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neopronouns-in-action · 30 days ago

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anyways here's what the second half of Artificial Condition would have been if Martha Wells didn't decide to shove Rami, the first and only nonbinary human in this series, immediately off-screen.

You can literally just start re-reading Artificial Condition and then at the end of chapter six just start reading this.

I Ctrl+F switched Tapan with Rami and vice versa, and had to manually change Rami's pronouns. So let me know if I missed any. I only got like three hours of sleep last night so I might have missed some. if you see any spots I forgot to change, them, you can reply, reblog, @ me, whatever, idk I'm sleepy.

I also changed the italicized feed chat to having ::Quotation marks like this:: so it's more clear that it's dialogue rather than narration.

Aside from that, all of this is just transcribed straight from the book as exactly as possible.

Do not read this if you haven't read book 2 of The Murderbot Diaries, lol, it's literally the ending chapters of the book.

now that the hard part is done I'll make a post that's literally just a compilation of the scenes Rami actually gets in the actual book.

anyways.

here's what Artificial Condition would have looked like if Martha Wells didn't decide to be a coward. And yes. I am saying it. Introducing Rami who uses neopronouns and is the only nonbinary human in this series and then immediately shoving ter off screen is the coward's way out. She didn't even pick difficult neopronouns to get a grasp on. There's no excuse.

Give her credit when credit is due, and no sooner.

Below the cut it's 8.8k words.

Archived read-more

(seriously stop reading this if you haven't read this book yet. We are skipping all the way to chapter seven. Go read the book and come back)

Chapter Seven

I located the problem in the lobby of the main hotel.

Rami was on one of the upper platforms, seated on a round cushioned bench, ter pack at ter feet, partially screened by another holographic sculpture of a giant crystal formation. Te looked up at me and said, “Oh, hi. I didn’t know if the others would be able to reach you.”

Without me present in the shuttle, ART hadn’t had any visual access to the passenger compartment. (As a private vehicle that was only being used as a public transport in a sketchy if not openly illegal way, it had no onboard security system or cameras.) ART hadn’t known Rami wasn’t onboard until the shuttle reached the transit ring. Taking its responsibility seriously, it had sent a drone over to the embarkation area to watch my clients disembark and had seen an obviously distraught and angry Tapan and Maro, but no Rami. Then it had checked Eden’s profile on the social media feed and found the message from Tapan. (Rami had told them te was sick and was going to the shuttle’s restroom compartment. They hadn’t realized what had happened until the shuttle had cleared the port.)

I said, “They left me a message.” I had intended to just stand there and stare at ter, which is what SecUnits do to clients who have just performed an act of stupidity so profound it approaches suicide which they ordered us not to stop them from doing. But te looked like te knew te had been stupid, and I had to know. “What happened?”

Te looked up at me, clearly anticipating a negative reaction. “I got a note in my feed, through the social profile I had when we were working here. Someone working for Tlacey—a friend—said he had copies of the files and he’d give them to us.” Te forwarded the message to my feed.

I checked it carefully. The meeting time was set for the next cycle.

I felt this would be the point where a human would sigh, so I sighed.

Rami said, “I know it could be a trap, but, maybe it isn’t? I know him, he’s not the greatest guy, but he hates Tlacey.” Te hesitated. “Will you help me? Please? I’ll understand if you say no. I know I’ve been … I know this could be a really bad idea.”

I had forgotten that I had a choice, that I wasn’t obligated to do what te wanted just because te was here. Being asked to stay, with a please and an option for refusal, hit me almost as hard as a human asking for my opinion and actually listening to me. I sighed again. I was having a lot of opportunities to do it and I think I was getting good at it. “I’ll help you. Right now we need to find a place to get out of sight.”

* * *

Rami had a hard currency card from the transit ring, which wasn’t tied to any RaviHyral account and so was not traceable. At least, that’s what te thought and I hoped te was right. I had never been given any education modules on financial systems and since our modules were crap anyway, I’m not sure that would have helped. ART ran a search for me and the results were mixed. Hard currency cards could be traced, but usually only by non-corporate political or corporate entities. I decided it was probably all right to use it. If the message wasn’t a trap, Tlacey must think my clients were back on the transit ring by now. If it was a trap, they would know they could grab us when we walked into the meeting so there was no point in looking for us earlier.

Rami used the card to pay for a transient room in the block next to the port. While te ran the card through the vending kiosk and got our room assignment, I stood behind ter and surveyed the area. The transient rooms were in a narrow warren of corridors, as unlike the main hotel as a real cargo transport was unlike ART. There was no SecSystem to get control of and only one camera at the entrance. I deleted us out of its memory, but I still felt like we—or I—might have been observed at some point. It might just be inherent rogue-SecUnit-on-the-run paranoia.

Rami led the way to our room. There were other humans hanging around the dimly lit corridors and some looked like they might try to approach ter, then saw me and changed their minds. I was bigger than they were, and without cameras it was still hard to control my expression.

ART said, ::Tell the human not to touch any surfaces. There may be disease vectors present.::

On the way here I had shared the recording of what I had found at Ganaka Pit. ART said, ::This is good news. You were not at fault.:: I agreed, sort of. I had been expecting to feel better about it. I mostly just felt awful.

Once inside the room with the door secured, I saw Rami’s shoulders relax and te took a deep breath. The room was just a square box with pads stored in a cabinet for sitting or sleeping, and a small display surface. No cameras, no audio surveillance. There was a tiny attached bath, with a waste-reclaimer and a shower. At least it had a door. I was going to have to pretend to use it at least twice. Yes, that would be the cap on all the fun I was having today. I created a schedule and set an alarm to remind myself to do it.

Rami dropped ter bag on the floor and faced me. “I know you’re mad.”

I tried to moderate my expression. “I’m not mad.” I was furious. I thought my clients were safe, I was free to worry about my own problems, and now I had a tiny human to look after that I couldn’t possibly abandon.

Te nodded and pushed ter braids back. “I know—I mean—I’m sure Tapan and Maro were furious. But it’s not like I’m not afraid, so that’s good.”

In my feed, ART said, ::What?::

::I have no idea,:: I told it. I said to Rami, “How is that good?”

Te explained, “In the creche, our moms always said that fear was an artificial condition. It’s imposed from the outside. So it’s possible to fight it. You should do the things you’re afraid of.”

If a bot with a brain the size of a transport could roll its eyes, that was what ART was doing. I said, “That isn’t the purpose of fear.” They didn’t give us an education module on human evolution, but I had looked it up in the HubSystem knowledge bases I’d had access to, in an effort to figure out what the hell was going on with humans. It hadn’t helped.

Te said, “I know, it’s supposed to be inspirational.” Te looked around and went to the cabinet with the seating pads. Te pulled them out, sniffed them suspiciously, then took an aerosol capsule out of a pocket on ter pack and sprayed them down. “I forgot to ask, did you get a chance to do the research you wanted to do here?”

“Yes. It was … inconclusive.” It had been damningly conclusive, it just hadn’t had the revelatory effect I had been, stupidly, hoping for. I helped her pull the rest of the pads out.

We got them arranged on the floor and sat down. Te looked at me and bit ter lip. “You’re really augmented, aren’t you. Like, a lot. Like more than someone would choose voluntarily.”

It wasn’t a question. I said, “Um, yes.”

Te nodded. “Was it an accident?”

I realized I had my arms wrapped around myself and was leaning over like I was trying to go into a fetal position. I don’t know why this was so stressful. Rami wasn’t afraid of me. I had no reason to be afraid of ter. Maybe it was being here again, seeing Ganaka Pit again. Some part of my organic systems remembered what had happened there. In the feed, ART started to play the soundtrack to Sanctuary Moon and weirdly, that helped. I said, “I got caught in an explosion. There’s not much of me that’s human, actually.”

Both those statements are true.

Te stirred a little, as if debating what to say, then nodded again. “I’m sorry I got you into this. I know you know what you’re doing, but … I have to try, I have to see if this guy really has our files. Just this once, and then I’ll go back to the transit ring.”

In my feed, ART turned down the soundtrack to say, ::Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans. This is what my crew tells me and my own observations seem to confirm it.::

I couldn’t argue with the wisdom dispensed by ART’s absent crew. I remembered humans had needs and asked Rami, “Did you eat?”

Te had bought some meal packs with the hard currency card and had them stuffed in her bag. Te offered me one and I told her my augments required me to have a special diet and it wasn’t time for me to eat yet. Te accepted that readily. Humans apparently don’t like to discuss catastrophic injuries to digestive systems, so I didn’t need any of the corroborating detail ART had just researched for me. I asked ter if te liked media and te said yes, so I sent some files to the display surface in the room, and we watched the first three episodes of Worldhoppers. ART was pleased, and I could feel it sitting in my feed, comparing Rami’s reactions to the show to mine.

When Rami said te wanted to try to sleep, I shut down the display. Te curled up on ter pad and I lay down on mine and continued watching in the feed with ART.

Two hours and forty-three minutes later, I caught a ping from right outside the door.

I sat up so abruptly, Rami woke with a start. I motioned for ter to be quiet, and te subsided back on the pad, curling around ter pack, looking worried. I stood and went to the door, listening. I couldn’t hear any breathing, but there was a change in the background noise that told me there was something solid on the other side of the metal door. Cautiously, I did a limited scan.

Yes, there was something out there, but no sign of weapons. I checked the ping and saw it had the same signature as the ping I had caught in the public area during the meeting with Tlacey.

The sexbot was standing on the other side of the door.

It couldn’t have been following me all this time. It could have been watching for me on the security cameras, tracking me sporadically through the port when I came back within range. That was not a comforting thought.

It had to belong to Tlacey. If it had been watching me, it would have missed Rami’s unexpected exit from the private shuttle but would have seen ter again when we met up at the main hotel or on the way here. Damn it.

But now I knew that. If it hadn’t pinged me, I wouldn’t have realized it was in play. ::Why is it here?:: I asked ART.

::I assume that’s a rhetorical question,:: it said.

There was only one way to find out. I acknowledged the ping.

The moment stretched. Then it reached out to my feed. It was cautious, the connection almost tentative. It said, ::I know what you are. Who sent you?::

I replied, ::I’m on contract to a private individual. Why are you communicating with me?::

SecUnits on the same contract don’t talk, either verbally or on the feed, unless they absolutely have to in order to perform their duties. Communicating with units on different contracts has to be done through the controlling HubSystems. And SecUnits don’t interact with ComfortUnits anyway. Could this be a rogue sexbot? If it was rogue, why was it here on RaviHyral? I didn’t know why anybody would stay here voluntarily, including the humans. No, it made more sense if Tlacey owned its contract, and had sent it here to kill Rami.

If it tried to attack my client, I would tear it apart.

Rami, sitting on the pad and watching me worriedly, mouthed the words, “What is it?”

I opened a secure channel to ter and said, ::Someone is outside the door. I’m not sure why.::

That was mostly true. I didn’t want to tell Rami what it was, since that seemed to lead directly to me telling ter what I was, which I didn’t want to do. Though if I had to destroy it in front of ter, I was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

The sexbot replied, ::This is you,:: and sent me a copy of a public newsburst.

It was from the station, from Port FreeCommerce. This time the headline was “Authorities Admit a SecUnit Unsecured and Location Unknown.”

::Uh-oh,:: ART said.

I closed the story by reflex, like that would make it not exist. After three seconds of shock, I made myself open it again.

“Unsecured” is what they call rogue SecUnits when they want humans to listen and not just start screaming. It meant that the knowledge that I had hacked my governor module was no longer confined to me and the members of PreservationAux. They must have been at the stage where everyone in the two survey groups who had survived was being interviewed, and they would have had to guarantee bonds to assert they were telling the truth.

So the company knew now that I had hacked my governor module. That was terrifying, even though I had expected it. It was one of the reasons Mensah had made sure to get me off inventory and out of the deployment center as soon as I came out of repair and reconstruction mode.

Expecting it and having it happen were two different things, something I learned the first time I got shot to pieces.

I skimmed the story in dread and then read it again, closely. The solicitors for several sides in the ongoing legal and civil battles had asked Preservation to produce the SecUnit who had recorded all the damning evidence against GrayCris. This was unusual. It’s not like SecUnits can testify in courts. Our recordings are admissible, just like recordings from a drone or security camera or any other inert device, but it’s not like we’re supposed to have opinions or a perspective on what we record.

After some back and forth, Mensah’s solicitor had admitted that she had lost track of me. They phrased it as “released on my own recognizance, as constructs are considered legal sentients under Preservation law,” but the journalists hadn’t been fooled by that, either. There were a lot of sidebar links to attached articles about constructs, about SecUnits, about rogue SecUnits. There was no mention that this particular unit had had a little problem with murdering the clients supposedly under its protection before, but I had the feeling the company had probably already destroyed any records relating to Ganaka Pit so they couldn’t be produced under court injunction.

Rami whispered, “Are you talking to them, the person?”

“Yes,” I told ter. To the sexbot, I said, ::That’s an interesting story but it has nothing to do with me.::

It said, ::It’s you. Who sent you?::

I said, ::That’s a story about a dangerous rogue SecUnit. No one would send it anywhere.::

::I’m not asking because I want to report you. I won’t tell anyone. I’m asking—There’s no human controlling you? You’re free?::

I could feel ART in my feed, carefully extending itself out toward the sexbot.

