Mineral Monster

Prologue

In a large, yet often forgotten city, sat a large suburban house on a distant hill. Inside, the sounds of junk food wrappers and keyboard clacking was drowned out by the various hums of machinery below. Sophie Barger, a homeschooled highschool student with a head of curly dark hair, was sitting sideways in her armchair, legs dangling over the edge with laptop in hand. Meanwhile, her lanky father was holed up in the basement, tweaking machinery and tapping on test tubes as he worked tirelessly on his latest project.

"Any news?" Sophie yelled toward the stairs, "It's been hours since you've come up to eat anything."

Thomas poked his head up the stairs and responded, "I think it's almost done, but you'd better order something just in case."

"Can I at least come down and see it?" She said while sitting up in the chair, "You never let me watch you work, it'd be nice to have a little family bonding every once in a while."

Pausing for a moment to think, her father decided, "Yeah, might as well. It's far enough along now that I think you'll get a real kick out of it!"

With an excited hop out her chair, Sophie followed her father down to his lab. The moment she entered, a pungent earthy smell invaded her nose as she looked around at the different mineral samples sitting in tubes nearby. Her father is a very specialized scientist, mostly working in geology, but has plenty of knowledge of biology and psychology as well. He's been credited with several small steps forward in the scientific world, but as the two of them approached the back of the room, Sophie realized that her father was reaching for something much bigger this time.

"What is it?" She asked out of both curiosity and fear. Before her stood a large glass vat full of a murky liquid, and standing in the middle seemed to be a dark stone statue. Upon closer inspection, she noticed that it didn't seem to be one big piece, but instead thousands of smaller rocks all stuck together in a humanoid shape. All except for where it's face would have been, as the only thing staring back at her was a smooth, almost mirror-like, flat surface.

"This," Thomas gestures with a large grin, "is what I've been working on these past months! It's a living, inorganic being... is what I'd like to say, at least."

His smile drops as he rushes to a nearby computer and starts tapping away at it. The statue sat unmoving as Sophie walked around the tube, taking in the size of the thing. If it weren't for it's hunched over appearance, it could easy be six and a half feet tall, though even now it towered over both Sophie and her father.

"I swear, I'm as close as I can be to getting this thing to move on it's own, but I can't seem to find the final magic piece!" Thomas exclaimed as he smacked a hand on his desk, "If I can get this thing going, it'd essentially be a new species of creature."

Sophie paused as her father's words sunk in, "Wait, so you mean to tell me this boulder here is gonna start walking around?"

"Oh, it'll be able to do way more than just that! I've essentially created a sentient magnetic field, using my own mind as a baseline," he replies with a grin once again, "It's basically like another form of nanomachines, if that makes sense. Until I get it moving however, it's nothing more than a fancy pile of rocks."

Taking a moment to stare at his creation and breathe a sigh of resignation, Thomas turned to make his way back up the stairs, "I think for right now, all I want to think about is what's for dinner."

"Good idea!" Sophie responded, walking after him.

She was trying to wrap her head around what exactly her father was trying to do, but decided the details could be left for another day. As she made her way up the stairs, she turned around to get one last look at the statue, and for just a moment she could have sworn it was looking back at her.