July, 2556

 

I must have drifted off, because the first time I noticed the floret trying to get my attention, he'd already moved up to tugging gently on my vines. I was sunning myself in the office's atrium, topping up my caloric load before my appointment with Camassia, and when my brain finally stirred enough to begin making sense of my skinsight again, Sammy quickly swam into focus.

"Miss Tam?" he said. "Hello? Master says you got a memo-thingy. Miss Tam?" His eyes were slightly glazed over, the pupils big and black and half-hidden behind a curtain of long blonde hair — sweet little thing must have been high as a kite.

"Mmmmmhey Sammy," I murmured, my vines tensing and pulsing as I stretched them, then pulled them in to wrap them around my meat. "A memo-thingy, huh?"

"Special notice, Master said," he added, nodding and still tugging on my vine.

"And he sent you to get me, hmm?" I smiled. Anthemis loved to give Sammy little tasks when he brought his pet into the office. Watching him stumble around to pass notes was dangerously precious.

"Uh-huh!" A big grin began to split his face. He knew exactly what was coming.

"Good boy, Sammy!" I said, ruffling his hair with a vine and winning a giggle for my efforts. "You want a ride back to Master?"

"Yeah!" He flung his arms into the air in the universal floret sign language of "Uppies!" I happily obliged him, picking him up as I got to my feet and carrying him under my arm, keeping him tightly secured as my vines remembered how to be feet again. I hadn't used the Sixth Toe in months, and I was still getting used to letting my vines carry all the weight. It had been a week since I'd last taken a tumble, but if I was carrying such precious cargo, I was going to be extra careful about it.

Sammy kicked and squirmed happily as I made my way back into the office proper, a large round room that elegantly blended a very modern-looking office — desks, computing terminals, file storage, and the like — with the aesthetic of a rainforest, moss-covered rocks and flowering fallen logs serving to divide up workspaces from one another, and tall trees providing shade from the open skylight. Under one such overhanging tree, which came from a planet I couldn't quite remember the name of, Anthemis was lounging next to his low desk.

After two years and change of experience, I felt comfortable labeling Anthemis Circinatum the comfiest-looking Affini I had ever met. He was big, broad-shouldered, nearly three and a half meters when he stood up (which was rarely), his foliage vibrant and fresh from his recent reblooming. If he were human, I'd say he had a swimmer's body gone to pot, his long torso sporting a big, soft, mossy belly. "Ahem," I said as I walked up to him. "I believe I have something here that belongs to you, Anthemis."

"Oh?" He looked up from the file he'd been reading over, one hand stroking his long beard. "Well, whatever could that be?" His biorhythm was full of playful notes that danced all along my vines.

I hefted a still-squirming Sammy and held him up. "A certain floret of yours?"

"Hiiiii, Master!" Sammy said, laughing and waving.

"Aaaaah, yes, I do have a certain floret," he said, grinning and reaching out with a vine and slipping it under the defenseless Sammy's colorful shift to tickle him. "A tiny, adorable little floret named Sammy, who is a very good boy!" Sammy's squirming redoubled, and he made his usual high-pitched yelps as he flailed. He loved being tickled. "Mmmm, that certainly seems like Sammy, doesn't it?"

"I think you might be on to something there," I said, playing along. "But there's only one way to know for sure, of course."

"Ah, yes, aerodynamic testing. Well~" He laid his file down on his desk and reclined further, arms behind his head. "Fire when ready!"

"Standing by to deploy Sammy!" I said, backing up and swinging him to and fro. "One... two..."

"Aaackpth!" Sammy desperately tried to escape, still giggling uncontrollably, but my vines had him locked up tight as I rocked him back and forth, miming what I was about to do to him.

"Three!" At the end of the last motion, I released my vines and let Sammy go sailing through the air to land right in Anthemis's big, soft belly. He went in with the swish of disturbed foliage as it gave way beneath him, and before he could even rebound little vines started to coil around him and hold him fast.

"Oh, that was a very Sammy trajectory," Anthemis said, reaching down to pet his floret. "Well, that settles it, this is definitely my perfect little good boy Sammy, then!"

