First step is always the same: not to panic. He knew it was probably wrong, but he couldn't help himself feeling excitement over the rising feeling of doom. Real results, not hopeful guesses that surely something happened but it was just too insignificant to notice!
Rosemarée rushed to the table and flicked open a locker on a special metal tube, extracting a few ampoules from inside. Taking out the ceramic board, he poured a droplet of each intestemént and focused on their reaction. In four out of five precipitation occurred almost instantly; fifth was taking slower, but that's still within reference values. It means that protective chemicals are still in the air in sufficient concentration to prevent the containment breach, so protocols of working with potentially self-governing projects with mass class o-5 are still adhered to. That's a relief, but there are other, less obvious dangers to be aware of.
He quickly grabbed a stissén scalpel, its thick and sticky rubber handle ensuring a proper grip in any circumstances, and used his other hand to reach under his sleeve to find a dense, protruding excrescence on his skin. Pressing it into his arm, he felt a slight tremble of the implanted gland and a ticklish sensation as the artificial vessels in his palms began to fill with liquid. As he paced through the room, his hands were slowly coated with the oily compound, transforming into liquid gloves that protected against most fluids and killed any parasites -- the most popular, and the most mundanely useful implant one could get. The scalpel lived up to its name by sticking well to his hand despite the oil.
Rosemarée stood before the cocoon. This was the moment; most of the alteworld stories started this way. The "beginning of the end" trope was also popular... but there is a difference between a lucky and talented novel protagonist and six debilitating years of Chemidiáté education, not to mention the successful studentship under the Professor Elquéyde.
Dim red spots flickered here and there on the cocoon's surface, changing in intensity every second, following an unrecognizable rhythm. They appeared at seemingly random spots, but Rosemarée knew that beneath the ashen skin, these were areas where drained blood vessels had conglomerated, which were used to grow the cocoon. Was his project traveling through now-obsolete blood vessels, seeking easier access to the proteins composing the cocoon? Or was it attempting to reach something?
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
Rosemarée slowly circled the cocoon, examining it from all sides; the more he saw, the clearer and more worrying the picture became. Considering the construction of the cocoon, this particular lump of red dots was not surprising: this was where the "outer" environment held the dosage of nutrient-catalyst, slowly dispersing it after each environmental reset. Judging by the amount of red dots... there wasn't much catalyst or nutrients left. The inner part of the project was hijacking the outer and feeding on it. It was roughly in line with the overall concept... but it definitely wasn't how Rosemarée had pictured it. The one mutation that overpowered the environment.
The predicament warranted closer examination, so with a small incision, he cut open one cluster of red dots, taking a slice into his other hand. With his other hand, he reached inside the cocoon and carefully extracted a pearl-shaped lump of black matter from the center of his creation. Physical manifestation of his "breakthrough idea" was resting in his hand now; as opposed to a popular approach of trying to fit "smart replication" into a single overloaded cell, Rosemarée synthesized a biological processing hub, which was responsible for replicating enhanced cells via feedback loop. This pearl was making all the adaptations, sending "modified cells" to test them out. Supposedly, the project won't do anything until the pearl is returned, giving him plenty of time to examine it. With that in mind, he slowly got back to his workstation and laid out his findings on the table.
After spraying it with inhibitor tailored to cells of this specific configuration he reached for a large lensóscope resting on the corner of the table.
What Rosemarée was looking at was slightly more unusual than the average graduation project, but not by much, yet. Any student above the second Tier could make an organism saturate itself by consuming proteins, or, in more simple words, munch the meat. What was interesting, and what Rosemarée was glad to see match his expectations, is that his project came up with it on it's own. It was clunky and some minor details looked excessive or wrong, but that will do; the project adapted to the only type of matter it was surrounded by.
Putting the processing pearl aside, Rosemarée traced extracted slice with his oil-coated finger. It seemed to be a step in the right direction as well; any complex enough organism needed a transportation system, and it looked to be exactly that. He was lost in thought about the structural details when his hand came across a small compaction. It took a quick scalpel cut to expose small spherical growth... a crude replica of a processing pearl, seemingly not that different from the main one.
Except for the fact that it should not have been here, and should not have been at all in the first place.
