:Draft:The Human Termites

A scientist Hans Souderman spends 30 years of his life studying Termites in Africa and upon his return to America, decides that he urgently needs to share his discoveries with a successor for he accidentally uncovered the truth that threatens the future of humanity. For that he picks a young scientist Adam Fry, deciding that Adam is a man with imagination (a trait he deemed of most importance) and hence a perfect match to become his heir.

During their conversations, Souderman reveals that termitary is like an organism of a bigger animal with individual termites being just like "cells" of its body, all mindless on their own but commanded by a Central Intelligence, millions of years old entities, one for each colony. Using special equipment he was able to hear the sounds inside the termitary, which he recorded and sent to the linguist to decipher as a language. The conclusion of both himself and the linguist was that they're dealing with two separate languages - one for exchanging simple commands given to the termites, and another, higher language, was for complex communication between the Central Intelligences (the Giant Termites, as Souderman called them). After learning and listening to this higher language of the Giant Termite, Souderman had found out about termites plan to conquest all life on Earth, and for the first time decided to speak back. He composed a message "This is a large world. There's room for all. Why try to destroy all other life?" and played it to the termitary. As a response he received a demand to leave. The next morning, after a restless night of sleep, he discovered that all his equipment and recordings were destroyed and eaten by the termites. He rushed to Cape Town where he thought other records were safe with the linguist but found the entire house a wreck with the linguist killed, evidently eaten alive. Afraid for his life, Souderman announced he'd be leaving Cape Town by a certain steamer, but then the last moment left by plane learning later on that the ship he was supposed to be on sank the day it sailed from Cape Town, and all on board were lost.

Soon, termites attack the apartment in which Souderman and Adam resided for the time of their studies, and the two men parted ways. Souderman headed North where termites couldn't follow due to the cold climate, and Adam made an effort to enlist another man to their aid. For that he picked Bailey Bankerville, a multimillionaire with scientific background, but the man refused to let Adam into his house, not interested in anything he had to say. After a few days of unsuccessful attempts to establish contact, Adam got inside Bailey's house at night, tied the man to his bed and so was able to finally grab his attention. As he shared his story, Adam was able to win Bankerville as well as his sister Susanne to his side.

Bankerville prepares an expedition of scientists to conduct their own research of termites, but just as they leave, Bankerville's house suddenly gets attacked under mysterious circumstances, with no perpetrator being able to explain the motivation behind the attack. This development made the team composed of Adam, Bailey and Susanne to conclude that humans too have some kind of Central Intelligence, one for each nation, that orders people to obey its orders blindly in much the same way Giant Termite orders the individual termites. They deduct that the Central Intelligence of the United States ordered to capture them as criminals, so during their escape they disguise themselves under fake names. This way, they reach their destination of a small deserted island near Australia with no life on it other than that of the termites.

As they conduct their research of the termites on the island, it shortly appears as if the whole affair is a waste of time, but soon enough several of the men from the crew of scientists and sailors disappear without a trace. Determined to solve the mystery of their disappearance, Susanne sneaks from the ship during the night and swims to the island. She takes a nap, and upon awakening finds herself in some sort of underground tunnels. In there she meets with Central Intelligence of the local colony of the termites who tells her that they have billions of twenty-foot soldier termites cross-bread with humans with a goal to fight humanity into extinction, and captured Susanne is to become one of their queens producing the new offspring of those human-termites mutants.

Central Intelligence, originally looking like a shapeless mass of white matter, crawls into the head of one of the dead captured men, taking the place of the brain. Susanne shoots it from a revolver and escapes back to the ship. The majority of the crew goes ashore to fight the termites but Bankerville, Susanne, Fry as well as the ship's captain escape on two hydroplanes that they conveniently had with them on the ship. In Australia they learn that the termites have attacked the continent. They pick up a young woman named Anna Ruth and escape by plane to America intending to warn the people of the danger upon arrival, but soon they learn that the apart from the problem with termites, the whole world has suddenly gone mad with all the nations going to war with each other.

The attempts to convince country's authorities fail, so Susanne attempts to telepathically communicate with US's Central Intelligence (something she learned she can do after her meeting with Giant Termite who communicated with her the same way) but as a result of this, it only orders more people to capture the four protagonists as wanted criminals. In the meantime Adam and Susanne get married playing a double wedding with Bailey and Anna Ruth.

More and more countries get attacked with the giant termites as the four protagonists reunite with Souderman in the distant place in the mountains of Canada where they base a small village that they hurriedly populate with a selected families of 25, and soon they become the only surviving people on Earth. The Termites attempt attacking them occasionally, but each time they fail. It continues until humans infect a few animals with artificially created plague and throw them for the termites to eat. Due to termites' custom of eating their dead, the disease spreads among them until the entire population of all the termites becomes extinct, and the planet becomes once again safe for humans to inhabit.

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