Pulmonia
Residential District N-22
Last Super-City on Earth
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4 Days Later
Cathorine sat with her head on her knee, contemplating the past few days. Stress, Shock, Disbelief. Much was going through her head. Was he really gone? Even though technology had surpassed the threshold to bring a non-insignificant percentage back to the realm of the living, he hadn't woken up. They had tried everything after his heart stopped beating to when his blood didn't have any oxygen left in it. They could get his heart to beat on its own for a while, and it would just fade back into disfunction hours later. And discovering that his brain had completely and in its entirety stopped its function, they finally decided that he had in fact passed on. The reason for death had a circle filled in for the first time in a century.
The V-V blabbing on in the background snapped her back to the present.
V-V Host: We've gotten news that, as of 4 days ago, the owner and primary scientist at Wraint Institution of Technology and Locomotion, Jackson Liethre, has passed. The reason for his passing is undisclosed at this time. 44 days too early, it seems, as they planned to reveal their latest project later this summer and had reserved a spot in the largest tech show for him to announce it himself. Tomorrow his ceremony will be held at the Grand Juctoos Coliseum at 3 PM. May he rest in peace.
It was finally revealed to the world that one of the most influential world figures was no more. Social media exploded in outrage and people took to the streets in protest of the medical system not saving him. The calm and collected amongst those who stayed at home felt rage they could do nothing but contain. The emotional cried, and the introverted intellectuals sat in silence. Quiet places grew restless and loud places grew quiet. Talkative people listened and shy people spoke.
Ultimately, the solar system was a different place without him. He had effects on every humanity-established planet in the system; every essential providing service was changed from his insight. He took hard work from other scientists and applied it to subjects completely unrelated, and it worked flawlessly as though the research being done prior was applicable in every way, shape, function and form. But Jackson Liethre was dead. Is dead.
V-V Host: In other news, the start of demolitions to upgrade Pulmonia to the standard of the rest of the world's M.E.G.A.-type cities will start in 21 days. Housing transitioning will begin 4 days pri- *click*
The only reason Pulmonia was even still a super city instead of the larger, more efficient M.E.G.A. was a result of him. For some executive to make the decision to change it so soon after the news of Jackson's demise put a knot in her throat. Something about reminding him of his earliest accomplishments she recalled him saying. He redesigned the structure of the new standard too but it had been a lesser accomplishment. He said something to her about it being incomplete, but the people he spoke to took his idea as if he were perfect. Later the same day, he also drew up a diagram showing the exact flaw. The only evidence of this issue was a photo she snapped in secret in a brief moment he was absent from his room.
He knew she took the photo.
She knew he knew.
He said nothing.
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Well, better think fast. I recon I have less than a minute before I hit something. A common strong shape is all I can manage before I start smashing into a dominoing ping-pong of my body off the walls.
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47 Impact Damage Taken!
960 Impact Damage Taken!
Temporary Health Exhausted! Reconstruct? Y/N
Remaining Health: 3/10! Rest Immediately!
'No, don't reform.'
Body Formation Broken, Returning to Freeform!
My equilateral triangular shape had smashed into the wall again, and then the jagged, sharp boulders resting at the bottom of the crevice. I had hardened myself into the consistency of hard rubber but lacked the molecular chains that would ordinarily hold such materials together. I already lost a good half of myself falling and impacting several walls earlier, no thanks to the winding and regularly shifting walls of what felt like a never-ending, underground canyon—as I was now convinced it was—and its strangely linear width. But to say I had gotten lucky was a very heavy understatement. With each impact, some mental fog came back, and every reformation of my shape to maintain this [Temporary Health] bonus became harder and harder to accomplish.
Feeling sluggish, I gathered the grouping of my largest pieces and liquified, returning to a singular mass. Bits of my no longer controlled body lost minutes ago trickled down piece by piece, further broken and shattering like glass on impact. Temporarily frozen from the cooling of a freezing region above. I had avoided overcooling by churning and cycling my mass, ricocheting extra hard only once when I did lose a facet to the cold. Still, even despite the notion of potential death and fear of falling that grew as time had grown deep, I had taken in some of my surroundings. The mined regions stopped long before I had reached the first of a good few biomes above. Only one place was familiar, a very damp, hardly bioluminescent moss-covered region that lasted all of 3 seconds of my decent. It seemed too small. The bioluminescence had been weak, but I clearly recalled not seeing a thing during my first bouts of consciousness. Nonetheless, surely a subject of study for another time.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Things were not all fine and dandy, as caterpillaring around was actually highly difficult on a pile of sharp, oversized rocks. I slumped into my most relaxed plastic form. Neither free-flowing nor rigid, similar to a recently massaged muscle. In this state, my mind calmed and entered a state of rest. It didn't feel like I knew I was now resting; more, I felt a solid warmth flow throughout my body. Warm but with no actual warmth. I read in a book that people felt this way when they were freezing to death—a sense not attached to reality as they lost themselves to permafrost—in whatever situation they came to be in. This was in fact rather different, though; I was quite aware and still feeling in a rational sense.
