July, 2557

Four Affini and one Terran stood in the kitchen of the hab in Greater Reykjavik; strangely, it wasn't any of the four Affini who were cooking, but the Terran, who was using a stepstool to be able to reach the heated section of the countertop. Using a set of adorably undersized pans and utensils, Warren Argall was completing the final steps of preparing a meal for himself. Fried egg joined lettuce, onion, and mustard on a toasted piece of bread, and another such slice topped it off. He levered it onto a plate with a spatula, shut off the cooktop, and said, <Ta-dah, food. Happy?>

"His attitude certainly hasn't improved any," Dictyanthus said.

<Just as a reminder, my client would prefer that any discussion of his evaluation in his presence take place in English,> I said.

<Yes, yes, of course,> Dictyanthus said. <Apologies. Well, let's see what Warren has made for us. A sandwich with an egg?>

<An egg sandwich, yes,> Argall said, glaring up at Dictyanthus. <What, you want it garnished with gold leaf?>

<That won't be necessary, no,> Dictyanthus said. <What do you think, Viscaria?>

<Nutritionally, it's... acceptable,> the veterinarian said. <In a vacuum. I am a little concerned that it's — oh, what's the English term — ah, 'depression food.'>

<If you were on trial for your life after a year of imprisonment, you'd be a lot more depressed than I am,> Argall growled.

<None of that,> I said, tapping him on the shoulder with a vine. He shot me a dirty look, but said nothing. <But you agree, Viscaria, there's nothing wrong with a fried egg sandwich. You just said so yourself.>

<In a vacuum, yes. But he could have made any number of other meals that would reflect a much healthier approach to food preparation. Instead, he chose something that involved minimal effort.>

<What, you want me to make foie gras? Beef wellington?! I've been cooking for less than a year! Besides, if I want something fancy, I've got the compiler for that, haven't I? Why waste all that effort?>

<Mmmm-hmm.> Viscaria ticked off a box on her tablet.

<Oh come on!> Argall protested.

<I would like to point out that this kitchen is not fully accessible to my client,> I put in quickly. <He has to use the stepstool to even access the cooktop, and as for anything on a shelf, well, he certainly can't reach those. A straightforward meal makes perfect sense in a situation like this. I don't believe it's fair to penalize him based on a successful meal preparation.>

<That is a point,> Dictyanthus admitted. <We'll make a note to include that in our final deliberation. Shall we move on to the next exam? Let's see... ah, yes, the psychological evaluation.> Off he went, back to the sitting room in the center of the hab, Vita and Viscaria following, but Argall lingered.

<This is not exactly going well,> he hissed up at me. I was still rather taller than him, even when he stood on the stepstool.

<Calm down, Warren,> I told him, giving him a gentle pat on the head to soothe him, which he took but seemed a touch peeved at. <I think you're doing fine.>

<Yeah, well, what you think doesn't matter. It's what they think that matters, and that Viscaria... she's out to get me!>

I affected a sigh. <She's not out to 'get you,' Warren. She's just not sure you're ready.> And maybe she was a bit of a knothole, but I wasn't going to say that in front of him. Her opinion of me hadn't improved over the course of Argall's wardship — she was still horrified that I was grafting more and more phytotech to myself without the benefit of a haustoric implant and an owner to keep an eye on me.

<I was 'ready' before you damn plants showed up,> he mumbled, probably at a level he didn't think I could hear.

<Warren,> I said, kneeling down to look him in the eye — and pinioning him on the spot with my gaze. I watched his eyes saccade first to, then briefly away from, and then right back to eye contact with me. I watched his pupils dilate ever so slightly. <You were having trouble with the mechanics of boiling water when you began your wardship. You've made a lot of progress from there, and I'm very proud of you, but you're working from a serious skills deficit and it is important we correct it before we turn you loose.>

<Nnngh.> He finally managed to drag his gaze away. <Don't do that!>

<Don't do what?> I said, a playful lilt to my voice.

<Don't fucking hypnotize me! You're supposed to be on my side, remember?>

I laughed. <Oh Warren, I'd have to really try to hypnotize you. My eyes aren't nearly as good as other Affini's at catching cute little xenosophonts. I can do florets, most of the time, and always my Judypup, but independents?> I put on a pout. <Only if you really, really want it. Do you want it?>

<No!>

<Well then you don't have anything to worry about,> I said, straightening up and putting a vine at the small of his back. <Come on, let's not keep everyone waiting.> With a gentle little push, I started him walking and guided him out of the kitchen, all the while my imagination began spinning up in the background.

