IT - Pieces in the Dark

Chapter 16 - The Colony

Chapter 16  -  The Colony

 

After a minute, the endless blackness was replaced with faint grey glows on the ground around them. A slowly emerging scene on a stage, gradually being lit by lights fading in, which highlighted a dry, sandy and undulating baked earth landscape.

It was the sunlight of first dawn, spreading over a badly constructed film set. There were brown earth mounds of varying heights all around them as far as the eye could see. As the light grew they spread way off into the far distance.

There was now a bright, warm sun up in the dark blue, cloudless sky. The vegetation was quite sparse and consisted of rough, light brown grass patches, with areas of sand and rocks, but in no particular logical order.

There were the odd little animals here and there, scurrying about, in and out of holes. It was the terrain of an African savannah, but with too many oddly sized and badly made hills around. They were all of varying heights, with much larger hills in the distance, all of which seemed to have been produced in a hurry, like a Hollywood film set created for effect by amateurs who hadn’t had enough time available and had worked with a very low budget.

Even the few bushes that were around had just been ‘placed’ in the ground in odd locations, and some of the branches looked as though they had been stuck on with the wrong sort of glue.

Way off in the distance they could now make out many thousands of human sized ants, dashing about all over the landscape, busy working, socialising.

Some were collecting food and vegetation while others were involved in arguments or were fighting. They all seemed to be acting out duties or scenarios, like they were extras as part of some movie scene, rather than being actual real ants.

Some moved stones and dug in the ground, others gathered and collected imaginary ‘things’, and some built mounds of different ‘stuff’. Quite a lot of them seemed to be standing around waiting for something, or looking busy, while others were directing other ants or standing guard.

It soon became obvious to the Priest and the Biologist that they were seeing humanity again portrayed as many groups of ants in one giant colony made up of lots of hills. Large organisations of people were defined as ant mounds, countries or civilisations as groups of hills, which themselves were made up of many mounds, and the world was the whole thing, whatever that was.

Different personalities and groups and attitudes all seemed to be reflected in what they saw going on; a low budget movie, with millions of extras. However it was certainly not one that you would pay to view, or want to watch for very long.

The Priest looked at the Biologist, and raised the corner of his lip and his eyebrows questioningly. The Biologist didn’t say anything but he looked fairly bewildered.

“So,” said Sam, looking smug “just to put you in the picture - we are now in a gigantic rectangular glass cabinet or case. It is thousands of miles across, with layer upon layer of soil, sand and stuff built up underneath us like a stratum of layers. You know, sort of like the ones you see in the natural history museums, where you can see the ants from the top and from the sides to see what is going on inside.

“The layers of soil underneath depict the ants’ individual consciousness, or collective psyche structures, and groups or organisations of countries, cultures and so on, where things have built up over time in layers. This is just the human perspective though. There are no other animals or plants here to integrate with, and this is just up to the collective subconscious level, there are no conscious elements here, I just want to keep it simple.