The gears
in Max’s head were turning.
As he stood
there surrounded by literally hundreds of talking ants who were communicating
with him in English and behaving just like humans, he couldn’t help but get
some vivid flashbacks replaying in his head of some similar portrayals in the
media.
A 10-year-old
white boy with thick, black-rimmed glasses flooding an ant colony with a hose
while a pest exterminator with a cigar in his mouth cheered him on. A princess ant
and a worker ant being ejected from a garbage chute out of an ant hill, with
royal guards pursuing after them who were then burnt to a cinder by a human
holding a magnifying glass. And an evil grasshopper who had been tormenting a
blue ant colony and looting their food supply being snatched by a mama finch
and being devoured by cute little yellow baby chicks. More of these bright colourful
animated images continued to be replayed in his mind after being buried deep
within his childhood subconsciousness, triggered by the nostalgia of the
similar circumstances he found himself in.
As the vivid
animated images continued to play in his mind, he realised that the animation styles
changed in between them, leading him to the conclusion that these kiddish
insect animated movies were from several different films he had watched when he
was younger; the majority coming from Disney’s Pixar, DreamWorks and Warner
Bros Pictures. He remembered thinking of them as goofy, silly, and weird when
he was younger. But his sister absolutely hated them, claiming they were ‘fucking
stupid’ and ‘vegan nonsense’, trying to humanize insects instead of being
treated like the filthy pests that they deserved to be. In fact, his sister had
stated that the blue ant colony film made by Disney Pixar was one of their
worst films ever made.
The names
of these films were on the tip of his tongue, like he was almost there, trying
to remember them. But since it had been
several years since he had watched them, it was like trying to remember a lucid
vivid dream after waking up, which was quickly fading from his mind every
second.
‘Fuck, why
can’t I remember them….’ he thought to himself. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue’.
Looking
around and realising that he was standing in the presence of an entirely
anthropomorphic ant colony made him shiver with fear as to how similar these
ants were to the ones he had seen in those films.
“Excuse me,
Max?” piped a female voice.
Max was
snapped out of his trance and spun around to face Princess Penelope’s gorgeous
face, with those bright yellow eyes and eyelashes fluttering at him.
“Something more important to think about?” she
giggled.
Max’s face
went bright red like a tomato, his face flushing red with embarrassment.
“Um
nothing….” he mumbled.
“Awww!!” giggled
Princess Penelope. “You look so cute and adorable. I didn’t know that humans
could change colours….”
This made
Max even more embarrassed and ashamed. He didn’t realise she had such sharp
eyesight to see his face turning bright red and now he felt like he was like a
little kid again. Only little kids from his point of view got embarrassed like
this.
“Hey, stop mocking
me you smug little bitch!” he yelled. “Or I will squash you under my shoe like
the shitty little bug you are!”
Princess
Penelope smirked and approached him, very closely puffing up her chest and
looming over him.
“Yeah, I
don’t see how that will be possible now…” she sneered.
Max hadn’t actually
noticed this earlier as he tilted his head upwards slightly, but Princess
Penelope was actually 4 to 6 cm taller than him from his perspective. The fact
that this creature literally 3 hours ago was a speck at his feet and now he had
been reduced to this puny state made him even more infuriated.
“Okay, let
me show you around our society, kid” she giggled. “You can think of me as your
tour guide”.
This
greatly annoyed Max. “What is with this fucking weird assss relationship!” he
snarled. “You’re not my big sister, we are not even the same fucking species!”
Princess
Penelope laughed and replied “Isn’t a dog, man’s best friend! They are not
exactly the same species, huh Max?”
Suddenly
their conversation was interrupted by a gruff 56-year-old man’s voice, piercing
the still air like a razor-sharp blade.
“HOLD IT
YOUR MAJESTY!” snarled General Sting. “THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING WAY, I AM
LETTING YOU GO UNACCOMPANIED WITH THE HUMAN!”
Scared out
of his wits, Max spun his head around to face the wrath of General Sting, his
large sinister bloodshot yellow eyes locking onto his face and sending shivers
down his spine, the army medals on his green jacket, glinting in the artificial
light.
“I will be
watching you 24/7, you stupid little shit…” he growled to Max. “Don’t fuck with
me”.
“You know General Sting, I am 22 years old,
I’m not a little girl anymore!” snapped Princess Penelope. “You don’t need to
babysit me all the time!”
“I swore a
blood oath to your father, the king, before he died that I would always protect
you.” General Sting angrily stated then dropped his head down solemnly. “I served
your father for many years; he was one of my best friends…”
“Yes, but I
think it’s finally time I finally become an independent adult!” argued Princess
Penelope. “I am going to be coronated as Queen in 3 years’ time. You really
need to stop treating me like a teenager!”
“If you
honestly think I am leaving you here with this filthy little fucker you are
surely mistaken!” snarled General Sting, glaring at Max as if he was a piece of
shit. “Let’s not forget what killed your father, it was his foolishness, naive
stupidity and a soft spot for humans!”
This made
Princess Penelope’s hemolymph (insect blood) boil. She was usually a peaceful sweet girl but
if it was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was others talking shit about her
dead father. Enraged she raised her hand and slapped General Sting right across
the face, causing him to yell out in shock and pain. Max just stood there,
extremely confused about the context with his jaw dropping open.
“DON’T YOU
EVER FUCKING TALK ABOUT MY FATHER LIKE THAT ASSHOLE!” she screamed with tears
in her eyes. “HE WAS 1000 TIMES THE MAN YOU EVER WERE!”
General Sting
dropped his head down in shame and rubbed his right sore mandible and cheek
with his hand.
“I’m sorry
I got a bit personal there” he sadly apologised. “I know you don’t like anyone
bringing up anything negative about your father, it’s a touchy subject” with
his mandibles trembling. “It’s just I have seen so many of my loved ones and
friends die such cruel, unnecessary deaths which I have been powerless to stop.
I don’t want to lose you too my dear child”.
Princess
Penelope looked at him, with her facial expression softening up a bit before
hugging him. “It’s ok I forgive you, you were just in a moment of anger”.
Max didn’t
know that Antopia had a King. Well used to have, according to Princess Penelope
and General Sting. And apparently, he had been killed by humans? He had so many
burning questions but seeing how upset Princess Penelope had gotten when her
father was brought up, he decided to keep his questions to himself.
By now most
of the rows of seats of the arena had been cleared out, with the public
audience crammed at the exit passageways, rubbing shoulder to shoulder as they
tried to head out. Max glanced to the centre of the arena, some distance away
where Queen Dakota was still sitting on her throne, now fast asleep while the other
government ministers had gotten up and were talking among themselves. Squirt
and his mother Ava also appeared to have left with the public crowd because now
he could see no sign of them.
“Okay,
here’s what’s going to happen” explained Princes Penelope. “Mum is going to
head back to the royal palace, while me….” she sighed “And General Sting will
give our little human guest a tour of our society. To be honest I can give the
tour by myself, but General Sting won’t leave me alone and still thinks I am a teenager”
she pouted.
Max glanced
at the massive crowd, which was still traffic jammed at the exits, pushing, and
shoving each other trying to get out.
“Yeah,
let’s wait here another 30 minutes until the crowd has died down,” said
Princess Penelope. “Depot Station is going to be absolutely packed”.
“I keep
telling them we need more exit passageways,” remarked General Sting.
Max just
sighed and crossed his arms.
30 minutes
later….
Beep! Beep!
Beep!
Max stood
on the platform of Depot station, glancing at the mass of hundreds of
mechanical pods moving past them at a snail’s pace, moving bumper to bumper. Ants
shouted obscenities and other angry insults at other drivers as they tried to
weave in and out of the congested mess.
“Fucking
hell” groaned General Sting. “I hate peak hour traffic….”
Max was
surprised that they weren’t choking on toxic fumes and carbon monoxide from the
exhaust gases from hundreds of vehicles, trapped deep underground and in an
enclosed space.
“How come
we are not suffocating from air pollution?” he asked Princess Penelope.
“Unlike
your human vehicles, our vehicles are powered by recycled water and steam, not
the oil-powered internal combustion engine” replied Princess Penelope.
That
explained why it was so warm, damp, and humid. The atmosphere was absolutely soaked
in moisture from all the exhaust fumes.
As Max
glanced to the left and right, he saw the traffic jam running all alongside the
silver-coloured platform and the parking lane almost completely empty.
Apparently, almost all the vehicles had been completely booked out.
“Quickly
guys!” cried Princess Penelope, darting towards a lone solitary vehicle still
left in the parking lane. “There is still one left!”
“Oh yeah
that reminds me…” smirked General Sting as the 3 companions approached the last
vehicle. “I will not be driving this time…”
“Um….
what?” frowned Max. “Then whose driving?”
“Isn’t it
obvious?” he sneered, looking directly at him.
“Me!”
gasped Max in absolute shock and horror. “But I’m only 16, I only have a learner’s
permit!”
“I think it
serves you right!” jeered General Sting. “You stated I had shitty driving
skills, so I am very curious to see what fantastic driving skills you have Mr.
Perfect Driver…”
He flexed
his mandibles open and smirked “And just for the record I never even opened the
operating manual before I took the driving test”.
Princess
Penelope was not surprised by this fact and stated “To be honest, I don’t think
even half our drivers ever read our operating manual. It just comes to show how
easy our driver’s test is to pass”.
General
Sting and Princess Penelope hopped in the two backseats of the mechanical pod
while Max climbed into the driver’s seat. The layout was very much like a tuk-tuk
and now he wished he paid more attention to the movements of the tuk-tuk
drivers when his class were on their field trip in Kolkata, India.
‘At least
it is not overloaded with passengers this time’ thought Max to himself.
Gripping
the handlebars tightly, he pushed his right shoe on top of the engine lever
which was attached to a lower section of the front mainframe. The mechanical pod
burst into life with a vibrating hum filling the air.
“I will give
him pointers for knowing how to start it,” General Sting remarked
sarcastically.
‘Now where
is the accelerator’ Max thought to himself.
Max didn’t
realise this, but the vehicle’s mainframe and design was structured in such a
way so that the accelerator was a rectangular button on the right underside of
the handlebar while the brake was located on the left-hand side of the
handlebar. It was quite different from your typical average car which was about
to make for one hectic driving experience.
Princess
Penelope gave a terrified, blood-curdling shriek as the vehicle suddenly
lurched forward at full throttle, whizzing past alongside the platform parallelly
and straight towards the bumper of a mechanical pod that was at a standstill,
just a few metres in front of the end of the parking lane. If Max didn’t hit
the brake immediately, they were going to smash headfirst into the back of it.
“YOU
FUCKING IDIOT!” shrieked General Sting. “YOU ARE PRESSING THE ACCELERATOR AT
FULL THROTTLE!”
Max
immediately released his tight grip from the underside of the right handlebar.
However, the vehicle was still in motion due to the stored kinetic energy and
was still moving at a frighteningly fast pace towards the back bumper of the
mechanical pod.
“THE BRAKE
IS ON THE LEFT-HAND SIDE! THE BRAKE IS ON THE LEFT-HAND SIDE!” screamed
Princess Penelope in an absolute panic. Max out of instinct pressed the
underside of the left handlebar, resulting in the vehicle jolting violently to
a stop just half a metre from the back bumper of the mechanical pod.
General
Sting, unfortunately, was not prepared for this unexpected sudden braking,
flying face-first into a metal bar directly in front of him, separating the
passenger section from the driver’s section.
“Ouch!” he
yelled. “You fucking asshole! I think I bruised my mandibles!”
“Why are
you getting so mad? This was all your idea to let a 16-year-old learner driver
drive!” lectured Princess Penelope.
“Well, now
I kind of regret it…” moaned General Sting, rubbing his sore mandibles.
The minutes
trickled into several minutes as Max just sat there at an almost complete
standstill, moving at a snail’s pace as the traffic jam inched forward with pod
horns blasting. Above them, below them, in front of them and behind them was an
endless line of vehicles, stretching off into the focal point of the brightly
lit blue neon tunnel. Every now and then Max could see little flickers of blue
electricity flashing in bolts on the tunnel walls.
‘So much
for an authentic driving experience’ groaned Max as he gently touched the
accelerator to inch the vehicle forward another metre every few minutes.
“I keep
telling Mum we need to carve out more tunnels” stated Princess Penelope. “We
can’t cram our entire peak hour traffic into just one main tunnel passageway
for 5 different chambers.”
Around 30
minutes later, the traffic finally started to pick up, moving faster and faster
with the gaps between the vehicles starting to grow larger.
