Chapter 2: Zaun Amorphous Combatant
South of The Ironspike Mountains and North of The Institute of War.
"Comfy?" Zac asked.
Riven shifted a little inside the gooey mass. "Surprisingly…yes."
Zac smiled. "Good, now let's see. How about my birth? Is that a good place to start?"
"Who or what birthed you?" Riven asked with a curious tone.
Zac sighed, "Fine, we shall call it my creation. Is that better?"
"Yeah, go ahead. But first, I'm a little thirsty."
Zac 'harvested' some more grass and put a spout near Riven's mouth. "Just suck here when you're thirsty. I need to concentrate my cells to remember my past."
"I'm not going to suck on a part of you!" Riven exclaimed with shock.
"Ugh, fine just stick out your tongue when you're thirsty. I need to concentrate." Zac began to show a face contorted in strenuous activity. "Alright I got the memories up and ready. Are you set?"
Lap-Lap-Lap
Riven drank some green liquid and said. "Shoot."
Zac got serious for his story. "Pay attention, because I would rather not repeat myself."
Ten years ago. Zaun. Military Lab Compund. Hexchem Division.
I don't remember all of it, but I do remember how my parents explained to me what happened.
The Department Head had just come into the Hexchem Division, led by my parents and monitored by another scientist named Dr. Parson. But Dr. Parson was only in charge of reporting to the Department Head on my parent's progress. Zaunites are not the most trusting people.
As the Department Head reached my parents he exclaimed, "Doctors Jay and Leticia Phyleus, how goes the work on the new organic fuel source?"
"Wonderful!" My mother responded. "We are letting it ferment as we speak."
"Once it's ready, we will put it in the isolation chamber to begin our tests." My father added.
The Department Head looked pleased. "Splendid. Oh, you two are and always have been the greatest assets to Zaun. I don't know what we'd do without you?"
My father huffed, "I don't think he would agree." He said as he pointed up to a glass window one story up in the lab. Whenever Dr. Parson monitored them it was done from up there. However, today he wasn't, and it always seemed to put my mother and father at ease when Dr. Parson was absent. My parents said it had something to do with 'being able to use their free time more productively' then they would both glance at one another and smile when they said that. I never got a straight answer as to why, but whatever.
Anyways, when the Department Head finally said all his normal things and asked all his normal questions, he signed off on their work from the day and left them alone. A few minutes after he left the fuel was ready for testing. My mother and father worked well together, so the painstaking task of transporting dangerous chemicals around was no problem to them. They loaded up the isolation chamber and primed the tests for the fuel.
Now the clear liquid was ready to test inside the isolation chamber. The first thing they tried was to freeze it, and it froze at 273 K. Disappointing because it was the same temperature when water would freeze. Then they applied heat and it was beginning to boil and started to ignite at 373 K which didn't help their needs to make a proper combustible fuel. Now they needed Dr. Parson's permission to use the 'specialized radiation' on the fuel. This radiation didn't act like radiation. In fact my parents were convinced it wasn't radiation at all, but their job wasn't to go snooping so they would just have to accept it.
They couldn't reach him, so they decided to flip a coin. It came up heads and they went for it. Starting off low, they gradually brought the exposure up to three hundred rads. Again, rad was a relative term because there was no proof it was actually radiation. So whatever measurement would actually be necessary must have been beyond the scope of Zaun scientists. Despite the fuels reaction to temperatures being similar to that of water, the rads had no effect. My mother then convinced my father to increase it to six hundred rads, but still no effect. It made no sense; the fuel should have been destroyed by now. Risking backlash from the Department head they increased the rads to two thousand, believing the fuel should definitely be destroyed. Still no change; they were baffled and were scared to actually record all of what was happening. They couldn't figure out what they had created, even after going back over their notes.
The scale maxed out at ten thousand rads. My mother said, "Just hold my hand and do it."
My father nodded and started to crank up the inside of the chamber to ten thousand rads. Any more and the chamber couldn't keep it isolated. Both my parents were in shock. This was impossible. They wanted to turn it back down and check on the fuel, but because there was no change they decided to just let it keep going at ten thousand rads. For seven hours into the night they monitored the fuel; doing 'stuff' as they called it, in the meantime. When they were finally ready to stop, something amazing happened. The fuel turned dark green and started to get viscous.
[ "That was you?!" Riven exclaimed.
Zac formed his face to stare coldly at Riven.
Riven pursed a smile like she was all innocent and said, "Sorry, please continue?" ]
They didn't know what 'it' was. [ Zac continued staring coldly at Riven. ] But they had a hunch it was a new chemical that could act like fuel. After waiting an hour for the rads to dissipate they removed the fuel from the isolation chamber to get a good look at it.
