25,000 Sugar Lumps
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, ants, places, events and products are either creations of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All had once been well for the ant princess Christina, until the discovery of Ant Juice. For sixteen years, the ant colony of TipTap had thrived amidst the rainforest. Her Mother, queen Suzie Chew, had birthed thousands of eggs, and ruled the colony with a measured foreleg. The ants of TipTap dug a deep complex in the soft rainforest soil. The ants labored day and night to keep the colony bountiful with food: seeds, dead bugs, honeydew.
Princess Christina had always loved her mother. And TipTap. And the ants loved their princess in turn. She spent her days with the workers, cleaning tunnels, caring for larvae. She was humble, yet beautiful, with long legs, crystalline wings, and eyes that could sell pyramid schemes.
TipTap’s explorers were the ones to discover the juice that would cause so much grief. One day, while roaming the dense darkness of the forest, an explorer ant named Dominik had stumbled upon an unusual fruit. The fruit was short, and shaped like a pretzel. It was small, hummed softly, and constantly changed colors, from blue, to pink, to sterile alabaster.
The most exciting aspect of the fruit was its taste. When Dominik stuck his mandible into its flesh, he found the juice sweeter than any nectar.
Excited beyond measure, the explorer rushed back to TipTap. Queen Chew and all her advisors tasted the wonderful juice of the fruit, which they named Ant Juice. All found Ant Juice to be pure ecstasy, better than other vittles. The queen soon called for Mass Harvest.
For a time, it seemed to Princess Christina that the TipTapian Golden Age had reached a new climacteric. Each day more ants drank the Ant Juice. They ceased to gather the nuts and seeds and golden nectar - nourishing foods which had once filled their bellies. TipTap received word from their scouts that the other ant colonies - the kingdom of Rockface, and Quickvine, and Money Chatter Stump - were drinking now. All drank deeply of the sweet, sweet Ant Juice.
A change, however, stole over the ants as they drank. They stopped building new tunnels. They stopped cleaning old ones. The ants indulged only in the pleasure and the luxury of the Ant Juice. The ants began to drool.
Princess Christina appealed to the queen: “Something is Rotten in the state of TipTap.” Yet Queen Suzie Chew loved Ant Juice more than anyone, and would not listen.
The Ant Juice offered few true nutrients, and so some ants starved to death. Yet even then, the ants who did not starve continued to drink and drool quite contently.
It was at this time that one of the queen’s royal advisors, Beefoid O’Keith approached the princess. “Ladyship, it’s plain as pupa silk, we can’t stay here. What if we found a new colony? A colony of food-gatherers and tunnel-diggers?”
The princess bit her antenna; never before had she considered rebellion. Yet never had her people known peril. “Let us begin,” she agreed at last.
Princess Christina set off into the rainforest at the head of a column. Only volunteers followed the princess; those ants who remembered their clean, well-constructed tunnels; who missed the simple seeds and bugs. The ants travelled far through the wet forest, crossing streams by way of fallen trees, or tiptoeing past sleeping anteaters.
One ant made himself invaluable during the long journey. This was Billingham “Billy” Bluecheese, one of TipTap’s most experienced explorers. Billy Bluecheese was an odd ant. Forty-years-old in human years, he gave the impression of wanting to appear older and wiser than his age allowed. To this end, Billy smoked tobacco continually through a small wooden pipe, his path through the forest being easily marked by the unbroken cloud which wafted over the undergrowth. This habit had been intended to give him the aspect of a much-wiser sixty human years. But Billy had smoked too much. He looked perhaps closer to a vivacious eighty years, or more accurately, like a forty-year-old ant with an addiction.
Nevertheless, Billy Bluecheese was a skilled and invaluable guide. Many a rainforest spider or hard-shelled snail - many a bog or brake - were skirted under the careful direction of Billy Bluecheese.
Still the outcasts travelled far afield. Not all the ants who stepped out from TipTap’s tunnels were to ever set claws in a tunnel again.
But at last, after many suns and moons had risen and descended over the canopy, Billy Bluecheese returned from a jungle scouting run. He said to the princess, “Come at once, ladyship.”
“Is there another canyon?” asked the princess, wringing her claws.
“No, ladyship. I have seen a mountain, just behind this mossy log.”
The princess and her advisors followed Billy Bluecheese. When they rounded the log’s corner, they beheld a great stack of stones, sitting beside the trunk of a towering Brazil-nut tree. Creepers and vines served as mortar for the stones. When the ants investigated this stack further, they found the pile had sunken into the jungle floor. A huge network of subsurface tunnels already ran around the stones below.
