Even though they weren’t moving anymore, it somehow felt even worse for the vines to be there. All I could do was stay there, trying my best not to squirm. And then the culprit (though I already knew who she was) finally revealed herself.
It was Alice. According to her, they were the cutest part of me, and it would be a crime against sophonts to not let her touch them.
I blushed a bit, cloaking my outright disgust behind a veil of embarrassment. “Stop!” I exclaimed in a playful way while giving my best fake smile - I could object, but I knew that would be a bad idea, considering that objections would be punished by limiting my freedom in a far more perverse way. I’d been drugged once, and that was an experience I wasn’t eager to repeat. During the week after they gave me the injection, I was barely able to do even the insanely easy busywork they gave me. I was more of a cuddly pet than anything else.
It was so demeaning, and I couldn’t have done anything about it - I was just drugged, and the rest was set in stone. I was so helpless, so useless, so dependent on them, so worthless, so horrible, so gross and disgusting and loopy and absent. This couldn’t ever happen again. It wouldn’t ever happen again.
So, I had to be cuddly enough, complicit enough, that they didn’t feel the need to change me. I had to let them pet me with a smile on my face, if only to prove myself. That was the entire point of this, and I had to bear all of this in hopes that maybe, someday, they’d take me seriously enough to treat me as an equal in some manner.
<Hey, Alice! Can you help me with _______ _____?> Violet asked Alice. I couldn’t understand spoken Affini very well, so I wasn’t sure exactly what she said. <Sure!> Alice replied, almost immediately.
A few seconds later, after she didn’t move, Violet responded with <I’m _____ _____ all your vines __ ____.>
And then, finally, Alice’s vines slithered their way off of my chest. Violet had used various different excuses to save me from Alice that way, countless times over the months. It was like she was the only one who truly understood how much I hated being touched like that. Or, at least, she was the only one who truly cared.
And they were reviewing my performance right now. Oak, the boss, was looking at the work I had done… Perhaps I’d be promoted to someone who got taken seriously, someone whose work mattered, someone who could be trusted with making the tiny system improvements that streamlined Affini terraforming equipment… or maybe someone who could do paperwork that wasn’t merely a redundancy.
The actual work I was doing was bureaucratic nonsense. Luckily, they’d had the courtesy of translating it into English; my Affini was horrible. I could barely read it, let alone understand conversations in it. Everything I had done so far was incredibly easy… validating some of the math that was involved in the equipment.
After doing some number crunching for a few hours, while shrugging off various headpats from the Affini, I needed to use the bathroom. This required me to get up from my desk, which was in the center of the room (because, apparently, all the Affini deserved access to a cute Terran), and go all the way to the back of the office, where the only bathroom was.
Opening the door, I was met with the usual hot pink room. Aside from the color, luckily, they hadn’t done anything weird to it - although one of the soap dispensers actually dispensed class-A xenodrugs for some reason. It was some sort of office prank that only I was the victim of. Luckily, I’d only made the mistake of using that one once. Sensitive hands were horrible for typing.
My return trip was the last straw. Oak was in their office, along with Alice. As I was walking back to my desk, I could see what was on Oak’s twin monitors. The left one contained some Affini script that I couldn’t parse, but the right one had pictures. Looking closer, I realized they were pictures of me in various situations - at my desk from various angles, walking, and, the most damning one of them all: in the bathroom with my pants down. The caption they used was also in Affini, but I took the time to translate it in my head: “Isn’t she so cute? I wonder which one of us will get to domesticate her!”
I suppressed the rage I felt as I brought out my phone, turned off its internet, and captured and translated the Affini script on the left monitor. I walked back to my desk, giving no indication of what I saw.
With the limited amount of privacy I had at my desk, I grew curious. And, finally, I looked at my phone, and began to read the translation of the Affini script:
The title read, “Math problems to keep your floret busy.”
No… this wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. Maybe it was unrelated? A tiny bit of hope held out, making my emotions just a tiny bit manageable. I tightened my hold on my biorhythm, forcing my heart to beat at a normal rate, forcing the rest of my body in line. I could not freak out here. I could not waver even one bit. The weeds would notice, and I would get drugged again.
I continued reading. The description was, “Want to make your floret feel like she’s doing something other than being the cutest pet ever? Give her these math problems! Guaranteed to fool even the silliest xenosophonts into thinking what they do matters!”
No! NO! NONONONONONONONONO! This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t about me. It couldn’t be about me. I couldn’t be the one this was for. Oak couldn’t be that bad. Nine months of torture had to be for something . Every horrible time my boundaries were violated, every time I let them use me like some sort of toy had to be for something. All the humiliation had to be for something. It was for something.
