All of sudden, you felt a wave of cold engulf your body but then it was more like surges of electricity rushing across your spine and limbs, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end while shuddering from the drastic drop in temperature. Then there was an intense pain as all the muscles in your body clenched at the same time, it was as if you were tied with countless ropes on the inside, leaving you unable to move, unable to speak and almost unable to think. Your heartbeat quickened and breathing became extremely difficult, at that moment all you could think was that you were suddenly dying for no reason and then... darkness, your thoughts faded before you even realized...
You then woke up, you were laying on something cool and vaguely sweet-smelling. Your fingers twitched and you felt it was like some sort of gel, which made you open your eyes wide in surprise. You found yourself laying on some transparent gel that seemed uncannily familiar for some reason but then you looked to the side and noticed a glass wall, a massive one at that.
"Oh, he woke up" You heard a female voice but not one you recognized.
"Well, there goes the 1st live test. We didn't think it'd knock out a god like that but at least he endured it" Another female voice was heard.
"The what now?" You said and then turned towards where the voices came from but as you did you almost had a heard attack: It wasn't people speaking but massive insectoid beings, easily the size of people from your perspective. You gasped and tried to crawl backwards by reflex without taking your eyes off them. Among them there was one that was much bigger than the rest, easily 4 or 5 times larger.
"W-what the?!" You looked around but you seemed to be inside a cave, one that was dug in this unnatural transparent gel substance.
There was no apparent escape and nothing you could use to defend yourself with. But before your heart rate accelerated too much you forced yourself to calm down a little and looked at these beings. They definitely resembled insects, most specifically ants but at the same time, they bore some humanized features, like their faces, the fact that they had hands and their body shapes, as it was quite evident which ones were female, even reminding you of some childhood movies where bugs were depicted like people. But the most uncanny thing of all was that you had heard these... things speak.
"Where am I?" You tentatively asked but weren't fully expecting an answer.
"Welcome! That was a better reaction than we anticipated!" One of these beings spoke and you noticed that it was even wearing what looked like a rough imitation of a labcoat.
"Good thing there was no need for subduing, at ease!" The largest one spoke with a soft, motherly voice that reminded you a bit of your own mom's. You then noticed that there were several more of these insectoid beings that looked like some kind of armored guards, who did a military salute and then stood at ease as commanded.
"I don't know what the hell kind of hallucination this is but for the sake of going with the flow, who are you and where are we?" You asked, feeling an incoming headache at this fever dream that refused to quit.
"This is no hallucination" The one with the labcoat spoke
"Take a look and see if you can recognize this place" She said and you reluctantly did but then you noticed a few things and did a double take. Your heart skipped a few beats and your eyes widened.
"Wait, this is the ant farm?!" You said.
"So that's what gods call them, huh? We prefer to refer to it as The Kingdom" The largest one said.
You stood up and began patting your own body, your face, your arms. You were afraid to find that you had a hard exoskeleton like these beings, which apparently are the same ants you saw in the ant farm. Fortunately you were still made of flesh and blood without the layer of chitin.
"We reduced your size, we did not transform you into one of our own. Our technology hasn't quite gotten there... yet..." The scientist-looking ant said.
"This is insane!" You then sighed and shook your head "I've actually seen something like this somewhere but I must ask: Why? I don't think I did anything wrong"
The ants tilted their head, surprised when you mentioned you saw something like this before but they also found your reaction interesting. The largest ant, which you now realized was the queen, seeing that she was even wearing a crown, walked slowly towards you and knelt down to try and get closer to your level though she was still the equivalent to 30ft tall to you.
"I think you're getting the wrong idea, this isn't an attack or a retaliatory measure. We did this for Science" She said, slowly reaching towards you with her hand in a similar way one would do to a scared kitten.
"What do you mean science?" You asked, feeling a bit more at ease because it was clear that if they wanted to hurt you they would have done easily so while you were still out cold.
"Yes, science, for research and learning" The ant queen explained "We want to learn more about our goddess and her kind since there's more beings like Her. Thankfully better than the Great Evil One"
"Goddess?" You raised an eyebrow "Oh, you must mean Snickers" And at that moment all the ants gasped, including the Queen.
"We have finally learned the Divine Name!" An ant that was more or less dressed like a nun spoke and right after all ants got on the ground and knelt, doing a sort of silent prayer for a few seconds.
