AVOCADO
~A tribute to Carpdime’s Avocado~
By Oculus (with illustrations by Carpdime)
Chapter One
~
(continued from The Foal in a Can Factory )
Fresh from his mother’s womb, our little green foal had gone through rigorous processing to determine his value for sale. His light great coat, resembling that of the flesh of an avocado, was deemed to be of acceptable quality for the factory’s standards. He was assigned to a can for the cheaper range of similar product, for he lacked the coat and pedigree provided by expensive free-range mares, or the extensive breeding reserved for more up-market clientele. No, our little green foal was a decent colour, but for a cheap price.
The cans that the processed foals were placed into were positioned upright. The soft bedding material designed to soak up waste material was on one side of the can, and a rubber teat was at the base. As each foal was slowly pumped into each can, they landed on this teat which gave a minimal amount of cushion for their light body. The rubber teat cordoned off a portion of the can that held the appropriate amount of milk formula, enough to feed a foal for a week. Housed within the can, the foal remained blind to the world. Reaching out and feeling only cold plastic, it remained unaware of the sustenance that laid beneath the rubber teat.
The process was designed to be efficient but occasionally there was a mishap. Just after our little green foal entered his can, the following foal had the mishap of landing near the opening of the can, with its head still on the rim. As the intern oversees the line of product place within the cans, he noticed the one defective product, the rare mishap where a foal was not placed properly by the tube. As he took the bloodied can and threw it into the waste, he observed that the rest of the product were ready to be shipped for this month’s batch.
Being a new-born, our little green foal could not make sense of the sounds he was hearing, or the sensations around him. He had heard the dying scream of one of his brethren, which had a negative effect on his disposition, but he was not sure what to make of it. As he squirmed around in his can, his soft hooves could only feel the cold transparent polymer. The cans were then placed on their sides as the intern oversaw the packing of the cans into a specially designed crate. With the can now re-oriented to have the bedding aligned to the plane of gravity, our foal was able to rest better on a bedding that, while cheap and synthetic, provided a minimal amount of comfort. His body on the cushion, the foal could make sense of the rubber teat ahead of him, and the nourishment that was behind it. Needing only a few suckles, our little green foal was able to satiate itself, and fall into its first sleep.
The crate was then loaded by a forklift to the nearest truck. The interior of the truck was cold, as the foals in each can were starting experience a form of induced hibernation. Maintaining the cold temperature, the worker assigned to the interior of the truck had to oversee the safe transportation and handling of the product, as they reached the respective vending machines.
Foalcan’s vending machines were a fixture of many areas around the town, and the truck did its rounds among the many areas the machines were installed. One in a college, one near a community centre, a few in a mall, and so on. Reaching each vending machine, the assigned worker had to take stock of the amount of product that had not been dispensed from each machine, as well as the amount of profit that had been made. In the first few weeks of the Foalcan fad, profits from the machines had been good, resulting in more vending machines distributed to meet the demand.
But the interest and demand for the product had already started to wane. As the truck reached a vending machine located at a convenience store in the red-light district, he took note of the large number of unpurchased cans. Although each machine was designed to keep the can refrigerated for up to a month, this would not prevent the eventual spoiling of the formula, and with it, the product. The hibernation could only last so long. Muttering to himself, the worker started collecting the unpurchased and spoiled product as he loaded it into an empty crate designed for that purpose.
He then started to load the fresh cans into the vending machine, our little green foal being one of them. The vending machine had a large plane of glass, through which the potential customer could see the various sleeping foals in their cans, each grouped according to their assigned price based on pedigree and colour. At the bottom of the machine was a conveyor belt, which could reposition itself to the level where the purchased can is situated. The idea behind this was to minimize the amount of trauma dealt to the can – although sturdy and with some cushion, enough testing at Foalcan had demonstrated that the classic method of pushing and dropping the can into a dispenser resulted in too many premature deaths.
Being in the wee hours of the morning, a lone hooker was sitting by the roadside, looking for a potential customer. As the worker continued his business, he could hear the hooker making a snide remark.
“They’re still selling these things? No one buys them anymore, at least not around here.”
For about a week, our little green foal remained there. The interior of the vending machine, being refrigerated, allowing its movements and metabolism to be slowed as it entered a form of hibernation. However, this hibernation could only last for so long, and in about a few more weeks, the truck would come to collect the wasted product…
~
He was a young man, having experienced little more than two decades of life. A student at a university located not too far from the town, he was currently browsing the goods this seedy convenience store in this dark area of the city. What decision led to this youth to this area, we may never know. Perhaps he was looking for some unsavoury entertainment in this dark part of the town. Or perhaps he wanted to purchase some booze, and with most other shops closed, he had to make do for the services of this convenience store. Whatever the reasoning, the young man now passed by the vending machine.
