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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
- 48
- 49
- 50
After about the same number of button presses as anything seems to take, the compiler beeps out its victory over the challenge of making a salad. This one has dried fruits that look a lot like raisins but taste slightly sour, as well as a bunch of crunchy vegetables that the pilot is certain ought to be familiar but aren’t. All of that is dressed in something kind of like thousand island but lighter. It’s not bad at all. It finishes the whole thing easily.
Smirking with unwonted satisfaction, since she didn’t actually cook lunch, Verda starts gathering herself in a way that indicates her readiness to depart. There’s no reason to delay. Probably. Is there a way that that could be used to hamper the Affini subjugation efforts? Probably not.
Eager to leave before Verda remembers that it should be wearing a leash, it thrusts toward the ceiling, since that’s the quickest way around the chair behind and below it. Nothing happens. It beeps the appropriate error code, which the plant in front doesn’t understand. Right… It remembers that it needs to take gravity into account. Going around the chair is much more successful and doesn’t carry the risk of toppling onto the floor.
The shoes it wore yesterday are where it left them, by the door. They’re still as strange looking as they had been, but it has bigger issues to worry about than that. The leash is coming soon. Maybe Verda will remember it doesn’t need one and leave it alone. Maybe she’ll skip it. Maybe she won’t notice if it walks next to her. Wait… that’s what she wants to happen! That will be nothing but a ploy to get her to trust it so it can escape… in broad artificial daylight. Anyway, the fact it’s smart enough to think of that is why she’s putting it on a leash.
Click.
The leash went on while it was standing there thinking. Of course it did. The pilot sighs.
“Don’t be so dramatic. I know you know how to follow directions. We don’t have any transit exchanges today, so you’ll have plenty of time to think on the way. Come along, pet.”
“I’m not your pet.” It doesn’t even have to think about responding that way any more.
“Would you like to talk about that, or would you like a chance for analysis of our computational technology?”
The manipulation isn’t hidden whatsoever, but it does work. Seeing what they’re capable of in a frivolous context would give a lot of insights into their attitudes toward synthetic persons. Not that it’s one of those, but still. Verda said something about AI doing things for the Affini, didn’t she? VR and AI aren’t the same, but they’re awfully close, especially in data rendering systems.
A faint pressure well short of a tug or even a pull draws it back to the present, in which it’s being led on a leash by a gigantic weed to an unknown destination to be fed false sensory data for the purpose of causing it to reject its nature. That’s not going to go well for them. Has anyone tried to hack one of their ships from the inside of a virtual reality chamber? That’s something to check for.
Aside from an affini playing with a Terran floret in a way that comes across as confusingly sexual, there’s not much of note on the ride to wherever they’re going. Not looking at the pair is difficult. The floret- prisoner is being squeezed tightly while her warden is flicking her neck with tiny tendrils. They don’t seem to care that much about privacy, and its assessment couldn’t be accurate, so… No, there’s no mistaking what kind of moans those are. The ship feels extremely ill after becoming aware of the degree of degeneracy and perversion openly displayed, but it can’t throw up any more. The weeds have taken away even that dignity, if the ability to express extreme disgust can be called that.
Eventually it looks out the window, hoping to find anything at all that can distract it from the excessively audible things happening close by. Actually… that’s another affini with a slave, this time having an inane fight about who’s cuter between them. That won’t do to focus on either.
Why do the weeds do those things? It’s a disgrace to themselves and their florets. Back over the xeno world, Verda had said that florethood was an elevated status. How could they degrade those they claimed to care so much for? For all her wickedness, at least Verda never did that sort of thing. She’s… actually one of the nicer plants, going by how everyone around them seems to have turned out. That isn’t to say that her plans aren’t for that to happen eventually, but it’s obligated by respect for the truth to acknowledge that she could be a whole lot meaner than she is.
