Harvesting
By Gardel
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In a sterile room inside a polycarbonate box was a red unicorn mare. She was bought from a store that had overstock and so instead of going to a home she ended up here. She almost got bought, almost got named by a little boy whose mother bought him a pegasus instead.
Her legs are long gone, their utility was irrelevant for her current task. The mare could still remember when she was brought to the БыстрыйРог-brand stumper and the feeling of the heated blades cutting through her weggies and searing her flesh. Around the pillowed mare were 7 foals, all already “talkie” but not yet weaned.
Wuv! wuv mummah! - said a little green pegasus filly while hugging the mare’s side
Huuu, mummah wuvs wingie babbeh tu! - replied the mare, saddened that it would never get to give huggies to any of her foals.
Not this litter, nor the next.
Never.
The mare struggled to stand on her side so her foals could feed. Thankfully the hoomins there provided her with all the food it could need in the form of nutritious kibble albeit not a tasty brand. None of the hoomis ever pet her though, and while her foals would hug their fingers when they opened the box to pour more kibble or clean it the hoomins would simply shake the foals off, finish what they were doing and close the box again.
A sign on the opposite side of the wall made it clear
“DO NOT SHOW LOVE TO THE UNITS, DO NOT APPRECIATE THEM, DO NOT PLAY WITH THEM”
But is not like the mare with its chin perpetually touching the ground could look up and see the sign.
Or understand it.
Pillowed mares take less space, and can’t harm nor protect their foals and that makes taking the foals for them much easier for the workers in this facility.
The Cherious Medical Pharmaceutical Company.
Nuuu! nu wan weave! mummah!
Today a worker examined the foals and saw they already had teeth growing in their gums.
They are ready…
Huuuu! y mummah nu hewp babbehs?
Sowwy babbeh, mummah nu have weggies nu mow, huhuuu… -said the mare already resigned after having countless other litters taken from her. She knew at this point that fighting was pointless, it would only get her shocked with the electric sorry stick.
The lab tech carried a small closed box with all seven foals inside. They were all good colors, nothing fancy or expensive but if this was a store none of these foals would be in the bargain bin.
But it doesn’t matters, they are far more valuable than mere fluffy pets.
These foals didn’t have a father, no stallion was ever close to the mare that birthed them. Each litter was the product of genetic engineering, Cherious’ scientists were able to reverse engineer Hasbio’s code and figure out how to make custom fluffies. With this came a very profitable business, far more profitable than selling these fluffies as pets.
The seven foals then arrived to the prep room.
“Okay we got a new batch, these foals are marked for LAL” said one of the lab techs.
Wat am WAW? wewe mummah? hoomin be nyu daddeh? fo’ babbeh? - said the blue colt
The tech said nothing, he grabbed the colt and put him into a leg holder.
Y weggies nu move? - ‘always the same’ thought the tech. And indeed most foals said that, or cried, and some threatened him as if they could do anything at all. He was quite annoyed at dealing with this for so long but these foals were special. They might look common on the outside but unlike literally every other fluffy out there what it counts here is the inside.
And so these valuable foals had to be treated with as much care as possible. Not love, just be extra careful to not damage them because unlike foals in fluffy mills these don’t have a thousand replacements that look the same act the same and thus are worth the same.
Babbeh nu wike! wan mummah! dummeh hoomin is meanie!
The tech breathes in and remembers there is no reason to hate this biotoy, after all its future is darker than death, probably worse than hell itself.
Except hell is an imaginary place, while what this foal is about to enter is very very real…
Sketti? - would be the last word this foal would utter as the tech brought a thin piece of clear soft plastic tubing covered in liquid vaseline.
Huh-PEEP! - the tech grabbed the tiny foal muzzle, careful not to break the still soft bones. Then he proceeded to shove the tubing inside the foal’s tiny mouth. The colt began shaking its body trying to get its weggies out but it was impossible, the leg holder had been designed for this very situation.
The piece of tube had a mark, the tech had to shove it until said mark was just before the foal’s nose and that means the tube has reached the stomach. At this point the foal is clearly distressed, its jaw hurts because the tube while tiny is too big and long for it. That’s because the tube will stay there as the foal grows, but it doesn’t know that yet.
