April, 2557

 

"Something's happened. Something's different. I can't explain it, it's just-" It was so frustrating, to have attained perfect command of a language and still not be able to properly express myself in it.

"Please calm down," Camassia said, waving a device over my skull. (Epimagnetic dipole resonance imaging system, my mind helpfully supplied. I must have heard Camassia call it that once. No, I read it in Common Xenosophont Medical Care Devices for class.) "There isn't anything wrong with your neurology."

"Then why am I thinking so much?" I was pacing back and forth in Camassia's exam room, arms wrapped around my body, vines twitching and reaching out to touch things at random out of sheer anxiety. (Don't touch the deep tissue biopsy probe or Camassia will have to recalibrate it.) "I feel like my head's about to detonate at any given time!"

"...are you experiencing pain?"

"No! Just...I have too many thoughts. All at once!" Even as I was freaking out at Camassia, even as my mind was helpfully identifying every piece of equipment in the exam room and enthusiastically dredging up its tolerances and use cases, I was deep in the weeds reorganizing my entire filing system at work and simultaneously planning Judy's birthday party in eight months.

"No pain, just racing thoughts. Hmm. Have you considered Class-E xenodrugs?"

"No, no, I lose cohesion when I take them." The last thing I needed was to feel like my body was out of control along with my mind. "I'm not- the thoughts aren't the problem, I don't think. It's just that I'm having so many of them and I'm worried that something is wrong."

"Nothing is wrong, though," Camassia said. "Your phytocortex is operating normally, and seems to be in perfect tandem with the rest of your brain." She paused, picked up her tablet, and began to enter notes. "Please describe, in detail, the symptoms. Their onset, anything that seems to particularly exacerbate them, et cetera."

"Alright." I began to lay it all out for Camassia — now that I had something to really focus on, my thoughts helpfully snapped into alignment (most of them, anyway; I wasn't going to give short shrift to Judy's birthday party). Memory upon memory surged back up all at once, and I was able to sift through them rapidly and pinpoint key moments in the neurological changes I'd been experiencing. I realized, suddenly, that they'd been going on for longer than I had been aware of them.

At first, it was simply the improved multitasking that let me handle so many vines at once, when the phytocortex was mostly serving as a distributed motor and sensory cortex. That was the first change — being actively aware of all my vines at once, and all the things I perceived in the light that fell on them. My skinsight (not that the meat's skin was doing it anymore) went from a weird sixth sense to the primary way I perceived the world visually.

But things had grown from there. My ability to multitask had developed beyond the merely physical, and my paperwork had grown far more efficient — I realized that as I relived more than a dozen conferences with Vanda overlaid on top of one another, the differences in them plain now that I compared so many to one another. My ability to serve as Argall's advocate throughout his wardship (The review is coming up. Better devote some headspace to that.) without compromising the quality of my work at OTD was another example, subtle but obvious in hindsight.

It was only when my brain wouldn't stop multitasking that I had really noticed any changes, and though I'd written them off as small and subtle, they were in fact more significant than I'd realized. I'd been too immersed in the Symposium on Terran Wellness Logistics, too saturated with information that I somehow still retained every bit of, to process it on the level it deserved. When I came home, when I began to turn the full weight of my now-hyperactive mind and its seemingly infinite bandwidth toward the single, all-important subject of Judy, I'd noticed what a change it really was.

And then I'd added the preparatory reading for the Terran care classes I was now enrolled in, and a new flood of information and possibilities smashed the floodgates wide open. I couldn't stop thinking this way now, even if I wanted to.

"Hmm. Hmm. Hm. Yes, yes I see," Camassia said, nodding and entering in notes the entire time I spoke without a moment's pause. When I finally described the way that thinking about Judy felt, the obsession as broad as it was deep, she added "That's not especially unusual."

"...what?"

"It's not unusual to have that level of focus on your floret," she said. I perceived biorhythms well enough now that I knew Camassia didn't have nearly so flat an affect (especially when speaking Affini) as I'd thought, but she could still be strangely brusque, and this was one of those times. "To a lesser extent, that's more or less how I think about my patients."

"....you're kidding."

"No," she said. "Why would I joke about this? You're describing fairly normal cognition. You're just not used to it."

"This is normal?" Now my brain was opening up even more avenues as I immediately started recontextualizing every interaction I'd ever had with another Affini as I realized that the entire time they were talking to me, their brains had been doing this. "How do you stand it?!"