After some time, a tingling sensation started to occur at the tips and edges. I paid it little mind until I realized that I was actually moving around without my own intent. Little tendrils of my being plucking about and sucking on random surfaces around me. With my continued idling, I started moving about, a passenger in my own sludge. This movement seemed so natural, consistent, and freedom-inducing that I cared not to stop my active inaction.
With further inspection of my primordial instinct to cycle my mass through myself to arrive at a new non-descript destination, I drew a line back to the microcosmos. I was far more familiar with looking through a microscope to see multitudes of tiny lifeforms living amongst us in and on everything. But what dawned on me was that one of them was similar, both in shape and manner of movement to how I was relocating myself right now. Just like a protist cell amoeba.
I figured with such a logical and simple method of transport being possible with basic chemical reactions and a creature with no brain, as a creature with a metaphorical brain, could do this without issue. I would just need to think about what I was doing from a very different angle. Forget appendages! That was a time of the past! I am in the here and now! Why care about something I can't accomplish yet? I need to follow what is natural until I learn more about myself. Forcing my amorphous being into a morphous state without any foundation was a very silly and narrowminded approach to coming to a new world.
This would apply to becoming anything but a human for me. Duh!
Really, even with what felt like an overall improvement to my mental plasticity, the more mass I lost, the less I felt like I was really here. As a response to this notion, I immediately nudged my auto-moving body to go in the direction of the remaining slime chunks and pieces to see if they were recyclable. It, acting like a creature all on its own, followed the instruction but also conveyed a mental twinge of never having followed orders in the past. Maybe I was now a being with a creature for a body instead of owning my own body. Something to investigate further at another time too.
Unsurprisingly, upon contact, the shards joined the primary mass' viscosity with no issue. Allowing me further room for comfort in my own mind.
Nature Discovered!
Reaccumulation:
Regroup any lost and undamaged mass for lossless recovery.
Recover damaged mass for regeneration at a discount.
Skill Acquired!
Regeneration: LVL 0
Skill Acquired!
Slime Generation: LVL 0
Three loud dings rebounding around in my head later, I was starting to see the real benefit to attaching this system to my mind. Permanently learning skills just by applying basic concepts to my situation was my reward, huh? To just convert my nature as a simple being into active and developable skills. I was quite happy, though I had never been much for showing my emotion back on earth. So I simply trudged on with a more optimistic view of my future. A quiet kid if you would.
Skill Leveled!
Basic Movement: LVL 2
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Many years prior to learning chemical engineering or getting my bachelor's in electrical and electronics, amongst other varying subjects in my field, I had been something of a gamer. Few responsibilities and too much time on my hands that I didn't have any desire to direct towards more productive goals in life. But there was always a category of games I never indulged in. Something about it just irked me in an unnerving way. This category was the run-of-the-mill RPG. What didn't happen was me not learning everything about them anyway because, of course, all my friends played them to the ends of the earth. As much as I could call those no-life's friends. Even less responsibility in their hands as the world had recently become fairly autonomous. I didn't see a desirable future in just sitting around playing games for the next 90 years as I could be sure they were going to do, so I sat and learned all sorts of things instead.
That's besides the point though. RPG's. The most popular of the popular, role-playing games had been firmly set into humanity decades ago. Aside from knowing every notable basic concept about them, it just had no relevance in my mind. As such, I moved on.
Then, I started seeing the appeal. A world where every bit of information was accessible at the push of a button. Your wellbeing, status, capability, and standing, just to name a handful. Or flawless appraisal of an object, a distance, a person, a reality... Virtual reality was paramount to that last one. Ranging from headsets to implants and dream chambers.
And now... now I have no clue what to do with myself... other than make anything and everything in a reality hardly touched. A first player to log on. A first human in a slime body. And a world with two centuries of technological advancement to catch up on.