Snout activated their chip, and projected in the air before them a screen that showed a strand of DNA.
“They let you keep your chip?” TO said as they felt more keenly than they had in the last few days the absence of their own.
“You’ll get yours back too.” Flit promised, “It just needs to be altered before you can have it.”
“Chips aren’t important now.” Snout snapped, “Just look. This-” They gestured to the screen, “Is supposed to be King Decon’s greatest breakthrough. The very thing that allows his galactic kingdom to thrive. Us. Synths.” They pointed to TO, “you asked before how Synths are made. What’s the answer?”
TO blinked, surprised that they were being questioned, surprised that a question that they had given up on so long ago was being brought up now. With everything else happening, it didn’t even seem important.
“King Decon made us.” They said. They nodded at the screen. “The DNA was crafted from base proteins and sugars, and then grown to create us.”
“All DNA is crafted from base proteins and sugars. How did Decon do it?”
TO’s ears twitched down, confusion coloring their expression. They had, in fact, wondered that so long ago. Wondering about it, following their curiosity had caused so much trouble that even now it filled them with a slight panic to let their mind ponder that path.
“TO?”
“I… Don’t know.” They said, “It’s protected information. The process, if fallen into the wrong hands, could be disastrous.”
Snout snapped a finger at them. “Right. That’s what we’re told. We’re told not to look too closely at all this. We’re told not to. Ask questions. We’re taught- no, we’re programmed not to ask questions.”
A gesture, and the picture changed; this time it showed the image of a brain scan. A synth's brain scan. TO had seen this multiple times in their studies back in training; The strange combination of smooth and rough surfaces differed from any other creature in the galaxy.
“Programmed before we even leave the tank.” Snout said. They pointed to the smoothed parts of the brain. “These parts. Do you know what it is?”
“Adjustments.” TO said, proud that they knew that much, at least. “Parts where minor imperfections were fixed.”
“It’s damaged.” Flit muttered, “Damaged to erase things that would complicate life for you.”
“We’ve figured out different parts of the brain fairly well.” Snout continued as they pointed to various places in the brain, “Parts of the brain that handle things like love, curiosity, empathy. All smoothed out by lasers. And of course-” They pulled up another image- this one showing a good section of the frontal lobe smoothed out much more than the previous image, “IN case of synths that need to be corrected, the entire personality gets removed. Of course, this also destroys things like memory, dexterity, and problem-solving…” Their ears pinned back, their wings puffing up slightly, “But hey, it’s worth it, right? Better to have a mindless slave do menial physical labour than waste the whole synth.”
“There are no unimportant jobs under King Decon.” DH said, the recitation coming quickly to their mouth. TO had been about to say the same thing, the reflex instant and quick.
“They passed that thing Gidi mentioned.” Tham snapped. They still had the gun pointed at them. “They’re too far in. You can’t convince them-“
“They’re clever.” Flit said, “Both of them. When presented with the evidence… it might take some time, but they’ll be fine.” Their ears pinned back slightly, “And remember that I passed ‘that thing’ too, and made my way through the ranks to one of the most revered position in Decon’s army.”
Tham snarled, but said nothing more.
“If I can continue.” Snout said. They brought back the first image, “Now the ‘corrections’ that occur in every synth's brain remove various instincts, and suppressed natural, intellectual curiosity. That makes us less likely to question ‘facts’ that are fed to us. Even after leaving the tank, we’re trained not to ask questions. They could condition even a synth with an intact brain not to ask questions. This is, of course, essential for Decon because otherwise we’d start asking questions like-” they flicked back to the DNA, “How does a single person create, from nothing, an entire species to serve him?”
“And, something you asked before-” Flit added, “If Decon created us, why does so much need to be done? Afterwards? All these alterations to the mind and body-“
“The surgery I kept you from attending.” Snout added in, “Done to every synth to remove ‘unnecessary’ organs. If they’re unnecessary, and King Decon created us in the first place, then why keep in elements that need to be fixed?”
TO knew the answer, or at least the answer that they had been given once. It was complex, and they, as synths, couldn’t comprehend how King Decon created them.
“The answer, of course, is that Decon didn’t make us. He stole us.”
“How could He have stolen us when we were made right in the training center?” TO said, “I saw them. I activated them-“
“You didn’t activate. You fertilized.” Another screen came up, this one showing the odd, vibrating dots that TO had seen so long ago; the activation fluid that Snout had been examining.
