Otis the goo prospector digs his hole in the rubbery gray muck that used to be part of California. He wants to be rich. Just a simple speck, a molecule of potential is all. Stevens found one; he became rich when the goo grew a breeding stereo. Peck got skates, Fredderson even got gold.
Some say that youth can be found in the goo.
Otis would like that. He’s been digging the goo for years; become as gray as the fields around him. As he digs, sweat pours off his body.
At sunset, he leaves his hole, goes to his tent, and dies.
Down in the hole, the sweat and skin cells left by Otis sink into the goo. Ancient machines, tiny and unseen, still active, read and weave the DNA.
The next day, Otis wakes up at the bottom of the hole, wonders how he got there. He climbs out for breakfast, and finds his dead body in the tent. He sighs, and drags it to the pile with the others. How many, he wonders. Five hundred, a thousand?
He starts digging again. Someday he’ll find out how to turn the goo off.