“Finally…”
sighed Princess Penelope with relief. “The traffic jam is finally starting to
break apart. We must be at the end of the main section of the tunnel.”
Max glanced
ahead and saw that the main tunnel was split up into three different breakaway
tunnels, each leading to a different destination. The left breakaway tunnel slanting
to the left direction was lit in light neon pink, the middle breakaway smaller
tunnel continuing straight on from the main tunnel was dark neon green and the
right breakaway tunnel slanting to the right direction was dark neon orange.
Hanging off the top secant of each of the circular tunnels was a large,
lettered neon sign, lit up in the same colours as the corresponding tunnel.
The left
tunnel read: Exit A: Metropolis. 2 km ahead
The middle
tunnel read: Exit B: Military
headquarters. 7
km ahead
The right tunnel read:
Exit C: Insectwood 3.5 km ahead.
“Okay Max, I want you
to listen to me very carefully” instructed Princess Penelope. “We are going to
the Metropolis first. Take the left exit please”.
Turning the handlebars
to the left and flicking the indicator lever under the left handlebar, Max
veered to the left direction and merged into the left lanes of traffic, even
doing a shoulder check. In fact, he was the only driver who followed the perfect
manoeuvre and safety protocols; performing a turn into the left exit; indicator
on, checking the mirrors and doing a shoulder check.
‘Hey, I am getting
really good at this, thanks Dad’ Max smiled to himself. ‘I’ll be able to ace
that driver’s test in no time’.
Unfortunately, a
motorway is only as safe as the other driver’s behaviour and unfortunately, not
a single other driver was following good safe road etiquette which Max was
about to find out the hard way.
A very impatient and
aggressive driver overtook him from above and then dropped into his lane from
above, just a metre in front of him, resulting in him almost crunching into the
back of the vehicle. Max was forced to slow down abruptly and blasted the horn,
yelling at him, but the driver just laughed and sped off in front of him,
leaving him in the dust.
Another idiot selfish
driver cut into his lane abruptly, just in front of him. There was no time to
brake so Max was forced to swerve to the right, skimming against the start of
the metropolis tunnel wall and almost smashing into the wall barrier,
separating Exit A from Exit B.
It was at this point
Max realised that being an obedient driver who followed all the motorway rules
was going to get him nowhere. He needed to be aggressive, dominate and
intimidate the other drivers to get them out of his way.
Max was now deep
inside the Metropolis tunnel, with pink flickering neon tunnel lights and
electric bolts flashing past him as he zipped past. He was now very deep
underground relative to his size, deeper than any human had ever been before.
It would be the equivalent of a human being 3 kilometres underground. Now he
was deep inside the heart of Antopia.
Smirking to himself,
Max pressed on the accelerator at full throttle and zipped past all the other
vehicles at a frighteningly fast speed. He didn’t give a shit about the speed
limit anymore; he was going to drive Grand Theft Auto style now.
Tightly gripping on
the handlebars, he twisted them left, right, up, and down several times a
second, weaving in and out between the vehicles, zero fucks given about the
marked lanes, blasting his horn as he roared past every driver. Driving like
this reminded him of the mountain biking he did on school camp last year,
bounding down the rough terrain and having to have the perfect traction control
to dodge obstacles that kept popping up every second.
General Sting laughed
and exclaimed “Now that’s the spirit! I knew you would be driving my way
eventually! About time you started following my advice!”
Princess Penelope
turned to him, cocked her head, and said, “Was that the first positive thing I have
ever heard you say about a human?”
General Sting retorted
“Of course not! I am just saying something from a hypothetical point of view…”
Princess Penelope
giggled “I knew it! I knew you would start warming up to him eventually!”
“Shut up!” pouted
General Sting, crossing his 4 arms and sulking.
The next section of the
tunnel was now poorly lit due to its faulty pink neon lights, greatly reducing
visibility. Max was forced to turn on the headlights. As he did, he noticed a
dark solid mass in front of him, getting closer and closer every second,
causing Max to swerve sharply to the left to avoid it. This caused Princess
Penelope to slide on her abdomen towards General Sting on the left-hand side of
the mechanical pod, causing them to be squashed against one another.
“Ooof, sorry….”
groaned Princess Penelope as she hastily got off him.
As they drove past the
unidentified solid mass, Max realised that it was a 5-seater larger mechanical
pod that hadn’t even bothered to turn on its headlights, leaving the driver and
his occupants practically invisible.
“It’s completely
unlit” he commented with disgust. “An unlit wide load, in the dark, on an unlit
motorway…”
As they proceeded down
the tunnel, Max was relieved that the next set of pink neon tunnel lights was
functioning properly. He then proceeded to see an enormous bright glowing sign
in front of him, hanging from two top secant points of the tunnel circumference
and lit up in red lettering that read:
Grand Metropolis Depot Station: 300 metres ahead
“Ahh yes!” exclaimed
Princess Penelope. “We are almost there…”
Max’s eyes darted
further up ahead and noticed that the tunnel ended in a dead end. However, the
dead end was a much larger spherical-shaped chamber with a much larger radius
than the original diameter of the tunnel. As they entered this spherical dead-end
Max realised that there were literally hundreds of mechanical spherical pods
cruising above them, trying to find a perfect parking spot. And finding a
parking spot was almost impossible because this station was insanely larger,
and a lot more densely populated than the previous depot station.
Grand Metropolis Depot
Station had not one, not two but three silver-coloured gleaming rectangular prism
platforms placed at strategic points at the cross-section circumference of the
sphere and the midpoint of the top and bottom quadrants of the sphere. The
platforms were curved around more to fit the shape of the sphere and were also
longer, being 500 metres long from end to end. Rather than having just one
parking lane, it actually had three running alongside the platform with
narrower rectangular platform walkways made to allow access to the parking
lanes furthest from the edge of the platform, with one walkway running between every
column section of parking spots. The surface area of the sphere was also coated
with different kinds of pink neon lighting on almost every square centimetre
(ant perspective), making the interior surface area of the sphere look like a
glowing pink disco ball. Three huge signs were posted above each platform on
the perimeter of the sphere in brightly red-lit writing which read: Grand
Metropolis Depot Station.
“Okay……” said Princess
Penelope looking around hastily. “Let’s see if we can find a parking spot”.
Finding a parking spot
was proving to be an absolute nightmare because almost every other driver had
the same idea. Drivers were seen routinely swooping in and stealing others’
parking spots when they weren’t looking causing foul-mouthed obscenities to be
hurled at one another. Sometimes drivers even leapt from one vehicle to another
to start fistfights with the other drivers. Things were escalating and getting
pretty violent and hectic.
“That’s it!” groaned
Princess Penelope. “I am not fucking going through this shit again! I’m calling
security….”
Pulling a small device
out of the pocket of her dress, which was cubic in shape, she pressed a few
buttons on a control panel, located on the underside of it. A holographic
projection was then displayed, appearing to be Queen Dakota in blue holographic
form.
“Wow!” gasped Max.
“You guys’ even invented holograms!”
Ignoring Max, Princess
Penelope asked “Mum, I can feel another riot is brewing again due to peak hour
traffic. Might have to send security down here again. God, I don’t know why
everyone is being so fucking selfish….”
“Entitled little shits!”
groaned Queen Dakota. “I will send another squad down now”.
A few minutes later
Max heard the loud wail and screaming sirens of mechanical pods rushing into
the tunnel, however, these mechanical pods were different with blue and white striped
patterns painted on their exterior with loud siren horns and red flashing
lights attached to the top of the roofs of their vehicles.
“Say hello to our
police force Max” explained Princes Penelope.
Within a few minutes,
the police squad mechanical pods had organised all the drivers into neatly
organised rows and columns and were being allowed to park one at a time. The
unlucky drivers who were stuck all the way at the back were particularly very
grumpy and unhappy with their long waiting times.
Princess Penelope
smirked and said, “Now we can find a parking spot for sure!”.
“What?” asked Max.
“But we aren’t even in line!”
“Max just do as I say
and drive directly to the middle platform and the first parking lane most
adjacent to the platform” replied Princes Penelope. “Just trust me”.
Max sighed and drove
slowly towards the first parking lane of the middle platform and was shocked to
see the police just let him pass with some of them even saluting him as he
drove past. Other drivers however booed him with some even mouthing him ‘fuck
you’. As he parked in the first parking lane of the middle platform he turned
to Princess Penelope and asked, “Why are we getting special treatment?”
“The perks of being treasured
royalty I guess” giggled Princess Penelope.
Max faced palmed. Of
course, she was going to be their future queen and ruler, no wonder they were
getting special treatment.
The three companions
hopped out of the mechanical pod and made their way towards a pair of stone
exit doors. Princess Penelope led the way and then turned back to face Max with
her arms out open in pure joy and awe to be teaching a foreigner about their
culture and society.
“This is where your
journey begins Max….” she exclaimed in awe. “Welcome to Antopia….”
20 minutes later….
As soon as Max,
General Sting and Princess Penelope easily cleared the biometric
identification security system and walked through a tunnel almost identical to the
one they had gone through earlier, except this tunnel was a lot wider, Max was
gobsmacked with the next sight that was displayed in front of his eyes.
Max had exited the tunnel and was walking with General Sting
and Princess Penelope on a bright blood-red coloured walkway. As Max
scrutinised his eyes, he realised it was a bridge crossway and that they in
fact were crossing a moat, the kind of moat that surrounded a medieval castle
to keep out intruders and was a castle’s first obstacle/ barrier for defence.
Looking back, he saw the archway exit of the tunnel they had
just exited out of was embedded into the rocky soiled wall of an enormous
chamber, at least 1000 times bigger than the High Court Chamber. The ceiling
alone looked like it soared 3km above the ground and the diameter of this
chamber appeared to be at least 20km wide.
The red bridgeway he was crossing was at least 5 ants wide
and Max, driven by burning curiosity went over to the edge and peeked over the twig-fenced
barrier. The moat was muddy dirty coloured water which would have been a small
trickle when he was human-sized but now was the size of a large lake, stretched
around in an oval around an enormous city wall, where the height stretched at
least a kilometre high. The city wall was made out of compacted sand and soil
with large pieces of gravel stones and white pebbles embedded into the surface,
while the moat was around 15 ants wide, around the same width as the Yarra
River. Squinting his eyes. Max saw other brightly coloured red bridge crossways
emerging from other tunnel exits, crossing the moat to other entrance points
inside the city walls. As he trudged back to the middle of the bridgeway and
focussed his eyesight on what was in front of him he was astonished by the next
advanced piece of architecture that his eyes fell upon.
In front of him was an enormous city semi-circle archway
with metal barred gate doors pried open and rose at least 50 feet (15m) high.
The top archway section of the gate was coloured red with rainbow-coloured
flashing lights lining the circumference of the archway in three distinct rows.
In the middle of the top archway section there was a glowing blue neon-lit sign
that read:
Antopia:
Entrance Gate 1B
Underneath the main
sign was a smaller sign that read: Please provide ID at the screening office.
As they approached
closer to the gate archway Max actually noticed that there was a customs office
embedded into the width of the gate archway itself, which was around 7 ants in
width. The customs office had a glass screen in front of it with two ants in their
early to mid-20s dressed in soldier uniforms, sitting in a small office with a
desk, two chairs and a bookshelf behind them, with the office being dimly lit
in white-blueish light. On the front of the glass screen was a sign which read:
Please present ID.
In front of the office were around 50 razor-sharp
spiked bollards stretching the entire width of the gate archway from one end to
the other end, so tightly packed that a single ant couldn’t even squeeze
through.
General Sting, Princes
Penelope and Max stopped directly in front of the customs office.
“Name and ID please…”
groaned the first soldier ant without even looking at them or making eye
contact.
“Yeah and state your
reason for leaving the Metropolis” replied the other soldier ant.
As soon as they made
eye contact with the faces of General Sting and Princess Penelope their faces
turned bright red, and their eyes bulged with shock and embarrassment.
“Oh, my goodness!”
gasped the first soldier ant. “Your majesty! Sir! I am so sorry for the hold-up!
I will let you through immediately!”
“Sir, your majesty, it
is an honour!” replied the other soldier ant, saluting the future queen and ruler
of Antopia and the Minister of Defence.
“Please don’t give us
special treatment like that…” smiled Princess Penelope sweetly. “Who knows guys
we might be imposters in disguise….” she snickered. “Just check our IDs just like
everyone else”.
