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Cellulose & Steel	By : Not-Taylor Category: Misc Books > FemmeSlash Views: 1028 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own HDG or its characters and I don't make money from this work.

Chapter List
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Song’s thoughts are interrupted by yet another visitor who knocks and immediately enters. Why don’t they just install a chime that goes off when somebody presses the door button instead of that? Weeds and their machinations are a plague on the universe.
The xeno who enters now is It’heela, the fake mechanic. She looks a little sad. Is she going to pretend that she’s unhappy Song’s leaving? She really hopes the weed isn’t going to do that. It’s so annoying, and Verda wants to get out of here too, doesn’t she? At least she’ll be on the same side as Song for a change. There’s no apron this time, so It’heela must’ve gotten bored of the cosplay.
“Hello to both of you. How is my… patient?”
“I’m back to normal and perfectly healthy.”
‘Really?”
“Beep.” That was Verda. Did she really… She did, and she finishes her thought with a short series of output noises. This isn’t good at all.
“Verda, maybe you should tell her in a different language.”
The affini blinks a few times and repeats herself. “As I was saying, I believe the issues my floret now faces are best dealt with in a safe and familiar environment. From what I’ve seen, especially when my floret was exercising yesterday, everything medical seems to be in proper form.”
“Oh. Good.” It’heela looks very confused, but in fact that’s what Verda had said.
“So can I go now?”
“Not yet. I’d like to check you over myself, since that’s why I’m here. It shouldn’t take long.”
It did take long. She seemed to be overly focused on every possible detail, and checking in the slowest way possible. She paused between sentences and gave Verda many thoughtful looks, filling in what must have been pages and pages of a digital form. Fortunately, the end of the examination brought her release of both captives. Song guesses there’s a lot of red tape involved in such things in unfree societies.
Verda shoves one of her vines under the bed, extracting the tablet that had been lying there since whenever Song had dropped it, and stuck it into the leaves around her core. Those leaves shouldn’t be too hard to burn, Song estimates. She wonders if it’s finally time to go home.
“All right, you can go now. I don’t feel good about letting you go with your memory still fragmented, but since you both insist you’re fine, I suppose that must be the case. Your mistress is the one to determine your treatment. If you have any issues, I’ll be here with the rest of the hospital team.”
“Thank you for the offer. Will we need to check out?”
“No, I’ll take care of that. It’s just one button press in my report. I hope both of you stay well.”
The affini pivots on her large green heel and exits, gesturing at nobody as the door closes behind her. Song and Verda are left alone, with seemingly nothing to pack. Since Song no longer owns anything and Verda has both their tablets, there’s nothing left here. Song really hopes she won’t change her mind.
“There’s one thing we have to do before we leave, and before that I suggest you put these on,” Verda says, holding up a pair of shoes. They look like sneakers, but not. Song isn’t sure how the plants could’ve messed up something so common on Terra. It’s something about the contour of the tongue…
“Unless you’d rather spend more time here, pet?” That makes the choice easy.
“Oh. Fine.” Song puts on the shoes, which fit better than she expected them to. Perfect for running away from volatile vegetables in.
“Now, if you’re feeling up to it, I’d like you to try something for me.”
“No.”
“Then we’ll stay until you’re ready.”
“...”
“I didn’t think so. Close your eyes.” Song complies and is lifted and transported a short distance, to somewhere else in the room.
“Open.”
It’s the closed curtain. What’s the point of this?
“When you’re ready, open the curtains, darling. Take as long as you need to, since it won’t keep us here longer than refusing will.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“We can stand here as long as it takes. I mean that. Don’t rush, and talk to me if there’s anything wrong. You shouldn’t hurt yourself.”
Song doesn’t want to open the curtain. It feels sick. What’s out there? What perversions and horrors must they have planted? Is it proof this is a simulation and it’s trapped in hell? How could it be worse? It has to be strong and learn the truth. Verda would never respect it otherwise. It can’t actually be dangerous, can it? She’d never allow it to actually be harmed by looking at something. That’s silly. And how can looking at something outside hurt? What’s the worst it could be? Gore? Affini fetish porn? It’s sure it’s seen worse than anything they’d think to use against it. Song braces itself and pulls open the curtains while keeping its eyes tightly shut.
It wants to die. Why? It can’t even see anything. After a deep breath it opens its eyes while using the curtains to keep itself upright. That’s just a garden. It’s not even a very interesting one. There’s a fountain, and a bunch of random xenoflora, but not much else. There’s a big bench clearly meant for multiple affini. That’s the terror. It still feels just a bit sick…
Song breathes. Breathing is a biological function. Even plants need to breathe. Plants are like bugs and breathe through their skin, which is really weird to think about, but isn’t unnatural somehow. Song, not being a spaceship or a weed or a bug, is breathing in the human way, through its bow respiratory cavities. That’s what they’re for. Breathing is good and healthy. Why was this so scary?