The tech then connects a nasal cannula and glues it in so it wont fall off as he releases his grip on the foal’s head and it starts shaking in vain trying to get the tubes off. With the legs still in the holder the tech proceeds to attach the waste tube. Unlike “fluffy racks” in places like the infamous Fluffy Superfactory the foals in this facility get a plain old plastic tube with some skin glue to keep it in place. The catheter will hurt more than that.
And this colt, and the rest of the foals in this place, unlike those industrial fluffies living in racks they get to keep their weggies. This is not an act of charity, cutting the legs is not only a traumatic process that could kill some of these expensive foals but more importantly it would hinder production yields.
The technician then lifts the creature from the leg holder. The colt stops its muffled cries thinking the worse is over.
He is wrong.
As he is left on the table mumbling with the “weird sketties” coming out from all over its body the hoomin with the weird not-fluff was looking around for the last component of the process: the isolation bag.
Made of a thick yet flexible self-healing plastic it was made to outlast the life of any fluffy by a considerable margin.
“Come on now” said the tech
MMMMMMMMF! said the colt crying again, trying to scamper away as his marshmallow hoofs had no grip on the stainless steel table. It was useless to resist, the tech grabbed the colt and it was over, its fate sealed.
He put the tiny foal inside the bag and making sure the cannula was well connected and its legs were splayed he put the bag into the vacuum system. This device applied both pressure and heat to remove all the air in the bag and seal it.
The colt felt as the weird see-thru soft walls that were around him got closer and closer. He could feel the pressure, the pain, its fluff compressing against his skin. He wanted to scream for his mummah, his bruddahs and sistahs, but the tubes had rendered him mute. Even yelling came out as a faint mumble.
And now inside the airtight bag even that was impossible, the colt could make no noises anymore, just cry little tears that went unnoticed. With much effort he could open its tiny eyes to see but the plastic would scrape its pea-sized eyeballs when they moved so he couldn’t look around.
Nor close his eyes again.
Just stare straight into the white ceiling of the room.
Into nothingness…forever.
The tech picked up the bag with the foal and placed it vertically into a holder. The colt eyes wide open saw its green pegasus sissy going through the same process.
NUUUUUU! NU WAN! MUMMA-GAK!
He saw the meanie human putting the nu-sketti into her orifices, placing her into the baggie and then the monster machine that gave him hurties.
Now the hoomin placed the airtight bag with the filly on the holder. Both foals were looking at each other, both with their legs splayed, tubes coming out of every orifice and their eyes locked forward forever.
The process went on until all 7 foals were “bagged”. The technician lifted the holder by a handle on top and went into the LAL production area.
Or as the employees called it: “the blue room”
The colt couldn’t see anything but his sissy, however one of his bruddahs a yellow pegasus colt who was the last one to endure the suffering was on the last slot of the holder and facing outwards so he could see everything: rows and rows of fluffies of every type and color, foals, youngs and adults, even some old graying stallions and mares.
They were all in the same bags as them. The adults had already grown into the bags and their hoofs were near the border of the sealed plastic. They were hanging vertically from steel cables like clothes drying under the sun with tubes and cables going in and out of them. Rows and rows one on top of the other from floor to ceiling inside the warehouse
Art by Batsy
All the fluffies had the same dead stare, eyes wide open. The yellow colt noticed that some graying adult fluffies’ eyes were cloudy. As any old fluffy they had gone blind with age. The company didn’t bother to fix that problem of their genetic code as it didn’t make a difference to their profits if fluffies could see anymore or not.
“Well here we are” said the hoomin that was carrying them. They had arrived at a bottom row. Another hoomin there in the same white not-fluff was taking old gray foweba sweepin fluffies that were hanging on the cable. He would disconnect the hoses and other cables then simply throw them into a bucket with a black bag.
Buh fwuffies nu am twashies - thought the yellow colt
“Oh hey John” said the hoomin that tossed the old fluffy
“Sup Carl, got a new batch here”
“Replacements, lets see if these last longer than those shitrats” he said pointing at the dead fluffies still hanging there.
