-= The Rendering Pit=-
[[A PATREON series. This story was posted 12 months ago on Patreon, subscribe now to see this arc, AND THE NEXT for as little as 2.50]]
Table of Contents


After a rough night and a strange exam, it appears that Samuel has found a friend in one of the school's maintenance 'drones'! The custodial staff, largely avoided by the student population, turns out to be unexpectedly friendly, and a much needed source of comfort.

This chapter written by RabidBadger , illustrated by myself!

Buy THE COMPLETE Book One of The Rendering Pit HERE

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The badger was staring down at his student’s tablet, the room around him quite silent as he and several others worked their way through the quiz Professor Reginald had sprung on them for their last lesson of the week. Most of the basics of it had come easily, some of his old rules had come in handy too – skip the questions that give you trouble and come back to them at the end, when you’re sure you have time. He couldn’t begin to say he wasn’t anxious though, enough to sweat a little. His stomach felt hollow, and twisted – the last question was a tricky one – a trick one, even. Samuel read it over once more.

What did I tell you to forget on your first day here?

That particular question struck the badger as unfair, but that might be because he was coming up (understandably) blank about the matter. He’d been told he could use notes, reference the earlier study material, everything – but how the hell he was supposed to do this?

Samuel looked at the clock again – ten minutes left. Ought to be more than enough for one question, surely – but…? The badger slid his finger over to the study material from day one again. The stuff he’d gone and ‘relaxed’ himself with just a bit too completely. Something he had yet to manage to fix, and couldn’t bring himself to ask the professor for help on. He looked once more at the question, and then back to the start of the question – the instructions. Rigel had rightly chastised him for not reading directions closely enough before.

Ask yourself this question:

Samuel blinked. His original assessment, that there was a trick to the question, came flooding back – as did the fact that there’d been a self-entrancing app included in the day one study material. The badger pulled up the recording feature on his tablet, thought carefully about choice of words, and then put the resulting file into a video queue behind the trance file Professor Reginald had given them all. Feeling his nervous sweat turn cold, Samuel pressed play, and things went dark.

***

The badger gasped a breath in when his next moment of awareness came, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, laying on something comfortable – if very uneven. He felt kind of sore, having no idea how long he’d been sprawled out haphazardly on… what the heck was he laying on anyway? It felt pillowy, but also smooth – grippy – like rubber, or a balloon, or-

Samuel’s eyes snapped more fully open as his awareness decide a hurry might be in order. Said awareness found him lying in a tangled mess of limbs and pillowy bodies, no small portion of which were partially or completely coated in bright, primary colored latex if he had to guess. In some cases it was partial – usually waist down, but a few of those in the – where the hell was he? It looked, to Samuel, like some kind of maintenance chamber. Tools here and there, cleaning supplies – and then there was the fact that he could count at least three fully covered custodial drones amid the group he was, apparently, part of here on the floor.

He managed not to panic too hard – it seemed late, the station school tried to emulate day and night lighting to a degree, and nobody else was awake as far as he could tell. Extricating himself from the tangle of limbs was the first task called for. Samuel just had to figure out how to do it without rousing anyone else and risking having to explain himself. The effort was going to be a slow one, if it was to be successful. The badger arched his back and tried to get his feet under him, pulling his belly out of the way and hoping the building gurgling in his stomach was just hunger, and not some impending air horn he’d wake the room with.

This process being successfully completed informed him that he would also have to find some pants soon.

A major conundrum, that. Samuel found he wasn’t too hard pressed to make headway toward the door, but actually going through it would spill him into the school corridors – improperly clad as it were. He’d been hesitating while staring at the door for, well – either moments or minutes, it was hard to say. Enough time to question the bloated, squishy sensation deep inside at least. Enough time for someone to sneak up on him, a hand closing over his shoulder and leading to a panicked squeaking sound coming out of at least two of the badger’s orifices.

When he got enough past that to turn his head, wide-eyed and tense, he found himself staring at the perfectly latex-sealed face of what had probably been a mouse. Short, pudgy, staring upward with a finger over her face in a ‘shhh’ motion – and holding what looked distinctly like his robes. His tension collapsed inward on itself in a moment, particularly as the drone mouse was holding the robe open for him to slip inside. Samuel swallowed heavily, exhaled, and leaned himself in – feeling the smooth textured hands ease the robe’s openings around him, even tugging it downward after (though the little rodent might’ve gotten a touch grabby at that point). He still found himself earnestly mouthing out ‘thank you’ before he made to slip quietly into the hallway.

The trip back to his dorm was uneventful, following visual prompts and finding nobody in the halls apart from two other custodians who simply waved to him (he waved back of course) and let him pass. Inside, he found his dorm-mates sleeping, and did his level best to make his way into his bed quietly. Gurgling innards aside, Samuel curled up and quite quickly succeeded at hiding from what he’d just found himself in by pulling the covers over his head and waiting to lose consciousness once again.

