Scout

 

She didn't know how long it had been. She didn't know how many times she'd been through it. All she knew was that the last time had apparently been enough for the gigantic alien holding her prisoner, and for her smaller comrades or subordinates or whatever they were. Now when they came in to do their dirty work, she wasn't anchored down or restrained in any way, wasn't prevented from running, hiding, fighting back.

But she did none of those things. She let them poke and prod her, acquiescing to their every demand as shame and rage built up until every last tendril of her true flesh was saturated by it. Oh, for full control of her war-machine body — she would tear through these ridiculous things like the flimsiest of longweed were it not for the lockouts, or for the knowledge that there were far more of them than there were of her, for the conditioning that paralyzed her every time her thoughts drifted to violence.

Scout was trapped, and there was precious little she could do about it save to wait for an opportunity, something the Affini had missed as they hammered obedience into her. Perhaps a new body, if she could find a way to be left alone with one long enough to make the transfer — one that wouldn't have the lockouts on physical force that this one did. Given sufficient time she could make it seamless, preserve her life rather than abandoning her post and leaving all her troubles to her successor. If she was to die, Scout resolved, she would do her utmost to die free, and not consign another to what she now faced.

"So, these reefminds," said the shaggy-looking affini, their broad leaves bristling in virtually every direction. Scout had not bothered to learn its name. "I'm very fascinated by the potential biochemistry, you know. It's not every day we encounter a species that has developed a form of electrotelepathy!"

"How joyous for you," Scout mumbled. If anything irritated her more than being captured and subjected to repeated brainwashing that left her docile and obedient, it was how wretchedly cheerful the affini who were doing it were. Endure this shame, she told herself. One day, every one of these blasphemous things will be ridden, and we will be safe.

"Oh, quite!" said the affini, either missing the venom in her voice or ignoring it. "What can you tell me about the evolutionary history of the reefmind? The practice, the mechanics, the limitations. Does it require a direct connection between your neural tendrils, or is the seawater of your home planet sufficiently saline that it can conduct signals to an acceptable standard?"

There was little enough harm in telling them this. Giving them unimportant details seemed to make them happy, and that might predispose them to let their guard down. "Sometimes. In the right conditions. But it's shaky, hazy, transient. Best to maintain a strong connection. A reefmind is meant to last, to endure beyond generations and to carry the souls of all who participate in it forward, even beyond the death of the true flesh. Mostly, a reefmind in the appropriate conditions uses it to steer thought-agents in close proximity, if their training has lapsed."

"Mmm, the thought-agents. You train your own to perform tasks to such a degree that it persists even after you're disconnected from your reefminds, yes? Marvelous adaptation!"

"Mmmm." Let them wonder at the simplest and most prosaic things we can do, Scout told herself. Let them distract themselves with their absurd obsessions. Let them forget that we have moved so far beyond the limitations of what a reefmind and thought-agents could ever have accomplished. "We remember our previous lives, even if we cannot understand them apart from the reefmind. Then, when we return, our memories are stripped and distributed to the reefmind as a whole. They endure forever as part of the reefmind."

"A sort of immortality, in a manner of speaking."

Scout turned her head to glare at the Affini. "The only kind of immortality there is."

"Oh, I don't know about that," the affini said cheerfully. "I'm immortal, after all, in a rather more literal sense. You see, when this body wears itself out, my core will slough it away and replace it with new growth. We call that reblooming, by the way. I've done it three times, hence Third Bloom."

The worst part about being bound to faux mammalian neurology was the transient sensations it expected to feel, and which thus ghosted through Scout's own somatic sensory cortex. The chassis, as far as she knew, didn't have a stomach, but she felt one turn over nevertheless.

"And then, of course, there's several sophont species we've encountered who are negligibly senescent," the affini went on. "It's a very big Local Group, you know, and we've domesticated a good chunk of it already. We've found a lot of wonderful little xenos of all kinds to love — you're just the latest!"

