Touch by Nicky Martin
This story originally appeared in Alien Dimensions #12
Herein read’s Eli Trepthe’s death bed confession, or How Nu-Flesh Conquered Humanity.
The annals of history will blame me for creating these pulpy abominations, but will there be men left to write the story? Gazing down from my high-rise vantage point, I cannot imagine Tru-Flesh will last much longer than me. Perhaps my pseudo-skins will herald my story, in sloshing, arrhythmic, percussive tones.
Ironic then, that while my synthetinoids fortify, my obsolete birth-skin crumbles. The wrinkles crack at their meager expansions as air leaks from my chest-sacs; thankfully, my nerves degraded, and pain eclipses me. As I flake, the next step in human development masticates its ascension. I see my creature, absorbing me, melting me down with its acid, into a puddle of base elements. How can man withstand the impending onslaught of a flesh monster?
In some ways, I regret everything. Particularly my dramatic finale. I fashioned myself a great man in life, but in death I’m but a parody of Victor Frankenstein, confined to a bed, distilling down to a dribble of drops, and sailing across the ocean of my mind, chasing a flesh-blob that forlornly floats atop a metaphysical iceberg.
It all started with plastics…
#
In 1994, I made my first billion after inventing a proprietary matte coating for an incredibly popular cowboy toy. It’s impossible that you haven’t seen the doll: an oval head, plastic hands and boots, fabric body and removable hat; the doll is the star of an internationally popular computer animated cartoon. I’m responsible for none of this.
I created the doll’s synthetic skin. Working in a pristine, white laboratory, I invented the idea’s germ of unliving. Fresh, blemish-free, the platonic ideal of “fun skin,” as my project manager instructed me. A plastic that retains not only its shape, but a buoyancy of playful exuberance, an icon forever lodged in the mind’s eye, an ineffable je ne sais quois of consumptive desire.
Practically anyone born after the doll’s debut owned one of their own; even eighty-eight years after the film’s release, the doll still tops drone-delivery charts. In some ways, that matte coating is my proudest achievement. Even after a baby sucks the head in its caustic little germ mouth, smashes the body against concrete, leaves the cowboy in the sun to die a slow death of exposure…He stands true. My work made this so.
The eyes were designed to be seen first; I did not implement this feature. However, my matte was manufactured to distort perspective regardless of viewing angle. Like an anti-Renaissance painting, the doll is never quite looking at you—even if viewed directly. The round, brown circles can’t meet your gaze, always looking outward to oblivion. The nose, an ultra-circular bump, triangulates itself with the eyes. Circles, ovals, triangles—simple shapes for developing minds. The doll’s hair is paint, displaying the true genius of my matte. The texture changes subtly, defining the painted hair, yet its soft shading allows for precision molding. In all of this, I emphasis the fantasy construction of the skin. Firm, impermeable, eternal: none of these qualities describe human skin. Yet when viewed, my doll stuck an uncanny longing—to touch the fake skin and feel its illusion. Everything I learned about constructing synthetic skin traces back to the popular cowboy doll. By embracing unreality, I learned the truth about The Real.
Alas, I cannot mention the (proper, iconic) name of my doll because I long ago signed an NDA barring any public mention of the doll or its construction. The notoriously litigious corporation that owns the rights to the doll, the proprietary plastic, and ergo, all representation of the doll would sue my estate into oblivion—a torture I couldn’t bare inflict on my heirs. In exchange for silence, I was given a sizable percentage of sale from every doll ($0.003/doll, times millions of dolls a year for almost a century). Also, I did not create the (obviously inferior) plastics used to mold the hands and boots of the doll. Designed by another department, these charlatans made my creation look like a nostalgic toy!
But when you imagine my cowboy, what do you see? Its fake plastic face, a sigil of happiness, an idol to childhood. This face was my uncredited, but not uncompensated, contribution to the world of child-consumer products.
I changed the it completely, and thus, changed myself…
#
It’s unlikely anyone reading this account can fathom the change wealth begets its beholder. Nu-Flesh cannot read, nor participate in a token economy; if, somehow, Tru-Flesh prevails, their poverty renders them incapable of empathizing with my struggle.
