INTERMITTENS

INTERMITTENS CONTENT => Intermittens written submissions => Topic started by: enkiv2 on June 06, 2013, 08:27:30 PM

Title: Tank Chocolate
Post by: enkiv2 on June 06, 2013, 08:27:30 PM
In life, the Author had been a large man. Not portly, but broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with a slight paunch. His beard greyed early, and his hair fell out late. In his current state, though, he was by human standards very large. Completely hairless, his various organs were distributed between various large grey boxes across an area that was once the primary warehouse for an international chain of bookstores. While in life he had been (by American standards) fairly lean and muscular for a member of a sedentary profession, his remaining musculature was now atrophied and the smooth muscles coated in thick layers of pearly white fat (a mechanism based on metal racks and galvanism similar to that used in the production of synthetic beef having been abandoned for economic reasons years before). More sedentary than he ever was in life, in death he was at least more productive: while he had published two or three books a year from his twentieth birthday to his first heart attack at age 55, he had released on average one book every three weeks in the thirty years since. While his popularity with audiences waxed and waned (except in France, where he was perpetually mid-list), each boom provided more than enough profits for his estate to maintain his body during the busts.
Mylar-coated plastic tubes, filled with bodily fluids, synthetic compounds, and thick bundles of electric and fiber-optic cable formed the veins and synapses of this very modern machine.
On 2 March, 2022, an alarm sounded inside the facility.
On-call technical staff, most of them fans of the Author’s work, were already in the employee lounge. They were shooting the shit about European history.
“That shit, in the lime-green tubes? Methamphetamines.”
“Bull shit. That ain’t legal.”
“When you make as much cash as the old guy in the box, you can buy legal.” The old guy was no longer a guy, and most of him was no longer old. It had been a long time since there was only one box. “You’ve been here, what? Two, three years? I was here when they upgraded that system. Guy doing repairs told me. Said that shit’s invented by the Nazis, see.”
“Meth? I thought it was invented by hicks.”
The older man ignored him. “Said it was a kind of super pep-pill, but that it was cursed. Said at first it made them better, faster, work harder, didn’t need no sleep. Then, later, it drove ‘em- shit.” The alarm blared. “Fucker needs repairs.”
They slipped on sterile paper gowns over their jumpsuits, and put on goggles and facemasks. The younger man put on a pair of gloves.
Glancing at a panel of small lamps, the older man frowned. “Leak in section 2-B. This is gonna be messy.”
The younger man frowned, hopped on a cart, and drove down to the far corner of the warehouse. Fecal leaks are the worst part of the job, but he’s the only one on duty with medical training - the rest are merely engineers with HVAC certs.
“Shit,” the older man said. “Shit,” he repeated, shouting. “Leaks aren’t the worst of our problems.”
The younger man looked back to see the entire array of lamps flashing. He stopped, and began to turn around, when there was a blinding flash of light, like magnesium igniting. Covering his eyes, he blindly veered his cart to the left, crashing through the pre-fab aluminium wall. A steady stream of red-brown fluid followed him out the makeshift opening.
Smoke began to rise from the hole. He smelled a whif of ozone and burning hydrocarbon polymer, mixed with the distinct scent of overcooked hamburger meat. Stumbling out of the now-stalled cart, he walked towards the barrens at the edge of the property, numbly groping for his mobile in his pocket.