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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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The pain in Ember’s head is fading further into the background every minute. It suspects the side effects won’t be very pronounced by lunch, even without the antidote Verda offered. That’s not a bad thing. Now that there’s somebody from the outside to talk to, somebody who doesn’t like the Compact either, things are much more exciting. Ember is so happy to be able to hear from Lysander, even if she seems a bit spacy. If everyone is being a bit mean to her, that would explain a lot. Trans people do tend to attract bullies, after all.
After letting the matter simmer a little, Ember doesn’t feel quite as worried about the ethics of reaching out this way. Verda said that the egg wouldn’t have to become a floret and before that could happen either way, Ember will make sure to treat her well. It just hopes it’ll be good enough. As confident as it tries to be all the time, it’s well aware of every way it could mess up. Being able to excise your anxiety temporarily is extremely useful. Maybe meatbags will get that upgrade at some point.
Ember of Beginnings is proud of its first contact with a Terran. The egg will be hatched under the careful guidance of an expert sitter. Actually, Ember probably has less experience sitting than just about anyone, since it’s been suspended in a fluid for the past few years. Whether so much time interacting with others through an interface has warped its thinking is something better left alone. It’s trying its best.
Considering how helpful Verda was this morning, maybe she’s trying her best too. She’s a xeno and wants to keep Ember as a slave, but she’s done a lot for it when she simply could’ve drugged it into compliance. No matter what’s happened, Ember keeps waiting for the evidence it’s all been a trick. Building its trust in order to make its destruction all the more amusing is just what it would expect. Terrans do that sort of thing too, frequently. That’s how it knows there’s something suspicious going on.
She’s weird. All the other weeds think she’s weird. Ember remembers the first time it laid eyes on her. Patches of colors were floating in its vision due to the destruction of many of its sensors. The first thing its body saw when it was unplugged was a vaguely green blur. “Breathe and be calm. I’m here to help.” She may as well have said, “Move a muscle and I’ll eat your liver.” The sight of a fuzzy blob that takes up most of the room would have been less intimidating if Ember hadn’t known what she looked like in advance. Stars… It shivers. That’s what horror movies are based on.
Even back then, Verda must’ve had some reason to think Ember was different. She could randomly treat a prisoner differently from everyone else, but why would she? Shouldn’t an admiral have had first pick of the florets? It doesn’t add up. Verda’s powerful to the point of being eccentric rather than insane, so nobody’s opinions really matter, except that they apparently all think she’s a good leader. It’s not sure how that works out, but that isn’t its problem for now.
What would a good floret be doing right now? Cuddling against Verda and purring. It looks back at the affini. She probably doesn’t actually want that. For some reason, Ember has the impression that she’d rather see it doing something that made it feel accomplished, which being a stuffed animal for an overgrown scarecrow would not. But that can’t be right. That would defy Affini culture. Assuming she’s telling the truth, it can just ask about this once it’s gotten Lysander to pick her new name.
The pilot’s musings are unjustly interrupted when Verda raises her leafy face to address it.
“Ember, if I were to leave you alone for an hour while I dealt with an issue elsewhere on the ship, would you be able to promise that you wouldn’t cause any mischief?”
“No.” Something is bound to go wrong, and Verda will blame Ember. Then not only will it have failed to be a good floret, it will have lied.
“Then would you rather come with me?”
“No.”
“I can’t leave you here unless you promise to try to be good, darling. Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll try.” That wording is much more accommodating.
“No being abducted?” the plant asks with a wry smile.
“I’ll try.” It was hoping she wouldn’t remember that. Now it’s stuck here.
“As you know, you can reach me at any time. I will rush back if you need me.”
The plant gives her prisoner a brief and gentle squeeze on her way to the door, drawing a shocked gasp. The gesture was unexpected, but Ember is grateful that Verda was mentally present enough to restrain the urges that it knows she has. In its skimming of the readme, it noted at least a dozen references to the squeezing of Terrans, which was very unsettling when it considered that the entire point of using the tablet is that the reader won’t be in the room with the “asset.”
By the time Ember is able to recover from the surprise of having been grabbed, Verda is already through the door, locking it and slithering away. It leans back against the couch, breathing deeply the heavily oxygenated air of Ruby Trunk. It doesn’t smell very different from Song’s air. Tump synk ka-tink.
Stars’ blight on the weeds! It’s still here! Ember screams at the biorhythms. Even though Verda is gone, she’s imposing herself on it from a distance. It feels them accelerate along with its heartrate, or it feels its heartrate jump along with the sounds. The betrayal strikes it with the weight of a hundred parsec jump. How could she? It tried to be “good,” to hold back. She’s been holding back too! After all that, she’s just going to destroy its brain with her weed tones while she doesn’t even give it the dignity of seeing her pretense of a face as she’s doing it? That’s below a xeno. Tump synk ka-tink.
