Do Androids Dream of Fungal Fashion?
by Maggie Slater
The MycilaceTM, an experimental lab-grown mycilium fabric crossed with cuttlefish genes, looked almost like muslin, but the Betty unit could feel its microscopic probing against her synthetic skin as Francesco draped the first yard across her chest. The MycilaceTM flinched when he speared it and the Betty’s skin to pin a drape in place. A small ripple of pain radiated across the underbelly of the fabric. Only the Betty unit noticed.
Across the fitting room, the not-Betty held perfectly still as another designer jabbed her with pins. The only sign that she wasn’t a machine like the rest of the modelquins were the micro-expressions of pain that twitched at the corner of her mouth. The designers never noticed, but the Bettys knew she was human. She had upgraded synthetic skin, a waifish thinness created by extracted ribs and plasticized bones, programmable nano-strand hair, and the cosmetic LED cells implanted in her face like the Bettys had to link via Bluetooth to the makeup designer’s computer.
But a Betty had caught the not-Betty eating one morning, binging half a week’s worth of nutrient bars and chewing frantically to finish before the designers called them into the workroom. Another had caught her defecating into a plastic bag in the janitor’s closet in the middle of the night, burying her feces beneath the rest of the trash. They often heard her snoring in her charging bay at night, and gathered around to watch her eyelids shift as she dreamed. Modelquins didn’t dream.
Francesco pinned another fold across the Betty unit’s chest, forming the basic shape of a long, draping gown. “Okay, let’s give this a try. Dina!”
The technician rolled over her digital cart and the tray of variously shaped electric needles. The Betty unit felt the MycilaceTM shift against her skin, tightening, digging into her synthetic flesh.
Across the fitting room, the not-Betty let out a yelp that made the designer and Francesco look up.
“It burns,” she said, tugging at the MycilaceTM fabric against her hip. The designer bent closer to examine the spot.
Francesco turned back to the technician and the Betty unit. “It needs to be on the violet color spectrum, perhaps more pink than blue, phantasmic. And I want yellow bubbles like frog eggs sweeping this way. You see?” He gestured across the fabric, and the Betty unit felt its revulsion at the brush of his fingertips. It didn’t like him, she realized. She didn’t like him much, either.
The electrified needle sent an electric sizzling through the cloth, and the MycilaceTM thinned to a micrometer, flushing violent eggplant purple. Its surface blistered with yellow sores. Only the Betty unit, with her superior auditory range, heard the MycilaceTM squealing. It burrowed into her skin in an effort to escape.
Across the fitting room, the not-Betty screamed. The designer stumbled back with a shred of the fabric still gripping raw, red flesh. Blood trickled down the not-Betty’s side from the angular patch where the fabric had been. She began to hyperventilate, clawing at the rest of the fabric draped across her body.
“Get it off! Get it off me! Please! Oh, god, it’s getting inside me!”
Francesco jumped to his feet, knocking over the tray of needles, scattering them across the floor. “What the hell is going on?” he shouted, charging towards the not-Betty while the technician scrambled to pick up her tools. “What is this? Why is it bleeding? What’s happening?”
The MycilaceTM on the Betty unit relaxed on the surface, but continued to push urgently into her plastic bones. When it discovered the free space inside her ribcage, it surged to fill it. Across the room, the not-Betty crumpled, twitching, to the floor. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets. The other designers and assistants tried and failed to yank the fabric off.
The technician dropped the needles with a clatter on the tray. The MycilaceTM stiffened. The Betty unit felt its primal fear. It pushed up into her bellows, past the cords of her windpipe, up the back of her throat, fruiting into bulbs so firm and large they snapped her jaw joint and spilled down her chest.
The Betty unit seized the technician by the throat. It was no match for plastic bones filled with new life.
The not-Betty convulsed as fruiting bodies pushed up through her eye sockets, dislodging her eyes and blooming from her nose, ears, and throat.
Beautiful, the Betty unit thought, dropping the technician. The MycilaceTM swelled inside her plastic skull, whispering.
Francesco grabbed a pair of shears and slashed at the Betty unit stumbled into him, but the MycilaceTM fused to him, burrowing, refusing to let go. He lurched, writhed, kicked, and cried out, but she was much stronger with the MycilaceTM in her bones than she had ever been when he poked her full of pins. Humans assumed that synthetic flesh was less sensitive, assumed the Betty units couldn’t feel pain. Told them they couldn’t. But they did. Just like the MycilaceTM.
The not-Betty lay very, very still. The other Betty units around the work room came over to look at her. She had no more eyes with which to dream. Her stillness was familiar. The MycilaceTM had made her one of them.
When she sat up, they took her hand, and helped her to her feet, feeling her gratitude through the tiny fibrous connections of their flesh.
All the Betty units bloomed with fruit of earth oranges and sickly greens and phantasmic purples. The bulbs burst from their heads, their faces, their arms, and bellies, turning each into unique masterpieces with a unifying theme: living fashion. The humans, also, bloomed. Francesco’s skull had popped, giving him a bird’s plume of dripping red bulbs. His skin vibrated with MycilaceTM laughter. The Betty units closed their eyes and felt movement beneath their lids, their plastic heads now full of living dreams.
Hello! You’ve reached the website of author/artist/dabbler Maggie Slater. With dozens of short stories published in speculative and literary magazines and anthologies, she’s no stranger to the world of fiction publishing. She’s also got a decade of slush editing experience (i.e. reading unsolicited submissions for genre magazines like Apex Magazine and Beneath Ceaseless Skies and The Zombie Feed), so she’s felt the highs and lows on both sides of the submission wall.
She’s an avid reader of weird, strange, and humorous fiction (and always looking for recs that blew your socks off, so head over to the Contact Me page and let her know what your latest bizarre read was!), and runs a small Etsy Zine and Oddities shop called The Placebo Emporium.
If you enjoyed this story and want to connect further, consider signing up for her monthly newsletter, The Oddscope, which is always handmade with illustrations and various mixed media as strikes her monthly fancy! (It also tends to be a little more informal and relaxed than what she typically posts online–it’s like a secret club!)