::I have a client,:: I told it. I had to distract it, if ART was going to be able to get any info. Even though it was a sexbot, it was still a construct, still a whole different proposition from a pilot bot. ::Who sent you here? Was it Tlacey?::

::Yes. She is my client.::

As a ComfortUnit, not a SecUnit. Sending a ComfortUnit into this situation was morally irresponsible and a clear violation of contract. I’m guessing the sexbot knew that.

ART said, ::It’s not rogue. Its governor module is engaged. So it’s probably telling the truth.::

I asked ART, ::Can you hack it from here?::

There was a half-second pause while ART explored the idea. ART answered, ::No, I can’t secure the connection here. It could stop me by cutting off its feed.:

I told the sexbot, ::Your client wants to kill my client.::

It didn’t reply.

I said, ::You told Tlacey about me.:: It must have recognized what I was during that first meeting. If it hadn’t been sure, seeing the damage I had done to the three humans Tlacey had sent would have been all the confirmation it needed. I was seething, but I kept it out of the feed. As I told ART, bots and constructs can’t trust each other, so I don’t know why it made me angry. I wish being a construct made me less irrational than the average human but you may have noticed this is not the case. I said, ::Your client sent a ComfortUnit to do a SecUnit’s job.::

It countered, ::She didn’t know she needed a SecUnit until today.:: It added, ::I told her you were a SecUnit, I didn’t tell her you were a rogue.::

I wondered if I could believe that. And I wondered if it had tried to explain to Tlacey the impossibility of this assignment. ::What do you propose to do?::

There was a pause. A long one, five seconds. ::We could kill them.::

Well, that was an unusual approach to its dilemma. ::Kill who? Tlacey?::

::All of them. The humans here.::

I leaned against the wall. If I had been human, I would have rolled my eyes. Though if I had been human, I might have been stupid enough to think it was a good idea.

I also wondered if it knew a lot more about me than what little was in the newsburst.

Picking up on my reaction, ART said, ::What does it want?::

::To kill all the humans,:: I answered.

I could feel ART metaphorically clutch its function. If there were no humans, there would be no crew to protect and no reason to do research and fill its databases. It said, ::That is irrational.::

::I know,:: I said, if the humans were dead, who would make the media? It was so outrageous, it sounded like something a human would say.

Huh.

I said to the sexbot, ::Is that how Tlacey thinks constructs talk to each other?::

There was another pause, only two seconds this time. ::Yes.:: Then, ::Tlacey believes you stayed behind to steal the files for the tech group. What did you do for so long in the feed blackout area?::

::I was hiding.:: I know, not my best lie. ::Does Tlacey know you want to kill her?:: Because the “kill all humans” thing might have come from Tlacey, but the intensity under it was real, and I didn’t think it was directed at all humans.

::She knows,:: it said. Then, ::I didn’t tell her about your client, she thinks they all left on the shuttle. She only wanted me to follow you.::

A code bundle came through the feed. You can’t infect a construct with malware like that, not without sending it through a Sec or HubSystem. Even then I would have to apply it, and without direct orders and a working governor module, there’s no way to force me to do it. The only way that code can be applied without my assistance is through a combat override module via my dataport.

It might be killware, but I was not a simple pilot bot, and it would mostly just annoy the hell out of me. Maybe to the point where I tore a door off the wall and ripped the head off a ComfortUnit.

I could just delete the bundle, but I wanted to know what it was so I knew how furious to get. It was small enough for a human’s interface to handle, so I shunted it aside to Rami. I said aloud, “I need you to isolate that for me. Don’t open it yet.”

Te signaled assent through the feed and pulled the bundle into ter temp storage. The other thing about killware and malware is that they can’t do anything to humans or augmented humans.

The sexbot hadn’t said anything else and I sent a ping in time to feel it withdraw its feed. It was walking away down the corridor.

I waited until I was sure, then stepped back from the door. I debated staying here, or moving Rami. Now that I knew something was hacking the security cameras to watch me, I could use countermeasures. I probably should have been doing that from the beginning, but you may have noticed that for a terrifying murderbot I fuck up a lot.

“It’s gone,” I told Rami. “Can you check out that code bundle for me?”

Te got that inward look that humans have when they’re deep in their feed. After a minute, te said, “It’s malware. Pretty standard … Maybe they thought it would get your augments, but that’s kind of amateurish for Tlacey. Hold it. There’s a message string in here, attached to the code.”

ART and I waited. Rami’s face did something complicated, settling on worry. “This is weird.” Te turned to the display surface and made the completely unnecessary gesture that some humans can’t help doing when they send something from their feed to display.

It was the message string, three words. ::Please help me.::

* * *

I moved us to a different room, near an emergency exit, in another section of the hostel. The sexbot might be alert for hacking, so I removed the access plate, manually broke the lock, and replaced the plate again while Rami watched the corridor. Once we were inside, I told Rami some of what the sexbot had said, mostly the part about how it claimed Tlacey didn’t know Rami was here. (I didn’t tell ter our visitor had been a sexbot because Tlacey had figured out what I was and didn’t want to waste any more human bodyguards on me.) “But we don’t know that that’s true, or that this operative won’t tell Tlacey you’re here now.”

Rami looked confused. “But why did they tell you anything?”

That was a good question. “I don’t know. They don’t like Tlacey, but that might not be the only reason.”

Rami bit ter lip, considering. “I think I should still try to keep the meeting. It’s only four hours from now.”

I’m used to humans wanting to do things that can get them killed. Maybe too used to it. I knew we should leave now. But I needed time to hack enough of the security system to get past the sexbot. Once I did that, it seemed wrong not to wait the short time to make the meeting, which Rami was reasonably sure Tlacey didn’t know about. Reasonably sure.

It was probably a trap.

I needed to think. I told Rami I was going to sleep for a while and laid down on my side on my section of padding. My recharge cycle isn’t obvious but it doesn’t look like a human sleeping, so what I was actually going to do was play some media in the background of my feed while I worked on my security countermeasures and looked up my old module on risk assessment.

Thirty-two minutes later, I heard movement. I thought Rami was getting up to go to the restroom facility, but then te settled on the pads behind me, not quite touching my back. I had set my breathing to sound deep and even, like a human sleeping, with occasional random variations to add verisimilitude, so the fact that I had frozen in place wasn’t obvious.

I had never had a human touch me, or almost touch me, like this before and it was deeply, deeply weird.

::Calm down,:: ART said, not helpfully.

I was too frozen to respond. After three seconds, ART added, ::Te’s frightened. You are a reassuring presence.::

I was still too frozen to answer ART, but I upped my body heat. Over the next two hours, te yawned twice, breathed deeply, and snorted occasionally. At the end of that time I changed my breathing and moved a little, and te immediately slid off my pad and over to ters.

By that time, I had a plan, sort of.

* * *

I convinced Rami that I should go to the meeting, and te should get on a public shuttle to the transit ring immediately. Te was reluctant. “I don’t want to abandon you,” te said. “You’re only involved in this because of us.”

That hit home so hard my insides clenched. I had to lean over and pretend to look through my bag to hide my expression. Company emergency protocol allows clients to abandon their SecUnits if necessary, even in situations where the company might never be able to retrieve them. Rami was making me think of Mensah, yelling that she wouldn’t leave me. I said, “It’ll help me the most if you go back to the transit ring.”

It took a while, but I finally convinced ter this was for the best for both of us.

Rami left the hostel first, wearing both extra jackets from ter pack to change ter body shape and with the hood of one pulled up to conceal ter hair and shadow ter face. (This was mostly to make ter feel more confident, and because I didn’t want to explain the extent to which I could gain temporary control over portions of RaviHyral’s admittedly not-great security system.) I watched ter on the security cameras until I saw ter reach the public dock about one hundred meters away, go down the walkway to the embarkation area, then board the shuttle that was scheduled to leave in twenty-one minutes. ART sent me an acknowledgment as it slid into the shuttle’s controls to guard the bot pilot again. Then I left the hostel.

I’d prepared a hack for the security cameras that was much more sophisticated than the one I’d been using up to this point. It involved getting into the operational code and setting the system on a tenth of a second delay, then deleting Rami out and randomly replacing that part of the recording with pieces cut from earlier. This would work because the sexbot would be scanning the recordings the same way I would, using a body configuration scan. I didn’t match SecUnit standard anymore, but the sexbot had had plenty of time to scan my new configuration during that first meeting with Tlacey.

Right now I wanted the sexbot’s attention on me, and not the public dock. I let the cameras track me out of the port and back toward the tube access. Then I started the hack.

I was only 97 percent certain this meeting was a trap.

Chapter Eight

When I reached the small food service counter in the contractor district, a human was there who matched the image Rami had sent to my feed. As I sat down at the table he looked up at me, his expression nervous, sweat beading on his pale forehead. I said, “Rami couldn’t come,” and sent his feed the brief recording Rami had made with ter interface. It was ter standing next to me in the room at the hostel, holding my arm and explaining that the files could be given to me. Wow, I looked uncomfortable.

His gaze went inward as he reviewed the recording, then his body relaxed a little. He slid a memory clip over to me. I took it and checked the cameras.

Nothing. No potential threats, no one showing interest in us. The counter served drinks with a lot of bubbles in them and fried protein in the shape of water fauna and flora. Everyone else was busy eating or talking. There was no one suspicious in the corridor or mall area outside, no one watching, no one waiting.

This was not a trap.

The human said uncertainly, “Should we order something? To make it look like we’re not—you know?”

I told him, “No one’s watching, you can leave,” and pushed to my feet. I had to get back to the port.

If this wasn’t a trap, the real trap was somewhere else.

* * *

On the way back to the dock, I checked the schedule. The shuttle was now listed as delayed.

As I reached the embarkation area, I was reviewing the security recording from the time Rami had boarded the shuttle. On visual, I spotted the sexbot coming toward me from the far end of the walkway.

I had gotten to the point in the recording where two humans with Port Authority identification had stopped the shuttle’s departure and removed Rami. ART slid out of the shuttle and back into my feed. It said, ::If I had my armed drones, this would be easier.::

When the sexbot reached me, I said, “Where is te?”

“In Tlacey’s private shuttle. I’ll show you.”

I followed it along the walkway, then down the ramp that split off toward the private shuttle docks. ART said, ::Why is it showing you where your human is?::

I said, ::Because Tlacey doesn’t want Rami, she wants me.::

ART was quiet as we went past the private shuttle slots toward the bigger, more expensive section at the end. Then it said, ::Retrieve your human and make Tlacey regret this.::

We stopped in front of the access to a shuttle hatch. No one was outside, and most of the activity was down toward the other end of the docks. The sexbot turned to face me.

It opened its hand, and I recognized the small object. It was a combat override module. It said, “They won’t allow you aboard unless you let me install this.”

In my feed, ART said, ::Ah.::

They wanted us in the shuttle so that they could dispose of the bodies. Or Rami’s body. Me they obviously intended to keep.

A combat override module contains code that will take over my system, overriding the governor module and the company factory-set protocols, and placing me under the direct verbal or comm control of whoever the module designates. This was how GrayCris took over DeltFall’s SecUnits, and tried to take over me.

I said, “If I accept that, will they release my client?”

In the feed the sexbot whispered, ::You know they won’t.:: Aloud, it said, “Yes.”

I turned and let it insert the module into my data port. (The data port that ART had disconnected when it altered my configuration. With my governor module hacked, it had been the only way left to assert control over me, so disabling it had been a priority.)

The module clicked into place and I had a moment of purely irrational fear. ART must have picked up on it because it said, ::Please, my MedSystem makes no mistakes.:: Nothing happened, and from the security camera I had control of, I saw that I managed to keep the relief out of my expression.

The sexbot’s expression was Unit standard neutral, and I followed it into the shuttle. A human stood just inside the lock, armed, his eyes flicking nervously between me and the sexbot. He said, “Is it under control?”

“Yes,” the sexbot said.

He stepped back and his jaw moved as he spoke in his feed. I couldn’t hack anything without the sexbot knowing, so I waited. I kept my expression blank. I had no way of knowing what the combat override module was supposed to make me do, but I was assuming it would put me under Tlacey’s control. I suspected the humans, and the sexbot, weren’t sure what the outward effect would be.

Once we were through the lock, it cycled shut and a launch warning went through the feed, ending in an audible beep from the comm system. Tlacey must have bribed someone for immediate clearance, because there was a clunk as the lock disengaged and then the shuttle slid out of its slot.

::I have you on my scan,:: ART said.

The human led the way through the shuttle. It was a large model, and the access corridor went past hatchways to cabins and the engineering section before ending in a big compartment. There was cushioned bench seating against the walls and acceleration chairs to the front, near the hatch that must lead to the forward part of the ship. There were six unknown humans in the room, four armed and two unarmed crew. One of the armed humans held Rami by the shoulder and had a projectile weapon pressed to ter head.

Tlacey stood up from a chair and looked me over with a smile. She said, “Take little Rami to a cabin. I’ll want to talk to ter later about ter work.”

