Flesh/Compressed

Monica Vasquez peeled open the NutriCompress™ packet, watching the single gray pill tumble into her palm. Compressed breakfast - 1,200 calories, perfectly balanced macros, compressed down to the size of an aspirin.

“Tastes like a full English,” her roommate Keiko promised. “Just let it decompress on your tongue.”

Monica placed it in her mouth. The sensation hit immediately - not taste but presence. Eggs materialized across her taste buds in quantum bursts, the ghost of bacon fat coating her throat. Her stomach received signals of fullness from food that existed more as probability than substance.

“Fuck,” she gasped. The experience was overwhelming - like deep-throating breakfast itself.

“Gets you high the first few times,” Keiko grinned. “Compression releases endorphins. Some people get addicted to the sensation.”

Monica’s body couldn’t decide if it was hungry or sated. The compressed nutrients hit her bloodstream in waves, each decompression a tiny explosion of sensation. Her nipples hardened as phantom coffee flooded her system - the caffeine arriving all at once instead of sipped over minutes.

“I can feel every individual nutrient,” she moaned. “The vitamins are... dancing?”

“Wait till you try CompressSex,” Keiko suggested. “Entire orgasms compressed into pills. Pop one and experience three hours of fucking in thirty seconds.”

Monica stumbled to the couch, her body processing breakfast at quantum speeds. This was wrong. Food should take time, should involve chewing, swallowing, digesting. Instead, her stomach performed calculations, extracting nutrition from mathematics.

“My grandmother cooked,” Monica mumbled. “Real food. Took hours.”

“Hours nobody has anymore,” Keiko countered, dry-swallowing her own pill. Her eyes rolled back as compressed juice detonated across her palate. “Oh fuck, they added mango to the Tuesday blend.”

Monica felt the metallic aftertaste building - the signature of compressed consumption. Everything left the same copper penny finish, whether it was breakfast or orgasms or the compressed air they breathed in the metro. The taste of efficiency.

“I’m wet,” Monica realized. “From breakfast. That’s not... that’s not normal.”

“Nothing’s normal anymore,” Keiko said, already reaching for her lunch pill. “Normal got compressed out of existence. Now shut up and let me eat this burger in pill form. I want to feel the pickle hit.”

Monica watched her roommate’s face contort in pleasure-disgust as compressed sensations flooded her system. This was eating in 2125 - not sustenance but sensation, compressed down until the experience became more real than reality.

Her stomach gurgled, processing mathematics into flesh.

She missed chewing.