"History is unfolding before our eyes!" A smaller, older-looking male ant spoke, pulling a piece of gel and it looked like he was writing on it by carving it with his claws.
"Wait, wait, wait... Snickers is not her name, it's kind of a nickname, a false name if you will. Not even I know her true name" You said while laughing awkwardly, hoping you didn't get them angry.
"At least it's a name given by your kind, it's better than nothing" the Queen said.
"I suppose it's understandable that Her name remains a secret"
"So... anything else you want to know about humans?" You asked, wondering if this was some sort of elaborate prank.
"Humans is the name of your species? We heard those words before but we weren't sure for certain" The scientist ant asked and you nodded a bit timidly, then wrote down in a similar fashion to the older ant from earlier.
"Wait, before we continue with all this... did you really just shrink me to ask me questions about humans?" You said, feeling like something wasn't adding up.
"Well, that was the primary reason, yes" The Queen spoke and even did a slight giggle "I personally requested to run our test on you because you intrigued us" She said as she slowly brought her hand under your chin.
"This is the first time we saw a male of our Goddess' species and we saw that you bore no ill will towards us, you showed us kindness and that made you someone safe to bring into our Kingdom"
Even though her hand was hard to the touch due to her exoskeleton, the Queen had a gentle elegance that still made her touch have that motherly vibe that you got from your own mom somehow and that only confused you all the more.
"Wait, how do you even know I'm a male?" You asked, figuring that you were too different from an ant for them to tell, even if these were super intelligent for some reason.
"Everything" The Queen said softly "Your looks, your scent... you know how you can tell things about other beings even if they're different from you? You can look into a different creature's eyes and still know those are their eyes... Kind of like that, we could tell you're a male human" She explained.
"And as if we needed more confirmation, we saw that you were eager to mate with our Goddess too!" The scientist ant blurted out and the Queen shot her an annoyed glare.
"Wait, what?!" This time you felt incredible embarrassed but also indignant at how nonchalantly she had just gone and said that to your face.
"Your temperature rose, your scent intensified, we saw that your gaze was fixed on Her body and... well, we also saw a physical change on your lower body" The Queen then said and at that moment you just couldn't take it anymore, falling backwards.
"Hey, hey! We're not judging! It'd be pretty presumptuous of us to try and judge a Higher Being"
"That was just a massive misunderstanding and I shouldn't have done that" You said weakly as the Queen gently helped you up.
"I don't think that kind of reaction is something you can control, if it's natural instinct than that's simply what you're supposed to do" The scientist ant said in a more reassuring tone "Besides, we are curious as to how humans breed! I've never seen a human egg or a larva!"
"Uhh... it doesn't quite work like that" You said "But also I'm not... mating with your Goddess"
"Does that mean you already have a mate?" The Scientist asked and was visibly writing down notes on that piece of gel.
"No! I'm not mating with anybody!" You said, more flustered than you thought.
"Hmm, it appears that discussing the topic of mating is uncomfortable to humans" The scientist ant noted and you sighed in relief, for once she seemed to have made a correct assumption.
"Anyway, like I was saying, you intrigued us as the first male human we saw and we saw that you're more like our Goddess Snickers rather than the Great Evil One so we brought you here to learn more of your kind" The Queen said.
"I have 2 questions if you don't mind: How do you even talk? And how come I'm seeing you right now standing on two feet, wearing clothes, writing and looking way more human now? When I fed you I saw you as ordinary ants walking on six legs and stuff" You asked.
"Ooh, I can answer those!" The scientist ant sounded excited for sure.
"We don't exactly talk like your species does. It might be too complicated to explain in full but the gist of it is that when we shrank you we also added a sort of enhancement to your brain that lets you understand us in a way that you can manage. We ants make sounds that you can't hear and use smells to communicate..."
"I see, that makes some sense" You replied.
"As for the second one, you see, that's an interesting phenomenon and we have a bunch of theories about it but so far, all we know is that humans in their normal form can't seem to perceive us beyond our most basic features. At least now we got evidence that size-altered humans can indeed see us for who we are now"
"Yeah, I'm sure Snickers would be thrilled if she knew you guys are so smart" You said "Okay, one more question: How long am I going to stay shrunken like this?" And then the scientist ant responded: