August, 2557

Camassia's clinic had grown over the last few years, expanding both out into the water and onto the waterfront, replacing the old wharf with state-of-the-art Affini construction housing everything a medical center could possibly need — which was considerable, since she had several other Affini working under her now, handling everything from scraped knees to major surgeries. Her labs, of course, were still right at the center of it all, the same spiraling, fluted structure that had landed the very first day the Compact arrived on Terra. She still worked from there, carrying on the intensive research effort that consumed ever more of her time.

"I do hope she's not going to propose something completely ludicrous," Ardisia said as the pod swept in over the city and came in to land in the flowery courtyard that had once been a torn-up city street. "She purports to have made a significant advancement, but in the brief time I've known her I've come to understand that she might mean anything from a minor tweak to one of your augmentations to ... who knows what."

"I'm excited, personally," I said, smiling over at them as we disembarked. Dozens of Affini and their pets were around, either arriving at or leaving from veterinary appointments or simply walking by and enjoying a nice day; the sun was noticeably dimmer than usual, thanks to it being a soletta day. Somewhere, millions of kilometers distant, a massive arrangement of lenses was gently diffusing the light of the sun, ever so slightly lowering the amount that fell on the planet.

"Of course you're excited," Ardisia said, with a sort of exasperated smile. They really were very good at Terran expressions. "You're anticipating a new toy."

"I beg your pardon, they're not toys, they're essential components of my body. Every time I come in here and having something done, I get that much closer to fulfilling my dream. Besides, at this point, new augmentations get grafted directly to my phytotech. Recovery is so much easier than it used to be."

"Mmm. Be that as it may, remember our agreement."

"It has never once left my mind," I told them. It was hard to forget: if Ardisia thought Camassia was pushing things too far, too fast, they'd shut us down completely. That they held that Sword of Damocles over my head out of concern for me didn't make it feel any better.

Camassia greeted us just inside the door — she was clearly excited, her vines twitching and twisting around each other even as they unknotted themselves, her like spindly body was completely remaking itself in real time. "Yes, yes, good, you're here! Big breakthrough, fantastic stuff! Come in, come in! I have to show you this!"

"So I'm guessing it's not just another tweak to my biorhythmic prosthetics?" I said, laughing a little. Three successive improvements over the last six months still hadn't amplified my biorhythm significantly — it was proving to be a real tricky problem.

"Mmm, in a way, in a way. Realized the problem." She led us back into one of her lab rooms, where a large cylinder filled with a transparent fluid occupied pride of place in the center. Inside it, a large pod or seed or something floated, attached at top and bottom to a nutrient line via a few phytotech connections. "The prosthetics are working fine. There's just interference."

"What precisely do you mean by interference?" Ardisia asked, walking a slow circuit around the cylinder. "I take it this is the solution you've hit upon?"

"Yes!" Camassia nearly vibrated herself apart. "Look! Look at it! I am a genius."

I finally realized what I was looking at. "Oh Everbloom, it's... it's a core!"

"Your core, specifically!" Camassia said, losing cohesion for just an instant and reforming just as quickly.

"Then... then we've done it!" I said, nearly losing my composure the same way. "We graft this in, and we can start working on the haustoric implant, right?!"

"What? Oh no no no no," Camassia said. "No, that comes later. This merely solves the issue with your weak biorhythm. I told you, interference. Too much of you is made of non-phytotech tissue! I thought using your lung cavities as resonating chambers would help but it turns out they're the problem. Well. Not just the lung cavities, the whole thing. It's got to go!"

"Hold on," Ardisia said, holding up a hand. "You're saying that her... her Terran biology is the issue?"

"Exactly."

"And you're going to solve it by..."

Camassia looked extremely proud of herself. She interlaced every single one of her fingers, drew herself up to her full height, and stared lovingly into the tank in the center of the room.

"Tam, I'm going to put your brain into that!"

Ardisia protested, but I wasn't really paying attention to what she was saying: every train of thought I had was in the process of converging on understanding the implications of what Camassia had just said. I was looking at my core — unfinished, perhaps, considering what Camassia had said, but my core nevertheless. I leaned forward, one hand on the cylinder, and stared in at it. My core. Somewhere, deep inside me, my vines tensed just a little around the meat, and I felt it shiver.

"You want to remove her brain from her head and put it in an experimental life support system!" Ardisia was saying, almost shouting. "That is not improving her quality of life, it's a dangerous experiment and you absolutely are not doing it!"