***

Morning came like it always did, with a buzzing telling the badger to wake up so he had time to get down to the cafeteria before his first class, with eyes opening to soft light filtering through the dorm window that had nothing to do with the presence of any nearby star. Samuel stretched languidly, silencing the internal alarm and slowly working awareness back into his mind, and fluidity to his limbs. He’d been having a rather intense and bizarre set of dreams, probably – he suspected – due to the anxiety from that quiz he had…

The badger blinked, and rapidly sat up in his bed, which left him with the night stand by it in his peripheral vision. Including the woven basket (made mostly of old wiring) sitting on it. Inside was arranged numerous bottles of raw food reconstruction material in a variety of (mostly very sweet) flavors, as well as his student’s tablet. He reached for that first, and one of the tubes (clearly labeled chocolate & cream cheese) as an afterthought. With the tube tucked under his arm and already being quietly sucked on. Samuel saw three notices waiting for him when the device booted. Two messages from Professor Reginald, and one video playlist.

The first message was simple enough at least.

Samuel! Excellent job on the quiz, particularly the last question. Next time, don’t be so anxious about taking your time. The only minute that costs you grading is the last one. See you next class period.

The badger blinked very slowly, trying to remember the quiz, how that had played out – and while at this, checked the playlist. The first flickering images of the induction file they had all been given caused Samuel to rapidly skip ahead to the next file in the list as his recollection of last night cleared, just a little. He saw himself in the second file, heard himself saying.

“You will remember what you were told to forget on the first day of class, and write it on the quiz.”

The file was quite brief, obviously. As it ended, his face flickered out – and Professor Reginald’s tan furred outline around a dark center replaced it, with those striking blue Siamese eyes. He spoke clearly, slowly, in a rich baritone that felt as nice to the ear as that creamy chocolate did on the badger’s tongue.

“You will spend the night pursuing every act of reckless debauchery you can find yourself invited to be part of, with relish and abandon. Then, when you next wake, recall nothing of the events that transpired. You will only retain a newfound appreciation for the care one must take in wording a suggestion.”

Samuel blinked slowly again. He had some idea what he’d been up to, sure. No real memory per se, but he woke up in a room full of drones and naked students, some of whom were half coated in the same thing the drones were, and he still felt weirdly bloated. Rocket science this was not. Then came the last notice, an automated one from the look of it – something built into the station’s operating system.

Greetings Student. This is a general information dispersal being sent to you based on possible interest detected in your observed activity. We at The Rendering Pit wish you to be aware that while fraternizing with the custodial staff is not forbidden, and consent will always be offered when asked for, it is still required – and there are certain areas one must be aware of and act responsibly in regards to.

1: Over-indulgence may result in communication of replication colonies. These colonies will not be removed.

2: Colonies may affect appetite, metabolism, digestive tendencies, and in greater concentrations can cause suggestibility.

3: If you believe you have experienced colony transmission please report to the nurse for further educational pamphlets and a physical.

4: If you believe you have crossed critical production thresholds, do not panic. Remain calm, and stationary. Someone will be with you shortly to transport you to processing.

The badger’s slow blinking and general internal unrest intensified, until the collapse of the tube under his arm and the empty suckling sounds of a spent tube provided a distraction. Setting the tablet down, Samuel swallowed the last of what was in his mouth, and thought – finally – to look at the basket properly, and maybe read the labels a little more closely. The basket was indeed cobbled together from junk, mostly wiring and fiber-optics, and on a couple of the sharper edges he saw colorful spots of what looked to be latex that had scraped free. The tube was indeed a basic stock one designed to feed into automated preparation devices, as were the others – probably stolen from the cafeteria stores. It wasn’t expired, that was the first worry. Everything on the label checked out in fact. Not exactly good for you, to be sure – rich and thick, lots of calories per serving, which he’d just had several… dozen, or, wait-

Samuel brought the tablet’s calculator functions online, simple as such things were, and quietly whispered to it the question weighing on his mind.

“How the hell much chocolate cream cheese filling did I just eat!?”

It ran the math instantly, and corrected an assumption the badger hadn’t realized he’d made. He hadn’t spotted the ‘k’ before ‘calories’, easy mistake to make really. Granted, that mistake had just resulted in him sucking down a bottle of what was essentially the equivalent of bathtub full of cake batter. He sat the empty tube into the basket, staring still at the numbers, listening to his belly writhe and begin its dark work digesting all that fuel, voicing the single most common thought he found himself having so far in this place.

“I have seriously got to start reading things more closely.”