The biology of Microsians

The Ship

Illuminating an Ancient Secret

The ship rocked beneath her feet.  A near-yet-muffled report of something striking the hull accompanied ship-wide alarms.
"What the hell is going out there?!" barked Captain Dylan Cobb from the command deck.
At his elbow, Joni Janders felt her jaw slacken... but it wasn't the size of the paramecium that evoked dismay.  No, it was something else – someone else.  There, in the light of the ship's nose lamp, a humanoid figure was clearly visible astride the whale-scaled protozoan, gripping some kind of riding tack with pseudopod hands.  At the end of a long curved neck, a bulbous head swiveled left, then right, and the Microsian's single red photosensitive eyespot pulled apart into two eyes, then gazed for an instant across half millimeter of aquatic micro-space at Joni.

 (Excerpt)

Once More Unto the Breach

Water rushed passed her. Cilia thrashed around her legs. She could feel Cobb's chest pressing into her back as they jointly gripped the reins with all their strength. Their Microsian escort was doing the real work, the work of steering the huge paramecium through the battle. A nearby explosion made Joni wince. The enemy was getting closer.
(Excerpt)

The Generals Strategize

Helmets came off.  Cilia relaxed.  Pseudopods morphed into arms and legs.  Joni Janders knew the Microsian… knew her well.  The paramecium-ride over from the colony had bonded them.  But the man in front of her, this James Ford… he was a mystery.  Suddenly her osmotic diving suit felt uncomfortably revealing.

(Excerpt)

Cytoplasm Will be Spilled This Day

​​​​​​​"Joni, stop!  Don't do it!  They don't understand!  No, Joni... NO!!!"
Before his eyes the disaster unfolded in slow-motion.  Jas Ford was too distant to stop her, too far away to intercept the sweeping arc of Joni's scimitar.  Time crawled.  Jas watched in horror, unable to look away as Joni Janders pulled the blade along a deadly radius.
At the last instant the Scylex warrior spun to face the enraged human and met her scythe with a look of anger-turned-surprise.  The point easily separated membrane and cytoskeleton.  Ichor-like cytoplasm billowed from the horrible torso-length gash in amber clouds of liberated organelles.  The Microsian's bisected nucleus spilled its milky trove of genetic code into the cold, dark water.
A microorganism is dead, but using those words didn't diminish the moment – Jas Ford knew that he and his crew had just done what they had sworn not to do; they had taken a life for a life, and in doing so, brought calamity and horror to paradise.
(Excerpt)
The nightmare had unfolded as she had feared, then blossomed into tragic reality.  The skirmish had followed the template of Joni’s quantum-transform premonition… right down to the last drop of spilled cytoplasm…and blood.
No human mind could comprehend all that had transpired in the previous minutes, but the broad strokes couldn’t be ignored.  The Intrepid was scuttled and adrift, her battered hull leaking the last vestige of micronized breathable oxygen…lost.  But the infinitely greater loss was Kaya.  Even through the filter of shock Joni couldn’t erase the searingly vivid memory of Kaya’s contorted-yet-still-beautiful form falling lifelessly through micro space like an angel descending through clouds – accompanied by the screech of the audio receiver…Jas Ford shouting, pleading to Joni, to stop her attack on the Scylex centurion.
When that Microsian centurion tore lover/partner/soul mate away from the Scylex temple, Joni’s mind broke as easily as Kaya’s body.  The savagery of her subsequent attack left the centurion dead – and plunged the human exploration team into a conflict they had no business being in.
She felt Jas’ arms pull her close as he guided her away from the battlefield, through the carnage of war.  Where would they go?  How could they survive without the ship?  How could she even exist without Kaya?
Joni opened her eyes.  If the answers weren’t to be found into the shadowy canyons of bottom detritus that lay before them, then Joni would not have to suffer those heartbreaking memories for long.