"But it's a necessary step, a precondition of the actual work! Leaving Terran tissue in the mix is going to keep frosting everything up! I have to get rid of as much of it as possible and it turns out that I can get rid of all of it that isn't the brain!"

"Why not just digitize her, then?!"

"Can't, wouldn't work," Camassia said. "Thought of it, thought of it a looooong time ago. Even if it would have worked, it would have been too easy. Besides, I doubt Tam would have wanted it that way, duplication and Class-O. Not her style."

"Huh?" I slipped out of my reverie and looked at the other two. "Wait, what?"

"Tam, I'm sorry," Ardisia said, "but this is too much, far too fast. There's no way I can permit it."

"What? Why not?" No. I couldn't come this close only to have it snatched away so suddenly! My brain began to spin out a thousand lines of argument, laying traps down every potential avenue the conversation might take. You're not taking this away from me.

"Tam, your... your original body, of which your brain is a part... they're connected. Trying to permanently remove one from the other is untested on your species — your former species — as far as I know, and generally not the way we do things! It's dangerous."

"Not that dangerous," Camassia huffed, crossing her arms. In the midst of everything, as my thoughts converged on the path of the argument, I recognized it as as gesture she'd picked up from Judy, and it gave me a warm feeling deep inside.

If I won this argument, I realized, I could actually start saying deep in my core and mean it. "Camassia's the expert," I added. "And a veterinarian to boot. Her first priority is my well-being. If it was really that dangerous, she wouldn't be suggesting it!"

"Camassia is a veterinarian, yes, but she's also obsessed with radical augmentation and always has been," Ardisia countered — an anticipated tack, and the branching tree in my mind narrowed further. "This is just one more example of her putting the latter ahead of the former. This can in no way be an improvement for you."

There we go. "You think so?" I said quietly. "You really think keeping my body around is essential for me?"

"It's essential for any sophont," Ardisia insisted. The lines of argument converged. I had an endpoint.

"Okay," I replied, and began to unweave my body. I kept enough of it together to keep myself upright, legs and a strip of carefully tensed vines. I disarticulated my face and, with extreme care, slowly exposed and levered the meat out of my body, holding it out in a hammock of vines. "You should probably have a look at it, then, if it's so important."

I had seen it, and so had Camassia, but Ardisia had never once looked beneath my vines, save for a peek at the meat's face — and that, at least, looked much the same as it ever had, save for the microvines running in to pierce nerve channels here and there. I wasn't showing off the dead-eyed, half-lidded stare of that face, though — I was showing off the rest of the meat. I had long since stopped using it for anything, and its muscles had atrophied to the point where it no longer resembled itself. If anything, I thought, it looks like the stereotypical disaster movie elgee. Spindly limbs rested immobile in my vines; even if I'd wanted to move the meat without my vines, I couldn't. It was like a bundle of twigs wrapped in a thin layer of flesh, shot through and held together with so many vines and phytotech constructions that they surely outmassed whatever meat and bone was still there.

"You can hold it, if you like," I said, speaking exclusively through my biorhythmic prosthetics as I offered it to Ardisia. "Be careful, though, the bones aren't as strong as they used to be."

"Tam, that's-" Ardisia stared down at the meat, visibly horrified.

"I know what you're thinking: that poor little thing, look what's happened to her. I feel it too, sometimes, when I look at this. I think any Affini would. But Ardisia, that's not me," I said. "It's not even my body, not anymore. It's just a thing I'm chained to."

"Her former biology has very little to do with keeping her brain alive at this point," Camassia added. "And what little purpose it still serves, the life support systems of the pseudocore will not only replace but will be a significant improvement upon. There will likely be a period of adjustment, of course, that's inevitable. Some physical therapy, some relearning of actions that still rely on, well, that." She gestured at the meat. "But what Tam says is quite correct — in no meaningful way does this body actively contribute to her well-being."

"In point of fact, it significantly diminishes it." I still had to care for the meat — still had to wash it, make sure it was properly supported, ensure it wasn't malnourished, and so on. It was like caring for a second floret. I had to do it in secret, too — I didn't want Judy to see what had become of something she'd loved so much, but it made me feel like I was lying to her, and I hated it. That came on top of the constant reminder that I wasn't like other Affini, that I had to work to be like them, that I belonged with them but had been set apart from them by a twist of fate. "Getting rid of this will be a major improvement for me, and it'll bring us closer to the project's end goal. Right?"

