I'm thinking about writing a story about infrastructure body horror - your wetware house accidentally becoming sentient; the walls screaming in agony, blood gushing from ceilings, the house trapping you inside, etc.

I already have a biopunk worldbuilding project with lots of lore on biomachines, so the “theoretical” foundation is there. I just wanted to bounce this idea off the sub to get feedback if it’s been done before, or even sounds interesting to people.

I started that biopunk worldbuilding project because I always wanted to see the this setting: Humanity has moved entirely to organic, wetware-based technology. No steel, no fossil fuels, just engineered biology.

How did this happen? As always, war. Rust spores and entropy beetles designed to collapse metal infrastructure worked too well. In the decades since, metal never fully came back. Biotech filled the gap - originally developed by a slave species as a means to achieve freedom, then adopted by everyone out of necessity.

Some of the more unsettling corners of the setting I’d also like to explore in the potential story:

• Abandoned creations: Imagine how milk cows would feel if humans disappeared. Hurting udders from not being milked, chained in stables, and surrounded by a slowly returning wilderness they were never made for. Now imagine that for a pet species 10 times as modified.
• Assembled creatures: Biomachines have a grey area, where they could potentially become a sentient, living being. So the good old Frankensteinian theme.

[first]

Another night, another rendezvous with the embalmers. Under the high fog of the backline stoves pumping out spore-neutralizing chemicals, they are already at it again, collecting the bodies as another harvest for the necrobionic clinics. We're not supposed to talk to the worker drones picking up pieces of flesh, since they have already had their trip through said clinic - now they look like zombies, sewn together from spare parts in the guts of some huge mobile centipede lab, smell-blocking liquids dripping in slimy turquoise from their pores.

Maybe that's why the soldiers like picking on them. Maybe it's cause they're afraid of ending up like them, which is not unlikely. Maybe it's because the drones can usually hardly utter a word.

No one really knows how much consciousness is left in their slimy skulls. Some run on sentience programs, letting these meant-to-be-deceased fulfill the most basic tasks like pick up a severed arm, throw it in a bucket. Others still have functioning brains installed.

"I'd rather get liquidated to goo, than turn into one o' you!", a dolphin soldier yells at two of the drones shuffling along. "No need, you've always been a sack of shit anyway, Meyersen!", another responds to him. General laughter around the lazarus pool the group sits about, watching one of theirs receive regrowth treatment on an arm. Routine inspection is due for the night shift, and everyone waits to get treatment for their little burns and bruises, as well as the mandatory inspection for genestealing parasite wetware.

I stay in my shadowy spot between some hive egg clusters of yet unhatched aerial units, where the soldiers won’t notice me. They despise the drones because of disgust and fear - but a 31st replicant soldier would fill their hearts with terror and their minds with hate. Funny how proud we dolphins already got about shit like heritage, when we've been cooked up in some lab dish not too long ago ourselves.

It's a quiet night, otherwise. The trenches are deep, the no-man's-land as vast as it hasn't been in months, and we sit comfortably in our exo-shell bunkers. All erected in mere days, to be fought over for months whilst constantly regrown.

We're at a point of the war where all sides have exhausted a lot of their capacities, and everyone's anxiously waiting for the next technology to terrorize and maybe turn the tide completely. One of these bets being me and the rest of the 31st.

But we're only a myth for the common soldier - a whisper across battlefields, a pile of bodies here and there. Self-destruction in death helps keep us angels a secret. So, the true fear right now are the liquidation bombardments; spitting out chemicals of rapid infection which make flesh fall from bone. The Doc seemed unbothered, though - and that means at least the 31st will be immune to it soon, and this infection only for the weak. Rumors of a secret absorption gene have been rampant for ages, anyway.

The only other factor command truly thinks could change the war is security breaches. And since the frontline is stagnant, and even a regiment of supersoldiers too small a power to change it, that's the task I'm facing on this night: Checking reports of smuggling and sabotage along frontline section 80, allowed to eliminate any perpetrators per my own judgement, should command, who are constantly watching my feed, not have given me orders already - the orders always being to kill.

There is only one crime unforgivable in this nation which is just being founded, and that is to conspire with our creator-oppressors. One who deals with those who made us just to abuse us, is one who has forfeited their life - so goes the first rule of military training. It is the one guideline all the different breeds, tribes, crews, caravans, and whatnot throughout all depths and currents follow without question.

But war is a game of opportunity, and the common soldier - caught between necrodrones, specialized fighter breeds, and units with better funding - is prone to become a victim of circumstance. Thus goes the briefing, at least.