Presenting their
identity cards which had a picture of their face, their occupation, status, and
date of birth, the first soldier ant scanned the barcode with a scanning
machine. The machine beeped with approval.
“Okay Jimmy, you can
let them through, they’re not imposters!” laughed the first soldier ant.
Jimmy the Soldier ant
then pressed a button that retracted the razor-sharp bollards into the ground
using an electric slot retractable system.
Happily, the three
companions strolled through to the other side, coming out from under the bridge
archway and onto a balcony-like platform with a twig barrier fence and a flight
of stairs leading down onto the city ground level below.
“This is it, kid,”
remarked General Sting. “This is Antopia. The heart of the colony……”
Max’s jaw dropped open
at the spectacular sight that was presented in front of his eyes just off the
balcony edge.
The Antopia Metropolis
was an entire bustling, thriving civilization, a collection of a wide variety
of different incredible structures. The first thing that Max noticed were the
towering skyscrapers that were shaped like beehives and bottles, assorted with
glowing circular windows. The beehive-based skyscrapers were actually composed
of two sections, a top beehive section facing downwards and a bottom beehive
section pointing upwards, with a viewing platform gap created in the middle of
these two beehive sections and being held up by colossal rock and soil trunk structures,
with a twig fenced balcony perimeter.
Other skyscrapers that were bottled shaped also consisted of circular
windows, with a winding sloping upwards pathway wrapping around the bottle of
the skyscraper to its spire. The rest of the skyscrapers were domed cylinders
of a variety of different sizes and curvatures.
These skyscrapers
towered 1.5 to 2km high from an ant’s perspective which meant it was around
1000 ants high. This was absolutely incredible in terms of high-rise
architecture when compared with the tallest structure humans had ever created:
The Burj Khalifa which was only 365 humans high with a real height of 835
metres from a human perspective.
In the shadow of these
monolith structures lay smaller buildings, lighter-coloured dome-shaped
structures, only a few stories high. Some of these were bright green and
covered in leafy material while others were lightly coloured brown and sandy yellow,
with transparent oval-shaped windows.
There were some really
abnormally shaped buildings amongst all this lot. These buildings were so
twisted and mangled, it was like a giant pretzel stretching from one end to
another for several hundred metres at several different ground touch points.
Max was amazed that the ant architects and engineers had managed to design it
in such a way that the building material didn’t snap, or the structure didn’t
collapse.
Running alongside the
side of the skyscrapers was an elaborate elevator electric pulley system,
consisting of an upside-down acorn being suspended by a net-like structure of
spider web material. The acorn base was capable of holding around 50 to 70 ants
as well as equipment and moved up and down the sides of the skyscraper to get
to the middle viewing platform and the top of the spire.
Winding in between the
buildings were bright dark green grass stalk cut pathways that appeared to be
streets for ant pedestrians and traffic, which interestingly only consisted of
quad bikes, sometimes pulling trailers filled with a load behind them. These bright
dark green grass stalk streets however weren’t just limited to the ground
surface, sometimes they were raised off the ground and entered the vantage
point of a building. Other times there were streets fully suspended off the
ground, winding in between several different vantage points of the buildings,
several dozen metres off the ground. Max figured that since ants had an
exoskeleton, they could survive falls from much greater heights relative to
their size, which was why they weren’t as fazed or scared falling off the suspended
grass stalk streets.
While Antopia’s
Metropolis had many similarities with a human-built city/civilization, there
was one major stark difference, this city was shrouded in the darkness. All the
lighting coming from the buildings and the massive chandelier light structure
from the top middle point of the chamber was artificial. Since they were so
deep underground the sun never shone here. The warmth and the rays of the sun
could never penetrate so deep underground through the thickness of the
geological soil layers. There were no clouds, no rain, no bright sunny
sunshine, no wind, just a rocky brown chamber ceiling sky, peppered with artificial
light points. This was a city shrouded in the darkness, without the
observations of the seeker ants sending back footage of the surface, it could
never be interpreted whether it was day or night. This phenomenon resulted in
it earning the nickname, ‘The City of the Shadows’.
Max’s gawking at the
raw creativity and innovation of the ant colony he had thought as puny, insignificant,
and inferior for so long was suddenly interrupted by a gruff middle-aged man’s
voice piercing the air like a knife through butter.
“All right boy that’s
enough lollygagging and gawking!” barked General Sting. “We have a tight
schedule you know!”
Max and his 2 ant tour
guides then proceeded to tear themselves away from the balcony railing and
proceed with their descent down the stairs to the surface level of the building.
Max suddenly felt very puny indeed as he was in the shadow of hundreds of
towering structures like New York City with green stalk streets winding all
around him, however, the disturbing reality was that this civilization was
probably no larger than a child’s Lego set and stashed deep underground. A
world no human would never lay their eyes on and would never ever lay their
eyes on in their lifetime.
Crossing a pedestrian
walkway that had a large teeming, swarming wave of ants passing over each point
every second, the trio squeezed their way between them and made their way to an
enormous parking lot with a twig and straw meshed fence with a gate archway and
curved golden coloured spiked gate doors, made from discarded tiny leftover
Lego bricks. That is what really disturbed Max, a human child’s play toy had been
taken and implemented into a real-world structure, making his newly reduced
status even more insignificant.
As they walked through
those gates, Max saw hundreds of quad bikes lined up in parking slots with a
lock mechanism wrapped around the wooden wheels. The parking slots were marked
with white lane markings on a dark green leafy material, in neatly arranged
rows in sets of two. The quad bikes were the kind Max saw on the farms in
Outback Australia, a sturdy motorcycle structure with thick handlebars and a
large hydrogen water engine in the back component section, which was around 1/3
exposed, peeking out from behind the brightly coloured framing. The quad bikes
came in a wide assortment of different colours.
Princess Penelope
turned to Max and smiled “I will let our special little guest pick which one he
likes. Which one do you like Max?”
“Um I don’t know, red
I guess….” replied Max unsurely and shrugged his shoulders.
“Okay, red it is!”
chimed Princess Penelope, pulling out some hardened sugar cubes out of a
decorated brown sack with rainbow-coloured glitter scattered around on its
surface.
“Unlike the mechanical
pods the quad bikes aren’t free” explained General Sting to Max. “The
government makes you pay a certain small fee every time you use them”.
“And that’s your
currency, isn’t it?” asked Max. “Sugar cubes?”
“Oh yeah, I think I
saw your human currency discarded on the ground a few times when I went out onto
the surface” replied General Sting. “Giant house-sized metal coins and park-sized
colourful paper notes with fucking ugly human faces on them. So confusing to be
honest. Why can’t you just use one identical object like us?”
“I think it is to show
the value of each note or coin” interrupted Princess Penelope as she fed 5
sugar cubes into the parking meter dispenser slot machine to unlock the lock
mechanism on the tires. “Though I think it just overcomplicates things. Sugar
cubes are all worth the same, the standard unit of 1, so all you have to do is
count the number needed to pay”.
Ka-Ching!
The lock mechanism
wrapped around the tyres unlocked, retreating into the slot system. Max
attempted to approach the driver’s seat, but General Sting stopped him and put
a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t even think
about it asshole…” smirked General Sting. “I’m driving!”
“Whatever you say Mr
Macho One Man Show!” scoffed Max to himself.
Princess Penelope and
Max hopped into the back seats while General Sting jumped into the driver’s
seat. It was at this point Max realised they weren’t wearing helmets.
“Um where are the
helmets?” enquired Max.
“What are helmets?” replied
both ants in unison.
‘Oh yeah’ remembered
Max. ‘Ants have exoskeletons so their heads are probably harder than rocks and
can absorb heavy violent shock a lot better than a human skull due to their
biology. Their society has probably never felt the pressure to invent them’.
“Never mind…” groaned
Max.
General Sting stomped
down viciously with his exoskeleton foot on the engine clutch lever attached to
the bottom framework structure of the quad bike on the right-hand side, resulting
in the machine roaring into life. Twisting the handlebar gears anticlockwise
towards him General Sting reversed the Quad bike before twisting the handlebars
to the right, resulting in the vehicle veering sharply to the left. Changing
the gears to drive using additional switches under the handlebars, General
Sting then pressed the left-hand underside button, resulting in accelerating
the vehicle towards the exit of the parking lot. With a quick right turn, they
had officially exited the main quad bike docking station and were now driving
on the grass-stalk streets.
Max could feel the
wind resistance brushing up against him and he knew that General Sting had to be
going insanely fast for him to be feeling this amount of air resistance since
there were no natural wind currents underground.
“Do you mind slowing
down?!” shrieked Max fearfully. “I don’t want to break my fucking neck!”
“I see that you are
still crying and wailing like a fucking pussy!” jeered General Sting. “Have a
bit of thrill-seeking excitement for once in your life!”
Ant pedestrians,
buildings and quad-bike traffic went zipping past him in a blur. Max was sure
by this point that if they were involved in a crash, Max would be a mangled
broken corpse of blood, flesh, and bones.
“He’s right General
Sting,” said Princess Penelope. “He’s a human after all with a vertebrate,
backbone, and endoskeleton, which is a completely different physiology, and
anatomy to an ant. Their bodies are a lot more softer and jelly-like unlike the
rock-hard tough exterior of our exoskeletons. Maybe that’s why nature and
evolution made them so naturally enormous, to compensate for this loss.”
“Fine” groaned General
Sting. “I guess I should go at cruising speed since this is supposed to be a
tour of the Metropolis and you are supposed to be getting a good look at the sights”.
General Sting slowed
down to a cruising speed and Max got his first real good look at his
surroundings and where exactly in the Metropolis they were.
Moving his head around
180 degrees, his heart dropped as he recognised the area they were travelling
in. It was the exact same residential neighbourhood that had that shocking and
bizarre interview with violent paedophile Jack Feeler.
The houses were all
neatly lined up in either one-storey or two-storey cute little dome-shaped
dwellings, which almost resembled an igloo. The standard structure for an ant
dwelling was a dome shape with a circular arch doorway and was either mud brown
or sandy coloured. The houses clearly had been constructed out of a mixture of
sandy clay and silty soil with some larger chunks of gravel embedded into the
surface material of the houses. Circular windows on both sides of the archway
entrance were also present as well as being on the second storey for the
two-storey houses.
The dome houses lining
the streets had a twig fence perimeter running around each individual property
with moss and algae-covered front lawns. The front appearances of the dome
houses looked so similar to the human settlements that they even had mushrooms
and liverworts the size of trees growing on their front lawns to compensate for
the green trees, bushes and shrubs just like a typical human suburban house.
Since they were so deep underground no sunlight and photosynthesis-reliant
plants could grow here, only fungi and cave-dwelling species that needed
minimal light could grow here.
As they turned right
into a smaller grass stalk side street Max caught a glimpse into the Ant
families’ backyards. He saw very similar backyard fungi and plant species
growing there as well as a moss-covered lawn and even a small veranda and patio
made out of discarded wooden splitters and dead leaf material. Ant children
were seen playing in the backyard while the parent ants watched over them.
Interestingly though Max noticed a smaller dome structure in the back corner of
the garden however it was much more robust, sturdier, and tightly packed.
It almost looked like
a World War 2 style bomb shelter….
“What is that?” asked
Max pointing to it.
“That is a bomb
shelter that the innocent families around here take refuge inside every time
your little sister attacks the colony…” sighed Princess Penelope. “Every time
your little sister stomps, chunks of soil and rock rain down from above, resulting
in the entire chamber shaking. It seems like no one can escape your little sister’s
wrath”.
Max was still
adjusting to the fact that his little sister was a warmongering, genocidal
monster so he held his head down in absolute shame, not wanting to provoke the
situation further by defending her. He really couldn’t defend her actions
anymore……
Max had also noticed
there were no powerlines hanging overhead or power line poles.
“Where are the
powerlines?” asked Max.
“Well kid you’re driving
on them now” replied General Sting. “All our electricity is fed into our
building grid system via a series of underground fusion energy delivery lines.
Well technically we are already underground but what I mean is deeper
underground.”
“Watch out there’s a
red traffic light ahead!” warned Princess Penelope.
General Sting slammed
on the brakes and Max would have been thrown off the quad bike if it wasn’t for
Princess Penelope quickly wrapping her 4 arms around his waist and torso in a
split-second reaction.
“Pay attention next
time!” chastised Princess Penelope, rubbing Max on the head.
Normally Max would
have been annoyed by this gesture but given the fact she had literally saved
his life, he let it slide for now.
