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Introductory Text

A Dead Cat Wearing an Old Jock Strap
Ben's Narrative Part 01 33rd Post Posted 3 May 2016 at 02:32:44 EDT Link to original

Imagine a dead cat wearing an old jock strap.

This is the smell of the bed sores. This is the smell that comes out of the hygiene beds when we open them up. It's not just a smell but a feeling -- a sickly warmth that the masks cannot block out. Even through the filtered, scented air, you know it's there, coming through the filters in <.1 micrometer sized particles, touching your face, touching your clothes, adhering to you, fouling you, fouling everything it touches.

I think what makes the smell so putrid is that it's a combination of living tissue and dead tissue. Somehow this unnatural intermingling of life and death creates a potent stench that is repellant to basic human sensibility. This is why I am saving up to go to school and become a Readjustment Specialist. Pulling people out of malfunctioning hygiene beds is no way to make living. Certainly it is not the calling of a sensitive, erudite soul such as myself.

When a hygiene bed breaks (say, the Healthy Limb System fails, or a catheter gets blocked up), it's supposed to cut off the internet feed, forcing the sleeper to get the bed fixed. But it's easy enough to override this cut-off function. Immersed in their feeds, people often forget that the bed is broken. But eventually pain or discomfort will force the sleeper to get their bed fixed. The pain of bedsores or the stench of a backed-up evacuator is a strong motivator. But if the sleeper has direct sense feeds, they can switch off these smells and discomforts. They can even switch off the worry associated with the broken bed.

At this point there is only one thing which can impel them to save themselves: basic human dignity. The age-old desire to not spend one's days playing Princess Romance Cafe, lying in one's own shit while one's dick rots off. (I would also say that an occasional fleeting desire to see the outside world could also prove advantageous, but for the sort of people I'm talking about here, this is simply not a factor.)

Sadly, for some people, this desire is not strong enough, and we come to the very last line of defense: the smell.

The smell eventually leaks out of the hygiene bed's encasement, and nearby tenants start to notice. The building manager calls us, and we go and pull them out. For the most hardcore sleepers, those who have entirely rejected reality in favor of their feeds, it is the smell and the smell alone that saves their lives before the bacteria devour them alive. It is the stinky hand of salvation that plucks them from the abyss.

I don't know what God looks like. But he smells like a dead cat wearing an old jock strap.