Mimic Slime · 2:25am Jul 26th, 2020
A friend is putting together a high-fantasy world for a story, and one particular subject came up—the titular mimic slimes. He asked (because he knows I have oft-freaky ideas) me for any thoughts on how to make them work. Well, one watching of Journey to the Microcosmos later, and it was firmly established that they were amoeba-like creatures, specifically a type of testate amoeba. All slimes are roughly about as smart as a blowfly—they sense edible things and eat them—but these ones were different.
Almost human-smart, the mimic slime instead has its shell within (like a cuttlefish), and has repurposed it as an organelle that holds its acid. They can weaken this shell and project it outward at great speed to impact against creatures or use it in other ways. The downside is, of course, that like many creatures that use substances it takes time to produce more.
As for the mimic side of things, they can reshape themselves into complex forms like the semblance of living creatures (though their insides are still slime), as well as produce smells and sounds. In short, they can mimic most things fairly well, and with enough intelligence, they can become quite a menace.
That's where my little story comes in. We wanted to prod at some of the horrors of these things, and I offered my keyboard.
The Fixer and the Mimic Slime
It was a wonderful morning. A bright day was coming, and along with it myself. It wasn't that I wanted to kill them all. The seaport and shipyards were just a problem for the man who'd paid me. Oh, he'd tried to explain how he was a noble for some other country and blah blah blah. I'd almost killed him on the spot for oversharing—probably would have if he'd had the gold with him.
"Are you ready?" I asked of it.
"Yes." The reply would have set the hair of anyone's neck standing straight up. There was an alienness to it spoke of its origins. The reply sounded perfectly clear and exquisitely pronounced, but at the same time there was something about it that told you no humanoid throat had made it. "All of them?"
"Yeah. This will be an ambush port. You can do that, right? Mimic people well enough that arriving ships won't recognize what you are?" My load was heavy—a large sack over my shoulder that the voice came from.
"Oh yes. We'll feast." The worst part about the voice was the emotion it betrayed. The emotions it associated with eating were the most powerful. "You will find me prey?"
It would be the easiest thing. Go into town, pay some sweet girl for a night in a warm bed. "Of course. You wouldn't even need to use all your acid."
"This is why I like you so much. It's the little things that make you a friend." A monster's friend. Yeah, that was me. When the gods claimed me at my deathbed, and they asked whose lives I'd enriched along my path, I'd point to the monster that had slaughtered dozens of cities and smile proudly.
Just like always, no one questioned a stranger willing to spend his coin. I got a room at a nice inn with a pretty maid who brought me food and ale. I flirted with her, tipping her far more than I should, which earned me a lot of smiles and, at the end of the night, an invitation.
She was a pretty girl, so alive and full of excitement and happiness. When we were done, and she asleep, I leaned over the side of the bed and reached my hand down to untie the sack.
"About time. You enjoyed her?" It always asked strange things like that, and I guess I was strange too because I always answered.
"Yeah. She was sweet and willing to try anything. A shame." Slipping from the bed, I walked around to the side she was on adjusted the bed covers carefully. "Are you ready?"
The slime was ambulatory. It oozed its way up and onto the bed just as the girl I was restraining woke up. She started to fight, struggling in the covers to get an arm or a leg free, but I'd done this before—she couldn't even scream past the rolled sheet hem in her mouth.
My friend, probably my best and only friend, oozed its way against the girl's belly and then *into* her. There was no way to explain how it used small amounts of its acid to melt the girl's body and start its work.
"Why don't you start with the head?" I asked. "That way I wouldn't have to—"
"I like it when you hold them. I like it when they squirm and try to get away. Thank you." There was that emotion again. My best friend really enjoyed its work, and after nearly an hour of her tears and snot staining the covers I'd restrained her with, it was done with her. Her body was a husk now—a skin-bag with only a slime inside it. A moment later the skin was gone too, but the girl was laying in its place. She sat up and looked around. "It's more than like, you know."
I let go of the covers. "Yeah, I know you love doing that. How many do you think we can seed before you'll be able to take this place over?"
"There are four more in this place. I can feel them." Its voice coming from her mouth was a fresh horror for anyone who'd hear it—except me.
"Careful of the voice. You heard her enough times you know how she speaks."
"Well, of course I do, silly." And there it was. The girl's voice was perfect. "Now, should we make a grab for another tonight?"
"No," I said. "You need to learn about this family for the seeding to work. You're just a human doing human things, remember?"
Her hand reached out and ran down my torso, tracing the outlines of each muscle as she did. But it wasn't her, it was it. "We could pick up where you left off."
Damn it. Damn me. I was in hell and bringing others with me, but it was a hell of my own making. Its body was perfect, its voice perfect—it even smelled like her.
The most horrifying thing for me, as I lay down and let it kiss my chest, was that I knew all this and was okay with it.
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Applauds
Disturbing on multiple levels-psychological, emotional, and in a primal sense, especially as it's clear this pair have done this before. How many villages are gone or worse, hidden traps filled with Mimic Slimes going about their day, waiting for an unwary traveler to come by for a rest?
Oof. Nasty.
I feel... conflicted about this one. And it honestly horrifies me that I'm not decisively horrified. But shapeshifters, oozes, and shapeshifting oozes are some of my favorite tropes. Yes, the actions are deplorable, but the concept is fascinating.
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5322279 This was mostly done to help get the mental juices flowing regarding the species and how to have them work as something truly antithetical to society.
We brainstormed further and built up ideas on how memory and intelligence works in this particular species.
Reproduction:
Budding: very little reduction in intelligence of parent, child is dumb as a post.
Splitting: large loss of intelligence of parent, children share memories of parent and are reasonably intelligent.
We postulated that they very rarely use splitting, since it creates an entirely new competitor that wants all the same things the parent wants.
They can subsist on non-sapient flesh, but consuming sapient beings is how they grow in intelligence.
All put together, this implies that these two have killed a lot of people together for this particular slime to be not just intelligent to the point of having (completely alien) emotions, but willing to not consume a ready source of food (the protagonist) in order to continue their work. Also, with how the protagonist talked of the slime and its offspring as being singular, but the slime talks of plural "we", it implies that the slime first of all splits and then consumes people to regain the lost intelligence—leaving its sleeper agent twin behind to carry out the work.
These creatures are more a harmful parasite of society itself, rather than individuals. Like a virus attacking the cells of a host settlement and literally using them to make more of itself. But worst of all, they're intelligent.