“How do you feel?”
“I’m fine. Why did you make me look at the garden?”
“It certainly seemed to upset you before. Do you remember why that might be?”
“Not at all.”
“Hm. I suppose that’s all right. Try to remember.”
“A green diamond. A line pointing to the top right and bottom left. Buttermilk. Does that mean anything or am I making things up because you asked me to?”
“I don’t know, pet. If you’re feeling well enough to look outside, I suppose there’s no reason for us to stay. Come.”
She holds out a leash and collar, the same set they used before. Song doesn’t want to “come” or “sit” or “heel.” It wants to go home, and not to Verda’s home. Right now, it’s trapped. There’s literally nowhere to go.
“Until you come, we’re going to be staying here. You did try to run away again last night, so how am I to trust you now?”
“Truth is a virtue.”
“If I trust you and don’t put you on a leash, will you try to run away again?”
“...”
“I thought so. That’s why you’re not being trusted. Now, when you’re ready to leave, pet.”
There really aren’t any other options, are there? Song knows Verda means it, and it knows it can’t get past her even if she’s distracted. It knows also that she’ll just start texting people if she gets bored, and she’ll last much longer that way than Song will without texting anyone
Verda stands silently, holding up the collar on one of her tendrils. She’s swaying quietly as she watches her prisoner through absent eyes. Perhaps she can be distracted and they can skip the ownership routine.
“You beeped earlier.”
“Did I?”
“When the other one was here. You were speaking Intercom. That isn’t a healthy sign.”
“You don’t need to worry about my health, pet. I’ll look after myself. It’s still sweet that you do.”
“I’m not worrying about you. You’re not fit to care for me with sensory withdrawal.”
“But I am! All the better to relate to you with, my dear. In fact, I can even see what you’re trying to do right now.”
“What’s that?”
She replies with an error tone that can’t be mistaken.
“You don’t think anyone’s going to notice that?”
“It was intentional, and you understood me perfectly, didn’t you?”
“Of course, but that’s because I’m sick too.”
"Is it sickness to understand one’s mistress?”
"It's sickness to believe you can own another person.”
“But I own a floret. It’s quite different.”
“Inventing a new word doesn’t absolve you of your actions.”
“You call yourself a rebel instead of a terrorist.”
“Resisting an invading power isn’t terrorism. Nobody thinks otherwise.”
“You’d be surprised, pet.”
Neither speaks for several minutes.
“You’d feel better if you plugged yourself back in.”
“I’m aware of that, but I have no intention of resetting my recovery. We’re going home, and we’re going to have a restful and quiet day without any drama or happenings or kidnappings. Am I clear?”
“Take that up with the universe, not me.”
“I suppose you’re ensuring nothing bad will happen by remaining where you stand. That’s all right. You’ll go to sleep eventually. When you do, we’ll depart.”
Song hadn’t thought of that. She can do that, can’t she? Do affini sleep? Wait, no, they do, but apparently they can stay up for days at a time without much in the way of negative consequences. That doesn’t seem fair, somehow.
“No.”
“No?” Verda laughs. “ Really? You’re going to try that? If I’m forced to carry you away because you’ve been so stubborn that you fall asleep where you stand, I’m going to have no choice about scheduling your implantation for as soon as possible after then. I can’t have you wasting a hospital room, my time and patience, and your life and happiness, just because you want to be difficult. You’ve already gone beyond what most mistresses would tolerate.”
“You’re going to have me implanted anyway!”
“That’s true, but not for a while. I wanted to wait until you were more stable, but it seems you’d rather force my vines. The choice is yours, darling. You have a couple of days to think it over, I expect.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course. Why would I lie to my adorable pet?”
This isn’t going anywhere. It’s not sure what it expected when it refused to obey. Maybe it expected something more cinematic than a vegetate-off. Verda isn’t going anywhere. She probably doesn’t need to eat, and if she needs to sleep she isn’t going to. Song does need those things, and other things besides. It’s time to enact Operation Greater Good early. If it were religious it would be saying prayers right now.
As Song moves to cross over the bed, its captor extends several vines to block it. They’re thick, but very soft. It spends a fraction of a second longer than it should against them. Verda firmly shoves it back to the small area where it had been standing.
“No. You’re not leaving without a collar. Not even to go to the bathroom. I may not know what schemes you’ve been working on, but I know that I don’t want you to execute them. Your scheming face is very obvious, pet.”
“I wasn’t scheming.”
“Then what were you doing? And why do you need to go over there both so badly it can’t wait and not badly enough to simply behave?”
