In Alix’s field of work, explanations weren’t always simple, nor did they always come easy. Alix had seen plenty of inexplicable phenomena over the course of her career, things she could only begin to theorize about.
But she had to admit, seeing a blotch of fungus spell out her name on the floor of the central hub was a top contender for weird events.
“If you guys are pranking me somehow, now’s the time to confess,” Alix said shakily to Lyle and Maisie.
“If this is a prank, I’m not in on it.” Maisie took a step back, eyes not leaving the glittering, black mold that had just shifted to form the letters ‘ALIX’.
Lyle said nothing. His gaze shifted from the letters to the surrounding walls, where the rest of the mold had begun to pulsate more violently than before. It was as though they were all trapped within some dark, beating organ, on the verge of being consumed.
Figaro leaned against his tube on the table to tip it over, letting it roll to the edge so he could get a better view. “I’m no fungus expert, but is it supposed to move like this?”
The fungus, or whatever it was, began to shift again, the disparate letters coagulating to form a single black splotch once more. The splotch pulsed rapidly and then began to separate to form yet another word.
HELP
“There’s no way I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing,” Alix said. She patted down her pockets with trembling hands. “I don’t have any of that wing fragment stuck to me somewhere, do I? Am I hallucinating right now?”
“Nope. This is real,” Figaro said grimly. “And by real, I mean real weird. Let’s scram!”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Lyle turned quickly and grabbed his tablet from the table. He switched to its camera and hit record, aiming the lens at the fungus. “I have to document this.”
“You do that little thing. I want out.” Figaro tapped at his enclosure, looking up at Alix. “Boss?”
Alix lifted his tube from the table and tucked it into her breast pocket, but made no move to leave. It was impossible to take her eyes off the mold. Something about its glittering surface and steady pulse was mesmerizing. “Do you think it’s trying to communicate?”
The splotch shifted again. ‘HELP’ merged, then split into a new word.
RETURN
“There’s that word again,” Figaro snapped. His tube was sticking just far enough out of the pocket for him to see the ground. “They hammered it into my head when they body-snatched me! Let’s go before they do it again!”
“I don’t understand.” Alix furrowed her brows as she stared down at this strange, living message to her. “Return what? Or to what?”
The splotch stopped pulsing at her words. It merged again. With shocking speed, the splotch retreated from its spot in front of them and slid to the much larger patches growing on the walls, fusing with them. The pulsing of the rest of the mold in the room grew even more frenzied and uneven. The black that covered the walls and ceiling began to bubble.
Maisie quickly turned and began gathering her supplies. “I’ve got a feeling we won’t be able to solve anything if we stick around much longer. Alix’s bot is right. Time to bounce.”
Lyle hesitantly stopped recording and packed his things up as well. Alix followed them out. As she did, she glimpsed tendrils of the black reaching out from behind her, as though pleading for her to stay.
***
“The director really ought to have taken the time to set up a proper decontamination shower outside the hub,” Dr. Park said as she held a scanner up to Alix’s eye. She was back in her green medical uniform, one gloved hand holding Alix’s eyelids apart, the other working the scanner. Figaro was on the stand beside Alix’s examination table, idly fiddling with Dr. Park’s instruments. They were the only ones in the medical bay at the moment.
After everything that had happened the past several days, and some hounding from Dr. Park, Alix figured it would be wise to drop in for a quick physical. Alix wasn’t a big fan of being poked and prodded, but she had to admit there was something calming about the med bay. Maybe it was the cool blue walls, the neat rows of beds, the gentle beeps of various scanners announcing that all was well with Alix’s heart, lungs, blood pressure, what have you. It could also be Dr. Park herself, the steady way she spoke and the stoic expression that never left her face.
“We had decon sprays in the tent outside the door.” Alix shrugged as Dr. Park switched to her other eye. “And I showered back at my quarters before coming here. But if I’m being honest with you, Doc, I don’t know that it matters. I’ve got a feeling that mystery gunk has already begun spreading throughout the station. If it’s in the hub, then it's probably in other walls, other systems, hell, even the vents. We’re all already contaminated.”
