Three months ago…

 

I was about to go into my apartment building, almost ready to finally drop The Facade , when I felt a light tap on my shoulder. It was a vine. 

 

I immediately looked back to where that had come from, just seeing a long, green vine that extended around the entire hallway. Apparently, somebody had gotten just a tiny bit lazy. The Facade was going to stay on just a bit longer. 

 

It took a few seconds for her to finally come into view; apparently, her vine had been quite extended. I immediately recognized her; it was Violet. She was about eight feet tall - a bit short by Affini standards, but she still towered over me. A bark-like material covered her torso, her vines forming her arms and legs. Her face was surprisingly detailed, considering the fact that it was literally made of vines - I didn’t think vines could get that small. And her eyes… I knew never to do more than passively glance at them, but they were a reddish orange, which meant that she was concerned. 

 

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied, keeping The Facade up. I didn’t have time for this. Keeping every part of my body in line was getting exhausting. I didn’t want to hide my emotions any longer. 

 

“It’s just… you haven’t shown up to work in three days, and I was a little worried about you,” she replies, “I mean, I know you didn’t like it there that much, but you left after nine months, without even a goodbye. I’m worried, Vanessa.”

 

If this were anyone else, I would have slammed the door in their face. But Violet was different. She was the only one who seemed to care about my actual feelings - not just my hypothetical feelings if they were to domesticate me. 

 

“Look, Violet…” I trail off, not knowing what to say. 

 

“Can you just… tell me why you left, Vanessa? It feels so abrupt. You were settling in, you were getting happier, getting used to everything, and then you just left. And could you consider coming back? Everyone misses you. We even brought in another Terran, but he’s just not the same.”

 

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Violet was the only one who genuinely cared about my autonomy and my actual consent. She was the only one who actually had respect for me. Perhaps she deserved to know. 

 

“Can you promise that you won’t tell anybody what I tell or show you?”

 

She nodded. 

 

“And, can you promise not to drug me or anything?” I quickly added. I didn’t think she was going to do anything like that; I just wanted her to actually say it. It would make me feel much safer. 

 

“I promise,” she states, her expression relatively serious. 

 

I was going to tell her. She deserved it, and she wasn’t going to betray my trust, or break her promises, or go back on her word. She wasn’t that type of Affini; for the nine months I had known her, she had been different. She had been the only exception to a gigantic world of cruelty. 

This is the point of no return, my last chance to find a way out of this without coming clean to an Affini. But, as little as I trusted the rest of the Affini, god, I trusted her … 

 

“Alright, come in. I’ll tell you.”

 

I opened the door to my apartment and walked inside, holding the door to let Violet follow me inside. 

 

After making sure to lock the door, I grabbed a glass of water, and sat down in the living room. After making sure Violet had followed me in, I finally prepared to drop The Facade . 

 

“This is how working there felt,” I stated, while Violet gave a confused look - there wasn’t anything for her to notice yet, after all. And, finally, while Violet sat next to me, I released the hold that I had on my body. I let my heart race, I let my tear ducts fill, I let my eyes dilate like they were supposed to, I let adrenaline fill my veins. 

 

I stewed in it, letting the anger, the fear, the feeling of being smothered, cornered, ready to give up seep through my entire body. 

 

And I let Violet feel all of it. It didn’t even take biorhythms for her to know how I felt. 

 

She instinctively reached out to comfort me, but she could feel my sheer revulsion and disgust as her plantlike tentacle moved closer and closer to my head. Perhaps she hadn’t realized the sheer magnitude of my fear and hatred and disgust until now. 

 

And she, too, began to cry.

 

I went through everything I had absolutely hated about the office in meticulous detail. There was practically nothing there that I didn’t have a complaint about - the color of the bathroom, how little sense it made, and how demeaning and childish it had made me feel. Exactly how violating the vines had felt, and how they had completely invaded my personal space. How, the one time I protested, Alice had drugged me for my troubles, and I’d learned that I could never complain about anything ever again. How easy the work was, how I was never taken seriously in any way whatsoever, how easy the differential equations were…

 

“I thought - I thought you were improving. I thought you were starting to like working there, when it was all - ”

 

“Yes, it was all fake, Violet. I never enjoyed a second of it.”

 

“Why would you even do that to yourself?”

 

“Because… I thought that, maybe, if I stuck with it, I could do something important. You know, make an impact. So that, one day, I could go to a newly made habitable world, and go, ‘I did some of that.’ I thought it would pay off someday.”

 

She nodded. She didn’t even need to ask the other question, for she’d already known that my entire reason for working there had been a lie. She had known that all along , and hadn’t even told me. And it didn’t take much thinking to know that I had finally figured it out. 

 

“Why didn’t you - “

 

“What was I supposed to do, Violet? How was I supposed to trust anyone in the office after I was tied down and drugged without my consent?”

