Part 1: Baked taters need 'water' to be boiled.

The black potato was sliced as the hot hexagon lost its sunny radiance with the passing of time. Ebullient bubbling diminished and cooled-off slowly as I, a small puddle with one eye, stared without blinking. (Because I didn't have eyelids! Puddle Joke!)

Then, said slices were ingested by the first sphere while I stared expectantly as it fused with the second one. The process took a while until the 1st and 2nd sphere separated. This allowed the system to transform and internalize the 1st sphere, exchanging its contents and preparing for a scan.

Commencing scanning sequence…

I waited patiently for the scanning results. It wasn’t needed to be an expert to know that this black thing should be some kind of treasure. Especially, if the plants were growing out of them or using them as fuel.

My puddle, scanning is complete, showing the results…

Nice! Thank you, A18.

The results were remarkable. The unknown material seems to have some kind of metallic assemblies as components. You have zinc, carbon, calcium, potassium and many other elements. But there are some of these that are unknown… They must still belong to the chemical universe, yet my memories aren’t able to provide enough information for the AI to interpret them.

Anyways, more than the metal inside, what actually caught my interest was the ability to use all of these components to form a composite material. Yes, this rocky tuber was actually composed of metallic-proteins. If my thoughts are in the correct direction, this meant that the life here is made of a different combination between elements than the one in my previous world.

Sadly, I couldn't make materials with my current tools. Just imagine making a body of carbon fiber or graphene. It would be so cool. The problem was... How to make those. I never worked with them before, not even with steel or polymers. Too many things were above my knowledge. I am really in an unknown ocean.

Wait, ocean?!

This isn’t the most important thing to scan! Oh my god! How could I remain indifferent to this!

I forgot about the tuber's results while thinking of something that I should have checked first.

A18, digest a sample of this ‘water’.

My puddle before digesting the next sample, the system needs to expulse the unnecessary resources.

Unnecessary resources?

Elements and materials that are in too high amount and can’t be utilized by the project at the moment. There is also no space for storing them all.

Okay…

I watched as the system regurgitated part of the tuber towards the outside. But this time it sent the redundant resources to the 1st sphere. And then, the 1st sphere made a black and porous sphere that floated inside the water.

A18, what is happening? Why are you using the first sphere like that?

My puddle, the less contact the system has with the exterior, the better preservation of the system. By using the ‘mouth’ as a means of transfer between the exterior and the system, the system can increase an unaltered state.

Yeah, I know that. I mean why does it look so disgusting?

My puddle, most of the excessive matter is organic. The digestion can’t prevent it from reacting as redundant elements formed after the scanning will reassemble into waste.

...

Anyways, what this AI is telling me, is that poop will be formed even if you are a machine. Like a machine that ate a banana. It will expulse a digested banana, even if said machine only wanted the potassium (metal) inside. And thus, I learned an important lesson, even a machine does number 2. My first AI-dung.

However, this produced some controversial questions that every 'machine' needs to have answered.

Do we really have to eat organic? Where do I find processed food or canned metals?

Yuck! Did I just poop with my mouth?

Good thing I don’t have taste buds!

I need to create another sphere for... Ugh, forget it.

Omitting the AI’s biological behavior and my new experience, I asked her to scan the water that surrounded me. I watched it while it happened. Again, the 1st sphere ingested a bunch of water, fused with the second one, separated from it, and then entered the system.

Scanning…

The composition was mostly hydrogen and oxygen.

Yes, call me whatever you want, but… Is this actually dihydrogen monoxide? Who knows, but if it isn’t, then what kind of ‘fluid’ is this if not water?

The results were weird. I mean, I just found one of the dumbest but at the same time smartest questions about 'water'.

How much ‘water’ should be inside of water for it to be called water?

This just meant that I can’t be sure of whatever this fluid here is.

What the hell am I swimming in?

Is it water? yes.

But, is it saltwater? Puddle water? Or some sort of water from a lake or a sewer?

I am not sure.

The composition is around 95% Hydrogen and oxygen, which means that ~95% is H2O. Is this the right amount? I don’t know. The other part has the same organic materials found everywhere in the surroundings. And then, you have smaller amounts of salts, metals, and ‘others’ that could be unknown.

Thus, this went above bad...

Every time I think of having something that could give me a decent clue of what this place is, I am attacked by the unknown and thrown from my fluffy flying cloud!

I am discouraged! I am depressed! How much H2O should be in a fluid for it to be called water?!

A18, hug me.

Come here my feeble puddle (A18 has given you a ‘ghost-hug’).~

I could actually feel that? Did I make my sensors give me the perception of touch when it shouldn’t exist?

VR is Cool!

It seems my messy mind is creating things I wouldn’t have thought of in the background. Tinkering with the interface and creating a false sensation? This means that I can also play virtual reality videogames and cat...

