CW: Suicide

Three days ago…

 

I came back into the room; we’d done this every week for the entire past year. The room hadn’t changed; it was still the same old familiar space. Then, there were a bunch of new framed pictures; some sort of abstract art. Sarah was in her usual place, with a decorative mirror behind her. 

 

I let The Facade drop. I had spent the first few months after the arrival working on it, learning all the processes in my body and how to control them consciously. I couldn’t allow the Affini to learn what was going on with me, and most of them had figured out how Terran biorhythms worked long ago. So, I had to adapt. Or else… I shuddered at the thought. 

 

Domestication. That was what was in store for me if I fell out of line. Every day, I saw a potential future on the street. They were on leashes, completely brainwashed, and in horrible, horrible states that kept me up at night. The worst part were the former draftees of the Terran Cosmic Navy. They were the ones who hated the Affini the most… and the Affini completely eradicated even their ability to hate them. They were completely brainwashed. 

 

That was what I was up against. 

 

But this was a safe space. I could tell Sarah how wrong it felt to see Terrans reduced to scary, disgusting animals. I could tell her how patronizing the Affini acted, and how I was never treated like an equal. I could complain, I could cry, I could scream, I should share my worries, and I could get mad. And she’d listen. 

 

I didn’t care that we had slightly different opinions. She had promised not to rat me out. 

 

“Hey, Vanessa! How are you doing?” Sarah asked, cheery as always. I shrugged, letting my face slowly settle into its more natural frown as I sat down on the comfy couch. She opened up an app on her tablet, probably for taking notes. 

 

“Horrible,” I muttered, as I began to think about everything that had happened in the last week. “It’s almost like I’m exploding. It’s harder and harder to find things to do… and I’m just becoming so lazy and everything’s getting so much harder to do and I don’t know what to do and all the stuff I want to do isn’t actually fulfilling…”

 

I continued on for a while, talking about how hard it was to get myself to do things in a post-scarcity society where you didn’t have to do anything, and where you couldn’t accomplish anything meaningful. The megacorporations weren’t the best, but the work you did there allowed you to contribute to something. The meaning of my work was what gave me fulfillment in a world where I struggled to connect to others, and the Affini just gave us tasks that were completely meaningless. I couldn’t trust them to let me help out after three months ago, when they’d completely betrayed my trust. 

 

“And… Did I tell you about Violet?” I asked. After Sarah nodded, I continued, “I’ve been having nightmares about her. About her pretending to give me choices, and that moment when she tried to hypnotize me…”

 

“Yeah, it must feel horrible to be betrayed by someone you trusted,” Sarah added. 

 

“I should’ve known, Sarah. That’s the kicker. Of course that’s the only thing that they want. I just… I just thought she was different. I thought what we had was special.” The floodgates of sadness finally break, and tears spring from my eyes. All she ever wanted was me. As a pet. She wanted to destroy my brain, she wanted to murder my memories, and she wanted to rape my independence. That’s what all the Affini were, murderers, or wannabe murderers. 

 

I’d been so foolish back then. Of course it was fake; why hadn’t I seen the warning signs? An Affini with a completely different moral system than the rest of them… it was too good to be true. And, of course, it wasn’t. 

 

“And… and she almost did it. She almost turned me into one of those disgusting things . I was only saved because of a glass of water, Sarah. A glass of water!”

 

It seemed like Sarah had gotten a little offended by me calling florets disgusting. She winced a bit, noting something on her tablet. “I know, but you’re okay now. That’s the important thing. You’re safe.”

 

“Yeah, but… not the rest of humanity. It’s almost like a third of everyone I see is a human pet who’s been forced to want exactly what their owners want. Even…”

 

“...Rose,” Sarah finished. She knew what I was going to say. 

 

I pictured what they were going to do to her. What the Affini did to us could only be described as rape. What else would one call it? Manufacturing consent to violate a body, coercing and manipulating us, all justified because they knew our subconscious desires. Apparently, our conscious mind didn’t get a seat at the table. 

 

They obviously didn’t think we were worthy of full legal consideration, that we weren’t worthy of autonomy, that our consent could be violated because they knew better . They were hyper intelligent, they found manipulating us to be incredibly easy, and they often had decades, if not centuries more life experience than us. But, despite that, the Affini Compact still thought it was okay for them to have sex with us, as if we could truly give meaningful consent to it. 

 

All sex between an Affini and a Terran was rape, because no Terran could ever meaningfully consent to sex with an Affini. They acknowledged the inequality themselves; I wasn’t an idiot. I’d been in their workplaces. I’d walked in the streets. Sometimes, it seemed like I was the only sane one left. 

