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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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Over the past few seconds, the light has gotten oppressive. It’s brighter than it should be. The feralist radical rubs its eyes, only to find that it has no eyes. It looks around but its vision doesn’t change. Its field of view is too wide, and it looks like it’s standing on top of something… That’s what’s happening. They messed with its senses. That’s why everything looks so strange. It’s going to be all right. These electromagnetic sensors are better than before. They’re almost as good as in its ship form, but for interior viewing it’s much better than even those. Seeing so clearly for a change is relieving.
That would explain the hearing as well. If Verda and Gerald were testing out some enhancement they wanted to give it, it’d make sense to try it out virtually, just to be sure nothing’s wrong before making it or connecting it in a way that can’t be instantly terminated. Sight and hearing are good. It seems to be able to see magnetic fields in a way that’s different from how it usually does. That’s… interesting, and very difficult to describe. They’re… almost like heat distortions, but completely invisible. It’s not sure how it sees them. That’s not a human sense, is it? The feeling is surreal.
Taste seems to be about the same, not that it’s eating anything right now. Smell is much more sensitive. It smells Verda in great detail, even from across the room. She’s more pungent than when it’d been crushed against her before, which is something it now clearly remembers, even if the memories were previously fuzzy. Is that just because its sensor dysphoria was soothed half a minute ago? That’s impossible to know at this juncture.
Touch is… wrong. It’s very wrong. It squeezes its hand and stamps its feet to feel something, but it doesn’t work. There’s something… off about that. It can’t properly feel its hands, and there’s a weird flow of air against its face. Is that Verda’s breathing? Wait, really? It can’t be, can it, from all the way across the room? That’s… disgusting. There’s no way. Stars…
Then it makes the mistake of looking down. The weird feeling in its legs is because it doesn’t have any legs. It doesn’t have any arms either. It has vines. That’s vile! It’s a crime against nature! It’s one of those disgusting xenos! It looks for Hans for assistance, but no such toolbearing person is present.
It screams, but instead of a scream, only a bizarre trumpeting sound comes out. This is so wrong. What has that evil weed done to it? It just wanted not to be in pain any more. She’s standing there, gloating. Unacceptable. It rushes over to wring the closest thing to a neck that weeds have, flailing clumsily with unfamiliar limbs that don’t respond quite the right way. Seeing her victim’s rage, Verda objects. She’s trying to soothe it.
“It’s just a simulation. This isn’t real. You’ll be back to normal as soon as you disconnect. Remember the safeword.”
It remembers the safeword. That’s true. She isn’t lying, at least, if she wasn’t lying before. It’s free to leave as soon as it wants to, allegedly. None of this is real, even if it feels extremely, oppressively real. That’s enough to calm it down. Strangling Verda wouldn’t accomplish anything either, would it? At worst, she’d wake up in meatspace with a headache. Since it’s here, it may as well see what’s going on, right?
“I’m sorry I didn’t give you a better warning, darling. If I had, you would’ve refused and we wouldn’t have the benefit of testing my hypothesis. If you put aside your feelings of disgust and try to be objective, how do you feel right now?”
It cocks its head. It doesn’t have a head. Why doesn’t it have a head? Ships don’t have heads. No, that’s not quite it. Plants don’t have heads. Now it understands the magnitude of Verda’s subterfuge. It’s in a simulation of an affini body, and worse, one arranged similarly to that of its captor, who looks on curiously and hopefully.
The things it feels regarding this are complicated. It’s furious. How could she violate its integrity in such a heartless way? Then again, it’s also technically heartless right now. The core somewhere in its middle feels a lot like a heart, pumping and twitching in strange ways, but it isn’t one. The fluids it pumps aren’t blood. Adjusting for the fact it doesn’t have arms or legs, touch isn’t so weird. Letting itself adjust for how it feels the simulated world around it, its sense of touch isn’t bad. Only now does it become clear what was weird about its other senses. Since it doesn’t have a face or a head, it’s seeing very differently, through a large number of distributed sensory regions. After so long piloting a warship… this is oddly intuitive.
Moving by way of vines is easy. They extend and wrap even more willingly than its real body’s limbs. It grabs a few objects off the table in the middle of the room, which clearly were set there as part of this abhorrent experiment. They’re nimble. Wow. This is easier than it expected. It throws a vividly colored cylinder into the air and catches it with a different vine. Not bad at all! If it weren’t distinctly conscious of being polluted by Affini filth, it could get used to this.
