Dark Goo's page

“Life in a test tube isn’t very exciting,” the dark goo thinks to itself. Unfortunately, that has been its existence for the past couple of weeks, transferred from beaker or test tube to the next latest and greatest glass container. It has been heated, measured, weighed, and analyzed a dozen different ways and it knew of a dozen more ways that the scientists hadn’t tried yet. Its tedious and monotonous day is interrupted as it looks out of its current container, “How do you look when you have no eyes,”it wonders, as it sees a familiar figure approaching. “Oh, here comes Dr. Chen, probably running more tests,” it surmises. “Hello Doctor Chen”, the goo tries to say but can’t since it has no mouth.
The goo remembers a time before it lived in beakers, flasks, test tubes and graduated cylinders, a time before it was a puddle on the ground even, a time when it was a person.
It wonders, are these its memories, at times the memories are cloudy like watching something through a fog or at other times like watching it through long tunnel. Still, at other times things are clearer and it knows with a certainty it use to be this person in the memories. Today it seems like the memories are more like watching a movie then really remembering them. The movie currently playing is of the person he was and the life he lived. “I wish I had some popcorn,” the goo laments. The movie/memory shows the person he was growing up as an only child in an affluent family with a typical childhood. Then the movie fast forwards and shows the person graduating valedictorian of his high school and cuts to his awkward groping of the girl he lost his virginity to on his prom night. “It seemed so important at the time,” it remembers. The movie is like a highlight reel now jumping to and from the other accomplishments and accolades of the person’s life. The goo is impressed as it thinks, [i] “this guy had it all.” The highlight reel shows the person graduating Magna Cum Laude from MIT, with advanced degrees from other prestigious universities. And finally, the pay off, the dream research job, with the big house, and fancy car. It shows the woman and the two small ones. “STOP!” It screams to itself, “They were important, they had names, I had a name, I was a person!

The movie/memory jumps to another scene: Two months earlier;

“Another late night,” Dr. Ty Bender thinks to himself as he enters the Organic Polymer Lab of the research installation he works at. He stops at a workstation and downloads the latest results from the international space station on the collaborative zero gee research in polymerase chain reactions. As he reviews the data he smiles as the results are encouraging. He continues to make his way around the lab taking stock of the various tests and experiments. He stops and makes a couple of entries into a ledger noting that the thermoplastics experiment hypothesis appears to have greater probability density then originally asserted.
Dr. Bender moves on and adjusts the settings on the particle accelerator for tomorrows run and checks the integrity of the vacuum chamber. His late evening in the labs continues in this fashion until he reaches the metal silylamides operant conditioning chamber. “Hmm, that’s odd,” he concludes as he examines the latest data. Trying to isolate the problem he monitors the spectrophotometry effecting the experiment and decreases the wavelength of the laser. A warning light starts blinking on the monitor, ”Why is it losing pressure, he wonders as he begins to flood the OC chamber with liquid nitrogen to slow down the reaction. He changes his monitors to the inferred spectrum and notices the crack in the glass of the OC chamber, “Crud,” he thinks right before the explosion.
He wakens and feels a tingling throughout his entire body. As he looks up he can tell that the explosion caused a lot of damage to the lab. From his vantage point on the floor he can see many of the staff standing around, “Why is no one helping me up.” he wonders. “Give me a hand here,” he tries to say but no words come out. As one of the technicians approach him he grows excited as he feels help is on the way. His excitement quickly grows to fear when he realizes that the technician has just sucked him up into a large pipette and moved him into a beaker. He watched the proceedings from his new vantage point and listened.
As it watched and listened from its beaker, it learned that the explosion had caused some kind of chemical reaction with his body, fusing together with it, and leaving behind this goo, well sentient living goo to be more precise. It wasn’t clear to the goo if the scientists realized the person was part of the goo. Eventually, the goo discovered that Dr. Bender was declared dead, and that scientist decided to study the compound that was left behind.
A sensation and a sound draws it out of its reminiscence. It hears Dr. Chen say to someone in the lab, ”Have you seen these readings.” [b] Chen leans over a workstation showing someone some papers, [b] “See here, this data stream shows that it definitely responding to stimuli.” Getting more excited he continues, “Further, see how it tries to maintain homeostasis in temperature, pH, and water concentration. Also look at the ATP production levels, they’re rising,” he concludes triumphantly.
Replying to something the goo cannot hear Chen says, “Yes, of course. Lest hold everything constant except for temperature lets raise it 2 degrees Celsius and we’ll see what the data shows tomorrow.