Woo, short story! I just had this idea and wrote it; started it months and months ago and had the plot planned out, but only finished it only recently, even though it's shorter than a chapter of my main story. It was just a struggle to get out.
Beware, this story contains an instance of mild physical abuse that could be translated as sexual abuse (though they
are a-sexual mudokons) and is probably inappropriate for younger readers. Woo, now you can't sue me!
This was probably subconsciously inspired in part by an idea of T-nex's that she told me about, so credit and hugs to her.
Anyway, moving swiftly on...
Stock
Happy frantic music blares; close up on Presenter Slig, standing on news stage.
Slig: “Vykkers and Gentle-Gluks, we all know that mudokons are stupid!”
Cut to a mudokon getting chased by a pack of slogs,
Slig: (Voiceover) “Weak!”
Cut to mudokon attempting to push a stubborn mug off of a minecar track. Just as the mug picks itself up and shuffles forward a minecar runs past at high speed and flattens the mud.
Slig: (Voiceover) “Clumsy!”
Cut to a factory scene. A mud stumbles into shot, obviously pushed, and then a big-bro slig charges past him, knocking backwards into a bonesaw. Gore flies everywhere and blood splatters the camera.
Slig: “And above all, ungrateful!”
Cut to freeze-frame of an ‘Abe-Wanted’ poster.
Cut to a headshot of Presenter Slig on news stage.
Slig: “But it doesn’t have to be this way! We at ‘Sam’s Labour Production’ like to make the most of our mudokons!”
Cut to blurry image of Sam, with a male mudokon standing before her. Just visibly, he is holding a mudokon child.
Slig: (Voiceover, continued narrative) “Using a combination of natural methods,”
Cut to a wall of stacked, small, square cages, each containing a very young mudokon. A Vykker stands in front of them, facing away from the camera.
Slig: (Voiceover, continued narrative) “And modern technology…”
The vykker turns to face the camera.
Vykker: (His voice incredibly squeaky) “We breed the strongest, smartest and most industrial-friendly mudokons around!”
Cut to news stage and slig. Hotline number flashes along the bottom of the screen in big print. In much, much smaller print flashes the message, ‘Calls charged by the minute.’
Slig: “So call our special hotline number, now, for more information and to place your order for the best labour money can buy!”
Fadeout.
Five lay in utter darkness, as still and as cold as a corpse. She barely breathed, ears alert.
Somehow, One always knew, always got it right, within minutes. How she could tell in that unconquerable darkness was a mystery, but she was always right.
It came then, the clink of chains, then two rapid taps on the floor, tap, tap. A short pause and then Two replied, tap, tap. So it moved up the line, its progress tracked by the clink of chains. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. She felt a hand touch, squeeze her shoulder, and still barely breathing she raised a closed fist and took her place in the chain; tap, tap. Her own chains rattling now, she reached out and squeezed the shoulder of Six on her right, and heard the reply; tap, tap.
Seven, Eight… When Eight gave the signal, she held her breath. Several seconds passed and she almost screamed before she heard a feeble tap… tap from Nine. Her head rolling on the concrete floor in relief, she hardly listened as Ten, Eleven and Twelve gave their signals. They were all alive, safe once more from the darkness. She found tears in her eyes as she prayed her thanks to the Bright, Warm Light.
Minutes later they heard the clank and bang that told them that One had been as accurate as ever, and then grey light spilt into the room and they began pushing themselves wearily to their feet. The familiar whirr made them hurry and Five was on her feet and struggling to straighten up by the time the half-flesh-half-machine creature walked passed. She watched its legs in front of her, fearing it would stop before her, but it passed by, on down the line.
When its whirring stopped, she closed her eyes.
The strike of its Roaring Tube on skin-clung bones made her shudder and she felt tears in her eyes again. She heard Nine fall to the floor and cry out and the machine-flesh made a shout that perhaps meant something but was just noise to the twelve mudokons, and then struck again. Nine was screaming. Five kept her eyes closed but jerked every time another blow fell. All along the line, their chains rattled.
At last they stopped and the flesh-machine made another noise. Five kept her eyes closed as she listened to Nine struggle slowly to her feet. At last, the creature grunted and walked back along the line. Five opened her eyes as the rattling chain told her that it was being released from the wall, and then the flesh-machine led them from the room in their line, holding the end of the chain all the while.
They passed into a large room. One wall of the room had a table long enough for the twelve of them to sit, and the opposite wall from that was made of glass, letting them look out on the grey heavens. As with every morning, they stopped and looked out on that vast openness with mouths open in slack amazement; so different from the world they knew.