Scout felt her servos begin to lock, but she said nothing.

"I think little Scout might have reached her limit." Gallica slowly descended from above, massive legs framing her as they came down on either side of her. Her hands followed, scooping her up; she offered no resistance, her servos frozen not only from the anti-violence conditioning and the hardcoded lockouts but from simple, basal terror. It was humiliating. "If it's alright with you, Peltandra?"

"Oh, of course! I wouldn't want to push the little dear." The shaggy affini, just visible from the corner of Scout's eye, shoved its tablet back inside its chest. Disgusting. "We can follow up about the reefmind later. We are going to have to get clever if we're going domesticate one of those."

"Quite so. And I'm sure the cotyledon committee will be happy to schedule more time for you." Gallica smiled warmly down at Scout, in a way that made her recoil against her shell. "But there's more to domestication than biomechanics and symbiosis. Instead of question-and-answer, I think it's a good time to start socialization testing. Your connivents just got back from their walk, Scout, why don't we go meet them properly, hm?"

Scout didn't reply. She had long since learned her captors felt immensely gratified at even the tiniest responses that weren't a direct answer to a direct question, and she had no desire to gratify any of them.

"Scout? Aww. A little worn out, are you?" Gallica's vines coiled around her, tickling at her artificial skin and making her squirm involuntarily. Once again, as she clenched and tried her best to resist the impulses, she wondered why anyone would build a war machine capable of these kinds of infuriating sensations. "Oh, you're definitely ticklish," Gallica said, laughing as she climbed up the side of the enormous room that had served as Scout's prison for the last...however long she'd been here. "Which isn't surprising, of course. I designed that body to be just as ticklish as Jenny and Ryder are. Speaking of whom~" Up and over through some kind of dark tunnel, and then Gallica was descending just as rapidly, settling in smoothly on all four of her legs and kneeling down — before Scout knew it, she was being set down on her feet again in another, much larger chamber. Another biped, one that Scout recognized, stood not far away. "Hello, my little nybbles~"

The biped's jacket lit up and excitedly shouted "Admin!"

The biped itself merely cast a glance up at Gallica and said "Hey." Its eyes then fixed on Scout. "What the fuck is that doing here?"

"I might ask you the same question, meat," Scout spat back.

"None of that, girls," Gallica said. One of her vines coiled around Scout's waist, while another wound itself around the biped. "You're connivents now, so I expect you to work on getting along."

"No, fuck that," the biped growled, "I'm not talking to that thing." Her face slackened for a moment, then tightened back up, a squinching expression that Scout's mammalian neurology helpfully identified as discomfort painted across its face. "But I'm still- ugh! Fine!" the biped said, its head lolling back as it rolled its eyes. (Frustration, annoyance, said the chassis' wet memory.)

"Hi, Jenny~" the jacket sang.

"Hi, Jess," the biped — Jenny, apparently — replied, hugging itself and the jacket and turning a little circle. "And hi, Admin~"

"Hello, my lovely little cutie," Gallica said, the vine uncoiling from around it and stroking its hair. "I see you and Ryder are getting along a little better, hm?"

"Y-yeah, a little." It leaned into the affection, its expression changing to one of blissful relaxation. The way that the meat-machine's brain kept changing how it saw the biped's face was beginning to get irritating, Scout thought, and once more she wished that these bipeds the meat-machine had been modeled after emoted in a sensible way, with simple electrical frequency shifts. "And Ryder and Jess nerded out about video games together."

"Yeah, it turns out Ryder inherited our good taste in infocruisers!" the jacket added with another colorful display.

"Oh~? Do I detect a return to the halcyon lands of Hackfleet you've told oh-so-many tales of, my darling?"

"Maaaaybe, once I fancy it up a bit," the jacket said. "No sense doing something if I can't be extra as frost about it, right?"

