Chapter 5: Opening Up
The time had finally come. Jack knew that in order to keep up the lie, that he actually cared about life again. He needed to attend school. He needed to come across as at least slightly sociable. To come across as a normal student, one who had gone through depression and conquered it. The first thing he would do was make it up to that girl he had met the day before, maybe he could convince her to be an ally. That is why he had brought his own yellow Misha cat today. It wasn't a keychain, but it might make up for what had happened, and he had only received the collectors edition on a fluke anyway.
Sadly for his deception. He could not find the girl anywhere. He went home with one more failure on his record. Doesn't matter, he thought to himself, she will be there one of these days.
In the meantime, he had finally begun to make progress communicating with the pink blob he had holed up in a jar. It was actually pretty easy, if a little rudimentary to communicate, as long as you stuck to extreme statements that would cause fairly emotional responses. The mucus had a color scheme for emotions. Yellow was fear, Green was disgust, Blue was sadness, red was of course anger. It took awhile to figure out which was which, but based off of the creatures body language and the questions asked he deduced it fairly quickly.
"Why have you been studying humanity?" he asked.
The mucus turned a bright yellow. Seemingly scared that it had been found out.
"Are there others?"
It did not change color, just seemed to want to hide somewhere in it's transparent prison.
"Could you communicate in our language if I provided the opportunity?"
It returned to a pink color very slowly. rising from the bottom of the jar, and moving the topmost portion in what Jack could only call a nod.
A few hours later Jack had designed a keyboard that could be placed inside the jar. But how to get it in without letting the creature out? He had confirmed that when the creature was asleep or passed out it turned grey. But he didn't really want to wait for that to happen. He started to flick the jar.
"Hey." he said, "does your species taste good? Have they been used as materials for some kind of invention? I could probably make you into a mood ring, those would sell for a lot of money."
He had noticed the creature wasn't very emotionally stable. But any creature under threat of becoming a dollar store novelty item, no matter how on top of their emotions, would probably pass out, and this mucus did. Jack swiftly opened the jar and stuffed the keyboard in. Drilling a small hole for the wire and sealing it with a quick drying adhesive.
Jack tinkered around with a microchip for a while, trying to see if he could make it process a little faster or slower depending on the capacitors used. He almost didn't notice the mucus like creature begin to revitalize.
As soon as it was awake, it saw the keyboard and turned a bright red. If anyone had seen the creature in the jar, they would have thought that it was just a tomato.
"Oh," Jack said, "glad to see you're up. You are familiar with our writing correct?"
The mucus turned more red and started to flail about in the jar.
"Congratulations, now we can communicate properly. If you would be so kind as to use our technology to do so. What is your name? or the closest approximation you can give?
The black screen stayed that way for a few moments. The cursor flashed, indicating where the creature could type if it would, and finally it did. It felt like an eternity to Jack, watching the letters appear one after the other. Hira. An odd name to be sure, certainly not one he had heard before.
"A pleasure to officially meet you, Hira." Jack said, only slightly cynically, "why are you here? Why did you immediately attack me? What kind of lifeform are you? Are there others?"
Again the screen stayed black for a while. The cursor blinking in and out as Hira turned a pinkish red, and slightly deflated. Finally the words began to appear on the screen. "I didn't attack you. I was trying to meld, if anything you attacked me."
"What do you mean meld?"
Hira ignored him, continuing with the first questions he had asked, seemingly delighted with the power to ignore him. "There are others and we are here to save your planet from an enemy you do not yet know. We would be classified under Bitumine, by your study of biology, however we call ourselves the Bixian race, and yes, humanity as it is, cannot win against our enemy. They are the Klexic Empire, and everywhere that they have gone turns into a wasteland, or an ally of vice and depravity. We don't know where they came from, we come from Alpha Centauri, or what's left of those habitable worlds."
"I don't really care about the intergalactic drama." Jack said bluntly, "What do you mean by "trying to meld with me?"
The cursor blinked. It didn't move for far longer than before. "no." the reply said simply.
"No?" Jack cried out, "what do you mean no? what are you talking about?"
The cursor began to move furiously, words appearing one after the other in what appeared to be a rant, judging from the crimson red color of Hira. "No, you don't qualify for Project Paragon. The end goal of melding, is not to enable the species around us to become more powerful, but to give power to the moral. I thought there may be something worth redeeming in you, it's in my nature to try. But at the end of the day, you're not fit to become a paragon that would save this world. You are far to self centered for that."
"And you think any other human can?!" Jack retorted, his own rant at the ready. "Wake up to reality! Humans are all self centered, its in our nature! This planet is a spinning mudball with almost 8 billion assholes on it! There isn't a single man, woman, or child who you could call a "paragon" that's just a pretty word that we made up for our bedtime stories and idle philosophies. You won't find a single paragon in this whole damned world!"
"How do you know?" the cursor blinked
"Because I've already seen your melding be misused." Jack retorted, glad his parents weren't home when this happened. "Some blue slime attached to a bully, and guess what, he used that power on me! All because I wouldn't pay attention to him, and you say humanity will bring forth even one paragon!?"
The cursor blinked. Hira turned a deep, deep blue. The words appeared on the screen, very slowly. "Maybe not." Hira said, "maybe humanity can't bring a true paragon forward, but someone will try, and in trying succeed, at least when it counts."
"That will never happen." said Jack, and he ripped the cable from his computer so that Hira could not say another word.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Enet_Grinson
Enet_Grinson Sorry about the long delay between this chapter and the last. I've been rather busy with work lately, trying to make ends meet, while also picking up shifts so I can get a computer that doesn't disconnect from the internet every five minutes. Hope you guys are enjoying the story so far, I will try and be more consistent in the future.
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