“I swear to fucking god cunts….” growled Max angrily to his captors “When I get big again, I am going to spray all of you with so much fucking Mortein....”

 “Aww, how cute!” jeered General Sting as the large group of ants scuttled through the dense grassy undergrowth towards the anthill, moving parallel to the concrete barrier of the backyard concrete pergola. “The little faggot seriously thinks he can ever return back to normal size!”

As soon as Max heard that statement his blood turned cold, mortified at the mention of such a predicament. “What the fuck did you just say to me?” he stammered.

Surely his captors couldn’t be so cruel and ruthless to keep him at this pathetic puny size for the rest of his life…. could they? He was so young and had so much going for him, he had so many dreams and big plans. If he was shrunk to a height of only 5 millimetres for the rest of his life, his life might as well be over and done with. He seriously thought death would be a better alternative than being reduced to such a pathetic grovelling existence.

“Nothing...” snickered General Sting under his breath.

This made Max’s blood boil with rage. Not only had this arrogant ant army general almost beaten him within inches of death, but now he was also fully relishing in his pain and suffering.

“FUCK YOU!!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “YOU ARE THE BIGGEST CUNT OF THEM ALL!!”

“Wow!” giggled General Sting. “That’s quite the potty mouth you have got there for such a little boy!”

“Just ignore him” sighed Princess Penelope as she squeezed in between 2 large green trunks of grass blades that were very close to each other. “He’s just traumatized and upset”.

This annoyed Max even further. At least General Sting was being completely honest about his true feelings and attitudes towards him from his perspective. This girl on the other hand was using flattery to try and soothe him, disguising her true intentions from his perspective.

“Yeah, fuck you too bitch!” snarled Max angrily. “Eat a bag of dicks!”

Princess Penelope was shocked at the hurtful and foul-mouthed insults being hurled at her by the older teenage boy. “Wow!” she gasped in shock. “Talk about being ungrateful! I have defended you, nurtured you and even saved your life and this is how you repay me!”

Max laughed and replied “Let me tell you something, your royal highness! If a farmer raises a piglet, feeds it, cares for it, and protects it from predators and pests until it is fattened enough as an adult to be killed and slaughtered for pork, is the pig supposed to be grateful to the farmer?! If anything, that’s even more fucked up than if the farmer just killed the piglet on the spot!”

With angry tears in his eyes, he stated “You are only keeping me alive so you can kill me at the proper moment. I just know it”  

Princess Penelope was heartbroken that the teenage boy in front of her who was only 6 years younger than her would think of her as a cruel executioner. “No! No! No!” she stammered “It’s not like that I promise!”

“Oh really?” retorted Max. “Because I have been here just 2 hours, and all I have seen you do is suck his cock!” gesturing at an enraged General Sting.

This made General Sting furious to the point of being an exploding volcano. “Why you little fucking wretched brat! You worthless little cunt! How dare you talk to a member of royalty like that?! I ought to fucking punch your head in!” He began to approach Max with his 4 fists raised.

 “All right, that’s enough bickering the 3 of you…” groaned Squirt’s mother who was walking several metres in front of them. “My 6 children at home get along better than this and are more well-behaved than you 3.”  

“Okay we are here now!” called out one of the soldier ants.

“Holy Shit!” gasped Max. 

The large group of ants had now made their way out of the shadowy twilight of the dense grassy undergrowth into a small clearing where fresh direct sunlight was showering them from above. Behind them lay a quarter semicircle circumference perimeter where the Amazonian grassy green jungle just abruptly ended, with the continuous rows of 50-foot-tall grass green blade stalks immediately stopping.  It was pretty obvious to Max that this small clearing had been artificially cleared since plant growth didn’t just abruptly stop in an open space area naturally for no reason. The ants had painstakingly actually cleared dozens of grass blades to make way for a small clearing. Given their size Max wondered how long it had taken to do it since a human could do it in less than a minute by ripping a tuff of grass with a single hand.

Max’s eyes then darted to his front. In front of him lay a yellowish-whiteish desert with cricket ball-sized yellow and white grains crunching underneath the exoskeleton feet of the ants as they walked. It was the colossal structure directly in front of him though, that shocked him to his core the most and made it really sink in how small he had physically become.

 A massive behemoth sand dune hill towered in front of him, 50 feet high (15m) and the height of a four-storey building, towering above them, casting a twilight shadow around it for several metres. On top of the sand dune, however, Max spotted a perfectly symmetrically circular hole opening which meant that this structure had also been artificially created. Looking at it in its entirety reminded Max of a sandy volcano, in fact, it was shaped just like a volcano with sloping conical sandy slopes and a crater-shaped hole embedded symmetrically into the top.

It was the surrounding environment that disturbed him the most though. Behind the ant hill was a 100-foot-tall wooden fence overshadowing it which Max identified as the wooden lining fence separating the grassy lawn from the garden patch where the small shrubs and flower bushes grew. However, they were no longer small; now they were the size of a mountain range with shrubs overlooking the anthill like the Himalayas and he was at the foothills. On the right-hand side was the concrete barrier of the backyard pergola running parallel like the Great Wall of China in a continuous unbroken straight line, 5 metres high. The backside of the anthill and the right-hand side was resting directly against both structures for support.

For a second Max wondered if he had been transported to a strange foreign alien world valley but then the haunting truth dawned on him that this was no alien world. This was the area where just a few hours ago he could completely stomp and obliterate the entire small clearing and corner with his right shoe in a single stomp. The concrete wall which had only reached to his ankle was now like the Great Wall of China and the wooden fence lining which he could kick over in a single kick was like a towering iron barrier fence.

His entire perspective of the world had changed like he had taken a long journey, but he hadn’t even moved an inch in his journey, literally.

As the large group of ants began to make their way up the sandy slopes at a 40 to 45-degree angle like an intrepid group of mountaineers Max had a few more questions for his captors about the development work they had done. 

“If you guys live underground, why do you need to build a 4-storey tall anthill?” inquired Max. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just make a hole in the ground at ground level?”

“Because you stupid little child we need to be able to see over the dense canopy of grassy blade stalks!” groaned General Sting as they trudged up the sandy slope. “When your colony is located in a sheltered corner where your view is obstructed by a grassy jungle, a wooden fence and a concrete wall you must be able to peer over them to spot any immediate dangers within a few kilometres radius.”

“No need to get so hostile and grumpy I was just curious!” groaned Max, rolling his eyes.

As the ants reached the rim of the perfectly symmetrical circular-shaped crater hole Max gasped at the scale of the opening.

From his perspective, the crater was at least 10 metres in diameter, with several flights of stairs lining around the circular perimeter leading down the crater slopes which were inclined at an even steeper 60-to-65-degree angle. Max also observed that around 10 metres inclination down the crater slopes the flight of stairs abruptly ended in a 50-foot (15m) vertical drop with strong flexible grass fibre ladders attached to the last stair rung, leading in a 90-degree angle straight downwards onto a grey circular platform around 25 metres in diameter. 

“You can’t be serious!” gasped Max in horror. “That’s more than a fucking 50-foot drop. I will fucking break my neck and spine if I drop from that height!”

“Oh yeah sorry I forgot you humans are vertebrates that have an endoskeleton, meaning that your skeleton is on the inside of your body,” replied Princess Penelope. “For us ants, we have an exoskeleton which means our skeleton is on the outside of our body making us a lot tougher and more resilient and able to survive higher falls from greater heights. You humans are so delicate…”

“Hey!” shouted Max angrily. “You don’t need to baby-talk me you know!”

“Yeah, you humans are not so cocky and powerful when your immense size has been stripped away from you, are you?!” sneered General Sting.

As they proceeded their descent down the flight of stairs, Max observed that the stairs had actually been carved in and embedded into the crater slopes themselves, with a 1.5-metre-high sandy reinforced wall on both sides and stairs made up of grey gravel rectangular stone blocks. As they reached the vertical drop, Max shivered as all the surrounding ants from the large group on adjacent stair pathways turned backwards and took their first step onto the first rung.

“This is fucking insane…” he gasped.

As Princess Penelope took her first steps onto the ladder, the ladder actually buckled and started drifting back and forth from the force being distributed. Max suddenly felt extremely nauseous like he was on a rollercoaster.

Glancing to his left and right he was shocked by the brazen behaviour of the other fellow ants. Some ants weren’t even bothering to use the ladders and instead were just jumping 50 feet down, directly onto the platform, landing on their feet, completely unscathed. Other ants were casually and deliberately swinging back and forth on the ladders like a jungle vine as they descended downwards, not even bothered by the thought of slipping and falling.

‘I really wished I had an exoskeleton’ thought Max to himself.

When they reached the enormous grey circular platform, Max noticed several different elevator doors lining the circular wall surrounding the platform with different names etched on top. Narrowing his eyes, he noticed some of the names above: Metropolis, Hell’s gate prison, army headquarters, breeding chambers, food processing sector, scientific research and Insectwood.

“What?” he gasped “Do they have an entire society down here?”

“Squirt and I have decided that we wouldn’t miss this trial for anything your majesty and yes, we will be attending this human’s trial!  This is a very historic day for all of us. The first time a human has ventured into Antopia!” exclaimed Squirt’s mother.

“Are you sure?” inquired Princess Penelope. “There are two other trials that need to be done before Max’s. I don’t want to waste any more of your time!”

 “Oh, don’t worry” stated Squirt’s mother angrily glaring at Max. “I really want to see this”

“Oh, suits yourself” stated Princess Penelope. “You can follow right behind General Sting and me”

Max noticed General Sting and Princess Penelope whose back he was quite literally still piggybacking on were still with him as for several other soldiers which meant they were going to be present while he was being assessed under whatever this trial was. What really disturbed him however was their idea of justice and punishment. For the first time in a long time, he was utterly petrified and the worst part about it was he couldn’t reach out to his parents to protect him, let alone anyone else.

Ching!

Max heard the elevator doors open and he, Princess Penelope, General Sting, Squirt’s mother, and Squirt crammed themselves into a silver shiny rectangular prism elevator only 2.5 metres wide. However, this elevator only had two buttons, a red arrow pointing upwards and downwards. Max noticed that several of the other soldier ants were waiting outside the elevator doors since there was no way a single other ant could fit in. The ants were packed in, with limbs and bodies rubbing against each other.

“You would have thought that the idiot that designed this thing would have made it a little bigger!” Max remarked sarcastically.

“We have limited space, smartass!” General Sting replied angrily.

General Sting looked at the soldier ants waiting outside and said, “Sorry lads you are just going to have to take the next one!” as the elevator doors closed.

Squirt’s mother was pressed right up against the buttons.

“I am sorry, this is embarrassing but I never even asked your name!” stated Princess Penelope sheepishly. “What’s your name?”

Squirt’s mother smiled and replied “My name is Ava”

“Ava, can you please press the downward button?” asked Princess Penelope.

“No problem,” said Ava, pressing the downward arrow button.

The elevator burst into life as they were showered in a glow of blue electrical light and the sound of grinding gears filled their ears as the elevator lurched vertically downwards.

‘Damn they have electricity as well’ Max thought to himself. Looking upwards he saw the name inscribed just above the elevator doors: High Court Chambers

Max didn’t know how deep they were travelling underground but he estimated that they were moving pretty fast at around 40 to 45km/h which meant they were going at least 250 to 300 metres underground from an ant’s perspective. From a human perspective, it would probably be around a bed or table height underground.

Around 90 seconds later the elevator finally grinded to a halt with another bell ching.

As the 5 ants stepped out of the elevator doors Max gasped in awe and shock at the sight that lay before him.

The elevator had stopped at a rectangular prism platform inside an enormous tunnel around 100 metres in diameter, with blue neon electric lights running parallel along the circular circumference of the tunnel. The silvery grey rectangular prism platform was attached to the middle cross-section line of the tunnel and extended outwards from the perimeter, 10 metres inwards. After the platform lay a lane of parked traffic where electrical mechanical pods were parked adjacent to the platform, running alongside the stone platform perimeter. From where the elevator door had opened, it was located right in the middle of the platform with 40 metres of platform on the left and right-hand sides. The elevator doors were embedded into the circular surface area of the tunnel itself right above the cross-section line and after the parked lane of vehicles lay 7 lanes of traffic where dozens of mechanical pods were zipping past every second.

Max looked above the elevator doors and saw a large red neon sign attached above that read: Surface Exit Pod Depot Station. Looking ahead he saw another large tunnel red neon sign attached to the top cross-section line of the tunnel that read: High Court Chambers Exit 750 metres ahead, Metropolis Exit 2km ahead, Hell’s Gate Prison Exit 3km ahead with a large red arrow pointing straight ahead.

“Welcome to our transport tunnel network” explained Princess Penelope. “You can think of it as being very similar to your human subway train tunnel network but instead of trains we use mechanical pods”.

“Just wait till we give you a grand tour of Antopia!” exclaimed Squirt.

“Shut up you stupid boy!” growled Ava. “I thought I told you not to engage with the disgusting human in any way”.

“Uggggh” groaned Squirt.

“Okay this isn’t a fucking tour show, we don’t have time for this!” snarled General Sting as he approached a mechanical pod that was parked alongside the platform. As the 5 ants walked towards the mechanical pod Princess Penelope decided to ask some more questions about human culture to Max.

