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Chunked
Matt Maxwell
They refused to tell me the name of the ship, only to wait for it.
The deckhand who led me on board the tiny skiff was tall and wrapped in a leather poncho. He stood stooped and black, like a bat wrapping its wings against the cold and wet.
The flensing ship loomed in the water, its reflection cast large in the greasy moonlight. The rain had stopped, and the water’s surface lurched slowly, twitching like an animal’s lips during dream time. Yellow light spilled from the superstructure, catching steam and smoke from countless pipes and exhaust ducts. The ship made its own weather. Its height was obscured by clouds, leaving only glimpses of what might be above the mist. My eyes swept to the name on the hull, written in white block letters taller than a man. I slid my glasses down to read.
Something touched my shoulder, and I jerked.
The deckhand laughed. “You’re just a barrel of laughs.” He flinched and lifted his arms, wiggling his fingers, “Ooooooo! I’m a scary monster!”
I sucked back a breath and willed my heart to stop rattling around in my chest. My heart has always been bad. Nothing fearful, but I was acutely aware of sudden turns. They took a physical toll on me.
“You okay?” His amusement cooled down to something harder. “Gotta be made of stronger stuff than that if you wanna step on board. The stuff we catch—”
“I’m well aware of that,” I snapped. “And I’ll be fine.” The pulse rushing through my neck put a small lie to that.
Drizzle ran down the black of his hood as he nodded like he knew I was lying. “Okay, buddy. I mean, no shame in turning back. Hell, most folk wouldn’t have even waited on the dock. I mean, they’re happy to pop open a cup and eat it cold, but—”
“Knowing where it comes from is another thing.”
“Sure enough,” he said as he docked the craft at the retractable landing.
I looked up at the metal angles and watched the water sheeting off of the hull like it had just been thrust up from the ocean floor, shedding the Pacific as it settled.
The captain was a big man, weight pressing at the seams of the uniform shirt beneath the orange overcoat. It was stained with something, a color that hovered uneasily between moldy green and dirty brown.
“Welcome aboard Meester Lew-ellyn,” he said with an accent so heavy that it had its own pull. His lips twitched with the words he held back.
“Thanks,” I said as I wiped my glasses dry and replaced them. “Not like Russia out there, right?” I pointed to the rain-slicked windows, yellow drops hanging and glittering in the corners.
His frown could have curdled blood to scabs. “Ukrainian. Not Russian.” He spat something from between his big teeth. It hissed into the corner and skittered away into the dark. His lips were stained green from lulu.
“I’m very sorry.” The phrase flopped out of my mouth like a beached fish.
“It is okay, Lew-ellyn.” His fist thudded against the shirt, right above his heart. “Ukraine only here now.” He then swiped at his lip with the back of his hand, not noticing the smear that it left. Brittle chips of something like insect shell hung in the spit.
“I wanted to … to thank you for letting me on board on such short notice.”
He turned away with a shrug of his shoulders that was obscured by the stained orange fabric. “Your paperwork cleared. And—”
“And?” I stifled a cough, guts kicking. He knew.
The captain’s eyes narrowed in mirth. “Never seen EA man actually do the job. Was curious to see what kind of man would wander onto flenser.” His hand swept around the bridge. As he turned back, his eyes were lit with a sharpness.
“I’ve been to the accelerator gateway in Blackrock, Nevada. And to the aeries and tanneries of Bangkok.” I lay it out to him like an offering.
“Got my leathers from there. Ain’t nothing cuts through these babies.” The lingering deckhand slapped his leg, and the sound was sharp.
“So you are a collector? Preserver? I hear about people like that. Who want to see them all.”
I shook off the question. “Hard to get a census on ships,” I said after a moment. “And I wanted to see the final frontier. I mean, you’re after the big one, right?”
“You hear correct.” The captain pointed at the helmsman and snapped his fingers. “We finish out that reef, every last one of those bastards. Even the big one down around the horn. They called it Day-something. Took a week to process. Quality product, too. Then, we come up here.”
Lit from below by the cool glow of his console, the helmsman’s downturned lips and protruding mouth made him look like a drowning man. “Locked in, Captain. Take us a day at half power.”
“A day?” I asked. “I thought it would be longer.” The idea of it having been so close all this time ate at me suddenly.
“Is that fear?” The Captain laughed. “And you have been to Blackrock? Surely, that was more frightening with the colors and the …”
“Geometries?”
“Yes. Ge-om-et-ries.” He repeated the word, playing with each of the syllables like it was a piece of fatty tuna on his tongue. “The ab-stractions.” His finger thrust out from his fist, and he rotated it around his ear and whistled.
“It was safer than you’d think. There was a distance between us and the essential at the gateway.” I coughed and shifted on my feet. “Tomorrow?”
“Hah!” He fished out a translucent plastic bag from inside his jacket. The instrument lights shone through it, showing turquoise-colored gelatin. Suspended in that were strings of something like fungus and chitin.
Pure lulu.
He took three fingers and shaped a wad before stuffing it into his cheek.
