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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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If Affini signs work the same way as Terran signs, they’re entering a sprawling office space that takes up two floors of a large building that dominates the local skyline. There isn’t actually a skyline here since there’s no sky and even if there were everything would fade into the other buildings on the deck… but that’s a distraction. What matters to Ember is that the place is very large compared to everywhere they’ve been but the hospital. The building’s exterior looks like any Terran cement skyscraper, but on closer inspection it’s made out of some kind of plant matter, like so much Affini architecture.
The receptionist on the lower floor of the complex is playing with a ball on a string attached to a cup. She’s making the shot every time, leading Ember to wonder how long she’s been practicing and what entertainment she’s still getting out of that. Verda preempts any conversation with an especially rapid assault in Affini, out of which the word “chka” is the only one recognizable. It wonders if she’s still going to teach it the rest of the language or if she’s decided that knowledge is too great a threat to their conquest.
They’re quickly pointed to what looks like a waiting area that’s distinctly different from most of the other parts of the ship. Everything is still comfortable, but it’s missing some of the softness from elsewhere. More interestingly, there aren’t any other prisoners. A few affini are perched on what look like trellises scattered around the room and there aren’t any chairs. The walls and ceiling look wooden, but they’re green. On closer inspection, they don’t have a grain. The substance is varnished so that Ember can’t tell what it really is. A screen on one of the walls has an Affini message running across it. Floral symbols similar to those on the messaging application separate what are probably different messages.
“We shouldn’t be long, but I can give you a seat if you’d rather not stand,” Verda says.
Ember elects not to take advantage of that offer. One of the affini on the other side of the room gives them an odd look but quickly gets distracted by what she was busy with before they arrived. Verda stretches before climbing a nearby trellis and weaving into it. She looks remarkably comfortable, more than when she’s been sitting on chairs.
The atmosphere here is very still. It’s abnormally quiet in a way that makes Ember a little uncomfortable. The only sounds are the occasional rustle of typing vines and the loud and conflicting rhythms of the affini around it. It’s almost as though the air has some quality making them easier to hear. A friendly chime makes all the affini look at the message screen. The affini who looked at them is the only one who doesn’t look down after. She gets up and walks through a door close to her, tucking her tablet into her leaves.
Not long after, the chime repeats, again causing the affini to take notice. Somebody new passes through the entry just as that’s happening and pauses to read the message. This time Verda’s the one to get up, pulling her prisoner along on the makeshift leash. They exit through a different door from the first affini into a long hall. Most of the doors are open and lead to empty rooms. A few look like storage but are closed. No amount of curiosity is enough to make Ember think that stopping to look in random doors would be smart right now.
They eventually reach an especially large room, which Verda gestures to enter. On closer inspection, the room isn’t very big. It’s much larger than Ember’s hospital room but much smaller than their- than Verda’s bedroom. The walls are covered in hooks and a trellis and a metal table are positioned somewhere close to the middle. The room must be… five meters across, if it had to guess. Every centimeter of that is covered in abstract diagrams on washed out colors that hardly seem to depict anything. The lack of chairs is odd, but Ember doesn’t feel much like sitting anyway. If there were any, it has a strong suspicion that they’d be much too big for it.
After just a couple of minutes, an exceptionally small affini, probably a meter and a half tall, knocks and instantly enters. Between the height and color, Ember would describe the affini as a goblin, but it’s clear each of the limbs could unravel into a variety of long nimble vines. The few short vines that aren’t bound as arms or legs have polished metal tips. Seeing those waving through the air is a little unnerving. She carries some tools in a weird belt across her shoulders, almost like a bandolier. The goblin affini chirps an introduction. Ember thinks it catches “Lily Mayflower, seventeenth bloom” among a lot of Affini. Verda responds in kind and they talk animatedly for a while. It lost track at some point after Lily got out a blackboard and started drawing diagrams of something or other. It knows they’re talking about it because one or the other occasionally points energetically at it, not that it knows what they’re saying. If it had to guess, it’d say they’re talking about how it’s a problem and they need to fix it. At least Verda seems to actually be better now. Not that that’s a good thing. She hasn’t dipped into melancholy since they left the park.
