Learning to Think

As long as Gabriel could remember, life had always been this way. He was not sure why his memory didn't reach back farther than his adult working life, but that was the truth. Somehow, a very thorough amnesia had swept through his brain and left him with nothing but his name and his daily routines.

And routines they were.

Gabriel would wake up early every morning. He had no need to put on his working outfit; he simply slept in it. So did everyone else, for in their society, work was everything. Everyone worked, and they all worked towards the same purpose - the betterment of their society.

After waking up, Gabriel would almost immediately receive the first orders of the day through the communication device implanted in his head. This implantation was yet another thing that he had no memory of, but he assumed that it had to have happened, as it always worked to perfection; the voice in his head telling him what to do was always crystal clear.

"Walk the 7,786 steps from your home to the edge of The Greens, search for proper building materials in a 200 step vicinity and then return the 7,217 steps back to the construction site. Repeat action until first break". That was the first order of the day. A typical one at that, too. The majority of the working population was divided into three subcategories: food scavengers, builders and warriors. And above them all, their leader. The one whose voice seemed to simultaneously penetrate the millions of minds of the giant society under her leadership.

Gabriel was a builder. He had previously worked as a part of the food crew, until one morning the voice in his head had given him other instructions without any explanation at all. But that was the way of life in their society. Blind devotion to their eternal empress, no questions asked.

And life could have gone on like that forever it seemed, was it not for the fact that Gabriel seemed to feel different this morning. As he strolled towards The Greens on his usual route, he started to think.

"Why do we follow these orders?" he asked himself, while picking up a log several times his own size at the outskirts of The Greens. And this thought lead to another, and that one to even more. At the time Gabriel put down the giant log at the drop-off spot at the construction site, he had contemplated almost all that he knew about their society. And he was not happy about it.

For when he came to think about it, their rules and customs could best be described as cynical, or perhaps even cruel.

"We slave away for eternity with no apparent gain other than to serve this woman - and none of us even have any memory of why she has all that power! And when the hard, physical work has finally worn you down, you are left to die and replaced. No thanks, no gratefulness, nothing!".

This was one of many thoughts that flew through Gabriels head that day. And all night these reflections tormented him, so for the first time in his life, he had already been awake a long time when he heard the voice issue the same order as yesterday and the day before that.

Despite his newfound truancy towards their seemingly omnipresent leader, Gabriel chose to carry out his orders.

But as he walked alongside the mass of other construction workers headed to gather materials at the same spot as him, he couldn't help but share his thoughts. And as a wildfire these thoughts spread throughout the entire workforce. And when the thousands and thousands of workers on the building team returned with their first haul of logs, these logs were no longer intended for building, but for destruction.

Gabriel was not yet sure how to feel about this. He had shared his thoughts at first merely with the purpose of having the others reflect on them and tell him their opinion. But he had not envisioned the way that his fellow workers seemed to accept his words as the one and only truth.

Every word he spoke seemed to have almost the same effect as an order, except that these ideas spread by word of mouth. Each time they were told another time the force of these notions was amplified, multiplied, until they finally culminated in what was about to happen; an uprising.

They fought their way through the long and narrow tunnels of their home, towards the empress' chambers, sweeping through every bit of opposition with no mercy. Even the most proficient of the warriors were crushed without much difficulty as they were greatly outnumbered by the elated mass of hardened workers.

At some point in this chaos, Gabriel, now just a tiny drop in the unstoppable flow of force all put together by his words, seemed to come to terms with what was happening.

"This is right. It's exactly what we need. To purge the entire colony of anyone opposing us, opposing our freedom." And with that thought in mind he pushed forward, ending up as one of the first to breach the entrance to the queens personal dwellings.

The queen was much larger than them, three or four times their size at least. But they were a people accustomed to following orders no matter the prospect of danger, and she was only one while they were many. She was quickly brought down and pinned to the floor by a wave of some of the strongest workers, and Gabriel was then brought forth to finish what he had started.

"It has to be done. Only this way can we be free. Free from their lies."

With one swift motion he severed the queens head from her body. Her body was dragged away by a few of the workers, but the head was brought to the summit of their colony, for all to see. From this summit Gabriel held a speech. A speech with which he sought to reach the minds of as many of his people as possible. A speech spoken without fear, even though he could see the swarms of the winged warriors appear in the distance, all returning from whatever business they might have in an answer to the queens last call of distress. To avenge her. And Gabriel knew that he and his army of untrained workers would stand no chance against them. This is what he said, and these were his last words:

"Fellow citizens! Fellow workers! Despite the tragic events of today, we should not mourn, but rejoice! For today a great revelation has been made to us. No matter what they might say, no matter what they might do, you should never again trust them. Through what seems like a miracle, I have been granted the ability to see through their fog of lies, and thus reveal the biggest lie of them all!"

Gabriel briefly looked to the sky and then spoke his last few sentences, well knowing that he would be dead soon, seeing the thousands of winged attackers preparing to unleash hell on him and his comrades.

"No matter who ends up ruling this colony after my death, after they have crushed our rebellion, remember one thing. They will tell you that you have to follow the orders. But that's not true. It's a lie."

This was the story of Gabriel, the first ant to grow a conscience.