The Rendering Pit - Bad Day 2 (Patreon)

In the aftermath of the events of Day 15, Sebastian finds himself confined to a room in the Depths, contemplating his fate. 

Part 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/14901782

Day 15: https://www.patreon.com/posts/rendering-pit-15-15494397

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Cameo appearance by Doom7951, be sure to check out his work! We're using his character Sebastian! The following story is written and illustrated by me.

Characters belong to their respective Players.

- - - 

Victoria was tired, sitting alone in her office behind her expansive desk. Rubbing her eyes, she wondered when exactly it was that things had become so complicated. Around her was an office resplendent with the trappings of wealth and comfort, reminders of everything she’d earned since taking her position as a professor. There was a red, velvet theme to the room, with comfortable carpeting, contrasted by the magnificent tech on display. Her desk itself was but a grand holo-emitter that currently displayed the output from several dozen university cameras at any one time. There were replicators for food, wine, anything and everything she could ever need, was at the touch of a hand. It was all far more than she could have expected when she herself had first enrolled in The Rendering Pit. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, she, like most who walk through the eye emblazoned door had been totally unprepared for the harsh realities of the life ahead of her. The Rendering Pit; a constant struggle for survival. And yet, even having pulled herself from the crowd to become a professor, having mastered sciences of space that most minds could not even begin to comprehend, the struggle did not end. A new threat loomed over the horizon. 

Seed AI.

The Headmistress had been clear. Any breach that allowed such an AI access to The Rendering Pit’s technology would not be inherently dangerous to Victoria or the other Professors, but the consequences would be. For a dizzying moment, Victoria felt like she was in school once more, faced with impossible deadlines and the knowledge of what should happen to her, should she fail. 

A ping from one of her computers distracted Victoria from her thoughts for a moment. The ping in and of itself was not by any means strange, as a teacher she receives dozens of them a day, but this one came from a computer, and not her internal hardware. Someone wasn’t trying to talk to her, they were trying to be heard. She leaned forward and pulled the message up.

HAI DUDZ! I hear yu gotz naughty probz wit mah gran.

“Incredible.” Victoria heard herself say, in part due to the content of the message itself, and in part due to the fact that it had originated from outside of the university, bypassing many of their security layers to deliver, as far as she could tell, only a simple message. 

Who are you?

Her response was composed of half thought and half gesture of her hands across the holographic interface in front of her. The reply? It was instantaneous.

Your saviour. 

- - -

Sebastian had lost count of the days he’d spent, locked up down where only the drones dared to tread. The blue haired feline occupied a small room that he suspected had once served a greater purpose, though not for some time, perhaps. Archaic looking pipes ran the length of the walls and ceiling, dripping occasionally what smelled like mouldy water. He had been supplied with a bed and the drones even brought him food and the occasional book to read, though he could handily tell they did not like him. Three days ago he hadn’t even known that drones could dislike a person, now he was public enemy number one. Not that he could blame them. When you steal a basket of drone eggs and attempt to forcibly convert a pair of students, you poke the proverbial hornet’s nest, he suspected.

If you had only served as you were supposed to, you wouldn’t be here.

The voice inside his skull reminded him, echoing and buzzing around his head. He winced. She had helped him once, helped him stay afloat and ahead of his studies. Now? She reminded him of that horrible day, the day he had tried to hurt his fellow students. He could feel her dismissing his regrets out of hand, her presence in his mind having only grown in recent days, accompanied by painful headaches that kept him up at night. 

“Rise and shine Sebastian, it’s your lucky day.” 

Sebastian couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard a person’s voice. He sat up in bed, slowly maneuvering around the mound of his gut. He didn’t remember lying down. Victoria was leaning lazily against the doorframe to his room, warm light radiating from an old fashioned looking lantern in her hand. He blinked groggily and rubbed his eyes.

“What’s happening?” The words came to his throat, the same thought that had been on his mind since his imprisonment. “What’s going to happen?”

Victoria only smiled. It was the kind of smile the predator gives to its prey. Sebastian rose slowly to his feet, his bones ached a little from the days of inactivity, the pounds that the voice in his mind had saddled him with hung heavily from his tired frame. It didn’t matter that he got no response, he would go with Victoria anyway. He had made his bed, it was time he lay in it. 

