An Essay on the World of Oozes:

Hello. I am Garanze (Ga-ran-ze), a red class ooze author. I am told people in your
world wish to learn about mine. Well, allow me to explain what I know. As an
important note, I am told that your world has 3 physical dimensions. In my world,
there are only 2 physical dimensions. This may take some adjusting for you to
understand; understanding your world was rather tricky for me.

Biology:
Starting with the matter of biology, I will begin by explaining myself.

At 11 inches wide and 7 inches tall, I am an average-sized ooze. My body is made

entirely of red Form Ooze; this is why I am Red-class. There are also Blue-class
oozes made of blue Form Ooze.

By thinking about it, I can roll my ooze around and jump upward. This ooze is soft,
providing little resistance to physical intrusion; however, the ooze flows around
objects to remain one group. I can instead pull and hold small objects within this
ooze to carry them around easily. I can also harden my border, turning my soft
perimeter quite hard to block things from getting in.

Inside me, there is an object known as a Mindstone with a radius of 1 inch. This
stone is grey in color and contains my mind; it holds my memories and thoughts. It
also creates an Aura field, a complex force that I'm told doesn't exist in your
world. It holds my ooze body together into one mass and allows me to effect the
world around me in several ways.

The most important ways we use Aura are as follows:

Sightcasting: We are constantly and passively sending out a small signal that lets
us see everything nearby. We can see in every direction until we hit a solid
object. This tells us color and distance. We can see through Form Ooze (we still
see it, but we can see beyond it too), but everything else is solid.
Voicecasting: We can send out a bigger signal that sends a message. Everyone who
can see us "hears" the message and knows who sent it.
Lifting: We can focus to move objects around. We can only move objects we can see
unless we know exactly where they are. Once someone starts moving an object, no-one
else can move that object until they stop. We can even use this ability to jump in
mid-air; this is quite disorienting however and most can only do it once before
they need to land. Lifting can not be used on something in someone else's Form
Ooze.
There are others, but they are less important; I'll cover them as they become
important.

As an Ooze, I require food to continue my life. My Mindstone requires energy to

work. By bringing food into my ooze, I can consume it and turn it into energy for
my Mindstone. If my Mindstone has excess energy, it makes extra Form ooze. However,
if my Mindstone runs out of energy, it will start to consume my Form ooze for
energy. If it consumes too much of my Form, it will run out and...

There are only 2 ways to kill an Ooze. Either break its Mindstone or remove its
Mindstone from its body. In either case, the Mindstone turns black and stops
working forever. If there isn't enough Form ooze to surround the Mindstone, this
counts as removing it from the body.

Now, moving beyond the matter of survival and onto reproduction. Two oozes can come
together to create a third ooze. As a red class ooze, I would need to work with a
blue class ooze (like my partner) to have a child. We each take some of our Form
ooze and combine them into what is known as a pod. Over several weeks, the pod
grows larger and, if we're lucky, an new Mindstone pops into it and it settles into
either red or blue. If not, the pod breaks and we have to try again.
Moving past the biology of greater oozes and onto lesser oozes. There are two other
classes of ooze: purple and orange. Purple and orange class oozes have much smaller
Mindstones (about 0.5 inches) and are much smaller and stupider as a result. My
contact in your world tells me that less intelligent "dogs" would be a good
comparison. Their Aura is weaker as well; they can see and "hear", but can not use
Lifting. They can Voicecast, but the results is just "sound" without meaning.
Purple and orange reproduce with each other in much the same way I described prior.

An odd trait of lesser oozes is Twinning. Roughly 0.1% of the time, a lesser ooze
forms with 2 Mindstones instead of one. Such a lesser ooze, known as a double ooze,
is twice as large as other lesser oozes. Double oozes are stronger and faster than
other oozes. However, they are not any smarter; their two mindstones are linked and
hold the exact same thoughts. Both stones fail if either is removed. If two double
oozes reproduce, the resulting ooze has a ~75% chance of Twinning as well. Greater
oozes never Twin.

