The Centimetre Scale

by John Nyman

Chapter 1

The earth of the tunnels was packed tightly, harshly pounded flat by the constant scampering of sharp feet, while the walls retained the rough surfaces of the builders’ teeth. Thousands of ants used the passages hourly, clamouring around the nest with clear intents and purposes unknown to me. I clamoured through the tunnels as they did, the dirt enclosing me into the earthly casing as its irregularities moved past in relation to my rapid motion. As my eyes transferred the passing surfaces into a blur, my antennae pulsed with the constant burning of pheromone. The nest was a melting pot of scents, which compiled into a haze of messages ringing into my mind as a slur of useless information. The siphoning of such messages into the strain that my caste was responsible for was painstakingly difficult, and so only proved to drive me from the nest faster.

My legs increased their speed rapidly to fire me from the atmosphere of the cramped underground tubes. With my gaze fixed directly forward and smell reception directly downward at the strongest foraging scents the complex movement of my legs was second nature, and so I barrelled through the tunnels with perfect accuracy. Hindsight was completely unnecessary, as I was determined to outrun any colonist approaching behind me, being a dominant worker myself. My eyes poised, I detected a movement apart from the constant passing of the tunnel walls, and tuned the slightest portion of my attention accordingly. New perspective quickly in place, I noticed a group of workers digging a new tunnel on my left, but instantly turned my attention back to the path ahead, ignorant of the other ants’ purposes. I realized another ant dashing ahead of me in the opposite direction, and instantly prepared myself. My eyes quickly calculated its exact movement, and we braced ourselves for the pass. In a moment I had pressed against the wall to avoid collision, my skeleton striking against and imprinting the soft soil, then shifted my leg movement and eyesight back to forward locomotion, frontal focus. As I continued my path veered into an upward slope and tunnel openings rapidly came into and faded out of my vision on my left and right sides. More ants poured out of these tunnels, mostly foragers, and joined me on the upward slope. As the openings appeared the competing scents that choked my antennae dropped off, and the foragers’ trail boomed ever clearer into my conscious. Thirsting for freedom from the mess of voices, we continually clamoured over and around each other in harmonious disarray, forming a shifting line of flashing black skeletons rushing upward through the narrow passageway. I continued to move forward at my full speed, consciously ignorant of the ants around me, as the pheromone revealed itself ever more clearly to my duty and a point of bright light appeared at the exit of the tunnel.

As the slope of the tunnel drew upward steeply my claws had to dig in to keep moving with the train. Ahead the light opened rapidly, revealing a blue sea dotted with white shifting clouds, and I had soon left the nest. Close on the heels of the other ants I climbed out of the hole in the dirt hill and into the outside. Free at last from the congestion of the pheromone-ridden tunnels, I quickly recalibrated my senses and caught the scent of the trail once again, leading out of the anthill and into the grass. My path was completely uninterrupted, and I soon moulded back in time with the other marching foragers, who had now arranged themselves into rigid line. The area around the anthill was blindingly bright, and wind whipped through it with tremendous force, so the many busy ants had to constantly entrench into the soil to defend against the blasts. The concern to me was only temporary, however, as I soon discovered that the trail led directly into the grass forests around the hill. As quickly as possible the train of ants trickled into the looming green blades, which soon shaded us from the pounding heat and wrapped us in a chilling cold.

The jungle was much unlike the dust desert around the anthill. Within the cover of the grass the air was cool and the foliage was a dark green. Around us stood broad blades of grass, hanging above us and sprawling from all available space on the ground. The soil was black, soft, and sticky, so that it felt like suction cups hung off of our legs with every step we took. Still, we continued moving at the same pace, if not faster, and my antennae stayed affixed to the pheromone, which screamed at my instincts even through the dankness of the forest. My eyes remained poised forward, having been unmoved for too long to fidget. They observed the green trunks move by with lightening speed, and the one ant ahead of me running forward, keeping up with the ant in front of him. The pace was calculated automatically. Every movement of the ant in front of me was quickly observed and acted upon, being transformed into a slight increase in leg speed, or a slight decrease. Often the train would have to bend around grass blades and irregularities in the ground, and a mistake on the part of any one ant could ruin the pace. It was therefore imperative that I remained alert, constantly shifting in split seconds to chase the forager ahead, making sure the line ran smoothly throughout. My sight and my smelling of the food trail, which curved around the obstacles with us, provided the complete focus of my mind, allowing me to ignore the gloomy conditions around me.

After a long period of relentlessly rapid travel the end of the trail came into sight. Behind the blades of grass I sensed a lump of soft food sitting among the jungle. The train ahead of me continued in rigid succession; each ant would stop at the lump, grip a small portion of the food in their mandibles, then turn and begin marching back the way they came. Once my turn to take the food arrived I did so, storing it for use in the nest, and then turned with the others. We instantly set our course for our next destination, the nest, of which we were the only source of food. For this task the preset pheromone trail was not necessary, as we could always find our way home from our own scents, so we quickly formed a line to take the shortest route back. Beside us the trail of ants still dashing towards the lump moved by, but my eyes were too fixed to look at them clearly. Again, I dodged grass blades and obstacles while returning, in total harmony with the ants ahead of me and behind me, moving in the perfect formation of complete focus and confidence, and determined to deliver my morsel to the colony. The trek back dragged on as had the original, but my concentration defied any lack of energy or any of the jungle’s obstacles, and the train soon found itself back at the anthill.

The structure of the hill had morphed since I left earlier. Some parts of it had collapsed, and almost all of the holes were missing. Many of the colony’s entrances had been filled with dirt, and the pheromone trails that led to these confused many of the foragers. As the line reached one such blocked gateway it broke into a state of confusion, as ants ran in all directions with no clear intent, trying to follow other pheromone trails that led to arbitrary points in the middle of the dusty hill. Once my antennae’s search for a useful scent had yielded no results, I too fell into a state of panic. The automatic movement that had once allowed me to meld so perfectly with the line of ants now threw me into disarray, as conflicted signals from my boggled mind turned them in varied and contradictory directions. Thankfully, I soon caught sight of a large group of ants digging tirelessly to widen a surviving hole in the anthill. Upon receiving this knowledge, I ran towards the opening, pushed several of the smaller workers aside, and dashed back into the nest to deliver my food, as did all of the other foragers as they trickled back from the jungle.