Help Me

My first entry to this month's competition on the Black Library Bolthole. The theme is "Hunger" and, as always, I've been gratuitously dark. Any of you who remember the Strogg from the Quake games will understand what gave me the idea for this.

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Can anyone hear me?

I don’t know how much time I have to speak. It’s the first time in…..throne; I don’t even know how long it’s been. I heard them, issuing instructions to the servitors. There’s a clog in one of the feed lines I think, and a valve’s blown somewhere. It won’t take them long to replace it. Listen.

Listen.

If anyone can hear me, I need your help.

I don’t know where I am. It could be anywhere on the planet. All I know is that I’m a prisoner here. I know there are others like me, trapped in the bowels of this vast production line. I’m glad of that.

I’m sorry. I know how that must sound. But…..the thought that I might be the only one…..it’s more than I can bear. Sometimes I imagine I can hear them. The others. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just hearing what I want to, what I need to, whatever keeps me sane.

I…..wait……

I thought I heard one of them. It’s okay, I think they’re gone now.

They’re the only people I see now. If you can call them that. Some of them barely look human, although I suppose they must have been at one point. One of them, the Arch-magos…..his face is just a thick mass of flailing metal tentacles. I don’t even know how he sees where he’s going! He can though. See, I mean. He certainly sees me. He comes by every so often, always with a scribe-servitor in tow, checking that I’m still performing my designated function within acceptable parameters. That’s what he says to the servitor. He never speaks to me.

He must know, though. He must know that I’m suffering. Surely he can see it in my eyes. He just doesn’t care. None of them do. Whatever they do to each other, it strips away their humanity, their compassion.

Mind you, compassion is something a lot of people seem to lack. Like the Judge. What was his name…..Graven, that was it. Judge Graven.

He must have understood the fate that awaited me when he handed me over to the Mechanicus. He just didn’t care. If anything, he seemed to find it amusing. A fitting punishment for your gluttony, he called it.

Damn him.

I mean, yes, I was a bit overweight. It’s not like I can deny it. I always have been, ever since I was little. I just…..I was just always hungry. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. I didn’t eat so much because I was greedy. I gorged myself because I had to, because I always needed to. I don’t suppose you’ll understand what that feels like. Nobody does. Even my family didn’t get it. I know what they thought of me, I could see it in every contemptuous look they gave me.

And of course, that affected my work. I had a job on a production line, just like everyone else. Ten hours a day, seven days a week. I prepared ration-packs for the Imperial Guard. Well, me and ten thousand other workers. Immense lifters came every week to boost the tonnes of packs into orbit. From there, well, I don’t know where they went. All over the sector probably, to dozens of different worlds.

I know it was wrong. And for years I fought the impulse, I really did. I was just…..so…..hungry that day. Like I said, you can’t understand what it’s like. So I stole some of the ration packs. Only four or five, it’s not like it was the crime of the century! Do you know how many packs go through that factory in a single day? No, silly question.

I can hear them now. I think the valve is nearly fixed. I don’t have much time left.

They caught me, obviously. They gave me a pretty savage beating, and I thought that was the end of it. If only. The supervisor had me hauled up in front of a judge. I think they wanted to make an example of me. Maybe I wasn’t the only one caught stealing. Or maybe the supervisor was just a sadistic bastard. I don’t suppose it matters.

The judge handed me over to the Mechanicus running the bio-reclamation facility. Let your gluttony be turned to the Emperor’s service, he said. I remember it so clearly. And the Mechanicus are nothing if not literal-minded.

They remade me, turned me into a servitor. They sliced off my arms and legs, opened up my torso, and remodelled my digestive system. I was conscious through it all, though I couldn’t feel it. Maybe it didn’t occur to them to knock me out. In a way it was worse to be able to see all this happening, and yet not to feel it.

Then they put me into the production line, just another part of the machine. My neck is clamped in place and there’s a plate under my jaw so I can’t move it much. Helps stop the feed pipe inside my mouth from getting dislodged. Today is the first time I can remember that it hasn’t been functioning.

Maybe you’re wondering what I do. I’m a recycler. That’s what they made me into.

Every hour of every day they feed waste into me. I swallow it all, I can’t do anything but swallow it. My digestive system filters out everything that might be useful, every scrap of nutrition that can be reused, turned into new rations to feed the workers of this world, or supplies for the Imperial Guard. The rest of it passes out through a pipe they shoved up inside me. I think it goes through others, to try and catch anything my system missed. I used to feel sorry for them, until I realised that there may be more up the line thinking the same about me.

I can’t understand why they left me conscious. I certainly don’t know why I’m still sane. But it’s good that I am. It means I can ask you this.

Listen. I can hear it now. The feed lines are back on. I only have a few seconds. If anyone is out there, if anyone can hear this. Please. You have to…..

…..mmphfphh…..

Kill me.