<Thanks for the practice,> I told him. Sammy struggled helplessly, less to escape and more to lean into Anthemis' gentle strokes. <Definitely getting better, I think.>

<Oh, much better,> he rumbled. <I'm sure Camassia's very proud.>

<I don't know if proud is the word,> I replied, <but I suppose I'll find out in about an hour or so. I hear I have a 'memo-thingy?'>

Anthemis chuckled. <Ah yes. The pretext.> He reached back up to his desk and picked up a sealed envelope, marked with a series of floral glyphs that identified it as official interdepartmental correspondence. Standing out amongst them was a series of phonic glyphs I recognized as my name, written in Affini. <Came in just now. Seems to be some kind of special request for assistance on a wardship.>

<Really?> I took the envelope and glanced over it. <Well, that's what it says. Xenosophont Wellness must have picked up one of ours without realizing it, I suppose.> It had happened a few times since I'd started working at OTD — given how massive and sprawling the Compact's bureaucracy was, the left vine often did a share of the right vine's work, and vice versa. <Hmm. It's not marked urgent, just special attention. I suppose it'll keep until after my appointment, then.>

<I think so,> Anthemis said. <Your health is important too, you know. And, of course, your ongoing effort, as well. How's your head feeling, by the way?>

<It's fine.> I'd been fielding that question non-stop ever since Camassia had removed the back of my skull, both to make connecting the phytocortex easier and to give my brain room to expand as it grew and developed in response to the demands I was placing upon it. Everything was still carefully protected by pytotech, which Camassia had assured me would protect against impact better than bone ever could. It was very visible, though — the back of my head was now a good six inches further back than it had been before. I devoted one of the vine clusters anchored there to helping support my head, and after a brief learning curve my balance recovered, but Affini were Affini, and even among their own they were going to be concerned.

Assuming, that is, they considered me one of their own, but that was an uncharitable thought. Anthemis had always included me in conversation and was extremely diligent about trading floret teasing strategies with me (several of which I had used on Judy to great effect). At worst, I think he probably saw me as a weird Affini with lots of medical issues, and again, Affini were Affini — it's in our nature to worry about others.

<I'm very glad to hear,> he said. <And just to confirm, Game Night is still happening, yes?>

<How else am I supposed to break in the new place?> Having finally moved to one of the new Affini highrises, I now had a common area big enough to house more than one or two Affini at a time, and was at long last able to not only host all my work friends at once but also cleanly merge my two friend groups. There was even a place for the florets to all have fun together, since I'd requested an exact copy of Judy's den for the new place to keep the disruption to her routine as minimal as possible.

<Marvelous! Sammy's been really looking forward to it, I know. Haven't you, little guy~?> He gave the floret, still half-embedded in his belly and squirming, a good scritch, and Sammy responded with a long moan. <That's a yes, I think.>

<Well, if I don't see you when I get back to the office, I'll see you tonight! And thanks again for letting me know about this,> I added, holding up the envelope. It found its way to my inbox, where it and a few low-priority files were waiting to be cleared.

It was probably for the best that I didn't read it right then, or I'd have been distracted the entire time I was at Camassia's lab.

---

I'd spent the entire train ride from the central admin district over to the waterfront rehearsing my argument for why we should proceed with the next phase of implantation. There was almost always a little give and take with Camassia. She'd spent the last year and a half being pleasantly surprised at what a biologically human brain could do to itself given the appropriate stimulation via xenodrugs, and at how quickly I'd learned to handle detail work with my vines. They were still a little clumsy as far as I was concerned, but I was getting better with practice.

As it turns out, I needn't have bothered. <Good, good, adaptability on curve, yes, yes.> She was leaning over me, poking and prodding from virtually every angle with one instrument or another, and the funny thing was, I could see everything. It wasn't just the phytocortex making visual processing easier, but I was actually getting used to the skinsight, having multiple focal angles at once, being able to perceive three-dimensional space as a matter of course.

