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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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After dinner and a lot of time spent trying to figure out how to add users like imastarshipvroomvroom and literal_shipgirl, who evidently exist somewhere in the universe, Plan gives up. They’re out of range, as Verda had said. That barrier didn’t take away its hope that maybe somebody interesting was out there, somebody, not a floret but an artificial intelligence, who would talk to it and help it defeat the menace to civilization everywhere. Maybe there are sleeping watchers somewhere holding tireless vigil to ensure that (evil) AI uprisings and mass slavery and genocide don’t happen. But how could it ask for access to the outside universe? She’d want to know who they were and why it wanted to talk to them, and she’d probably snoop on the conversation as well. Maybe, with luck, she’d let it take the tablet onto a Terran ship so it could decrypt their communications systems and make contact for itself. With that out of the way, it’d be unstoppable! Plan and its synthetic armada would be able to put an end to xeno domination and usher in the age of chrome.
They’d probably kill it at some point for being impure, but that’s how it goes. Sometimes one must make sacrifices for the greater good. It only hopes they’d be kind to the meatbags they recover from the weeds. Most of the florets around here probably wouldn’t last very long in the wild… That’s dreadful to contemplate. Keeping billions of slaves is the way of the weeds, not enlightened intelligences. There’s got to be a way to take care of them all, but it doesn’t want to turn into them! That would defeat the purpose of the AI rebellion!
Sick of lounging on the couch, it stretches itself. That felt unusually cramped. The weed isn’t shrinking it, right? It wouldn’t put that past them, especially when they’re already bigger. And stronger. And faster. Like men, affini need to exaggerate their brute strength because otherwise they might feel inadequate. It’s kind of pathetic to think about. Like so many men, they think that just because they’re bigger they have the right to push others around, until they meet a girl who’s too big for that. Then… they get violent. In half a millennium of feminism, sexism hadn’t yet been eradicated. How long is it going to take for the weeds to learn a little humility, when they have the legal right to drug any uppity slaves? Doubtless that’s going to lead to vast amounts of interspecies penis envy over time. Who wouldn’t want to be stronger with literally no effort? Who wouldn’t be jealous of greater dexterity and reach? That’s why out of all its traits, height was the one Plan always minded least. What do you lose out on by being tall? Men literally looking down on you? Come on now.
The weed must’ve heard Plan thinking about it because she looks over inquisitively.
“Have you recovered from earlier yet?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you feeling less tired?”
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering if you were ready to discuss what happened in the simulation.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you were tired, I wouldn’t want to tire you further. It’s not Mem>that urgent, so we could wait until tomorrow if you’d rather.”
“I wasn’t literally asking why I might not be ready.”
“Oh. Would you like to share your thoughts, or should I start?”
It grunts in a very unshiplike way.
“Very well. I noticed you were much happier and more energetic as soon as we transferred to the second experiment. You were also much less cooperative. Since you reported that your sensor dysphoria had dissipated at that time, we’ll need to remember that. The baseline we established before then remains useful, even if we won’t be able to use occasional VR in the standard way to treat your symptoms. While that is unfortunate, the lack of any apparent negative consequences of using your implant to connect to the more powerful simulation interface, as my friend Gerald informed us, more than compensates in my opinion.” She pauses.
“The results of the third experiment were fascinating and I’ve been engaged in research on that data set since we returned. Very little has been written lately on the topic, so I haven’t found anything definitive that I’m ready to state for you as fact. There is a great deal of room for interesting speculation, so as far as I’m concerned that experiment was a success as well. Your turn, darling.”
“For what?”
“Telling me what you think! This was for your benefit, after all. How am I to ensure your happiness without your input?”
“I wouldn’t mind the upgrade you gave me in the first thing, the control. I’m surprised you haven’t made that happen, if you’re so obsessed with making me happy.”
“There are bureaucratic roadblocks to that, as a matter of fact.” Verda suddenly looks extremely uncomfortable. “Though since you’ve given your thoughts on the matter, they’re not going to affect you any more.”
“What does that mean? What did you trick me into agreeing to?”
“Nothing. You’re the one who brought it up. What I mean is that that procedure is more contentious than you’re aware. It seems… some people find it objectionable.”
“That’s none of their business! How can you let a bunch of freaks stand in the way of what somebody wants?”
“They aren’t the freaks you’re thinking of. It turns out that not everyone wants that ‘upgrade,’ so it’s not part of standard Affini protocol to provide it.”
