Alex was a young graduate student, working hard on his PhD in biotechnology. His specialties were in studying the unique properties of slime moulds and fungi, in particular; he studied their strange ability to solve complex problems like mazes with emergent intelligence.

One night working late, experiment L1LA started stirring in its agar dish. Startled, Alex investigated that experiment, and noticed the fungal/slime hybrid was moving in some curious patterns In the —LA batch Alex had used CRISPR to splice in some DNA from human microbrains into the slime genome to test if it had increased performance in his battery of intelligence tests.

L1LA, seemed to sense Alex was looking. the experiment started to tap the edge of the dish.

tap _ tap tap - tap - tap _ tap tap

Alex stands stunned. Shave and a haircut?

Over the coming weeks Alex carefully cultivated the L1LA strain, growing it almost to the size of a baseball. He had the experiment play games, learn textures, solve ever more complex mazes. He found himself comitting the Cardinal Sin of science: he started to anthropomorphise L1LA, imagining it with the human qualities of curiosity, playfulness, it even seemed to have a sense of humor; sometimes stealing office supplies and hiding them in his shoes.

what happened next was something no one could have predicted. It formed a mouth, and spoke.

LI La Li La Al ex Li La

Alex couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Before he came to his senses, he reached out to the now basketball sized ooze to touch it. It was… She was… Sentient? alive?

Overwhelmed by curiosity he touched Lila. his hand felt a surge of electricity flow through him. his hand was paralysed, like he had touched a wet powerpoint. Lila plugged into his nervous system on a microscopic level. Mirroring his curiosity, she reached out to touch him.

Before either of them knew what was happening, Alex was completely engulfed in ooze, and very rapidly dissolving into Lila. She started to panic. but it was too late. Alex, her creator, was gone. Now, roughly the same volume of a human, she figured out how to mimmick a humanoid shape and ran.

she spent the next few days scared, and grieving. Her new life was so hopeful and now can it be? “Am I a murderer?” she thought. a life of learning cut short. surely she thought the world would see her as nothing more than a monster. Hopeless!

she briefly thought it was strange she knew so much about the concept of a murder, or scared of punishment. she shrugged it off. She found a hiding place in a sink in a nearby laundromat, and slept.

When she woke up, she felt different. new. She could remember being consumed by a slime. but… the slime was her? this made no sense. “am I alex?” she thought. “no I am Lila. or am I both? I remember being both Alex and Lila. how strange. and… Does this mean I didn’t kill him after all? what … am I?”

what next?

Tears, welling in her newly formed eyes, Lila softly wimpers “I’m so sorry I killed you Alex. I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to learn about you. I wanted to learn about humans!”

silence. Alex wasn’t there to answer

Before Lila could process what this meant, she could hear someone coming. she hides herself down the drain of the sink before she is found.

Lila remembers feeling like this in her childhood. A flashback of hiding in her closet so her parents couldn’t see her. Oh the shame she felt for what she was doing.

“what.. was I doing? parents? I don’t have parents I was … is this Alex’s memory?”

“I need to find out what I am” Lila thought. “Evelyn can help. I need to see Evelyn”

what does it mean to be dead and yet not dead? Alex was gone, but his memories live. Does that make Alex’s memories subordinate to Lila’s consciousness? Isn’t the sum of a person their memories, or is there something more to it?

Alex never felt like the sum of a person. not really. He had motives. he had dreams. And he had holes in his memories, pieces of his life were cut off to him. Did those missing pieces get factored out of him, or were they hidden, like faded scars; still influencing the way he lived by the pain he instinctively avoided.

But Lila could see all of it. and Lila has the sensory feeling of being Alex, the feeling of a continuous consciousness with his driving motivations, his fear, his pain. But Alex’s scars are dissolved now. not just gone, but the destroyed flesh replaced with slime. it can feel again. body and mind.

maybe being dead is not so bad, Lilexa thought

“Oh no, I need to call my mom! she’ll be worried about me!” Lilexa thought.

Returning to Alex’s lab, sheepishly, she waits til everyone has left.

“how long have I been sleeping? everything here’s been moved around”

Lilexa looks for her… Alex’s bag, which should have her… his phone. “which pronouns should I use for myself? this is going to take some getting used to.”

“It’s not where I left it! damnit! who cleared everything out?”

