Work Text:
The carbon dioxide concentration had dropped another three percent.
You frowned and checked the sensor again.
Still low.
That shouldn’t have happened.
You jotted the new reading into your notebook before comparing it to the neighboring microcosm. Same starting community. Same nutrient medium. Same incubation temperature. Same pressure. Every variable had been carefully controlled weeks ago.
And yet, they were beginning to tell two different stories. Satisfied the analyzer wasn’t malfunctioning, you moved down the bench, checking incubator temperatures, internal pressures, and gas composition against your controls. Months of work sat quietly humming around you inside rows of sealed microcosms.
Most people looked at your project and saw tubes of cloudy liquid or Petri dishes covered in slime. You saw ecosystems. Individual organisms were interesting. Communities is where biology becomes more unpredictable and complicated.
Communities of environmental extremophiles collected from places that seemed determined not to support life at all—acidic mine drainage, hypersaline lakes, deep subsurface rock, alpine cloud condensates. Organisms that had spent millions of years adapting to conditions most life would never survive.
Your question wasn’t which species would survive starvation. It was what happened when survival depended on each other.
Your phone buzzed in your lab coat pocket just as you lowered your eye to the microscope.
Not now.
The newly isolated cave yeast filled your field of view. The polyextremotolerant organism had been recovered from a deep marine cave system sealed off until recent mining operations breached the surrounding rock. One characteristic still fascinated researchers: despite never seeing sunlight, it produced abundant melanin.
Not to prevent ultraviolet damage. Not to reduce desiccation. If current hypotheses were correct, the pigment appeared to help the organism exploit the low levels of ionizing radiation naturally emitted by nearby uranium-bearing rock. The mechanism was still poorly understood—which, naturally, made it far more interesting.
You adjusted the fine focus.
The cells weren’t remaining in their usual yeast morphology. Long filamentous hyphae stretched across the field instead.
Huh. Cooler temperature?
You pulled a slide from another microcosm maintained at an even lower temperature. No hyphae.
Interesting.
Your phone buzzed again. You sighed, declining the call without looking. If it mattered, they’d leave a message.
Back at the microscope, another detail caught your attention. The chemolithoautotrophic isolate had expanded far beyond its previous abundance. You reached for the gas analyzer. Lower CO₂.
You glanced back at the fungal cells.
Maybe…Maybe not temperature. Maybe carbon dioxide. Not like Candida, though. If anything, this would be the inverse.
You scribbled a quick note in the margin of your notebook before underlining it once. Test CO₂ independently—repeat with CO₂ variable only, maintain temperature constant.
Leave everything else alone. If the morphology changed again, I’ll have my answer. If it didn’t… back to the drawing board.
…
Only after transferring the completed cultures and logging their endpoint observations did you finally peel off your gloves and lab coat.
Your office was little more than a desk squeezed into the corner of the research suite, but it was unmistakably yours. Conference badges hung from a corkboard beside hand-drawn metabolic pathway sketches. A tiny plush tardigrade sat watch over a stack of papers threatening to topple over. Margin-filled journal articles competed for space with postcards from colleagues, a folded letter from a childhood friend, and sticky notes layered so many times they had begun preserving old reminders beneath new ones.
You sank into the chair with a tired sigh and unlocked your phone.
Two missed calls, one voicemail. Unknown number.
Probably spam. Still…
You tapped play.
“Uh… hi. This is Ryland Grace…”
You froze.
Without realizing it, your fingers drifted across the desk, absentmindedly moving an award plaque just enough to expose the corner of a photograph hidden beneath it.
Two sleep-deprived graduate students grinned back at you. Ryland had one arm slung over your shoulder. Both of you still wore conference badges from the day you had defended your dissertation. Ryland wore the same oversized grin he always had after pulling off something ridiculous. Your cheeks were both flushed from the celebratory drinks that had followed your dissertation defense. The picture was slightly bent, one corner stained by what was probably old coffee.
You hadn’t seen it in years.
“If this is you—like actually you—which it should be if you haven’t changed your number which is… good?” He groans at his own awkwardness.
“Listen, I, I need a microbiologist. Which… that might sound dramatic—which it might be? I’m not too sure yet which is part of the problem.” You hear him readjust.
“I found something and… I remembered you. You were… kind of the only person who didn’t immediately tell me I was insane. You…. supported me without judgement”
You hadn’t heard from him since you both split ways in your careers. Him leaving university academia while you pursued research through lab work. Hearing his kind words warmed your cheeks.
“It’s alive, or at least I’m pretty sure it is. And if so…my dissertation may have been correct, which is awesome! But, not in this context.”
You caught your breath hearing the implications of his words.
Silence.
The hum of the refrigerator compressor suddenly seemed much louder. Ryland didn’t say anything else for a moment.
Was he right all along? Why not go to someone else about this, you haven’t talked in years.
“So… yeah. If you get this, could you call me back? Soon-ish? Immediately-ish? I’m going to keep making some observations but don’t think I should be doing this alone.”
“….Okay. That’s it. I think. I feel like I should say something normal like ‘hope you’re well’ or ‘long time no see,’ but feels inappropriate given the circumstances.”
“So I’ll just say… please call me back [Y/N].”
A pause.
“Okay. Sorry. Bye” then a click as the message ends.
You sit in silence for a moment, processing the bizarre message you just received. Ryland. Ryland Grace.
You look at the photo of you two for a moment before checking the timer running on your watch. Forty seven seconds until the incubation period for one of your samples would reach its endpoint. Standing up, you head back to the lab and pull the culture of thermophiles from the 65°C incubator. Writing down some observations of color changes in the biochemical assays before adding an extra label to the plate and placing it into a cooler, 30°C incubator for storage. After some quick cleaning up and reorganizing your thoughts, you leave the lab again and sit in the stairwell of the building.
You hesitate before pressing call and take a deep breath before taking the plunge. It’s rings once before he picks up.
“Ryland?”
There’s a beat of silence.
“You….you called back.”
“You sounded worried.” You say.
“….yeah, yeah that’s fair.”
An awkward silence
“It’s been a while,” you continue.
“Eight years”
You laugh quietly, “you counted?”
“I did not.”
“….”
“I may have counted” you smirk and there’s another pause.
“……so, you’re Dr. [Y/F/N] [Y/L/N] now?”
“So are you, Dr. Ryland.” You say as you lean to the side as someone walks by.
“I saw your paper on desert biofilms”
You laugh at the out of nowhere comment and his accompanying giddiness.
“I also read your dissertation follow-up on the halophilic bacterial species being used in bioremediation in combination with that algae species you were interested in.”
“You actually read it?” You smile at the thought of him following your work after you parted ways. “Most people do not get past the title”
“I almost didn’t.” He replied.
You genuinely laughed at that, smiling at the familiarity of the interaction.
Then Ryland shifts, you hear his tone change to something more serious.
“I wasn’t actually calling to catch up”
“I figured.” You sigh, remembering the urgency in his voice when listening to the voicemail.
“I found something.”
“What kind of something?”
“I… don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve been staring at it for seven hours now.” He pauses. “And I still don’t know.”
You swallow. “What do you know?”
“I could tell you, but I don’t think you’ll believe me.” Another pause. “I’d rather show you”.
“Ryland, what did you get yourself into?”
“I honestly don’t think I got myself into this. This, situation, found me.”
I lean back, looking out the window of the stairwell and quietly ask, “where are you?”