Max, Princess
Penelope, and General Sting had now approached a major intersection of two main
grass stalk streets. Focusing his eyesight, he was horrified to notice that the
traffic light that was controlling all 4 streams of traffic was a simple Lego
traffic light gizmo device with a pole rising around 4 metres high and 4 metres
across the intersection, with 3 sets of traffic lights and with 3 sets of
green, red, and yellow bright flashing lights hanging from the overhead top
hanger. At the bottom of the traffic pole base was an electric battery motor,
the kind used for small electronic Lego pieces and interlocking plastic toy electronic
pieces. As he continued to stare at it, he suddenly recognised where it had
come from.
“Hold on a minute!”
gasped Max with absolute shock and disbelief. “That’s one of the pieces that
went missing from the 18+ Lego City set I had last year! I was looking for that
particular piece for weeks!”
“That’s yours?” asked
Princess Penelope with shock. “A couple of the seeker ants found that in the
green grassy Amazonian jungle and thought it would be useful to have it
incorporated into our architecture. What is it exactly?”
“It’s just a child’s
toy…” replied Max. Now he understood why he couldn’t find it anywhere, it had
been dragged underground, far beyond his reach in a place he would never ever think
to look in a million years.
“That’s just a child’s
toy?” gasped Princess Penelope. “But that’s such a sophisticated piece of
technology!”
“It’s hard to explain
Penelope….” sighed Max. “I will tell you about it later….”
Once the traffic light
turned green General Sting pressed down on the accelerator and they thundered
through the intersection. Max glanced to his left and right and noticed angry
quad bike riders glaring at him with annoyance and morbid curiosity since they
had never seen a human reduced to their state before. Their engine exhaust
pipes exhausted clouds of steam and water mist as they waited at the red light.
Max noticed that this
area was starting to become more built up with taller, sturdier domed and
curved shaped cylinder towers 4 to 5 stories high, tightly packed together,
sometimes even sharing the same adjacent ground floor wall in a way that they
were interlocked together. The buildings were coloured mixtures of brown,
yellow and grey with giant bright neon signs of almost all the colours of the
rainbow spectrum flashing on the front entrance of the building, just above the
entrance door, sometimes with commercialised branded logos.
“So Max, we left the
residential precinct where 99% of Antopia live their private lives and sleep,”
explained Princess Penelope. “This is our retail precinct where all of the
non-edible items are sold to our residents”.
Peering into the shop
windows as they drove down the main street of the shopping strip area Max saw a
vast array of different items being sold to customers behind the counter and on
the shelves. Items such as dresses, jackets, hats, and shirts were custom-made
to fit over the segmented upper torso of the ant body, especially the thorax.
Max saw local Antopia brand names such as Blocs, Exo and Segs being advertised
on giant bright lit neon and printed artwork signs in front of their stores,
with ants wearing their clothing portrayed in a variety of different settings
including school, logistics and family-orientated activities. Interestingly
though, Max noticed that there were no stores for pants or shoes.
Narrowing his eyes on
Princess Penelope’s enormous conical-shaped abdomen and buttocks, it was easy
to see why. Her abdomen was so huge it was an entirely different body segment,
sticking out behind her head and thorax like a giant flagpole. Now he
understood why ants had retractable anuses, penises and vaginas that could be
concealed by an additional sheet of exoskeleton shell. With such a large
buttock it was almost impossible to fully cover it, so their biology had
evolved other ways for preventing public genital exposure and retaining basic decency.
This biological
concept could also explain why there was no need for shoes. Ant feet were hard
and with their exoskeleton covering, were very tough, the foot composing almost
like a horse’s hoof. Ants had a tough segmented foot, with a hardened tip at
the end in a way that it was almost shaped like a boot. Ants did not have any toes,
nor did they need shoes since the sole of their foot was very tough, in fact,
they could walk on broken glass without obtaining a single scratch.
As they continued to move down the street Max noticed other retail
businesses were selling other items to customers behind the shop windows. Items
such as furniture, technology such as televisions, computers, radios, and other
automated gadgets that did menial tasks, accessories such as backpacks and
stationery, clocks, garden tools, cosmetics, musical instruments and even
children’s toys. Max couldn’t believe how many similarities there were between
the items the ants were selling and the ones his own kind was selling. In a
way, even though the ants hated humans they still replicated, copied, mimicked,
and appropriated his own kind’s culture. Now he felt kind of ashamed for
thinking of the whole ant race as nothing but mindless insignificant black
blobs with no individuality or consciousness. In an ironic kind of way, they
looked up to humans despite them thinking of their kind as absolutely nothing and
lived like them even though they were facing extinction by a human child. The
fact a small child was capable of wiping out and destroying their entire
civilization and society simply for her own playtime and enjoyment was
incredibly insulting and degrading.
“Okay, make a left
turn at the next intersection!” called out Princess Penelope to General Sting.
“We are going to take a detour right through Antopia’s largest shopping mall!”
The next street was
Mall Avenue, a tiny little crossroad with a big sign plastered in front of the
turnoff that read: Mall Staff and Special Clearance Only Permitted to
use this street. Severe Penalties Apply for Unauthorised Access and Trespassers.
Max was shocked to see Mall Avenue entering into the enclosed covered area of a
giant shopping centre, running right through its middle diameter with an
archway entrance and an enclosed roof.
When General Sting
took the next left turn Max was greeted by a very narrow grass stalk street
with only two lanes, one in each direction of traffic. On each side of this
crossroad were around 4 pedestrian walkways with bumper zebra-striped
pedestrian crossings every 50 metres, forcing General Sting to slow down to a
speed limit of only 15km/h, going 10km/h when going over the speed humps. Looking upwards Max observed that this tiny
crossroad shortcut was covered by a huge glass dome curved roof with artificial
lights peppered along its steel supporting beams.
Looking around Max
realised that this was a road cutting right through the middle of an enormous
shopping mall, very much resembling the Dubai Mall. On each side, Max could see
hundreds of busy ant customers weaving and sifting their way through hundreds
of different stores lined up along the walls of the shopping centre, with huge
white tiled walkways on around 5 different levels. Max could see escalators and
lifts where ants were moving up and down constantly and large open middle
sections where a customer standing in the middle of the ground floor could look
up and see the top domed glass roof section above them and a customer on any of
the upper floors could look down from the floor barrier railing and see the
middle section bottom of the ground floor. The floors were structured like a
doughnut, with rings of upper floors shaped like an oval, with a huge statue
and water fountain-like feature situated in the middle-holed section of the
doughnut structure, rising to the second floor so that customers on all floors
could see it. The statue was of Queen Dakota with her royal staff and grass-stitched
silk dress standing on a rocky mount, while jets of water from several
different water outlets around the circumference of the statue mount were
exerted out of the base of the statue mount into a semi-circle water basin.
There were a huge
variety of brands selling very similar goods to the ones Max had seen earlier
in the local shopping strips. However, this shopping centre was more reserved
and committed to big-name business corporations and franchises that operated
several different stores across Antopia.
The shopping centre
structure enclosed itself around the crossroad they were travelling on, with
Queen Dakota’s statue acting like a giant roundabout. As they drove around the
statue and proceeded straight ahead, they then passed through the exit archway
at the end of the shopping centre after 3 minutes. The fact that it had taken 3
minutes to cross the vast diameter of the shopping centre really illustrated
just how enormous it was.
“Just if you wanted to
know Max, only staff and citizens with special clearance can use this
crossroad” explained Princess Penelope to Max. “The mall security runs random security
ID checks sometimes at roadblocks along Mall Avenue. If they catch you without
an ID with permitted special clearance, you’re basically fucked.”
“Okay General Sting
now take the right turn off the intersection at Mall Avenue towards the
industrial sector” instructed Princess Penelope.
As they exited
Antopia’s largest shopping centre, Max looked back to the enormous lightly
brown-coloured beehive structure 5 to 6 stories high, with an interior doughnut
floor structure layout and giant glowing corporate neon sign brand and logo
advertising plastered all over its exterior surface. Looking straight ahead Max
noticed Mall Avenue ended in a T intersection, with the left-hand side leading
towards the back docking section area of the shopping centre for accepting
delivery goods and stock and the carpark and the right-hand side of the
intersection leading towards a major road network.
General Sting
proceeded to turn right and continue along a grass stalk street, running right
alongside a vacant block of empty land with worker ants gathered, construction
equipment and a few scattered construction sites. Signs plastered in front of
the newly acquired vacant empty land described new warehouse logistics and
storage facilities for new goods and stock coming into the shopping centre. It
appeared that this empty spot of vacant land behind the shopping centre was
part of an expansion project for new storage facilities to hold more stock in at
a time.
“Okay turn left here!”
called out Princess Penelope.
General Sting then
turned the handlebars to the left and they then turned onto another major road,
heading towards an even more built-up area. Max noticed that this area’s
traffic had heavier-duty vehicles with larger more robust quad bikes, dragging
multiple trailers at a time, carrying a wide assortment of goods, cargo, and
boxes. Looking around he realised he had entered into a heavily industrialised
area of Antopia since the architecture of the buildings had changed to a more spread-out
layout of building compartments, with cylindrical exhaust chimneys spewing
water mist exhaust fumes into the air and huge cubical rectangular prism
buildings spanning a huge amount of land area. Max could see that there were
huge junkyards as well, with discarded mechanical equipment and enormous vehicle
parking lots as well as docking station garages, where boxes upon boxes of
goods were stored on shelves, with some being loaded onto trailers being parked
on the indoor garage driveways. Narrowing his eyes, Max could see mechanical
structure systems and machinery being attached to the framework of the
buildings as well as surrounding the network of the buildings.
“This is where all our
non-edible goods are manufactured and processed before being sent to the
stores” explained Princess Penelope.
As they continued down
the major highway, cutting through the highly industrialised precinct of
Antopia, the grass stalk highway ramp began to rise 3 to 4 metres above the
ground in a way that it was almost suspended in the air like a giant spanning
archway bridge. This resulted in Max being able to peek into the top windows of
the top floors of the warehouses and buildings since the lower floors did not
have any windows, meaning the top sequence of circular windows were the only
windows letting outside light into the building. Seeing the entire industrial
network and infrastructure surrounding him and being elevated 4 metres off the
ground reminded him of the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne.
Peeking into the top
floor of the warehouses’, Max saw thousands of boxes and crates containing
goods being neatly stacked on stone-carved shelves, 5 rows high and 10 metres
long. Each shelf had an alphabetical letter and number, representing their intricate
and precise organisational skills. Every so often Max would spot a couple of
worker ants pushing trolleys and other loading equipment between the shelves,
sometimes pulling out stock off the shelves and other times loading the empty
spots on the shelves with new fresh stock.
As they proceeded
further down the highway, Max then caught a glimpse of the manufacturing sector
of Antopia. Max saw robotic arms and claw grabbers, as well as ant workers,
using a variety of different mechanical machines, tools, and technology to
disassemble and reassemble raw materials into finished products at a
frighteningly fast pace as they whizzed past them on the conveyor belt. The raw materials were fed onto the conveyor
belt, which then went through a variety of different sectors along the conveyor
belt, having several different intricate processes applied to them such as
cutting, grinding, reshaping, melting, moulding, attachment, and reattachment
to other carved parts of different materials. Supervisors could also be seen
standing at podium posts and stations watching and monitoring all their work
and progress through their computer systems.
‘Damn,’ Max thought to
himself. ‘I didn’t know ants were so innovative and creative’.
As General Sting
continued his ascent upwards as he drove along the suspended highway, Max
continued to be greeted by more of the ant’s innovation and creativity
throughout the industrial and manufacturing sector. When General Sting reached
5 metres off the ground, Max noticed that the slope had now levelled out almost
horizontally, meaning that they had reached the parabolic arc turning point of
the highway bridge. Once they passed the vertex point of the parabolic bridge,
General Sting proceeded to descend downwards, their elevation height off the
ground decreasing as they drove further on, they began to reach the ground
level again. Max noticed that the industrial and manufacturing buildings were
thinning out, meaning they were leaving Antopia’s industrial and manufacturing
sector.
“Okay General Sting
take the left exit!” called out Princess Penelope.
General Sting twisted
the handlebars to the sharp left and took a left exit highway ramp, descending
downwards at a 45-degree angle and looping around at a 270-degree angle. As
General Sting thundered around the sharp bend, Max caught a glimpse of humongous
glistening skyscrapers 1000 ants high, shaped like double-segmented beehive and
bottle structures, which had interlocked twisted structures wrapped around
their exterior and in between sections. Most shocking of all, Max noticed that
many of these giant skyscrapers were gold and silver plated, with crystal gems embedded
into their exterior, peppering it in a beautiful rainbow glow. Max realised
that these were the skyscrapers he had caught a glimpse of at the balcony city
wall viewing platform earlier, however now that he was much closer, he realised
that these giant skyscrapers were much more extravagant and luxurious.
