Submission (#397) Approved

Here's the pasted version of the piece:

Dr. Scope was bored. Incredibly bored. So bored that he may or may not have pulled a random stranger off of the street without thinking twice just so they could check out his new lab findings. Sure, it may have taken him a few hours, since everyone gave him weird looks, but his search wasn’t for nothing.

“And it’s rightttt… there! Aha!”

The scientist exclaimed with glee at his microscope, pointing at it and turning to look at his guest. A burly, reptilian Terralien that looks like it could kill you at any second. Rob. He had nothing better to do. He looked incredibly out of place; he was surrounded by all sorts of gadgets and gizmos that he couldn’t comprehend to save his life. It was a giant mess, but it looked weirdly organized. The overhead lighting didn’t help either: it flickers constantly, making this whole laboratory look a lot scarier than what it needs to be.

“Did ya find the uhhh.. the thingy?” Rob tilted his head. If you looked close enough, you could see the little crocodile in his visor raise an imaginary eyebrow.

“The specimen?? Yes yes, come look!!” Scope clapped his hands together. This was the first time anyone’s listened to his babbling in a long, long time. It only filled him with joy, even if his lab rat was a little confused.

“If you say so man.” Robbie didn’t try to come off as mean; he was just skeptical. What was he about to look at?

He leaned forward, pushing his locs back so they wouldn’t fall into the… thing, under the lens. He didn’t know what it was. Scope knew, of course. He eagerly fidgeted with his hands, awaiting Robbie’s reaction. The small crocodile acted as his eyes, taking a gander into the microscope. What he saw was… surprisingly fascinating. It resembled a really small worm, with small fins extending from its sides. It was the only one that held this unique appearance, the others just looked like misshapen blobs.

“What the…”

“It’s bacteria,” Scope began, “that I grew in this very lab!! Not sure what the point of it is, though… but it’s never been seen before!! Should be harmless.”

Robbie let out the smallest chuckle at his words. Something that loosened the tension weighing over the two Terras. He pulled up from the scope, looking over at… Scope. The living one, not the machine.

“...That’s some pretty cool stuff, dude.” Robbie smiled with his words, watching the doctor’s face light up with pure excitement. He let out a little cackle, as most scientists do.

“Aha, well…” Scope trailed off, before snapping to his senses.
“OH! There’s something else I wanna show you! Come quick, come quick!!” Before Robbie could react, he was being yanked into a completely different section of the lab, with even more contraptions that he couldn’t understand.

He was going to be here for a while, wasn’t he?