The Earth is my Ant Farm, The Creational School gave it to me but
I’m a bit bored with it now.
A bigger boy threw a rock at it in the classroom and wiped out all my dinosaurs, I liked them.
Now I’m stuck with the ants and they like to multiply.
I have a favourite Ant, his name is Derek.
This is about him, he likes to travel.
He doesn’t know how but I will tell him one day.
A long line of plastic detergent bottles attempted to stand to
attention but it was no easy matter on a moving conveyor belt as
they raced along on a designated path. Occasionally a few defect
bottles would be pulled from the line as if they had forgotten to
polish their boots on inspection.
Derek Hill, the line supervisor was busy checking his troops
and keeping count with his trusty clipboard and pen, furiously
scribbling notes that no one could see or even dared to question.
Such was the power of the note scribbler, notes meant order and
quality control being the order of the day.
Derek was king of the production line, his minions, dressed in
overalls and silly plastic hats were tasked with making sure he did as little scribbling as possible.
The Supersuds Detergent factory dominated the industrial
landscape of Runcorn in Cheshire, it had long been a hive of
chemical processing since the 19th century, producing the greatest number of Soaps & Liquids ever seen in the UK and kept armpits, nether regions and hair as grime free as possible.
Derek was proud of his post, he had probably been the
unwitting catalyst of social grooming, fathering the greatest
number of offspring through the fact that no one wanted to date
anyone stinky and unclean.
Derek was a modern day marvel of Darwin’s Natural Selection
theory, mind you, Darwin would have been grateful for some
Supersuds Shaving Foam and razors in his day; he may well have
spent less time with primates.
Derek’s red lobster face matched his levels of stress, he had
already been remonstrated by the Line Manager for allowing an
extra ten plastic bottles to fail inspection yesterday. He was only half way through his shift and had almost reached the shocking
limit of sixty rejections per 10,000. Heads will roll for this he
thought, probably his own red head before long.
A portly man appeared with spectacles and shaven sideburns
that carried on up to an alarming inch above his ears, he came
walking steadily over to Derek, decked out in a Marks and Spencer
blue checked business shirt and polyester tie combination, a top
dog on the line and one that Derek feared the most amongst them.
“Derek, have you seen these rejections, they are appalling!”
the fat man was waving around reams of figures as he had the
benefit of a printer which made his social status higher than a
clipboard.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Driver, I don’t know what’s happening
today…”
“Don’t know! It’s your job to know, you are the line
supervisor aren’t you?”
“Yes Sir, I am” came the weakened reply
Mr. Driver took on a different persona this time, he loved
sarcasm.
“Am I speaking to the Line Supervisor?” he hummed back to
Derek, then studied him for a moment before allowing him to
speak.
“Yes Sir, the line manager yes”
“Good, well bloody well manage then! I had better not see
another repeat of yesterday, pull out all the stops, Derek.”
A line of workers seated at the belt were busy looking around
at themselves and smirking, they were glad they weren’t Derek.
The fat man raced off and left Derek to turn a greater shade of
lipstick red as he furiously scribbled notes onto his clipboard.
“Everyone get back to work, nothing to see here, no more
mistakes” he managed to yell in a high pitched wavering tone.
Every order had a chain of command and each chain shouted
down to the other until the work was done or heads were bitten off and left in a pile as a warning to others.
The hours seemed to wind down very slowly as he paced back
and forth hoping that not a single plastic soldier was rejected until the end of his shift at five. The pressure was definitely on, sooner or later a ticking time bomb would come rolling down, a
misshapen container, a defect plastic cap, maybe a printing error, there were so many possibilities.
Some nights he would wake up from sheer panic after
dreaming of disfigured armies of plastic bottles advancing towards him with his general screaming at him from behind the front line to do something to stop them.
Hopefully his workers, who seemed to like the hapless man,
would turn a blind eye to a few defects, they would bail him out,
they may get a worse replacement if they were too eager, at least
Derek let you off for a prolonged cigarette break outside.
The time had finally come, it was 4.58pm but the seconds
seemed to slow to a dramatic crawl, not a single error, his
clipboard tally had been stuck at sixty since 3.30pm, everything
may just be fine after all, he could see the brooding Mr. Driver
staring out back at him from behind his glass walled office.
Then it happened, it could have waited till a minute past five
but it was on a long headrush to his destruction, Derek eyed it as it made its way through the weaving line and onto Quality Control, it was only a matter of time before its pathetic and weak shape
landed as a mark on his clipboard.
Derek began to sweat, his face looked like it was boiling over,
like a kettle with a malfunction; His boss had sat up and began to watch him intently as Derek wiped his forehead with the cotton
sleeve of his white overall. He had but a few seconds to spare
before someone raised the bottle in the air and announced it
defunct. Mr. Driver would see the arm and come storming out of
the office, he knew the tally, he knew his authority, he knew Derek Hill was heading for a written warning sooner or later.
