Meat Made Empty

Alejandro's Empty farm wasn't the biggest in the Underside but it kept him plenty busy. It wasn't even the biggest in range of the local pylon, but while the others were owned by conglomerates from the city-states, Alejandro kept his local. He'd refused all purchase offers, no matter how generous. His mom didn't spend thirty years tending this land just so Split Valley or Humbert Step could buy it up and send all the labor and meat to interior folk. If he didn't hold her pylon ration, many of the locals would go hungry.

Not that they ever dropped by to thank him. It got lonely but Alejandro didn't mind the quiet. He also didn't blame people for avoiding the farm. No one wanted to see how the sausage got made, so to speak. Empties were a weird enough sight when calm, let alone during slaughter. Empty farms were usually on the outskirts of the Underside for a reason. Better to keep human-shaped livestock far from consumer consciences.

Alejandro thought little of the discomfort; he had a farmer's stomach and an outlander's practicality. Genon built a pylon in this back corner of the Underside for a reason. It'd be a shame to waste all that Net on account of squeamishness. The tower didn't stand very high, but it didn't have to with the overhang of the world-roof sloping so close by. Net arced out from the stone to the pylon's spherical tip pretty regularly; at least twice a day. Enough to fill the farm's cells and grow Empty muscle. Enough to give Alejandro a dark tan on his face, neck, and arms. Enough to keep the farm afloat a few more months.

Getting consistent Net was only the first challenge, though. Alejandro stepped off the maintenance ladder, satisfied that the capacitors at his corner of the pylon were back to regulation resistance levels. The corporate farms at the other three corners would love to find any reason to report him to the EIA. If an inspector flagged even the tiniest code violation in his equipment the corpos would waste no time filing an acquisition claim for his land. It was tough keeping up with city-state-funded android maintenance crews but he hadn't failed an inspection yet.

Next he had to rotate the substrate for the mushroom feed. Alejandro descended into the huge cellar with a headlamp and a sigh. Mushrooms didn't need Net to grow but they were damn finicky about humidity and ventilation. He walked along rows and rows of substrate pillars, inspecting the stacks of straw and gypsum with a discerning eye. It was a quiet, eerie job to do alone. He was glad to be done quickly; none of the stacks were fruiting today so he didn't have to lug any crates up to the troughs. Yet another reason he needed a new farmhand. If he'd had to stop and harvest, the Empties would get their lunch schedule all thrown off. Not fun dealing with two hundred thrashing, hungry bodies while trying to wrangle the feeding hose.

Jorge was waiting when Alejandro emerged from the mushroom cellar. The younger man's lower leg hadn't grown back yet--it was hard to get a doctor out here--so Jorge used a crutch to approach.

"Lady's here."

Alejandro dusted himself off. "What lady?"

Jorge shrugged, pulling up the crutch a little. "I dunno. A lady who wants work."

The lady in question was waiting at the house. She paced restlessly across the porch until she saw the brothers walking up. Alejandro frowned. He watched her hands for twitching as he reached earshot.

"You come about the ad?"

The woman was lanky and pale but her hands were steady. Her voice was distinctively deep and raspy. "You run this place?"

"I do."

She stepped off the porch. "I'm Brigid. Hear you're looking for a hand." Her greying brown hair was tied in short braids but a few wisps escaped into the breeze. The woman brushed them aside and nodded to Jorge's crutch. "...Or maybe a leg."

Jorge smiled but Alejandro just grunted. He lingered a look on Brigid's hands and eyelids. Seemed stable enough.

"Just for a season," he said finally. "Have you worked with Empties before?"

Brigid put away the smile she'd returned to Jorge and faced Alejandro seriously. "Not on a farm, but I managed a crew in the wetmines last year."

"Long way from any mines. You followed my ad all the way here?"

Brigid shrugged. "I've been on the road since. Good work's rare out there." Her neck twitched, but not enough for Alejandro to notice.

He sighed and waved to the Empty pens. The bodies inside were getting restless, rattling the wire fences. "Well, I'd guess you're right about that. Let me show what you'll be doing."

There were four pens, closer to the pylon corner than to the brothers' house. The Net tower loomed overhead and hummed with imminent discharge. Compared to its shiny chrome feet the paddock fences looked dull and dirty. Inside, the Empty bodies were lumbering toward the perimeter with aggressive steps.

They were the shape of people young and old, short and tall. Their pale and veiny skin was like that of blindfish from cave pools, and seemed torn or unfinished in places. White bone and red-gray muscle showed through the gaps in their recycled skin. The nearest batch was almost mature, with only a few exposed patches each. The pen closest to the pylon housed younger Empties, ones which were barely more than skeletons with freshly-grown flesh at the joints.

Even Alejandro didn't like the young ones. Their gaping eye sockets and slack jaws made them all the more uncanny. At least adults didn't have anything human left besides their shape. No hair, no genitals, no nipples, and no face. That's when they were ready for use. First as dumb labor, later as cheap meat.