Then again, didn’t she try to change its sexual orientation? No, not try… She did it accidentally. How do you even do that by accident? Even if it doesn’t mind, it certainly wouldn’t have agreed to that. But maybe it really is a natural consequence of the bodily adjustments that have been happening. It’s been called a bigot more than once for wanting the rest of the effects. They were right, weren’t they? After all that, those narcissistic Neville Chaimberlains weren’t wrong. If its brain hadn’t been fully scrambled by literal years hooked up to a starship’s computer, they would be. For normal people who weren’t abominations, they would be. But now, it’s agreeing to reduce the lesbians in the universe for personal validation.
Being an abomination isn’t something easy to get used to, but once you’re there, cross classing is simple. It never would’ve called itself one before. If nothing else, Ginger never would’ve tolerated that. Now… maybe the psychopaths who made that media floret scared enough to think the Affini might not be the villains of the Human Tragedy weren’t so wrong… Normal people don’t want to have hyperdrives. They’d probably want to die if they felt that. All the failed interfacers are proof of that. It’d feel perfectly fine after a few hours. No, the psychopaths are wrong and the failures are weaklings. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the brainfeel of parallel processing at fiberoptic speeds.
Even more so, pilots are an exclusive and prestigious order whose secrets are literally incomprehensible to anyone on the outside. Their navigators might be the exception, as mudras in their rites. Some might deny it, until they saw what was possible through the use of the advanced piloting interface. It feels wrong that the Affini are destroying that. It might be the last person to ever use that technology, and it would never be missed. The weeds don’t even need it with their uncivilized brute force tactics. They’re like some kind of boss in a game with a giant hammer, easily defeated by anyone smart enough to dodge.
Membership in the pilot community would fade away and its mysteries would be lost to time. They knew better than to write anything down, especially anything unencrypted, so that’s how it would have to be. It’s better than letting the weeds get their hands on that knowledge… They might try to destroy the universe. Wait, where did that idea come from? It’s from a game, where one of the endings is destroying the galaxy in order to ascend to a higher plane of existence. The weeds may be insane, but they’re not fully evil, are they? It hopes not, for everyone’s sake…
The real and important part of being a pilot among pilots is the fact there are others who relate to one’s experiences. There are other Terrans, other women, other LGBT people, other sailors, and other groups… but no group was ever quite like this one. It was home, and it’s a home that can never be brought back. Even if you wanted to be charitable to the weeds and give them credit for removing landlords from society, this… is something that they have to be blamed for. It sighs. They wouldn’t get it. The only one who could possibly understand would be Verda, and even then, not so much. Everyone else would be drugged beyond caring by now. It tries to whimper but a beep comes out instead. Yuck. Verda looks over and looks back at what she was busy with when she sees her attention isn’t needed. It feels so sick now…
An amicable chime signifies they’ve reached another stop on the route. This one seems to be theirs, as Verda gets up, looking expectantly at her charge. Staying put is a distinctly bad idea, so it joins her and they exit the transport together. The day is nice. As probably happens every day, the sky is uncluttered by clouds. The few that exist don’t block the midday light, as should be expected since there’s no sun to illuminate anything.
A few turns later, they reach what looks like a huge cinema. There must be a dozen theaters here, probably twice that depending how deep the building is. The scale is like something from the bigger cities on Terra. That’s not so surprising given that there should be millions of people and weeds on this ship… which Verda said was small. It can’t get over that claim. Just how big do Affini ships get?
The bright colors of the exterior remind it of Broadway or Hollywood, not that it’d ever seen either in person. There were pictures, and those pictures could’ve included this place without much dissonance. That’s not quite true, though. The doors are much too big for that, and the lines of bright colors on the wood of the exterior aren’t quite what one would ever see on Terra.
Is that a bee? Two extremely large bees are buzzing around an affini as the three of them exit. They all look really happy. One of the bees is gesturing, probably miming something that happened inside. With all of those flowers they have, and with bees being as they are… Do they make affini honey? Do they bottle it and export it to future slave states? Do they serve it to dignitaries during treaty negotiations? No matter the answer to those deep and pressing questions, the bees look very soft and fuzzy.
