Hunger
“…capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that wealth can not be hoarded except through the channels of poverty, hunger, and cold…” ~ ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS, Emma Goldman.
“What kind of pervert would do this to themselves?” Security Chief Mcguire contorted his face like he had stepped into something foul.
The woman to his left cocked a severe eyebrow at him, “That…pervert, killed an entire research retreat’s worth of people and is holding our CEO hostage. He should not be underestimated. Shall we begin?”
McGuire rose, “Alright knuckleheads, corporate sent us a shrink this time to help us understand…whatever the fuck we are dealing with. Go ahead honey.”
“My name is Dr. Therese Inedia,” she said, gesturing towards the holographic display that dominated the dark briefing room, trying to hide her disgust of McGuire, “and I am a specialist in the effects of heavy augmentation on the human mind. What we are looking at, frankly, is the most heavily artificially modified human organism on Earth.”
She tried her best to describe the miracle before them. She drilled into herself the night before to remember to use smaller words, to speak slowly, to never let them sense her awe. Her fear. But the 12 man security team seemed puzzled or just uninterested in understanding the finer psychological details and anatomical make-up of what they had been tasked to kill. Therese saw brilliance.
The virgin pairing of biological neurology wedded to artificial neurons. Fake muscle wrapped around living ones like lovers till the two became inseparable. Organs streamlined so no amount of blood shit cum or bile was wasted. Retractable elongated limbs with finger nail germinal matrices altered to grow carbon steel talons. Teeth sharpened into an alloy resembling tungsten with a jaw pressure so great he could bite off her head without even trying.
It was opera. His caloric intake must have been astronomical to continue functioning. Ever ravenous. It was beautiful.
The men around her looked on in either revolted disgust or professional detachment. More then a few went pale. Their helicopter pilot yawned, openly uninterested. To them ‘cybernetics’ just meant a fresh organ, a new limb after the organic one was blown off, or a cosmetic upgrade below the belt. They only saw madness and suppurating wounds where metal met flesh, ripped from aerial photographs and half finished blueprints.
“In summary, he is EMP hardened with a resilience to direct damage, and may show animal like characteristics. He is very dangerous.” She tried not to linger on the reproductive organ, made smooth and efficient and resembling a cloaca from behind.
She bit her lip. “Very dangerous.”
~
“You know the history right?” Gutter’s breath was red smoke in the freezing night, which was often the case due to the flavored nicotine dispenser lodged somewhere in his lungs and the scourged sky which allowed no sun to touch the earth.
“History?” Catherine knew for a fact Gutter couldn’t read.
“Ya got to know where we come from if ya want to join us.”
Tonight was her night, and despite her malnutrition, she was to follow Gutter through the forever winter alleys to…somewhere. They didn’t say where but it was where it would all take place.
“Some guy, right? He was the first. Got fed up with em-”
“Who?” She wobbled, but caught herself. She refused to ask for help. The last time she ate would have been a couple weeks ago. There was no work, and no work meant no food. The powers that be said you can’t eat if you don’t work, but the machines don’t eat so they do the work. Gutter had called it a ‘viscous circle’.
“With them! Pay attention!” He pointed a razor nail at a looming skyscraper, its tip lost in the smog. She heard stories that people have food in there. They own the machines so they get the money to eat, or so Gutter says.
“He got fed up with em. Used to work for em. Then he changed himself. First of the species. First of us. First of the Famish.”
~
Despite Therese’s protests, they tried a light carpet bombing to start things off. Duke Merro, CEO of Alta Cybernetica, had a tracking chip that read he was moving back and forth in his panic room since they arrived. They couldn’t make contact due to the density of the concrete, but he was eight stories underground and wouldn’t feel some napalm.
McGuire had attached himself to what Therese had said about their target’s mind being very much altered to accommodate a predator’s body. “So he’s an animal? Dumb fuck turned himself into a dog or something.”
“Not an animal. Not a person either. He’s something new and should not be underestimated.” Max Kempe was the top surgeon and cybernetics designer in the company. Multi award winning, a once in a generation mind. Only he could have done this to himself. But her warnings were unheeded, so bombs away.
Only after the chemical flames settle down enough for them to land the chopper did the tracking beacon leave the shelter, then suddenly become still.
~
Catherine’s mouth began to water. “Do they have food here?”
The neon sign, bright and red, said ‘The Butchers Shop’.
Gutter coughed, which was how he laughed. He gave her a sharp smile, “Oh girly, if ya live ya gonna be eaten’ real good.”
That possibility, of not surviving this, often kept her awake until this night. But after hiking through the cold, after stepping over the starved frozen bodies of her fellow slum dwellers, after holding her sister’s emaciated body till it went still those weeks ago, fear meant little now.
“Come on,” he gently touched her shoulder, “ya gotta go in yourself. I’ll follow.”
It looked like it used to be a slaughter house. A hollowed out warehouse of freezers, hooks, and grimy tiled surfaces. She always imagined wherever this tribe she wanted to join tread that it would smell like blood, but it smelled like cheap cleaning solution the farther she went in.
