Setting a pair of frappuccinos down on the counter, there were no customers left in line. By this point in the afternoon Jessica was feeling her body’s age. Unfortunate considering it only started moving under its own power at 9 am. Since there were no customers around, she might as well get out to stretch and see if she couldn’t ‘advertise their wares’ a bit. It would be more than her wages were worth to have to drag this meat suit around until closing. She grabbed the food-safe pen from the little cup behind the counter and added another red line to her cheek, right along side the other two. If she kept up like this she’d practically end up owing money by the end of the week, but she was sick of having to keep working with this.
“Yo Ocean, I’m going to go take a quick stretch. Be back in a few.” She called behind her to her coworker, physically identical to her in nearly every aspect, who’d been busying herself with an inventory of the little closet they kept most of coffee related things.
The pair of baristas looked like caricatures more than actual people, unrealistically thin and curvy, putting children’s fashion dolls to shame. Jessica tried to lift herself over the counter, but her feeble muscles didn’t even manage to shift her torso. Right. This wasn’t her first gig working ‘food service,’ but this was her first week trying out the newly released ‘Barista’ model. The brain doing her thinking was presently sitting in her actual body, which itself was sitting in a cybernetic control pod in a cellar beneath the food court. The body she was currently looking through the eyes of and moving around, on the other hand was a cynical piece of garbage designed to minimize growth and storage costs and provide discerning customers with a lighter snack than they might find elsewhere. The key issue was that it hadn’t been designed with anything else in mind either, including basic life functions. For instance, her digestive system was basically non-existent, helping to pinch her waist in and also to prevent employees from needing lunch breaks when a nutrient solution infusion would suffice. After all, these cloned bodies were only meant to last an hour or three at most. Her muscles were weak as all hell so jumping the counter was a pipe dream, even if her lungs hadn’t been squeezed up into a ribcage that would cause any archaeologists to guess had come from a rhesus monkey put through a taffy streachter. Designed to be produced cheaply first, digested second, and actually used third, the muscles in her back had already begun to deteriorate as it struggled to hold her standing upright. Astrodoes had made some questionable decisions on their first bulk orders, and decided that since big breasts drew in tips, they should staple some onto their new toastrack Baristas ™ despite the fact that they could barely support themselves even if they sported a figure with more figure appropriate proportions. Putting together an ultra-slim body with exaggerated curves sounded like a great idea in the marketing board meetings, but as a finished product, the actual effect was that of a racey cartoon drawn by a horney teenager, somehow failing to be sexually appealing while somehow still being too uncomfortably “sexy” for general audiences.
Even more poorly conceived was the decision to roll out this model in a mall food court. Sure, the Barista model had its place during the early morning coffee rush where a dedicated Astrodoes location could see a good handful of predators late for work and desperate for a meal but not wanting to pop too many buttons on their shirts since they had meetings that afternoon. After all, they initially rolled out the pods in their locations since they kept losing employees to what they had later called an “untapped demographic”. But nobody came to the mall food court for a quick breakfast, and there were dozens of places nearby a pred could get an actual meal, not least of all being the other customers. Sure you could get kicked out for doing that, but once they had a few shopping bags full mall security usually turned a blind eye (most of them being preds themselves and partial to some surreptitious snacking- carefully chosen as not to affect daily sales), and even then if nobody saw you it’s not like security was going to ask to see your receipt for a squirming belly. And so, at 4 pm, Jessica was still standing in the body she’d started her shift in. Ocean was at least lucky enough to have been ‘relieved of duty’ for twenty minutes or so around 2:00 and had got to spend the rest of the afternoon in a fresh one. Baristas had the authority to mark down her own price- the three red lines Jessica had drawn on her face indicated she was now 75% off- but that also meant she’d have no commission for the day- the one perk of her pay scheme that would have made prancing around in this stupid mistake of biological engeneering worthwhile. The wages were menial and the tips were pretty poor otherwise. At an actual location she could expect to sell 7 or 8 a day, but here? They’d be lucky to shift 3 in a day with a commission, and basically had to give them away at closing.
