View source for Lore:Slimeperson

<!-- Slimefolk. Who knew? -->{{LorePageHeader
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 |loretype = SPECIES
 |mainname = Xenobiological Slime Hybrid
 |denonyms = Slime, Slimes
 |othernames = Slime, Squishies
 |relatedpages = [[Sentient_Slime|Sentient Slime]], [[Guide_to_xenobiology|Guide to Xenobiology]]
 |relatedlore = [[Lore:Bluespace]]
 |languages = {{SlimeLang}}
 |contributors={{Contributor/softservedeath}}, {{Contributor/ArcanaObscura|Any idea when slime people went from xeno slimes to Actual People?: "It had to have happened during early xenobiology studies. A slime might have naturally evolved sapience on its own depending on their environment but it must have been accelerated unnaturally when people started isolating sapience "potions" if it happened in the last 50.<br>A scientist wakes up to a pen full of humanoids asking to be let out and it got REAL awkward from there since Sol Fed has a charter against sapient slavery."}}, {{Contributor/GreytideSkye|The idea of repeating your ideas back at yourself like you're ADHD.}}
}}[[Category:Lore]]

How can you know who you'll be tomorrow?

= Xenobiological Slime Hybrid =
'''Slimes''', referred to with a variety of languages word simply for 'slime', are amorphous fauna entirely native to [[Lore:Bluespace|bluespace]]. Liquid, like everything else in this celestial space, slimes are an opportunistic group of omnivores utilizing practically anything as a food source: Plastic, metal, meat, but they are known to prioritize the incredibly high energy of solid, liquid, or gaseous [[Lore:Plasma|plasma]] first and foremost. Slimes will normally seat themselves in the barrier between realspace and bluespace or its permanent pores, filter feeding off the resulting ore that forms. Other times, they will gather in groups of anywhere from a lake to a sea, all the way up to oceanic masses of slimes, intentionally wearing away at the Veil's stability and introducing dimensional friction on their own.

Normally located on the other end of the barrier, numerous slimes will often end up leaking through to realspace in search of their prized meals, typically keying themselves to an associated anomaly's properties. [[Sentient_Slime|Single dog-sized masses]] have normally been reported, but tidal waves of poorly differentiated ooze are not uncommon. The [[Lore:Ordoht|Ordoht]] have historically been known to intentionally pull slime out from the other side, exploiting a common feature: mimicry. Slimes are capable of incredible feats of learning and overall mental agility, necessary to navigate the currents and eddies of their home dimension. Within even a few months of existing in realspace, a slime can be brought to resemble almost any organism it typically interacts with, and able to react to speech in under an hour. Further work can give one a roughly humanoid shape, upon which the Ordoht would recognize them as capable of complex learning-- the foundations of becoming a person.

Despite their amorphous and shape-shifting nature as liquids, slimes that reach the point of personhood can become rapidly affixed to a single identity. Thought of by the Ordoht as 'mimicking themselves' and looping in on their own habits, a slime's disposition can become extraordinarily individualistic and defined in most cultures it's exposed to. Even before and after the point of peak memetic saturation, slimes will ruthlessly chase any new cultural or philosophical information to either adopt or discard.

The first slimes captured by NanoTrasen in the modern day are known to have come from anomalies in deep space, seemingly searching for the plasma ore stored aboard stations and ships. Failing to recognize their desire for the purple substance, humans started with normal everyday food-- later stepping it up to whole livestock. Some simply performed basic mitosis, but others diverged into a multitude of colors as their bodies adapted to different properties. In search of exploiting the memetic properties of slimes with faster results than 'domestication', many scientists have attempted to apply them to a carbon-based lifeform's anatomy, resulting in slime physiology patterned off humanoid psychology.

== How am I? ==

Xenobiological Slime Persons were recognized as a formal, distinct species by SolFed recently, 2520. In theory, this means the [[Lore:Moths#GNF|Grand Nomad Fleet]] could have several slimes dutifully serving aboard. In practice, this means that Ethics in Xenobiology is a comparatively recent field of study with interesting linguistics ties. 

