PERFORATION 6.13 (Patreon)

Hey. You know what today is?

It's a three-chapter day. I've got one of BELOW, stored away, one of RfR, and one of VISCERAE? I am not sure what's happening but you know what, I'm not complaining. This ain't bad at all.

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Farming in gaming refers to the repetitive action of collecting resources, experience points, or in-game items to progress or improve a character. Popular examples include gathering gold in World of Warcrafting by defeating mobs or mining ore in Digcraft to craft tools and build structures. 

– Definition of a popular gaming term, originating in online discourse.

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Many things can be farmed, if one grows them carefully. Gristle grows in batches like ivy. Muscle hangs like thick, bulbous fruit. Veins are like bushes, branching and branching and branching. Bone, of course, grows like coral, like stone, in a sense. Brains are my favorite, in spite of the dread that they used to inspire in me, ever so long ago. They grow like flowers. Thick and wet and blooming things, dense and vibrant and, for want of a better word, fleshy. 

I have found that the easiest thing to farm, if treated properly, is blood. A solid enough core of marrow, planted in a rich enough slurry, will produce more almost without end. The blood itself can be made to reproduce, if properly designed, if fed the right ingredients and allowed the right spaces to grow. 

The most difficult thing, perhaps, is a spine. It requires such a precise spacing, such a delicate framework of neural tissue and bone, that it rarely ever goes well without proper expertise. 

I have farmed whole bodies, once. That particular tree… was not to my liking. Its design was perfect. Its manifestation, precisely crafted. In many ways, it is the most impressive thing I have ever built. 

But I did not like the noises. Nor how it writhed.

– Fifteenth Scripture, twelfth verse of the books of Lo-ahnn Daughtler, First Architect of Artistry

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My veins swim and wriggle and jump for joy. It does not do great things for my bodily dysmorphia, but fuck, it’s pretty damn joyful. I feel like my body is like a pool full of golden retrievers, except the happy puppies literally are the pool, are the water, shaking themselves into droplets everywhere.

SYMBIONTS: 

DIVINE BLOODLING (VII)

If I thought it was weird to have one Bloodling in my body, having six is a whole new level of strange. Every time I step or move anywhere, I can feel every vein more clearly than even my skin, and what’s more, it’s sort of… slopping around. The blood in my calves is excited to meet the blood in my thighs, which is excited to meet the blood in my heart and lungs and arms. It’s all moving in the right patterns, not tearing anything apart, not causing any harm, it doesn’t even hurt, but it does make me feel like gravity is acting weirdly, pulling me one way or another semi-randomly. 

I step out of yet another pool of crimson, onto a nearby hillside just over where the newly developed swampland is draining away. I notice, in spite of how weird it feels, that I’m moving more smoothly, more easily. My limbs respond as fast as I think about them, faster than I’m used to, which takes plenty of adjustment in and of itself. 

And it’s easier. Walking uphill leaves almost no burn of exertion in my system. I might as well be walking downhill, for all it’s doing to me. It’s not that surprising, I guess- having blood that actively helps rather than passively allows is already a benefit, but if I understand how the Bloodlings work, I now have a lot more blood in me than normal. From how my feet sink into the scab-gravel, I might even be heavier than normal.

Which really does so much for the dysphoria, truly. I just love being heavy. At least the Greater Fleshling’s body doesn’t bloat with all this supernatural fluid added to it. 

I still don’t feel the first Bloodling, though. It’s there, on my sheet, in the exact same place and way as the others, so I know it’s not gone. But whatever it did to bring me back from the dead? It kept it quiet. Kept it down and out. Asleep, somehow, or resting, or inactive, or… I don’t know.

I don’t think it’s very accurate, especially considering how much else it does, but the thought comes to my head. 

Luigi. The platformer games. There’s ways to get more lives in that game, in most games like it, but there’s also, sometimes, a way to raise your max lives, the total you have. If I have seven Bloodlings, maybe I have six more lives to go, and the other one will eventually recharge. 

Probably not. Probably just wishful thinking, and the scary kind, too, if it makes me get too complacent. 

Maybe it’ll heal on its own, over time, now that it’s got friends. Maybe not. Whatever else happens, I’ll make sure that it gets whatever it needs to come back, to wake up again. I literally owe the little thing my whole entire life. It saved me. And while it’s a part of me, I know everything it felt, everything it knew.

It knew me. It loved me. And it was and had nothing else. I was its whole world, from the moment it first spawned into existence at my touch.

