Author: Colin Jeffrey

As the sentient slime mould squelched slowly across the asteroid it lived on, it found its mind – such as it was – occupied by a single thought:

Ludwig van Beethoven.

This was strange for several reasons, most obvious being that slime moulds are not renowned for their thoughts on music. Or thoughts. However, this particular slime mould was not your average gelatinous lifeform.

It had achieved sentience via a spurt of just the right stray radiation, the absorption of just the right mineral dust, and possessing genes agreeable to change. Eventually, it developed awareness and a tendency toward introspection. Its favourite pastime was pondering the nature of Beethoven’s music.

This behaviour had started when its mutated body – acting like a biological radio receiver – absorbed signals from a satellite circling the closest star. Among the data traffic was a faint rendition of “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” occasionally accompanied by the composer’s name. This information lodged itself in the slime mould’s not-quite-a-brain.

For years onward, it waited each day for the satellite’s alignment to return.

Eventually, though, the signals stopped. This upset the creature terribly. It had never been upset before, so its pain was new and all-encompassing. So much so that it determined, somehow, to get those sounds back.

So, it built a transmitter. Of sorts.

What it really did was think furiously about replicating the signal and sending its own. This caused the metallic particles within its body to realign and – in one of those one-in-a-trillion coincidences – created a crude radio transmitter. As improbable as this was, the slime mould then managed to more improbably summon its collected solar energy to produce one short, weak transmission:

“Da-da-da-DAAA.”

Exhausted, it settled down to wait, not knowing if it had been heard, but satisfied in a job well done.

Some 24 hours later, a human scientist conducting radio telescope studies of the Oort cloud from Mars’ moon, Deimos, saw a brief – but clearly aligned – set of data in her readings.

Brimming with excitement, she isolated the section, cleaned it, amplified it, and played it through her console’s speakers.

She recognised it immediately – the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.

In the years that followed, people all over the world argued furiously about the signal’s origins, who had sent it, and whether they should make a Korean reality TV show about it.

Eventually, space agencies collaborated on a mission to locate the source, then promptly sent individual spacecraft, racing to be first.

Three hundred years later, the first missions arrived. They found a single gelatinous green mass sunning itself on a rock.

It felt their presence, lifted a pseudo-limb to taste their vibrations. It quivered with anticipation. Not knowing how to communicate, the astronauts simply stood around it at first, taking selfies.

After some time, the slime mould decided to see if they knew of the Beethoven it had heard so much about.

A simple four-note melody played through the radio headsets in their helmets.

Amazed – but already prepared – one of the astronauts played a reply through his radio. It was the entirety of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

The slime mould, enraptured, sent scintillating ripples across its surface. The dim light of the distant sun played along its edges, dancing and writhing in time with the music.

The visitors from Earth could feel the joy rebounding through their bodies as the creature sent wave upon wave of emotion in rolling electrical barrages.

When the music finished and the entity slowly stopped pulsating, one unmistakable sound came through their headsets.

Laughter.

Wet, wobbly, joyous laughter.