Curiosity Is A Bad Trait for a dumb intern by zekameka
Curiosity Is A Bad Trait for a dumb intern by zekameka ,Introduction: Introduction: A careless intern almost jepardizes a science experiment , The alien writhes inside its glass confine, a mass of blackness so dark Agnes can make the contours of its tentacles only when they pull away from its body, contrasting against the stark white of the lab walls.
It’s fluid in a manner that can not be understood by any human outside the few dozen in this ship, the physics of its movements are so distant from anything seen in Earth. Despite the malleability of its form, however, its strength – measured by their top-notch equipment – is nothing short of mind boggling. The creature’s home planet has twice the pull of gravity as Earth, and its ocean is around 20 times as deep. The sun it orbits is far, small and reddish. The planet would be a wasteland of frozen lifelessness if not for the star-hot core warming it from within.
It was in the depts of the hostile sea that covers planet SG-58231 that it was found. Though found is not the right word to describe what happened. Agnes was there, the one, lucky intern in Nasa’s most coveted crew, the crew that gets to plant an American flag in new worlds, unveils environments never before seen or touched by humans, plans and executes the initial research necessary before anything found is deemed safe enough to be shipped back to Earth for further examination.
They entered the planet’s atmosphere after extensive surveillance, hoping to gather a sizeable sample of water – the smaller ones, collected by machines, had come back perfectly potable. Earth water. The ship shone a light over the impenetrable surface of the black sea, made only as much contact with the water as necessary.
It was then that the alien rose to meet the humans, tentacles swaying along with the current in such way that it took the ship’s equipment blaring warnings for the crew to notice it. The creature allowed itself to be hoisted up, put into one container, a tank, then another, a glass cage in the form of a small room. It shrunk to better fit the entrapment of the ship, as if it could understand the need to share space with the humans.
Agnes was fascinated by it from the first second her eyes landed on its clearly living, moving, willful form. She glued herself to the back of the head scientist, Doctor Mackenzie, curious and greedy for any chance to study the creature, to understand it.
There’s a full glass wall in the alien’s room. Often, in those first couple of weeks, a dozen of people could be seen standing by it, watching the creature’s slow, languid movements in nothing short of disbelief. This is, after all, the first multi-cellular, living organism found outside of Earth, even after centuries of relentless search. However, all novelty loses its shine as days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months. 243 days after the finding, as the ship is barely a week away from home, and Agnes is the only one who can be consistently found in front of these glass walls.
If she has annotated its movements, its moods, its tendencies in both paper and her mind, that’s only her job. The creature eats through osmosis, and she could swear she notices a spike in activity when its environment is charged with the microorganisms it ingests.
The alien splashes, swims, behaves. As if it feels. As their schedule is consistent, Agnes made sure to annotate that the creature is intelligent enough to anticipate the times it is supposed to receive nourishment. Like any animal that walks the Earth, it knows food, can be driven by it.
If Agnes starts to refer to it as he, in her mind, no one would be too put off by it. That’s her job, after all. To watch the creature as closely as humanly possible, to observe and convey each of its behavioral idiosyncrasies. For months and months, she has done so. Faithfully, to her best ability. Eventually, his mysterious, obsidian tentacles creeped into her dreams.
There, she could feel them against her skin, so impossibly smooth and yet, hard, unyielding. Fuzzy memories of said dreams made her cheeks flush during the day. For the first time in her 5-years deployment, she missed the opportunity of intimacy. Of course, as a virgin so shy it can be described as borderline debilitating social-anxiety, Agnes couldn’t really know what she was missing. Yet, she still missed it.
It is a strange evening, 56 hours before they reach Earth’s atmosphere, that Agnes realizes something. This creature, he, is the first complex, life-form ever found. Sure, he didn’t respond to any of the many sentiency and intelligence tests the crew tried to administer, but, how could he? When he came from a world of relentless storms, impenetrable darkness, aggressive and ever- present tactile information? Safety measures dictated no direct contact could be made with him, so all of the tests were given through the glass, using food. Weak and inconclusive. Couldn’t the creature be proven intelligent, if only it were allowed to use the sole sense it seems to have?
Agnes’ heart is beating in her throat as she punches in Doctor Mackenzie’s code. Interns go unnoticed so easily, she knows all the codes, all the accesses, and as much as she has used them to gather information before, the main crew never noticed. In her hands, she takes only a small case of the creature’s favored food. A gift, she hopes.
Truthfully, this is insanity, and she knows it. But Agnes has dreamed of the starts ever since she was old enough to support her neck and look up at the sky. She has made up stories about aliens and astronauts, about humankind conquering the universe. It’s her greatest desire, her whole life. Is it really so out of the realm of possibility that someone such as her would walk into a glass cage with an alien? How could she not?
It awakes as if from an eon-long slumber, long limbs tasting the water in the tank, creeping out to feel the air in the room. Sensitive nerve-endings pick up on vibration, not quite sound, but as close as tactile receptors can get. Steps, the human way of moving.
There are particles of food in the air, it can feel them. It splashes lazily as it waits, luxuriates in the meal when the human deposits it in its tank. They have never been so close before, however. It’s curious, the air tastes like something it should know. Warmth, softness, fertility. Of course, it knows what to do. In hostile environments, life subsists. In welcoming ones, it reproduces.
The doors to the enclosure snap locked at Agnes’ first scream. It’s a security measure, she knows. It’s there for a reason, that being aliens can be fairly unpredictable. The system assumes at any distress signal that the foreign life-form in the ship must be contained. It also blares an alarm, deafening, unmistakable. Agnes knows the whole crew will be on the other side of the glass in moments.
The creature has enveloped her in a thick, black tentacle, picked her up as if her weight is negligible. She notices, even as terror freezes her limbs, that his surface is not smooth, but littered with patterned bumps that somehow couldn’t be seen, but are keenly felt. Not that it’s rough, on the contrary. The tentacle holding her is slick with slime, softened by a life in the water. Even then, Agnes can’t escape. She wriggles and thrashes, pushes the limb away and grunts with the effort. The creature simply adds a second tentacle to the assault, holding her legs in place.