Coming to his senses

Anthony tried to open his eyes. He was conscious, therefor he was alive, he thought. To bad his eyelids did not respond. Not in the “they wouldn't move” way, but in the “I can't feel them at all” way. He considered the possibility, that he was sedated in some way. He could rule that out, because there was no numbness in the way he had felt it, when he had his wisdom teeth removed. No, a localized anesthetic would have a limit to its effect. Instead he could feel neither his face nor his toes.

Since he couldn't feel his middle ear, he assumed he was in a resting position and so he tried to feel what he was on.

Almost instantly he felt a lot. He was on a rough very solid surface. Focusing on it, he could easily identify it as stone and as he tried to learn more for a brief moment he was flooded with impressions, which vanished the instance the possibility of getting overwhelmed crossed his mind.

His sense...s? were silent again and Anthony gathered his thoughts. From what he had gathered at the very least his sense of touch seemed to be completely based on his intention to use it. He had heard, something similar was the default for most people. The skins tactile feedback would be blocked out by the brain in most situations. But this was different. Lying on rough stone ground should definitely cause discomfort. Regardless of whether he tried to or not, he should be feeling it.

To Anthony it was somewhat familiar, though not that intimate: When programming a robot with sensors, the input from those sensors would only exist, if those sensors were addressed properly. At least as far as the robot was concerned. If the robot was told to use its eyes, it would be blind, because it did not have eyes. If it was only told once to use its camera, it would only see a single snapshot.

But both the camera as well as the capacity to process the input it provided were there. You just had to figure out how to use it.

Slowly he got a feeling for the part of his body, that was touching the ground. He must've gotten fat, because his skin matched the surface of the ground perfectly. At the thought of how the shape his back should have he tensed. Suddenly his underside was straight and much more firm.

After what he assumed were about twenty minutes Anthony had come to an unexpected conclusion. The information gathered from his sense(s) and the behavior of his body did not allow for the assumption, that his body was human.

The most succinct way of describing it was, that his body was roughly ten liters of sentient liquid. But even that explanation didn't quite add up. When he pushed himself up against a wall and formed up into a roughly spherical shape, he was surprisingly compact. His estimation on his diameter in this shape being about 26 cm, wasn't based on much other than the assumption, that cave, which had too regular a shape to be natural, was about one meter in width. Yet when stretching into a disc that by the same estimation was about 2 cm thick, he was able to cover an area of roughly 50 m^2.

There was another revelation, when doing this: There was something solid at his center. This … core had at first felt to be the size of a walnut and was now the size of a human head.

Anthony came to two conclusions. One: he was, for some reason or another, a slime. This core was most likely the closest he had to a vital organ and so he had taken a shape, where it would be well covered.

Two: He had no idea where he was, his best guess being an old mine. Since he also had no idea, what he required as sustenance he was in a predicament: attempting to explore and find out where he was and maybe more about himself if he was lucky would be an incalculable risk, as long he could only use tactile perception.

On the other hand with no way surely identify the needs of his body wasting time could spell his demise just as likely.

The obvious solution was a compromise, the disadvantages of both. He would wander into a random direction. Right now his speed was rather poor, so the odds of wandering into anything, that had not already made a decision on him, were in his favor. At the same time he experimented with his senses to increase his perception beyond whatever he happened to bump into.

This had been the right decision for several reasons. For one, because he was very successful in his endeavor to increase his perception. He found, that even if he was a slime, he was still a living being. Made of cells. Each individual cell could fulfill a vast variety of roles and purposes, which he had only scratched the surface of. What he had gotten the hang of was receiving haptic feedback from them, awareness of where a given cell was in relation to his core, and moving them around.

All three of which worked up to two seconds after the cells had left his body. While this had the clear disadvantage of losing him mass, it provided him with an otherwise reliable method of getting a bearing off his surroundings.

The other revelation was his new found sense of smell? Taste? His cells could perform a surprisingly effective chemical analysis of anything they came into contact with. The precision was dependent on the ratio of cells to material sample. The solitary cells he had projected outward to feel the room, could do barely more than telling ph-value, while the ones at his bodies surface with a small alteration to make the texture slightly more porous, could tell pretty clearly what kinds of gasses were in the air, and where they were coming from. Of course, never having had a sense of smell anywhere near as precise, most of his deductions, on what these gasses were, were based on the assumption, that he was in an earth-like atmosphere. One pretty acidic gas that came in low concentration was likely oxygen, while the reactive one, which contained traces of the previous one, was presumably methane.