“Driving a pod is very easy as long as you have a license. Do you have a license, Max?” asked Princess Penelope.

“Umm sort of…” grumbled Max. His license wasn’t really a full license, just a learner’s permit that was issued to him 5 months ago. He had practised nearly 60 hours of driving on quiet suburban roads with his experienced driver father, however, he was still really shaky when driving on high-speed freeways and highways especially.

“What do you mean sort of?” inquired Princess Penelope.

“It’s a learner’s permit which means I have to practise driving with an experienced fully licensed driver to learn how to properly operate and navigate a vehicle on the road, hands-on style” explained Max.

Princess Penelope was baffled and very curious about the process of obtaining a human vehicle licence. “Well, here you don’t have to do anything like that! Here you can just read a manual and book your test where you just have to drive in a straight line for 20 metres!” she exclaimed.

“What” gasped Max. “That doesn’t sound like nearly enough training to properly operate a vehicle!”

Max was in for even more of a shock as his eyes fell upon the vehicle, he would be travelling in.

The mechanical pod was a spherical oval shape; however, the pod didn’t even have any doors, just outside perimeter metal bars separating the driver’s section from the passenger section. Both sides were completely open and exposed with only a fabric curtain covering the roof and a single glass pane for the windscreen. It was pretty obvious to Max that large surface area sections of the pod had been completely removed for convenience, for passengers to hop in and out faster. Looking at the resemblance it reminded him of the tuk-tuks (three-wheeled auto rickshaws) he had seen throughout South Asia, especially Kolkata India, where his class had gone on a field trip last year.

What shocked Max the most, however, was that there was only one driver’s seat in the front and two passenger seats in the back. And they had 5 passengers….

“Are you fucking crazy?” gasped Max. “There is no way that pod is fitting 5 fucking passengers inside!”

“Oh, it’s fine!” laughed Princess Penelope. “Ants overload the pods with more passengers than the built capacity all the time!”

“I’m driving…..” growled General Sting as he hopped into the driver’s seat, gripped the handlebars, and kicked the foot pedal with his exoskeleton foot to start it. A low vibrating hum was heard and felt as the machine roared into life.

“Is this your own vehicle?” Max asked.

“Nah Boy, these are all government-owned vehicles, which means anyone can use them as long as you have a license” General Sting replied  

Ava was the first to hop into the vehicle, followed by her son Squirt who sat on her lap. Before Princess Penelope jumped in, she turned and twisted Max around in his weed rope-bound state so that instead of being attached to her back he was now attached to her chest area. Satisfied she also hopped in with Max also now sitting on her lap.

“I feel like a fucking baby” Max complained as he sat in the older girl’s lap.

Max was about to get a taste of the shocking road rules or should be said tunnel rules that operated in the tunnel transport network.

 Imagine Max’s horror when General Sting suddenly pressed on the accelerator underneath the handlebars and lurched forward and in the right direction, suddenly into the moving lanes of traffic without even indicating or doing a shoulder check. A loud high-pitched beep filled the air directly behind them as General Sting deliberately and very aggressively cut in front of the lane of traffic.

“What the fuck?!” snarled Max. “You didn’t even indicate!”

“Oh, fuck off cunt!” growled General Sting “Don’t tell me how to drive!”

This was just the first in a long line of traffic violations that Max was about to witness.

Max spotted that while their pod was overloaded, other pods were overloaded to a whole new level with some pods carrying double or triple the number of passengers. Some ants were riding off the roofs of the pods while others were hanging off the metal bars and exterior of the vehicle, tightly clutching.

‘How do they not fall off’ Max thought to himself in horror.

Max also quickly found out that while there were 7 marked lanes, no one was following the lane marking with ants driving in the middle of the lanes, frequently cutting in front of each other and continuously blasting their horns. Max spotted 100 near misses in just one minute and he was starting to get an ear-splintering headache from all the beeping and traffic noise.

‘Fucking hell’ Max thought to himself. ‘It’s just like driving in Kolkata, India’

“Oooh this is going to be tight,” said General Sting as he accelerated between two pods on both sides with only a millimetre gap (ant perspective). Max closed his eyes and shivered as General Sting squeezed in between the two pods and he swore he could feel the sides of the pod scrape against both vehicles.

“Aww it’s ok buddy...” cooed Princess Penelope as she rubbed Max’s head.

This really irritated Max, he was no child anymore. At least from his perspective.

“You know you’re not my fucking big sister!” he growled angrily. Princess Penelope giggled. 

Another Pod whizzed past at a frighteningly fast speed on their left-hand side.

“Holy Fuck!” gasped Max in horror. “That guy is driving on the wrong side of the tunnel!”

Max screamed as he saw two more pods whizz past him on both sides in the opposite direction, blasting their horns as they went past. It had also become apparent that there was no speed limit inside the tunnel.

“I just don’t understand what we are doing! I don’t understand the rules inside this tunnel!” exclaimed Max as they continued their insane journey down the tunnel. “Everyone seems to drive one minute on the left, one minute on the right. Some pods stop to let you overtake, sometimes they don’t. Others come up barrelling up behind you doing 3.5 times the speed of sound, it’s completely baffling!”

“Okay we are reaching the exit now!” called out General Sting.

Max once again shut his eyes as General Sting cut across 4 lanes of traffic, without indicating or shoulder checking once. When he opened his eyes again, he saw a smaller breakaway tunnel splitting from the main tunnel on their left-hand side with different coloured green neon lighting. Max looked above and saw a large sign hanging on the top circular cross-section line where the tunnel started which said: High Court Chambers Exit

Max breathed a sigh of relief as he saw up ahead another rectangular prism platform, 50 metres up ahead and the tunnel abruptly ending in a dead end 75 metres up ahead, which meant they were definitely parking in the parking lane. It had been the most terrifying car ride (or should it be said pod ride) of Max’s life. He swore to himself that when he got his full license he would never drive so selfishly, recklessly, and dangerously.

As General Sting very abruptly and sharply swerved left into the parking lane running adjacent to the platform Max had quite a lot to say about General Sting’s insane driving skills.

“That was fucking awful!” Max exclaimed as the mechanical pod lurched to a standstill and the engine turned off. “That was the most terrifying ride in my entire life! It’s a miracle there aren’t mountains of corpses piled up in the tunnels with the insanity I just witnessed!”

“Actually Max, many ants have gotten used to this driving style so there aren’t as many deaths as you would expect” replied Princess Penelope as she hopped out of the pod onto the platform with Max attached to her like a giant baby carrier. “Also, an exoskeleton can absorb shock a lot better”

 “Lol, what a fucking pussy!” sneered General Sting as he jumped out of the driver’s seat. “Can’t even handle a little bit of danger and excitement!”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” replied Max sarcastically “Who is really the pussy? The one who has a legitimate fear of shitty driving or the one who is petrified of an 11-year-old little girl!”

This sent General Sting into a wild rage. Already he had developed PTSD from seeing his colleagues slaughtered by the demon child and here was this arrogant brat making light of it. Violently grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, he pressed his mandibles very close to Max’s face.

“You know you have a very fast tongue…” snarled General Sting. “Be a shame if someone fucking ripped it out…”

“Sting… STOP!” gasped Princess Penelope as she frantically pushed him away from Max.

“Why are you defending this little shit all the time!” muttered General Sting angrily. “I mean all he does is talk shit about all of us!”

“Kind of like you, Huh?” Princess Penelope replied.

General Sting frowned and crossed his 4 arms.

“Hurry up, let’s go inside the High Court and get it over and done with!” said Ava as she and Squirt jumped off the mechanical pod. “We don’t have all day!”

Max glanced upwards to see a bright red neon lighting sign plastered on the left circular wall above the platform that read: High Court Chambers Depot Station.

Underneath the sign located in the middle cross-section line of the platform were two large stone doors, with a small scanning machine on the side. As the group of ants made their way towards the door with General Sting leading the way, General Sting crouched downwards, holding one of the antennae and moving it towards an electric gridded scanner circle in the centre of the machine.

“What….” gasped Max.

When the antenna was pressed against the scanner circle, the machine responded with a high-pitched beep and the doors opened for around 5 seconds to allow just one ant to pass through, which in this case was General Sting.

“It’s just like the metro ticket gates we have at Flinders Street Station,” said Max.

The remaining ants all repeated this process to allow them to pass one at a time, with the exception of Max and Squirt who hitched a ride with their adult guardians. The scanner machine appeared to be some kind of biometric identification security system.

The group of 5 ants trudged their way through another narrow tunnel which was only one ant wide and had green neon lighting above them, basking them in a warm green glow. As they walked another 100 metres down the tunnel Max noticed the exit opened into a vast chamber. He could tell because there was a considerable amount of noise and different coloured lights reaching them which gave the impression that the chamber was really big.

What Max failed to comprehend was just how enormous the chamber actually was.

As he walked through a narrow passageway, he noticed that on either side of him were two enormous, towering right-angle triangular-shaped structures with a maximum height being at least 10 metres in height, with the inclination slope gradually decreasing at a 45-degree angle as he proceeded further down the passageway. As he looked up and squinted his eyes, he could make out the outline of what looked like red velvet chairs.

 When he left the narrow passageway section and into the exposed central area with bright yellow light showering him from the ceiling lighting above and illuminating the majority of the chamber, he finally got a real good look at the structure of this chamber. Looking upwards he saw a large conical shape structure network of bright yellow lights hanging off the ceiling by several chains.  

Surrounding him at a 360-degree angle were rows and rows of red velvet chairs, with each row raised one step higher to gain a full view of the central area. It was like a stadium or theatre-styled seating you might see in a sporting match or musical drama theatre. Max could see at strategic intervals of the circle; a flight of stairs had been carved from the very first row at ground level with the central area to the highest and last back seated row at the top at a 10-metre vertical height above the central area. Max also spotted 4 single narrow passageways at quarter-circle intervals, signalling they were the entrance and exits, cutting right in between the seating at the same level as the central area.

What shocked Max however was the fact that every single one of these seats was occupied. Judging by the volume, he estimated at least 1000 ants had come to watch these High court trials and suddenly he felt very exposed. He had not expected the population of ants to be this high.

Looking into the central area, he noticed that it was at least 50 metres in radius which was the same size as the MCG pitch (Melbourne Cricket Ground). He noticed that the central circle was coloured in a way, like the circular sections of an archery circle board. Around 40 ant guards were placed around them, monitoring their every move.

In the centre of the central area was a giant white stone carved throne at least twice his height, decorated with rainbow butterfly wings coming out on each of the backsides of the throne. On each side of the throne lay 3 and 4 smaller-sized, grey-coloured stone carved chairs also decorated with colourful spotted and swirled patterns but not nearly as beautiful as the throne right at the centre. The seven chairs were arranged in a circle with the throne in the centre of this circle and an oval-raised platform directly in front of it with a single podium post with chain hooks attached.

As Max glanced around, he noticed two other ant criminals in two sets of handcuffs to restrain their four arms were kneeling in an area very close to the throne and chair arrangements with 5 ant guards watching them closely. But it was one ant guard that really stood out for Max closely however due to his immense size.

This ant was 3 times the height of every single other ant in the room, dwarfing every single individual and had a rippling robust body with bulging muscles and was also wearing a military jacket with war medals and an army commander’s cap. Max estimated he must be at least 17 to 20 millimetres (human perspective) in height which was more than 3 to 4 times the height of the average ant.

“Who is that man?” Max asked Princess Penelope, beckoning to him.

“Oh, that’s General Claw, he’s second in command of our army after General Sting” she replied.

“He’s huge!” gasped Max “What have you been feeding him!”

“You know he just has a form of gigantism in his genes, he was born that way” explained Princess Penelope. “Kind of like some really tall humans who also had a form of gigantism”

Max thought back to a man he had read about in the Guinness Book of World Records called, Robert Wadlow, the tallest man ever.  He was also known as the Alton Giant and the Giant of Illinois and with a height of 272cm (8 feet, 11 inches) (human perspective), no other human had ever come close to beating his record. He also had a severe form of gigantism.

When Max looked back at General Claw, he was shocked to see that he was eyeing him and staring at him directly with his bright yellow eyes, smiling.

Suddenly he approached him and grabbed his leg, injecting him with some yellow fluid into his left ankle with a syringe, pulling his sock down. For some reason, Princess Penelope did nothing to stop him

“Ouch, what the fuck!” Max squealed. “Let go of me!”

“Max calm down, he’s helping you!” exclaimed Princess Penelope.

Suddenly his ankle felt fine, and he could move it around freely again. It was no longer broken. Sighing with relief, Princess Penelope undid the weed rope and freed Max from being attached to her body.

“Hey, I can walk again!” exclaimed Max jumping up and down and skipping happily. However, his freedom didn’t last long.

General Claw suddenly grabbed him in a tight bear hug and pinned his arms behind his back. Max felt a set of handcuffs wrapping around his wrists.

“Get your filthy hands off me, faggot!” Max snarled. “Fuck off!”

He kicked and wiggled and squirmed, but he soon gave up and accepted his fate. There was no point trying to fight someone three times your size with an insane amount of strength. With a sharp click, the handcuffs clicked and locked around his wrists.