Cursing Astrodoes, whatever that new company that pumped out these stupid clones as called, consumerism in general, her poorly fit uniform failing to support said stupid clone’s stupid clones (they were all identical you’d think they could get the size right), and herself for taking this stupid job over the MacAurthor’s possition that had opened up across the street (their employees were always going on about how comfortable their clones were- even if they were 85% bioengeneered fat agglomerates where major internal structures should be), she took the back door into the access corridor and wandered out into the foodcourt proper. She found a quieter corner by a plastic tree and tried one of the stretches Astrodoes had recommended in that memo to try and mitigate some of the inevitable lawsuits and promptly pulled a muscle just past what was supposed to do, making her spine ache even worse than before. Realizing she wasn’t going to be able to advertise herself much as a doubled over mess, she took a seat at a free table and tried to cycle some air through her nearly useless lungs. She felt near tears when she felt a hand on her shoulder, causing her to instinctively try to bolt upright and turn around, an action that was complicated by her exhausted muscles and unusual weight distribution. So as she jerked upright she cried out in pain and turned more quickly than she’d intended, causing an almost comically loud cracking noise as the momentum of her front-heavy torso kept her spine moving just a little further than she’d been able to get it before while stretching.
“That sounded like it felt good” crooned a deep voice in teasing tones.
“Scared the crap out of me, Dan!” Jessica wheezed.
A predator wearing a stained apron over a polo shirt (which itself was compressing a noticeably distended belly- clearly he’d had a big breakfast), nearly twice her height and 4 times her weight (neither of which was especially impressive, Jessica’s current body was less than a twig) sat down in an empty chair beside her and started to rub her shoulders.
“Man, you weren't kidding about these new baristas. You’re barely worth the effort of eating at that size, and probably full of all sorts of gross overworked muscle residues.”
Working in ‘Food Services’ you learned quickly not to take statements like this personally. You came to think of your body as just another part of your scratchy, poor fitting uniform. The thing that was telling Jessica it’s back hurt and it was low on oxygen was probably more like an object to her than it was to Daniel, who personally saw it as the bipedal equivalent of a prepackaged gas station sandwich where all the fillings have been arranged near the plastic window so that it looks a lot more wholesome than it actually was and the first bight contained more food than the whole rest of the sandwich, which was preferable on the basis that had any more lunch meats been included, it would probably result in terminal food poisoning.
“I know right? I haven’t been able to shift one all day. And it’s already starting to break down on me. Speaking of, can you go a bit lower?”
Dan obliged and Jessica moaned softly in relief. “No kidding, this feels like I’m massaging cartilage. Those marketing teams are always getting it wrong. Tits are nice and all, but in the scheme of things they’re in your mouth for a few seconds tops. It’s not like you’re even in a cheap motel room, you’re right in the middle of a damned restaurant. Too big and you just choke on them. Some nice back muscles on the other hand, you can feel them rippling and shit all the way down, and they fill you up like crazy. Never underestimate the tasteyness of a good back.”
“Talking with you is always an education.” Jessica said, partially feigning admiration.
Jessica had come to respect Dan’s expertise when it came to eating people. He worked at the artisanal deli, which was something of a living fossil. The owner, a man now in his 70’s with a mind like a steel trap, had negotiated for some special lease with the building manager decades earlier that had some weird nest of clauses that meant the deli was not only locked into rent that hadn’t been adjusted for inflation or market costs since the early 80’s, but they couldn’t be kicked out without costing the Mall more than the store space was worth. As such, the owner could get away with doing basically whatever the hell he wanted with his business space and profits could go hang. And as such, with relatively low operating costs, he could throw profit margins to the wind and enact the policies he- and every other heavily abused public facing employee- had always dreamed of. If you talk shit to the ‘sandwich artisan’, you got eaten. ‘Artisan’ wasn’t some corporate hogwash to make upper management feel like they made middle management feel like they made minimum wage employees feel like they were important. Despite literally killing a significant fraction of their new customers, they had a strong base of regulars because the sandwiches were so damn good. This was in no small part due to Dan’s skill as a butcher and the supply of fresh meat brought in daily. The old man had been an amazing teacher and Daniel learned his way around preparing every muscle group in just about every animal that could move under its own power and 4 that couldn’t (sea sponge on sourdough was surprisingly popular before the species they used had gone extinct in the wild due to oversponging). Between butchering and ‘dealing with’ abusive customers, he developed a pretty solid palette, a rather rare trait in predators (most of which would eat any old thing off the street if it didn’t struggle too hard to swallow). And while he was absolutely revolted with the new Barista ™ line Astrodoes had put out, he’d been kind enough to lend Jessica and Ocean a hand getting rid of their ‘leftovers’ in the evenings at cost. Otherwise it meant putting them back in the ‘freezer’ and starting tomorrow’s shift in a body that was barely held together by sinew and ligament.