Anthony was now pretty sure, that he was in an abandoned mineshaft. He had found wooden beams supporting the ceiling and old equipment. The nice part about this was, that he now had a clear point of reference for sizes and found, that his initial estimates had been pretty good.

To his surprise he found, that the tunnel he had been in did not end with a shaft to the surface but instead in a more cave-like cavern. Which was good, because here he could observe a typical slimes life cycle. The slimes would randomly pop into being if enough moisture, carbon and an as off yet unknown third component were present in abundance. The feral slimes would sometimes randomly, sometimes deliberately, make their way towards this part of the caves or mines.

From what Anthony could gather it was entirely up to chance, whether they would learn to perceive their surroundings the same way he did. Judging by how few, even among those that were moving deliberately, interfered with his tactile sense, he was the exception, rather than the rule. However this suggested, that there were plenty of other methods of perceiving space. Assuming there was an even distribution among all useful methods, Anthony guessed there to be at least three more; it was definitely possible, that it was only one sense, that could be utilized in different ways, like echolocation using either ultrasound or infrasound or seeing different frequencies of electromagnetic waves.

Like he had speculated slimes did require sustenance. He had “eaten” a bit of wood, when he had first encountered a wooden beam. Whatever enzymes he had used were not very good at it, which explained, why the beam was still there in the first place. The wild slimes probably didn't bother and instead went for what they were most effective at.

Having taken in carbon and absorbing moisture from the air Anthony had with a thought created new mass for his body, but without the unknown third ingredient the new cells died almost instantly. While he didn't dare testing it, he suspected, that he could make the new cells last longer, by giving up “energy” from the rest of his body, which would lead to his entire body dying faster.

Observing the other slimes, he got a good idea, of what was good sustenance: puddles and places where liquid water dripped from the ceiling were constantly occupied. The most popular source of carbon seemed to be bones and hair, followed by flesh. Anthony had seen a number of animal carcasses, all of which were hairless, but lacking teeth and the form that came with an endoskeleton. The only reason he could correctly identify them as carcasses, was because he got to see a fresh one getting swarmed by slimes.

As for the mysterious third nutrient... He noticed slimes seeking out certain crystals and plants. However there were two problems: For one, he could not find anything about them, that hinted at what made them so attractive. Neither the shape nor the smell gave anything away. The only reason, he was so certain, that they actually were of use to him and not just a mistake the other slimes made, was that half of the cells he sent towards the crystals remained responsive for longer, the closer they got to them, with those that came within centimeters, before other slimes got in the way, living pretty much for as long as the crystals remained exposed.

The second issue was, that they did not appear to be universally good. The slimes, that enveloped the crystals appeared to suddenly fall apart into lifeless goo, as soon as they maximized their exposure to them. Anthony's theory was, that the crystals emitted something, that was either good or bad depending on dose, or they emitted both something good as well as something bad. Especially the latter was supported as the cells, that got close to the crystals, that did not live longer, died instantly.

The plants were thought out by the slimes much more rarely. This meant, that it was much harder to observe, how they affected them.

Then there was the other issue: Slimes were next to the plants the absolute bottom end of the food chain. Pretty much all animals Anthony could observe would attempt to consume slimes, if they came across them. The slimes seemed to be to simple minded to prevent their demise this way and so the animals were not much of a threat to Anthony. Instead of pursuing him, they would just go their way, until they happened on a different one. Judging by how the animals seemed to avoid the mysterious plants and crystals the theory was as follows: The slimes could be consumed without concern, so all animals used them as an easy source of nutrients, including the not nearly as safe ones as the ones coming from the apparently poisonous plants and the crystals.

Sadly he had to assume, that the plants and crystals were as lethal to him as for everybody else. This meant the safest source of food were dead slimes, which were really popular for the larger animals, that usually didn't bother discerning, whether the slime they were licking was alive or not.