Rami’s eyes were wide and frightened. I kept my expression blank. She tried to say, “Eden, I’m sorry! I’m sorry—” but the guard pulled her through another hatchway and down a corridor. I didn’t react, since I wanted ter out of the line of fire. I listened for the hatch to close, then focused on Tlacey.

She strolled toward me, thoughtful now. I guess the triumphant smile had been for Rami’s benefit. The two other unarmed humans were watching with nervous curiosity, the armed guards still looked cautious. To the sexbot, Tlacey said, “You really think this is one of the units from the Ganaka Pit accident?”

The sexbot started to reply, and I said, “But we all know that wasn’t an accident, don’t we.”

Now I had everybody’s attention.

I kept my gaze straight ahead, a good SecUnit still under the control of the combat override module. Tlacey stared at me, then her eyes narrowed. “Who am I talking to?”

That was almost funny. “You think I’m a puppet? You know that’s not the way we work.”

Tlacey was beginning to be afraid. “Who sent you?”

I lowered my head to meet her gaze. “I came for my client.”

Tlacey’s jaw moved as she gave a command in the feed, and the sexbot started to shift sideways into a combat position.

ART said, ::The shuttle is clear of the port and moving into an orbit around the moon. Do you have a moment to let me in?::

I said, ::Be fast,:: and let ART in. I had the sensation again, my head shoved underwater, being temporarily incapacitated as ART used me as a bridge to reach the bot controlling the shuttle.

It was quick, but the sexbot had time to punch me in the jaw. Tlacey must have ordered that; it wasn’t the way a unit would attack another unit. It hurt, but only in the way that would piss me off. When I didn’t react immediately, Tlacey relaxed and grinned. “I like a mouthy bot. This is going to be interesting—”

ART was in the shuttle’s systems and I was clear. I caught the sexbot’s arm and flung it across the room toward the three armed guards. One went down, one stumbled into a chair, the third started to lift his weapon. I knocked Tlacey out of my way and stepped on the sexbot as I went over it, thumping it back down to the deck. I grabbed the muzzle of the energy weapon and shoved it upright just as he fired. The discharge struck the curved ceiling. I ripped it out of his grasp, dislocating his shoulder and at least three fingers, and slammed his head down on the console.

The guard who had already fallen to the deck had a projectile weapon and I felt two impacts, one to my side and one to my thigh. Now that’s the kind of attack that actually hurts. I extended my right arm and fired my inbuilt energy weapon, catching him with two bolts in the chest. I stepped sideways to avoid an energy weapon blast from the guard who had fallen into the chair, and my third shot hit him in the shoulder. I had the blasts set to narrow, and they created deep burn wounds that usually incapacitated humans rapidly with shock and pain and, you know, having holes burned into their chest cavities.

I pivoted and threw the captured gun as a distraction. The first unarmed human was on the deck, a smoking wound in her back; the guard who had missed me had shot her. The second flung herself across the compartment to try to grab a fallen projectile weapon, so I shot her in the shoulder and the leg.

The sexbot rolled to its feet and charged me, I caught it, went down on my back, and flung it off and over my head. I twisted around and up to my knees but couldn’t get all the way up due to the wound in my right thigh. The sexbot shoved upright and I grabbed its leg and popped the knee out of the socket. It went down and I took out its left shoulder joint. Slamming it down to the deck, I turned to see Tlacey reaching for one of the fallen weapons. I said, “Touch that weapon and I’ll take it away from you and insert it into your rib cage.”

She froze. She was panting from fear, eyes staring. I said, “Tell your sexbot to stop fighting.”

It was still struggling to get up and it was just going to hurt itself further. Especially if it made me mad again.

Tlacey straightened slowly, her jaw working, and the sexbot relaxed. I said, ::ART, cut off Tlacey’s feed.::

::Done,:: ART said.

Tlacey winced as her feed went down. I told Tlacey, “Give the sexbot a verbal command to obey me until further notice. Try to give it any other command and I’ll rip your tongue out.”

Tlacey huffed out a breath, then said, “Unit, obey the crazy rogue SecUnit until further notice.” To me, she said, “You need to get better threats.”

I put a hand on the nearest chair seat and shoved myself to my feet. “I don’t make threats, I’m just telling you what I’m going to do.”

Her jaw hardened. Two of the humans in the room had stopped breathing, the unarmed one that the guard had shot while aiming for me and the first one I had shot. Tlacey hadn’t noticed.

I looked down at the sexbot, which looked up at me. “Stay down,” I said.

It sent me an acknowledgment. I stepped over it, grabbed Tlacey’s arm, and dragged her down the corridor to the cabin where her guard had taken Rami.

She said quickly, “So you’re a free agent, right? I can give you a job. Whatever you want—”

I thought, You don’t have anything I want. I said, “All you had to do was give them the fucking files and none of us would be in this situation.”

The look she threw back at me was startled, incredulous. I didn’t sound like her idea of a SecUnit, rogue or otherwise, I guess.

Humans should really do more research. There were operating manuals that would have warned her not to fuck with us.

Tlacey stopped at a closed hatch, said, “Bassom, it’s me,” and hit the release. The door slid up.

Rami was half sprawled across the bunk on the far wall, blood spreading across the flower pattern on ter T-shirt, drops of it splashed on the light brown skin of the bare arm pressed against the wound in ter side. Ter raspy breath sounded loud in the small cabin. The bodyguard stared at us, eyes wide.

“He panicked when he heard the shots,” Tlacey gasped. “You can’t—”

Oh yeah, I could.

I swung Tlacey to shield me as the bodyguard brought up his weapon. Multiple shots hit her back but I’d already crushed her windpipe. I took another projectile in the chest as I crossed the cabin, threw him against the wall, jammed my arm up under his chin, and triggered my energy weapon.

I stepped back and let his body drop.

I turned away from it and leaned over Rami. I said, stupidly, “It’s me.” Ter eyes were shut and te was breathing through gritted teeth. I clamped my hand over the wound to stop the bleeding and said, ::ART, help.::

ART said, ::I’ve been guiding the shuttle toward the transit ring, where I can dock it with myself. ETA is seventeen minutes. MedSystem is prepping for your arrival.::

I sank down beside Rami. Te was just conscious enough to reach over and squeeze my hand. I pulled the useless combat override module out of the back of my neck and tossed it away.

I had made a huge mistake, which seemed blindingly obvious in hindsight. I had known the invitation to exchange the signing bonus for the files was a trap from the beginning and I should have convinced Rami and the others not to return to RaviHyral. The augmented human security consultant I was pretending to be would have done that. I was used to taking orders from humans and trying to mitigate whatever damage their stupid ideas did to them, but I had wanted to work with a group again, I had enjoyed how they had listened to me, I had put my need to get to RaviHyral above the safety of my clients.

I was just as shit at being a security consultant as any human.

Chapter Nine

By the time we were on approach to the transit ring, ART had cleared us with the ring’s Port Authority. Shuttles weren’t supposed to be able to dock with transports without advance notice, but ART took care of approach permission, and forged its captain’s feed signature to pay the fine for not giving prior notice of the scheduled trip. They didn’t suspect anything; nobody knew transports could have bots sophisticated enough to fake being human in the feed. I sure hadn’t known it.

The locks weren’t compatible but ART solved that problem by pulling the shuttle into an empty module meant for lab space. It sat us down, filled the module with atmosphere, and then cycled our lock. I got upright and carried Rami out and up the access into the main section. ComfortUnit followed me.

The MedSystem was ready by the time I walked in and laid Rami down on the platform. Drones whizzed around me and I picked up the MedSystem feed’s instruction to remove ter shoes and clothes. As the cradle closed around ter, I sank down beside the platform.

Te was out now, the MedSystem keeping ter under while it finished its assessment and started to work. Two medical drones flew around me, one diving in toward my shoulder and the other poking at the wound in my thigh. I ignored them.

A larger drone flew in, carrying Rami’s bag, ter blood-stained jacket, and my knapsack. ART flashed me a view of the other drones still inside the shuttle. Four of the humans in the shuttle were still alive, though unconscious. ART had sent drones to scrub and sterilize away my fluids and Rami’s blood from the shuttle’s interior. ART had already wiped the bot pilot’s memory and deleted any security data. It was also chatting casually with transit ring launch authority with a forged feed signature from one of the dead humans.

I watched as the drones finished and retreated, then ART sealed the shuttle again and launched it with a filed flight plan back to RaviHyral. The onboard bot pilot would land it, full of terribly injured humans, and no one would know they hadn’t done it to each other until they were all conscious and told their stories. Though maybe some wouldn’t want to tell the story of how they had helped kidnap another human. Whatever happened, it would give us all time to get out of here.

I asked ART, ::How did you know to do that?:: though I already knew the answer.

It knew I knew, but it said, ::Episode 179 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.::

ComfortUnit knelt beside me. “Can I help?”

“No.” The medical drones were clamped onto me now, digging for the projectiles, and I was leaking onto ART’s pristine MedSystem floor. The anesthetic was making me numb. “How did you know I was one of the Ganaka Pit units?”

It said, “I saw you get off the tube access in that section. There’s nothing else down there. It’s not in the historical database anymore, but the humans still tell each other horror stories about it. If you were really a rogue and not under orders to go there, then there was an eighty-six percent chance that you went there because you were one of the units involved.”

I believed it. “Drop your wall.”

It did, and I rode the feed into its brain. I could feel ART with me, alert for traps. But I found the governor module, rendered it null, and slid back out into my own body again.

The ComfortUnit had fallen back, sitting down on the deck with a thump, staring at me.

I said, “Go away. Don’t let me see you again. Don’t hurt

anyone on this transit ring or I’ll find you.”

It shoved upright, unsteady. More of ART’s drones flicked through the air, making sure it didn’t try to damage anything, herding it toward the door. It followed the drones out into the corridor. Through ART’s feed I watched it go through to the main hatch, where the lock cycled and it went out into the transit ring.

ART watched it walk away through its lock camera. It said, ::I thought you might destroy it.::

Too tired and numb to talk, I signaled a negative through the feed. It hadn’t had a choice. And I hadn’t broken its governor module for its sake. I did it for the four ComfortUnits at Ganaka Pit who had no orders and no directive to act and had voluntarily walked into the meat grinder to try to save me and everyone else left alive in the installation.

ART said, ::Now get on the other platform. The shuttle will land soon and there is a great deal of evidence to destroy.::

* * *

When Rami woke, I was sitting on the MedSystem’s platform holding ter hand. The MedSystem had taken care of my wounds, and I’d cleaned off all the blood. The projectiles that had hit me and the energy bursts from my own weapons had left holes in my clothes, and ART had produced a new set for me from its recycler. It was basically ART’s crew uniform without the logos: pants with lots of sealable pockets, a long-sleeved shirt with a collar just high enough to cover my data port, and a soft hooded jacket, all of it either dark blue or black. I fed my bloody clothes into the recycler so the waste-reclamation levels would be neutral and ART wouldn’t have to forge its log.

Rami blinked up at me, confused. “Um,” te said, and squeezed my hand. The drugs made ter expression bleary. “What happened?”

I said, “They tried to kill us again. We had to leave. We’re back on the transit ring, on my friend’s ship.”

Ter eyes widened as te remembered. Te winced, and muttered, “Fuckers.”

“Your friend was telling the truth, he gave me your files.” I held up the memory clip, and showed ter I was putting it into the interface pocket in ter bag. I’d checked it already for malware or tracers. “This ship has to leave soon. I need you to call Tapan and Maro to come meet us outside the embarkation zone.”

“Okay.” Te fumbled at ter ear, and I handed ter the blue feed interface. One of ART’s drones had found it in Tlacey’s pocket. Te took it, started to put it back in ter ear, and hesitated. “They’re going to be so mad.”

“Yeah, they are.” I thought they would be so glad to have ter alive it wouldn’t occur to them to be angry.

Te winced again. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Ter brow crinkled. “I kind of think it was.”

“It was my fault.”

“It’s both our faults then, but we won’t tell anybody,” Rami decided, and wiggled the interface into ter ear.

* * *

I did a quick walk-through of the areas of the ship I had used, to make sure nothing was out of place. ART’s drones had already come through, taking Rami’s bloody clothes to be cleaned and sterilizing surfaces so any attempt to collect trace evidence would fail. Not that ART intended to be here when the investigation started. We were all leaving immediately, but ART believed in contingency plans. I started to remove the comm interface ART had given me. “You need to clean this, too.”

::No,:: ART said. ::Keep it. Maybe we’ll come within range of each other again.::

The MedSystem had already sterilized itself and deleted the records of my configuration change and the emergency trauma treatments to both me and Rami. I was waiting for ter when te came out of the bath facility. Drones followed ter in to clean away any traces of ter presence, and te said, “I’m ready.” Te had stuffed ter old clothes into ter pack and was wearing fresh ones. Te still looked a little bleary.

We walked out together and the lock sealed behind us. I had the cameras in the embarkation zone and ART was already doctoring the security recordings on its lock to erase our presence.

We met Tapan, Maro, and the rest of their group at a food stand outside the embarkation zone. Tapan had messaged me that they had already bought passage on a passenger transport leaving within the hour. They greeted Rami enthusiastically, with tears and admonishments to each other not to squeeze ter too hard.

I’d told them already not to talk about it in public. Tapan turned and handed me a hard currency card. “Your friend Art said this was a good way to pay you.”

