Mangling Malfunction - Part One

Wandering down the street, short bursts of rain spitting down in the night air, I try to pull my leather jacket over my head for some semblance of cover. Clouds blot out the stars and the moon, the faint glow emanating from the sky doing little to illuminate the footpath.

A few scant street lights help guide the way, the warm glow also catching the rain as it threatens to come down heavier by the second. It was the calm before the storm, the pitter patter of sharp cold droplets and the rumbling of thunder in the distance tell me it was a race against time to find some sort of cover.

I hadn't intended to stay out so late, just a few drinks before heading to my waiting bed. However, seeing me drinking alone the bar had been 'kind enough to ply me with cheap liquor all night. I'd normally just call a cab or Uber home, though with the extra time spent out I'd unfortunately killed the battery in my phone. My head hangs forward, my stance listing from side to side as I try to keep balance on the wet and slippery path.

Suddenly, a flash of light fills the sky only to be followed by a near immediate rumbling boom of thunder. The heavens open above me, the gentle spitting of rain rapidly devolving into an intense deluge that threatens to sweep me off my feet.

Wincing under the onslaught I look around for somewhere to take shelter, only to be met with the sight of closed storefronts and locked buildings. Squinting towards the distance I spy a faint blue light as some vague sense of recollection filling me as the gears turn ever so slowly in my inebriated mind.

Getting closer, struggling against the downpour that seems to nearly be going sideways with the growing wind, I begin to make out the structure. It looks almost similar to a phone booth, a larger tall cylinder clad in a hard curved outer layer of steel. Graffiti, both in the form of painted images and Sharpied tags, litter the exterior of the once shiny and pristine booth.

A softly glowing blue light sits atop the booth, the light building and fading just fast enough to grab your attention but without becoming distractingly obnoxious. Wrapped around the top of the booth reads its name, white letters on a black band repeating over and over.

Public Auto-Closet

Auto-Closets had always been a rich man's toy. The complex machinery and the difficult to source material used inside the device leading to run away production costs that could really only be owned by the most wealthy in society.

While working in this niche would have netted the company a good ongoing profit, simply acting as the cosmetic surgeons for the uber rich, they wanted more as all companies do. If people can't pay to own one of our products, the thought process went, then would they pay just to use it.

From this simple idea the Public Auto-Closet was born, an ugly albeit futuristic looking device hastily deployed in cities and towns around the world in an over eager attempt to capture this hypothetical market.

Largely equipped for small time maintenance work and some small number of synthetic surgery options, these devices offered to clean up and improve the user for a modest fee. Filling out lips, excising moles, and adding a few cc's to a cup size were all in the days work for these contraptions.

Of course, each Public Auto-Closet was equipped with the necessities to store biological matter almost indefinitely. Used to hold fat, muscle, bone, and skin taken from users in order to offer more organic services for later users, these vats were stored under the machine in an out of sight out if mind manner.

These machines, while used often at first, soon became known as a dying fad. The ongoing costs to use them to nip and tuck every few days was far too onerous, and most people only really needed to use them once anyway. Before long these devices were left to rot, the maintenance on each of them becoming slower and less likely to take place with removal being even less likely due to how deep they ran into the ground beneath them.

It was after sitting without support for quite some time that stories of malfunctions began to spring up in the news. Though rarely lasting in the news cycle longer than a single article, stories of people becoming trapped inside these glowing coffins began to crop up. Some had parts harvested from them, others found themselves stuffed with plastic and silicone when just trying to get a dye job.

The Auto-Closet Company of course was behind the silencing of these stories, paying large sums or offering those powerful few free services in exchange for the story dying then and there. Besides, issues like silicone stuffed breasts or a flattened ass could easily be rectified with another run through a working closet.

However, these small issues soon began to balloon out though in much rarer cases. People seemed to go missing after using the closets, turning back up days to months later. These unlucky few sadly were seen as all spare parts by the Public Auto-Closet, being broken down into composite organic components to be purchased by future users only to be freed once bought or found by the rare repair technician.

These errors could compound of course, with more and more users going missing as they were stored down below. However, this independent functioning worked both ways, with some users finding themselves being not only harvested but rebuilt using the parts in storage. At best they would simply be rebuilt using only parts from a single victim of the Auto-Closet, however, bodies made of multiple victims were all too common.