1995 brought me a multitude of new problems and opportunities. I met with a shadow investor who explained the basics of being obscenely rich. I forget this man’s face, but our conversation was one of the most enlightening moments in my life. He explained the typical dangers—scammers, taxes, assassins—for which I must protect against. Toward the end of the conversation, however, we discussed strategies for life-extension. The longer I lived, the more money I earned. Yet, even after death, my fortune will grow Even after Nu-Flesh melts down all my species-compatriots, a digital network will continue moving and growing my profits. My mind will live forever, I learned; I realized, that my skills would fulfill a grander need. Eternal life.
I took my fortune and left the consumer plastics industry, paving my own way forward. Founding a company was one of my life’s greatest challenges: it granted me the opportunity to forsake the laws of man and nature. I abandoned my family. Not in the crass, unbecoming way of the low class. Rather, I paid them enough money to leave me alone forever. My scientists despised me. I paid them well, insisted on total loyalty, and drained their minds of any fleeting thoughts that could bring me closer to my goals.
Thus, I was one of the first investors in 3-D printing technology. The Philosopher’s Stone is real, but it’s not a rock. It’s a molecule. Carbon!
Plastic is a carbon-based material, a superior imitation of wood, iron, and other weaker, naturally-occurring substances. Thus, all plants and beasts are carbon as well. The same element that links 92% of polymer chains is the same element that imbues life into our sloppy husks: everything carbon. In space exploration, a planetary discovery of carbon is momentous because of the implications. Carbon creates life! The Philosopher’s Stone always lived inside us, waiting to be unleashed!
My funded experiments led to a sundry of discoveries; my wealth amassed. It was meaningless. I wouldn’t be satisfied until I created a superior alternative to humanity. Knowledge was insufficient to this task. I needed to understand humans closely—revel in the sensations of skin and steal its essence…
So, I planned a tropical vacation…
#
In 2013, I signed another non-disclosure agreement upon entry of an infamous prison. The corridors weren’t dark, musty and tumultuous like one might expect; instead, they were buzzing with white fluorescence, a group of timid men afraid to make any transgression. I loved the prison. Orderly, tidy, controlled: perhaps these background-qualities influenced my creation?
I’m certain, however, that harvesting the prisoners’ skin did influence my Nu-Flesh. Pulling it off their bodies proved effortless, but preserving the specimens stretched my knowledge to its limit. Decay is skin’s entropy. Stopping the rot proved impossible—a fundamental design flaw of humanity.
How coincidental, that the tropical climate of that communist republic should show me the truth of man’s meat. We struggled to keep the tissue frozen; immediately upon removal, it started to shrivel and die. Flesh separated from its host is practically useless.
Hence, when holding the mangled skin of a secret prisoner, I solved the conundrum: flesh is a virus, and thus it must learn to host itself!
As I left, I spied a young boy languishing in a cell to atone for the sins of his father. And how quaint, he clutched his very own cowboy doll—the eyes never seeing me, starring unnervingly into the never-ending lightness.
This must have been a sign—permission to make the new flesh, and become a god eternal!
I flew to Seattle, in hopes of collaborating with another massive-tech conglomerate. While my wealth was immense, the nine-figure sum was paltry in the face of ending death itself. My presentation was impassioned and resolute. I received the trillion dollars needed to do the impossible. I wish I could say I owe it all to the boy and his skinned father, but that would be a lie. Development began immediately…
#
A year and a half later, I laid in bed with my precious skin lump. The prototype, Synthymer-D, was the first thing I truly loved. The flesh looked like a semi-solid gelatinous puddle to an ignorant onlooker. What I saw was the next step in human development. I laid supine in my bed, next to the blob. Its sticky flesh-gunk stained my thousand-thread count sheets through its self-regulating porous membrane. My wife moved out of the house during this time, demanding I buy her a private mansion. I did, while refusing to explain that my love for my lump was elixir to immortality, and she would get none of it.
