“Ahem. Excuse me?” A naked preteen boy coated in mucous said to a passing man in a lab coat.

“Ah! Specimen LC15! I see you’ve hatched from your genesis chamber. I pray there’s nothing wrong?” The scientist asked. He was young and enthusiastic.

“No, nothing in particular. It’s just…”

“Yes?”

“Well, I don’t mean to be a bother, but I appear to be glowing.”

“So you do.”

“Is that typical?” The boy inquired, thankful that the bright green glow obscured any details of his nakedness (for, despite being vat-grown and completely ignorant to the social mores of the real world, he was still a 10-year-old boy and some things are universal).

“I… I don’t believe so?” The scientist offered.

“Was that a question?”
“I’m sorry, I’m rather new here.”

“Surely you know whether or not people are supposed to glow. You don’t glow. Am I the aberration or are you?”

“Well, I mean, maybe it’ll wear off.”
“Wear off?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’ll wash off when you take a few showers. Like paint, or despair.”

“This pair of what?”

“And if it doesn’t, well, it could be quite useful.” Said the Scientist, trying to change the subject.

“How so? The real world doesn’t involve a great deal of spelunking, does it?”

“Well, I dunno. Maybe… Alright, will you accept a hypothetical?”
“It’s really all I know at this point, sir.”

“Excellent. Alright, let’s say you’re walking home from a day of your post-birth five year long mandatory service at the local hectanium mines, and you’re depressed-“

“-Perhaps because I was earlier on the receiving end of the shenanigans of some particularly vicious anti-bioluminescence hate group. Assuming, of course, that there are actually enough of us to warrant such a group. But I wouldn’t know, now would I?”

“Quiet you. Do you want to accept my hypothetical or not?”
“I’m sorry. Hypoth away.”

“Right. So let’s say you’re feeling depressed for one reason or another, and you stumble across a blind beggar.”

“If he’s the blind one, and not me, wouldn’t I be able to see him well enough to walk around him and avoid any stumbling?”

“I meant it figuratively.”

“You’re very abstract.”

“Quite. In any case, let us say that you and this blind beggar get to talking, and it becomes clear that he’s a member of the Nazi party. You might then realize that since he’s blind, he doesn’t know you’re glowing. Since you DO know you’re glowing, you would then be able to feel quite proud of yourself for making a horrible person seem ignorant by comparison. That seems to me as if it would be quite useful.”

“I think you’re reaching.”

“I think you’re naked and covered with mucous.”

“Curses.” The boy said simply. He looked at the scientist, and he felt naked and covered with slimy by comparison.