Nothing bored Dhinha more than meetings with investors and shareholders because they didn't want to hear anything other than good news, even though that mentality was incredibly childish.
Of course, there was bad news. Several employees had died in the past month, lawsuits were piling up, some rats were embezzling company funds, women sought maternity leave for some reason, and men were being scolded for harassing their colleagues.
All this wasn't even a tenth of the company's problems, and yet the people on the screen in front of Dhinha didn't want to hear any of it.
He bit his teeth as he detailed why profits weren't as high as had been projected, and this earned him glares and scowls from the twelve faces on his screen.
"And what can we do to minimise further losses?" One of the investors asked. Dhinha vaguely recognised him as one of the businessmen who spearheaded the expansion of the ISS.
It was being prepared to act as a stop point between the Earth and the lunar base that was being developed, for reasons Dhinha really didn't care about.
It's not that he wasn't rich enough to afford going to the station or the moon.
The damned things were still under construction and were only scheduled to open in fifty or so years.
Even though methods were found to further prolong the lives of humans, he never had the patience to wait for such things.
Although he couldn't deny that he had always been drawn towards the prospect of conquering the stars, just as man had conquered the Earth.
Dhinha internally scoffed at the futility of it all before presenting a scheme to cut costs by limiting the amount of overtime employees were able to take, along with limiting night shift work, forcing more people to show up for day work.
This would lead to increased daytime productivity and would save the company a ton of money by reducing overall work hours.
"I assume you are all happy with the suggested strategy?" He asked, his dark brown eyes glaring back at those who would trouble him with extra chores.
The shareholders approved his scheme, and like that, the meeting ended.
He took a deep breath before lifting his large frame from his chair. A chair which had been made from the leather of one of the last cows.
He then took heavy steps towards the window behind his desk, where he beheld the world from atop one of the tallest buildings in the megalopolis he called home. A vast sprawl of buildings built on buildings, from refiners and general factories, atop which were super apartment buildings that were soaked in the fumes from below.
His brow wetted with sweat after having moved, making his dark skin glisten in his barely lit office, and his suit choked his body, but he had to wear it to look professional, so he ignored the discomfort and pain.
He was only able to see the horizon as the sun set because this day wasn't as smoggy as the others, but whatever beauty the sun provided was marred by the slums below that stretched out in every direction.
It was enough to make Dhinha's face twist.
He couldn't imagine living in such a cramped, likely smelly place, and so he took a deep breath of the processed air that was sent to his quarters.
Little did he know that it would be his last.
He clutched his chest as his heart finally choked on the chunks of fat that lined its discoloured walls.
He fell to his knees and tried calling for help, but at this point, his body had already given in.
He desperately gasped, hoping that someone would hear him, but his office had been soundproofed, and the surveillance cameras littered around were linked to the security personnel on the first floor, who definitely weren't going to respond on time.
Dhinha fell face flat on his soft, pleasant-smelling carpet as his eyes rolled backwards.
The agony of asphyxiation was rapidly followed by a dull numbness that robbed him of every sense one by one until his vision faded to black.
What followed was a silence that frightened him to no end.
It was a fear that followed him into oblivion, although it was strange.
He had expected to cease feeling anything at all, but that fear persisted.
It grew stronger as time seemed to pass.
A fear that he would be forever alone in death.
A fear that no one wept for the loss of his life.
This fear followed him across the silence and, until, perhaps even more frighteningly, he felt a crack.
He felt as though something was changing, and it wasn't long until he felt like he could move.
What Dhinha could never have known was that after his body was disposed of in one of the many biomass landfills, after almost all of his cells died, one remained.
In a strange turn of events, it mutated and developed a hard casing around itself.
It then very slowly began to absorb nutrients and water from the muck around it, growing and multiplying to form a new type of life.
One that could survive in the putrid filth that was left in mankind's wake.
This lump of mutated cells continued to feed as the years turned into decades, and even after the rich abandoned the Earth.
They were finally able to set off for the moon and abandoned the poor on the rotting Earth.
Billions died in the toxic hellscape, and their corpses served to further expand the biomass beneath the junk.
Dhinha still couldn't see, and it felt like he was underwater, but he could ever so slightly twitch what felt like a small pair of arms and legs.
Some more time passed, and he gradually came to realise that he was growing.
His limbs steadily felt larger and firmer as an unknowable amount of time passed.
He eventually managed to open his eyes, only to close them immediately as the liquid he was submerged in entered them.
He had only managed to get a glance, but he saw that he was in a strange pod and was floating in a murky blueish liquid.
He wanted to try opening his eyes again and breaking out, but chose to instead wait.
His thoughts were steadily returning, and so he allowed himself a moment to catch himself up on everything that he knew.
He remembered a long life of business dealings and corruption, all of which culminated in his sudden death, but everything after that was a dim blur.
Dhinha then realised that he wasn't breathing, and this made him panic as he remembered what it felt like when he died.
He frantically clawed at the front of the pod, tearing the soft, fleshy membrane that sealed it and releasing the waters that held him.
He fell forward and hit the floor, coughing out the murky fluid that filled his lungs and finally taking a breath.