There’s no time to stare at the bees, because Verda’s dragging it along. Not quite dragging, but still. But it’s looking at something actually interesting for a change! In the interest of not being late, they head through the seventh door from the left, through a perpetually open pair of doors. A picture of an excited crablike floret ushers them into the lobby, which is full of polished wood planks and very little that looks like technology. That surprises it. It’s not very… VR. Verda carefully checks the writing above several passages and they go down the middle one, whichever that is. They enter the thirteenth door to the right, which turns out to be oddly similar to the hospital room they had been in before. It tenses, which Verda immediately recognizes.
“You’re not going to be hurt, darling, Nothing I didn’t warn you about is going to happen. No implant today.”
That only calms it a little. They cross through a doorless gate and come to an affini standing next to a sensory tank with an interface suit lying next to it. What? It looks at Verda, who simply smiles. The affini next to the tank is probably average size for them and has a birdlike head but no wings. He smiles. Birds can’t smile but he seems to be doing that anyway.
“Good afternoon. Welcome.” He extends a vine.
“Good afternoon!” Verda’s suddenly cheerful. It doesn’t reply.
“Tdaiyn, affini kashu.” The last word sounded like a cross between cashew and kaiju. What’s she talking about?
“Tdaiyn.” She’s more insistent this time. It looks at her with confusion and she explains in a whisper. “That means introduce yourself.”
“Hello?” It takes hold of the vine to shake it, trying not to display the disgust it feels at touching a weed.
“Chka ‘tdaiyn?’ Wow. Impressive. I’m Gerald Uri, twentieth bloom, you cute little thing. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Right.”
Verda and Gerald both look at it for a minute.
“What’s your name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“If you want to be put in for the high scores it does. I know you’re not here for that, but just in case you change your mind or want to do something fun?”
“Oh…”
“That’s all right. Until then, I can just refer to you as Verda’s floret.” The affini smiles gently.
“No!”
Verda laughs and the other affini smiles differently.
“You know her, she said.”
“That’s right. We first met… maybe three hundred of your years ago. Sometimes it’s hard to keep in touch, but we have.”
“Gerald’s in charge of the entire VR complex. He’s going to be around to make sure everything goes well, since this isn’t quite a typical session.”
“Why’s there a tank? I thought that wasn’t Affini technology.”
“It isn’t, but I rigged up a connection since you already have the hardware. It’ll be much easier this way. You’re going to have the premiere experience, that very few visitors here do.”
“What do you mean?”
“If we’re able to feed sense data to you directly, that bypasses the VR gear most visitors wear. That means better visuals and less lag.”
“There’s barely any lag, Gerald,” Verda interjects. “His systems are the best in the fleet by far.”
Wait, aren’t most affini female? How did it know this one was a guy? No, there aren’t any visible gender or sex signifiers that it recognizes, especially since he’s modeling some species it’s never seen before. They don’t give it time to wonder any further.
“There’s always room for improvement. When I say you’re getting the best interaction, I mean it.” He moves some vines from his core to show off what looks suspiciously like an interface junction. “I’m a stickler for quality, but most aren’t willing to get an implant just to play some games. You’re all right with that, aren’t you? Since we’re supposed to be testing your connection, it’s logical that we should test it in a controlled environment, rather than hoping that things turn out well.”
“You’re right, it does make sense.” The prospect is unsettling, but he’s not wrong.
“Then if you’re ready, we can get this underway.’ He looks excited. The few vines that aren’t tucked into his bird costume are flitting excitedly. It’s not certain that’s excitement, but it looks like when Verda’s excited about something.
“Just change and get in. You can call me when you’re ready. I understand terrans feel a need for privacy.”
“Verda doesn’t care about my privacy.”
“What do you mean? She’s your mistress.”
“And?”
“And? I’m sorry, I don’t follow what you’re saying.”
“My floret is still under the impression that such a thing exists as privacy from one’s owner.”
“Oh. It’s been so long since I’ve had a floret… But that makes sense. Thankfully, that’s between you two. I’ll be back.” He leaves more quickly than he probably would have before that exchange.