Don't hypnotize me, he said. What a silly thing to say — it immediately made me start thinking of how I could hypnotize him. Even after only a few short months of learning how to care for Terrans properly, I knew multiple inductions that I could use to lay the groundwork for a proper domestication. With my amplified cognition firing away, I naturally began to run through the steps with imaginary versions of Argall, demolishing his willpower in tandem across each of them. I had all the tools I needed to put him properly under.

What would I do with him, though? He certainly needed an attitude adjustment, probably more of one than I could manage with simple, unaided hypnosis. Maybe a good dose of Class-W would get him used to not backtalking. That could be the stick; the carrot, of course, would be a cocktail of Class-A and Class-E, to make him nice and clumsy and dependent, and so keyed up that he'd beg to be touched and held.

His entire aesthetic would need to change, of course. Vita's fashion worked well enough on him as he was, but if I was going to keep Warren, he'd need to be considerably softer. A bit of carefully tailored Class-G to slim him down, smooth out his skin, knock a foot or so off his height — by the time I was done with him, he'd make Anthemis' little cutie Sammy look hard and masculine.

It wasn't quite enough, though. One train of thought hit upon an idea that quickly spiraled out to dominate all the others: Judypup needs a kitty to chase. Once I had Warren nice and obedient, I'd reward him with cute kitty ears, a tail, and a pair of useless little paws instead of hands. Throw in a biomod to let him purr and some hypnotic conditioning to force meows and nyas into practically every sentence I allowed him to speak, and oh, what a cutie he'd make. Warren Argall, former trillionaire, reduced to nothing more than my silly, happy little kittyfloret — it was perfect.

But alas, it was just a passing fancy. He was my client, after all, and I was here to help him stay independent. To be honest, I thought he had a decent chance of pulling it off. He had improved significantly.

When we reached the sitting room, Vita offered him a vine; Warren sighed dramatically, took it, and let her pull him up into her lap. This wasn't his first time having a psychological evaluation, and he knew the routine. He was so docile, not even fighting as Vita took him by the chin, enthralled him, and promptly dropped him into a deep trance.

"Well, at least he listens to you," Viscaria said, making another note.

"He's really a very good boy," Vita said, smiling and petting Warren's hair. "He just gets antsy when there's too many people in the house. I've been trying to socialize him bit by bit."

"He went under so smoothly," I said, impressed with how easily she'd done it. "Have you been working with him like that apart from the evaluations?"

"Oh, yes. Implanting and reinforcing healthy habits, mostly, but also sketching out a loose psyche map. Nothing professional, of course, I wouldn't base any mnemonic engineering on it, but I think it's helpful to understand the lay of the land."

"Oh, that's interesting! We've just gotten to introduction to psyche mapping in my Terran care class, and I didn't realize you could use it like that." Even the introduction to the subject had left me completely baffled — it relied on some concepts in neurology that simply didn't exist in human science, and I'd had to stay after and get some catch-up reading from Separia on the subject. More grist for the never-ending mill of my brain.

"It's not something for a beginner to play around with, of course," Dictyanthus said. "But yes, there are some applications outside of mnemonic engineering."

"It's a highly complex process," Viscaria said, "one that even many Affini leave to professionals. Just in case you're starting to get ideas."

"Oh be nice, Viscaria," Vita said. "she's just curious. It's perfectly natural."

"I don't want her getting her hopes up."

"You don't want me running off to try it myself, you mean," I said. "You know, just because I have meat inside of me doesn't mean I'm incompetent."

"That is not what I said nor was I attempting to imply it," Viscaria protested. "I would have said the same thing to any sprout getting too excited about highly advanced xenosophont care methodologies."

"Your concern is appreciated but entirely unnecessary." Knothole. Yet even as I thought it, thoughts began spinning off of their own accord, looking at the situation from Viscaria's perspective; as a veterinarian, her primary focus was xenosophont well-being, and even if one accepted the position that I was an Affini, there was still on some level a xenosophont inside me and she couldn't simply ignore that. It went against every instinct, every impulse, every iota of her training. I was doing something untested, unsanctioned, and fundamentally unknown — who knew what would come of it? I was fine with that risk, and I'd convinced Camassia the risks were worth it, but Viscaria hadn't come to the same conclusion. It wasn't motivated by any kind of animus against me — she was just concerned I was tempting consequences that neither she nor I could foresee, and she was cautious by nature.

