Now that the slime was appearing to be friendly, Justin’s first priority had become finding some way to keep it from wandering out of his sight. Despite its sudden switch to docility, Justin still had the deep feeling that there was more to these creatures than their combat capability.
If they had never been intended for more, then the ability to cooperate wouldn’t have been programmed into them, Justin thought. Just by existing for so long in the council’s borders, he knew enough about the way higher civilizations did things to understand they would have made the creatures to be unthinking, if war had been all they were intended for.
No, just like their physical nature, they served many uses. Justin would soon attempt to discover what those were.
Justin emerged in the end chamber of the cave system and immediately began to swim up, with the slime in tow around one of his tentacles. Splashing out of the water and escaping from the starfish’s sense as soon as possible, he dug in and clung to the roof of the cave like a spider.
Holding out the slime in his hands, he dangled it over the rippling surface with a steady hand.
‘Perfectly content to focus on its meal, it really is just like an animal. Whoever created you must have wanted to give you the barest capabilities of following orders, but not anywhere near the reasoning to question them.’
Or perhaps it was just introverted and a foodie? Justin almost laughed at the thought.
No, it could talk back to him, but rarely initiated communication itself. Either a choice or a product of its design, Justin was unsure. But he knew if he were engineering an anomalous race of adaptable bioweapons, he would want the more dangerous ones to be more obedient, and therefore quieter.
Well, Justin would test if that was the case now.
Reaching his mind out to the slime, he tried giving it the kind of order he imagined its creators would have.
“Travel down for ten seconds. After that, release a moderate amount of heat for three seconds.”
His reply came back in a dismissal of annoyance.
“Hungry. Remain!”
Justin sighed. This was like training a puppy.
“I will give you more food if you do this, alright? Food? Sustenance? Confirm?”
The slime still seemed hesitant. Was it counting the powder left on his palm? That seemed quite advanced, so Justin doubted it. It was probably just being stubborn like creatures often were.
“Confirm.”
The slime finally agreed after a moment. It then dropped into the lightless water without breaking the surface tension. Its form shrinked into the lake but didn’t leave Justin’s thermal vision.
‘Yes, that’s good, keep going…’
Justin watched it descend through the water, knowing he wasn’t the only one doing so. His eyes angled slightly at the starfish’s huge form that was beginning to stir.
Unlike Justin, it had the raw strength to decimate the slime in a single blow. So why had Justin dropped what was currently his most likely method to get out of here into a sink of uncertainty?
There were two reasons. He had assurance, for one, and therefore the risk-to-benefit ratio became greatly improved.
His assurances were that even if the slime was struck by the starfish out of instinct, not only would he be unaffected but the loss wouldn’t be irrecoverable. Yes, the slime would die, but the process of training it to follow his commands at least partially hadn’t shown any indicators of being unique to the one slime. There were more of its kind in storage, including a whole category he had yet to touch. Additionally, Justin had confirmed that the starfish’s senses were unable to breach the limitations of the water, so it couldn’t see him at the moment.
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Secondarily, the benefit of this now minor risk was that if his theory was correct, he could start releasing more than just the red slime to experiment with. He had counted over forty of just it’s type of vial, but who knew how many more were still hidden.
WWWHOOOOOOOOMMMM
The water suddenly rippled. Justin’s eyes excitedly honed in as he realized it hadn't been from a sudden lash of the starfish. No, it was detaching itself from the wall. It was acknowledging the slime!
Justin released himself as well once he knew it was safe. Diving down to the level of the slime and the starfish beast he was able to witness something spectacular.
Strands of cilia were stretching out, meeting with strands of the fiery slime’s body. Almost like brothers reuniting they made an awkward gesticulation that sort of resembled a hand shake.
But in line with Justin’s theory, he knew they weren’t anything like that. Instead of recognizing each other, they were taking in the presence of each other as ‘familiar strangers’. The slime started to dart around the body of the starfish, which opened itself up casually, compared to the defensive stance it had taken in Justin’s first meeting with it.
‘This proves not only that they’re the same species, or were born in the same lab like I had thought, but that there is some kind of group instinct sewn amongst their kind. The starfish doesn’t appear to be assuming the position of an alpha, so I can only assume their social structure would more resemble a colony than mammalian packs.’
The irony was not lost on Justin that he should encounter such a species as a hive himself, but from what he could tell so far his own class of being was not yet reflected in this species.
‘If they behave like a colony, then there would have to be a controller, a central node somewhere. Some kind of queen…or connection point. Could it have escaped already?’
Unlikely, as the kind of being Justin was imagining would likely have the ability to propagate its own kind. Justin had already searched his memory for any mention of this race of creature in their briefing, but had come up with nothing. Harriet would have brought them up if she had found them as interesting as Justin did.
‘So it still might be sealed somewhere down here.’
The doors in the storage room behind the debris came to mind. He would have to see how hot little red could get.
“Alright come on, enough playing around.”
After a while Justin scooped up the red slime through the water, causing both creatures to look at him like he had just interrupted their play date.
“Time to go to work, I’ve got another job for you.”
“Dishonesty!”
“Oh settle down, here’s your dust. Go on, have a snack.”
Justin shook his head as the slime’s complaints were silenced when its face met food. Sure, everyone was for socializing, but in the face of some snacks? No question.
Justin waved to the starfish before diving further, opening the hatch and resealing it behind both of them as he took the slime into the storage room.
Now in here, the risk to Justin’s interests was bigger than potentially losing the little red slime with the starfish. Justin couldn’t imagine any reason for the slime to strike out at the vials around them, but he kept a close watch on it all the same.
It wasn’t long before they reached the end of the corridor. Justin took away the rest of the dust when they got to the metal structural debris, earning an immediate uproar from the creature.
“Hey before you get upset, here’s your new task, then I promise to give you the food back. I’ll even double it, alright?”
The slime barely squabbled with him after that, and Justin was content to see it already growing complacent with the new routine of exchange. They really had engineered these creatures well…
“See that scrap? Get as hot as you can and melt through it. Try not to damage the door too much.”
Justin tried to highlight that last bit. If possible, he didn’t want to wreck whatever room was past this one in the event it hadn’t been flooded. Even more vials could be waiting back there, and he didn’t want to make the same gamble twice.
The slime left Justin’s grasp then, floating over to the pile of mashed together metal bars and support structure as it grew red-hot. Latching onto the debris and spreading out, the water around it quickly started to pop and thrum loudly.
Under so much pressure deep as they were, boiling water was like placing dynamite in a pressure cooker. Still though, there weren’t any changes to the metal itself.
‘Damn! That’s some tough material. I guess it's not too strange to think the scientists aboard knew what they were doing when they were containing these slimes in the vacuum of space.’
Justin rubbed his chin as he recalled the slime back. It wasn’t going to get hot enough to melt through the titanium, no matter how hard it tried. Salt rock, yes, but the metal here was specially alloyed and proven to be temperature resistant among other things.
He turned around as the slime grumbled in his arms. Of course he hadn’t forgotten where he was, as his eyes scanned the walls of vial containers.
‘If one isn’t enough, why don’t I bring out some more?’
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