There was no I. There was only we. There was only The Colony.
This was the last thought that I had as even an echo of a human being. I know this because in order to realize that there was no 'I', I needed to at least have an idea of what 'I' was. Ants have no idea of concept of self. Ants are basically soulless machines that run on pheromones.
Right now, the air and ground stink of pheromones. Pheromones from The Colony, pheromones from The Enemy – it is confusing.
Antennae in the air, sorting scents, trying to understand. The Enemy is near. The Colony is destroyed. The Queen is in danger.
Wait! Another from The Colony is near. Our antennae connect, touching, examining. We are similar, no, exactly the same. But that does not matter, all that matters is that we are from The Colony and not The Enemy.
The Queen is in danger. We take off, across valleys of floor cracks, climbing giant white rocks that are actually chunks of plaster with ease. To a human, the damaged pet shop would seem like a horrible mess. To an ant, it was a major disaster area.
We are soldiers, charging across the battlefield toward the distress cry of The Queen from behind enemy lines. We run into nothing but The Enemy. We are warriors, and they are drones. We pull them apart at the joints. A few more yards, and we run into The Enemy again. They are red, and also warriors, and there are more of Them then Us. But The Queen needs us, so we enter the battle.
It is vicious, but The Enemy fails and The Colony succeeds. We continue towards our Queen, fighting off The Enemy drones and the occasional warriors. There are so many more of Them than Us that the ant brain, which usually does not think in terms of numbers, recognizes that there are far more of Them than there are of Us than usual. But we keep going, and keep killing, killing, killing. It is more badass than the most badass war movie ever made, yet we think nothing of it. We think nothing at all. It is our job.
Finally, we reach The Queen. She is distressed. The Colony was destroyed, and now We are weaker than We were. The Enemy is everywhere.
We lead The Queen down a pheromone trail that is marked as safe. We do not know who made it, who cleared a path through The Enemy and made a safe passage for The Queen and The Colony to escape. There is no credit in The Colony.
The Colony marches, one by one, along the pheromone trail. A line of a song passes through the ant brain, along with a desperate sort of laugh, but it does not recognize or acknowledge either.
The Colony is all.
We continue marching past the start of the pheromone trail, over the mounds of fabric that smell like human. We ignore the earthquakes that are actually angry human footsteps, and march towards the scent of outdoors. It is raining hard, and The Colony should be safe underground, not aboveground. Currents swirl through the grass and along the dirt. Trickles of rain are rivers of death to The Colony.
But The Enemy is behind us. So we march forward.
We establish a new colony after a long march. It is nowhere near our old colony.
We gather food. We make more of Us. The Queen is calm.
Time is nothing.
We continue on relatively undisturbed. We eat, We grow, We shrink. We survive.
But eventually, we find The Enemy. They are not new. The Enemy that is red that was near our old colony has also created a new colony, and it is not far from where The Colony is.
Of course, this is unacceptable, and The Enemy must be destroyed.
But The Enemy comes to us first. Their drones and warriors swarm our colony, and our tunnels are filled with alarm pheromones.
The Colony is in danger. The Queen is in danger.
We battle The Enemy at the mouth of our tunnels, but They are too many. We are forced backward. By forced backwards, of course, it is meant that we were physically forced backwards down the tunnels by the combined mass of our corpses and The Enemy pushing forward. We did not retreat. Ants do not retreat.
'We' eventually consists of the two ants who are exactly the same. The Colony contains more, we have not yet been defeated, but We are separated from The Colony. For some reason or another, We have always been a pair, together at almost all times. It probably has something to do with our sameness. Ants are comfortable with sameness.
As can be judged by The Colony's current battle with The Enemy, we are not comfortable with differences. We faced down many of The Enemy, but there were too many of them. There were too many of them but we fought anyway, because that was all that we were programmed to do.
And then, suddenly, The Queen was in Danger! Not just danger, but Danger. THE ENEMY WAS TOUCHING THE QUEEN. THE ENEMY WAS ATTACKING THE QUEEN.
We go into a frenzy, shredding The Enemy. Red body parts littler the tunnels, piling up on top of a deeper sea of black parts. THE ENEMY SHALL NOT HARM THE QUEEN.
In the ant brain, it was a complete impossibility. The Enemy is not physically capable of attacking The Queen, yet The Enemy was. In the ant brain, THE UNIVERSE WAS WRONG.
The universe was wrong, and it was up to Us to fix it. We slaughter, slaughter, slaughter, mashing red ant parts and spilling red ant goo inside of the chamber. But The Enemy is everywhere.
And suddenly, The Queen is nowhere. In that moment, The Queen has gone from being alive to being dead.
And in that moment, I am found.