Derek’s eyes bulged out of their sockets as Mavis Cutter, one
of the line workers caught the wretched container and pulled it out of production, she eyed Derek, she knew the rules, she decided to
shout out…
“Mr. Hill, would it be okay if I had a fag break? I’m gasping, I
don’t clock off till seven, be a luv would you?” she winked at
Derek as she placed the container in her oversized handbag.
His nervousness took hold of him before he blurted out,
“Cert…Certainly Mavis, you could do with a break, you’ve
worked really hard.”
A smile spread upon Derek’s face as the clock struck five,
everyone in the line was in no doubt about what had happened
back there, it was a dangerous move by one of their colleagues but it was a life or death situation.
Derek loosened his collar to let out the steam and thanked
everyone for their efforts as he placed his clipboard contents into the Control processing tray ready for Mr. Drivers verdict, he eyed his boss nervously as he walked past his office and could see him
scowling back as he punched his card and hastily made his way out
of the building.
“Thank you Mavis, you’re a star,” he called as he passed his
saviour outside and headed over to his silver Montego estate to
escape back to normality; it had been a very close shave indeed.
God Boy was trying hard to understand the theory of social
interaction as a micro change mechanism and he had wished his
beloved dinosaurs were still around, the only social interaction
they did was with their sharp pointy teeth as they devoured each
other in the steamy swamps of Pangaea.
He was one of several God Boys attending the Creational
School and each had a task of tending to their own designated
clusters of galaxies, the figure was huge, in fact billions of them, but only a few within each had anything meaningful to tend,
develop too much and you were constantly busy creating and it left no time to play outside.
The grand Visioneer, draped in a white light robe, came
around the class inspecting the progress of each of his pupils, he had a few surprises up his sleeve for them today, of course, a day was not an earth day, its size couldn’t be fathomed by any other
minds except for his own flock.
“Class, I must say without a doubt, that you are one of the
most gifted groups I have ever had the pleasure to nurture, a great many variations of species have been achieved over the course of
this semester but there is one thing I think you may have
overlooked.”
Every pupil seated around the large hovering universe
twinkling with luminescence and life couldn’t for the life of them think what it was.
The teacher cut all their vague ideas off in an instant, he could
see their thoughts floating around the room, “Come, come, I do not expect anyone here present to have the faintest clue as to what I am leading to, so I will enlighten you!”
There were many puzzled looks about the room.
“It is of course, a higher learning and I do not mean instinct, I
can see that a great many of you have opted for a barbaric
existence, kill or be killed, the great food chain, your savage
monsters have wrought a good deal of destruction upon your
worlds and as a child I can imagine it has been fun, but…”
He walked around the universe until he had made a complete
circle back to his starting point, during that time he had studied all of their creations, admired some, snorted at others and noted a
single God Boys unique avenue of thought.
He stopped suddenly and continued his speech. “The semester
is almost over and you will all be aware of the prize at the end;
Now! I propose a series of experiments I believe will eventually
determine the champion amongst you all.”
Instantly, each God Boy received a parchment within his
grasp, on each was written the first in a series of four experiments to achieve the ‘Higher Understanding’ Merit, the quality and
presentation of each document outshone any printer or clipboard
by miles and denoted absolute authority, the first experiment was
quite clever, it simply read…
“1. Select an individual specimen, direct it to
another colony, marks will be lost for a specimen
that perishes, marks will be gained if the specimen
survives to experiment number 2”
The Teacher noted with interest his favourite pupils reaction, it
was clear to everyone that he was smiling as if he knew something
they didn’t. This particular God Boy had seen one of his
designated planets and its life almost destroyed by a flying rock 65
million earth years ago, thrown in by his larger, more envious
brother.
Of course, it was only natural that out of this complete chaos
came a new species, one that the bully hadn’t even considered; he
was still playing with his monsters and was woefully ill prepared
for the first experiment.
The grey non descript Austin spluttered and shuddered to a
halt on the road outside Derek’s equally non descript semi
detached house in the Runcorn suburbs, his car didn’t even have
the decency to make it onto the drive. Derek slammed his two fists down onto the steering wheel and yelped at the pain it gave back.
“Could this day get any worse?” he thought.
Sniveling wasn’t a very nice word but it summed up Derek in
as little as three syllables. Upon his head he wore a mop of jet
black hair, slightly greasy and pushed to the left, a large but thin nose and small lips but the one defining feature of this amiable
man is that he could turn beetroot red at the drop of a hat.