(Excerpt)

Saviors and Sanctuary

The micro-scape was a watercolor blur of blue, green, and amber. There was no up or down. Joni closed her eyes, shutting off the dizzying vista and the vertigo that threatened to make her puke. She felt James' arm pull her close, his right hand held firmly around her waist. She was spent, both physically and emotionally. He was now the only thing anchoring Joni, albeit tenuously, to time and space. Kaya was gone, her sweet soul and living brilliance extinguished in a moment of confusion and violence, and with them, Joni's will to continue with the mission – with even the most rudimentary tasks of survival.
But survive they must, somehow...and do so without ship or crew, or the most basic shelter. Jas moved them forward, away from the aftermath of the battle, away from that unthinkable disaster that had pitted them against the strange indigenous sentients. The micro thrusters in his suit harnessed the water's Brownian motion, directed excited molecules of H2O to move them deeper into the strange land of micro space.
Joni opened her eyes. Her pupils adjusted to the gloom. Ahead, in the distance she could see twinkling lights...and they came from inside a familiar shape, far away yet unimaginably huge. It was a bottle.
And then they where no longer alone. Figures appeared out of the micro haze...
First one, then a second, and finally a third of the aquatic seraphim materialized out of the watery gloom directly ahead. Each had wing-like membranes bound to gently waving cilia trailing from their pseudopodia, and down the ventral surface of head, neck, and torso. Joni wasn't sure which was the greater revelation: that angels were real, or that angels were microorganisms.

(Excerpt)
The three angels approached and encircled the humans in a slowly tightening ring. Tension radiated from James, probably his combat training shifting into gear. If there was a fight, was he in any shape to defend them? Joni doubted it, and knew for certain that she wasn't – but it wasn't a conflict she was worried about. Joni put her hand on his arm in a calming gesture.
They drifted in aquatic micro space miles above the submerged bottle. From within, points of light twinkled through unimaginably dense glass. Bioluminescence, Joni reasoned. If the city boasted light, maybe there was heat, and who knows what other unimaginable micro wonders. For the city to exist in this hostile environment was itself a wonder, and could only be explained because of the colony's ideal location – inside the air pocket of the bottle, safe from invaders. Joni recalled that many species of freshwater microorganisms preferred to colonize similarly protected spaces. It seemed that the Microsians learned from the best.
The angels showed no sign of aggression – though who really knows what aggressive angels look like? – thought Joni. The creatures closed their ring around the pair. Pseudopodia grew, broadening and thickening – the limbs of one Microsian interweaving with those of the others, forming a watertight plait of eukaryotic membrane that enveloped Joni and Jas – a near perfectly spherical cocoon. The angel's clusters of red photoreceptor eyes faced outward.
Inside the cocoon Joni felt the relative gravity increase as contractile vacuoles in the membrane pumped water out, while green organelles – chloroplasts – replaced the water with oxygen. In seconds, the inner space was dry. Joni touched the pressure point on her collar: her helmet evaporated with a soft pop. She took a breath. The cocoon's air was sweet, richer than she was used to.
Jas filled his lungs. "Seems okay," he intoned with an approving rumble. "Don't breath too deeply, or you'll hyperventilate."
Joni pressed her hand against the wall of the cocoon, could feel the thrumming reverberation of cilia working in wave-like coordination, propelling them... somewhere. "They're moving us," Joni thought aloud. Although the Microsian cocoon had no windows, the shifting of watery light playing through translucent cell membranes confirmed movement.
Jas finished her thought: "To that bottle, and whatever is inside it."
Again, the dark cloud of desperation threatened. Joni held it at bay by focusing on the present, on the now. She concentrated on breathing. Short breaths, spaced three seconds apart.
"Are you all right?" asked Jas.
Joni shook her head. "Kaya is gone," she answered, and continued distantly. "Whatever life was before, no longer is. Our mission...the crew...me...you...all of it...gone."
Jas did not offer any words – there were none. He put his arm around Joni, and not just for warmth. The only sound was the flittering butterfly humming of the ciliary membranes fanning the water, moving them toward the Microsian colony in the submerged bottle.