Physics:
Now onto the matter of physics. I will begin by explaining the basic rules of my
world.

At the bottom of the world is the Ground Line. There is no "below" the Ground Line.
As far as we know, it is the bottom of the universe. Any object below a certain
size (about 0.005 inches) "falls through" the Ground Line and vanishes.

One of the basic forces of our universe is gravity. With one exception, all objects
are pulled towards the Ground Line.

There are 7 basic elements in our world. They are as follows:

Water: Water is the root of all life. At exact intervals, a wall of water falls
from a great distance above; this wall of water is known as the Rain. Water is used
in many ways. Any water that touches the Ground Line vanishes. Water is blue in
color.
Green Wood: Green Wood is a plant. Green Wood is too soft to build with; however,
it can be consumed as food.
Light Wood: Light Wood is a plant. Light Wood is used as a building material. It is
a tan color.
Dark Wood: Dark Wood is a plant. Dark Wood is used as a building material and is
immune to Lifting with Aura (it can however be pushed by objects lifted with Aura).
It is dark brown in color.
Stone: Stone is found in the wild. It is very strong and can only be moved with
Aura. It is also immune to gravity. It is dark grey in color.
Form Ooze: Form Ooze makes up the body of living creatures. It comes in 4 colors
(red, blue, purple and orange). Any Form Ooze that touches the Ground Line vanishes
unless it is connected to a functioning Mindstone. Form Ooze can be consumed as
food, but usually is not.
Mindstone: Mindstones hold the mind of living creatures. Grey Mindstones are alive
and immune to lifting with Aura; black Mindstones are dead and not immune.

Moving into the specific, I will cover the field of agriculture. I am not an expert
in this field, but I will do my best.

Each of the three Woods works the same way. Wood comes in three forms: Live, Dead
and Source. Dead Wood is darker in color; Source Wood is brighter in color.

Live Wood that comes into contact with Water consumes the water and grows larger,
going upward and outward. Live Wood must always have a line of itself connecting it
to the Ground Line.
Any Live Wood disconnected from the Ground Line, even once, turns into Dead Wood.
Dead Wood can not grow. It is used for building and food.
Every so often, when Live Wood grows, a small part of the new wood will be Source
Wood. Source Wood falls off the plant a short while later. If Source Wood is ever
touching both Water and the Ground Line, it turns into Live Wood. Thus, new plants
can be planted in new places.

Green Wood also sometimes grows Colored Wood when growing. Colored wood comes in
three colors: red, yellow and blue. It still works as food, but it can also be
crushed up and dissolved in water to make paint.

That is my entire understanding of agriculture.

One last point to discuss is Fire. Not an element, it is a force. If two pieces of
Stone are clashed together fast enough, they produce a small amount of Fire. If
Fire touches Wood, it starts to consume the wood and produce more Fire. If Fire
can't find Wood to consume, it fades away. Fire is destroyed if touched by Water.

Most wood is destroyed when Fire consumes it, but Colored Wood instead becomes a
strange substance called Binder. Binder can be used to attach two objects together
when put between them (I'm told it's like glue in your world). Binder does not
attach to Form Ooze or Stone and is destroyed when touched by Water.

Technology:
My contact tells me you wish to hear of us as people in addition to hearing of our
world. I will begin by discussing the technology that allows our way of life.

Most tools are made of Light Wood. It is a sturdy material, hard enough to handle
stress, but can be moved both by pushing and Aura. We can use such tools to move
objects and make things much easier. However, Light Wood isn't hard enough to shape
itself. Hence, we have to use stone tools to shape light wood in the exact ways we
need. We also use stone tools to break off more stone we can use.

We use Purple and Orange class oozes to make our lives easier as well. They can be
trained to follow basic orders. We use them to pull and push objects or just as
pets.

