(This stems from “Does a Bee Care?”  by Isaac Asimov. There is a whole lot of outright plagiarism here. Hope that is OK, given the prompt’s requirements. And I certainly don’t think this is better than the Asimov story--quite the contrary--just somewhat different.)

Butterfly

Even 8000 years is not too long when instinct drives a creature. And Kane was willing to wait . . .

“He looks like a caterpillar, “ said young Mikey, Thomas Hammer’s five year old son, accompanying his father to work to see the latest marvelous product.

“A caterpillar?” said his father. “Who does?”

Thomas Hammer, founder and principal owner of HammerScope, creators of incredibly brilliant observation equipment, originated most of the concepts and handled the mathematical symbols that formed the their basis . This latest production, which would, among other goals, be the best means yet for discovering threatening comets at a distance, was soon to be lofted into space via the first circumlunar test of the Space Launch System. This observer was huge and complex, but so was the SLS that would carry it.

His chief assistant, Theo, said, as he pointed with a rigid, stabbing finger “That man? A slug, more likely.”

Hammer peered. "You mean Kane?"

"The fellow in the white overalls, holding a tablet."

"That’s Kane. What have you’ve got against him? And why”, he asked, turning to his son, “do you call him a caterpillar."

Mikey jumped in while Theo was putting together thoughts and words. “I dunno. Just looks like it.”

"I want to know what he does. The man’s an idiot." Theo snapped.

Hammer turned to look at the Theo, his spare body assuming an air of displeasure along every inch. "Have you been bothering him?"

^'Bothering him? I’ve been talking to him. It’s part of my job, isn’t it, to talk to the people, to get their viewpoints, make sure morale is OK."

"How does Kane disturb that?"

 "He’s insolent. I asked him how it felt to be working on equipment that would live beyond the moon? In company with the stars. Perhaps I made a little speech about it, built it up a bit, when he turned away in the rudest possible manner. I called him back and said, ‘Where are you going?’ And he said, ‘I get tired of that kind of talk. I’m going out to look at the stars.’ "

Hammer nodded. "All right. Kane likes to look at the stars."

"It was daytime. The man’s an idiot. I’ve been watching him since and he doesn’t do any work. And there’s nothing on that tablet he’s always carrying around."

"I know that."

"Then why is he kept on?"

Hammer said with a sudden, tight fierceness, "Because I want him around. Because he’s my luck."

"Your luck?"  Theo stared. "What the hell does that mean?"

 "It means that when he’s around I think better. When he passes me, holding his tablet, blank or not, I get ideas. It’s happened three times. I don’t explain it; I’m not interested in explaining it. It’s happened. He stays."

Theo was silent. Toby looked up at his father, “The caterpillar did all that?” He looked again at Kane with interest.

His father sighed. “Can’t really explain it better; Come on.” Toby looked back several times at Kane as they moved on. He was trying to figure out why the little man made him think of caterpillars. So far, he had no luck.

Kane stood there in his white overalls, holding his tablet.

Dimly he was aware that the that the huge, bristling observer was almost ready. It was not designed to carry a man, but there was space for a small man. He knew that the way he knew a lot of things; like keeping out of the way of most people most of the time; like carrying a tablet until people grew used to him carrying a tablet and stopped noticing it. Protective coloration consisted of little things, really, — like carrying the tablet.

He was full of drives he did not fully understand; like looking at the stars. At first, many years back, he had just looked at the stars with a vague ache. Then, slowly, his attention had centered itself on a certain region of the sky, then to a certain pin-pointed spot. He didn’t know why that certain spot. There were no stars in that spot. There was nothing to see.

That spot was high in the night sky in the late spring and in the summer months and he sometimes spent most of the night watching the spot until it sank toward the southwestern horizon. At other times in the year he would stare at the spot during the day.

There was some thought in connection with that spot which he couldn’t quite crystallize. It had grown stronger, come nearer the surface as the years passed and it was almost bursting for expression now. But still it had not quite come clear.

Kane shifted restlessly and approached the huge Observer. It was almost complete, almost whole. Very soon it would be taken to the big launch vehicle. Everything fitted just so. Almost.

For within it was a hole a little larger than a very small man; and leading to that hole was a pathway a little wider than the very small  man. Soon that pathway would be filled with the last of the equipment and before that was done, the hole had to be filled, too. But not with anything they planned.

Kane moved still closer and no one paid any attention to him. They were used to him.