"Mmm! Once integration with the pseudocore is complete, I should be able to begin cultivating a bed of grafting cells. It may take some time to finalize the exact composition of that bed, of course, but once I have it, I may well be able to extract a viable cutting for a haustoric implant. May," she added with emphasis. "I still don't know if that'll work. But the pseudocore will. It will, with 6.5 sigma confidence, not only preserve but significantly improve her life."

"...six point five?" Ardisia said, not looking away from the meat. I had them. I knew I had them. "You're certain."

"Ran the math multiple times."

"I'll need to see that. And everything else having to do with this." They finally managed to tear their gaze away from the meat and look up, first at Camassia, then at me — at my face, my real face. "I'm going to need to read over everything and make sure I understand it before I sign off on this. I believe that's within the spirit of our agreement?"

"As long as you're not doing it just to dig in your roots arbitrarily, yes," I said. Her concern was understandable. Here was this sophont — xeno or otherwise — who was champing at the bit to do something untested and on-its-face dangerous. Sure, there was science saying it wasn't as dangerous as it seemed, but better to be sure before one leapt ahead.

"This is... a big thing, Tam, which you'll recall I did specifically say wouldn't help your case."

"Well, I won't be able to do this," I said, hefting the meat gently and smiling. "That's true. I will lose a bit of a trump card. But on the other hand, I would argue that being willing to go through with this shows commitment not only to the process, but to the overall outcome. Regardless of legalities, I am an Affini, and I will do anything for my floret. Even this."

Ardisia was silent for a moment, our eyes locked on one another's. My real eyes, not the ones buried in the meat that I never really used anymore. "I'll need those files," they said quietly. "And I'll be consulting with others. Second, third, fourth opinions. We'll see what happens."

"....so, now you wait?"

"Now I wait," I said, nodding. Karyon and I were seated on the couch in my living room, leaning into one another as our vines entangled. The wall opposite us was showing Judy's stream — off in her den, she was grinding away for a shot at top 3, and while we had the sound turned down, the split display and her bouncy little animated avatar told us everything we needed to know about the state of the run she was on. "I think my chances are pretty good, but that doesn't make the wait any less vine-twisting."

"I can only imagine." Karyon was careful, as her vines slipped inside me, to avoid the meat; she'd accidentally brushed it a few times early on, and she knew it wasn't exactly pleasant for me. I leaned into her, and returned the favor.

"Mmm. At least OTD has been relatively slow of late. I won't be causing too many problems when I inevitably have to take another sabbatical."

"You're still carrying that Terran work ethic trauma around, I see."

"Don't tease," I replied. "I just care about you and everyone else and I don't want to cause problems unnecessarily."

"Well, I definitely think that this surgery is a necessary one, so that's that problem sorted." She smiled and leaned in to give me a soft kiss on the cheek. "So stop worrying. Okay?"

"Nope. Too late. I'm going to worry." She was close enough to feel my biorhythms quaver in a sarcastic tone. "There is one thing I need to do, though — I'm going to need to find someone to watch Judy for a while. This surgery is probably going to fully incapacitate me, even more than the previous ones did."

"What's this 'find someone' nonsense?" She reached out with a vine and turned my head to face her. "You already have."

I could feel the meat's face warming, one of those reflexes that never really went away. "I didn't want to presume-"

"Presume?" Karyon said, arching a perfectly shaped eyebrow composed of a hundred infinitesimal flowers. "Tam, you are the first friend I made on this planet, my dear co-worker who I care for very much, and a brilliant and gorgeous sophont that spent several local years pursuing — and I'm still young enough that a a few years is a significant time investment for me! Why in the world would you think that asking me to help look after Judy is some kind of imposition, or presumptuous in any way?"

"Okay, okay, when you put it like that-" I couldn't help but laugh, the tension in my biorhythm that I hadn't even noticed breaking suddenly. "Fine, fine. I know Judy will be happy to have you around." I would be too, to be perfectly honest, even if Karyon had finally found a way around my objections to her moving in with me, however temporarily. At least she was moving in with me rather than the other way around, and given the official battle over my status had begun, it seemed less risky than it might otherwise.

Besides, was I going to ask a Terran to look after Judy? I'd done that before, of course, but, well... things were different now, and the Terran I'd most often turned to for help in that vein, Clara, was now happily a floret herself. "I don't know how long it's going to be," I added. "It may not be very long at all. Or it might take me months to relearn how to move around. I really don't know; Camassia doesn't have any sort of a timeline for this."

"Well, I will enjoy being here beside you for however long it takes. But just think: it won't be long before I can do this to you." Her vines seized on one of mine, pulling it deeper into her body and up against her core. The cilia of my vine brushed up against the surface, clinging gently, a soft brushing sensation that I knew she loved.

