Deep within the Hive's Dontas Factory, its manager was spending his working hours making something decidedly inedible. And also, should any Drones or Hosts peer through the Hivemind at what he was doing, they would get the gentle but distinct sense that he would prefer if it was a secret for now. No, secret was too strong of a word. A surprise. Mother knew everything he was doing as clearly as ever, but he wanted to keep this a surprise for its intended recipient--especially if it did not work.

A crystalline workbench on which dough had been flattened had been cleared and requisitioned for this purpose. On it lay a shining metal music box, which had been partially disassembled. Drone Zero-Zero-Four Manager hovered over it, facial features indistinct, holding a complicated clockwork mechanism with small sculpted figures attached. As he lifted a hand, a delicate white screwdriver grew from his fingertip, and he carefully detached each of these figures from their mechanism.

As the music box came apart, each part and gear was set aside in meticulously neat rows so that he would know exactly where to find them and put them back later. Now that the original figures were detached, Jinyi set about making new ones. He tried to synthesize the glassy polymer the Hive used so often, but his magic felt sluggish and slow. After a long moment, no such secretions appeared from his fingertips.

Perhaps it was slow because he had never used this magic before. But Jinyi was confident that the concept of what he was trying to do should work. He tried concentrating harder. Suddenly, a burst of thick, glassy polymer exploded across his palms, tangling his fingers in sticky-stretchy stuff that looked like clear taffy. Jinyi bit back a curse as he struggled to pull his hands free even as it rapidly began to harden. This was not what he had wanted, and it was going to be impossible to get off.

This was so unbecoming for a Drone that should be perfectly neat and pristine at all times. He still couldn't get the last vestiges of sticky polymer clinging to his fingers off. Frustrated, Jinyi tried to summon some kind of scraping tool to help him remove it, but he must have been too emotional. Instead of a helpful apparatus growing from his hands, an overly-large scraper sprouted from his shoulder, rapidly growing and spinning faster and faster until it was of the perfect size and velocity to slap him in the face. THWACK! The apparatus crumbled into white dust and disappeared. Jinyi stumbled, stunned.

Eventually he recovered enough that he could have a coherent thought again. Maybe it was lucky that no siblings were watching. Especially Ace, Jinyi thought with a twinge of embarrassed humor. Dontacael knew the dragonlike Drone would never let him hear the end of it. With that thought to keep him company, he grew a smaller, useful, non-spinning scraper this time, and gingerly removed the polymer residue from his hands.

If at first you don't succeed, just try again, right? Jinyi didn't have all the time in the world, but it was pretty close to that. He just had to be patient and relentless, as Order always was. He concentrated again, and this time, an appropriate amount of polymer flowed at a controlled rate from his fingertips. He got to work shaping it immediately, envisioning his subject as he did. Four segmented legs. A crown of crystalline spikes. Tentacles, which he made by stretching the substance thin like threads of candy. Finally, a curtain of wings, into which Jinyi scratched featherlike patterns with his screwdriver-finger before they hardened.

It was delicate, detailed, meticulous work. But Jinyi was a Drone, and this kind of work was exactly what Order should excel at doing. Finally, he set the newly-sculpted figure down to cure. The centerpiece.

But his work here wasn't done yet. The original music box had had multiple figures turning in a circle, and Jinyi planned the same for this modified version. The central feature of the Hive, after all, was never being alone :)

He made to secrete more polymer, but the magic wouldn't respond again. A frown reflexively appeared on Jinyi's features, though no one was here to see it. Was it because he was too tired from making the centerpiece? He flexed his fingers and laced them together, pushing outward in a stretch. Then he stood up on his tippy toes, reaching toward the ceiling, then rotated his torso at several frightening angles. It was important to care for one's body.

He tried again. This time the polymer flowed more reluctantly, and he found himself actively having to spend effort on coaxing more to be synthesized in the right amounts and positions as he worked. Nevertheless, more familiar figures were sculpted into existence by his hands, though all of them were necessarily smaller than the centerpiece he had made. A biped with a halo above its head. A pair of antlike silhouettes. A creature with fins and a fishlike head and a flying figure with a mane, the texture of hair and scales scratched into their surface by his screwdriver again. The screwdriver was serving a lot of different creative functions today.

Eventually the magic ran out and he had to cast it again to make more. This time the polymer was synthesized without issues, and Jinyi felt his mood brightening as he shaped it. This work was good, enjoyable, like all work done in service of the Hive. He felt like this when the chip factory was running, too, the clockwork machinery churning out bag after bag of perfectly-fried, perfectly-packaged Dontas. He was locked in. In a flow state.

Who-knows-how-much-time later, the Drone set down the last polymer figure on the workbench and stretched again. They would need time to cure, but now... he looked down at his creations with a critical eye. Something was missing, and that something was color. He stood still, thinking. Planning. Then he turned and left the neat rows of familiar figures sitting on the bench, striding with purpose. He knew where to go next.

Jinyi returned, jars dangling from a hanger in hand, and set his newly-acquired supplies down one-by-one on the benchtop. Then he grew a kind of five-headed hammer apparatus from his hand, to simultaneously crush the items in each jar. The berries rapidly turned into a colored liquid that he thought was probably good to use right away, while the bugs and pieces of shell turned into powder.

He gave the hammer device a thorough rinse at the hand-washing station (it was important for all factories processing food to come with a hand-washing station for hygiene and anti-cross-contamination purposes, so of course the Dontas™ Factory had them spaced throughout the room as well) and returned to the jars. He poured a portion of the white berry juice into the jar containing the crushed nacre, but hesitated before adding it to the jar with the crushed bugs. The chitin that grew on him and some of his siblings wasn't white; it was a glassy translucent color. How could he reproduce that?

Slowly, a potential solution took shape. Clearstone was clear; it was in the name. And it was a perfect representation of Order, to boot.

Mother? he thought tentatively, reaching out to the ant queen's presence. Would she approve of this idea? Would she grant him this favor for his work?