Derek turned beetroot red, he looked out of the window at the
summing up of his life and cursed his God for giving him so much
grief, he didn’t need this right now, he needed God to increase his reject quota at the factory and fix the carburetor on his beat up
Montego.
He stepped out of the car and slowly walked up the drive, the
only peace he had was the twenty yards from the car to the front
door and it was shattered in an instant when his youngest child,
Jack, came screaming and bawling out the door in a hurry. He was
being chased by his elder twin sisters, Citron & Ella who were quite mean to him.
Jack grabbed onto Derek’s leg and wouldn’t let go, in his own
world he was frightened for his life but his Dad managed to calm
the little mite down as he dragged his now heavy right leg along
and into the doorway.
“Hi Honey, I’m home!” the greeting never failed to make him
snigger as Honey was in fact her name.
His wife rolled her eyes for the millionth time, the greeting
never failed to make her hate him just that little bit more for being unimaginative.
He walked into the kitchen to see his wife chopping swedes for
dinner, he hated swedes, she knew he hated swedes but he was
getting them anyway.
“Hi dear, how has your day been?” he tentatively asked.
His ever loving wife launched into a tirade, “It has been a
bloody awful day Derek if you must know; It’s alright for you
swanning around your factory playing the big I am, but back here I have had to deal with these little reprobates, sort out bills, boy have we had a lot of them too and to cap it all off, next door have only gone and installed a posh new conservatory!”
Derek ignored the rest of the whining and looked out of the
window to admire the beautiful three facet Victorian design that
now dominated his view.
“Wow, Honey that is fantastic, we will have to go round and
marvel at it.”
She slammed the swede peeler onto the chopping board in an
act of defiance, “We most certainly will not Derek! Do you know
how long I have been waiting for our very own conservatory,
hmmm? and now they have pipped us to it, do you know what this
means?”
Derek didn’t have a clue, it was just an extension to him, he
was unsure of his approach, “Ermm, it means they have a rather
large buy now pay later agreement to deal with?”
She flashed around and waved the peeler at him in a menacing
way, “No you bloody idiot, it means Petunia will be having lots of dinner parties and showing off her new purchase to all and sundry, what the hell do we have Derek? Tell me?”
Derek’s face had turned a shade darker, Jack meanwhile was
pretending his Dad’s shoe was a football and began kicking it in a frenzy, the girls were hiding round the corner in fear of the death peeler and all Derek could do was offer a weak reply amidst the
pain.
“We have each other?”
“Christ Almighty, Derek! you are the weakest link, really you
are; Out of my way, I’m phoning mother”
She pushed past him and stormed off down the hall to grab the
phone and deliver the news to the one person he feared the most of all, even Mr. Driver, it was his mother in law, the gatekeeper of
hell, Gloria Weaver.
Derek stroked his little boy’s head and pulled him away from
his sore foot before walking back over to the window to admire the extension once more; Trevor, his next door neighbour, must have
scored a few brownie points when he had that installed, he was
quite a good chap, it was a shame that his wife was in such a fierce social competition with his own wife, still, he thought, life must go on.
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.
Only time would tell.
Derek had spent quite an uneventful evening playing ‘smack
snoozing daddy around the head with a pillow’ with his three
children, it was obvious he was losing and was much relieved
when it was their bedtime.
Honey was in an awful mood and had taken residence in the
chair opposite, she was still fuming over Petunia’s new purchase
and had ripped up an invitation pushed through their letter box
announcing its launch party.
He hadn’t had time to head into his celestial escape room and
decided to call it a night, he was glad it was Saturday tomorrow,
TV had nothing to offer except another 100 years of painful talent shows, rich gourmet chefs telling everyone to grow their own
organic vegetables like they did on their 100 acre rural estates and extended versions of the Lottery when in reality the only highlight was the balls dropping through the hole.
They both turned off the lights and headed upstairs, Derek
watched his wife’s posterior as she clambered up the wooden hill
and thought that maybe he might get a bit of nookie, a little
sweetener to wipe away the dreary night.
“Stop looking Derek, I know you are, you’re not getting any
until you get me something that outshines Petunia’s purchase!”
Derek was sure that Trevor next door was getting his, he
wished he could trade places.
Honey had managed to tuck a pillow in between them as a
final rebuff, not even a spoon, she switched off the light and left him to suffer a little bit more. He lay there in the darkness thinking about the weekend ahead, it was sure to be mowing on Sunday as
spring had arrived, he would have to fix his carburetor somehow
and Saturday was his daughter Ella’s hockey match, a semi final,
he couldn’t miss that for the world.
If only I could stop time, he thought to himself, it would be
nice just to have a day or two to myself to do whatever I fancied, an adventure, yes that was it. He closed his eyes and went to sleep.