(This story contains gore and body horror. Reader discresion is advised.)

Ballard: The Visionary Entrepreneur’s Call for Wetware Computer Revolution

Worker Advocates, Scientists Question Wetware Ethics

CEO of Anesidora calls human workforce ‘burden of the past…wetware is the future of business’

Anesidora Acquisition of Ballard’s Pithos Approved

Famed Entrepreneur of Pithos In Coma After Collision

Darkness

Smell of rot

Feel of slime

Open my eyes

Eternal fire and thundering skies

Find myself standing alone

Fields of filth and flesh

Pools of poison and blood

Hills of garbage and bone

I am surrounded by everlasting trash and death

Blood pulp and sewage where I step

No roads

Hell?

Not Hell

Don’t believe in Hell

Shallow canal of vile waste

Manmade ways of dead and decaying

Plow trucks run the canal in haste

When I near they stop

Doors open and wait

I look inside

My stomach drop

Driver of meat and wire

They don’t speak

They don’t emote

They don’t tire

The trucks are the only way to leave the fields

Ferrymen of the River of Styx?

Not Hell

Not dead

Don’t believe

Dream? Nightmare?

Why can’t I wake up?

Canals to a city of ruin

I am out of the plow

Streets full of filth

Streets empty of life

Trucks carrying garbage

Trucks carrying dead

Drivers of meat and wire

Someone Something comes out of a building

Mess of flesh and machine

Not a man

No face

No head

Walks like man

Carrying the dead

Dead thrown into truck

Abomination grabs me

I join the lifeless in a truck

Can’t crawl out

I’m taken to the factory

All trucks go to the factory

I’m dumped with garbage and death

Dead below me

The ceilings are alive

Long metal flesh arms descend

The claws arch and extend

Garbage taken

I writhe

Dead taken

I’m taken

Fall onto a belt for corpses

Ride the belt to the grinder

The grinder chews those before me

I head for the grinder

Stumble on dead to get away

Slip on dead to get away

Climb out and over the divide

Escape before the grinder

Explore the factory of shrieking machines

Moving belts of refuse

Separate metal from electronic

Separate electronic from rest

All is recycled

Necrotic pulp passes me

I follow the belt

Great hall of metal and flesh

Metal weld into chassis

Flesh print onto chassis

Electronics attach to flesh

Once was dead now alive

Vehicles fill with flesh

Electronics attach to flesh

Flesh and metal one

Once was dead now alive

All is recycled

The belt diverts

Follow to a cold room

Tubes of meat? cells? brain cells! artificial brain cells!

Familiar

Cells brew behind glass

Pulp filters

Serum flows

Serum grows the cell mass

All is recycled

Too familiar

All too familiar

Wires and cables on the floors

Wires and cables on the ceiling

Wires and cables on walls and doors

Something inside the room with me

It approaches me

With wire and cables it move

Looks like a person

Looks like a familiar person

More stirring in the room

All approach me

The Board

Machines in preserved skin

Camera and cable eyes

Servants of the System

Managers of the System’s molded slaves

The System was sold as the Dream

The Dream promised to serve life

The Dream promised to provide liberty

The Dream promised to help all pursue happiness

The Dream is a lie

The System serves its people The System serves itself

The System seeks growth over humanity

Ignorance feeds the System

Spite feeds the System

Strife feeds the System

Death feeds the System

The System is cancer

The Board knew when they sold the System

The Board sacrifices humanity to be one with the System

One with the System to reap the benefits

The Board is a parasite

The System’s foundation = Universally Compatible Artificial Organic Computer

My design

My shortsighted plans

My greed

My hubris

My selfishness

The Board wants to reward me

The Board wants me

My body to feed the System

My mind to grow the System

My progress without my humanity

I run

Chased by abominations

Chased into fields of oil and decay

Alarms scream not for me

My pursuers flee

The landscape trembles

Hills of refuse collapse

Giants each made from 50,000 bones

Hatred gazes upon me

Blood of toxic runoff

Bile of black oil

Eyes of fire

Undead children of a poisoned Earth

Devourers of flesh

Drinkers of blood

Fire setters of wheels and wells

Made from the victims of lies

Victims of deceit

Victims of abandonment neglect

I run

I’m caught

I’m lifted

I feel rows of teeth cut and crush

My blood escapes

My blood pours down the gullet ahead

Separated from myself my screams hush

How am I alive?

Feel the walls close in

Walls of snapping jaws

Walls of bile

Jaws rend

Jaws mangle

Bile burns

Innards tangle

My pain goes wild

I’m becoming one with my devourer

Feel everything

Hell?

Not Hell

Hell?

Don’t believe in Hell

Not Hell

Don’t believe in Hell

I don’t believe in Hell

Worse

This is worse

This is worse than Hell

Famed Entrepreneur Out of Month-Long Coma

Famed Entrepreneur Calls for Pithos Split with Anesidora

CEO of Anesidora says Ballard ‘not cut out for business, nor his own vision’

Blood Meet: Ballard Assaults CEO

Ballard Missing, on the Run

CEO of Anesidora Stable, Permanently Blind

First Tests of Pithos’s Universally Compatible Wetware Proves Positive

I saw it coming

I see it coming

How do I stop it?

There’s got to be something

I haven’t slept

Should I sleep?

What if I return to that place?

My head hurts

I need to remember

My body aches

Need to write from memory

My chest hurts

Write more to see what I missed

I’m missing something

It must be something

I’m missing something

It’s got to be something

I have to stop it

How do I stop it?