MeatHab

Posted by: Dominus Maximus, Scum <Info Msg Rep>
Station Type: Unique
Allegiance: Independent
Primary Languages: Mandarin, Polish, Turkish
Population: 500

As I am in the Meat, the Meat is also in me. I partake of the Meat and the Meat sustains me. I sustain the Meat with my presence. The Meat is my everything. And so on, and so forth. All praise the most holy hamburger, we bow before the divine sausage, may the meat gods shower us in meatballs, et cetera, et cetera.

If you’ve never been to MeatHab before -- or, as the faithful insist on calling it, Turn Yourself Into a Giant Mass of Space Meat for Art! -- then you’re in for a treat. Pun intended.

What started as a bizarre piece of performance art by an unknown transhuman that obviously was way, way ahead of the curve when it came to becoming a habitat has since taken on an existence just as bizarre as its genesis. It probably didn’t expect squatters to move in, but MeatHab is currently home to some 500 morphs and easily twice that number of visitors, pilgrims, artists, and scientists on any given day. Most of the permanent residents are artists, anarchists, or scum who dig the unique atmosphere of the place and are content to just bask in the weirdness without trying to read anything deeper into it. But the rest of the lot? Nutters at best, dangerous psychos at worst.

It’s unsurprising that such an oddity would attract tourists. Certainly there’s little like it in the known universe, and transhumanity has always appreciated a good freak show. But the pilgrims? They’re a bit unexpected. I’ve seen transhumans turn to all manner of belief systems since the Fall, but the Acolytes of Living Meat, those guys are fucking bonkers. Led by a genderless case that refers to itself as the Speaker of the Meat, the Acolytes are all sleeved into non-organic bodies since they don’t believe themselves worthy of the gift of flesh. As near as anyone has been able to cobble together from their theology, they seem to believe that MeatHab was created by a transhuman, but that the habitat was infused with a spark of the divine and attained sapience on its own. It is, literally, the avatar of their god or goddess. For the most part, they keep to themselves, kneeling in corners or rubbing oils and lotions into the walls of the habitat.

The kicker of this is that MeatHab itself seems to be, well, fucking with them. It sends “signs” to the devout, but seems to do so in such a way to undermine the authority of the current Speaker and its cronies.

This is far from the only sign that people have observed that indicates the original intelligence of the habitat is still around and taking an interest in the people living inside of it. If you live here long enough, you’ll get a fairly good sense of how MeatHab feels about you. It may be little things, like how long it takes the maintenance lizards to clean your private area, or the way the doors open and close, but there is definitely a presence there. And it has a clever sense of humor.