“This is the place for our colony,” said the princess. All the ants agreed.
By now the ants were half their original number. They had no rations left from their journey. They knew they would need to work quickly.
Ants are industrious for their size, especially when motivated, and the ants who had followed the princess across the rainforest set to work at once building their new colony. Day-after-day they tunneled and toiled; carved out a new cavern for seeds; smoothed and waxed a nursery floor.
Christina was crowned queen, on a platform of laurel leaves gathered specially for the occasion. As Queen Christina, she worked harder than she had in her entire life, harder than any other ant in the colony. She laid thousands upon thousands of eggs to bolster the colony’s numbers. She met hourly with her councilors to organize the workforce. She was forced to give up her lovely translucent wings, for they would not fit in the tunnel - she shed unseen tears for many days over their loss.
Rainstorms came and went. Suns rose and set. The paths of the forest changed. Tunnel-by-tunnel, Stack-of-Stones was carved into a livable - though not comfortable - subsurface colony.
Through these early days, Queen Christina held firm to her intention: no Ant Juice. “Stack-of-Stones is different,” she said to her assembled ants, in the new colony amphitheater. “Ours shall be a colony of willful ants. A colony of industrious ants. A colony of builders, and dreamers, and not daydreamers, as we left in TipTap.”
Meanwhile though, Billy Bluecheese began to mount explorations of the rainforest nearby. Lo-and-behold, they soon found the same color-changing, humming, pretzel-shaped fruits from which the Ant Juice could be harvested. The fruits were high, high, high in a nearby tree. But they could be reached. The queen forbid all her ants to go there.
Billy Bluecheese had no more love of Ant Juice than was typical. He liked to be listened-to, however, and once he came to Queen Christian, and said, “My queen, we ants are weary from days of endless toil. Let us bring in some small amounts of juice. It shall raise our peoples’ spirits, and attract ants from other colonies.”
But the queen was firm. Instead of harvesting the juice, she ordered her council to set up a system of reward. The ants who shaped the best tunnels, or found the best nuts to eat, would receive the largest share of breeding-time. This was immensely popular.
For some seasons, the queen and her council ran the colony thus. Daily, Stack-of-Stones grew as a colony of skilled, laboring ants.
Time changes neither people nor ants. Soon the novelty of the breeding-time order wore away. The colony ceased to grow. Then one day, Queen Christina’s closest advisor, Beefoid O’Keith, came to her. “Ladyship,” he said, “I must tell you, for it’s plain as pupa silk: ants are leaving the colony.”
“Why?” asked the queen. Her youthful luster and exuberance had been replaced with a leader’s pragmatism.
“They are bored and unhappy.”
So Queen Christina summoned her advisor-ants into the chamber of begetting.
“We should keep going,” said Beefoid O’Keith. “It’s okay if ants that refuse to gather seeds or dig tunnels leave our colony. We built our colony for the gatherer’s and the diggers.”
“Let’s expand the flower-garden,” suggested Shipsworth, the chief tunnel engineer.
“Or start a mushroom-drive,” suggested another.
The queen shook her head. “We’ve tried all that. We can’t keep losing ants to other colonies.”
“Ladyship,” came the sandpaper voice of Billy Bluecheese. “We could gather the nearby Ant Juice.”
The queen shook her head. “That wouldn’t make our workers happy. Anyway, the fruit is too far up in the trees.”
Billy stroked a mandible. “It is high,” he conceded. “But we could cut the fruit stems with our powerful jaws, and drop them to the forest floor. We could gather the juice.”
The queen rubbed the crow’s-footed carapace at the corner of her eye. Leadership had worn at her. Those eyes no longer shone, except when she made them to for public address, and the ring in her voice during her orations was a forced one.
“Ladyship,” said Beefoid, “reconsider. Bringing Ant Juice into Stack of Stones will be the opening of Pandora’s Box. Not ant will compass the reversal of policy if we change our minds.”
“Offering Ant Juice will attract adults from other colonies,” argued Billy Bluecheese.
Beefoid scoffed. “Offering Ant Juice in Stack-of-Stones will draw in the same ants that drink it elsewhere. They won’t eat nectar. They just drool, and want more juice.”
“Enough,” said Queen Christina. “We will gather a supply of juice.”
The gathered council murmured. But they did not argue. Queen Christina had led them through the early days; they trusted her august command.
When it was announced in the snailshell amphitheater that Stack-of-Stones would harvest its own Ant Juice, many workers grumbled.
