Chapters The Book of Milk Chapter 4
Cow 87 dreamt that she was standing on a meadows with other cows like her. It was an idyllic scene, like something out of a picture book. Her sisters were leisurely eating the grass in front of them while birds chirped in the air. A fresh breeze made Cow 87 shiver momentarily and her cowbell rang out while her udders gently swayed under her. But the warmth of the sun soon made her forget the short chill and she was back to chewing the grass, slowly, feeling completely at peace with herself…
The images of the dream lingered when she opened her eyes and at first she was confused why she only had two hooves instead of four. Then everything came back to her. Well, almost. There was also a sense of loss she couldn’t explain. She remembered her desperation too, but now it was just a dull sadness at the back of her mind. “At least he made me come. That felt kinda nice.” she thought. But this positive piece of memory was immediately shattered as she became aware of the dried up shit and piss that still clung to her ass and long legs. And the rest of her body was now also covered with a layer of dirt from lying on the straw, which only superficially protected from the packed earth beneath. “I’m filthy. I need a bath.”
Then she realized how stupid that thought was considering her situation. She had to finally do something about it, get some control of her life back, even if it had taken a completely horrible turn! With renewed vigor, Cow 87 managed to get up again, scraping her armpit against the rough wood, until she looked around her enclosure once more.
“Maybe now I can find some way to escape?” she thought.
[THOUGHT DELETED FOR CONTRADICTING PROGRAM PARAMETERS.]
“Wait, what?” Cow 87 sighed, which came out as a low moo. “And hello to you too, voice.” she thought, helplessly resigning herself to the enemy in her head.
“Back to the business at hand.” (Ha ha, Cow 87 thought sarcastically and without any humour.) Methodically, she walked around a circle along the walls of her stall, or rather stomped ungracefully on her hooves. Once she arrived at the entrance, she raised her right legs to kick the door open, almost falling when she realized she couldn’t balance on only one hoof. Changing her tactic, she then threw her weight against it. The shoddy wooden door was surprisingly sturdy and the latch on the other side didn’t budge or even rattle. The whole time she was careful not to think of escape directly. Instead, she tried to think of images of men dressed in blue caps with batons breaking through doors that were typical of the sort of shows her father had loved to watch. Cow 87 couldn’t remember the precise word for the blue men anyways, nor why they broke down doors, only that they helped people. But thinking of them might help avoid detection. She didn’t know if she had managed to trick the voice or if it just had ignored this attempt at esc… at playing “blue man” because it had been doomed from the start. The wooden door didn’t give way in the slightest.
The exertion left her sweating and panting. She also realized that she was thirsty and hungry now, her stomach growling fiercely. Without thinking she tried to call out “Hey, I need some food and water!” to her captors. But of course she only mooed. Frowning, she tried to speak again. “I. Am. Hungry.” she thought, trying to picture how her mouth would move when speaking the words and what sound her throat was supposed to make. “Moo. Moooo. Mmmooo.”
She bit back a scream of frustration, which she knew would only sound the same. “I’m not a cow. I’m still a c… I’m still what I was before.” Cow 87 thought defiantly. Her mooing had been heard in the meantime and someone was already entering the barn and walking towards her stall. This time, she was prepared. So when the stall was opened, she immediately ran awkwardly towards the man and tried to get past him. She didn’t even think about it beforehand so the voice couldn’t stop her. It was then she felt two metal prongs in her side and a split second later, a strong electric current coursing through her body. Mooing in painful surprise, she fell down sideways, her legs twitching uncontrollably. Her bladder released, but it was only a trickle that was quickly absorbed by the dry earth.
[ESCAPE ATTEMPT DETECT… TECT… TECT… OVERLOAD FAILURE. SHUTTING DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE.]
“You almost got me there, 87! But don’t worry! We also got more conventional methods than the implant to keep you in line. Now, up you get… and no tricks this time!” To underline this threat he again jabbed the cattle prod into her side without activating the electric current.
Sobbing, Cow 87 slowly managed to get up. She needed several tries without a wall for support and felt like a helpless bug someone had turned on its back. The man didn’t help her, clearly thinking she deserved the humiliating display. Finally, she managed to get her legs under her. But she was now completely covered with even more dirt, from head to hoof. She tried shaking it off, which made her heavy udders sway, a feeling Cow 87 still couldn’t get used to. Since she was upright again, the man ordered her to move in front of her. It was the same guy as the day before, “Brad,” but before she could start walking, he slung some rope around her neck and now had a makeshift leash so she couldn’t outrun him before he could use the prod again.
As she started to walk laboriously, which was still a weird sensation due to her unfeeling hooves, and clumsy due to her sloshing udders, Cow 87 reflected on her last impression of the program. She had expected to be punished by it, but it seemed the voice had suffered a malfunction when she had been electrified, she had heard that. Time for a little test, Cow 87 decided. “I’m going to escape and call the blue men and… and kill this bad guy!” One of those was sure to activate the program, but nothing happened. Then nothing continued to happen. Cow 87 breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like the voice was gone, at least for the moment.
She wasn’t so naive to believe it wouldn’t come back though, and since she didn’t know when that would be, she had to use the most of her relative freedom. Another escape attempt was out of the question, she could still feel her legs being jittery from the electric shock, her heart beating painfully fast in her chest and the points where the prod had connected to the skin feeling numb and tingly at the same time.