I was in control. I could do this. My work was going to be meaningful. They were giving me a chance. Everything was going to work out.
The rest of the page contained a bunch of positive reviews that I skimmed over, as well as the one that Oak had been busy writing - “Kept our office cutie busy! She really thought she was doing something important, and she looked so pretty while she was doing it! Way better at fooling Terrans than most of the other ones… these were the only ones that - ”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
No. Not here. I couldn’t flip out here. I wasn’t allowed to flip out here. But it was happening anyway.
I peered into my body. It had finally given out. The Facade had finally cracked. I could’ve been doomed if I hadn’t gotten myself in line right then .
My adrenal gland was in overdrive, pumping out adrenaline as fast as it could. Left unchecked, that could ruin me. I clenched around it, forcing it to shut down. But the chemical spill had already happened. I felt adrenaline coursing through my veins, my biology trying to run in the exact wrong way - the way that would get noticed. That poor thing, suppressed for so long, sheepishly begging to come out, pleading for its cries to be heard…
No matter how much it begged, no matter how much it pleaded to finally vent, it couldn’t happen now. I had five more hours before it could finally run free, before I could finally let myself properly cry and scream and display my anguish, to an audience of nobody. I had nobody safe to talk to.
The chemical spill slowly seeped through my blood, and I quickly moved to compensate for it. Muscles tried to tense, and I made them relax. Eyes attempted to dilate, and I forcibly constricted them. My heart wanted to race and pound, and I took charge of its beating. My blood vessels constricted, and I pulled them back open.
A ripple of anguish, of raw fear and anger and sadness spread across my body, followed by a wave of calm as I took charge, as I compensated for each and every crack and defect and problem.
And then, finally, my focus was able to turn to the amygdala; the culprit of this whole situation. All of the fear was radiating right from it as it kept sounding a blaring alarm, making me want to do something drastic. But I knew that they could hear the alarm too. I knew it would do nothing but draw the Affini in, like parasites, to drug me and take me apart. And so, the alarm had to be silenced.
My poor amygdala… it was just doing its job, trying to keep me safe, but it wasn’t functioning correctly. It was screaming at me to do things that were impossible. I couldn’t fight them. I couldn’t run from them. I couldn’t even freeze; I had to keep moving as normal, I had to bury the evidence of what I’d seen. I closed the image on my phone, instead turning my attention to the fake, ridiculously easy math problems.
My biorhythm was fine, perfectly calm, maintaining the perfect illusion, except for one tiny leak. And that had to be fixed as soon as possible. And, so, I concentrated. And I concentrated. And I concentrated. I knew that severing was incredibly difficult to do, and rather difficult to maintain as well, but it was the only way.
And then, finally, my poor little amygdala fell silent. My biorhythm was fine. As far as they knew, I was completely calm. It had only taken a few seconds to get everything back in order. By the time they had noticed, I was doing the useless math problems again.
“Are you getting a little frustrated, cutie?” Alice asked. Yeah, I was definitely a little frustrated. That was completely correct. “Are the math problems getting too hard for you? You’re such a good girl for trying to solve them, but you can take a break now…”
I felt a vine on the top of my head, violating my hair as I forced my body not to quiver, not to have a reaction, and to feign appreciation in the best way I knew how. Not long after, cold, green tendrils surrounded me and slowly slithered up my body, slurping away at my body heat like parasites. My lizard brain screamed at me that this was wrong, that I needed to get out, but those cries thankfully fell on deaf ears. It had been cut out of the equation, its proposals completely counterproductive. I was wrapped in cold, hard, unforgiving vines, which almost made me feel like I was being kidnapped. And that was apparently supposed to be a hug.
I faked a smile at the term “good girl”. Nobody would say that to an equal, that was for sure; it was so demeaning, so patronizing, probably by intent. I hated it.. But they couldn’t know that, or else they’d think there was something wrong with me… or else I’d be such a delectable target for domestication. They wouldn’t be able to resist.
“But there’s no shame in giving up! Your cute little brain needs to focus on more important things, like getting cuddles and hugs and - ”
“Could you help me with this math problem, Violet?” I asked, looking in Violet’s direction as I interrupted her, “I’ve just been struggling with it a lot and it’s really frustrating.” Traditional Affini practice was to discipline me for daring to interrupt an Affini, but I was rejecting her in the plainest way possible. Plus, Violet was probably the nicest Affini in the entire office - she wasn’t going to give Alice time to even think about disciplining me.