“Hm. If you’re contaminated, you don’t seem to be suffering ill effects. Well, any that are immediately apparent, in any case.” Dr. Park released Alix’s eyelids and put the scanner back on the table beside Figaro. “I’m running your blood work now. That will hopefully reveal any fungal toxins or bacterial infection, as well as any lingering imbalances as a result of that wing fragment you were telling me about.”
Alix got off the table and stretched. “Many thanks, Doc! God knows I’ve got enough ‘imbalances’ going on around here, the last thing I need is any left on the inside.”
“And the last thing I need is a patient who drags her feet like you do.” Dr. Park raised an eyebrow. “Next time, don’t make me send twenty messages just to get you in the med bay.”
“Hey, I came eventually, didn’t I? I was only late by a day or so.”
“Believe me, a lot can happen in a day or so.” Dr. Park turned her head abruptly toward Figaro. “And kindly keep your robot from meddling with my tools.”
Figaro dropped the thermometer he was holding and looked up at Dr. Park indignantly. “Hey, I got a name, thanks! It’s Figaro. Mr. Figaro to you. I’m not some little pet.”
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Dr. Park took in a breath and nodded hesitantly. “Right . . . Figaro. Forgive my slip-up. I’m not used to dealing with robots with your level of cognitive sophistication. I forget.”
“Yeah, you and half the station staff,” Figaro grumbled, picking up an empty glass vial and peering at Dr. Park through it. “What’ll it take to get it through your slimy, meatbag brains that I’m my own guy, with thoughts and feelings? A look at my CPU under the microscope?”
Dr. Park chuckled and folded her arms. “I highly doubt the answers to your consciousness would be found there.”
“Fine, sue me, I’m not a freaking engineer.” Figaro shrugged two limbs. “My consciousness is sitting in one of my microchips, maybe.”
“I’m no engineer, either, but I’d still wager that’s not how it works,” said Dr. Park. She seemed vaguely amused as she spoke to Figaro. “First, let’s assume you truly possess a consciousness and aren’t merely going through the correct motions and responses of an abnormal algorithm that mimics consciousness.”
“‘Let’s assume’? Excuse you!” Figaro stamped a limb. “You know, by your stupid logic, you could be just ‘mimicking’ consciousness too!”
“Oh, certainly. I don’t deny that could be true. But for the sake of the argument, let’s assume everyone here possesses consciousness. The thing about consciousness is, it’s not tangible.” Dr. Park looked between Alix and Figaro. “We’ve seen incredible advancements both in cybernetics and neurology. Yet no one can pinpoint any one structure or neuron in the brain that houses or generates consciousness. So, the likeliest explanation for consciousness is emergence.”
“Emergence?” Figaro tilted his head.
“It means a lot of simple parts coming together to form something more complex,” Alix explained to him. She’d studied this before, back in university. “Think of ants coming together to form a colony, or atoms combining to form molecules.”
Dr. Park nodded with a smile. “In this case, we apply it to the mind. Consciousness is the sum of numerous neural structures working in harmony. Every disparate component of your mechanical brain comes together to form the thing that makes you Figaro, Figaro. So taking you apart wouldn’t be very productive in finding your consciousness. Really, it would simply obliterate it.”
“Wow,” Figaro said simply. “Huh. Thanks for the existential crisis, Doctor.”
Dr. Park winked at him. “You’re quite welcome.”
Alix held her hand to Figaro for him to climb on, thinking about Dr. Park’s words. She thought, too, of the words sprawled on the floor of the hub earlier. ‘Alix’. ‘Help’. ‘Return’. They weren’t formed by accident.
The lights flickered above and static crackled on the nearby intercom, earning a sharp frown from Dr. Park. Dr. Park looked around at the lights as they continued to act up.
“Well, that’s as good a reminder as any,” Alix said as Figaro scurried up to her shoulder. She headed for the door. “Time to get back to work. Thanks again, Doc.”
“Any time, Alix,” said Dr. Park without looking her way. The doctor’s eyes were instead trained on the far left corner of the med bay, where a nearly imperceptible patch of black had appeared against the blue.
