She remembered the day she was born. The chemicals swirled in her, overjoyed, singing their Latinate names as she awakened. She was tiny, as small as an M&M, pastel peach and embossed with the face of a fairy. She was slightly telepathic, like all of her kind.
Tinkerwench’s life had one point. It was to be released from her pastel peach egg and merge with her liberator. When she was free, she would be powder pale, and dressed in a gown of pink crystals. She would wear earrings of yellow stalactites. She would swirl and dance, twanging her liberator’s brainwaves and mix mood-fluids like a DJ spun records at a rave, creating a seamless mélange of emotion and color. She could hardly wait. What Tinkerwench did after those moments of freedom didn’t really concern her. If pressed, she’d guess that she would be enhancing (and enchanting) her host Forever, or at least until the party ended. Right now, all was waiting. And competition. Tink was not the only one of her kind born that day. She laid in a plastic baggy, next her siblings, lizard-green Godzero, marigold Kitty and the Albino Twins. She perceived them next to her. They started chattering.
“I’ll be the first to be transformed,” said Godzero, breaking the silence, “because I’m the fiercest one of you all.”
When no one challenged him, he continued: “You two,” he meant the Albino Twins, “are unexceptional. No color, nothing to make you look any different from aspirin or anything else. And you two girls are too cutesy. I’m a monster, my poison is more potent.”
Tink could hardly stand such boasting. “Impotent, more like it. I’m a fairy, and my poison is tinged with magic.”
“Precisely my point. Only a girl would find you attractive.” Godzero humphed in triumph.
Tink countered: “Fool. You really have no idea, do you? Where we’re going, things like gender and sex have no meaning, whatsoever.”
Kitty spoke up, nervously adjusting the bow in-between her ears: “Can’t we all just get along, since it seems like we will be waiting together for a long time? I really do wish everyone the best.”
The Albino Twins seemed to talk, in unison, but no one understood what they said. Tink supposed that it was because they were both virgins, unembossed with a character, and subsequently, a character’s voice. The Albino’s language was undiluted chemical speak, with lots of long words, vaguely medical in sound, strung together like so many molecular components.
Kitty was too cutesy. But Tinkerwench decided to make a yeoman’s effort, and mend fences with the green lizard. “Each of us was born for a certain host. I trust that you’ll find yours, Godzero.”
Kitty’s ears wiggled in pleasure.
“Yes, and I wish the same for you. May she be made of sugar and spice, and everything nice,” growled the lizard sarcastically.
That was it. “And may you meet the brain-dead metal head you were created for!”
Kitty sighed dramatically.
“Shut up,” said Tink and Godzero simultaneously.
She saw that this was not going to be pleasant. She resigned herself to silence, thinking of the visions that she would give her host. Given that she had nothing to feed on, save the vague memories of her makers, this was surprisingly hard to do. She had a limited vocabulary in this regard. As a chemical substance, she was only the conduit for imagination; she really had none of her own. The semi-sentience that she and her siblings shared was, in this environment, quite useless. Tink did the only thing she knew how: she went dormant. This was not exactly like sleeping. She focused on her inanimacy; the unquiet rest of her volatile components being watched by her generic parts. Her tenure at the birthplace—a laboratory—would not be too long, she hoped.