Dejected, Alice finally let the vines go, letting them slither away from me as Violet replaced her. Everything was going to be okay.
The math problem was just a differential equation. I had learned about them when I was ten, along with 99.9% of the population of Antares, and I could do them in my sleep. But the Affini, in their arrogance, didn’t think that any Terrans could have an easy time with anything like that. The least they could do was crack open actual, difficult mathematics… there must be something between the simplest differential equations on the planet, and whatever esoteric Affini mathematics they were at now.
“Well, cutie… this differential equation requires something called an integrating factor. Do you know what that is?” Violet asked. I shook my head. It’s not like I’ve known how to do this for over half my life or something.
For a second, she paused, almost as if she was astonished by the idea that I didn’t know how to do that. And then, she walked me through it like I was an idiot child. And, all I could do was sit back and pretend to appreciate a completely useless lesson, as she pretended to treat me like I didn’t know how to do it. As demeaning as it felt, I knew that she didn’t truly think I was that dumb. I knew that she was playing along, protecting me from everyone else.
Finally, with the differential equation solved, and with none of the Affini suspecting anything, I thought about my options. I couldn’t confront them; I’d read too many horror stories of Terrans talking about how they were about to confront an Affini, and then promptly disappeared forever. No, they could never know that I saw what they were doing; for all they knew, it had to be some kind of unrelated reason. Perhaps I had decided to do art instead, or I wanted to become a video game streamer, or… something in this post-scarcity society. I had the lie all drafted; the only reason I chose to work was because I’d thought I had to.
I couldn’t shake the fact that they didn’t even see me as having the potential to become remotely equal to them. I could never be anything more than some cute little pet. They didn’t even let me do anything that was meaningful, anything that they paid attention to, anything that could improve their society in any way. No, I was nothing more than vine candy, to be ogled and pet and groped. That was all they thought of me, and that was all I could ever be to them.
That was the last day I ever came into work.
Present Day
“That was the last day I ever came into work,” I finished, a somber look on my face, “there wasn’t much of a point in coming after I saw the truth.”
Emma looked confused. “But Vanessa, why’d you even want to leave? They appreciated you, didn’t they? And, I mean, you must’ve helped them in your own way, even if you weren’t doing any real work. You must’ve made lots of Affini happy just by being there, and they must’ve been so sad when you stopped showing up!”
I shrug. “I dunno, Emma, that’s not how I want to contribute. I don’t like being a glorified prostitute for some weird plant aliens. And, besides, Alice was probably going to try to domesticate me anyway, so I wasn’t really going to be able to spend too much time there anyway.” I wanted to get mad, I wanted to tell her that not everybody fantasized about the horrible violations that I was the victim of. But that was a sure way to get reported to the Bureau.
Emma seemed miffed at that comparison. “Don’t talk about florets like that!” she exclaimed, “I really think you should go back there, Vanessa. I mean, sure, you won’t be able to directly contribute, but I bet the office would do so much better with you back there… you’re still helping them work! You’re still making a big difference!”
I shrugged. I wished I could have flipped Emma off instead. Did she really think that being eternally stoned, eternally not present, eternally subverted, was a good thing? Her brain really was rotten to the core. Finally, after giving it a bit of thought, I responded, “Well, maybe they should’ve treated me better. Then they would’ve kept their office pet for a bit longer.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone about it?” Emma added, “they would have fixed that right up… you would never feel violated again.”
“Emma, I know this is hard for you to understand, but not everybody likes having their brain invaded. I mean, if you forcibly take away my likes and dislikes, alter my personality, what's even left of me? Is the person inhabiting my body even really me at that point?”
“Of course it is!” is Emma’s quick retort.
We truly couldn’t see eye to eye on this.
“Vanessa, you just need to realize that you’re not an Affini. You’re a dumb, cute little Terran, and you should know your place,” Isabelle remarked in a lighthearted way. My eyes reflexively narrowed in a cold expression of anger. Quickly, The Facade took charge, and they moved back to a more neutral position. It was obvious she was joking, but it had still gotten to me, but I didn’t want anyone to know that. I forced a fake giggle out of my body, copying everyone else.
“Why don’t we just… move on and play something else?” I suggested. Everybody seemed to agree with me that playing another game was a good idea. “How about Defcon?” I added, “assuming everyone brought their holopads…”
“We can just compile some, silly!” Isabelle teased. Of course… she had adapted super well to the whole Affini invasion. I sometimes forgot that the Atomic Compiler could make things other than food.
Everything was going to be just great.