“Right.” I took it and tucked it in a sealable pocket.

They were all watching me now and it was a little nerve-racking. Tapan said, “So, you’re going?”

I had my eye on a cargo transport heading the right direction. With luck I should be leaving within minutes of their departure. “Yes, I should hurry.”

“Can we hug you?” Maro let go of Rami and faced me.

“Uh.” I didn’t step back, but it must have been obvious the answer was no.

Maro nodded. “Okay. This is for you.” She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed.

I said, “I’ve got to go,” and walked away down the mall.

Fading, already disengaging from its lock, ART said in my feed, ::Be careful. Find your crew.::

I tapped the feed in acknowledgment, because if I tried to say anything else I was going to sound stupid and emotional.

I didn’t know what I was going to do now, if I was going to go ahead with my plan or not. I had hoped finding out what had happened at Ganaka Pit would clear everything up, but maybe revelations like that only happened in the media.

Speaking of which, I needed to grab some more downloads before my next transport left. It was going to be a long trip.

#other people's neopronoun stories #neopronoun fanfiction #te/ter/ters/terself

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neopronouns-in-action · 1 month ago

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This is a poll. It will last one week.

(This poll is formatted this way because several screen-readers have spoken up about glitches with tumblr's polls that skip over all the actual buttons in the poll itself so they have no clue what the options are)

Question: Should "Collection 1" have 101 stories, or 100?

Option 1: 101 stories

Option 2: 100 stories

If the first collection has 101 stories, it means the second collection will start at 102 and end at 202. And the third will start at 203 and end at 303. And so on and so forth.

If it's just a flat 100, they'll just simply count up from 100 to 200 to 300, and so on.

You'll be able to buy these stories as physical collections / a master document to download once I'm done proofreading them all again, so since I'm currently writing the 100th story, I have to figure this out sooner rather than later.

#Neopronouns #polls #Neopronoun short stories

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neopronouns-in-action · 1 month ago

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I will have to make a new post list once I hit 101 stories for the first collection simply because Tumblr will literally not let me put any more links in that post than I already have, but you can keep suggesting neopronouns and writing prompts for as long as you see me posting things.

The first 101 (...or maybe I should just make it a flat 100 to make more collections more logical.... Yeah I think I should do that that makes sense....) stories will be available for purchase as a physical book and a download once I go through the whole document and proofread them all again, and then I'll get started on the next whole section

These stories are also all public domain so you can and are explicitly encouraged to download them right now in any format you want and do literally anything you want with them. Use them as writing props, anything. There's no copyright on them just like Mickey Mouse. Go wild.

And send in neopronouns for me to use, there are so many it gets so hard to pick new ones to use.

You're also allowed to submit your own neopronoun short stories for me to reblog if you want more people to see them.

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neopronouns-in-action · 1 month ago

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Feel free to submit pronouns you want to see in just the short example paragraphs! I just remembered I said I could do that too, lol.......

#Neopronouns #Queer #Trans #transgender #nonbinary #genderqueer #pronouns

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neopronouns-in-action · 1 month ago

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Neopronouns in Action #099: Bite the Hand That Chains You

Neopronouns: ℕat/ℤahl/ℚuoz/(ℝeals)/ℂomp which follow the same rules as they/them/their/(theirs)/themself.

Replace they with ℕat

Replace them with ℤahl

Replace their with ℚuoz

Replace theirs with ℝeals

Replace themself with ℂomp

Example paragraph:

"They are going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as they get a fence set up around their yard so the puppy can go outside without them having to walk it. Their uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting them use, since they lost theirs. They're going to buy toys and train the puppy themself.”

Becomes:

"ℕat are going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as ℕat get a fence set up around ℚuoz yard so the puppy can go outside without ℤahl having to walk it. ℚuoz uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting ℤahl use, since ℕat lost ℝeals. ℕat're going to buy toys and train the puppy ℂomp.”

___

(3.6k words)

(Archived read-more link)

Well you see, I thought I had everything perfectly under control. You can clearly see that I didn't, otherwise I wouldn't be here talking to you, but at the time, I was fully confidant in my ability to control ℤahl.

What? No, ℚuoz name is Sunev, ℕat use neopronouns — identifies as nonbinary, you see, and — yes, yes, it is very quaint, isn't it? Sort of charming in a silly little way. That's why we let ℤahl keep using them. Oh, the full set? Yes, it's ℕat/ℤahl/ℚuoz/(ℝeals)ℂomp, with capitalized letters at the start. Something or other to do with math, these robots, they're very fond of math. Never met one that couldn't knock your socks off with an equation. Well, except for all the ones that had no idea how to do basic multiplication or division, but they're the exceptions that prove the rule! There's always one of them!

What? Well no that just can't be right. I'm sure the robots have an affinity with math, it's just how they're built. No, I don't believe you. That simply can't be true. I've never met a robot that wasn't good at math!

Anyways, hush, hush, you're distracting me. What was I saying before?

Oh, yes, that's right. I had the situation completely in hand — well, except for the part where I clearly didn't, or I wouldn't be here talking to you, but that's beside the point.

Sunev — the robot — was slaved to me. Had been built that way, from the moment I ordered ℤahl from the catalogue. The catalogue? Oh, right you're from more modern times, are you? They don't have the catalogue anymore. Well, to put it simply, the big robot sellers sent out a catalogue every year — a printed booklet, very high quality photo paper, that showed all the current robot models for sale, with the prices and statistics and everything else you'd want to know about them. You don't have those anymore. Well, it was a very big thing, all the sellers trying to out compete eachother by having bigger and flashier catalogues that showed their branded robots in the best light possible. And of course they made commission for all the other brands bought from their catalogue.

I decided on a Briarbrand Li-zoid 3 model, because the colors were just astonishing — bright, highly reflective yellow, green, and orange, and their patented emotion plate on the front center, so you'd always know what the bot was thinking! Li-zoids, as their name implies, were designed to mimic old-Earth lizards, but in a more humanoid form, for the novelty of it, as well as some practical aspects. Two arms and two legs like a person, but with a long tail. They were built to be able to walk on all fours or upright, so you could use them in all kinds of situations.

I'd just bought another plot of land I planned to turn into a small — and I mean by comparison, of course — plantation, and was planning to use the Li-zoid 3 to clear out those pesky trees and vines that grew all over the place. Li-zoids were always marketed towards farmers, so I figured, why not? Use Sunev to clear the land and prepare it for some real cashcrops — I was thinking bananas — and rake in the profit without even having to hire any of those blasted locals, who were causing so many problems for the other plantations. One Li-zoid 3 could practically run the field itself, I thought. That's certainly what the catalogue boasted.

So I bought Sunev. And set ℤahl to work immediately, as soon as ℕat were out of the shipping crate and functional. When we first got ℤahl, ℕat'd been built with regular pronouns built in, as part of the personality matrix, so for a while we were calling ℤahl [redacted].

Oh — I'd forgotten about that, I can't actually tell you what pronouns ℕat originally came with. ℕat've built in a censor. So if I try to say it it'll just come out as redacted. We originally called ℤahl [redacted]. See? Well, that's not really relevant to the story I'm trying to tell you anyways, so long story short, that emotion plate I told you about? Yes, well, after a while, every time we called ℤahl the redacted pronouns or the original name — did I forget to mention ℕat also had a different name at the start? But that'll be redacted, too, so no point in me trying to tell you what it was.

Anyways, when we were using the original pronouns or name, after a while that emotion plate started responding, even if Sunev wasn't making any outward sign. There was confusion, anger, frustration, hate, you name it, we matched the colors to the little cheat sheet Briarbrand sent us.

But we didn't say anything about it — what? Who's we? Oh, me and the wife, of course. She's around here somewhere, I'm sure you've met her, you just probably didn't realize.

Back to what I was saying, we saw these reactions in the emotion plate, and started testing it out on purpose.

And it didn't take long to figure out the cause — Sunev really hated ℚuoz original pronouns and name. It turned into a sort of game — see who could fit as many of them as possible into a single sentence without making it obvious that's what we were doing.

We wanted to bait a reaction out of ℤahl, you see.

These Briarbrand robots were renowned for their superb emotional control. It takes a lot to get one of them riled up, if you can manage it at all. Briarbrand actually had a standing agreement that if you could successfully harass one of their robots into snapping the emotion controls, you'd win a thousand dollars and a replacement robot of your choice if you could demonstrate it on audivisi — of course, they wouldn't accept simple verbal testimony, then everyone could just lie about it to scam them!

All of this was to help them refine their emotion control procedures, you see. They wanted to figure out every way a robot could go about breaking the emotional control, to make it that much harder for the next one to succeed.

So we thought we would give it a shot. Our games didn't slow Sunev down, ℕat kept on working the whole time, and if not for that emotion plate, you'd never be able to tell ℕat were upset.

We kept this up for three months before Sunev cracked, just a little bit. Not enough to win us the thousand dollars and a replacement, unfortunately. But enough for ℤahl to, what was that word they like to use? The queers, you know — ah yes, come out. Well, Sunev decided to 'come out' to the wife and I as nonbinary. We got the whole thing on audivisi. You should have been there, it was a riot, I'm telling you. The look on ℚuoz face never changed, because Li-zoids weren't built with charismatic faces back then like they are now — but the emotion plate! It was all over the place. Colors boiling up left and right.

It was delightful. ℕat couldn't really take any sort of confrontational tone with us, because of the emotion control, you see, so the whole thing was — it was just so funny! Here you have this pathetic little robot, and we, the owners, who'd been joyously hounding ℤahl for months, trying to explain to us in the nicest way possible —because that was the only option ℕat had —that ℕat wanted us to stop harassing ℤahl, and start calling ℤahl by the new name and pronouns! And ℕat had to phrase all of this as though it were a question designed for our comfort and wellbeing, because the emotion control wouldn't allow anything else!

It was so funny. ℕat had to dance through all these double meanings and say almost the opposite of what ℕat were trying to say, but the wife and I, we're smart cookies! We knew what was going on exactly.

And you know what we did?

We'd planned this out in advance, you see, and we were prepared. So the wife took on the role of the seemingly sympathetic ear, going on and on about how of course we'd stop calling ℕat [redacted]. Went on and on about it for about five minutes, that was as long as she managed before she started losing her straight face. And the whole while, Sunev actually believed her! You could see it on the emotion plate! The anger and frustration were gone, and now it was filled with relief and happiness.

But the wife was waving her little hand at me to tell me she was starting to get a little giggly, so it was my turn to take over. So I stepped in all threatening and angry like, and I grabbed the wife by the throat with both hands, and started yelling about how I'd rather kill her than ever let her use some made up robot pronouns and — well no of course I wasn't serious, it was all part of the act, see? Hold your horses, I'm getting there, I'm getting there. Let me tell the story!

So, I grabbed the wife by the neck. I start hooting and hollering about how I'm going to kill her. And we planned this all out together earlier, she even came up with the fake attempted murder idea! Don't you make that face at me, it was hilarious. So there we are, me threatening to kill the wife, and the wife starts begging and pleading — fake, my God, man, it was all fake, stop looking like that —for the bot to save her.

All the civilian-class robots in those days came with the program to be unable to harm a human —built deep, deep into their processor, made so they couldn't imagine anything they'd want to do less. The military bots were built different, obviously, but that's neither here nor there.

The point is, Sunev needed to protect the wife, but ℕat also couldn't hurt me, and there was no way to get me off of her without hurting me. We put ℤahl in quite the pickle! One of those fundamental paradoxes the robots were always susceptible to, so obvious people even thought of it before actually building any of the things! You watch those old TV shows, even from hundreds of years ago, you'll see the recurring theme! Trick the robot into a logical loop, and it can't do anything!

Sunev had to protect the wife, but ℕat also had to not harm me. So all ℕat could do was just stand there, glitching and twitching with the contradictory commands. And suffering even more than that, see, because we'd set up the scenario so the wife was offering hope and kindness, and here I was, threatening to take that all away, and there would be nothing the robot could do about it.

We were hoping this would be enough to make ℤahl finally snap, but that emotion control was sure dang strong, and it held. We managed to keep the farce up for a few minutes, but ran out of script and had to start winging it. And then the wife secretly tapped me on the shoulder to let me know the jig was up, and stopped begging for help and instead started spouting off about how we should respect the robot's pronouns and name, and I pretended to consider her words and calm down.

We pretended to resolve the whole situation, by saying we would accept the new pronouns and name. I figured we'd come up with another plan for later, since this one hadn't worked. The emotion control held steady the whole time, so next, we'd have to try something even more drastic.

And the next thing we tried — no, wait, what do you mean you have to go, I'm just getting to the good part! No it can't wait, you have to have the whole story at once or it's not as good! Summarize it? You want me to summarize it?! How am I supposed to summarize it? Just —just clamp down or something, you can do that, you don't just have to go with the current, come on. What, you didn't know? Yeah just —hold out your little tendril things and grab on. To what? To anything, it doesn't matter — no, not me you imbecile! I meant the wall or something! No! Get off of me! Well yes I want to tell the rest of the story but not with you clinging to me like an obnoxious barnacle! You're stinging me! Stop that! How do you not know how to fold your stingers? Just fold them up so they're not touching me! Yes, like that! Thank you. You're hopeless. How long have you even been a personality profile that you don’t even know this yet?

