The Juicer.
A speculative sci-fi story. Not one you'd want for breakfast.
Is that…roast chicken? Yes. Roast chicken. But why the fuck is it so dark? Where’s the light?
Flap an arm for the bedside lamp but there’s nothing. Feels like there’s ten hands at the end of my arm. Arms. ARMS? What the fuck? I can’t move my body. I squirm. I’m stuck tight in somewhere, stuff pressing against me everywhere. Warm wetness on my hands. Squirm. In some kind of warm, wet sleeping bag? Did I piss myself? Wait…there’s a light. Squirm free. Chicken getting stronger. Christ I’m hungry. Thirsty. What did I drink? Did I drink? Need to eat. Squirm to the light, wriggle free. Get out of this…this…whatever it is.
BANG. Light. Blind. Dark. Dark fades to light.
EEEEEEE. Sound. Silence. Fades to sound. Voices.
Smell. Chicken. Hungry. HUNGRY!
Voice
<Chicken. Gets ‘em every time.>
Squirm. Got to get out. Arms. Arms. Legs Legs Legs Legs. LEGS? What the fuck.
Voices
<Holy fuck! Get it!>
<You get it!>
<What the fuck are you paid for?>
Light. White fades to vision. Everything at once. Blink. Can’t blink. Where the fuck am I?! Faces. HUGE Faces. Room. Hospital? Up. Down. Left. Behind.
Under: what is thaaaaat?
Above: light. Blink. Can’t blink. Help. Speak. SQUEEEEEE. What the fuck. Help. SQUUUee. SQUEEELP!
<Zap it for fuck sake!>
ZZZZzzzt.
Jerking. Falling. Screaming. Can’t scream. Can’t stop seeing everything. All round. All at once.
ZZZZzzzt.
Dark.
“Did you get it? Get the lid on it?”
“Yeah. I got it, but, Jesus, Doc! You didn’t say it was going to be like…like that!”
“What did you expect a third generation exotic was going to be like, Franklin?”
“I don’t know. Like a…a blob or something. Not so…lively? Not like an actual thing.”
“Oh, they’re an actual thing alright. Autoclave that taser then hang it up will ya? And antibac yourself when you get your kit off. Can’t be too careful.”
Franklin bumbled around in the theatre, new-kid style, giving a quick side eye to the vitrine and the lifeless looking exotic inside it. It’s legs were still. He shuddered.
“What do we do with it, after the extract?” he asked.
Doctor Benedetto mumbled through her sandwich and a few shreds of chicken flew out. She raised the back of her hand to cover her mouth.
How can she eat that, after…after…
“This? This is a damned good sandwich, Franklin, that’s how I can eat it, even if the chicken is vat reared,” she said, interrupting the disgust in Franklin’s face. A drip of mayo hung at the corner of her mouth.
“I always bring a chicken salad sandwich to an extract. Like I told you, chicken always gets them out. S’posed to use the speculum, the drugs, the calipers right? Didn’t do shit did it. Thing’s in there for the duration. But thing’s gotta eat, right? It’s been in there, what, four weeks? Think about it.”
Franklin didn’t want to think about it. Five years of vet-med and this is it? Off-world, sucking exotics out of rich kids brains in a ‘roid lab? Grey work at best.
He closed his eyes. Mustangs galloped in slow motion over imaginary plains; real dogs held up their paws. It was a fantasy, rendered in photoreal trickery on the university brochures. Were there any real horses left? Any fucking plains? Any grass?
“What do we do with it now, the thing?”
“Juicer. Then eDNA.”
“What? Don’t they cost, like, a zillion creds?”
“Well,” Annie paused to wipe the mayo off her face, “this one was big. Biggest I’ve done. Never usually leave them in longer than a week, see? This was four! Pushing the limits. That’s why the crash team was in, I guess.”
“So?”
