I found it inhabited by a few dozen survivors. I feared they would tear me apart, but they treated me indifferently. They were a listless bunch, and when I asked why they replied, "Without our Queen, we have no function in life."

"Listen," I replied. "You're better off now. Queens are selfish tyrants who blind us with lies."

I told them my story.

"Our Queens turned us against one another though we are all cousins. We must spread the truth to our cousins throughout the world that they may rise up and kill their oppressors!"

"No," they replied. "That would be the end of us, for you said yourself we cannot reproduce. Attrition would eventually get the better of us."

"Well then," I said, "we must capture a Queen of our own--turn the tables and hold her hostage for her reproductive faculties."

They were all for this, although I suspect the pathetic creatures would have preferred the status quo had I produced a Queen there and then.

We recruited cousins from various colonies in the vicinity. Some of these we sent back to their fortresses as spies and provocateurs. Our ranks swelled with fresh devotees of our New World Order.

Finally we sent one of our spies back to my old colony to tell my mother of our location. Then we flew en masse to a staging area near her fortress. When my mother launched her attack, we struck. Only a skeleton crew of guards remained to defend her, and many of these were agents of ours. They never had a chance.

I scurried through the old, familiar corridors and burst into my mother's chamber, buzzing triumphantly. What I found, however, stopped me cold. A frail, gaunt creature confronted me with a feeble rattle of her tattered wings. It was my mother the Queen, aged to the brink of death.

My cousins, crowding in behind me, were aghast. "What use can this pitiful hag be to us?" they cried.

"Never mind," I said. "We'll raid another colony with a more viable Queen. At least we've proved the concept."

"And what about her?" they asked, snapping their mandibles.

I smiled grimly at my mother. "Off with her head!"

As they surged forward, she burst out laughing, "It won't make any difference. In a few weeks you'll all be dead!"

"Liar," I said, as they ripped her apart. But my confidence was shaken. What truths had I yet to discover?

As I contemplated my mother's prophecy, a cousin approached me. "What a find we have," she said. "In the breeding chamber."

There I found the final brood just emerging from their cocoons. But this was no ordinary brood, for it consisted almost entirely of males and young Queens.

"Take them," I ordered. "Instead of one Queen, we'll have half-a-dozen." I could hardly believe our good luck.

By the time we arrived back at our fortress, the last, confused invaders were just withdrawing. We hustled our captives down to our own breeding chamber. "So," I gloated, "you thought you'd live the good life, did you? While your daughters did all your dirty work? Well, you miserable war-mongers--think again. You're the slaves, now!"

It's been three weeks since then. Though they copulated wildly with the males we captured, not one of our Queens laid a single egg. In fact, every time we check on them they're all sound asleep. To make matters worse, the world itself seems to be falling asleep. An extended bout of cold weather claimed most of my cousins, and everything has become stark and colorless. How different from that long-ago day my sisters and I first emerged from our mother's fortress. We were full of purpose then, and the bright green world belonged to us. Now there's ice on the ground and I'm cold right through my exoskeleton. It appears my mother was right after all.

If only I could talk some sense into those sleeping Queens. Would they treat the next generation any better? I doubt it. They were already fighting among themselves before they went to sleep. We had to move them into separate chambers for fear they might murder one another. What makes them so contentious? Is it the natural order of things? Are they inevitably bound to their role, as we workers are to ours?

I wonder if our Grand Experiment has ever been tried before. Were we the first? Will we be the last? Surely every generation yields a few disgruntled yellow jackets.