The Little Ant with the Criminal Mind (10/30)

(10/30 @ 10/27) The little ant gathered collected an odd little mushroom when he was out on midden/rubbish duty with the other captives.  The black ants didn’t really check up on them, so he could wander off and search the surrounding areas for any kind of plant material.  He was building a little stockpile out by the midden and another by the rubble pile.  He would bring what he thought were the most promising samples back into the colony to work on them.  Many herb samples only became useful when soaked or fermented and he tried to get some fermentation going at his stockpile site, but it really worked best back in the colony itself.  He had been fermenting this new type of mushroom he had found and he decided to try it out.  He was his own, only guinea pig.  He had the idea that if some substance worked for him, changed his mood or feelings, had some valuable, tangible effect on him, then it might also for the other captive ants.  He wasn’t any too sure what a “valuable effect” might be, but he hoped that he would know it when he tried it.  [describe the mushroom]  He also wanted to do it.  He wanted to change everyone’s consciousness, but he also wanted to change his own.  He didn’t want to feel the way he felt all the time anymore.  He wanted a break from it.   Was it that desire for a break or the desire to free all of the other ants what drove him?  He honestly didn’t know.  He was experimenting and he didn’t know or even really care where it was leading to.  It didn’t really occur to him that he could kill himself this way.  He was gathering all sorts of strange plants, pollens, spores, mushrooms, barks, husks, leaves, roots, fruits, seeds and so forth, and doing all sorts of things to them like soaking them and fermenting them and combining them.  Many of them were substances that no ant he know of had put to use before.  It never really occurred to him, but some of them could be deadly if not downright poisonous.  It occurred to him that he should perhaps recruit some other ants to help him, to carry on the work if he should die or to die in his stead if there were a bad batch.  He must make contact.  The black ants never took the captives on foraging expeditions, but he went anyway.  He could observe what the black ants gathered and they went to places were there were other things to gather as well.  Perhaps he could bring some of his fellow captives on a black ant foraging expedition to see what they would gather once he had made actual contact.