THE ROBOTIC ANT

Chapter 12

This was a dream...Everything...from the start of the day to now, it was all but a dream...a long, long dream. This is want I could get right now to convince my mind that was overwhelming with feelings. My Anti-Bot was damaged and was not responding unlike my phone which even after suffering a critical damaged, still worked as it did earlier.

On the road home, I don't recall if I saw any Robots or any protestors. I had my eyes either closed or over my Anti-Bot who in order to save my life, gave away hers.

The car stopped, we were home, finally. I paid away every coin, every penny in my wallet. All of a sudden, I was poor. My first thing in priority was to turn on some music and then fix the Anti-Bot. I opened the rack that hold all of my special cassettes. Pop, classics, disco, hip hop, ratio, my collection has everything. "No...Nope...not this...not at all...this is old, I hate old...Nope, this is recent...I am getting something...this one?...not that, is it this one?...Yeah, perfect!" And there it went, into the player, music reaching throughout my house. Scoot, in the kitchen, was making some coffee. "Make it two." I called out to him. "Yup. I will."

I placed my Robotic Ant on DSRE. DSRE means 'Desk of Scientific Research and Experimentation', my desk where I made the Anti-Bot and rest of nothing. Yup, this one was my first invention. I named it DSRE when I was in fifth grade and carried a volcanic eruption activity on the same desk. Yeah, maybe, as Dad had told me...

...I had BLASTED the volcano, but I thought that's what happens during this experiment. Dad was also saying that my plaster-made volcano was melting at some high Celsius, but, I would never agree to it until I recall it. Suddenly, I started missing my Dad. He was a good man...and...and...he was...a good man. But now...he is...he is...gone! Not totally gone, but, he is no more in the country. He went to Europe for a vacation spending most of his ever earned money and lost his return ticket. And now, neither he has enough money to come back, nor, we are able manage money to get him. Whenever we try to protect some money for his tickets and find that cash surprisingly after some time and forget why we'd stored it, then, that cash would look like 'reward money' and we would spend it at GrandWoods' or ice cream.

I can proudly say I love coffee and will marry only someone who can make some deliciously hot and soothing coffee. And a full glass of hot coffee was waiting to be drunk right on the DSRE. I gently took a sip. "Whoa! It's amazing!" Coffee and only coffee is the thing I can appreciate Scoot for. And Sandwich. Sandwich is also a thing I can appreciate Scoot for.

In a couple of gulps, as I always do, I killed my dearest coffee. Enough of easing and relaxation, it was now time to do some work! Plans of the Anti-Bot were pinned on the dashboard of DSRE. I arranged big instruments on the right, delicate tools on the left and some space for my Robotic Ant in the middle.

"You left-handed?" Anyone, anyone but Scoot was expected to ask this. He should know.

"Yes, Scoot. Yes! I am left-handed." Guess what I meant. I meant him to shut up. And he got that perfectly. He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. At this age, I watch cartoons. And if I watch cartoons, then my younger brother being younger to me ought to watch baby channels, not News.

Ok, I was back into my world, the world of science, the world of knowledge, the world of creativity and the world of ants. When I placed the screw driver to open up the Ant's body, I realized I had tightened the screws a little bit more than required. After sometime of continuous hard attempts, my Ant was into two parts exposing all of the thousands of its delicacies. I cannot even tell if I know how to assemble it back but what I can tell is that unbolting her felt like I was dissecting a real ant in a medical science class. In my 12th grade, I'd bunked almost of my medical science lectures especially practical classes where they give you a live frog and you have to kill it. Medicals is all about saving the living, not killing it. This frog killing thing is to me, a misconception.

For the first second, I thought Scoot was watching some death sustaining film of his like. But when I turned my head towards the TV, I remembered something. Did I just forget about the riots back there? Yes, I did. And now, the riots had reached us at our house. Not really but on the TV of our house. Though they were far from our home, but it felt like everything was happening right in my house! And what really worried was that the coverage was LIVE! It means that it was still going on. The biggest riot I had ever seen before was a few years back when a group of young kids was fighting for a candy and now I think that it was nothing compared to this. Here, there were no kids of course. But according to what the media was saying, there were even no men or women. All the damage, the collapsed street lights, shattered glasses, fired cars, this wasn't a human effort, but...