Jenny

 

It felt strange for there to be other sophonts in the hab. Usually, it was nice and quiet and empty, just her and Jess and Admin, with lots of room to run around and little terran-sized tunnels and chambers to explore in the walls. She still needed a map to find more than the most frequently used ones, or Jess's guiding hand, holding onto hers and pulling her excitedly along.

But that wouldn't happen now, not for a while, at least. "So that whole room is going to be for her?" she asked, holding onto some of Admin's vines as she perched on Her shoulder, looking down at the busy affini below. It was definitely weird to see them from above like this.

"Living space, laboratory, and more," Admin said, nodding, Her vines coiling just a little too tightly around Jenny's legs. She'd been hyperprotective ever since the incident in the artificial tide pool tank, but Jenny could definitely understand why, after the stunt Ryder had pulled. "We don't really know what she needs, but we have enough space we can dedicate it to the most critical equipment for studying a cotyledon, and we can always add more. Besides, she clearly needs to be socialized."

"Yeah." Jenny frowned and squeezed one of Admin's vines in her hand. "I know she's going to be my connivent but I really don't like the idea of her being around."

"By the time we start to socialize her with you, petal, I assure you she will be entirely safe."

Of that, Jenny had little doubt, but it didn't serve as a balm for her concerns. Jess had been off in the digital realm recovering from her ordeal ever since it had happened, and Jenny didn't want to bother her, but at the same time she desperately wanted to reach out to her and make sure everything was okay. The last thing she wanted was to have all of her connivents mad at her. Sure, she wasn't the one who walked the shared body out into the tidepool, but she didn't exactly manage to stop it either — and as a result, Jess lost her chassis. The guilt was still eating away at her, somewhere down in the pit of her stomach.

Well, one of those problems, she could do something about immediately, at least. "Admin, can you put me down in my bedroom? I think I want to try to talk to Ryder like Mx. Diadelphas suggested." The affini therapists, whom Admin had insisted she talk to after the tide pool while she dealt with the scout, had been very nice, and had not only helped settle her after everything that had happened, but had also given her a new trick to try and make communicating with Ryder a little easier.

The only reason they hadn't tried it then and there was because Ryder was still entranced after Admin's commands. She'd disabled them later, but Ryder hadn't said much to her since. She was still there, and Jenny could feel her skulking gloomily

im not skulking, fuck you

in the back of her head and occasionally throwing out barbs when she focused a little too closely on her. Don't be so prickly. I want to try something.

fuck off

No. She hopped down from Admin's hand to her balcony, gave one of Her fingers a hug and a kiss, and waved to Her as She turned Her attention back to the installation of all the cotyledon equipment. Stars, I love Her.

uuuuugh

Oh, quit complaining. Jenny rolled her eyes and sat down on the edge of her bed. Look, while you were out, Admin had me talk to some therapists to make sure I was okay after what happened, and — you know what, it's easier if I just try it, I think. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began consciously letting go of tension, muscle group by muscle group. As she let out her breath in a slow sigh, she tried to imagine all the stress and worry going with it — having that along for the ride would only complicate what she was going to do next.

what, you want me to meditate with you? i said fuck off didn't i

Jenny didn't respond — not directly, anyway. Instead, she focused inward, shutting out the soft noises and distant biorhythms of the other affini in the hab. Something familiar to both of us is easiest. She tried to envision the apartment she'd once lived in, or at least, a cleaner, nicer, less cramped version of it — the kitchen nook, set into the wall opposite the sleeping nook, also recessed; the table-slash-desk between them, overflowing with bits and bobs of electronics for one project or another; the shower cubicle, with the deployable toilet bowl.

seriously, what the fuck are you doing

"I'm trying to make it easier for us to talk," she said, not out loud but in the imagined apartment, seated on the edge of the incongruously comfortable bed. "Are you picking up on this?"

on what? oh. oh that.

"It's the old apartment. You remember it, right? Just... try to imagine yourself in it. Imagine with me, if that makes sense."

why would i want to do that?

"Because Mx. Diadelphas thought it would be helpful, and you were still tranced when they explained it or we would have done it together. We probably will next time we see them, so we may as well practice, right?"

this is stupid

Jenny rolled her imaginary eyes this time. "Just try it, okay?"

"Fine. It's still stupid." Ryder was leaning against the door, a few steps away, arms crossed and pointedly not looking at Jenny. "Stars, what a shithole this was."