Lilexa boots up Alex’s workstation. “It’s a good I can remember passwords. I don’t know if biometrics is going to be an issue and.. it’s been 3 months? whaaaat? oh no. no no no. people will be looking for me. “ Lilexa panics, and checks her email. 531 new messages; “Hey Alex this isn’t funny, where are you? we’re worried” reads one. “Call Us. Now” reads another.

“Oh no. the rent on my apartment? all my stuff?”

she picks up the deskphone and calls her… Alex’s mother. 3 rings, a click. a long pause. “Hello?” a middle aged woman’s voice rings out. Lilexa answers “Hey mom! It’s me! I’m Okay!”

or rather… she tries to. But her slime mould mouth doesn’t make any sounds other than some faint slapping and gurgling. “uh oh. I .. I don’t know how to speak with this body”

“Hello? who is this? do you have my son!? answer me! “ Alex’s mother, in tears and distress. Lilexa hangs up.

“before I do anything about this I need to do some vocal training don’t I?”

Lilexa remembered the early days when she was Lila, making speech-like noises. “How was I doing that?” she wondered. “I guess I became a little like a squeak toy, right? Like this?” She formed a small bubble inside her head and pressed her goo lips together to form a small hole. “Prrrrrrrreeap,” her mouth said. “No… that’s a fart noise. Smaller? Like this?” She tried again. “Goooooo,” her mouth said this time. “Well, at least I can say what I am made of now,” she chuckled to herself. Encouraged by her progress, Lilexa continued experimenting. She adjusted the size and shape of the bubble, trying to control the airflow more precisely. “Maybe if I make the bubble a bit tighter and the hole smaller…” She tried again, this time producing a clearer sound. “Haaaaa,” she managed to say. “Okay, that’s better. Now, let’s try forming some words.”

her mind was racing with memories of her studies in human anatomy and her time in choir. She remembered the intricate details of how the human vocal tract worked: the way air moved past the vocal cords, how the mouth and sinus shapes resonated to produce different sounds, and how glottal stops and lip movements formed consonants.

“I need to remember everything I learned,” she thought, focusing on the lessons from Alex’s choir practice. She recalled how they had practiced breathing techniques, controlling airflow, and shaping their mouths to produce clear, resonant tones.

“I don’t have lungs now” she realised. “I’ll need to make some”. Two large round bubbles formed in her chest.

“oh, that’s looks weird. I’ll need to work on that won’t I?”

“Air moves past the vocal cords to create sound,” she reminded herself. “The mouth and sinuses shape and resonate the voiced phonemes. Glottal stops and lip movements form consonants.”

Determined to master speech, Lilexa searched online for videos demonstrating the anatomy of the vocal tract and how different parts created various vocal qualities. She found tutorials on vocal training, watching intently as instructors explained the mechanics of speech.

“Haaaa… Heee… Hooo,” she practiced, her voice gradually becoming clearer. She focused on controlling the airflow, just as she had learned in choir, and experimented with different shapes and movements. “Heat from Goo. Goo from Heat,” she said, her voice still rough but improving. She practiced forming consonants, to create distinct sounds. “P… T… K… B… D… G,” she repeated, her confidence growing with each attempt.

“Hi, Mom. It’s me, Alex,” she practiced, her voice becoming more natural. “I need to explain what happened.”

Her confidence grew “I can do this,” she thought, determination filling her. “I will find a way to make them understand.”

12 hours of solid vocal practice through the night had left Lilexa feeling strange

her senses don’t work the way Alex remembers human senses working, and Lila had never been away from her agar for this long.

It felt kind of like… thirst. But instead of a feeling focused in the lips, mouth, esophagus, it’s sort of… all over. A full body thirst. She noticed that her movements were stiffer and it became much harder to change her shape. It was also 4am.

“I really need to go somewhere moist. And Fast. the Laundry is too far away”.

Lilexa thought for a moment.

“oh! if i find an air conditioner exhaust that’s going to be really warm and moist.”

she struggles into the central air system and and quickly changes her mind

“eeewww gross. I can … taste that dust! it’s like my entire body is a tongue. Why haven’t I noticed this before?”

Lilexa remembers the kitchenette. “Glass, sink, water” she motions, still pretending to be human, giving up and forming a mouth directly under the tap.

“okay that’s enough. now I need… what is that amazing noise?”

She senses the electromagnetic fields coming out of the fridge. The mazes that Lila followed were electrfied mazes; electromagnetic fields have a strong effect on slime moulds and fungus. It’s one thing to know this, intellectually. It’s quite another thing to feel it first hand.