Sometimes, I really hated the hyper-empathy I was developing along with my augmented cognition. It made it hard to stay mad at others, even when I really, really wanted to.

With our requisite sniping out of the way for a moment, the psychological exam proceeded. Viscaria and Dictyanthus walked Argall through a series of hallucinatory situations, marking his responses, before turning to more abstract questions of ideology.

<Fuckin' weeds,> he muttered. <Stole everything...>

"Not exactly the response one hopes to hear," Dictyanthus commented.

"He spent his entire life in the Accord," I countered. "It takes longer than a year to self-condition subconscious feelings that deep-seated, even I know that."

"Well, maybe we shouldn't be leaving him to do his own conditioning," Dictyanthus said. "That's a matter for the full committee, though. Let's continue."

And we did. The psychological exam, the physical fitness evaluation, the self-grooming evaluation — over and over Argall's ability to care for himself was tested from every angle. He did surprisingly well, for a man who'd probably never had to apply his own toothpaste to his toothbrush before the Affini arrived, but I could sense the collective feeling — he was not exactly hitting it out of the park.

<Well,> I said, taking a seat on the sofa after Dictyanthus and Viscaria had left, <that could have been worse.>

<Could have been a hell of a lot better, too,> Argall growled. <I told you she was out to get me!>

<Now Warren, you know that's not true,> Vita said, kneeling down next to him and petting him gently. He didn't squirm away, but he did keep grumbling to himself. <Do you want some Class-E to relax with?>

<...maybe a little,> he muttered. <I don't want to be a total space-case!> he added quickly. He accepted the flower Vita offered to him, took a single deep breath from it, and let it out slowly. <...yeah. Okay.>

<Do you want to go get into your suit?>

<...yeah. I'm gonna go do that. Thanks.> He didn't quite stumble off, but his gait was definitely a little more fluid than was usual.

"He really is different when it's just you," I said as Vita took a seat next to me. "We should pull the hab records for the wardship hearing."

"I doubt that would be enough to swing things," Vita said. "He's adapting behaviorally, but let's be honest: he'll backslide the moment he's out of sight."

"I don't think it'll get him completely off the hook, but it might just lock in the extension — and he is improving. Another six or eight months might just be enough for him to shake this idea that he's owed something special by the universe."

"Well, I certainly won't mind having him around," Vita said, a contented harmony backing her biorhythm. "I've gotten very used to him, you know. I even filed a Notice of Intent to Domesticate for him, just in case."

"Awwww. That's sweet! Any specific plans?" There went the old imagination again — he'd make such a good connivent for Judy — even when I'd literally just been told Vita had called dibs.

"Mmm, maybe, but really I'd just be content to see him walking around in his cute little suit. He actually changes the way he walks in it, and it's adorable."

"Rather than get creative with your first Terran, you just want the natural Terran experience?" This was something I'd heard from classmates. Granted, like me they were quite a bit younger than Vita.

"Something like that. I might do something with his hair. Brown with bits of silver is fine and all, but I'm thinking we can find something a bit more colorful for him. Oh, here he comes!" She turned as Argall walked, still quite languidly, back into the room. He wore, rather than his ratty old suit that I'd told him multiple times to decompile, a new suit in an entirely different cut, a darker grey with splashes of floral color in the lining, and a subdued goldenrod tie. It actually looked quite nice on him! <Oh, good choice, Warren!>

<I see you finally took my advice,> I said, adding a playfully smug undertone to my voice.

<I didn't decompile the old suit,> he said. <I just got new ones tailored.>

<Mmmhmm!> Vita said cheerfully as she offered Argall a vine; he took it in his hand, and she pulled him up onto the couch. <We found a tailor that met Warren's exacting standards, so now he's got a whole wardrobe!>

<Well, I'm certainly glad to hear that,> I said. <That poor old suit of yours couldn't have survived for much longer. And you look very nice in that! Honestly, if he's got a slightly more colorful one, we might even want to have him wear that to the hearing. Showing that he's moving on from material obsession would score some points for sure.>

<Let's be honest with ourselves,> Argall said, <they're all going to vote to melon-ball me.>

<Warren, no,> Vita said sharply, tapping him on the nose before I could even react. <We don't talk about florets that way.>

<Ow. Sorry,> he said, covering his nose with all the languid awkwardness of the florets he'd just insulted. <But I'm not wrong,> he added in a nasal tone. <They're never going to turn me loose and we all know it.>

<Don't be so pessimistic,> Vita said, giving him a gentle pat on the head. <Tam thinks you have a decent chance.>

<I think we can secure an extension for you. You have improved quite a lot,> I added.

