It was going to be a long day. I had already grabbed the materials. All that was left was to spend some time with my friends. And make sure to get everything done before the wellness check tomorrow. I couldn’t forget that, could I? Everything was done. The machine was set up, the tank was pilfered, and a gas mask was obtained - I couldn’t inhale the wrong gas, after all.
This had to work. It was going to work. I’d done a trial run, and I’d made sure of it. I’d covered my tracks… but not well enough. They were getting a little bit suspicious. But it was fine. I had time.
I took a brave, final step out of my apartment and into the streets. The Affini were spectacular at urban planning, I admitted. They really were better than us in every way. They had better technology, they were smarter, more durable, literally immortal… to them we were nothing more than animals. Cute ones, but still. And it showed. Even on the street, I saw a bunch of gigantic plants. They were all over 9 feet tall, their bodies a mixture of green, brown, and the occasional splash of color from their flowers.
Their vines were crudely woven into vague humanoid shapes, as some of them led strung-out, obviously drugged people on leashes. Their clothing varied, from relatively normal, to various kinds of fetish clothes, to complete nudity, aside from a collar. It was sickening to have my comrades, my family… and even some of my friends reduced to that state.
I concealed my disgust, shoving it into a dark corner of my mind as I suppressed my urge to gag. “Mind over matter,” I repeated to myself in my head. I had grown relatively good at that. Showing those kinds of emotions gets you on the watchlist, after all. It draws you ever closer to becoming one of them, becoming some sort of pet, always in some sort of stupor, completely dependent on their owner. I held my head high, a light, rehearsed smile on my face, and tried to just get to the train station. But that was hard. It was always hard.
When I had reached the train station, an Affini eyed me with some form of adoration. It didn’t stick out from any of the others; it looked surprisingly normal. Its face was completely woven from vines, with gaps in the constructed face for its yellow crystalline eyes (indicating happiness) and a fake mouth. Most of its flowers were pink roses, which would be beautiful and nice to smell if I didn’t know that they were xenodrug dispensers.
“Oh my stars! You’re so cute!” it exclaimed in a sickeningly sweet, overly artificial, feminine voice. It was delighted to see me. Despite me being on the taller side, I was still prone to being infantilized. I tried my best to ignore it, but that didn’t work. “Hi! I’m Lily Chloydre, second bloom. She/her.” She sat down next to me, and I did my best to contort my facial expression into a bigger smile. I crinkled my eyes, which was enough to fool the less experienced ones.
Judging by the fact that she had just given me her full name, her lack of experience with Terran culture was obvious. “I’m Vanessa. She/her,” I said, giving my best customer service voice. I knew that, if I were sad, they’d try their best to remedy that. They’d give me some sort of xenodrug, enhance their biorhythm, hypnotize me, whatever they could do to make me happy.
But that wasn’t what I wanted, so I had to present myself as someone who didn’t need any help. As someone who was perfectly happy, and was never that sad, and never needed anything, because nothing was ever wrong. Nothing was ever wrong. It was exasperating, to be forced to keep up this lie to every single Affini, Floret, and even some of the independents who had come around to this twisted philosophy.
That’s what stung the most: Lying to fellow independents. I thought they were okay to complain to, safe harbors who I could vent around without getting a wellness check. Sadly, I was wrong. And now, I could never be honest around anyone, ever again. I could never show that side of myself, ever again, lest I be domesticated. But, there was relief coming. I wasn’t going to have to worry about that anymore. Not after the plan succeeded.
“So… um… what do you want?” I ask, saying it in a way that hopefully felt more confused than aggressive to Lily. “Oh, maybe I could give you scritches… or pet you, if you’re okay with that…” she replied. I shake my head, signaling a no. But of course I had to elaborate, give a reason, other than the fact that I don’t like being treated like a pet, and I didn’t like xenodrugs, either. Those reasons always went nowhere; they simply couldn’t understand. “Oh, they’re just not my thing,” I reply, before detecting a bit of confusion.
Reading Affini eye colors was surprisingly easy, especially compared to Terran social cues. It was one of the few things I liked about them; they wore their hearts on their sleeves, making things easy for me. “I don’t like them,” I reply, “I like personal space better.” Lily was sad. Of course she was. But I wasn’t, not to their knowledge. They couldn’t get into my brain. Not yet, anyway. Not as long as I gave them no reason to take a deeper dive.
Still, she stayed close. “But, do you want cuddles? I know Terrans like cuddles!” I thought to myself for a moment. She wanted to make me feel happier, and, if I seemed happier, she’d feel like she did her job. And she’d probably trust me anyway, because she didn’t know very much about Terrans… “Well, Lily,” I started, “I’m an introvert, and I don’t like being around other sophonts all the time,” I could barely use that word without layering it with anger. Those filthy weeds had even colonized our language. “So, right now, I need some alone time, to recharge my social batteries! Could you help me get some alone time, away from all the other sophonts?” There… Maybe that would work.
Luckily, it did. She nodded, her eyes also displaying that she understood. I even picked up a tinge of sadness from her; she didn’t like the fact that she was going to have to stay away from me to make me happy. But it was for my happiness, so she’d do it.
The worst part of all of this was the dependence. I knew that I couldn’t contribute to Affini society, and Terran society was completely dead. I would never be anything more than a mascot to them, never more than something cute to look at. My intelligence would never truly be respected again - after all, it was nothing compared to the average Affini. I would never be put to work on anything meaningful. There were no stakes, no important choices. There was no control that I had, no impact I could make - not over the world, not over myself, and not over anyone else.
Except for one thing. And that was happening today. I felt genuine happiness as I thought it over. The Affini weren’t going to win this time. They’d beaten our society to a pulp, reduced us to nothingness, but they couldn’t beat me. There was one decision that they couldn’t stop me from making. At least, that was what I hoped.
As I boarded the train, in one of the emptier cars (thanks to Lily, who had shown me in and then left), I began to think. What was I going to do with my friends? Maybe we could play some old Earth board games, talk about our lives pre-invasion, chow down on some junk food and get fat… I giggled to myself, thinking about last year, before all this had happened. It wasn’t the best life, but my future had been bright before all this. I was going to become an engineer. If all went well, I was on track to help design an autonomous terraformer that could make Antares A2 habitable in 50 years time. That was the goal, anyway. Perhaps, if I had lived that long, I could have seen my effort come to fruition. But, no, the Affini came and beat us to it. People were already moving onto Antares A2.
There truly was nothing that I could do to help anything.
I looked around, making sure that nobody was paying attention to me. And then, finally, I let the facade drop, and I finally let myself get crushed by the weight of my sorrows. A tear escaped my eyes, and then another, and then another. I sobbed as I mourned all that could have been, all that was made obsolete when they arrived, the complete and utter destruction of my goals, my hopes and dreams, my independence, all of the meaning to anything. I wept at my obsolescence.
All they had to do was treat us as equals, and let us grow into the mature, responsible Terrans that we yearned to be. Let us participate in the beautiful society that they had built for us. Let us exist in the same way that they existed. And they didn’t.
