Cohost writing prompt: @slime-that — Goo that’s planned out the perfect rapid transit network
Civic Planner Mouth-Spilleth-Piety sits with his hands folded neatly, an expression of polite interest upon his face. “I’m told,” he says, smooth and sincere — truly, he is cursed with a mien suited to speaking to members of the public, cranks, philantropists with strings attached, complainants, and theorists — “that you have put considerable work into a perfected model of public transportation.” He gestures to the small table between them. “Can I offer you refreshment?”
There’s tea, and some cubes of starchy paste, flavoured with petal-water and dyed pastel colours with various plant extracts. Innocuous for most visitors, close enough to sweets to occupy small children, far enough from any nice dessert to pacify their parents.
The ooze in the visitor’s chair bounces. “No, no,” it says, “thank you, but really, I am so excited to see my work taken up—”
Mouth-Spilleth-Piety nods judiciously. “I have to caution,” he says, “that political process, and the sad business of compromise, are the death of many perfect things. Eager as I am to see your work, I cannot promise we shall either live to see it implemented.”
This is polite expectation-setting, for the inevitable discovery that yet another peddler of perfection is an unmitigated loon. He can only hope that this one won’t haunt the entrances for months afterward, screaming invective because they haven’t IMMEDIATELY put hippopotamus-drawn rickshaws on the streets, and simultaneously revolutionised the city’s food supply with hippo bacon.
“Behold!” the ooze says, putting forth pseudopods to unscrew the end of a document tube, and tip a sheaf of engineering drawings onto the table. Mouth-Spilleth-Piety moves with elegant haste to keep papers and tea safe from each other.
“This is—” he hesitates, scrutinising the plans. “A blueprint for a high-speed pneumatic mail delivery tube system?”
“With modifications for passenger use!”
“Ah,” Mouth-Spilleth-Piety says, with another solemn nod. “Not of particular suitability for, I think…any of our current transit passengers with, for example, bones?”
“One doesn’t compromise perfection for inconvenient trifles,” his visitor declares grandly.
