Polly
by Spencer Barnes
It started as a joke. Life has been hard recently, and you’ve been feeling lonely. Anyone else would want the same thing: a companion. Unfortunately, your new apartment has a strict “no pets” rule, but everything has a workaround. Physarum polycephalum—“Polly” for short—is one of the smartest acellular organisms to ever exist. They can be bought on Etsy from anywhere between $9.98 to $54.79. Your other option was purchasing a Mexican marigold from the garden center Ajay worked at. When you had to choose between the two—the slime mold or a symbolic gesture towards a former lover—you spent a long time contemplating the consequences of each purchase. You thought about the flower burrowing into its stolen soil; you imagined the roots of the plant becoming multi-jointed legs; you dreamed that it could push itself out of its pot; you became terrified that it would walk away at any moment, leaving a trail of dirt and red mulch as it ran towards an inevitable end. After careful meditation, you bought the yellow blob.
Physarum polycephalum are unique in that, unlike most eukaryotic organisms, they are composed of a single cell with multiple nuclei. Polly is essentially brainless. Despite this, it is the smartest pet you’ve ever owned. Your childhood chihuahua, Persephone, used to bark at her own reflection for hours. She did this until Mom hitched her outside and left her barking throughout the night. At your old apartment, whenever you or Ajay forgot to close the bathroom door, Ajay’s cross-eyed tuxedo cat, Mortimer, would get himself stuck between the toilet bowl and the bathtub. You remember how frustrating it was to pull him out. Someone—usually Ajay until you realized how bruised his calves were—would have to get down on their knees and tug on the cat’s rear, risking a potential encounter with the animal’s claws once he was freed. If neither of you were home, your neighbors would send a text out of concern for Mortimer’s safety. Today, the cat’s constant wailing still echoes deep inside your skull. Polly, on the other hand, is incredibly intelligent, and demands significantly less attention than any pet or relationship you’ve had previously. All it needs is a damp terrarium, and some oatmeal—that’s it.
Like any creature, Physarum polycephalum are motivated by consumption. To search for food, moist tendrils branch out from their porous core, finding the shortest and most energy efficient way to reach their next meal. You remember reading a paper about researchers at the University of Hokkaido in Sapporo, Japan, who created an organic model of the Tokyo rail system. They accomplished this by feeding a Physarum polycephalum—their own Polly—pieces of oatmeal. Grains were placed on a map of Tokyo in a pattern that aligned with the many stations of the city’s transit system. Inside your slime mold’s container, a constellation of yellow veins stretches from oat to oat, mapping out your partner’s path of lethargic destruction. It would be incorrect to say that Polly sleeps in a graveyard of oatmeal. Polly does not live with tombstones: it has become your cemetery.
According to his doctor, Ajay’s tumor likely started in his prostate. She said it was rare for adults to develop this type of cancer—that in some sick way, your fiance’s condition was unique. By the time you noticed—and by the time Ajay was willing to do anything—the disease had already done too much. On top of the necessary chemotherapy, amputation was floated around as a potential treatment. You think about this as you cut Polly in two, placing the severed slime into another glass tank. Unlike human limbs, this piece of organic matter will continue to operate without its previous body. The new Polly, PollyII, can even reconnect with its former half should you permit it to (although you were never afforded this luxury). Eventually, PollyII will traverse across its container, just as the original Polly took over its home, and just as Ajay’s cancer traveled from his prostate to his legs.
You told Ajay it would be okay. This was easy for you to say: you still had four working limbs. You’re pretty sure everything was okay at first. You bought him a self-operated wheelchair. It was an expensive purchase that, at the time, seemed worth it. When Ajay was able to, he would spend his afternoons singing to his little garden by the kitchen window. Even as he was wilting away, Ajay made sure all of his flora were as alive as possible. He relied on you to water and check up on them when he was too weak to leave his bed; he was so sad when his irises began to wither. It is difficult to remember what your relationship with Ajay was actually like. All of the pointless fights, hate sex, and make-up sex seem so far away. The clearest image your heart can conjure is of the wheelchair-bound stranger you had promised to protect. You remember watching the inconceivable become reality; you concentrate on how hope and bone marrow abandoned his soul; you recall the gradual decay of it all: how the constant radiation eradicated his life and his ability to love. You do this until—absent mindedly—you cut off more of Polly’s flesh. There is now a PollyIII.
Two months have passed since you purchased Polly for $11.01 off of Etsy. Since then, PollyII, PollyIII, PollyIV, PollyV, and PollyVI have died. The original Polly has not died. You wonder if this is because of the many surgeries you have performed on it. Maybe Polly’s single cell repairs itself after it has been hurt. Why can’t humans do that? Can Polly even feel pain? Does it know how lucky it is to be such a simple organism—to not question the complexities of existence? You feel a great sense of pity as you look down at your gelatinous companion. Somehow, you find yourself engaged in a staring contest with this eyeless, pathetic creature—with your sweet, boneless Polly. Slowly, your lips lower to meet its soggy skin. They touch for a moment before you immediately pull away. The kiss does nothing to satiate your hunger for a former love. Your red lipstick looks ridiculous on Polly. It looks like some crazy person came into your apartment and left a flirtatious gesture on your slime mold; it looks like you put ketchup on fried eggs. After a few slow, methodical breaths, your tongue begins to move underneath the organism, licking it up and inching it towards the back of your throat. You close your eyes before you swallow.
It tastes like oatmeal and ass.
BIO: Spencer Barnes is currently in his sophomore year at The New School's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. This will be his first publication.