"You're just not used to it," she repeated. "I understand it's probably a very strange experience for you, but take a moment and evaluate the nature of your thoughts. Examine each one in turn, and the holistic gestalt of all of them. I'll wait."

I sighed (which, at this point, was entirely a theatrical gesture I did purely out of habit), closed my eyes (again, habit, since it didn't do much to restrict my visual perception), and began to sift through my thoughts one by one. As I focused on the task, the noise softened; extraneous thoughts occurred, were examined, and were shelved until such time as I wasn't busy. One by one I ticked them off, and slowly came to the realization that none of these thoughts were negative, nor were they problematic, nor were they causing me any sort of harm. There was just a frosting dirtload of them, and that was apparently normal.

"I... I guess it's not... a problem," I finally said. "But it still feels weird."

"You're going through a lot of changes," Camassia said, draping a vine around my shoulder. Most Affini were still taller than me, but she was taller than most Affini (at least, when she was actually standing up), and so when I looked up at her, I still had to crane my neck a bit. Sure, I could see her the whole time anyway, but it seemed like the polite thing to do. "It's normal to feel a bit apprehensive about it. Well. This is, as far as I know, a unique circumstance, so 'normal' is perhaps not the right word, but you take my meaning."

"I do. Still, it's just- I mean, you feel all that when you look at me?"

"Right now, I'm primarily focused on helping you process your cognitive development. I'm also composing a memo to Ardisia complaining about the unnecessary restrictions she's placing on this process, developing an improved biorhythmic prosthetic, evaluating a metastudy of your neurochemical composition in preparation for more advanced augmentation, and of course continuing to work on the problem of how to develop a pseudocore. In fact, I haven't really stopped thinking about that last one since you brought the idea of developing a haustoric implant for Judy to my attention."

"... you've been thinking about it constantly for the last two and a half years?" I said, my biorhythm dropping off a cliff in shock.

"More or less. It's a very complicated problem," she said, as nonchalant as I'd ever seen an Affini. "As you grow accustomed to normal cognition, you'll likely find that the breadth of your thoughts will diminish somewhat. I'll recommend some reading on psychology and theory of mind for you on the subject — I wasn't certain you'd experience changes like this, or I'd have done so already. That should help you order your thoughts properly."

"Okay," I said. "It does help to know that this isn't some weird reaction to the xenodrugs or the phytocortex going wrong or something." Focusing on the thoughts themselves, rather than my confusion at having them all at once, had done quite a lot to quiet things down, but some of the extraneous thoughts were starting to sneak back in. Still, now that I knew it wasn't a problem, it was a lot easier to just let those thoughts be. (My filing system could use reorganizing...)

"Understandable concerns," Camassia said. "And you did the right thing by coming to me."

"Thank you," I said. I finally managed to get my vines to unclench, and felt the relief in my meat that it wasn't being compressed quite so much. I shook out my foliage and gave a brief, stretching arpeggio in my biorhythmic prosthetic. "Well, since we're here...do you want to get Judy's checkup out of the way?" I glanced at my pet, sitting happily on the table and playing a game on her handheld console, totally oblivious to the conversation Camassia and I were having.

"A bit early, but why not?" she said, a cheerful note in her voice.

---

I'd half expected the classroom to look like, well, a Terran classroom — desks all in a row facing a display or a lectern or both, where the teacher would stand and lecture the class. Instead, when I showed up in Room 7 of the Affini Educational Annex, a broad dome-like building that had been erected in the middle of the Punchbowl (and whose lower levels were devoted to some of the machinery that had turned it from a toxic algae-wracked soup back into the cool, blue waters of historical videos and documentaries), I found a round room with a circle of soft seats in the center and a small hemisphere — a holographic projector — hanging from the ceiling in the center. There were about half a dozen Affini in the room, one of whom was having a quiet conversation with a Terran, probably her floret; the others all seemed to be vibrating with excitement, and I don't suppose I could blame them (though I was mixing in a dash of anxiety, personally).

I took one of the empty seats — a bench-like hump of soft, mossy material — and began to prepare my tablet's workspace for class. Almost immediately, my neighbor to the left, a rail-thin Affini with dappled white bark and a spray of stubby foliage mimicking Terran hair, scootched over and said "Hi! I'm Elymia Liatris! Oooooh, I'm so excited! Are you excited? You look excited."

"Hi," I said, just a bit overwhelmed by their sheer enthusiasm. "Tamara Slaine, she/her."

