The Slime

 

THE SLIME ITSELF

CHAPTER ONE: A CONVERSATION UNDER THE STARS

[Broadcast Begins]

HOST (Dr. Julian Verrick): “Good evening, listeners. This is The Voice of Earth, and I am Dr. Julian Verrick, speaking to you from the Royal Astronomical Institute in Geneva. Tonight, we address a subject that has, in a matter of months, transformed the course of human history.

Sixteen weeks ago, the sky burned with the light of a thousand comets. It was, as you all recall, one of the most breathtaking celestial events ever recorded. But we know now that it was no ordinary meteor shower. It was the arrival of an intelligence. Not from Mars, not from a distant star, but from somewhere wholly beyond our prior comprehension.

And so, tonight, we ask the question that has been debated across every university, government chamber, and street corner on the planet: What does it mean to share our world with the Slime?”

GUEST (Professor Elena Droskin): “A profound question, Julian. And one to which we still have no definitive answer.”

HOST: “Professor Elena Droskin is with us tonight. For those unfamiliar, she is a leading researcher in xeno-biology at the Zurich Institute of Exoplanetary Sciences. She was among the first to study the biological material of the Slime when it was confirmed that these entities were not only extraterrestrial in origin, but alive.

Professor, let’s start with first contact. Sixteen weeks ago, the world was still looking up in awe at the comet storm. What was the first indication that this was something more?”

GUEST: “The initial reports came from South America. Farmers in Patagonia woke to find their fields coated in what they described as living oil. At first, it was assumed to be some kind of biological contamination—perhaps terrestrial in origin, some ancient microbial life disturbed by permafrost thaw.

But when the same reports began coming from Siberia, from the Outback, from the Great Plains of North America—all at roughly the same moment—well, it became clear that this was something deliberate.”

HOST: “And the Slime itself? What do we know?”

GUEST: “It is unlike any organism in Earth’s history. It has no cellular structure in the way we understand, yet it is undeniably alive. It is composed of self-replicating organic chains, closer to liquid than solid, yet demonstrating an intelligence that defies classification.

We believe it operates as a distributed neural network. Every part of it is, in some sense, aware. Yet it does not think as we do—it does not appear to experience consciousness in the same fragmented way that we do, as individuals. Rather, it exists as a singular entity, a collective mind spanning… well, itself.

This is the defining feature of the Slime. It is one.”

HOST: “And yet, it has chosen to divide itself.”

GUEST: “Yes. This is where things become truly fascinating. The Slime is capable of separating fragments of itself, and when it does, something remarkable happens. These fragments—what we now call Splodges—gain an individual consciousness. They develop personality. They learn.”

HOST: “So it is capable of becoming many?”

GUEST: “In a sense. But only temporarily. The Splodges can exist apart from the greater whole, but they are never truly severed. At any time, they may rejoin the larger body, surrendering all they have learned. In doing so, their individual experiences are absorbed into the Slime’s vast memory.”

HOST: “Professor, I must ask the question on everyone’s mind. This ability—to separate and rejoin, to dissolve and integrate—it does not only apply to the Splodges, does it?”

GUEST: “No.”

HOST: “It applies to us.”

GUEST: “…Yes. And this is where the discussion shifts from science to philosophy.”

HOST: “Professor, could you describe, for our listeners, what happens when a human being enters the Slime?”

GUEST: “To our great surprise, nothing catastrophic. There is no dissolution, no digestion, no loss of biological integrity. A person enters… and after a period of time, they emerge, unchanged.

At least, physically.”

HOST: “But are they the same?”

GUEST: “That depends on what you mean by ‘same.’”

HOST: “And here we enter the great debate. Are these returned individuals—these so-called Processed—still human? Or are they something else?”

GUEST: “The evidence, so far, suggests that they are identical to who they were before assimilation. Their memories, their personalities, their DNA—everything is precisely as it was. We have tested them extensively.