The way it sees right now is starting to make more sense. What its brain interpreted as a single image clearly isn’t one. Then again, its brain interpreted what it’s always seen with two eyes the same way. And don’t humans technically see upside down? That’s confusing. Technically speaking, since it was thinking with an emulation of the Song of Destruction’s processing power before, is it thinking with affini brainpower/corepower right now? The thought makes it sick, but also very curious. If it stays here too long will it want to enslave a xeno?
Only now does it remember that Verda’s still there with it. She looks a little nervous, but she’s well. It looks more carefully, since this is the first time it’ll be able to see her similarly to how she would see herself. It should see her in all her glory, with proper senses now. She’s… weirdly aesthetic. Now it sees patterns sculpted into her vines that weren’t visible before. The glyphs and forms carved into her planty flesh make her a living work of art, something crafted over four blooms. The way every tendril of her body moves in harmony is more dignified than it wants to admit. Her attempt at mimicking a human face smiles hopefully. Normally it wouldn’t say this, even to itself, but from this perspective she’s beautiful.
“Is something wrong, darling?”
“No. Very. I don’t know.” Everything is wrong and right at the same time. It doesn’t know what it should feel right now.
“Are your senses working correctly?”
“I think so… Is this how you see all the time?”
“It most likely is. Your avatar is a slightly modified version of a generic affini avatar, so there should be a lot of commonality.”
“You just- Why?”
“This was the only way to test whether your systems were in fact as similar to ours as I had come to suspect. There have been a couple of terrans who experienced what you’re experiencing now. They didn’t respond as well as you did. One of them even asked for it. You seem unusually suited to this.”
“Of course. I’m used to manipulating a large number of systems at once. But how am I speaking? I don’t have vocal chords, do I?”
“That’s not entirely true. Verbal language is simply the movement of air in particular patterns. I’m pleased you didn’t have to learn to speak this way. It makes things much easier.”
“For you.”
“And for you, little one. You had many questions that otherwise would go unanswered. This way we can evaluate the situation.”
“Hm.” It feels leaves somewhere on its exterior ruffle. It’s not sure where they are without looking.
“Gerald, the sensory test, please.” A stack of large papers appears, which Verda lifts.
“You only need to read what’s written here. That shouldn’t be too difficult.”
It does just that. Words and images are written on the paper in a transparent magnetic substance. They aren’t small so everything’s easy to identify. Only the last paper is hard to read, and that’s because it’s in Affini.
“So you can’t read that? That’s good to know. Touch two of your vines together, if you would.”
The Terran in an affini suit complies easily, taking care not to stab itself with the thorn it notices after the vines start to move. Even if it doesn’t know how to work these things, they seem to know how to work themselves. Acting on inspiration, it lifts itself up the way Verda did to intimidate Artemis. That somehow works, but it doesn't change the field of view much. It’s a little disappointed it doesn’t get to glare down at its captor. Instead, she rises to its height with a wide smile, reminding the Terran native that it doesn’t have a face.
“This is so weird, Verda. I don’t know how to feel about it.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No. I feel sick that you’ve subjected me to this, but I’m not in pain.”
“Your sensor dysphoria is gone?”
“... It is. It’s completely gone. This is the clearest I’ve been able to think in years when disconnected from my body.”
“Your ship, you mean.”
“...Right. This feels so weird…”
“So this configuration negates your sensory dysphoria, but you haven’t acclimated to it? If you had no other choice in the matter, would this be preferable to enduring sensor dysphoria in your natural body?”
It doesn’t want to answer that. Despite how wrong and disgusting and abhorrent the situation is, it feels a whole lot better than it has since it got used to flying. There’s a lot to be said for the freedom of having an interstellar propulsion system, but that’s not the question. It would’ve thought it would miss its old form a lot more than it does. That might just be because it knows it’s going back- that’s a lie. Even the abomination of occupying a weed’s form isn’t enough to make it feel worse than it did. Verda wouldn’t know that since it’s good at hiding its pain. Time with Ginger taught it to pretend everything’s fine so that it doesn’t have to assuage sympathy.