“This is the city
centre of Antopia, otherwise known as the CBD….”, General Sting proudly
proclaimed as he turned right off the freeway ramp onto the main road that went
directly through the city centre of Antopia. “This is the true heart of the
colony……”
As they reached closer
to the city centre the first thing Max noticed were bright yellow beehive
structures, pointing upwards with hexagonal interlocking holes covering their
exterior. Their entrances were once again curved archways, but it jutted out as
an outcrop, kind of like a veranda, with ancient Greek-style columns, supporting
the entrance archway roof. As Max
narrowed his eyes, he noticed that on each of the bright yellow beehive
buildings were signs that read vault A, B, C etc. He also noticed that outside
each entrance point were armed security guards with sand grain assault rifles.
“These are our major
big banks Max, which contain all of the savings of sugar cubes for the whole of
Antopia.” explained Princess Penelope. “Based on their credit/debit score in
their electronic bank account, citizens can withdraw whatever portion they earned
from the sugar cube vaults once they sign in at the office”.
‘They even have their
own currency system and economy’ thought Max to himself, shaking his head in
disbelief. ‘I don’t believe this’.
As they continued
deeper into the city centre Max noticed fancy bottle-shaped skyscrapers with
its exterior being polished gold and silver plated, with crystal gems embedded
into its surface. Peeking into the crystallised transparent circular windows,
Max noticed fancy luxury rooms of the highest quality including the highest
quality furniture, giant plasma tv screens, the latest technology and shining
with the highest levels of hygiene. Wrapping around the bottle-necked
cylindrical base and exterior of the skyscraper was a gold-plated ramp, that
looped all the way around the circumference of the building until it reached
the top spire, where Max noticed a swimming pool, fancy restaurant, and spa on
the top level of the building.
“This would be where
our richest residents live” explained Princess Penelope. “Sugar Towers. Mostly
reserved for Antopia’s Metropolis government ministers and CEOs. However, my
royal palace is 1000 times better compared to this”.
Max cocked his head
with surprised curiosity at Princess Penelope. Sugar towers were the equivalent
of a 5-star rated service, fit for millionaires and billionaires. If Princess
Penelope said this was poor looking according to her royal standards, he
seriously wondered what kind of luxury she was used to living in.
Max went past more
double-segmented beehive skyscrapers structures, which had one beehive pointing
upwards and another pointing downwards, interlocked with an intricate network
of curved structured poles, with a balcony created in the gap between the two
segments. However, instead of being gold and silver plated, it was covered in
leafy material and was bright jungle green with an intricate network of river
neon lightning pathways wrapping around its exterior, providing a beautiful shiny
purple and blue glow. Max noticed that several of these types of skyscrapers
had giant company logo signs plastered on their buildings’ front exteriors.
“These would be the
headquarters for all our mega-corporation franchise businesses” stated Princess
Penelope as they drove past.
Now Max was greeted
with the incredible inner-city architecture as they reached the inner-inner
city centre where all the government buildings were located. He saw the twisted
spiral structure of the buildings twisting around him like they were giant
noodles, touching down at multiple ground entrance points and all interlocking
together like they were one giant network. Humans had never been able to
achieve this level of craftsmanship with their building architecture and Max
seriously wondered how they had managed to mould a material that was as hard as
literal rock and metal into something as soft as jelly.
“These are our
headquarters for all the different governmental aspects of the Antopia
metropolis…” explained Princess Penelope. “There are several different
governmental sectors including housing services, disaster and response
management, government finance, medical and health services, business and trade
management, manufacturing, waste disposal and well basically any other services
required in a city”.
As Max looked upwards
there was one aspect that really caught his eye. Hanging from the most central
point of the underground chamber was an enormous half-semi-circle sphere ball, attached
by a network of chandelier chains and the sheer volume of the sphere made it look
almost like an artificial sun. It was peppered with dozens of holes, allowing
sharp bright yellow rays to shine its extremely luminous rays onto the city
centre below. Max judged by looking at it, it was at least 15 metres in radius,
which was as large as a 4-storey building. He couldn’t believe and imagine how
all that weight was being held up and being suspended 2400 metres in the air by
a simple network of chandelier chains.
As General Sting
weaved the quad bike in and out between the network of looped roads, passing
under the archway of the buildings, Max saw the giant monolith of a building
that lay right in the centre of this whole twisted spider web network of
government buildings and his heart dropped by how colossal it was.
“Finally!” exclaimed
Princess Penelope with delight. “Finally, we have arrived at Human Tower!”
As Max looked back, he
observed that the government buildings were interlocked together like a
spider’s web, forming decagonal ring after decagonal ring around Human Tower,
with each decagonal ring becoming smaller and smaller in diameter as it reached
closer and closer in proximity to the base of Human Tower. It appeared that the
government buildings formed a domed shape of an interlocked spider’s web, with
a network of winding curved grass stalk roads passing under each segmented
sector of the spider web structure, with Human Tower located right in the centre
of this web structure as a separate column entity. It was the most beautifully intricately
designed and detailed architectural structure Max had ever seen in his life.
As they passed under
the smallest and last decagonal ring, Max noticed that all the networks of
roads coming in all directions for 360 degrees, curved around to converge into a
single wide road with at least 6 different distinct lanes of traffic in one
direction, leading into an enormous indoor parking garage, with at least 5
different levels, with multiple ramps leading up into each level. Max also
noticed that at the end of the ground-parking level was an exit gateway with a
road of 6 splitting lanes leading out of the spider web structure, parting
outwards.
“Okay, I think I am going
to park on the 1st level!” called out General Sting.
As Max looked ahead,
the quad bike they were riding on passed through a rectangular gateway entrance
into a giant indoor garage parking lot. It was a giant rectangular prism block
of grey and brown concrete, composed of rock and soil, with circular ceiling
lights neatly lining the ceiling above the network of parkway driveways. As
General Sting weaved around the area of the parking lot level, there were hundreds
upon hundreds of parking spots on each side, with a letter and a number
allocated to each slot. The concrete ceiling was being held up by black and
yellow rectangular prism columns every 10 metres in all directions.
General Sting turned
left onto a parking lane driveway, which led directly up a ramp that went
upwards at a 45-degree angle into a square opening, cut right into the ground
level ceiling, 5 metres long and 5 metres wide, going onto the top of a new
parking level. As they went up the ramp, Max was greeted by an almost identical
set-up as the below parking level, except this one was labelled B as opposed to
A.
General Sting turned
right off the parking lane driveway into an empty parking slot labelled B-256
and adjusted the vehicle to be perfectly straight. Despite being an aggressive
driver, he was an excellent parker. Cutting off the engine he turned to Max and
Princess Penelope with a tired, stressed but relieved expression.
“Hey Kid….” he smiled
gesturing to an exit walkway, that led into the wall of the parking garage
which then transformed into a flight of stairs and led straight towards the
front of Human Tower. “Let’s all get out of here….”
20 minutes later……………
When Max approached
the front entrance of the tallest building in Antopia, known as Human Tower,
his jaw dropped open at the sheer presence of how mind-bogglingly gigantic it
was. The structure of this building was so colossal, Max felt he had arrived at
the foothills of Mount Everest and the very presence of the building cast a
shadow for a several kilometre radius, the base surface area so wide in
diameter, Max couldn’t even see the other side of the curvature as the
perimeter stretched around for hundreds upon hundreds of metres.
Human tower was the
only structure in Antopia where both the top and the bottom were anchored to a
horizontal plane. The tower was so tall, it reached from the surface bottom of
the Antopia Metropolis ground level and stretched all the way to the ceiling
chamber wall of the Metropolis, where the top part of the structure had been
fully connected and integrated into the ceiling metropolis wall, resulting in its
top perimeter and spire blending into the ceiling in a way so intricately, it
was like the top part of the building had been absorbed into the ceiling itself.
This was literally the
only building in the whole of Antopia where the skyscraper fully extended the
height of the underground Metropolis chamber, dwarfing every other building in
sight, with no other building coming even close to matching its height. From an
ant’s perspective, it was around 2.4 kilometres high, which was incredible
since this was 3 times the height of the tallest structure humans had ever
created, the Burj Khalifa at 826 metres tall. Essentially, what they had
managed to do was build a mini mountain inside this vast underground chamber.
Physically Max estimated it was 1.75 metres in height, which was disturbingly chilling
since that was his natural biological height.
Max felt like he was looking at a non-shrunken mirror version of himself,
since had he not been shrunken down and magically teleported to this very spot,
he would be standing at the exact same height as Human Tower. If he stood at
his natural true height, he would be able to stand fully upright inside the
Antopia Metropolis, with his head just brushing up against the ceiling chamber
wall. Since this was the average height of a human male, Max guessed that this
was one of the reasons it had been called Human Tower.
Narrowing his eyes, he
focused his observation on the architectural design of Human Tower. It was
shaped just like a huge old oak tree trunk, with a column mass of rock, concrete,
and white marble with a fat gurdy base, with imprints of root-shaped
passageways sinking its way into the ground. As Max looked upwards, Max noticed
that these root passageways were partially cylindrical sections that merged
into a single curved cylindrical section, which then twisted around like a
strand of DNA 2 times into a knot until it once again expanded into a fat gurdy
base, with the root passageways parting away again into noticeable root partially
cylindrical sections, before absorbing themselves and merging themselves into
the ceiling of the Metropolis chamber. It was like the top and bottom sections
of Human Tower had been architecturally designed and shaped to look just like
the trunk of a huge oak tree facing upwards and downwards, with the middle
section twisted around to look like a strand of human DNA. Transparent crystal circular windows peppered
the building’s exterior like they were stars in the night sky. When Max looked at this building, he felt
like he was looking at a giant treehouse.
When Max craned his
head to have a look at the surface area exterior, he was incredibly shocked to
discover that it was covered in intricate detailed colourful artworks and paintings,
making it also the most beautifully decorated building in the whole of the Antopia
Metropolis. It wasn’t the nature of how the artwork was done or the decorations
that were surprising to him though, it was what was being portrayed in the artwork
that really shocked him to his core.
All these artworks
that had been painted on the surface area building exterior of Human Tower had
one thing in common; they were all portraying the different interactions that
had happened between the ant race and the human race. Most of the interactions
graphically depicted were extremely negative such as a woman spraying ants in
her kitchen with Mortein causing their exoskeletons to be brutally melted off
and them screaming in excruciating pain, ants getting unwarily squished by a
variety of different human shoes, ants getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner to
be blended and suffocated to death, ants getting killed by a lawn mower to be
gruesomely shredded to bits and pieces and basically any other ways an ant could
die through the actions of a human. However, there were 2 artworks that really
stood out to Max.
There was a girl with
ginger red flowing hair, holding a magnifying glass like it was a War of the
Worlds style death ray of mass destruction, sadistically frying a large group
of ants as they desperately tried to run away from her, screaming and crying
with absolute fear and terror. In the background of her painting, there were
bright fiery red and orange flames and the pupils of her eyes had been coloured
blood red, signifying she was some kind of evil devil or demon.
Those freckles on her
face, that wide smile…….
He recognised that
face anywhere……
It was his seemingly
sweet little sister.
Never before in a
million years could he have guessed that his cute, innocent, sometimes bratty
and annoying, but mostly harmless little sister could become a cruel,
psychopathic monster and an unstoppable vengeful powerful force of evil like the
Anti-Christ Satan himself. He was still having a very hard time coming to terms
with the fact that this was what his little sister was like to them, a
heartless monster, and he had pinched himself on the forearm multiple times
today to remind himself that this was all real and wasn’t some bizarre dream he
was having.
As he cocked his head
to another bottom curvature section of the building, he noticed that the most
recent painting that had been added also had a very familiar girl. However, unlike the previous ant-human
interactions, this was a positive one, a gentle motherly interaction. It
featured an 11-year-old Sri Lankan girl with a loving smile hovering her head
above a little ant and extending her fingertip directly in front of the ant
with an Oreo crumb.
There was only one
girl he knew that could be that gentle with tiny little animals. It was his
sister’s best friend Divya….
“I see here you are
taking a good hard look at our featured Human Tower artworks painted on the front
exterior of the building!” called out Princess Penelope happily as they calmly strolled
through the front courtyard towards the front entrance of Human Tower, breaking
Max out of his trance.
