[Original Novel] Metal Fever 2: The Erasure of Asherah, Part 4

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So bizarrely, unexpectedly peaceful. Alejandro snapped his fingers. “Now? Quickly? Today?” I apologized, and began explaining my predicament. “I can’t go anywhere on the mainland looking like this. I made a lot of enemies with the heist, some of them with mob connections.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Say no more, say no more. But that body old. I can’t sell for much, and I don’t have any other fullmetal bodies you can afford with what the one you have now is worth.” Not a problem, I insisted. “I want to go bio.”

Dad slowly turned to stare at me as if I’d announced my plans to open a turnip stand. “Full bio? Just when I thought I’ve seen every damn fool decision you can possibly make…” But when I elaborated on my reasons, he came around.

“They’ll be expecting another fullmetal body. Their weapons and countermeasures will be chosen under the assumption that it’s a fullmetal they’ll have to contend with. None of that’s easy on the human body either, not as it naturally occurs, but it’s much more survivable. Besides which, none of the scum I used to deal with on the reg will believe a gear hound like me is full bio again.”

Alejandro seemed troubled. When I asked why, he spun the monitor around to face me. “This all I have. The one on the right is the most bio I can offer you. Many implants still, but mostly on inside. Recently upgraded optical lobe interface, I throw in for low price.” A stout, muscular Chinese man who looked to be middle aged. Maybe a touch younger. Still has all of his hair, anyways.

His right leg from the knee down was an appallingly old fashioned model. Carbon fiber with a literal pneumatic piston actuating the ankle. No gel muscle, no linear motor. Man alive, actual old timey pneumatics! Stunningly good condition though, for a leg that old.

The left forearm looked to be much newer. The hand was sheathed in a thin layer of transparent silicone. Not remotely pretending to be skin, just a common precaution mechanics use to keep fiddly, sharp little metal bits out of the delicate joints of their wrist and fingers.

“Habitat technician. Worked down here four years. Saved up money, goes fullmetal, then disappears. Leaves old body with me. I was getting ready to chop it honestly, nobody want to buy body like this.”

Except me. “It’s perfect!” I gushed. They both looked perturbed. “Perfect for what?” Alejandro scoffed. “Are you moving to China?” Meant as a joke presumably, because he just about keeled over when I nodded. Dad just sat there perfectly still, processing all of it.

“I’ve got some contacts there, buddies I used to race with and a guy that used to fence for me. I warned him about the heist, so he didn’t lose anything. Last I knew before I was locked up, he’d moved his operation to Shenzen.”

Dad wiped a nonexistent tear from his eye and hunched over. I asked him what the matter was. “It’s just...you only got out of the big house today. I get to see you for all of a few hours, now you’re disappearing from my life again.” I hugged him, metal scraping on metal, and promised it would be different.

“China isn’t prison, Dad. I’ll keep in touch. Haven’t I always kept in touch with you, even when you were living out in the boonies?” He slowly nodded, still mopey. Alejandro interrupted the two of us, tapping his watch. The hell does he need a watch for? Then again it was hardly the only antique I’d seen down here so far. Soon my old body would join them, gathering dust in this rusty old tub.

A droplet of water landed on my shoulder. I glanced up at the ceiling. “Should it be dripping? I feel like that’s bad. It shouldn’t be dripping, should it?” Alejandro hurried me to the operating table, ignoring my questions about the leak.

I eased my considerable weight onto the dentist-style reclining chair. The leather restraints did not escape my notice. Alejandro gestured at the panel mounted to the ceiling, and it flickered to life. Oh rad, just what I need right now. The Bible Network.

“Now I know many of you have been hard hit by the increasingly nasty gas storms lately” the man in the thousand dollar suit with the immaculately groomed hair says. “But that’s no reason to stop sending in as much as you can. Don’t be afraid of the storms, be afraid of God. There is no storm bigger than God!”

The audience cheers. I can feel Alejandro plugging hoses into my waist that will circulate oxygenated blood while my body’s offline. “The secular media wants you to believe the gas storms are because of so-called climate change” the suited preacher sneers.

“But didn’t they predict the storms would start twenty years sooner than they actually did? Their models are always wrong! You know what’s never wrong?” He held up an ostentatious gilded Bible, and the audience cheered louder than before.

“That’s right, my dear friends. The Bible doesn’t say anything about climate change. God would never allow us to unbalance the Earth so severely. You know what the Bible does say though? More times than you can count, there were tribes who defied God’s will.”

The audience booed. Some in the nearest rows of the gargantuan floating megachurch had on foam fingers, but the finger was shaped like a crucifix. “That’s right! They didn’t live the way God demands of us. They were homosexuals! They were prideful women, seeking to feminize the church! They were men who believed themselves wiser than the Bible, or who lusted after the metal!”

More booing. The camera briefly cut away to an elderly hispanic woman, weeping and holding up a sign reading “Repent, you final generation.” It then cut back to the stage, which was designed something like an inside out palace. The walls and part of the ceiling of an opulently decorated room, albeit made from painted fiberglass.

Even through the screen, it made me feel included. It made me feel like the tremendous wealth of the preacher was also my own. Like I’m on the inside with him looking out, rather than on the outside looking in.

Of course the seating for the attendees was considerably more bare-bones. Plenty of it, but made from welded steel with bare rafters overhead, like at a wrestling event. When the preacher finished, they would all go home, many of them to residorms and other forms of subsidized housing.

For all his ranting about the prosperity God would grace them with, proportional to their own generosity when donating to the preacher’s ministry, none of his wealth would go home with them.

Instead the money would only ever flow in only one direction, from bottom of the pyramid to the top. It reminded me of something Dad once said: “Sheep spend their whole lives in fear of wolves, only to be eaten by the shepherd.”

He suddenly grew more animated, striking a dramatic pose. “So he sent fire upon them! He sent plagues, and earthquakes, and storms! Does that sound familiar to you? It does to me! Are we not living in times such as those?

These days sin is everywhere you look. Those who have turned their back on God live however they please, disregarding His plan for their lives, and for society! What have been the fruits of their disobedience? The Lord God has sent gas storms upon them!”

I recalled him mentioning not so long ago that his audience was especially badly hit by those storms, but seemingly nobody in the audience remembered or cared. The preacher himself just kept rolling, not missing a beat.

“They want to place the blame on us! They say it’s because we voted down every preventative measure, the Satanic Communism they tried to foist on us under the pretense of environmental stewardship. But we knew better, because we see with spiritual eyes! Eyes which see clearly whose fault the storms actually are!”

The display behind him, comprising the entire wall around which the gaudy stage was built, now depicted a rapid slideshow. A man with his fullmetal girlfriend. A dome covered mosque in Dubai. A gay pride event in some VR lobby I didn’t recognize. That fuckin’ dolphin ambassador to the UN that’s on the news sometimes. A Church of Scientology. A child receiving her first prosthetic. Some children’s cartoon about a monkey, for some reason.

“Do you think God smiles upon this depravity? He is long suffering, but do not mistake patience for approval. Don’t you pay any mind to those mockers and scoffers who say the law of God is “bigoted” either, that men of God like me are “prejudiced” and other Marxist code words. I don’t make the rules, people! It’s all right there in the Bible, plain as day! If you don’t like it, if it’s not “tolerant” enough for you, don’t come crying to me. Take it up with God.”

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 5!}