 

They forced us into cages, they made us cuddle with them, they forced us to like them (chemically if necessary), and got us completely docile so that we’d let their cold, slithering, disgusting tentacles run all over us without so much as an objection, without us being allowed to even dislike the horrible atrocities they committed. 

 

I remembered Alice’s vines. I remembered how good they felt after she had taken me, against my will, into a class-J place. She had completely turned my senses against me. I was barely able to form words, and all I could do was cuddle with her while she had her way with me, and I was stuck doing nothing but begging for more. 

 

I couldn’t hate the revolting things they had done to me. I couldn’t hate the way her cold, slithering vines had smothered my entire body. I couldn’t hate the penetration she had subjected me to, the violating feeling of being forcibly “pleasured” with tendrils that had almost bruised me. I couldn’t hate how they had completely turned off my brain, and left me completely vulnerable to anyone else who wanted to take advantage of me. I couldn’t hate how I was forced to rely on them for food, for water, for movement, for everything else. I couldn’t hate the humiliation of crawling everywhere, the cafe they had locked me in, or being given dog ears that I was unable to take off. 

 

I couldn’t hate dogs. They were a horrible hive-mind of beasts that all seemed to hate me. They wanted to kill me and bite me and destroy me, and I couldn’t care. I couldn’t hate the way they barked, the way they ran, the way they always were right up in your space. 

 

All the hate had to be done over the weekend, as I slowly began to process that horrible week. I hadn’t known how horrible it was going to be. Those memories were seen through rose-tinted glasses; I caught myself looking back at them fondly during that first Saturday. I wasn’t allowed to hate anything before then, because the part of my brain that could process that hate was asleep. 

 

And I knew that, if that part of my brain ever spoke up again, an Affini would put it to sleep again. Forever. 

 

That’s what had probably happened to Rose. She had spoken too loud, and she had paid the price. The part of her brain that allowed her to comprehend how violated she was, wasn’t just going to be put to sleep. It was going to be completely glassed. And then what would be left of her? It wouldn’t be Rose anymore, that was for sure. 

 

Her owner was going to squeeze her brains out of her body, and then it was going to defile her braindead corpse for hundreds of years until the spoiled vegetable gave out. And then, depressed that its zombie pet had finally decayed, it was going to find a new victim. 

 

I told Sarah everything. 

 

I could see what she was doing through the mirror. She wasn’t actually taking notes. I squinted. 

 

“Look, Vanessa… you talk about these problems every week… unhappiness, purposelessness, lack of control… you talk about all of this trauma as well, and yet you somehow never process any of this. Sure, you feel like there’s no solution at all, that you’re stuck like this. But I think you’re ignoring one that’s staring you right in the face.”

 

I grew confused, wondering what she was talking about. Meanwhile, I stared at her tablet’s reflection, though trying not to let her notice what I’m doing. Looking nonchalant was incredibly difficult, and I have no idea how I pulled it off. She was filing a report with the Bureau of Xenosophont Wellness and Care. Right there, in broad daylight - though I didn’t think she knew I could see her screen. 

 

“And what solution is that?” I asked - though I already had a pretty good idea of what she was going to say. 

 

I braced myself. She wasn’t safe anymore. I reached into my body, and forced myself to calm down. My emotions would give me away; they wouldn’t help anything. The boiling rage I felt at Sarah’s betrayal could NOT reach the surface. What I needed right then was cold, calculating logic. How was I going to get through this? I couldn’t survive a visit with the bureau without being domesticated. 

 

“Domestication,” came the predictable answer. Meanwhile, I could see her screen. It was a selection based on the priority of the case - high priority for incredibly unstable people, and low priority for people who could afford to wait, and were easier to work with. Her finger was on the “high priority” button, about to press it. 

 

I knew what I had to do. 

 

“Alright… I give up. Nothing’s worked so far, and you’re right. I need something else. So, I might as well try it,” I lied. I knew that good behavior would give me more time. Time to make a plan to escape this, somehow. I needed to find something that would work - something that would get the Affini away from me. Permanently. 

 

“Great! I’ll schedule an appointment with someone in a few days! They’ll come right to your house!” Sarah exclaimed, a smile on her face as she started the timer to my demise. I looked at the screen one final time, seeing the option she clicked. Four to five days. That was all the time I had before the Bureau showed up and ended things. Minus a day of padding, just in case. 

 

And all I could do was smile at my impending murder. 

 

“Thank you so much, Sarah!” I exclaim, lying through my teeth. “I feel like this might actually help!” She probably had her suspicions - me saying this sounded too good to be true, after all - but I’d practiced everything about my biorhythms, my muscles, and my voice. I could sound genuine enough to fool her, and she didn’t know that. 