***
Alix’s messages to Maise were met with a curt “not now, busy in my quarters, call you later”. That left only Lyle to confer with. Before the three of them had parted ways, he’d said he’d be spending the rest of the day in the botany department lab until it was time for their report to Director Werner.
As Alix and Figaro made their way through the station halls to the botany department, it was impossible not to notice evidence of the growing threat in every bend and corner. Alix saw traces of black lining the windows, creeping out vents, clinging to the elevator doors. All small enough that you’d only notice once you knew to look for it.
Figaro evidently noticed it too.
“It’s like an invasion,” he whispered in Alix’s ear. “It’s everywhere. Boss, I think I wanna stay in one of Lyle’s plastic tubes full-time.”
“What, seriously?”
“Seriously,” he said, and the robot certainly sounded like he meant it. “I can’t handle getting body-snatched again, I can’t.”
“Figaro—”
“No, you don’t understand!” Figaro raised his voice. “It was horrifying. I woke up and knew something was wrong. I kept trying to call to you, and it was like . . . in my mind, I mean, it was as if . . .”
Alix stopped and looked down at Figaro on her shoulder, gentle. “As if what, Fig?”
Figaro shifted to avoid her eyes. He grew quiet again. “I just can’t, okay?”
Alix patted Figaro and started walking again, the botany lab in view by now. “Don’t worry, buddy. I won’t let you get body-snatched again. I promise.”
Alix continued to the lab. She shut the door behind her. The lab was empty save for Lyle, who was hunched over a compound microscope, black-filled vials lined beside it. He stared into its lens in rapt concentration. A stray lock of hair hung over his cheek.
“Whoa, pretty empty in here,” Alix said, causing Lyle to jump as he became aware of her. “Where is everybody?”
“Greenhouse,” Lyle answered. He kept his eyes on the microscope rather than look at her. “They all want to be sure to arrange the optimal conditions for our newest sample.”
“Newest sample?”
Lyle glanced up. “The Polyminia you brought.”
“Ah, right! You’re welcome for that, by the way,” Alix drawled. She walked up to the table and sat on the stool across from Lyle. “Glad my romantic gesture hasn’t completely gone to waste.”
Lyle smiled slightly as he adjusted the brightness on the microscope. The smile faded as he zoomed it. “The more I look at these samples, the more confused I get. I can see clear as day it has all the features of a mold.”
Lyle gestured for Alix to come see. She peered into the lenses. There in the slide were tell-tale dark stalks of hyphae. She also spotted characteristics of a slime mold, which would explain the strange, tarry texture of the substance.
Lyle shifted the slide. “But then look at this.”
A small, sparkling fragment appeared, so small that Alix could just barely make it out.
“What is that?” Alix asked. “Some sort of weird cellulose structure?”
“That’s what I thought at first, but the size and distribution don’t support that. I have no idea what they are, but these things are sprinkled in everywhere,” said Lyle. He folded his arms. “I’ve never seen anything like this in any kind of mold.”
“Well, this isn’t just any kind of mold,” Alix said, staring down as the mold sample squirmed in the confines of its plastic slide. “We all know what we saw in the hub. Whatever this stuff is, it’s got some sort of intelligence.”
“That’s . . . no, it’s too out there.” Lyle began pacing in the lab, brows furrowed. “I can’t accept that kind of a leap without more evidence.”
“Lyle, take it from someone who wildly underestimated a species’ intelligence once before and got her ass kidnapped for it. This thing is intelligent,” said Alix. “It formed words on the floor! It attempted to communicate! What more evidence do you need?”
“That doesn’t automatically equate to intelligence. Maybe that was just some sort of advanced mimicry response,” Lyle said, though the wobble in his voice told Alix that he didn’t fully buy his own words.
“It spelled out my name. It’s not like I was wearing a nametag or had my name carved out on the floor.” Alix looked up from the microscope and put a hand on her hip. “How could it have possibly mimicked something it’s never encountered before?”
“Because it has,” Figaro said quietly.
Lyle stopped abruptly and stared at Figaro. Alix also turned to look at the little robot, stunned.
“Fig, what are you talking about?”
Figaro nervously drummed a limb on her shoulder. “I guess it’s time I told you the whole truth . . .”