Anthony could “eat” the mystery plants at reduced risk, to consume them, when he either understood them better, or he got ****: Instead of using his enzymes, to dissolve and digest them, he could mechanically eat them using his cells like chewing on his gums.

The focus however was finding out, what made them special.

Anthony was confident he found it. He in a sense flipped through the channels. Without knowledge what the sense he randomly switched on were actually perceiving, it was neigh impossible to interpret them.

That was until he came across one, that he at first confused for his sense of temperature, until he realized, that the sense of temperature was a lot more filigree, allowing any cell to evaluate its environment on a scale from “too cold to survive” to “too hot to survive”. This sense in gave the following output “+ present” “- present” or “neither”. The individual cell did not provide an intensity for plus or minus, like it would in an electromagnetic sense. Plus and minus were like particles. They were there or not. If there were more of them, you were more likely to get hit by one. From what he could observe the “plus-particles”, which he dubbed mana, seemed to add energy. His cells lived longer, certain materials would heat up and in exceptionally high concentrations even tiny amounts of matter would spontaneously pop into existence.

The opposite, anti-mana, withdrew energy. Slimes became dead goo, temperature dropped and even small grains of stones would spontaneously cease to exist, when hit by large doses.

And the crystals emitted both in spades. As for the plants: While they didn't normally emit either, there was a huge burst, whenever they got damaged.

The slimes, alive or dead were saturated with mana, while they would stop absorbing anti-mana as soon as they had taken a lethal dose.

Overall he could not find a rule, for whether a material would absorb, reflect or react with mana or anti-mana. Not all materials that reacted to one reacted to the other, some materials seemed to react differently depending on the dose. For example the stone around the crystals would increase in volume, turn to dust, get reduced again and turn back to solid stone in pulses. At the same time a different stone above one crystal would grow as a stalactite so fast, that Anthony could observe it's growth.

Being dependent on something so volatile was not a nice prospect, but Anthony had a ray of hope: From what he could tell, slimes had an emitting ability corresponding to each of their perceptive abilities. They were able touch and reach out as well as feel touch, Anthony noticed he had a conscious control over his body temperature, to a small degree at least and judging by the behavior of the other animals it seemed as if some of the slimes were bio-luminescent. It stood to reason, that Anthony could manipulate mana, anti-mana or both enough to prevent himself from getting snuffed out when approaching the crystals.

Anthony felt great. Based on his theory, he had carefully approached other slimes to make more precise measurements and indeed, they did emit anti-mana. By testing the reaction of a small slime, he found out, that he was also able to consciously emit mana. Sadly he was not really able to detect his own emissions directly. His working theory was, that when used by organisms mana and anti-mana worked similarly to oxygen and carbon-dioxide: creatures, like slimes and maybe of some of the creatures that ate them used the mana as a way to supply their body with energy, that didn't require digestion, somehow in doing so they did not just spend the mana they took in, but even more energy, making it anti-mana. In theory the anti-mana could be used deliberately in areas like deserts or near volcanic activity to get rid of excess heat, but down here in the mine/cave he had not seen a use, while he had seen frogs, or rather creatures, that looked like frogs creating heat lures in front of their mouths and rats were even using mana to outright attack.

One short series of test revealed, that mana and anti-mana could anihilate one another, if they collided directly, while same (mana and mana or anti-mana and anti-mana) weakly repulsed one another, simply to how if two mechanical objects of similar mass and speed collided.

So now Anthony could feed off of the crystals with basically no risk.

Anthony was curious, why the plants could release large amounts of mana and why they crystals released it as well. His first major revelation in the matter, was that he could stop the crystals from emitting mana, if he covered it and did not to react chemically with his body. A small trip away from his favorite crystal to a patch of plants and found, that those worked much the same way. There was a chemical inside of the plants, that when it broke down emitted large amounts of mana and anti-mana. Well, other chemical reactions released heat and light.

Anthony had figured out, how to see and hear: hearing was easy. He was aware of all cells of his body. When they were hit by a sound wave, they'd vibrate. It was as simple as that.

