The Gender Out of Space: Part 1

I was one of several experts on marine biology summoned to that beach in Florida. For the most part, the job was far from glamorous–you’d be surprised how much of my time was spent on boats taking regular measurements of all kinds of data: depth, temperature, clarity, salinity, acidity, and so on. Yet this potential discovery had my hope piqued in a way that it had not been since I was a bright-eyed undergraduate.

I’d always dreamed of a species named in reference to my favorite author, envisioning Aurelia lovecrafti or something of that ilk. His tales of great Cthulhu lurking in the depths had been my first inkling as a boy that my future might lie in probing the vastness of Earth’s seas. It puzzled me that many of my generation were so avidly enthused by space exploration. In my view, the most fascinating unknowns lay closer to home.

It is difficult for the human mind to comprehend the true enormity of an ocean. It weighs sextillions of pounds, a number so large that likely some of my less educated readers may not recognize it. A popular science writer might display the number in full–1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000–or describe it as one thousand million million million. It occupies millions of cubic miles of water. An average adult human, floating in the water as a particulate contaminant, would comprise about 1 part per octillion

I had faith that the abyssal zone–which covers 60% of Earth’s surface–still held many surprises for humanity. Even the largest of creatures would be dwarfed by the sheer scale of it, rendered unknown or mythical by the sheer rarity of their encounters with humanity. The first adult giant squid was not successfully photographed until the year 2002.

In addition, we might be separated from unknown creatures by the sheer vastness of time. Many creatures of the deep are famously massive–a recurring phenomenon known as deep-sea gigantism–with slow metabolisms that can last their entire lives on shockingly little food. For example, the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamilton) weighs 500 kilograms, but happily subsists on 30 grams of food per day. Frederick Aldrich–an early authority on the giant squid–believed that their beachings occurred according to a highly regular cyclical pattern. Could we truly be confident that human civilization had merely happened to arise between two far-flung spates of beachings?

Besides, some deep-sea creatures were documented to live for an indefinite amount of time, continuously growing throughout their lives. One American lobster (Homarus americanus) survived until the ripe old age of 140 years old–a record handily outstripping even the most elderly of Homo sapiens.

Upon hearing through my academic e-mail that a massive mound of some unknown gelatinous substance had materialized on a beach in St. Athanasius, I immediately packed my things and, after consuming copious quantities of caffeine, drove through the night. You see, an essential tenet of the Linnaean system used by all modern biologists was the Rule of Priority, which states that the first to name a species has their binomial supercede all others. I had not published any major papers as of late–only a few mundane reports discussing climate change–and I feared for my chances of achieving tenure. If this truly was an opportunity to discover a new species, then I felt compelled to take it, for both my hero and myself.

I found myself arriving at my destination just as dawn broke. The reds and oranges of the dawn were reflected in the waves below. The air was still cool but already heavily laden with moisture, with the threat of a hot mugginess by noon.

I stumbled across the sand, my dress shoes slipping backwards on the gentle dunes and making every step cumbersome. Eventually I tore off the shoes in frustration, leaving them facedown where they lay, and made my way in only Goldtoe socks.

Eventually the white blubber of the mysterious mass hove into view, and my pace quickened in eagerness. As I rounded the final dune, I took a breath from my panting to curse. Somehow, my rival, Dr. Emily Zacharoudis, had beat me to the scene.

“How nice to see you, Mr. Bloodgood!” she said cheerfully. Despite the wind that blew across the beach, her hair remained flawless, and she had kept her blazer free of sand.

“Doctor Bloodgood, please,” I said.

“Ah, of course. Just a slip of the tongue. Anyway, in the spirit of scientific cooperation, I believe we can simultaneously study this… thing.”

“How magnanimous of you,” I replied in a measured tone. “Might I ask if you have any preliminary findings?”

“Nothing I’m confident in,” she said. Ending a sentence in a preposition like that was a typical example of her intellectual sloppiness. “It seems to have a cellular structure but… I’m not quite prepared to make an identification beyond that.”

I scoffed. A woman with her years of education should at least be able to tell if the samples were from an animal or a plant.

Deciding that continuing to speak to Dr. Zacharoudis would be a waste of my limited time, I instead set to work. I rapidly unfolded a small folding table from my briefcase, and placed my small field microscope atop it. I pulled out a pair of gloves and a scalpel before leaning forward to cut a small slice from the mass.

