Chapter 194: BreakThrough Complete! (5)
In his journal, Theo started summarizing everything that had gone on so far that could relate to the hive mind.
’When even one ant’s antennae glows, every single ant gets the message... it happened during the honey drop in the forest and it happened with all the roaches too...’ Theo thought.
All the roaches were already dismembered piece by piece before every single one of its parts was taken inside the queen’s chamber for her to eat.
Theo knew these glowing antennae were related to the hive mind, yet even thinking that didn’t give him the privilege of completing the quest.
There was something missing, and for him to find out what it was, he needed to mind inside the ants’ behavior with a lot more precision.
For hours, he kept sitting near the ants’ colony, making notes and observing things to the best he could. But when left naturally without much intervention, the ants didn’t show any sign of a hive link being made.
Just to make it a little interesting, Theo had thrown a pebble inside the terrarium only for it to fall near an ant that froze.
It touched its antennae once or twice on it before they started glowing, which, as usual, made all the ants freeze and come toward it.
The next part was a lot more interesting as the ants started using their mandibles to break the pebble into smaller pieces, making Theo remember the mantis, who ate ores just like this.
The smaller pieces of the pebbles were then sent to the queen in the chamber, which she surprisingly ate.
Theo wrote it down too, but it was nothing more than a special trait of the species of ants, not something related to the hive mind.
A full day passed, and Theo didn’t realize what should be done. Ideas kept popping in, but they weren’t as good.
The next morning, he went to Bernard to get some answers, and while they brainstormed a lot, Theo only got a few things to work with.
The book on the ants was still not here; there was no printing press here where books were mass published.
If there were a few books, then they either were sold at a highly expensive price or just copied onto another book by a person.
A book as niche as a study on ants was so rare, Theo was sure he could be finding the solution way before the book ever arrived.
A few days passed on with certain experiments to see how ants reacted in different situations.
He started with keeping honey drops at two different locations but near the ants in the current areas respectively.
When both the ants detected the drops individually in different corners, their antennae glowed, making others stop for a second before some ants stayed near the queen while an equal amount went to the two drops in different locations.
That was the most fruitful test, making Theo realize that not only did they share consciousness, but they also used their mind intelligently.
This delegation of work showed that the ant queen, who was supposedly proved to be giving the orders all this time, was a lot more intelligent than he gave credit for.
After writing everything down, Theo did a lot more smaller experiments and observations, but nothing was as fruitful as the honey drop one.
Until the next day, when he decided to isolate an ant while being inside the very ground they were at.
He isolated a single ant by keeping a transparent cup with a few holes for air on the top. The ant moved fast for a long time before its antennae glowed.
Theo observed carefully as all the ants made their way toward the small container with the single ant.
He could see the ant queen a lot more frantic this time. All the other ants systematically tried moving the container off the single ant with aggression, yet it was a lot heavier to begin with.
Theo wrote down this observation. Their actions clearly showed them trying to push the container off, which showed another level of intelligence.
It was all observatory for a few minutes until Theo felt like he could hear some CLINK noise from the container.
Theo had totally forgotten about their strong mandibles until they started breaking the glass from one singular place to make a hole as they had done before.
All the ants might have moved all around the small container—the walls, the ground near it, and the top where there were very little holes.
They started cracking the small holes off the top, and Theo had no way to get the glass out as they were swarming all over it.
After just a few minutes of hopelessly looking at them, Theo saw one ant from the outside finally move inside. Its antenna glow flashed brighter for a second before the ant that was stuck inside got out from the enlarged hole.
When it was out, Theo was finally relieved that he would be able to get the glass container out, as it was dangerous for them to be near such sharp pieces of broken glass.
But to his surprise, the ants didn’t leave the glass at all.
It took Theo some time to notice what they were doing, and when he saw it, he realized that they were eating the small shards of glass on their own while also bringing some bigger ones inside the chamber for the queen.
Theo could not understand this behavior at all. To eat glass so leisurely was weird to say the least, but at the same time, their name ’Shardjaw Ants’ started making a lot more sense.
A few hours in and Theo could see a small pile of glass shards at the corner of the chamber where the queen was, and every now and then, the queen took a bite off the shards.
Theo noted down the observation, which was, while not related to the hive mind, still very interesting.
But the next day, Theo finally got the notification he was looking for that made all the effort finally worthwhile.