[How often does Noah mess with the world?]

[Frequently. You wouldn't believe the political issues he causes just by showing up.]

[I don't know what politics are.]

[Honestly, I don't get what they are either. They have something to do with greed, I think.]

[Then let's stay out of them. Greed is the very worst thing to have.]

[I thought you would say that. Would you like to know how you're doing in terms of power?]

[Actually, I'd rather hunt something and test it for myself. Are there any spiders nearby?]

Joule laughs into my head.

[I don't think you can hunt spiders anymore.]

[What? Why not? Are they all gone?]

[No, there's still plenty of spiders around here, but you tried to use a Void Bite on them you'd probably just annihilate them.]

[Oh. So I'm stronger than I used to be?]

[Significantly, yes.]

It's an interesting thought. Spiders are - no, used to be - so much bigger and stronger than me that I have a hard time believing I'm that much more powerful.

[Perhaps we should hunt some more of those pigs. They generated a fair amount of energy and your conversion rate has increased enormously since then.]

[That's... really good news. I know I got much larger when Noah named me, for whatever reason, but how much bigger?]

[You are approximately...]

She trails off for a moment, calculating the difference.

[Eighty-five hundred percent larger than your original size.]

[...What does that mean?]

[You're eighty-five times larger than you used to be.]

I'm stunned. How massive have I grown? Can I eat elephants? Do I have to eat tigers now?

[In other words, you're about four feet long.]

I guess not.

[Well, let's go back inside and figure out what we should do next.]

[Agreed.]

I turn around and find that the entrance hole to my lovely home is much smaller than it used to be.

[How am I supposed to fit through that?]

[Based on my math? You can't. You'll just have to dig a new one.]

[Oh. Well, all right.]

I get to work immediately, earth flying through my mandibles and being absorbed into the void.

[Aren't you going to miss your old hole?]

[Why would I? It's just a hole.]

[Yes, but it was your hole. It was the base we had when we killed the pig, the home you dug for yourself, for the first time. You're really going to tell me you don't feel anything for your old home?]

I pause for a moment, thinking about the strange tone she's using. Is it unusual not to care? Should I care?

Maybe it's a thing that Joule does.

[I really don't care about the old hole. It served its purpose, didn't it? If you'd like to hold onto it for a while, I can avoid digging into it, but it's not going to be useful for much when I can't fit into it.]

I can practically hear Joule pouting.

[Fine. We don't have to keep it.]

[All right.]

I promptly break down the wall to my left and start caving the old hole in.

[What are you doing?]

[You said we didn't have to keep it!]

[That doesn't mean you have to destroy it!]

I sit still for a moment, trying to get my thoughts in order.

[So, you're fine with not having it, but you don't want it to be gone? What sort of thinking is that?]

[It's human thinking!]

[I'm not a human! I'm an ant! And if we don't need something, we don't think about it twice!]

Joule stops talking as if she's thinking about what I'm saying.

[You're not a human! You're a voe or something, remember?]

[V.E.A.U, actually...]

She really seems to be thinking hard.

[You're right. We're not human and there's no reason we should pretend we are. But there is one piece of advice I don't think Noah's thought of.]

[What might that be?]

[Whenever possible, don't attack a human. They're brutally merciless when it comes to things they don't understand and there's billions of them, with all different levels of power.]

[Fair enough.]

It wasn't until much later that I realized how accurate Joule's words were. And by then, it was a bit too late.