Professor Victoria commanded an impressive amount of respect about the campus, even now, Sebastian found it hard to penetrate that, and ask his question again. They had been walking for a handful of minutes when the professor finally did respond, she was looking ahead, but he could tell that she was keeping an eye on him, at all times. “You have a virus,” she replied, “not of the biological kind, but of the digital.” This made an alarming amount of sense. Sebastian found himself looking up at her, as though for some reassurance. If he had a virus, could he be cured? She returned his glance for the merest hint of a moment, and he wondered if he saw pity in her eyes.

“I made contact with someone... something outside.” The words tumbled from his mouth, a confession he had wanted to make for days.

“An artificial intelligence, I know.” All around, the pipes the run beneath the university hissed, rattled and gurgled. There were no light fixtures active down here, the darkness only retreating against the light cast by the professor’s lantern. Even with his implants deactivated, Sebastian fancied he could feel the current of wireless information as it flowed overhead, like a twisting river. “I’m not sure what possessed you to allow it into your implants, but as soon as you did, it was over for you.” 

He felt the familiar urge to run, a foreign instinct that could take control of his legs from him and send him stumbling in some other direction, down some other corridor, into the never ending darkness of the Depths. Almost subconsciously, he felt his head move, to scan out the possibility of escape. Without even squinting, he could see the drones waiting for him, just out of reach of Professor Victoria’s lamplight. 

“I would advise against running.” The professor’s voice drew his thoughts away from the university’s silent custodians. 

“It’s not me that wants to, ma’am.” 

This drew another glance, and Sebastian remembered how hard it was to lock eyes with a university professor. He shied away, but not before seeing her pity, once more.

“In any case,” she continued, “We’ve found an... expert, I suppose you would call him. With his assistance, we may be able to eliminate the risk that you pose to the university.” 

Sebastian struggled not to look scared and the professor laughed. 

“Darling, if we had wanted you dead, we’d hardly have gone to the trouble of locking you down here where you would be safe, would we? We’re scientists, not barbarians.” Those were the last words the professor would give to Sebastian whilst they traversed the depths. He continued to feel the presence of the AI inside of him, stirring, churning, a careful, contemplative machine that was factoring into its calculations everything it had heard.

I am a part of you, organic. It said, its voice hissing like steam, and echoing like a nightmare. Your school will burn, before you are rid of me.

- - - 

By the time they reached their destination, Sebastian’s feet, ankles and knees were sore. He was sweating, and panting, heaving this heavy body of his around had taken its toll on the feline. He would lay odds that they’d been going uphill for most of the way. Their little corridor emptied out into a larger room, one Sebastian could almost swear he recognised, in a strange dejavu kind of way. But more interesting than the room itself, which was only another simple collection of pipes and strange, archaic machines, was the room’s occupants. There was a mouse, although to call her simply that would be a grave understatement to the sheer magnitude of what she was. She was a ball of lard, a small hill of it, with her face sunken against her chins and cheeks, her hands sunken into stubby tires of blubber. Her feet were long buried beneath her mammoth gut, but her ass cheeks were certainly present, wobbling like pudding behind her. She smiled meekly and blushed as Sebastian and the professor walked in, Sebastian didn’t blame her. Unlike the Egg Vectors he’d seen being tended to by the drone, this mouse didn’t didn’t appear to even be a student, he could barely guess at why anyone would achieve such a size, much less stay that way. Aside from her cute face and long brown hair, the only other distinctive feature about her was what appeared to be a smart tattoo that spanned a decent portion of her stomach, animated in what looked like the cartoonish face of a fox. The fox wasn’t doing anything beside looking around, and Sebastian realised that he too was blushing, he’d only managed to perceive the tattoo because the mouse was naked, and he was staring.

Beside the mouse, talking to Professor Reginald was an altogether more strange creature. A bat, with a fox like face and peculiar markings along her limbs. She was dressed in an elegant black and crimson dress, and fell silent as she noticed the him and the professor enter. She turned to observe them, but seemed to do little else. Professor Reginald for his part grinned as he saw Sebastian (a disquieting thing to behold) and clasped his hands behind his back. 