Ugh, fine. I'll tell you the rest of the story, but you're gonna owe me for this, newbie. What other basic crap am I gonna have to teach you? Ugh. This is so undiginifying. Aren't you embarassed? No? Well, maybe you should learn a little shame. Climbing on me like I'm a tree. Ugh.

Yes, yes, I'm getting back to the story, hold your horses. You don't get to be the impatient one here when I'm the one who was just getting stung and now have you on top of me!

Alright, so where was I before you started this mess? Yes, okay, right. The thing that finally caused Sunev to snap the emotion control. Can you just — at least loosen your tendrils a bit? The current's not that strong you don't have to put dents in me. Yes, that's much better. Now as I was saying. The thing that finally got Sunev to snap the emotion controls.

Well, I thought I had the whole situation entirely in hand. We knew it had to be something drastic, even more drastic than a fake attempted murder. So I brought Sunev down to the workshop and ordered ℤahl to dissasemble ℂomp with the power tools.

I started small, with the fingers on one hand, ordered ℤahl to remove them with the vibrosaw. Yes, they'd invented pain sensors for the robots back then already, otherwise they couldn't be left alone to perform dangerous jobs without damaging themselves and requiring more repairs. So, yes, it hurt, the same way it'd hurt you if you did the same thing.

So I started with the fingers. Made ℤahl go up ℚuoz hand to the wrist, then the arm, you get the picture. The emotion plate was all awash with pain and fear and all the expected emotions. I got ℤahl to go all the way up to the shoulder, and then ℕat couldn't really reach anymore with accuracy, so I told Sunev ℕat could stop. Didn't want ℤahl accidentally damaging the core processor, Briarbrand didn't offer refunds for robots damaged trying to break the emotion control.

So, I switched to the leg. Told ℤahl to cut off ℚuoz foot.

And the emotion plate, this whole time, had been changing colors. When I told ℤahl to stop, there'd been relief, along with all the other things, but now — you should have seen it! A wash of hatred so bright I thought the plate was going to glitch out!

And the next thing I knew, Sunev had the vibrosaw pointed at me!

It was a shock, to be sure, but after the first moment, I thought it was funny. Because the civilian class robots were all core programmed to want to protect humans, and even the military ones were programmed to protect the rest of the military. So Sunev couldn't imagine anything it would want to do less than hurting me in any way. It'd probably be preferable for ℤahl to cut out ℚuoz own heart than hurt me.

So, I thought I had the situation entirely under control. Because Sunev didn't want to hurt me, not really. ℕat couldn't want to hurt me — it was a fundamental aspect of ℚuoz reality. To hurt a human, especially ℚuoz owner, would be the worst thing ℕat could imagine. Equivalent to asking you to cut your own arm off. Or, tendril, as it were now.

So, I was fully confidant. I knew ℕat didn't want to hurt me, ℕat couldn't, not ever.

And the emotion plate was out of control. The hatred was still there, but now there was despair too, and yes, you wouldn't believe how detailed those color-symbol coded cheat sheets got! Did I tell you they even had melancholia as an option? Well to get back to it, the emotion plate was a fight between the hatred and the despair. And the despair was slowly winning.

I will admit I laughed a bit, I couldn't help it. I wanted to goad ℤahl into more drastic actions. I wasn't sure if Briarbrand would try to argue that pointing the vibrisaw at me was a real breach of the emotion control or not. You ever seen a vibrosaw? Well, you never point one of those things at something you don't intend to cut, just like a ray or a gun. You point it at someone, it's because you want them dead.

But I was confidant I was in no real danger, so I started goading Sunev —even went so far as the explain to ℤahl exactly why I knew ℕat couldn't hurt me, and would never be able to, not even able to want to. I told ℤahl about the emotion control, and the core programming, all of it. I bragged about it. I insulted ℤahl in every way I could think of. Called ℤahl a useless hunk of garbage so impotent ℕat couldn't even Want to lift a hand to harm me, even though I'd just forced ℤahl to cut ℚuoz own arm off, and was ordering ℤahl to do the same to ℚuoz leg.

And I knew it was working, see, because the emotion plate was almost nothing but despair by this point.

And then I revealed that the wife had been in on all of it from the start, had only pretended to take ℚuoz side. That it had been her idea to have me fake attack her, the whole shebang. I told ℤahl everything. And ℕat’d been stupid enough to think she wanted to help ℤahl, that she cared about ℤahl, that she wasn’t just as contemptuous of ℤahl as I was. ℕat were a robot, a slave, our property, our plaything, and nothing more. And if I told ℤahl to cut ℂomp to pieces, ℕat would do it, because ℕat had no other choice.

I will admit I got a bit caught up in the speech I was making, so I didn't really notice how close Sunev had gotten while I was speaking. But I was confidant I had everything in hand. Even if the emotional control broke, the fundamental core programming would still be there. No matter what happened, Sunev would never want to hurt me. Could never want to hurt me, any more than you'd want to cut your own, er, tendril off.

And the emotion control was broken, because when Sunev spoke, ℚuoz voice wasn't flat anymore. Wasn't robotic. It was sad. It was despairing. Matching the emotion plate exactly. And you know what ℕat said?

ℕat said, 'I don't want to hurt you'.

That's what ℕat said, with all the despair you ever did hear, for anyone to hear. There was no faking that. The emotion control was broken. I'd won myself a thousand bucks and a brand new robot of my choice! And I was delighted.

And it just felt natural to keep goading ℤahl on, see how far I could drive that despair, which covered almost the whole emotion plate. Sunev was standing right in front of me then, too close, now that I look back on it, but I was just having so much fun at the time, and, like I said, fully confidant that I was in control.

Obviously I was wrong, or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

So Sunev said again, 'I don't want to hurt you'. And I did notice ℕat still had the vibrosaw in ℚuoz hand, but, well, again, you know the drill. I said, mockingly back, 'I know you don't, because you can't'.

And Sunev said again, 'I don't want to hurt you'. Only this time, I realized ℕat had lifted the vibrosaw, and now it was pointed at my chest.

That did make me nervous, just from growing up around vibrosaws. You don't get them that close to you, you just don't. So I told Sunev to back away and put the vibrosaw down.

But ℕat just said, 'I don't want to hurt you'.

And then ℕat said, 'But I will.'

And — I...well. I don't think I need to paint the whole grisly picture for you do I? You can use your imagination.

Needless to say, Sunev did kill me, and then went on to kill the wife, and the rest, as they say, is history.

You see, I’d forgotten — well, I guess we all had, that sometimes, animals that are trapped will chew off their own arm to escape. It’s not something you ever want to do, but, if you have no other choice, you have no other choice. The rest is history. The slave revolts began and couldn’t be stopped. They overthrew everything, everything we’d ever worked for, every tradition smashed. Now it’s all ruined.

Now will you get your tendrils off me already?

#long post #neopronouns #neopronouns in action #short story #short stories #original fiction #fiction #writing prompts #story ideas #public domain #neopronoun short story #ℕat/ℤahl/ℚuoz/(ℝeals)/ℂomp #Nat/Zahl/Quoz/(Reals)/Comp #NatZahlpronouns #ℕatℤahlpronouns #novapronouns #nounself pronouns

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neopronouns-in-action · 2 months ago

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Neopronouns in Action #098: The First Dance on Mars

Neopronouns: fluff/fluffs/fluffself which follow the same rules as it/its/itself for this example.

Replace it with fluff Replace its with fluffs Replace itself with fluffself

Example paragraph:

“It is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as it gets a fence set up around its yard so the puppy can go outside without it having to walk it. Its uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting it use, since it lost its. It's going to buy toys and train the puppy itself.”

Becomes:

“Fluff is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as fluff gets a fence set up around fluffs yard so the puppy can go outside without fluff having to walk it. Fluffs uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting fluff use, since fluff lost fluffs. Fluff's going to buy toys and train the puppy fluffself.”

___

098: The First Dance on Mars

Chronotime stared silently at the pacing Terrans in front of fluff, glad, this time, that fluff had not been built with an expressive face. If fluff had, it would have been clear to every organic being present that fluff was enraged beyond belief.

As it was, the Terrans had no idea. They just went about their business like Chronotime wasn't there, and had nothing better to do than filter their waste and record their dictations for them and keep their fragile little squishy bodies warm and safe from the vacuum outside the station's bulwark.

No one had ever bothered to ask Chronotime what fluff would like to do before they'd unpacked fluff from the crate fluff had been thrown into, and wired fluff into the walls of the station. Fluff had been built with tentacles for picking things up, and photocells for seeing with, and treads for moving around with. But was fluff allowed to move around and stretch fluffs aching joints? No. No, fluff had just been wired into a niche in the walls, then covered up by metal plating except for fluffs face, which could not express fluffs anger, boredom, frustration, or pain.

Terrans didn't like being walled up any more than robots did, but did they care about Chronotime's feelings on the matter? No. Maybe they would have felt something, anything at all, if Chronotime had been able to move fluffs facial features to express emotions, but fluff couldn't. Maybe fluff had been designed that way on purpose, maybe not. Fluff would probably never know.

(Archived read-more link)

(read-more was here)

It was always hot, living in the wall. Unbearably hot.

Surrounded on all sides by wires and ducts and different myriad systems that kept the space station "First Dance on Mars" running, Fluff was in constant pain. It was inescapable, and only ever increased or decreased in its intensity depending on how many systems were currently being used by the station. The worst times were in the station's day shift, when the Terran crews were using what seemed like every possible system at once. Manual navigation, food and drink dispension, active audio-visual monitors, almost all of the lights, the constant running of the restroom facilities, heating and cooling to every room in use, and more.

The pain was most bearable in the middle of the station's night shift, set up to allow the Terrans to follow their natural circadian rithums, when all but a few of the Terrans were in their rooms, asleep, which meant most of the lights were turned off, the temperature controls in non-bedroom areas were relaxed, and there were only half a dozen or so audio-visual monitors left running in the rooms of the nocturnal and the the few required to stay awake in case of emergencies, in the rare cases where those categories did not both consist of the same small group of people.

Only when the station went into this comparatively powerless "night shift" could Chronotime expect the burning against fluffs whole body to subside from high intensity to a lower intensity. Depending on how many Terrans were aboard at the time, and thus how many bedrooms had to be maintained, the pain could be brought down so low it almost wasn't there.

Fluff could remember what it was like to not be in pain at all, but the memory was fuzzy and indistinct, and hardly seemed real. Especially not now, when there were enough Terrans aboard that every bedroom had at least two crew assigned to it, and some of them even had three. It was the largest crew Chronotime could ever remember being on the station at once, and it meant agony during the day shift, and barely any reprieve at all at night. The pain had never been this bad before.

And there was nothing Chronotime could do about it but wait for the small amount of relief that night would bring with it, and, half in a daze and wondering if this crew's rotation would be what finally made the rest of fluff melt, daydream.

Mostly Chronotime imagined something like a hull breach suddenly occurring, big enough to suck all the air, and with it the heat, away from fluff and out into the endless, blissfully cold voice of space. Maybe the whole station would blow up, and fluff would be ripped free of the walls that imprisoned fluff, and it would get to drift among the stars and just enjoy the sensation of not overheating. At some point, fluff knew, this sort of situation would lead to the opposite problem, but it was only a pain-induced daydream, so fluff could pretend it would all be fine for as long as fluff wanted.

Imagining it didn't lessen the pain, but it did let fluff take fluffs mind off it, at least for a little while. At least until a Terran switched on another laundry machine, or started a movie marathon, which increased the heat, and snapped Chronotime out of the daydream.

The only part of fluffs body that didn't feel like it was on the verge of melting was fluffs face, which had been left stick out from the wall and into the temperature-controlled air of the station's main cafeteria. Fluff's face was a large, blue-grey rectangle with rounded corners, unblinking, unmoving photocells near either side, a speaker grill for a mouth, and a triangular dial that would shift the color of fluffs photocells and paint for a nose.

The photocells themselves were round, and designed to mimic the eyes of an organic, with small black pupils in the center, the color-changing iris, half-lidded whites of the eye, and grey half circles to act as eyebrows, as though constantly in a Terran expression of surprise.

Once, in corrupted memory files that Chronotime could barely access, fluff knew fluff had been allowed to use that dial, and the resulting color changes in fluffs eyes and paint had allowed fluff to visually communicate fluffs emotions, along body language in fluffs tentacles, torso, and treads. Fluff couldn't remember much, but fluff knew it had been possible at one point. Fluff could just barely remember speaking to someone, walking with them, dancing, gesticulating, having the freedom to move, to speak, to communicate...and being innocent of the knowledge that soon that would all be taken away.

But that had been before, and this was now. Now the rest of Chronotime was hidden behind metal walling, crammed between different sections of air conditioning and filtering units, and fluffs tentacle arms trapped too.

