You’re reading the eighth story in Underground, Tractor Beam’s Spring 2026 issue. You can read Fatimah Asghar’s guest editor letter and the remaining stories here. Subscribe to receive future Tractor Beam issues in your inbox as soon as they drop!

Story by: Aidan Koch

Annotations by: Fatimah Asghar and Autumn Brown

I will be using the mark-recapture method for tracking changes in population and behavior for desert harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex spp.). This data will allow me to compare historic and current foraging and activity patterns outside the nest and correlate them to changing climatic conditions. My initial sample population will include 12 colonies within a creosote bush scrub desert community.

1. I love how beautiful and soft the art is here. The style feels so open and calming. (Annotation by Fatimah Asghar, Guest Editor)

2. The juxtaposition of the desert landscape, with its lush colors where sky and sand blend together, and the hard lines of the power towers is striking! (Annotation by Autumn Brown)

3. The intrusion of the truck and cell phone tower, when juxtaposed with the softness and vibrancy of the landscape, works really well. What’s a rigid line when compared to the curve of a mountain? What’s a metal car and tire against the green lushness of a small plant? (Annotation by Fatimah Asghar, Guest Editor)

4. The shape of the hand deteriorates as the pain from the bite grows. This image neatly mirrors the figures climbing out of the truck just a few panels before, as the shapes of their bodies dissolve in the desert mirage. (Annotation by Autumn Brown)

5. The maze floating above our scientist's head appears to represent both the inner life of the colony and the inner workings of the computer. And perhaps the inner workings of the mind. (Annotation by Autumn Brown)

6. I really love this question here. (Annotation by Fatimah Asghar, Guest Editor)

7. I love the ways that the ants and hands interact throughout this piece—moving from pain to a kind of tender acceptance. (Annotation by Fatimah Asghar, Guest Editor)

About the Author

Aidan Koch is an artist and graphic novelist based in the Mojave Desert on unceded Serrano land. Koch's work uses modes of ecological story-telling to explore loving and fraught relationships between humans, non-human animals, and landscapes. Her most recent graphic novel, Spiral and Other Stories, was named one of the best graphic novels of 2024 by the Guardian and Washington Post. Her work has been featured in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Frieze Magazine, Best American Comics 2014, and MoMA PS1 GNY series. She has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, South Bend Museum of Art, and Queens University Belfast, among others. Koch's ongoing projects, Institute for Interspecies Art and Relations and Environmental Comics, act as pedagogical and collaborative extensions of her ecological inquiries.

About the Annotators

Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, educator, and performer whose work includes an Emmy nominated web series, a National Book Award Longlisted book of fiction, a critically acclaimed book of poetry, and they served as the co-producer and writer of Time and Again for Ms Marvel on Disney +. Their second poetry book “Daughter of the Mountains” is forthcoming July 2026.

Autumn Brown is a mother, movement leader, and musician, whose organizing work is rooted in Black feminist and fugitive freedom movements. For over 20 years she has organized for healing justice, developed movement strategy, and trained organizers in consensus process, facilitation, and racial justice. Autumn is a 2020 Auburn Seminary Lives of Commitment Honoree and recipient of the 2025 Margaret Brent Award. She lives on Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN, where she co-hosts the podcast How to Survive the End of the World. Her forthcoming book, Temper: Practicing Freedom in an Unfree World (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2026), offers wisdom and teaching on cultivating inner freedom and wayfinding toward liberation, even when the way is uncertain.

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