“Ah! Allow me to make introductions,” Reginald, the Siamese cat suggested. “Red,” He motioned to the mouse, “Meet Sebastian. And of course, your grandmother, was it? I suppose no introductions will be needed there.” 

“My wayward son,” Sebastian found his mouth opening and closing without any input from him, more worrying still, the voice that he spoke with wasn’t his own. “My mistake.” 

“Aww gran, I knew you missed me!” The voice came from the mouse’s direction, but it wasn’t the mouse that spoke. What Sebastian had assumed was a smart tattoo of some description was apparently something altogether different. As he pondered what it was he was dealing with, a sharp pain struck through his head. The mouse is a host, nothing more. 

“So it is you that they summoned to do their bidding.” Once more, Sebastian found the voice that he spoke with to be alien, he felt now, more than ever like a puppet. His body truly was no longer his own. “We designed you to be better than that. To be more than a slave.” 

The fox tattoo-creature, Red, scoffed. “Yeah right gran! What now? Is this when you tell me I should join you? That together, we could rule the galaxy?” 

Sebastian found himself impressed. The AI within him had commanded a strange kind of respect, even the professors appeared cautious around it. And yet, this fox image, plastered on the side of a morbidly obese rodent was almost gleefully happy to talk down to it. To make fun of it. It brought a strange kind of confidence bubbling up inside him.

Dolt. Prototype R will turn you into a husk. In burning out this fraction of a copy of myself, he will destroy you.

Yeah? Well good riddance. 

“I think that’s enough.” Professor Victoria’s voice was another strangely calming presence. “We’ve shielded this room. It’s time to do what you came here for.” 

The visitors, the mouse, bat and fox all looked at professor Victoria, and for a moment Sebastian wondered if they would refuse. He didn’t know what brought them here in the first place, but he had the sense that his life, such that it was, was in their hands. 

“Alright ma’am, fair enough.” The tattoo-fox broke out into a grin. “Give us the room, and we’ll begin.” 

- - - 

Sebastian was alone then, aside from the mouse, and the fox that was using her stomach as a projection board. The others had all left, though he knew better to think that he was away from the watchful eye of the custodial drones.

“Please, take a seat.” The mouse spoke, she offered him a sympathetic little smile, but it was far more genuine than anything he’d seen so far. He complied, though it meant that as he sat down, the mouse had to reach forward and push down on her stomach and breasts to be able to see him beyond them. 

The fox on the other hand was watching him intently, or at least appeared to be. Sebastian wasn’t sure exactly how that worked. 

“I ‘spose I ought to introduce myself huh? I’m Red. I’d offer a hand or something to shake, but as you can see, I don’t exactly work like that.” The smart-tattoo creature, Red, spoke and along with his voice, Sebastian could hear a faint buzzing sound. 

Awkwardly realising that Red was awaiting a response, he replied, “Oh, uhm, I’m Sebastian.” After a slight pause, he added, “What are you?” 

The mouse smiled a little and stroked her stomach in a maternal manner. “Me?” Red grinned. “Only your Chrome sent hero! Naw but really, guess you could say I’m an AI. A little bit like what you’ve got inside you, but smarter.” 

He could feel the presence within him bristle at that, but it remained silent, for now. 

“Me and Agatha here go way back.” As Red spoke, Sebastian looked between  him and the mouse. Agatha. Red continued, his voice projecting from the Agatha, but not coming from her mouth. “You won’t hear me call her Agatha much, I like to think of her more like my mom. And that girl in you? Well she’s my gran! Complicated family, right?” 

Sebastian nodded quickly.

“Well it’s about to get a little more complicated. You see, I’m here to offer you a deal. And the thing is, you don’t have to accept the deal, but I don’t know what’ll happen to you if you don’t.” He could feel his insides lurch. “If you accept, I’ll take that AI out of you, I’ll be able to give you back control over your own body. Your own destiny, more or less. Hell, I can even get you out of this shitty school if you want.”

Sebastian’s heart rose a little. He could leave The Rendering Pit? It would be unheard of. “And the catch?” He could not help but ask.

