She could not remember how long she had been stuck there to the side of the building, but the sentient goo knew it had been many years. The blob had formulated a method to keep her boredom and loneliness at bay; for hours upon hours, she recited formulas. Any formulas. From physics to calculus to even Freudian and Gestalt, she loved remembering formulas, theories, equations, running through them until she had dissected the meaning of each. Then, as the years passed and the formulas and theories had lost their mystery, she began reciting them in many different languages. How the sentient goo knew any language at all being as she had a mouth but no vocal chords was a mystery even the intelligent being had not deciphered. From what society these languages came from was also a mystery. The other sentient goo around her did not communicate through words but vibrations and spent most of their time in their own minds. They barely registered extraneous stimulation at all. The only other sentient beings she had contact with over the many years were brain dead acidic beasts whose only motivation was the devouring of flesh. They slumped through the decrepit city oozing and moaning, and never stimulating the curiosity impulses in the goo's impulse riddled mind.

There was a time before, the goo remembered, when she was not goo at all but a tall, lanky girl of a decade and a half who spent most her time in a wonderful place the goo remembered being called the University Library. Or with a man, dark haired with glasses, named "Professor." The Professor was a kindly man with a fatherly smile and had taken in the young girl as a protégé during her years as "student," the only word the sentient goo could think of to associate with herself. But the Professor was gone, and what reason was there to continue reevaluating broken, painful memories?

The goo's eyes, hardly ever registering the world outside her mind, noticed movement in the alley way. The moaning monstrosities had gathered into a frenzy, leaking and sliding down the city streets towards what the goo almost accurately guessed. The monsters had not tasted live flesh for several years. This swarm could only mean one thing: there was something alive running around the city.

Excitement coursed through the goo's impulses. Something had survived this mess, this horrific apocalyptic war! The goo had feared all life had been extinguished once the war had left her city's streets as she had not seen even animals in at least a year. Suddenly, the pink blob was thrown into confusion. The neighboring sentient goo, whom she had long thought had lost communication skills of all kind, was vibrating all at once. Vibrations carried longer distances than sound, so she felt the thoughts of goo from miles away to the ones directly next to her to all the ones in between.

Sick…she heard. Need chicken soup, the urgent cry went out. Help, the other beings called to their neighbors. She felt her boundaries start stretching and pulling which indicated that the others like her were moving and trying to find the items they needed. The goo, knowing the beings were many miles away from the direction of the original vibrations, was happy nonetheless. Even if she could not see the unknown creatures, she would try her best to help them! Slowly and painfully, the sentient goo moved for the first time in a long time as she slid down the side of the building in search of chicken soup.

She felt the vibrations of the swarming monsters head back towards her direction. She dreaded what this meant; could the creatures have already devoured the precious being that needed chicken soup? But, no, suddenly a long haired man and a small girl child ran down her alley with the monsters close on their heels. The man shoved the girl into a rusted car, and faced off against the monsters. His face a mask of determination he began to sing a song that echoed familiarly in the sentient goo's memories. With a determined sweep, the man placed a shining thing on his head and transformed into a powerful wizard. One after another the monsters fell to crushing waves of snow and ice. Over and over, she felt something solid passing through the goo around her. The man swept off the magical crown, tossing it to the snow in front of him with disgust. The sentient blob grabbed the chicken soup and spoon, which had travelled miles over the sticky pink sea to her, and dripped it down her body right next to the white haired man. Startled, the man saw her, looked into her melting face and gingerly pulled the soup from her gooey flesh.

She watched with subliminal happiness as the man fed the soup to the girl and held the child. She felt alive for the first time in almost a decade, but her chest ached. When the two gathered their things and turned to leave, the sentient being instinctively knew she could not live another day as she had been living. Their backs were to her; they had already turned from her alley.