“Love the fact that I only need one set of handcuffs for a human” snickered General claw under his breath.  

“Sorry Max I don’t make the rules,” said Princess Penelope as Max was led away in handcuffs by General Claw towards where the other 2 ant criminals were also kneeling in handcuffs.

As Max looked upwards, he was shocked to see a giant double-sided plasma screen tv hanging off the ceiling by two stone-reinforced chains, around the size of a sticky note to a human, however to an ant it would be the size of a cinema screen. The bottom side of the plasma screen tv was hovering just 2.5 metres above the central area.

‘I wonder what that’s for?’ Max thought to himself.

He then turned his attention to the two other ant criminals who were also going to be on trial with him. One ant was dressed in a security guard uniform and the other was extremely mean looking with bloodshot red eyes, bulging muscles, and patterned yellow and white swirls covering his four arms which Max assumed had to be their equivalent of tattoos.

“What did you guys do?” Max inquired. The criminals simply ignored him and scoffed, turning their heads away like he was some kind of diseased infested parasite.

‘Yeesh tough crowd…’ Max thought to himself.

Darting his eyes towards the white stone rainbow butterfly throne, his eyes fell upon the older female figure that was residing on the throne.

The ant was an older female in her early 50s and was also wearing a grass-stitched silk woven dress, however, this dress was a lot more extravagant and beautiful with a rainbow pattern of swirls and polka dots covering the dress’s entire surface area. He also noticed two large pairs of translucent wings that sprouted from her back and was slightly bigger than the rest of the ants at around 1.5 times the average size. She also had very large yellow eyes with black pupils which very much resembled that of her daughter Penelope. On her head rested an enormous shiny metallic gem incrusted crown, shaped like a flower petal which was gold plated and had rubies, diamonds and emeralds embedded into the base. Max understood that this special ant must be the queen of Antopia and the monarchy ruler of the entire ant colony.

“Hey!” Max called out to Princess Penelope. “If she’s really your mother and you really are a princess how come you don’t have wings!”

“Wings in royal ants aren’t fully formed until you are 25 which is the average age for coronation for the next ruler “explained Princess Penelope showing her stubby little lumps on her back which Max now understood to be the roots of the wings he had been brushing up against when he was attached to her back. “Mine haven’t fully formed yet”

Looking back, he saw the queen pick up a curved cinnamon pipe, resting on her right-hand side next to her on the armrest, and took a large drag out of it, blowing a cloud of smoke out of her mouth.

‘Damn your mother smokes too, Penelope’ Max thought to himself.

He noticed that 7 other ants were also sitting on either side of her, however, they were average-sized and wore white ceremonial robes with different icons embedded on their fronts. They also had no headgear and had large tables in front of them with a stack of documents. Max made a guess that these ants must be members of the government or high court judges or something.

“Okay everyone the first trial is about to start!” called out Princess Penelope.

Meanwhile……

“Oh, Divya….” cried Lucy with a few tears trickling down her cheeks.

Angrily she looked across the hallway to her brother’s closed bedroom door.

‘Wow,’ she thought to herself. ‘Some brother he is! He hasn’t even come to comfort me let alone ask me what happened or why I’m upset!’

Lucy Firewall was sitting on her flowered patterned blanket and blue bedspread on her bed, pushing her back against two pink pillows which were resting up against the bedhead. She was holding a brown framed photo that was of her and Divya that was taken just a few weeks after they had first met 4 years ago. The two 7-year-old girls had their arms wrapped around each other in a tight hug, their faces pressed up against each other, smiling with their missing-gapped tooth smiles. The photo had been taken by Divya’s father in front of a 50-foot-tall Eucalyptus tree at the base of the trunk in a parkland reserve with both girls wearing matching green dresses with white polka dots.  It had been their first official ‘play date’ in the park and had been so memorable for them that Lucy had asked Mr Bandaranayake for a printed copy so that she could frame it and put it on the shelf in her bedroom.

“Carrot Top didn’t mean anything she said Curry Spice” she tearfully smiled, looking at the photo.

Divya and Lucy had gotten so close over the last 4.5 years that they had given each other cute nicknames based on their appearances and ethnic features. Divya called Lucy ‘Carrot Top’ due to her red hair while Lucy called Divya ‘Curry Spice’ due to her Singhalese ethnicity.

She had deeply regretted calling her a coconut and had tried desperately to apologise to her, running all the way down the street barefoot to her house. However, Divya was so deeply hurt by what Lucy had called her that she locked herself inside her house and refused to come out, even to talk to her.

‘We have been best friends for so long’ she optimistically thought to herself. ‘She can’t stay mad at me forever. She will cool down eventually’

No one could ever understand why she had such a deep-seated hatred for insects. Already they had fucked up her life in more ways than they could ever possibly imagine. She swore to herself that she would never ever reveal her insect-homicidal hobbies to anyone ever again. 

Suddenly she heard the clicking of the front door opening, like the sound of a key being inserted into a keyhole and the twisting of a lock latch in a door being unlocked.

The front door swung open to reveal a 34-year-old woman in a flowery blouse, blue jeans, and saltwater sandals and a 39-year-old man in a white shirt, red tie, black pants, and black laced shoes.

“Lucy! Max! We’re home!” they called out.

Lucy’s parents, Rebecca and Robert Firewall had just arrived home.

Meanwhile……

“Okay silence everybody!” the Queen shouted into a megaphone, attached to a stand directly in front of her throne, with her voice echoing around the walls of the High Court chamber and banging her royal staff on the ground, which consisted of a long stick with a green emerald attached to an orb. Immediately the murmuring of the crowd quickly died down.

Sucking on her cinnamon pipe in her mouth, she took another long drag and blew three whisps of smoke out of her 3 ocelli holes (ant nostrils).

“I, Queen Dakota would like to welcome everyone to the 41st weekly high court chambers reserved for trials concerning suspects with very serious criminal charges. 1000 members of the public are encouraged to watch the spectacle with a first-in, best-served service for tickets,” she stated loudly into the megaphone to the cheering crowd.

Every single ant in the chamber then proceeded to stand up and salute their queen with a salute with their right arms, extending their arm from the top of their head at a 90-degree angle to a 180-degree straight line.

Everyone that is, except Max Firewall.

This caught the attention of Queen Dakota, who turned her pupils in Max’s direction.

“Oh, it seems we have an unusual guest” she smiled coldly at him.

“Max, what are you doing?!” muttered Princess Penelope angrily. “It is customary for their royal subjects to salute their rulers. Even the suspected ant criminals did it!”

“She’s not my queen, nor my ruler!” Max angrily replied. “She never will be!”

“Excuse me?” said Queen Dakota, frowning angrily at him. “As long as you are in my kingdom, you abide by my rules and regulations”.

“Oh really” sneered Max. “If you think I am obeying you, here’s my response. You can suck my dick!”

Loud boos and gasps were heard from the audience with many growling and scowling at Max’s rude response. One teenage girl around the same age as Max shouted from the crowd, “How fucking dare you!”

Princess Penelope was also disgusted and appalled by Max’s response. “How dare you talk to my elderly mother like that!” she cried.

Max growled and glared at her and stated, “You can suck my dick as well!”

Max looked to the audience and shouted, “In fact, all of you cunts can suck my dick!”

Queen Dakota rolled her eyes and stated “He’s just a stupid foul-mouthed teenage boy. I will deal with that little shit later”

The crowd shouted more boos at Max and hurled insults such as scum, faggot, fuckwit, dickhead, asshole, and cunt.

“Okay, now I would like to introduce the government ministers that will be aiding me in my criminal trials!” she stated. “Here we have ministers for all 7 different sectors of Antopia: Metropolis, Breeding Chambers and Nursery, Transportation, Education and Scientific Research, Food Production, Media, Communications, and Entertainment and finally Defence”.

6 male and female ant government ministers stood up in their white ceremonial robes and bowed down to the cheers of the crowd.

“Hold on, where’s the Minister for Defence?” asked Queen Dakota.

“Here I am your majesty!” called out General Sting, putting on his white ceremonial robes which had a symbol of two swords crossing each other in a cross. When he finished putting on his ceremonial robes, he pulled a cinnamon pipe out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth, walking up to his grey stone-carved seat.

“What?!” gasped Max in horror. “You can’t be fucking serious!”

“Yep, you better believe it kid!” sneered General Sting, jumping into his seat and lighting his cinnamon pipe with his lighter, taking a long drag and blowing a large cloud of smoke out of his 3 ocelli holes (ant nostrils). The circular end of the pipe glowed bright orange as it burned and simmered, filling the air with a burning cinnamon smell. “I am the minister for defence”

“Your majesty, you can’t be serious!” gasped Max. “This guy fucking hates my guts! My trial is going to be completely rigged and bullshit if he’s allowed to participate in the decision-making!”

“Silence child!” barked Queen Dakota loudly. “I think you will find that I am in charge around here!”

“Oh, so now you respect her when your life is on the line!” jeered General Sting, blowing another cloud of cinnamon smoke from his mouth.

“Fuck you bitch!” Max growled under his breath. “I swear when I get big again, I am going to hire a pest exterminator to kill all of you assholes”

“I’m sorry, what was that Max?” Princess Penelope frowned, looking at him. 

 “Nothing” Max grumbled.

“Okay bring out the first suspect on trial!” called Queen Dakota.

General Claw grabbed the first ant suspect in handcuffs next to Max, who was an ant in a security uniform, dragging him to the oval raised platform and clicking his handcuffs into the chain hooks, so that he was forced into a kneeling position, grovelling directly in front of the Queen’s feet with the 7 government ministers surrounding him, seated in a circle.

 “Okay, Mr Node Abraham Exoman” stated the Queen, reading out a piece of paper that had been handed to her by one of the government ministers. “You stand here today accused of gross negligence and intoxication and failing to do your job which had disastrous consequences”.

“Your majesty please!” pleaded Node with tears in his eyes. “I have never drunk alcohol in my life!”

“Then how come when my guards found you, you were found smelling like sugar whiskey, completely passed out!” stated Queen Dakota angrily.

“I don’t know to be honest” stammered Node. “To be honest I think I have been set up! Someone spiked my drink and framed me!”

Queen Dakota laughed and said, “You really expect me to believe all that fanatical bullshit!”

Node whimpered and turned his head down, a few tears trickling down his cheeks.

“Because of your negligence of failing to guard the gates at the exit depot station, a little child was able to escape all the way up to the surface and almost got himself killed!” shouted Queen Dakota. “A fucking child almost died because of you! May I remind you how serious your charges are!”

“Hey, I’m no child!” called out Squirt, stepping forward much to the shock and embarrassment of his mother Ava.

“What the?” gasped the Queen. “Why aren’t you two with the rest of the public audience?”

“Mum, they came with me” replied Princess Penelope.

“Oh, sweetheart thank you for letting me know,” said Queen Dakota.

“Please I don’t want anyone to be executed because of me…..” stammered Squirt.

“Squirt, be quiet!” squealed Ava. “Sorry your majesty for my son speaking out of term”

“Your son also committed some very serious crimes” explained Queen Dakota. “He hid as a stowaway at the back of one of the mechanical pods and snuck onto the surface 9 years under the legal age!”

 Ava’s face flushed red with embarrassment.

“You are so young,” said Queen Dakota, looking at Squirt. “You are not even old enough to go into our juvenile detention facility where you must be at least 12 years old. Just 6 months under the minimum criminal age of responsibility.”

“But I…” began Squirt.

“So, I think your punishment can be handed down by your mother” stated Queen Dakota.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Ava. “I assure you your majesty; Squirt will be severely punished”

“As for you,” said the Queen, angrily glaring at Node who was shackled in front of her. “You will not be receiving the death sentence….” promoting a relieved sigh from Node. “But you will still be punished….”

Queen Dakota then turned to the minister of the nursery and breeding chambers, which was an elderly woman wearing glasses and an emblem of two-parent ants and a baby ant breaking out of an egg on the front of her robe. “What do you think?”

“I say definitely add child endangerment as a charge” she replied.

 “And job negligence” piped the minister for transportation. “Since this is my sector that this happened in, I think it is fair to add this charge as well”

“Okay it is decided then,” said the Queen, opening up a large book on judicial law on her lap. “Let’s see child endangerment + job negligence =?”

“You are sentenced to 21 days general imprisonment at Hell’s gate prison” she stated finally.

“WHAT?!” screamed Node. “NOOOO!!!”

“Maybe next time you will take your job more seriously and not get others killed…” she warned him sternly.

“Your Majesty PLEASE!” screamed Node as two ant guards, wrapped their 4 arms around his body and unshackled him from the post, dragging him away towards an exit passageway in handcuffs.

“PLEASE I BEG YOU!!” he screamed.

“He deserves it” smiled Ava, rubbing her son Squirt on the head, “After almost getting you killed”

“I didn’t want anyone to get hurt because of me” stammered Squirt with tears in his eyes.

“I HAVE BEEN SET UP!!” wailed Node as he was dragged away. “WE HAVE A TRAITOR AMONG US!!”

“Yeesh, what a whiner” smirked General Claw.

“Okay that’s one guy down” sighed Queen Dakota. “Who’s next?”

Max started shivering uncontrollably in fear, terrified of what could happen in his trial. If this was how ruthless and savage the queen was towards crimes like this, he was petrified of what kind of sentence he would receive for literally threatening their very society. A few tears trickled down his cheeks.

