[A Bug's Life]

You’ve lived like this for a long time.

Your daily routine is simple. Wake up, eat, sit with the others in silence, eat some more, sleep. You aren’t expected to do much of anything; you hear clanging sounds in the distance day in and day out, but that’s the way the world’s always been for you. You don’t think much of it.

You don’t think very much of anything.



No one else does either, so you don’t worry about it.

Little changes in your world. Well, usually. Lately someone new arrived; you can’t see them, but you can feel their presence, and their orders tugging at your limbs.



They must be tugging at the others, too, because things turn to chaos at the slightest twitch. People jump up and wiggle around, or walk together in perfect step, or go running off at random with doors crashing and banging. You hardly know how to deal with the break in routine. For the first time in your life you’re almost unsettled.

That’s what interrupts today’s empty time. The person sitting next to you leaps out of their seat and races out the door, leaving it swinging ajar behind them. You hardly have time to blink before they’ve vanished.

You’ve never left the room before.