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"Ms. Gupta-Das," I looked up to see Loyiso Acerbi, weight shifted to his rear leg, chin up to imply this usual unimpressed derision, but his hands were fists, hidden and twisted into his robe's long sleeves. Weird.

"We'll be having dinner tomorrow. I know you have a special diet that's prevented you from joining all prior meals, but in order to close this deal, it is traditional for all negotiation personnel to be present." He tilted his head to look directly at me (great), and shifted his face into what was supposed to be a welcoming smile and a less haughty, more approachable expression. It was still strained, and with how much the whites of his eyes were showing, he was scared and trying to hide it.

He continued, "It's the sort of cultural contract that makes Barish-Estranza a wholeFAMILY™." A heartwarming tagline, cute. Through my years working for The Company, corporations that told its employees that they were part of a big corporate family were everything, but familial. 

Being bonded out to them always sucked.

I had a response for this. I'd used it at the negotiations' start, and hadn't been forced to attend any of the group meals ever since. "I have a very complicated diet that I really can't stray from, and I don't want my inability to eat what's offered to create awkward tension, especially when I'm just an intern that—”

"Nonsense! Your team lead was kind enough to gift us the necessary information, for free, to craft a meal that fulfills everyone's needs, even your limited diet."

What the fuck? I opened up a secure channel.

'What the fuck? They want me to come eat with the negotiation teams at the signing dinner.' 

To Loyiso Acerbi I said, "I'd feel more comfortable knowing what was being served. I've had several occasions where I've had to make a faux pas and refuse food that my augments can't process, and others where I've accepted food, became ill and had to invoice for extensive augment replacements. The last thing I want to do is refuse food at an important closing." 

Iris was first to answer, 'Peri made up a dietary regimen we passed off to them. They shouldn't be able to accommodate it on short notice.'

'I examined their resource log when we arrived. They don't have a medical grade nutrient recycler, so they don't even have the means to make such a meal. Whatever they make you have an excuse to turn down.' ART was being a little too confident for my liking. 

"I fully understand your apprehension, truly," my Mehira and New Tideland University schedule was about to switch my availability from a recreational period to a sleep period, I couldn't help but think Acerbi's timing was intentional. 

I stood up to leave the lounge and Loyiso Acerbi jumped back. Oh, yeah, he was definitely here for a reason. Not a good reason either. "B-b-but I can assure you we now have a culinary recycler on hand that can craft any meal to meet all of the medical limitations of any member of your negotiations team, i-i-including yourself."

This guy was way too nervous. This wasn't nervous jitters over closing a big deal between three parties, this was fear of me. 

Fuck. 

'Fuck. Well, Iris, now we have a bigger problem.'

'What?'

'They suspect I'm not your tag-along intern, and the guy they sent to invite me for the closing dinner almost bolted just now when I got up.'

I put on my best chagrined, but friendly face and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, but my sleep period is supposed to start, and—" 

"Ah, that's quite alright. We'll be expecting you at the contractual dinner tomorrow evening." He left the room without my confirmation.

Someone had definitely identified me as a secUnit, or suspected it, which was not good for this mission.

We were trying to restart and revamp Lutran's refugee smuggling operation. ART had the fabrication know-how to draw up foolproof documents to protect abandoned colonies from oncoming corporate acquisitional indenture, so fabricating documents to give new identities and citizenship to future refugees would be a piece of cake. A small team of academics and intelligence officials were here to socialize and begin to identify who in the organization would be willing to help us.

My role in all of this was much smaller. I was providing security for the whole team while we were disembarked. 

Oh, and I was also on the committee that would be planning and overseeing the future refugee smuggling operations, currently controlling Barish-Estranza's SecSys so it wouldn't flag any of our team for suspicious activity, snooping technology, small arms, or me. And I was surveilling the Barish-Estranza crew and data-mining everything their headquarters had to offer. And they had a lot to offer. 

