There’s a high-pitched whining as the centrifuge spins around and around, finally slowing down after its work. The sample of ooze that Gottlieb had collected from the frozen creature comes to a stop.
It’s quiet for a moment, and then the lid pops open.
Gottlieb takes out the vial of separated liquid, looking at the contents that have come apart in a variety of layers, much like when one would put oil in a glass of water.
This looks right.
He grabs several different petri dishes and then does his best to extract samples from the various layers of coagulation in the centrifuge-vial, placing some of them each into their own little container.
“What do you think, Kai?” asks the man, sliding them onto a sheet and into a device that looks like an oven. “Will it work?”
A blue light runs out from the inside of the oven, as the properties of the collected samples are examined carefully by the station’s AI.
— The light flickers above his head.
Gottlieb looks, staring at the bulb. It doesn’t look like it's on the fritz. The station as a whole is falling apart. He’s doing his best to keep up now, but it’s hard. For the last few days, he hasn’t really been working the gun anymore. Firing this often has led to several burnouts in the wiring. The gun especially needs intricate and careful maintenance, that he has neglected, opting instead to roughneck the piece of machinery to the edge of its intended lifespan.
Pieces need replacement and fixing, and while some of those parts are here, not all of them are. He’s going to have to try to be more resourceful.
The light in the little chamber dies down as the scan finishes.
[Results]
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- Hazardous bio-matter, while a threat to other organic matter, is not corrosive against the inert, inorganic substances presented in this use case.
Gottlieb nods.
“Thanks, Kai,” says the man, walking off. “I’m going to the airlock.”
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Gottlieb walks into the chamber before the airlock, opening some lockers for one that looks like it’d be a good fit.
This one seems right.
He takes it and slams the door shut, and then heads to cryo.
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The man stands in cryo, standing in front of the pod that the ooze is frozen in, her face pressed up against the glass.
The man sucks his teeth, checks his gloves, and then hits the button on the chamber.
The capsule hisses as the dethawing process begins. Vapors escape the chamber, rising up towards the vents at the top of the room. After a moment, before the full process is done, Gottlieb presses the emergency release.
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The chamber slides open, the metal lid shooting up in an instant. Gottlieb holds the second spacesuit that he had just grabbed from the lockers and begins grabbing the ooze, shoveling her into the thing as best as he can, filling the suit up with the toxic sludge like it was a big water balloon.
Now, for a human, interrupting this process would be very dangerous. But the ooze seems to be a uniquely robust creature. She’ll be fine, if not a little confused.
The suit gets heavier and heavier as the wet mass fills it, and it becomes even more cumbersome as it begins to awkwardly dribble and squirm around in confusion as she returns to wakefulness.
Gottlieb stands the suit up onto its legs, which are very oddly bulging, looking as if they were filled, like surgical gloves full of petroleum jelly, as most of her mass slides down into the feet and legs of the one-piece.
Thankful that he’s so strong, Gottlieb holds the neck of the suit with one hand and finagles the helmet on with the other. He twists it, locking the sealing mechanism in place.
The suit squirms.
Gottlieb steps back, watching the suit wiggle around awkwardly as the thing inside comes to life, spreading itself around in a confused attempt to escape as it flows around the interior of the space suit, filling the fingers, the neck, and all the rest of it a little more evenly. But it’s still soft and squishy beneath his hands, beneath which he feels an agitated rumbling of a surging liquid.
— A face pops up in the visor of the helmet.
“Hey,” says Gottlieb, somewhat awkwardly. He slowly lets go, his fingers releasing. The suit pops into place as new ooze moves to fill the gap.
The suit wobbles as the eyes inside stare at him and around the area, floating in confused anger as she looks at him and at the area around them, trying to understand what the situation is.
She looks at him and wobbles, the suit bulging in and out as she tries to break free from it in what looks like clear anger. “Take it easy,” says the man. “I’m trying to apologize.”