As I neared the quivering heap, I was struck by an inexplicable sense of unease. Well, perhaps my anxiety was not altogether without reason. A number of odd properties–not obvious at a distance–made me less and less certain that I could identify the source of this specimen.

Rather than truly being albino white, the mass had subtle, almost iridescent sheen of strange colors. I blinked, confused by what looked at once like purple and green. This was likely some form of optical illusion taking advantage of flaws in human color processing.

In addition, the mass was covered in a grid of fine thorns or hairs, black and seemingly shimmering with an oily residue. Yet despite its appearance, which suggested a certain rancidity, the substance had no odor that I could identify. The closest comparison I could conceive of was a certain odor that my great-grandfather–now deceased for many years–had emanated in his old age.

It was like a combination of a crowded fish market and armpit funk, but much subtler than either, and almost pleasant. Well, ambergris and castoreum are used in perfumes, and truffles–which resemble body odor in scent–are a prized source of flavor, so perhaps such a thing is not so unprecedented.

I shook myself from my familial memories, and mentally chided myself. Such a lack of focus was a tendency I had striven to overcome. As a small child, I had many fabulous inventions and flights of fancy, or so I am informed by Mother and Father. It was not within my recollection, but apparently I had oft requested to play the part of a princess in the noble court of Camelot, with my au pair playing the role of a lady-in-waiting. When Mother discovered this pastime, she immediately fired that caretaker and sent for a replacement from the agency.

I shook myself again and finally moved forward to gingerly slice a small piece off of the mass. I then cautiously conveyed it to my small table and efficiently made it up into a slide.

Peering at the magnified image in my field telescope, I was vexed. The cells I saw seemed to behave in strange and chaotic ways–constantly moving, in randomly changing currents, and frequently merging into and splitting from each other. Some cells appeared to have no nucleus, while others had several, and although they lacked a cell wall they had the vacuoles typical of plants.

I took out my voice recorder and made a quick recording of the time, date, location, and a description of the specimen. Although the unfamiliarity of the source left me puzzled, it also excited me. I could be on the verge of a truly revolutionary discovery.

I was focused again on my microscope, making several sketches in my leatherbound notebook, when I found myself growing lightheaded. I had not eaten in around fourteen hours, which surely contributed to such a condition. In addition, I had been prone to migraines and fatigue throughout my life, so the feeling was not altogether unfamiliar.

As my legs gave out, I inadvertently slumped into a sprawled-out sitting pose upon the sound. I attempted to lean back to rest sitting against my field table, but swore as the table–already somewhat unbalanced due to the uneven level of the sand upon which it rested–toppled and fell into the sand. I groped blindly for my fallen microscope, hoping that the lens was not damaged, but the effort proved to be the last straw for my weakened constitution. I found myself sprawled out across the sand, my vision turning black. The last image I witnessed before sinking into unconsciousness was Zacharoudis looming over me.

***

I awoke in an unfamiliar bed. Glancing about, still groggy, I deduced that I was currently in a hospital. A moment later, I recalled my last memory of passing out on the beach.

I took a moment to take inventory of how all the parts of my body felt. Such embodied awareness was something I often lacked, as my mind was frequently concerned with more abstract and lofty matters.

I noticed an aching soreness all over my body, but particularly concentrated around my extremities and my pectorals. I quickly lifted a hand to examine it, and was revealed to see that my long slender fingers were undamaged. As a youth, I had spent many years studying the piano, and though I rarely had time for the pursuit I still valued my manual dexterity.

My gaze then continued to my chest. I frowned as I noticed that my nipples seemed unusually chafed, red, and puffy. Perhaps I had proven to be allergic to the substance, triggering an inflammatory immune response. I had many environmental allergies, which obliged me to live in a space free of dust, pollen, and dander, and another joining the list would not be terribly surprising.

I was startled into greater environmental awareness by a voice loudly saying, “You’re finally awake!” I turned, scowling, to see Zacharoudis perched sitting upon a flimsy plastic chair.

“How long has it been?” I asked her.

“About four hours,” she said, in a sentence fragment rather typical of her linguistic sloppiness. “I called 9-1-1 after you passed out and I’ve been waiting here ever since.”

“Did you leave the specimen to rot in the hot sun?” I asked sharply. “You may be throwing away potentially valuable scientific insight.”