“Pet?” Verda seems to have turned to look at it when it wasn’t watching.
“Verda.” It’s not her pet, but she doesn’t look like reminding her of that would go over well right now.
“Affini kashu.” What does that mean, again? It remembers that it should stick out its hand.
“I’m Ember.” Saying that still feels really nice. Even if it doesn’t know why it stopped liking its real name, this one is perfectly serviceable.
“Nice to meet you, Ember,” The weed slaps Ember’s palm confidently. “Lily Mayflower, seventeenth bloom (fae/faer).” it continues in a very thick and hard to place accent.
“Lily is a superb engineer of cybernetics, who regrettably wasn’t expecting to meet any terran florets in person and never got around to studying the language in depth. We’ve been discussing your situation and hopefully we’ll be able to come up with something that can treat your sensor dysphoria.”
That sounds good. Somebody who understands how mechanical implants function would be ideal. Provided this isn’t a trick, anyway. Wait a minute…
“Fae/faer?”
Both affini signal confirmation.
“Seriously? I had no idea you weeds did that whole meme pronoun thing. Do you do the pronoun circles too? I thought you’d be better than believing in made up genders.”
“You’ve heard others introduce their pronouns, haven’t you?” Verda asks, vines slowing to a wary pace.
“Those were all Terrans. I had no idea you’d imported that silliness.”
Verda’s core makes a faint sound that sounds a bit like growling. “We’ll discuss this later, tdaiyn. For now I must insist that you be respectful of the affini who has so willingly agreed to help you.” She continues in Affini, presumably to apologize on behalf of her property.
How could they not know better? Anyone can be gender nonconforming. Even Ember is, and that doesn’t make it not a real woman. Maybe affini have extra genders after all. It doesn’t actually know that they don’t. But if they do, why do they have to use fake Terran genders? And shouldn’t Verda have introduced that topic already? So it has to be fake. Just another weed subversion. Just as Artemis wanted to deny it medicine and Verda’s still denying it surgery, they’re probably going to deny its gender next. Why? Because some hypothetical floret creature Ember will never meet in its life might potentially be vaguely offended by having to share the universe with an icky binary person. Stupid weeds, always picking the worst of humanity to glorify.
“Lily says fae will take your measurements and examine your implant now. Cooperate, Ember.”
The xeno’s humanoid anatomy makes the examination reasonably quick. Lily is able to demonstrate the poses she wants Ember to take. None of them are particularly challenging, even accounting for the difficulty of staying still when vines are tickling it. The nauseating feel of the affini’s touch goes away in time as she punches the results into her tablet. When the time comes to examine its neck, Ember flinches. It really wasn’t pleased to hear this would be happening. The wild hair that hasn’t been tamed in years is achingly pulled back as Lily runs a thick springy finger along the lip of the junction. The actual sensation ceases to be unpleasant quickly as Ember lacks touch on the metal part. It feels slight pressure but nothing else. The affini has a steady hand. The Terran feels relief when that part of the examination ends.
“Thank you for staying still, Ember. You’re a good girl.”
“Never call me that!” the discarnate warship snaps.
Maybe that was a bit aggressive of a response, it thinks. Then again, the weed has no right to call it a “good girl.” Verda says something brief in Affini wearing an expression with a clear meaning of “told you so.” Good. She already knows better than to speak to Ember so familiarly.
“Of course, second floret of Verda Edok.” She goes back to high speed consultation with Verda, who seems very interested. More squiggly lines appear on the blackboard and time continues to pass. It looks out the window. Evening is coming. They probably have a couple of more hours of light before it starts to get dark.
