It was one of those movie-set mornings. Cloudless, windless, temperatures just about perfect for sitting in the yard sipping iced tea, which is exactly what Kipper was doing when he heard Tiger's grainy lilt calling from the front door. He had barely leaned forward and raised his sunglasses when Tiger came bounding around the house.
"We've been called to a meeting," Tiger said. He was waving a scrap of paper, this one was white and bore no evidence that it was accepted as legal tender. "This afternoon, at the office."
Kipper stood and took the letter from Tiger. "Have I got a letter, too?" he asked.
"Oh, this one is yours," Tiger said. "I thought I'd save you the trouble of retrieving it and prying it open..."
"Thank you, I suppose," Kipper said, dutifully ignoring this breach of privacy and pivoting to read the letter. "It says it's at noon today. Is it one of those lunch and learns?"
"Oh, I wouldn't know that, Kipper, it's your letter."
Kipper narrowed his eyes, pretending to read further. "It says there will be beverages but no lunch is provided..."
"What? No, it said there will be sandwiches, soup and salad," Tiger said, grabbing the paper from Kipper's paws. "See? Right there. Under where it says 'Mandatory'."
"So it does, yes... What do you, um, suppose it's all about then?"
"That it doesn't say. I mean, let's see... no, it doesn't say."
"You don't say."
When they arrived in the office, the line at the buffet table extended halfway down the corridor. The table was piled high with sandwiches, bowls of salad, cartons of soup and all the necessities and fixings. Pig and Jake stood at the head of the line, their arms already laden with grilled veggie wraps and soup.
"I don't know if I can stick to this diet," said Jake, sounding dismayed.
"You shouldn't think of it as a diet, Jake," Pig said. "It's more of a lifestyle change."
"Then I don't know if I can stick to this lifestyle, I suppose."
Pig, Jake and several of the workers found seats around the conference table. A few others rolled or dragged chairs fom elsewhere in the building. One employee rolled his chair all the way from his desk while sitting the entire time. Kipper and Tiger wound up standing, much too close to the front of the room.
Tom, the Marketing Director, was standing at the head of the table, with his coffee cup in hand. There was also a large gift bag and a cake. Paper plates and whatnot were arranged on the credenza behind him. Bald and fairly short, Tom was the kind of man who seemed pathetically non-threatening and murderously creepy at the same time, a look cultivated by his bland personality and a total lack of interpersonal skills. Kipper was forever torn between feeling bad for the guy and being ashamed to know him.
"Hello," Tom began in a voice thin as a willow branch. He had a habit of chuckling at his own jokes, but worse than that, was the staring, or maybe leering, at a selected person a beat too long while he spoke. "As you know, it's my birthday, which I am lucky enough to share with nobody else here."
Everybody knew Tom pulled a lot of weight at the network, and nobody ever got hired if they shared his birthday. While he spoke, those in the room who had been eating found themselves paused, holding their sandwich wraps and spoonfuls of soup, like animatronic furries waiting for a visitor to activate their sensor.
"Tomorrow it's Sarah's, and Mike's," Tom said, singling each of them out for a moment while they cringed. "Next Wednesday four people in the building have a birthday. But today is, heh, all mine."
At this point everybody took a quick bite, or slurp, before Tom continued.
"I took the liberty of opening my gifts, to save time. I wanted to thank everyone for the card, too. That was a well-kept secret. You guys had me worried. Heh heh."
Tom pulled a few things out of the bag on the table. Lifting a racquet of some type Kipper couldn't identify, he said "This is nice, thank you, Trisha, this might turn my badminton into goodminton. Heh."
"And this, a new travel mug is always useful, thank you, Kellie. This is the sort that plugs in, keeps your tea warm. Can't heat it, but probably wise."
At this point Tom stopped and stared into the bag, letting everyone have another chew. His face grimaced as he pulled out Tiger's ant farm. Tiger beamed as he realized Tom had opened it, and set the food and egg sacs in the soil.
"Now this is from Tiger. Thank you, Tiger, but I think I need a little help with it. The little eggs won't hatch."
Tiger, during the last few days, had given a great deal of thought to this possibility, and how embarrassing it would be to have his dollar-store gift turn out to be a miserable failure. For this reason, he'd come prepared.
"I read that you can coax the eggs along with a little coffee," Tiger said. "Warm, not hot. Just a drop or two."
"Coffee, really?" Tom said, eyeing his cup, then looking dubiously at Tiger.
"Yes, I'll show you!" At this, Tiger took the cup and began to pour just a sip's worth into the farm. Tom reached out to grab his coffee, and Tiger's arm lifted suddenly, spilling the entire cup across the table. Seconds became minutes as they both watched the puddle expand toward the bag and the cake.
Kipper noticed the ant farm, now saturated with liquid, starting to bubble. First it grew a shell of rime, as the sugar Tom had added to the coffee reacted with something. This something began to fizz as it puffed into clusters of tiny white pellets, coating the wooden case. The fizzing turned into a crackling sound as the same reaction occurred inside the case.
The pellets started to pop open with a noise that, at the scale of the conference room, was a mild sizzling about the level of a fan in a computer, or the buzz of a cell phone. But as every ear in the room was now tuned to the scale and detail of the ant farm's four-inch universe, the splitting of the tiny eggs tore through the room like a crashing jet plane, the grains of soil tumbling like boulders caught in an avalanche.
Suddenly the surface of the table was churning with something spilling from the white goop. Something moving not quite mechanically, but not quite predictably. Something alive.