If Gutter was behind her, she had no way of telling. His tribe often faded into the darkness, and now she felt their eyes on her as it got darker and darker the further she moved into the building. She tried not to picture herself tripping into a meat grinder or something. Only when the darkness became too much did she see the red light pooling outside a plastic flap covered doorway.
Here she could see her breath, somehow feeling colder inside than out. She pulled the plastic curtain aside, and before she could register the several sets of footsteps behind her, she was pushed into waiting arms that terminated into talons.
“Gutter brought us a little snack.” His lips were the perfect shade of red. She could smell it wasn’t just lipstick. Something redder.
“No. We don’t eat our own, Masque. ‘Thou shall not feast upon the downtrodden.’ She is as poor as us.” An intensely pale creature, as gender had lost any meaning, stepped in from where Catherine had stumbled. Leather jacket clad and a sleeve covered in what could only be human teeth. It didn’t smile, for it had no lips, just sharp glistening bone. “Get rid of her.”
The one who held her, his entire being so much taller than anyone else she had ever seen, retracted himself down to a normal height while he shoved her into an old dentist chair. She looked at her attacker and marveled at how beautiful he was. “Aw, but look at her, Cleaver. We could maybe have a little bite?”
“Nah nah nah, this is the one I was telling you all about. She’s cool.” Gutter followed the lipless one, to Catherine’s relief. “She wants to get cut. She knows the history and everything. All 100 years.”
“Oh yeah?” The one they called Cleaver spoke again from somewhere in its throat. “Tell me.”
~
Therese ran through the charred woods already being reclaimed by frost. The sun had set long ago. He ate the tracker when he ate Merro, and threw it up when they loudly announced themselves. Stupid fucking McGuire.
They got separated when it became clear their target wasn’t in the facility. Ventured into the woods. Ignored her. One by one they died, and when they fell back to the chopper, they found the pilot with his face ripped off and the fuel tank clawed open.
Then the radio died. Turned to just static. Max had purposely left something out of the schematics they lifted from his computer – knowing full well they’d be used against him eventually. He must have been emitting some form of scrambling signal. She heard it, like a low hiss, when he snuck-up on them and clawed the last of the security detail apart.
McGuire, the shithead, ran after pushing her towards the carnage. She bolted the opposite direction. She didn’t even know where she was going.
After what felt like eternity, she stopped. She had to. Her lungs burned from the cold winter air.
Then she heard the hiss. He just stood there, so tall, with McGuire hanging by the neck from his impossibly big maw. This was it. She tried not to admire the design of his expanding jaw and throat when he dropped the big man’s limp body.
“Max? Please.”
~
Benjamin Markos the 3rd, heir to the Markos Corporation, had used up his normal pleasures for the night. It was easy to tempt any whore of any desired flavor when all you had to do was wave a few dollars out the window, although a loaf of bread seemed to work better.
But malnourished teenagers could only entertain for so long. The ketamine had been used up, and his father had banned him from the recreational STDs, as the lessers had little resistance against them.
He saw them then. A tall faggot in stockings and a girl on the street corner. The closer the limo got the more he could tell she wasn’t a girl. A woman, short, leather jacket clad.
The queer whore wore a fur coat, stockings, and heels. Despite himself, Benjamin was intrigued by how pretty he was. Perfect features framed shining red lips.
But the woman interested him more. She looked too small for such a rough jacket, all black but for a brooch pinned through the front resembling a nun in prayer. Or was it spiritual ecstasy? She wore worn out jeans and there was nothing under the leather jacket. He liked how pale she was in the cold.
“Stop the car.” He told his driver.
With a sigh like TV static, the driver did as he was told. The limo smoothly slid up to the whores. Benjamin rolled the window down, ignoring the painted queer. “How much?”
“Well then.” The tall queer played at being insulted, a toothless smile on their painted lips.
The woman seemed to think about it for a second, before looking Benjamin dead in his eyes, “$100 and you can do whatever you want.”
“Get in.” He opened the door and she soundlessly slid inside.
~
“They starved.”
“What?” Therese said, her throat raw from the cold or crying.
“They starved,” Max spoke using a mouth and throat no longer designed for the task, “stopped food. Didn’t send. Starved.”
She looked at his retroflecting eyes and wracked her brain for what he meant. “Who starved, Max?”
He growled from his chest, “No aid. No help. Starved.”
It hit her then. The corporate consortium stopped all food aid to half the country. Too wasteful. Too expensive. Freeloaders, they called them. Many died. That was 10 years ago.
“Payment. Stop them. Punish them.” He stepped forward, and before she could blink he had her head in his hands. He carefully sounded out, “They lost their predator. They think they are top of the food chain.”
Therese touched his chest. Her knees felt weak from either the exhaustion or the rising heat in her. He was all suture scars and cold pale flesh wedded with exposed synthetic muscle. She dug her nails into him till he bled. She wanted to kiss the gore on his lipless mouth.