Seeing was actually the first thing he had done, since becoming a slime. It had taken him some time, that he only saw “black”, when trying to see, while there was no light. When he didn't try to see, he did not actually see. He was simply to used to understand the difference at the time. There was the difference, that instead of eyes he was simply covered in photoreceptive cells. Instead of two pictures, that could be focused an overlayed, he had to manually find a way to make sense of trillions of points of color, that could be influenced by diffuse reflection from his entire field of view. The solution came from insects: using dust to create opaque barriers on his surface, he partitioned out billions of tunnels with photoreceptive cells at the bottom. Thanks to the tunnels only the light coming from a straight angle would be seen. He was now one large compound eye.

Anthony saw an animal consciously use anti-mana. In the larger area he was currently exploring, there were about six animals of note: the smallest ones were bugs, similar to ants or termites. They could fly, but not well, they swarmed over any resource they found and communicated using bio-luminescence. When they found a source of mana, like most slimes, they would use it first to amplify their lights, so the rest of the swarm would find it too and then boost their speed, to scurry around faster.

They were primarily preyed upon by aggressive slimes, that simply started digesting the chitin, when they landed on them, and some kind of jumping spider. When the spider had taken in large amounts of mana, it would jump **** lengths, several meters with pinpoint precision, alternatively they would create nets mid-jump to restrain prey, that would be large to kill with just one bite.

Like the rats. They came in various sizes, from less than three centimeters to almost thirty. The appeared to be blind, using a heat-sense and echolocation. Contrary to earth-rats they seemed to be rather dim. They used mana to simply bite things to great effect, that they normally couldn't, mainly rocks. They didn't eat them and there were definetly better ways to wear down their teeth.

The smaller ones often fell victims to the large frogs, that created heat-lures right in front of their mouths, which in turn were the favorite food of what Anthony called flash-dogs: canine like creatures the size of house cats, that primarily relied on echolocation, which why the rats were actually able to avoid them, but since a frog holding still was very hard to distinguish from a stone the flash-dogs had their use of mana: a bright flash of light, to which the frogs reacted. Which was all the target confirmation the flash-dogs needed.

And finally there were the mini-moose. Their torso and head looked like that of an elk, but without antlers. Their legs were disproportionally short and weak, making them one of the slowest creatures in the tunnels, even though at about the size of a small deer, they were easily the largest.

Since flash-dogs appeared to be about as social as earth dogs, Anthony had wondered, why they bothered going after the frogs, when the mini-moose appeared to be so much easier targets.

The answer was anti-mana. Once Anthony saw a group of flash-dogs **** enough to go for a mini-moose. It backed itself into a corner and then the magic happened. Literally.

Anthony could detect mana and more unusually anti-mana getting emitted in large quantities. It formed interlocking glowing and light absorbing circular patterns and in the center the temperature dropped. A lot before the flash-dogs could close in, icicles had formed above the mini-moose' head aimed at the aggressor. A second later they were launched at deadly speed.

It took Anthony what he guessed were two days to replicate the trick, which enabled him to hunt … pretty much anything. The bad news were, that he had no idea, how it actually worked. Mostly. One anti-mana circle decreased temperature, one mana circle provided the water, another anti-mana circle ingeniously withdrew potential energy, keeping the icicles from moving and much more importantly falling, before they were fully formed and the last pattern provided the desired momentum. He had yet to discover new patterns, which would do other things. Without the patterns he was limited to very basic and imminent usage of mana and anti-mana. The disadvantage of the patterns were, that they required a lot more. Here the plants came in handy. Since he was able to take them in, without breaking them down, he could store them to break down, as soon as he needed it.

Which was what the mini-moose did as well. It turned out, that their main habitat was a lot greener, than the tunnels he had come into being. On the other side the crystals were a lot rarer, and since they were the source of the ambient mana, the slimes relied on, so were the other slimes, which made Anthony stand out. On the other hand with barely any slimes, there were also barely any animals, that bothered to try and eat him and so he continued exploring.

He now had an idea, of what the cave-system he was in was. The larger areas, in which the magic plants grew, were part of a natural cave-system, while the tight tunnels, that sometimes had wooden support beams, were man made. And if they were man-made, they had an entrance. Sure, it might have collapsed, when whatever reason the tunnels were dug for, was given up, but there were few creatures better at squeezing through tight gaps than a slime.

He was delighted to find evidence that he was right: a stairway.