They say that the greatest scientific discoveries are almost always accidental.

Becquerel and radioactivity. Fleming and penicillin. Viagra.

So maybe it is fitting that the closest I’d gotten to destroying the world was also an accident.

I know, I know. I’m the big bad Apocalchemist. I try to destroy the world every Monday and Thursday, and take over it on at least every second Friday. Why would I even try to claim that this particular incident was an accident? Who would even believe me?

But the thing about science is that if we want to have any kind of result, we need to be honest. And if you know anything about the Apocalchemist, you know I’ve always been dedicated to science.

So there I was, in my secret lab in –redacted-, and my kid tells me she wants to play with slime. I’ll freely admit that it took me a while to understand what in Hephaestus’s name she was talking about. I mean, of course I know what a slime is. I’ve got access to at least three different interdimensional travel methods, and I’ve been to more magic based worlds than you can shake a magic want at. But why would a six year old want to play with a mindless blob of acid that wants to eat everything it touches?

OK, fine. This is my daughter we’re talking about. Of course she’d want to play with mindless blobs of ravenousness. And after I got to one of those weird dungeon worlds and got some, she had a great time playing fetch with her new pet green slime. She named it ‘Muck Wazowski’. But once the novelty wore off, it turned out that this wasn’t at all what she meant.

Apparently it’s this old-new trend she got off of the internet. And yeah, of course we’ve got internet down here. I’m a mad genius. I can’t very well do research without access to ‘Nature’, now can I? And you’d better believe that I’ve got the tech to arrange for a high speed connection even in an Invisible Concrete™ reinforced bunker buried at an undisclosed depth.

Anyway, they’ve been selling the stupid piece of chemistry since the seventies, but it’s had a resurgence lately, and children are making it in their own homes now. And the jewel of my life saw it on those youtube videos she’s so fond of, and now she wants some to play with.

I wouldn’t normally have a problem arranging for something this simple. I’m the guy who invented Invisible Concrete™, remember?

But I was still laying low after the Laser Eel incident. I honestly have no idea why I’ve been getting so much flack for that of all plots. Pentaprotector shut it down before I could take over even a single town. There was a lot less fuss over the supervulcano eruption, and that one was seconds away from destroying the world.

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But the media will latch onto whatever the media decides, and the Eels were it, so I was keeping a low profile. And that means no Ali Express shipments into the bunker. And while I have stocks of nearly every reagent that could possibly be useful in my work, I don’t have any sodium tetraborate. And no, I will not call it borax. It’s a chemical, not a faux-kazakh movie character. I’ll stick with scientific names, thank you very much.

So I didn’t have any sodium tetraborate, and I couldn’t order any more until things up above calmed down at least a little. I did have at least seven different types of glue that could be polymerized into slime, but I needed something to cross link it. But you can say what you will about the Apocalchemist as a scientist and as a would be world ruler-slash-destroyer, I am nothing if not a devoted father, and I would definitely not let something as insignificant as a lack of one necessary chemical stop me from giving my little girl what she wants.

So if I didn’t have a specific chemical, I’d just go and use a generic one. I still had a few flasks full of the nanomachines I tried to grey goo the world with, and it was a matter of minutes to reprogram them to crosslink glue molecules. Mix them together, add some pink coloring and glitter, and presto! Instant slime.

Industrial strength slime, at that. I tested its tensile strength and I’m fairly sure the stuff could be used to tether a space elevator. Utterly impossible to tear.

Kid was delighted. She played with it all day, and I think she even took some videos of herself to put on youtube. And then she had the bright idea of using her slime to play fetch with her slime.

And that’s where the trouble started. I’d used acid resistant glue to make the slime. Not out of any intention for the slime to be acid resistant. I just happened to have more of it than I had anything else. So when Muck Wazowski ate the thing up, it couldn’t digest it.

Apparently, the acid resistant glue was strong enough to protect the nanomachines from the slime’s substance. A fact I really wish I’d known back when I tried to goo the world. There’s no way The Acidversary’d have defeated me if the nanomachines could withstand her acid beam.

Also, acid beam? Really? How is that even remotely scientifically feasible? I could understand a spray, or a cloud. But a beam? I’m telling you. That’s just being the platypus of the superhero world. Sheesh.

Back to the point. Not only did the nanomachines survive being eaten by Muck, but apparently its substance was close enough to glue that they started to crosslink it. So the slime got slimed, and with it being a typical fantasy world entry level monster, it evolved.

Muck 2.0 was resistant to every type of physical damage I could subject it to, and to every poisonous and/or corrosive chemical I had on hand.

Which was all of them. I mean, you remember who I am, right?

So there I was, with a polymerized fantasy slime filled with my grey goo nanomachines. Of course I made more of them used them to try and destroy the world. I mean, what did you expect? I’m the Apocalchemist. It’s what I do.

And it would have worked if it wasn’t for Ice Ice Becky.

At least my daughter still has her Muck Wazowski to play with.