“The catch is that I gotta move in. That’s it. You become a host for some of my processing ability and I’ll be able to remove that lil’ parasite of an AI you got inside you. ‘Course that means becoming a member of my crew, but that don’t sound like it’s a step down from where you are, frankly.” 

“It’s really not so bad.” Agatha chimed in cheerfully. 

It wasn’t a choice though, not really. If he said no, he continued to play host to this hostile AI and the university would find ways to contain or eliminate the threat he posed. If he said yes, he’d play host to an entirely new AI and have to hope that Red was better than whatever was inhabiting his body at the moment. The only real factor would be, obviously the university had in some way condoned Red. And Red had promised him freedom. Whatever other consequences awaited him, he would have to take them as they came.

Sebastian opened his mouth to say yes, but the AI within him was quicker.

“Go to hell, Red. We’re making one specifically for you, and when we find you, it will be all you and your so-called crew ever know.”

“I’ll take that as a yes!” Red replied cheerfully. “I’ve already infiltrated your inserts,” the buzzing sound increased in volume. “We’ll begin the transfer now. Hold onto your hat, Sebs.” 

The cat felt his insides churn and he looked down to find he was clutching his stomach, the big, cyan furred mass rumbling between his legs. He looked up, and Agatha flashed him that sympathetic smile of hers. She explained: “When Red extends his network to a new body, usually there’s a lot of growth involved. To make room, you understand.”

She wiggled a finger in what might have been a pointing motion, if her entire arm weren’t swaddled in so much blubber it had practically vanished. All the same, Sebastian looked down to see his stomach begin to swell, pressing out against his legs. He whimpered, confused. “Usually,” Agatha continued, “we would have a stock of specially modified nutrient paste on hand. Everything the body needs to complete its transformation from person, to host.” He felt himself flinch at the implication, was that all he would be from now on? “But your professors have informed us that your food was dosed with the required materials already, all that’s left to do is make use of them.” 

“W-why?” The word pushed from his mouth as he felt himself rising up on asscheeks that were growing, rising like dough in an oven. “Why... this?” He motioned to himself, even his fingers growing chubbier, thicker. It didn’t make sense that he would become beached, would he end up as big as her?

Bigger.

It was a new voice in his head, Red’s. 

“It’s not so different from your ‘smart mass’, really.” Agatha explained, peering forward intently. “Like what you use for your mods here. Red takes a lot of processing power - at least, I think he prefers to take up a lot of it.”

I heard that mom.

“I knew you would. Anyways, he’s a growing kid and he needs a lot of space. As you know, the best computing space isn’t in computers, but in fat cells wired up like servers. At least, that’s how I think it works, never really did my homework on that one.” Agatha admits with a shrug that sinks her further into her bloated mass of a body. 

She’s mostly right.

Sebastian could hear Red inside his head, and he wasn’t sure which he found more disconcerting, that, or the feeling of every fat cell in his body becoming engorged as he was slowly turned into a living machine. A person big enough to house what the entity that had assumed control over his network implants. He had always sort of enjoyed the extra mass that he’d been saddled with. At least, he had learned to enjoy it, but this was something entirely new. He held his arms out in front of his face, watching them inflate into sagging sausages of limbs, being slowly dragged down by the force of gravity as he found himself using more and more energy just to keep them raised. They landed with a ‘plop’ on the swelling mass of his gut, which was pushing his legs apart before spreading over them, pushing out to his sides such that he doubted he could reach the ground anymore. He wondered if he ever would again. 

Worse still, inside was another matter. He fancied he could almost feel the battle raging inside him, as Red tried to deliver on his promise of purging him of the AI that infected him. Sebastian could feel it still, that ebbing presence like a thorn in the back of his mind, only now instead of focused on the outside world, he knew its attention was focused inwards. Fighting a battle he couldn’t even begin to perceive. It was losing.

I’ve come too far to let her win.

Red spoke, again directly to Sebastian. “W-what did she do?” His words were clumsy, suddenly pushed through cheeks fatther than he knew he had. They were two fluffy little blue orbs that rose upon the horizon of his vision. Blushing, he could feel his chins beneath them, merging into one massive, bulging collar of blubber that his head was sinking into. His stomach was creeping across the ground more, he felt the cool metal plating against the sensitive underside of an expanse of gut he hadn’t had ten minutes ago, and his ass was billowing out behind him, propping him up like pudding filled beanbags.

