Flesh for Punktown Read online

  Flesh for

  Punktown

  A Trio of Dark Science Fiction Stories

  JEFFREY THOMAS

  The Jeffrey Thomas Chapbook Series

  #3

  Copyright © 2019 Jeffrey Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Tithi Luadthong/Shutterstock.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  Open Minded first appeared in the anthology Eldritch Chrome, Chaosium, 2013.

  Transformation first appeared in the publication Phantasmagorium, Gorgon Press, 2012.

  Sacred Meat first appeared in the anthology Into Painfreak, Necro Publication, 2016.

  CONTENTS

  1. OPEN MINDED

  2. TRANSFORMATION

  3. SACRED MEAT

  4. About the Author

  OPEN MINDED

  Fallon Ash had been hired on at Augmentation Concepts as a lead technician only a year earlier, and so this was quite an important project for him to have been given to head, a project that might propel his career.

  For the most part, Augmentation Concepts worked with the healthcare industry, creating “ponies” as the slang went: mechanical bodies for mutants who had been born without limbs, or for severely compromised accident victims. But the company also created cybernetic bodies for nonhuman races, and these were always lucrative contracts.

  Until being outfitted by Augmentation Concepts with a mechanical body that enabled them to interact effectively in a humanoid-oriented environment like Punktown, the putty-like extradimensional race called the L'lewed had formerly been required to remain inside a small life-support container, manually carried about by a hired human aide. Similarly, members of the insect-like race known as the Mee'hi, small as termites, had been accidentally squashed underfoot on a number of occasions until human-sized mechanical bodies had been custom-designed for them, which could be piloted by one creature while a whole tribe of his fellows came along for the ride.

  But Fallon was still grateful that he hadn’t been part of those particular success stories. Precisely because they were so far removed from the human form, both races seemed to hold the humanoid races as inferior, both nearly having been deported from the city of Punktown – and banned from Oasis and the other Earth Colonies worlds altogether – for criminal activity. The L’lewed had been accused of a number of murders, sacrificing individuals as part of a religious ritual, while several groups of Mee’hi had integrated their resinous nests with human victims who served as both host and nourishment. Their respective embassies had apologized for these embarrassments and removed the offending individuals back to their own worlds, and all had been forgiven as a cultural misunderstanding. All apologies aside, Fallon had no desire to work in any capacity with beings who might view him and his species as little more than a kind of livestock.

  Yet he would go into this new project without bias, in the true spirit of a professional, with open arms and an open mind.

  ***

  In touring his client through Augmentation Concepts, Fallon escorted the liaison of the Ogim race into the spacious, dome-roofed cafeteria that surmounted the building, so as to show off its impressive view of Paxton, the colony city that its inhabitants had taken to calling Punktown. A panoramic view of overwhelmingly discordant architecture, representing countless cultures in addition to that of the indigenous Choom race. The sky peeked through chinks here and there between the buildings, and in a broken patch directly overhead, but it was dark with storm clouds. Rain pelted the dome, ran down its sides in rippling waves, making the city undulate like something illusory.

  “We hold meetings for the employees in here as well,” Fallon explained in his pleasant British accent. He had a young, smooth face – his girlfriend Lee said it was a baby face – with his short bristly hair dyed a vibrant purple, his eyebrows a matching shade. He wore a few conservative piercings, the rings in one ear representing various career awards. His charcoal gray suit was a bit too small for him, but this was a calculated style these days among young executives to make them look less stuffy and more cute. Lee had picked it out for him. His spectacles, with their thick black frames and green lenses, served multiple uses in his work but he had taken to wearing them constantly.

  “As long as we’re here,” Fallon said, “would you like to sit down for a bit, grab a coffee or some food? The machines have really excellent fare.”

  “No thank you, Mr. Ash,” the liaison said in a deep monotone.

  Fallon hadn’t expected the individual to say yes. He might have taken this entity to be one of the partially human creations the Coleopteroid race nicknamed the Bedbugs used as liaisons, had he not known it represented the Ogim. Same principle. The Ogim liaison, taller than Fallon by almost a head, wore a heavy rust-colored cloak that fully concealed its body, and a hood that framed its human face. This face was exceedingly pale, its flesh slack and doughy, the small dark eyes as expressionless as the being’s voice. A bioengineered organism, perhaps, but more likely a cybernetic creation itself.

  “Shall we resume our tour, then?” Fallon said, leading his towering companion back into the corridor outside the cafeteria. As they walked, the Ogim liaison with odd, awkward lurching steps, Fallon went on, “Personally, I think our most fascinating success was providing bodies for the Guests, as they refer to themselves. Are you familiar with them? No? The Guests exist in another dimension, but unlike other extradimensional races they have no means by which to enter our plane physically. So we designed a mechanical body with a blank encephalon mind – a biogen organ – for them to project their consciousness into remotely. It allows them to interact in our dimension quite admirably.”

  “Yes, this is akin to our needs,” the liaison droned. “But in our case the brains will be provided by us, for you to implant into your puppet devices.”

  “So are these biogen computers, for encephalon-powered robots?” Fallon asked. “Or are they…Ogim brains?” He had no idea what the Ogim’s natural form was.

