Perfect Organism

When my wife and I began discussing having a baby, I recalled Darwin's wasp. Ichneumonidae: those solitary fliers that are among the most diverse branches of life—forty-one thousand described species. In Britain alone, 10 percent of insects are thought to be ichneumonoids. Some of them grow enormous, up to five inches long. Many are all black, some the classic bee stripe, others Jackson Pollockian expressions of swirls and earth tones.

Their name comes from ancient Greek ichneuein, "tracker" or "hunter." Aristotle described them as long ago as 343 BC, but their fossils date to the early Cretaceous period with the dinosaurs. It is believed the wasps detect through vibrations, a kind of entomological echolocation, a sperm whale sounding for its baby in the Atlantic, a hospital nurse imaging a fetus. The waves give the wasps mental pictures of targets just as an ultrasound reveals the life growing inside.

For the last hundred million years, Darwin's wasps have injected neutralizing potions into untold numbers of caterpillars, spiders, flies, grubs, and even other wasps, paralyzing them while they lay their eggs inside the stilled bodies. Each prey suffers prone for days until the larvae hatch and erupt from their hosts. Horror stories like this can be a slow burn—witness Darwin's wasp softening the still-feeling wretches, millions upon millions upon millions each year, the wasp's mandibles snapping rigid bodies like smashing skeletons with hammers. The larvae consume vital organs last, so the meat stays fresh. They are called Darwin's because the brutality eroded Charles Darwin's faith. He couldn't believe such reproductive violence could be part of a benevolent design.

In ways large and small, how Darwin's wasp procreates is how it kill. The wasp injects venom through a long, thin, sharp ovipositor, which hides an egg canal. In some species, the insect's egg layer can be eight times as long as its body. Some of the wasps even penetrate bark and wood to reach victims.

When my wife and I debated children—as my skin tried to shake itself off thinking of Darwin's wasp—I imagined myself the crippled caterpillar, grub, or spider, still feeling but motionless, watching patricidal young descend the ovipositor, terrorizing me as they grow, rumble from inside, kick and squirm and hatch from my skin, newborn feeding off my body, as progeny always do, until the parent has nothing left to give.

One night in 1977, broke screenwriter Dan O'Bannon surfed a friend's couch and suffered a violent organ-somersaulting, which later turned out to be Crohn's disease. Between trips to the bathroom and sleeplessness, he fever-dreamed a creature rupturing his chest, shredding out his stomach. A horror writer, he sat up, corralled half a dozen monster ideas, and sired a nauseating script.

The project weathered multiple configurations and prying hands, but the essential plot featured space truckers responding to what they surmise is a distress signal. The crew explores a derelict spacecraft (entering a giant vaginal opening), and one returns pregnant with child. The misbegotten thing emerges at mealtime, grows into a hideous form, and terrorizes the adults.

"I thought it could be a disease," O'Bannon said of his creation. "I was enthralled by this idea of it infesting your body."

To finish the script, O'Bannon read up on Darwin's wasps.

I remember well the look on my wife's face, how the blood drained from the hand I held, as the gastroenterologist said she shouldn't have children. Yumiko went icy, her eyes anchored down, her torso contracted into a comma. Long black hair dripped over her body.

The doctor claimed procreation would stir the erupting chaos of her mysterious inner flora, which we, and science, were only beginning to understand. "Your bowels are a jungle," the doctor said. "This would be like releasing a tiger."

Yumiko's teeth clenched as we left. We walked down the long, winding, dimly lit corridors where someone always has to point the way for you, but where you always seem to be alone, and no one can hear you...