He suddenly felt a feeler on his shoulder and spun his head around and was shocked to see Princess Penelope beaming at him, just above his head while he was kneeling down.

“Don’t worry” she smiled. “I am the queen’s daughter. I will make sure that my mum goes easy on you!”

“Okay, bring out the next suspect!” called out Queen Dakota, taking another long drag out of her cinnamon pipe. The end of the pipe turned bright red as she sucked in the smoke and blew a puffy cloud of smoke.

The next suspect was not so innocent looking like Node and was quite intimidating and scary. He had the body of a bodybuilder with rippling muscles and an 8-pack, wearing a bright red-orange jacket with a flame design pattern logo on the back of his jacket. Covering his 4 black exoskeleton arms were red and orange flame-patterned swirls which Max recognised had to be their equivalent of tattoos.

Since he was a stronger figure, General Claw himself and two other ant guards dragged the handcuffed suspect to the oval raised platform and locked his handcuffs into the chain locks of the podium post, forcing him to also kneel directly in front of the queen and be surrounded in a circle by the 7 government ministers.

“Mr……Cuddles!” Queen Dakota frowned in surprise, looking over his documentation that had been handed to her by one of the government ministers. “That’s seriously your name? You are not known by any other names?”

“Yes, your majesty” grunted the Prisoner.

 “Okay….” said Queen Dakota, shuffling through the documentation. “You stand here today accused of………HOLY FUCKING GAIA!!” she squealed. “40 FUCKING HOMICIDES!!”

The audience gasped with shock and horror as the Queen read out his charges.

“You, Cuddles, are a convicted serial killer known for murdering 40 ants over a period of 11 years, throughout the whole of Antopia” the Queen read out in disgust. “Multiple corpses have been found in the Metropolis, Insectwood, The Food Processing factory and even the transportation tunnels.”

“Holy fuck!” she muttered to herself. “40 murders. “My mind fails to comprehend what a sick bastard you are!”

‘He’s been murdering since my sister was born’ thought Max as he was listening to all of this. ‘Damn’

“For so long the authorities could never find the evil killer. But thanks to advances in technology by our friend over here, the minister for education and scientific research” she stated pointing to an ant in a lab coat. Max gasped in shock as he squinted his eyes and recognised the ant in the lab coat, it was Dr Thorax, the ant that had created the formula and shot him, to shrink him in the first place.

‘So, Dr Thorax is the minister of education and scientific research’ Max thought to himself. ‘Damn I can’t believe I have already met several members of the government of this weird society

“We have been able to do advanced DNA testing to find the culprit” she concluded.

Cuddles remained silent, looking at the ground solemnly.

“Well!” she snarled. “Why did you kill all those innocent ants!”

“Oh, come on your majesty, they were complete fucking assholes!” he replied angrily. “They deserved what they got!”

Disgusted, the Queen looked at him with angry tears in her eyes.

“You are so disgusting…you know that right?” she said, glaring at him.

“When you were being an asshole to me, I wasn’t just going to stick you an inch, I was going to run something all the way fucking through you….” he jeered.

Another elderly ant in a white ceremonial robe with an emblem of a few city skyscrapers on his front piped up and added “It says he your majesty” flicking through the pages of a document “That all the victims he hated and had personal grudges with”

Max assumed that this had to be the Minister for The Metropolis.

“Is that so” snarled Queen Dakota. “That’s your response? They were being a bit mean to you, so you decided to fucking kill them all!”

“Yes” replied Cuddles sarcastically.

“Oh, my Gaia” the queen sighed, facepalming.

“That’s not all he did your majesty” replied General Sting. “The way he killed his victims was absolutely barbaric and depraved…” fiddling with a few buttons and a control button on the desk in front of him.

Suddenly the plasma tv screen above them burst into life and the crowd gasped in horror at the graphic images being displayed on the screen.

A photograph of an autopsy of one of the victims showed her face so fucked up and disfigured, it was to the point it was completely unrecognisable. Her eyeball was ripped out of her socket and hanging by a single fleshy thread, the mandibles ripped clean off and her mouth and cheeks bludgeoned to the point of being a twisted, mangled pile of exoskeleton shards and flesh pointing inwards into her shattered skull. It was clear that Cuddles bashed this victim to death by bludgeoning her to death with a rock by smashing her face 50 times.

“Why did you kill this poor woman?” inquired Queen Dakota.

“She was being a dirty little slut and a fucking whore!” laughed Cuddles. “I fucked her at the brothel and asked her if she wanted to go out for dinner, but she said I had a small cock!”

“So, you killed her because she said you had a small penis,” asked the queen in disbelief.

“Um, yeah!” snickered Cuddles.

“You know you are really making it hard for me to find excuses not to impose the death penalty on you” she stated.

“Fucking hell, the only other creature who fucks up an ant corpse this bad is the demon child,” she said to herself while looking at the grotesque gruesome photo of the poor ant prostitute.

“That’s not all he has been up to your majesty,” said Dr Thorax who was also the minister for education and scientific research, handing her a stack of equipment. “Cuddles has also been involved in several gang-related activities, particularly involving smuggling technology to prison gangs inside Hell’s gate prison”

“What?!” gasped the Queen. “Let me see!”

Picking up the equipment piled up at her feet, Queen Dakota was shocked to find earthworm summoning and communication sets, sand grain guns, light rays, splinter swords and raw cinnamon smoking powder and pipes.

“So, this is why there have been so many murders and breakouts in Hell’s gate prison recently!” exclaimed the queen. “I was wondering where they were getting all this stuff from!

Narrowing her eyes on Cuddles she inquired, “How did you get past all the security to smuggle in all this stuff?” she inquired.

“I think I can answer that as well your majesty” stated Dr Thorax. “He has been using earthworms to carve secret elaborate tunnels using the communication equipment under his complete control.

Queen Dakota then came across a chest with a large bulky metallic latch.

“What’s in here?” she frowned.

“No don’t open that!” squealed cuddles as the queen jerked it open.

“I beg to differ” she snorted.

“What the?” she gasped, “What are all these unlabelled conical disks with weird symbols on them?”

“I will play it on the plasma screen and see what it is” replied General Sting grabbing one of them and pushing it into the conical, disk slots on the table in front of him next to the control panel.

“Noooo please don’t play it!!” Cuddles screamed.

The crowd was in for the shock of their lives.

Imagine their horror when they saw a sexually graphic x18+ scene flash on the plasma screen in front of them, loud, big, and bright for everyone to see. The scene depicted a female ant prostitute or porn star in a gimp mask and a collar, performing oral sex on a male ant. The male ant was holding a leash attached to her collar with her kneeling down and her face in his abdomen crotch area where the semi-circle opening was fully open and exposed. He was erotically moaning as the female’s mandibles gripped tightly and moved up and down his erect penis with a little bit of blue-coloured semen leaking out as he repeatedly called her a dirty whore and a slut and pulled on her leash. It appeared that it was some kind of illegal hardcore BDSM pornography film with prohibited sexual exploitation content.

It is safe to say that Queen Dakota was not amused.

“Ewwwww!!” she screamed closing her eyes and waving her arms around. “Gross! Gross! Gross! Fucking Gross! Turn that off right now! My daughter is here! There are children here!”

The parents in the audience screamed and covered their children’s eyes, not wanting to be exposed to that disgusting sexually graphic content 

Red-faced and embarrassed, General Sting frantically began pressing buttons, desperately trying to eject the conical disk from the plasma disk player, next to the control panel. After around 10 seconds the disk ejected, disappearing from the plasma screen. Unfortunately, around 12 seconds of the illegally made and distributed pornography film had already been shown to an audience of around 1000 ants.

“You sick fuck….” she snarled at Cuddles. “You must be into sexual sadism or sadomasochism!”

“That wasn’t for me!” he explained.

“What?!” gasped Queen Dakota.

“It appears that Cuddles has also been smuggling hardcore pornography to the prison inmates,” said General Sting, as he looked through the chest on his desk that had been given to him by Queen Dakota. “Particularly the sexually exploitative and sexually graphic violent ones”

Max was also trying not to puke after seeing that x18+ snapshot scene. That was the first time he had actually seen non-human pornography and he was quite disturbed by it.

‘Bestiality porn’ he cringed to himself. ‘I swear I need to wash my eyeballs after seeing that….’

“Check this out,” said General Sting, going through a stack of photographs that had a bunch of scantily clad ant prostitutes and porn stars smoking cinnamon pipes in very sexual and erotic poses, blowing smoke out of their mouths. One image even had a cinnamon pipe inserted into one woman’s vagina, the pipe fully lit while it was inserted and blowing smoke out of the remaining bottom gap of her vaginal opening. “I swear Cuddles; you definitely have some kind of smoking fetish!”

 Sneering at Cuddles, he took another drag of his cinnamon pipe and blew a cloud of smoke in his face. 

“Does that turn you on?” he jeered.

“You know what, I have seen enough!” growled Queen Dakota. “You, Cuddles, are clearly a very disturbed man who can never ever be released into society. I have only one final solution….”

The government ministers all turned their heads towards him, glaring at him with pure hatred in their eyes.

“The sentence of this court!” she called loudly into the megaphone. “Is this man be taken to our lawful prison!”

The crowd erupted into cheers and whooping.

“Then to a place of execution!” she exclaimed. The crowds cheered loudly and cries of ‘kill that fucker!’ and ‘he must die painfully!’ were heard throughout the crowd.

“Where he will be showered with Mortein in an execution chamber!” she growled sinisterly into the megaphone.

“Until he is dead!” she concluded loudly into the megaphone.

“Fuck Yeah!” the crowd shouted.

“What kind of a sick society is this?!” gasped Max. In Australia, they hadn’t carried out executions in nearly 50 years in the justice system. Even in America where they still carried out executions of convicted criminals, it happened behind closed doors, not publicised like this.

‘The crowd are baying for blood like in a gladiator match!’ thought Max to himself. ‘They are just a bunch of fucking savages!’

It is safe to say Cuddles was absolutely shocked by his sentence.

“What!” he shrieked. “I thought I was getting a life sentence, not the death penalty!”

“Take this fucking scum away!” she growled, pointing at him.

“NOOO PLEASE!!” screamed Cuddles as he was detached from the podium post and roughly handled by 5 ant guards. He screamed with tears flowing down his cheeks, kicking, thrashing, and squirming, trying to break free. The guards responded by roughhousing him and hitting him with their stone truncheons, resulting in him moaning in pain.

“YOUR MAJESTY, PLEASE HAVE MERCY!” he cried, sobbing as he was being dragged towards an exit passageway. “I DON’T WANT TO CHEMICALLY BURN TO DEATH BY MORTEIN!”

 “Your majesty, please don’t sentence my nephew to death!” cried out a voice in the crowd. Shocked, Queen Dakota looked up to see an elderly female ant in a brown bonnet and black dress with white polka dots, running towards them, from the first row of seating towards the central area.

“He didn’t seem to care about the families and friends of his victims when he slaughtered them” explained Queen Dakota sternly. “He didn’t seem to care that the victims had a mother, a father, a brother, and a sister that would miss them dearly. So yeah, I think the death penalty is very appropriate in this case”

“My nephew is mentally unstable,” cried the old lady ant, kneeling in front of her with tears trickling down her cheeks “He has bipolar disorder and an IQ of 65. Please spare him from the death sentence and give him life in prison instead”

“You must be his great aunt….” concluded the Queen. “I am sorry, but your nephew seemed to be very cunning and intelligent when he was smuggling all that disgusting shit into Hell’s Gate prison. So sorry I will not be revoking the death sentence”

This was the final straw for Cuddles’ great aunt. She had tried being so kind and polite to the queen and tried to convince her of her case, yet she still stated that her nephew deserved to die.

“FUCK YOU!!” she screamed, charging at her. “YOU EVIL BITCH!!”

Cuddle’s great-aunt tried to lunge at Queen Dakota, but she was intercepted by General Claw who grabbed her and hoisted her up onto his shoulder, slinging her onto his shoulder with her facing backwards towards the Queen.

“This isn’t over!” she screamed. “You will pay for this!”

“I will take her just outside the High Court Chambers for some time-out,” said General Claw as he carried the screaming and wailing elderly woman towards one of the exit passageways.

Max was greatly disturbed by the savageness and ruthlessness Queen Dakota had shown towards her perceived enemies. Once she decided you were her enemy, she showed you absolutely no mercy.

‘Note to self’ he thought to himself. ‘Don’t fuck with Queen Dakota’

“Okay then!” exclaimed Queen Dakota, focussing her attention on Max Firewall. “I guess that just leaves you, huh young man?”

Max gulped nervously.

“The very first human on ant trial!” she smiled, rubbing her feelers with glee. “This is a historic day for all of us! This is going to be a very interesting trial indeed….”

 Meanwhile……

Rebecca crouched down and unclipped the back strap buckles of her saltwater sandals at the back of her heel, sliding her naked bare feet out of her sandals. Wiggling her dark green-painted toes happily, she sucked on the cigarette in her mouth, with the butt end glowing bright reddish orange. Gripping the cigarette between her purple-painted middle finger and pointer finger, she blew a cloud of smoke from her mouth.