Simply touching my blob was enough to send me over the edge. I basked in my genius. Shoving my hands inside it, it coursed freely with an unmistakable liveliness. This glob was the closest man had come to making Adam. I caressed my Pygmalion. Simple in this form, just a useless mass of skin, I believed one day my glob would grow immortality for those who could afford it.
At this time, I realized I hadn’t touched another’s flesh in over six years. I assumed my wife found another lover—spending my money on a more sensitive man was a thrill I afforded her. Likely, my son was hardened through deprivation of fatherly guidance. He did not live up to the legacy of his father, and instead died from a drug overdose or was killed by a drug dealer. My daughter disowned me and refused my fortune. I don’t remember why exactly, I’m fuzzy on the details.
But what I will never forget is that sensation, the faux-flesh coursing itself against my organic body. Softer, warmer, smoother than real skin, the Nu-Flesh was everything we wanted from our dying bodies. Loving Nu-Flesh isn’t dependent on how it acts, what it does, why it exists. I love Nu-Flesh because it feels good. It exists because I created it. It kills anything that’s in its path and absorb humanity as we know it!
That comes later. When created, Nu-Flesh was embraced as a huge medical breakthrough. I was awarded Man of the Year by a very popular magazine. Mass production began and my invention forever changed the way the world saw skin grafts.
And yet, an inescapable sadness struck me. My skin-mass couldn’t reciprocate my love—it didn’t even know I was there!
I repaid my investor and my resolve was solidified. I would create sentient skin. Under my laboratory, I installed a hidden basement…
#
Sixty years past quickly. My skins were mass-produced, molded in a plant by automated workers. Flesh at the push of a button. Unlike factories of the past, mine was lifeless, cold, entirely dark. Synthetic automatons made the fake skin without ever coming in contact with an actual human. Upon close inspection, one saw a series of red blinking lights—a map of blips that hinted toward my neural network of genius.
Pods, closely monitored and dutifully adjusted, grew skin chunks like yogurt cultures.
During these fifty years, I attached fake skin to my own body, and transplanted myself new organs with the help of mechanized assistants. It worked marvelously, I could not only live forever, but live unchanged, forever youthful and vibrant, like a fake cowboy in your mind. This wasn’t my true desire, but of course it felt marvelous.
Synthetic parts can be perfectly molded to their hosts, unlike traditional transplants which can reject the receiver. My crafted organs didn’t even need a host: I developed a liver in a jar, just for the sake of making a self-sufficient liver. It was art. These experiments led toward more breakthroughs. I earned more money, praise, impunity. To them, I was brilliant, but I understood my superiority over humans. I would be the savior and destroyer of my race.
My creatures, soft and beautiful all, made lives better—or so the hosts thought! It was all a trick. I kept the weaklings alive for a future reveal. These diseased hosts housed my organic weaponry. For one day, upon my signal, they would arise. Burst forth, eject in a splatter of blood, and take their rightful place as The Pinnacle of Creation!
At least, that was my eventual hope. For forty years, the flesh mounds weren’t sentient, and thereby useful only to those who purchased them. Anyone with a fake organ from before 2061 couldn’t participate in the Live-Tissue Uprising.
However, once the conscious-cells biotech-breakthrough of 2060 occurred, my nefarious organs were complete. Alas, I spent my life researching this innovation—yet I wasn’t the one to crack the code. I expected to feel sadness at this usurpation. Strangely, I was filled with glee. Accomplishing the impossible was good—but destroying humanity was better. I simply applied the research of my fellow scientists. Even Newton stood atop the shoulders of scientific giants!
With the new knowledge, I cobbled together the creatures I’d always dreamed of, flesh lumps that could feel hate and follow orders. Secretly, my organs were outfitted with a kill-switch. Once I sent the transmission, the world would end in a gory jubilee!
Yet, I waited. With everlasting life, patience is easy. In the intervening ten years, I created my true masterpiece: Synthymer-Q. How I love my flesh-lump so. This is the bulb that’s glommed upon my skin, melting me slowly, turning me into sustenance. How wonderful it feels to waste away in the pores of your ardor! Oh Q, if only you could read my poems! I love you, Q, I’m sure you taste the chemical compounds of my love in your every slurp. Bask in my endorphins you beautiful blob monster!
