Be sure to tell me if you like some of my theories about ghosts! if i even do a good job of communicating them?

A light. And then darkness. He forced his eyes open, but they quickly succumbed to exhaustion, and he was under again. A sea of emptiness swelled above him, pinning him to the ocean floor, the currents placing an ungodly amount of pressure on his weightless form.

At last he recovered enough sense and energy to notice his surroundings. Lying on a metal platform with his hands and feet bound to the four corners, he fought back a wave of panic.

Then a shape shifted over him. A silhouette of his mother peered down at him, deep in thought. A second smaller light besides the one which illuminated every crevice of his body came into view.

She massaged his mouth open, and Danny discovered that he couldn't object, his muscles unable to respond to his command. His mother inspected his throat, so far very human-like, aside from the fact that he seemed to glow brighter the deeper she looked.

"Interesting," Maddie muttered. She would have to make sure to locate the source some other time. She imagined it would be a very invasive procedure for the ghost.

Through with that, she moved on to his hair which appeared normal enough. She plucked one with a pair of tweezers only to watch it dissipate into the air, like a wisp of white smoke. Therefore, she concluded, that his form was indeed transitory, meaning that apart from his matrix (which she would get into later), the ectoplasm which constituted his body would lose its shape and return to the ghost zone.

Every ghost was similar in that respect. Something in the ectoplasm of the more obvious features of a ghost possessed a small amount of memory, and as a result, depending on the amount of storage (so to speak), a particular body part can last up to seven days. For example, she hypothesized that if she cut off Phantom's finger right now, it would probably not disappear until tomorrow.

However, if she cut off her own finger, it would remain in this room indefinitely and simply decompose; the materials would go nowhere. Every other carbon based substance is confined to this world, while ectoplasm could drift between both.

She espoused on that subject in one of her papers: how the Ghost zone is governed partially by psychic energy through an arm of physics that they had no comprehension of. Ectoplasm defied natural physics.

Even the structure of ectoplasm is a mystery. As she noted on day one, they knew ectoplasm consisted of one lithium and nine carbons, but beyond that, they were clueless. (Though she was working on a paper about how the protons and neutrons of a molecule of ectoplasm are constantly changing positions and mixing around, a direct violation of the strong and weak forces for an atom.

But whatever made Lithium Nonacarbon so special allowed it to change shape at will, to become invisible, to become intangible, to perform impossible transfers of heat, and to easily switch between dimensions. All these were beyond the capabilities of human science and technology.

Scientists' inability to comprehend ectoplasm probably stemmed from how poorly scientists understood about the human brain. If they were being honest, she'd say they knew about 0.01% of everything that goes on up there. Given how they knew for certain that ectoplasm was linked to consciousness (otherwise how would a ghost form with a personality and with cognition), the compound probably landed in the 99.99% of what they didn't know.

As for the way a limb of a ghost can remember its shape, that is easier to explain. All cells possessed a surprising amount of memory, but that's only because its constituents contain a certain amount of memory, and memory was only formed through chemistry. DNA, though remarkable and astonishingly complex, was composed of only four building blocks. The interaction of those four building blocks is nature's language or code.

Back to work. Maddie retrieved a hypodermic needle from the tray beside the table where Phantom lay. She noticed that his eyes widened at the sight of the glistening tip. For a moment she speculated on a ghost's physical responses to fear. They do not possess a heart so they don't possess a pulse which speeds up. They don't sweat. Do ghosts possess adrenaline? Probably not, unless ectoplasm mimicked the hormone. (Ectoplasm mimicked a lot of important body fluids and organs in a ghost.)

Nevertheless she pointed the instrument towards the underside of his elbow. She briefly wondered if Phantom was so complex as to possess veins. She guessed in a moment she would find out.

As she inserted the needle she made sure to note the ghost's increased rate of breathing. He appeared to be on the verge of hyperventilating. However, a second later he calmed down as the procedure was over. Inside the tube was about a 1 cm3 worth of ectoplasm. And yes, he did possess crude veins.

Putting it under the microscope she was disappointed to find it had lost all structure and was now a simple blob of ectoplasm. If she intended to study the ectoplasm in its original functional form, she would have to open a part of Phantom up while he was still alive.

Oh well. She could do that later in the week. And perhaps in doing so she could figure out what the other ghost meant by Phantom being different.

Who will admit that they have been looking forward to this upcoming part?

And i got rid of Ember since i don't like the idea of offending any shippers.

As for danny revealing his identity to his mother, something crucial will happen in the end in that respect, but hopefully something which hasn't been done before; im still thinking about it. Though will danny come right out and tell his mother? probably not. i never got that feeling from the show.

In addtion the science in this chapter is very crude and is probably a little bullcrap. But i haven't taken biology yet so i don't know that much.