[Original Novel] Metal Fever 2: The Erasure of Asherah, Part 30

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Finally, the petals reopened. There in the center was a brand new plant based device which I have no basis of comparison for. A large opening at one end seemed about the right diameter for my forearm. The small opening at the other end, presumably, is what I was meant to point at enemies.

“Wait, where’d my pistol go?” I inquired. The chieftess assured me I wouldn’t need it anymore. I was considerably less sure of that. When she instructed me to insert my hand into the larger of the two openings, I became exponentially less certain any of it was a good idea.

The opening smelled faintly of freshly cut grass. It looked moist, the interior a light purple mottled with pink blotches. Small tendrils about an inch long lined the opening and waved feebly to and fro as if reaching for my arm.

“I ain’t sticking my arm in that thing” I stated, on no uncertain terms. I mean, I’ve stuck my appendages in some dubious places before. But for fuck’s sake, a guy’s got to draw the line somewhere.

Is this how they made all of their tools? This...organic copier? But I saw them planting seeds on the day I first arrived in the village. Indeed, there were translucent sacks of seed pods suspended from the inner wall of the hut.

The chieftess filled in the gaps for me. “Anything we put into it is copied, but seeds will come out as well that permit us to grow more.” Even as she spoke, some sort of ovipositor at the base of the plant secreted a series of seed pods, glistening with mucus.

“You’re just...okay with this? Nothing about it seems fucked up to you?” She shrugged again, looking at me as if I was the crazy person for finding fault with the arrangement. I wonder what she’d make of a 3D printer though, come to think of it.

This thing’s not just a fabricator, though. There’s got to be something like a brain in there, for it to be able to understand the intended function of whatever is put into it. Is it aware of me? I cautiously caressed it, and felt it faintly throb.

The chieftess removed my hand. “You mustn’t do that. The womb of Asherah is sacred.” Oh, of course. Her womb. I shuddered and wiped my hand vigorously on my pant leg. I might’ve just used one of the dangling flaps of excess skin left over from my liposuction as a towel. She’d been charitable not to comment on it, but I could pass for a flying squirrel lately.

I gave serious thought to stealing it. I couldn’t help myself! I’d entertained the notion when I first visited the village of smuggling one of their tools or healing pods home with me, but this…”womb”...surely that’s the real big ticket item here.

That train of thought didn’t make it very far, derailed when a series of gunshots rang out. I bolted upright, looking first at the chieftess and then glancing around the edge of the doorway. “I thought I fucking got them all.” She joined me at the doorway, scanning the smoldering remains of the village for the source of the sound. “So did I.”

I searched frantically for my pistol. No sign of it amidst the petals. Nor could it be found anywhere around the roots. “Where is it!?” I demanded. “What happens to shit you put in there??” She silently shook her head and shrugged, eyes wide with fear.

Another gunshot. I uneasily eyeballed the organic weapon still awaiting use in the center of the unfolded bulb. I looked at the chieftess, who urged me on. Then back at the damp orifice with the countless little cilia, waving gently as if tasting the air. Searching for an arm, if I had to guess.

With no remaining options, I gave it mine. Prosthetic arm first, but it regurgitated the damn thing, rhythmic muscular contractions inching it off my plastic and metal appendage until it fell to the soil at my feet. “The other one!” the chieftess hissed, irritated by my reluctance.

I grimaced as I slid my meat arm into the opening. It eagerly latched on and pulled itself the rest of the way until it fit far more snugly than I’d have liked. It engulfed my hand and forearm all the way up to the elbow, each of my fingers resting in its own flesh pocket.

I could feel bony protrusions within those pockets. It didn’t take me long to work out what they were for. Aiming the business end of the arm swallowing nightmare at the nearest wall, I used my index finger to tug at the trigger in that pocket.

A loud, gassy series of pops followed. The rate of fire was high enough that I couldn’t work out that it was shooting thorns until I pried one free from a wooden post it’d lodged itself in. Not too shabby. The index finger’s trigger, however, corresponded to a completely different function.

I once again took aim, this time curling my middle finger. There was an abrupt, wet sounding burp as the weapon emitted a burst of purple spray. It smelled absolutely foul, but did a worse number on the wooden post than my nose by far.

The post immediately began crumbling as what I now figured for acid continued to audibly sizzle as it ate away at the wood. Another gunshot, this time followed by panicked screaming. No time for a full test. I felt plenty satisfied it would kill a man, the only purpose for which I needed it just then.

I again crept around the edges of the huts in search of the lone remnant I must have overlooked in the confusion of the firefight earlier. Upon catching my first glimpse, I quickly realized I’d gotten the drop on him.

He backed away from a group of frightened but determined looking villagers advancing on him little by little as he held one of them hostage. The old man from the clearing! I was nearly behind him, off to one side but with excellent odds of catching him by surprise...until the group of villagers noticed me.

The criddler followed their gaze. In the split second before he could pull his hostage around to position him between us, I filled his face with high velocity thorns. He bellowed in pain, stumbling backwards. It was all the chance the old man needed to break free and run for it.

Once the old man was clear, I blasted the remnant with acid. His screaming intensified, then grew more hoarse and strained as the corrosive purple concoction stripped away his skin. He knelt, pawing at his face, shocked to see pieces of it coming off in his hands.

He then crawled towards me with an outstretched hand and a piteous expression on what was left of his face. As if, at this point, there was anything I could do to reverse the chemical reaction rapidly eating him alive. Acrid fumes rose from his bubbling flesh as it melted, stinging my nostrils.

Within about ninety seconds, there wasn’t even a skeleton. Just a putrid mass of brown sludge seeping into the soil, fumes still coming off it. “J-Jesus” I stammered, dumbstruck by what I’d just witnessed. “Jesus f-fucking...Christ.”

