"What the hell is that?" said Dr. Roberts, jabbing his finger at the slide. "Would you tell me what that is?  Because I have never seen anything like it."

"I don’t know either," sighed Dr. Clarkson, adjusting the microscope up and down aimlessly.  It was useless; he still couldn’t distinguish much.  "There’s some sort of nucleus, I think.  Like a eukaryotic cell.  But the rest is hard to tell.  I don’t even think it has a defined shape."

"This would be more exciting if it did something, you know?"  Dr. Roberts said, tapping a pen against his teeth.  "Apparently they just scraped it off some ship at the bottom of the Atlantic.  It’s probably mutant algae or something."

"It would be some pretty mutant algae," Clarkson answered, his voice heavy with doubt.  "How hard have you looked at this?"

"Long enough to know I’m not really interested, just frustrated," Roberts muttered, walking off in the other direction.  "I’m going to go back to working on that vaccine that actually has some promise.  I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about mutant algae."

"This is definitely not mutant algae," said Clarkson, mostly to himself, staring hypnotically into the microscope.

***

"A little," said Clarkson the next day.  "A little!  And I wiped it up.  I wiped it up with that towel right here, in this biohazard bin."

Roberts opened the biohazard bin, gagged at the smell, and slammed it shut.  "Well, it’s growing, that’s for sure.  Just look at this desk.  It’s covered in the stuff!  And so is the inside of that bin; it’s absolutely caked. This is disgusting.  Can’t you conduct research without spilling it?  Christ."

"The growth is incredible," said Clarkson, scratching his head and ignoring Roberts’ harsher words.  "They didn’t say anything about that in the report they sent us."

"Well, they didn’t know that yet, they sent it to us for analysis," growled Roberts.  "I’m sure we have more than enough sample material of it now. Clean it up with something a little more toxic this time."

"As you wish," answered Clarkson, absentmindedly.  "Other than this and its bizarre structure, all the tests I’ve run seem to imply it’s a fairly normal eukaryotic organism . . ."

"OK, yeah, mutant algae.  Just clean that nasty stuff up."

***

Joey was a janitor.  Joey was a humble janitor.  Joey just cleaned the floors and tables with some special antiseptic stuff.  Joey was not prepared for what he saw entering Laboratory Room A.

It was everywhere.

Joey stood with the door open, staring for a long time.

Eventually, he slowly eased the door shut, and headed towards Laboratory Room B, which was refreshingly normal.

Joey did not look behind him as he left the hallway.

***

Clarkson awoke in a sweat from a terrible nightmare.  Panting wildly, he felt paralyzed.  He closed his eyes again and reassured himself that this usually happened when he awoke from such a dream.  But a strange sensation over his entire body caused him to panic again.  It was sort of like the pins and needles of limbs falling asleep, but more like actual pins and needles piercing him.

When he opened his eyes again, he was greeted with a room coated with a fairly normal eukaryotic organism.  Turning his eyes to his body, he screamed in horror as he saw the organism steadily, disgustingly, digesting his skin—and as it burgeoned and grew, heading for his muscles and bones as well.