Her husband Robert Firewall rolled his eyes as his wife blew a cloud of tobacco smoke directly in front of his face, with the real estate agent coughing and spluttering a little bit as he breathed in the smoke.

“You know honey, you have been smoking since you were 17” he lectured sternly. “You should have quit by now! All this smoking is really eating away at our bills you know!”

“Oh, come on Robert, it’s a great stress reliever!” pouted Rebecca. “Ugh, my feet are all slimy and sweaty” she frowned, feeling a coat of sticky foot sweat covering her entire foot. Wiggling her slimy toes, she noticed that she was leaving sweaty footprints everywhere she walked. Embarrassed she wiped her feet on the welcome mat.

As she walked a little bit further forward, a poor little pill bug that had wandered into her oncoming path didn’t realise what had hit him until it was too late. Pill bugs were a lot bigger than ants at around 4 to 5 times their size, around the size of a large shirt button. However, Rebecca was too busy enjoying her cigarette and walking around lazily that she didn’t even look down. He looked up one final time to see an enormous barefoot with a filthy brown sole covered in dark brown dirt covering his entire perceptual vision with dark green wiggling painted toes. He closed his eyes and braced for the end.

Squish!

Rebecca frowned with the cigarette in her mouth, feeling a jelly-like squelch under her dark, green-painted big toe on her left foot as she lazily trudged down the entrance hallway. Pulling the cigarette out of her mouth, blowing a cloud of smoke, and flicking the ash out of the smouldering end of her cigarette butt, she balanced on her right foot and looked down at the sole of her left foot.

“Ewww I feel something squishy!” she exclaimed.

Narrowing her eyes, she noticed a mangled, gooey black fat blob pasted on the bottom of her big toe, with a haemolymph puddle surrounding it with bits of insect legs sticking out.

“Ewww gross, I think I just crushed a bug!” she squealed. “Since when do we have bugs in this house?!”

Robert snickered under his breath.

“This isn’t funny Robert!” she yelled. “Ewww, its disgusting goo is all over my big toe!” she squealed, rubbing her toe vigorously and frantically, smothering his broken corpse into the tiled floor, trying to get the nasty stuff off her toe, leaving a long blackish brown smear on the white tiled floor.

“Oh, come on….” she moaned as she looked at the black dried patch on the bottom of her big toe. “Now I have to go and wash my feet. I just took my sandals off….”

Robert looked down at the black smear on the floor. “Yeah, I am not cleaning up your mess….”

“Whatever!” she replied taking her last drag of her almost finished smouldering cigarette and blowing out one final cloud of tobacco smoke.  Reaching for an ashtray on the entrance table, she pressed her cigarette butt into the ashtray, the butt folding and bending into a scrunched ball of tobacco paper, as she squeezed the butt between her purple-painted pointer finger, middle finger, and thumb. The butt sizzled and fizzed out as she twisted and pressed the butt into the ashtray, leaving nothing but a fresh layer of tobacco ash and a shrivelled cigarette butt.

“Lucy! Sweetheart!” Rebecca called out upstairs.

“Go Away!” Lucy screamed.

Robert raised his eyebrows. “Well, she’s certainly turning into a moody hormonal teenager,” he said.

“I will go talk to her….” sighed Rebecca, starting her ascent upstairs.

“And I will talk to Max…” stated Robert, also trudging up the stairs.

Rebecca Firewall trudged up the wooden u-shape staircase and walked into Lucy’s room, which was on the left-hand side of the upstairs hallway. She spotted her daughter sitting on her bed with her legs stretched out and back pressing up against two pink pillows, sadly staring at the photo of her and Divya.

“What’s wrong sweetheart?” she asked. “Why are you so grumpy?”

Lucy looked up angrily at her mother, glaring at her and replied, “Leave me alone!”

Rebecca smiled and sat beside her on the bed on the right-hand side, also putting her legs up and wiggling her dark green painted toes in the coolness of the room and putting her hand on her shoulder.

“You know when things can seem a little bit blown out of proportion? You know when it is around that age when girls start becoming young ladies and get their first you know?” she asked sheepishly.

This infuriated Lucy even more, with her jerking her head towards her and saying “Oh my god! Is that why you think I am upset?! You think I got my first period!”  

Rebecca was surprised that her daughter had mentioned it so directly without her even mentioning it, asking “Oh, you know a lot about it already?!”

“Yes!” she replied grumpily. “Mrs Stevens, our health, and human development teacher have already started teaching us girls about what is happening to our bodies around adolescence. So yes, I am very fully well aware of what a period is!”

“Oh, okay sweetie!” said Rebecca, holding her hands up defensively.

“For your information, I am not moody and grumpy because I am on my first period!” she shouted.

“Oh, okay so then why are you upset?” questioned Rebecca.

Sadly, Lucy confessed “Divya hates me. I think I pushed her away forever...” 

 “Oh sweetie,” said Rebecca, putting her arms around her in a tight hug. “Sometimes as you are growing up you accidentally push away your closest childhood friends because we as people change, as our interests, character, and behaviours develop as we get older. But it’s not always forever. You and Divya have been best friends for 4.5 years. I am sure you two will work out your differences eventually…”

Tearfully smiling, Lucy hugged her mother back; “Thanks mum”

Getting up off the bed, Rebecca stated, “Now I have to go talk to your father” she said sauntering out of the room, towards the opposite side of the hallway where she was shocked to see Robert just loitering around outside Max’s closed bedroom door.

“What’s going on?” she questioned him angrily. “Why aren’t you talking to him?”

“A closed bedroom door for a teenage boy is a bad sign” explained Robert sheepishly. “He’s probably doing something really private and intimate”

“I don’t follow!” shouted Rebecca angrily. “What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Because” Robert sighed “I don’t want to barge in there and catch him with his pants down and his dick hanging out. I get the feeling that he is jerking off to porn….”

This enraged Rebecca: “That’s disgusting Robert! Not in my House!” she yelled, charging towards the closed bedroom door, however, Robert put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“He’s 16 now, he’s at that age now Rebecca…” he sighed. “Let’s just let him be….”

This shook Rebecca right to her core. “Oh my god Robert, did all the reckless stuff I did as a rebellious teenager really set the bar that fucking low!” she gasped in horror.

Robert just facepalmed. She just didn’t understand how the teenage male brain worked. Let alone any other woman.

“So, you are perfectly fine with your 16-year-old son, accessing x18+ sexually explicit porn sites when he is clearly underage!” she yelled.

“You would be shocked to know that 90% of underage teenage boys have accessed adult 18+ sites when they were clearly not supposed to!” stated Robert. “They are curious and a little bit rebellious, it’s in their nature. When an underage teenage boy sees an 18+ age rating he’s thinking to himself fuck that, I’m mature enough to handle it!”.

Rebecca couldn’t believe the shocking and disgusting filth coming out of her husband’s mouth, trying to justify their son’s actions. “So, you are perfectly fine with your son touching himself to images and videos of scantily clad, half-naked women?” she snarled.

“Well, at least he’s not gay!” laughed Robert.

“Un-fucking believable!” Rebecca snarled.

“I have something to confess,” said Robert sheepishly. “When I was 14, me, my younger brother and my best friend stole my father’s adult 18+ Playboy magazine to have a sneak peek at it.”

“I can’t believe this!” said Rebecca in disgust walking away from Max’s closed bedroom door and walking back towards the wooden u-shape staircase. “I think I need another cigarette….”

“And I think I need a can of Mercury Cider…” stated Robert, rolling his eyes and sauntering after her.

 Lucy heard her parents arguing and smirked to herself ‘Happy family’.

A few minutes later she heard more shouting downstairs.

“REBECCA!! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!!” screamed Robert downstairs. “DID YOU SPEND $45.99 ON FUCKING CIGARETTES?!”

‘Yep,’ Lucy smirked to herself. ‘One big happy family….’

None of the Firewalls had noticed that Max was missing yet……

Meanwhile….

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” loudly called out Queen Dakota into the megaphone, to the audience of 1000 ants. “Today is one of the most important and most historic days in the entire history of Antopia! For the first time in history, our species has managed to capture and control a human! Think about that for a second! A creature 50000 times bigger than us and with 100000 times the strength was able to be shrunk down and held at our mercy because we were able to use our brains instead of our brawn! This really has shown us brains truly is better than brawn!”

The crowd erupted into cheers and roars of approval, with dozens of ants even throwing their caps into the air and jumping up and down in glee.

“Bring the prisoner here!” announced Queen Dakota.

Max shivered with fear as two ant guards grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him to the oval raised platform and podium post, hooking his handcuffs into the chain hooks. This left Max completely at her mercy as he was forced to kneel and be shackled directly in front of her throne at her feet with all the government ministers surrounding him in a circle, glaring at him angrily.

When the crowd and some of the government ministers looked at Max’s face, however, their cheers immediately died down.

“The little monster was a human girl, not a boy!” called out someone in the crowd.

“Do we know this human?” called out another.

“He also looks kind of familiar?!” piped another.

“Apologies, ladies and gentlemen,” said Queen Dakota sheepishly. “I was informed earlier today by my daughter Penelope, General Sting and the Minister for Education and Scientific Research Dr Thorax that the wrong human was accidentally shrunk by a misfired shrinking dart and a case of mistaken identity. Unfortunately, only one dart was prepared so we are unable to shrink our intended target at the moment…”

This sent the crowd into a panicked wild rage. Screams of panic and horror echoed throughout the crowd with some ants breaking down and sobbing into tears.

“Does this mean we are still going to become attacked by the little monster?” cried an ant mother in the crowd.

“Well done, Dr Thorax you fucking dumbass!” yelled another man in the crowd. “All your research and hard work were for nothing! Thanks to you we are still going to get continuously attacked by her and ants will continue to die! What use is this random human?!”

“SILENCE!” screamed Queen Dakota into the megaphone, banging her staff onto the ground. The crowd immediately hushed and fell silent.

“Now this would normally be bad news, but General Sting and my little girl have given me some more inside information into who this human actually is. Turns out he’s not just some random human. Turns out he’s actually the older brother of our enemy!” 

The crowd gasped in shock and awe as this new information was brought forward into the light.

“That vile cruel monster actually has a family?” gasped the Minister for the nursery and breeding chambers. “Damn she’s so ruthless, self-absorbed and full of hatred you would think she doesn’t care for anything and anyone other than herself and has no one that actually loves her and cares for her”

This deeply offended Max. No one talks shit about his sister other than him!

“How fucking dare you talk about my sister like that bitch!” he yelled at her.

The Minister for the nursery and breeding chambers laughed and jeered at him, stating “I can see where she gets her aggression from!”

“Yes” agreed Queen Dakota. “In fact, after obtaining some more evidence from Dr Thorax I think many of our enemy’s traits have been picked up and learned by others.”

 The crowd gasped. Max could feel around 1000 pairs of eyeballs pointed in his direction.

“Particularly him” she snarled, pointing at him.

Max gulped nervously as he saw the queen staring him down.

“Okay, Mr………. Fuck, what’s your name again? You are not a citizen of Antopia so I have no identity documents on you….” said Queen Dakota, looking around in confusion.

“His name is Max, mum” replied Princess Penelope, stepping forward.

“Okay, Mr…. Max” sighed the queen. “I grew up with 4 older siblings. 2 brothers and 2 sisters. And believe me, when I say it, the younger siblings learn a lot from their older siblings. Even if they don’t show it or admit to it, they will always eventually try to imitate them and pick subtle messages of what is right and what is wrong”

Queen Dakota then death stared him right in the eye.

“And you as the older brother haven’t exactly been setting a good example…” she growled. “Particularly for how she treats us…”

 “Should we hold him for ransom your majesty?” suggested the Minister for the nursery and breeding chambers. “I will be very curious to see how much his sister cares for him or whether his sister even cares about him at all!”

Max’s blood had really started to boil now. The nerve of these ants to get so up and personal about him!

“I guess we will have to wait and see after his trial has been completed” stated the queen. “Dr Thorax, please bring out the first batch of evidence”

 “You know what they say, as a line from a famous movie once said” stated the queen. “There is no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher…”

‘Wait, what?’ thought Max to himself. ‘Isn’t that from the Karate Kid? How the fuck do they know about that film?!’

The audience had now erupted into a bloodthirsty hungry mob, hurling insults at Max, and even throwing projectiles at him. A large chunk of seed hit Max square in the back, knocking the wind out of him for a second. Several loud boos were also heard throughout the crowd. 

“Disgusting creature!” yelled out one woman in the audience.

“Fuck off and die!” yelled another man.

Princess Penelope stepped out in front of him in a protective stance. “Okay that’s enough now everyone, knock it off!”

The crowd stopped throwing projectiles but continued loudly booing and hurling more offensive insults.

“Anyway…,” said Queen Dakota. “Let’s get this trial underway then…”

Dr Thorax picked up a silver conical disk from the desk in front of him, grimacing at the violent and graphic content contained on it.

“Do you want to see something really disturbing your majesty?” stammered Dr Thorax fearfully.

“If I need to” replied Queen Dakota. “For any sensitive members in the audience and children, it is strongly recommended that you please not watch the terrifying and gruesome footage”

Dr Thorax inserted the disk into the plasma disk player. 