Ok, so I was farming that last part out to ART, but I was supposed to follow everyone around and pretend to be a sheltered Preservation intern, there's no way I could do everything simultaneously and pretend to be a student. 

So it was pretty fuckin' important nobody clocked me as a SecUnit. I'd gone through the process of further altering myself for this mission. To obscure the planes of my face a pattern of colorful thin wavy lines had been decoratively tattooed. My hair was grown out to fall below my shoulders and braided with ribbons and jewelry into a wide plait and I wore all the big body obscuring clothes I wanted, but everything had to be colorful and eye-catching. Even the regions where my organic and inorganic parts enmeshed visibly were altered to be more colorful and showy. 

I hated it.

I was supposed to look like I wanted to be seen (ick), but my intern status would make anyone we encountered in Barish-Estranza territory pretend I didn't exist.

Seen, but not heard. Which was fine, I didn't want them to interact with me and I didn't want to interact with them. It still bothered me.

So now, in the home stretch where we've gathered all our intel and signing the stupid contracts were all that was left, I was looking forward to climbing back into ART so it could burn this shit off my face and watch Valorous Defenders together.

The intern not being invited to dinner with everyone else had made it easier for me to snoop and meander around.

For the end of negotiations I could see everyone who'd arrived on ART being invited to the signing event, but the likelihood of Barish-Estranza acquiring a medical grade nutrient recycler just so the negotiating team's intern could come eat with everyone was a null value.

If they had a nutrient recycler, they would have gone through considerable effort to get it here covertly enough that neither ART nor I had flagged it.

Unlikely, but not null.

'Iris, contact the Barish-Estranza team later on this cycle to try and get your intern uninvited, but I don't think we have anything to worry about. I believe SecUnit's plausible deniability is still intact.'

After some back and forth, I was going to dinner.

Surrounded by mastication is what I've always wanted.

Great. Just great.

Chapter Text

So, this is happening.

This is… happening.

ART was wrong. A medical grade culinary recycler made an appearance in the kitchen area several hours before the meal and we watched as they followed every stupid dietary protocol. They went all out to make my future meal as visually stunning as they could. 

When ART asked me if I had a plan, I said I did and explained what I was going to do. ART told me I was an idiot, and it's right.

There are now 42 Barish-Estranza security personnel placed nonchalantly and unassumingly along our path through the station. Most were armed, armored, and out of sight, while the rest carried concealed weaponry. I, a rogue secUnit dressed in clashing fluorescent patterns, was going to nonchalantly and unassumingly walk down among my 24 obliviously vulnerable human crewmembers, and eat food. Like I was one of them.

As a secUnit, I wanted to keep my humans sequestered aboard ART and have it take us out of the corporation rim. Sensible, but this smuggling operation would never get off the ground.

We did the smart thing when crafting my cover story. A traumatic childhood accident, growing up with a body that failed to adapt and properly integrate with GI augments, blah blah blah, nobody wanted to hear the sad, gross intestinal back story of some nobody intern from some nowhere polity. If some poor human did want to hear my back story, ART had fleshed it out with enough grotesque details, that they would come away wishing they'd never asked. I controlled and monitored the Barish-Estranza system networks, preventing them from recognizing me as a SecUnit, and got to annoy some corporates with my attempts to network like a human. 

Per usual, I was going to have to do things the dumb way. I was going to eat with the humans. 

I don't have a stomach, that's why it's dumb. 

What I planned to do was "eat" and "swallow" food into a portion of my lung and then wait around until I could get ART to clean it out. 

Simple. 

Easy. 

If I tell myself not to worry, perhaps I'll believe it?

Ha. 

Most of my crew didn't know I was a SecUnit. It's easy to get a crew of 24 people to treat you like an augmented human if that's what they know you to be. So they were unfazed by me sitting down to dinner with them.

Iris and, of all people, Thiago were the only exceptions. But I'd only told them that I was going to store the food in my body, not that I was storing it in my lung. Thiago made a point of sitting to my right at the table in case I needed him, or something. 