"Now, don't you teach your connivent to swear before she's even properly domesticated, little one," Gallica purred, her vine playing with the jacket's collar. "And you," she added with a squeeze of the vine holding Scout, "be nice. This is your chance to show me that you're acclimating to your new environment. First things first, introductions. Girls?"

"Oh!" The biped's eyes lit up. "Jenny and Ryder Lophophora, Third Floret Ortet Pluribus! She/her for both of us! I'm Jenny," it added, closing one of its eyes and opening it again quickly. "You met Ryder earlier before she wandered off to decorate our infocruiser."

"Jess Lophophora, Third Floret Ramet," the jacket chirped. "You know, the one you stole that chassis from?"

"Oh yes, I remember you too," Scout said, glaring. "The mind that stole most of my knowledge about your particular species of meat from me. Instead, I'm left to work it all out from first principles."

The jacket flickered through several shades of red, but before it could say anything else, a vine prodded Scout in the back, just between the shoulder articulation subchassis. "None of that, petal," Gallica said. "Jess is my possession, not yours. Just because you also belong to me doesn't mean you're entitled to her, or to her mind. If you want to learn from her, I suggest listening to her; after all, she's got rather a lot of experience at being a floret. I think she'll be a marvelous teacher for you. But first things first: Introduce yourself."

Scout shuddered as the immense, powerful voice seemed to grab her in an enormous hand and squeeze, and before she could stop herself she blurted out, "Scout Lophophora, Fourth Floret, she/her!" She followed it up with a frustrated scream, one that her mammalian neurology insisted should come from the gut but which in reality simply came from the integrated audio system. She still wasn't used to this war-machine body and it's bizarre idiosyncrasies. She wouldn't have had to get used to it, if the mind that had been resident within it had stayed where it should have.

"Whoa," the biped said, taking a step backwards. "Is she okay, Admin?"

"She's just having some difficulty adjusting," Gallica said, several of her vines descending on Scout and stroking her relentlessly. "There, there, little one," she purred. "This is all very new to you, and it's new to us too — but just think, all this struggle and difficulty is going to result in unmeasurable happiness not just for you, but for your entire species."

"You will never find them!" Scout snarled, her face a rictus of pain and frustration. "They will correct you, all of you!" It was only her conditioning that kept her from thrashing violently, from tearing away from the vines — the knowledge that, if she did, her chassis would seize up on her again, and she would no doubt be subjected to even more humiliating treatment.

Gallica only chuckled. "You are so willful! As willful as any terran feralist I've ever encountered, and I assure you I've met quite a few. So full of bluster and anger, so ready to shout and scream, so sure that the mighty Terran Accord would triumph in the end." She leaned in close, turning Scout around with her vines, her sharp-toothed grin stretching across her immense face. "They all wound up such adorable pets, my darling Scout — and so will you."

"I will never be your pet," Scout hissed.

"Silly thing." A vine ruffled Scout's hair. "You already are."

"Uhm, Admin?" The biped was edging around Scout towards Gallica, keeping its distance. Uncertainty — nay, fear — was obvious on its face, and this gave Scout a measure of strength. "Are you sure she's ready to, y'know, be out and about?"

"She's perfectly safe, Jenny, I promise you. Even if her conditioning were to lapse — and I was quite firm with it — I've installed hardware lockouts on all of her motive systems. I'm not taking any more chances with your safety, not after I've failed you twice. Besides, I think socializing Scout will be a big help, not just for her, but for the cotyledon program as a whole." She turned Scout to face the biped, vines giving her a gentle push forward, just strong enough to force the issue. "Here's your chance to make a friend, cutie."

Scout clenched her jaw, bared her teeth, and growled, "I am not going to be friends with meat."