John looked at the QR code on one of the bags. His google glass read it and showed to him the data from that fluffy on the transparent viewfinder that was in front of his right eye.
“Shit, only 4 months? I thought shitrats could live like, I don’t know, 6 years?”
“Yeah around that, some even more, but this process pretty much ruins them faster”
“Well I leave these to you, have to prep another litter”
“Sure, see ya”
And with that the first hoomin left and they were left with the other one, Carl. He went on removing the old fluffies and tossing them on the bucket, then pulling on the strings to close the bag.
He barely even looked at the yellow colt when he picked up the bag and hanged it. He then proceeded to carefully connect the tubes to the same connections that were used by the old fluffy that occupied that space.
Next he took a pink unicorn filly, he noticed some moisture in the plastic around the cheecks of the foal.
She was crying.
“Heh, you scared shitrat? don’t be”
For a moment the filly’s brain reacted and she thought maybe this hoomin was not as bad as the previous one that gave her so many huwties.
N-nyu daddeh? - were the words she was trying to say but couldn’t, and then the hoomin said
“…the worst is yet to come”
And the filly’s hopes of getting out were immediately shattered.
Carl hanged the pink filly and connected the tubes, the bag swinging only a bit from the foal shaking every muscle it had. There was no way it could get out.
And then the worst part came: Carl took a big needle with a tube and stabbed an artery in one of the filly’s weggies through the plastic bag.
WOWEST HUWTIES! - thought the filly but it couldn’t do anything, not even scream.
“Alright starting the flooding” said the meanie hoomin as he pushed a blue button. A chemical went through the tube and into the needle.
It only took a second for the signal to reach the filly’s nut-size brain: pain, pure pain. The tiny biotoy felt as if fire was being pumped inside of her, it felt as if its blood was replaced with acid. Every muscle, every joint, even the follicles of her fluff were sending pain shocks.
A skinned fluffy being rolled in salt and lemon juice would feel better than her.
Art by Cyrilsneer
Carl hanged the rest of the litter, each foal going through the same horrible experience: first the needle, then the “wowest huwtie juice”.
The chemical would be pumped into the foals for 1 minute of horrible torture, then incrementally increasing as they growed up until 5 minutes of pure hell when they reached adulthood.
The “juice” was a propietary compound that reacted with the custom genetics of these fluffies to create LAL.
Limulus amebocyte lysate, always in great demand by the medical industry this substance used to be made with the blood of horseshoe crabs which were bleed and then returned to the ocean. However water pollution caused by seafluffies had decimated this crab species populations which were now critically endangered and thus using them for LAL production was now banned worldwide.
It was not possible to synthesize this vital product so Cherious turned to GMO animals, and then its scientists decided to use one that was easy to modify because it was already artificial in nature.
Fluffies.
Initially they tried to modify fluffies so their blood would have hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin. The results were a disaster, most of these prototypes didn’t even reach embryo status and only a few would be born dead or with horrible deformities. But an alternative was found: they would make fluffies that could make LAL almost directly inside themselves after being injected with special chemicals. Of course the first were simply injected and left to live in cages but as it turns out the chemical was extremely painful and made the fluffies crazy enough to smash their heads against walls until they killed themselves.
And so the vacuum bag method was created to restrain them to be able to harvest their blood. This would come out in a purple-ish color and after proper filtering could be turned into LAL. In the meantime fluffies would live in a state of never-ending suffering being pumped with the chemical, being force-feed to keep them alive and stabbed with needles again and again as their arteries whithered. It only ended when they died or when their production yields were too low in which case they were disconnect and left to suffocate on a tray. Because of intellectual property concerns all fluffies had to be destroyed in an industrial furnace to keep competitors from obtaining any remains and cloning them.
Some fluffies made it alive to this stage, a last moment of misery to end their already miserable short lives.
The foals didn’t know it but this was just one of many similar warehouses in this facility, each one dedicated to use fluffies from birth to death for the production of not just LAL but other medical compounds on an industrial scale. As the blue colt writted in pain as his now LAL-rich blood was being pumped out of its body a mare in another part of the building was giving birth to a litter of foals modified to produce insulin.
Their suffering would be just as bad, perhaps even worse.
