Another fortunate accident

REVISED BY Vestiphile with permission from lrocks911

The blob slithered through the halls, avoiding larger groups of people at first by darting into a ventilation grate. It wandered the inner workings of the facility, following voices and vibrations along the vent systems. On occasion it would sit on the edge of another aperture, listening to or observing the personnel below. The scientist wanted to keep its escape low-key. He wasn't sure if the sample he retained was the original or his take-home plaything, and he hadn't realized that his attribute modeling error had passed on pretty much all the learned behavior and 'talents' to both samples. After an hour of looking, though, he knew he had to document the issue.

Shortly afterward, a memo had been sent to the lab personnel, in the immediate area, alerting them of the missing sample. It didn't quite give all the details of the new experiment's abilities, so it wasn't considered particularly urgent or harmful for now, but the staff was to be on alert all the same.

Eventually, the blob found a place it was interested in making its exit, slipping through a ceiling grate above some storage cabinets. The room was centered around a large workstation, looking like something between an electron microscope and a laser array. A lone woman was manning it. The slime focused on the lady technician, a dark haired woman in a lab coat, white undershirt, and tight dress pants. It hadn't ever seen a real woman before, but between the scientist's wetware and its augmented learning algorithm, it found this one particularly pleasing.

At the workstation, an experiment in exotic energy production was underway. A wire-like geometric shape like a small faraday cage sat in the middle of the station, surrounded by strange glowing illumination from the sensors and diodes strewn about it. The cage seemed to encompass a glowing, floating ball of energy.

The slime wasn't particularly interested in the experiment, but it was curious about the woman. It began to crawl across the ceiling, making its way above her. Slowly it creeped across the space. Just as it neared her, the workstation crackled, and she backed away, getting her bearings. That's when she took notice of the foreign body dangling above her. When it tried to react, it lost its tentative suction on the ceiling. Losing its grip on one side at first, it fell off in an arc, sailing right into the floating ball of energy.

Sparks flew. The energy and the sample violently intermingled, with the slime spastically morphing about in the air. The motion and the chaos grew until a limiting breaker was tripped, ending in a ZAP and a darkened room. An energy wave erupted from the point of contact between the sample and the energy, knocking the scientist to the ground and frying the makeshift faraday cage. After a moment, the breaker reset and the lights flickered back on, illuminating the scene.

"Chambers, are you good in there?" An intercom buzzed. "Brie? Hey Brie, physical reported another surge--but this time it seemed to be internal, from your grid. You okay?"

The scientist stood up, and after determining she was uninjured, she made her way to the table. The major lab equipment was okay, but the connections to the wire page were fried and the energy ball was gone. In the charred conductive material, though, a small blob sat inside the middle of it.

"I'm...I'm good," She replied to the intercom. "We had--" She thought about reporting the contact, but she looked at the thing that came from the ceiling. The turgid, bubbled-out shape, the gloss of the thing and the texture as it dropped from the ceiling...it almost looked like Julie's strange polymer. She couldn't imagine how it would've gotten in, and she didn't want to try to explain, so... "It looks like we had a crossed short somewhere in the field generator," She lied. "We might, um, need another wire module for the core."

"And the other equipment?" The voice asked. "Everything else okay?" Brie's jaw dropped as the glossy substance began wobbling. It pulled itself away from the blackened wires, molding into a ball. As it formed up, a blue-green glow emanated from it, taking it from clear to a pale lime-colored translucence. She watched this moving ball in awe as it rolled itself through the wires, onto the table.

"Everything else...seems okay. Let me, um...boot everything and I'll...get you...a...report," She trailed off, watching the green slime. It elongated on the top side, seeming to 'look' left, then right. It was obviously all made out of the same substance, but if Brie had to guess, she'd say it was looking around.

"Hey, sounds good. Let us know if you notice anything strange," the intercom buzzed. She sneered a little, looking at the strange ball, which was now 'looking' at her.

"Will do," She said back, letting go of the TX button on the intercom and turning down the volume all the way.

She looked at the thing carefully. It seemed disoriented, if that was possible. "You took quite a jolt there...but you certainly took it, because there's nothing left of my cage. Did you just...merge with that energy somehow!?" she excitedly exclaimed.

It focused on her voice and sized her up. Her size and shape, the vibration of her voice, her attention on it--every detail of her clicked with its programming. It recognized her as something it needed, something that held some kind of set of objectives for it, but it wasn't quite sure what they were or how to achieve them. She extended her hand forward, holding a finger out.

"If you were still conductive you'd already have zapped me through the steel table," she said. She glanced up at the ceiling. "You didn't even leave a mark on that organic foam stuff, so I'm certain you're not corrosive," She muttered, looking back at the thing, still seeming unsure of her. "It looks like...you're listening to me," She laughed. "If you are...can you...wobble over here?" She only felt a little silly personifying this thing. Its little motions and movements were almost a type of body language, even if she wasn't sure it could be said to have a body. "Come here," She beckoned. "I'm not gonna hurt ya."

It sat for a moment before squishing itself against the surface of the table and bouncing off of it, into her hand.