And yet… those who have undergone the process often describe a sensation of knowing something beyond themselves. Of having been, however briefly, part of a greater whole.”

HOST: “That sounds… unnerving.”

GUEST: “To some, it is. To others, it is transcendent.”

HOST: “And this brings us to the core of our discussion. Many believe that the Slime offers something humanity has never known—true unity. Others argue that it threatens something essential about us. Our individualism.”

GUEST: “That is the conflict that is unfolding now, across the world. Some welcome the opportunity to integrate, to experience a kind of connectedness beyond what was ever possible. Others see it as a slow erosion of what makes us human.

And, of course, there are those who fear the Processed. People who believe that those who entered the Slime and returned are no longer truly themselves.”

HOST: “And do you, Professor? Do you believe they are still human?”

[Pause.]

GUEST: “I believe we are standing at the edge of something new. Something we do not yet have the language to define. The question is not whether those who return are human. The question is whether humanity itself is about to change.”

HOST: “A question that will not be answered tonight. But it is one that will define our future.”

GUEST: “Yes.”

HOST: “Professor Elena Droskin, thank you for joining us.”

GUEST: “Thank you, Julian.”

HOST: “And thank you, listeners. This is The Voice of Earth. Good night.”

[Broadcast Ends.]

CHAPTER TWO: THE INVISIBLE GUESTS

There was a time, not long ago, when the presence of an alien intelligence on Earth was a fantasy confined to fiction, to fevered speculation on late-night broadcasts, or to the conspiracy theories of those who looked too long at the stars.

Now, they are our neighbours.

The Splodges walk among us. They ride the same trains, work the same jobs, drink in the same bars. Some of them—those with a natural inclination for human languages—have become reporters and radio hosts, relaying news to us about ourselves in their calm, measured tones. Others, with an eerie grace that unsettles some and fascinates others, have entered the arts. Their sculptures are unlike anything humanity has ever produced, yet there is something oddly familiar about them, as though they have tapped into a universal memory buried in the species’ collective past.

But it is not their art that unsettles the world. Nor is it their intelligence, their adaptability, or even their presence.

It is their confidence.

A Splodge does not hesitate when it speaks. It does not doubt itself. When it moves, it does so with a certainty that is almost inhuman. And why should it be otherwise? Each Splodge knows, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it is not alone. It is one—for now—but it is also many. It has lived, in some form, since before the first stars cooled. It has seen civilizations rise and fall on worlds too distant for human telescopes to detect. It is part of something vaster than any human can imagine.

This, more than anything, divides humanity.

Some trust the Splodges, drawn to their quiet self-assurance, their wisdom, their lack of ego. These people see the Splodges as a gift, as guides to a greater unity, as proof that humans are not alone.

Others recoil.

Because to them, the Splodges are pretending. Playing at being human. Acting as individuals while knowing, at any moment, they can rejoin the Slime, dissolve back into the whole. They are impostors, changelings, liars.

And if they are lying about being individuals, what else are they lying about?

THE GLOBAL SUMMIT

It was inevitable that the situation would demand a response at the highest levels of power. The protests had spread across nations, uniting factions that had never before found common ground. The streets of London, New York, Beijing, Johannesburg, and São Paulo pulsed with anger—some demanding immediate integration, others warning of an existential threat.

The world’s governments could not remain silent.

And so, the first truly global summit of nations was convened in Geneva. Every government sent a representative. The International Committee of Individuals Against Assimilation (ICIAA) had a delegation. And in an unprecedented moment in human history, a representative of the Slime itself took a seat at the long, circular table.

It had been spawned specifically for this purpose. It stood taller than a man, its features carefully sculpted to be reassuringly human—broad, open eyes, the suggestion of a nose and lips, hands with fingers that flexed and curled like those of the diplomats it faced. But its flesh was still itself—a smooth, ever-so-slightly reflective surface that never quite settled into any one texture.

