[Original Novel] Metal Fever 2: The Erasure of Asherah, Part 5

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I never went in for this religion stuff. Certainly not Scientology. Living with Audrey acquainted me intimately enough with the consequences of being raised in that crowd that I never bothered taking a closer look at what it’s all about.

I always figured that if the biggest religion on Earth wasn’t for me, then neither were any of the others. To be fair that’s assuming too much, they’re not identical or anything, it just seems improbable to me that one of them would have real answers if none of the others do.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on this stuff. In fact I’m probably more ignorant of spiritual matters than the average mug. But from where I’m sitting, it sure seems an awful lot like the God of the Bible is just a big scary puppet they use to terrify everybody who believes it’s real into behaving the way they think society ought to be. Then again, at least it’s not Scientology. That’s not saying much, but it counts for something.

My thoughts begin to blend together, and the room starts slowly spinning around me. That’ll be the drugs I assume, the only part of surgery I look forward to. For funsies I try counting backwards. I only make it to triangle.

The next thing I knew, I was struck by a flood of nostalgic sensations. The feeling of cool air against my skin, all the little hairs standing on end. Itches. Back pain. Even sleep crust in the corners of my eyes as the lids parted, permitting the harsh overhead lighting onto my retinas.

Yet as familiar as it all felt, there were also differences. Your first body is like your first car. The seat slowly molds into the shape of your ass, back and shoulders until it fits you so perfectly that it feels weird and wrong to drive somebody else’s.

These aren’t my arms. Despite Alejandro’s protestation, I wave them about, just to test the quality of the connection. This isn’t my chest. Those aren’t my legs, and...Sweet baby L. Ron, that penis! That’s not my fucking penis, I didn’t think about this going in.

It’s one thing to drive around some meatloaf’s body. I don’t have to get attached, it’s just a mobility appliance. But having some other dude’s jizz blaster swinging between my legs is a different animal entirely. Didn’t sit right with me, so I asked Alejandro about my options.

“You don’t want to go crazy with transplants. It’s like plastic surgery, you can’t do much of it before scar tissue build up and shit start to fall off your body, or you forget how to add.” Whatever. It’s not like I can’t get an exocortex plugin for math.

I press the matter, but he reminds me this is the only body fitting my criteria he has on hand, and that I have to let my brain heal for at least six months before I could safely have it transplanted again. I sigh, look in the mirror and pat my new body’s conspicuous beer belly. “Looks like I’m stuck with you for a while. You better not have any STDs I don’t know about.”

It isn’t just the sensations which differ. I can feel a distinct, immediate change in how people look at me. Before they either admired me from afar, or made a point to steer clear. Now all I get are momentary glances, followed by indifference or the occasional sneer.

Fine by me. Hidden in plain sight, every borged up lowlife unwittingly doing me a favor by turning their attention elsewhere as I saunter past. On my way through the lobby, various small fish swimming past the curved windows, I soaked in the obnoxiously ever-present ads.

Most of ‘em are for aquatic implants like the ones I jacked the data center with. Chest cavity O2 tanks. Bloodstream CO2 scrubbers. Prosthetic mermaid tails, hands with octopus style suckers on them, and a dizzying variety of underwater weaponry.

One of the ads, a lenticular thin film poster that ran up the side of the cylindrical metal module onto the ceiling, promoted some sort of race. That caught my attention. How I’d like to be racing again! But instead of motorcycles, they appeared to be...torpedoes?

No, not quite. Rocket powered, and with a cockpit. “Supercav Grand Prix.” The sleek, menacing submersible craft then began to animate as the ad detected my eyes looking at it. Bubbles formed around each sub, from tiny gas jets around the nose.

They sped frantically through the sunlit waters of the continental shelf, diving, rolling, ducking under coral arches. Dad came up behind me, perhaps noticing how wistful I looked, and put a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll be back in the saddle before you know it.”

I wanted to believe him, but I’ve never been this broke before. Another borged up mermaid appeared in the ad, swinging the checkered flag and then winking. That’s the other thing that’s everywhere in all these fucking ads.

Tits. Ass. Abs. Legs, lips, eyes. The composition never focusing on the complete person, but framing them as a collection of marketable body parts. Which I suppose most of us technically are these days, but still.

Everywhere I looked, even on ads for mundane shit like chewing gum or implant crust remover, there would be some titties just hanging out in the corner or whatever. They don’t even try to have it make contextual sense for a woman to be in the shot. My dick’s not complaining, but my brain feels somewhat patronized.

The men don’t bother me as much, but then I don’t process images of men the way somebody attracted to them does. If I pay attention, they’re nearly as well represented as women, washboard abs inexplicably the background for an algae paste promotion.

In another, a man’s tanned biceps and shoulders support a tray bearing all manner of cosmetics. I remember when I was a kid, there was a big push to remove stuff like this from ads because it was sexist. Instead they just sexed everything up equally for men and women alike. Profit always wins.

A haggard looking man nursing a cigarette sits slumped over in one of the wall mounted chairs just outside the brothel. Through the entrance I glimpse some sort of eight-limbed human cocktopus, each of its arms a prosthetic penis, whirling about as lusty bitches tuck money into its various jiggling folds.

“I think I’ve seen enough. You ready to go topside?” Dad turned this way and that. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I haven’t been down here in awhile” he confessed. “I think I got us a little turned around.” Somewhat worried about the prospect, I asked if he meant we were lost.

He took umbrage to that. “Lost? That’s rich, I know this tub like the back of my own hand!” He held out his shiny red hand for effect, seemingly newer and in better shape than most of his other parts. He then stared at it and picked at a loose bolt. “Wait, what the fuck is this? I don’t remember it being that way.”

I smirked, once again capable of facial expressions and somewhat pleased with that. The busted up dude outside the brothel was watching us closely now. I tried to scan his face and compare it against the footage of those gawkers from topside only to realize I could only do that with my old body.

Little by little the changes were piling up and becoming real for me. A few of them pleasant pangs of nostalgia. The rest unwelcome shortcomings which made me realize why I’d been so eager to go fullmetal in the first place.

The aches in particular. In the spot where the prosthetic leg attaches to bone. At the elbow of my prosthetic arm, where skin meets metal. I can feel every vertebra in my spine, every rib in my ribcage moving as I turn or bend my torso.

I grimaced, mentally working out an estimate of how long it would probably take me to raise the RMB I needed for a fullmetal body once I’m set up in Shenzen. This temporary return to the warmth and softness of biological frailty had already outlived its novelty, and overstayed its welcome.

After brief argument, Dad and I agreed to follow one wall until we made it out. The seafloor complex is larger than the stead above it, but still only equivalent to a few city blocks. The problem is the convoluted layout. Even so, we soon wound up at the docking terminal, and within a few minutes were once again boarding the makeshift aquatic elevator.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 6!}