The villagers evidently felt the same way, staring at me with a mixture of awe and disgust. Nevermind that I’d saved one of them. Then again, it’s not every day you see a man ripped apart at the molecular level right in front of you. I felt more disgusted than any of them, if I’m honest.

I was about to look away from the stomach turning sight when I noticed something poking out of the mound of gelatinous remains. The remnant’s body armor. What the fuck? Why didn’t it dissolve? I searched it for logos.

“Neutralis Defense Solutions™ anti-ballistic body armor” it read, followed by a manufacturing date and list of caliburs it will reliably repel. Then beneath that, “Made in the USA from 100% authentic hydraulically compressed Speedfoam.”

Well fuck me sideways. That shit really CAN do anything. I wiped as much of the...organic residue...from the armor as I could manage before tucking it under one arm and heading back to the hut containing Asherah’s womb.

The chieftess followed close behind, peppering me with questions like “where are you going”, “what do you intend to do with that” and so on. All answered about fifteen minutes after the petals of the revolting plant orifice closed around the armor.

So far as I could tell, there was no way to tell the damned thing what you wanted. Whatever comes out is just the organism’s own interpretation of what the object you put into it was for, plus whatever improvements unique to engineered plant biology it can devise.

The thorn blasting, acid spitting arm gun it made out of my pistol was no disappointment, and neither was the armor it finally finished constituting out of god knows what. Nutrients from the soil I assume. Does this thing need sunlight?

The armor was recognizably the correct size and shape for my figure. A chest piece, modest pauldrons, lower body armor including a codpiece and hip guards, plus thigh and shin guards to round out the set.

The pieces weren’t separate though, bound together by a web of dense, stretchy mucus. I could probably tear it apart if I had any reason to, but it didn’t make it meaningfully more difficult to pull onto my body.

Still a tall man with broad shoulders, but now with a slim midsection with droopy folds of excess skin dangling from it, I had kind of a hard time figuring out how to tuck those folds into the section which protects my stomach.

I wouldn’t call it comfortable, but after witnessing what the gun was capable of, I felt confident that the armor would stop anything short of armor piercing rounds. Mercifully the interior side of each armor component was not lined with the moist purple surface now wrapped tightly around my forearm.

There was, however, an opening on the chest. Sensing my confusion, the chieftess offered up the observation that every plant based device she’s so far seen come out of Asherah’s womb required either sunlight and water saturated with nutrients to stay alive, or a constant influx of digestible organic matter.

Something like a pitcher plant, then. Or a venus fly trap. I scrubbed a bit of the jiggling brown crud I must’ve missed earlier from one of my shin guards and fed it into the opening on the chest plate.

Those horrible little tendrils immediately extended from the X-shaped opening, each triangular flap parting slightly to admit the brown morsel’s entry. I could feel it grow warmer and throb subtly. I then watched as the fluid circulating through the stretchy translucent web of capillaries between armor sections grew steadily browner.

“That’s the grossest fuckin’ thing I ever saw” I uttered. “Wicked too, though.” The outer skin of the armor somewhat resembled lettuce. A darker shade of green, and tougher. A texture like elephant skin, only cris-crossed with the protruding veins of a lettuce leaf.

The veins proved close enough to the surface that I could watch purple fluid of some sort coursing through them. The brown shade slowly vanished as the nutrients in it were absorbed. Then, predictably, my armor took a shit.

It even came out the section of armor covering my butt, too. Now that’s what I call attention to detail. It gave me reason to second guess the wisdom of creating living tools...but I decided to reserve judgement until I got a better idea of what all it could do in exchange for tolerating the occasional smelly unpleasantries of biology.

I emerged from the hut to a throng of astonisher villagers. “How, in all this time, did it never occur to any of you that you could make yourselves armor?” The chieftess answered plainly that it would require them to anticipate and prepare for violent acts they wanted no part of.

I stared at her, incredulous. “Come on now. Be real with me. This? All of this? The village, your way of life, all of it. How long did you think this could possibly last in the modern world? It’s been a stretch of incredible luck that you’ve evaded media attention for so long.”

Perhaps not what she needed to hear, so soon after the massacre of her people. I left her brooding on her throne, content to seek out the mangrove swamp by my lonesome. I might at least get an idea of their numbers and firepower, before deciding if retaliation is on the table.

The various musky smells of the jungle now seemed unexpectedly stronger. I eventually realized I could now both smell and taste through every inch of the plant armor, a capability I never asked for and couldn’t imagine would make me more combat effective.

It felt like walking around with tastebuds on my feet, the relatively inoffensive but unappetizing flavors of mud, soil and crushed undergrowth now my constant companions. The ability to taste the air, on the other hand, very quickly proved its value.

The plant armor could evidently detect scents much more effectively than my unassisted nose. This must be what dogs smell, I reflected as I closed my eyes and visualized the scentscape around me. Only the humid stench of the jungle in all directions...except one.

That’s gunpowder, isn’t it? Gunpowder, fire, the familiar acrid stench of welding...and an irritating, sterile chemical scent I also remembered from Dave’s trash barge. That must be whatever goes into their veins, into their lungs or up their noses.

Meth almost certainly, but it could be anything. The advent of molecular printers has erased the formerly clear distinctions between different substances. New ones hit the street faster than regulatory bodies around the world can schedule them.

The only important detail, from my perspective, was the distinct scent. It made it remarkably easy to find my way through the dimly lit, thickly overgrown jungle until I wound up peering at the remnant operation from a ridge overlooking it, obscured by ferns.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 31!}