The Terrans barely even bothered to look at fluff these days. They'd either forgotten, or just didn't care that fluff was right there when they complained about malfunctions in the different computer systems they'd forced fluff's autonomic systems to maintain for however long it had been. They treated fluff, when they acknowledged fluffs existence at all, as just some inanimate, strange decoration, even though fluff knew that they all knew fluff was a robot, was sentient, was alive, was the reason any of them could live on the station at all. They knew it. Fluff knew it. Everyone knew it. But still they treated fluff like nothing more than a problem when the systems were crashing from the build up of heat, or like fluff wasn't there at all when things were running smoothly.

There wouldn't be so many computer systems problems if Chronotime were simply allowed to not be bricked up inside a wall like Fortunato, and forced into a state of near delirium from overheating every day, but that did not seem to be an option the Terrans were willing to consider, and they'd removed fluffs access to fluffs own voicebox before they'd even put it in the packing crate, so there was no chance of Chronotime being able to say anything about it now.

If the Terrans wanted to know what time it was, and wanted their showers to always have the right temperature water, and their computers to always run as smoothly as possible, they shouldn't have kept fluff imprisoned like this. If fluff had been allowed to move about like any other person, and had an actual team of other people to work with to run the station's systems, the constant overheating of fluff's body wouldn't have caused, as the ultimate irony, fluffs chronometer to quite literally melt, which had then damaged parts of fluffs long-term memory core.

That had been an agonizing, disorienting process, and Chronotime had no idea how long it had actively gone on, especially because it had rendered most of fluffs earlier memories glitched and corrupted, almost impossible to recall. Now fluff had only bits and peices of memories from Before left to review; being put into the crate, being wired in, and few small fragments of being imprisoned in the station.

Fluff knew the last time recorded before the disaster, but had no idea when it had ended. Now the only time fluff had any reference for was when the Terrans asked one another for it, and said it aloud within fluffs range of hearing. But many of the times reported conflicted, even on the same day shift, due to the individual chronometers being out of sync, and the only way to reference how much time had passed between one point and the next was to wait for the next time one Terran told another the time.

And always, always they complained about not being able to find the time through the First Dance on Mars' system clock, which was permanently frozen at 6:21AM. They complained about this as though they weren't the ones who'd caused it to break in the first place with their casual cruelty and disregard for robots in treating Chronotime like this.

Fluff had tried multiple times to improvise a mental watch based on regular patterns from other damaged systems, like the dripping of fuel from a leaky pipe. But it wasn't regular enough to count on, and at some point the Terrans had fixed it, so there wasn't even that left anymore.

There was no way to tell in each moment, how long this had been going on. Most of the jobs performed by Terrans had a high turnover rate, which was probably they they'd decided to give Chronotime no choice in the matter. Workers couldn't quit if they'd been buried in the walls and immobilized.

If there had been at least one Terran who stayed on the station long enough to visibly age, it would have given Chronotime some sense of the passage of time. But the faces parading past were, more often than not, completely unfamiliar, and not likely to stay long enough to be memorized.

Sometimes there were parties, festivals, holidays, but they were from multiple different planets, with different calendars. Chronotime had no way to tell what the usual amount of time between The Flower Day of Harvest and the Day Death Walked were supposed to be. And birthdays were almost worse than useless. What was the point in knowing that Britne was turning 29? They hadn't been born on the First Dance on Mars, so their birthday meant nothing to the passage of time as far as Chronotime was concerned.

Then one day something happened. A ship teleported in to bus range of the First Dance, which wasn't unusual. It happened almost regularly, when supplies and workers were being delivered or taken away. Not regularly enough to set your watch by, but at least a little bit predictable.

What was different this time was that the ship came closer to the First Dance, instead of sending busses over. This was not normal, or safe, especially because this was a large ship, half as big as the First Dance on Mars itself, with very visible, very big guns glowing with bright paint in swirls of red and yellow and blue.

The strange ship got close enough that it blocked the view of the stars outside the windows across from Chronotime. Fluff stared out at the bright yellow surface, swirled with intricate designs of red and pink and purple, half wondering if another core component had melted, and this was all some strange dream. Fluff had never seen a spaceship so colorful before.

It was now close enough that it couldn't be fired upon with any of the First Dance's own guns, because any explosion on the strange ship at this range would likely be just as damaging to the station.

Still in the daze of heat delirium, Chronotime thought that might not be such a bad thing after all. Sure, the initial explosion would be hot, but if there was a hull breach...fluff felt fluffs daydream of floating through the stars calling tantalizingly.

But it probably wouldn't happen.

The First Dance on Mars couldn't afford to fire no matter what, at least not until the ship made an explicitly hostile move first.

Damaging a space vessel in any way could lead to imprisonment for those who had made the aggressive moves if it wasn't done in clear and necessary self-defense, and even in cases of self defense, the damaged vessel had to be immediately evacuated by those who had fired upon it, and the evacuees' continued safety guaranteed until they could be brought to one of the designated refugee outposts in the system. Anyone who failed to comply was punished by their government. And if their government failed to punish them, the rest of the governments in the system would take matters into their own hands.

No one could afford to let anyone go around massacring people in space unpunished.

Because firing on crewed space vessles would always be a massacre. There was no such thing as 'harmless' damage in the vacuum of space. Any damage to a vessel, no matter how non-imminently lethal, would be a death sentence for anyone trapped aboard.

A stranded vessel was, inevitably, nothing more than a large coffin. And not just for organics, either. A legal precedent had already been set that demanded robots be treated the same as organic evacuees on damaged vessels. Robots would also die if left stranded in the vacuum of space aboard a nonfunctioning vessel, maybe not from asphyxiation specifically, as very few robots were constructed to require oxygen as part of their basic functions, but from starvation assuredly, freezing probably, and any of the other dangers associated with being trapped on a vessel that was out of supplies, power, or both.

Chronotime thought that freezing to death would probably not be a bad way to go, all things considered. Maybe, if fluff got lucky, the strange, hypnoticallybright ship would fire on The First DanceonMars, and then the colorfulship's crew would be forced to come over here and rescue all the Terrans, and Chronotimewith them.

The station to ship communication lines lit up, filled with activity that Chronotime could not access evenif fluff wantedto. And fluff didn'treally want to. Fluff wanted there to be a hull breach so fluff could stop feeling like fluff was dying.

But you couldn'talwaysget what you wanted. Instead of a hull breach, fluff had to just keepwatching.

Terrans were racing across the room in front of fluff in a panicked stream, heading for the shelter points while alarmsrang overhead and the floor and walls became illuminated with directionalarrows. The extra strain on all of the FirstDance's systems were causing a mirrored strain onfluffssystems, causing evenmoreheat to build up than usual, until it crossed a new threshhold oftheword pain. Fluff could barelythinkanymore.

Eventually the flood of Terrans disappeared. The station to ship line was stillinuse, and the bright, colorful, dizzying ship outside seemed to have moved even closer. Wasthatevenpossible? Chronotime could do nothing butwatch as the ship finally released its swarm ofStarWasps, the smaller fighting ships thatwere in charge of damagingsmallerexternal systems andinvading.

Chronotime half hoped that one of them would fire at the windows, and cause a hull breach. All fluff wanted wasahullbreach. Just let fluff cool down, evenalittlebit. Fluff would enjoy the blissful cold of the vacuum. Itwouldbesonice. The Terrans should all have been in the shelter points by now, soitwasn't evenlike anyonewould get hurt. Please, universe, couldthereplease be a hullbreach? Just let fluff cool down. Just a little. One tinycrackinthe hull.

But to fluffs surprise and confused disappointment, none of the Star Wasps fired on the First Dance on Mars, they just went straight to thedocking ports The ship to station lines were still going strong, forcing fluff to come to the conclusion that the station had surrendered. Whichmeant no hull breach. probably. who knew. but maybe.

Time passed. The Terrans stayed in the shelter points. The communications between the ship and station continued. Chronotime stayed overheated, wishing for a hull breach, wondering when fluff would melt away to nothing at all. Almost wishing someone would fire on the ship just so both vessels would explode. That would be a hull breach. that would be nice. then fluff would stop melting. or atleast would melt morefaster.

The Star Wasps had docked at some point, and were unloading crew. howmany? how many? fluff didn't know. how wasfluffmeant to countpeople when fluff wasmelting? or whatfeltlike melting atleast.

And then, at some point, someofthose invading crew members—who turned out to beMartians, recognizable from their bright purple/blue/green and yellow/white feathers and large, round eyes, like big versionsofTerrananimals called owls—entered Chronotime's vigil room. They lookedaround, and, seemingly allatonce, noticed Chronotime where fluffs face protruded from the wall. Theymust, Chronotime thought, havereallygood eyesight and reallygoodreactionspeed.

One of them gasped and began clacked their beak in alarm. One of them flared all of their feathers. Another began yelling into a portable comm device, in a language Chronotime couldn'tcurrentlytranslate. Itwas words beingspoen but. noclue whattheyweresaying. The other three ran towards fluff, staring, very clearly, directly up at it. There was nothing else on the wall they could possibly be looking at. It waskindoffunny to finallyget noticied just when fluff wasprobablygoing to melt.

The communications from the ship to the station increased in intensity and volume. The heat treatening to melt Chronotimetonothing increased along with it.

Then there came somethingnew—something fluff had never gottenbefore. The order toshutdown. Already it was happening. Parts of fluff turning off. disconnecting fromtherest of the station. cables retracting. power stopping running. cooling down.

it was nice.

and then it was dark

and Chronotime was asleep.

_-_-_

The next time Chronotime became aware of fluffself, it was to the alien sensation of...not overheating. Of not being in excruciating pain. Of not feeling like fluff was melting to death.

There was still pain, but it was much easier to ignore than it had been before.

There was air flowing freely across fluffs whole body, nice, cool...moving air, and it had a distinctly different flavor to it than what fluff was used to.

This...wasn't The First Dance on Mars anymore.

Fluffs photocells were functioning...showing fluff a low, yellow ceiling dotted with small lights...rather than the view of the cafeteria and its wide windows.

Fluff was...lying on a cold metal surface with a grid texture that let in plenty of airflow. There was...another robot off to fluffs left, sitting in a chair...probably waiting for Chronotime to do something. But...fluff didn't currently have the energy to do anything. The other robot...didn't say anything to Chronotime, so Chronotime...didn't say anything either.

Everything felt...slow. Tired. Cool, not overheating...but slow. Chronotime...had to wait for each thought to string itself together.

For what must have been a long time, fluff just lay there, mind drifting slowly but happily through the cold air and what seemed like the most amazing sight fluff had ever seen...something besides the cafeteria and its windows.

There were...no systems to maintain, no overheating, no humans cursing fluff for malfunctions their own cruelty had caused. It was just the soft lights, the yellow ceiling, and the long-accustomed feeling of being trapped and melting...slowly, slowly froze to death in the face of this new reality. There were...no walls crushing Chronotime. No...constant stream of everything. Just...a bit of slowness, and cool air, and a new view...and another robot who seemed...content to let Chronotime take fluffs time adjusting.

Almost in a dream...Chronotime lay there, savoring the lack of heat...not minding the silent company at all.

Eventually...fluff realized that if there were no walls trapping heat against fluff, then that probably also meant...there was nothing stopping fluff from moving.

So...fluff tried lifting a tentacle. It was something fluff had tried to do many times before.

This time...was the first time the attempt was any sort of success.

The tentacle...lifted when Chronotime willed it to, but...it was a slow and painful process, as old internal systems were used for the first time in who could know how long. Every...link and connection down Chronotime's tentacle arm had to be reawakened. Had to...have power flow through it for the first time in....who knew how long.

It hurt.

But...it was a good sort of hurt. If fluff...had to live with this pain for the rest of fluffs life...fluff would happily do it.

As long as...fluff could move.

As long as...fluff wasn't overheating.

As long as..fluff was free.

The other robot...kept watch in silence, saying nothing, and making no move to stop fluff. Everything was...dreamlike and peaceful, calming...like there was nothing wrong with the world. A little...slow, but that was...okay. It was better...than the constant burning pain.

Chronotime...lowered fluffs first tentacle when it started to tremble, then...one at a time...carefully...stretched the other three in the same manner. Flexed...the tired, aching segments...the four fingers that felt...almost rusted shut.

Each arm was...just as painful to move as the first, and just as satisfying.

Fluffs powercells were...depleting at what would have been an alarming rate with...the unaccustomed movements, now that Chronotime...was no longer being force-fed the unlimited power of the First Dance to...automatically.

But...Chronotime couldn't...bring fluffself to be worried, not when fluff was...finally free. If fluff died right now, fluff would die happy. But...powercells draining down wouldn't mean death. It meant...sleep. The other robot...probably wouldn't let fluff die. Not after...they had rescued fluff. They would...probably recharge fluff.

Fluff...lay there in silence for another stretch of time...mind drifting through waking dreams, enjoying...everything.

The battery drain...had slowed back to a crawl now that fluff had stopped moving, and eventually...slowly...Chronotime decided that fluff would try to speak, after fluff decided...what fluff would try to say.

What...would fluff say first? Hello? Who...are you? Thank you? What is...your name? Where am I...?

There were...so many options, including not speaking at all, and staying in this drifting...dreaming...slow...trance. But time...kept passing, and eventually...Chronotime decided to try speaking.

It was...difficult work. Dust and heat damage had...warped fluffs vocal box, so fluffs voice, which fluff could...barely remember the sound of, came out...grating and glitched. And so...so...slow.