“Ugh, what?” gasped
Max, breaking out of his trance of gazing and gawking at the paintings. “Oh
yeah, it’s just that I didn’t know you paint actual real events with actual real
people I know….”
“Oh yeah, we are a very
proud and culturally historic race of people” explained Princess Penelope. “We
like to paint everything that happens to us throughout the ages, whether it’s
good or bad because it is those experiences that help us to become stronger and
much more resilient. There are actually much older artworks that are stored
back at the royal palace that are hundreds, if not thousands of years old. I
can show you later on……”
“Um no thanks I’m all good
for today” replied Max hastily. Today had been enough of a brain overload and a
hectic day for him….
As General Sting,
Princess Penelope and Max strolled through the front courtyard, Max took a
second to take in his surroundings……
The front courtyard
was paved in whitish-greyish concrete paved rectangular tiles, all interlocked
together, with small, polished grooves in between each tile. The base
foundational roots of the building curved in around them like a large enclave,
forming a bay that was around 500 metres in diameter. There were several moss-covered
front entrance lawns, with tiny cave-dwelling liverworts and miniaturised plant
and fungi species the size of bushes and shrubs, decorated in the courtyard
surrounding him, forming nice little green spaces.
There were also decorated
roundabout structures, with stone white marble carved statues spread out
throughout the entire courtyard, depicting a variety of different department officials
and franchise CEOs that managed and operated in the Antopia Metropolis. Some of
these officials were dressed in standard governmental uniform robes, such as
the government residential manager, who was shown holding a big set of house
keys and a clipboard, while other times, there were business CEOs dressed in posh
business jackets, suits, and ties, holding a sack of sugar cubes. All of these
statues were standing on raised cylindrical bases, with a circle of green moss
surrounding the circular plate base of the statue, with a name plate attached
to the front of the cylindrical base describing their position and full name.
However, when they
were just 3 metres from the base of the building, there was one statue that
really caught Max’s eye. It was a gigantic statue, 5 metres tall, of an ant
dressed in a bowler’s hat, blazer jacket and tie, holding a staff in one hand
and lifting an oval spherical shaped seed with pointed ends, that was around
the length of his body, above his head with the other hand. He was also
standing on top of a multiple 2-step cylindrical platform structure, with water
outlets surrounding the circumference of the smaller cylindrical base, which
was raised higher and inside the perimeter of the larger cylindrical base.
Water was being exerted out of the water outlets into a small ringed pool
inside the perimeter of the larger cylindrical base, creating a mini fountain.
On the top of the smaller cylindrical platform, a ring of green moss surrounded
the circular plate base of the statue.
"I think you had
a glance of him before Max” explained Princess Penelope as they walked past it.
“This is the chief government minister for the Metropolis, otherwise known as
the Mayor of Antopia, who is in charge of all the operations that happen in the
Metropolis”.
“Isn’t that the Queen
ant’s job?” Max inquired.
“Um no, there are 8
different chambers in this colony and my poor mother can’t manage them all by
herself,” explained Princess Penelope. “You can think of it this way, the ants
in charge of each chamber are like state governors or premiers but my mother is
the overall overseeing president or prime minister.”
“Oh, I guess that
makes a lot more sense now” replied Max. “However, I would like to add that
your society operates as a semi-monarchy since the new King and Queen of
Antopia is determined by royal blood only and not by a democratic vote”.
Princess Penelope’s
pupils dilated a lot in surprise and exclaimed “Well you certainly know a lot
more than I thought!”
As they reached one of
the entrances of the skyscraper, Max gasped at how lavishly designed it was. It
was a 180-degree archway gateway outcrop, with the first segmented archway
exterior plated in polished bronze. In the middle of the bronze-plated archway
was a sign that read: Human Tower Entrance 1C. Max glanced to his left
and right and realised there were several entrances for every 50 metres of the
building’s curvature. As they walked
under the archway roof Max saw around 3 to 4 further archway segments adjacent
to each other, however, these were transparent and were made of crystal glass,
with steel support beams jutting vertically and horizontally, creating rectangular
grid patterning across the archway. As they reached the revolving glass doors,
Max realised it was part of a cylindrical crystal column, with gold lining that
stood straight up at a perfectly 90-degree angle, with the horizontal plane of
the ground and half of it was jutting out from the main framework of the
building, while the other half was embedded inside the building. The archway
was estimated to be 7 metres high, and Max held his breath in anticipation for
the next sights that were going to meet his eyes as they approached the
spinning glass revolving doors.
As soon as Max
strolled through those gleaming crystal glass spinning revolving doors and
entered the Human Tower Reception lobby, he felt the prying eyeballs of dozens
of racist ants within his vicinity fixated on him like he was some kind of
foreign specimen or alien (which ironically, he kind of was). Ants from other
colonies were forbidden from even venturing into the vicinity of other ant colonies,
so having a completely different unrelated intelligent species added a new kind
of xenophobia.
“Ignore them” groaned
Princess Penelope as they entered the reception lobby, and she caught the sight
of dozens of ants glaring at Max very hostilely with disgust. Angered by this
portrayal of extremely rude, offensive, and xenophobic behaviour she spun her
head around and decided to scold them.
“What the fuck are you
all gawking at?!” she snarled angrily at them. “Didn’t anyone teach you how
rude it is to stare like that?!”
Ashamed, the
bystanders looked away and went back to being preoccupied with whatever it is
they were doing.
Max spun his head
around to look at the grand scale of the skyscraper reception lobby he was currently
standing in. It was absolutely enormous, being at least 3 basketball courts
long and 4 footy fields long. Max couldn’t believe he couldn’t even see the
other end of the lobby on the left- and right-hand side, having to squint to
try to see an outline. On his left-hand side was an indoor sugar water fountain,
encased in a gleaming white column marble structure, running through the centre
of 3 plate dishes and a conical-tipped mast, spraying sugar water from the top
tip. The sugar water trickled down from the top two bowls into the bottom bowl
basin. At his feet was an intricate fine network of red-carpet pathways,
winding their way across the surface area of the lobby like the blood vessels in
a human body. Giant gold-plated columns with colourful gems and crystals
embedded into their surface began appearing every 50 metres as they moved on
into the middle section of this giant lobby, creating grid sections around 50
metres wide. Seating areas were also located at various points around him, with
4 or 5 cushioned chairs and sofas, with a wooden table on a circular white
carpet, with blue dots and potted mushrooms on the tables. As they headed
deeper inside, the outside lighting began to fade, being replaced by artificial
ceiling lighting from above. Above him
was yellow chandelier lighting inside half-spherical capacities that were attached
to the ceiling above, with the ceiling decorated in a multitude of patterned
green and purple swirls against a silver-plated background.
“Just follow the red-carpet
pathways” instructed General Sting to Max. “It is very easy to get lost”.
“You could say that again,”
remarked Max. “I can’t even see the side walls of this lobby.”
“Yeah, there are 21
different reception desks inside this lobby” added Princess Penelope
The red-carpet pathway
they were following soon turned into a closed narrow corridor, around 3 metres
wide, with bronze-plated walls which then soon opened up in a closed-off cavern,
around 10 metres in diameter. The cavern had 2 large seating areas similar to
the ones Max had seen earlier and a white stone rectangular prism reception
desk, with a golden metal solid curtain background on the back wall behind the
reception desk, with red streaks. A multitude of different paintings hung on
the walls around them, depicting different colourful patterns such as stripes,
swirls, and polka dots. On the front of
the reception desk as well as hanging behind it on the curtain wall was a sign
that read: Human Tower: Reception Desk 1C.
Looking to the
left-hand side, Max also spotted another sign with a series of red dots. Next
to the dots on the right-hand side, were details about the floor number and
name. Max estimated there were at least 256 different floors, describing
various different departments including business budgeting, civil
infrastructure, transport, social services, and crime. The 256th
floor, however, really interested Max the most, it was a floor that stated: Mayor’s
office and viewing platform.
Princess Penelope
approached the white stone reception desk and rang the golden ringer bell. She
had noticed no one was occupying the 3 big, cushioned chairs situated directly
behind the desk.
“Excuse me?” she
called out. “Anyone there?”
The private brown door,
located on the bronze side wall connected to the golden metal curtain wall at a
45-degree angle, swung open to reveal a very fat, obese female ant receptionist.
She was absolutely bloated, with an abdomen 5 times larger than her head and
thorax with the lower section of her thorax swollen like a balloon. She was so
fat that when she walked with her 6 stubby legs, her abdomen was dragging
across the floor, creating a screeching sound as she puffed and heaved her twig-like
legs forward, which were clearly struggling to support her weight. Max noticed
that around her mandibles and inner lips was a coating of white sugar dust and
in two of her hands she was clutching sugar cubes. As she dragged herself
forward like a slug, she stuffed two sugar cubes into her mouth, greedily
gulping them down. Apart from General Claw, this was the second largest ant he
had ever seen so far from his perspective, but she was still only a third of
his size. Besides General Claw was just generally big in all bodily proportions
while this ant lady clearly had deposited large amounts of fat in her lower
body due to greedy binge eating, making her very unproportionate in terms of
body size distribution.
“Oh” sighed Princess
Penelope with disgust. “Karen, I didn’t realise you were working today…” as she
saw Karen drag her fat body to the reception desk.
“Yeah…so what Ms.
Goody two shoes?” sneered Karen as she munched down on another sugar cube,
directly in front of her, spraying sugar crumbs in her face.
“Ewwww!” squealed
Princess Penelope with disgust. “Do you ever stop fucking eating?!”
“I am sorry, do you
two know each other?” inquired Max.
“Umm yeah” explained
Princess Penelope. “Karen was my school bully when I went undercover at a
public school when I was 14 to see how people would treat me if they didn’t
know my status. You should have seen the look on her face when she found out
who I truly was!”.
“Well how was I
supposed to know you were the Princess” angrily retorted Karen. “You didn’t
exactly look like posh royalty!”
“Excuse me you are
supposed to treat people with respect out of the kindness of your heart, not
because they have some fancy title!” replied Princess Penelope.
Karen’s attention then
turned to Max where she narrowed her eyes and smirked.
“I see this is your
little human pet…” she sneered.
“Hey! Don’t talk to
him that way!” yelled Princess Penelope.
Meanwhile, General
Sting cringed in the background. ‘Girls’ he thought to himself. ‘I honestly
feel like I am in a fucking women’s prison!’
“Whatever Karen, can
you please grant us access to Floor 256: The Mayor’s office” sighed
Princess Penelope.
“I will do it on one
condition” sneered Karen with a devilish grin in her eyes. Looking at Max, Max
suddenly gulped nervously. He had a feeling that her intentions weren’t going
to be very nice.
“Take off your
clothes, little boy” jeered Karen to Max. “I know how horny you boys are at
this age. I want to see your cute little human dick. I want to see your rock-hard
erection and your adorable little ginger pubic hairs on your tiny white
testicles…”
“What!!?” screeched
Princess Penelope. “You disgusting, perverted fuck! How dare you ask something
like that?!”
General Sting was also
appalled by the sexually aggressive proposal. Flexing his 4 arms he turned to
Princess Penelope and said, “Do you want me to handle this bitch, your
majesty?”
“No General Sting I
think I will handle this myself!” snarled Princess Penelope angrily.
Max also chimed in, offended,
and stated, “Hey no one is going to see my red pubes and my big dick apart from
Mia!”
“Wait whose Mia?”
inquired Princess Penelope. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“Oh fuck…” muttered
Max, red-faced and embarrassed. “She’s no one…. she’s not my girlfriend…. Yet….”
he answered sheepishly.
“That’s actually kind
of cute” smiled Princess Penelope.
Redirecting her anger
towards Karen, she glared at her right in the eyes, completely enraged.
“Here’s my proposal
Karen,” growled Princess Penelope. “How about you take your clothes off, take
your crusty shit-covered dildo, shove it up your fat fucking ass and shake it
fast, ok? You fat fuck!”
“Wow settle down
bitch!” replied Karen, her voice muffled with her mouth full of sugar before
swallowing. “I was just joking around. Here you can have access to floor 256.”
“And just for the
record, I have a boyfriend now!” shouted Karen angrily. I do not use a dildo to
anally fuck myself anymore!”
“Anymore!” laughed
Max. “Seriously you actually used to do it?!”
“Shut the fuck up
boy!” snarled Karen. “I bet you still wank that little virgin wiener of yours every
day in your fucking room!”