Aboard the {{TooltipInline|NSV Saltine|The year 2512. Further dates have been redacted, as they'd expose identifying information.}}, Doctor Cooper Limelight sat alone in his isolated xenobiology lab. With one button, he teleports slimes from one pen to another. "Hello, slimes!" he says in the queen's {{Common}}, and when they blurble back something, he notes it down. These notes would be the basis of the {{SlimeLang}} definition. Given his inability to elicit more than about fifty distinct responses, the initial language seemed rudimentary at best.

When Doctor Limelight applies distilled [[Guide_to_xenobiology#Tier_5|light pink slime essence]] to a slime, he expected to test his linguistic theories against a chattering orb of gray mess. According to legend, he fell out of his chair when the slime from the next pen over asked "Hey, can I get a hit of that too?"

<!-- It had to have happened during early xenobiology studies. A slime might have naturally evolved sapience on its own depending on their environment but it must have been accelerated unnaturally when people started isolating sapience "potions" if it happened in the last 50.
A scientist wakes up to a pen full of humanoids asking to be let out and it got REAL awkward from there since Sol Fed has a charter against sapient slavery. -->

== How am I not? ==

Modern regulations on xenobiological farming reflect what Doctor Limelight discovered in the following months:
* Slimes must be culled, dehydrated, or otherwise rendered insapient within 1 month of hydration. While a slime can establish human-equivalent sapience at any point in their lifecycle, it is statistically safe to assume most fresh slime are mentally inert.
** Slime division does not inherently reset this biological timer.
* Statistically, it cannot be assumed that any particular slime will develop sapience within its natural lifecycle. "Spontaneous Sapience" presently occurs in {{TooltipInline|1 of every 640|25% mutation on split, 4 possible splits to cyan, 2/4 splits to dark pink, 2/4 splits to light pink... 1/4, 16, 32, 64??? Then the insignificant chances of not splitting from grey to cyan but getting to cyan anyways?? then divide by 10 because a light pink is gonna turn itself sapient 1 in 10 times? look, if I was good at math I'd be a mather, not a writer.}}, {{TooltipInline|roughly.|If this ratio reaches 1 in 8 or higher, farming permissions will automatically be rescinded and rights will be called to revote.}} This roughly correlates with the ratio of "light pink slimes," who are known for their [[Guide_to_xenobiology#Tier_5|intellectual stimulant]] applications. Doctor Limelight postulated that a slime of any color can mutate just enough to apply light pink slime to itself, though it is suspected that this draws from his degree in Poetry, not Biology.
* Exposure to language accelerates the development of cognition. A slime capable of overhearing a radio is more likely to understand modern cultural references, even if listening prior to acquiring sapience.
* A slime is noted as sapient if it can beg for its life, establish communication with a caretaker, and grasp the basics of its own mortality.
** Slime farming '''may not''' be automated. A being capable of communicating and being recognized as communicative must be present and visible to any slimes at risk of processing. 
** In short, if a slime says it's cool, it's cool.
* Slimes can be assholes! If one escapes and starts causing harm, there are special anti-protections that permit treating the sapient slime as a rabid animal and euthanizing it. This addendum came after Senator Peelix Feelix McWheelix perished on the 2535 senate floor mauled by a released Slime. As the slime was swearing in perfect {{Common}} and responding conversationally (with contextually vulgar slurs), no other senator felt comfortable spraying it with an extinguisher to kill it.
** This thankfully occurred prior to the first noted attack of a Supermatter-induced slime anomaly, which immediately grasped its surroundings, tried to break open a sealed tank of plasma, and was obliterated under a shower.

== How do I become? ==

Most Slime persons were born of at least one Slimeperson parent, either through sexual or asexual mitosis. Much like with mammalian biology, the parent grows a small core for a duration, then excretes that when it is likely to survive the outside world. The parent remains relatively intact (social life notwithstanding) with most of their mass, and is pressured into caring for their offspring. The excreted child grows up, exhibiting sapience around the same time human toddlers do: three years old, depending on who you ask. Born Slimefolk follow a similar pathway to sapience and self-realization as Spontaneously Sapient slimes.