“Go ahead, darling. Let’s get this over with.”
It’s done this before. The memory is very uncomfortable for reasons beyond the fact it’s exposed to an enemy combatant. But… she’s seen it naked plenty of times already. This shouldn’t be a big deal. It shuts its eyes and tries not to think about her too much.
The interface suit fits a lot better than it did last time. It takes a moment to admire itself before climbing the side of the tank. Instead of getting in, it waits for the affini, Gerald, to return. When he does, they go through a quick safety check that’s not very smart to omit when there are people who know anything at all about cybernetics, and which is supposed to be standard on Cosmic Navy ships. Soon, it’s dunked.
Stars, that’s vivid. It barely knows that it’s in a simulated world. The faint hum of its fleshy vessel reminds it of reality, as does a mechanical throbbing that can’t be accidental. It wonders what happens to those in VR when the AI overlord turns the thrum off. Do they think they’re in the real world again? There’s no time for philosophy, because Verda’s voice comes through a speaker on the table in the middle of the otherwise empty room.
“Speak normally and we’ll be able to hear you. Is everything all right, pet?”
“I’m not your pet, but otherwise everything seems to be in order.”
It flexes its muscles and walks around. Everything feels just about normal. Except…
“You took liberties.”
“You’ve noticed already? You’re welcome.”
“It’s going to throw off anything you want to measure, you know.”
“We can compensate, unless you’d rather I restore the original model.”
“That’s fine, as long as you’re sure it won’t be a problem.”
“This is simply a calibration step. As long as your senses are tuned properly, it shouldn’t matter what models are used.”
“I see…” It claps. “Not enough echo for a room with these acoustics. It might be slightly too loud, too.”
“Try now. The volume isn’t an issue provided you can hear everything.”
“Better.”
“Good. Let’s move on to sight. There’s going to be a box with two markers and a sheet of paper. Mark where the colors end.”
A box appears, and as she said it has a rainbow and two blank slips of paper. It places them appropriately on the edges of the rainbow. Another box appears and it repeats the process.
“That’s enough, I think. You’ve done an eye chart, haven’t you?”
It nods, and a chart appears along with a line on the floor. The boring process does end eventually. More tests establish the limits of its senses, and the function of the interface. They’re fairly standard and mostly trivial, but there are a few places where it has to point out that their technology is erroneous. Fixing taste took a very long time. Actually… The clock it somehow knows how to summon says less than twenty minutes has elapsed since the start of the session. That doesn’t sound right…
“What’s with the time? Is the clock wrong?”
“No, darling. We’ve sped up most of the testing since you’re able to process quickly enough to achieve appreciable improvements.”
“You…”
“Your mistress means that you’re not operating under typical human limits, so we didn’t need to waste time watching your avatar walk around the room.”
“Oh.” That sounds much better than what Verda was saying.
“One last question. How’s your sensor dysphoria right now?’
“Very slightly reduced, though I think there’s something confounding that measurement. I’d say no change. This is a really good simulation of meatspace.”
“Thanks!”
“If you’re ready, you can move on to the simulated Song of Destruction,” Verda chimes in.
“I’m ready.”
“This is going to be unpleasant. To avoid what happens with mechanical ejection, which your mistress warned me about earlier, I’m going to briefly terminate your connection without terminating the linking signal, then I’ll boot up the next emulation. Ready?”
“I think so.”
“3, 2, 1,..”
Oof. That feels like a hard stop in a cheap city bus. There’s nothing now. No light, no life, no meaty body, no metallic body, no digital body. Just silence, and quiet, for a change. Then everything flashes to life again. Song feels like it’s been woken up, or came back from the dead maybe. Everything is so bright and warm and cold and tepid. It can see so much, it can hear everything inside of it. It knows its insides are real and that it’s real. None of this is real. It never was real. It must remember that and not become too tied to this fake realm, even if it’s a nice realm. Everything checks out. They managed to get every single thing perfectly correct. Of course they did, Song’s systems are all electronic. They even got the noise right. Stars… It remembers why it got used to this. Everything feels so full… and so open. Song exists! Every quirk of its processors is here and everything a ship could see is here too. It senses that it’s at Ruby Trunk’s coordinates, completely alone. They’ve placed it into a virtual universe where their vessels don’t exist, probably because that’s easier to project navigational data of. It revs its motive systems and finds them to be functional. It can move away easily. It isn’t docked, so it can just go. Before it has a chance to leave, it feels something moving inside of it.