Ember hasn’t been able to get over Verda’s meltdown. It’s never seen her that way. She’s weak. But it’s because she cares. She’s weak because she doesn’t really want to hurt Ember, as far as she understands that concept? That sounds like something a villain would say. Even the psychotic weed hadn’t said that. It doesn’t want to be turned into a zombie slave, but the real reason it’s still fighting is so that doesn’t happen to Terrans in general. It cares, even if it knows nobody else does at this precise moment. They’d care if they could.
Even if Violet Cornucopia called them a “floret race,” Ember knows better. It knows that the Terran spirit is unbreakable. But if it’s unbreakable, how were they broken? Xenodrugs. The will to fight only departed once their brains were taken hostage. Their smiles are artificial. They can’t be enjoying their servitude, not really…
Memories of the trip to Terra resurface with a pinch to the interior of Ember’s brain, as though they’d been locked away. They hadn’t, as far as it knows. It remembers the smiling faces and genuine peace of the human population. They’re happy. They’re weed slaves, producing some resource it’s not even aware of, but they’re “happy.” It’s like the conspiracy theories of Terra being a demonic reincarnation suffering farm, only real. What do the weeds get out of this? Verda might think she’s helping everyone, but what about the others?
But if they really are as “happy” as they look, and if all hope of rebellion is really over, and if nobody but Song is left…
“Ember.” Verda interrupts its thoughts. “Lily has a design in mind fae would like to check with you about, once it's ready. Fae designed a structure that would have minimal impact on your balance and locomotion but would give a slight sensory improvement as well as increased reach and perceptual limb count. It’s not perfect, but it’s a preliminary installation so it should tell us whether we’re on the right track. It’s to be installed through your cybernetic intake port-”
“That won’t work. Plugging something in dampens my other bodily functions. I wouldn’t be able to walk or see.”
Lily clearly understood that and starts explaining something to Verda. There’s no sense in keeping the secret since they’d be finding out the hard way if it didn’t say anything.
“That shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re willing to let faer examine the inside more closely, fae should be able to adjust the connector to not have that effect.”
It nods and she looks inside of it again. It thinks it ought to be more worried about a weed examining its structures, but the junction is standard enough that nothing new should be learned. Assuming the Cosmic Navy doctors didn’t have a mystery tradition as well… Stars, it hopes they didn’t. That’s kind of concerning for medical people…
“Ah!” It nearly collapses as the xeno torturer disables its limbs. Telling them where to find that was a huge mistake. A set of strong vines evidently belonging to Verda catch it, but it almost wishes she’d let it fall. She’s disgusting, she and all her kind.
“Sorry. I can work this off,” Lily says from above Ember’s present eye level.
She’s sorry? That’s a surprise. It knows weeds enjoy torturing their victims. This one even has fake pronouns to torture it with. And how would a different xeno react to that idea? Do they even have pronouns in every language? Not that that linguistic construct is a mark of superiority, in fact Ember always thought they were weird…
“Lily can make this work. Fae can give you what I just described. Isn’t that exciting?”
“...”
“You still distrust me.”
“How could I not?”
Verda sighs, running a hand along the side of her face as though she were moving hair out of the way. “It won’t be ready for a while. Perhaps by then you’ll have changed your mind.”
Probably not. It’ll take at least until the sensor dysphoria gets bad again. Maybe it could hold out until the weed gets bored and lets it fly again. That would feel so nice…
Unless she decides to murder it while retaining its body. That’s what she’s been planning all along. The instant it gets too rebellious, it dies. A terrible way to go but one that makes sense. The Affini can’t afford to have a Free Terran “feralist” running around, can they? Especially if their admiral, who needs to maintain an image of power and authority, is the “owner” of that rebel. Ember understands. The Accord probably would’ve done the same in that situation. It just… feels no inclination to accept their worldview and submit. It doesn’t want vines in its brain! It doesn’t want to be a treef- memories of Artemis resurface and it shudders. Lunatic weeds.