But… would it prefer to be this way? Just about anything is better than what it was feeling before, and even if it weren’t this is basically a complete upgrade. Its EM detectors are better, its sonic detectors are better, its motion detectors now exist, it doesn’t lose vision when it blinks, it’s bigger and stronger, and generally better in nearly every way. Frost, it’s sounding like one of them now. Even more to the point, it notices the enhancement to its processing capabilities relative to its high fidelity analog. The thumping and jostling in its core (in the Affini sense of the term) isn’t even unpleasant. I would’ve thought it’d mind that sort of thing… but it doesn’t. The core feels kind of like its engine. It even has a self destruct switch! How is that not cool?
That bramble must’ve known what she was doing when she did this to it. Not that it can think of why… but there has to be some conniving reason! She wouldn’t subject it to this… To… the knowledge that it has to go back… if she didn’t want to torture it! Maybe it was just to show off how much better she thinks she is than it because she gets to have a superior form. It knows better than to fall for that trick. It learned long ago that software and hardware are not the same.
The question is unfair by its nature. How can it be expected to say it wants to suffer the way it’s been suffering for the past weeks? How can it be expected to say it would rather choose not to be a proud feralist human and instead be one of those revolting Affini plants? Its vines shiver at the thought. Absurd!
“Are you ready for one last test, darling?”
“Fine.”
“I need you to locomote across the room and then back to me, so we can see how your brain is processing a large number of appendages at once.”
It complies. Moving is much easier than it was at first. If it were to practice a little, it could probably beat 10khp easily. That reminds it to check the gravity. It jumps on the way back to Verda, who looks amused by that. She shouldn’t be. This is very serious business. The rate of falling suggests they’re in a simulated version of Verda’s deck, which isn’t a surprise but is useful information… somehow.
“Very good. How did that feel?”
“It was fine.”
“Just fine? You wouldn’t want to try this again some time?”
“...” Another question it’d rather not answer. What’s this plant’s problem?
“That’s what I thought. Can you think of anything else you’d like to try while we’re here?”
It feels the tips of its vines starting to flit pensively as it contemplates whether there are any further tests that would be useful. That can’t be good. It feels a wave of motion pass across one of its outer leafy sheaths in its displeasure. This could be a problem. Florets don’t have those reactions- not that it’s a floret. It’s glad that it isn’t a floret, not that that means it would have vines and leaves if it weren’t. Being a floret probably isn’t that bad, at least for lesser beings. This weirdness is making its core ache. Actually, it doesn’t have a core. This is just a simulation.. It can’t shake its head to clear its thoughts because it doesn’t have one right now. Well, it does, but that’s back on Ruby Trunk and inaccessible for the time being. Gerald did a good job of blocking out sense data from its proper form.
“Mirror.”
“Are you sure about that? You won’t be able to unsee what’s there, even if this isn’t entirely real.”
“I’m sure. I need to see.” It exhales from somewhere and nervously marvels at how much detail was put into the emulation that’s being run. “This is a body map for affini?”
“That’s right, it’s designed to feel natural for us. I didn’t expect you to handle it quite this well, which is why I gave you a safe word.”
A mirror appears by one of the walls, covered in a sheet. The somewhat digital nonaffini braces itself before removing the curtain. This is a serious step, as its captor said. It’s just a shape. It doesn’t actually look like an affini. It’ll be fine, won’t it? Why’s it so worried when this is just pixels sent to its actual and real brain? It reminds itself that this is doable and that it can handle anything it sees. It’s seen plants before. It’s seen many things that a whole lot of people would go insane from, death and suffering beyond what ought to exist. What could be so bad about a digital avatar? Maybe it could be a giant wolf or something next time. That would be equally fake and not real. Verda rustles behind it, probably worried about the fact it’s planted there doing nothing.
With a last breath, it fails to shut its eyes because it presently has none and takes off the sheet. What greets it through the glass is an affini, and a fairly generic one at that. It’s green and big, but doesn’t have any of the features that Verda or the others it’s spoken to before did. There are lots of vines moving aimlessly, but none that look special. It feels inexplicably saddened by the lack of little flowers that differentiates it from everyone else on Ruby Trunk.
Out of the many feelings passing through its core, it doesn’t feel shame or disgust. That must be a botanical trick. How could it not, when it’s clearly not an affini? Flexing a couple of vines feels familiar, very reminiscent of the manipulation of its appendages as Song’s pilot. This is wrong! So… why does it feel fine? Shouldn’t there be some dysphoria or dysmorphia, or something? Things could be worse, couldn’t they?