The face slams against the inside of her suit as the arms of it flail awkwardly in all directions as she has no sense of locomotion. Seeing as she can’t get out, the ooze instead begins understanding the nature of her arms and begins flopping them against him in a series of uncoordinated, furious strikes.
“PAPA!” yells the monster, clearly with more anger in its voice than any confused sense of love now, as it beats against him, letting out the hurt of the many betrayals.
“I know,” replies the man. “Ready?”
— He lets go fully.
The suit falls down toward the floor, unable to hold itself upright on its wobbly legs.
She lays there like a dead body for a while, the arms and the legs of the suit twitching and spasming, flopping up and down now and then as she tries to figure it out.
He bends down and picks her up. “I got you. Easy.” She hits him, striking away at his arms to make him let go as it slowly and wobbly rises up to its feet. “Slow down,” says Gottlieb.
“— Papa!” repeats the ooze, saying the only word that it seems to know as she lashes against her visor, pushing the helmet forward to violently strike the glass of it against his forehead.
He lets go again, and she stabilizes herself, pressing more pressure down into her legs to maintain a somewhat stable posture.
Gottlieb holds her and bends down a little into his haunches. “Like this,” he says, pointing at his thighs.
— The ooze, not focusing on learning the art of walking, continues to instead punch him over and over in her only method of retribution. “Papa!” she yells.
“Come on,” says Gottlieb, letting go of her a second time.
She manages to stay upright, but instead of standing there and mimicking him, the goo-filled suit lunges forward, tackling him and throwing both of them to the metal ground.
The ooze screams the word over and over as she sits on top of him, the rubber fists of her suit wailing against him — his chest, his face, wherever she can manage to hit.
Gottlieb lays there, looking at the creature’s face through the glass that separates them, as a fist flies towards his vision again.
— It doesn’t hurt. She doesn’t really have any strength at all, having no clue as to how to actually use this body. She’s just sort of flailing.
But he feels like he owes her this.
“PAPA!” howls the ooze.
“I know,” replies Gottlieb, nodding to her. He holds a hand against the back of the suit, and the whole thing flops over forward, falling against him, the helmet thudding down next to his head. The suit, full of a screaming, crying, angry thing lays there, its awkward, saggy limbs splayed out as it covers him like a wet sack, howls coming from next to his ear.
“Pa…”
“— Sorry,” says Gottlieb, running a hand over her back.
The man lays there on the metal floor, his hand running over the suit atop himself, as he stares up towards the ceiling, towards the blue light that is there, twinkling up in the darkness like a star in the night.
“I know,” repeats Gottlieb as she cries.
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Gottlieb walks down the flight of stairs to the gunner’s bay, carrying a saggy thing in his arms, its arms wrapped around his neck to stop itself from flopping over, despite its head that lays at an awkward angle.
“Kai,” says Gottlieb, entering the room. “This is Maintanance Crewmember Blauhausen,” explains the man.
— Something squawks up in the ceiling. Gottlieb looks at the harpy, sitting there and clicking and hissing excitedly with her mouth.
“Is that the ooze?” asks Grunheide’s voice.
Gottlieb looks around, trying to find her.
Something knocks down at his feet, and he looks down through the panels to the shaft below. The goblin must have hidden herself down there to not get eaten while he was gone. “Watch your tone, Grunheide,” says Gottlieb, carrying the thing towards its station. “This here is my daughter.”
“Papa!” cries the ooze.
One problem at a time. He can handle it bit by bit, and if he manages to get some crew-members and he manages to train them to be useful instead of what they are now, then the station may have a shot at making it a while longer. One man and Kai just aren’t enough for the job. They need able hands.
— A wet, sloshy hand softly slaps against his face, its boneless fingers squirming around as she squishes his cheeks and nose.
They need a lot of hands. The station had forty-some people on it before, and with the sun constantly dying out for unknown reasons and the station falling apart piece by piece, he’s going to have to work a little harder at it to protect the people of the world below for longer than a week or two.
The question is, how does he make something useful out of these three?