 

“They were supposed to make you ha-”

“ I didn’t want them, Violet! I don’t like being a stoned moron who can barely use a coloring book! ”

 

She nodded again, not really wanting to respond to that. My response was perfectly valid, after all. “Look, Vanessa… I’m not going to force anything. I’m not calling the bureau, and I’m going to let you say no to this, but,” 

 

Here it comes. 

 

“I really think you would benefit from domestication. I know that you don’t like the idea of it, but it isn’t as bad as you think. I promise.”

 

I let out a massive sigh. She knew the gist of what I was going to say from reading my emotions. It must have been weird for her, to go from seeing me completely happy, to seeing all of these undercurrents of horrible anguish. “No, Violet, I’m not going to let you destroy my autonomy and get turned into some dog . I don’t want my greatest desire to be getting walked every week.”

 

"Look, not all Affini parade their florets around on leashes. I'm not like that. I won't even drug you unless you really want it, and you consent to it. It would basically be your normal life, but with a cool plant roommate who can help you out with everything you want! I'd be a shoulder to cry on... I'd help you with whatever projects you want to work on... With me, you could just be . You could enjoy life for once. You could be happy."

 

She paused for a moment, letting that sink in. "I can feel your pain, Vanessa. I can sense the vibrations of your pain from across the room. And I pity you, Vanessa White. I pity you, because you don't think you're allowed to be happy until a man in a lab coat tells you your machine is going to be used somewhere. And I can't imagine what it must be like to have so little confidence in your own self-worth. You deserve better."

 

"What about my personhood? My autonomy? My independence? My name? My ability to say no?"

 

"I'll respect all of that, I promise. You don't need to worry about me."

 

"I'm sorry, Violet, but I just can't trust you with that. I can't trust anyone with that."

 

"Are you sure ?"

 

I took a passing glance at her eyes, just to see what she was feeling. They were green - she was calm and collected, and so pretty... stars, I hadn't seen it before. Every tiny speck of her captivating eyes radiated with beauty. I wanted nothing more than to stare into them forever. Perhaps I wasn't sure. Perhaps Violet's pretty eyes were trustworthy enough. Seconds turned into minutes of captivation. The rest of the world disappeared into her enormous eyes, the prettiest things in the whole world. Trusting Violet to make me into her cute floret felt lovely, like it was an amazing idea, its reasoning elegant and precise. 

 

My arms loosened, falling limp at my sides as my hands opened up. 

 

I heard the sound of glass shattering. 

 

I blinked. 

 

My apartment came back. I only had a second before I was going to become captivated again, get lost in those beautiful eyes again, but a second was all I needed to keep my eyes shut. My glass of water had fallen and shattered all over the floor. Violet had apparently been too surprised to catch it. That was what had snapped me out of the hypnosis. 

 

What was I thinking? Staring into the eyes of an Affini was a horrible decision. I had given her an opportunity, and she had exploited it. She had hypnotized me. It was only pure luck that had saved me. 

 

Looking down at Violet’s waist, I answered her question. “How can I trust somebody who just broke her promise?” I asked. 

 

Caught in the act, her entire body shriveled up. It didn’t take looking into her eyes to realize that she felt remorse for what she’d just tried to do. But that didn’t change the fact that she had done it. She had probably justified it in her head, saying that it was for my own good. But that didn’t change the fact that, no matter how things appeared, no matter how much restraint she had shown, deep down, she had valued a chance at putting me into fake chemical bliss over my autonomy and independence. 

 

“I’m… I’m so, so sorry,” she stuttered, her voice thick with sadness, “I don’t know what I was thinking, I shouldn’t have done that to you, it was a horrible mistake. It’s just, you were so sad and I’ve never seen you this way before and I couldn’t just stand there and let you feel like that. I - I just wanted to help - ” 

 

I had thought that she was different from the rest of my former coworkers, but that wasn’t the case at all; she just hid her desires better. Now that I’d thought about it, the entire workplace was probably one big attempt to use manipulation to make her look good. It was the classic “good cop, bad cop” strategy, and I had fallen for it, like a complete and utter moron. I was never going to let that happen again. 

 

“Just get out , Violet!” I snapped. 

 

“I - I…” she paused for a moment. She knew that talking wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “Okay. I’ll leave, Vanessa. I’m truly sorry for everything.”

 

She launched herself onto the door, unlocked it, and practically flew out of my apartment. Just like that, she was out of my hair. I was incredibly lucky that she hadn’t tried to hypnotize me again - though I wasn’t exactly sure why. She had no qualms with hypnotizing me the first time, so why wouldn’t she try again? Perhaps her guilt was genuine. Perhaps she was going to try again later, when this blatant manipulation wasn’t fresh in my mind. Perhaps she thought I was going to come crawling back to her someday. But, I was sure about two things: 

 

I never wanted to see Violet again,

 

and she was the last Affini I would ever trust. 