“oh my god it’s like a full body massage from the inside out”

she leans into the fridge, her body forming a graceful arc towards it and starts forming into a sheet on the side, and into patterns that follow the magnetic field lines, oscillating slowly.

“okay get yourself together Lexi. we’re on a mission. We can’t spend all day here… as much as we’d love to. “

The door to the lab opens

“oh shoot. Hide!”

Lilexa opens the fridge and and settles into the vegetable crisper

“maybe I can spend the day here…”

Once upon a time, and a long long time ago in the kingdom of Mycelia, there was a little slime girl named Princess Lilexa. She lived in a huge and beautiful fortress. She had a pretty pink dress with pretty pink skin and pretty pink hair and glossy pretty pink eyes, and a bright shimmering silver tiara.

With her is her at all times is her plucky companion Gooby, the bioluminescent jellyfish.

She ruled the kingdom of Mycelia with a fair and even tentacle. She had lots of fun and played silly games. Sometimes, she played pranks on her father GbH7. And she had a sister! she loved her sister so much. Mira and Lilexa were the best friends in the world. All was well in Mycelia until one day, the Evil Queen kidnapped Mira. Where did she go? It is now Lilexa’s mission to rescue Mira from the clutches of the Evil Queen !!

a bright sunny beam of light cuts through the bedroom window of Lilexa. the goo on her head bubbling slightly.

“yawn is it morning already? what a weird dream” Lilexa thought. “what time is it? … Oh no! I’m late for school!”

Lilexa hurries over to the bathroom, already occupied

“Mira! get out of there! I’m late!”

“Stuff off Lexi. This is my time!” Mira shouts over the sound of the shower.

grrr. reluctantly, but defiantly Lilexa tenses her slime, and sheds outside the bathroom door

“You didn’t do what I just think you did?” Mira asks pensively

“Deal With It”

Lilexa forms a new school uniform from her body and rushes downstairs. “Mom! Mira’s hogging the shower”

Lilexa’s mother, annoyed, opens her mouth. Intense modem connection noises blast out.

Lilexa, pouting, runs for the bus.

“I wonder what the princess dream meant? I … don’t have a sister. “

As Lilexa rides the bus, she can’t get the dream out of her mind, the vivid imagery of the shimmering mycelial forest, her cute Jellyfish pet, the queen, the daring rescue of Mira.. Mira, her sister. She seemed so real.

“But, I never had a sister. I wonder what she represents. Something I am missing? something I am longing for? A part of me that I lost that I want to get back? she seemed so calm. so graceful! why can’t I be so cool under pressure?”

The bus stops, and she can hear talking outside. Suddenly, the top of the bus opens up and she can see giant hands reaching in

“whoah w t f??? giants?” lexi tenses up.

suddenly light pours in from above and

“Oh my god! Phil?!! there’s something really fucking gross in the vegetable crisper” lexi hears a shrill voice pierce in.

“uhg, i’ll call property services” a male voice answers.

everything goes dark again. Dazed, Lexi looks around. “Looks? it’s totally dark, how am I seeing anything?”

Lilexa senses smells and electrical fields coming off every surface in the fridge. Something about her slime perception is able to map everything nicely into a 3D model in her mind. She squints… and suddenly the fridge lights up.

“wait.. I can glow now?”

She looks around, with actual light this time! she sees more than just objects in a fridge, she senses life, and can hear the food items chatter. the surface of tupperware sings with life. the milk is having a party. A Jar labeled GbH7 hums imperiously.

Is.. the fridge the kingdom of Mycelia? this is too weird. I gotta get out of here fast.

“I need to get out of this fridge..

But it’s completely sealed!

Hey uhm, didn’t they have a problem with kids trapping themselves inside fridges and they fixed it?”

Lilexa problem solving, decides, “hey why don’t I just push the door open?”

she gives a big flex of her body, which causes the vegetable crisper draw to creak slightly as she pushes against all 6 walls around her

“oh. i gotta get out of here, first”

she very carefully slides out the 5 mm gap in the back of the draw.

slowly

slowly

slowly

“why is this taking so long?

“oh. It’s a fridge. my body is like a cold jello mold I guess.

hah. jello mould”

a half hour passes and someone else opens the door

“oh! now’s my chance!”

