The Slime – a 2200 Blues Short Story (Third Draft)

This is a non-canon 2200 Blues short story, meaning that even though it takes place in the 2200 Blues universe, this story is not part of the definite canon or timeline of events that the manuscript belongs to.

This story takes place outside of the scope of the 2200 Blues manuscript, featuring characters and a setting that aren’t shown in the original novel chapters. This story reflects new and evolving world-building from my current rewriting of the manuscript as a trilogy. Once further revised, this story may become canon in the future.

2200 Blues © 2026 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

God save me from this world. Broken. Corrugated. Everything feels like a slime that never lets up. Unrelenting. A slime of feelings, memories I can’t shake off. Of the screens of the virtual work I hate. Coating the world outside, keeping me afraid of it, keeping others away from me and me away from others. There’s silence when I walk outside, a silence that eats at my soul, a slime that keeps reminding me that the world will never go back to normal, that people will never understand how I feel. The slime of the same four walls that make up my life and the entirety of my world. A slime of my mother that I’m stuck with, who will never understand me.

The slime is everywhere. It’s in the people keeping me cooped up. The people who have been telling me what to do before I even existed. I can’t trust this slime. It’s everywhere.

They’re taking the truth from us. They’re stealing it. I’m the only one I know who’s looked for it, who’s seen what there is to be seen. Who’s grabbed onto the truth and kept searching.

I’m not prepared for the outside world. I can’t survive it. Not alone. These articles I read, podcasts I listen to, the very truth itself that I’ve uncovered. It’s my only armor of defense in this godforsaken world that I’ve found myself in. It’s my only armor against the slime.

“We have an hour to go until the blood transfusion.”

The fluorescent lights glare into my eyes. It’s like being at the dentist’s office, only it’s really nothing like the dentist’s office. The cold metal of the handholds holding me down to the hard rubber of the patient table is like metal bands wrapped tightly around my biceps, my wrists, and my ankles. I feel the desire to writhe in the deep discomfort that I feel, to scream at the surgeons and the stand-by robot to rip off the manacles from my body. But I keep thinking of the slime, of the childless cat ladies who told me I was bad for being a man, of the liberal deep state that kept me locked up, and most of all, of my mom for letting all of them get to me, brainwash me, psychologically abuse me for all these years. I think of the slime and of the union I will find with the truth I have uncovered in the Intersphere after this procedure is over. After I have reclaimed my freedom. In the Intersphere. In my brain. Forever.

“When you wake up, you’ll feel a heat in the back of your head.”

The lead surgeon leaned over the table to stare straight into my eyes, blotting out the fluorescent lights like a cloud passing over the sun before it burned me alive. He wore neurolaced lenses embedded into his face, already a man elevated by machines. The lenses were strapped into his face on a band that stretched around his head, the small green visors just barely protruding from his eyes. His pale skin was stretched out like seams from his eyes, drooping over his face.

“That’s the transmission adapter,” the doctor said, tapping the back of the metal cranium plate fitted to my scalp. “It’s fused the micro battery and the wireless adapter together so that it’ll be self-charging throughout the day.” He used a fine-tooth scalpel to sift through the micro-wires hooked up to the back of the head plate. I felt it as an array of gentle prickling vibrations rippling over the back of my head. “That’s why it’ll be so hot.” The vibrations tickled me, sending shivers down my spine. “Once we’ve configured the wireless transmission, the adapter will be powered by your brain activity as well as the wireless Intersphere data wafer.”

I squirmed in my seat, wanting to release the shuddering shivers and crimping feelings lacing my whole body, only finding myself writhing gently against the ironclad hold of the manacles. “Your brain activity and the Intersphere Realm activity will keep this powered.” He tapped at the back of the cranium with his tool, causing my head to crimp under the clanging weight that echoed around my skull.

“Your very thought and the thoughts of your comrades will power this device, will power the enlightenment you, me, and all of your brothers want to see in the world,” the doctor said, leaning over the side of my head and whispering in my ear. Outside of my peripheral vision, he twisted knobs that were connected to my cranium cap, and I felt a pressure cinch my head that was both numbing and painful in its compression. The sensations drifted around my skullcap. Shivers continued to lace throughout my body, and my writhing became more spasmodic.

My hips lurched upward on the table, slamming my shins against the restraints holding my legs down. But the feelings grew remote. A soft lulling bobbed up against my awareness, even as the pain shooting through my body weighed me down. But it was worth it. I was willing to put myself through this pain if it meant that the slime could never touch me again.

………….

“Test subject has awakened.” The world was a blur. I couldn’t tell if I was awake or still drugged. I kept blacking out and reawakening in between bouts of blurry lights, the hazy auras of objects wavering before my eyes and disappearing as soon as they appeared. “Test subject has awakened.” My mouth opened, stretching its dried seams and insides. I felt like I hadn’t drank any liquids in a long time.

“Test subject has awakened.” The voice was exactly the same. It wasn’t the doctor. It was the robotic surgeon tool. But it only spoke every now and then, to announce a new phase of the operation. It wasn’t supposed to speak; it was a tool used by the surgeon. “Test subject has awakened.” As the brightness of the world and its colors and shapes expanded, I gritted my teeth, frowning and bulging my eyeballs outward in a push to widen my eyes and keep them open. A glaring white screen caught my eyes, but a deafening roar from the inside of my temples clogged my ears, and the screen’s light split in two. A splitting headache cracked through my skull, splitting apart my world. Everything buzzed and the world turned red. Even the voice of the robotic surgeon assistant faded against the voices in my mind, the voice—of my mind. Everything I had been told to resist, to banish from the public sphere of thought and speech, everything I was taught I couldn’t say to people—do to people. It was all real. The manifestos of my Ether Realm soared through my mind, its ideas—calls to action like adrenaline searing through my body and exhilarating my mind.

Finally. I lifted my limbs from the table and clambered off its surface. I flexed my arms to the side and roared at the ceiling of fluorescent lights in exaltation.