The Earth is My Ant Farm

Life didn't go on as much as he hoped when he heard a shout down the hallway, “Derek, Mother would like to speak to you this instant!” He rolled his eyes and took one of those slow walks that prisoners take when about to be executed, the electric chair being the phone, he hadn't even had his last supper, he was quite sure he had never requested swede? He gingerly accepted the phone and tried to smile before talking for a sunnier disposition like they train you to do in call centres, “Hello Gloria, nice day, lovely to speak to you again.” Gloria Rottweiler launched into him, “Don't you lovely and nice me you imbecile! Do you know how upset your wife is to have to sit there and stare at a new conservatory without ever having one of her own?” “Yes I do under…” “Derek, shut up and listen” she shouted back, “I don't know what you have been playing at but my daughter wasn't brought into this world to sit around and wait for the things that, as a right, should be hers, do you understand?” “Yes I under…” “You have entered into marriage and you must, as a man, although I can't for the life of me think that is what you really are, you must keep her in a manner to which she is accustomed. Why haven't you received your promotion yet Derek?” “Mr. Driver doesn't think I am ready yet Gloria.” “I cannot believe that, Derek, Mr. Driver knows you manage 12 of the 15 production lines, singlehandedly I may add, it is nigh time he moved you up so that you can afford a better conservatory than your neighbours.” Derek had failed to mention he only managed one, every time he had had the misfortune of visiting her, the number of managed production lines went up by one, it was all he could do to avoid the hairdryer treatment, he was sure Satan's breath smelled sweeter than hers. Derek was sweating again, his furious wife was standing there with a raised eyebrow and folded arms, she looked like Gloria in her early stages, it would only be a matter of time before she too chrysalises. “Get it sorted with Mr. Driver, Derek, or I will be forced to go around to the chemical plant myself and pay him a visit! do you hear me?” He sucked in his own breath and choked a little at the thought of his two worst enemies locked in mortal combat and, what was worse, the truth of his real work responsibilities would come to light as well as his incompetence, as of late, in the reject quota. Gloria shouted down the phone after hearing no response for a micro second, “Derek, are you there? speak up, you blithering idiot!” “Yes, I am here, I will speak to him, would you like to speak to your lovely daughter?” Derek didn't wait for her response, he handed the phone quickly back to his wife and headed upstairs to the sanctity of his hobby room. He had finally found peace in his tiny study room which doubled up as SETI's satellite backup station, there were various Reflector and Refractor telescopes standing idly about pointing out towards his skylight, on the walls were numerous constellation maps showing famous sections of Aurora, Ursa Minor and Pegasus. It was still daylight but he peered through his Celestron and saw a large dark shape scurrying in the most haphazard manner across his lens, he moved around to the end of the scope, saw a tiny ant trying to hitch a ride on the next mission to Mars and picked up a ruler from his desk. Derek believed in Karma and although it hadn't been good to him of late he let the Ant climb aboard the wooden spaceship and moved it over to the window to allow its intrepid Ant-ronaut to disembark on the ledge outside, the red painted brick was about as close as it would ever get. “There you go, little fella” he called out and went back to studying the blue sky. He wondered to himself if there really was life up there, he was sure that no green alien had had the misfortune of eking out its existence in a detergent factory; he would instead be zooming around the galaxy having a whale of time in his superfast flying saucer. Derek let out a sigh and continued to look skyward, he was waiting for night to fall when his own fun would begin, he could still hear the shrieks of his wife downstairs as she bemoaned her life and Derek's incompetence to her mother. No wonder they had bills, they were virtually propping up BT all by themselves. God Boy was equally peering into his own region of the universe trying to look for a specimen to complete his first assignment; he had so many ants to choose from but which one? Did it matter anyway, whoever was picked may end up with the same fate as any of the others. He thought that as in life, random events ruled the day and he should just choose the first one that caught his interest. He looked across his world of blue, green and brown; it didn't have a name although his ants had already named it, there were a few of his fellow students who had also managed to culture an existence and named their own worlds too, so he wasn't leading this competition by any stretch. Something moved across his vision, it was interesting to say the least, he saw understanding between one creature and the next, even though one was a hundred times smaller, he saw a flash of a ruler as it zoomed across to an opening with the explorer onboard and then a giant eye looking up through a tube back at him. God Boy smiled, he had found his unwitting volunteer, he hoped that this particular specimen had enough fight in him to see his experiments through.