The Sweet Drop
By Mark Elias Keller
Forma was feeding the newest generation of ants when she smelled the excitement and commotion just outside the colony. Already sensing an unusually sweet scent wafting through the familiar odors of mildew, metal, and chemicals, she hurried along the damp pipes toward the opening leading to the bright place, where the ground was smooth and cool. There, a crowd clustered round Dolus, the colony’s top scout ant, long admired for his fearless foraging. Vibrating with enthusiasm, he was telling the colony about his newest discovery.
“This is incredible!” he exclaimed, his abdomen rising and his body moving jerkily. He stood taller than usual, antennae lifted high, commanding the colony’s attention. “I usually have to go far for new food, but this was right on my trail. So convenient!”
Forma listened as Dolus spoke of gleaming, clear droplets with an alluring, intoxicating sweetness. But just as Dolus started encouraging everyone to follow him to the new food came the strident voice of Contra, a middle-aged ant Forma knew to be intelligent, but often disgruntled and apt to find flaw with just about anything. Some months ago, he’d griped about the colony deciding to relocate to the dark, damp place, futilely exhorting them to stay in the warmth of the sun and the fresh soil of the outdoors.
“Wait! Slow down!” Contra yelled. “We don’t know nearly enough about this new food yet! Where’s it coming from? What is it, exactly? It might be dangerous! It could kill us all!”
The rest of the colony paused to consider Contra’s warning. But Dolus quickly spoke up: “Nonsense! Paranoia! This is like when we moved, Contra. You just can’t handle anything new.” Dolus waved his antennae toward the gleaming droplets. “Now follow me, everyone, and taste for yourselves! You’ll see what I mean!”
And follow they did—except Forma. She was curious, but Contra’s warning was fair. Something didn’t feel right to her. As Dolus said, this new food had come so easily, so conveniently. Maybe too easily and too conveniently. So for now, Forma hesitated to eat it.
But she was clearly in the minority of doubters. The bounty quickly sent the colony buzzing into a frenzy unlike anything she’d ever seen. Dolus’s original scent trail, thin and dotted, soon thickened into a superhighway. Workers, foragers, nurses, even other brood-tenders like Forma left their tasks to taste the “Sweet Drop,” as Dolus now called it. Clusters of ants circled around the sticky droplets, gorging until they could eat no more, gathering as much into their crops as they could, then stampeding back to the darkness of the colony, bumping into each other in their mass inebriation. Forma could also smell Regula, their nest-bound queen, eagerly tasting the Sweet Drop straight from the mouths of workers and nurses.
Everywhere Forma went, the inescapable sweetness clung to the air. The Sweet Drop! Everyone chattered nonstop about it: where it was, how much remained, and when more would come, for it seemed to appear out of nowhere. And it seemed to Forma that the colony was benefitting from the new burst of energy: soldier ants were more defensive, Regula laid more eggs, and workers dug new chambers, though these stayed empty, since most of the colony was constantly treading to and from the Sweet Drop.
Forma watched the frenzy, tempted more and more to try the Sweet Drop, especially as Dolus pumped out a constant stream of rapturous speeches about it:
“Do you remember what life was like just days ago?” he asked the colony. “Endless toil! Nonstop drudgery! Foraging dangerously for scraps and crumbs. Now those problems are solved! We’re liberated, free to enjoy our lives, with time to—well, to do whatever we want. Now, come, anyone who hasn’t yet tasted it, eat and enjoy!”
And as usual after one of Dolus’s speeches, the smooth floor in the bright open space was darkened by a stream of ants rushing toward the Sweet Drop, despite Contra’s persistent warnings.
“Stop! Think about what you’re doing!” Contra waggled his antennae furiously. “Since when have we ever eaten only one food? We shouldn’t rely so much on something we don’t know anything about!”
“We know everyone’s happy with the Sweet Drop,” Dolus huffed. “That’s what matters. Is there some risk? Of course. There’s risk in everything. But the reward is too great to pass up. And if we don’t eat the Sweet Drop, another colony will, and then what? They thrive? While we starve? No! Never!”
The rest of the ants murmured in agreement, turning their backs to Contra and streaming after Dolus toward the Sweet Drop, while Contra and the other dissenters held firm, refusing even a single taste. They—and Forma, for now—survived on dry scrapings of a floral-scented gel clinging to the smooth wall of the white basin.
But as the days passed, Forma wavered, her curiosity growing. Clearly there was something irresistible about this new food. Why else would her sisters abandon their crucial feeding tasks and gorge themselves on it? But Forma could smell danger lurking in the air, literally: the scent of Regula, their queen, was different, fainter. Forma knew it, but it was impossible for her to tell anyone else, because the only thing the colony wanted to talk about was the Sweet Drop. So she went about her tasks, watching the ongoing frenzy, and with every one of Dolus’s incessant speeches about the glorious new age they were living in, and every well-meaning attempt from another ant to feed her the new food, she took a reluctant step closer to tasting it for herself.
