Chapter 19: World Within

Belle had waited a day to announce her idea. She needed that time to prepare, as it required modifications to much of the inside of her body. It was her largest ‘personal project’ yet. She also had some growing to do: another 20 miles to be precise: putting her at around 70 miles tall. Enough that almost any city would fit square under one foot.

So, the morning after she conquered Japan, she was standing outside Paris. That was the city considered the center of her European presence over a week into the invasion, after all. It was the most populated both with her own troops and the conquered citizens of the surrounding areas.

She had told her forces the day before that she wanted as much of them back within the city on her body as possible, especially the high ranking officers. She did this under the guise of wanting them to get even more accustomed to living inside her, which was technically true, although even knowing the full extent of her plan, they were in no position to resist.

Belle looked down, smile on her face as she zoomed in her vision to the city at her toes. She addressed them aloud and over every radio channel in range. All homes had speakers equipped to hear their god’s words. That was one of the first things her forces helped setup during occupation. Her forces listened via the speakers within the buildings inside the hoops on her limbs and the few buildings atop her shoulders as well.

“Good morning my loyal subjects. It is I, your divine and gracious god. My plans for control over all humanity are progressing well, and I’ll be invading Australia, Africa, and the other left over countries soon enough to wrap things up.”

Cheers erupted in the city from her more ‘enthusiastic’ and faithful subjects. She smiled.

“But, I got to thinking. What kind of god rules a world while on it? A true god should instead *be* a world unto herself!”

As she spoke, minibots began to swarm the city and buildings attached to her body. Her form was essentially ‘reabsorbing’ all she had made. Holes in her body formed for the buildings she wished to keep to be drawn inside. The hoops on her limbs shrunk back into her. Everyone on her was being taken inside her with a chorus of surprised screaming. Only the most devout seemed happy about this development.

“The future of humanity is within me, and the future of me is not being constrained on one big rock of a world. This planet isn’t my home, it’s my future food. The old model isn’t just foolish and unworthy of my being, it’s wasteful too. Why let cities exist outside me, when I could breakdown all those buildings to make myself bigger? Why have a planet at all, when its mass can be mine?”

Belle bent down towards Paris, which began to scream in near unison. As her hands touched it, minibots escaped her body to help prepare everyone for a safer journey to her mouth. She wanted them alive.

“Of course, I also thought about humanity in general. Humans have value, all of them, but for some, that value is simply serving as my meal. For many, the most they can hope for is being turned into the clear oil compound which keeps my body shiny, clean, and smooth. Do not worry though, as those who are worthy will live on--inside me. The rest will have the high honor of giving their lives to me.”

She brought Paris up to her mouth.

“Thank you for your service everyone, and welcome to a new world.”

She stuffed the city into her mouth and swallowed.

The people of Paris were the first to experience Belle’s new way of ingesting people. Upon being swallowed, they were brought to her throat, which now had many branching paths. Inorganic matter was sorted out right away and sent to her stomach, but the people were all clumped up. They rested on a sealed metal floor, thousands of feet in radius, while minibots swarmed.

Belle had sensed gained the ability to see through all her minibots at once. They skittered past every person, pinching them as they took blood samples for testing purposes. Even they had evolved: they were part of Belle, of course, not distinct so much as extensions of her will and desires.

Those in engineering and science outfits were taking to one chute, where a pipe carried them off. Others who were fit, typically already clad in military uniform, were pushed by shifting metal to other chutes, which lead to other series of pipes for further sorting. The especially beautiful and handsome were also separated. Swarms of minibots helped to usher them, willing or no, to chutes which sorted them based on the appeal and quality of physical characteristics--according to Belle’s aesthetic tastes. Her tastes were diverse though, varied, but generally boiled down to having an appealing body with symmetrical facial features.

There was a lot of sorting done on the journey to her body, but for all of it the vast majority of those she had swallowed stayed where they were. When at last everyone else was sorted, that primary group had the ground fall under them. They plummeted down Belle’s main throat all the way to her stomach. They were the unremarkable, the less important. In her mind, they were better off being cooked alive and picked apart by her digestive system for useful bits of matter to repurpose.

They were more valuable as additional mass or even lubricant than as living, breathing people to their divine brass mistress. The realization almost invariably hit them at the moment digestive processes really started to scald them.

Belle spent about a week carefully devouring and taking in the cities she had conquered. She walked east from Europe back to Asia, then crossed the Pacific over to the Americas and devoured her first conquered landscape without a hint of guilt, even as she sorted the vast majority of its population into her stomach.

Her plan was to grow, evolve, and only after “integrating” what was left of her already conquered cities would she take on the last few countries that resisted her rule.