Animals too could sometimes be found wandering into these machines, either not returning or only to be followed by a wild and wide-eyed person stumbling out of the machine as they struggle to stand on two legs. These 'traumatized persons' would be taken by the company as they were rehabilitated, though to little success beyond being a mute and playful individual where no additional human gray matter was added into the mix. The same could also be said of people wandering in, only for some random bird or dog to stagger out loudly vocalizing their dismay in a panic.

On few rare occasions, animal material and human material could be blended together with the machine attempting to create as human as possible an entity from the foreign physiology.

Worst case scenarios involved the brain tissue of those stored in the Auto-Closet being broken down and store inside the composite victim, the neurons being stored in fatty tissue and integrated as a mute hindbrain never to be returned to normal. At worst the hindbrain would merely be left to feel the sensations of their connected nerves, acting as sentient body part without any way to action their own will. Some developed some rudimentary control, becoming more like an independent limb, while others could communicate with or acted as a searchable knowledge base for the main brain.

In the cases of these more extreme scenarios the business plan was simple, lay for the problem to go away before decommissioning the error-riddled device one way or another.

The unfortunate composite person would simply have to adapt to their new form, the severe nature of the procedure leading to an extended healing time where no further operations could be performed.

Those trapped inside the Auto-Closet would be released and hopefully rebuilt from whatever was left inside, additional biomass and synthetic material being used to recreate their former body as best as possible from the information stored on file and their complaints after the fact. With little memory of their time inside they would be paid out for the time lost, thankfully lacking the memories of the horrible experience of being carved up and stored for hours to weeks on end.

Despite having heard strange mumblings in the past about these odd machines but in the pelting rain I simply didn't care. What did random small town news articles about the odd claims of some random person know anyway.

Racing up to the booth, slipping and sliding on the footpath in front of it, I press my hand against the door. Responding to my touch immediately the doors slide open with a low hiss and a subtle grinding, the hidden hinges appearing to show their age and disrepair. A burst of pleasantly warm air emanates from within, the heat beckoning me inside as I drunkenly stagger inside.

While the exterior was scrawled with all manner of markings the inside was still crisp and clean, the self-cleaning cycle working well to keep up appearances despite the lack of attention from the company at large.

As I lean up against the curved wall inside the door slides shut behind me, a low hiss escaping from it as the sound of the rain outside suddenly ceases as the seal is formed.

A soft chime escapes from the ceiling, the booting up process starting as it detects a living breathing person inside the booth.

"Wel... Wel... Welcome... Auto-Clos... Come to Aut..." Bleats the machine, the soft feminine voice used to once calm the user's sounding far more menacing and off-putting as if jumping up and down the sentence at random.

"Wet... Wet... Wet... You are... Wet..." It sparks, repeating the words in an off-putting and identical tone each time. "Allow me to... Take... Take... Take your... Your... Take ..." I groans, a subtle crackling sound soon coming from the walls as the rain from outside appears to seep in.

I turn towards the now sealed door, stepping towards it as a large metal arm springs down from the ceiling. I freeze up as I feel something pierce into my chest, the sudden sensation being followed by a cool numbing feeling beginning to pump into my torso.

Looking down I spy a large needle piercing my right side, a faint blue liquid rapidly plunging into the wound. I feel my muscles lock, the frigid concoction pouring into my chest causing me to seize up as further arms descending from the ceiling.

For a moment I feel my clothes shift over my skin, the sensations creeping further and further out of my mind as I find my nerves falling asleep and dulling.

"Th... Than... Cooperation... Ank you" the machine crackles, pulling my clothes away somewhere deeper within the wall. "You have... Sel... Select... Credit... Success... Credit... Ful."

I don't have much time to really let the disjointed words sink in, my stomach sinking as the needle is soon retracted to allow my shirt to be pulled over my head.

The sound of hatches opening around me fills the room, the noise only getting worse as various saws and suction devices come to life in preparation for the forced surgery that was about to commence. A screen flickers to life on the far wall, the monitor showing water dribbling down behind the display. Lines of text flicker on the screen, an intelligible scrawl flashing up as the machine attempts to explain that it was about to...