Goo

A strange goo has engulfed the Earth. What is it, and can an alien named Mikealie save humanity?

The voice of The Brain is Sarah Nightmare. Featuring "Somnambulax" by Doctor Brandon Winter and "Goo" by Klaus Brenner

Enjoy.

Transcript

Salutations, gentle listener.

Are you fed up with spending one third of your life asleep, another third at work, and the rest on chores and errands? Then Somnambulax may be right up your alley.

Only Somnambulax stimulates lower cognitive functions with enzymes derived from the night cats of Niktos II. With your synapses firing just below the radar, you’ll be able to pull yourself out of bed and trudge through the day’s menial drudgery while in a heightened state of REM sleep. You’ll barely be conscious of your surroundings or your actions, but the results will speak for themselves. Need to organize your garage? Do it with Somnambulax. Have laundry to fold? Well, thank God there’s Somnambulax. Need to sharpen your kitchen knives? Somnambulax.

There’s nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it, so just imagine what you can accomplish when you let your subconscious take over. 

Somnambulax. The name in productive zombie-ism, a name you can trust.

Side effects may include: rash; headache; acting out repressed desires; constipation; joint pain; shortness of breath; emergence of second personalities driven by subconscious fears; bloating; and gout.

And now, as promised, your grim tale of the future.

The goo reached all the way to Mickaelie’s waist. Silver, metallic, stretching all the way to the horizon. If not for her visor, the light reflecting off it would have blinded her.

The invention of nanotechnology is an important milestone in the development of any civilization. Diseases once thought incurable can be fought on a molecular level. Environmental damages that would otherwise take millenia to heal can be cleaned up in a matter of minutes. Wondrous and useful new substances, once thought only theoretically possible, can be brought into the world.

But nanotechnology can also lead to the end of all things. All it takes is a simple programming error, and instead of targeting a tumor or an oil-spill, the nanobots go after all carbon-based matter. All living things on a planet, replaced by microscopic machines in a matter of days, hours even.

Mickailie pushed a button on her wrist, and the temporal beacon, one of seventeen she had placed around the world, glowed red.

If they’re able to get off-planet, out-of-control nanobots can pose a galactic-level threat. Therefore, the Hegemony that holds dominion over the Milky Way will disable any they encounter. Once they were detected here, a nearby war ship fired an electromagnetic pulse at the planet, rendering the bots inanimate. It was too late for life on Earth, though.

Or almost. See, the prevalent train of thought across the galaxy is that intelligent life in the universe is rare and that space faring civilizations should be kept safe from harm up until first contact. As soon as the Earthlings had put a satellite in orbit, they were unwittingly under The Hegemony’s protection.

The sky changed from blue to orange. Mikailie and the beacon stayed as they were, while 

around her time flowed backwards. The nanobots flickered on again, then transformed, reverting to grass and trees, animals and people. The city of Fort Worth returned to life.

The backwards time slowed, then stopped. Mikaelie turned to the small, brick building where it had happened. She turned a dial on her suit and the wall in front of her became translucent. She stepped through.

Inside, scientists in lab coats stood frozen. She walked past them, past the shielded glass, to a computer console. She waved her hand across it. She could see them now, millions of lines of code. It only took her moments to find it, the error that had doomed humanity. A tiny bolt of electricity travelled from her fingertip into the machine, and just like that, a seven became a nine.

Back outside, Mikaelie pressed the button on her wrist again, and the beacon crumbled into dust. She looked up at her ship as it descended through a sky slowly turning blue again.

Her antenna sprang free as she lifted off her helmet. She was on her way home. Through a monitor, she watched the Earth grow smaller. It was beginning to spin again, slowly. Within minutes, everything would be as it was. Humanity would go on, completely oblivious to the colaminity that had befallen it.

As the tiny blue orb disappeared from view, Mikaelie wondered what the point had been. In the 98 years since Sputnik, the Earthlings had managed to destroy themselves seven times. Three times by nuclear holocaust, twice by artificially-manufactured pandemic, once by genetically modified Cetatian, and now nanobots. What was the point of saving a species with a deathwish?

Oh well. It wasn’t her decision. She made her way towards her sleeping quarters for a well-deserved nap.

A few hours later, in Vienna, professor Maximilian Morritz made a remarkable discovery. If one were to install a reactor into the heart of the sun itself, they’d have access to a cheap, nearly endless supply of energy.

There was only one, slight issue. If this reactor were to ever melt down, the sun might explode. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?