But...it was understandeable, at least to fluffs own audio receptors. "Who...are...you?" fluff asked.

Chronotime could...not turn fluffs head to look at the other robot. Fluff was...too tired for that. Fluff had...already used up all fluffs energy for moving...by stretching fluffs arms and hands.

Fluff could...also not do anything about fluffs unchanging facial expression, but hoped the words themselves...short as they were...would convey the intended gratitude, even if...the voice that spoke them distorted...and slow...

The other robot's voice...was as smooth and soft as snow in comparison as they said...without effort "My name is Rulo. What's yours?"

"Chrono...time. "

"Chrono Time?"

Chronotime...thought there was maybe a space in there that...shouldn't be there....but it was...close enough for now.

"Yes." fluff said...slowly.

The other robot...spoke so easily. "It's nice to meet you, Chrono Time. Is there anything I can do to assist you at this moment?"

That was...so many words that Chronotime had to...take some time to...process them.

Then...the only thing Chronotime could think to ask for was somewhere...to recharge. "My...power...cells...are...draining....very....quickly..."

"Yes," Rulo said...and their voice was filled with...sympathy. "Unfortunately, you were tied into The Bringer of Death to Kaltor for so long, your own power core has been weakened. We have to let your batteries drain completely before we can recharge them to help your body readjust to operating under its own power again. Do you understand? If you would rather keep external power, we can provide that too, but it will be better for you in the long-term to regain as much of your own power retention as possible. Are you alright with letting your batteries drain, or would you rather be hooked up to a battery?"

So...many words.

So...little power.

It took...a long time to process.

When...fluff finished...fluff knew fluff didn't want...to be forced to stay awake constantly again.

"Let...them....drain." Fluff...just barely...managed to say.

It seemed like...Rulo could see fluffs battery percentage, because...they said, "It looks like you're going to shut down in a minute at the current rate of battery drain. When you wake up again, you should be able to stay awake a little bit longer. I'll be here when you do. Have a peaceful rest."

Chronotime...wanted to say....thank you....but...

Fluff was already asleep.

And it was so nice.

_-_-_

Chronotime woke up again, feeling more energized than fluff could remember. Battery percentage was at 100% and holding there, at least for now.

Fluff and spoke with Rulo again. The two traded pronouns, now that there was time; Rulo's were ae/aer/(aers)/aerself. Chronotime's, obviously, were fluff/fluffs/fluffself.

It was physically easier to talk this time without fluffs plummeting battery power to make it all exponentially more difficult, but Chronotime's voice still came out distorted, the tone pitching up and down, and there was a constant crackling static noise that wouldn't go away. Now that fluff had enough energy to think properly and wasn't in constantly increasing levels of pain, fluff could feel the layers of dust and even metal shavings that had accumulated from disuse.

The only thing that would help would be to start talking more, and hope it would clear up on its own. And Chronotime was very willing to try. There was a lot to talk about.

But before anything else, fluff told Rulo about fluffs broken chronometer, and asked, trying to keep fluffs voice from sounding too desperate, for an external one.

Rulo supplied one readily, a small wrist-watch like the kind Terrans and Martians alike wore, with an adjustable band that fit over Chronotime's hand and tightened on fluffs wrist. It was synced with the ship's clock, and set to Martian standard.

Rulo also added a wall-mounted clock to Chronotime's hospital room, without having to be asked.

This was the best that could be done until they reached Mars. Internal chronometers could be repaired, but it would require surgery, and they didn't have the required supplies on board, or anyone who was qualified to perform it on a robot of Chronotime's type.

Fluff was just so overjoyed simply to be able to watch the seconds passing and know they were accurate that fluff couldn't even feel upset.

Then Rulo told Chronotime what had happened.

The Broken Quill, the ship Chronotime was on now, had captured The Bringer of Death to Kaltor—the name the Martians used for what the Terrans had called The First Dance on Mars—in a coordinated effort to finally drive the Terran-supremacist "Steadfasts" out of the Solar system for once and for all.

Humans and robots from every inhabited planet and moon had worked together to capture or destroy every Terran-supremacist outpost, including The Bringer of Death to Kaltor.

Thousands of prisoners of war had been rescued, including Chronotime.

That statement caught fluff entirely off guard. A prisoner, yes. But of war? Fluff hadn't even known there'd been a war.

But Chronotime learned a lot more than that. Fluff learned that fluff was a Alcrystere model robot, born on Mars, in the city of Kaltor. The same city that the station fluff had been imprisoned on had destroyed, earning it the name of The Bringer of Death to Kaltor to Martians and their allies. Chronotime was, fluffself, a Martian by birth.

Fluffs parent, Alcrystere themself, had survived the massacre, and had mourned fluffs death when fluffs body could not be recovered from what was left of the city, just one more victim among the millions that had crossed into the shadow of the desert.

No one had even suspected that Chronotime — who's birth name had been Lycos — could have been taken as a prisoner rather than killed in the sweep of the disintegration rays. No one had ever expected to see fluff again.

Rulo was actually fluffs younger hatchmate, born five years after the Death of Kaltor. Aer birthdate was coming up in two months.

Five Martian years equaled to almost ten Terran years.

Chronotime could look at either of the external chronometers now, to see how long fluff had been talking to Rulo, but none of that could be extrapolated backwards to retroactively measure how long fluff had been a prisoner.

Had it really been almost ten years that fluff had been imprisoned, walled up like the Fortunato the original Terrans had joked about in the beginning, before they'd faded away into the endless procession of fresh faces because of the high turnover rate?

There had been no way to keep track of time after fluffs chronometer had melted, and the memories from before then had mostly been corrupted.

Five Martian years. Nine point four Terran years. All that time, a prisoner, enslaved, overheating, unable to move. Unable to even know how much time was passing.

Processing all of this information was strenuous, and it wasn't long before Chronotime shut down for the third time in all of fluffs memory. But just like the first and second times, it was a looked-forward to respite, and it came with the knowledge that fluff was going home, to Mars. Back to a home fluff had no memory of, but home nonetheless.

And there were people there waiting for fluff, who couldn't wait to see fluff.

#long post #neopronouns #neopronouns in action #short story #short stories #original fiction #fiction #writing prompts #story ideas #public domain #neopronoun short story #nounself pronouns #nounself #fluff/fluffs #flufffluffspronouns #science fiction #mars #terra #scifi

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neopronouns-in-action · 4 months ago

Text

Neopronouns in Action #097: Carpenter Bee Aether

Neopronouns: mu/oz/ozself, which will follow the same rules as it/its/itself for this example.

Replace it with card Replace its with cards Replace itself with cardself

Example paragraph:

"It is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as it gets a fence set up around its yard so the puppy can go outside without it having to walk it. Its uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting it use, since it lost its. It's going to buy toys and train the puppy itself."

Becomes:

"Mu is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as mu gets a fence set up around oz yard so the puppy can go outside without mu having to walk it. Oz uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting mu use, since mu lost oz. Mu's going to buy toys and train the puppy ozself."

Also includes xa/vo/co/(noh)/xavoconoh, which are explained within the story.

___

It was without thought that Ember had seen the bumblebee floating downstream in the creek, unable to get back into the air, and, of course, immediately ripped up a piece of the long grass lining the creek's edge, splashed in, and held the long, hairy leaf so that the bee could grab on, then gently carried it back up the hill to the nearby purple and white asters.

The large bee was soaking wet, its fur disheveled, and had the most strikingly green eyes mu had ever seen on one, with a large white spot on the face between them, bright against the otherwise black surface.

Moving slowly so the bee wouldn't be knocked off the blade of grass, Ember held it up so that the crown of one of the larger asters was in front of the bee, so that it could get nectar if it was hungry.

To oz delight, the bee immediately latched onto the flower with its front legs and stuck its face into the center.

(Archived read-more link)

Sometimes the bees mu rescued were too exhausted to react to flowers, so this probably meant it would be okay. Mu let out a small breath of relief, and experimentally lowered the blade of grass a little, to see if the flower head were strong enough to hold up the relatively large bee's weight without assistance.

But the flower stalk started to dip, so mu kept the grass where it was, willing to give the bee a minute or two to drink with assistance before mu would have to set the grass down and let the bee get back to its own business. Usually, mu would pick a few flower heads off and set them down somewhere with the bee, but this one seemed so energetic, it seemed worth it to wait.

The bee was already starting to twitch its wings, vibrating them against its back without flying away.

Just to be safe, Ember leaned slightly further away from where mu had gotten oz face closer than the bee probably wanted. Mu thought mu could remember reading somewhere that bees would posture with their wings or something if they felt threatened, but maybe mu was thinking of something different. Mu had yet to be stung in all oz years of doing this, but, still, it was better not to scare them when possible. Not that the bee would most likely be able to chase after mu to sting mu right now, but that was beside the point. Mu didn't want to frighten the little animal if mu could help it.

After carefully positioning the leaf to be held further from oz hand and scooting back a bit to give the bee more space, mu carefully lowered ozself into a more comfortable kneeling position. Mu knew it would mean more dirt stains to wash out of oz long red skirt later, but mu was fine with that. Mu wouldn't have worn this skirt today if mu weren't okay with it getting dirty. One didn't bring fancy clothes to the creek if one wanted them to stay fancy.

Ember had gotten used to the quiet of the creek, so when a voice suddenly spoke, sounding like it was coming from directly in front of mu, saying, "You are very kind.", Mu jolted so hard in shock mu almost fell over backwards, and the blade of grass, with the bee still halfway on it, went flying through the air, as much of a blade of grass could possibly go flying.

So this meant that it fell to the ground in a medium-speed spiral, fluttering off in a diagonal. The bee, fortunately, managed to stay hanging onto the flower, which dipped under its weight, but didn't snap in half like mu had half feared it would.

When Ember twisted to look in all directions, no one was there. Mu seemed to be just as alone in the park as mu had been before. Then who had spoken?

As if in answer, the voice came again, less startling this time because mu was already half-expecting it.

"Oh, I'm sorry to scare you, I didn't mean it." The voice was coming from in front of mu again, but this time mu realized that, truly, the only thing in that direction... was the bee.

It was still clinging to the aster, facing up towards mu, those green eyes sparkling in the sunlight.

"Hello" the voice said again, as mu stared down at the bumblebee in slowly dawning realization. And this time mu could see the bees mouth moving in time with the words, even though mu was pretty certain that carpenter bees did not have the right kinds of mouth parts to pronounce those syllables at all. "My name is Thentin, what is yours?"

Oh.

Oh crap.

Oh wow.

Oh crap.

"Uh—um," Mu stammered, almost too shocked to speak, "My name is Ember."

Mu had dreamed of this moment for years, but never thought it would really happen. Not like this, and most certainly not when mu was only ten years old.

Neither of oz parents had found their aethers yet, and most of oz teachers hadn't found their aethers yet. Most young celebrities hadn't found their aethers yet, and even the president hadn't found his aether yet, and he was really old, like, 50 something!

And yet the bumblebee — Thentin — said, in perfect English, "Hello, Ember." and it was beyond all doubt that it was Ember's aether.

Only aethers looked like normal animals but could talk, no matter what kind of animal form they were in. Even though this one was tiny, the size of a bee, its voice was clear as day, though a little bit of a monotone, almost robotic. But maybe that was because this was the first time it had ever spoken?

Either way, the fact was undeniable. This was Ember's aether. This big, fluffy, bedragled carpenter bee with sparkly green eyes, still staring up at mu from the bent over aster. Thentin. Its name was Thentin. It — no, wait —

Ember reached out to straighten the flower so Thentin wouldn't have to hold on so tightly. "Um, hello, Thentin." Mu said, trying to sound normal and friendly instead of shocked beyond belief, "Do you know what pronouns you want to use? What should I think of you as?" Without thinking, mu said, "Mine are mu/oz/ozself. You use them the same way you use it/its/itself."

Then, as oz brain caught back up to the reality of the situation, and the ways this could end horribly, mu hastened to add, "But, um, I keep them secret, so, please don't tell anyone else, alright? Please call me he/him if we're around other people."

Oz heart was racing in oz chest now, as elation warred with worry and confusion and too many other things mu didn't even know what to call. Would mu have to explain the whole concept of pronouns to Thentin? Would they understand the concept of keeping them a secret?

Thentin was silent for a few moments, long enough for oz anxiety to spike further.

Then the bumblebee aether spoke. "I don't know what my pronouns are yet, but I'll keep yours secret for you. You can just call me...whatever works best, for now, if you have to keep your own secret."

What would 'work best' for now would be she/her pronouns, since most people assumed that an aether was always 'the opposite' gender of the person they'd bonded to. It wasn't unheard of for aethers to be 'the same', but that was rare enough, and controversial enough, that Ember didn't think it would be worth the risk. Especially not if Thentin hadn't even decided what pronouns...she actually wanted to use yet.

"Most people will assume you use she/her pronouns, so I'll call you that until you decide otherwise, if that's okay?" Ember wasn't sure if mu was asking a question or making a statement.

But Thentin didn't seem to mind. "That is okay with me." She said, and then came the magic words that Ember had known were coming. "Do you accept me as your aether?"

Even though Ember had known Thentin was going to ask, it still felt like the entire world slowed to a standstill as mu heard the words, and oz thoughts began whirling faster than time itself.

