That night, Interior Minister Babat had yet another nightmare. A vast, ink-black battalion of ants surged up his nostrils and disappeared inside him. Moments later they began snaking back out through his jaws in a long line, each ant now gripping a tiny gobbet of something in its mouth. The gobbets were the minister’s innards, chewed to bits. The ants discarded the flecks of innards on exiting his body, did an immediate about-turn and marched straight back up his nostrils. It was an ant production line, a nightmare loop, a horrifyingly vicious circle. He could feel himself being hollowed out.

The minister’s dream was not as far-fetched as he would have hoped. At that very moment, a pair of soldier ants was indeed voyaging up one of his nostrils. The deadly duo had sidled into his bedroom during the day and hidden under his pillow, biding their time. Now, as the sleeping dinosaur snored his way through his terrifying nightmare, each one of his jet-stream inhalations propelled the two soldiers deeper inside his nasal cavity. The fearless Formicans were then able to navigate the dark cranium with practised ease, and in no time at all they arrived at his brain.

One of the ants switched on his tiny headlamp and quickly located the main cerebral artery. His colleague attached a yellow mine-grain to the artery’s transparent outer wall. The two then withdrew from the brain, following another winding passage downwards through the dark, dank cranium until they emerged at the ear. A sliver of light filtered through the translucent eardrum and things suddenly got very noisy as sounds from the outside world were amplified by the cochlea and transmitted around the space. The ants swiftly set about installing a listening device beneath the drum.

The interior minister was still trapped in his nightmare. In his dream, all his internal organs had been scraped out and swarms of ants had scuttled inside him, intent on using his cavernous body as a nest. He woke up in a cold sweat.

The two ants working feverishly in his ear felt the world around them beginning to sway, followed by a distinct change in gravitational pull. A deafening rumble filled their dim space, rattling the ants almost to jelly. The minister was yelling and the vibrations were travelling through his cranial bones.

‘Guard! Guard!’

There was another voice, this time from outside. The eardrum vibrated so violently that its surface seemed to blur. ‘Minister, what is it?’

‘Fetch a scanner. I need to be examined at once.’

The two ants glanced nervously at each other. They’d managed to install the listening device, but now they were in great danger of being spotted. ‘What should we do?’ the light-bearing ant said. ‘Perforate the eardrum and evacuate through the ear canal?’

‘No good.’ His colleague waggled her feelers dismissively. ‘We’ll be discovered that way. Let’s take cover in the lungs. Usually they only scan the head.’