"Oooh, right, right, she/her, and I mean, First Bloom, obviously," Elymia said, her vines riffling as she giggled. "Tamara Slaine, huh? Interesting name! How'd you choose it?"

"Actually, it was given to me," I said, not entirely sure how to broach the subject of my parentage. "But I tend to go by Tam."

"Ohhhhh, Tam, I like it! Nice and short and to the point! Well, you can call me Ely then!" She clapped her hands, then began to flap them. "Oh! I'm just practicing. I read that this is something Terrans do when they're happy!"

"Some, yes," I said. I couldn't help but smile — she was so eager. (If I was like her, bloomed Affini, first domestication campaign, still learning not just about Terrans but about the universe, about myself, I'd be just the same way. Funny how decades of living the wrong life can ground you.) I let that thought run; it felt helpful, not to mention nice, to develop that kind of intentional empathy, seeing myself in the place of a sprout not from Mars but from some other world the Affini had found and domesticated, arriving on a planet full of adorable xenosophonts in need of loving care. I felt much less overwhelmed, and all it took was letting a tiny piece of my mind wander for a split second. Maybe what Camassia called 'normal cognition' had its upsides after all. "My floret does it, actually," I added.

She stopped dead, every single vine freezing in place. "You have a floret already?! Oh wow! Can I see a picture?"

"Of course," I said, pulling up my image gallery and showing Elymia a picture of Judy rolling over on the carpet, her tongue lolling out, not a stitch of clothing on her save her collar. "She doesn't have her haustoric implant yet, I still need to get certified, and solve some other issues. But she's all mine, and I love her more than words can say."

"Ohhh dirt, look at her!" Elymia said, her biorhythm a tightly coiled spring of pure desire. "Lucky! Oh Everbloom, her little ears and her little tail... she's much too cute! Dangerously cute!."

"I very much agree," I said.

"How did you meet her?"

"Oh, I've known her for years, we-" I paused, trailing off; the Affini who brought her floret was standing up and making a gesture with their vines that I knew was meant to call attention. Elymia got the message too, and sat up straight, paying attention — though, at least a few of her vines were still turned to focus on my tablet. I felt a little bit of pride about that; the call of so cute a floret as Judy was difficult to resist.

"Hello, everyone! My name is Separia Balsamifera, Fifth Bloom, pronouns she/her." She was a little shorter than average, I thought, broadly built with a narrow waist and thick legs, a mane of carefully trimmed leaves running down her back. "And this is Megan, also she/her. Say hi, Megan."

"Hi Megan!" the floret in the bright pink-and-yellow sundress said cheerfully, waving. Whether she knew it or not, she'd received a broad chorus of admiration from the collective biorhythms of everyone present, even me (though mine was quite a bit softer). Her Affini seemed odd to me, strangely flat — I realized I was effectively hearing what I used to sound like, before I got my biorhythmic prosthetic.

Separia gave Megan a gentle pat on the head with a vine. "Megan is my floret, of course, but she's also my teaching assistant, so even if she's a little silly, she knows what she's doing, I promise. So, welcome to Introduction to Terran Xenosophont Care, or, as I like to call it, Help! These Terrans Are All Too Adorable And I Don't Know What To Do! Rest assured that, by the end of this course, you will in fact know what to do when you happen upon the sweet little Terran of your dreams."

What followed was a high-level overview of the course, which doubled as a rundown of how Terrans' various needs usually expressed themselves. A lot of it was review for me — I'd lived it for almost four decades, after all — but I paid attention anyway. Best to know the foundation that the lessons would be built upon.

The day's studies went on to include some basic Terran biology, common substances that were toxic to Terrans, common Terran allergies and how to recognize them (and what xenodrugs might help ameliorate the symptoms long enough to get them to a veterinarian), Terran emotive states, and so on. The culmination of the day was a roleplaying exercise: each student took their turn comforting a Terran, ably played by Megan. The little floret had some real acting chops, it turned out — she could cry on command, which absolutely terrified Elymia, who had eagerly volunteered to go first. After everyone had a go, Separia gave everyone a list of books to read (not sections of books, entire books) and dismissed the class, adding, "Tam, would you stay after just a bit?"

So of course, I stayed. "Is everything alright?" I asked once the other students started drifting out of the room.

"Oh, yes, please don't feel anxious!" Separia said, laughing. "I just wanted to compliment you on how well you did in the roleplaying exercise! I had Megan give you a toughie, since, well, you have a lot more experience with Terrans than most students I see."

