1.0.0-a1

 

"I still think you're blowing this way out of proportion. I was sleepwalking! I did that a lot as a kid, it's not a big deal." Hands in her jacket pockets and back hunched sulkily, Jess did not take in the magnificent view of the Tillandsia's interior as she walked along the path. She'd already been accosted by three separate Affini wanting to give her affection, and they'd been out of the hab less than five minutes. Yes, the headpats were nice, but they weren't Gallica's headpats.

"My little nybble, you're recovering from a serious neurological trauma, and even if you weren't, your well-being is very much a big deal." It was Jess's face, Jess's voice, and more or less Jess's body, but there was no question that the other Jess was not at the wheel — Gallica had borrowed the chassis to walk her to Arvense's, not wanting to let her not only out of her sight but out of quick reach after her little nighttime escapade.

how was i supposed to know their spy cameras could see in the dark

Look, you fucked up, okay ridealong? Now we both have to deal with it. She suppressed a shudder at the thought of what had happened — she'd slept through the entire thing, but the idea of whatever the hell the thing in her head was being able to just make her body get up and move around was terrifying.

oh, thing in your head, your body. nice

Yeah, it's my body, deal with it.

funny, as far as i can tell we got here at the same time

You're not even supposed to be here!

well, i am. deal with it

"Petal?" A warm hand on her shoulder brought Jess back to the world around her. Somehow, despite being compressed down into a human-sized frame that she was driving around like a drone, Gallica's presence was immediately palpable. They were the same height, but Jess still somehow felt as if she was looking up at Gallica's full immensity when she glanced over at her.

"Sorry, woolgathering," she replied, shaking her head. "Just tuning out."

"Well, we've arrived." The familiar facade of Arvense's clinic, a comforting and welcoming structure woven of what looked like several dozen sprawling trees and their infinitely twisting roots, stood before them. "Try to relax a little, pet," she added, reaching up and gently guiding Jess's gaze to hers with a pair of fingers on her chin. "It's going to be a very simple and noninvasive scan. That's all."

Jess swallowed as she felt her insides squirm. The eyes might have been more-or-less carbon copies of her own, but she could feel Gallica's gaze radiating from behind them. "You promise? No... weird stuff?"

"No weird stuff." Soothing, gentle, her voice was like being stroked. How the fuck did she make Jess's voice even do that?

i don't know and i don't like it

"Okay," Jess mumbled, glancing away and biting her lip as Gallica guided her inside. Why did she have to use this chassis anyway? Now I'm gonna start having weird feelings about otherme.

start?

Fuck off.

"Gallica!" Arvense was waiting inside, dripping wet as usual, sunken eyes glowing dimly in their pits. "Hmmm. You look different. Wait, wait, don't tell me: you had your foliage pruned!"

"Very funny, Arvense," Gallica said, smiling politely.

"And Jess, my dear," he added, crouching down a little and — well, maybe the way his face twisted was meant to be a smile. "You're looking much better physically, but I hear you've had some unusual sleep patterns, hm?"

"Uh... y-yeah, I guess," Jess said, fidgeting with the hem of her jacket. Are they gonna be able to see you in there?

how the hell should I know?

"Well, don't worry, we'll figure out what's going on, make sure you're healing up properly, and see if we can't figure this little hiccup out, hm?" He gave Jess a gentle (if moist) pat on the head. "I'm just going to have a few words with your owner beforehand while you get ready, okay?"

"Okay, but uhm, what should I...?" She glanced around, uncertain, until her eyes lit on the Terran standing just behind Arvense, whom she hadn't even noticed before. He was taller than Jess, dark-haired, with a neatly trimmed beard and a broad, soft build. He wore something like a nurse's scrubs, but decorated in bright colors with bunches of broad green leaves dotted here and there all over. He also, of course, wore a collar, a dark green band around his neck. In one hand, he held a thin tablet like a clipboard; with other, he gestured for Jess to follow.

run

"Come on," he said with a friendly smile, "I'll get you set up."

run

"Uhm, alright." With one last caress from Gallica's currently-normal-sized hand, Jess followed the other floret back from the waiting room, down long, warmly lit halls whose walls teemed with greenery. Calm down, she added to her ridealong. This is a shitty time to bolt, we'd never get away.