There was a short metal ladder that had to be climbed to enter the last opening. He knew where the opening was as exactly as though he had built the observer with his own hands. He climbed the ladder.

It was dark in the hole and, of course, there was no ventilation, but Kane paid no attention to that. With the sureness of instinct, he scrambled into the hole that would receive him, then lay there, not bothering to breathe, fitting the cavity neatly as though it were a womb.

Kane was not afraid of being prematurely discovered. No one in the project knew the hole was there. The design didn’t call for it. The mechanics and construction men weren’t aware of having put it in.

Kane had arranged that entirely by himself.

He didn’t know how he had arranged it, but he knew he had.

He could watch his own influence without knowing how it was exerted. Take the man, Hammer, for instance, the leader of the company and the project and the most clearly influenced. Of all the indistinct figures about Kane, he was the least indistinct. Kane would be very aware of him at times, when he passed near him in his slow and hazy journeys about the building. It was all that was necessary, — passing near him.

Kane recalled it had been so before, particularly with the one theoreticians. When Lise Meitner decided to test for barium among the products of the neutron bombardment of uranium, Kane had been there, an unnoticed plodder along a corridor nearby.

He had been picking up leaves and trash in a park in 1904 when the young Einstein had passed by, pondering. Einstein’s steps had quickened with the impact of sudden thought. Kane felt it like an electric shock.

But he didn’t know how it was done. Does a spider know architectural theory when it begins to construct its first web?"

It went further back. The evening the young Newton had stared at the Moon with the dawn of a certain thought, Kane had been there. And further back still.

It had not been perfect, of course. The myths of the Wandering Jew and the Flying Dutchman had arisen, but he was still here. He had not been disturbed. He didn’t know why the little boy today seemed to recognize something about him. That sometimes happened with very small children.

This was the first SLS to go completely free of Earth. Eventually, it would carry humans to Mars, but not yet. On this trip, it would  reach out and circle the Moon before falling back. It would leave behind  the Observer, guardian of Earth, on its ceaseless rounds. But it would no longer have its unknown passenger.

It took surprisingly little time to transport the Observer to its porter and then to finish preparing that. Kane was barely aware of the process.

Dimly, he knew his long journey was nearly over. He would no longer have to maneuver carefully to avoid having people realize he was immortal. He would no longer have to fade into the background, no longer wander eternally from place to place, changing names and personality, manipulating minds.

He detached his mind, lifting it up and outward, freeing it from direct connection with his body in order that he might be unaware of the pain and discomfort.

He could see his spot in the sky. Through the mass and solidity of the ship he could see it. Or not really. He didn’t have the proper word.

He knew there was a proper word, though. He could not say how he knew a fraction of the things he knew except that as the centuries had passed he had gradually grown to know them with a sureness that required no reason.

He had begun as an ovum (or as something for which ‘‘ovum" was the nearest word he knew) , deposited on Earth before the first cities had been built by the wandering hunting-creatures since called men. Earth had been chosen carefully by his progenitor. Not every world would do.

What world would? What was the criterion?" That he still didn’t know.

The ovum spilt him forth at length and he took the shape of a man and lived among men and protected himself against men. And his one purpose was to arrange to have men travel along a path that would end with a ship and within the ship a hole and within the hole himself. It had taken eight thousand years of slow striving and stumbling.

He did realize, finally, that the ship had lifted. The spot in the sky became sharper now as the ship moved out of the atmosphere, and then the Observer was deposited in its home, in privacy beyond the moon. Nothing on Earth now could notice any peculiar energy fluctuations. That was the key that opened his mind, the piece that completed the puzzle.

Stars blinked within that spot that could not be seen by a man’s eye unaided. One in particular shone brilliantly and Kane yearned toward it. The expression that had been building within him for so long burst out now.

"Home," he thought.

The final step was completed in the slow maturing that had taken eight thousand years, and Kane was no longer larval, but adult.

The adult Kane fled from the human flesh that had protected the larva, and fled the Observer, too. Kane hastened onward, at inconceivable speeds, toward home, from which some day it, too, might set off on wanderings through space to fertilize some planet with its ovum.

It sped through space, giving no thought, to the ship carrying an empty chrysalis. It gave no thought to the fact that it had driven a whole world toward technology and space-travel in order only that it might mature and reach its fulfillment.

Back on Earth, Mikey stared up at stars. Last week, he told his father he wanted to be a fireman. This week, he wanted to be an astronaut. Wanted it very much.

END