The original cell rippled and turned back to its native environment, spending the next ten minutes… eating some more, its luminous sheet growing brighter but also thinner as the cell grew in volume even more. When it returned to the edge of the medium some time later, it was three centimetres wide.
I could literally see inside it despite the light it gave off. It wasn't empty.
It wasn't homogenous. There was an inner nucleus of… it looked like gas.
Careful and amazed that this was happening on a scale I could actually study, I brought my magnifying array as close as I could. There were tiny lightning bolts running through the space between the inner nucleus and membrane.
"Plasma life… successfully created in laboratory conditions…" I breathed reverently. I don't know how long I stood there, just absorbing the reality of my accomplishment.
"Ur-specimen will be dubbed…" Yimir was a bit too on the nose, but it was ultimately just a later version of the original sacrifice known to the ancient Europeans, wasn't he? "Ur-specimen is hereby dubbed Yemo. " My mouth felt dry in the wake of that dedication as I wrote down the words.
"A luminous sheet acting as cellular membrane. Double-layered plasma life form with an outer layer of negatively charged electrons and an inner layer of positively charged ions.
A nucleus made of gas atoms with an electric field present between the boundary and nucleus, within which electrons are accelerated. Morphological assumptions pending verification.
"
Yemo floated there, his nucleus pulsing in and out in a steady, rhythmic inhalation. Breathing.
Far behind the first and most precocious of my new creations, the swarm of young lives grew larger and brighter by the minute.
Yemo split again. The child tried to pass through the glass again.
And succeeded.
I was shocked.
It lingered out in the open air for a moment, seemingly as astonished as I was. Then it rushed back only to sadly disperse before it could… reunite with its parent?
I swallowed, feeling oddly sad. Maybe it wasn't tough enough to survive outside its native environment yet? "The evolved sphere appears as a stable, self-confined, layered, luminous and nearly spherical body," I muttered as I wrote.
Reluctantly. Every moment spent writing was a moment I had to look away from them.
"Capable of reproduction through mitosis. Reproductive process appears to include inherited command and control functionality for the child cell.
Resulting cells identical and capable of immediately acting with coordination. Propagation capacity of 'genetic' memory uncertain.
The amount of energy in the initial spark seems to govern their size and lifespan. "
Yemo had another feast and even merged with another couple of smaller cells before splitting a third time. The 'child' repeated its exodus, but immediately dashed back into its home and merged back with the parent cell.
Then Yemo… hovered a bit in place before turning back and floating over to the closest Tesla coil. Then it entered stable orbit around the toroid and didn't seem inclined to do anything else.
Briefly, I seriously considered turning the coils back on.
Instead, I first turned the power dial on all three as low as I could, and then activated just one of them on the lowest setting, the one farthest from Yemo.
There was barely a spark instead of the great arcs of lightning from the beginning, but the change was immediate. The entire environment was disturbed.
The floating dust shuddered. The swarm of young plasma cells clustering around the electrodes down below flinched with almost uncanny coordination away from the coil, and Yemo was knocked out of his orbit.
But then, most of the swarm broke off from their… birthing place and gathered around the Tesla coil instead. A few got too close and were zapped out of existence.
The others, though, seemingly learned their lesson and settled into a safer orbit. Yemo wandered around the outmost range of the rest, other cells flying to him and back.
Either I was seeing things or they were developing social dynamics. Communicating.
They also really wanted to be close to the coil for some reason. More than they did the electrodes.
Static electricity works as fuel? They only managed something resembling far orbit though. Any closer and zap goes the sparkling.
I couldn't turn the coil down any lower without shutting it completely off. I wasn't sure it would mean anything to them if it was weaker.
And turning it off seemed mean now that they chose it over their literal birthplace.
I was amazed at their coordination. Cooperation, even from Yemo who'd grown so large in part by eating a whole bunch of the rest.
Well, merging with them, if there was a difference. "Based on the synchronised pulsations of the larger observable specimens, I theorise that the creatures communicate information by emitting electromagnetic energy, making the atoms within other spheres vibrate at a particular frequency.
I will need to develop a proper microscope and the appropriate electromagnetic spectroscopy equipment to be sure. " At least one other experiment I read about had observed just that effect, similar to the vibrating diaphragm in a telephone which enables information to be communicated from one point to another.
"My new children are telepathic, heh – wait, no, don't write that down, never thought I'd be glad for the lack of recording equipment. "
Yemo, probably because of his larger mass, went closer than all the rest and allowed the Tesla lighting to hit him. For a moment I thought he was dead, the membrane rippling and the inner working stuttering in place.
But then his membrane actually grew stronger, and Yemo's jittering movements from the shock of the strike steadily smoothed out until he was… floating in stable orbit around the Tesla coil. Oh my god, that's just-.
And then Yemo's membrane grew thicker and brighter and – magnifying array, quick! – and… and now it was giving off lightning of its own too, like it was some sort of antenna for the Tesla coil. The arcs were tiny and soft, floating loosely like strands of hair, but I could still see them, barely.
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