“Let me come with you.”
~
“You have a name?” The john asked, after a number of minutes of silence. They found a suitable quiet alley. The driver rolled the windows up and turned the driver-passenger camera off. They were, to an extent, alone.
“Catherine,” she said. She had never met an arcology person before. He smelt like chemicals and disease, but she had learned to swallow such things already. She liked to think of herself as a sin eater. She smiled at the thought, and the fool thought she was smiling for him.
“That’s a pretty name.” He poured something expensive into a champagne flute and handed it to her. He refrained from pouring any for himself, too used to using desperation as a hunting method. She could smell the chemicals in it and feign excitement as she swigged the entire thing in one gulp.
“I bet you give this to all the girls, huh?” Her laugh was full of razors. She shed her jacket, all pale flesh and suture scars around perky breasts. No point hiding.
If he was concerned, he wasn’t enough. He looked confused that his usual trick didn’t work. The scars and teeth, though, were an interesting twist for him. She could smell the excitement on him. A creature too stupid to know it was fucked.
“Only the special ones.”
“Oh I bet.”
He struck first, his closed fist connecting with her face. He had some well manufactured limbs, as his fist made the same sound as metal smacking metal when it connected with her cheek. But she didn’t bend, she just smiled more razors. Now it was her turn to get excited.
“Again.” She cooed.
He obliged her with the other hand. The same metal on metal sound. Now the fear crept in him.
“Again.” She said, breathlessly. For a moment she felt self-conscious about drooling.
He didn’t strike again. Now he knew he fucked up. Catherine shoved a bare foot into his neck, pinning him against the expensive upholstery from where she sat. If the driver heard this, he didn’t react.
“How does it feel? To meet someone you can’t hurt? Can’t use up?” Her toenails unsheathed themselves into black talons, digging into his soft flesh.
He couldn’t speak, his windpipe slowly being crushed. Instead, he pulled a pistol from his jacket and shot her in the head. Cleaver’s words about being careful now ringing in her ears.
The john bolted out of the limo, yelling for his driver to help him. He ran to the drivers side, banging on the window until it slid down. For a moment, the john wondered where the hole in his drivers chest came from.
Masque, now so tall it was a wonder he could fit into the passenger seat, had shed his entire face revealing a bottomless maw, which was now idly chewing on the bodyguards heart.
“All that steel under there for such a little pearl of meat.” Masque bit into the heart again, making sure the john saw it.
He ran. They always ran. He ran down the frozen alley, thinking the darkness would save him. That he was blessed wherever he went. That his yells for police mattered in a neighborhood so starved. Pigs knew they were prey here.
Something tripped him. A leg in the darkness. “Hey man.” What looked like a pale junkie detached itself from the shadows, cackling through red breath.
Something heavy landed next to him from above. A lipless horror that looked at him with nothing but hate through red eyes. It slid a knife quickly, but ever so deliberately, into his chest. The john could no longer scream with one of his artificial lungs punctured. He just gurgled.
The horror pulled the knife out with a jerk, “We eat.”
“Not yet, rookie gotta eat first.” Gutter held the john down with a well placed boot on his chest. The meat just squirmed.
If Cleaver could smile, they would have. “’May the youngest of you bloody themselves.’” It tilted their head towards where the meat had ran, “Better than hunting pimps, eh kid?”
Catherine came out of the darkness. She had stripped out of her jeans and was now nude in the snow, hard nipples and sharper appendages. Her head didn’t bleed as she picked the bullet out of her reinforced skull. She could have never imagined before that pain, especially a bullet in the head, could feel so good.
“Much better. I didn’t think I’d find worse than them, but here he is. All meat and no soul.”
She gently motioned for Gutter to get off of him. She mounted the meat, ignoring the little sounds meat likes to make right before the end. The john gurgled promises of money. Then threats. Then tears.
Catherine bent down, shoving her tongue into his mouth. Then came back up with his tongue still flapping between her teeth.
~
Max had lost much of himself. Apotheosis was like that, sometimes. He needed her help. Needed Therese to help spread this enlightenment. She gleaned what knowledge she could from his hunter’s mind.
She had no way of knowing her efforts would survive a century. It never crossed her mind, as the schematics she named ‘Kuru’ uploaded to the dark web, that she was the Mother of Teeth.
A half-starved street kid entered her grimy back alley clinic, “This where you learn how not to be hungry? Ain’t no jobs and -”
She smiled razor blades, “And you can’t eat if you can’t work. Oh, I think I can help.”
Steven J. Matos (Scum) is the editor of Neon Dystopia and one of the host of the L0WL1F3 Podcast. He has edited many a smut novel for Peter North, edited Glitch Logs Book 4: Hard Reset by Rachel E. Beck, and was one of the proofreaders for the collection Cyberpunkdreams by Rob Chant. He can be found on the ND Videodrome discord. Anarchism is his thinly disguised fetish. He never sleeps.
For 4 years and this week he was a SNAP recipient.