I wasn't entirely surprised to hear that Separia knew about me — Arisia or Sona must have quietly flagged my educational profile. "Glad to hear I didn't totally blow it," I said, smiling. 'Toughie' was putting it mildly; Megan had pretended to have a broken leg for my turn in the exercise, and her screams of pain were disturbingly realistic. I'd used my tablet to notify a local 'veterinarian' (Separia playing the role of the vet) who gave me directions and instructed me to bring the Terran in. After distracting Megan by asking her tell me about herself (and again, props to the actress, who improvised an entire life's story on the spot), I braced her leg, gently lifted her up, and carried her off to the 'vet' — which is to say, I handed her over to Separia.

"Usually, that one has students in absolute fits, but you kept your head remarkably well. Very little hesitation, I like that!"

"It's not the first leg break I've seen." TerraPrep had been a rough ride, and there'd been multiple injuries, many of them in the first station phase when we began to acclimate to higher gravity. It only takes one moment of inattention when handling weights at .55g instead of .38g to dump a 20-kilo dumbbell on your foot, or take a step wrong on the track, twist your ankle, then shatter your knee in the landing when you fell. "But it definitely woke me up, I'll say that. You," I added, glancing down at Megan, who was leaning against Separia's thigh, "are a very good actress, apart from being adorable."

"Mmm, thank you," Megan said, smiling contentedly. Separia had given her a dose of something, probably a Class-A, so she was nicely languid and floaty.

"Well, don't you rest on your laurels," Separia went on. "We'll get out of the basics soon enough, and then you may well find yourself struggling to keep up. If you do, please do come and see me outside of class, and we can fill in any remedial gaps we need to, alright?"

"I appreciate it, thank you," I said. "I don't know where those gaps might be, but I suppose I'll know them when I encounter them. It was like that at Transitional Decarceralization, when I was getting used to Compact bureaucracy."

"Mmm, yes, I read that in your file. You're quite young for a clerk, you know. Even with the business of your- I suppose 'transition' is the right word? -and your work in the Terran legal system prior to our arrival, it's impressive. And caring for a Terran who's functionally a floret on top of it!"

"Hopefully before too long, we can drop the 'functionally,'" I said. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, though. Not everyone gets on board with the idea of me being the way I am so quickly."

"You're here to learn. I'm here to teach. If you can keep up, that's one more sophont out there helping to keep an eye on little cuties like Megan." She gave her floret a gentle scruffle, and she made a perfectly adorable little noise. "Whether you're a Terran or an Affini really doesn't matter, if you look at it that way."

"...that's a good point," I said, relaxing just a little. I felt a little safer, a little more at home, in the class after that — which, I suppose, was probably her intent the whole time. "Well, I've got a bunch of new reading to do, so...see you next class?" We parted ways, my head full of new ideas to consider, dismantle, and look at from new angles. Was I getting used to the sheer breadth of my thoughts, or was it just the knowledge that it wasn't some kind of error or aberration that gave me the confidence to actually engage with them?

"Tam!" Elymia was loitering just outside the door. "Are you seriously a clerk too?!"

"Did you stay behind just to eavesdrop on me?" I said, giving her a smile with my face and my biorhythm.

"No! Well, yes. But seriously! You have a floret and you're a clerk!"

"I contain multitudes?" I riffled my vines in a shrug. "It's not so different from what I was doing before."

"Is that what Separia was talking about when she said you had more experience with Terrans?" Elymia let out an extremely theatrical gasp and clapped her hands over her mouth. "Were you some kind of forward agent sent to infiltrate Terra before the main fleet arrived to ensure that nothing bad happened when the planet was pacified?! Oh dirt, you're so cool!"

"Nothing so exciting. I'm just from Mars," I said. "And before the Compact arrived, I was a lawyer."

"That's... the little Terrans who argued in their horribly broken and punitive legal system, right?" Elymia said, her vines shifting in confusion. "But...would they have let an Affini be a lawyer? Didn't the Accord not want us around?"

"Well, at the time, I didn't know I was an Affini," I explained. "...you know what, here, look." I unhinged my jaw and let my face slide back out of the way so she could see the meat underneath. "Ta-dah~"

I could read the shock in Elymia's biorhythm, of course, but also in the fact that she forgot to emote like a Terran would. "...you used to be a Terran?!"

"In a manner of speaking," I said, closing my face back up around the meat. "I was pretty Affini-like even at the time."

"....that's so cool! Tell me more! Dirt, let's go get some fortified water, I want to hear all about this!"