Verda and Lily say goodbye to one another quickly and the vine leash is slipped back around the prisoner’s neck. It was hoping she wouldn’t think of that. It feels dozens of tiny needles tucked into the body of the vine, waiting for a single thought to extend into its neck. Verda smiles and gives a gentle wave in the direction of the door. They exit the building without reentering the waiting room.
The ride to Verda’s house isn’t especially eventful. No hordes of zombies appear and Ember doesn’t have to divert their tram from its route in order to stop a meteor from hitting it. No tense music plays, though in the Compact even owning that might be illegal. They pass a variety of affini with their domestic servants, all of whom stare at their owners and Ruby Trunk in glassy adoration. It’s pathetic. Ember wishes they could be made to see what’s happening to them. Maybe most xenos wouldn’t be capable of contemplating a better life where they were free, but the Terrans surely would be able to. Stars… It can’t just leave them this way. It’s wrong. It thinks it hears one floret getting on say “thank you for ignoring me when I said not to domesticate me, mistress.” Disgusting. Vile. It could swear it hears the cores of a few affini around it buzzing out the weed version of “awww” in response to that comment. It probably heard correctly. Ewww. Ember tries not to think about that the rest of the way home.
When they’re back, Verda flops with dignity into her chair across from the couch and with its back to where the television descends. With dignity, because seeing her against a trellis revealed just how awkward sitting is for her. How did Ember not see that sooner? Despite that, she comes close to making it look natural. As her vines spread through her portion of the room, Verda accosts her captive.
“The prosthetic should be ready in a few days, darling.”
“That’s fast.”
“If Lily Mayflower has nothing better to do, it could be very soon. Otherwise, it could take a while, since your issue isn’t quite so pressing.”
“So you’ll take me flying again?”
“No, pet. I suspect you might actually crash us this time. Intentionally.”
“Really?”
“Your body language gives away more than you think, pet.”
“I continue not to be your pet.”
“For how long?” She looks as though she wants to continue but nothing more is said.
“Forever.”
“I know you think that, pet.”
“And I know you think this is going to get you somewhere.’
She looks shocked, but doesn’t disagree.
“You said Lily’s language skills weren’t good. She seemed fine to me. I could understand everything and she looked like she understood me well enough.”
“The Affini pride ourselves on making our florets- the florets we own and others’ florets, comfortable and happy. If you were slightly inconvenienced, Lily would consider that a failing on faer part. And thank you for reminding me that this conversation needs to happen, darling. Your conduct earlier was not acceptable.”
“How?”
“You misgendered somebody, and you did it again just now! You didn’t treat Lily’s gender with respect. In fact, you’ve already misgendered several affini since you’ve come into my possession. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d been doing that even more than I’m aware of.”
“I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
“And why not, pet?”
“Because it’s fake.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because the fae aren’t real, Verda. And even if they were, the fae would be a species, not a gender.”
“Perhaps, but respecting others is a very important part of social life.”
“So you’ll let me suffer in a body I hate but you’ll complain until I waste away to nothing if I use the wrong word for somebody?”
She winces. “Ember, you know it’s not that direct.”
“It is! You only care about consent in this one area, and that’s because people who aren’t me don’t want what I want. You’ll even destroy my sexuality to support your heteronormative floret fantasies. Besides, what does it matter if I offend somebody when I don’t even have rights? Are you even capable of treating me like a person at this point?”
“Ember-”
“And how do affini genders work? Why would you have to use Terran words if they were real and innate?”
“In a sense, one could say that we take on the characteristics expected of us by our florets. My personality most corresponds to what you and other terrans would call a woman, so I temper my exterior to that image. I’m sure you’ve surmised that this isn’t my ‘natural’ voice. I’m simply filling a role to make myself easier to relate to, no differently from adopting your mannerisms and face. Remember, I never told you that I was a woman. You chose to project that template onto me, and I didn’t directly reject it.” That’s… kind of obvious in retrospect. Of course they wouldn’t be so like Terrans by nature. They’re literally alien lifeforms.