Those who are Spontaneously Sapient describe their early memories as best as they can. Lacking the language at the time, according to linguists, strongly hampers the formation of memories, so studies are undergoing and the below timeline should be taken unscientifically.

* '''Needing.''' "Give monkey me give eat monkey me eat monkey give me eat monkey give me you." Even the most basic of slimes recognizes prey, hunger, and fear. At this point, the slime soon-to-be-person "becomes aware" that their feeling towards monkeys, "wanting," can also apply to other concepts. For weeks, they experiment with the notion of wanting other things, like attention, or light, or space. In learning and applying their newfound wants, they learn to associate cause with effect.
* '''Wanting.''' At some point, the slime recognizes that their "wants" are different from their "needs," e.g. that a less-cramped pen is not necessary for survival, but still urgent to some part of them. In discovering what part of them "wants", they discover that they exist and have the capacity to make choices affecting their present state.
* '''Absorbing.''' The slime has little reference for what it should be. Spontaneously establishing sapience means that they stand alone in their field of uneducated slimes. Slimes are creatures of mimicry, so following that reflex and learning from their peers would result in the slime regressing to ferality. Doctor Limelight suggests this happens to 7 in 10 potentially sapient slimes, using numbers he made up to sound better. For those with any external stimuli to emulate, these slimes latch onto these ideas, applying them to their sense of self until it becomes routine. The best chance for one to grow at this point is to observe an existing sapient being, either a Slimeperson or any {{TooltipInline|Human-equivalent caretaker|Researchers have experimented with growing slimes adjacent to an [[Lore:Synths|AI Core]]. The slimes did not recognize the AI core as a being to emulate, just as a source of noises, and the AI core reported extreme dissatisfaction with the bothersome squishing noises and occasional acidic glomp. Further experiments with Cyborg shells and other Synthetic persons proved much more fruitful. Experiments to see if mobility alone would help resulted in an AI Core bolted to a MULEbot and the entire sample size eventually (allegedly accidentally) smeared into roadkill. "Whoops."}}.
* '''Rejecting.''' It won't be for another week that the slime encounters a notion that it can firmly say does ''not'' apply to itself. Perhaps it encounters a taste it does not like, or a word that feels wrong to copy, or a fandom that makes it cringe. Thus, the slime reaches the important milestone of finding a boundary; knowing where you are not is just as important as knowing where you are. From this first boundary comes others, a violent time of rejecting half the universe. Even then, the slime entertains these notions for a while before rejecting them.
* '''Retaining.''' The slime is prone to mimicry, and only has a finite attention span. Every idea it entertains, it forgets a previous one. This milestone comes when the slime realizes it forgot something it assumed was a core part of its being. Some ideas can be more important than others. With no tools beyond mimicry, the slime has to mimic itself, has to pretend to be the self that wanted that, pretend to be the self that pretended to be the self that wanted that, so on. The slime repeats itself, defining itself in a hierarchy of thoughts and notions. Constant affirmations define the slime, core rules and heuristics, a collection of choices that let the slime predict how to react to new information without internalizing it. Remaining consistent comes second nature to most people, but for Slimes, there is no first nature to rely on.
* '''Becoming.''' Through practice, the core tenets that make a slime a Slimeperson ingrain into that slime's nucleus. By the time they reach Personhood, they no longer need to devote most of their conscious thought into remaining who they are. Those neural pathways are as burnt in as one can get in an amorphous gelatin. That is, even at their most stalwart, a Slimeperson's integrity and consistency is still highly fluid. 
* '''Remaining.''' Over the course of growing up, the slime person learns how much effort they need to remain themselves, and how little they can let themselves grow without betraying who they were yesterday. Mistakes happen, focuses shift, interests wane, and the Slimeperson you were last week can seem entirely foreign to the Slimeperson you are today. You never lost your memories, of course, but where they are in relation to you, who you are in relation to them? That shifts. Slimehood is a struggle between stagnating and remaining. One must always remain true to oneself, but one must also keep growing forward. Paradoxically growing and shrinking. Unbecoming and becoming. 


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