[Original Novel] Metal Fever 2: The Erasure of Asherah, Part 10

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I could feel some sort of resonating vibration which I assumed was the plane’s own propulsion system kicking in. No moving parts, evidently. It called into question why the launch mechanism was even necessary, until I thought about what a devastatingly huge load on the plane’s batteries a conventional takeoff would probably be.

The giddiness wore off as well, and soon the plane AI began giving us some canned speech about anticipated travel time, being courteous to other passengers and so on. It was visually represented by an anthropomorphic cartoon airplane character volumetrically projected into the cabin.

It was dressed as a stewardess, spoke in a sultry voice and had a disturbingly curvy figure. Why did the developers of this program try to make a bipedal airplane sexy? Who is the intended audience for that?

I recalled some terrifying fetish sims I’ve stumbled across before on the darkweb. Alright, yeah, I can see it. There probably already is an audience for this shit, and I’m sure I don’t want to meet them. Remble ordered a steak.

“Steak? Really?” Through a beak full of lab grown sirloin, he mumbled “We don’t only eat fish.” I again appreciated his candor. “Aren’t you going to order anything?” he pried, upon hearing my stomach growl. Must have at least some implants, to hear that well out of the water.

Some brain implants as well, I’d put good money on it. Full bio dolphins, despite decades of efforts to genetically engineer improvements to their intelligence, are not exactly the brightest bulbs without a little bit of ‘silicon assistance’. But then, the same is true of many humans. In at least that one respect, implants have been a powerful force for equality.

“They have pizza, you know. This airline is offering freshly baked pizza while in the air for the next six months as a promotional novelty. It’s not made by a machine either, they actually have a paid employee whose job it is to put it together by hand in a sterile food preparation room below the passenger deck.

After you order, the app shows you a live video feed of him kneading the dough, pouring the sauce, and putting the toppings on. You can even click a button that makes a robot arm whip him, if you want him to go faster.”

I thought I detected a tinge of sadistic glee in his voice for a moment. I really could go for pizza, but didn’t want to spend anything until I reached Shenzen, so I fibbed that I was feeling nauseous from the takeoff.

Remble ordered one for himself. I pointed out he’d already had a steak. “Please, that was an appetizer. I weigh nearly 400 kilograms. I’m sure you can work out for yourself how many calories I need to eat per day.”

So, he ate. And ate, and ate. I watched as he ordered the pizza on the pivoting touchscreen between us. “Haha, you were right. There he is, he’s really doing it.” I leaned in, studying the uniformed goob’s movements as he manually assembled the pie.

“Yeah, that’s it you little bitch” I whispered at the screen. “Knead that dough niiiice and sllloooowww. Daddy like. Yeah pour that sauce, pour that gooey tomato sauce you fucking slut. You know that’s what I need.” Remble cautioned me that the video feed was in fact two-way.

“What, he can hear me?” The dude making the pizza looked up at the camera with a mixture of disgust and concern. Well fuck me, that’s what I get. I should’ve said it in dolphin. A pair of triple jointed plastic arms sliding along tracks built into the ceiling then delivered the pizza to Remble.

“Have a slice, will you?” I asked him about the whole calorie thing. “It’s pizza, though” he protested. “It’s designed to be shared. You gotta take a slice, it’s the law.” I knew of no such law but didn’t need to be invited to dig in more than once.

In the end I ate three, but in my defense the entire pie was maybe eighteen inches across. Calling that tiny little thing a pizza is what ought to be against the law. The sultry she-plane voice returned. “If you look out the left side, you’ll see Sky Disney, the most recently opened property of the Disney resort franchise.”

It lives up to the name. Resembled some photos I’ve seen, closeups of an insect’s compound eye. Just a fuckoff massive floating sphere made out of countless little geometric facets. All of them transparent plastic, like a ball shaped flying greenhouse.

I don’t fully understand how they fly. Something about sunlight heating the air inside, and the interior volume of a sphere increasing non-linearly relative to the surface area. Bits and pieces I remember from school, not especially important to know.

I could see little specks zipping around the levitating sphere, which cast an immense round shadow on the cloud layer below it. Drones or something. What did it feel like to have the kind of money one needs to visit a place like that? I hardly remember now.

Remble asked what I was contemplating so intently. I didn’t realize it was outwardly apparent, but gave him an honest answer. “I was...in a coma for six years.” Not a lie, really. “When I woke up, everything was so different. Everything changed so much more drastically than I expected it to.

Everything’s strange and vaguely threatening now compared to how I remember it. My Dad would probably gloat about how I’m having the same feelings he did as he got older. That’s how it works for fins too, I bet? You turn into your fathers. Or…?”

He nodded, the carrier swaying gently beneath him as a result of the motion. “It’s mostly the same. I mean the whole pod plays a part in raising children, but I do find myself reacting to things the way my elders did while they were alive.”

That last part was an unexpected punch in the gut. I didn’t know what to say. I never do. It’s the one thing my Dad never prepared me for. He had to watch his own father grow old and weak, then die. Maybe that’s just something you can’t prepare somebody for.

It’s also something that, based on Dad’s near-fullmetal makeover, I might never have to deal with. Fingers crossed. It brought to mind what Remble said about the fact that most of the world can’t afford to go fullmetal. I’ve escaped a horror which remains unavoidable for almost everybody else on the planet.

Only by crime, as well. I’d like to say I only went down that path because all others were closed to me, but that would be a half-truth. The fact of the matter is that I have a talent for it. For subterfuge, manipulation, the Machiavellian arts.

How else do you monetize such a talent? It’s not as if I was ever likely to become a creative or something. If I hadn’t recognized my own aptitude for jacking other people’s shit, who knows where I’d be right now? Probably on the bottom level of an airliner, making pizza for dolphins.

Speaking of which, I suddenly heard the motor whine and revolting gurgle of a stomach pump. I had one myself before the fullmetal surgery, as I had my lower intestine removed years prior to make room for more implants.

“That’s not bothering you, is it?” Remble asked. “I’m a carnivore. I can’t actually digest most of the pizza, I just like how it tastes.” It at least saved me from asking what happens to his pee. I’d been trying to work out if it mixes in with the water and gets sprayed onto him over and over by the misters, or what.

I figure that if I opened the side panel on that scooter of his, I’d find both solid and liquid waste storage tanks, as well as a variety of other disturbing necessities for a cetacean to comfortably spend long periods of time on land. One of those matters that’s best left alone.

An irritating chime I soon realized was audible only to me sounded. I closed my eyes to find my interface GUI dominated by a flashing notification that I had an incoming call from my Dad. To save some D-coin I routed it through the in-plane wifi, which was free for the first hour to new users.

“Oh, you’re on the plane.” How could he tell? I could see him, but knew of no way for him to see my surroundings unless there’s a camera on me I don’t know about. I asked, and he clarified that he could hear the ambient chatter and propulsion hum.

“There are fullmetals here looking for you. Expensive, top shelf ones. I don’t know who they’re with but I’m equally sure I don’t want to find out.” I was ready to turn around and board the next flight back the moment this one landed, but he assured me they didn’t seem to realize his relation to me.

“The previous owner of this body is dead. His public profile came with it as part of the package. I’ve also customized it extensively since then, so even if he had enemies I don’t know about, they’d have nearly as hard a time recognizing me as the fullmetals who arrived today.”

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 11!}