As she grew, so too did her insides, which people could see up close for the first time. She had illuminated every cavity of her body in preparation for this plan, so the future of humanity could see inside their new world. They could see alright, and most would choose to describe her interiors as “overwhelming”.

Gears the size of buildings spun all around the metal cities she had molded within her body. There were all sorts of pipes crisscrossing every which way. It was orderly, elegant, but extremely complex. Her body was far and away the most advanced and confusing steamtech the moment it was put together in the Voxhaben Complex, but since then it had only further evolved in complexity. Her insides were labyrinthine to many.

That was all well and good to Belle though. If she needed to move people around, her minibots would take them on a tide of of their millions-strong mass. There were also pipes for transport, which propelled humans from one part of her body to another at speeds *just* slow enough that the people didn’t die from the raw forces of movement. It still left many thinking their insides would launch right out of their throats, even though they never did.

The people lived in cities of Brass, walking on the smooth metal grounds of her inner cavities. Complicate gyroscopic mechanisms kept them from bouncing as she walked, or if she saw fit to sit down or even lay on her side. It didn’t, however, prevent some vibrations from reaching them. The buildings were made by her, and thus resistant, but it meant for bumpy walks down between the various looming brass and blocky spires.

Of course, there was plenty of work to be done. Belle still expected the military to undergo their fitness and training regimes, even as she had proclaimed to taken over the rest of the planet by her self.

Every now and then engineers and scientists were taken to parts of her body to fix issues. She could of course do it herself with minibots, which she often did, so there was almost always a catch when she made humans do that kind of work.

One time, one of the steam pipes in her body had a bit of an issue as an associated valve which was supposed to turn on its own had gotten stuck. It needed manual hands to turn it once so it could start again. She ordered some engineers to turn the massive valve, which they did, at which point hot steam rushed forth from the freshly opened ‘hanger’ on the pipe, burning them to crisps and filling much of that entire cavity with deadly steam.

She had not wanted to send the minibots for that task, as that much concentrated, super-hot steam might affect their integrity. The number of minibots she would have to send to fix it, put at risk, would be more than the value of the humans themselves in matter. That is, it would potentially destroy more minibots to fix the issue than would be able to be produced by simply melting the human crew down. So, it made sense to have people fix thee issues and pay with their lives for it.

Their remains were collected and processed by Belle’s body regardless.

Another time, some gears near her stomach region were jammed. Fixing this was a high priority, and she sent some of the handiest people in her body to go fix it. The issue was a long rod of bronze stuck in one of the cogs. It had fallen from another complex bit of machinery above, which her minibots had since fixed.

The engineers managed to get the rod out, and Belle thanked them over radio before promptly shoving them into the gears via some nearby pneumatic ‘arms’. The people screamed as the cogs ground them to a fine, slick paste.

She did this because once the gears were moving again, they needed to be lubricated as soon as possible to avoid risk of further damage. Once again, the value the minibots expended to fix the issue would be more than making humans do it. At least, that was the case when she realized their liquefied bodies would make a fine and fitting lubricate for the gears.

By far, the hardest work was to be had in her mechanical snatch. Her crotch was were the people she found most beautiful lived, via cities close to her womanhood. They all had shifts, going on 24 hours, which essentially involved stimulating Belle night and day.

They wandered the slick, moving tunnel that was Belle’s cunt, throwing themselves into the walls amid a steamy atmosphere under the watchful eyes of her minibots. She had since lowered the temperature in the region to be far more hospital since her earlier sessions of stimulation, but that didn’t mean it was a safe place to be.

Indeed, it was the most dangerous by far, as her orgasms still sent scalding hot fluids everywhere, threatening to gush the workers right out of her body if they were too close to her slit, and unable to grab any of the minute handholds molded into her vaginal walls in time.

There was one moment, while feasting on her cities, that a gear was under-performing in her pussy region. Fixing it became a top priority, and cost over one thousand engineers their lives as she moved them over to the region, practically throwing them at the issue until it was remedied. The issue never actually hindered her enjoyment during those times, but the mere threat that it could meant she was willing to sacrifice hundreds of lives of humanity’s brightest.

That’s cause she knew they didn’t matter all that much. The brightest mind wasn’t even one hundredth of hers in intellect. The strongest human couldn’t lift her finger even if they were multiplied thousands of times over. The best airship pilots couldn’t do more damage than she could with but a wiggle of her toe.

Indeed, when Belle had finished ‘integrating’ the last already-conquered city in her surface empire into her body, she stood hundreds of miles tall. Her head was technically in space. She was simply better than any human in every sense of the world. She was very, very much beyond them.

And so, when she at last swallowed New York City, the last city that was left, she announced over her internal speakers the good news: that it was time to take over and take in the last remaining countries on Earth.