Sample Number One
He just wanted to taste it
Perhaps it would have been better, somehow, if this had been sample 142, or 96, or 305 — something innocuous and meaningless — but no, it was sample number one. It was the first. And Devin wanted to taste it.
He’d tried blaming a few other things. Perhaps it had reached some telepathic tendrils into his mind at the point of death to make him look at it hungrily? It wasn’t dead. It lay microscopically still, waiting to be ingested so its parasitic fetal cells could awaken and attach to his stomach lining and grow inside his blood.
Perhaps this was an important scientific experiment that needed to happen now — before endless committees talked themselves into a tangle. Yes, now, before the whole thing got entrenched with the bioethics lot and tied up in the finicky parameters of some drawn-out lab test. He would certainly not be included.
He needed to step up and be the pioneer. There were millions starving back home — soon billions. But here on Europa, there was an endless supply of these nutritionally rich organisms. Their alarming rate of reproduction and ease of capture destined them to save an ailing species of twelve billion superior mouths.
But the truth was, Devin just wanted to taste it.
He wanted, more than anything, the experience of pressing the monochrome dough between his teeth, feeling the spread of its fizzing oil across his tongue while that sharp, salty, oaky aroma filled his mouth and coated his throat and washed him through. He’d seen the salivation of the others. They’d all thought it. But none had the guile, or the access.
So, he slipped the scalpel from his sleeve, angled his body to block the cameras, and sliced out a decent chunk from the thirteenth petri dish of Sample #1. It was the part he’d identified, in his head, as the flank. The morsel and the scalpel went back into his sleeve as he lowered the thirteenth Petri into permanent cold storage.
Later, as he cooked it, he thought he saw, just for half a second, the meat twitch to life. He grinned at himself. He chuckled, whistled, and shook his head. It must’ve been the spit of the oil, the kick of the flame, a trick of the eye. But Devin didn’t care. He just wanted to taste it.
