The old Karu refining vats? Total dumps filled with awful memories. They stunk and were stained from ages of divine marrow processing. Huge, like the guts of some dead monster down in the basements. The smell? Sweet, rotten, and just too much – like the ghost of a billion meals.
Now, a strange band of people was cleaning them: ex-Taste-Guards blasting with lymph hoses, heretics scraping off the hard crud, and symbiotes using disgusting fungal spit to eat away the spiritual stains. The sound? A loud, noisy attempt at cleaning up.
Lucien and Maxine were working hard in the biggest vat, now scrubbed to a dull bone color. They had installed some resonance-crystals – things they got from old dampeners – all around the inside. Maxine made a control panel from Harvester Rig parts.
Okay, so it's like this, Lucien explained to the people watching – Naomi, Bianca, Leo, and some council members. We are going to fill the vat with ground-up Root-Bread and some living mushroom material. Instead of using fire and prayers as with Ambrosia, we will use a special sound field. The sound should get the mushroom to decompose quickly and naturally, thus producing sugars and proteins that we can eat.
"Sounds cruel," Bianca said, looking unhappy. "Making a living thing eat itself."
"It's a deal," Leo said, with his arms crossed. He was not very sure, but they were out of options. The mushroom will understand that it has to sacrifice itself for the good of everyone. If the sound is correct – if it is a request, not an order – the mushroom will comply. It did it for the Heartwood Spire.
Maxine was at the console, her hands on the controls. Her graft was inserted into a sample of the mash. She was listening, trying to sense the mushroom's natural rhythm – a busy hum of constantly changing things.
"It's not just one note," she whispered, with her eyes closed. "It's a circle. A pattern of breaking and building." She heard the part where the fungus broke down big stuff to feed itself. It was a soft, giving sound, then a sudden burst of energy.
She started to mimic it. The crystals surrounding the vat started humming, giving off a soft, green-gold light. The sound was like a forest after rain, a deep, wet, crumbling sound that seemed full of life.
The workers dumped the first batch of grey mash into the vat. It was there, lifeless.
Maxine increased the volume, concentrating on the giving part. The sound became lower. The mash started to foam, not from heat, but from something going on. The color changed, going from grey to a rich brown. A new odor came out – not the disgusting sweet rot of Karu, but the warm, earthy smell of baking bread.
Everyone was shocked. It was an odor that deeply resonated with their memories. The smell of home, not heaven.
They operated it for an hour. When Maxine turned off the crystals, the vat was filled with thick porridge. Lucien, with a trembling hand, took some in a beaker and tested it.
"Chitin is lowered by seventy percent," he said, very quietly. "Good proteins and carbs are increased four times." "It's… it's food. Real food."
Naomi was the first to step forward. She took a spoonful of the warm porridge and tasted it, her eyes closed. The taste was not great, but it was satisfying, rough, and truthful. The flavor was of earth, hard work, and everyone doing their part. The flavor was like the future.
"It's good," she said, with tears in her eyes – not tears of sorrow, but of relief.
A cheer started, quiet at first, and then loud. It was the first victory that was about creating something, not just preventing something bad.
That evening, the first Vat-Bread was distributed. It was far from being enough, not even close. But it showed that they might be able to feed themselves without having to eat their god.
In the silent Pancreatic Junction, Benny was looking at the Resonant Aligner coursing regularly. The cellular cohesion number was going up a little. He thought he saw his mother's finger move.
In the Gaping Maw, Bianca and Rhiza were singing, and some disgusting lymphatic fluid was starting to flow the right way for the first time in a long time.
And far down in the Cerebral Vault, in its quiet bubble, the black tear of the Core Memory Lobe was there. The crack didn't close, but it was shining faintly. In the silence, something that wasn't a thought, but a feeling, was starting to… GROW.
The fast was still going. But now, there was the smell of bread in the air.