You might have noticed I've been saying, 'my lung,' and not, 'my lungs.' I only have the one lung, and a SecUnit standard lung bears no resemblance to its human counterpart. Structurally, a SecUnit lung looks more like the semicircular canals of a human's inner ear. It is organic lung tissue grown into an inorganic mesh base, designed to fit in and around the other tightly packed internal components. It looks like several branching loops that sequentially squeeze and undulate to move air. If a projectile obliterated a portion of my lung, my lung was capable of cordoning off the damaged portion, allowing me to continue on as a bullet shield.

"How does it look? Do you think you can eat it?" Thiago asked. 

A wide shallow bowl sat in front of me, filled by a thick, light beige mucilage. A delicate starburst design of yellowish brown tones swirled throughout it, and a huge wafer floated in the middle. It was shaped like a Sudanese möbius band and was paper thin. 

"Well, I'll find out won't I?" I pulled out a pen-like medical device ART had made, and began poking it into the chunky smears and swirls, and against the wafer. Each reading returned an approval. I guess I'm committed to this path of action. 

"Wow, they went all out to make your meal look good," Iris piped up from across the table, "The pre-packaged goop you eat has never looked this appetizing."

"Hey, Mal, look over there," I turned to my left to look where Thiago was pointing. Just as my eyes made contact with one of the armed nonchalants (she stiffened), Thiago's spoon dove in and scooped out a large mound of my edible medical substance and popped it in his mouth. Instinctually, I pulled my bowl to the left so my client wouldn't poison their self, then felt silly because it was all medical grade nutrition formulated for the most sickly human. 

I still had a cover to maintain. Banging my arm down between us, I pouted and declared, "Mine!" in Thiago's face. Thiago was cheeky and triumphant but his face quickly grimaced and then began to… malfunction? It took him three shivering swallows to get it all down and another moment to gather himself back together to say, "it's like vinegar. Thick, gritty, sludgy vinegar," and then downed half a glass of water and started shoveling his own food into his face. It was like a comedy, it broke the tension. I leaned in on my right barrier-arm and picked up the spoon with my left hand.

"Hey, listen, I've been eating this shit my whole life!" I jammed my spoon down into the goo and dragged out my own big scoop. The excess mass of beige mottled mucilage didn't really drip, but rather sloughed off in clumps. "It's about time you watched a pro eat!" and I shoved it into my face. 

I'm not designed to eat, and you've certainly gleaned that from my lack of a GI tract and my plan to store food in my singular lung, but it goes a little beyond that. Everything solid in my body is an inorganic alloy, including my teeth. The softer bits can be organic, inorganic, or a combination. My mouth, lips, gums, tongue, cheeks, etc., are organic except for the dry, protective, inorganic film that covers everything. The surfaces inside my mouth appear shiny, like a wet human mouth (eugh!), but I have no salivary glands or taste buds. I'd wanted to rub my absent gustatory response in Thiago's face, and got over confident. 

There were no salivary secretions present in my mouth to aid in lubricating the gluey glob I'd just shoved in, so it immediately coated my entire mouth and slimed its way into every single nook and cranny in between my teeth. 

I wanted to eject it — spit it back out, but I was committed to this. I pretended to chew goo (I'd practiced chewing a piece of cloth in a mirror), squelching it from cheek to cheek and moving my tongue through it. Sickeningly thick and almost unyielding I moved the first portion to the back of my mouth with my tongue. (It was strange, I've never moved anything around with my tongue.) Squeezing the first portion into my throat, I inhaled. 

It gurgled and glugged its way down into my right-most lung-loop (which I immediately clamped shut). Like I said, I don't have salivary glands for lubrication, so everything from between my teeth, down through my bronchial tube was now coated in gelatinous slime. For the first time in my life, I shivered. I didn't want to do this anymore, fuck being human, fuck me for thinking I could pull this off, fuck Indah for pushing me to do this, fuck Iris and fuck Thiago for looking concerned, and fuck Barish-Estranza! 

