Your name is Mary, you work retail at one of Hasbio’s official Fluffy Pony Stores. The place is yet another swanky-looking prefab franchise made by marketers too concerned about brand identity to realize they aren’t selling iPhones but living creatures, even if synthetic in nature. Hasbio didn’t even bother with petstores, after all they were selling a premium product not some hamster replacement.
Most days go by without too much trouble. The latest fluffy version “Majestic” is far easier to handle than earlier ones. You remember having to clean up the cages all day long because you couldn’t risk customers seeing shit, that was bad for the brand. But the updated fluffies never do it outside the litterbox, have excellent bowel controls and can’t do sorry-poopies anymore which is a godsend. You remember getting shit on by a unicorn mare and having to contain your anger because any damage to it would come out of your paycheck which was far less than the cost of that thing.
Still as production ramped up prices went down and you were able to afford a fluffy of your own, something that used to be way out of your reach even with the employee discount you get. Its not the fanciest model, a three-tone earthie mare you call Becky, but it still gets you looks from other people when you walk through the street. Despite getting cheaper fluffies are still the “IT” biotoy and people like to flaunt theirs.
But what people don’t know is that fluffies should be cheaper, way cheaper. A co-worker has a friend working at a hasbio installation. He couldn’t give too many details because of the NDA he had to sign but he told her that fluffies are not even born from other fluffies like the official hasbio guide says. They are mass produced, your co-worker didn’t know how but her friend did said something about ovens…
Still fluffies are now accessible to most people, you can get one for the price of a smartphone so unless you are really broke (or just aren’t into biotoys at all) you really don’t have an excuse to not own one. There is a caveat though: ever since ver3.0 fluffies need to eat official Hasbio kibble or canned “sketti” moist food or else they die. Rumors say the upcoming ver8.0 will simply refuse to eat non-hasbio foods, some say those fluffies will even starve rather than eat off-brand kibble.
Partly because of this fluffies are now much cheaper and no longer super-luxurius as a they were when they launched. While hasbio isn’t selling fluffies at a loss they now make most of their money from selling the hasbio food fluffies need to stay “functional” (we can’t say ‘dead’ since biotoys aren’t legally alive). At first the company tried to make money with fluffy toys but as it turns out fluffies will play with anything and after a lawsuit against a pet toy company that made unofficial fluffy toys that hasbio lost now anyone can make and sell toys for fluffies. They say hasbio R&D tried to get fluffies to reject non-fluffy toys and accessories but they were unable to program them to do so like they did with the food, but then again the food thing wasn’t programming but a killswitch that’s triggered when they eat anything without hasbio’s patented Nutri-Sauce on it.
But today is the saddest day of the month for you. Today you have to get rid of excess inventory. Ever since fluffy production ramped up stores get more stock that they can sell. At first hasbio slowly lowered the price to make fluffies more affordable since only very few people could buy a pony-shaped biotoy that was worth thousands of dollars. But at one point prices stopped falling, you heard it was because the head of marketing at hasbio said that fluffies becoming cheap pets would destroy the brand’s image and its appeal as a premium product. So since the initial R&D costs for developing the fluffies are already paid for and production is now cheaper than ever the solution for hasbio was simple: at the end of the month unsold fluffies must be destroyed
At first it seemed insane, why not have a sale? or give them away?. Not possible, you were told other retailers started doing the same years ago, destroying products that became worthless to avoid dumpster divers taking them for free and/or reselling them. Hasbio is very brand-aware and they don’t want fluffies to become as the store manager said “the new hamster, a shit pet”.
Because hasbio can’t afford the bad press of people finding dead fluffies in the dumpsters outside the mall every store has its own ‘Biotoy Processing System’ or BPS. Its this big machine the size of an office xerox. However and to keep with the design of all the other furniture in the official store it has a curvy case painted in pastel cyan with big stickers of cartoon fluffies plastered all over it. The ‘feeding ramp’ to toss the fluffies in is shaped as a red playground slide with a red flap curtain keeping the fluffies thrown inside from seeing what’s behind it.
The BPS is just a meat grinder, that’s all. When a repairman had to come from hasbio central to fix your unit because a discarded mare jammed it you could see the machine itself was fairly small, most of the space inside the case was taken by noise dampening material to keep the customers and fluffies in the store from hearing the grinding noise and the scream of the discarded fluffies inside.
Yesterday you received the latest batch of fresh newborn foals from hasbio. They used to come in small boxes with a milk bottle and woodchips but now they come pre-packaged in bags full of gel that you’re told keeps them in an induced hibernation of sorts. This keeps foal damage to a minimum while with the old system it was fairly common to open one of the boxes just to see a broken foal you couldn’t sell. Apparently they use a proprietary knock-out gas to trigger this hibernation process which is taken from the genes of ground squirrels. When you unpack the foals they feel like a plush toy, you can even juggle them around and they wont wake up!. You have to use a tiny stick that using electric stimulation brings them out of hibernation. The foal starts chirping loudly so you have to place it in a small polycarbonate cage with a heatlamp so it wont freeze to death. Exactly one day later it opens its eyes and starts talking so its ready to be brought out front to the store to be sold.