"Yeah. Sorry. If you can think of a better place, I'm all for it, but I wanted to start with something I knew we could both visualize, and-"

Ryder cut her off with a wave of her hand. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Doesn't matter. They're going to core me out the same way they did you, I don't see why you don't just fucking wait for it instead of this."

"Uhh, because we're kinda in this together? Because it's nice to be able to see you while I'm talking to you? Anyway, they're not going to core you out. Don't be gross."

"They're going to unmake everything that makes me me. Which isn't much." She finally turned to look at Jenny, eyes full of anger. "All I have is scraps of who you are and scraps of who that..." She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, tears already beginning to gather at the corners. "Fuck this! Fuck all of this! I didn't ask for any of this bullshit!"

"Hey..." Jenny stood, and for a moment felt the disconnect between her sense of proprioception and the visualized sense of where she was. It was dizzying, and the room swam not out of focus but out of presence for a moment, as if she could no longer see it but nevertheless knew precisely where each and every feature of the room was, what all of its qualities were. Once she was able to revisualize it — once the knowledge became perception, if merely imagined perception, once again — she crossed to Ryder and hugged her. Imagined hugging her, as much as she could. She imagined hugging Jess, warm and soft for all she rode a machine around, and tried as hard as she could to send that feeling to Ryder. "This is gonna take some practice, I think. But I'm here for you, okay?"

"What are you doing? Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off!" For a moment, she didn't move — then, she planted a hand against Jenny's collarbone and shoved her away. "There! I fucking imagined it for you! Are you happy? Fuck off!"

Jenny backed up against the table, remembering the flimsy, glossy surface of the plastic laminate as she grasped for its edge. "S-sorry, I just... you seemed like you were hurting, so-"

"I am," Ryder snarled, "and there's nothing you can fucking do about! Don't you understand? I have nothing! All this time I wanted to just get away, to go home, and now I find out that home's just as bad as here! Maybe worse! The only upside is that there I'd be the fucking monster, not the one getting her brain scrambled, and that's not better! I don't want to be that... that thing! But if I'm not that, then what am I? I'm not you! I have your memories but I'm not you, and if I'm not that thing than I'm no one."

"You're not me, no," Jenny said softly, looking down at the ground. "And you're not that xeno that stole Jess's chassis either. You're just... you." She looked up, met Ryder's angry eyes, still brimming with tears. "You can just be you, you know?"

"Jenny, how the fuck am I supposed to be me when I have no stars-damned clue who me even is?!"

"Well..." Jenny bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. "I know a few things about you. You're the kind of person willing to do anything about someone you care about, for one thing."

Ryder said nothing for a moment. Then, she sniffled and said, "what?"

"I mean, you didn't even know who you were trying to get back to, who to contact, right? It was misguided, but you cared enough that you risked your life — and mine, admittedly — to try to warn them about the Affini. Right?"

"...shut up."

"And when you found out what phantoms do, well, look at you. You don't want to be that way."

"You're conveniently leaving out that the Affini are the exact same thing."

"They are not!" Jenny crossed her arms and pouted. "Admin hasn't done anything bad to me and you know it!"

Ryder stared at her, face empty for a moment. "She's having a plant eat our brain."

"So we can be uploaded! We might not remember asking for it, but we did, back when me and Jess were the same person. And you've got enough of my memories to know that I do want that. When I look at what Jess can do, the things she gets to have over on the digital side, stars yes I want that. I'm jealous. Not like, the bad kind of jealous, but I want that. And I know that Admin will give it to me, as soon as She can. She's not hurting us!"

"She's not hurting you. Or have you forgotten what she did to me?!" Ryder shuddered and looked away, ran her fingers through her hair. "I can still hear it."

"She just wants what's best for you. And you do need to learn to love yourself. Like, really bad."

"And so it's okay for her to just reach into my head like that?!"

"Well, you are Her floret. I don't think they see it as any different than, y'know, putting a kid in time-out or something. Like, yes, it sucks, but it's going to help in the long run."

"I'm not a little kid!"

Jenny couldn't help but smile. "I mean, we kinda are, compared to them. Think about it, y'know? Admin's like 2000 years old or something. I'm in my 40s but I sure don't feel like it. Especially not around Her. And you? You're literally a couple of weeks old."

"Fuck off," Ryder grumbled, looking away. "I feel like a stars-damned adult and I expect to be treated like one!"