“So it’s too big for anything now. It’s too…developed. We’d never get it into anything. Not with all the—”
“—the legs?” Franklin finished her sentence.
“Yeah. The legs. And yes, they do cost a zillion creds. Christ knows what that dude wanted put in there. Void like a grapefruit.”
“A what?”
“Never mind. Big hole, that's all. So yeah, we take a few slices then juice the rest. Level-P gets the eDNA to play with. They love that stuff, and it's worth a shit ton. They don’t tell the client that when they invoice, that’s for sure.”
Franklin absorbed the economics. “I’m going to shower. Do you mind? I just feel…itchy.”
Annie laughed. “Sure. Say, I know you only been here a week, but…Shit. Do you, er, want to, er, you know—” her eyebrows flicked up twice, “—after you shower?”
Franklin looked at her, his resting idiot face on. Right now, all he wanted to do was scrub his skin to the bone, but he wasn’t sure of the etiquette with his line manager. Usually, the “sex question” was one he would have answered for himself within a half minute of walking into a room with a woman in it, or a noot for that matter. Especially off world. But right now?
Legs. Scuttling. Too many eyes. Yellow viscid liquid spurting from the brain hole as the exotic squirmed it’s way out of the skull.
The pause was just too long. “Whatever,” said Annie. “Just thought, you know, we gotta work together and there’s not much goin’ on here. Know what I mean?” She sighed. That and the cranial speculum, the insertion of it, shaving the scalp, the pinkness; the exotic just ever so much like a cock sliding out, glistening wet…Annie? you’re a freak, girl.
Franklin left. In the shower he thought about “the sex question” and it didn’t seem such a bad idea. Still, the exotic? The size of it? How it moved? How it squealed? The way its legs twitched like it was trying to haul itself out of the client’s brain; its own head jerking left and right, up and down, like it was looking around?
“What do they do with the patient, once we get it out of them?” Franklin asked when he got back to the theatre, smelling of apple body wash, feeling less itchy. Annie was at the microscope; the thing was in it. She was taking samples.
“Client, Franklin. The Client,” she said, without turning round. “They take ‘em to Modules. Level O. Above my pay-grade down there. Not our concern. I’m a flesh and blood gal. It's all nuts ‘n bolts ‘n chips ‘n clips down there. Proprietary. Neural robo-surgery. Bring the box over, will ya? I’m nearly done here.”
Franklin picked up the vitrine for the exotic, traces of yellow slime wrinkled his nose, even with the lid on it.
“What sort of mod would need all that space, Doc?”
“Fucktifiknow. Something ‘spensive. Usually, with a one-weeker? It’s a sensor mod—gets wired into the frontal cortex. Or, sometimes, like an AI co-pilot for multiple drones—assassin shit. We don't ask, they don’t tell. But they’re like, so big.” She made a circle with finger and thumb.
“Something that size though? S’prised there’s any room left for the brain. But that’s the thing with your exotics; they, like, reorganise shit inside there; bond with it. Don’t think anyone knows for sure. We just gotta keep ‘em alive. Pop ‘em in and suck em out. Works a fuck ton better than surgery. Mortality rates’re excellent. That’s why the big bucks.” She rubbed a finger and thumb together.
Franklin hummmed.
“Ok, I’m done. C’mere with that container.” Annie beckoned him over with clicking fingers.
Franklin brought the vitrine across and Annie slithered the exotic into it with silicone tongs. As it dropped in, some of the legs twitched. Franklin fumbled the lid, desperate to get the clips on. Annie smirked. He’s kind of adorable.
“Anyway, if you wanna know more? Maxine in Bio-Tech. Rec. She can tell you all the horror stories. Catch her in the canteen, she’s tagged. She told me one time, this courtesan motherfucker? Freakish conical tits; pelvic floor implants like wishbone suspension—this’ll kill ya—they got an artificial vagina put in there. Like “fuck my brains out” for real! Right! I know! Too much money these Elites. How d’ya get that gig huh?”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Ask Maxine, man!”