(Excerpt)
The cocoon discorporated around them, reforming into the three Microbian angels. Joni found herself standing on solid ground, or something equating to ground. The light from overhead was diffused, tinted cool. She turned, looking in all directions. They had been deposited on a platform beside a placid sea, or perhaps a large lake. Beyond the featureless water the sky rose up from the horizon in a gentle curve and became a pale blue-green cyclorama without any hint of transition. Joni knew that she was actually looking at the inner curvature of a glass bottle. An air pocket at the back of the bottle kept the Captive Sea at bay, leaving roughly a third of the bottle's enormous volume available for terrestrial exploitation, and in which the Microsians had constructed, over time and countless generations, a vast and intricate city.
Joni looked back over her shoulder at the towering columns and suspended platforms rising higher and higher into the air pocket, the uppermost levels disappearing into veils of fine vapor.
Overhead, spanning the enormous bottle interior was a progression of six buttressed platforms, a vertical array of enormous bridges, each serving as the foundation of its own Microsian city.  The highest level was barely visible above a ceiling of cloud. 
"It's a soda bottle," mused Jas as he strained to pierce the overhead cloud layer. "See? The hour-glass shape and fluted sides. Looks like it's from the 1950s or 60s, the same kind Santa is holding in those vintage print ads."
"So somebody littered it maybe seventy or eighty years ago," calculated Joni. "But that doesn't jibe – the city looks much older than that."
"Much older," agreed Jas. "Centuries old – by macro world standards. And if my cultural anthro classes were anywhere close to accurate – soda bottles definitely weren't around in the middle ages when this place appears to have been built."
The Microsian with the green chloroplasts suspended in its cytoplasm glided forwarded. Extending arm-like pseudopods, it indicated in a decidedly fluid sign-language for the humans to enter the city.
"Makes no sense..." whispered Joni as they passed into a shaded concourse between enormous pillars that held up the second level of the city. "...unless there is something to the time dilation theory – that time moves faster at micro scale."
Jas answered with raised eyebrows, as if to say: that would explain a great deal.
(Excerpt)

