Rubber Boot Dronification

another extremely self-descriptive title

Huh… This is definitely the place.

You walk over a small pile of rubble as you enter the abandoned facility, not quite sure as to whether or not you should really be here. Your friend had given you a few tips for some cool places to check out as a beginner urban spelunker, but this already felt a bit odd. You knew you should probably have brought someone with you, but your friend insisted it wasn’t dangerous enough to not just go by yourself. You’re starting to question why you believed him. Oh well, you couldn’t be breaking any more trespassing laws than you already had, so you decided to keep going.

From what you could figure, this place used to be an old factory, or a warehouse, or something. You couldn’t really figure it out, as there was nothing written about what the place even was. As far as you could tell, it was never operational. You walked idly around the main floor of the building. Most of the sky lights on the roof had been shattered long ago, leaving the place open to the elements, along with plenty of birds and probably also bats that made it their home. This was not the kind of place you would want to visit at night, but the sunlight shining through into the building made it decently non-threatening for now. There were a few catwalks suspended up above, and while none of them had collapsed yet, you still didn’t trust the stairs leading up to them. Still on the ground floor, you were now off to another side of the structure. There were a few empty doorframes along the wall you were following, and just a cursory inspection with your flashlight revealed nothing of interest in any of the rooms behind them, until you reached what must have been the generator room. Everything of value or danger had been stripped long ago to sell for scrap, so the room was mostly desolate.

There were a few rusty metal cabinets off to the side, the first few were empty, but upon opening the last, you encountered something you very much didn’t expect to find in a long-abandoned factory: A pristine-looking pair of hefty rubber boots. They were the kind that had soles a lot thicker than they’d need, and went up all the way to your knees. They looked like solid rubber, thick all the way around, and with a slight sheen to everything but the soles. You’d seen these kinds of boots before, and they were definitely something a lot lewder than simple safety equipment.

It was obvious these had been placed here recently, but by who? Who would leave something like this in an abandoned warehouse, and why? They weren’t cheap, and they’re definitely something you’d notice going missing, so what on earth were they doing here? Obviously, there was a simple answer to all of this: You had to take them. Nobody was going to go looking for them in a place like this, and you doubted the next person to come find them would appreciate them for what they were, so you made your choice. You took them.

God, they were heavy. Holding the things in your arms felt silly the moment you decided on it. You barely made it out of the room before deciding on an alternate method of transport.

You took off the cheap sneakers you had been wearing previously, and your socks too. You’re not sure why you thought to take off your socks as well, but it felt right for this. Placing the two rubber boots upright on the floor, you lowered your feet into them one after the other. They fit remarkably well. You took your first cautious step forwards in the boots, and then another, and then another. They were heavy, sure, but they also fit well enough to make that not much of an issue. You walked back in the direction you came, ready to leave the building now that the sun had started to set and you’d collected your loot.

You stopped. You didn’t mean to stop, and with confusion you looked down at the boots. They had somehow rooted themselves to the floor, now sticking firmly and refusing to let go. Slightly concerned, you decided to take your feet out of the boots. You couldn’t. Your feet, too, were firmly planted within the rubber boots. More alarmingly, something black and shiny had began to spread from the entrance to the boots. You tried again to get your feet out of them, but almost falling over revealed that it wasn’t worth the painful situation you might end up in if you fell. Slowly but surely, the black material spread up your legs. They were now engulfing your kneecaps, and you could get a better look at what exactly was spreading across your body. It looked to be the exact same material the boots were made out of. Along with this, you now made a startling discovery: You could no longer feel your toes. Sure, you could barely wiggle them before, but now there was simply no sensation, anywhere in your feet. It was as if you didn’t have feet, and instead it was nothing but the rubber boots themselves.

You gulped.

The rubber was now progressing up your thighs, with a light tingling sensation felt wherever the stuff touched. In addition to crawling over your skin, it also began to absorb your clothing, coating it along with your body. Strangely, as the material passed its way up, there was no sign of the clothing beneath the rubber. In fact, the rubber had the exact same outline that your body had in each area that was absorbed. In essence, you were being made more naked as the rubber covered you, even despite your clothing. You came to the conclusion that it was being somehow dissolved. This was alarming, as the rubber was already nearly at your crotch. You couldn’t see the rubber on your skin, only the parts covering and absorbing your clothes was visible, but you could most definitely feel it as the sleek material began to coat your nether regions. You let out a moan as the rubber engulfed it, and soon, just like your clothing, it had all been flattened down into your body. Whatever was there before was now gone, with a shiny blank patch being all that was left. You reached down, desperately trying to touch what you now lacked, but with no success. For the first time, you could feel the smooth rubbery texture that your body was becoming; It felt just like the boots had felt when you first touched them. You really were turning into the same material as the rubber boots you had so thoughtlessly plundered.

