Peter shivered in the pre-dawn gloom as Cristina typed a code on the keypad next to a steel exterior door. The light above the pad turned green, and the door unlocked with an audible kerchunk. Cristina opened it and beckoned Peter to enter.
“Time to take the red pill,” the blonde remarked with a grin. “Welcome to the rabbit hole, so to speak.”
Peter nodded and walked through the door into a cavernous industrial space. Cristina closed the door behind them and headed up a flight of stairs to an elevated walkway. Peter followed. After a minute of navigating the massive space, Cristina stopped along a wall next to the start of a conveyor belt made of a synthetic mesh. It was not running.
“Well, this is where the magic begins,” she said.
“I see,” Peter replied, looking around the deserted facility. “Where are the prisoners?”
“Oh, they’ll be arriving shortly.”
A sudden roar outside got Peter’s attention.
“What’s that?”
“That’s a cargo freighter from Mars coming in for a landing. It’s carrying our raw material.”
The roar cut off. A few seconds later, the conveyor belt started up as a hatch opened in the wall. A large rectangular block of ice glided through the opening from the ship. A nude man was lying frozen inside it, facing up toward the ceiling.
“And here’s our first customer of the day,” Cristina said. “Let’s follow along, shall we?”
They walked along, keeping pace with the man in the ice block as the belt carried him into a large metal machine with a plate-glass window. The belt stopped, the machine powered up, and the inside began to glow. Peter watched as the ice melted away, leaving the naked man lying prone on the belt. It started up again, carrying him out the other end. He began to stir.
“The prisoners take a while to wake up,” Cristina explained, “so we have time to make sure they don’t.”
The belt carried the man into a clear glass machine and stopped. The device was filled with an orange gas, which dissipated ten seconds later. As the nude man exited the machine on the belt, he was perfectly still.
“Ah, much better,” Cristina said. “We wouldn’t want him wandering off. We’re not done with him yet.”
They continued following the unconscious man as he glided underneath an eight-by-four-foot light that illuminated his nude form. Peter looked on as the light switched to bright green, bathing the man in an ethereal glow.
“Observe,” said Cristina. “This part is my favorite.”
As the green light grew brighter, the man’s flesh took on a metallic sheen. Ten seconds later, the light switched off to reveal a steel figure lying on the belt.
“Whoa!” Peter exclaimed. “What just happened to him?”
“He’s been transformed into steel.”
“Solid steel?”
Cristina smiled and nodded. “Through and through. Let’s keep going.”
The belt started up again, and the pair followed the metal man along. Soon, he glided into the next machine, a large contraption with a window on the side. The inside of the machine began to glow, softly at first and then with more intensity.
Peter’s jaw dropped as the man’s metallic face started to soften. Within seconds, it had melted completely. The rest of his body soon followed as the molten steel dripped through the mesh of the conveyor belt and into a rectangular ceramic form on another belt below it. That belt began to move.
“All right, let’s continue,” said Cristina as though nothing unusual was happening.
“Umm, sure,” Peter replied, following her down a few steps to the level of the lower belt.
The molten steel glided into another machine where jets of cold water sprayed all over it, creating billowing clouds of steam. This continued for thirty seconds before the ceramic form continued down the belt.
As it reached the end, a robotic arm tipped the form sideways, allowing a human-sized steel ingot to fall onto another belt.
“And there we go!” Cristina exclaimed with a grin. “One fully processed prisoner. One of many we’ll handle today.”
“How many?”
“I’m not sure exactly, as it depends on how much material we receive, but we’ll yield a few thousand steel ingots, give or take.”
“Wow,” Peter replied as another chunk of steel dropped onto the belt next to him. “And where do the ingots go from here?”
“They’re loaded onto a train and taken to another facility where they’re reforged into steel beams. Our bio-steel is considered a premium building material. Demand is high, so we’re requesting more raw material from the prison system for our factory.”
“Incredible,” Peter replied, shaking his head. “We thought the prisoners were helping with the steel production.”
“Well, they are, but not in the way you expected. They’re the input to our BioForge processing line.”
“BioForge?”
Cristina rolled her eyes. “Please don’t tell me I need to explain the name. Anyway, our company is called TFO Construction. That’s short for TransFormed Only, in case you were wondering. TFO specializes in biologically sourced building materials for all their projects, from simple landscaping to an entire estate or office building.”
“Wait a sec. You turn people into other stuff, too?”
“Yes, we can transmute them into stone, wood, glass, concrete, and all types of metals. Whether you need a dozen people for a small garden or tens of thousands for an office tower, TFO Construction can make it happen!”
Peter started sweating. “What am I going to tell the prison board?”
Cristina shrugged. “They already know about all of this. They sent you here to see how you’d react. They do this to all the new board members. So, what do you think?”
“What do I think?! It’s barbaric! I can’t believe anyone would condone such a—”
Peter stopped suddenly when Cristina sprayed an anesthetic in his face. He wobbled and then crumpled to the floor unconscious. Cristina slipped the spray bottle back in her coat pocket.
“I figured you’d say something like that.”
Peter awoke to find himself staring at the ceiling. He was also moving. He tried to sit up, but his body failed to respond.
“I administered a paralytic agent before you woke up,” said Cristina. “Nothing left to do but enjoy the process.”
Peter felt a chill and realized he was naked. He instinctively tried to cover himself, but his hands just lay limply on the belt.
The belt? Oh, shit! I’m on the belt! She’s gonna melt me!
The belt carried Peter beneath a large light and stopped. The light switched on, glowing a bright green. Peter’s flesh began to tingle and harden.
Fuck! I’m being converted into steel! This is not happening. It can’t be happening.
“Well, this is where we part ways, my friend,” Cristina said with a smile. “Enjoy your new life as a building material. Ciao, baby!”
She walked away as Peter’s nude body continued to solidify.
Shit! I gotta get out of here! I can’t let her turn me into…
Peter trailed off as his body fully converted into metal and then continued down the belt. A minute later, after being melted and reformed, the steel ingot that used to be Peter was loaded onto a train and carried away with hundreds of others, destined to be reforged into steel beams for the construction of TFO’s twelfth production facility. To say the biologically sourced building materials business was booming would be an understatement.
Meanwhile, Cristina returned to her office overlooking the factory floor and placed a call.
“Yes, it’s Cristina Gallegos at TFO7. Mhmm, it’s done. He’s on the train as we speak. You owe me a hundred bucks, by the way. He freaked the fuck out, just like I predicted. Oh? A special assignment, eh? Well, that’s some mysterious shit. Yeah, of course, I’ll do it. Right, HQ in a week. Yeah, see you soon, boss.”
She set down the phone and grinned.
“I can’t fucking wait to find out what that shit’s about! In the meantime, I’ll just keep turning naked dudes into steel ingots. Somebody’s gotta do the fun stuff, right?”
Copyright 2025 Olivia Zoe Quinn
Photo by yasin hemmati on Unsplash
Story notes
This story arose from a discussion in the comments of “Midnight at the BodyWerks” back in December. I had an unfinished draft lying around from a couple of years ago, one thing led to another, and (finally) here’s a finished story—the first of several in a new series about transforming people into various building materials.
If you’re planning a home improvement project, I’d be happy to get you in touch with TFO Construction. They do excellent work!
Article Tags: Male · Melted · Metal · Nudity · Sci-Fi · Statue