Of course, I knew what lulu did. I also knew it wasn’t for me. It made the walls reverberate and let you see around corners and in-between the edges of things. It was critical for flensers, letting them look at the things with the distance necessary to do the job and not go insane. Or only go insane in a useful way.
The captain offered the pouch to the helmsman, who took a generous helping and stuffed it in his cheek. His fingers came out wet, and he stared ahead, uncaring.
A hand reached past me as the deckhand leaned for a pinch as well. The bag stopped in front of me, and the captain shook it. Contents jiggling, they caught the console lights like neon in a splashed puddle.
I held up my hand, palm out. “That stuff gets in the way of my reports.”
“Might make ‘em sharper,” said the deckhand. His words were flabby around the lulu in his cheek.
The captain clapped his hand on my shoulder, and it felt like a dead thing there. “Quiet time. Almost done processing. Caught one in Gulf of California. So many legs.” His eyes were black and dead as the lulu took hold.
“A big one, I hope?”
“Only big ones left. Little ones easy to snap up. Use trawl field. Big ones we need to fight. Old school. You see tomorrow.”
The cabin was no bigger than a rich man’s hearse. I slept but not well.
I took a drink from the supply of water that I’d brought on board and tore open the foil on an Icthyo bar. I hadn’t sourced it personally, but the dealer was reputable. Who knew what kind of food they’d be serving here? Probably cut straight from whatever they’d caught. That was a little too close to the start of the supply chain for me.
The protein bar was too salty by half, even with the dry crackers. My fingers lingered over the pear in the bag, but I’d save that for a real emergency. Or for trade—as if anyone on this ship would have anything I thought worth giving up fresh fruit for.
A knock rang through the small room, and I pulled my glasses on. “Yes, what is it?” My voice sounded unsure and tenta
tive, even to me.
“Hey, there. Captain thought you might want to know that the timetable’s moved up. We’re expecting contact in a … now.”
“Now?”
“Big one, too. Point eight seven hull lengths.” He made a sucking sound and said, “Ya ain’t scared, are ya?”
“If you aren’t, then I’m not.”
“Gawd, but you are a terrible liar. Get yourself dressed and on deck if you want to catch the show.”
“Is that safe? I mean, to look at it directly?” I gulped. “How about the glasses?”
“Lenses, you mean?” The sneer cut through the door. “You won’t find a pair on the ship. Those things mess with your head.”
“Good enough for the crews at Blackrock.”
“Gutless cowards, all of you. Yeah, put your lenses on if it’ll make you feel better.”
The sun was out now, but the sea still had a slow roil like molten lead. Churning formed chaotic whorls on the surface, like melting words. It didn’t feel like we were anywhere now. Water and sky looked the same in either direction. The wind smelled like fish, like meat left out at low tide.
Something ahead of us surged off the port bow. It broke through the water but wasn’t visible through the spray.
The smell swarmed me. I pulled out a mask, holding it to my mouth and sucking in on the bleach and alcohol.
On the level below, black-clad workers shifted and made the line ready. Spools shone silver as they peeled the yellow sheathing off, leaving it aside like jellied snakeskins.
I’d never understood how the process worked, and the metaphysics involved went over just about everyone’s heads. What I did understand was that the essentials needed to be grounded in order to be flensed. They existed in some kind of half-life until their state could be fixed, and then, they could be worked. Before that, they were real enough to split the ship’s hull in half, just not to be processed and consumed.
“You all know the drill,” the voice boomed out of the loudspeaker. “That’s cash money out there slithering around in the surf.”
Something like an arm broke the surface and made a clawing forward stroke into the sea. Distortion hovered around it, like it was a video only half-loaded, while giant chunks were interpolated or only guessed at. The low sun gave enough light to show a sheath of greenish slime like liquid emerald.
But I knew it wasn’t a sheath. It looked like that all the way through: underwater green, always wet. Sunlight scattered, and my brain imagined it a giant squid half-chewed and spit out by a whale bigger than any on record.
Thousands of meters of grounding cable gleamed, shining like a mirror hammered out into wire thicker around than a man’s arm.
Water around the thing boiled. It didn’t belong here, violating any reality it touched.
“Good to see you out here, even if it is with crutch.” The captain’s voice boomed behind me, but I didn’t jump this time.
“Crutch?”
He pointed to the lenses and made a face to indicate the mask. “You know why you need those, yes?”
“The smell is revolting.”
He laughed. “Your attachment to aesthetic is touching but is wrong.” He folded the bag as he stuffed his fingers deep into his cheek.
“Without the glasses, I’d go crazy. Unless I started crazy, that is.”
“Ha! None of us is crazy here.”
Crazy for lulu maybe.
“So why do I need these things?”
“Sentiment, my friend.” He put an arm around me and leaned in close, so I could smell the lulu on his breath, like jellyfish-flavored mints. “You think this is something more than it is.” The crinkles on his face deepened as he smiled.
“And what is it?”
“Goop to process. Jobs for a thousand flensers. Heart of thriving industry. Frozen dinners waiting to happen.”
He squeezed me like a gorilla squeezing an orange, flush with pride.
“Nothing to be afraid of at all?”
“It only smell bad.”