Perception wasn't the only thing the phytocortex did for me, of course. It served as a distributed extension of my neurology, adapting to my needs and helping my original brain-meat maintain a healthy structure as it developed and changed under the influence of the xenodrug cocktail I was on. So far, if the scans Camassia had shown me were anything to go by, it was still mostly in a shape recognizable as Terran, the phytocortex just a lump nestled along the backside. It shared no few features with the haustoric implant, ironically enough, but instead of integrating with my meat's nervous system, it focused exclusively on maintaining and managing the phytotech aspects of my body. It had already developed its own peripheral motor neuron system, which had greatly improved my dexterity. Was it a little scary to think about my brain, the seat of my consciousness, the material manifestation of everything I was, changing so radically?

A little, yeah. But I knew that every step I took was a step in the right direction, and I was in good hands with Camassia. <Everything up to spec, I take it?> I said cheerfully.

<Mmm. Good neuronal connections, intercranial pressure exactly where it should be. Phytocortex seems to have fully assimilated. We can start fixing your endoframe today, I think. Yes.>

<Wait, you want to do the surgery today?> I asked, incredulous. I couldn't believe my luck — she'd never sprung a procedure on me like this before. <Is there any way to put that off? I have Game Night tonight.>

<No no no,> Camassia said, waving a vine. <No surgery. Well. A little, technically, but functionally I'm just starting a graft. Easy, easy, outpatient. Nothing to do with the internals.> A.K.A., my meat body. Her bedside manner might have left something to be desired, but she was at least scrupulous about not labeling me as human. <Additional support, better locomotion, less stress on vines, less likelihood of injury. Balance much improved.>

<Well, I will appreciate that,> I admitted, still a little thrown by the idea that I'd progressed to the point where more augmentations didn't necessarily mean surgery, recovery, and long-term physical therapy exercises. A little closer to the ideal. But I held fast to that feeling and continued, lest Camassia change her mind. <Getting a little tired of being so wobbly, here. Well, let's get started, then!>

She showed me each piece of the endoframe, a lovingly carved and polished piece of engineered living bark, its undersides teeming with mossy microvines and hollows. For the first few, she walked me through the process, as I endured the little stings of my own microvines being clipped and bound one by one to the bark, and as my larger vines found their way into the hollows to secure them. After that, it became almost routine very quickly — snip snip snip, graft graft graft, then hold it close and let the dull ache fade slowly. My phytotech healed much, much faster than my meat, and by the time Camassia finally finished the last piece of the endoframe, a broad piece that rested entangled in my vines between my shoulder blades, I was already beginning to gain some feeling into the first pieces she'd added.

I now had two skeletons, I realized — one buried in the meat, a thing of bone just a little too lightweight for Earth gravity, and one of wood, anchored to my vines and bound in place in a way that supported the meat and the vines far better than the bones ever had. When Camassia told me to stand up, I let my vines reach out, carrying bits of the endroframe with them, and began to puzzle out just what that meant now. It took me a moment to work out how to arrange things, but in the end I maneuvered two pieces of the endroframe into position, replicating the arrangement of the ball and heel of Terran feet, and shifted my weight down onto them.

It was so much more stable, and so much less effort, to stand with something firm bracing against the floor. It reminded me of how the Sixth Toes had felt, back when I still used them, how much my body relied on them to keep me upright. Standing on just my vines, I'd relied on constant shifting of force across dozens of them to hold my balance, but now I could simply let my weight rest naturally. That wasn't what threw me for a loop, though — that was settling comfortably against the endroframe and realizing that the room seemed significantly less tall. The endoframe had added maybe a third of a meter to my height, and my meat-feet were nowhere near my actual feet but covered by the 'musculature' of my vines. "Holy shit," I muttered in English, purely by reflex. <I think it's a little big,> I added, laughing a little as I took a careful step forward, then another.