As the hum of the pylon buzzed louder, Jorge hobbled to the feeding hose and started unrolling it from a coiling wheel. The Empties turned all at once to face the sound of the squeaky wheel. They rushed to the fence, flailing and pushing each other over to get closer.

Brigid, to her credit, seemed unfazed. Alejandro couldn't tell, however, if she was experienced or distracted. She kept glancing at the Net tower. It was almost powered up. Fat green-yellow arcs of Net were coalescing on the surface of its top sphere. Soon those arcs would snake down and distribute their energy to the hulking storage cells at the corners.

"This is the best time to feed 'em," Alejandro explained as he hefted the hose with Brigid. "Our cells aren't big enough to store all the discharge. So we gotta use the overflow to power feeding time."

Jorge attached the hose to a silo and soon the length became engorged with mushroom slurry. Alejandro struggled with the pressurized hose, wrestling it into position by the paddock. As the Net blasted down to the storage cells, excess energy fried the air all around. A corona of diffuse Net turned the area a sickly green. Alejandro jerked his head at Brigid.

"You're up!" he shouted over the roar of static. "Hope you know how to decouple the air-gap!"

But Brigid was already at the storage cells with her hand on the discharge nozzle. Alejandro was pleased for a moment. She must know what to do; he wouldn't have to wait for Jorge to limp over and help. However, his relief was short-lived. Brigid wasn't at the discharge node to help them. She wasn't even trying to dodge the stray arcs of Net that leapt from the tower. She was basking in them.

"Jorge, look away!" Alejandro shouted.

Brigid got on her knees and leaned close to the energized nozzle of the storage cells. She was convulsing in anticipation, hands trembling and neck twitching violently. With a jerk she threw the lever down. Thirty thousand volts of Net tried to jump to the metal paddock fences, but found Brigid's open mouth first. Alejandro grimaced. He should have followed his instinct. She was a junkie after all. An autovescor.

As expected, millions of mites began to condense into a cloud, attracted to and focused by the concentration of Net in the air. Most people thought Net made a buzzing sound on its own, but that wasn't true. It was the mites. You didn't have to collect or prepare them for surges. They were everywhere, all the time. Harmless, inert...until they had energy, material, and a stencil.

Alejandro allowed the hose to open, spraying gray mushroom-laden water into the Empty pens. Some of the mites rushed to the slurry, but many were distracted by Brigid. They followed the Net inside her body, pouring into her mouth, nostrils, eyes, ears, and probably her pores. She went out in fatal ecstasy; a once-in-a-lifetime high. The mites did their job well, just on the wrong target. Instead of building up the Empties with fungal protein, they used Brigid's own matter against her. They ate and rebuilt her again dozens of times a second. Her body flickered between life and death. The mites deconstructed every cell of skin, teeth, hair, and muscle down to her bones, then put it all back. One moment she was a skeleton, the next her whole self. Her existence disintegrated and reconstituted hundreds of times in less than a minute.

An autovescor's dream. The thrill of being then not-being. Again, and again, and again.

Of course, it couldn't last. The stencil of Brigid's skeleton held fast, but her bodily material decayed with each iteration. Her skin and hair turned gray from recycling. Her eyes shriveled to nubs and her muscles became stringy and limp. Without warning, the mites abandoned her. Her material was no longer adequate. The cloud moved on to their intended target, the stream of mushroom slurry. They lapped it up eagerly and converted it to flesh for the Empties. The bodies' exposed skin became seamless. Faceless heads turned smooth and uniform. The mites metabolized vegetable into muscle and dermis with the power of Net. Soon, many of the Empties were sated and matured, but far fewer than planned.

The hose went slack as Jorge crimped it off the silo. Alejandro's heart sank. This crop wouldn't be enough. Brigid had stolen a huge chunk of their overflow. Too many Empties were left undernourished, still showing muscle and bone. He was going to have to use the storage cells to feed the rest. That wouldn't leave enough to power the mushroom pulverizer...

"Hey Al?" Jorge's voice was small and hollow but it cut through his brother's dread. The younger man limped to Brigid's skeleton. He was quiet for a while, then asked, "Is this how mom died?"

Alejandro joined his brother in silence by the bones. After some time, he sighed. "Yeah." He tried to think of something comforting to say next, but nothing came to mind. To his surprise, Jorge chuckled lightly.

"Why didn't you tell me this is what happens?" He gestured to his crutch. "I'd have felt a lot less stupid for falling off the pylon trying to get a taste. Glad I didn't get the chance."

Alejandro nodded. "Good." He tapped Brigid's bones with his foot. "Help me get this into the pens. Gonna need to hire someone else I guess. At least we got a full stencil out of it."

Jorge bent to grab an arm bone then paused. He looked out over the teeming crowds of naked, featureless Empties. "Alejandro, is one of those...mom?"

Alejandro shook his head. "What? No. Course not." He hefted the Brigid's skeleton--a fresh Empty stencil--toward the Empty paddocks. "She died years ago. Her bones are probably in Split Valley by now."