The Moloch: a setting sourcebook for KULT
Chapter 8: Seeing the Ugly Truth
Peter and Kurt meet Antonio again (the guy who showed them the balcony in the True City). They talk for a while and realize during that talk that Peter and Kurt have a similar reason to hide: Peter, the attorney of state, had spent a lot of his time delving into a strange case which was concerned with a trust of meat-producing companies who seemed to disobey all national and European regulations and quotas. Their numbers did not add up - it was completely impossible to produce the amount they obviously did without breaking a healthy number of laws and regulations. By law Peter was required to inquire further, though he could have stopped when he saw he did not get anywhere and could not prove anything. His colleagues and his boss urged him to let go, always friendly, but on hindsight there was a bit of a concealed threat in it.
Kurt has learned from his father's chief accountant that his father has had dubious dealings with those self-same companies - usually transports which were overloaded, on a too tight schedule etc. He was obviously paid off to look away.
Having established this (albeit weak) link between their cases, Antonio tells them that he could help them find out what those companies are actually up to - at least to show them that there was probably nothing anyone could do against it.
Antonio says he could get them into a group of ecologists who are going to visit the largest meat-producing company in the area a few days later. He can also equip them with a pill - this pill will open their eyes to the true reality and wipe away the illusion. It is made according to a recipe found in the Fifties when scientists tried to find a painkiller stronger than Morphium but without detrimental effects regarding one's ability to perform. They did not succeed but one of the side developments was this pill. The recipe has filtered down into the underground and anyone with a toy chemistry set and three or four over-the-counter drugs can now create the stuff. There is a side-effect: the worst headache ever experienced accompanies the eye-opening effect and lingers for about half a day. But the most dangerous effect is having to cope with what one sees.
Antonio warns the PCs quite graphically but good role-players that they are the players decide to go for it.
They meet the group of ecologists and get into the company with no hassle. They take their pills and wait for reality to poke through.
In a kind of class room the effect begins to kick in, accompanied by the beginning headache. The CEO of the company seems to have a large shadow or nimbus around him - the name tags that have been hand-written by a secretary change to S/M-style necklaces connected by wires to guide rails along the ceiling. For a time reality and illusion overlay each other.
The CEO changes to an obese man of 2.5m with no hair, white, almost translucent skin, sharp pointed teeth and a long black tongue, wearing a black rubber or leather garment which keeps his flesh in a bit of shape (a KULT Lictor). His voice grows low and raspy, with constant gurgling and smacking noises interspersed. He squeezes himself out through the door and begins the tour. The other people in the group are almost unchanged - save for strange bulges on some of their wrists, hidden under their clothes.
Outside everything seems normal at first - then they step into the area where the cows scheduled for butchering are kept.
The cows near them are kept in separate stalls, but they are covered with foot long black parasites looking like super slugs, about a dozen on each cow. They are apparently guiding the movements of the cow; the cows themselves are passive, possibly even dead already. New cows are led in and the parasites drop onto them from a steel construction above; the cows panick but are soothed (go zombie) once at least three parasites have found purchase on them.
Where there should be walls the characters only see panes of glass. Behind the glass a field stretches to the horizon, invisible but for the billions of cows crowded into it. They are so cramped they hurt each other, even grow into each other, and farther away they have fused into large hills of meat with occasional heads and legs sticking out. Black gripping devices move across the landscape and pick cow-sized chunks of bleeding flesh out of the sea of cows.
Of course no-one but the PCs notices anything amiss.
The group is then led on into the abattoir. The chunks ripped out of the herd are dropped into funnels and processed here; there is also a 'normal' butchery where parasite-infested cows are slaughtered and processed - in some cases the parasites are processed with them.
Next they visit the same kind of place but for pigs. After that, the chicken factory where normal, even rather thin and lively chickens can be seen. Yet behind the glass walls there is a hangar-like structure where millions of strange beings scuttle over and across each other. The lighting is bad and the PCs can't make out details - yet.
Peter is already thoroughly shaken and tries to focus on the pattern on the dress of a woman who walks in front of him. He succeeds. Kurt tries the same thing later as well but he just can't keep his eyes occupied where it is safe...
The next stop is the abattoir where the chickens are processed. Only there are no chickens. Rather the beings from the hangar are brought in, looking like large caterpillars with a pair of good legs and a pair of crippled atavistic legs per segment, a dozen segments to each individual. Only a small, featherless head with a beak is slightly reminiscent of a chicken. These critters are killed here and chopped, segment by segment, into a chickeny shape.
Kurt's sanity snaps at this point. He wills himself not to scream, not to break down, but he shakes all over and is white like a blanket. The CEO comes to him and puts an arm around his shoulder - all cold and soft white flesh. In his ghastly voice he tells him that a bit of nausea was just to be expected, and Kurt had in fact kept himself well. Weak stomachs often give in much earlier, even though all pains are taken to keep the production as clean, efficient and ethically sound as possible. He then leads Kurt out through a fire exit to find his way back to the compound entrance.
The tour is over only a few moments later anyway. When someone near him is looking at his watch Peter sees that instead of a watch this man is nursing a green, bug-like parasite dug into his wrist. He checks his own wrist, where up until their meeting with Platon he had had his own watch, and find marks of a corresponding wound not quite healed yet.
Outside Peter then sees a truck from the company of Kurt's father. A large mound of flesh with cow's legs and heads is forced into the truck by workers with long grappling hooks.
The necklaces are opened and the group is free to go. Peter and Kurt meet at the entrance where Kurt has already opened his own necklace which has speeded away. The two of them go home underground, both vowing never to eat meat again.