Chapter 2 - Does multiplication turn me on?

“Alchemy is the power of the body and the real world, pickle alchemy is the most delicious usage for this power.” - Rick Tzu, pickle alchemist strategist.

Vera came back home in a daze, she knew something had changed. She was excited about the bacteria she had cultivated, but didn’t understand this incessant feeling washing over her. Was it really fateful attraction? How could she feel it for a micro-organism? Did the organism have a sense of self, and according to the law of fateful attraction, was it attracted to her? It didn’t always happen that the law went both ways, and that had Vera worried.

She did things in her dorm room automatically until the door opened. Her roommate Jill Wei entered, Jill was a medicine student in the same faculty, but she lived her life vicariously. Steeling her body against the deteriorative functions of drugs on the body, she was an addict through-and-through.

This didn’t stop Jill from advancing both in terms of medicine and cultivation, and she would tell you it sped it up, though Vera felt her brilliant genius was slowed by the influence of the substances she was using. Jill was 4ft11, over a foot shorter than Vera, she had dark gray hair, with neon red highlights, to signify the element of fire.

“Got with a good man for once? Why do you look so happy?” Vera hated how crass Jill was whenever she came back to the dorm, especially in her heavily inebriated stupors like she had today. Vera however blushed, as she had no good response to that.

“Success with bacteria cultivation.” She finally managed to stammer out, her cheeks becoming even redder as realization, that there was no way she just fooled Jill, had dawned on her.

“I see” Jill smiled wide-eyed, clearly showing that she knew that she was just lied to. “So young Vera doesn’t want to talk about her boy problems.” She put her hands to her eyes play-crying. “I’m hurt.”

“You say that, but you always tell. I might as well print it out as a letter and send it to everybody if I tell you.” Vera was angry, as such a thing had happened before.

“Aww, don’t be so cold to me, I can help you succeed.” Jill got closer and touched her on the shoulder.

“That’s not...” Vera trailed off, she was unsure on how she could ‘succeed’ in her predicament. Resolving to change the discussion topic “I made some dinner, chicken noodle soup, if you want some.”

“You know, paying me off is just a temporary solution” Jill said with determination but instantly sat behind the table and started eating, knowing to give Vera at least a bit of a berth.

Vera moved to her bed and started reading about the base bacteria she was working on, she knew that it wasn’t supposed to have a sense of self, as she had made many experiments on them, but it was clear that this particular batch was different.

It didn’t help her, the bacteria was named ‘Koi Koshi’, the word Koi was an inseparable love in the olden teachings. ‘Oh the irony’ Vera though. The other part of the name came from the Koshi fungus that they ate, turning the two stumps the mushroom had into something that looked like a heart.

The reason this bacteria was the one she decided to work on, was because after thorough analysis, she believed that there was a similarity in the spiritual mask of the Koshi fungus and the Kung parasite cyst causing the widespread epidemic. This was of course just her hypothesis, but surprisingly after compiling a project with this idea, the university Principal Mark Hugh, applied for the grant to be given personally. This of course meant that she was not only given the project, but she could get a freshman to study under her, while she was working on her master thesis.

She didn’t have much luck roping the freshmen in, as the summer holidays had just ended and everyone wanted some peace and quiet from the hard work, but Vera really needed a pair of hands to help her, preferably strong hands helping her relieve all of her stress.

She stopped herself from fantasizing any further, she was tired and she had work to do tomorrow. Looking around, Jill had finished her portion of the food and done the dishes. This was one of the big reasons she stayed dorm buddies with her, along the fact that she paid on time. Jill was taking a shower, so it was a perfect moment for Vera to turn off the big day light, and turn on the small night light next to the bathroom while she dozed off in sleep.

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Vera heard the sound of Jill’s alarm clock, and woke up before Jill, this happened every day. ‘Why do the medics start class at 7 am when none of them are morning people’. She went into the shower, had a nibble and got absorbed in reading her book on algea-fungal relationships and how the Koi Koshi bacteria had certain algae like properties.

As most days, she got so enveloped in her reading that she almost forgot the time, she rushed out on her sword to the station and just about made it in time for the 8:15 train, where she continued reading. The trek lasted 32 minutes because of a slight delay but she still had enough time to fly the way over on her sword before 9:00. The two short distances on her sword didn’t have time to dishevel her hair so she was going along happily, until she saw her childhood friend Markus Hong having an argument with John Wo, the spider boy.

She came closer, not wanting them to know about her.

“You can’t stand up to me and you should stay further away from her.” Markus seemed to be angry, but she didn’t catch the context of the argument.

“I never wanted to snub you, I just wanted to be friends with her.” John said trying to stand his ground.

Markus slammed the locker behind him and screamed at him “Yeah, well you’re not helping”. That broke something in John and he said:

“I just finished ‘Overcome Desire’, maybe you should invest some time into that as well.” With a snarky attitude. This just put Markus over the edge and he shoved John.

Vera put her hands on her head and down in a smooth motion, getting determination to stop the two from fighting, she coughed and appeared from behind the lockers, at which point John and Markus who had been tied up in a row, dropped each other and both looked down in shame, with red hitting Johns cheeks much harder than Markus’s.