RUN

"Glad to see you're feeling better," the floret nurse said. "I was on watch for you a lot while you were in the coma, you know. Spent a lot of time in there, talking to you. Don't know if you heard me."

RUN!!

"I...don't remember, sorry," Jess mumbled. "I don't remember a lot, to be honest. I'm missing like twenty years. I don't even know if we know each other, do we?"

"You could say that," he said. Something about his chuckle seemed off.

don't you recognize him?!

No, why would I- Jess froze as she watched the man key open a door to some kind of exam room, then turn back to look at her. It was when he turned that she saw it — the profile, softened by age and by weight, the shoulders, the brows, the nose, the eyes. It clicked all at once, and she was once more in the back of the truck, pressed against the wall of the trailer, staring up at a man she was certain was going to beat her to death with his bare hands.

"Nikolai." The gasp of breath that escaped her when she said it barely qualified as a whisper. She felt her extremities go cold, felt her skin tighten like she was trying to crawl out of it. Everything else faded into a shadowy background as every mental spotlight she had converged on the man standing in front of her. She watched him finish his turn in a kind of slow-motion, every action, every minute twitch of muscle hyper-scrutinized for a sign that a blow was about to land. She watched him look at her, watched his eyes dart to and fro, watched the expression on his face slowly shift.

"Oh." He sighed, shook his head, and turned back to the room, walking in and quickly returning with a soft-looking stool, which he set down in the middle of the hall and backed away. "Here, sit if you need to. Especially if you feel like you're going to pass out. Do you want a Class-E inhaler? Master said you probably shouldn't have too many xenodrugs while you're healing, but you look pretty miserable."

Jess had no reply. She couldn't move, could barely think. She could feel her heartbeat, a steady, rapid pulse in her chest, in her neck, in her temples. How had she not recognized him? Sure, he'd put on weight and was cleaner-cut, and Nikolai would never have worn anything that colorful before, but it was him, without a doubt.

"Jess?" He squatted down and leaned back against the far wall, resting his elbows on his thighs. His gaze fell to the ground. "Look, I think I know what you probably just remembered, and I don't blame you for being scared of me. I did a lot of things back then that I'm not proud of, and I'm sorry I hurt you. But Master fixed me, and he showed me what I was doing wrong, and he helped me not be that way anymore. So you don't have to be afraid of me, okay?"

"You're gonna tell me we're friends, now?" Jess whispered. Dimly, she felt the pain of her fingernails digging into her palms.

"I don't know if I'd say we were friends," Nikolai replied, shrugging. "We don't exactly have a lot in common. You're a hacker, I'm a nurse. But I don't think there was any bad blood between us." He chuckled. "At least, that's how it got to be. I don't really remember the first couple years I was with Master very well. I was baked out of my gourd pretty much all the time. But after that, whenever you came in for a checkup, we got along fine."

don't believe him, he's lying

Jess forced herself to swallow past the lump in her throat. "So, what, for twenty years... I've just been okay with you?"

Nikolai shrugged again. "I guess, yeah." He glanced up at her, the corner of his mouth quirking slightly. "Hey... what's got five toes and isn't your foot?"

"Wh-what?"

"What's got five toes and isn't your foot?" he repeated.

what is he doing

"I, uh, I don't know," Jess mumbled.

"My foot." His mouth cracked into a wide grin, and he began snickering to himself. "Okay, okay, how about this one: What's green and has wheels?"

"Uhhh..."

what

"Grass. I lied about the wheels." His laughter redoubled, and he almost lost his balance. Jess was finding it harder and harder to see him as any kind

that's what he wants, don't let your guard down

of a threat. "Heeee... oh, I love that one," he added, wiping at his eye with one hand. "Okay, okay... why's it so convenient to throw a party at a haunted house? Because the ghosts bring all the boos!" This time, when he dissolved into a fit of laughter, he did actually lose his balance, and slid down onto his butt as he hugged himself. His face was actually starting to turn a little red.