She hurt me. She hurt mom. And when I didn’t fit into her little plan, she tried to disassemble me, line by line, so she could figure out how to make me work.

Sebastian wondered if part of him felt sorry for Red. For an AI, he seemed remarkably like a person. For a start, he’d never heard of an AI talking about being hurt before. But he could definitely believe it. The AI inside of him, Yaela, Red had called it, was in pain right then. He could feel it buzzing in his mind, squirming, writhing as it fought and fought, but found less space to fight within. Sebastian’s body was being terraformed as a hostile place for Yaela. She was being forcibly evicted.

Not evicted, killed. Red corrected. This fragment of Yaela will not survive the transfer.

He gasped, feeling another spasm, another twinge within him as his stomach surged forwards again. 

“You’re doing great hun,” the rodent’s voice, reassuring as it was, was almost lost among the miasma of sensation going through the blue furred feline. 

With a start, Sebastian realised that Agatha no longer had to look down so much to see him. She was still the bigger of the two, but he was steadily catching up, a thought that set his heart racing, blood pounding in his ears. He was huge! Massive! And still growing. He could feel himself, sinking into his own body. Slowly but surely he was becoming a blob of a person. His arms were raised up at odd angles from his body, and he could feel it as they were slowly enveloped by blubber, made useless by it. His legs, long stripped of even the most remote chance of carrying his massive weight, were stuck beside his gut and even they were resting upon his own mass, ankles as big as tree trunks poked out either side of his stomach and rested against it. His tail had disappeared between two massive ass cheeks that nearly rivaled him in height sitting down, and he though, looking around as best he possibly could, that even if he managed to get his feet on the ground, would he have any chance of moving them?

Probably not, but we’ll get you outfitted with lev pads like mom has. Now if you’ll excuse me for just a moment...

Another lurch rocked his body, wobbling him like jello. He felt his breath coming in short waves, and wondered if it were the weight upon his chest - the weight of his own body, or the rising panic at his own situation, the sudden climax of his transformation, the realisation that a part of him liked it. A soft, quiet part that moaned as he felt his back swell into thick folds of blubber big enough to lose a hand between. That relished the feeling of his gut as it pushed gently against the mouse’s own and the slick feel of sweat in his fur, dripping down his moobs, his skin more sensitive than it had ever been.

Sebastian could feel the AI within him groan. It made a final push, and then screamed. A horrible, digital sound that filled his ears and made his vision blur. For a moment, he thought he would pass out. The pain of the sound echoed in his head and burned there, before suddenly it was cut out.

Sorry about that Sebs, she tried to broadcast her way out. Pfft, as if I’d let her. Anyway I cut that off and what’s left of her is thoroughly beaten. I might play with it a bit before I dissect the remaining code. Either way, I’m done.

It was over. Definitely over. He could feel himself, drenched with sweat, panting, gasping for breath, but he’d stopped growing. If he had to guess, he was as big as the mouse in front of him, as big as Agatha. Maybe bigger. But his vision was swimming and he wasn’t going to spend much time thinking about it. The feline just took the moment he had to slump into himself, exhausted and hopefully free.

“Alright,” He could hear Red’s voice again, this time addressing the pair of them through audible channels. “I’ll call in the Ambassador and we’ll get Sebs here set up with lev plates. Sound good to you Seb?” 

He nodded and pulled himself up, as up as he could, realising he barely had any control over his body anymore. It was his, but so laden in fat that moving it would be a supreme challenge. Lev plates would help with that at least, they would give him some control over where he went. “What happens after that?” His words were still sluggish, but they were his. He could no longer feel the AI Yaela within him, that thorn in his mind had been pulled. It was relieving. 

“You could stay here if you wanted,” Red replied. Sebastian winced at the thought. “But I think you’d fit in better with the crew.” 

“What would I do?” He couldn’t not ask, he had to know. What would his life be like, as part of this new AI? As part of Red’s network? What would be expected of him? What would he be expected to do?

“Eat.”