[Original Novel] Pressure 3: Beautiful Corpse, Part 11

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Oh God, the machinery. Now she remembered what level 20 was for. A series of machines lay before her, engulfed partially in the damp white flesh, with rusty pipes at various stages of integration. An overhead conveyor of hanging bodies in crew uniforms passed them one at a time into reach of a robot arm which cut off their clothing. The next deftly cut a series of seams into their skin, then degloved them. No other word describes it. The skin was cut, tugged on, and simply sloughed right off the body.

“No” Olivia muttered, as if rejecting the spectacle would cause it to vanish. Of course it didn’t. The machines just kept on working. The bodies were next passed to a transparent cylindrical enclosure which prevented splatter as a surgical saw on the end of a robot arm separated the corpse into sections. Not the ones a butcher might choose, but then these were not for consumption. Of the conventional kind.

The sections fell one by one down a chute, onto their own conveyor. Here, the machinery ended. The metal machinery. What followed was an improvised disassembly line of a different sort. The arms which sorted and arranged the parts were made from mended tissue. Bones, limbs, nerves and veins from unwilling donors. Automated machinery of flesh and blood, to pick up where the robots left off. “NO!” Olivia shouted. But the process chugged right on.

The parts were then packed in ice and placed in airtight PVC chests. She recognized them from Vivian’s apartment. Taking in the whole process at once was stupefying. So much had to go wrong for things to arrive at this point. But the worst was still to come.

“Olivia. How bad is it?” She turned to face Violet. And there she was. Eyes, nose, mouth and a tuft of hair. Her face was embedded in a wall of flesh with dozens more, most in a trancelike state. Of course. The processing power for all of this.

“No. Nooo Violet. God no. Not this.” She wept. “They did something to me didn’t they.” Olivia could only nod, hot salty tears streaming down her cheeks. “You can fix it, right? We can still get out of here like you said. Like you promised.”

Olivia collapsed. How could it come to this? She had a deal with it. Violet was like the carrot it dangled in front of her so she’d cooperate. Violation upon violation. She berated herself for trusting it. How she’d wanted to. Only believing that it would release Violet had gotten her this far. Everything fell apart around her.

“Olivia. Please. Kill me.” She choked. Was there anything left to do? She withdrew one of the pistols from her pocket and, hand shaking, carefully rested the barrel on Violet’s forehead. “Release me from this. Like you promised.” Her stomach turned. Her finger hugged the trigger and she fought to summon the strength to pull it.

She refused. There was nothing else left to drive her but this girl, however lost. A switch flipped in her mind and once again the path was clear. Olivia thought back to the gurgling abominations which resulted the last time she’d tried to mend. But she had to try.

Feeling around in her pocket, she found the scalpel by clumsily cutting her finger on it. She winced and put the tip of her finger in her mouth. The taste of living blood. There was nothing to cut bone with but as she peeled away the layers of flesh, it turned out everything but the front of the skull was gone. It made removing the brain and eyes a breeze.

She packed them in ice, then sealed them in one of the smaller PVC containers. It just barely fit under one arm. The other faces on the wall of flesh moaned in protest, only now sensing that part of their intelligence had been removed. On every flesh surface, eyes began to open like some kind of security system. All eyes then turned to focus on her.

The whole room shook slightly. Olivia stood still hoping it was a fluke but another, stronger tremor followed. She didn’t figure out they were footsteps until, in the immense dome window on the far side of the chamber appeared the face of a child.

It was neotenous, at least. A high bulbous forehead, lacking any hair, with six thin red slits for eyes. The mouth was lined with sharp little teeth. It raised one arm, and brought its fist down on the window. The impact could be felt through the floor. Then with the other arm, as if in slow motion. Then again with the first, pounding on the window, trying to get inside, staring furiously at Olivia.