Instead she looked around and tried to get as much information about her surroundings as possible. There was a sign on a beam they walked past saying “Cow Sheds”. Well, Cow 87 had already figured that one out. Beneath that another one said “Cleansing Stations” with an arrow pointing in the direction they were walking towards. A third pointing in the opposite direction said “Exit”. That was a lot more interesting. Now Cow 87 knew at least where she could find an exit, although that didn’t necessarily mean “freedom”. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.
The voice still hadn’t come back, so Cow 87 now thought freely about how she could counter its presence in her head. She had studied computer sciences at… at… it didn’t matter, at university, so she had an understanding of machine logic. “It can’t react to something it can’t understand.” she mused. And machines were notoriously bad at interpreting metaphors. Therefore she had to start thinking in pictures instead of words at least when something risky was concerned. Cow 87 only hoped that she had the mental acuity to always react that fast. Thoughts were slippery things, as famous experiments like the impossible order “don’t think about unicorns” showed. She tried it out by thinking “I need to escape and get help” and then changing it into “I need to [picture of a man jumping out of a window] and get [picture of a man pulling a woman out of quicksand].” She wasn’t convinced herself, but it was worth a try.
How she would manage all the other changes… that would have to come later.
In the meantime she had trotted in a straight line through the large barn structure. It was only now that Cow 87 became aware of how big it actually was. There were a lot of stalls like hers in here, but they all seemed to be empty. She tried counting them, but after one, she always started to only think “one and one”, then “one and one and one”, until switching to “a few”, and finally “a lot”. It seemed answers to simple questions like how many stalls she had passed to get to the Exit sign were simply out of her grasp now.
Finally they arrived at what Cow 87 assumed were the cleansing stations. Here, there was a grate in the floor and above it a pipe that ended in several crude showerheads, at least… one and… more than a few, she decided. “Over there, cow!” Cow 87 did as she was told and now stood beneath one of the showerheads.
With a metallic squeak, Brad opened a valve and suddenly a stream of cold water hit Cow 87 from above. She mooed in surprise and wanted to pull back, but the man, now before her, pulled the rope around her neck so she had to stay where she was. After a few seconds, her body got used to the temperature of the water somewhat. Now, the guy used a brick of soap to lather the brush, then started to clean Cow 87’s skin. The brush was rough but she actually somewhat enjoyed getting cleaned, but the feeling was immediately soured by the degrading nature of the process.
She had to blink water out of her eyes repeatedly and the water on her head made her painfully aware that she was completely bald. For some reason, she wasn’t surprised to be hairless, although she couldn’t remember noticing it before. At that moment, the brush started to push between her legs, which she spread instinctively. She mooed as her sensitive labia and asshole was assaulted by the rough bristles, halfway between pain and pleasure. She bent forward to show even more of her sex, her former shyness forgotten for the moment.
A puddle of water had formed under her and within it, she saw her face for the first time since being abducted. She almost didn’t recognize herself. Besides being completely bald she didn’t have eyebrows any more and her large eyes looked even bigger as a result, framed as they were by thick lashes, apparently the only hair still left. Instead of her green irises she also somehow now had dark brown ones, much larger than before as were her pupils, almost filling the whites completely. On the sides of her hairless head, her ears had been enlarged and stretched away from her head. Now she also knew why she couldn’t breathe right anymore: her nostrils were stuffed with a large metal ring, pierced through her septum, that stretched her original small delicate nose into a wider, more bulbous shape. Underneath, her lips had been plumped up so she now pouted constantly, making her look stupid and slutty in equal measure. Instead of teeth behind those lips there were only two fleshy ridges. The coloring of her skin also hadn’t stopped at her face. Both sides of it were now brown, with a white streak in the middle. Additionally, her nose and mouth had been colored a fleshy pink, making it stand out from the white. The worst change however, was on her forehead. Because here she now sported two small yellowing ivory horns, erupting from her skin, that identified her new identity beyond all doubt.
All that Cow 87 noticed almost simultaneously. Tears started to mix with the soapy water running down her head. “Oh no! No… even my face is like a cow’s now! And my nose… deformed… my mouth… bloated… no teeth… like some sort of muzzle!”
[SELF-DIAGNOSTICS COMPLETE. CENTRAL IMPLANT BACK ONLINE. FACIAL SELF-RECOGNITION DETECTED. CHANGING MENTAL FACIAL PATTERNS TO CURRENT TEMPLATE. SELF-DESCRIPTIVE TERM “MUZZLE” LOCKED IN. OVERWRITES AND MERGES SELF-DESCRIPTIVE TERMS “MOUTH/ NOSE”.]
“What? No! I wasn’t ready! This face! It’s not my real face! It is not! It doesn’t look like this! No, not like this! I had [NO] hair on my head! I was [NOT] a blonde. Or… brunette? And I had [NO] blue eyes! Or green… I… I think? Oh god no… my old face… my cow face… Please! Not one and one things at once! Take one back! I can’t even think muzzle anymore, only muzzle. And my muzzle is my muzzle now too? That doesn’t even make sense! Wasn’t it enough that I could only moo with my muzzle? Muzzle! Why now? Why?!”
Cow 87 stared into the puddle, wide eyes full of shock and sadness. What stared back was her face. The only face she could recall as her own anymore.