Excerpt from We Are the Ants by Shaun Hutchinson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

My throat was scratchy. Even caged rats are given water bottles and food pellets.

"If you're testing my patience, I should warn you that I once spent three weeks in a roach-infested RV with my family on the antiquing trip from hell. Twenty-one days of Dad getting lost, Mom losing her temper, and my brother finding any excuse to punch me, all set to the glorious song of Nana's deviated septum."

Nothing. No reaction. The slugger beside me waggled its eyestalks, the glassy marbles taking in a 360-degree view. They were like one of those security cameras hidden under a shaded dome; it was impossible to know where they were tracking at any given moment.

"Seriously, it was the worst trip of my life. Every night we all had to lie still and pretend we couldn't hear Charlie polishing his rifle in the overhead bunk. I'm pretty confident he broke the world record for the most number of times a kid's masturbated while sharing breathing space with his parents, brother, and grandmother."

A beam of light shot over my shoulder, projecting a three-dimensional image of Earth in the air a few feet in front of me. I turned to find the source, but the slugger sprouted an appendage and slapped me in the neck.

"I really hope that was an arm," I said, rubbing the fresh welt. The picture of the planet was meticulously detailed. Feathery clouds drifted across the surface as the image rotated leisurely. Tight clusters of defiant lights sparkled from every city, as bright as any star. A few moments later, a smooth pillar approximately one meter tall rose from the floor beside the image of the earth. Atop it was a bright red button.

"Do you want me to press it?" The aliens had never given me the impression that they understood anything I said or did, but I figured they wouldn't have presented me with a big shiny button if they hadn't intended for me to press it.

The moment I stood, electricity surged up my feet and into my body. I collapsed to the floor, twitching. A strangled squeal escaped my throat. The slugger didn't offer to help me, despite its ability to grow arms at will, and I waited for the spasms to recede before climbing back into the chair. "Fine, I won't touch the button."

The projection of the earth exploded, showering me with sparks and light. I threw up my arm to protect my face, but I felt no pain. When I opened my eyes, the image was restored.

"So, you definitely don't want me to press the button?"

Under the watchful eyes of my alien overlord, I witnessed the planet explode seven more times, but I refused to budge from my seat. On the eighth explosion, the sluggers shocked me again. I lost control of my bladder and flopped onto the floor in a puddle of my own urine. My jaw was sore from clenching, and I wasn't sure how much more I could take.

"You know, if you just told me what you wanted me to do, we could skip the excruciating pain portion of this experiment."

They restored the planet again; only when I tried to sit, they shocked me and blew it up. The next time the image was whole, I scrambled to the button and slammed it with my hand. I was rewarded with an intense burst of euphoria that began in my feet and surged up my legs, spreading to my fingers and the tips of my ears. It was pure bliss, like I'd ejaculated a chorus of baby angels from every pore of my body.

"That didn't suck."


I lost track of how many times I pressed the button. Sometimes they shocked me, sometimes they dosed me with pure rapture, but I never knew which to expect. Not until I saw the pattern. It was so simple, I felt like an imbecile for not seeing it sooner. Being shocked until I pissed myself probably hadn't helped my problem-solving abilities.

Those shocks and bursts of euphoria weren't punishments and rewards, nor were they random. They were simply meant to force me to see that there was a causal relationship between whether I pressed the button and whether the planet exploded. The sluggers were trying to communicate with me. It would have been a much more exciting moment in human history if I hadn't been wearing soggy underwear.

Excerpted from We Are the Ants by Shaun Hutchinson. Copyright © 2016 by Shaun Hutchinson. Excerpted by permission of Simon Pulse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.