With an eardrum shattering bang, a crack appeared in the window. As the creature continued to hammer away at it the crack splintered outward, like a spider web. Realizing what came next, Olivia made a beeline for the entry hatch, set the PVC container down in the elevator and mashed the level 1 button with her thumb. Behind her the earth shaking impacts continued. It felt like an eternity before the elevator doors closed.

The impacts shook the elevator less and less as it ascended. Olivia caught her breath and began to process what she’d seen. Their endgame. She’d never thought it through that far, but it now seemed obvious that any significant number of fabricants would need to streamline the production of replacement parts. So as the contagion spread, so would the machinery.

She now saw in her mind an Earth the entire surface of which had been converted into automated machinery, partly metal and partly flesh, for the purpose of processing human cattle. If it were done sustainably, the fabricants would never run out. Worse by an order of magnitude than the dead universe she assumed before.

To think, she’d briefly considered them family. To glimpse at last their true face violently swept aside her hatred of human beings. It seemed trivial now. A horror beyond horrors from which there could be no escape would consume every life bearing world if she couldn’t stop the outbreak here and now.

The elevator shuddered to a stop. The doors opened. She exited into a common area packed with resting soldiers. Some milling about, others cleaning their rifles, all gradually took notice of her. “Everyone! I have something of vital importance to tell you.” They gathered around, appearing intrigued.

“The creatures you face can be crippled by bullets but not killed. And they only repair themselves before resuming their onslaught. Isn’t that right?” They stared. “It’s because what gives them life is external. It’s fed to them through a sort of umbilical you cannot see. Like a power cable. Once they’re disabled, get close and use scissors or a knife to gouge out the bellybutton. You don’t need to see the cord itself, that’ll do the trick. If you do this, they’ll truly die. Don’t ask me know I know this, if you try it for yourselves…”

They only continued to stare at her with eyes she now noticed had familiar yellow irises, and cruciform pupils. They were upon her before she could retreat into the elevator. In the commotion, the box went unnoticed.

“Deceitful ingrate Olivia, once favored Heirophant of the master. Sinful betrayer Olivia, with her duplicitous heart and liar’s tongue.” The mass of them moved in unison to seize her by the arms, hair and clothing, dragging her kicking and screaming towards the central sphere.

Just then, an ear splitting concussive blast rocked the station. Vibration mounted and the thundering sound of rushing water approached. “The window! I forgot to shut the hatch-” Olivia thought just before frigid sea water erupted from the elevator shaft, sweeping them all away like ants in a downpour.

Somewhere in all of it Olivia was tossed against something rigid and angular. She held fast to what turned out to be the PVC dry case she’d left in the elevator and used it for floatation. Her old body couldn’t drown, but the same could not be said for this one.

The water settled at roughly shoulder height. It would be some time before it filled the lower decks of every module, after which it would resume rising. As it did so it would compress the remaining air until it reached equilibrium with the outside seawater. That would leave what, four? Five dry decks at the very top?

For all its advantages, Olivia’s new body could also feel pain. And it was intensely painful to wade nearly up to her neck through ice cold seawater trying to reach the central sphere. Reaching higher ground was priority one and she had little confidence that the elevator she’d just used was still in working order.

A cold, stiff hand grabbed at her below the waterline. She cried out and thrashed trying to get away from it. Remembering the pistols in her pockets she withdrew one and fired randomly into the water. A man’s head and shoulders emerged, rivulets of seawater trickling down his features.

A flash of insight struck Olivia. She aimed for his heart and fired. The man looked confused, then shocked. As his body began to shut down, his grip loosened and Olivia slipped away, leaving him floating face down as the water surrounding him turned increasingly red.

The burning pain subsided, replaced by numbness and a gradual stiffening of the joints. Not much time left. “What a fragile thing life is” Olivia thought. As a condition, death was in all ways sturdier than this.