And now I’ve got six more just like it to take care of. 

There’s something profoundly fucked up about that. Profoundly. That I’m pulling them into whatever shitshow I’ve got going on. Then again, they don’t really exist otherwise. I’m responsible for them, which means I can’t ever die again.

As if I needed more motivation.

…

Ok, maybe a little extra motivation in that direction is helpful.

Sitting on the hillside, cradling my spear in my additional limbs, I raise my wrist-computer up.

“Alright, friend. I think that’s probably enough of them for now. Some of those blood markers are pretty close to the edge of some of those larger icons. Can you tell me anything about them? Offer… I don’t know, location descriptions?”

“0F C0URS3!” scrolls across the screen, bright green. A little click sounds as one of the weird little knobs pops up out of the corner of the screen, bringing up a little grid-thing on the map as it does. I scroll it to one side, then the other, moving it around the screen from one icon to the next, where little words pop up as the “cursor” hovers over them.

The swamp: 

A swamp! Full of mushies!

Alright. Sure. That’s… better than nothing, right? It’s something.

The strange bundle of wires, like a rat king or a nest of snakes:

H3LL0! I7'S M3! HI HI!

I can’t help but laugh a little. Whether it’s an enemy pretending at being an ally, or it’s being genuine, the damn thing is endearing. And kind of cute.

To the northwest, the big eye:

Another friend! Wow! Big peepers!

Mmh. Someone or something that the computer’s met? And “big peepers”; more than one, then. 

I think of the craters in the back of so many people’s heads, all across town. The eyes that sometimes open and turn to stare, blindly or at me. 

Maybe I save that one until I’m a bit more prepared.

The big boil, or open cauldron, maybe both for all I know:

Yummy! Thick and hearty! Full of tasty chemicals!

The big craggy hills, and the theater behind them:

They’re fun! They dance! They play! Come to the play!

Then, the last two. First, the massive, broken hand, with a tree growing out of it:

Big and old and grumpy! Very sleepy! Like a big mountain!

And finally, the blank tombstone.

So baby! Very small. Full of family!

Alright. That settles it. 

I’m having to guess and interpret a shitload, obviously, but if these are things I’ve seen or met out in the real world, I can see the connections forming already. The play? I remember what GLIMPSE BEYOND told me when I looked at the puppet. The eyeball? The eyes on the backs of people’s heads. The swamp? The fungus, back in the mill. The big hand with the tree? My mind shoots over to the “big guy”, that gargoyle thing that ripped me literally limb from limb. I’m not sure what the big cauldron is, but… maybe Dani? Their magics? It somewhat makes sense, enough that I can connect the dots. 

But the tombstone? 

Process of elimination. There’s only one other supernatural person I know of, that I’ve met, that fits the criteria, especially with the friend-computer’s description.

“Full of family!”

The kid. Brian Johnson. Currently in federal custody after he vanished from the clinic, where I met him. Where he was wearing the bodies of his grandfather and his brother as an exosuit to compensate for paralysis. 

It’s not a hard decision. Most of the other entities out there are older, stronger, or more provably dangerous, or completely unknown. I don’t know how interacting with Dani will go, or going back to interact with the puppet again, or anything. I know what the swamp is, I’m confident I can fuck with that, but everyone else is a danger.

But he’s a kid. He seemed more confused than even me, and his powers, whatever they may be, were limited, seemed small and kind of tragic in origin. The gravestone only reinforces that. If there’s anywhere I can go that I actually want to connect with, that I might be able to help with and, what’s more, am not threatened by, then that fits all of the criteria.

It’s more or less on the opposite side of the map from me, the other side of the valley I’m still trapped in. Lots of walking.

So I get up, and I start walking. 

I’ve got some pit stops I’d like to go to on the way. 

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It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts.

It’s inevitable.

I keep cutting, feeling the slime grow into my flesh.

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SYMBIONT ACQUIRED: Writhing Limbs

Writhing Limbs: Utilizing the minimal utility of the Twitching Digits and Digestive Sludge of the bottom-feeders in the local environment, these tendril-like appendages are a useful tool for additional modification and little else.

SYMBIONT ACQUIRED: Writhing Blades

Writhing Blades: Utilizing a Divine Bloodling, a manufactured set of Writhing Limbs, and improvised blades of bone, a particularly uninteresting mass of tissue has been brute-forced into sharp-edged implements of combat, less useful than proper limbs, but moreso than nothing at all. 