“It’s… personal.”
“Of course.”
They stare at each other a while longer, occasionally flinching and shivering. This is bad for Verda as well, but she seems determined. She probably believes she’s doing the right thing and protecting her floret from itself, or something. Weeds are insane. You never know what lies they’ve tricked themselves into believing. She probably thinks Song is just being stubborn for the sake of it. Song snorts.
How much longer will it have to spend trapped with these xenos? There should be a rescue operation now. They have to have been lying about the end of the Resistance. That ceremony had to have been fake, just to intimidate Song and make it think it had to give up. How can it just… let Verda put a collar on it?
She hasn’t asked before. She’s done that without waiting for compliance. This is new. It’s different. Song doesn’t like it. It looks at her fake eyes. She’s replicating the expression of caring. She doesn’t care. She can’t, She’s a xeno! She can’t care or love or empathize. Those things are what it means to be human! If humanity doesn’t have that… what does it have?
Can a plant really want somebody to be happy? It makes no sense. It’s absurd. A plant can’t feel things. That’s what makes it a plant, along with photosynthesis and a rigid cell structure. Of course it can’t. So this can’t be malice derived from a grudge. Verda probably does just want to go home. Song’s preventing that. That isn’t its fault! Verda should stop demanding things if she wants to leave! She’s the one keeping them here.
The serene plant woman sways gently where she’s placed herself, directly in Song’s path. Her vines spread across the bed are bracing her, helping her stay up when withdrawal strikes. If she were going to collapse or give up, she’d have done it already. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. There’s no point any more. Song’s mission will still be here later. Being collared isn’t going to stop it from fighting for Terra. They can go now.
Song takes a single step toward Verda, who smiles and slips the collar around its neck. She deliberately draws out the length of the leash to show how long it is and how far Song can be before it’s taut. She eyes it to check for something and turns toward the door.
“Good floret. Let’s go home.”
Song refrains from reminding Verda that it isn’t her floret in the spirit of getting out of here as quickly as possible. The elevator beeps in a friendly way when they enter and exit. Verda does a bad job of hiding that she wants to beep back, but nobody else is likely to have noticed that. The reception area of the hospital is very cheerful. A few florets and affini are positioned in a sort of waiting room with hotel lobby style furnishings. Evlen had neglected to include it in his tour. Song will have to hold him accountable for that.
The journey h- to Verda’s place is uneventful. They seem to have been one deck lower than they were before, so the ride in the big elevator isn’t very long or interesting. Song doesn’t feel up to thinking about splattering itself on the roof, not that that could happen when they’re going up. They don’t see any interesting xenos either. It was hoping to see a talking unicorn or something, at least. The tram ride is also short, but they have to walk several minutes before they arrive.
After those minutes, Song notices that they aren’t anywhere near their destination. It doesn’t recognize any of the buildings. The architecture looks right, but they’re clearly somewhere new. It doesn’t have the patience for this kind of thing any more.
“Where are we going? Did you lie about the implant?”
“No, pet. I haven’t lied to you. We’re making a little detour on the way home. If you’re that eager to be alone with me, I suppose we can skip it…”
“But all I asked was where we were going.”
“You accused me of lying, which I haven’t. You’ll see where we’re going once we arrive.”
“But then I wouldn’t see where we were going, I’d see where we’d gotten.”
“I suppose that’s true. I’ll point it out when I see it. Is that better?”
“...”
The affini ruffles Song’s hair in a peculiar way that doesn’t make it look untamed. It reminds itself that such sensations are vile and it should feel disgusting for having been touched in such a manner. There’s nothing it could’ve done to prevent the indignity, however.
As Song starts to get tired, they reach a garishly colored building that screams that it was designed for florets, Affini writing or not. It’s actually an old fashioned ice cream parlor, so the palette isn’t that horrible. It looks like old photographs, with swoopy trim and large windows. A bell chimes as they enter, causing them both to tense momentarily.
An affini soda jerk waves at them and points to a sign that tells them, in Affini and a few other languages, to find a seat after ordering. Rather than talk to the plant thing in a paper hat (is that like a fur coat for weeds?), Verda goes to a compiler and presses some buttons. The case has a happy rainbow and sparkles all over it.
After it hums and buzzes, the compiler beeps, signaling that its task is done. It created two banana splits. Fascinating. Song wonders whether Verda knew what those were before she ordered them. It doesn’t have much time to think about that before pressure on its neck forces it to sit down with the weed on the other end of the leash.
“I thought you could use a treat, since you’ve been through a lot in the last week. You don’t mind ice cream, do you?”
“No.”
