Slime Girl

Silly title, silly story, silly concept. I know. Here's a little short (relatively speaking, it's 6 Word pages) story I wrote over the span of an afternoon, detailing the story of my newest weird character - Slime Girl. Unlike most of my other stories, I'm not going to pretend that this is deep or great in any way. I wrote this for fun, and indeed I had a lot of fun actually writing it, which I'm actually really happy with. There are times when it hurts to write, but this time it put a smile on my face.

It's refreshing to be able to stop taking yourself seriously for a while and write this much weirdness with a straight face, and I plan to do more of it in the future. For the moment, though, let me know what you think.

Please, I'm serious. Any feedback would be more than appreciated

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

When doing illegal research based on the work of not only a convicted criminal, but a committed madman, to boot, all of it behind your employers' backs, it pays to be very, very careful. However, the consequences of science gone awry is one lesson that Professor Scott Sholl, lead developer of biotechnologies for the prominent Biotech corporation, apparently skipped in school. To be fair, the man himself was always one loaf short of a bread basket, himself, so things like "operational safety" and "catastrophic failure" were never part of his vocabulary. They say genius goes hand in hand with madness, but I dare say genius his highly overrated, considering most of what it produces is unstoppable monsters, portals to hell, killer robots and the like.

Back a few years ago, Prof. Sholl managed to con his superiors into funding the development of what amounted to perpetual energy technologies. You know, the impossible. At least, impossible to modern science, but when have the limitations of real life ever stopped a determined mind? Why an otherwise respected scientist decided to shoot for what was clearly science fiction has been difficult to understand, but what we all know is that Sholl spent a year gaining no progress, wasting massive amounts of money and causing more than a few tragic accidents in the process. Facing utter, career-ending humiliation and actual fraud charges, Sholl finally resorted to what can only be described as madness.

About ten years prior to Sholl's ill-fated experiments, another scientist whose name was eventually classified, but whose public moniker of "Majik" (misspelling included) could never be truly erased from public memory, shot for much the same elusive goal of unlimited energy. Unlike Sholl, Majik had rather a lot more success, actually perfecting an entire branch of science and technology which seemed to be able to generate as much energy as his machines could project, drawing on a source that appeared to be literally unlimited. Free energy is always an enticing prospect for any scientist with vision and ambition, obviously, but most of the sane ones have learned to let it go.

You see, Majik's research managed to upset a lot of people for one simple fact - he attempted to harness the power of literal magic through his machines, hence the awkward name. And, yes, seriously. He tried to, as papers at the time described it, "cast spells with computers." Much more shockingly, he succeeded! What should have been a massive breakthrough, however, turned him into a laughing stock, as his academic colleagues refused to take his as of then unproven technology seriously, and the mystic society saw him as a threat. Magic lost his funding, which caused him to turn his inventions to crime in order to find alternate sources of money, eventually getting him thrown in prison, and finally seeing him broken out and employed by one of the more notorious criminal lords out there. As of the making of this programme, it is not known if Majik is indeed still alive, but his last-known status was basically that of a prisoner and slave to the infamous "Lord Bane," truly a fate no refined man of science would want for himself.

You would think that the utter ruination of the creator of what could have been the greatest scientific discovery in all of history, bridging the gulf between the physical and metaphysical worlds for the first time ever would be a strong deterrent to Prof. Sholl. After all, even the greatest of ideas will be stamped out by a misunderstanding world if they are too far ahead of their time. But before the prospect of complete failure and losing not just his job but his entire career, Sholl did not think twice about stealing the illegal research of a convicted criminal and using it as his own.

At first, Majik's equations helped Sholl's bioelectricity generator finally produce more energy than it consumed to run, delaying foreclosure and saving his career, but it had set a dangerous precedent. Sholl had only limited understanding of Majik's work into mystical energies, and unlike the technology's creator, no eye for the metaphysical consequences of his actions. After all, the "magic generator" was never a free energy device, it merely tapped into the energy of the world's invisible metaphysical forces, which in turn had other, more mystical effects. For instance, Sholl's original design called for a large body of amorphous biomass to produce large amounts of bioelectricity when stimulated by outside forces, relying on a series of controversial theories describing a loophole in this kind of cycle, allowing energy to amplify itself. That obviously failed, but when Sholl applied Majik's research to his own generator, it seemed to do exactly that... Except it didn't.