What we've seen in this part of the frontline, though, is more than poor souls deserting into lifelong servitude, or the usual black market. Enemy breaches here have been organized and too efficient. Someone is selling information to the dryskins - a mad concept, to defend your home but tell the burglars where to get in for small change. Yet, loyalty and reason fall short when it's about life and death. I suppose, at least. The concept of finality makes my head spin; I know I will always live on - not in this body, not with this mind, but with the same thoughts and memories in another incarnation.

I shake off the philosophical confusions, and focus on the task at hand: Stalking this bastard Meyersen, who'd just insulted the drones so heartily. His heckling betrays his nature, he'd do anything to get what he considers a better deal. Command has suspicions about him being a perpetrator of smuggling, and found some interesting information about his background:

An ex-miner from somewhere above luxborder, he was quick to grab the opportunity when the revolts began. He'd not even been close to any of the secret projects, so the appearance of secretly bred armadas of fighters must've seemed just as messianic to him, as to anyone else uninvolved. But he's not slow, and not too scrupulous, either.

Not only the old human owners of his mine ended up dead, he also denounced several first-gen foremen. His evidence couldn't be confirmed later on, but the times were chaotic and the revolutionary courts trigger-happy. Leading to one supposedly fine-as-can-be dolphin named Meyersen becoming the new owner of the mine - for a time until the revolution was over, but damned if he'd ever give that lucrative position up again. Well, he had to.

The recruiting process of our army (if one should call the patchwork of conspiring militias, only slowly coming to install common command that) doesn't take kindly to right about anyone, and a mine could be operated with drones after a few months of war. Leading to Meyersen being drafted, and now sitting here.

His haggling nature at least earned him a good spot in a calmer part of the frontline, but his former occupation had nevertheless cursed him to some truly dirty work: Being a sapper.

Using moles and tunneling solutions, rapid growth defensive fibers, assembling exo-shell infrastructure. You won't have much direct fighting - because you're too busy trying to build stuff while getting shot at constantly. No one envies the sappers.

And one could tell Meyersen wasn't happy in this position, at all - disowned and, with the threat of liquidators now, highly likely to die during service. The motive is there, the symptoms of suspiciously precise enemy attacks, as well - catching the bastard red-handed to get as much info on his network of scum is the only challenge, now.

I carefully save these mental notes, always ready to track my target should he move. The military psychologist provided for the 31st only has suggested we keep a steady diary, as to monitor our own state of mind. Dying repeatedly does not sit well with your psyche, and the last thing they want is one of their supersecret stealth soldiers going amok. So, here's to another round of an angel’s memories.

I'll never get used to waking up. My whole body burns, and I gain consciousness while thrashing and screaming. To no use, though - the liquidation bombardment I just witnessed, turning our fighters into sludge and slowly eating away at my cells in painful agony? Wiped away like dirt falls off the eye lenses without any remains sticking.

The dark blue of the breeding tanks splashes around me, the honey thickening around my flailing limbs in its gentle yet determined equalization of any force. I finally sink back into myself, able to stop the involuntary spasms and cramping. It's always the same with muscles fresh from the fleshpress.

The soothing blue of ocean dulls my senses, even though it's just make believe. I'm not back home. I'll never be, I was built for this damn war. I'm at least thirty kilometers deep into dry land, on board of one of the countless caterpillar trains supplying our frontline with mobile breeding stations, hospitals, and necrobionic clinics.

This small bubble of comfort, a membrane bubble just large enough to hold a synthetic fighter like me, will soon drain and reintroduce me to the world. Tests will follow, and evaluations of the precious moments before the old copy of me got snuffed out somewhere on the battlefield and a scan of that brain was transferred to this new body.

Time to check if my memory is functional. I have a thousand memories of dying. Such is the fate of me and the others in the 31st regiment, which most call “the angels”. We know more, kill more, live as often as possible since hardly any brains have been lost to irreparable damage or jammed coms. Our souls always slip back to HQ, somehow. Whether via satellite, local transmission, or the backup satchels of other soldiers, or the data crawlers spreading around our dead feet, serving as sensors of our masters.

I sense someone outside my bubble of comfort. Time for school.

The Doc grins at me differently today. Yashasan is his name, and he's a true first-gen sociopath if there ever was one. I can't really feel my face, my whole head feels heavy and numb, but I try my best at shooting a dark glance at him.

"Gabriel, my boy!", he exclaims, while his helpers drag me out of the tattered remains of the membrane bubble. Deep blue droplets from my skin stain their perfect white uniforms, only to be absorbed and disappear moments later. This feels like a half-assed try at reality.

"You did great out there, Gabriel! All that data on the workings of the liquidation ammunition is gonna save a ton of lives – from angels A to F, everyone will thank you. Damn, that must've hurt rotting alive in just half a minute!", he continues happily.