As the scrapings grew scanter and Forma grew hungrier, her curiosity eventually overcame her caution. She scurried along the robust trail to the Sweet Drop, drawing close enough to breathe in the Sweet Drop’s full scent and feel it overwhelm her doubts. She had to taste it—so she did.
Instantly she understood. The taste was incredibly, unnaturally rich, but undeniably delicious. Forma ate another bite, the sweetness flooding her senses. Seeing the vast reserves of the Sweet Drop still glistening, a new feeling surged in her, unfamiliar but thrilling: independence. It wasn’t just the sweetness itself: like Dolus advertised, it was the proximity, the ease of access. She didn’t have to wait for foragers to find distant crumbs and bring them back home for her to eat. She didn’t have to eat from another’s mouth. She didn’t have to survive on oddly-scented scrapings. She could go right to the Sweet Drop, any time, and get her own delicious food. The old way suddenly felt silly and slow, all that waiting and dependence on others.
Feeling stuffed and fighting the urge for just one more mouthful, Forma turned away from the Sweet Drop to head back to the brood. She considered bringing some of the sweetness back to the larvae, but something stopped her, a faintly bitter hesitation she couldn’t quite explain. Anyway, she told herself, the larvae were getting enough of the Sweet Drop from the other tenders. More than enough, probably.
Right outside the narrow opening into the colony, she brushed against the big-headed soldier ant, Herka, who stared at her tensely, his antennae pointed toward her and his threatening mandibles open, like he was trying to figure out if Forma was an enemy.
“It’s me,” Forma said. “Forma.”
Herka stared for another second, leaning toward her, then wandered off toward the Sweet Drop, stumbling in uneven zigzags.
Forma tried to quash her skepticism and embrace the Sweet Drop the way that Dolus and the rest of the colony did, excluding Contra and his small band of dissenters. After all, the colony was livelier, Forma admitted. Workers chattered excitedly, foragers returned quickly, and Regula the queen fed more eagerly than usual. The dark place where they lived even felt warmer and more alive. Maybe this was progress, disorienting at first, but ultimately good. Maybe her uneasiness was only a fear of change, like Contra’s, nothing more.
But her skepticism returned as unsettling changes piled up. Whatever bump in output the Sweet Drop had originally inspired in the colony had fallen off dramatically. Less work than ever was now getting done with the sudden drop in energy, focus—and life itself. Death was normal for Forma; sisters and brothers died often—she’d carried corpses herself to the colony’s crypt—but this was different. The oily scent of death was stronger than she’d ever smelled it. She found far too many larvae lying still where they should have been squirming and feeding. Later that day, when feeding the brood, Forma hesitated before touching them, wiping her mandibles clean, afraid any lingering Sweet Drop in her crop might seep into the blind, trusting bodies. Most disturbing of all was the nearby row of limp, oozing larvae in their last gasps of a very short life.
It wasn’t only the brood Forma worried about: she saw a forager, far too young to die naturally, twitch and collapse right along the trail to the Sweet Drop, his legs thrashing wildly as he rolled around before dying, unable to communicate what was happening to him. Not long after, came more, similar deaths, even the mighty Herka suddenly twitching, flopping, and falling still. Forma watched the colony change rapidly—and not for the better, in her opinion. Everywhere she looked was unfinished or sloppy work. Roles blurred and faded. Nurses had all but stopped cleaning the young ones. Once-adventurous scouts and foragers, even Dolus, laid no new trails, merely trudging back and forth between the colony and the Sweet Drop. The damp dark place had fallen markedly quieter as the brunt of the colony clustered around the sticky droplets in the bright area.
Contra now hollered even louder. “Look around you!” he yelled. “We used to lay trails in every direction. Now there’s only one! And it leads to the same thing, over and over. The Sweet Drop! We used to forage, scout, build. Now we just feed, feed, feed! Is this really the life we want? Dolus speaks of a blissful new age, but look at the brood rotting away. Look at Herka dropping dead. That’s your ‘new age.’”
But the colony, in thrall to the Sweet Drop, ignored Contra even more than before. Forma, though, couldn’t ignore the worst effect yet: Regula, the queen, was either neglecting her task, which seemed absurd, or was losing her ability to do it, something even more ominous. But undoubtedly their queen was laying far fewer eggs. And from the eggs that hatched now came sickly, underdeveloped progeny, wandering confusedly and often dying shortly after being born.
Fear and dread grew in Forma as her sisters and brothers went on as if nothing had changed, either blind or unwilling to see what she could no longer ignore. But what about the finder of the Sweet Drop? Forma wondered. What did Dolus himself think about what was happening to the colony? Surely their astute scout had to notice his siblings twitching, meandering aimlessly, and slacking in their traditional tasks.
Forma confronted him that afternoon as he was returning from the Sweet Drop. “Dolus!” she shouted. “Don’t you see all your dead brothers and sisters? And the brood going untended and neglected? You know that’s not normal.”