“You’ll both be late for class.” She said while skipping on her Soul cultivation studies. Vera herself had an imbalance that the doctor suggested skipping Soul Realm studies, in favor of either more Body Realm studies or continuation on her master’s thesis. Even though it was characteristic of her to do the research over the Body realm studies, today she had extra reason to, and with pep in her step, she continued down the hallway, towards the research lab.

On the way there she met Lang Bao, who was going towards the classroom from the toilet.

“Hey Lang how is it going?” She seemed out of it until Vera called to her. She suddenly jolted her head towards Vera, smiled and said:

“Oh, it’s going well.” She stopped next to her and said “Are you going to do more research now?” while putting her hand on her shoulder “You know you used to be the most advanced in Soul Realm until you started shirking your classes.” She said, knowing full well the reason she didn’t try to advance her knowledge of the Soul Realm. On the outside that question looked playful but it seemed something was bothering Lang.

“So you and Mike got ahead of me, so what?” Mike Zhou was the top of the class in terms of cultivation, he was also proficient in the other studies, but as a result he didn’t have much of a social life.

“You used to be the only one who kept him in check, in terms of Soul Realm and yesterday the twins caught up to him in terms of Body Realm.” Lang took her hand off her shoulder. “You know I’ll try my best to catch up in Soul.”

“I feel like I’m on the verge of a breakthrough in terms of bacteria.” Vera said happily, so happily in fact, that Lang froze up for a second.

‘Did something good happen?’ she muttered under her breath, “Good luck, I have to run.” and Lang bound away quickly. Vera’s face just there was too cute, Lang needed to find out more.

Just like that, Vera half-skipped towards the lab, not thinking anything of Lang’s unusual behavior. She went through all the procedures, after which she almost ran towards her research place.

She asked for allowance to use the box, while she was the only student there, two beeps came which meant she could open the box including disease-ridden samples. When she entered, cold sweat went down her back.

It wasn’t there, she started looking around in panic, until she noticed that all the samples from her table were moved towards the designated fridge, freezer and dryer according to their labeling.

“Phew.” She sighed a sigh of relief, picked up the green container with the bacteria she felt a connection to and started twiddling it in her fingers. One of those orange spots hosted it.

She stopped herself as it almost fell out of her hand, “That was close.” She sighed again. She went over all of the required steps, for all of her samples, writing down all the numbers and data. She kept looking back at the important sample, but instead of trying to make a new concoction, she decided to look at it under the microscope.

She took a micro-pipette and took a milliliter of the substance, she believed contained the organism she was inundated with. Carefully placing it under the looking glass, she noticed a blackish line appear pressed against the looking glass.

Looking into the microscope, she could see the classical bacteria, their tiny flagella motors and their body parts, but when going over the blackish spot, a sense of deja vu appeared. ‘Future Sight’ she tried to use her Soulforce to see better, but it didn’t help too much, until she got to the other side of that black smudge.

Collagen! “That means its human hair!” she exclaimed. Embarrassed, she looked around her, noticing no one was there, she exhaled and the blood thumping sensation quickly subsided. ‘How did a human hair get there’ she thought to herself, “I use a net on my hair when inside the lab” she spoke quietly to herself.

She paced back and forth, until finally “It was from my eyebrows!” she exclaimed again, this time not afraid anyone would hear. ‘So that’s what caused the attraction to happen in the first place’ she muttered under her breath.

“I must look for the bacteria” she said and continued looking along the tiny eyebrow piece, until she found it, close to the end of the follicle. “Aha, got you!” and she admired it for a couple of seconds.

‘I need to make a better environment for it’ she took out a tiny needle, and scraped off the bacteria itself, using the technique ‘Complete Stillness’ on her whole body except for her two fingers, for maximum coordination. Placing it in a new Petri Dish filled with agar for cultivating cultures, she took off another of her eyebrows and disinfected it, put it under warm water for a couple of seconds, before placing it at the end of the needle.

She then used her Body Realm ‘Relekinesis’ to remove the bacteria safely off the needle. It was now alone in a Petri dish with all it needed for survival ‘Wait, they love Koshi mushrooms’ she thought to herself, so she took a small Koshi mushroom piece and placed it next to the eyebrow. She closed the dish and decided to give the little one some space.

The rest of her day went pretty normally, but she kept looking back at the Petri dish, so before her closing hours, she looked at it through a microscope, feeling a strange feeling she said “Future Sight” and finally had a Eureka moment in the Body Realm, the first time in 5 months.

She saw the single bacteria cell, right as it had duplicated its DNA, during the next 40 seconds she saw it duplicate and became hot and bothered “I’m such a pervert.” She said out loud. ‘Getting horny from watching a bacteria multiply, how degenerate’ she felt embarrassed, but she turned around ‘I should think of it in a different way’.

Vera became content, she knew that the bacteria could thrive in there and she felt as if the fateful attraction doubled in power “Oh god, does that mean… both?” She didn’t want to think too hard on that.

On her way back home, the throbbing became the same as yesterday, so she decided it probably hadn’t doubled.

After getting back home, she saw Jill already sleeping, she realized it was Tuesday so Jill wouldn’t party, cause Wednesday was ‘Learning day’ for people in masters courses, cultivation, research and practical lessons were put on hold, in favor of regular classes. Vera sighed, she was rearing to go back to bacteria cultivation.