“Actually, I’m pretty glad you came over this way. I have some good news for you. Just read online you’re being recalled.”
“Recalled?”
“Yup. It turns out that between the stupid marketing and the stupid design, Astrodoe made an even stupider descision designing your new body.”
“You’re kidding. Let me guess, I'm a choking hazard?”
Dan chuckled. “Honestly with bones like that,” he reached around, took her hand, and squeezed her pinky gently between his thumb and forefinger. For a moment Jessica had thought that the digit had painlessly dislocated, but as he wiggled it, it was clear there was a clean break in the bone between her knuckles. “-I’m surprised that’s not it.”
“Dude what the fuck!?” Shouted Jessica in disbelief. “I’m pretty sure I need that!”
“Not for more than a few minutes, anyways. You’re going to be pretty popular this evening.”
“What the hell are you talking about?!” She shouted, still in disbelief over having her finger so casually broken.
“It turns out the growth medium they used to grow the Baristas in has some… interesting side effects if you eat enough of ‘em. I figure there’ll probably be a line forming over at your booth any time now if the news gets around the internet fast enough.”
“Why would that make people rush to the booth?”
She looked over to the Astrodoes’s booth, the green harpy logo shining down on three predators now lined up, the first holding Ocean by the collar and drooling. Ocean caught Jessica’s look and gave her a wave to hurry back.
“Well I thought I noticed a little difference when I was…” he trailed off and looked thoughtful for a moment before he leaned down and growled in Jessica’s ear. “Well maybe if you’re really interested I can show you first hand. Say, this weekend?”
Jessica’s face contorted in confusion for a moment, and then her eyes widened and her cheeks turned beet red. “Oooh. Ooh. Oh. Y-yeah, I mi-might like that…”
They’d been flirting on and off since she’d started working in the food court. They didn’t quite have an understanding so much as a as a hunch. A bold move like this was fairly uncharacteristic. Maybe there was some truth to the rumor. After all, he’d eaten two a night for the past week.
“Now let’s see how you taste right about now…” He grabbed Jessica by the top of the head and slurped his tongue across her scarlet cheek, wiping clean a red line, and barely suppressing a look of disgust. “50% off even. Not a terrible commission, right?. Can you can ring me up when we get back to the register?” he purred like a panther might have, if panthers were capable of purring.
“Mmnmnm.” Jessica confirmed, as if in a trance.
“Delectable.” He dragged the word out, sending a shiver down Jessica’s spine.
In spite of all of Astrodoes’s bullshit, deep down Jessica enjoyed being an operator. Her self preservation instincts were too strong to just let herself be eaten, but she’d had something of a talent for it. She’d been in an odd spot between jobs and found herself mistakenly applying for an operator position that she’d assumed was just a normal waitress job. She only realized about 10 minutes into the interview, and figured she’d at least see it through to the end. After all, they’d cut the feed between her and the clone after she’d struggled around in the interviewer's stomach for a bit right? She’d been wobbly on her new feet at first but was moving with confidence more quickly than the interviewer had expected, and while nervous when the practical part of the interview began, she realized she was enjoying herself. It was unnerving that the sight of canines the size of a lion’s being pressed in her face made her feel the way she did, and she was shocked when she sat up in the control pod and found herself wishing she could have spent more time overseeing her own digestion personally. She’d stayed with the diner as a waitress for months until it was bought out by a holding company a few disconnects away from a major restaurant chain and closed down unceremoniously, and by then she was hooked. She could have gone on to stock shelves, or sit in a call center, or any one of the dozens of things a young woman with no post-secondary education could legally accomplish. She CHOSE Astrodoes, as sad as that was.