"What have I told you about trying to top a top?" I laughed and added a few vines to her core — if she was going to play like that, I was going to play right back. I knew she was trying to distract me from my anxieties over the potential surgery, but in her defense, it was working.

"That it's fun and I should do it more often?" she replied, pulling me deeper into her — her substitute for my lack of a core for her to play with.

"I don't recall that being the overall theme, no." I shifted, straddling her — even though I'd been putting on mass and height as my phytotech body grew, Karyon must have been adding on more mass herself, because when we were standing I still only came up to her tits. This way, at least, I could look her in the eye. "Do we need a refresher lesson?"

"Oh my, yes," she thrummed. I felt her biorhythm through my vines, rumbling and powerful. Someday, maybe someday soon, I'd be able to do that. "Do enlighten me."

"Well, the first lesson is-" I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers, letting my vines coil fully around her core and gently squeezing it. Her tongue, bitter and floral, made a quick appearance, and I slipped another few vines into her mouth to serve as an ersatz tongue of my own. (Dirt, I thought, I'm going to need to graft one of these. I spun off a train of thought to keep track of that, and to begin enumerating anything else I might need to add to my body once the meat was out of the way.) We communicated our needs to one another not with words — though we certainly could have — but with the mutual fluctuations of our biorhythms, a duet we improvised together that slipped into a beautiful harmony of smooth quavers interspersed with sudden octave leaps.

We'd slipped easily into this kind of behavior, a kind of intimacy I'd never really known before. It was making love, but a love that wasn't inherently sexual — not in the way a Terran would describe it, at least. Karyon and I explored each others' bodies and gave each other what pleasure we could, with touch and affirmation and the meshing of our biorhythms. It wasn't like the stone butch/pillow princess dynamic I shared (and loved) with Judy — I was a participant, I was being touched, and I liked it. If you'd asked me to point out the differences, I'm not sure I could have, but there was one. I could feel it in the stroke of every vine, the taste of Karyon's tongue, the sound of every biorhythmic note in perfect counterpoint. I was giving, and I was receiving what was given, and in both I found joy, for I knew, knew without a shadow of a doubt, that Karyon felt the same. The physical dimension of it was just one small part of the whole, of the unity we shared. There was no rising tension, no crest like a Terran orgasm, but simply a gentle tide of love and belonging that rose to envelop me, like an active and sustained afterglow without the after.

If my tear ducts hadn't long ago been converted into channels for phytotech nerve grafts, it would have made me weep for joy.

I could have let an eternity pass like that, but- <Tam! Tam! Tam! I made it! Sub-41 PB! Top 3, top 3, top 3!"> Judy was at the foot of the couch, jumping and trying to climb up onto it; I reached down with a vine and pulled her up, sandwiching her between us.

<Top 3? Good girl!> I gave her a scruffle under her chin and began petting her as she squirmed and bounced excitedly. At no point did I stop toying with Karyon's core, and at no point did she stop fooling around right back at me.

<Yes, good girl Judy!> Karyon agreed, joining in with scritches behind Judy's ears. Her fluffy little tail went thump thump thump against our bodies. >I'm so proud of you!<

<Eeeee!> Judy giggled and burrowed deeper into me, wrapping her arms around my body and luxuriating in the pressure of two Affini, in the biorhythms rumbling around her, and in the affection we were giving her. <I got the out-of-bounds dance and and and I did Persimmon Skip 2!>

<I saw!> And I had — I was reintegrating the train of thought I'd kept paying attention to the screen while Karyon and I had been playing with one another. <And you even got the quick-kill on Rocket Tank! Gold split! What a good girl you are!> I squeezed her in my vines and was rewarded with an adorable little squeak. <But petal, I think you forgot something,> I added, chuckling and leaning out of the way just enough for Judy to see the screen behind me. Her animated avatar was hanging limp next to the scrolling end credits of Mecha March 3 — she'd run off to tell me about her PB and left the rig's field of view. The chat display was a nigh-constant stream of laughing emoji of Judy's avatar, cartoon bone-shaped dog biscuits, and a waterfall of stylized "Good Girl!" emotes. I loved her chat.

<Oops!> She was far too happy to fret about it, letting out a laugh and burying her face in me. <Should I go back?>

<No, no, stay right where you are, Judypup,> I told her, using a vine to tap a few words into the chatbox, letting them know that a certain good girl was taking a moment to enjoy her owner's lap. She's such a perfect pet, I thought as I leaned back into Karyon, and began to kiss her again.