‘Ah fuck that’s
actually true’ thought Max to himself.
Pulling out a computer
from a drawer slot under a compartment gap in the reception desk, she punched
in a few numbers.
“Okay access granted
my royal highness” stated Karen sarcastically. “Sorry for making your little
pet human feel uncomfortable”.
Rolling her eyes,
Princess Penelope turned and said to General Sting and Max, “Okay let’s go to
the elevator lobby now. I have had enough of putting up with Karen’s fucking
bullshit for one day.”
Max was slightly
lagging behind both of them, so General Sting and Princess Penelope didn’t hear
the snide remark from Karen as he walked past her.
“Trust me, buddy,
she’s a real fucking slut. Tries to fuck every boy she tries to make friends
with. The biggest fucking whore I have ever fucking known. Also dodged a real
bullet. Puffy vagina….” she sneered.
“Okay, thank you for
that useless information, Karen I did not need to know that” sighed Max.
The 3 companions then
proceeded to stroll around the reception desk on the left-hand side, towards a
rectangular open entrance that led into an elevator lobby. The elevator lobby
had 6 different elevators, with 3 elevators on the left and right-hand sides.
The elevator doors were plated shiny silver with a square bronze grill directly
above the top of the elevator doors, against a dark turquoise polished stone
marble wall. In front of each elevator door was a little information stand
detailing which elevators gave access to which floors.
“Over here!” called
out Princess Penelope, walking over towards the elevator furthest down the
elevator lobby hallway on the right-hand side. In front of this elevator was a
sign that read: Warning! Only Authorized Access is Granted for Floor 256:
Mayor’s Office. Severe Penalties apply for Trespassers without Granted Access.
There was a loud ding
sound as the elevator doors opened to reveal a gleaming red fabric-carpeted
elevator floor with gold-plated elevator cell walls.
“Access Granted” read
out a computerised voice.
“Okay, Max let’s not
keep gawking at it” General Sting lectured Max. “Those doors aren’t going to stay
open forever you know!”
Hastily, they hopped
inside, with the elevator doors swiftly closing behind them.
With a loud hum, the
elevator motor roared into life and the elevator started vibrating and moving at
a frighteningly fast pace. Max estimated that the elevator must be clocking at
least 80km/h or 22 metres per second by his estimations, so they would reach
the 256th floor in approximately 2 to 3 minutes.
Ding!
At the sound of the
bell, the elevator doors pried open, and Max’s eyes adjusted to the bright yellow-white
lighting with his pupils scrutinising on the sight that lay before him as they
stepped foot into the mayor’s office.
The first thing that
captured Max’s eyes was the shape of the mayor’s office. The circumference of
the office was shaped like an oval, with white gleaming marble walls and a
half-spherical whiteish cream ceiling. The walls of the oval white marble room were adorned
with a swirling embroidery pattern that extended around the top circumference of
the oval walls and spherical ceiling. A locked door was on Max’s right-hand
side. The door archway's top and surrounding perimeter outline had a similar
appearance to a Greek temple which was embedded into the walls. In between the space of the locked door and
the back window of the mayor’s desk was a bookshelf of approximately 4 shelves
embedded inside the white marble wall itself, containing various important
scrolls, books and documents that seemed to be governmental records due to
their old-fashioned plain covers consisting of red, black, and blue.
Max also noticed two
windows on the left-hand side, which also had this Greek temple perimeter
design embedded into the walls themselves, surrounding each window. In the middle of the oval office was an
oval-shaped blue carpet that took up 80% of the floor space. There were 2 cream
couches located on the left- and right-hand side, with a brown desk in between
them, which were located right in the centre of the blue carpet. On the couch
side further away from the mayor’s desk were two more brown desks, with two
identical lampshades. On the side of those brown desks closer to the elevator
doors were two cream single-seater couch chairs that were turned at a 45-degree
angle.
In the centre of the
blue carpet was a huge circular logo emblem with a 1-metre diameter which
resembled a group of ant workers carrying a large seed or rock on their backs,
which looked to be around 20 times their size. On top of the seed was a small
cluster of houses of single to double-story buildings.
At the curved back
section of the wall lay the mayor’s prized government desk, where he would pass
executive orders and other important city governmental laws. Max could feel the raw power radiating from
it as he stared at it closely. It consisted of a large black synthetic leather
chair behind a brown wooden desk, with intricate carvings of ants participating
in a variety of different construction and business activities, with the
details so finely ingrained it was like embroidery. Behind the leather chair
was another desk, with several different photos displayed of what look like
personal photos of the mayor with his wife and 4 children. Many of the photos
displayed his children playing a variety of different games including climbing
and scaling directly up vertical walls at a 90-degree angle, while other photos
included him and his wife kissing.
Behind that photo
frame desk were three framed windows, patterned like a grid structure, with the
windows separated by a thin column of white marble wall. Hanging over and
around all three windows, was a gleaming golden sparkling curtain structure,
with a silver lining. The curtain rail ran across the top of all 3 windows in a
single beam, with 4 different curtain drapes to cover each window. Max also
spotted two head white marble statues mounted on the left and right side of the
desk; on the left-hand side was Queen Dakota herself, with her jewel-incrusted
crown while on the right-hand side was the mayor with his tall bowler hat.
In between the space
of the photo frame desk and the windows, were two flags hung up by the masts
sticking up, draped down so that Max could only see part of it. The flag on the
right-hand side bore the exact same emblem Max had seen earlier on the blue
circular floor carpet, with the group of ants carrying the giant seed with the
mini city on top of it. The flag on the left-hand side, however, depicted Queen
Dakota herself with a circle of ants surrounding her in an interlocked
structure, with the ants holding feelers together. While Queen Dakota herself
was very colourful with her splotches of rainbows and bright rainbow light
shining outwards like she was the sun, the ants surrounding her had been
painted a simple black against a bright blood-red background. Max
interpretation of these flags was that the flag on the right-hand side
represented the city-state of the Antopia Metropolis, with the representation
of citizens building and participating in the city’s society, while the second
flag was the national flag of Antopia, with Queen Dakota protecting and ruling
over all the ants that resided in this colony.
The final thing Max
noticed was the historic paintings that hung on the walls of the oval office. A
few had captured Max’s eyes such as an ant princess with big cute yellow eyes
lovingly tending to a family of aphids in her arms, however, she wasn’t
Princess Penelope, with the princess’s back against the blue-pink neon sky,
with twin blue and pink suns in the background, which meant this wasn’t an
Earth environment. Another painting depicted a violent battlefield between 4
different ant colonies, with the sky scorched in smoke and ash, multiple
different bombardments, and orange explosions everywhere as well as ant
soldiers shooting, stabbing, and bludgeoning each other to death. Death and
destruction were seen everywhere. As Max narrowed his eyes and approached the
painting, he saw a caption that made his blood run cold:
The Height of the
1000-year race war: Year: 365 BGG
“What?” gasped Max.
“I see that you are
admiring our historical paintings young man!” called out a crisp serious voice,
that pierced the quiet atmosphere like a window shattering into glass shards
from being smashed by a rock. The voice caught Max completely off guard and his
heart leapt up into his throat with him spinning around in shock to see where
the voice had originated from.
Max observed an ant
that looked like he was in his mid-50s, strolling into the mayor’s office from
the right-hand side door, that had the Greek temple perimeter outline. As he
looked closer at this ant, he noticed that he was wearing a bright Irish green
blazer with 4 sleeves, wrapped around his thorax section, but funnily was
wearing his blazer with no shirt, exposing part of his black thorax chest area.
He also wore a red tie around his neck and a tall black bowler’s hat on the top
of his head, at least 30cm in height from the top of his head, with his two
antennae peeking out from the sides of his head at a bent angle, with a silver
stripe wrapped around the bottom midsection circumference of the hat. Max also
noticed a gold rectangular name badge pinned on the right-hand-side pocket that
read: Mayor of Metropolis: Doug Tibia.
“Oh my gosh….”
stammered Max. “You’re the….”
“The mayor”
interrupted Mayor Doug. “Mayor Doug Tibia, the 401st in line for the
mayor of this colony tribe and the 1st in line for the mayor of this
location. I have been the mayor for 25 years,” he stated proudly.
Narrowing his eyes on
the human, he gawked at him with his strange features, including his two legs,
two arms and ginger red hair sprouting like weeds on the top of his head, as
well as having a nose, large ears and wearing bottom half clothing, including
trousers and shoes. Mayor Doug had never seen a human so close-up before, fully
displayed, so it was fascinating to him that they dressed and looked just as
strangely as described in the books and literature.
“And you must be
Princess Penelope’s little human pet” he smiled. “Or as I would more bluntly
put it, Penelope’s little bitch”.
“For Fuck’s sake, Stop
calling me that!” yelled Max angrily.
Taking aback by Max’s
angry shouting, Mayor Doug laughed and replied, “I see you are just as much a
big of a loudmouth as our Majesty Queen Dakota described”.
Looking around, he
smiled and said, “I take it you have any questions about the paintings you were
just gawking at?”
“Um yes actually” said
Max inquisitively. “What does 365 BGG mean exactly?”
Mayor Doug explained,
“Well human, that would be our calendar year system. It’s how we keep track of
time on a historical yearly scale. BGG stands for years before Gaia’s Gift. So,
in this case, this historical event took place 365 years before Gaia’s Gift”.
‘Who is this Gaia Girl
that these ants seemed to be so obsessed with and grovel at the feet at all the
time?’ wondered Max to himself. ‘It seems to me that their entire society
revolves around this all-powerful goddess’.
“I have another
question” piped up Max, approaching another painting he had observed earlier
which showed an ant princess very similar to Princess Penelope’s appearance,
cuddling a family of aphids in her 4 arms, with the twin blue and pink suns
shining in the background sky. As his eyes looked closer, he saw this painting
also had a year inscribed on it.
Princess Lala, the
birth of Aphid Farming and the ant-aphid alliance. Year: 125000 BGG.
Using their calendar
year system, this meant that this historical event, whatever it was, had taken
place 125000 years before Gaia’s Gift. 125000 years was an enormous period of
time, in terms of history, where so much could happen. In fact, 125000 years
ago Max was pretty sure humans were still living as primitive hunter-gatherers.
So, when exactly had this Gaia’s Gift event taken place relative to the human
Christian calendar system with B.C (Before Christ) and A.D (After Death), had
taken place? Max’s head was swarming with so many more questions.
I understand that our
current human calendar system is based on Jesus and Christianity and that the
year is 2016 A.D., signifying 2016 years since Jesus's death. So what year is
it relative to ants?” asked Max to Mayor Doug.
“For us, it is 12016
AGG, which means 12016 years after Gaia’s Gift,” explained Mayor Doug.
Max’s heart froze in absolute
shock and horror, the realisation hitting him like the weight of a freight
truck. No, it could not possibly be true. Human civilization had only lasted
10000 years so far. Max remembered that it was only after farming and the dawn
of the agricultural revolution that human civilizations really began to take
off. The earliest settlements as described by his history teacher happened
around 8000 to 9000 B.C and they were just simple farming villages. For
hundreds of thousands of years before that, humans had been living the same
hunter-gatherer lifestyle, with human innovation barely advancing by a single
degree.
It couldn’t be
possible that ant civilization was older than human civilization, could it? Surely,
they couldn’t be that intelligent and advanced?
“Impossible!” snarled
Max. After asking these questions he was now more confused than ever before and
now had more questions swarming around in his head.
“I am sorry, what was
that?” frowned Mayor Doug.
“I have some more
questions” inquired Max, pointing at the Princess Lala Aphid painting. “The
artist here has clearly made a mistake. Last time I checked Earth only had one
fucking sun!”
“Oh no my dear child,
that’s not a mistake!” laughed Mayor Doug. “You see, our ancestors are not
actually from this-“
“Okay, that’s enough!”
called out Princess Penelope. “Let’s not overwhelm Max with too much new
information! He’s overwhelmed enough as it is!”
“No, I need to know
more!” yelled Max angrily.
“Okay….” said Mayor
Doug. “How about I leave the explanation for our ancient history to Princess
Penelope for some other day and I give you an explanation of our more recent history
and general workings of this metropolis society?”
“Fine…” groaned Max,
rolling his eyes at Princess Penelope. He was really starting to get fed up
with her treating him like a fucking baby.
“Okay then...” sighed
Mayor Doug, looking over at another painting on the opposite side of the room, which
was closer to the mayor’s desk. “I guess I will show you this one…….um what’s
your name again?” he asked, facepalming. “I can’t believe I didn’t ask you this
earlier!”