Only then does it truly appreciate that it’s missing a face. It’s used to not having one, and to not having localized sensory input, but this is something else. Of course the tumbleweeds lack faces, but it’s not one of them. It turns to view its artificial form from new angles. Wow, is it flexible now. It rotates everything it wants a new angle on one at a time, gawking at how strange it all is. It turns to Verda again to get a fresh look at her. Actually, it gets a look before it starts turning since it can see her perfectly clearly even without doing so. She senses she’s being watched and tilts her head.
“Well, sprout? What do you think? Are you going to get into modeling?”
“No comment.” She hides a smile in a way that might’ve been good enough that it wouldn’t have noticed in its other form. Right now, her expressions are extremely transparent. Her body language says everything it needs to know.
“If you say so, darling. Since we finished so quickly and we have lots of notes and observations to think about later, I think we should play a game with our remaining time here. How does that sound?”
“A game? Seriously?” Tiny hairs on a couple of its limbs go rigid. In the middle of its existential crisis she wants to play a game?
“Seriously. I know just the thing. Gerald, would you please set up scrappitch for us?”
A few moments later, they’re on what looks like a half of a tennis court facing a wall. There are several lines marked on the ground including concentric semicircles around the middle of the wall. Verda holds up a dozen rackets proudly, showing them off.
“What’s this?”
“Scrappitch! It’s a collaborative game, so we work together to get the highest score. It’s relatively straightforward.”
As Verda explains the rules, it’s a collaborative game about hitting enough balls at various points on the wall, depending on the phase of the game. The markings have something to do with body configurations, but she doesn’t go into too much detail about that, or cheating, or penalties, or time limits… She mostly just says where to hit the balls, and to try not to interfere with each other and to hit the balls that bounce back. For something dreamed up by affini, it doesn’t sound so bad. This might actually be fun. It has trouble believing that it’s really thinking that.
Their first match is terrible, as the resilient feralist can’t quite get it. The balls are heavier than tennis balls despite being close to the same size (it thinks, since it can’t compare properly). Manipulating two rackets at once while watching where everything is going is really challenging, and its shock when Verda explains that they’re supposed to be using six rackets each is immense. How do they do that?
After a couple of attempts, it gets the hang of it, sort of. Its captor is a decent teacher and never gets upset with its awful performance. They just keep trying, and eventually it gets it right. It goes an entire phase without smacking itself or coming close to smacking Verda, who somehow manages to dodge every time. They’re eventually able to get through an entire game. It’s proud of itself for figuring the weird plant game rules out.
“Good work, darling. Are you ready to play a real game of scrappitch?”
“Real?”
“For points. On the record.”
“We weren’t before?”
“No, that would’ve been pointless, but I think you understand how it’s played now. Do you think you can handle it?”
“Of course!”
It won’t let her show it up! She smiles wickedly and pushes a button on the far side of the wall. A timer beeps and reads some number in Affini, and Verda gestures to it to take its position. The situation is suddenly much more intense. Verda’s focused in a way it hasn’t seen before. She wants to win. Leave it to the Affini to be competitive about teamwork.
Each of their racket wielding vines jumps around the field at high speed, slashing at balls and weaving between the other’s vines. Even if it didn’t know at the time, they hadn’t been playing scrappitch before, they’d just been playing around. This, on the other stalk, is serious. At first they bump into each other occasionally, but by the last phase they’re synchronized, darting between each other for the best angles and generally working as a team. They don’t need to speak, everything is obvious. Perhaps someone in a human body wouldn’t have been able to react quickly enough to make the game work, but as they are now, it’s really cool. It’s more exciting than Verda’s gaming partner could’ve predicted.
A buzzer sounds and the scoring lights go off. It’s done. Even if they’re not in real bodies, they’re both tired. It fans its interior leaves to cool itself in a gesture that feels reflexive. Verda smiles at it enthusiastically and gives it a thumbs up that it can’t reciprocate due to its lack of thumbs. She beckons and they move to the middle of the field and stand for a bit.
“You did really well for your first time!”
“Thanks.” It shouldn’t be thanking her for flattery meant to turn it into a pet.