The shadowy passage delivered the party into a well-lit, open intersection where several streets converged. Joni thought of Times Square in New York City, but far less busy. A few Microsians glided on flowing pseudopods at uniform speed through the intersection, and Joni was left with the feeling they were avoiding contact with the humans. At the center of this town square (octagon, really) were a pair of transparent columns, which rose up side by side, disappearing into the next level up. The trio of angels herded Joni and Jas toward the columns.
One of the three, whom Joni had nicknamed Merryweather, stepped up to the nearer of the two columns, stepping into an opening designed to accommodate the stature of Microsians. In the next moment Merryweather stood inside what was now revealed as a tube. The floor under the angel's pseudopod feet was solid, yet Joni could see that it was the gel-like cohesive interface of water and air – surface tension. In the next instant the water accelerated upward, pushing Merryweather up and away through the transparent tube. Inside the neighboring tube, a core of water descended at the same time – counter force to the rising column.
The two columns must be a single looped tube, with the physics for ascending or descending provided by capillary action. How very clever! "It's an elevator!" proclaimed Joni with a mixture of delight and admiration. "After you," she said, waving Jas into the tube ahead of her.
Jas and Joni, Flora and Fauna stepped into the ascent tube and were propelled up through the amazing microscopic city.
Joni marveled at the simplicity and genius of the Microsian elevator as it hurled them upward at a relative astonishing speed. The foundation level of the Primo Gradu dropped away as the party ascended through the space between buildings, then a moment of darkness as the tube carried them through the second platform.  In the space of a single breath they burst back into the light of the second city as the capillary conveyer carried them higher and higher, through the third, then the fourth.
They broke into the light of the fifth city.  The grand vista of the Captured Sea was breathtaking.  At this altitude the curved walls of the bottle drew closer, curving inward to meet them as they rocketed skyward.  The vista revealed endless arrays of algae farms clinging to the inside of the bottle.  A shimmer of movement among those vast gravity-defying fields betrayed the presence of shy Microsians– the grower caste was hard at work, tending the simple crops that provide the colony with energy and oxygen. 
The darkness of the sixth level swallowed them momentarily. When they emerged from shadow, the light of the sixth city washed over them, the brightest yet.  Joni saw that they had ascended above the atmospheric vapor frequenting the upper levels of the bottle-space, now cloaking the seventh city from view of the others below. 
Flora pushed a pseudopod finger through the inner cylinder wall. At once their ascent slowed.  They rose into the light of the uppermost city – the terminus of their dramatic vertical transit.  Flora stepped through the cylinder’s inner membrane.  The rest followed her onto the clean plain of the Semptimo Gradu, the city of the seventh level.
The new arrivals crossed to where Merryweather was waiting at the entrance of a roughly sphere-shaped building, several stories tall. At the moment of reunion, the three angels gathered close, extended their long necks inward, and bowed their heads until all three touched momentarily with a soft musical hum.
Merryweather swiveled her gaze to Joni, meeting human eyes with the Microsian's bottomless red/black photoreceptive organelles. The humming continued, but seemed to emanate from all directions – more sensed than heard. The concept of enter here tingled like an impulse on Joni's mind. She could comply, or resist, with equal effort. She turned to Jas.
"They want us to go inside."
A grand corridor opened into an impossibly vast chamber that instantly evoked in Joni a sweet yet painful memory of visiting the Aerium in Brandenburg, when she had taken Kaya to the simulated tropical island resort built within the massive airship construction hangar. But here, in place of a palm tree spangled tropical paradise, one side of the enormous space was open to the soda bottle's bottom, forming a gigantic window looking out into the microcosmic wilderness. A paramecium swooped through the tableau with a Microsian rider astride its whale-sized form, gripping reins for steering the huge ciliate.
"Of course. They defend their city with a microscopic cavalry," commented Jas.
"Everything they need comes from microscopic resources," said Joni with admiration. "These buildings weren't built. They were grown. They've undoubtedly mastered techniques for genetic coding that we haven't dreamed of. I would love to see if they've figured out..."
We are the Microsia Aquatica. You are from the Great Elsewhere.
"Yes. That's right," said Joni. "We call ourselves humans. It is a great honor to meet you. Thank you for rescuing us."
Humans have been here before. Honor...Thanks... do not advance the imperatives of the Unity.
"What are the imperatives?" asked Jas.
Food – hummed Flora
Reproduction – hummed Fauna.
Defense – hummed Merryweather.
"Well then how can we thank you... express our gratitude?"
Gratitude does not advance the imperatives of the Unity. We propose a symbiosis.
"What kind of symbiosis?" asked Joni.
The angels stepped aside to reveal a container so meticulously crafted that it looked like polished platinum. A round porthole set in the side glowed with an inner luminescence. Something about about the shape and size of the container made Joni uneasy. She stepped tentatively closer. The collective humming continued...
A symbiosis to advance a new imperative.
Joni put her hand on the rectilinear box. It was cool to the touch, like the water outside. She leaned toward the softly glowing porthole. "Beyond food, reproduction, and defense? What other imperative could there be?" she asked as she cautiously leaned into the small window.
Domination – hummed the three angels.
Joni pressed her hand on the glass and peered inside. Her eyes flashed wide. Every muscle began to shake. The box contained a human body.
We will repair this individual, and you will help us attain the fourth imperative.
Joni knew this body. The face, though pale, bruised and broken, was still recognizable. It was Kaya.
Before Jas could stop her, she turned to Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather and gave her answer.
(Excerpt)

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