A miasma of bright blue-pink gases filling the glass tube thickened unevenly. Powerful but unseen forces seemed to be greedily attracting and compressing the matter around the randomly scattered spots. Among these shapeless clusters, fleeting gaseous streaks stretched lazily like smoke from an incense stick. An intense blue light emanated from the spaces between the accumulated masses and streaks of matter.
Three days into the process, the gases evaporated, and the condensate had turned to plasma, which was slowly becoming dense and taking over the glass chamber. It began to precipitate clusters of matter similar in appearance to those of cotton. Gradually, they wove a three-dimensional web of microscopic filaments connected by rays of light. The cotton-like structure evolved in a manner similar to growing crystals, and the whole process, as before with the gases, occurred at different rates in different places.
By the fifth day of the process, the cotton-like structure and plasma began to change color. The blue glow faded, the plasma darkened, and the structure grew more and more pink, blue, red, and purple clusters, forming an amorphous mass.
On the sixth day, the outlines of dark, soft, round shapes could be seen here and there, though their edges continued to dissolve into the plasma. Centimeter by centimeter, the matter solidified into what looked like limbs. A casual observer might have thought he was witnessing some kind of accelerated photosynthesis, building a massive tree out of light, water, and carbon dioxide. The surface of the branches had solidified and, already clearly separated from the plasma, was getting covered with a translucent walnut patina that hardened evenly. Inside the branches, multicolored filaments developed, comprising increasingly complex networks.
The walnut branches were taking up the plasma faster and faster, thickening into a slurry that was being absorbed by the expanding brown structure.
A cloudy, iridescent liquid the color of dirty milk began to flow through one of the transparent tubes propped up in the glass chamber. This liquid, as it settled into the tube, dissolved the remnants of the plasma and liquefied the remnants of the gases that still survived in the upper part of the tube.
By the end of the seventh day, the entire chamber was filled with a milky liquid, in which floated a massive form covered with a dark, nutty coating. Delicate and transparent at first, it grew more solid with each passing hour until it tightly enveloped the branches and covered the arteries pulsing beneath. Now the shape could be named. In the glass chamber, immersed in the liquid, floated the body of a slender young woman. Her skin was already completely thickened. The barely visible bluish veins on her neck, arms, and hands pulsed gently and rhythmically. Her head was hairless. There were no eyebrows or lashes around her eyes. The long, slender fingers of the hands ended in bright, pale pink nails, the color of which seemed to be the remnants of plasma.
The milky liquid slowly drained from the chamber, and the woman floated on its surface like a mannequin, without the slightest sign of life. Even after the fluids were extracted and the chamber was filled with pumped-in air, her body remained inert. She neither moved nor breathed. The rings around the valves clicked, twisted, and popped off with a hiss. The glass chamber was now connected to the rest of the lab’s equipment only by thin hoses and wires attached at the top and end. The pumps stopped working, and there was complete silence in the room. The lights that lit the room went out. Now only the chamber was lit from above and below. Behind the semicircular glass that separated the room from the lab’s control room, the LEDs on the instruments and screens flickered, and the flexiglass desks and the glasses on the faces of the observers glowed.
“Operator, increase the oxygen level by five percent,” a harsh female voice came from the control room, where the tension was palpable. ”And start cooling the chamber.” For the next seemingly endless minutes, the woman in the glass chamber lay motionless.
“We were close…” a disappointed male voice sounded in the control room of the lab. “We will try again in a few days.”
“We’re not done yet. She just needs some time,” the rough female voice answered, this time sounding irritated instead of tense. “Operator, ten percent more oxygen and drop the temperature four degrees.”
A pall of vapor covered the inside of the chamber and quickly retreated like a chased intruder. As it disappeared, water droplets ran down the chamber’s convex glass, and goosebumps appeared on the woman’s arms.
“Operator, level the nitrogen.”
Apparently moved by some random spasm, the fingers of her left hand twitched unwittingly, but only once, then froze. Seconds passed, minutes passed, and the walnut-colored flesh showed no further signs of life. Unexpectedly, her chest rose and fell, then froze again, lifeless. After a while, it rose again with the same suddenness, and her belly sank. Her chest fell again, this time more slowly and much more shallowly than before. She remained still for a few seconds, then tilted her head and arched her body. A violent cough shook her; she drew in and choked on an abrupt gulp of air. She turned her head. Still choking and spitting out the liquid, she turned her body to the side. After a moment, she returned to her previous position, but now her chest rose and fell evenly.
She was breathing.
She moved her right hand, then slowly raised her whole arm. Her fingers passed over her stomach, her large and shapely breasts, slid up her neck and touched her lips. Her eyelids twitched slightly. They tightened, relaxed, and tightened again. A few seconds later, trembling, they began to pull apart. Finally, they lifted completely, revealing chocolate irises. She blinked and then covered her eyes with the back of her hand.
She was alive.
“She’s stable. Get her mapping and a full neural net diagnostic.” The same harsh female voice sounded again in the lab’s control room, and after a moment, much softer and gentler, it whispered, “Welcome back… sister.”