“We were promised a free colony,” shouted one old ant.
Another ant with a high voice squealed, “How will we tend the larvae? Or gather leaves? Every ant will be too-busy sipping juice.”
Queen Christina promised the colony that she “heard” and “felt” their concerns; and then she went through with her plans, unaltered; and the ghosts of all the world’s politicians nodded their approval.
“We’re making the juice better,” said the queen. “It won’t be TipTap Juice here. It will be the juice of our wonderful Stack-of-Stones. Stack Juice. Another option in our regular harvest. You have the solemn promise of your queen: the greatest builders and dreamers, in our subsurface corner of the rainforest, under this stack of stones, shall still receive the greatest reward.”
And aside from a few early rumbles, most ants were thrilled when the first drops of sweet, sweet Stack Juice came trickling into the tunnel. A surge of industry swept through the colony: new dining caverns, longer drills for soldiers. The Mineral and Stick Index (MSI) rose 13% in one day. A fresh wave of immigrants arrived when word spread of the Stack’s new juice.
Gradually, however, the juice’s novelty wore off, just as it had in every other colony. The ants still drank their juice, but they stopped their other labors. Other jobs were not needed - the only thing needed was more Ant juice. New colonists stopped coming.
In response, the queen stepped up recruitment. She posted a reward: 25,000 sugar lumps to the ant who could bring the most colonists from the dying warren of TipTap. This only sparked fresh argument between the councilors:
“This is a betrayal of Colony Values!”
“It is not. We’re showing TipTap’s ants that Stack-of-Stones is a harbor-”
“You’re showing favoritism to feebleminded juice drinkers.”
“Those are ant-beings you’re talking about!”
“-plain as pupa silk, we shouldn’t have started drinking Ant Juice.”
Such was the discourse. In any event, the reward made little difference. Some came. Yet few stayed. “Why should we drink Stack Juice?” said they. “Our formula was perfect already. Your juice - if it isn’t inferior - is certainly no better. Your juice is exactly the same as any other colony’s.”
And each day, more ants in Stack-of-Stone drank juice instead of tunneling or gathering.
Seasons passed. Suns rose and set over the ants. Once more, the queen found herself within the great chamber of begetting, surrounded by shouting advisors. All were sipping Ant Juice.
“What about ginger and nutmeg?” said one advisor.
“Ginger and Nutmeg?” asked another, between slurps of juice.
“We could offer ginger and nutmeg Ant Juice. Gingernut Juice. A new variety.”
The ants sipped and pondered. They knew every variety of juice had been tried before, if not in their colony then in others. The base was still the same though - plain, sweet Ant Juice. The last ant had starved in TipTap long ago. Rockface’s colony was said to be populated only by automaton ants now. Inexorably, it seemed, Ant Juice ceased to offer any real nourishment; the colonies which drank it slowly starved.
Queen Christina sat quietly a little apart from the others. She sipped her own drop of juice, through a porcelain straw. She hardly heard the words of her council. She was unconscious of her own actions. She was thinking about the juice, only the juice, how wonderfully sweet it was, how it seemed to push all tiresome thoughts of governance and industry far from the sanded-down lobes of her brain.
“We should stop gathering Ant Juice altogether,” said old Beefoid O’Keith. “It’s plain as-” Even as he said the words, however, he was drowned in a hail of rebuke from the other councilors. Beefoid groaned, and leaned back in his chair.
“I’ve heard two ants were found dead in the trash chamber,” said Billy Bluecheese glumly. “Starved.”
Queen Christina hardly heard his words. She was thinking: things were not yet terrible in Stack-of-Stones. If they could just figure out a way to bring in more ants, the colony could be back on its feet in no time. The problem, she reflected, was the distance to the fruit. What they needed was more Ant Juice. They needed to make Stack Juice as easily accessible as possible; to make that sweet, blissful, ambrosial, orgiastic syrup of the gods freely available. Free Juice, for any ant who would make the journey to stack of stones. They needed more Ant Juice… more Ant Juice… more…
Queen Christina was suddenly conscious that the chamber of begetting had ceased to echo with the raised voices of ants. She looked up. All of her councilors were staring at her. Their antennas were lifted in shock. Queen Christina blinked at them. She followed their eyes, looking down at herself.
From the tip of her left mandible, the queen saw a thin tendril of spittle, making its gravitational exodus from her mouth to the soil below. While sipping away at her drop of Ant Juice, her mind a thousand miles from the meeting, Queen Christina had begun to drool.