  “We will concern ourselves with those matters,” the liaison said evasively, staring ahead, not looking at Fallon. It hadn’t once looked directly at him. It appeared to see without seeing.

  Fallon forced himself not to take offense. “Of course – we won’t involve ourselves any more than you direct us to be. At whatever point you want us to turn the work over to your team, you just indicate. This is your show.”

  “Indeed,” said the liaison, barely moving its bloodless lips. “Thank you, Mr. Ash.”

  “I am at your service,” Fallon said. As they turned toward the shipping department, he casually reached up to his spectacles as if to adjust them on his nose. He depressed a tiny key set into their frames.

  It was an improper action, no doubt about it, but Fallon could no longer resist. He told himself it was merely scientific curiosity. The twin screens of his lenses now filtered out the shapeless, flowing cloak to reveal the body lurching along beside him.

  It was not a mechanical framework enshrouded within that robe, Fallon was surprised to find, but an entirely organic one. A pinkish crustaceous figure walking on two jointed legs but with a series of pincer-tipped upper limbs tucked against its thorax. Two of the arthropod’s upper limbs filled the cloak’s sleeves and wore gloved appendages that masqueraded as human hands. Fallon’s lenses didn’t allow him to see through the mock human head, however, to view the creature’s natural head. He was left to wonder if that human head was a clever synthetic creation, or – somehow, and more repulsively – something tha
t was also organic, itself.

  Fallon was determined not to allow the creature’s true appearance to stir his mistrust. That would be wrong, and he would be little better than the superior L’lewed and Mee’hi, whom he had felt so critical of. Though he couldn’t help but wonder why the being thought it must perpetuate such a deception in a world it already seemed sufficiently adapted to deal with. Did it think so little of him that it believed he would feel more at ease interacting with a human face?

  Actually, stealing another glance at that dead-eyed countenance, Fallon would have preferred the opposite.

  ***

  Work on the Ogim commission proceeded smoothly, and thus swiftly. Fallon’s superiors were quite pleased with him. His girlfriend Lee – who had been his team leader at a former job – was pleased with his mounting success and hence less likely to leave him, despite the troubles that all young couples faced. Basically, he had never been more pleased with himself in his adult life.

  Not to say that he didn’t find the Ogim troubling, from time to time. Or perhaps, always troubling, but he hadn’t wanted to admit to it. Not to himself, and surely not to any of his team or management lest it reflect badly upon him.

  Fallon had been designated Research and Development Bay 5 in which to set up shop for the project. He led a team of twelve technicians, and every few days anywhere from one to three Ogim representatives came in to inspect their progress and familiarize themselves with the technology being devised for them. For all Fallon knew, twenty different Ogim might have visited the facility by now, just taking turns wearing the same three human masks, which were almost identically bland and lifeless.

  One day, a day on which a trio of Ogim were present, a petite attractive tech named Padma leaned close to Fallon and whispered, “Who do you think they killed to get those faces?”

  Fallon glanced around quickly to be certain no one, particularly an Ogim, was near enough to hear them, and scolded Padma, “Shh – don’t say that! I’m sure they…grew them or something.”

  “Are you so sure?” she asked. “And who do they think they’re fooling, anyway, wearing those getups? They look like they’re ready to go trick-or-treating.”

  “Padma, please now. We have to respect their cultural…beliefs or practices or what have you. For all we know, they might consider it disrespectful to interact with another race without trying to appear like them. Or it could be a very old instinct of self-preservation to try to blend in with other creatures who aren’t like them, and they’re just following their nature.”

  “You don’t think they could simply be sneaky by nature?”

  Fallon straightened up and made his tone more officious. “Padma, I’m sorry but that’ll be enough of that. This is Punktown – it’s not like we aren’t familiar with alien races here. And this is Augmentation Concepts, where we don’t discriminate against workers or clients. Okay?”

  “Sorry, Fallon,” Padma muttered, turning back to her work.

  Fallon hated confrontation of any kind, but with greater responsibility came…greater responsibility. He glanced about further to locate the trio of Ogim and spotted their tall, robed forms huddled around an object floating in a clear tank filled with a greenish, faintly luminous solution. He moved to join them.

  “Gentlemen,” he greeted them, not knowing even if the Ogim had distinct genders. “I see you’re just about ready for us to integrate the first of your test encephalons.”

  Bioengineered human brain tissue that served as organic computers had been widely used for years now by Earth’s own people, but usually this tissue was spread out almost flat in what was called a brainframe. The Ogim’s encephalon, however, looked precisely like a human brain in shape and size. Wires trailed from it like unraveling nerves as it rested at the bottom of the burbling tank.

  A loud buzz issued from the parted lips of one of the three pallid faces. Fallon was startled and almost took a step back. All around, technicians looked up sharply. The Ogim made a phlegmy sound like it was clearing its throat, and then spoke. “Excuse me.” It cleared its throat again. “Ah, yes, Mr. Ash, we feel we are ready for the first tests along those lines. We will oversee your introduction of the brain into the armature. However, you are to be certain that the speech apparatus that would normally allow the brain to generate audio will not be engaged for this test, or any other to follow.”