The thing off the port lurched forward like an island cut free and rolling on a storm surge, part liquid, part solid, hideously between states. It raised an arm that looked more like a melting skyscraper sheathed in green glass. The sunlight passed through it murkily, and beneath the skin, veins swam.
I tried to see it like the captain did. Countless individual servings of Benthi-Chow in those bright green and yellow tubs on store shelves. Something boiled up at the back of my throat, and I retched over the rail. My mask hung by one ear in the breeze.
“See, I tell you. You no need stupid mask.” The captain’s laugh barked out like a seal’s. “Look at it like product.” He turned to face the target.
The thing seethed in the water, reaching for the ship, neither urgent nor afraid.
“Smile, you son of blubber.” The captain’s whisper was hoarse and ragged now. He was all up in the lulu. Maybe the words were for whatever he saw in his head and not the thing bearing down on us.
Through the mist was a green hellscape, gelatinous and shifting. There were two black spaces in the center of it, almost like eyes. The urge to rip off my lenses bit at me, but I kept my hands on the rail.
“Fire!” the captain yelled. “Fire to bring supper home!”
No other sound existed after that. Just a horrible woosh that ramped up for the space of a heartbeat and then cut out. Several tons of decompressing propellant hissed around the barrel of the spear gun.
The grounding line shot out in silence, only my brain imagining a kerrang of metal against metal. Cable shone hard as it unspooled behind.
I looked up to see the line go tight for a second before going slack as momentum caught up to the spear. It jutted out, embedded some distance below the eyes. Lulu addicts or not, the crew knew their business.
The thing stopped, lowering its arm into the water slowly and curiously, distracted by sensation.
“Throw current!” the captain yelled. “Ground that meat!” The words were muffled as if through a hundred feet of cotton batting.
I felt a galvanic snap. My hair stood up, and my jaw clenched as a somatic shock rolled through my whole body. Were I not holding onto the railing, I’d have dropped to the deck or thrown myself over the side in spasm.
The thing shook once, ripped from a state of shifting to that of leaden certainty, of reality so solid that it could now be cut by knives and carved into bite-sized chunks. It could be reckoned entirely. And now known, the creature stopped moving, only so much gelid meat awaiting the butchers.
Seagulls wheeled above it but did not land. Instead, they dodged in and out of the bright white arc lights that played over the massive carcass alongside the ship. Their screams were insane, chattering.
“Is it always like this?” I asked one of the black-slickered men.
He looked up. His features were once strong but now molded into something paler and duller. His lips were stained green. “No. This is different. Gulls usually won’t eat this until it’s been processed.”
Which was smarter than the handful of workers I’d seen down on the muscle shoals floating alongside, kneeling and grabbing up handfuls of slime, licking their fingers clean. They did it mechanically, without joy or shame.
Unrefined lulu.
The carcass was being maneuvered by a series of skimmers, each with grounding hooks attached. They worked with the currents and wind, reading each and calculating the best vectoring paths. Their blades whirred with an eerie pulsing rhythm. The gulls pecked at the machines, seeing these things as nothing more than larger, blacker birds taking pieces of their kill.
Ever so slowly, the drones pushed the titan corpse into the receiving bay at the back of the ship.
I tried to watch dispassionately, as the captain had urged me to earlier with his drunken manner and breath that betrayed appetites that I couldn’t dare contemplate. The body floated as teams of men in yellow hoods flashed electric chainsaw blades that bit through the meat. Great strips were
flensed away from the mass. They couldn’t even wait for it to be lashed down to the work docks, had to get it fresh.
“Beautiful sight, ain’t it?” The deckhand settled next to me on the rail, loose and flush with what must have been very fresh lulu.
“I suppose.” The green of the thing was bilious now, more yellow than emerald. Maybe it was already starting to rot, locked in our world.
“Enthusiasm, Lew-ellyn,” he said in a dire imitation of the captain’s accent.
“Sorry. Just that, when essentials are harvested over at Blackrock, it’s more like watching a light show or fireworks. This is different.”
“Captain’s right. You’re a preservationist.” He whistled, and the light rimmed his face. He looked like a crescent-moon man with the face on the wrong side. “But a man’s gotta eat.”
“I don’t care for seafood.” Not that I could think about eating. Even the pear waiting back in my bag in the cabin was rotten in my mind, mealy and slimy.
“Maybe you just need a taste of the right stuff instead. You’ll stop fretting.” His smile had no reassurance.
Swarms of men were flensing the fiction off the bone and slipping it into giant polyethylene sleeves or siphon tubes that ate giant chunks of flesh as fast as they could be fed. Above, the seagulls continued their chattering—an odd sing-song quality behind it now with a rhythm that was clear to me.
“No,” I lied. “I just need to file my report and get back on dry land.”
“What report? For EA?” His smile turned wicked now. “Oh yeah, we all figured it out.”
I went back to gripping the rail, pressing my flesh to the cold metal to have something to hold onto. Otherwise, my brain would scatter off into a thousand directions. I checked my breath and held it down.
Tomorrow's Cthulhu: Stories at the Dawn of Posthumanity Page 27