'Fuck Barish-Estranza,' was the only thought that kept me from losing it. This whole mission was a "fuck you," to Barish-Estranza, and the pilot program for a larger "fuck you," to the rim. I felt the sticky strings of liquid nutritional food vibrating in my airway, and the cooling sensation as air rushed in and out of my mouth and nose over the invasive glue that coated my teeth and gums and adhered my cheeks to my teeth.

I wanted to both curl into a gurgling ball under the table, and also flip the table and go ballistic, but ART started playing the soundtrack to sanctuary moon in my feed. 

Instead, I inhaled the last gulp of goo, looked back at Thiago's worried, still-vinegar-twitching-face, and did my best to smirk through a grimace, "See? I told you I was a professional at this."

"Hey, Intern Mal?" Iris piped up, "can I try a bite? I wanna see where I fall on the toughness scale between Mal and Thiago. 

The low side of the toughness scale grumbled something unintelligible into his mashed mint peas. 

I, on the elevated side of the toughness scale, responded, "Because you asked politely: Yes, you may," and slid my bowl across. But not before grabbing my own, more reasonably sized, spoonful. 

Unlike Thiago, Iris took a small amount of my nutritional mucilage. (Now that I think of it, Thiago might have been planning on eating a lot more of my food so I wouldn't have to. Now, I felt bad about being mean, but he got me shot off the balcony of a boat, so I guess we're even now.) She did try to maintain a straight face and was mostly successful. As I inhaled my reasonable spoonful, Thiago butted in before Iris could claim her mid-tier toughness award, "That is not fair; Mal and I both ate a heap of that stuff and all you had was a tiny taste!" 

Before I could finish pulling my bowl back, Iris slammed her spoon back into it (collapsing the Sudanese Möbius, and attracting nearby attention), heaved out her own mound, made challenging eye-contact with Thiago (undercut by her still persed vinegar lips), and shoved it all into her face. 

I 'ate' several more bites while everyone watched her struggle to maintain her disposition. The shattered wafer added a whole new layer of grit and was not prone to absorbing moisture from the goo, fantastic. She lost, and spat everything into her napkin (gross, but I'd kill to have that option myself), and fell to the bottom of the toughness scale with Thiago (I couldn't decide, so they share last place). But this started a game to see who could eat a spoonful and beat the intern at her own game. Watching each human foe (Preservation Alliance, UMihira+New Tideland, and Barish-Estranza alike) breakdown from steely determination to glitching out, kept my focus off of what was happening inside me. I also found that water diluted the goo and rinsed my mouth and respiratory tube. 

Then the Port Authority General Administrator came over. With SecSys under my control I had developed a profile for everyone. Hers reflected a need for superiority and a disregard for the well-being of anyone below her in the Barish-Estranza hierarchy. I expected her to try the food while ignoring my existence. What I didn't expect was for her to knock me out of my chair in doing so. Mid-swallow, I went from leaning casually on my right arm to let food get suctioned into my right-most lung-loop, to falling sideways to my left and everything getting suctioned into all the other loops! Fuck Barish-Estranza! 

The viscous slime and wafer shards were now actively gurgling and scraping through every portion of my lung. I started coughing, and I've never coughed before. I had to roll back the security footage to see Iris and Thiago make a medical excuse (probably fed to them by ART), and guide me by my arms back to ART so it could crack me open, clean me out, and tell me what a dumb little idiot I was. 

Fuck Barish-Estranza! 

After writing this chapter I recognized two cinematic parallels from two of my favorite childhood movies:

Barish-Estranza asking Murderbot to dinner

Murderbot eating its meal in a "I'm gonna eat better than all you humans!" attitude

Chapter Text

Appetite ≠ Aspiration 

You eat Funion Rings

Murderbot has fun lung rings

Don't breathe Funion Rings