It was gooey and held together, even out of the beaker. They were cautious not to touch it without gloves, but what they realized was that it had started to devour all the material it would touch. The beaker had marks, the table had marks, and their gloves had marks, of material torn away. The gooey mass seemed to grow as it destroyed matter around it.
"STOP!" My father called out; only afterwards did he realize the folly of his words. This thing couldn't hear him. Or could it? When he yelled for it to stop, it had done just that.
My parents looked at one another. Then my mother said, "Can you understand us?"
The gooey mass formed a solid yellow dot that faced them. It was at that moment that they had realized their new fuel source was actually a living amorphous blob.
[ "So, that was you?!" Riven cut in to ask again.
Again, Zac stared coldly at Riven. ]
My parents immediately started to record their findings. They were astonished by how this thing grew and interacted with them. They decided to just bite the bullet, and called Dr. Parson in to see what they had done.
"Hmmm…" Dr. Parson exclaimed. "Can it be used as a weapon?"
My parents locked eyes and my father replied, "That's your first question. Not how is it alive? Or why it grows by consuming matter?"
Dr. Parson sighed, "I can see those things well enough. I am interested to know if it can be made into a weapon."
"But it's alive." My mother stated. "Isn't that the bigger question?"
Dr. Parson stared at the gooey mass and said, "I know why it is alive. I monitored your actions from my office last night."
Now my parents were confused. My father exclaimed, "If you saw everything we saw, then how does that explain why it has life?"
"You don't need to concern yourself with the how. Just find me a way to make this thing into a weapon. That will be all." At that Dr. Parson left them, in horrible confusion, and made his way out of my parent's lab.
My parents stared at one another. "Do you think it was the 'specialized radiation' we used?" My mother asked.
"It had to be. Nothing else was tried." My father replied.
They had their suspicions, but they knew they couldn't act on them. So they let it go and refocused their attention on the gooey, dark green mass on the table. They were still in shock about what happened, but were far more preoccupied with how the gooey mass was able to understand conscious orders.
Over the next few weeks my parents ran experiments on the gooey mass in which Dr. Parson gave the title, Zaun Amorphous Combatant. They didn't want to refer to the creature in such a cruel way so they called it ZAC.
[ Riven looked like she was going to burst it out.
So Zac said, "Ugh, yes that's me."
Riven smiled. ]
Whenever my parents spoke to 'me' I would expand out to show an eye, and after awhile some limbs. I was just a small blob, trying to mimic their human form, but I was struggling. When they would sing to me; especially my mother, my father was monotone and horrible; I would bounce up and down. I however, can't remember this far back.
Aside from the playful experiments, I would undergo tests in low and high temperatures. Both of which would deliver very little effect. My parents feared I would make a great weapon. Especially when they had me test hitting dummies. Streams of goo flowed out from my body and would harden on impact to knock the dummies back against the wall. These dummies were bolted to the floor. In their reports; that I read on their table as they would sing to me; they would write down the huge amounts of kinetic energy that I would create from practically nowhere. They gave me so much praise, despite the fact that all my greater abilities would be very useful if I was made into a weapon.
The first memory I actually have is about the night everything changed. After one of my tests in the isolation chamber went wrong; where I, in anger, burst my way out of it, my parents were instructed to lock me away for the night. Once inside my cage, I cowered in the corner, hoping they wouldn't leave me for too long. They had put me inside the cage without a single song. I felt angst for the first time in my life. It was very unpleasant.
My parents saw me and explained it to me like this: We saw our creation, shivering with despair in his cage. That's when we realized that we caged a creature we had started to love so much. It was too much for us to see you in there son. So we decided that you deserve a better life.
That night, my parents snuck back into the lab. They grabbed a sealable storage container large enough to house me and placed me inside. My mother told me to just wait silently until she opened it up again. I don't remember what happened, but after they told me later, everything I can remember made sense. They put me in what's referred to as "The Daily Flush' and left me there to await being 'flushed' out through miles of twisting pipes to the Zaun Harbor. Once there they got me out of the container and made their way out of Zaun, forever.
[ "Wow!" Riven exclaimed.
"Wow what?" Zac asked.
"Your parents," Riven was trying to keep her emotions in check, and doing pretty well at it, "they were so loving."
Zac smiled. "They still are."
"I can see that they really loved you. So noble of them to risk their stable lives, just for your freedom." Riven said closing her eyes. "That's what real parents are."
Zac kept smiling. "Yep, now it's your turn." ]