Life. A strange sort of energy, it would seem, for just about anything can absorb it, with the right conditions. Say, a wad of gum? Imagine, a thirteen year old boy pools money with his friends and buys four packs of big league chew, he rips open the packages and stuffs all the gum in his mouth, slobbering and choking and getting the best jaw workout on the market. then it loses its flavor, a slightly bitter mass of rubbery pink chew, thrown on the ground for someone to step on. Now, when that much of one thing is combined with equal or greater parts of biological material, like saliva, it gets a little weird.

  Back in the vacant lot, it is raining, and it is raining hard, like the earth wanted to do the ice bucket challenge, but with a planet- sized fire hose. Some who are crazy or poor enough to be out in the rain are occasionally knocked down by it, and an alley cat didn't get back up. This is great if you are made of stale gum and need a way to get around. As the bullet- sized drops of water hydrated this gray glob, it realized it didn't know how to stretch, but it could wiggle, and wiggle it did, it wiggled, wriggled and writhed its way to the middle of the lot, not that it could see that. In actuality, it could only sense the ground around it, and vibrations in the ground. But that would soon be fixed, it felt. But as it stands right now, the rain was flattening it, and that was a problem, it could be separated if it was thinner, so it instinctively curled up, becoming a ball again, this time with rainwater trapped inside, experimentally, it made a hole on one side and squeezed, spraying the small amount of water back out.

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  Now armed with the knowledge of how to move and mold itself, it set off in a random direction, feeling its way forward with a probing protrusion and bumping into every conceivable thing to bump into on the way. Eventually it found itself in a troubling position, after hours of crawling. It was drying out again, and it needed moisture quickly. Unfortunately, It had gotten rid of the only water it had before the storm ended, so the sticky savant rolled for all it was worth, trying to find a puddle to revitalize it. It rolled forward, faster and faster, until it fell. It fell quite far, it thought, for it had never fallen before, but it had only really fell about 3 feet, into a sewer. This was fine, because the gum didn’t know what a sewer was, and it couldn’t smell anyhow. But there was water! The mangy mucilage was delighted to be supple and stretchy again, but it still didn’t know where it was going, so it tried to rectify that situation. One thing it knew instinctively was that seeing was good, and it wanted seeing, so it bobbed about, looking for sight. It soon realized this was a pointless endeavor, and almost gave up, when a round bit of plastic stuck fast to it! To it’s surprise, the plastic let it see slightly, but it was dark in here, so it bobbed towards the stony edge. Once it was out, it tried to move while keeping sewer water inside itself, and found that it was slow, frustrating, and pointless, because it would only keep his insides wet. But that was fine, because it could see now! And it felt that mad dash for water catching up to it, to it covered up it’s ersatz eye and rested.