 

I excused myself, walking out of the room. The betrayal stung, but I couldn’t show that. I wasn’t allowed to cry. I wasn’t allowed to feel pain. I wasn’t allowed to be mad. I wasn’t allowed to be scared. Not while there were witnesses, anyway. But, inside, it swirled around, a concoction of horrible emotions… and disbelief. How could she do this to me?!! How could she betray me, after an entire year? How could she disrespect my wishes and report me to the bureau?!! 

 

The Plan slowly began to come into fruition in my brain. My knowledge could finally be taken advantage of. I knew exactly what to do. 

 

Present day…

 

The door finally shut. I was alone in my apartment, save for the atomic compiler in the kitchen. “Could I get some spaghetti and meatballs?” I asked the compiler. 

 

“Did you say the magic words, Petal?” it retorted. 

 

I decided that starvation was also quite nice. 

 

I didn’t realize how hungry I’d been until I’d been denied food, but I didn’t really care about that enough. Fixing the blasted thing would require time that I didn’t want to waste, and begging for my food was something I refused to do on principle. Of course my AI had reset to default (floret) mode. 

 

Instead of eating, I decided to write a note for the Bureau of Xenosophont Wellness and Care. They were going to show up at my doorstep soon, after all. I giggled a bit, thinking about an Affini, showing up to “help” me, only to find that I had already succeeded. I wasn’t as stupid as they all thought I was, and they were about to figure that out. I knew exactly how to hurt them. 

 

“To Lily,” I started writing, continuing to snicker. They were always named Lily, at least in Antares. Either that, or some other kind of flower, or some random gibberish. The weeds couldn’t pick a normal name even if they tried. What was even the point of making a new name for use around Terrans, if you didn’t pick a normal Terran name? 

 

“I know that you’re trying to help, and that you think you’re doing good things. But you’re not. What you weeds don’t understand is that not all Terrans feel fulfilled by happiness alone. There’s more to life than pleasure chemicals—Some of us get fulfillment by doing things ourselves. By having control of our lives. By having influence on the world. The things that only you have the privilege of doing.” 

 

I thought about this, making sure that my argument was sound. I knew that the Affini wouldn’t listen, with their esoteric morality, but it was worth a shot. And I thought it was a good point… who knew, it just might convince them. But, at the same time, I wanted to get my emotions out, so I got more confrontational in the second part of the letter. 

 

“And you will never understand us. You’re just going to keep trying to control us. And that’ll work for all of the soldiers. It’ll work for all of the trillionaires who want capitalism back. It’ll work for all the fools who think that they want this. It’ll work for beautiful, naive little feralists, who still entertain the delusion that you’re killable. But it won’t work for me.”

 

My writing style began to falter, losing its neatness and becoming a bit more scribbly as I began to pour out all of my anger and sadness and fear onto the page. It worked. It worked on my sweet little Rose. She had never given up, and for that, she was dead, replaced by a Rose-shaped pleasure receptor. 

 

“To hell with you and to hell with The Compact. I’m in complete control of my life, and I've finally won. You’ve taken everything away from me, but you will never take this,” I wrote, and then I signed my name, Vanessa White. It was my name then, and it would be my name forever. 

 

I had written down enough. I had The Plan . I had at least six hours left until the clock struck midnight; they weren’t supposed to come today. Everything had been gathered, everything had been prepared. All I needed to do was execute it. I stuck the note up onto the fridge, and went back into the living room. 

 

This place was a prison. The Affini were like wardens, no matter how benevolent they pretended to be. And I was going to escape it. 

 

The chemical reaction would spread like wildfire. Every fixture would be shut down, the powerhouses, the libraries, the mail hubs, the factories. The weak point was oxygen. I’d studied the prison; I’ve studied its architecture, and that was its one weakness. If I got rid of the oxygen, nothing would work. Soon, all the powerpacks would be consumed, and the cells, starved of oxygen, would cease functioning. The reaction would spread like wildfire, knocking out the transit networks, the computational hub, the light receptors and the vibration detectors, and then, finally, I’d be able to escape. 

 

Of course, they’d have no idea what hit them. I just needed to use the nitrogen medium to get rid of the waste products, and they’d never know until it was too late. The prison would break down. And I would be in control of myself for the rest of my life. That was the best part, finally managing to be in control of something. 

 

I put on the gas mask, released the valve on the tank, and I finally began to breathe clean air as the polluted air was slowly exhaled into my apartment. 

 

I breathe in, I breathe out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. I’m sleepy, just like before. 

 

In, out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. I’m very tired now. I need to rest. 

 

In, out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. I’m in control. 

 

In, out. 

 

I go to sleep, with a smile on my face. 

 

For the first time in over a month, it’s genuine. 

 

In, out. 

 

I’m in control. 

 

Finally, 

 

the long day 

 

is over.