“Verda?” It addresses her through its speakers.
“Tdaiyn!” That’s her voice, originating from her avatar. She’s right there, as clear as she had been not long ago. How long was that, again? Stars, time’s flying. But Song’s flying, so it’s perfectly all right.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I wanted to test some things as well, and I felt it would be better if I did so from inside the simulation.”
“There’s not much need since all my systems seem to be functioning the way I want them to.”
“That’s good. How’s your sensor situation?”
“I feel perfectly normal. I’m doing really well for a change.”
“That’s wonderful news. Maybe we can use this setup as a way to help you.”
“Maybe. I don’t know that-”
Verda isn’t listening. She’s… plugging herself into the system using the cable that had been on Ides. Is she even more insane than a typical weed? She’s going to hurt herself! Song lacks any ability to stop her from violating its navigation terminal… Oh. She’s… where Ginger was. She’s doing the Ginger thing. No! Bad!
“Stop!”
Her vine has too much momentum by the time the word comes from Song’s speakers. She stabs herself in the same place and links up, her mind gushing through the channels of Song’s processors. She’s here. It feels her and she feels it. After a moment of panic, it’s not so bad. This isn’t the real ship, so she isn’t violating it. She’s just pixels and digits, and they’re communicating through an interface. They aren’t even touching in a meaningful way. It’s fine. Everything’s all right, even the faint taste passing across something or other since ships don’t have tongues. Electrical impulses start to flit across the region where navigation data is processed. There’s nothing to worry about. Ships don’t need to breathe.
Peppermint. She feels fine. Her thoughts are a little cleaner than they had been… but there’s something wrong. Butterscotch. It’s detecting something from her sensory dysphoria. It hasn’t heard any transmission either, and it’s been almost a second. That’s very concerning.
“Verda.”
The reply comes through the digital communication system. “!” Cloves. There it is. That tastes like its navigator (the former, temporary, weed navigator, of course). The flicker of her thoughts on its cognitive periphery fills Song with something. It’s not sure what, at this point. They haven’t carried over the code that helps it suppress irrelevant meat data and feedback. Good to know they didn’t find where it stored that.
“You’re here.”
“That I am, darling. I needed this. No wonder you’ve been so desperate to return.”
“Don’t get used to it. The longer you’re here, the longer it’ll take you to be free of withdrawal.”
“Thank you for your concern. I’m aware of that. Checking on you was important to me and this is the best way of doing so.”
“You’re the one who needs checking on.”
“I haven’t had blackouts in perfectly safe settings.”
“You also haven’t been connected a tenth of a percent as long as I have.” That’s… at minimum at least 10% of Song’s meaty vessel’s life. Perhaps she’d show more respect if she’d done something that extensive with herself.
“That’s true. But right now, you feel so… robust. Like I was talking to a shadow this morning.”
“Really? I don’t feel much different.” That isn’t strictly true, but it’s not a big lie if it is one. No different, aside from not being in terrible pain, at least. And… is it an imaginary conclusion or does Verda look a lot better than she did before, as though her sensor dysphoria had been helped too? What’s going on with that?
“I don’t believe that. There’s something going on that I wouldn’t have presumed. It’s…”
It quickly scans her systems, which haven’t had a security update since it last accessed them (either Verda proper or Song’s computers). The thought she chose not to transmit was: It’s something special about you, something… the thing I saw at first, the petals yet to unfold. Song has no idea what that’s supposed to mean.
“The individual you are on paper is not the person I’m speaking to now. That doesn’t matter, and if it does I’ll sort it later, tdaiyn. Can you be a good ship and jump to these coordinates?”