He had heard of these things. The foal in can. In his hometown, just a few months back, they were all the craze. What fueled his desire to get one? Was it just the novelty of the craze? A leftover memory of being a fan of the animated series that led to the development of fluffy pony biotoys? Or was it the longing for a companion, being a freshman in a university, in a world completely foreign to the one he left? Perhaps it was a combination of all these factors, as he entered the transaction of a few silver pieces into the slot. He didn’t have much on hand, so he looked at the assortment of colours. Some red, some blue, some brown. But the young man liked green and, on a whim, decided to purchase one of the cans holding a green foal. The conveyor belt within the machine raised up and positioned itself, as the can with our little green foal was slowly pushed onto it. The conveyor belt then lowered itself to the level of the dispensing area, and after a few seconds, the can was neatly placed in the dispenser.
Placing his fingers on the can, the young man could feel its mild chill, as he saw the foal, still sleeping, housed within this plastic shell. On one end was the milk formula, on the other was a pull tab, much like the one soda cans had. It had a little message that read, “Open one week after purchase.”
~
Feeling warmth for the first time in a long while, our lucky green foal was starting to resume its movements and motions. It slowly approached the rubber teat as he kept nourishing itself, slowly making the most of the formula. Still blind to the world, our little green foal had instinctively thought the rubber teat to be of its mother. With his sense of sight still developing, the foal was not aware that he was placed within a can. Drinking the cheap formula from the teat, its infantile mind could only see the teat as its mother. Having recovered from induced hibernation, the foal had only scant memories of the inner workings of factory, as well as the chirpings of its brethren, and the one scream of the unfortunately misplaced foal.
However, and now within the home of his new owner, the little green foal could only hear a soft music. Our young man had been eyeing his newly purchased foal with much fascination. Having looked up enough online guides and videos, he positioned a speaker near the can, and set its volume low.
The speaker then played a soft song.
"Mummah wuv babbehs,
Babbehs wuv mummah,
Babbehs dwink miwkies,
Gwow big an stwong"
The foal could not understand the words, but the song sounded reassuring, despite coming from a speaker. Still blind, and suckling from the teat, the foal came to appreciate the song. The young man didn’t play it all the time but tried his best to play it whenever the foal was awake and reaching for the teat. To the young man, he reckoned that the process resembled an actual mare nursing its foals. Although the actual situation was different, our little green foal was unaware of this.
~
A week has passed. The young man had noticed that most of the cheap formula in the can been used up. The foal had initially made high pitched chirping noises, but was now starting to make a different, stronger, screechy sound. He was getting bigger.
The young man had been undecided on what name to give our little green foal when he realized that his growing of coat fluff resembled the flesh of an avocado. Said young man had been consuming a fair amount of avocado, milkshake, guacamole and as part of salads, so it only seemed natural for him to give Avocado his name. And it was time for Avocado to make his debut.
Avocado was reluctant to leave the can. As the young man lifted the aluminum pull-ring lever, he slowly peeled the top of the lid, exposing the interior of the can. Sensing the sound, Avocado was desperate. For the few weeks it had been alive, the can was the only thing it had known. Flailing his hooves at the rubber teat, Avocado was helpless as he could feel the pull of gravity dragging him away from the teat. A gentle tilt of the can was all it took for Avocado to slide down onto the pile of kitchen towels that the young man had prepared.
Trashing around on the paper, the blind foal was unable to make sense of his surroundings. The young man, having followed some instructions, proceeded to slowly clean the smelly little foal, using a cotton bud as well as a small cloth to remove the excess fecal matter that remained stuck to the poor thing. Feeling sensations particularly in areas it had not experienced before Avocado kept squirming. Like a human infant, tears were pouring from his eyes as he kept crying.
The young man then took a bottle. Resembling a much smaller version of the baby bottle, it was designed to be suckled by young foals, as he placed its teat to its mouth. This time, made from a better grade formula, the foal could sense its smell, and as it suckled, readily gulping down a better form of sustenance than the pre-packaged formula. Nearby, the speaker that the man had used to pacify the foal was playing the ‘Mummah’ song again. Upon receiving his first proper meal outside of his can, a satiated Avocado was starting to feel drowsy.
The young man smiled, as he looked as his precious bundle of joy. Placing his finger beside Avocado, Avocado clutched to it. The warm embrace of the man’s finger, though foreign, felt reassuring and gentle. Hanging on to it, Avocado slowly drifted into blissful sleep.