My puddle needs punishment!

Oh…g…r...e...a…t…

Part 2: Metal n’ chips.

After feeling energized again for some reason I missed, a screen with the previous results was shown.

A18, do you know if this digestible-strange-rock can be used as fuel to create a nanomachine?

My puddle, results for energy have not varied. However, a complete tuber seems to meet the requirements for a-tenth-part of a basic micromachine based on the metallic structure of it.

A tenth? Doesn’t that mean that I can gain more by eating them? It’s like gaining one-tenth of a micromachine!

Good news! I can eat and repair myself now.

However, if you asked me before, I didn’t have many expectations about what I’d have gotten from these plants. I believed these ones wouldn't get me much, and as expected, I needed a lot of them to be able to create another sensor. Supposing a sensor needs 250 MMs, it meant I needed more than two thousand potatoes.

So having thought about it before, my eyes were staring at my real goal. This goal was decided carefully after watching my previous’ trip footage'. There were images that piqued my interest and allowed me to think of how this ecosystem worked. Know, I only needed to prove things truth. I needed to observe if the other things which ‘can move’ are more valuable than this opaque plant; be it in energy or resources.

With things that can move, I was referring to the glowy plants and the Poke-pokes. I thought of something that needed confirmation. And no, the poke-blobs are out of question for the current experiment. I have a feeling that if one of those catches me, I will become a dead puddle in its inside. And obviously, I don't want to become the devoured goo inside a gooey creature. Thus, my approach for the next experiment was to grab some of the glowy plants that grew near the walls.

I grabbed some of the opaque plants in the surroundings and gave them to A18.

A18, carry this set of plants in the system, we will use them at our destination.

Yes, my puddle!

Part 3: The next target.

All that time I have been researching over the mat allowed my energy to be parallelly recharged. It was to the point of reaching the current maximum capacity. My opaque plant exploration was completed and having decided the next experiment, I took off the runway like a plane, soared up through the murky algae in the surroundings, and dashed inside the waters like an arrow.

Even if my current vision was limited, the encompassing environment appeared marvelous. This perception of water and deep-sea experience piqued my curiosity. It made me find wonders in the little things this new life delivered. It felt like watching an underwater documentary, no, more like being the actor in it.

And though I never practiced diving in my previous life, I believed myself to be an exceptional swimmer. My perception could see dunes of gray sand showcasing their slithering patterns on the surface. There weren’t many extras to add as my sensor couldn’t distinguish colors. There were rocks, but they hid within the gray powders at the bottom and seemed unimportant for now. There were no crustaceans, nor other animals or plants. The only thing I could tell was different, appeared when the light diminished and I arrived at the 'black ring'. This is how I called the place where visibility reached its lowest point.

If we divided the area, you had the center where my mat was surrounded by opaque plants. Then as the light from the mat diminished, the opaque plants decreased in numbers until reaching a place that looked like a black ring. This ring, wasn’t too big as compared to the areas where plants grew, yet it was like a division between the opaque plants and their glowing counterparts. It appeared to limit or create a boundary between them. And for an undiscovered reason, it was a place where the light from the mat and the glowing plants diminished.

A18, remind me to check this ‘black ring’ after we collect some glowy flowers for you.

Yes, my puddle! A notification has been added for the moment of return.

Nice! You are becoming more and more helpful.

I slowed down when the cave where the Poke-pokes lived entered my range of vision. There was no blob on the coast, which allowed me to feel the anxiousness vanishing, yet I remained cautious. Being attacked by a glowy herb in the past, I kept alert when landing near the selected and small-sized shrub.

This time I knew more about them, by glimpsing with an experienced eye, I caught a predicted structure. They had the bubbling spheres, they had the same stems, and the very same leaves. I just thought they were different types of algae when I gained sentience. It was a bit hard to discern it, because the only time they stopped glowing, was when the incandescent bubbles were released from little openings in those sacs. A scene that was interesting yet creepy if you experienced how they appeared to be winking at you while releasing myriads of glowing bubbles.

Leaving my thoughts aside, my next action was to take a sample, yet it wasn’t simple. Unlike their opaque counterparts, these plants were too far away from the mat. I could digest them here, true. But it might become troublesome if something occurred outside of my conceived arrangements. I don’t have MMs nor energy to spare.

Digesting on the spot was turned to the back of my head. Carrying them to the mat in batches was also not efficient as there was a limit to the size I could ‘carry’. The storage ability depended on my size. I could only select a small shrub and a little fragment to isolate.

The fragment would be carried in my 1st sphere which is akin to a mouth. The complete specimen would be carried by the system's storage, which shouldn’t be used for this, but I didn’t have more options. The mouth had less space than the system obviously.