<By design. You're going to have to grow into it, your internals aren't big enough for everything I'm going to have to do. Can expand it later, of course. Will probably have to. Easy enough.> She tapped a few notes into her tablet and watched me walk around the room, my gait slowly sorting itself out into something approximating stability. <How does it feel?>

<Good!> I said, and it did. The vines had done the work of protecting me against gravity, but the endoframe made that work so much easier. The vines had made moving around on Earth easier than it had been in years, but the endoframe made it, if not effortless, the next best thing to it. With a little bit of practice, I might even get back to the kind of mobility I had back on Mars. Now there was an intoxicating thought. <This is really amazing, Camassia. Thank you.>

<Mmm. This was easy,> she said, most of her eyes shifting to focus on the tablet. <Similar applications for injured Affini, replacement parts, that sort of thing. Just needed to ensure compatibility for you. Easy. Too easy, really, but I have other things to focus on.>

<Oh?> I paused and turned back toward her, and while I almost overbalanced it felt almost completely natural — if there was any difficulty, it was that I couldn't feel the entirety of the endoframe yet, sort of like trying to walk on a foot after it's fallen asleep. <What's that? Are you working on the psuedocore?> I didn't want to get my hopes up, but at the same time, if there'd been movement forward on the most important part of the process, I wanted to know about it.

<No, no, no,> she said, and I tried not to let the disappointment show. <That's still... theoretical at best. Have ideas, not hypotheses. Yet. No, no, the thing I was talking about is this.> She reached over and tapped the wall, and a panel slid out of the way to reveal what I'd come to recognize as a nutrient tank — I'd seen several of my phytotech implants suspended in a liquid medium in one of these prior to them going in my body. What was inside of this one, however, wasn't a vine or even an organ.

<Is that... a face?> I said, crossing the lab and staring at the arrangement of bark, moss, thorns, and incredibly fine vines. It certainly looked like one, eyeholes and cheekbones and soft tissue unarguably shaped like lips.

<Your face,> Camassia said. <Modeled on yours, anyway. Most Affini create their own, of course, but most Affini also have more experience and skill with fine manipulation and readaptation of foliage than you do, so think of it like a prosthetic. I specifically designed it as a single, integrated piece, with a nervous channel layout identical to that of Terran facial musculature. That should make it much easier for you to get used to emoting with it.>

I was speechless, staring up at the facial prosthetic in the tank and realizing that I was, functionally, looking at myself in the mirror for the first time. Someday, hopefully not too far in the future, that's what I would look like. I felt a shivering feeling in my chest, the kind of meat-feeling I was still all too accustomed to. Would it always feel like that, when emotion overwhelmed me? Would I always feel like someone had a hand around my heart and was squeezing?

<If you want aesthetic changes, you should probably mention that now, of course. It should stay mostly Terran-aligned, I think, for your own comfort and ease of mobility acquisition.>

<No... no, it's amazing,> I said, still staring at it. <What about the eyes?>

<Mmm. Still haven't figured those out,> Camassia said. <I have a functional lens assembly, of course, but the trick will be routing a connection to your optic nerve. I know you're learning to see with your foliage very well,> she added, preempting my question, <but I think it's best you retain a familiar mode of sight.>

<...they're not going to work like your eyes, are they?> I said, and this time I was unable to keep the disappointment out of my voice. <One of those 'limitations of phytotech vs. naturally occurring Affini tissue' things, I take it?>

<Partially. The lenses will probably fascinate particularly susceptible sophonts, especially if they're already florets, but I wouldn't expect them to do much more than that, especially since you don't have the biorhythm prosthetic. And, to be honest, that's probably for the best right now, because giving you those capabilities would likely prompt certain questions neither of us want to answer at this point in time.>

In other words, if I was as naturally hypnotic as my fellow Affini were, someone less well disposed to the change in my status (and certainly to my giving Judy the implant she deserved) might notice before I was ready to make a bureaucratic stink about it — which, at the moment, I wasn't. <Fair enough,> I said, nodding. <You're probably right. How long until this can go in, then?>

<I would say... two months, perhaps three. This is your optic nerves we're talking about. I'm not going to....> She paused. "Play fast and loose with them." <Did I say that right?>

<You did, very good!> I said, grinning and giving her a pat on the back (which was significantly easier to reach, now, and much less likely to end up in an ass-pat situation).