The changes were relentless. Now that your torso had began to transform, you could start to feel all the additional changes beneath the surface. Namely, that all your intestines, organs, blood, bones, everything, was turning to rubber. There was nothing below the surface. It was the same material all the way through: You were turning into rubber. The only reprieve you got was in the fact that you could still, through some strange power, move. You could feel the rubber parts of your body when you touched them, and you could still move your legs, albeit now with much more squeaking involved. As the material progressed up your belly, it finally set in how futile any attempt at escaping from your fate had become. There was nobody to save you. You could scream and nobody would hear. You were alone in this factory, with nobody to stop your slow rubbery transformation.

The changes accelerated once they reached your diaphragm. The reasoning as to why was quickly made obvious: You could no longer breathe. The rubber flooded down your arms, things changing that you could not yet notice in your oxygen-deprived state, and soon, the rubber was coating, swarming, up your neck, and through your head. Everything went black.

For a moment, nothing. No sensations, no thoughts, nothing. But quickly following the nothing was everything, and the world snapped back into existence. You stood motionless in an abandoned factory. You couldn’t see quite as well as you could before. When you moved, there were squeaking noises. Oh, and you were entirely made out of living rubber.

“Motionless” means something different in the context of a non-organic creature. Sure, you can say you’re motionless as an organic, but you’re anything but. There’s endless micro-movements, your muscles constantly changing state as you subconsciously balance yourself to keep position. Your breathing never halts, and nothing else does either. Blood rushes like a river through your body, pumped around by your never-ceasing heart. Neurons are endlessly firing in patterns and rhythms that seem random and yet comprise who you are. Compared to a synthetic, there’s little difference between “motionless” and dancing.

You were no longer an organic, and you were now truly motionless. Nothing moved beneath your skin. Your synthetic body simply maintained the position it maintained. Your mind was no longer a property of neurons firing, but simply of amorphous living rubber.

You began to notice some changes that went unseen in the flurry of activity near the end. You looked down at your hands, and found that they seemed to be wearing thick latex gloves of the same material that the rest of your body had. Touching them revealed that you were not really wearing them, and more that they were formed as a part of you. Drones had many things to carry and operate, so proper gloves were always needed.

Drones.

The word had popped into your head out of nowhere. It seemed such an archaic description, and yet at the same time it felt perfect. The thought buzzed away in your mind, and it wasn’t one you would be getting rid of soon.

Drone.

Your vision was not as great as it used to be. To be more specific, your actual vision was now perfect no matter what it had been before, but there was now a significant loss of periphery. You had a suspicion as to why this might be the case simply from the sensation of your face alone, and as you brought your rubber gloved hands up to your face, you confirmed it. You were wearing a gas mask, and again, it was also a part of you. It seemed fully equipped with filters and breathing apparatus, which was kind of useless seeing as you had no use for oxygen any more. Only organics needed stuff like that.

You are a drone.

Looking down at your body, you got a full view of what the transformations were all for. You looked as if you were wearing a skin-tight rubber suit, the kind of thing that might be used in bio-hazard situations, but in reality it was simply your new skin. Down below were the boots that had initiated all of this, and you had to admit they now fit perfectly with the rest of your appearance.

Drones are built to obey.

You were hit by the realisation that, at this point, you had no idea what to do next. You were metres from the way you had come in, and yet, you had no desire to leave. What would there be to return to, any way? You couldn’t even recognise yourself as once being a person.

Once a person. No longer a person.

You started walking back towards the room you had came from. Somehow, this description made more sense than the outside being where you came from. This is where you came from, where you began. Loud footsteps and squeaking echoed around the dark factory, and soon you made it back to your origin.

Obey.

You weren’t sure why, but there was an urge deep within you to do something. You had to open a door that you didn’t even know existed. Your hand was pushed against a slab of concrete on the wall, with a panel lighting up beneath it. It registered your non-existent palm print and granted access to the core systems of the once-dormant Drone facility. Information on the factory flooded your mind, with the only Drone registered being #A-001: You. As the initiator of facility activation, you had automatically been granted operator privileges, and had been embedded with all the data required to get the factory fully operational again. A swarm of new wants and desires flooded your mind, routines and commands anchoring themselves into the core of your very being, and leaving you with only the illusion of free will. Your own will had now been overridden, and was now that of the facility, and of Drones in general. You were now a finished Drone.

Somewhere there was a person’s mind, buried deep in a sea of latex, in the head of a Drone. The Drone’s thoughts were still a close mirror of the person, but with many unneeded features filtered. You could not hear the part of you that was screaming that this was wrong, that you shouldn’t activate this facility, that it would take over and turn the entire planet’s population into drones. Well, you could hear it, you simply elected to ignore it. After all, what could possibly feel better than obeying the programming embedded in your new consciousness?

You initialized the core facility protocols. Within a few hours, it would be operating at peak capacity, and the world as you once knew it would be over.

The end.