I try to speak up, but cough up lots of blue liquid first. Forgot to do the damn Heimlich. Recovering from my choking, I at least manage to press out a few shaky syllables:

"I'm not your boy. I don't care you first-gens think one has either poles or holes, I can get a dick plus some huge titties tomorrow if I fancy. So you better address me the proper way, DOCTOR."

He bursts out laughing.

"Sounds just like you, Gabriel. For a moment there, I was afraid the rot had gotten to your brain before we got the scan finished. Sorry I called you that my sweet angel, I guess my old century military training shines through!"

I growl. "Beats me why they kept a basket case fuckhead like you around. And why you're so fixated on extreme males, even when I'm a fucking flesh puppet with refractory digestion so no sniffer will ever find the stink of my shit."

He's in an unbearably good mood today, as he immediately starts laughing again. Something's definitely up.

"Well, you know I'm not one to be limited by fantasy, Gabriel. That's why they love me so much - I don't see the thing, I see what can be done with it! Maybe you should try it, next time a liquidator melts your face off."

I can finally stand up on my own, and stretch my rubbery limbs.

"Shut the fuck up with the rich asshole talk and tell me what you did to me this time", I whisper with resignation. You can't get atop this stupid bastard; he always has one more dumb line up his ass. Now, he's giggling like a small child failing at hiding a surprise it has prepared. He leads the way, fluting back at me:

"Let's get you to the ortholab and present you to the mirror, Cinderella. I'll show you who's the prettiest of them all!"

I limp after him, my feet relearning to walk slowly.

"Stop making references I don't get.", I grumble.

"No. It's too funny.", he declares and bounces around the corner into the lab. When I say he, what I really mean is a first-gen head and torso fixated on a sort of special-breed living chair with very flexible legs and lots of extra arms for instruments. Should look like an absolute menace, but he jiggles while walking like some dumb kid's show mascot.

Turning around the bend into the lab, I freeze in the doorframe and my thoughts are washed away by shock. My slender, elegant body, it's camouflage skin tainted with the purple tinge of repossession irritation, looks back at me from the mirror - tainted with a new, grizzly detail: Fangs like some ugly anglerfish instead of my usual dolphin teeth replica. Not even underneath lips, just thick bones surrounding my mouth, making the head with extra bone plates seem like a wrecking ball.

The Doc just laughs at my shocked face.

"Now, now. Don't act like you'd have modeled for Vincanni Lux or Gustav Reed next season. Remember that one time your woundfoam canal didn't open and you bled out like a rookie? Not gonna happen again with this premium smile. Obsidian-edge biters, ready to shred a piece of ass!"

He mimicks my voice with the last sentence. Eating ass is what he should've done instead of doctoring, I think. But I don't say it. Something creeps up on me; what we call a "long night's feel" out in the field.

"How am I supposed to ever function as a normal dolphin again if you're slowly turning me into a Frankenstein?"

At least one classic I know. The Doc's face goes serious at this question. He steps closer with a fatherly look:

"Look, those are questions neither you nor I should ask."

He's right and I know it. I brush off the feeling and we start with the physical exam. Time to get ready for deployment, again.

[wiki]

TL;DR
Title: The Biopunk Manifesto | Ocean-themed biopunk, post-human civilizations, hand-drawn illustrations. Link to free excerpt in the comments.

I wrote the book I always missed on the shelves (corny, I know). And I used to feel like biopunk never got the genre treatment it deserved. 

The story follows Silvius Creyman, a diplomat navigating a world on the brink of collapse, an underwater civilization producing wonders beyond imagination and a plague that speaks to people - while trying to prevent history from repeating itself. 

This book is for you, if you’re interested in:

• biopunk without any fossil fuels or metal-based technology
• sunken / underwater civilizations
• post-human species interaction (anything from curious personal encounters to large-scale war and diplomacy)

The bold title felt right for several reasons: 

I always felt biopunk is barely acknowledged as a genre, even though its influence is everywhere. I think it's because other subgenres have a clear canon and distinct aesthetics - biopunk still lacks those. So I wanted to take a shot at that.

And I never found an “all-in-one”: Living architecture, additional sensory organs, biological computers, uplifted species, competing posthuman species, give me everything! Many works focus on aspects of speculative biotech, but Biopunk has several distinct subgenres of its own (I’ll do a post on them soon). I wanted aspects/sections to honor all of them, without making the story feel stilted.

Even if all I achieve is that someone reads this and feels like they could write a better version, I have succeeded.

Cover and illustrations drawn by me, everything written and edited by me. Thanks for checking it out!