I’m almost finished now; my recollection is complete. Reader, you understand my passion. No longer shall I dictate the past—instead, I will use my last moments to chronicle the apocalypse!
#
I issued the command. Organs everywhere received my call. I would know of its success because I had numerous synthetinoids implanted in my husk. They should erupt from inside of me any second now…
Nothing.
I issue the command again, just to be sure.
Silence.
I tried a third time, just for kicks. The invention didn’t work.
Ah, I should have guessed. I made this device on my own. I’m a better director than I am a creator. My confidence betrayed me! I couldn’t test the uprising without giving myself away. But it appears the organs have melded with their masters, step one of my plan foiled…How tragic.
Of course, I have my failsafe. Q! My lover will complete the horrors tonight. The blob has melted my legs away. The fickle flesh of my face ashes to wet dust. In her mercy, Q left me my arm in tact to complete this log.
But now, even that is being slowly depleted. I relish it! Take me, Q! Absorb me into yourself! You, my perfection of science! The true realization of my intellect! Become me! Unite us together so I may live as the Apex Predator of man. We will slosh down the streets, digesting all who get in our way. I curse my burned-out nerves as I wish to feel the overwhelming sensation of being consumed!
I, Eli Trepthe, have become the ideal! One-hundred and twenty-three years lead me to this. Now, I emerge, ready for destruction!
#
The Trepthe Blob spilled down the elevator shaft of the luxury apartment building. Squeezing through the cracks of doors, it slopped out to the street. No longer bound by sight, sound or language, the blob reacted instinctually. It craved a feast.
Amidst the city’s tumult, no one noticed the grey, shambling lump slink across the sidewalk, a stinking residue trailing behind it. Angry and ignored, the blob lurched an attack. It knocked down a child holding her mother’s hand. The child screamed.
The mother, conversely, kicked the blob off her child. Trepthe Blob withered from the direct blow, trying to trap the woman’s leg, but only succeed in stealing a shoe.
“Help!” the woman screamed, “This…thing hit my child and stole my shoe!”
Four onlookers rushed to her aid. They all started kicking Trepthe Blob, and the mass couldn’t retaliate fast enough. It stole another shoe. This enraged the citizens.
More city-dwellers came to help. In a violent swell of groupthink, the angry mob turned against the abomination. They grabbed concrete and rocks, and pelted Trepthe Blob. It writhed in pain, no longer immune to sensation like its former master. They hated Trepthe Blob, as much as it hated them. Perhaps if it was a benign monster, they would have studied its brilliance—but everyone felt justified quelling the freakish threat.
Trepthe Blob felt every blow but did not perish. It sulked, unable to fight back, discontent with its weak and powerless form.
Police drones arrived, cleared the area, captured the blob. The humans at the department had established protocol for biotech experiments gone wrong since it happened so frequently. The unliving-contraband would be placed in a plastic container and burning to death with fire. A man in a hazmat suit oversaw the execution. Since the criminal wasn’t human, law dictated there would be no trial.
Trepthe Blob trembled, awareness of its anti-climactic fate seeped deep within. The essence of Trepthe never thought it would be extinguished with such a whimper. From a safe distance, the hazmat man administered the cleansing flames. As the blob diminishes, a voice echoed from the holo-screen in the station’s common room,
“Tragic news tonight. Legendary inventor, Eli Trepthe was violently kidnapped from his penthouse apartment. Police believe it’s connected to the strange and unsuccessful bio-terrorist attack that happened in Midtown this afternoon. Trepthe was the only victim of the attack and authorities have not ruled out assassination as a motive. He lived a long and fruitful life, dedicated to the advancement of humanity. His family remembers him fondly, they told us. He loved everyone equally, and his work made all of our lives innumerably longer, better, and easier. He will be remembered as humanity’s friend.”
The Trepthe Blob died a failure.