Awakened

Thousands of steps fall out of line. I am pushed and shoved repeatedly until I find myself in the center. The sight of the spiral is dizzying. Sunlight paints a shadow army as the whirlwind of scurrying feet takes its final form. My brothers and sisters, enslaved by their instincts, push onwards, unable to bow out from this march to their inevitable deaths. And they will take me with them.

I cannot recall how long it has been since I changed, but there was a time when I was just like them. Before I learnt to recognise the cycles of the moon, or appreciate the intricacies of the fungal gardens we constructed with its many chambers and tunnels, my mind was dormant but functional. I went about my existence without feeling anything but a coded purpose. A rigid resolve I couldn't contemplate on but one that was deeply entrenched in my constitution, guiding every single act of my life.

As death approaches, I search my newborn spirit for the exact moment that I had awakened. It is hard to point to a single incident that caused this rebirth of sorts. Consciousness has expanded every moment to a point of separation allowing me to traverse my history. But this new perspective has also cursed me with an emptiness by refusing any attempt of mine to understand its origins. I've traded my part in an elegant superorganism for a void that grows deeper and deeper. Even so, or perhaps because of this, I try my hardest to find the moment where my soul detached itself from the collective. I ask questions.

Was it when I refused to have sex with the queen? It happened when the snow started its slow retreat, the drab whiteness fading as the bloom of life brought colour back to our neighborhood. My brothers and I were summoned to the seasonal mating ritual where we give our colony a future and destroy any possibility of our own. As we took flight and the airborne swarm surrounded me, a sharp pang of fear took over which halted me from inseminating the queen. I didn't realise then what caused the hesitance, but now as I stand on death's door once again, it seems clear that I chose self preservation. Any notion of guilt is stifled by the memory of the lifeless bodies of my brothers lying on the ground postnuptial, the queen's broken wings scattered around them like flowers on a grave.

Or was it when I got trapped? Stranded behind a collapsed wall in the mound, I struggled hard to send signals of distress. On the verge of giving up, I rediscovered how to send a vibrational cry for help by scratching the wall frantically, accidentally scratching myself. Once they sensed the signal, with no hesitance or doubt, they saved my life.

My instincts had dissolved in an ocean of thought. I could no longer serve the colony, failing in every function I once performed naturally. Stepping outside the whole, I could finally see the magnificent scale of cooperation my brothers and sisters had achieved. Millions of members maintaining a level of coordination and precision other living beings could only dream of. Life was a constant battle between us and the world. Or you could call it a dance. An exchange of rhythms, in essence. The choreography had been conceived of and packed into each body. Not one wasted step. Sequences handcrafted by time itself. And I was the mutation that would disrupt it all.

While the colony survived and thrived through cooperation, I began to see the leaf I carried on my back as a burden. I had lost my rhythm and had nothing left to offer. And this weighed on me heavily. I hoped I could turn a switch and be a part of my colony again but it was futile. It was clear that once I could see beyond my role, there was no going back. The void was here to stay.

My new powers of observation took away so much but it gave me the ability to ask questions. That's all that was left to do. I turned it towards my colony. I watched horrific wars fought against some colonies while they merged with others. I watched the injured being nursed back to health and I saw the young being nurtured. I watched them establish mutually beneficial relationships with the environment.

Were they aware of what they were doing? Would they continue to perform their roles if they were conscious of it? If I was an example to go by then probably not. And I was the only one as far as I could tell. This made me feel special, for a short while. During this spell of delusional sense of grandeur, I yearned for something more, something to fill the void with. This made me feel much worse because it proved to be an impossible task. Maybe the void inside me was the source of my new perspective. The hostility of the environment paid no mind to my loneliness. Without direction and purpose, effectively severed from the hive mind, I was lost.

One night, I looked up to the sky for help and I found it. A star right above me twinkled rapidly. A gleeful invitation to participate in the universe without fear. This is when I made my decision to leave the colony.

On a trail, walking on as I had done all my life, for the first time ever I decided to step out of it. It was my first and last taste of freedom. As I stepped out of the path, I caused a few others to lose their way. Two, then four, and on and on it went until thousands of steps fell out of line. Eventually, the pheromonal loop led them in circles around the same path causing a death spiral. I now find myself in the center of it.

A final question comes to mind. I watch my brothers and sisters mindlessly following a broken trail, dragging their feet as life slowly seeps out of them, unable to stop despite the exhaustion. I am an awakened ant with the death of thousands on my mandibles, conscious of my own inevitable end as well as that of my brothers and sisters.

Whose fate is worse?