Finally she spotted a stairwell. It was an immense relief to be out of the water, but it didn’t last long. With the lower levels nearly full, the water level once again began to rise. She struggled to force her legs to carry her up the steps quickly. It was difficult even to place her feet squarely on the steps as she had no feeling in them.

As expected, there was an elevator door on the next level. With any luck the car was stopped there, or higher. Jamming on the call button caused the display to flash garbled text, part of which looked like an urgent maintenance request.

The water lapped at her ankles. “Come on...COME ON GOD DAMNIT!” Olivia shouted, banging on the door. The water reached her calves. She debated hoofing it up another flight of stairs, but right as the water reached her knees, the doors parted. Seawater rushed in, sucking Olivia into the elevator car along with it.

She hammered on the button for floor 5. The doors closed, and with a nauseating lurch the elevator car began to ascend. By the sounds of it the motor was really struggling as there was still about two feet of seawater inside the car. A loud thump sounded against the closed doors, then frantic clawing.

The screeching of nails on metal receded as the elevator car rose. Mercifully the seawater also drained out through the crack between the doors at which point her ascent accelerated somewhat. Then the lights flickered, and the elevator car came to a halt.

“No. Not now, please” she muttered. It budged for a moment, raised a few more feet, then ground to a halt again. This time for good. In the stillness she could hear the roaring of seawater still pouring in, rising to engulf her.

After her body drowned, it would begin to decompose with her entombed within it. In turn, entombed within the elevator car. Inside of this forsaken mess of pressure hulls and piping at the cold, dark bottom of the Pacific.

How long would it be until salvage workers found her? Prying open those rusted elevator doors to witness what weeks or months of immersion in seawater had done to her decaying flesh. First her body would bloat with gases. Then burst. Cycling between colors, from white to blueish green to brown. It dawned on her that she’d be conscious for all of it.

“Fuck! FUCK!!” she cried, and set about frantically searching for a way out. There was some sort of service hatch in the ceiling but it was locked. She raise the pistol, aimed, and pulled the trigger. It clicked impotently, out of bullets. Panic nearly set in before she remembered the second gun. Tossing the first to the floor, she pulled her spare gun out and fired it at the lock. That did the trick.

The new problem was how to get up and out through the hatch. It looked so easy in films. But without a ladder or stool and in her weakened state she just couldn’t pull herself up through it. A few minutes later the solution came in the form of a trickle of seawater re-entering the elevator through the closed doors. “Already?” she thought. But it was a blessing in disguise.

As soon as it reached her chest she was able to leverage the buoyancy of the dry case to boost herself up through the hatch. It was made more difficult by the weight seawater added to her soaked clothing. Leaning back down through the opening she grabbed hold of the dry case and pulled it up with her.

But now what? There was a ladder but she couldn’t climb it with the huge unwieldy case in tow. The hatch fell shut and she found herself in total darkness. Her eyes adjusted immediately, and the faint light coming through the crack between doors became visible.

She searched the roof of the elevator for tools and found nothing. Steeling herself, she wedged the tips of her fingers into the crack and, straining until she saw red, Olivia began pulling the doors apart.

She could feel the skin on her fingers tearing. A few of the small bones inside her digits cracked, her shoulder popped but did not dislocate, then finally the doors were far enough apart to get herself and the dry case through them. She held up her hands, now covered in blood but still too numb to feel anything.

Olivia staggered out of the elevator, struggling not to touch anything. Her hands burned. Reflexively she dipped them into the water now flowing around her shoes. The burning intensified. Of course, she scolded herself. Salt water.

This floor was packed with machinery. Most of which would soon catch fire as rising seawater shorted high voltage circuitry inside. Not wishing to be present for that, Olivia made a dash for the stairwell and began climbing. Two floors up, she heard someone call out to her.

“Are there any more or just you?” Olivia turned towards the voice. A young woman with red hair down to her neck stood in one of the tunnels connecting this tower to an adjacent one, frantically beckoning. Olivia shook her head. “Only me”.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 12!}