The pink, black, and white spheres between a pair of bent… yellowish stick things… under a blanket of foam and black ooze is strangely appealing. The cherry on top makes the image of a “classic” dessert. This is the sort of cultural nonsense the weeds pick up on because they base their studies on history and formal media rather than actually observing people. Sad!
Verda rewards Song’s ongoing good behavior by giving it a metal spoon with which to eat its ice cream. It doesn’t refuse and starts to enjoy the variety of tastes. She probably thinks this is going to dredge up fond childhood memories, but it doesn’t. It’s just ice cream, even if it’s delicious.
“I’ve been thinking.”
Song forces itself not to say “that’s a nice change.”
“There might be another way to treat your sensor dysphoria. Would you be interested in that?”
“I already told It’heela I didn’t want to be a guinea pig.”
“Of course you don’t. This isn’t the same thing at all. I’m not trying to medicate your feelings away. We have a virtual reality chamber on our deck. Would you be willing to at least test it out to see if it helped a little? That way we would know what specifically causes the issue: whether it’s some sort of sensory deprivation or whether there’s something else to it.”
“It’s deprivation.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind proving that, so that I can see about having a white noise generator created for your data intake.”
“But-”
“You’re rejecting an offer of making the pain go away?”
“That’s wrong! You can’t just… give me fake senses and pretend it’s fine! It won’t work. It’s… disgusting. Of all people, you should know better.’
“What if we discussed the conclusions I drew before acting on them? You could take a short simulated trip somewhere and compare it with a short simulated walk in a human body.”
“I won’t let you upload my consciousness to turn my body into a battery, weed.”
“That’s isn’t something I would contemplate. If we were going to do that, it would’ve happened as soon as you cried in front of me because of your pain. That’s the entire reason we boarded Ides of November, if you recall. We’ll spend the afternoon testing and recording your commentary and I won’t force any related treatments on you. I don’t know if anything useful will come of it. Is that acceptable?”
“Why are you asking permission?”
“Because without your cooperation the tests would be useless. This is to make your life easier, pet.”
“What about yours?”
“That’s a fortunate consequence. It’s much more difficult to connect me to a computer than it is you.”
“Oh.”
“We can still go play virtual reality games if you don’t want to.”
“What games are there?”
“More things than you could come up with before we got there, I’m sure. Every era of human history is accounted for in several different scenarios and several viewpoints in each scenario. Then there are the simulations of other societies, and the games and sports…”
“I guess we could go, if you’re willing to stop if it hurts.”
“Of course. I’m glad you’re willing to try this. How do you feel about tomorrow?”
Song shrugs. It has no feelings about any day.
“Good. I’ve gotten a friend to script the ship’s computer to emulate enough of a data stream to replicate your old ship’s functions. Bypassing the normal restrictions to accommodate your abilities and the enhanced processing you’re used to should have been an entertaining challenge.”
“Your friend did that for fun?”
“Fun, and to help me and help you.”
“Is that what you’ve been messaging so much about?”
“That’s one of the things. The rest may or may not be a surprise.”
Verda smiles and goes back to eating her split. Wait, she’s eating that? Affini eat ice cream? That’s an oddly specific diet. Berries and ice cream… She’s probably found a way to eat Terran food. Of course. Song wouldn’t mind knowing what they ate by themselves. Maybe it can find a textbook somewhere if Verda leaves her tablet unattended…
Noticing the melting of the food, Song finishes its snack quickly as well. It’s not able to appreciate it properly because breakfast was filling, but it doesn’t mind. Song isn’t the type to reject this sort of thing, even if it’s aware it’s being bribed. It has no objections for the time being. It could shoot virtual skeet or something, at the VR cafe, if that’s what they call it. That could be interesting. Maybe it could try fencing. It just has to try a little of the weed’s attempted sabotage. Song forces itself not to think about how badly that could go.
When the pair have finished, they leave the dishes on the table because Verda claims an automated system will take care of them. It isn’t Song’s problem so it doesn’t object. They take a couple of tram stops to get back to familiar surroundings, and arrive around what appears to be noon. The little house doesn’t look very different, which it shouldn’t after just a few days. Verda is clearly very happy to be home and spreads herself out in one of her extra large chairs as soon as they’re through the door.
Song spreads itself on the couch, happy to be somewhere that doesn’t feel cramped. The day feels long already, even if it isn’t far into the afternoon. Simply being in that hospital was exhausting, and it knows Verda felt the same way about it. Even if this place isn’t home, it’s nice to be here. Maybe it’s the more terrestrial air or the open architecture, or it might just be the occasional chirp from the park outside. There’s not much for Song to do, so it lets itself take a nap. With the way it sees Verda’s tendrils moving, it doesn’t think she’ll be bothering it for a while.
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Cellulose & Steel