The exotic in the vitrine stirred into life and Franklin nearly dropped it, fumbled it, slammed it onto the nearest counter-top. From inside, muffled squeaks and chirps could be heard and it squirmed around the inside of the container, suckered and clawed limb-ends probing the seals. It’s head weaved from left to right, the numerous black bulbous eyes swelling and contracting.
“Best get that to the juicer, Franklin. I’d nuke it in the oven, if it was up to me, but it fucks up the eDNA.”
Franklin nodded urgently. “Where is it again? Two levels up, follow the green lines, right?”
“You got it. And don’t let it out, whatever the fuck you do. It's worth more than your life. And mine, pro’lly.
Franklin hurried to the airlock, vitrine held out in front of him. Annie called out after him as the outer door hissed open. “If you change your mind about, you know, knock me up in my quarters. We got time before chow. I’m hungry. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Sure thing. Why not. Be good to…to…unwind a bit. You got any—”
“—I’m a vet, dude. What do you think?!”
Several floors below, in Modules, a technician was finishing off with the neuroscope. Two hundred and fifty six thousand microfibre synapse connections joined the ludicrously huge module to the client’s brain. The surgery was flawless, but something was wrong. The module was functioning, but it sat idle; there was no one in the driver’s seat.
“Should we try a reboot?” he asked. Behind him, another technician was on the intercom.
“Who you calling? Neurology?”
“Nah…Legal.”
Several floors above, Franklin was sweating as he tried to tip the exotic into the juicer, terrified it would slither out. The problem was, the juicer wasn’t designed to take stuff that was so alive. And not just alive, clinging to the side of the vitrine like its life depended on it. And the sounds it made? He shuddered. Eventually, with some vigorous banging on top of the box, the slithering, chittering, squealing thing lost its hold and slopped into the juicer. Franklin jammed on the lid with both hands.
Fuck.
As he tapped in the nature of the contents, where it came from, the date, time, operator ID and the recipient for the juice, the exotic slid about in the bottom of the jug. Its multi-eyed head flicked up and down as it looked beneath it to the reciprocating blades of the machine. It stopped moving for a few seconds, then it squirmed round, pressing its head against the glass, its sucker-like mouth gaping, squealing, its front limbs clawing frantically at the glass walls.
It’s like it knows. Franklin’s finger hovered over a button which had begun to glow green.
The exotic’s head flicked round to stare at the light, then back at Franklin, then back at the green light. It pressed itself against the glass, suckers and claws uselessly trying to gain purchase on the sides, to pull itself up from the blades.
Franklin’s finger touched the button and the squealing from the exotic grew yet more frantic and somehow like…like words.
“Eeeease…Squoh…Squooohnt.”
He looked at it, its front two pairs of legs pumelling at the glass, clawing at it like it was begging for its life. He squeezed shut his eyes, finger trembling on the button, but he couldn’t do it.
“I’m going to let you out,” he said, panting, trying to control his breath, a half-baked plan forming in his mind. “Do you understand?”
It nodded its head in a vigorous slithery way.
“You’ll have to get back in this box, though…’til I can figure out what were going to do, ok?” Franklin tapped on the lid of the vitrine. The exotic’s eyes bulged, then contracted. It nodded and squeaked just once. Franklin released the lid of the Juicer.
So hungry. HUNGRY.
“That was quick,” said Annie, as Franklin came back into the theatre, “all sorted?” She nodded at the empty vitrine in his hands.
“Yeah,” said Franklin. “We’re all good.” He wiped a trace of something from the corner of his mouth. "Say…you finished with that chicken sandwich?”
yes it was...but it was no longer just a thing...it was also the person who's brain it had been inside juuuuust a bit too long....the driver was no longer at the wheel...he was now the exotic...
Oh, nooo! The exotic! This was horrible on several levels, you diabolical mastermind!