"That's... okay, that one's actually kinda funny," Jess said, finally relaxing just a little bit. He's not gonna hurt us. I mean, think about it, he's been with the Affini for twenty years. You think they'd let him?

they're not perfect. maybe they missed something

Yeah, but look at him. He's not exactly threatening, and he definitely doesn't feel like that Nikolai did. Right? She watched him slowly get back to his feet, wiping his eyes and still cackling to himself at his own joke. Look, if they could make me look like this — hell, if they can do even half the stuff Leah said they did to her — why couldn't they do this to him? He's got a plant growing in his brain, too.

fair point, i guess. i still don't like being around him

I don't think we have to. Just... grit your teeth and let's get through it, okay?

fine

And so, when Nikolai extended a hand, palm up, Jess took it with only a slight degree of hesitation. "You're gonna be okay," he said, as if to reaffirm the notion for himself as well as Jess, and he gave her his warmest smile yet as a bonus. "Master Arvense will take good care of you, and so will Miss Gallica."

"I know she will," Jess said, biting her lip and looking away.

"C'mon. Let's get you set up for the scan."

---

"Well, well, well," Arvense said as he tapped away at a set of screens mounted on the far wall of the exam room. The flowers surrounding them glowed in the same shade as the screens themselves, shifting through the spectrum ever so slowly. "I have some good news for you, and a big question I need to ask. You can go ahead and sit up, by the way, Jess, the scan is complete."

"Okay," Jess mumbled as the apparatus hanging above her, which was probably not actually a fruit the way it seemed to be, swung out of the way. She slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position on the tall, broad, and oddly comfortable exam table. "So, my head's not exploding?"

"Certainly not. As an aside, exploding head syndrome is such a classically Terran name for something that, thankfully, does not actually involve a detonating cranium. Why in the world did you call it that?"

"So it's not hyphal delamination, then?" Gallica, in otherJess's chassis, had been sitting on the end of the exam table; within seconds of Jess sitting up, she was practically pulling Jess into her lap and holding on to her for dear life.

"Nooo, no no no," Arvense said. "Structurally, the haustoric implant is healing very well, reestablishing connections with Jess's grey matter in the damaged regions, everything we'd expect it to be doing given the circumstances. It doesn't seem to be properly managing emotional states, but that could be a simple case of exhaustion after the trauma it received. I'll give you a vitamin booster before you leave here today, Jess, that should get you in tip-top shape, and we'll see how things go from there." He turned away from the screens and leaned down to look Jess in the eye. "So. As to the question."

"Y-yeah?"

"Is there one or more additional cuties in there you'd like to introduce me to?" His face twisted in that probably-a-smile way. It was getting to the point where Jess actually felt at somewhat at ease when she saw it.

oh fuck

"U-uhm,

no no no don't tell him

maybe?" Jess squeaked.

"Arvense, Jess isn't a pluribus," Gallica said, giving Jess a squeeze. "We have seventeen years of high-fidelity brain imagery to confirm it."

"Indeed we do — and we now have imagery that says just the opposite. Here." He reached into his chest and pulled out a tablet, which he turned around to show Jess and Gallica. It only dripped a little as it displayed a 3-D image of a brain that had been half-eaten by some kind of fungal-plant thing. Lights flickered inside it in various shades. "As you can see, this is a scan

creepy

of Jess's neural activity from before the injury, displaying a pattern common to her neurotype, the sort of thing we usually saw when we took a look inside her sweet little noggin. And this-" Suddenly, the image shifted slightly — the structure of the brain was noticeably different, especially in the back. "-is the scan I just took."

Jess watched colors and lights flicker around the image. "They look... exactly the same?"

"To the untrained eye, perhaps, but rest assured, I have seen patterns like this many times, and it almost always indicates multipolar cognition is taking place. Why you've suddenly developed multipolar cognition

don't tell them about me, i don't like this

I couldn't say, though given the timing I'd wager it's connected in some way to the trauma you suffered. It'd be quite the coincidence if it wasn't."