As far as Sholl's measuring equipment was concerned, electricity was being fed into the biomass tank and more electricity was sunk out of it, so obviously the tank was amplifying the energy input. Right? Well, with no way to measure the actual interaction of energy and biomass, that's what Sholl assumed, but he was wrong. Studies of his generator done after the incident indicate that what the generator was actually doing was siphoning what mystics describe as "the life force of the planet" and converting that into more contemporary electricity which was being fed into the tank did little more than simply govern the process, and was in fact expended in whole in what was later dubbed as "animating the slime," as the biomass in his reactor was dubbed by researchers on site.

So, basically, you had a project lead dealing with technology potentially able to produce unlimited power, the fundamentals of which he didn't understand in the slightest. Sholl simply stole someone else's research which was both illegal and potentially dangerous. A normal person would worry at this point. Maybe there's a reason that this research was banned? Maybe there's a reason that Majik is widely regarded as a madman? Maybe there's a reason mystics were afraid of this power? Maybe you shouldn't build a high-energy generator based on science you don't understand because it might blow up in your face? Well, normal people would, but as a man posthumously diagnosed with several psychopathic disorder, Sholl never even attempted to halt the project.

Until it blew up in his face. The longer it ran, the more unstable his biomass generator became, reacting more radically to ever smaller input charges. Sholl dismissed this as a coincidence, but recent research has revealed the reason behind this. Sholl's generator was based upon the ability of his "slime" to channel mystic life force and transform it into electricity, but to do this, it had to be attuned to the frequencies and flow of life force around it, which is where the input charges came into play. However, the world of mysticism being as mystic as it is, eventually the biomass itself began to develop rudimentary intelligence, gaining the ability to align itself with greater and greater precision without outside help. Why this happened, no-one has been able to explain. Scientists the world over are baffled and mystic experts refuse to comment. Terms like "souls" and "spirits" have been thrown around by occultist speculators, but no conclusive evidence has ever been given.

The closest we've ever come to understanding what gave Sholl's biomass actual sentience is Roy Trent's "neural network" theory. According to Dr. Trent, the passing of both life force to which the "slime" was sensitive, as well as the passing of electrical current through the biomass eventually created charged pathways of least resistance, transforming what was once an unordered, amorphous mass into a structured system. This system would therefore be able to reshape itself to retain its arrangement, as well as eventually begin reacting to stimuli in ways that appear intelligent. He likened this to the forming of connections between the neurons of a human brain, a theory shared by a number of philosophers, but which has very little actual scientific backing.

Whatever the reason, Sholl's biomass developed a rudimentary kind of intelligence, along with the ability to align itself to channel life force into bioelectricity on its own, to the point where one day it went onto meltdown overload all by itself. With no means to stop the process other than cutting its input power - a futile gesture at this point - Sholl was unable to stop the meltdown, eventually leading up to the biomass core reaching critical charge. "Critical charge," as defined in Sholl's design documents, is a level of electrical current which, when surpassed by the generator's output, will arc out of the internal circuits and ground into the building's superstructure, basically electrocuting anyone within the lab complex. in an instant. This was considered one of the primary dangers of the reactor, but since right up until the incident, output levels have always been problematically low, no-one worried too much about it, Sholl least of all. What would happen to the generator after it reached critical charge was never officially theorised in advance, though some had proposed ideas that it might open up a black hole, create a portal to another dimension or even create life. Idle speculation is as idle speculation does.

On the day of the incident, Sholl was leading a tour of investors through the generator chamber, trying to ensure them that everything was going to plan. Talk about a bad day to make a visit. Confident of his grasp of the situation, Sholl didn't evacuate the complex when the biomass reactor's output suddenly surged, but instead tried to control it. When retracting full input charge failed to stop the power surge, it was already too late to do much about it. A single, massive electrical jolt arced out of the reactor, electrocuting the entire building and feeding into the power main, knocking out transformers all over the city. The reactor itself superheated from the current, causing the slime to expand, shatter the protective glass and basically splatter all over the room.

