People always said that the future was a mystery. But it wasn't. Not for me. For as long as I could remember, I knew exactly what my future would be. It was waiting for me in a city called Palo Alto, at a University called Stanford. The best university in the world. My destiny.

See, I was that kid. The one to which parents unfavorably compared their own children. The one with the 4.95 weighted GPA. The one with a perfect score on the ACT. The one with more extracurriculars and more awards than seemed humanly possible. The one the other kids wanted to beat up, but didn't, because one of his extracurriculars was Kenpo Karate and one of his awards a third degree black belt.

I was working on my Stanford application when he showed up. It was nearly five a.m. My eyes were dry from staring at my laptop and my head felt weird and floaty from too much Red Bull. An insect appeared at my bedroom window. A honeybee. Rapping insistently on the glass. I didn't give it much thought; the affairs of insects held little interest for me.

But then it started shouting.

"Hey, you! Hominid!" I turned to the window, astonished. "Let me in!"

It's interesting how our brains react when we encounter something thoroughly at odds with our understanding of reality. I found myself thinking, That's weird. Bees don't generally fly at night. My brain, apparently, thought it best to gloss over the whole talking bee thing.

"Come on!" it urged. "I'm freezing my nuts off!"

I pressed my face to the glass to get a better look at my visitor. My brain decided to completely skip over the fact that this bee was wearing a tiny metal helmet with a chin strap (or proboscis strap or whatever). Instead I found myself thinking, Huh. I'm not sure I've ever seen a bee this big. It was a few inches in length, a giant among bees.

"Don't be an asshole!"

Interesting. I didn't know bees liked to swear.

"Just open the damn window!"

"But... I'm allergic to bee stings."

"And I'm allergic to fucking idiots!" Seeing me bristle he grudgingly added, "Relax. I'm not the kind of bee that stings."

I unlatched the window and was about to open it when something occurred to me. "How do I know that you're not just saying that to trick me?" The bee rolled its five eyes at me, making his gesture 2.5 times more potent than the average human teenager's.

So I opened the window and he made a beeline (sorry, but he did) to my desk lamp. He lay down on my A.P. Calculus textbook and bathed in sixty luxuriant watts of incandescent warmth.

"Better?"

"Oh, yeah," he sighed.

"I'm Kyle, by the way."

"Did I ask?" For a talking bee he was not much of a conversationalist.

"And what's your name?"

"I don't have one."

"How do you distinguish yourself from other bees?"

"Pheromones. And bar codes." He indicated his thorax, which did indeed have that familiar crew cut silhouette stamped on it.

"Is it OK if I call you Bee?"

"I truly don't give a crap." It was like pulling teeth with this guy, but I soldiered on.

"So... how is it that you can talk? Wait, let me guess: Monsanto, right? Those bastards and their GMO's!"

"No, stupid. I'm a time traveler from two million years in your future."

To cope with this reality-shattering revelation, my brain pulled out the big guns: The normalizing power of etiquette.

"Well, where are my manners?" I said, in a strange fiddle-dee-dee cadence. "Can I offer you some refreshment?"

———————————————————

My mother kept the honey, unnecessarily, in the refrigerator in a plastic bear-shaped squeeze bottle, so it took forever to force a few tablespoons of stiff sucrose into a ramekin. Judging by the orgasmic noises Bee made as he slurped it down, it was worth the wait.

"This is some Grade A stuff!" he enthused. "You want some?"

I watched with revulsion as the honey dripped out of his mouth and back into the little bowl. "Nah. I'll stick with my Red Bull." I took a sip. It tasted like liquid SweeTarts and rare earth metals. You get used to it. "This might be an uncomfortable question, but what happened" — I corrected myself — "what will happen to humanity?"

He didn't even look up. "You go extinct. Duh." Apparently, he didn't find the question awkward at all.

"But... what specifically was it?"

Bee shrugged his wings. "I don't know."

I was shocked. "You don't know?"

Bee's antennae twitched mockingly. "Nobody gives a shit, hominid. You were dominant species for — what? — three weeks?"

"We always assumed that if we were gone, the next dominant species would be the cockroaches."

Bee laughed a gurgly laugh. "Cockroaches? Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a stupid cockroach?"

"I have not had the pleasure."

"You know, they can live for weeks without their heads. What does that tell you?"

"I take your point."

"Although they still outlasted you douche bags."

I decided to try a new topic. "So what is your society like?"

"It's close to perfect. All the major problems have been solved. War, hunger, disease, poverty. We don't need to work, we all have everything we need, we all get along."

"Sounds great."

"It's a nightmare." I raised my eyebrows in surprise. "Do you know what the number one cause of bee death is in the future?"

"Monsanto?"

"Old goddam age." He spat the words. "See, in the old days, if you mated with the queen, you died. If you used your stinger to defend the hive, you died! You decided what truly mattered and why it mattered, with the clarity that only death can impart."

"That's really dark."

