Just as Ixta made to rub his eye, three other ants nipped into his nostrils. Battling their way into a screaming gale, they expertly threaded their way through a tangled forest of nose hair, making a concerted attempt not to trigger a sneeze. They advanced quickly through the nasal cavity to the back of the eyeball, tracing a route that was familiar from countless surgical procedures. Following the translucent optic nerve, they now proceeded towards the brain. Here and there a thin membrane blocked their path, but they simply chewed a small hole and squeezed through. These holes were so tiny that the dinosaur felt nothing.

Finally, the three ants arrived at the brain, which was peacefully suspended in a sea of cerebrospinal fluid like a mysterious, discrete lifeform. After careful searching, they found the thick cerebral artery, the main pipeline supplying blood to the brain. Through the pellucid pipe wall they could see and hear the dark red blood coursing past with a low rumble. Ixta’s brain was working overtime, trying to process the mind-blowing quantities of battlefield information being transmitted from his optic and auditory nerves, and this torrent of blood was fuelling it with the necessary energy and oxygen.

The three ants were neurosurgical techs and this was familiar territory to them. They had been dispatched to places like this countless times before, to clear clogged cerebral blood vessels and save untold numbers of dinosaur lives in the process. Now, however, they would do the opposite. With their sharp mandibles, they began to make three deep scratches in the artery wall, working with care and skill. When the incisions joined up to form a complete circle, the ants rapidly withdrew the way they’d come. They had no wish to witness the end result. As veteran surgical techs, they knew exactly what was about to happen. Blood circulated at high pressure and very soon beads of blood would well from the incisions on the artery wall. Then, as neatly as if it had been scored by a glasscutter, the lesion would rupture and the little circular section of the artery wall would come loose and create a round hole. Blood would gush out of the hole, sending tendrils of crimson curling through the brain fluid and staining it red. Deprived of its blood supply, the brain would quiver and grow pale.