  Fallon shrugged. “As you wish.”

  “To be honest, since this is new technology and security is not yet assured, we wouldn’t want to inadvertently transmit information that could be considered confidential by our governing body.”

  “Yes, of course, I understand.” Fallon smiled to put them at ease. Still, he would be lying to himself if he didn’t wonder what it was the Ogim were afraid he or his team might overhear. Could Augmentation Concepts be inadvertently supplying technology to a future enemy? It wasn’t as though that had never happened before in the history of humankind, even prior to intergalactic colonization. He couldn’t repress a mental image of an army of cybernetic soldiers waging war in the streets of Punktown, commanded by minds such as this one resting in its aquarium like a brain coral.

  “Also,” the liaison continued in its sepulchral tone, “during the initial tests, we will want the armature’s powers of locomotion disabled, so it can be more easily controlled until we are assured of its safety.”

  “Well, um, but if you don’t want it to walk and move around, how can you tell if the encephalon’s integration and your subsequent programming are successful?”

  “All in good time, Mr. Ash. We will first monitor the brain’s response to simple commands. We will ask you to permit only the use of its arms and hands for the preliminary test.”

  “As you wish,” Fallon repeated. Again, he shrugged. After all, he was merely the tool to implement their desires, and they the tool to implement his paycheck.

  Their desires? Had he really thought of it in those words?

  It made him feel like a prostitute.

  ***

  Riding home on the subway that evening, after putting in an extra hour of work on the Ogim project, Fallon Ash as always kept an eye on his fellow passengers peripherally while ostensibly staring across the aisle at his own reflection in the opposite windows. A few years ago he had been violently mugged in a park by a mutant junkie high on purple vortex.

  A group of raucous youths, probably a gang, were seated a short distance away, all of them humanoid native Choom with mouths extending back to their ears. Several times Fallon had started to doze, his head drooping, and the youths had loudly feigned snoring. One of them had puckered his mouth small, too, obviously to imitate Fallon’s Earthly features, inciting the others to laughter. Fallon had smiled as if it were all in good fun to mock innocent strangers, but had still avoided looking at any of the youths. There were gangs that would kill you for making direct eye contact, considering it a challenge.

  As it drew nearer to his stop, the train emerged from the underground into the variegated light of night in the open city. The weather had been good today, the air outside warm and pleasant. Maybe there would be time for him and Lee to take a little walk around the safe shopping district close to their apartment. Perhaps they’d even dine out tonight. He was still in a celebratory frame of mind.

  Glancing around more actively now that there was more to see outside the windows, and restless as his stop approached, for the first time Fallon noticed a figure seated toward the end of this particular car. A man in a bulky raincoat, despite the weather, its hood pulled up over his head, obscuring his face so that only the end of his nose and thin sealed lips were discernible. He seemed to be staring back at Fallon, though it was hard to be sure with his eyes swallowed in shadow.

  Fallon’s heart lurched, or was that just the train pulling to a halt? In a flash he was up out of his seat and nudging along in the line to disembark. On the platform, when those who had been awaiting the train and those vacating it had finished trading places, Fallon turned to sca
n the windows of the car he had just left. He expected to see a shadowy hooded face peering down at him from one of them, but the city lights glared too brightly on their surfaces, and anyway the train was soon pulling away with a whoosh.

  He chided himself. What kind of irrational reaction had that been?

  He started to turn to continue on to his apartment complex on foot, but abruptly stopped. Sitting on a bench across the platform from him was the figure from the train, as if waiting for another train. The same heavy raincoat, its hood pulled up regardless of the comfortable weather, this time the entire face lost to shadow. Gloved hands were folded in the person’s lap.

  Trying to appear casual, Fallon turned away and began walking home, but his heart seemed intent on walking more briskly ahead of him like a small dog yanking at its leash. He turned a corner, and immediately glanced back to see if he were being followed. By the time he reached his building and let himself into its vestibule, he’d glanced behind him a half dozen times more. Before proceeding to the elevator, Fallon stared out through the glass of the vestibule’s door, but the figure didn’t appear out there on the sidewalk.

  “Fucking hell,” Fallon said shakily to himself. He was being foolish, surely. What reason would the Ogim have for following him?

  Was he now so unreasonably and unfairly distrustful of the Ogim, so unaccountably unnerved by them, that he no longer even trusted the faces of his fellow humans?

  Next, he told himself, he’d be jumping at his own reflection.

  Even still, as he stepped into the empty elevator, he half expected to see a hooded figure slip in after him just before the doors could close.

  ***

  “It doesn’t seem right,” confided small, brown-skinned Padma. Fallon had found himself thinking he would ask her out if Lee ever broke up with him. Not that he wanted that. Lee was primarily of Asian ancestry, Padma of Indian ancestry, and he admitted to himself that he was most attracted to nonwhite women. But he had never dated any of the more humanoid non-Earth races, such as the Choom, Tikkihottos, Kalians, or Sinanese. Padma went on, “They’re asking us not to monitor their experiments here in our own facility. If they want to do that, shouldn’t they do it on their own world? Or at least, rent their own space here in the city? We don’t know what they might do in Bay 5.”