Macro-Revolution

Waking to a line of red ants trouping across my thigh, abdomen, off the far arm, I realize the scouts lost in the clothes were nibbling. Being hardly able to find myself out of a elevator myself, I can hardly blame them. To swing vantage points we take our macro-mic and zoom in on the guy just crossing the cuff seam. He’s a clear muckraker. I can tell by the feelers in this heady chemical cloud of pheromones and clacking.

Big Red: They claim we are scavengers. Are we scavengers?
The Queue: Noooooo.
Big Red: They claim we are social insects with hive mind? Are we?
The Queue: (mixed clamour) yes, no, could you simplify the question?
Big Red: (feelers flicking in an irritation) They tell us we are one mind? Are they right?
The Queue: Nooooo.
Big Red: We can think independently of the Queen. We can be independent of the Queen. We can be independant. Are you with me?
The Queue: Yesssss
Big Red: On this our first fact-finding mission. And I remind you this is a peaceful fact-finding mission. There will be no taking of food trophies. We will use no formic acid unless provoked so I ask you to keep it plugged. We come as explorers and warriors, not as peevish petty greedy conquerers. (Whispered aside) So far.

We will take only what we need. We can show we are warriors. We can show we can bring down, not the whole forest gathering this crumb and that crumb, but bring home a single kill of the enemy.

The Queue: Cheering

Big Red: We do not come as scavengers but as avengers who will take back this forest and repel the giant’s invasionary force. We can not and will not continue the Queen’s policy of niche finding and beggaring ourselves to committee hormones.

We are not one. We come here to prove them wrong.
We come to prove we are more than our collectivity.
We come to prove we are more than our marching orders.
We are more than the ants bound to their instinct
to follow that are made fools walking infinity
on the edge of the giant’s glass. We are not
mandated by habit to be mandible to the gaster
of the drone ahead. Our destiny is greater ahead
as individuals of a new nation, than anything we
have come to yet.

(Hissed aside) Clypeus-Slant get your tibias back here.

We can show that this heaving mound of animate
earth giant does not need to be bowed to, pilfered from
as their flea-carriers do. These giants can be driven —

Clack-alert, clack alert: animate earth movement.
Take positions. Take positions.
Clasp and rasp as possible. Under fabric everyone.

Funiculus-Grande come back —

Omniscient Narrator: And so the animate earth rolls from bed, shaking limbs free of tiny itchy creatures and goes to get herself a morning wake-up. Something from the Columbian rainforest would be nice. Makes a mental note to speak to the manager about the hygiene of the room. A good scouring with borox would clean the scourge of insects out of here.