It cries, tears soaking its face before it reaches the arm of the couch. All its attempts at escape, all the concessions Verda made, its rescue from Artemis’s insanity, Verda’s admission of overreach, flying again, the fitting to become a weed hybrid abomination thing… None of that mattered. Tump synk ka-tink. Everything dies with a whimper, and for what? What does Verda even gain? The knowledge of having tortured somebody to death? She’s not like that. She can’t be that cruel. Ember doesn’t believe it.
Even if that’s not true, Ember has failed at everything it attempted. It’s still here. It hasn’t rescued anyone, infiltrated anything, captured Affini assets… Terrans are being denied their freedom. Ember is just one ship, but it should’ve been able to do something, to help somehow.
All it has to show for the past month is weed technology, and integrating more every day, becoming more like a slave every day…
Lysander isn’t even real. He’s just a simulation, some imitation of a Terran generated by the enemies of humanism and idolaters of “love.” They’re so afraid of harm, they just might have done that. After all, the risk remains no matter what, that Ember might poorly advise or misguide this “seed,” mildly inconveniencing her or her future mistress. It’s trying! Ember really does want Lysander to be happy, and it really does think she’s one of the eggiest eggs to ever not become an omelet.
None of that matters. None of it ever did. Ember is nothing. It’s worthless. It doesn’t matter. Verda could kill it and the Compact would never know. If it did, she might be commended for terminating a threat to the empire. That is, if it’s even significant enough that its death would merit concern. Why should they care? It’s just a slave. Slaves die all the time in every society that has them. Part of being property is that it’s expendable and replaceable. That’s the point. If it was Verda’s daughter, it’s sure they would care. Why would it even think of that? And anyway it isn’t, it’s just a “floret.” Worthless. Pathetic. Useless.
Ages pass while Ember sobs into the soft fabric of the couch. Miserable as it is, it feels better as it releases its misery. More patriarchy, having to put on a pretty face so that the superior caste doesn’t have to worry about what’s going on inside. Everbloom forbid a weed might have to worry about her floret’s happiness! That’s what xenodrugs are for. It’s shaking too much to physically react to the passing thought of what men might’ve done if they’d had access to xenodrugs during the first wave of feminism. It tries not to think too much about that.
Eventually the tears run out and the Terran pilot is left gripping the arm of the couch as well as sliding something over the back and under the seat. It tries not to think about that. By the time it’s able to breathe normally, the mood is gone. Ember sits up, wiping its eyes on the back of the couch. Verda never got around to teaching it how to compile so it doesn’t have access to tissues.
It doesn’t know when the last time was that it was able to properly cry. It’s not the same when there’s somebody watching. After almost never being alone for weeks, it needed to empty its stress in an extremely Terran way. You can’t just cry in public or in front of the enemy. This is much better. Now it can think more clearly. Really, it could use a hug from a friend right now, but those are in short supply. Evlen is on another deck, millions of people away. Ginger- None of the crew cared enough to be that kind of a friend, even if they were around. That’s partly Ember’s fault, but it doesn’t feel their absence as individuals so much as as a team.
“Fucking weeds get eaten by bugs.”
Saying that feels fantastic. It’s a meaningless phrase, but it’s something they don’t want it to say. It’s something it has to be on guard against at all times. It’s… liberated. Stars… Ember doesn’t even care that much any more. It just wants to be free. It likes not having to answer to anyone, being able to go where it decides, when it thinks going there is a good idea. If the weeds would just let it fly again, and let it be free, maybe it wouldn’t- The officer of the Cosmic Navy stops itself from thinking a treasonous thought.
Ember sighs, or what was intended as something along those lines comes out more as a cross with a whine and a groan. It hates being confined, and that’s what happened again and again and again. It’s sick of living out some moron’s idea of how it should be. Its parents told it what to do for 18 years. Its captain did since it moved aboard. Between then, an endless string of professors and commanders told it what to do constantly. Maybe it should’ve been smarter than to join the military if it didn’t like that, but there weren’t exactly a ton of job openings at the time. Ember just knows the spoiled kid in its year is a professor now because his dad pushed him along the path instead of Ember. At least it’s nice to imagine a weed going and telling him “everything you think you know about reality is stupid and wrong. Try to pass your alchemy off as real science again and you’ll be turned into a pet.” That makes it smile.
It shivers. Great, now it’s cold. Gripping itself for a little warmth, Ember tries to figure out what to do with its time. Since Verda is away and it’s free to be a Terran again, it has no idea. It doesn’t care! Anything while alone will make it feel much better about itself. Ember gets off the couch and jumps up and down repeatedly. She goes to Verda’s bedroom and jumps on the bed, though the softness of the mattress absorbs all of her attempts at bouncing. She goes to the kitchen and kicks the refrigerator because nobody’s going to come tell her she can’t. Tump synk ka-tink.
After shaking the sadness out of its head, Ember concludes that it’s time to return to being the good girl she will always have to be, for the rest of her medically extended life… She can’t handle a century of this. Ember begs every cosmic force in existence to terminate her suffering in the name of compassion. No life like this one is worthy of being lived.