Children being children, especially teenagers did not look away and decided to watch, thinking they were mature enough to handle it.

To say the footage was disturbing was an understatement. No one was prepared for the horrors that were about to unfold on screen.

The plasma screen portrayed what appeared to be medium close-up footage of a soldier ant, screaming, and writhing in excruciating pain under the concentrated rays of the hot sun. The sun’s heat and intensity seemed to have been greatly increased in strength by a large circular sheet of glass passing the rays of the sun through it, hovering above him with a black plastic frame and a long thin black handle. As Max focussed his eyesight, he realised he was looking at a magnifying glass.

The magnifying glass had concentrated the spread-out rays of the sun ray into a packed singular beam, greatly increasing the temperature and burning anything that came into contact with it due to its high temperature. The poor ant was literally being cooked alive by a giant light beam, his exoskeleton absorbing all that heat and cooking his insides.

“AAAAAAAHHH” shrieked the ant on screen. “OH FUCK, IT BURNS! IT BURNS! PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP!! IT HURTS! PLEASE SOMEBODY AAHHHHHHH!!!”

His exoskeleton had literally started to form large cracks with whisps of steam billowing out. His organs were literally being evaporated at boiling point, every second he was exposed, and the exoskeleton began to crack and split apart to relieve the heat and pressure building up inside of him.

As the pain intensified his movements became more frantic, twitching and desperately trying to crawl to get out of the palm of the light beam but it was in vain as the death ray followed him wherever he went. As the footage continued, the sound of giggling could be heard.

The footage then cut to a different camera angle and a new zoomed-out perspective. It showed Lucy Firewall kneeling in her blue chequered school dress, holding a magnifying glass over an ant. As the ant’s movements of pain grew more vigorous, her enjoyment only seemed to grow, with her smiling and laughing, as the ant’s pain grew greater and greater.

“Look at the pathetic little thing, wiggling!” she jeered.

After around 20 seconds, the ant stopped wiggling, indicating it had died. Lucy was disappointed that he had died so quickly.

“Aww he stopped moving” she pouted. “I thought he was stronger”

The footage then changed to another close-up shot of the dead ant’s corpse. The audience screamed in horror as they saw what had become of the poor soldier ant. The ant’s corpse had literally split open like an egg due to the build-up of heat and pressure with charred ash and charcoal remains covering his entire body and surrounding it.

The footage then changed back to the zoomed-out shot of Lucy hovering over the group of soldier ants and harvester ant workers on no man’s land, kneeling and holding a magnifying glass over them. The ants shook in absolute fear as their entire perpetual view was filled by a giant sheet of glass moving above them like a judgement cloud, deciding which one of them was going to die next.

“Oh well, I guess that’s why there are more of these little fuckers for me to play with!” Lucy sneered

 A montage of footage was then displayed, showing ants screaming and running away from the path of the magnifying glass in different directions, trying to escape the carnage and death path of the magnifying glass as it burned anything that was unfortunate to stay under the glass for too long. It took around 5 to 10 seconds for the magnifying glass to concentrate a light beam lethal enough for killing or destruction, hovering above a certain area or group of ants, sometimes creating little black burnt spots in the ground after 15 seconds. Some ants were lucky enough to hide under the grass blades to protect themselves from the rays, while others were not so lucky and were exposed to the lethal rays, succumbing very similarly to the first ant death.

Queen Dakota grimaced and cringed at the brutal violence. Max was so shocked he couldn’t utter a single word.

When a creature is small enough or distanced themselves enough, it is easy not to regard that creature as even a proper living thing. When you can’t see their facial expressions, their cries, and screams and most of the time even the close-ups of their body language or movements, what’s to stop a person from feeling any emotional connection at all? After all pain and suffering are measured by all of the factors above and when a person can’t see these things it becomes very easy to desensitize themselves to their suffering.

In this case, the sheer size of humans and the tiny size of the ants had created this gap in understanding.

“Okay, now let’s look at what the wise big brother’s response was” stated Queen Dakota sarcastically.

New snapshot footage at a different camera angle and perspective was shown replaying what Max had said to his sister when he caught her in the act.

“I would have thought this behaviour was cute when you were 7 years old but now you are going to become officially a teenager in less than a year. Here you are, 11 years old and three-quarters and still fucking around with the ants outside!” said a Max on a giant plasma screen to an audience of around 1000 ants.

 The audience gasped in shock and horror at such an insensitive and trivial response.

“You know if your sister was killing other humans or even creatures slightly larger than ants, I bet you would have intervened and stopped her immediately” lectured Queen Dakota.

“But I did intervene” stammered Max. “I did stop her from what she was doing”

“Yes, but not for the reasons that would be ethical and right,” said Queen Dakota.

The footage then cut to an excerpt of Max saying: “Go inside and study now sis! I am not going to ask again!”

“So rather than tell your sister how wrong it is to kill others for fun, you instead brushed it off as a minor inconvenience and told her to study instead!” lectured the queen. “In fact, I heard you say something really disgusting! You said her behaviour was cute!”

Max was now fed up with being attacked and now had some things of his own to say in his defence.

“Wait for a second! Wait! Wait! Wait! Time out!” shouted Max. “How was I supposed to know that ants had feelings, families or even a functioning society?!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” growled the queen angrily with disgust.

“Well, I just thought ants were mindless clone drones with no self-consciousness and awareness of their surroundings that did nothing but wiggle and crawl around all day,” explained Max. “Let’s be honest, I just thought you were a bunch of stupid ants!”

“Wow!” gasped Queen Dakota with incredible disgust and disbelief. “You know I am starting to think that General Sting has a point. You humans think you are gods, and the entire world revolves around you!”

“Also” she snarled, “What do you mean we have to be intelligent for you to respect us? Do you just kill stupid people because they haven’t gained your respect?!”

“Umm no,” Max confessed.

“Precisely,” said the queen. “How about leaving us the fuck alone and respecting us just because we have the will to live just like any other creature on the planet!”

Max looked down red-faced and embarrassed. The queen had demolished every single one of his arguments. He had been utterly destroyed in his debate with her.

‘Now I see why no one fucks with Queen Dakota’ he thought to himself. ’She’s such a badass.  

“Hey wait a minute?” he asked. “If you are so small, how did you get all that footage from multiple different zoomed-out angles?”

 “That would be thanks to our resident genius over here” she stated, pointing at Dr Thorax who waved at him and smiled proudly. “The minister for education and scientific research. Very recently he was able to create around 100-sugar aphid-sized drones that hover in the air at different heights in the air, above the surface to capture all the shenanigans that happen on the surface. The best part about them is that they are too small to be seen with the naked human eye, so they go completely unnoticed!”

‘So now they are spying on us’ thought Max to himself. ‘How charming’

“Your majesty one of the drones captured some shocking audio of the demon child that was captured just last week” stated General Sting. “I think we better play it as well”

“Oh yes, we definitely should,” said the queen. “I want Max to see who his sister really is!”

Dr Thorax ejected the conical disk containing the magnifying glass massacre and inserted the disk containing Lucy’s rant. 

 The crisp audio contained Lucy’s voice; however, it wasn’t the sweet innocent voice Max had gotten accustomed to when she was younger, nor the annoying little sister’s bratty voice now. It was a hate-filled voice, dripping with absolute genocidal hatred.

“I AM COMING BACK HERE LIKE A FUCKING 100 TIMES!! I AM SO MAD!! I AM SO FUCKING MAD AT THESE DISGUSTING LITTLE ANTS!!” shrieked Lucy’s voice on the plasma tv, her terrifying voice bellowing from the speakers, striking fear throughout the entire audience.

The rant continued: “THEY DROVE HIM AWAY FROM ME!! THEY DON’T DO THIS TO FUCKING ME!! I AM GOING TO FUCKING RITUALISTICALLY HUMILIATE AND EXTERMINATE THEM ALL!!”

‘What?’ thought Max to himself. ‘Whose him? Who is she talking about?’

“I AM COMING BACK HERE EVERY FUCKING WEEKEND IF I HAVE TO!! LIKE THIS IS NEVER OVER!! I WIN!! THEY FUCKING LOSE!” Lucy continued screaming.

‘Holy shit’ gasped Max. ‘She sounds just like fucking Adolf Hitler’

“I RULE THE FUCKING WORLD!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “THOSE PIECES OF SHIT GET RULED BY PEOPLE LIKE ME!! THEY LOOK UP AND SEE A FACE LIKE MINE LOOKING DOWN ON THEM!!”

“THAT’S HOW THE FUCKING WORLD WORKS!!” concluded Lucy. “I AM GOING TO DESTROY THE ENTIRE FUCKING ANT COLONY AND THEIR PATHETIC LITTLE HILL, WHEREVER IT IS, WHEN I FIND IT!”

“Jesus Christ” gasped Max.

He knew that his sister didn’t like ants, but he never imagined that she hated ants on this level, like Adolf Hitler had with the Jews. Watching that rant made Max feel like he had been transported back to 1930s Germany.    

“You know Max, we have more footage, incriminating your sister” stated the Queen. “Would you like to see?”

Max didn’t respond.

“Mum, maybe we are being a little bit too harsh on him!” cried out Princess Penelope. “I mean he’s not the one actually killing us!”

Queen Dakota looked at her daughter “Yes, but he has certainly encouraged her behaviour. Remember the Aesop’s fable I told you about called ‘The Trumpeter Taken Prisoner’ when you were little? Remember the moral you learnt from that fable: He who encourages others is just as bad as the person actually committing the actions.”

Queen Dakota glared at Max and stated “We need to make sure that the message sinks in for him”

“I think these next few images will definitely help your majesty!” said General Sting, pulling out another conical disk and ejecting the previous audio file disk before injecting this one.

The following images displayed on the screen were nothing short of horrific.

Autopsy images had been taken of the soldiers that had been brutally killed by Lucy and brought back to the funeral parlour for identification, burial, and time stream processing. However, their bodies were so gruesomely mangled and ripped apart that it was impossible to tell what creature they were anymore, let alone who they actually were. And unlike the ant prostitute Cuddles had killed earlier, these ants were mutilated on a scale 1000 times worse.

The crowd screamed and sobbed in horror as the extremely graphic and disturbing images flashed in front of their eyes. Some ants’ intestines, stomachs, lungs, and hearts had been squeezed out of their mouths like toothpaste and left half hanging out, while other photos showed their corpses literally ripped to shreds and pieces, with their insides liquified into goo and spread out in a puddle. Looking at the images Max could tell they had been crushed by immense pressure causing their bodies to be so mutilated in such a way. It would be like placing a human in a trash compactor and flattening him until his body exploded into a fleshy mess of guts and bone shards.

When Max was normal-sized, it never bothered him since the gruesome gore was so small, he couldn’t even see it properly. But now close-up, he felt like he was looking at the bodies of people that had been blown to pieces by bombs or gone through a meat grinder.

“Oh my god,” Max groaned. “No more, please! It’s too disturbing”. Max then started making puking sounds, feeling extremely nauseous. “Oh no, I am going to be sick! Oh no, I am sick!”

“Blaughhhh!!” Max vomited all over the exoskeleton feet of the queen, covering them in yellowish-greenish vomit.

“Ah” she frowned. “All over my fucking feet. How charming”

“Do you understand what is at stake now?” she asked Max sternly.

Suddenly two ant guards came running from the entrance passageways, through the central area towards the throne to where the queen was sitting.

“Your majesty!” they cried. “We have some urgent news!”

The queen sighed and said, “This better be important! I am in the middle of a trial!”

“Horrible news!” they gasped. “Jack Feeler escaped, just hours before his scheduled execution!”

“What?!” shrieked Queen Dakota. “Put the whole of Antopia on lockdown and tell authorities to search every nook and cranny of the entire colony. I do not want that disgusting man escaping justice!”

“Actually, your majesty that won’t be necessary” piped Dr Thorax enthusiastically. “I actually invented biological chip trackers recently that are embedded in all death row inmates, while they are sedated within the first 7 days they are on death row, to ensure they don’t escape justice! Not only do they pinpoint the exact location of the death row inmate, but they also film their surroundings within a 200-metre radius. The best part about this is that they have no idea they are being tracked!”

Queen Dakota was ecstatic to hear this news. “Oh, thank you Dr Thorax!” she cried.  “I knew I made the right decision by making you the Minister for Education and Scientific Research! I am so sorry I yelled at you earlier for shrinking the wrong human! Your inventions have really helped Antopia in the last several months!”

“Thank you, your majesty!” he said proudly, smiling and beaming happily. He then proceeded to pull a portable device out of a sack on the ground next to his chair and began fiddling with a bunch of buttons.

“Okay let’s see here what the status of the device is,” he said looking at the device. “What?” he gasped. “Your majesty it says here he’s dead!”

“Really?” said the queen curiously. “I wonder who killed him?”

Dr Thorax then started playing the footage of the last 5 minutes taken of Jack Feeler’s life. When he saw the footage of what had happened to him, he started laughing then gasping in awe.

“What is it?” asked the queen. “Play the footage on the big plasma screen right now!”