“A recording that I saved.” Snout said, “The same thing you saw that last day I was there.”
“Activation fluid.”
“Spermatozoa.” They corrected, “One half of the genetic makeup of a synth, harvested from sexual organs removed after a synth has reached a physical peak inside the tank. “
Ears flicking down in confusion, TO leaned forward, “We don’t have sexual organs.” TO sad, “That’s what separates us from civilians. We don’t have the base-“
“We do.” Snout said, “Or, rather, we should.” The brought the image of the brain back up. “We suspect that the sexual instinct in the brain is somewhere… here?” They pointed to a very smoothed out part of the brain. “With that smoothed out, and the organs removed, there’s no instinct for love or sexual desire.”
Next to them, they felt DH’s hand tighten around their own. No instinct for love or sexual desire. Well… for them, that wasn’t true.
“So… if someone has those things… Then it’s a mistake?”
“No, it’s not a mistake.” Snout said, then they looked at Flit, “Well… in our case, it was.”
“We were lucky.” Flit said, their ears coloring slightly.
“I wanted to know why I was different.” Snout said as they leaned against the wall. “I wanted to know why I felt things I shouldn’t, why everyone else around me was normal, and I had a broken mind. I looked into how the conditioning process works, the alterations of the mind, and neuromapping. I dug as deep as I could into the feedback loops and watched these tiny little synths experience years in a matter of days, and I watched the lasers alter and destroy feelings and sensations it deemed problematic as they came up. Then, finally, I scanned my mind to see what I was missing. TO see what made me different.”
They pulled up another scan. This one, TO didn’t recognize. It was a brain again, and it looked somewhat like a synth’s brain, but it lacked any of the smoothed places that TO was used to seeing.
“An intact synth brain.” They said. I don’t know why. I still don't know for certain, but I saw a record of some intense solar flares that hit the training center when Flit and I were in training, and we already knew that they had grown us in tanks next to one another. The best I could figure is that the feedback system for that set got fried, and nobody noticed it. The simulations were still running, but we just weren’t being altered, and the simulation wasn’t altering to condition us out of specific behaviors. That's my theory, anyway.”
“So, it was a mistake.” TO muttered, “Something broke, and then-” They frowned, “Is that why I’m… so different? Was there another flare?”
“Oh, no.” Flit said, “We disconnected you, GiDi, and DH as soon as they put you in your own tanks.”
“What?!” Once more, they felt their ears pin back, their wings puff up, and their lips curl back to reveal their pointed teeth. “I’m like this…. Because of you!?”
The nights sobbing alone in their bunk. The constant nightmares of blood. The isolation, the disdain of other synths. The horrible, horrible loneliness they experienced before DH was around… all that was because of them?
How much easier and simpler would everything be if they had just left them alone? What would their life be like if they were normal?
They wouldn’t have DH. They wouldn’t love DH. That was the only thing keeping them from being truly angry.
“We couldn’t let that happen to you.” Flit said, their ears down, “We… we just couldn’t.”
“Why not?” The words slipped, hissed through TO’s teeth.
“As. I said.” Flit continued, “The ‘activation fluid’ Is spermatozoa. The ‘base DNA’ is ovum. We harvest those resources from synths while still in the tank, and they’re tracked in order to prevent a genetic bottleneck.” They frowned. “Something that wouldn’t be necessary if Decon could simply create more at will.”
“And how do you know that?” TO snapped.
“The labels.” Snout said, “we mark the organs removed with specific codes, and sent to be destroyed. However, the ‘activation fluid’ and ‘base DNA’ have codes as well, and the original code for the organs hides in that code. This means it’s possible to track where certain genetic materials came from. It’s possible to see who has, without knowing it, parented a synth.”
They recalled GiDi saying that their parent was part of the insurgency. They hadn’t thought about that since -there was far too much going on in their head for that- but now…
“So… One of you. Your DNA was used to create GiDi?” TO asked, their ears down.
“Both of us.” Snout said. “GiDi is the only synth still living that has mine and Snouts combined DNA.”
“Yes. Once we realized what was happening…” Snout glanced at the image still on the screen, “I tracked all the synths that had my DNA, Flit’s DNA, or both, and deactivated the feedback before the brain had formed.”
Not a mistake. They said that TO wasn’t a mistake. They pointed a shaking hand at the screen.
“SO.” They said, their ears down, their voice cracking, “My brain looks something like that.”
“No TO.” Snout said, “It doesn’t look like this. This is a scan of your brain.”