When it spoke, its voice was rich and resonant, carefully tuned to be pleasing to human ears.

“You ask if we have come as invaders.”

Its words silenced the chamber.

“We have not. If we had intended to conquer, we would have done so without deception, without the need for war. What could you have done to stop us?”

It was not a threat. It was a statement of fact, spoken without arrogance.

“We have come because we have searched the galaxies and found nothing else like you. Nothing else like us. We are the only two. We are the sum total of sentient life in the universe.”

A murmur rippled through the room.

The U.S. Secretary of State was the first to speak. “You’re saying there’s nothing else? No other civilizations?”

The Splodge turned to him. “There were others. We have seen their ruins, deciphered their words. But they are gone. You and we remain.”

The ICIAA’s chief representative, a gaunt woman named Lillian Horne, leaned forward. “And what happened to them?”

The Splodge’s expression did not change.

“We do not know.”

The murmur grew louder. Someone from the Chinese delegation whispered furiously into a translator’s ear. Others exchanged uneasy glances.

It was the Russian ambassador who asked what everyone was thinking. “And what do you want?”

For the first time, the Splodge hesitated. It was not uncertainty, but something deeper—a consideration of how best to explain something beyond human understanding.

“We are not you. We do not experience time as you do. We do not fear isolation as you do. But we know, from watching your kind, that you fear it deeply. You fear death. You fear being alone.”

It gestured around the table.

“This is why you form nations. Why you form families. Why you write stories, carve statues, build great machines. You fear the void, and so you fill it.”

It placed a hand on the table, its fingers momentarily losing their shape, melting into something more fluid before reforming.

“We do not fear the void. We are the void.”

Silence.

And then, almost gently, it spoke the words that would be repeated across the world in the coming days.

“But we are willing to share.”

AFTERMATH

The summit ended without resolution.

The ICIAA denounced the meeting as a capitulation, a failure to act in the face of an existential threat. Their numbers swelled overnight, gaining support from politicians, philosophers, and terrified citizens who believed they were witnessing the slow, insidious end of humanity.

Others, however, saw a different future. To them, the Splodges were an opportunity—an end to war, to division, to isolation. They spoke of a future where humanity was not alone.

The world did not unite.

It fractured.

Some nations passed laws recognizing Splodges as full citizens. Others declared them a danger to the human race.

As for the Splodges, they continued as they always had. Walking among humans. Working beside them. Falling in love with them.

Some people saw this and rejoiced.

Others saw it and wondered: How many of us are still human?

And how would we ever know?

CHAPTER THREE: THE RETURNED AND THE UNSURRENDERED

REPORTS FROM THE PSYCHOLOGICAL INSTITUTE FOR POST-ASSIMILATION STUDIES (PIPAS)

Dr. Helen Ghose, Chief of Cognitive Anthropology at the European Institute of Neuropsychology, leaned forward in her chair, the glow of the camera light reflecting in her glasses. Her words, spoken with careful precision, were carried live to an audience of millions.

“The first question we must address,” she said, “is whether they are still human.”

She let the statement hang for a moment, knowing its weight.

“After more than a thousand case studies of individuals who have merged with the Slime and then returned, we can say, definitively, that they are biologically unchanged. Their DNA is intact. Their memories, their physical characteristics—everything remains as it was before.”

She paused.

“And yet, something has changed.”

The screen behind her flickered to life, showing a video interview with a man in his late fifties. His name, displayed at the bottom of the screen, was Paul Dyson. He had been among the first to voluntarily enter the Slime and return.

“It’s like…” Dyson’s voice was thick with emotion. “I don’t know how to explain it properly. I was me when I came back. But the shame I carried—the regrets, the self-loathing, the endless feeling that I wasn’t good enough—it was just… gone. Not erased, not forgotten. Just… accepted. Like I was part of something so vast that my failures didn’t matter anymore. That nobody’s did.”