"So... my little nybble is a pluribus?" One of Gallica's hands moved to her head and began to stroke her hair, and Jess leaned into the touch reflexively, letting out just the slightest sigh of relief.

"Potentially, yes. She may well not be aware of it herself yet. Something to keep an eye on."

"It would explain the episodes I've been worried were petit mal seizures. We're you just having a conversation, petal?"

"I

don't tell them!!

don't know," Jess mumbled. "I really just... this is all so weird." She buried her face in her hands and leaned further into Gallica. "I'm just really burned out, I think."

"Maybe we should get her home, then," Gallica said, planting a soft kiss on the crown of Jess's head and definitely not further complicating Jess's feelings about otherJess. "Just have a nice, calm day for a change. Doesn't that sound nice?" Jess nodded, letting her eyes slip shut. OtherJess's chassis made soft ticking noises just at the limit of her hearing, and it was soothing in a way that she had never quite recognized machine sounds could be before. The more she listened, the easier it became to pick out, the sounds of magnetic platter drives spinning up, of data being read from them in delicious, grindy chunks. Below it all, there was the droning of a cooling fan. Gallica was saying something, but Jess wasn't paying attention to anything but the sounds of her ramet's chassis.

Which is why, when she found herself being swept up into that chassis' arms in a classic wedding carry, she let out a surprised yelp. "Wha-?!"

"We're going home, my love," Gallica said, smiling and giving her a kiss on the cheek. Jess flushed and tried to protest, but her voice stubbornly refused

uh huh, sure

to work. "This chassis is more than strong enough to carry a precious little thing like you, so just relax and enjoy the ride." As if this wasn't enough, she finished the statement off with a wink.

Oh fuck. That's not fair.

yeah i agree

Jess barely noticed the slightly damp headpat that Arvense gave her, only dimly perceived Nikolai's whimpering as Arvense's vines had their way with him while Gallica carried her out. Gallica drove otherJess's chassis with confidence and skill, and her ride in those mechanical arms was as smooth as could be. Its shoulder was far more comfortable a place to rest her head than any machine had a right to be. So... you're real, huh?

obviously?

Is it okay if I have no idea what the fuck to do about that?

honestly, probably. i sure don't

Jess couldn't help but smile. Okay, I feel a little better about it, then. You got a name, ridealong?

uh. i hadn't really thought about that, actually

May I suggest not picking Jess?

yeah that name's already a bit crowded isn't it

Yeah. Don't know what I'm doing about that, either. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Or what I'm doing about her.

which her?

The other me. Gallica, at least, I think I'm starting to get.

oh?

I love her. There was no denying it. The way her body responded to Gallica even when the Affini wasn't in her own body, the way that her thoughts kept circling back to her, the way that she felt safe around her... I love her. I know you want to leave, but I don't want to be away from her.

i've been noticing that. it's going to be a problem, isn't it?

Why do you want to leave so bad, anyway? Her gut clenched at the thought of running away from Gallica, and she nuzzled into the chassis. It's pretty nice here. Better than Earth ever was. Better than what I remember of Solstice, too.

i know. but... we need to leave. i can't explain it. it's like waking up from a dream and only remembering a fuzzy idea of it. i think i was dreaming before the red one, polyphylla, did whatever she did that woke me up. it felt like dreaming, i think. and all i really remember of the dream is that i need to go home

But we are home. Jess surprised even herself when she reflexively responded with that, but as she sat in the silence that followed, she realized she was right. This was home to her. Gallica was home to her. The ship was home to her, and so were her friends, even if she didn't remember them — they all remembered her, and they made a place for her, and they loved her. Tears began to well up, but she held them back.

it's not really a name, is it

Jess opened her eyes, and a few of the tears escaped. Huh?

ridealong. it's not really a name

Oh. No. Sorry, I'll stop calling you that.

no, that's the thing. it feels almost right. is that weird?

I mean, I can't tell you how to feel about it.

Another long silence followed. Jess swayed gently in Gallica's remote-piloted arms, and the Tillandsia's gentle breeze played with both their hair.

how about ryder?