This is the memory palace. I'm Nate de Mau.

Some time in late spring, the locust in its egg, visible through its translucent shell.

Its antennae folded over its face and threaded through its jaws.

Begins to contract and expand its body.

Pushing and biting at the thin yellow membrane.

Tear away at its walls with the barbs and its long hind legs until it is free of the

hot. It continues to rive. Push with its legs, working its way upward through a layer

of mucus, deposited by its mother. Excrete it from the end of a ravenon as with the other

eggs there in a mass beneath the earth.

Some hatching now around it, as the locust pushes up and up in the dark.

Until it breaks through the surface of the earth and out into the sun.

Up a pathetic little thing, an inch, inch and a half flying there in the dirt.

Pale, nearly colorless, for half an hour or so, as it dries in the air and turns a brownish

grayish green.

And then stretches out its wings. Two sets, one in the back wide and strong that will provide

most of the lift. Another pair up front that will help it steer.

And it beats those wings, 20 times per second, generating a rippling buzz and sending it upward

to join the others.

The swarm, one insect of hundreds of billions, a trillion, several trillion.

How can we know now? How can someone think to count back then?

Overall that noise.

With a cloud of them.

...