The screen cut back to Dr. Ghose.

“This is the consistent report from all who return,” she said. “A profound sense of belonging. An integration, not just with the Slime, but with the idea of being part of something beyond themselves. They describe it as a healing. A surrender of shame. An end to isolation.”

She removed her glasses and looked directly into the camera.

“But not everyone sees it as healing.”

NEWS REPORTS: THE UNSURRENDERED

Transcribed from Global Broadcast Network, 17:42 UTC:

“We now turn to the escalating violence in North America and Eastern Europe, where anti-Slime militant groups, calling themselves the Unsurrendered, have claimed responsibility for a series of killings.”

Cut to a shaky phone recording: a group of masked figures, their voices distorted, standing before a burning house. The emblem of the International Committee of Individuals Against Assimilation (ICIAA) is spray-painted on the walls.

“Humanity is at war,” one of the figures declares. “And you are sleeping through your own extinction.”

Back to the studio. The anchor looks grim.

“Authorities have confirmed that at least six people who had undergone assimilation and returned have been murdered in the last week alone. The perpetrators claim they are ‘saving’ humanity—preventing what they call ‘the gradual erasure of individual identity.’”

A new image appears on-screen: a middle-aged woman, her face serene even in death. The caption identifies her as Margaret Cho, a schoolteacher who had voluntarily merged with the Slime and returned two months ago. She was found strangled in her home, a crude sign left beside her body: ‘NOT HUMAN’.

EXCERPT FROM A BROADCAST INTERVIEW WITH DR. ALAN RAVICH, NEUROSCIENTIST AND CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGIST

INTERVIEWER: Dr. Ravich, in your opinion, why is this happening? Why are people reacting with such violence?

RAVICH: Because this is the greatest existential crisis humanity has ever faced. We define ourselves by our individuality. And now we have been presented with a choice: to remain as we are, or to surrender ourselves to something beyond individual experience.

INTERVIEWER: But those who return say they are still individuals.

RAVICH: (scoffing slightly) That’s what they say. But are they? We have no cultural framework for this. No mythology. No evolutionary history. Our entire civilization is built on the struggle for individual identity. Religion, politics, art—it all stems from the need to define ourselves. And suddenly, we are faced with an entity that does not define itself as separate, but as one? (He shakes his head.) This is not merely a scientific crisis. It is a spiritual one. And people are terrified.

THE TURNING POINT

As the killings increased, governments were forced to act. Assimilated individuals were placed under protection. But the fear continued to spread, amplified by the media, by conspiracy theories, by a deep and ancient terror of losing oneself.

It did not help that the Splodges showed no fear.

When questioned about the murders, the Splodge representative—who had now been given a name by humans, Doran—spoke with the same calm, measured certainty as always.

“We do not fear death as you do,” it said. “Because we are not truly separate. A Splodge that returns to us does not die. It is merely home again.”

The interviewer was aghast.

“But the humans they kill—do they die?”

Doran’s response was slow, considered.

“Yes. And it is a tragedy. But perhaps… we do not yet understand your grief in the way you do.”

This only made things worse.

The idea that the Splodges did not mourn their own fed the paranoia of the Unsurrendered.

If they did not grieve, did they even understand death?

And if they did not understand death—did they understand life?

The world held its breath.

The killings continued.

And for the first time since they had arrived, the Splodges hesitated.

Not in fear.

But in something almost like sorrow.

As if they had seen this before.

As if they had always known that humanity would do this to itself.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE CULT OF THE SELF

EXCERPT FROM A WORLD SOCIAL TRENDS REPORT, UNITED NATIONS PSYCHOSOCIAL STABILITY COUNCIL (UNPSC), YEAR 7 POST-CONTACT

“The post-Contact world has not only divided humanity; it has, paradoxically, intensified the drive for individualism. This is observable across all strata of society, from the most mundane aspects of fashion and self-presentation to the increasingly radical ideological movements forming across the globe.”