Dolus’s mandibles tightened and his antennae snapped upward. Then his posture loosened again as he resumed his confident tone. “Of course I see the colony changing. But that’s a good thing, Forma. Doesn’t change usually mean survival?”
“But this isn’t right, what’s going on. And you know it’s connected to the Sweet Drop.”
He waved his antennae excitedly. “Of course it is! This is what happens when something—revolutionary comes along. There’s change, and some of it’s uncomfortable. But that’s no reason to abandon the Sweet Drop. Now stop worrying yourself, Forma. You sound like Contra.”
Dolus scurried away to a cluster of ants around a droplet and launched into another speech: “We’re living in revolutionary times!” he preached, even as a worker ant twitched and collapsed beside him. Dolus stepped right over her and went on: “How many colonies even get an opportunity like this? Sure, there may be transitional difficulties, some short-term costs, but that’s part of progress. Traditions and customs don’t last forever. We must embrace this disruption!”
Dolus spoke incessantly, eloquently, with more urgency and passion than ever. But it was obvious to Forma that the rest of the colony wasn’t listening as they had just days ago. Not because they didn’t want to listen. Because they couldn’t. They all seemed sluggish and dense, their antennae drooped and unfocused, the scents of communication becoming unintelligible.
When it became clear that most of the colony’s new generation wouldn’t survive past infancy, Forma couldn’t keep quiet any longer. Yes, she told the others, she understood the allure of the Sweet Drop. She, too, had tasted it. “But something very bad is happening!” she cried out. “We’re dying, not building and growing! And it must be because of the Sweet Drop! Now, please, brothers and sisters, stop eating it!”
But Forma knew it was futile. Contra and the dissenter ants seemed to know it, too, watching with a mix of sadness and smugness amidst the thickening scent of death and confusion.
It was about a week after the first discovery of the Sweet Drop when Regula, who had stopped laying eggs anyway, suddenly staggered to her feet. For a moment it seemed like she was trying to say something. But she only stumbled, twitched, then sank steadily and died silently, her scent fading rapidly.
Normally the death of a queen would have set off a terrified frenzy of mourning. “Stop!” Forma shouted. “Look at Regula! Our queen is dead! Dead from the Sweet Drop!”
But no one listened, their antennae motionless and their eyes blank. Where the air should have been filled with cries and wails was just sickly sweet silence. Soon after the queen’s passing came the death of Dolus himself. Still preaching about the glory of the Sweet Drop, he spoke mostly to himself now, with very few ants still cognizant enough to understand his words. Then, right in the middle of a sentence, Dolus began to tremble, his antennae fluttering wildly, legs jerking, before he collapsed, his body twitching erratically before toppling over. His last words, gasped out, were about abundance and prosperity.
With the queen and Dolus dead, any cohesion within the survivors quickly dissipated. Every time Forma turned around, another body lay still, the newly-dead accumulating faster than she could track. The dead lay where they fell, the idea of carrying them to the crypt long forgotten. A handful of her still-living sisters continued, even now, to trudge mechanically toward the Sweet Drop, but Forma knew: this was the end of the colony. She herself was feeling woozy and less alert, no doubt from her mouthfuls of the Sweet Drop.
By the next morning, nearly all the remaining colony members were lifeless. Forma was still alive, but groggy and weak. The only ants still physically healthy were Contra and his followers, who never ate the Sweet Drop. They’d been mocked and shunned as backward, paranoid, unwilling to progress. Now Forma realized they’d been right all along.
Clearly there was nothing left here for Forma or anyone else, including Contra and his followers. Forma caught the sharp, restless scent of the dissenters as they prepared to depart and take their chances in the wilderness. Lacking a better option, she decided to join them, even if not exactly invited. Still, she trudged along behind the group, through the pitch-black wall, down the warm slippery pipe, toward a narrow opening that separated the moist air from the blazing bright world beyond. At every step Forma’s legs trembled; she could barely keep moving, and even if the dissenters had wanted to speak to her, she wouldn’t have been able to reply.
Finally, just a few steps into the great light of the wilderness, Forma felt herself falter, her feet stumbling on a hard, rough surface. Her body twitched, as she had seen so many of her brothers and sisters twitch. Feeling the warmth of the sun, she recalled the old days, the old ways. Traditional roles, steady cooperative toil. Those days were really quite nice. She missed them. But like Dolus said, nothing lasts forever. Something was going to end her colony. The Sweet Drop was just the end they’d chosen. The thought lingered, cold and distant, as everything around her darkened.
Forma rolled and twitched on the hard ground as the dissenters marched deeper into the wilderness, searching, she supposed, for a new purpose, a new queen—for any future at all. Maybe they would find it, maybe they wouldn’t. It would be without her, though, Forma realized, breathing in the fresh grass and soft soil one last time as the natural world faded away from her forever.