Slime Charmer

I always wanted the freedom of a bird at the wing or a dolphin flipping through the waves. I wanted to jump out of my element and become something new and exciting, to be free. Well, it took me years of slaving away at books and in the gym but I finally made it. I am here, at very edge of the known universe, among the best of the best. I’m making history now.

I sighed and looked away from the porthole where yet an unexplored galaxy twirled around in her gauzy skirts like a Spanish dancer promising an eternity of pleasure if I dared to join her reverie. Instead I surveyed the field of work before me and gave out a tortured moan. The damned grape wines fastidiously refused the tender affections of the most nimble garden bots. One wrong move, one tender bough cut at the wrong angle with the wrong amount of pressure wiped out the whole plant. That would be just fine by me, I would gladly take a match and a bucketful of gasoline to this patch of gentile greenery but that would give our wine connoisseur of a captain a stroke and me a ticket straight back to Earth. So here I am, a horticulturist in the fifth generation, doing my part in the most noble of duties, conquering space knee deep in shit.

As my hands doled out the fragrant fertilizer my mind traced the all too familiar path to the new specimen the drones brought back from KPLG112059. The planet was so much like our home land we half expected it to harbor life and we did see live bacteria cultures roam around in the water sample. What’s more they were green, chlorophyll, my favorite color! I was already seeing myself in one of those monochrome pictures, doused in imperial glory, haughtily stepping on a freshly slaughtered lion. Only mine would be a mile tall sequoia or a man eating Drosera glanduligera.

When the last of the vines was properly nourished and neatly tucked into bed, (the old bastard would have me sing them lullabies if my raspy vocalizations improved his harvest), I rushed to the lab. I opened the hood over the nanomagnifier and gingerly placed the vial under the lens. Flipping on the screen I looked at the alien life form, mesmerized. Their tiny comings and goings, their engulfing, birthing and dying so fragile and yet so indestructible that they survived conditions of subzero temperatures and pitch dark on their way here. I wanted to welcome them; I wanted to give them all the love and affection that they deserved and that was misplaced on the captain’s favorites. I sang them a lullaby, the one that sent me drifting into sleep every night as a child, the one that was the essence of motherhood itself.

I must have fallen asleep for when I came to, I found myself wrapped around the nanomagnifier, cheek to vial, in a puddle of drool. The clock in the corner of my eye glowed gargoyle green, three A.M. I rubbed my face trying to shake the sleepiness out of the blood shot eyes and looked around. Sometime in my sleep I must have taken the helmet of my contamination suit off; for it lay on the floor near the stool I perched on through the night. The vial was intact. It stood on the nanomagnifier platform serenely with the green dots busily swarming about. I put it back in the contamination unit and sterilized the lab just to be on the safe side and then put myself through the routine sterilization procedure.

“That should take care of it.” I thought smugly.

I was back at the vine patch selflessly carrying on my Sisyphean task of producing the best wine this side of the universe when the alarm sounded. My heart stood still at the sound of the officially cold voice ordering everybody into their emergency units. I raced to the lab with dark premonitions snapping at my heels like mad dogs. As I came careening around the corner I saw a group of orange suits crowded near the door to the lab mutely looking on as the green mass bubbled up to the ceiling on the other side.

“What happened?” I panted, trying to catch my breath.

“It appears that the bacteria have an enormous propensity to divide and multiply. Something triggered this growth. What do the logs show, Susan?!” The chief bioengineer shouted at the back of the group.

“Greg performed the last procedure at 3 A.M. this morning.” Replied the girl, eagerly.

Everybody turned their heads in my direction, a deafening silence hung over my head along with the chief’s fist.

“What did you do?!” The man roared shaking me to and fro like a puppet.

“I sssang to them? I faltered though the chattering teeth.

“What?!! You mean…”

“The sound waves at his particular pitch or even the melody could have done it.” Cut in Susan just in time to save my poor head from being caved in. “Maybe he can stop them by trying another tune?”

“Sing pretty boy! Your life depends upon it!”

“And that’s how I became known as the Great Slime Charmer, kids.” I looked around the room at the young upturned faces. “I saved the world that time, you know.”

“Yeah you did dad, you did.”