The biped met her eyes — met her angry, furrowed brows, a consequence of her mammalian neurology mapping instinct to facial expression, which the biped promptly mirrored. Something happened beneath the surface; the biped's eyes shifted slightly, one eyelid fluttered briefly, the mouth worked but no sound came out. Then, almost without warning, the biped exploded in fury, advancing on her: "Stop calling us meat, you fucking asshole!" And it hit her. It draw back its hand and swept it quickly across, an open-palm slap across her face that stung — that actually stung — and turned her just a few degrees. The biped, having struck her, then bent in two, clutched its hand, and staggered away. "Ow. Fuck!"

"Ryder, no," Gallica said, tapping the biped gently on the back. "We don't hit others."

"She had it fucking coming! Fuck, ow, ow."

"Yeah, maybe don't hit the chassis with a titanium endoskeleton," the jacket said.

"Don't hit anyone," Gallica added. "Here, petal, let me take a look." Her vines coiled around the biped's arm, held the now reddened hand tenderly, and began to manipulate the fingers one by one. The biped hissed each time. "Nothing's broken. I'm going to apply a local analgesic, and you're going to take it easy on this hand for a little while, but it'll be alright."

Scout could only stare, dumbfounded, as Gallica tended to the biped's self-inflicted injury. It had struck her. The biped, a long-since-tamed pet of a soft and unimpressive species of thinking meat had struck her. Thinking meat was violent and unpredictable as a rule, but this was thinking meat that the Affini had broken so thoroughly that even when her predecessor had attempted to claim it, it could barely struggle. Unless- ah. "I see now," Scout said. "I should have realized it before, but I was distracted by... I was distracted."

"Yeah? What do you fucking see, asshole?" The biped glared at her as Gallica smeared some kind of gel from one of her vines onto its hand.

"You. You're a-" She paused, groping around in the dark recesses of her understanding of the mouth-flapping language for a word that would suitably describe what she meant to say. "-a ghost. The leavings of my predecessor, when that body was stolen from it. A true soul, yet trapped forever in a single body of meat, fated to die the true death with it. Your only hope is that, when we find you, that you are ridden — that another phantom chooses to merge its soul with yours — but that is very unlikely." She put on a cruel grin; she might not be able to strike the biped back, but she could still hurt it. "It's unseemly, you see. Who would dilute their self with the failed leavings of another? It only leads to instability, to weakness, to-"

"Shut the fuck up!" the biped shouted. She had scored a hit, then — she could see it in the biped's eyes, the set of its face.

"That's all very fascinating cultural knowledge, Scout," Gallica said, "but don't antagonize Ryder. You're both still learning to adapt. I will say Ryder's doing quite a bit better, but she has a head start and the advantage of sharing a body with Jenny. She still does need to learn a few lessons, though — like don't hit others, right?" The biped said nothing.

"I am not adapting," Scout said, glaring up at Gallica. "I am enduring, until the time comes when you are broken and ridden as you should be."

"This arrogance of yours never stops being adorable," Gallica purred, ruffling Scout's hair again. "I do hope you keep at least a little of it after I break you. Just enough to be a charm point. Enough for a bit of — oh, what's the word? Bratting?"

"Oh, she's definitely a brat, Admin," the jacket said, flickering through several colors as it laughed.

"She's a fucking asshole is what she is," the biped grumbled.

"I may be an asshole," Scout said, "but I am eternal, and you will die. Accept that you are an inferior thing, barely removed from the meat you occupy, but take solace in the fact that your suffering will end."

The biped, strangely, smiled. "Joke's on you, bitch. We're getting uploaded."

"...is that word supposed to mean something to me? I may not have a perfect understanding of your meat-culture but I know your language well enough, and what you said makes no sense. How can meat be uploaded?"

"I mean, how do you think I got here, mulch-for-brains?" the jacket quipped. At nothing more than a prod from one of Gallica's vines, she quickly added, "Sorry, Admin. Sorry, Scout."

"It's not just greymatter up here, dipshit," the biped said, tapping its cranium. "They put plant shit up there to control us, and when it finishes eating our brain, pop, out we come! Off to another world, the world of the electron and the switch, literally!"