 

Present day…

 

Defcon was great. It was a surprisingly realistic video game that explored what a nuclear war would look like on Antares B5. Of course, there were some creative liberties taken; the missiles were 400 years out of date in terms of yield and speed. Today, about ten antimatter missiles could glass an entire planet without any hope of retaliation, whereas, in Defcon, it would take hundreds of blasts to wipe out a nation. 

 

Additionally, the idea of a decentralized planetary stockpile that four nations would split evenly was completely preposterous. Defensive fusion weapons were usually hidden in a single bunker in an undisclosed location, at least a mile into the planet’s crust. Well, before the Affini Compact had dug them all out, anyway. 

 

Rose had absolutely loved that game. She was the one who made it fun. She was the only element of chaos there, and she never won - we easily took her to pieces - but she made sure that we’d all be laughing by the time the game was over.

 

But she was gone. My sweet little Rose had disappeared without a trace a couple months ago. And, so, we’d have to play Defcon, her favorite game, without her. 

 

I tried not to think about it. It seemed like I was the only one who was taking it hard, though. To Emma, Alex, and Isabelle, she was just gone, having moved on with her life. She was just a random member of the group, her absence not even worth discussing. She was probably just too busy to show up, or maybe an Affini had finally domesticated her or something. They didn’t give it much thought. 

 

They didn’t know what it was like to be so close to somebody, and to have them just disappear without a trace. 

 

I selected my nation’s color - my favorite color, green. I mainly liked it because it was the color of leaves and vines, and it felt nice and peaceful - although that wasn’t really true now that the Affini had come in. Out of everything they could ruin, I didn’t think the color green would be on the list, yet here we were. 

 

Usually, when one of us was absent and we played Defcon, we split into de-facto teams of two, and then there would be some infighting in the surviving team. Of course, Alex and Isabelle teamed up, which left me with Emma. We had a common pair of enemies, so we had to team up, after all. 

 

“So… I’ll put my fortifications on the other borders,” I propose to Emma over text, “and you’ll do the same. Can we agree not to attack each other until Isabelle and Alex are dead?”

 

“Sure!” Emma responded, “I’ll handle the land assault. Why don’t you use your submarines so that I can get sea cover?”

 

“Got it!” I replied, once again over text. 

 

A few turns were played in sequence, and the two of us defended our shared territory in tandem. However, it was obvious that I was the one putting in more of the effort, and I was the one taking heavier losses, leaving Emma relatively unscathed. I guess I was just being targeted; that happened a lot. 

 

I missed Rose. None of that stuff ever happened when she was there. 

 

“Emma… come on! I need support!” I texted her. Her reply was quick - “Hey! I have my hands full too. My cities are going to be ruined if I take any of my units off the land borders…” And so, I was forced to manage without her for at least another turn. Making sure that none of the cities were destroyed was a lovely micromanaging problem. I was able to get lost in solving it for a few minutes, which was amazing. 

 

Looking into her borders, it looked more like a stand-off. She had put her defenses on her border with Isabelle, and neither of them were firing. It was some sort of mutually assured destruction thing, both of them waiting for ample opportunity to strike each other. 

 

And then, after a few more turns… I saw that Emma was finally launching the missiles. But they weren’t going towards Isabelle. If they were doing that, they were taking a rather roundabout path. 

 

Looking at the trajectory, I finally realized the grim truth - I was the one being targeted by the missiles. She had backstabbed me. Not only that, she had placed a good amount of defenses on her own border with me; if I had tried to backstab her, it definitely wouldn’t have worked. She knew how this worked. 

 

“But… but you promised not to nuke me, Emma! I held up my end of the bargain! I did all of the dirty work!” I exclaimed, out loud, this time. 

 

“Oh, Vanessa, Vanessa… where in the rules does it say that promises had to be kept? You’ve just outlived your usefulness,” Emma teased, as she played out her turn. By the time she was done with me, I was going to be almost completely wiped out. She had the capability to destroy all of my major cities, as I hadn’t prepared for her assault at all, and she was certainly going to use it. I looked down at my bustling nation, realizing that it was dead in the water. 

 

Ice flowed through my veins. I had trusted her. We had worked on an arrangement to help each other because Isabelle and Alex had teamed up, and she was just… using me. 

 

I felt smothered in anguish, already ready to give up. In fact, I had already done that; the rest of the game was probably just going to be me memeing on everyone else. But I wasn’t supposed to get mad at this. It was just a game, after all. Everything was light-hearted and good fun, and I wasn’t about to make a scene. 

 

I stuffed my emotions down, doing what I did best and soothing my body as my mind carried a suppressed undercurrent of anguish. I watched my in-game nation get wrecked by Emma, the traitor. Emma, the master manipulator. I was nothing more than a sucker.

 

And all I could do was fake a smile.