And Dan was really the icing on the cake. He knew how to swallow a woman whole with style, and was clearly enjoying this almost as much as she was. He lifted her chin up and brought his own face level with hers, and gently kissed her forehead.
“See you on the other side.”
“Of the counter, or…”
“Don’t read too much into it. It gets less cute the more you do.”
“...well great. Now you’ve really ruined it.”
Without much warning, he pulled her whole head and opened his mouth wide. Jessica’s back cracked all along it’s length as she was pulled forward into the warm embrace of Daniel’s mouth. He wasted no time, immediately swallowing hard and effortlessly pulling her shoulders into his throat, snapping her fragile collarbone forcing the backs of her shoulders fully together. He lifted Jessica’s body by the thighs and pushed her along. He gagged as he took in the significant increase of thickness caused by a horny marketing team, but it was smooth swallowing from there. The first time around he was shocked at how little she weighed, and was still surprised at how little she was filling him despite being most of the way down his throat. With one last gulp the Barista’s horribly uncomfortable to wear but fairly easy to digest cardboard shoes plunked to the ground in front of Daniel as he slurped at her ankles. It was a fairly impressive party trick to be able to take your prey’s shoes off without your hands, and he was the type to show off even if nobody was watching. Incidentally the guy working the smoothie stand across the food court noticed and was quite impressed, although he never really had a reason to bring it up after the fact, so it was hardly worth mentioning.
The flavor probably could have been worse; after all, he’s had some pretty bad customers in the past. It still wasn’t anything he’d pay money for if he weren’t for his understanding with Jessica or the rumors of defective growth hormone side effects. MacAurthor’s MacCashiers ™ at least had an oddly beguiling other-nes about them. Your brain didn’t quite believe the signals your tongue sent back and so every once and a while you gave it a shot. The Barista was gamey and tough. If, god forbid, you were to cook one, there’d have to be an obscenely long process of tenderizing, marinade, slow roasting, and so forth to make it the least bit palletable- the sort of thing that only really got served if it was coming off of something rare, endangered and expensive or as a “regional delacy” to unwitting foreigners. To a gourmet like Dan it was blasphemy. Admittedly, it was more the “god damnit I stubbed my toe” kind of blaspheme. It was mostly undertones and textures. Skin oil and sweat still predominated, with undertones of some ‘eat me’ pheromones that especially preyish types put out (although you mostly taste it through your nose, it’s very understated on the taste buds). After all that you could worry about hormones and lactic acid, and to be frank most predators didn’t. Between the ones that were in it more for the intimate bonding between predator and prey, and the ones that liked to hunt for sport and came to expect fear as a sort of tangy aftertaste, and the ones that were just trying to satiate the unending hunger that left them feeling like everything inside them was being lost to the void, there was still a market for this sort of thing.
While Jessica’s collarbones snapped as easily and painlessly as her pinky finger, she hadn’t been so lucky as Daniel’s throat squeezed her rib cage. It was a pretty mild ache considering it felt like a few on either side were broken, but it was exacerbating her already sub-optimal breathing situation. She couldn’t complain too much. You generally didn’t last too long in a job as a literal foodstuff unless you have a taste for having enzymes rend your flesh into its most basic components, so it was a bit of an understatement to say Jessica had a masochistic streak. A little bit of suffocation had its place, and it’s not like stomachs were known for the freshness of their air. It’s not like it would matter for too much longer anyways. Jessica’s skin was tingling as soon as she’d made her way through Daniel’s esophagus. Between Daniel’s abnormally efficient stomach and the Barista’s paper thin skin, it took only seconds for that tingle to become a strong burning.