Our homes are made of mainly of Dark Wood. Imagine a box of Dark Wood. This box is
made of 5 pieces of Dark Wood. 3 of these pieces are the length of the room
(usually 4 feet) and 3 inches thick. One along the top, one along the bottom and
one on one side. Pushed into place and connected with Binder, the 3 large pieces
form 3 sides of the room. The remaining two pieces of Dark Wood are each half the
height of the room and 1 inch thick. One is bound on the bottom with 2 inches to
the bottom. Then, a piece of Light Wood, 1 inch by, in this case, 28 inches, is
placed next to it and the final piece of Dark Wood is bound parallel to the first
small piece. Now, the entire room is flipped upside down. Now, the purpose of these
actions is clear. The Light Wood drops, closing the room. However, it can be lifted
with Aura to enter and exit.

To explain this next step, you need to understand a rare Aura ability called
Popping; only trained builders are allowed to know how to do it. Somehow, they can
cause two locations just 1-2 inches apart to switch places. When the room is where
it belongs, the builder Pops small stone disks into the wall to lock it in place.
The wood wall can only be pushed, but the stones won't budge. Only someone who
knows where the stones are can move the room; such a person could move the stones
directly and the stones would push the room. Houses are just made by Binding
several rooms with larger chambers built in much the same way.

On to an... less than pleasant topic, I will briefly discuss the methods of combat.
As I said, there are two ways to kill an Ooze: break or remove. There are different
weapons for each of these purposes. The main weapon people use is spears made of
Light Wood. This can punch through the perimeter of an ooze to hit their mindstone
and try to break it. Other weapons rely on hooks, to try and pull their mindstone
out.

Moving onward to flatter land, dead mindstones can be very useful. To be clear, I
am talking about the use of smaller mindstones; larger ones are too complex (not to
mention the sheer disrespect; we crush them and drop them into the Ground Line).
Now you know enough to understand the last Aura power I need to discuss. If you can
see a dead mindstone, you can Read it to learn what data is on it. When an ooze
dies, its mindstone is full of thoughts and memories; however, we don't know how to
understand them. But, if you bring the mindstone into your body, you can Write onto
it, erasing and overwriting it. We use this to store, copy and transfer
information.

The mindstones of double oozes are even more useful. They remain linked and always
have the same content, so anything written to one can be read from the other,
regardless of distance.

Voicecasting has no maximum range. You can hear anyone you can see, no matter how
far away they are. By putting people atop great towers, we transmit information
across great distances.

This is more a point of geography, but there are several large mountains in the
world, each made of pure stone. Towers built atop these mountians can see almost
everywhere.

Culture:
While I doubt you will understand some aspects of our culture, I'm told others are
rather similar to yours.

Our cities are large buildings divided into different areas. The lower floors are
the marketplace, the middle floors are the homes and the upper floors hold the
goverment. Cities are mostly connected to each other by merchants traveling from
one to the next to make their fortune and towers to send news along from city to
city.

Outside of cities, you will find farms that produce a range of things. They need
access to the rain and the Ground Line, so they can't work within the city. By
their efforts, the cities have supplies of food, building materials and mindstones.

Our currency is measured in units known as a Tri, so named because it is a

triangular coin made of light wood. We also have pentagonal coins worth 20 Tri. The
method for making these coins is a closely guarded secret.

To discuss the arts, art is mainly divided into two fields: sculpture and writing.
Being a writer, I am a bit biased when I say that I prefer writing. Sculptors take
blocks of Wood and carve them in new and interesting shapes that people like to
look at. They often paint the wood as well. Writers take mindstones and write
stories into them, so people can read them for entertainment. I won't go too deep
into either, as I'm told you have both.

We also play games for entertainment. Rather than bore you with the wide range we
have, I will just explain one to get the idea across. Das is a board game played on
two boards. Both boards are made of white wood. One board is held in the air above
the other using small stones; together, they form a 2 by 8 board. Each player has 6
pieces made of white wood placed on the board; one set is painted red, the other
blue. I'm told it plays like a game in your world called Chess.