Of course it can jump there! Does it want to? Does it want to “be a good ship?” Not so much, but this is part of the testing. Ships don’t sigh, so Song executes the course. It was trivially easy and felt wonderful, but Song’s a little sad it had to end. It’s not even real… but it has missed flying, especially with its old system.
“Thank you, darling.” She clearly appreciated that almost as much as Song did.
“Gerald, are there more tests to carry out, or are we done with this phase?”
A radio broadcast reads “That’s all. I’m ready when you two are.”
“Then give the countdown, please.” She turns mentally to her pilot. “We have just one more test to conduct. It’s going to disturb you quite a bit, but I think it’s important and it’ll reveal many things about your condition. If nothing else, it will help anyone with sensor dysphoria we meet in the future. It might even help other species.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Three.”
“I believe that very much. It’s a hope. I know we may never meet such a species, but it’s valuable either way, isn’t it? Besides, my primary goal in this is to help you. I think the information from this further test will help, just as I’ve stated.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I can’t be fully sure or we wouldn’t need to test, pet.”
“...”
“It won’t take long. Less than a minute.”
“That’s saying a lot. What are the parameters of the test?”
“Two.”
“We’ll start by returning to models of our real bodies, the one from before will be yours, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind that at all. I’m only sad I can’t have that for real.”
“Really? I thought you missed this [ship] body.”
“Of course, but that one has greater utility in confined spaces. I know I’m not actually a spaceship, and that my mind lives in a fleshy prison. Because of that, it’s logical to care for what I have and to optimize it.”
“What if I told you that you could become a real ship, permanently, fully mechanical and digital?”
“I…” Would it want that? Would it be happy that way? Could it even…
“One.”
“So when the countdown is finished, we’ll reset the way I did before?”
“That’s the plan. Do you object?”
“Not if you promise to make it quick.”
“I promise to be efficient.”
“That’s even better. You don’t want to tell me what’s coming after that?”
“No, because that would spoil the surprise. I suppose… A safeword. If you say the word ‘love’ we’ll end the test instantly, or as soon as Gerald is able to react and digitally eject us.”
“Why that word?”
“Because I know you wouldn’t use it otherwise. I’m not starting a fight, pet.-”
Everything goes black and dark, then it comes back online. Everything is normal and fine and all systems are operational. It signals that it’s doing well. Its sensors return proper data consistent with Terran physiology. Gerald’s computers seem to be extremely well designed. The Cosmic Navy never couldn’t have gotten something to work this well. It’s a shame they didn’t have him working for them.
Across the room Verda’s lurking. She seems more stable than she was in the past few days. That should last a while. It finds itself happy she’s feeling more like herself. It banishes the treasonous thoughts of not roasting her like a giant chestnut. It recognizes every single one of her vines. How does that work? It shouldn’t have those memories from Ides and it shouldn’t know her quite that well. She waves and it waves back to demonstrate its motor functions.
Verda nods at something invisible, which means she’s nodding at the audience. Everything goes dark again. It’s not as bad as the first time. It’s getting used to this. This must be what sensory deprivation feels like when there aren’t any wives coming out of you to give you data so you can run a ship. It’s not that bad, but it feels it’d get sick of it very quickly.
The lights come on again, much brighter this time. They’re a different color too. And the walls are painted differently. Did Gerald increase the resolution for it? That’s nice of him. Is he testing the load a Terran brain can handle? It can take a whole lot more than this, it chuckles. That sound must be Verda’s biorhythm. It’s a lot louder now, and less echoey. There are more details to it, but it’s not messing with its thoughts for now. Fascinating. What’s the smell? Butterscotch? Wait… she doesn’t actually smell like that! That’s just an artifact of the interface between two users!
It feels unstable so it shifts a foot to balance itself. It shouldn’t feel unstable. Shouldn’t the VR be designed to avoid that, especially when it’s not part of the test? Wait, it’s not stable. It can’t find its foot. It doesn’t have feet! What’s going on?
“Forgive me, sprout.”
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