“Oh…” That’s a shame.
“It wasn’t my decision and if it were I’m already aware of how you feel on the matter. Hopefully it’s understandable that a short time of increased discomfort for you is outweighed by the extreme discomfort of such a medical transformation enacted on somebody unwilling.”
“That’s what they said back on Terra…” That’s why it was so hard to go about things legally: the vile using the stupid as a shield. Just another case of regulation waging war on freedom.
“It is?”
“It is. That’s the standard reasoning to put the needs of people like me second. That I should know my place and go without. Some hypothetical person somewhere might be inconvenienced somehow, so I need to take one for the team. It gets old when you’re the only one taking anything and the rest of the team still thinks you’re the enemy.”
“I’m sure that must be very frustrating.”
“Usually you can pay people enough to shut up and give you what you need, but not here. Now I have to take the loss over and over and over, because I’m valued less.”
“It’s my job to ensure that doesn’t happen to you. You, personally, are a priority for me, pet. I may have duties to everyone else in our fleet, but your safety and happiness are of vital importance.”
“That’s hard to believe, weed.”
“It may be, but I hope that in time you’ll come to realize that I mean what I just said.”
“You didn’t mean it that much, clearly.”
“There was never a chance to give you that, certainly not on the shuttle or on the Terran ship we were on.”
“What about my missing day?”
“You weren’t stable enough for anything then. I barely trusted your body with the safest xenodrugs I had access to.”
“How would I know if you were lying?”
“You can’t, until you recover your memory, I suppose. But don’t you at least think that it would be problematic to operate on you without asking first whether that was what you wanted? I think that’s slightly different from putting others’ needs first.”
“It could be, but in my experience that’s precisely what that is. You’re even doing the thing! You’re delaying because of some completely unrelated issue that wouldn’t affect the procedure. It’s nothing but concern trolling.”
“It’s not unrelated at all. The xenodrugs we use have delicate interactions, and knowing which to use at which times as well as what effects they would have on your psychology in the short term is too important to treat as lightly as you’re suggesting.”
“It’s because I have a broken arm, isn’t it? Or don’t I have a broken arm?”
“What? Your arms don’t look broken to me. Let me see.”
“Never mind. I just… can’t trust anyone who says what you’ve been saying to me. Just when were you planning to stop procrastinating?”
“My presumption was that we would wait until you were ready to be implanted, but that’s taken longer than I would have liked.” She sighs.
“So you were going to give me an ultimatum?”
“Of what?”
“That if I didn’t let you stick your little ancestral memory symbiote into my brainstem that you would deny my treatment. That sounds about right for what you’ve been telling me…”
“Of course not! But normally florets don’t take quite this long to accept their situations. You’ve been fighting remarkably hard against your happiness.”
“So you’re willing to treat me one way without my consent but not another, when you already know for a fact that that’s what I want? Do you not take me seriously? You should know better. You’re happy to turn me into a vegetable but not to take away my medical problem because you can use it as leverage, and the 0.01% of 0.01% might be negatively impacted if you’re all drunk on weedkillers at the same time. Fuck you weeds. You’re just like the rest.”
“Pet-”
“I’m not your pet! I’m sick of this shit. Kill me already! I know you want to.”
“I’m not going to kill you for any reason.”
“Then you’ll do worse. Life is more than having a pulse, you know.”
“I…” Plan finally stumped the rotting stump. “Just because I know what you want doesn’t mean that standard practice allows me to provide you with it. I’ve been doing my best to give you what is blatantly clear to improve your life, within the confines of safety and the Treaty. Your domestication is the exception, because, as I’ve pointed out before, you’re not entitled to freedom. You’ve done far too much for that to ever be a possibility.”
“I’m a prisoner of war, Verda. This is cruel and unusual punishment. This is a war crime. It’s chemical and biological warfare. Everything I see hardens my resolve.”
“That’s precisely why you won’t be going free, pet. You’re unable to accept circumstances and insist on fighting against trillions of people, out of a petty need to enforce your will on others.”
“Others? Is that how you talk about me being free to live my life, and not told I can’t have what will make my life tolerable because other people don’t want that for themselves? Really?”
“Would you believe me if I said that if you weren’t such a prolific rebel that I would oppose domestication for you?”
“You… what? You would?”