SYMBIONT ACQUIRED: Dermal Cloak

Dermal Cloak: Woven from hair-fibers grown from out of lackluster soil, digestive sludge, and awkward, post-causal surgical ability, this dense cloak of fur has been carved into a functional set of environment-resistant armor.

SYMBIONT ACQUIRED: Fungal Tissue (Leg, Arm, Torso)

Fungal Tissue: A material almost entirely fungal in nature has been modified to work in conjunction with flesh. The well-known hunger of both organisms blends unevenly together, but the skill of the craftsman and the variety and quality of ingredients allows for a stronger-than-usual bond, with each material offering distinct advantages as they work in tandem. These overlapping layers of nu-biology offer additional forms of circulation and regeneration, improving on the lackluster qualities of both original specimens.

I shake off another flea-mite-shroom-thing, the little half-crab thing working oddly as its pieces come apart. It, and dozens more like it, are lying in pieces, some of their more useful internal architecture rolled into my own. 

My body hurts. It’s going to keep hurting. The hurt is inevitable, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so I don’t have to think about it. 

I’m covered in criss-crossing scars of already-healing flesh, surgically altered to better suit my needs. Layers of slimy fungal material have been interwoven into muscle fibers, laced under my skin like rubbery armor. They mesh weirdly with the blood, not quite letting it flow through it due to a lack of veins, but the Bloodlings still soak into the fibers well enough. 

I’m a good foot taller than I was two hours ago, when I walked into the swamp. After pulling together near-replicas of what I used in my “best run”, the one I survived the longest and explored the most in. A total of six limbs, counting the insect-like tendrils of blade and twitching finger-things I can curl up behind my shoulders, and a thick coat of woven hairs, stitched into my skin like armor. I’ve forgone the “twitch-frame”; too much work for too little reward, especially when I can dig deeper than before, dig deeper into the rarer materials of the fungal marshlands. 

The descriptions, sassy as they remain, have gotten a little bit less insulting. Skill helps, even without letting INTERPRETIVE CRAFTSMANSHIP or SCULPTOR OF FLESH come out to play. I repress them like I do GLIMPSE BEYOND, I can’t… can’t face them yet. But even with that, they still sort of… leak through me. 

So all the Symbionts came out better than last time, and the descriptions follow that up. Even still, the opinion of whatever the fuck is writing them is pretty clear when it comes to what I’m using. Everything from the main areas of MEAT’s spawn-area, the valley I start in, is always written about like it’s literal garbage. Clearly, the better the thing I make from them, the better the description, but still. Only the materials from the fungal marsh don’t have insults baked into their writing. 

I’m not sure what that means, except that apparently, additions to the MEATlands are somehow better, or of higher quality, than the base. 

That tracks, sort of. Whatever this is, it’s an open world game, right? That’s what it started as. Explore, find new things, and the more you find, the more you uncover, the better off the game gets. The more you unlock. The more you get to play with. 

I sigh, but the taste of fungus never leaves my mouth. It’s in my body now, and some of it’s in my flesh enough that it leaks into other parts of me. 

I wonder if, using my SKILLs properly, I might be able to do even more. A deeper blend. A real evolution.

I’m almost tempted to get distracted and enjoy myself. 

I can’t afford that. So I keep walking. 

I see the green dot representing me on the map, the screen partially slimed over, approaching my destination. 

I look up, and I see it, over a few more hills. 

It looks like it’s sprouted right up out of the ground. It smells of rot, of decay, of meat left out, without any of the cleaner aspects of mold and mildew. 

The hillside looks like a pincushion, with dozens and dozens of bone-trees sprouting. They’re much more chaotic than the usual two or three that spawn out of the normal hills, and they have something none of the others have– leaves.

Little flaps of dead skin, fluttering, growing strong and solid and concretely, out of the many tumorous spikes emerging from the ground. 

And at the center of it all, there’s a stone. 

Heavy. Solid. Darker than the space around it. The strange lighting that just sort of exists, vaguely, everywhere, doesn’t touch it nearly as much as everywhere else, making it darker and harder to look at. It comes out of the ground like a piece of shrapnel, pushed out awkwardly and halfheartedly by a body that’s not designed for that sort of trauma. 

It could, if one were to be overly generous, be called a gravestone. 

It is so much colder than everything else. And yet… it fits. It meshes, seamlessly, into the world around me, into the rest of the MEAT.

I feel my biology shifting, my Fleshling adapting to the additions.

It’ll have to be enough.

I move towards the grave, gifted to me by a conversation with a child.