"Well, tell Her that. But maybe calm down a little first," she added with a giggle. "Otherwise you might just get us doped up on class-Es or something."

"It's not like she's going to listen to anything I have to say."

"Of course she will," Jenny said, taking a cautious step forward. "She cares about you, and of course She wants to know more about you. You've barely talked to Her, and you definitely haven't opened up to Her. Let Her show you how much She cares. Let me show you how much I care." She extended one hand, palm open, and held it out. "We're in this together, okay?"

Ryder gave Jenny's hand a suspicious glance before she met her eyes again. "The worst part is, I can feel how fucking genuine you are. Makes it really hard to be angry at you the way I'm angry at her."

"Well, maybe don't be angry at Her, then," Jenny said, smiling. "She's a little busy, but I bet She'll make time for you, if you want to go and talk to Her."

"I don't want to," Ryder muttered. "But it's not as if I have a lot of choice in the matter, is it?"

Jenny let her hand fall — Ryder clearly wasn't going to take it, but they were making progress anyway. "Well, I was going to offer to let you have the body for a while. I can stay in here and keep working on these visualization exercises Mx. Diadelphas gave me, maybe come up with a better place to do this than this awful apartment. Any requests?"

Ryder thought for a moment, looking off into the distance — or at the microfridge, possibly. "How about the crew deck from our Gibson-class infocruiser in Hackfleet Online? What did we call it, the, uh...the Lovelace, right?"

Jenny's eyes lit up. The Gibson-class was her favorite infocruiser — she'd spent more on the cosmetics and upgrades for it than she had on food. "Oh stars, that's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?! All the imaginary spaces in the world and I stick us in this miserable hole just because it has the virtue of being real. Stars, you know what? It probably isn't anymore. I bet the Affini tore this whole building down and put up somewhere actually nice to live in its place. The Gibson's just as real, if not more so!" She bounced up and down excitedly on the balls of her feet, flapping her hands and almost losing track of the visualized apartment entirely.

"Jenny? Jenny. Calm down you're making it really hard for me to hold onto this. shit, how were you even doing it

Sorry, sorry! Jenny squinched up her eyes and focused until the apartment was real enough to imagine again. "Still getting the hang of this. If you want to read about it our tablet has some notes on it!"

"Maybe," Ryder said, sighing and shaking her head. "This is really weird, Jenny, not gonna lie... but it is easier to talk this way, I guess."

"Not to mention I can actually kinda sorta hug you here," Jenny added with a wink. "Oh, don't give me that look! Hugs are great! I was freaked out with how touchy everyone is at first too but I got over it and you will too!"

"Or I'll be made to."

"Would that really be so bad? Do I look particularly unhappy?" She fluttered her imaginary eyelashes at Ryder, and it gave her such a wave of euphoria that even Ryder felt it and shivered.

"I'd just like to have a choice about whether I'm happy or not." But even as she said it, a thought occurred to her, one which Jenny gave voice to but a heartbeat later.

"Even if they'd let you...why would you choose to be unhappy?"

"...you just do your visualization crap. You're going to have to carry both of us when we get sent back to the shrinks."

Jenny stuck out her tongue. "You're gonna have to get better at it too!"

"I'm already getting better at it," Ryder grumbled. "Look! I'm visualizing exiting this conversation!" She turned, grabbed the door handle, and pulled it open, stepping out into the barely-extant hallway and closing it behind her. She opened her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, looking around the bedroom in the hab, the sounds of distant affini labor rising in the distance. She flexed her fingers, stretched, and stood up. Back in the body again. Her body. Jenny's body.

our body

Ugh. She crossed to the railing and leaned over, peering to the right at the cavernous doorway where all the work was taking place. It took her a moment to find Gallica, a moment before she remembered to look up — and there she was, smiling down at Ryder. "Hello, my little nybble," she purred. "Did you have a good talk with Jenny?"

"How did you know it was me?" she said, furrowing her brow as Gallica slowly lowered herself back down to the floor. Ryder still had to look up at her.

"Do you really think I can't tell my dear little florets apart?" Her smile grew wider, toothier, a fanged maw that might have swallowed Ryder whole. "You carry yourself in a totally different fashion, and you do this adorable little thing with your eyebrows that's a dead giveaway."

"I do not," Ryder grumbled, her eyebrows crinkling even further. "And I'm not your floret?"

"Oh?"