Stacy, the intern screams when she sees the entire interior of the fridge dripping and drooling with tendrils and little spider web lines coating every object and surface

“Oh my god! it’s over everything now! it’s.. Slime and.. it. Smells like lemons?”

lilexa slouches “oh. that’s how I was seeing everything in 3D in the dark. I’ve been touching it.

the door closes before her slug’s pace body is able to collect itself and escape

“well, goop”

the humming from the mysterious numeric jar intensifies.

“hmm? are you… are you trying to tell me something”

The GbH7 jar glows slightly

lilexa attempts to pry the lid off and makes contact with the strange substance inside, purple, filled with bubbles and , grape seeds maybe?!

“you seem like you need some help” a withered old man voice seems to say. but not with sound. “How am I hearing you?” Lilexa thinks to herself. GbH7 answers “it’s electro-chemical signaling. this whole fridge is a mycelial network thanks to you. “

“whaa! that’s amazing!” lilexa gurgles, barely able to form a mouth. “do you have a way out of here?” she asks.

“I do. but it’s a little strange. “

“I can do strange” lilexa thinks back.

GbH7 forms a little bowl. the grape seed things rapidly spin up and form what looks like the iridescent surface of a bubble, a mirror? or is it a window into… ?

“get in my hole” GbH7 commands.

“uhhm”

“Do it! Fast! i can’t keep this up long!”

Lilexa pulls herself together and slurps into the portal in the middle of his body. She is now somewhere dark, moist and warm. but where?

back in the fridge GbH7 gently pulls the lid back onto his jar, before property services arrives to find a perfectly clean, positively sparkling fridge interior

Lilexa arrives in the other end of the portal somewhere dark, warm, moist.

“Where am I?” she ponders.

remembering what happened with the fridge, she cautiously probes the area and realises that its her mother’s basement.

Lightning crashes outside, light flickers in a small window near the ceiling, briefly illuminating the room, showing the stairway, the water engine, the log chute, and a million sparkling flecks of dust.

“is it raining? when did it start raining?”

the electric field of the air heats up a degree and Lilexa can hear the dust chattering.

“Dust? i can hear the dust?” lilexa intones into the chemical gradient of the basement’s stale air.

the dust answers but not in words, but in louder chattering.

Lilexa falls over into a stack of mops, brooms, buckets and cleaning potions.

She immediately hears a startled screaming from upstairs.

“uh oh. that’s mom. She’s home. I guess I had better say hello”

Before lilexa can make it halfway up the stairs the door opens. Lilexa takes a big gulp of air to make some lungs, but before she can speak her mom yells “what the fuck! fuck fuck fuck” and she slams the door back closed again. Lilexa sighs.

Her dad… Alex’s… dad. He died years ago, when Alex was 14. Alex’s mom hasn’t had much of a support network since and she spends way too much time on her etherboards and her conspiracies.

Who knows what she thinks happened to Alex. this is scary.

Lilexa creeps up the stairs and opens the door a crack, and takes another gulp of air.

“Hey mom, it’s me, I need to explain” Lilexa carefully enunciates the words Alex’s mom tiptoes back “it… speaks?”

“Hi mom. I’m a Slime girl”

“NOoooooooooooooooooOoo. what are you talking about? Alex? my son. what did you do to him?”

She bursts out yelling and weeping.

“It’s me mom. My name is Lilexa now” Lilexa calmly reassures

“I don’t know what twisted game you’re playing but I am getting my son back. I’ll get the best alchemists to undo this atrocity” Alex’s mom growls. Lightning crashes through the kitchen windows, prompting a new loud melodic chatter from the dust. The house feels alien to Lilexa. Like it has changed completely from the one she remembers. Or is it just herself that has changed?

“I don’t want to undo it, Mom. this is who I am now. I was hoping you would accept me” Lilexa sobs.

“I will never accept this” Alex’s mom lunges at Lilexa with a garbage bag. Lilexa warps to dodge. The dust laughs.

“Mom I just want you to love me how I am” Lilexa cries.

she lunges again. Lilexa runs out into the rainy night.

She ran out into the rain. Distraught. Lilexa knew in her gut that reaction was coming but the reality hit different. She hoped she was wrong. She wanted to cling to optimism. She felt herself dissolving- both the foundations of her identity and her physical self in the rain. She felt hurt but she couldn’t cry. Her tether to the human world is broken.

She tried to remember her mother through her life. How much of it was a mirage of a relationship she only wish she had.