They sat. Food slid from shafts in the wall into their plates and they ate. It had the flavour of the bitter aftertaste of stale sweat and the consistency of earwax but they ate it ravenously. All food was like this. They had barely finished – Nine had not made it through half – when the flesh-machines came forward and began to split the chain using metal keys. Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine were separated from the others who were led away, heads hung low, towards the nests. These six were taken towards the milking room; it was their duty to provide this month.
They were shunted into a small, cramped room which was mostly taken up by the metal boxes and left alone; they all knew what to do.
Five shot a glance towards Nine before attaching the cup on the end of the tube from the box onto her chest. The others took their places, except for Seven, who crossed to Nine’s machine and hooked herself to that instead. Five was distracted then by the pain as the sucking began and she doubled over, moaning, tears coming to her eyes. It took her several minutes to recover, and then she pulled the cup off of her chest and stumbled over the room to Nine’s pump. She tapped Seven on the shoulder and she pulled the cup off of herself and passed it to Five. Five glanced up at Nine, who stood aside, feeble and hopeless, too old to provide the milk herself, even with the needles the flesh-machines put in them that made the rest of them swell. They knew what would happen to her if the half-machine creatures found out.
After a few minutes, Four took her place and she went back to her own pump. So it went on. After half an hour they all swapped to their full breast and continued, all taking another turn filling Nine’s pump, shooting furtive glances at the door, terrified that this time they might be caught…
When they were all emptied, they detached themselves from the pumps and waited; a few moments later, the flesh-machines opened the door and led them away without comment, and Five breathed a sigh of relief.
The rest of the day was spent lining boxes for the infants with straw and chunks of their own soft, thick feathers. It was not their time to see the children themselves; they had more turns producing milk than seeing the infants.
When the day had worn on, they were taken from their jobs and returned to that room where they were given more food. The Bright, Warm Light had moved away so that it could not be seen through the glass anymore. They were reunited with the others and chained to them again, and they sat and ate in silence. They would have one more milk-shift before the day ended, and then when there was nothing through that glass but darkness, they would return to the room where they slept.
They had stood to move and two creatures moved in to split their chains when there was a sharp call from across the room. They jerked and twisted and saw four of those flesh-machines striding towards them, their expressions fierce. They stopped at the end of the line and barked more noise at the flesh-machine holding the chain beside One. The creature nodded and tugged on the chain, making the 12 of them walk with it slowly, past the crowd of fierce guards. Five hung her head and stared at her feet, trembling with terror and not daring to look up even after she had passed. A moment later she heard a scream. She spun round and saw that the biggest and fiercest of that group had grabbed Nine as she passed, torn down her clothes and now grabbed her breast and squeezed it viciously. Nine shrieked and tried feebly to shake herself free, but the creature barked in a rage; had he grabbed Eight or Seven or any of the others, milk would have squirted out, but nothing came from Nine. He flung her to the ground, pulling the line in towards her, so Eight and Ten were pulled over her. He swung his Roaring Tube and struck Eight on the side of the head, knocking her to the ground as well, and out of the way.
Time seemed to slow as the creature raised its tube, pointing at Nine, who was crying and cowering. The creature said something in its pitiless grunt, and then there was a boom like the end of the world. Five shrieked and tried to hide her face, and received a blow to the back of the head for her noise. Thrown to the floor, she was forced to open her eyes, and for half a second saw Nine lying on the floor, her head a red blur above her shoulders. Then she squeezed her eyes closed shaking violently as she stood and weeping as she heard the chains disconnected. She didn’t open her eyes again even as she was led away to the milking room.
Much later in the darkness of their sleeping chamber, Five sat sobbing and shaking in Three’s arms. All of them were huddled together, the empty link in their chain like a black hole, sucking in their thoughts and feeble hopes to save their sister and crushing them into despair. It was One who came forward and drew a symbol in the dust with her finger.
It was a straight line, penetrated by a cross at either end: –x---x-. They looked at it, and then looked at her, and she whispered the only word that they understood. Five had never heard of hope, but if she had then she would have known it by the word that One whispered; “Abe.”
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Dunno how it turned out in the end. I liked the idea of Abe being a symbol of hope for even the most desperate slaves. And I liked the way the blaring, comic, happy advert (commercial, for the Americans) brushed over the much darker reality of how these top-of-the-range slaves are produced. Like how a lot of the products we buy, coffee, chocolate, fruit, clothes, are produced by people who are paid barely enough to feed themselves, some of them little more than slaves.
As I said, a lot of these ideas came from a conversation I had with T-nex, such as the fact that, since no one ever talks to these girls, they can't speak and don't know what things are called, like calling sligs flesh-machines. How did they know Abe's name? You decide!
Also, 'milk' is something of a misnomer; it's more like royal jelly, which is to bees what milk is to mammals.
Anyway, reply and let me know what you thought! There's another short story I started about the same time as this one, but it's much, much further from completion, so who knows.
Reply!
Splat.
Stock
But that's just my opinion.