<For a given definition of 'improve,'> he muttered. <I'd still rather things be the way they used to.>

<Yes, Warren, but literally everyone else at this point would much rather they not be that way,> I told him. <Even the last feralist holdouts are throwing in the towel at this point. If they can understand that the Accord is gone — and good riddance — you can certainly manage that too.>

<I'm not stupid,> he spat. <I know they aren't coming back. But things were fine back then! You got what you worked for.>

<Or what you inherited.>

<Fuck off,> he grunted.

<Hey!> Vita pulled him into a tight embrace and tapped him on the nose again. <We don't talk like that to friends and guests.>

<Sorry,> he muttered, looking away as his face went bright red.

<It's fine,> I said. <He's said much worse to me. Look, Warren, even you have to admit things weren't good for the vast, vast majority of people under the Accord. Now, everyone can live how they want to, have access to everything they need, fulfill their dreams no matter how outlandish. Warren, look at me.> I reached out with a vine and turned his head; his eyes locked with mine, and I watched him fall into them. <Everyone can live, more or less, the way you used to. Everyone can do whatever they want, and no one has to get hurt for it. Is it really that important to you that only you and a handful of others get to live like that? Is it really that important that you feel like you're more important than everyone else?>

<But...but I won,> he mumbled, unable to look away from me. Did I have him hooked? I had to keep going. I had to find out.

<And now everyone gets to win,> I said. <That doesn't mean you lose. The game isn't zero-sum anymore. We changed the rules.>

<Yeah, but-> His pupils dilated just a little, like the quivering of a small animal. The part of my brain imagining him as a soft little kitty got a little bit louder.

<So relax a little about it. Okay? No one's going to steal essential comforts from you. No matter what happens, you're going to be okay.>

<Y-yeah, but... yeah...> Argall swallowed. He hadn't blinked for at least thirty seconds now.

<Good boy,> I said, smiling and stroking his hair with a vine. I couldn't help but feel a wave of glee rush up from deep within me, rippling outwards. I actually had him in a light trance! I'd never managed this with an independent before — sure, Vita had softened him up, but still! <Go ahead and close those eyes. You've had a long day, haven't you?>

<Yeah...> His eyes fluttered, slowly falling shut, and he leaned up against Vita.

<Just relax there for a bit,> I whispered. "Dirt and roots," I added to Vita, "I can't believe I pulled that off!"

She giggled, one hand demurely covering her mouth, the other curling around Argall to hold him close. "A little shaky, but you definitely had him. Good job!"

"I've been practicing, but I've never done an independent before." Truth be told, I sometimes struggled even with some florets — Megan, when she wasn't playing along, was surprisingly strong-willed. Then again, that was probably a good thing for a floret working in education. "How much of that do you think will stick?"

"Oh, I don't know. I've been trying to plant that particular seed — don't worry, everything's okay, etc. — for a while now. Which isn't to say you didn't get your impressions across, he's just got a lot of anxiety built up around the issue, and that makes it hard to make that stick. If nothing else, you got him to relax for a little while, and that's always a good thing. Isn't it, Warren?" She stroked his hair, and he mumbled something incoherent as he nuzzled into her.

"I'm glad you two get along so well," I said. "He's still on the Class-C bonding blocker, right?" Once I'd told him about it, it had been one of his demands, and one which Vita had happily agreed to.

"Mmhmm. This is all him," she said proudly. "It turns out that even if he's grouchy about it, he just really likes to be held."

"A lap Terran through and through," I said, nodding. "Funny enough, I can see it. He spent his whole life building walls between himself and others for fear that they'd steal what he'd hoarded. No wonder he's touch-starved." He looked so floret-like, cuddling up to Vita the way he was. "Would you like me to take a picture?"

"You act as if I haven't taken a dozen pictures of him doing exactly this," Vita said. "In other words, yes, please. I have a collection to keep adding to, after all!"