“Jesus, Bloodgood, I was worried about you. Besides, I have a sample I harvested in a sealed cooler.”

“What of my microscope?” I inquired.

“It’s in my car along with my equipment, back near the beach. I rode here in the ambulance. It sounds like the bill for this is not gonna be cheap, by the way.”

I sighed. Fortunately, my family’s ancestral fortune should benefit me in this situation, although I was loath to ask Father for a loan.

“Have the doctors deduced my ailment?”

Zacharoudis shrugged. “They initially thought you were dehydrated or low in glucose, but some tests ruled that out. They couldn’t find anything wrong with you, actually. Their best guess is heat exhaustion.”

“Perhaps I pushed myself too hard,” I mused. “I may book a hotel room so that I may have a cool, clean place to conduct further study.”

“Are you sure it’s safe for you to be alone?” Zacharoudis inquired. “What if you pass out again?”

I waved away her concerns. “I’m sure I will be fine lying down in a dehumidified, air-conditioned room. I only hope I can find a decent suite.”

“Well, let me give you my number so you can call me if you need something,” Zacharoudis said.

I sighed and relented, handing her my cellular device in hopes of bringing this interaction to a close posthaste.

Zacharoudis coughed awkwardly. “Well… I’m going to try and get an Airbnb or something. Let me bring you your stuff and then I’ll get going.”

“Very well,” I said. “I shall summon a nurse and see about settling my bill.”

***

Later, in my mid-sized hotel room, I cautiously ensured a tight and secure fit of both gloves and mask, before I carefully extracted a slide of the mysterious substance from a case within a cooler and inserted it upon the microscope’s stage.

I was quite puzzled at what I saw. The sample looked nearly entirely different from my previous viewing, with strange fatty, yellow-white blobs interspersed with a network of twitching fibers. Through this strange matrix swam large spiked balls, which vaguely resembled human immune cells.

I nearly recoiled in horror at the seemingly alive tissue I espied, but managed to steel my nerves and harden my resolve. I quickly wrote and sketched copious notes which, unfortunately, blatantly contradicted my prior recordings.

I felt the start of a pounding headache taking root within my skull and sat back in my chair, massaging my temples for a moment. Perhaps I should turn in for the night and resume research tomorrow. Driven by insatiable curiosity, however, I decided I would view just one more slide.

Hours later, my scrawlings had grown increasingly illegible and frustrated. Every individual specimen–some of which Zacharoudis had helpfully provided from her own samples–seemed entirely dissimilar to all others. At this point, a migraine had fully taken hold of me, and I only barely managed to stagger from the room’s desk to its bed a few scant feet away, after placing all samples back into their cooler and that cooler into the room’s miniature refrigerator.

Despite my exhaustion, sleep did not come easy. I tossed and turned, alternately warm and cold and muttering in my deliria, sporadically struck by a sudden epiphany followed by immediate amnesia. I could not say with certainty when I had slipped along the slope from wakefulness into slumber, but my dreams were troubled and peculiar, with visions of strange aquatic chimera intermingled with a strangely familiar woman being romanced by a taller, stronger female.

***

I awoke in a sweat an unknown amount of time later. An orange light through the room’s gauzy curtains suggested late afternoon, nearly twilight, or perhaps early morning near dawn. I attempted, with shaking arms, to lever myself upright, but found myself collapsing back upon the hotel room’s bed.

Gingerly touching my left arm with my right hand, I noticed that my skin felt curiously cool and clammy, with a rigidity almost like that of a scab, and a grayish-blue cast.

My mind immediately ran through a list of potential disorders and ailments. Perhaps I was anoxic, or had some form of metal toxicity? And yet I felt no difficulty breathing. In fact, strangely, I felt in uncharacteristically good health, with no trace of my normal aches and itches.

Although I had taken some precautions, I was beginning to fear that I had contracted some unknown pathogen from the tissue samples which lay encased only a few feet away. Perhaps the substance was a bioweapon released from an experimental military aircraft, or rotting biological waste harboring a bacteria long locked away in melting Arctic ice. Either way, it seemed prudent of me to err on the side of safety and to impose a self-quarantine. I hardly wished to serve as patient zero of a novel pandemic.

My mind quickly went to Zacharoudis, who had likely received similar exposure to the substance. Perhaps she was an asymptomatic carrier who had already infected others. In the interests of public health, I knew I must contact her at once.