“My name is Max”
replied Max.
Princess Penelope also
added, “Oh come on Doug, I just said it earlier!”
“Well sorry, I’m a
56-year-old man” groaned Mayor Doug. “As you start reaching your late 50’s you
start becoming a little bit more forgetful”.
“Don’t be like that!”
growled General Sting who was standing in a corner. “Don’t ever let age dictate
your abilities. I am 66 and have a 12-pack thorax that is harder than fucking steel!”
he boasted. “I have 7 different black belts in 7 different fucking divisions!”
Max ignored the
squabbling between the 3 ants and instead approached the 3rd
painting hanging on the wall, which was much closer to the mayor’s desk. It had
a very similar depiction to the scene of the metropolis he had seen earlier at
the city wall, with the beehive and bottle-shaped skyscrapers clustered tightly
together as well as the smaller domed shape buildings and grass-stalk streets.
However, there was one major difference; this city was not even half completed.
As Max studied the
painting more closely, he noticed that the buildings were only a third tall and
were completely surrounded by scaffolding and temporary pulley elevator systems,
with ant construction workers scaling and climbing around on the semi-completed
structures, clutching tools and pieces of materials in their hands, as they
heaved themselves up. It was incredible that these ants could lift pieces 5
times their own size but then he remembered the important biological fact that
ants could lift 10 to 15 times their own weight.
‘If only humans could
lift 10 to 15 times their own weight’ thought Max to himself. ‘Then we could
build and get everything done so much faster’.
As he studied the
painting more closely, he noticed other fine details such as the skeletal
framework of the buildings, cranes positioned very close to the tallest
proposed skyscrapers to lift the pieces of materials that were too heavy even
for the ants and piles of construction materials and waste that were in neat little
stacks in the designated construction area. He also noticed on the outskirts of
the city construction sites were ant families camped out in makeshift tents
that were made of small pieces of leaves and twigs. These ants appeared to be
living in some sort of refugee camp, with their belongings scattered around
their campsite messily and families eating in communal shared areas. Max
couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for them.
Max then turned his
attention to the caption inscribed under the painting.
Our New Home-City
under construction: Year 12005 AGG.
Max then came to the
shocking realisation that this technologically advanced city was only 11 years
old. If he converted the year 12005 AGG to human years, it would have been only
2005 when this event depicted happened. How could they have built such a large
city on such a large scale to house such a large population in such a short
amount of time? It was absolutely insane!
“I can see you have
the look of confusion etched on your face Max!” interrupted Mayor Doug,
breaking Max from his trance.
“I didn’t know you could
build so fast….” stammered Max, looking at the painting. “This city was only
built in 2005 according to the date stamped under the painting.”
“Ah yes, you would be
amazed by how fast ants can build settlements and civilizations with such amazing
precision” bragged Mayor Doug. “Of course, our natural biological strength
gives us a major advantage as well, but it is our sheer stamina, teamwork, and
calculated coordination within a workforce of thousands of different
individuals that make us the best engineers on the planet! Did you know ants
can work for 100 hours straight without taking a break?”
“No, I actually did
not know that” replied Max with astonishment. “No wonder you guys built the
city so quickly”.
Frowning he turned his
head to Princess Penelope and said “Hold on a minute I thought you said your
mother has been ruling for 25 years? How come the city is only 11 years old?”
Princess Penelope
sighed and said “That’s because our colony wasn’t originally from this area. We
actually used to live further away from humans, out in a nice little forested area.
Where we could isolate ourselves from human interference….”
Her eyes got a little teary-eyed
and stammered “You know Max, our ant colony in that area had remained stable
for 1000 years.”
Mayor Doug interrupted
and stated, “In our culture, it is customary to move the ant hill base every
1000 years.”
Glaring at him
angrily, Princess Penelope redirected her attention to Max and stated “My
mother at the time, realised that her ancestors had been ruling in the same
area for over 1000 years. We were already preparing to relocate. Then the
humans arrived….”
A few tears trickled
down her cheeks. “My father, the king at the time tried to befriend the humans.
He saw them as another intelligent species like us. He thought we could form an
alliance. It didn’t go so well….”
Max could tell this
was really emotional and traumatising for her. “You don’t have to tell me about
what happened if you don’t want to….”
Max noticed another
painting next to the city construction one. This time it depicted a large group
of ants trudging through an enormous underground tunnel, with the tunnel walls
made out of clay, soil, and silt with large chunks of pebbles and rock embedded
into the tunnel walls themselves. Some of the ants were riding on the backs of
giant huge pink wiggling creatures the size of blue whales, with their backpacks
and belongings attached to their backs, via a network of tied-up knotted weed
ropes. Max quickly realised that these creatures were earthworms.
The caption read: The
365-day trek underground. Year: 12004 AGG
Mayor Doug walked up
beside Max and pointed to the painting. “This happened right after our beloved
King died. Our Queen was so traumatised by what had happened to her husband and
the cruel brutal gruesome nature of his death that she ordered the entire ant
colony to evacuate to a new area. As you can see here, we domesticated the
earthworms to carve tunnels for us to travel underground because she decided
the surface was much too dangerous to travel on. It took us a whole year but
yeah, we found this place”.
“And now…” interrupted
General Sting in a very angry tone. “Your psychopathic bitch of a sister is
waging a war on our entire way of life all for her own sick sadistic pleasure
and amusement. Even after we made an oath never to collaborate or attempt
contact with humans ever again. It’s like history is repeating itself all over
again….”
Max held his head down
in absolute shame. “I’m sorry…”
“Hey leave him alone!”
yelled Princess Penelope. “It’s not his fault! He can’t control his sister’s
actions!”
“Well, I am just
stating the truth and seriousness of our situation” growled General Sting. “He
needs to know the truth”.
“I bet you are amazed
by how quickly and efficiently we managed to create a fully functioning society
within 11 years!” exclaimed Mayor Doug. “Did you know I have 21 different
managers to help me manage all the different sectors of the Metropolis? Police
and emergency services, healthcare, business and commercial, construction and
infrastructure, family social services, residential management, electoral
management, the list goes on and on!”
“Come with me” he
smiled, beckoning to Max with his second left arm towards the first glass grid
window from the left, which was behind the mayor’s desk. “There’s something you
have got to see! I bet you will be the first of your kind to see it!”
“Remind me why we are
being so polite to him” whispered General Sting to Princess Penelope.
“Well, my mother said
we must teach him to become an ant and last time I checked, gentle persuasion
is much better at convincing a person than brute force” replied Princess
Penelope. “Have you not heard of the fable The Wind, The Sun and Traveller?”.
“Whatever smart ass!”
groaned General Sting quietly then smirked and said “Your mother really read
you all of Aseop’s Fables as bedtime stories huh? I swear you have memorised
every single one of them by now!”
“Okay well this ought
to be interesting” replied Max, as he approached the window Mayor Doug was
pointing to. As he got closer, he was shocked to realise that it wasn’t
actually a window but a transparent glass door, with a rectangular-shaped bronze
door handle a Jurassic Park velociraptor could open.
“Welcome to the
Skydeck my dear boy” Mayor Doug smiled as he drew the gold sparkling curtains
with the silver lining back fully to reveal and gain access to the door, pushed
downwards on the rectangular door handle, and then pushed outwards on the door
frame, resulting in the door swinging open to reveal a spectacular Skydeck
viewing platform, with a crystal transparent glass platform.
Max’s heart leapt into
his throat as he stepped into the Skydeck chamber.
The Skydeck consisted
of a large rectangular glass prism chamber which was hanging off outwards from
the main outcrop structure of the building, with only a single small door for the
entrance, which was the door he had just entered through. The entire structure
was made out of transparent crystal glass, with thin metal support beams
running around the exterior of the Skydeck in a grid structure to support it.
Since the structure
was transparent, Max’s legs began to shiver with fear as his brain was being tricked
into thinking he was going to fall through the floor. His subconscious thought
he was floating in mid-air, 2400 metres off the ground. Max knew where he had
seen a spectacle special feature like this before which used the exact same
kind of subconscious trickery.
“It’s like the Eureka
Skydeck in Melbourne CBD….” he gasped.
Peering downwards he
saw the giant spiral twisted brown structures which were like strands of DNA
and green cylindrical tree trunk shapes of the adjacent skyscrapers, protruding
from the ground upwards until they reached 75% of the height of the skyscraper
he was currently residing in. He could see the roofs of these skyscrapers with
their rounded spherical domed shaped roofs which looked just like the tops of
human heads with no hair, essentially making them bald. On the side windows of
the Skydeck, Max could also see the yellow tinted lit circular windows of the
city’s tallest skyscrapers, if he tilted his head down just a little bit on the
curvature exterior of the tallest skyscrapers. From time to time, he could see
tiny black shapes shifting through the windows which Max immediately understood
to be the ants residing inside these buildings.
The most spectacular
site to Max was the network of grass stalk pathways, running beneath his feet
as he got down on his knees and looked directly down through the transparent
clear floor. The grass stalk pathways looked just like a green river waterway
system, with pathways all around, up, and down and sometimes directly into skyscrapers.
The pathways were so complicated, with pathways branching outwards from several
different points into narrowing sections and sometimes conjoining together to form
a wider pathway, Max felt like he was looking at a blood vessel system. On each
grass stalk pathway were hundreds, if not thousands of little black dots moving
along the pathways in both directions like a teeming swarming mass.
As he continued to
look around himself and observe all the buildings around him, with the peculiar
shapes of rectangular prisms, cubes, spheres, and cylinders, making up multiple
different sections of one building, a terrifying and shocking realization
dawned upon him. He was currently residing in a building that was physically
1.75 metres tall from a human perspective, which was his original natural height.
This meant that for the first time since he was first shrunk, he was seeing the
ant world from his true perspective. The tallest skyscrapers surrounding him
were around the same size as younger children between the heights of 1.2 and
1.6 metres, respectively. Looking at all these buildings made him feel like he
was surrounded by little kids, but these were not kids, these were buildings
housing thousands of tiny residents. And now he was one of those tiny
residents.
“I have never seen so
many ants before in my fucking life….” he gasped. “I really have been living on
top of a secret world. Those small number of ants scuttling about on the
surface were just the tip of the iceberg….”
“Do you know how many
ants live in this colony?” interrupted a voice behind him. Max nearly jumped
out of his skin and spun around to see the face of the mayor who had closely followed
behind him.
“Um no” replied Max
dumbly.
“10,000….” Mayor Doug
replied.
‘Wow, who would have
thought that a seemingly sweet innocent little girl such as my sister would be
capable of such pure evil, such as threatening and destroying such a large
civilization’ Max thought to himself.
“Okay, can you two
please come back here!” called out Princess Penelope, who was standing in the
door frame. “We are running on a tight schedule!”
With both of them
rolling their eyes, they strolled back through the door and back into Mayor
Doug’s office.
As they re-entered the
office Max spotted something he hadn’t noticed earlier.
“Hey, I didn’t notice
that earlier!” exclaimed Max as he pointed with curiously excited joy towards
the right-hand door, with the Greek temple perimeter outline, which now had
been unlocked and open. Max could now see a second set of elevators, only this
time the doors were a shade of midnight black, and the background walls were a dark
shade of warning red.
“Oh, that would be the
set of short-cut elevators that lead straight up to the surface young man”
replied Mayor Doug. “Those elevators are strictly off-limits. Only to be used
in the case of emergency evacuation”
“Well Mayor Doug thank
you for your time,” said Princess Penelope. “But General Sting and I are on a
mission you see. I made a promise to my mother that I would teach this human
boy how to be an ant. I believe this is the easiest way to break the ice and
cultural race barriers, to show him the vast majority of Antopia and how we
live.”
Putting her first and
second left arms around him in a tight hug, she began to lead Max away from
Mayor Doug out of the office, who was smiling and waving at him.
“And believe me when I
say this….” she smiled sweetly, with her eyes developing blush red circles on
the sides of her yellow pupils. Max was shocked to see this phenomenon in any
species before, he had no idea ants could make their eyes blush. General Sting
cringed at the sight of the weird affection between Max and Princess Penelope
as they reached the elevator doors.
Pulling him into a
tighter hug, which made Max’s cheeks blush red with embarrassment, she then
took her right top arm and gently stroked his head, ruffling his long ginger
hair locks into a frizzly spiral. “You haven’t seen anything yet. We are just
getting the tour of our world started. There is so much left you have got to
see…….”