Better Testers

The human body is quite resistant to perfection, as it happens. We developed the ability to build muscles stronger, but the body doesn’t really know how to look after stronger muscles properly. Your legs might not work how you want them to, and thousands of years of scientific development hasn’t been able to fix that. The developments of the present didn’t bring us rocket cars, didn’t bring us teleportation, didn’t stop humans needing wheelchairs, glasses, crutches, braces.

The closest thing we have to the miracle cure is Gunk.

The mysteries of how someone came to invent Gunk are almost as curious as who it was who actually did it. Rumours abound. Some claim that the military have been using it for centuries, and the secret only recently leaked. Some claim it is the creation of a mad biologist. The Second Recognisance hold firm that it was the creation of Doctor Frankenfurter, although some say that was the name of the monster he created with it.

It has had many names. When hospitals started using it, they began with the scientific name, which is far too long to place here, purely to avoid having to use various trademarked brand names it was sold under “HumanGlue”, “PatchOMatic” and “Wunderstuff” being the most acceptable. Eventually everyone just ended up calling it Gunk, as the medics did within themselves, and a generation of marketeers sighed and went back to giving other things stupid names.

Gunk is the ultimate in anti-rejection technology. A biological fluid, it allows any two body parts to knit together, hale and hearty, and controlled as if the owner had grown them themselves. With the aid of a fresh new organ, limb or similar item, you too can graft one thing to another with minimal medical knowledge! Infinite possibilities are yours to behold!

This being a medical breakthrough, a miracle cure that solves nearly every problem imaginable, there are one or two slight drawbacks that have been observed over the years:

Firstly, it doesn’t stay fresh long. It’s quite easy to produce on a ship, given some quite widely available stuff, but you need to apply a good coating of it every couple of days.

Second, it’s kind of a one way journey. Once you’ve attached something to or in you with Gunk, your body starts to use it to keep other things hale and hearty. Like your heart, for example. A lack of Gunk in your life will start to affect the limbs and organs it’s actively being used for, but in time will start to reverse any changes your body has made to itself since you started using it; broken bones, healed scars, that kind of minor problem. After a couple of years use, that will include stuff like skin cells, memories… Fortunately it’s quite easy to find or make on a ship.

Third, it does have some limitations. The Wunderstuff Travelling Roadshow had a popular exhibit of “Face-Arsed Trevor” and a woman with hands grafted to the end of her feet and vice-versa, but the adaptations might as well have been latex models for the use they had. This isn’t to say there aren’t weird edges. Some tree bark is flexible enough for the Gunk to accept it as skin, and there’s a rich history of people discovering how powerful an animal’s heart you can install before your blood vessels start to explode. You can’t use organs that have started to decompose, but a good coating of Gunk will preserve an organ, limb or similar for a good while.

Fourth, Gunk reacts badly to technology. Someone who relies on Gunk cannot become of the Linitillian. Cannot accept the cyber-enhancements of the Improved. You can get your functional immortality one way or the other, but not both.

Fifth, it needs to be applied directly. Gunk is a thick, vicious substance of a dark purple colour, and users can usually be identified by a number of surgically installed custom-built ports to allow ease of application. These are not standardised, and for obvious reasons the knowledge of how to open them to apply things directly to a user’s organs is restricted to only their closest and most trusted friends and medical staff.

But last, last is the small print. The disclaimer. The minor bit of unimportant data that is entirely probably not a thing at all. Probably. It is this:

People who rely on Gunk are more at ease in each other’s company.

It’s not that other people make them antsy, it’s just that the more Gunked people are directly around, the more… peaceful the world seems. Hopeful. At rest.

There are rumours that it goes further than this. Rumours that if some gunked sit in a circle and hum in harmony that they might be able to do things that one person - any person - cannot.

Clearly, this is just a placebo effect from being around others who are like you.

Clearly this is the most likely reason for it.

Clearly


Nicholas Avenell