Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15
Part 16
Part 17
Part 18
Part 19
Part 20
Part 21
Part 22
Part 23
Part 24
Part 25
Part 26
Part 27
Part 28
Part 29
Part 30
Part 31
Part 32
Part 33
Part 34
Part 35
Part 36
Part 37
Who in the world is engineering plants at such an advanced level, though? Has biotech really come that far in the six years I was locked away? I could scarcely imagine it. I would’ve seen stuff like this back in Shenzen if that were true.
Even the huts, now that I thought to examine them more closely, were basically just huge dwelling-shaped plants of some sort. Like short, squat weeping willows but with long, wide, overlapping leaves that formed a fully enclosed shelter.
What I didn’t see were animal skins. None of their clothing looked to be made from animal skins, nor were they present in any of the decorations. The knives, arrowheads and such must’ve been mainly for defensive purposes then. I wonder how many intruders, less friendly than I, they’ve had to kill so far.
There was no cleanup after the meal as even the dishes were edible. Delicious too, though by now that was unsurprising. Who are these people? How did they get ahold of biotech this far beyond anything I’ve seen in the developed world?
To my chagrin, I was even able to take a hot shower. I took these people for primitives when I first arrived. What else are they hiding? The hot water came out of something resembling a five foot tall pitcher plant.
There was a veiny, ribbed green tube projecting from the top, then suspended from one of the overhead branches, terminating in the organic equivalent of a showerhead. Look at all those precisely formed little holes. Whose signature would I find in this thing’s DNA, if I had the means to sequence it?
It was still pretty warm out. I’d actually have preferred cold water right then, but could find no way to adjust the temperature. There were no protuberances resembling knobs or buttons anywhere on it that I could see.
“Feeling better?” I spun around to find their chieftess standing in the shelter’s opening. I covered myself, hot water still running down my body. “Come now” she urged. “Don’t bother with that. Shame is another vice from the metal world that we live without.”
She stripped out of her leafy green garments and stepped under the shower head with me. My eyeballs must’ve been the size of dinner plates. I no longer knew where to put my hands, so I held them up as if she had a weapon pointed at me. In truth, I was the one with a weapon pointed at her.
If she noticed, she gave no indication of it as she busied herself washing that long, thick mane of black hair which reached down to her knees. Eyes closed, she pointed to a seed pod of some kind on a little shelf just beyond her reach.
Still gobsmacked, I wordlessly handed it to her. She squeezed it, and a foamy substance I quickly worked out was some kind of soap oozed out of its pores. She used the foam to lather up her hair, and scrub down every inch of her glorious brown body while I struggled not to have my first hands-free orgasm since the Small World ride at Disneyland.
She handed the seed pod to me. Sheepishly, I squeezed it the way I saw her do it. More foam came out. I proceeded to finish washing myself as she dried off using a matted sheet of what I assumed had once been moss.
“I’ve got about a thousand questions for you” I sputtered. She looked amused. “Really? At a time like this, information is what you want from me?” I pretended I didn’t know what she was getting at, sitting awkwardly on the only chair in the room in a position I hoped would hide my erection.
“How the hell does your economy work? Houses for example. Is there a housing market? I don’t see any way to sell somebody a house when they could just grow their own. Do you have anything like a currency? How is labor divided?”
Her amused expression slowly transformed into one of impatience as I spoke. “The same tiresome questions as always. A beautiful woman joins you in the shower, and you want to know about money. You do seem at least somewhat different than the others so far, though. You’ve not tried to steal anything.”
The thought did cross my mind earlier. If I could smuggle even a tiny genetic sample from any one of these plants back to Shenzen, I felt certain it would make me revoltingly wealthy overnight. It surprised nobody more than me that I couldn’t bring myself to rob these people.
“There’s something else” she added, wringing her hair out and pulling her garments back on. “I sensed an energy in you when you first arrived. I wasn’t certain of it then but now I’m sure. Have you been contacted by any spirits?”
I reassured her that if I had, I would’ve first had my head examined before possibly calling the Ghostbusters. I don’t know why I thought she’d get the reference. She wouldn’t leave it alone. “Perhaps the metal world no longer has any concept of spirits, but have you been visited in dreams?”
I was about to rebuff her again before I remembered the strange dreams I’ve been having. The visions of a crude virtual world, my inexplicable birth into it and subsequent explorations. “Alright, yes. If you want to frame it that way.”
I expected satisfaction, but she instead looked troubled. “Even I was beginning to doubt. But for you to arrive so soon after the black tower fell…” I intuited she meant the collapse of the space elevator. “We must bring you before her at once.”
“Her”? Could there be some higher local authority I’d not yet been introduced to? Would she also barge in while I’m showering? Perhaps it’s their custom. But she didn’t lead me to another dwelling. Instead she summoned ten other villagers who accompanied us to a round wooden platform about twenty feet across.
There were soft round mats equally spaced around the outer rim, which the ten villagers and the chieftess settled into. I followed suit, not knowing what to expect. It was drugs, naturally. Nothing so cliche as a peace pipe, instead one of them handed out small clay cups.
Another then made the rounds pouring fragrant tea from a pitcher into each of the cups, one at a time. “Listen babe, you’ve been wonderful so far. I can’t fault your hospitality, and you’ve got a rockin’ bod no question. But I still don’t know you that well, I dunno if I want to trip balls alread-”
She shushed me. “Really though” I continued, “I get all emotional n’ shit. I pour out all my feelings everywhere, it’s really something I was only ever comfortable doing with Aubrey. I haven’t so much as dropped acid for-”
She glared. Everybody else gulped down their serving of tea. Shouldn’t this be the point where some popular cartoon character appears to talk about peer pressure and the importance of saying no to drugs? Or is that after you’ve dosed?
Oh well, when in Rome. I slurped down the contents of my own cup to her apparent satisfaction, at which point she did the same. “What have I done”, I thought. “What the fresh hell have I gotten myself into?” I was so dazzled by their technology I didn’t consider the possibility that this might be some kind of weird nature cult.
This better not be a group suicide. That better not have been poison I drank. If so, I resolved to haunt the bujeezus out of this village for eternity. Hella rattling some chains and shit, if I could even find any. Do you get complimentary chains when you become a ghost?
My anxiety mounted as I felt the tea kicking in. The first visuals to manifest were gentle, swirling distortions of the branches overhead. The setting sun darkened the jungle such that every shadow seemed full of pulsing, dancing geometric patterns.
The sort of stuff you see on substances of this nature with your eyes closed. Because you’ve deprived your brain of any real imagery to misinterpret, so it begins making imagery of its own. Hard to say whether the open eye or closed eye visuals are more entrancing.
It wasn’t acid in the tea though, that’s for damn sure. The intensity just kept ramping up even after it reached the level a strong dose of acid usually plateaus at for me. The distortions only grew more energetic and violent. Soon I could barely make sense of the jungle around me.
Stay Tuned for Part 39