"What's dark is getting fat and weak and slipping quietly into oblivion. What's dark is sleepwalking through your own life without ever knowing what really mattered, without ever making a choice. What's dark is dying for nothing." He paused thoughtfully. "And that's why I'm here."

He had more to say, but my attention was suddenly drawn to the window, where something truly horrifying was happening. The sun was peeking over the horizon. It was morning.

"Dammit!" I jumped to my feet. "I'm so sorry, but you need to go!"

"You can't be serious!"

"I really need to get some work done. No offense, but you're kind of a distraction."

"No offense, but screw you and the horse you rode in on." Apparently horses were another species that had outlasted us. Good for them. I like horses.

I opened the window wide. "You can come back tomorrow," I placated. "Or yesterday would work, too."

He made a gesture which I'm pretty sure was his way of flipping me off and buzzed away.

I wasn't trying to be rude, but my application was due by midnight, no exceptions. According to the To-Do list on my dry erase board, I had finished everything except the last supplemental essay, which was surprisingly challenging. The acceptance rate at Stanford was 4.8%. Everything needed to be perfect.

Which the rest of the application already was. I understood that academics alone won't get you into Stanford. You need to excel in every facet of your life. So check this out.

I was captain of the water polo team. Nobody, including me, cares about water polo but that's the point. If you want to be nationally recognized in basketball or tennis, good luck; but in the rarefied air of water polo, your odds are excellent. And nationally recognized I was. We finished second place in the Junior Olympics. It would have been first if our left wing hadn't gotten E Coli from a Burrito Bowl. Trust me: diarrhea and swimming pools are not a great combination.

Speaking of diarrhea, I spent my summers in Bolivia building houses for poor people. Colleges love that socially conscious stuff. I also started my own 501(c)(3) nonprofit to combat cyberbullying. I got tons of press, including a remote interview with Lara Spencer on GMA in which she called me an inspiration. And in that interview, I wore a Stanford hoodie! (Always be closing, as they say.) Plus, since diversity is such a buzzword these days — and I am, inconveniently, a heterosexual white male — I led the fight for gender neutral bathrooms in our school and demanded that they include Kwaanza songs in the Winter Recital. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards Stanford.

And I snagged the lead in Notre Dame High School's all-Catholic production of Fiddler On The Roof. I had my haikus published in the nation's most respectable (and only) Haiku magazine. Plus, I got an Honorable Mention in the National Geographic Photo Contest for High School Students with a portrait of some toothless old Thai woman looking sad, proving that I am both artistic and empathetic.

There's more — lots more — but you get the idea.

The essays were mostly a snap. There's no secret, really. You know what they want to hear, so you just tell them what they want to hear in a way that doesn't sound like you're telling them what to hear, which of course is exactly what they want to hear.

But — dammit — that last one! When I first read the prompt it seemed so obvious, so easy, that I'd be done in minutes. That was a week ago. And now, with a deadline closing in, I still didn't have it written. I kept willing my fingers to type something, anything, but they wouldn't move. Unbelievable.

Despairing, I read the prompt again. And then, suddenly, it all made sense. I understood what I needed to do.

I had to find Bee.

When I found him, he was pretty drunk on fermented nectar. He was also, from the looks of it, trying to hit on some local honeybees, swerving wildly as he followed them from flower to flower.

"Hey, ladies! Wanna give a future honeybee some honey?" "Come on, baby, show me your abdomen!" You didn't have to be melittologist to know that they were so not interested. "Where ya goin'?" he shouted as they flew off. Then he noticed me. "They'll be back," he said, trying to save face.

"I'm sure they will."

"They will! We're gonna have a beesome threesome!" He cackled at his idiotic wordplay.

"Super. So listen, I know why you're here!"

"Uh-huh."

"To get me into Stanford!" Bee looked at me blankly. "OK, you show up while I'm working on my college essays. You talk about the importance of knowing what truly matters and why it matters. I'm stuck on the third and final essay. Do you know what it is?"

"Don't care."

"'What matters to you... and why?'" I paused for effect. "That's your mission! To help me with the essay! I mean, I know what matters. Stanford. Obviously. But I just can't quite articulate why."

"Beesus Christ!" he slurred. "You seriously believe that an advanced civilization of intelligent bees would build a time machine to send me hurtling through the cosmos just so some dumbass from an obscure, long-extinct species could go to Stanford?"

When put that way, it did sound pretty ridiculous. But in fairness, when you receive a visit from a talking, time-traveling Apis mellifera you quickly find yourself recalibrating your understanding of what is and isn't preposterous. Also, I'd been living mostly on Red Bulls for the past week, which definitely didn't help.

"Fine," I said petulantly. "So why are you here?"

"Because..." He stared at the ground and lowered his voice. "Everyone in my time hates me."

"You don't say," I muttered.

"Blow me. All I wanted was to act like a real bee! And for that, they put me in therapy!" He made air quotes with his wings. "But I wouldn't play along.

Tell me what you're so angry about. Kiss my ass!

Let's try some meditation! Eat me!