A few staff members did survive the power surge, however, mostly through the sheer luck of being in protected locations at the time, such as an animal handler who had crawled into a large metal-bar cage, or Eric Stein, one of the building's janitors, who survived the power surge in the water main sub-basement where the forest of interlocking steel pipes absorbed the shock and led it way from his body. For the people who weren't killed by the power surge or weren't in the presence of people who were, there was no indication of the massive tragedy that had occurred. Thanks to Sholl's constant aggressive experiments, power in the building would go on and off all the time, and lacking an actual supersonic explosion, the incident was easy to miss.

Eric the Janitor assumed that the power outage was just another one of the many tripped breakers and that power would be back eventually, so he grabbed his flashlight and went to work. He was the only person to come into contact with Sholl's biomass before it evaporate4, as he came across a puddle of the green "slime" which had seeped through a ventilation grate to the level below. By mopping it up and dissolving it into the water and cleaning solutions in his bucket, Eric ensured that the slime did not disintegrate when exposed to air. The rest of the slime puddles which pooled around in the reactor room, on the other hand, quickly dehydrated, then hardened into a porous, rock-like solid, then eventually fell apart into dust, losing all of their unusual properties. Only the rather large sample that Eric had mopped up remained.

It wasn't long before the slime in Eric's bucket, now solidified by the various detergent into the consistency of soft jelly, rose of its own power and began shifting its shape. And it is at this point where both scientists and mystics just shrug their shoulders, because no-one has been able to piece together just what in the world happened next. The slime rose out of the bucket, forming itself into the shape of what Eric would later describe as looking like "a naked young woman made out of slime." Why a woman? It has never been explained, though parapsychologist Dr. Robert Craven theorises it could be a residual image the piece of biomass extracted from Eric's mind when it came into contact with his body while he was mopping it up. Dr. Craven has written several books on the appearance of spectres and apparitions, which he believes define their forms by drawing on the memories, desires and fears of the people who see them. That is why a poltergeist can look like a skeletal monster to some and a beautiful woman to others. While interesting, there is no evidence that this theory extends to sentient slime.

Later research would reveal that Sholl's biomass, as influenced by Majik's metaphysical energies, developed a certain amount of latent psychic abilities which. It has been theorised that this caused the limited, rudimentary intelligence of the whole biomass to interact with Eric's own psyche, essentially jumpstarting high-level sentient thought very reminiscent of human intellect, probably owing to the fact that the biomass' own psyche patterned itself either after Eric's own, or after Eric's idea of what a person should be. It's not entirely clear, but there is strong evidence to suggest that the biomass did "borrow" its eventual intelligence from Eric. In fact, AI engineer Dr. Alan Rick, has since written an entire book on intelligence development by borrowed exchange. By observing the interactions of people and how more suggestible individuals tend to copy and adopt the mannerisms and logic of stronger personalities, Dr. Rick has developed several self-learning AIs which attempt to "become" other people by copying them until sufficient intelligence is achieved for the AI to become self-aware. No evidence exists to expand this theory over Dr. Sholl's biomass experiment, however.

What is known, however, is that a brand new, sentient creature came out of this tragedy, calling herself, or rather, itself "Slime Girl," supposedly after Eric's original reaction toward seeing the creature, reported to be: "Woah! A slime girl?" Parapsychologist Dr. Craven believes that the then-impressionable creature accepted this as a moniker without question and built its entire personality onto that name, adopting it too deeply to change at a later date, even when it eventually realised how silly such a name sounded. This is how the eponymous Slime Girl first came to be, though her original personality was literally a blank slate, basically copying the actions and reactions of others and showing little initiative of her own.

For reasons unknown, Eric did not report the existence of Slime Girl to investigating authorities, instead opting to take her home with him. The reasons for this are unclear, but Psychoanalyst Heather Summers theorises the primary reason was that Eric was, in her own words, "a gigantic pervert," a statement that saw her sued out of job and home by Eric Stein several months after the incident on the grounds of slander and libel. Eric himself faced several years of prison time for perjury and withholding vital information from a federal grand jury by hiding Slime Girl instead of reporting her in. Luckily for him, some time had passed after the incident when the news came out, at which point Slime Girl's levels of intelligence and self-awareness had increased to where she was able to testify in Eric's defence and reduce his sentence to community service and a cash fine.

