He was still working on that. Well, on both. On being successful at stand-up and getting people to like him. He’d come out at uni, though, because there was a strong, supportive LGBTQIA+ society. He thought he’d found his people and he almost had. But when the leader of the group had come on to him and Kaden turned him down, he never felt comfortable whenever everyone met up. Eventually, he’d made some friends in his hall of residence, and they were still friends now.
Thinking about coming out made him wonder about that blob in the tank. It couldn’t really have been trying to escape the other blobs because that implied conceptual thought. It was probably just roving at random, no matter what it had looked like. Just Kaden’s overactive imagination going wild as usual.
When Max had finished chatting up the woman, he took Kaden down to the ground floor.
“You can access most doors on this floor. Go wherever you like. I need to do some work. Just don’t touch anything,” Max said.
If anyone else said that to him, Kaden was going to explode. He wandered around asking questions, making notes on what technicians were doing. Most people were friendly but Kaden didn’t understand a lot of what he was told. He couldn’t help thinking about the blob in the tank and eventually made his way back to that lab.
When he reached it, the little blob was still climbing the glass but at the other end of the tank. The others were grouped together at the bottom, waiting for it to fall.Waiting? I’ll be giving them names next. Tom, Dick, Harry and desperate Joe.He stifled a laugh. How would he know if they were waiting? And yet… He touched the glass right in front of where the little blue ball was stuck and a small finger-like extension came out to touch his finger on the other side of the glass.Wow!
When Kaden moved his finger, the sort-of finger followed.Double wow!This had to be some sort of animal, but he had no idea what. It looked a little like a single-armed sea anemone.
A woman came up at his shoulder and he dropped his hand into his pocket.
“Hi, Kaden. I’m Alisha. I work with Harris.”
“Hi. Yes, I’ve heard him mention your name. What’s in this tank?” He pressed record on his phone.
“Archaea. You know what that is?”
“Er… Not bacteria?”
She smiled. “That’s right.Bacteriacontain peptidoglycanin thecell wall but archaeadon’t. The cell membrane inbacteriais a lipid bilayer; inarchaea, it can be a lipid bilayer or a monolayer.Plus, bacteriacontain fatty acids on the cell membrane, while archaeacontain phytanyl.”
That was far too much information but Kaden kept going with questions. “So are archaea good or bad?”
“Generally, they’re pretty friendly. Many live in mutualistic relationships with other living things. Do you know the difference between mutualistic and symbiotic?”
He wanted to say yes, but, “No.”
“Mutualism is a type of symbiosis where there’s an ecological interaction between at least two species where both partners benefit. In symbiosis, there’s persistent contact between the partners and it’s not always mutually beneficial.”
Like his relationship with Harris. Not always good. Not for Kaden anyway, but then Harris didn’t seem to be particularly happy either.
“We’re studying parasitism in this other tank. That’s a symbiotic relationship in which one species benefit while the other species gets no benefit or is harmed.”
“Like fleas.”
“That’s right.”
She sounded surprised but he wasn’t entirely stupid.
“Do parasites get parasites?” he asked.
“They can, yes. A microbiologist at Vanderbilt University studied a five-tiered system of hyperparasites, starting with a fledgling bird. Blowflies infested the bird’s underside with bloodsucking larvae, which then dropped off and fell prey to hyper parasitic wasps. The wasps carry a parasitic bacterium calledWolbachia, which has evolved to modify its host’s reproductive system. Those bacteria are invaded by tiny viruses known as bacteriophages, which useWolbachia’scellular machinery to multiply.” She gave him a broad smile.
“So they get smaller and smaller? How small can they go?”
“Maybe a transposon, a roving bit of nucleic acid—a single, parasitic gene. Transposons have been discovered inside viruses that infect other viruses, which in turn infect amoebas that go on to infect human beings.”
In easier words—very small. Could the blue blob be a roving bit of nucleic acid but inside something else?
“But you don’t do testing on dogs, cats, rats, rabbits or any other animal.” He knew what Harris had told him, but he still needed to ask. “Can you think why an animal extremist organisation would imagine that you do?”
“Because they don’t understand what we’re doing and make stuff up.”
He could tell by her tone she was pissed off, though not with him.