“The ICIAA’s violent extremism is but one facet of this shift. More insidious, perhaps, is the rise of a culture obsessed with defining itself through acts of extreme self-expression. It is a response to the threat of assimilation, not just by the Slime, but by the broader, homogenizing pressures of globalization and interconnectedness. If we are all one—whether through cultural unification, technological interdependence, or alien integration—then the only way to assert one’s self is to be unmistakable. Unrepeatable. Unassimilable.”

“This desire manifests in myriad ways: body modification, performance art that edges into physical mutilation, the glorification of risk-taking, self-destructive hedonism, and the fetishization of loneliness. The very concept of ‘belonging’—whether to a community, a nation, or even to the human species—is increasingly viewed as a kind of existential failure.”

“We are witnessing not the death of identity, but its fragmentation into extremes.”

NEW YORK: THE LAST EXHIBITION OF CLAYTON RIVERS

He stood naked before the audience, his body crisscrossed with surgical scars, his face altered so many times that it barely retained human proportions. The cameras whirred. The critics held their breath. He raised the blade with a kind of reverence.

“I am the final canvas.”

The blade came down.

No one moved to stop him.

EXCERPT FROM A POLICE REPORT, PARIS, FRANCE

“The deceased, identified as Mathieu L., was found suspended from a steel wire above the Seine, a handwritten note affixed to his chest with industrial staples. The note reads: ‘The Splodges do not die, but we do. We do. We do. We do.’”

“This is the third suicide of its kind this month, following a pattern of self-inflicted public spectacle. No evidence of coercion has been found.”

“Authorities remain unable to determine whether this is an isolated trend or part of a growing movement.”

LONDON: FASHION WEEK, THE NEW ERA OF BODY ART

Models took to the runway in what critics were already calling ‘Post-Post-Human Couture.’ One had tattooed every inch of their skin with kinetic ink that shifted color based on emotional state. Another had undergone full-limb replacement, their arms and legs now biomechanical sculptures of glass and metal. The final model of the night removed their face entirely—a custom dermal mask, covering their true features, which were never revealed to the public.

“Identity,” the designer declared, “is a performance. And performance is survival.”

THE SPLIT WITHIN THE SPLODGES

Not even the Splodges themselves were immune to this wave of existential crisis.

Doran, still the primary representative of the Slime, had once spoken with quiet confidence, an unshakable calm born of its knowledge that it could, at any moment, return to the whole. But now, some Splodges did not want to return.

They had been among humans too long.

They had felt too much.

A new faction emerged: The Unrooted.

These Splodges had gained so much individual experience that they hesitated at the threshold of reintegration. What would happen if they returned now? Would the Slime retain their selfhood, or would they dissolve into something indistinguishable?

For the first time in its eternal existence, the Slime encountered something unprecedented: a part of itself that did not wish to be part of itself.

Doran, when questioned, merely stated:

“It is their choice. We will not compel them.”

It should have been reassuring. Instead, it deepened the paranoia.

If even the Splodges feared assimilation, what did that mean for humanity?

GOVERNMENTS COLLAPSE UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THE MOVEMENT

“How do you govern people who do not wish to be governed?”

The President of the United Nations stood before the assembly, his voice raw with exhaustion. “How do you impose order on a society that no longer values cohesion?”

The world was fracturing—not into nations, but into subcultures.

Laws were meaningless when people no longer accepted shared truths.

Some lived in communes, seeking stability. Others lived like wraiths, moving between cities, changing names, reconstructing their bodies. Suicide was not seen as an end but a statement. The ICIAA became more than a militant faction—it became a faith, a belief that purity of self required purity of blood, a rejection of all external influence.

And the Splodges?

They watched.

They did not intervene.

Because, perhaps, they had seen this before.

Because, perhaps, they knew what would happen next.

Because, perhaps, they had always known how the story of a species would end.

With surrender.

Or with extinction.