“No problem” smirked Dr Thorax, plugging his device into a cable extension plug point that was protruding outside the control panel. “Everyone needs to see this”

The audience gasped in shock and horror as the face of a giant tween girl filled the screen of the plasma tv. However, it wasn’t the face of the demon child, it was the face of a brown Sri Lankan girl they had never ever seen before. The girl they were looking at was Divya Bandaranayake and she was exhibiting a completely different set of behaviours that they thought hadn’t been possible in humans before.

They saw the adorable 11-year-old girl deposit giant Oreo crumbs in front of Jack Feeler saying, “Eat up little guy!”

No one however was more shocked than Queen Dakota herself. She could not believe a human was capable of feelings like compassion and love towards her species before.

“Who is this sweet girl?” she asked. “I never ever, in 50 years of my life, see a human being behave like that with ants before!”

 “Princess Penelope stepped forward and stated “Mum I think that human said her name is Divya. I have more footage of how gentle she was being with some of the other ants today!”

“Oh wow!” exclaimed the queen. “Sweetheart, you have got to show me the footage after I am done with this human!”

The audience also had some questions.

“Are their other humans like this?” asked one woman.

“She can be our guardian angel!” cried out another man. “She can protect us from the little monster!”

Princess Penelope smirked and thought to herself ‘I really like the sound of that’.

“Okay people” interrupted General Sting. “Let’s not forget she represents only 0.01% of the human population. The rest of the humans either hate us or don’t give a shit about us!”

This greatly annoyed Princess Penelope, who believed humans could be made good by guidance and gentle persuasion. “Shut the fuck up, General Sting!” she snarled.     

The footage continued with Jack Feeler shouting obscenities at Divya.

“What a fucking scumbag!” snarled the queen. “Out of all the ants she could have cared for and looked after, it just had to be him that she came across! He certainly doesn’t deserve her kindness!”

Suddenly the footage took a dark turn. Jack Feeler cried and screamed like a baby, begging for mercy as a giant white barefoot with white toenail polish crashed on top of him. The audience heard the sickening sound of his body crunching under the immense weight of the 11-year-old tween girl. The audience knew exactly whose foot it was, since they had gotten accustomed to it slaughtering their friends and family.

“Wow” gasped the queen in awe. “Karma is beautiful, isn’t it!”

“Hell yeah it is!” shouted a woman in the audience.

Even though everyone hated him, they grimaced as they saw him first suffocating, then his organs including his lungs, stomach and intestines becoming grossly and violently squeezed out of his body through his mouth like a tube of toothpaste. Finally, they saw his exoskeleton shredding and ripping into several pieces.

The audience then heard the cruel sound of the voice of the demon child stating “Yuck…. That was a crunchy one…”. They also heard the voice of the other girl in the footage, Divya, screaming at her before punching her right in the face. The footage then cut out to black.

“Holy shit” gasped Queen Dakota. “The Divya girl is willing to fight for my people! Maybe she really can become Antopia’s guardian angel.”

The Queen then looked at Max with disdain. “You know your bitch of a sister could learn a lot from that other adorable angel girl. You as well, young man!”

Max just looked at her, baffled. “I’m sorry can you give me some context here? Why are you saying that guy deserved what he got?”

Queen Dakota sighed and said “Max that man was a convicted sex offender and paedophile with no remorse for his actions at all. He was an inhumane depraved monster. Well maybe not as much as your genocidal sister but pretty close”

The Minister for media, entertainment, and communications, who was a 30-year-old man with a cinnamon pipe in his mouth and a bowler’s hat on his head with his antennae peeking out on the sides of his hat stated “In fact, I think we need to show Max how truly evil this man was. Do you mind if we rerun our news broadcast saved on the database from 3 months ago, your majesty?”. He then readjusted his robe with a symbol of a camera filming studio set on the front of his robe.

“Sure, no problem!” replied Queen Dakota.

The plasma screen then showed footage of what appeared to be a suburban street in the Antopia Metropolis, with little half-spherical dome houses lining the street and a narrow street to allow what looked like quad bikes to pass through, and a footpath on both sides. There was no natural sky, just a ceiling of brown hardened rock and dirt with artificial lighting. Despite being underground, Max couldn’t help but notice that the street he was looking at on the screen looked so much like the street he lived on.

‘They are so much like us!’ he gasped.

 The footage then cut to a news ant lady sitting at her desk, with a map of what appeared to be Antopia’s entire layout of chambers as the backdrop.

“We all want our children to be safe and make friends” she began reading off a large stack of papers on her desk. “But no parent would want their child exposed to the influence of this man” she continued before taking a deep breath. “Convicted child rapist Jack Feeler. How he feels about what he has done and his behaviour towards our interviewer in the next report will absolutely disgust you!”

The footage then cut to Jack Feeler and the interviewer standing on the footpath outside a dome house. Jack Feeler was getting really aggressive and cocky, getting right up in the interviewer’s face.

 “Yeah, terrible things happened!” he jeered. “You didn’t have any sex when you were young? Did you? Did you? Did You? No, you did not! You never pulled your dick out of your semi-circle opening when you were 16,17!” he continued on in his insane rant.

“Excuse me, stand back from me sir” sternly warned the interviewer.

The footage then cut back to the news lady, with her saying “He was once a prestigious teacher and tutor. He’s a 53-year-old man. And now he’s a convicted child abuser and proud paedophile who has no remorse for his actions. In fact, he is boasting about his actions! This is despite his trial by the queen starting tomorrow, with his crimes already worthy of the death penalty”. 

“Do you feel sorry for the poor young girls’ Jack?” questioned the interviewer as the footage transitioned back to their conversation. “They were your students you know!”

“Nope,” he jeered to the disgusted interviewer.

The conversation continued on-screen, becoming more erratic and unhinged.

“For the rest of their lives Jack, they will be thinking about that evil monster who stole their innocence!” snarled the interviewer to a defiant Jack as he turned his back towards him and started walking away from him.

“What about the last time you had sex with anybody?!” jeered Jack, turning around, walking back towards him, and getting very up, close, and personal in his face, pointing at him. “That was an evil occasion, wasn’t it? There was no consent there, was there?”

“What are you saying Jack?” asked the interviewer, completely baffled by where this was going.

“I am saying that you too sir, are a rapist!” jeered Jack.

As Max watched the news footage on the plasma screen, he couldn’t help but become more and more disgusted with it every second.

“You are enjoying this, aren’t you sir?” sneered Jack later on in the interview. “Imposing your noble morality on me and feeling so much better than me?”

“Do you think those young teenage girls enjoyed it when you abused them?” asked the interviewer.

“Yes, they did!” he exclaimed, almost with a sense of sick pride.

The footage then switched back to the news lady, with her stating “He’s clearly a very disturbed man”.   

The footage then abruptly cut to black, with Queen Dakota grimacing in disgust and stating, “You know what, I think we have seen enough!”, with her gesturing to the minister for media, entertainment, and communications to cut the footage.

Max was shocked at the depravity and cruelty of the man he had just witnessed.

‘Fucking hell’ he thought to himself. ‘I seriously wonder how Chris Hansen from To Catch a Predator would handle this guy…’

“You know Max,” said the Queen. “I think that was the first time your sister has actually done something good for this colony for once! It’s so good that she killed him! Saves the time and organisation for an execution!”

 Princess Penelope snickered and exclaimed “I love the fact that he fantasised about and committed acts which involved dominating and controlling young teenage girls. And that in the end, he ended up crying and sobbing, being overpowered by the one thing he lusts after, teenage girls! Serves him right to feel the feelings of his victims! How scared they must have been, knowing there was nothing they could do to stop him! And he died at the hands, or should I say feet of an 11-year-old tween girl whom he was absolutely terrified of and there was nothing he could do to stop her! Oh, I love karma!” 

“Yes sweetheart,” said Queen Dakota. “It would be great but let’s not forget the fact that his sister has literally killed hundreds of completely innocent people”

“Oh yeah” replied Princess Penelope dejectedly.

“Now!” stated Queen Dakota, glaring at max again. “The Minister for Media, Entertainment and communications says he’s found some more evidence to convict you! Now let’s talk about your mother’s so-called family-friendly advertising blog!”

“Oh, come on!” groaned Max.

“With this new evidence brought forward into the light, let’s finish and conclude this trial!” stated Queen Dakota.

Before Rebecca Firewall had gotten the higher profile accountant job 6 months ago, she was working for an advertising agency for a few years that had several businesses specifically trying to cater to parents with lots of children and big families. The advertising agency was called Happy Family, Happy Life and worked with several big businesses such as Coles and Dettol to specifically target these families using tactics such as relatability to hectic family life and portray these products as essential to practically function in everyday family life. As they said in advertising, you don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle and what essentially these companies were trying to do when working with this advertising agency is to sell the concept of an everyday family lifestyle while incorporating their products. They were partially behind the reason for Coles’ Sports for Schools and subliminal advertising of their products in family-friendly movies.

Since Rebecca was a mother of two, the advertising agency saw her as a perfect fit to promote their products. Rebecca had a deep understanding of family life, so representatives from the companies had decided they would pay her to promote their products. What Rebecca had done was essentially start a parenting blog called ‘My 2 Little Angels’ where she would promote different products by using them in everyday life, while praising them. Many of the blog posts had included Max and Lucy.

When she left the advertising agency job for the accounting job, Max had begged her to take it down since it was embarrassing because his classmates always managed to find the blog whenever they googled his name. However, Rebecca wasn’t willing to destroy 4 years of hard work building up a website.

Never in a million years could he have imagined the ants having access to that website.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” snarled Max. “You have access to the fucking internet as well?”

“You really love to ask so many questions about us, don’t you boy?” sneered General Sting. “Well let me assure you there is so much more that you don’t know about us!”

“Okay” stated the Minister for Media, Entertainment and Communications. “Let’s look at this first post called ‘My Daughter’s First Pedicure’. Is the Plasma Tv connected to the internet?”

“Yes” replied General Sting.

The plasma screen then proceeded to portray a set of enormous bare feet with pink nail polish on the toenails, topped off with a little intricate design of a daisy on each toe, with white petals and a yellowish centre. The bare feet filled the entire frame of the photo, which were standing on the backyard concrete pergola. It appeared that the person taking this photo had taken a zoomed-in shot of just her bare feet, omitting the other person’s body, face, and general surroundings. As Max focussed his eyesight on the photo in front of him, he realised that he was looking at his sister’s feet.

“Go ahead, boy…” General Sting sinisterly snarled. “Read the caption underneath”

Max sighed and read the caption underneath the photo.

My little girl got her first pedicure today for her 9th birthday! Lucy absolutely loves her pink nails with the white daisies! She had such an amazing time getting her toes done at the Golden Duck salon. It really was some incredible mother-daughter bonding time. As soon as she got home, however, she immediately went outside in the garden to squish bugs with her new pedicure!! God, I remember what it was like to be a carefree kid 😂

“Oh, come on!!” groaned Max. “I had nothing to do with that post!”

“You are going to continue to lie to us, huh boy!” snarled General Sting. “Do you want me to bring up your Instagram profile?”

‘Get absolutely fucked’ Max thought to himself. ‘There is no way these ants know about my social media profiles, do they?’

The Minister for media, entertainment and communication scrolled down Rebecca’s post to the comments section, which was powered by Instagram plug-in software.

“That’s your username right there, isn’t it?” inquired General Sting. “You are Max the Fire King?”

“Yes” confessed Max. “That’s my Instagram handle”

“Let’s look at what you said, shall we?” said General Sting.

Max’s comment read: ‘Mum this is so cheesy and cringe, please delete this 🙄

“See!” exclaimed Max. “I never supported that post!”

Max turned his head around and noticed that several of the soldier ants around him had already started shivering and crying in fear. Apparently, this post had triggered some PTSD. It had been a terrifying day for them when the demon child had first painted her toes. They had gotten so used to anticipating her unpainted toes squashing them for so long, they initially first thought that these new fleshy structures were new exotic plants after seeing the paintings of the white daisies on her toes. It wasn’t until the nail polish started wiggling and hovering very close to their faces that they realised it was human toes and that from their perspective the Demon Child had camouflaged her toes with some kind of war paint. But by now though it was too late, however, and Lucy ended up squishing more ants in a single day than ever before. Lucy had an amazing time showing her pretty little toes to the little ants before crushing them. From that day on she started wearing toenail polish regularly since she found it helped squish higher numbers of ants. This was because the ants also had the problem of the sunlight reflecting off the nail polish into their eyes, causing temporary blindness and leaving them like sitting ducks.

“He’s right” stated Queen Dakota. “We are going to need more incriminating evidence than that…”

“Not to worry” boasted The Minister for media, entertainment, and communication. “I have another post that fully incriminates this little fucker!”

“Okay let’s bring that up then!” replied the queen

“This second blog post is called Dettol Wipes are a must-have for Every Family” stated The Minister for media, entertainment, and communication.

The next photo that was shown on the screen sent terrified screams throughout the entire crowd.

The photo showed a 10-year-old Lucy sitting on the bottom step of the backyard concrete pergola, in light blue denim shorts and wearing a light grey short-sleeved t-shirt with the words GIRL POWER written in bold red lettering, across the front of the t-shirt. She was smiling at the camera happily, with her red ginger hair flowing freely over her shoulders, with the glass sliding door and expanse of the concrete pergola and veranda poles partially visible in the background. It was what she was doing however that was really disturbing to the ants. Lucy’s right foot was plastered firmly to the ground with the toes painted a light lime green colour. Her left foot was pointing upwards onto her knee, showing the underside of her sole which was dotted with little black dots that the ants now understood to be the corpses of their fallen comrades, family, and friends. In her right hand, she was clutching a Dettol wipe which she was using to start wiping the ants and their gooey stains off the bottom of her foot.