In contrast with the two above, my 2nd sphere was full of NMs and I couldn’t use it for storage. Once something entered it, I would be using energy to maintain and regulate the NMs inside, preventing them from damaging the ‘walls’. It was because digestion was in semi-manual mode and I couldn’t spare concentrating on it when more important things were at the front.

Part 4: Farming for false tomatoes.

I quickly adjusted my body and advanced with the flagellum towards the plant. This stalk was burgeoning alone on a minor slope. No other stalk grew near it as it seemed to be budding in a peculiar incline over the walls. It was also a trifling stalk if not the smallest I have seen, which would allow me to transport all of it easily with the system.

A18, help me remain alert of any additional signals that may come towards me during the extraction process.

Affirmative!

Starting to check for dangerous signals in the environment…

While A18 increased her perception of the surroundings, my flagellum moved and started to dig over the solid surface where the plant was growing from. The soil at this place was actually sturdier than the sandy floor near the mat.

I didn’t realize it before because previously I only cut the stalk at its base and never tried to dig. However, now that I am doing a more scrutinized approach, the ground and terrain seem very different to the ones near the mat. Nonetheless, my touch sensor didn’t perceive a superficial difference between the two.

It was like a repetitive boolean, a code that told me ‘a yes or a no’ if there was ‘touch’ present. The only difference was ‘where’ that touch came from, meaning I’d get provoked and irritated by touchy sensations from a place I didn’t expect ‘touch’ to appear. It didn’t mean I was sensitive, but I was not accustomed to a kick in the digestive spheres (Even if I didn’t feel real pain).

Thankfully, you could somehow perceive the strength of a blow by combining proprioception, equilibrioception and a bit of 'rough touch' magic. This was what allowed me to tell the difference in the terrain.

My digging continued until I could scrub the terrain and grasp what I was waiting to find, the plant’s tuber. The only difference between the opaque plants and the glowy ones was the radiance they gave, it seems that the glowy plant’s tuber shined when in contact with the ‘water’. Seeing the tuber and excited by having a result, I commanded A18 to do a check.

A18, are there any signals near?

My puddle there aren’t signals being released apart for the usual signal that comes from these plants.

Perfect. And yes, these plants seem to produce some weird signals that I suspect may attract those blobs. I believe there is some sort of relationship between the blobs and the glowy plants. In addition, and now that I have found that this plant also has a spherical-like rhizome, my hypothesis was near the point of becoming a result.

Taking that into account, I wanted to try touching it the least bit possible as not to stir trouble. In my carefulness, I used some of the parts of the opaque plants I brought to act like a brush. It didn’t seem to react to them, so it was safe since the signals didn’t hype or diminish.

Once a bigger part of the tuber was visible, I started to dig around the terrain that supported it. My idea was obviously to pull the damn thing out and throw it inside the system to be isolated as fast as possible.

I plowed the earth as a madman yet the spherical half wasn’t out with all my effort. The thing was bulkier than I expected. If my calculations were correct, it should be 4 times as big if compared to a same-sized stalk of its opaque counterpart. Even if that was the case, it was still possible for the system to internalize it. So I continued to dig until I was sure I could pull it off with ease.

However, when I was prepared to seize it, the glowing tuber suddenly moved!

The thing dug underground and escaped my grasp. It also left a part of its leaves outside and disappeared in what seemed to be a murky and boundless cavity.

Oh no! If that thing can move it may summon the blobs to appear here!

A18, signals!

No signals incoming apart from the one below, my puddle.

Yeah, but did it change or something?

There was a small shift in the signal, but it’s too weak and needs amplification to be perceived. Energy might decrease faster than usual. Do you wish to translate it?

If you can, please translate it. We have enough energy for it.

Translating…

Showing results…

(You don't want to know...)

A18, remind me to never translate this specific signal again in my whole puddle life.

Yes, my puddle…

Omitting whatever it was that the glowing plant expressed with its signal, I moved to another stalk. This time, I didn’t care about carefulness and went full power with my plans. Since, the little creeper plants are actually alive, and moved, I couldn’t overlook it.

I needed a net, some way to trap it, or a sturdier terrain for it to be unable to dig. If those didn’t work, I needed something to ‘attract it’. Planning was actually simple when you got to understand a bit more of these alien lifeforms.

Nonetheless, my options above weren’t useful. I don’t have a way to make them, nor do I have a viable solution. So when brains don’t work, you go for a bloody-berserker mode. And everyone has sliced potatoes once in their life. An experience that made things easier.

A18 we need some way to catch it quickly, but since it will probably move and struggle, I will just slice it! When I finish the bastard, be sure to use the system to isolate it. I don’t want its organs shouting ‘mama’ or something that attracts the monsters inside the cave.

Yes, my puddle!

Preparing system...

Now, it’s time to dice these moving radiant taters!