“Blech. I hope they stick with a more traditional growth formula for a while. You taste like… chemicals. How are you holding up?”
Daniel had to strain to hear anything but rumbling coming from his stomach, which he rubbed absentmindedly. He just about made out Jessica’s voice, but not anything she was trying to say.
Which wasn’t much. On top of being flimsy and small, her ribs were underpadded, the thin flesh being stripped away as red goo almost instantaneously. She’d wheezed “thanks for finally killing off-” before her lungs were too soupy to press air through her throat. For all the Barista’s failings as a body to actually serve coffee beverages in, Jessica had to give them credit; It digested like a champ. She’d never thought she could feel her heart dissolving in her chest before she died. It was a pretty incredible sort of feeling. A pain so detached from anything else she’d ever felt it was hardly even a pain, more like a combo of anxiety and that falling sensation you get sometimes when you’re on the verge of falling asleep. She’d tried to shift a bit, but her toothpick arms were already slush. She could just about move her right humerus so that the bone pressed into the side of daniel’s stomach a bit, where it bent slightly. It’s funny what kind of thing could catch your attention on the brink of death. She tried to play with her hilariously malfunctioning skeleton a bit more, but with no respiratory or circulatory system to speak of, she found her signal was starting to ‘cut out’, as her senses flickered on and off, until cutting out entirely.
Jessica jolted awake inside of her control pod, banging her head on the door. Damn megacorporation can’t even be bothered to pay to calibrate the damn neural dampeners so they just added a cushion against the pod door about 3 inches too low to prevent anyone from banging their head against the pod door if they jolted awake exactly like they wouldn’t if they had celebrated the neural dampeners. She squeezed the release handle, and took a nice deep breath of unrecycled air with her own two lungs nestled in a human sized rib cage that had never seen a taffy pulling machine. She sat up using her own unimpressive yet functional arm, leg, and back muscles to draw herself into a standing position, and tried to get used to the lack of slight delay between thinking about moving her head and actually moving it that operators usually adapt to a few minutes into a shift. She took in the dark and dusty cellar where the control pods for the whole food court, and saw Ocean’s pod across from her own sealed tight with the girl twitching busily. She couldn’t possibly have gotten into another body already, could she? The answer came quickly as a ding indicated the intercom built onto her pod was being activated.
“Get the lead out, Jessica, I’ve already warmed up another working stiff for you. We’ve got like 20 people in line and I’m not sure how many bodies in the freezer. Any idea what’s going on?”
“MMmmAeybe,” wobbled Jessica, as she tried to recall what her own voice was supposed to sound like, remembering that her personal larynx was quite a lot roomier that the dog whistle in her company owned throat. “Apparently those bodies are full of defective hormones or something and people want to try to get some cheap… er... ‘personal enhancement’ before they’re officially recalled.”
The speaker crackled again. “Well... that’d explain it. Come ring your boyfriend up and stuff yourself down another weirdo’s gullet. There’s a pretty long line forming and I doubt they’re here for coffee.”
Jessica grumbled a bit as she sat back in the pod and felt the electrodes touch down on her scalp as the door closed and the temperature started to drop. “He’s not exactly my boyfriend…” she grumbled as she started to fall (for lack of a better term) asleep. She’d have liked a little more time on her own two feet but it looked like there was going to be a rush.
And she jolted forward again, sweating slightly under the heat lamp. To either side of her were more Baristas, sitting motionless and unblinking. It never got less creepy. Since the bodies wore out so quickly they were kept in cold storage with a machine keeping their metabolic processes low before they were ready to be operated. This meant that you had to warm one up before you linked up to it, and it was tricky to get the temperature just right. Oh well, it’s not like most predators would mind a little sweat. Some even preferred the extra saltiness. She took a deep breath in to sigh, but was met with a sharp pain in her chest as her lungs reached capacity sooner than she anticipated.