“Oh my gosh” stammered Princess Penelope with tears in her eyes. “It’s like she almost wiped out a whole generation in a single fucking day….”

“Go ahead, boy…” General Sting sinisterly snarled. “Read the caption underneath”

Trembling and nervously Max read the caption underneath the photo.

Anyone with children just knows how messy and dirty they can be. Especially when you have a 15-year-old son that rolls around in the mud all day when playing footy and comes inside the house and steps all over the floor with his filthy bare feet leaving mucky bare footprints everywhere. Ewww

Lol, I bet you know what my little girl Lucy is doing in that photo. Yep. She’s cleaning the little bugs and ants she squished off her feet with a Dettol wipe. They are so effective at cleaning up any quick spills that my two clumsy children have or wiping away greasy stains off the table after dinner. 

And their size makes them so convenient. I can carry a whole packet in my handbag while travelling. I also keep some in the glove compartment of my car. You can also fit a few wipes in your pocket of whatever clothing you are wearing. That’s why my daughter also kept some in her pocket while she was at her best friend Divya’s birthday party because she’s quite a messy eater. That and also one of her favourite side hobbies which is squishing the ants in our backyard. She’s getting to be quite the little pest control exterminator! That’s why she is using one of the leftover ones in the photo above to wipe her feet after squishing some bugs.

“Good grief” stated the queen with disgust. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh?”

“Yeah, your majesty and the comments left by the other humans are really something else!” stated General Sting with disgust. “Some of these are really quite borderline psychopathic!”

“Okay let’s see some of them,” asked Queen Dakota.

Diana: I love Dettol wipes! And EW at the squished bugs! Lol

Emily: Eww with the squished ants between the toes

Jenny: Kids are gross, and it’s expected of them to be gross, just like squishing bugs lol. It’s quite a yucky childish hobby. That’s why Dettol wipes are the best!

Christine: That is so funny, cute, and adorable about your daughter squashing bugs! We go through tons of Dettol wipes at our house too!

Monique:  Squishing bugs is sooooooooooooooooooooo much fun…I used to do it when I was a kid!

“Who are these fucking demented monsters?!” gasped Princess Penelope. “They are literally laughing at mass murder!”

Max sighed and said “They are just a bunch of stupid suburban mums”

Princess Penelope looked at him with absolute horror in her eyes. “If that is how the mothers of your society behave towards other people’s children dying, I am completely lost for words!” she cried.

“Hold on a minute” frowned General Sting. “One of these comments is not like the others.”

Clicking on the hidden and archived comments section he spotted a different comment that had caught his eye. “Check this out everyone!” he exclaimed.

The comment was from Divya’s father. 

Dinesh Bandaranayake: This is appalling behaviour, Rebecca! Teaching your daughter, it’s okay to kill sentient life for fun! Did you know that devaluing violence towards innocent animals often leads to real-world violence against humans?! I encourage you to reflect on your approach and teach your daughter to respect the personal space of insects because they have the will to live just like any other living creature on the planet. That is what I have taught my beautiful sweet little angel Divya. She would literally would not ever even think of harming a fly.

“One in a million….” grunted General Sting, realising Dinesh’s comment was literally the only comment that had stood up for their species out of 50 others. Looking at Ava he said to her “Looks like you were right about these kinds of humans. They really do only represent 0.01% of the population.”

Focussing his attention on Max, he glared at him and stated, “Now let’s look at what Max the Fire King said, shall we?” 

Scrolling through the comment section he exclaimed “Ah Ha! There you are!”

Max the Fire King: This is actually kind of funny mum. Lucy using Dettol wipes for her childish hobby. But don’t you think she is getting a bit too old for this now?

“Throwing the corpses of my people away like they are used play toys and pieces of fucking garbage is funny huh?” snarled the queen. “I think I just found my incriminating evidence ladies and gentlemen”

“Oh Fuck…” muttered Max under his breath. “Listen I can explain!” he exclaimed. “You see what I meant was-”

“Enough!” shrieked the queen. “I think my time is done here!”

 “Wow” exclaimed General Sting. “I just got access to his Instagram account. Turns out not only did he trivialise the suffering of our people, but he also actually shared and distributed these blog posts with smiling and laughing emojis!”

 Queen Dakota glared at him with absolute disgust and simply stated “You are so bad!”

This greatly angered Max who yelled “For your information, I only shared those posts because my pestering and annoying mum was asking me repeatedly to do so in order to boost her advertising profile! She promised me a pack of Arnott’s Shapes if I did!”

“Actually Max,” said the Queen coldly “That doesn’t really help your case. The fact that you are willing to distribute and glorify the genocide of my people for a packet of fucking biscuits just shows that you are just as much of a psychopath as the rest of your family”

Looking to the government ministers she proclaimed “I hereby declare the human guilty of being an honorary associate for mass genocide! All those in favour?”

To Max’s absolute horror, all the government ministers raised their arms in approval.

“Okay then!” she stated. “This trial has almost concluded. It is decided then. Now how will we punish you?” she frowned, looking at him with curiosity.

“NO! NO! NO!” cried Max in horror, thrashing frantically on his chain shackles, trying to run but he was well and truly firmly locked to the podium post.

“BUT I’M INNOCENT!! INNOCENT!! PLEASE!! PLEASE!!” he shrieked with tears in his eyes, terrified that his fate was going to be 1000 times worse than the two criminals before him.

“Shut the fuck up you little shit!” barked Queen Dakota. “One more word out of you and I swear to fucking Gaia I will ask one of the guards to pull your fucking pants down and spank you in front of fucking everyone!”

This quickly shut Max up, who just knelt on the ground in his locked position, looking at the ground with tears in his eyes.

“Now where were we….,” said the queen, turning back to the government ministers.

Princess Penelope approached Max and put her hand on his shoulder. “My mum’s bark is worse than her bite” she smiled. “Don’t be scared”

Max looked up at her with angry tears in his eyes. “Fuck you!” he growled, sniffling a few tears. “You are just as bad as them!”

Meanwhile, an in-depth discussion was taking place between all 7 government ministers and Queen Dakota herself about the best way to punish Max.

“I still say we hold him for ransom!” suggested the Minister of Breeding Chambers and the Nursery. “We can tell the Little Monster we will let her brother go if she stops waging war on us!”

“That would never work!” groaned General Sting. “As soon as we grow him back, they could both turn on us and he could go back on his word and completely obliterate us within a day! Humans can never be trusted!”

Glaring at Max with intense hatred he snarled “I say, let’s just sentence him to death by the Mortein Chamber! It will fill me with great pleasure to watch him scream like a little bitch as he chemically burns to death by Mortein!”

Queen Dakota sighed and turned to General Sting; “General, we have been over this earlier. He is simply too young to be sentenced to death!”

“Oh, come on!!” groaned General Sting. “Can’t we make an exemption in this case? I mean, think of the gravity of the situation!”

“Well since he hasn’t actually directly mass murdered us, we can’t” replied Queen Dakota. “However, we could make that exemption for his cruel devil sister when we shrink her later on…”

“NOO!!” shrieked Max, horrified when he heard a discussion of the possible execution of his dear sweet little sister. “DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HER!!”

Queen Dakota chuckled when she heard Max screaming at her. “He certainly is a feisty one, isn’t he? Doesn’t like being told what to do, huh?”

Looking back at General Sting she explained “We can’t even send him to Hell’s gate Prison because he is still a minor. You must be at least 20 years old to be sent to Hell’s gate prison!”

“Booo!!” moaned General Sting. “I really wanted to make him suffer!”

“I suppose we could send him to our smaller juvenile facility called Naughty Pupas for 12 to 19-year-old teenagers …” suggested Queen Dakota. “There isn’t really much of another option, is there? Now how long should we sentence him for….”

This cheered General Sting up a little bit who stared at Max with glee in his eyes and sneered “I can’t wait for our boys in there to start beating the shit out of you!”

“No wait mum!” called out Princess Penelope. “I think I have an even better idea!”

Queen Dakota, clearly annoyed by her daughter interrupting her, turned to her grumpily and said “What possible better idea could you have, sweetheart? This better be good!”

“Well,” proposed Princess Penelope with a sympathetic look in her eye. “I think the problem here as it has been for so long is that ants and humans don’t understand one another at all. There is no understanding of each other’s lifestyles and both sides despise each other because there is zero communication!”

“Go on, I’m listening sweetheart,” said the queen sternly.

“That’s why I am suggesting we can change the nature of this human and create a brighter future, an alliance between humans and ants!” exclaimed Princess Penelope proudly.

“Oh, get absolutely fucked!” interrupted General sting loudly. “That’s never going to work! Didn’t your mum teach you Aesop’s fable about the brass pot and the clay pot!”

“Do you mind!” shouted Princess Penelope angrily. “I haven’t finished!”

“What was it you used to teach me, mum? That you can never fully understand how hard someone else’s life is unless you walk a mile in their shoes!” boasted Princess Penelope to her mother.

“Please proceed” replied the queen.

“That is why I think it would be better for this human boy to serve inside Antopia. To learn the ins and outs of our society, culture, and every aspect of our lives. When he begins to understand how much we are alike, maybe he can spread this vital information back to his species, including his sister and they can stop treating us like we are nothing!” stated Princess Penelope.

“So, what you are saying is that you want the human boy to perform community service across all areas of Antopia?” asked Queen Dakota.

“Yes, mum” replied Princess Penelope.

“Hmmm,” said Queen Dakota. “But it is hard to fill a cup which is already full….”

Princess Penelope sighed sadly and said to Max “I’m sorry, I tried…”

“But...” she said. “I am very curious to see how this will play out....”

Princess Penelope suddenly became optimistic. Finally, someone was starting to listen to her ideas….

 “Very well then” stated Queen Dakota, getting up and speaking into the megaphone and announcing to the audience of 1000 ants curiously watching: “This human boy will learn our ways. He will become an ant….”

“But for how long….”  she hummed into the megaphone. “We don’t even have a growth potion to grow him back yet….”

“WHAT?!” shrieked Max. “YOU MEAN I AM STUCK AT THIS SIZE FOREVER?!!”

“Well yes…” replied the Queen cheekily. “And no. You see I will instruct Dr Thorax to start working on a growth formula only if……” she paused for dramatic effect. “Only if you behave yourself, young man...”

“You can’t be serious!” snarled Max angrily. “You are gambling my entire life on a game of fucking chance!! You’re going to put the stake of my life in the hands of ……HIM!!” he growled bobbing his head at Dr Thorax. “How do you even know he can ever make the growth formula?”

 “Well given the fact that he shrunk you to our size, I’m pretty sure he can create the opposite!” laughed Queen Dakota. “Stop being such a pessimist!”

Dr Thorax then piped up and defended his reputation by stating “I have invented more than 10000 inventions and all of them have been successes so far. Even my shrinking dart worked perfectly, the only issue was that it shrunk the wrong person. That and also, I have been a little unprepared. But don’t worry I will whip up a growth formula when your punishment is over”

“Very well then” announced Queen Dakota into the megaphone. “It is decided then. I hereby sentence this human boy to live and work in Antopia for an undetermined amount of time”

She then proceeded to look Max right into his eyes and stated “My daughter will teach you our ways. Learn well…. Max Firewall. Then we will see if your insanity can be cured.”

This infuriated General sting who protested: “Your majesty you can’t be serious! Giving the brother of our sworn enemy a free tour of all our well-kept best secrets! He will betray us all!!”

Silence!” she barked. “It is final!”

She looked at her daughter. “This is the first time I have decided to test out one of your ideas. I hope you know what you are doing sweetheart…...”

“Don’t worry” beamed Princess Penelope. “I will make you proud mum!”

Queen Dakota smiled and replied “That’s my girl. Now unshackle him, sweetheart”

Readjusting herself she announced into the megaphone “Okay everyone! That concludes our 41st weekly high court chambers trials for the week!”

As soon as Max was unshackled by Princess Penelope he tried to run forward and confront the queen, but Princess Penelope stopped him.

“Hey!” he yelled. “That’s it! How long am I going to be like this? I want to go home!”

Queen Dakota and the 7 other government ministers turned their backs on him, ignoring his cries.

“You can’t fucking do this to me!” he yelled. “This is inhuman!”

This time Queen Dakota did turn back to face him with a snarky reply. “Yes, it would be inhuman. But you are forgetting one thing….” before pausing for dramatic effect before cheekily grinning and saying, “We are not humans!”

“This is fucking bullshit!!” he yelled.

Suddenly Max realised some of the phrases he was using, and this exact same scenario sounded and seemed very familiar to him.

‘Wait a minute’ he thought to himself. ‘A trial by ants. Being kidnapped by an ant colony. Being sentenced to live among them. Shouting catchy phrases. I swear I have definitely seen this exact same scenario in a kid’s animated film before. One starring Nicolas Cage and Julia Roberts. Damn but I forgot what that film is called though…….’