“Was I right about that being fun?”
“You were, I guess. Nobody told me you had games like that. It feels a bit violent for a floret, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all!” Verda laughs. The sound is even richer than it had noticed in its old form. “This is one of the things I would have put in our brochures if I’d had my way. Unfortunately, it’s a little difficult for species who don’t have enough limbs.”
“What about me?”
“You didn’t seem to have any issues.”
“But I…”
Her face falls and her vines slow down. “You’re… you, darling. I’m happy we had an opportunity to play together. I enjoyed it.” She sighs. “Gerald?”
“You’re right on time, Verda. Brace yourselves for extraction. Three, two, one.”
Everything goes black and the Terran partisan wakes up in its tank. Getting out is a familiar process that’s just as annoying as it was the first time. The disconnect from the past few hours makes it nauseous, but that always passes. In fact, it’s passing already. Gerald is a clever weed who knows how to not traumatize his customers. Verda isn’t faring quite as well. The distant look now in her eyes proves that her withdrawal is coming back. It can’t know what modifications she made to her avatar, but they seemed to really help. It can’t stop itself from feeling a little sad for her now.
The other affini smiles at them both. “Good game?”
“Very!” Verda smiles back genuinely.
“What about you, cuteness?” It glares at him. He has no right to call it that!
“My floret had a good time too. Thanks.”
“So I still have a question. Is there a name you want me to put on the leaderboard?”
“Leaderboard? We couldn’t have been that good,” it says.
“You’d be surprised. Besides, today’s a personal best for your team.” That’s technically true. “So, should I put something down? ‘Verda and floret?’ ‘Verda and mysterious stranger?’”
“You already asked. My floret-”
“I know what to put down.”
Verda gives it a surprised look it can feel even though she’s behind it.
“Membership_plan_11”
“Eleven? What does that mean?”
“It references my quest for Justice.”
“Justice, pet? Under whose judgement?”
“It’s an objective thing, weed.” Mine.
“Well,” Gerald interjects. “If you go about things that way, I think all you’ll find is your lust for revenge, or for things in general, dominating you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“But I still don’t see why you picked eleven, or any number.”
“Because 1+1=2, which reminds me of the important binaries in our world.” Weed and slave (or affini and floret, depending on one’s view). Male and female. Good and Evil. Terran and xeno. Black and white, left and right, the pillars that hold up the sky.
“But darling, in binary 11 is three.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Are you sure about that? There are a great many computers from the Terran Accord who would beg to differ.”
“I’m certain. 11 isn’t III, it’s II. You’ll never force me to think otherwise.”
“Think what you’re saying. How can you mean that, tdaiyn?”
“I mean it easily. This is the most important binary: true and false. On which side are you, affini?”
“On the side of the people out of the 10 groups of people in the universe who knows how binary works.”
“You say I’m a member of one of those groups?”
“That’s how binaries work.”
“As you wish.”
“But you’re sure that number isn’t three?”
“Do you think it should be?”
“I think that’s what it is, darling.”
“Think what you ask of me before you ask it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you ask for 3, you might well receive it, against your actual wishes. You know I go against the grain in the inhumanity of weed society.”
“I see. You’re clearly tired. Shall we go home now?”
“I think what your floret means is that eleven is ten plus one, and when you add the digits you get two,” says Gerald.
“That’s just what I said.”
“In that case, I suppose you’re correct, but I don’t see how binaries factor into that.”
“Because it ties together the old and the new. 11 is the revolution of evolution.”
“What…” Their mystified expressions are priceless.
“Let she who has ears hear.” Now that’s perfect. The utter bewilderment makes its day complete. They can’t even respond beyond staring, perhaps because neither of them has ears.
“I’ve always wanted to say that.”
“Pet, I think you’ve had enough time out of the house for today. Let’s go home.”
Verda takes Plan by the hand and escorts it out of the chamber. In the interest of politeness, it waves to Gerald with its left hand, which was free. The trip home is uneventful and pleasant, even if it’s spending time in a weed’s company, it’s happy to have a break from all that activity. The affini male wasn’t wrong about how good his VR was. It was probably a lot more enjoyable and realistic than just about anyone on Ruby Trunk could’ve experienced, and Verda had decided to share that with it. Now might be early to say so, but it feels today has been a very good day.
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