To put it simply, I am a slime. A sentient slime to be precise. Doc told me that I’m a amalgamation of smaller slime cores stitched together, now I have similar intelligence to a human. You might be asking why I have a humanoid shape, Doc gave me a skeleton to use. He’s slowly adding metal because I keep digesting the bones. Don’t worry Doc didn’t kill anyone, these are bones of Criminal on death sentence. -- Anon Guest
This is Doc. They prefer 'Doc' and they once said that any word for a parental figure was 'disturbing on multiple levels'. Besides, the only relationship we have is more or less incidental and accidental. No, don't get angry and please don't be sad. We're bonding. It's okay.
It's just that Doc is a scientist first and has no idea how to get through the red tape of an Accidental Parenthood License and Remedial Classes applications. They're doing their best, but the forms don't really accept what I am. Last I heard, the CRC are "looking into it". To hear Doc describe it, that means a whole bunch of people in a boring room throwing points of order at each other. That sounds... vicious.
Doc didn't mean to make me. They were trying for a cure for The Sneebs[1] and was interested in the synthesis properties of several strains of slime mould. The instant I started communicating, they changed course so fast that there was almost a comical screeching noise. We've been working things out from there.
Doc's only experience of parenting is from the child perspective, and has made decisions based on that. Honesty, scientific explanation, and a solid education are their keystones. I think it's worked out rather well. Hello. I'm Sabine. Pronounced 'sah-been' thank you. I read 'sneebs' backwards since it was on my tank and... well... I thought it meant me. Doc helped me turn it into a real name.
Right now? We're body building. Literally. Bones from long-dead animals didn't last long. My microspora think they're all food. Doc went looking for some bones that could help me operate in the same environment since animal bones made things both awkward and creepy. I am banned from animal skull sock puppets, and I will not say anything more about it.
There's not many opportunities to get hold of a cogniscent's skeleton after they're done with it. I mean, not usually? If you don't mind giving the Dereggers money, they will sell you anything. It's gross. Doc made sure I was okay with it before securing a Humans' used skeleton. Unfortunately, that's also food for my microspora.
Things can't be helped, Doc says. We are learning things about me together. Doc figured it might work like that, so they went ahead and scanned the entire skeleton, bone by bone, before they let me use it.
We're trying to figure out what's good to work with. Glass is okay, I guess. It's not food, and I don't erode it like I erode other things. But it is glass and I don't particularly like the idea of being breakable. It's a decent stopgap while we look at other materials.
Simple metals, alloys, and blends have our interest. The trick is finding out which ones I'm allergic to. Doc says 'allergic' is the wrong word, but I can't really die like most cogniscents can. My microspora are pretty tough and I'm technically a hive mind. Allergic fits best anyway. Some metals can kill a small portion of me and I violently eject them with a cocoon of the dead mass. And then I feel bad for the rest of the day.
Other cogniscents understand 'allergic'. Many of them won't sit still for, "a violent antireaction to partial toxicity exposure." Few of those that do sit still for that will try to understand it.
Doc says that the easy explanation is not correct. I have found that starting with the shorter story may interest people into the longer one. It's one of our periodic debates in the finer points of interacting with other people.
On that point, you might be wondering how a cogniscent hive-mind colony of slime mould interacts with everyday people. We're working on skin, too. The current stopgap is three layers of fine silica-fibre woven into a near full-body suit. It looks just as disturbing as you might expect.
We're working on it. I might find it amusing to have glass bones and glass skin, but it's not that funny to others. The truly unamusing bit is that all my eating tools have to be glass too.
We'll figure things out. There has to be some way to be a part of the universe. Even if it is with glass bones and glass skin.
[1] It sounds cute, but oh my goodness, you are better off not knowing.
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