Slime Girl herself (and at this point we can no longer call her "it") has come a long way since her humble beginnings as the unintended consequence of a mad scientist's experiment. When she first appeared, her intelligence level was so rudimentary she was no more intelligent than one of the many Police Drones that have been patrolling the streets in recent years. Her entire interaction with the world consisted of copying what she saw with no will or understanding. Xenobiologist Craig Kingston explains that her time spent with Eric Stein could perhaps have contributed to the healthy, working intelligence Slime Girl eventually developed. Prof. Kingston even testified at Eric's trial, explaining that, had Slime Girl been surrendered to researchers and exposed to tests and a colder environment, then perhaps the intelligence she developed might have been much more warped and hostile, turning her from the asset to society that she is now into what could have been a dangerous monster. Instead, she developed her mind in a warm atmosphere of friendly interaction, basing her psyche on positivism, empathy and introspective understanding, setting the foundations of a healthy individual.

Slime Girl herself has expressed thanks to Eric, whom she continues to live with, for the care and attention he gave her when she was still developing into a real person. In a recent interview, she talked at length about the many things she had learned from her mentor, as well as all the ways in which he had helped her get the right start in life. According to Slime Girl, it was Eric who urged her to apply for a hero license with City Hall, making her one of the first heroes of the city at the time.

As papers have written and talk shows have said, Slime Girl is particularly cut out for the job of a hero of the city. Retaining the ability that Sholl's biomass was first synthesised for, Slime Girl is able to channel the life force of the planet, producing high voltage, high-current electricity practically at will, making her an extremely dangerous opponent to the criminals of the city. The exact workings of her bioelectricity have, of course, never been fully explained. The science of it is relatively clear - Slime Girl is able to draw on energy from "somewhere," which she then uses the consistency of her slime to channel out of her body and form into arcing bolts. Where this energy comes from is unclear, as no-one but Majik is able to explain the function of his technology, and mystical experts refuse to comment. The few odd scraps of information we have talk about a "lifestream" that either circulates around the planet, or is possibly born from the planet that Slime Girl taps into, but none of that has been substantiated. It is more than likely that the exact mechanics of her power constitute forbidden magic.

The other side of Slime Girl's powers is the actual composition of her body. She lacks any sort of tissues, organs or body structures, her body consisting entirely of the same amorphous, jelly-consistency biomass. As such, harming her has proven extremely difficult for her adversaries, as it becomes akin to trying to harm water. Bullets and other projectiles will easily punch holes in her body, but her biomass will simply flow back in an close the holes at seemingly no damage. Even blowing her body apart into separate piles of goo has little effect, as she simply flows back together and reforms. The strange, mutant cells that make up her biomass appear to be almost completely resistant to burning or crushing, and even when they are destroyed, Slime Girl appears to be able to produce new cells at a rate faster than they are being destroyed. Criminals have tried shooting her, crushing her, burning her, irradiating her, anything you can think of, and even when she has been entirely evaporated, she has still managed to reform shortly thereafter.

It is currently not known what, if anything, holds Slime Girl together. Most known regenerators still have a vital core somewhere in their bodies that holds their tissues together, but Slime Girl has no such thing. In fact, according to spectral investigator Amanda Wayne, her resilience is more like that of a spectre than that of a physical creature. Spectres, Wayne explains, are typically bound to a specific object, person or abstract concept and will use that as an anchor to reform themselves around when dispersed. It is believed that Spectres draw energy from a mystic source, using it to give themselves paranormal forms while their souls remain bound to a specific anchor. Amanda Wayne theorises that Slime Girl's biomass is actually a physical form of spectral ectoplasm, forming around her soul anchored to this world. This has earned Amanda multiple death threats from the militant Church of Luka, who insist that inhuman creatures cannot have souls, and that Slime Girl's "snot" as they describe it has latched onto a human soul somehow. However, given that Slime Girl has put many of the Church's followers in jail for terrorist activity, it is debatable how much faith one should put in George Luka's opinion of her.