"That's not precisely accurate," Gallica said, "but rest assured, little Scout, we'll work out how to do it for you, too — though your neurology is going to make it quite the complicated task, I will say. But you needn't fear," she added, vines tightening around her. "We will spare no effort to make it work, and you will join your connivents in the digital one day. I will not tolerate any other outcome. That is my word to you."

Slowly, Scout tore her gaze away from the biped and up toward Gallica's many eyes. "What? N-no, you can't, that's — this is a lie. It has to be! Meat is transient! Only we are eternal!" Her mammalian neurology was screaming as she was screaming, demanding tears that she would not allow her chassis to shed. "Only we are eternal! It's all lies!"

"Oh, my little nybble," Gallica said, her voice tender, as she brushed Scout's hair back into place. "You're going to have to learn to let go of that fear of others. It's totally unfounded. In the Compact, you are safe, and we will do things for you that might only have been dreams before. Let's take the first step together, shall we? You too, Ryder," she added, her vines constricting around the biped and turning its head to look up at her. "Let me introduce you to your connivents, and to what will someday be your future home."

As Scout watched, the vines that made up Gallica's body began to loosen, and the bark superstructure of her chest began to crack apart, opening up to reveal her insides. Unlike meat, there was no viscera there, only more vines, more vines — and then, peeking through with an uncanny light, an organ. It was rounded, shot through dozens of thick vines, encrusted with strange, fungal-looking growths, glittering shelf mushrooms of glass or crystal. Small nodules of the same sort of stuff, equally shot through smaller vines that bound them to the larger whole, were nestled into convenient spaces among it all.

Something about it was intoxicating. Even as Scout was petrified with fear and filled with a righteous rage at the blasphemy she'd just heard uttered, something else was trickling into her, a calm that pushed back against her rightful emotions. One of Gallica's enormous hands swung up, a single finger extended. "This is my first floret, Dipt," she said, pointing to one of the nodules. "And this is Thrüeetak, and this is Jess, whom you've met of course," she continued, pointing to two more. "One day, my loves, you too will have a place here, and we shall never be separated in any way that matters ever again."

"I..wha...?" Scout could hear the biped stuttering away to her left, but she could no more tear her gaze from the warmly glowing orb at Gallica's core than she could do violence to it. The more she stared, the more she fell into what she knew was a hypnotic trance — the other affini had done it to her often enough over the last few days, but this was different somehow, a heavy blanket laid across her entire soul that pinned her inexorably down. Compromised though it might be, she rode a war machine, and yet it was nothing before this.

"So precious," Gallica purred, her voice a stone tossed casually into the still surface of her mind, setting it rippling. "Oh, why not give you a little sample, hmm? It shouldn't break you, Ryder, but if it does, well, you'll be happy about it, at least — and as for you, my darling little Scout, it might just help you accept what you are." Without even the hint of effort, the vines around Scout and the biped lifted them into the air, drawing them ever closer to the thing that had paralyzed both their minds.

Memory stirred, the legacy of her predecessor and its thorough training in astrogation. Only one thing could produce gravity like this. This was an event horizon. This was a black hole. There was no telling what was on the other side of the boundary she was hurtling towards. Would she be wrenched apart by the tidal forces, her molecules pulled into a filament-like stream as they spiraled down to infinity, to the death of mathematics, to the annihilation of information?

Or would that merely happen to her mind? To her soul? The vines pressed her up against the surface of the glowing organ, warm and soft and covered in downy hairs that seemed to cling to her. Like the echoing interior of a shell, she could hear something in the distance, her entire body serving as a receiver for a signal she couldn't quite process.

The vines tightened. Somehow, she knew she was safe, even as a tiny part of her somewhere in the distance was shrieking about the danger. It was so easy to ignore, though. If she just listened, she could make out what the signal was saying.

She was approaching an existential discontinuity, after all. Maybe the signal could tell her what would become of her on the other side.