Why I Hate Slime
A short story by Hal, space-faring insectoid
Stop Writing Alone’s prompt for September was:
Write a story using the following protagonist, places, and things.
Person:
INSECTOID
Thing (select at least one):
SPACE SUIT
SLIME
WORMHOLE
Place (select at least one):
SPACE
SLIME PLANET
You can visit the comments on this post to read all of the other submissions:
I despise slime. My hive commander knows this, but she says it builds character to send me on these missions.
This is utter bullshit and she knows it.
Slime is awful enough when encountered directly on my carapace, but it is an astronomical unit of magnitude more annoying when I’m wearing a spacesuit. This particular slime planet has five—FIVE!—distinct slime types. The most prolific of which are two types of slime molds. The other types are what we’re down here on this hellish bog of a planet to study.
And oh, am I ever studying it.
The joints on my suit over my right foreleg are malfunctioning. I keep trying to wiggle that leg back and forth but the joint material has started to corrode. I am becoming increasingly alarmed by this. If this slime can corrode our suit materials, what can it do to our exoskeletons?
My antennae instinctually swivel in the direction of our squad leader. He was just here, clicking and hissing at me to stop being a pill bug and get with the program. The fact that he hasn’t come to my survey grid to harangue me again should be a relief, but my dread starts to grow.
Is my left hind leg joint starting to stick? Has the corrosion spread? How long do I have before toxic atmospheric gases start leaking into my suit?
I’ve seen the training videos on what hydroprene does to our species’ nervous system. I don’t want to be trapped in my carapace, paralyzed and slowly suffocating.
If I could just get this sticky goop off of my suit!
I try flicking my forelegs, again. This is what I was doing when I noticed the joints had started to catch and grind. It’s no use. My right lower foreleg is now permanently fixed in a raised forty-five-degree angle. I look like I’m waving to passersby.
I briefly contemplate lying prone and wiggling all of my suit joints in tandem but dismiss the idea very quickly.
Firstly, because the thought of lying down in the muck beneath my feet elicits an immediate regurgitation reflex.
Secondly, because the precise second I adopt such a ridiculous position is guaranteed to be when Joey and his documentary-camera come back over the hillock. I’ll be forever immortalized as playing-acting a dying insect.
Hard pass.
“Adjunct! Do you require assistance?”
It’s Edgar, our squad leader.
As a testament to how desperate I am, I don’t immediately respond with, “No, Hive Subaltern!”
Subaltern Edgar’s suit is working perfectly, of course. He clomps across the dryer parts of the bog before stopping at the edge. He looks down at the murk I’m stuck in. His antennae swivel back and forth.
Edgar may look like an oaf, but he’s not completely brainless.
“Can you move at all?”
I give an experimental flex of my hind legs. My suit crackles like a dried-out screamer’s molt, but it does, kind of, move. So, I… hop… towards Edgar.
Look, I’m not proud of it. I could either remain motionless with my dignity intact and let the slime corrode everything of my suit, or I could suffer ignominy and live.
And no, you cannot see the footage because Joey is still blessedly absent.
As soon as I get close to him, Edgar takes a giant step backward. “Containment unit to my position now!” He barks the order while also backing up again. “Do not move further, Adjunct! Aggressive biological contamination detected!”
Yeah, no shit, Edgar.
“I think I found the sample the Hive Commander requested,” I say.
“You were supposed to use a sample collector, not bathe in the stuff, Hal.” Edgar keeps his distance, but that doesn’t stop him from stomping on what’s left of my self-esteem.
Dee Dee and Marky skitter over the dry ground and start spraying me down with containment film. This basically creates an impervious buffer around me and my slime-infested suit. The idea is to keep the contaminant from spreading to any of my hive or the rest of our ship.
“Uh, can we hurry this up? I don’t want to find out if this gunk will eat through me like it’s eating through my suit.”
“It’s not gunk, it’s slime,” Dee Dee hisses pedantically.
“It’s corrosive slime,” I click back.
“Evac inbound.”
“Thank the Egg-layer,” I mutter.
I hate slime.
I hate slime worlds.
And I really, really, hate slime in my spacesuit.
Builds the suspense nicely as the panic starts to set in.
Lol this is good 😂 had me chuckling more than a few times