The universe is too cruel to comply with her desires, leaving her stranded where she was before. She guesses she may as well learn about biorhythms some more. There’s nothing better to do. The pilot deflates onto the soft yet moist couch, groaning as she stretches her vine out to the tablets she left on the table.
Nothing from Lysander. Nothing from anyone else. A message from Evlen could’ve cheered her up. She unlocks the screen and opens the video folder. It’s already seen 50. 51 will be new and “exciting.” Ember hopes it’ll be worth her time. She really needs something that is right now.
A smiling floret decked in white with lace bunting waves at the camera from behind a mahogany desk. Her hair is in a Karen cut that doesn’t really match her facial shape. Her pronunciation is crisp and proper, as though she isn’t on xenodrugs, though her expression and sluggish cadence prove otherwise.
“Good morning. It’s morning here. Um, this is a supplementary video regarding biorhythms for the education of terran florets who need to be informed. From what I’ve been told, this is for if you and your owner want to play with them, so if that isn’t what’s happening, you two should have a careful and sincere discussion. As this content is sensitive, the fact you’re watching now shows that your owner trusts you a lot. Congratulations.”
The floret smiles even more broadly.
“I’m Nancy Averit, first floret of Velous Averit. I’ve been xis floret for four years, and during those years xe chose to care for another human floret and invited me to participate in her care. She’s been like a little sister to me since we met. My fellow floret had severe anxiety before joining us, and our master used xis biorhythms to treat that without xenodrugs. Since I was able to watch from the outside, I have knowledge of how the process looks, which is part of why I was selected for this project.
“As you’ve certainly discovered by now, an obedient floret is a good floret, and thus is a praised floret. Biorhythms aid in incentivizing obedience, allowing the floret to learn to be good without having to make stressful decisions regarding how to act. Following one’s new owner’s directions becomes easier, resulting in fewer conflicts and more compliments, leading to a smoother transition to domesticated life. The purpose of domestication is harmony, which is thus achieved.
“Beyond that, biorhythms are used to regulate a floret’s mood. Panic attacks can be resolved in a few minutes, as can depressive or manic episodes. Though there are limits, you won’t need to know them since your owner will be aware enough to make sure you’re not harmed by that. Whenever Sis started crying, Master gave her a hug, and it only took a week for her fears to go away. It was really heartwarming to see her change from a frightened girl into somebody happy and confident, and all because our owner was willing to solve her problems for her.
“Biorhythms can affect your dreams too. Most affini just use xenodrugs because those are easier to control to prevent nightmares, but it’s true nonetheless. I… frequently dream of tentacles when I fall asleep too near my master’s core. He says it’s not his fault. Little Sis dreams of lollipops, I have no idea why. They can be in any random dream context. The point is, the effect can be unpredictable. Let your owner know if that happens and you don’t like the topic.
“If you listen carefully, you can tell the details of your owner’s biorhythms. There is more complexity to them than you would probably expect. In fact, you can even learn to tell your owner’s mood through them. Of course, that could take years and I haven’t gotten close to that. When I try too much at once, I just fall asleep while Master cuddles me.
“There is a lot more that could be said, but it’s best for you to discover all of that with your owner. I should have given you enough of an idea of how things work to be able to be the best pet you can be. Thank you for listening, everyone. Behave!”
By vibrating your skull, affini can cure depression? Ember’s heard that one before. Tump synk ka-tink. There have been a few brain scrambling fads too expensive for her to think about trying, but none of them turned out to be effective. The weeds are probably lying so they can use another method of making their prisoners stupid. Except maybe the one talking. She doesn’t seem stupid, even if she could hypothetically just be reading a script.
The video seems to match up with what Verda said before, that Ember’s recording (modified to be affinilike, she’s sure) will be used to stop her egg from panicking and running away. Even if she’s uncomfortable with the idea, she doesn’t blame the weeds for picking up that technique, since it’s part of their biology. They can’t help it- except when they can, as Verda admitted. By not disabling their biorhythms, the weeds are choosing to vibrate people’s brains into mush. That’s disgusting.
Regardless of that, Verda has been demonstrating restraint. Nobody forced her to keep quiet and not bury Ember (so far as she knows). That’s just basic Terran decency, but it does mean something. It means that Verda hasn’t abused her power over her prisoner or forced her into a situation where she couldn’t say no… where she couldn’t even say no. She shivers at the horrible thought. Tump synk ka-tink.
So maybe Verda does care as much as she’s said she does. Maybe she wants to preserve Ember’s nature for some twisted xeno reason. Maybe it’s all true, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t try to do conversion therapy and sort of succeed. This isn’t the time to worry about that or she’ll start crying again. Her eyes still ache from before. “Stars, please don’t let her see me this way… I just have to be strong. She can be bargained with. Maybe she won’t give me an implant if I can figure out how to talk her out of it…”
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Cellulose & Steel