Damn. At least it was a fresh body, and her back wouldn’t have enough time to deteriorate before the next meal. She took a few uneasy steps and took the stairs up to the employee access hallway to get back to the booth. Ocean was already waist deep in another customer’s mouth, and Dan was standing in front of Jessica’s register.
“Sorry for the wait sir. You had one Barista ™ by Astrodoes ™ at 50% off, correct?” Jessica asked in her best fake customer service voice, already furiously typing into the register.
“...That’s right…” Dan said cautiously, wondering what she could possibly be typing into the machine.
“And you also wanted to sign up for the rewards card program, correct?” she asked with a leading tone.
“Suuuurrreee,” Dan played along.
The rewards card slid out of the machine with more of Dan’s personal information than he would have guessed Jessica would have known printed on it, and was quickly yanked out and slid through a card reader before being handed back to him.
“And you’ve come by quite a few times in the past week- without paying, even at 99% off I might add… don’t worry, I’ll just add that onto the total order. So 15 Baristas at various discounts come out to… $25.67. And would you look at that, you’ve already earned your first reward! A free Barista. Would you like to redeem it now or at your next visit?”
The small crowd that had formed behind them groaned at the new delay and reduction of supply as she grinded knowingly at Daniel, who returned a smirk.
“I think I’ll take it right now,” he said with false surprise in his voice. He rubbed his stomach, still full of softly gurgling Jessica.
“Excellent choice, sir. Just let me…”
She tapped on the computer, which let out a long buzz as an error message popped up on the lime green on black CRT.
“RECALL ERROR: ONE OR MORE ITEMS IN CART HAVE ACTIVE RECALL IN PLACE. PLEASE CONTACT MANAGER.”
“Well shoot. The manager’s not in. I guess I’ll just have to override this myself…” She tapped a few keys on the keyboard, causing the register to chime a jaunty tune and the growing crowd to sigh with relief.
“Please complete your transaction on the pin pad.”
She heard Ocean climbing up the stairs, her tiny lungs (or at least the ones she was using) sucking breath as quickly as they could to get her to the booth faster.
“I juuuust did a quick invenventotrorotry,” she announced, tottering in place.
“We can probably take around 50 custttttomers” a second Ocean wheezed as she made it to the top of the stairs.
“We can probably take another 50 customers” the first Ocean repeated.
Both faces looked confused for a moment. “Wait, did I just say that already?” they asked in unison, with a third voice harmonizing from somewhere nearby.
A third Ocean stomped unsteadily around the corner outside the booth. “Alma white. We omnly gots somany so I’mma gonna staar counin. Uno, dos, three, five…” it announced as she started pointing at customers.
“Jesus Ocean, are you trying to run three bodies at once? These things aren’t meant for multitasking.” Jessica asked Ocean #2 with concern. “Can’t you burn out your brain or something? It’s seriously not good for you.”
The ocean out in the crowd turned to a customer she’d numbered ‘October’ and gave them a solid poke. “Neither is starving to death without a roof over your head. Relax, I used to pilot tons of bodies at a time back at that bar I used to work at,” she announced, looking the confused customer dead in the eye, apparently confusing which set of eyes lined up with which body..
The first Ocean turned to look the second Ocean and placed a had reassuringly on her shoulder and #2 maintained eye contact and the crowd Ocean’s face went blank. “Besides, the comission we get tonight is going to be fucking awesome and I’m gonna sell as many of these fuckers as we can before corperate wakes our manager up from whatever drunken stupor he must be wallowing in and makes him make us stop.”
The Ocean out in the crowd, now being kindly handled by a security guard back to the booth started to say in unison with Ocean #1, “So hurry up, I’ve already got another 5 warming up.”
Jessica looked over to Daniel smiling ear to ear. This was going to be an interesting evening.
Posted by pbysteria 4 years ago Report
Really cool setting, also like the fragility of things.
Posted by Horserax 4 years ago Report
this is very unique and interesting, thanks for the read!
Posted by Archeo 4 years ago Report
A new story by Peptidase? With themes of criticizing capitalism?? This is everything I could have asked for, many thanks!