Camassia looked pleased with herself. <Well, I have been getting a lot of practice as the locals finally relax a little about coming in to see me. Terrans have some very interesting idioms. Anyway. Remember to do your exercises. I've included a new set for manipulating the endoframe, so be sure to include that and log everything.>

<I will. Thank you, Camassia.> I hugged her — again, much easier than it used to be, my head resting easily against her torso. She hugged me back, and our vines did a little bit of casual touch-and-go before we released one another. <Keep me in the loop about that face, alright?>

<Of course! I'm as eager to see it in use as you are.> I found that hard to believe, but I appreciated the sentiment nevertheless, and nothing was going to bring me down right now, not with the endoframe in place. My steps were still a little hesitant as I walked out of Camassia's clinic and into the bright midday sunlight — hot, certainly, but bearable, something I never could have said of July a scant two years ago — but I gained confidence with each one. Soon, my gait was, if not perfect, at least recognizable as someone walking without having to think about each and every step they were taking.

And then I got a wild idea in my head. I still had a block or so to go before I got to the transit station, a short enough distance to test something but a long enough one for the test to be a real one. And so, with only a moment of apprehension, my next step pushed me harder, faster, and the next more so, and more so, and more so.

I began to run.

I hadn't run anywhere in over a decade, since the first year of TerraPrep when I was still living in Martian gravity, the year I placed 17th in the Marineris Marathon. Isolated drops or jumps were one thing, but no Martian ever ran on Earth if they could avoid it — no matter how much muscle we built, no matter how good a weight distribution prosthetic we hard, it would completely destroy our knees in short order. There was just no way to cushion the blow sufficiently in the crushing gravity of Earth. But my knees weren't taking that force anymore, weren't taking any force. The endoframe and my vines were doing all the work now, and my meat was just along for the ride.

Stars, but I had almost forgotten how good it felt to run. I used to run all the time when I was younger, had even competed in high school and university in the 400-meter and 800-meter, and I was damn good at it — but I'd given that up to fulfill my dream of moving to Earth and actually making a difference in peoples' lives. I considered it a price worth paying, but now I'd been issued a full refund.

I nearly fell three times, of course, over the course of that block or so to the station. They aren't kidding when they say you should learn to walk before you try to run, after all. I managed to avoid disaster, though, and rode the train back to the office with a wide grin on my face.

<Oh! I like the new look!> Senna greeted me with a smile and a wave, their only-vaguely-humanoid bush of a body nestled tightly behind their wraparound desk near the entrance. <Very snazzy!>

<Thanks,> I said, pausing for just a moment next to their workspace. <It's just an endoframe, though, does it really make that much of a difference to look at?>

<Oh my, yes,> Senna said, reaching out and patting me on the shoulder affectionately. They had never quite gotten over treating me like this, but then, they were practically obsessed with anything Terran-shaped; they'd collected no less than four florets over the last five years, and were still on the lookout for more. <So much more solid, gives you more angles and such. Dynamic, that's the word for it!>

<Dynamic, huh?> I laughed. <Well, I've got to go dynamically get some work done. See you at Game Night tonight?>

<Oh, I wouldn't miss it, and neither would my cuties!> they said eagerly. <So many Terrans all in one little space? I might wilt from sheer adorableness overload.>

<Well, just remember, not every Terran wants to be a pet, okay?> I replied, winking at them as I walked around a massive fallen log and settled in at my own workstation, a desk made of dozens of thick roots that merged together into a single, polished desktop that housed a terminal, my inbox and outbox, and a collections of other essentials, like the dedicated display that served only to show my Judypup's stream whenever she was live. I watched for just a moment — ah, she was ahead going into Exarchate Prime! Good girl, I thought, reaching out and lifting the special notice letter from the inbox.

I paused for a moment, a mental image popping into my mind, a trick I'd seen Karyon do once. With a bit of effort, I extruded one of the thinner bits of my endoframe from my right arm. This should work, I thought, and slid it into the open end of the envelope. Tensing my vines to near-rigidity, I applied leverage, and with a soft riiiiip the envelope tore open right along the ersatz letter-opener I'd made of my endoframe. I shivered happily as I reintegrated it, pulling the memo out of the envelope and unfolding it. Alas, the happy feelings faded quickly, replaced with confusion as I read the memo in full.

"Warren Argall?"