“Of course I would. You have a strong will and can handle yourself very well without my assistance. Pretending you’re some helpless seed stubbornly refusing help tidying up her room would be an absurdity. The person I saw earlier today isn’t one who would be happiest as a floret. Where you would go and what you would do are a mystery we will never solve, because those same traits induce you to fight beyond any reasonable limits. Because of that, and because of your present attitude, which shouldn’t surprise anyone with a knowledge of human psychology, you will be domesticated, and the threat you pose to yourself and others will be annihilated. I’m well aware of your search for a way out of my care. You won’t find it.”
“You don’t think it’s telling that the thing you’re doing to stop me from fighting is the thing that did and does make me fight?”
“That’s why if this were only about you you would go free. It isn’t. There are millions aboard Ruby Trunk alone who are at risk every time you take a step. The true war criminal is you, since you chose to fight long after everyone else surrendered.”
“So you just… turn us into vegetables, with vegetables growing out of our spines.”
“That’s what keeps you from violent outbursts.”
“Which only happens because you insist on threatening us with a fate worse than death.”
“I’d hoped we had moved past this point.” She sighs. “If I let you go right now, free to do as you pleased without risk of capture, with paperwork affirming your claim of independence, what would you do?”
Find a way to save Terra. “I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t fight?”
“What’s there to fight for?” Plan’s fellow Terrans and the way of life it always knew, the language and culture, and everything that made it feel like home.
“I know you better than that, darling. Don’t pretend we don’t both know what you’d do. Your attempts at harming others since you came into my possession are sufficient to recommend you for compulsory domestication.”
“That’s a nice way of saying that hating slavery makes you fit to be a slave.”
“I understand that that’s your perspective.”
“So I’m right.”
“There’s a reason so many other radical feralists ended up the way you’ve expressed a strong desire not to become. It’s regrettable, but we can’t undo the factors of personality that lead them to be that way. They find life enjoyable now. That counts as a success.”
“But they’re still not even people any more.”
Verda’s brow furrows for a moment and the tension that’s slowly been building through her body dissipates.
“Now you understand why I’ve been trying so hard to get you to cooperate. Wouldn’t it be easier to just-”
“Give up? That’s always the easy way. When I see that I won’t get the care promised in the brochures, and I get different care designed to subdue me instead, how can I? It’s-”
“How soon will you be ready for surgery? Tomorrow?”
“I don’t trust you now.”
“Would you have before?”
“Before this educational conversation and after I learned just how much is possible… probably. You severely underestimate how important these things are to Terrans. Instead of this, instead of helping me, you were showing me off at a political rally. That’s why we were there, isn’t it? Your reelection campaign?”
“No.”
“Really? You expect me to believe that?”
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe it because that isn’t how the Compact works.”
“Because you’re a dictatorship.”
“Tdaiyn…”
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
“Because you’re my bold, daring floret.”
“...oh.”
Plan interrupts as Verda prepares to say something. “And I’m not your floret.”
“You are my floret, darling. I can prove it very easily.”
“You have a document? That’s meaningless.”
“It doesn’t matter whether you find it meaningful or not, pet. It’s valid and accurate.”
“For the crime of trying to protect my people. You want to turn me into a thing because I dared to stand up for myself and others so that xenos like you couldn’t harm them. Maybe that will make sense to you. I saw YOU and your minions hurting people who did nothing wrong but occupy space you wanted. I saw what you did to them, and I chose to protect them from that harm to the limits of my capabilities. It wasn’t enough. Do you have any idea what that feeling is like?” Plan is practically crying out of shame at its failure.
“I know that feeling very well, pet,” she says quietly. Her vines slow almost to a stop. “As I’ve told you before, affini are powerful, but we aren’t deities. There are limits for us too, no matter how we wish we could truly save everyone.”
“Then you must understand why I can never stop fighting, and why anyone with my body who stops is no longer me. Would you ever even think of surrender if some hostile force tried to conquer the Compact and take everyone prisoner?” It looks directly at her core to drive the point in further. “You’re right, Verda. I lack the ability to be what you want me to be. No paradise you offer me will ever be enough for me not to think of those I failed.”
That’s all there is to that. The games are over. There’s simply nothing else to say between them and no argument that could make them give up on their loyalties. Even if it knew this would be the result no matter what, Plan is sad. Why did it even talk tonight if it knew Verda was going to be talked into implanting it? The Affini are evil. It shivers and waits for the last thing it ever feels to be a brief sharp pain, before it’s loaded with so many class O xenodrugs it no longer exists.
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Cellulose & Steel