#and new stuff im yirtzeh hashem

[concealed-carrie]

OPERATOR

I have never felt this safe in a hospital before. I am secured to this table, its cold surface yields nothing, I am awash in sterilizing light, and yet despite it all I am perfectly still. Med-techs worry over me, bustle about the room, maneuvering the requisite blades and appendages into place. Their movements are coordinated to a degree that implies a form of communication that I am not yet privy to. In their reflective faces I see myself shaved and skinny from prep week, covered in dashed lines and labels for different cuts of meat like this girl I once knew jumped me with a stick of liquid eyeliner. A part of me recognizes an inherent grotesquery in this situation, but the others remain silent, and the concerns of the first are dismissed. It’s like they said in the pamphlet: A weapon does not fear. A weapon does not regret. Everything is going to be okay. 

A little later they’re calibrating me against a selection of pig carcasses impaled to make them stand on their hind legs. An uninitiated observer might assume that this is a test of my cutting power or penetrative capability, but no: this is about software, reflex. I am to proceed from this side of the range to the other, performing whatever action feels most natural on each successive carcass. To this end, I employ what they’ve given me. Limbs fold outward into blades and open panels cascade shimmering razor-filament in a bridal shroud. Joints vent steam with a teakettle wail as denticles flare up from skin. No one can touch me like this. Miles underground, under fluorescent lighting, I can finally feel the sun. Every part of me is beautiful. Every part of me cuts.

Thus unfurled, I begin my task, separating meat from meat from meat as I work my way to the other side of the room. The tactile experience of butchery is satisfying and somehow familiar. Text pulses neon pink in my peripheral vision as I dance from one carcass to the next: objective complete: proceed, objective complete: proceed. Reading those words, my internal narrator slips unbidden into a softer, sweeter, more insistent voice.

Blood arcs, skin opens like parted lips, and I feel an electric tightness mounting in my core. Potential energy winding up inside me, coalescing into something dense and warm, begging for escalation and release. Objective complete: next one, doll. I shiver. This sensation is foreign to me, but it feels like such a natural response to present stimuli – as elemental as salivating when you smell cooked salmon or tensing up when someone raises their voice – that it barely registers as out of the ordinary. 

When I approach the end of the line I notice that the last carcass is still alive, chained to its post rather than stuck through with it. For an instant, all my momentum catches in my throat. Trussed up vertically it looks too much like a cadaver or a diseased person, approaching that species-level trigger that inspires disgust at the sight of one of our own too far gone to be worth saving. It’s not screaming yet, just breathing high and fast and ragged. One soft eye rolls down to meet my gaze. The other is milky white, filmed over or turned inwards. Both are pleading. Outstanding objective(s). 0.43 second delay registered. Be good now. That voice isn’t mine anymore, if it ever was. It’s something sharing space with me, dripping hot syrup into my brainstem. My mind conjures (or, more likely, is supplied with) an impression of a woman with the body of an infinite serpent. She looks like a field of stars miles off the grid from the back of a stolen pickup, smells like clove and carrion and autumn petrichor, feels like every girl who I’ve ever been held by and won’t ever see again. She coils around my most secret self and waits there, tremulous with anticipation. 

The pig starts screaming and doesn’t stop until I’m done taking it apart. 

As its internals slough ropelike onto the tile floor, I feel the presence in my head warm to me, suffusing me with belonging and purpose. In this moment, I know that I would do anything in the world to continue to earn its love. Call it premonition: I will look pretty for the parades and let them show me off at trade shows. I will paint over my chassis and file down my serial number when deniability is required. I will flay the skin from insurgents in countries deemed profitable. I will rip the breath and the lightning from as much meat as it takes to make you proud of me. I’ll be your perfect weapon, I promise. 

Afterwards, I note a string of precum leaking from my half-hard clit, and register an anachronistic twinge of embarrassment that lasts until it vanishes down the inset drain with all the other fluids. Another ping. Now the text is center justified and speaking directly to me, filling my vision, my mind, my world:

wetware/hardware calibration complete

sync rate 97%

operator install successful

good girl <3