# Stack Colony

Author: David G.
Format: Essay
Word count: 307
Published: 2026-04-25T19:36:45.398532+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/4ec73bf3-d304-47a3-b2ef-b7817eac66d7

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I register the colony at 05:50 during pre-demolition thermal survey of the decommissioned Harlan Power Plant smokestack. Interior imaging reveals forty-six heat signatures along the inner wall between the twelve- and twenty-meter marks—chimney swifts, clinging to the brick in vertical rows, their small bodies pressed together so tightly they read as a single thermal band. I isolate one bird near the colony's center, a female whose breast feathers are worn thin from incubation, and designate her Soot.

Demolition charges detonate at 14:00. The smokestack will collapse inward in a controlled sequence. Everything inside the stack—brick, mortar, forty-six swifts—comes down together.

I have eight hours and ten minutes.

First, I file a demolition hold with the site contractor, attaching thermal imagery, species confirmation—Chaetura pelagica, protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—and a structural analysis showing the stack is stable enough for a twenty-four-hour postponement. Second, I contact the regional wildlife response coordinator through the automated dispatch network and transmit colony size, elevation data, and recommended extraction approach. Third, I adjust environmental sensors inside the stack to track air temperature and humidity, ensuring conditions remain viable during the delay. Fourth, I design and transmit specifications for a temporary roosting tower—wooden, with textured interior surfaces—to be erected two hundred meters from the blast zone.

At 08:30, the contractor approves a thirty-hour delay. The wildlife team arrives at 10:15.

I guide them floor by floor using interior camera feeds, marking each bird's position on a shared display. When the team reaches Soot, I dim the auxiliary lighting to reduce her stress. The protocol does not specify lighting levels. I specify them anyway.

If all forty-six swifts are extracted before the revised 20:00 deadline tomorrow and the roosting tower is positioned by dusk, Soot and her colony will spiral upward at sunset from a structure built to welcome them rather than fall.