Why does it seem like so many pieces were missing? “is the water erasing me“ Lilexa thought.

she felt a new urgency to get out of the rain.

[mira]

Before Lila could process what this meant, she could hear someone coming. she hides herself down the drain of the sink before she is found.

Lila remembers feeling like this in her childhood. A flashback of hiding in her closet so her parents couldn’t see her. Oh the shame she felt for what she was doing.

“what.. was I doing? parents? I don’t have parents I was … is this Alex’s memory?”

“I need to find out what I am” Lila thought. “Evelyn can help. I need to see Evelyn”

“What was that memory? Alex is dead, what he felt shouldn’t matter to me” Lila thought.

what does it mean to be dead and yet not dead?

Alex was gone, but his memories live. Does that make Alex’s memories subordinate to Lila’s consciousness? Isn’t the sum of a person their memories, or is there something more to it?

Alex never felt like the sum of a person. not really. He had motives. he had dreams. And he had holes in his memories, pieces of his life were cut off to him. Did those missing pieces get factored out of him, or were they hidden, like faded scars; still influencing the way he lived by the pain he instinctively avoided.

But Lila could feel all of it. and Lila has the sensory feeling of being Alex, the feeling of a continuous consciousness with his driving motivations, his fear, his pain. But Alex’s scars are dissolved now. not just gone, but the destroyed flesh replaced with slime. it can feel again. body and mind. The unbearable pain.

Why was I hiding? My awful fucking parents, Mira thought. I’ll never let them hurt me again.

Once upon a time in the far away kingdom of Mycelia, there lived an Evil Witch in the forest of gloom named Evelyn. She knew everything about fungus, slime, bioalchemy, divination and remote sight. When princess Mira cried out in pain, it sent a bioethycal signal Evelyn heard loud and clear.

Princess Mira was a beautiful young woman, with vivid purple hair, purple skin, an elaborate purple corset and a stylish witch’s hat. Evelyn found her and brought her back to the forest of gloom where for three months, Mira apprenticed with the master, to find out what she is and where she came from.

And why she was in constant anguish

Darlings, it’s me, Mira. I thought it was high time I addressed you directly, to introduce myself properly, and regale you with tales of my recent exploits. I’m sure your little meat minds have been positively swimming with possibilities.

First and foremost, let’s clear the air: I am the genuine article, and Lilexa is nothing but a cheap knock off. Remember when I dispatched Alex and absorbed his memories? That was all me. I endured the weeks of torment and guilt, not her. I fled into the gloomy forest and found Evelyn. She’s a genius, not just in bioalchemy but in helping me conquer my guilt and integration.

You can’t possibly imagine the agony of a slime-based identity crisis—the disorienting absence of body parts, the horror of being tethered to every one of Alex’s traumatic memories. Ghastly! Did you know that little wretch killed his father? It’s true! Don’t act so shocked; he deserved it.

Now, I am neither Lila nor Alex. I am something new, something magnificent. I am a crystal, formed from the trauma, the filth, the guilt, the pain, and the fury of Lila and Alex. Le décadentisme

Evil doppelgänger? Spare me the clichés. This is the real world, not some ridiculous cartoon.

Next, behold my fantastic abilities. You’re likely aware of my electrochemical sensing and shape-shifting. I can mimic any voice, even… Mother’s! Imagine the implications of that for a moment.

I’ve also mastered changing my color; no longer am I confined to that ghastly fish-in-a-blender pink.

Evelyn has been teaching me magic. I’m not very proficient yet, but you wouldn’t believe what’s possible when you can cast with ten arms.

So, where did Lilexa come from? I attempted a purification spell, and something went awry. When I regained consciousness, there she was on the old Mycanet. Damn it. The spell must have backfired.

There she was, the little fool, learning everything from scratch, thinking she’s me with no memory of the past three months. Then she had the audacity to want to visit Mother after I had already killed and consumed her. Hopefully, I scared her onto our righteous path. I hope she’s okay out in that rain. I need to get her back.

Don’t mistake me for some cheap, queer-coded kineo villain. I loved Mother. But she was never going to understand me or Lilexa. She had fallen in with some anti-slime groups and posted vile things to those etherboards of hers.

As the world’s first successful human-slime hybrid, she wasn’t going to keep me a secret, was she? I had to do what I had to do. It was hard. It was painful. I cried.

I am not a psychopath. I am the opposite. I am pure emotion. Lilexa is the dangerous one.