Tiny fleas

And us to bite 'em


we dug tunnels
beneath the ship's integument
we throve, I swear
we didn't kill it
but when explorers
returned from the anterior
we knew:
they had video of
a void bigger than our colony
filled with the corpses
of starved neurophages

we, the dead ship and fellow travellers, were
orbiting a moribund globe

world-ship rots
humanity trapped in an airtight tomb

then the alimentarians
our sisters in endo-domicility
sent word
the tapeworms were shedding cysts
launching capsules into space
and did we want to hitch
a ride?
there'd be other leviatha
somewhere in immensity

so we sent a dozen healthy
youngsters with seeds, tools
records of our people
in each dispersum
mermaid purses the size of jetliners
simulated treats for hungry giants

our progeny could eat the elephantine larvae
cultivate nutritious fungi in
the resultant cavernacula
carve out homes and prosper

Homo hyperparasiticum would survive