“So you weeds don’t really think you’re fae. These genders are basically a costume for you.”
“We… don’t have genders the way you do, or the way many species do. In fact, we lacked a concept of gender before we first contacted other intelligent life. Grammatically one might say Affini has two genders… but that’s nothing to do with what you mean with the word. Some of us just like being called fae/faer.” The weed shrugs in a calculated gesture.
“If it’s not real, why should I respect it?”
“For the same reason you’d respect anyone’s gender, including yours.”
“But… None of you have dysphoria?”
“Dysphoria over what? We can sculpt our bodies as we see fit, change our voices and our names, and our society treats us as individuals rather than… What’s the term? Members of sex classes. The Compact will never treat anyone differently due to reproductive signifiers.”
“Really?”
“Aside from how the individual would want to be treated, of course.”
That’s not quite what Ember was expecting. Naturally it’s a lie, like how “all men are created equal” only applies to certain men (male). Verda’s lies seem to be getting better, though. If Ember hadn’t been on guard it might’ve been fooled into thinking they prized individuality. In reality, they’re just communists who hate freedom.
“So pronouns are like our bodies and names, things we’re free to change as we please to tell the society how we want to be seen. Even you can choose your pronouns, little one.”
“This sounds like just another way to tell me I shouldn’t consider myself a woman. Not a real one, at least.”
“Is that what this is about? You don’t have to be a woman to receive the care you want, you know.”
“I’m not getting it either way, and what I’m getting is to stop me from being gay. Actually, now that I say that out loud, your homophobia goes in both directions!”
“If you’re so happy as a woman, why did you react so aggressively to being called a good girl?”
“Because that sort of thing is disgusting from a weed. You have no right to call me that.”
“Are you sure you’d be fine with somebody else calling you a good girl?”
“Of course.” Probably. Nobody really did that, and that sort of thing isn’t tolerated between sailors. Wasn’t. Even then this particular Terran’s been immune to how strongly some seemed to react to the phrase.
“That’s fascinating, Ember. Or should I start calling you Olivia again?” It can’t restrain a grimace. “When was the last time you called yourself a good girl? Very few female Terrans seem resistant to the phrase.” About that… “Or males, for that matter. I suppose that makes you special, doesn’t it? Or does that mean that you want me to know that you’re a bad girl?”
Verda winks and Ember rolls its eyes. No, it’s not a bad girl, and no, it’s not special in that way. It just… doesn’t like how weird people get about genders and treating each other differently for no real reason. It has to admit, the weeds not being sexist to it has been nice. Aside from the WLW = bad thing. That hasn’t been nice. Why is Verda bullying it now? Just because it doesn’t like people being weird to it doesn’t mean its womanhood evaporates. It doesn’t have to conform just because some humans a thousand years ago decided how it should act. The weeds are just trying to get into its head and hurt it emotionally. That’s what this is.
But why did it change its name? Maybe the old one reminded it too much of Ginger. Maybe it reminded it too much of the Cosmic Navy, from before its enhancement. Maybe it’s because that name was chosen for reasons other than Ember wanting it. Seriously, it named itself after fire? How edgy can you get? In the Affini Compact, it’s a perfectly normal and acceptable name, when you have Trip Stickses running around. Verda’s lying. They want to make it miserable enough it’ll “want” to be a man. They’re evil, even if Verda probably does think she’s a good person for doing all of this.
But would she really lie about that? After all the effort she’s apparently gone to to avoid killing Ember, why would she use pronouns of all things as a weapon? If she really believes that… then she’s no better than all the rest who want to discredit its gender. But if all of that is genuine… can it blame them for not relating well to the distinctions of another species? Why would they even be expected to understand? That some of them try is worth something, at least as far as xenos go.
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Cellulose & Steel