In the meantime you have to get rid of the old foals who at more or less a month old are now big and almost adults. Most people don’t like buying adult fluffies which is why hasbio’s geneticists tuned the fluffy genetics in later versions to make the foal phase last longer. It used to be with the first fluffies that foals would reach semi-adult stage in 2 weeks. Now its a month, and foals are also unweaned faster so they can be shipped to stores in less time.
Rumors say future version might be born unweaned…
The problem with adult fluffies is that they are technically more expensive since it was more costly to keep it in the store and feed it than a foal that is sold at the same price while still fresh off the factory. Put it simply a grown semi-adult has a smaller profit margin than a foal, and we can’t lower the price because it would hurt the brand.
So the moment the new foals in gel bags arrive from the hasbio installation the old ones have only 1 day left to get sold or enter the BPS. Most customers already know new fluffies arrive at the end of the month and they rather wait to get a fresh new model foal in this season’s new colors.
Because of that most of the fluffies you been taking care for a month are now doomed.
Its hard, the first fluffies were glitchy, bratty and full of bugs. But these new versions are almost perfect, and while you know their behavior is programmed it still feels true somehow.
Maybe biotoys are fake, but their love feels like its actually real.
And so your start your death march with your trolley, going through all the small individual plastic pens made to resemble little wood horse stables where you put each foal after taking them out from the small glass-like cages out back.
They spent a full month, an eternity for a fluffy, in these pens. Sometimes you put them in a bigger playtime pen at the center of the store, not all at once because they wont fit, but every fluffy foal gets to play with other foals like it at least once. Every time a customer went through the aisles the foals would put their leathery hoofs on the edges and beg to be bought.
A marketers dream: a product that sells itself.
After you pick all the grown-up foals that have overstayed their allotted shelf time you slowly push the trolley full of laughing and playful fluffies to where the BPS unit is.
You go slow to give them time, to let them enjoy the few moments they have left as they hug each other thinking being out of their little pens means something good is around the corner.
You smile, keep the sadness away, keep the tears from seeping out.
As you arrive you step on the trolley’s pedal to lock it in place. You pick the first fluffy, a sky-blue pegasus filly with a magenta mane. She has pink-purple eyes and a permanent smile on her tiny face.
You tell to her: “Your name is Lilly”
“GASP! FWUFFY HAS NAME? FWUFFY WUVS NAME! LILLY WUVS NYU MUMMAH MARY!”
Employees are not allowed to name the foals to avoid imprinting. Because customers want to name their fluffies it can be very hard to override an existing name due to the fluffy’s inherent programming.
You can’t interact with the foal much overall, after all your manager says that affection-starved foals are needy and beg more which means more sales.
But since at this point they are essentially worthless trash you grant them this last wish, since for fluffies getting their name is one of the keystones of their existence.
One last small courtesy for an unwanted product.
You give Lilly a hug, the only hug it ever received from a human since you never saw any customers paying her any attention, her coloration not being trendy enough. Lilly’s synapses fire in her tiny brain, its receiving tremendous amounts of dopamine as a product of the programming of engineers that made human affection its utmost desire in life.
Lilly’s wings are buzzing like a hummingbird’s, it tickles you.
“LILLY WUBS MUMMAH! WUBS HUGGIES!”
…time to go in the slide Lilly, mummah loves you… -you say, trying as hard as you can to keep a happy face, as you gently place her on the red plastic ramp of the BPS.
Lilly slides, giggling as she pushes through the plastic flap…and then silence
Nothing.
You pick up the next foal, an orange earthy colt with a white mane and those new sparkly green eyes Hasbio shows in their ads.
“Your name is Tommy”
“TOMHIE! FWUFFY AM TOMHIE! FANK YU NYU MUMMAH!”
You hug the little fluffly, barely the size of a small cat. Its short stumpy legs trying to wrap around you.
And then you place it on the slide…and no sound comes out.
Nothing again.
You pick a monochrome black unicorn filly with teal eyes and you do the same. Then pick another foal. And another, and another, and another until the trolley is now empty and the store is silent except for the fresh foals in the back chirping inside their tiny heated polycarbonate cages.
All the shredded minced fluffies are automatically extruded out the back of the BPS into a heat-sealed black plastic bag with grey bold letters that reads:
CAUTION/PRECAUCION
DANGEROUS BIOWASTE/BIODESECHOS PELIGROSOS
DO NOT OPEN/NO ABRIR
IF FOUND CALL AT/SI LO ENCUENTRA LLAME AL
…and there’s a telephone number with a big QR code below it. No hasbio or fluffy logos anywhere, god forbid someone puts two and two together and figures what is inside the bag and decides to open it. The bag goes into storage and then gets picked up by the same truck that brings the cardboard boxes full of gel bags with new foals inside. The bag tends to bloat in the meantime, most likely the gas from the decomposing fluffy slush inside.
Tomorrow you will come back to open the store, put the new foals up front in the fake-wood stables and hope once again that this time they all get a home.