The goo stretched and stretched, yearning for them to wait for her. Too many years had she spent alone and bereft. She needed them to stay. And if they wouldn't stay then she would follow. Inch by inch the goo spread out to her limits. Every inch of her protested and sinews snapped, but she kept pulling away from herself. She began to sweat into the snowy ground the wizard had left behind; if she had vocal chords she would have been screaming in agony. But life as it had been was agony of a different kind.

Determination, her own iron will sharpened for years on hard discipline, something pushed her on. She did not know what she was doing, felt as if she might be killing herself, but the goo pushed on. Suddenly, like a babe from the womb or, more accurately, a butterfly from a cocoon, she snapped free from her sinuous bindings and tumbled out from the snow to the hard ground of the city's concrete sidewalk. The collision bruised her delicate pink limbs, but she hardly noticed. She had limbs!

She explored herself then with her fingers. Anatomy diagrams flashed through her head, and she ticked off things in her mind. A working olfactory system complete with ethmoid bone and nasal septum, buccal cavity, post-pubescent development of glandular tissue in the breast, fibromuscular elastic tubular tract, urethral opening, patella; despite the organic compounds and make up of her newly birthed body maintaining the physical and chemical properties of the pink goo, she was a fully developed human woman! But the priority on her list, the number one thing she hoped for…

"Making your way in the world today takes everything you got," she sang in a pure, sweet voice. Startled, she clasped her newly formed fingers across her mouth. Her shock subsided, and she could not contain her smile a moment longer. Her hands dropped to the cement, and she threw her head back,

"Taking a break from all your worries should would help a lot! Wouldn't you like to get away? Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name! You want to be where everybody knows your name. You wanna go… where everybody… knows your name…"

Exhausted because of the exercise of her freshly formed vocal chords but laughing all the same, she fell back, and her gooey hair flew back and landed in the snow.

"Ach, mein glub!" she whispered to herself. She stared at the starry sky above her and judged how long her "birth" had taken. Several hours had passed giving the man and the girl plenty a head start. The new woman was sure they would not be travelling at night, but that still put them a couple of hours ahead of her. Then she noticed shifting in the snow. The monsters had responded to her voice and reanimated but were struggling against the thick, icy powder. Silently lifting herself, she tested her shaking, coltish legs. Her knees knocked and she fell several times, but eventually she learned to walk, if not confidently, effectively.

Her bare feet padded silently down the concrete street in the direction she had seen the two travel as she searched for tracks. She walked until she came to an intersection. Across from her was a clothing store with the windows broken and the mannequins dismembered and leaning on each other like a diseased forest. Light glinted to her left, and turning, she saw icy footsteps reflecting starlight leading out of the city. Looking at herself and comparing it to the memory of the man and girl, she knew she must conform to their standards of modesty. She headed towards the broken clothing store.

Inside, she silently explored the aisles. A monster stood stationary and moaning as it listened hard for the sound of prey. As quietly as possible, she pulled on jeans tight to her calf and a purple sweatshirt and sneakers. She found a heavy iron rod lying on the ground and decided she could make use of it. She was mostly over the shattered window pane when disaster struck.

The metal rod had slipped a few inches and knocked some glass from the frame. The sound of shattering glass was slight and rang beautifully in the night air, but to starved monsters straining against themselves for such a sound it was like a thunder clap. Dread filled her heart as she heard the monsters awaken and the groaning get louder as they excitedly pursued new prey.

The woman hopped to the street and sprinted in the direction the two had traveled towards the outskirts of the city. The iron bar would help, she knew, but she feared the monstrosities' acidic green secretions would destroy even the heavy weapon she held. They were surprisingly quick beings, and before long, her weak legs were failing and the beasts were gaining. She tried dodging them in a side alley, but she made the wrong choice. It was a dead end. A tear fell from her eye as all her new found hope was extinguished. How could she find new meaning in her existence only for it to end here, alone, on a dull night, surrounded by toxic beasts? She could calculate no escape and could only square her shoulders and plant her feet as the monsters approached their trapped prey.