He then let out another series of agonising coughs upon taking in the air, which was more putrid than any he had ever taken back when he was alive.
It burnt his nose and chest with each breath, making him want to hurl.
However, the more of it he took in, the easier it got to breathe.
Even his vision, which was a blurry mess, began to clear the more he blinked.
He glanced around and saw that he was in a dark, cramped space that was lined with a thick, greenish matter that writhed and pulsed with activity.
Tubes ran through it like veins, and crawling within and along it were things that resembled no insect Dhinha had ever seen. They were a dark grey, as large as a hand and were lined with metallic-looking pincers and faws that allowed them to easily dig through and eat the fleshy matter around them.
There was no visible light source in this uncomfortably hot place, but Dhinha had little difficulty seeing.
He coughed some more as he sat up, looking himself over to find that he was much smaller than before.
And more feminine.
His skin was a dark mixture of Cyan and black.
It was as if he had a hardened exoskeleton growing along his skin and in tandem with his rigid internal bones.
He had a pair of breasts that protruded from his chest, although he confusingly lacked genitalia.
Hanging from his head were thick, dark tendrils and his fingers were tipped with thick, pointed nails.
Taste followed, and it was awful.
He spat out the remaining fluid in his mouth, feeling like he had been waterboarded with petrol.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he wanted to cry, and so he did.
Although he had tried his best to keep a level head and stay focused, he didn't know what was going on or why it was happening to him, so he cried.
Loudly and pathetically.
For the first time in his life, he prayed and hoped that it was all a dream, but each breath he drew reminded him that it was all too real.
What felt like an hour passed as Dhinha lay on the cold, damp ground.
He eventually decided to stand up and, while his balance was a little off at first, he felt no pain in his ankles or knees, which was a welcome change.
He turned his now incredibly sharp eyes to the wall in front of him.
It looked a little softer than the surrounding flesh, so Dhinha dug his nails into it and clawed some of the supple, moist matter away.
He eventually tore a hole in the membrane, revealing a greenish tartarian sky beyond the confines that held him.
He cautiously emerged from the fleshly holding to see that he was on a small hill that overlooked a large crater turned lake that was lined by acres of dark flesh tubes and rivers of liquid rot. He could tell it was a crater because the riverbank was at the foot of an incredibly steep ridge that went all around the lake, suggesting a massive impact.
The sky churned with dark clouds that shed droplets that burnt a little on contact.
Dhinha bit his teeth as he took in his new humid reality.
It was all so horrible that it made his stomach knot, although he wasn't sure if he was just hungry.
But what could he possibly eat?
He'd have to look around until he found something relatively edible.
He took a single step forward and immediately froze as the world trembled as if reacting to his presence.
The tubes and walls of dark flesh thumped, and the rivers of nasty waters roared, making Dhinha consider returning to the wall womb that birthed him.
But the pain in his stomach was only growing, and it overwrote everything else.
Never before had he felt such intense hunger, not in a way that he couldn't easily remedy with all the food he once had, at least.
He wondered if this was what those who lived beneath him felt...
If this was the taste of starvation...
He tossed the thought aside as a new directive filled his mind; he had to keep moving.
He was tempted to take a bite of some of the soft, fleshy plants he walked over, but it all looked far too dubious.
"Haa..." He sighed aloud so that he could hear his own voice.
To his surprise, it came out distorted and sounded as if two people were speaking at the same time.
One voice was deep and gurgled while the other was soft and wispy.
This would have been enough to give him nightmares before, but he found it oddly soothing.
And so he let out a few meaningless hums as he walked, a dissonant choir that lulled the fear and hunger a little.
He eventually grew too weak to continue walking and so stopped by a pond of rot in the middle of a forest of tangled flesh tubes, where he tiredly sat.
He kept humming to himself as he peered into his reflection on the surface of the murk.
He was... Pretty.
He thought so, at least.
His tendrils swayed back and forth as he sat, letting glimpses of his bright cyan eyes peek through.
Little, Cyan puddles of light in the darkness—
Dhinha gasped upon hearing something intrude on the twisted tranquillity he had found himself in.
He turned around to find a creature that resembled none he had ever seen or could have ever imagined.
It crouched beneath some dark tubes and would have been hidden in shadow if it weren't for Dhinha's new eyes.
Based on the fact that Dhinha hadn't heard it move, he deduced that it had been staying completely still all this time, waiting.
It looked like a praying mantis, only its limbs and torso were made of dark, rubbery tubes that all converged at its head, which was a muscular maw that was lined with jagged, metallic teeth.
Dhinha held his breath and hoped the creature would ignore her, but, without warning, it dashed towards him while reaching for him with its mangled claws.
Dhinha then let out a scream that sent out so much force that the creature's dark flesh was stripped from its bones, which were flung backwards as the echo of his scream alone was enough to send several thunderclaps across the sky.
All he could do was watch as the air steadily settled. His heart raced powerfully in his chest, and his eyes rattled.
Not only did he not know where he was, where everyone else was or what was going on.
Now he had absolutely no idea what he was.