I can't help you if you unless you let me help you. Up yours!

"They decided I was beyond saving. So they stamped me with this." He pointed to his barcode. "You know what this is? My diagnosis. Bee-comma-aggressive. After that, nobody would come near me. So they locked me up for my own protection." Those air quotes again. "But they were really protecting themselves from the crazy bee who hated this boring world where nothing mattered. So when they needed a volunteer — someone expendable — for a high-risk mission to test their time machine, I jumped at the chance. I figured that any time would be better than that suckfest. But from what I've seen so far" — he glared at me — "this time is a suckfest, too."

"Why are you mad at me?"

"Because you're pathetic! You have infinite possibility and you choose a path you don't even want?"

"I want it. I just don't know why."

"Then you don't want it."

"This is what I'm supposed to do!"

"Says who?"

"It's what everyone expects from me!"

"Who cares?"

"Look, I can't turn around now! It's not an option!"

"It is! You just don't realize it because you're a pussy!"

"What do you know? Nobody likes you in your time! Or mine! Maybe the problem isn't everyone else. Maybe the problem is you!"

Suddenly, there was a needle-sharp pain in my neck. "Ow!" I could feel the stinger lodged in my throat. I stared at Bee incredulously. "Why did you sting my neck?"

"I was gonna sting your dick, but it's too small a target."

Strange, I thought, that a bee from the posthuman future could know enough about human male insecurity to pull off a dick joke. Damn it! My brain was doing it again! I forced myself to focus.

"You said that you weren't a stinging kind of bee!" I glared accusingly. "You're a liar!"

"You're the liar!" he shot back. "You said you were allergic! Well, if you're so allergic, how come you look perfectly..." He trailed off as I swelled up like a puffed pastry. "Oh. There we go."

I felt angry, itchy heat radiating outward from the puncture wound and I staggered around, disoriented. My breaths became short, labored, wheezy. Frantically, I fumbled in my jacket pocket, searching for my EpiPen. House keys, cell phone, a condom way past its expiration date. Then I found it. I pulled the cap off and stabbed myself in the thigh, hard. Weirdly, it didn't even break the skin. But it did leave a three-inch black slash on my jeans. It was, I realized, my dry erase marker. Crap!

I collapsed to the ground, clawing at my constricted windpipe. It was terrifying and painful and it seemed to go on forever. Where, I wondered, is that asphyxic euphoria I've heard such good things about?

All at once, it washed over me. It felt like I was in a warm bath. No, not in a bath, I was the bath. I was the tub, the water and the rubber duck. I was relaxation itself. I still couldn't breathe, but now I didn't care.

Whatever, man! Breathing is for squares! Nobody needs to breathe, you dig? I'm gonna lay something on you, brother, that'll blow your mind: You only think you need air 'cause that's what some L7 establishment cat from Madison Avenue told you so you'd buy into his capitalist trip, feed Tricky Dick's war machine. So just mellow out and go with the flow...

Far out, man! Check out those psychedelic colors! The grooviest blacklight poster in the universe, man, swirling and dancing to the beat of the cosmic drum circle! And who's that floating towards me? Stevie Wonder! I would have preferred Bowie, but still... Outasight!

Whoa! He's holding out his hand to me! And in it... a red pill and a blue pill.

"Choose!"

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I don't know whether it was my will to live or the jarring anachronism of Stevie Wonder delivering a line from The Matrix... or the issue of how a blind man could even know which pill was red and which one was blue (also: what was up with all those hippie idioms?) but my eyes suddenly opened and I gulped air. It was night now and I stared up at the moonlight streaming through the trees.

"I'm alive," I said in quiet awe.

From somewhere nearby, a weak, raspy voice. "Oh, for fuck's sake. Really?"

I turned my head to the side and there he was on the ground, a few inches from me.

"Are you all right?"

"Well, most of my digestive tract is still lodged in your neck, so... not really."

"That was a beautiful thing you did for me."

"I tried to kill you."

I chuckled. "No, you didn't. You stung me so I could examine my life with the clarity of death."

"You're delusional."

"Do you want to know what I decided?"

"Honestly, I'm hoping to die before you say another word."

"I'm not going to Stanford."

"Whoop-de-shit." After a few moments of silence, he asked, "What are you doing instead?"

"Nothing. I have infinite possibility. And I want to spend some time not knowing my future."

"That's nice." Bee coughed. "I'm happy for you."

"I'll always be grateful to you. You saved me."

"Not on purpose."

"Still counts."

Bee coughed again, this time wracked with pain. "Could you do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"Could you" — more coughing — "crush me with a rock?"

"You got it, buddy."

"You know, hominid, you're the closest thing I ever had to a friend."

"I'm not close to your friend, Bee. I am your friend." And for the first time, I saw a genuine smile on his face.

I stood up, feeling — for the first time in years — free and alive. And I went looking for a rock with which to squish my friend.

Host's Note: This story ended up as the winner of the Humor theme as chosen by our judge MichelleJoQuinn !