The amusement in Gallica's voice couldn't have been any more obvious, and it only served to stoke Ryder's anger higher. She squeezed it down into the pit of her stomach, took a deep breath. Yelling would just get her drugged. "I refuse to be treated this way just for trying to get away from you!"

"I see, I see," Gallica said, nodding along.

"If I've done anything wrong, it's only because I had no expectation of being taken seriously, being treated like a person, being treated as separate from someone who was already your fucking pet — everything I did was entirely reasonable given the circumstances!"

"Because, after all, how were you to know what you were trying to run home to?" Gallica helpfully supplied.

"Y-yeah." This wasn't right — she'd been prepared for an argument, not for agreement, not for Gallica saying the things she was working up to saying. "There's no- it's not like I'm going to do it again, now I that I know what they're like!"

"Naturally."

"So there's no reason for you to domesticate me!"

"Mmmm. Disagree." Somehow, her smile got wider, like some kind of deep-sea fish that was mostly mouth by volume.

"Wh- no, you can't just disagree, I-"

"Petal," Gallica said, leaning in closer, placing a hand to either side of Ryder. "This isn't an argument. I suggest you stop trying to treat it like one. If you want to make an assertion, make it, but all the arguing in the world is meaningless before the fact that you are my floret."

"But-" A single vine to Ryder's lips silenced her.

"Shhh." The vine slowly pulled away. "Now, tell me what you want to say. Don't try to dress it up. Don't try to logic your way out of this. Just speak from your heart. What do you want?"

"I..." Ryder's throat had gone dry, and she sucked on her tongue and swallowed to try to moisten it again. Bodies were such a pain in the ass. "I'm afraid. I don't want to be a floret," she whispered.

"Why ever not, little one?"

"Because...you'll do to me what you did to Jenny. You'll make me like her. Just like her. And then what's the point of me? What point is there in being an extra copy of the one you already wanted? You might as well just kill me!" Her eyes stung as tears began to form.

"You really think that's what domestication is?" Gallica's enormous hands moved closer, gently cupped Ryder's body, her fingers resting on her shoulders like a warm, heavy blanket. When Ryder nodded, Gallica continued. "Oh petal, nothing could be further from the truth. Why would I try to make you a copy of Jenny? What would be the point in that?"

"But you- before, you just shut me down, filled my head with nonsense I couldn't stop repeating, the same kind of shit you did to Jenny to make her the way she is!"

"My darling, I gave you that mantra to repeat because it's something you very much need to learn, and because it was a way to give you time to process what had happened safely. Jenny learned it more or less on her own, with a bit of help from Jess and her other friends, but you seem to be having trouble internalizing that you deserve love. You really can't expect me to just sit there and watch my good girl say such awful things about herself, let her lash out at others to control her pain, can you?"

Good girl.

Good girl.

I'm a good girl.

I'm a good girl and I deserve to be loved.

Ryder squeezed her eyes shut and tried to fight off the urge to repeat the line to herself. "Don't do that!"

"What are you, Ryder?" Gallica's fingers tightened.

"No!"

"What are you, Ryder?"

Her voice caught in her throat as she tried to stop herself from saying it.

"What are you?"

"Agoodgirl," she blurted out, before clapping her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were so big, and there were so many of them...

"You are a good girl," Gallica said proudly. "Aaaand?"

I'm a good girl and I deserve to be loved.

"...and I deserve to be loved," she breathed, unable to squeeze her eyes shut in sheer embarrassment and frustration like she wanted.

"And you are, my little nybble," Gallica purred. "And you always will be." Ryder felt her feet leave the ground — when had Gallica picked her up? Ah, well, it didn't matter, it wasn't as if she could do anything about it — as her heart swelled with emotions she didn't have the words for. Tears streamed down her face, her vision blurring as she forgot how to blink them away.

I'm a good girl and I deserve to be loved.

"So don't fret, little Ryder. I could break you right now, I think, and you would thank me for it. But I'm going to let you slip from the trap this time. I'm going to let you think on this. I'm going to see if giving you a chance to process how you really feel, deep down, when everything else has been stripped away, will convince you to break yourself."

I'm a good girl and I deserve to be loved.

She laughed, a musical sound that drove the breath from Ryder. "I can't help it, you know — I really am just like my pets. I find a question and I just have to know the answer. Will you break yourself for me, little Ryder, like all my other pets did? Jenny, petal, if you're listening, be nice and don't push her. I want her to do this herself."

yes, Admin!

I'm a good girl and I deserve to be loved.