It seems the notion of soul is always brought up when talking of what keeps a creature in this world, but metaphysicist Professor Herbert Howler believes that this is an erroneous interpretation of a much more complicated system. He believes that what binds humans to life is misunderstood and expressed as something monolithic, whereas a broader notion of "life energy" as the fuel which keeps life going is much more palatable. According to Prof. Howler, all living creatures have the ability to draw on the planet's life force, and indeed on the greater life force of all the cosmos, and that we only die when we lose the ability to draw on this energy, leaving only our energy imprint behind, which others might call a soul. But our minds, our feelings and our thoughts are not given to us and defined via a soul, but rather by the physical reality of actual living. As relates to Slime Girl, Prof. Howler believes that she is able to channel life energy via an extra-planar construct which transcends our reality, therefore the destruction of her physical avatar only impairs her ability to project this energy, but not her ability to channel it.

But whatever the scientific or mystical explanation, one thing is certain: Thanks to the crazy, overambitious idiot that was Professor Scott Sholl and the major disaster his carelessness and arrogance caused, we wound up with a strong and dedicated super heroine who has already sworn to use her unusual, inexplicable powers to do the right thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I recently came across your thread, While Lurking in one of the costume Threads here on the board.

As a returning Player, I had forgotten how intricate, and detailed a nice Back ground like yours can be, to enhance the over all game play.

I really did enjoy reading this, always expecting Scholl, or even the Janitor to be transformed into the hero you mentioned, But I have to admit, the Slime in a bucket, was an unique twist.

Thanks for a little enjoyment for me today, as I await continuing to download tonight.

~Stephen

Thank you for the kind words, Stephen

This story still makes me smile when I think about it, and it's probably about as weird as I've done so far. But I wanted to have a character created out of nothing, rather than transformed from an existing intelligence, just so that I could make her ever so subtly quirky. It took on a slightly more cynical tone than I'd intended, but I don't think it was ever malicious, so it should be all good

By the way, I want to thank you VERY MUCH for dropping me a line. I enjoyed writing the story, but seeing it sink down into the forums with nary a response was one of the less fun aspects of writing it. Now I feel like writing it had a point, so thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, I'm just glad I had a chance to read it. I could have sworn, of course it has been years ago, that there was a sub forum, just for toon bios.

Anyways, I love quirky though. One of my ideas for a villian toon is based roughly off one of my Favorite Novels, Grunts, by Mary Gentle.

I loved that novel so much, that 12 years ago, I named my first Brindle Boston Terrier (passed away 4 months ago) Gruntie Gentle.

The Premise, was about a group of Orcs who located a Time Traveling Dragons, Horde of treasure. It involved a cache of Marine Corp weaponry, adding a whole new twist to the term Grunt.

So far out there in the Premise, and so rewarding to read, esp. as A Marine myself (86-92)

Quirky is good, when pulled off, and you managed it with all the aplomb and Bluster needed. Never going overboard, and keeping the right pace.

Well, anyways, Have the game downloaded , and should be able to play soon, Had it Verifying the Game.

Thanks again, for some inspiration here.

~Stephen

Hmm... Time-travelling orcs sound a tad like Warhammer 40 000, but where theirs were idiots at the bottom of the technology tree, I wonder if there's some merit to be had in an orc scientist who is millenia ahead of his time in terms of technological knowledge

Hmm... Or, even better, because elven life times are typically long enough to amass enough knowledge, how about an elven scientist? Both ideas play on preconceptions, but I already have a troll girl, so elf is more of a novelty in my roster. Now I wonder if I could come up with a reason to call such a character Leningrad

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Leningrad... Hmm. They had a 900 day Siege, and Elves live beyond 900 years?

Lenin himself, Hmm... Marxist theory---> hippies---> Treehuggers---> elves?

I'm sure you could figure something out man, You already have the imagination for it.

~Stephen

Oh I like that idea man.

LOL, shoot, I am having to play so much catch up it's not even funny. My goal is to have at least two fresh 50's when the Game comes out. One Hero, one villain.

As easy as it is to level now though, it shouldn't be too hard.

Stephen

Love the story. Moar