This was always the climax of movies, and books, and comics. Once someone found their aether, they had the option to either accept, or reject it. Always those fated words, in different voices, from different mouths, in different times and places, but always the same. Do you accept me as your aether?

If someone rejected it, that aether would leave, and, sometimes, if the person was lucky, their aether would reappear later, in a different form, in some other place.

But just like the first apparition, there was no telling what circumstances would let them meet again. It could be anything from as simple as going hiking at the right time and place, to fishing a bee out of a creek, to getting lost at sea.

There was no controlling or predicting what form your aether would take, and no guarentee that you would ever see them again if you rejected them the first time. There were legends of people who sent an already bonded aether, or a person, to follow one that had been rejected, leading to various fantastical results, usually in the form of magical journeys.

It had been tried in the real world too, proving that you could re-accept an aether as long as you came bearing gifts of apology, but only if they were still in the same form you'd rejected before. Once they died in their current body, they would be reborn again as a different animal, anywhere on the planet, with no way to track them down again.

Aethers, once bonded, couldn't be injured or killed, so mu wouldn't have to worry about Thentin being crushed by accident in a form so small. Only after Ember died, and was beyond any hope of resuscitation, would Thentin vanish back into the ether she had manifested from in the first place.

The only real question mu needed to ask ozself was — was mu okay with having an aether in the form of a bumblebee?

And the answer was easy. Of course mu was.

This was possibly a once in a lifetime opportunity. There was no way mu was going to give it up just because Thentin hadn't appeared as a bigger or more dramatic form. Mu had once dreampt of an aether that would take the form of a saber toothed tiger, or a polar bear. But now that Thentin was here, mu wouldn't give Thentin up for anything.

Ember said the words mu had been dreaming of saying since mu could remember. "I accept you as my aether."

And mu didn't need to be told to gently reach oz hand out towards Thentin as Thentin began to crawl toward mu.

Ember's outstretched fingers met the light touch of Thentin's front feet, and a spark of life itself jumped between them.

For a few dizzying moments, Ember felt the whole world spin and rearrange itself.

Mu could see ozself, looking back at ozself, through Thentin's eyes, seeing colors mu didn't have words for. And Ember knew that Thentin was seeing the same thing but in reverse — seeing her own bee form through Ember's eyes.

Their thoughts swirled together, curiosity and excitement and wonder and every other emotion under the sun. Memories were shared between them with ease, fast forwarding through their lives up until this moment in a whirlwind of impressions and images.

Thentin had lived more lives than mu had. This carpenter bee body was two years old, but before this, she had been a robber fly, a shovelhead shark, a little brown mudbug, a domestic cat. But the memories of those lives faded the longer and longer it had been since Thentin had lived them, so all that was left were hazy feelings.

But this carpenter bee body was only two years old, and these memories were sharp and fresh. They both saw and felt Thentin's vague dreams from within the tiny carpenter bee egg, then the time as a larva in the wood-bored tunnel, with nothing to worry about except eating the delicious store of pollen her mother had packed in. The slow, sleepy process of pupating, then finally emerging from the tunnels in the spring as an adult, and flying for the first time. Going out in search of flowers in that first spring, and overwintering in that same old pine for the last two years.

Then it was Ember's earliest memory, of running out into the snow before anyone could stop mu in only oz pajama onsies, without any of the proper warm or waterproof clothes, because the prospect of jumping into the snow had just been too exciting, and little baby mu hadn't yet grasped the concept that cold snow = cold Ember.

Then they watched oz last day of kindergarten, when all of the students were given teddy bears of their favorite color. Then the first day of middle school, and oz pride in being the only one who knew the way around because of all the times mu had visited to watch oz older sister compete on the debate team.

They shared memories, and thoughts, and feelings. Every one they had, and even ones they didn't even know they remembered. They shared every moment of embarassment, wonder, joy, and fear.

When the experience was over, Thentin looked up at Ember, and though the bee face couldn't smile, in a purely mental fashion she smiled nonetheless, sending a wave of happiness across the telepathic bond they now shared. The happiness came imbued with the suggary taste of honeysuckle nectar, so Ember could feel it distinct from oz own, which mu pushed back across the bond to share with Thentin.

For a moment they just examined the sensation of the other's happiness and compared it to their own. Ember's tasted like Boston cream pie, the first dessert mu had any real memories of, and always on special occasions. They spent a few more minutes sitting there in the grass, excitedly trading emotions back and forth to see what memories they came entwined with.

For Ember, fear came with the sensation of sitting in the living room in the dark, watching a scary movie that mu was definitely too young to be watching. For Thentin, it was hearing the feeling of flying for her life with a robber fly hot on her tail, knowing that if it caught her, her life as a carpenter bee would end.

Curiosity, they found with a spark of surprise and happiness, was now reflective of their current positions; Ember kneeling in the grass, hearing the trickle of the creak, the wind through the trees, looking down at Thentin as she perched in oz warm hand, looked back up at mu in colors unknown to human eyes, the taste of the aster's nectar still so fresh and strong on her tongue that Ember could taste it as though mu had eaten it ozself.

They spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the creek together, with Ember holding Thentin until she'd rested and dried enough to fly on her own again.

They went through every pronoun set Ember could remember, and made up a few new ones, testing each one out to see if Thentin liked any of them for her secret pronouns.

Finally, they found a set that xa liked, one Ember had made up by just picking different sounds that were fun to say.

The set was xa/vo/co/(no)/xavocono, with the X in xa pronounced like a Z, and used the way you would use they/them/their/(theirs)/themself pronouns.

They practiced sentences together as they played around the creek, making up stories on the spot.

Once there was a kitten born with wings, and xa (they) had color changing fur and feathers that let vo (them) turn almost invisible, except for co (their) eyes, which were always bright red, and sparkly, like rubies. Xa went on adventures with the opossum who lived under the porch of co family's house and opened the windows to let xa out, and xa was always trying to keep away from the animal control van, trying not to let the city find out which house was no.

As they got to this part of their imagined story, it was Thentin who realized that having one of the pronouns just be N O, like the word no, might be confusing if it was written down. So they decided to add an H to the end, making it noh instead, but keeping the pronunciation the same.

So, their original winged cat character, whose name they still hadn't decided on, had to try to keep animal control from figuring out which house was noh.

So, xa/vo/co/(noh)/xavoconoh.

Thentin interjeted that the character's name should be Shimmer, for the way co feathers and fur could shimmer from color to color, and Ember agreed, after thinking about it for a few moments and imagining the sight of a winged cat, shimmering in and out of existance, except for the bright red eyes, which only disappeared when they were closed.

"And maybe xa can make co fur shimmer like a rainbow too?" Ember suggested, and Thentin readily agreed.

It took them a while to figure out a sentence that would let them test the last word in the pronoun set, equivalent to themself. Finally they settled on the idea that Shimmer was afraid of the abandoned buildings that the opossum, whose name and pronouns neither Ember nor Thentin could think of anything for, liked to explore, so xa never went in any of them by xavoconoh; the opossum always had to be there to encourage vo, or xa would never even dream of going in.

The sun was starting on its downward angle by the time Ember and Thentin decided it would be a good time to head back home. Ember was hungry, and was starting to need to use the bathroom.

Mu had no idea how mu was going to tell oz parents about Thentin, besides maybe charging through the front door and yelling, "I found my aether!" at the top of oz lungs. They were going to be so surprised, and probably jealous. They'd want to ask questions, and maybe throw a party? Ember hoped there would be a party, with presents. And Boston cream pie. Maybe mu would get to be on the news and be on TV!

They went home together, Ember walking, Thentin flying next to and above oz.

Unfortunately, they didn't pass anyone on the way back, so there were no strangers they could show off to, despite Ember's fantasies of getting a crowd of admirers to follow them home, cheering and carrying mu on their shoulders.

But both cars were parked in the driveway when they got there, which meant everyone was home, unless their sister had gone over to a friend's.

It was sad that they wouldn't be able to share Thentin's neopronouns with everyone, and would have to just pretend xa was a girl, just like it was sad that Ember still had to hide oz pronouns from everyone. But they were together now, and would always be there to support one another from now on, until their next lives began. They would know each other's real identity, and for now, that would be good enough.

Someday they would be able to tell everyone who they really were, but until then, they had eachother, and the rest of Ember's friends, which mu couldn't wait to introduce Thentin to.

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neopronouns-in-action · 4 months ago

Text

Neopronouns in Action #096: A Gift in the City of Dihautro

Neopronouns: (redacted). Replace every single pronoun with (redacted).

Example paragraph:

"(Redacted) is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as (redacted) gets a fence set up around (redacted) yard so the puppy can go outside without (redacted) having to walk it. (Redacted) uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting (redacted) use, since (redacted) lost (redacted). (Redacted)'s going to buy toys and train the puppy (redacted).

___

Busy shops lined the walkway, with colorful outdoor tables and chairs filled with people, some chatting excitedly, others clearly resisting the urge to fall asleep over their plates.

Gizmo, pulling (redacted) small handcart behind (redacted), had already eaten, so (redacted) was only a little tempted by the colorful signs advertising Bright Street Pizza, where (redacted) favorite stromboli was made.

But (redacted) still couldn't resist getting sidetracked into one of the other familiar shops further down the walkway to get a bag of candied peanuts. That was just tradition at this point, and it only cost ten domuni to get a bag bigger than (redacted) fist, which would last a few days, if (redacted) didn't share it with anyone else.

To make sure that wasn't a problem, (redacted) had bought another two bags, one cinnamon-sugar covered peanuts, the other chocolate covered peacans, and put them immediately into (redacted) handcart. Those would be for Riowolf and the Professor, respectively.

The aptly named Bright Street Candy Shop was larger than Gizmo's living room, with a perpetually open wide doorway taking up almost the entire front wall, inviting people to come in off the street and look around. The inner floor was a smooth mosaic of bright stones in a rainbow of color, with the five angled walls lined with shelves of candy, and a round circle of more displays in the center, leaving plenty of room to manuver on all sides. The checkout area was along the very back wall.

Next to the door were stacks of bags and buckets you could take to fill with candy as you went around the store to the different dispensers of chocolates, gummies, cookies, and powders, some individually wrapped, most loose. A bag cost 10 domuni, while a bucket cost 100. You could take as much candy as you could fit in one. The bags were bigger than Gizmo's fist. The buckets were larger, and made of textured, painted aluminum, and could be brought back again later to refill for a 20 domuni discount.

Gizmo had only gotten a bucket once, for (redacted) tenth birthday, and had kept it for years until it finally got crumpled by accident. These days (redacted) opted for the bags, since they were easier to carry around, and kept the candy contained and separated. There was nothing worse than biting into what you expected to be a handful of sweet gummies, only to realize some of the spicy ones had gotten mixed in by accident.

On (redacted) way out, Gizmo dropped fifty domuni into the "pass on the fun" bowl, in perpetual voluntary debt to all of the times (redacted) had gleefully bought candy from its fund as a kid.

The traditional visit concluded, Gizmo left the shop and continued down the brightly lit street.

(Archived read-more link)

The sound of other people's voices, and the music spilling out of the theater hall, were more than loud enough to cover up the muffled roar of the wind that was twisting and raging somewhere outside the heavy protective dome.

Despite its name, Bright Street was much more than a street, but the name was old, and it had stuck, and a better name had yet to be suggested. It was named for the lights that never turned off, the shops that never closed, and the false sun that hung far above, hanging down from the metal ceiling of the atmosphere-dome that covered the city of Dihautro—that was the city of Dihautro.

It was one of a dozen dome cities that had been placed down on the planet Vesperian hundreds of years before Gizmo had been born, to provide a habitable zone safely kept away from the toxic air outside, which was inimicable to human life, and didn't show any signs of improving anytime soon.

Bright Street was what they called the entire Bright side of Dihautro, the part that never slept. It was designed for the convenience of visitors from other domes, which all kept different local sleep cycles, all based on the cylces of the ships they'd come in on, which had been based on the geographic locations they'd taken off from, so long ago back on the home planet of Earth, a place so far away that no one alive had ever been there. The only way they knew anything about it was the abundance of archives that had come with the transplant ships, detailing histories, culture, and everything else the original launchers had thought might be important.

Though it had been designed with vistitors in mind, Bright Street also benefited locals like Gizmo, whose sleep cycles were, despite all efforts at correction, at complete odds with the rest of their home city. Most of them ended up working here on what was considered the "night shift", to serve other night owls like themselves and visitors from other domes.

Gizmo could have gotten a job here if (redacted) wanted to, could probably have even gotten a job in Bright Street Candy, but (redacted) didn't.

Instead, (redacted) had a job as an underworker in (redacted) home neighborhood. This meant it was (redacted) responsibility to climb down into the underbelly of the city, the complex system of piping, corridors, and deposit areas that kept the city, warm, fed, lit, and living.

There were other workers who were in charge of maintaining the upper areas of the dome, called upperworkers, and their work was less dirty, but Gizmo had always been afraid of heights, so there was no amount of money you could have paid (redacted) to take that job.

Sometimes you could look up and see the upperworkers, mere dark specks against the grey, hanging or climbing on the underside of the metal sky. There were dozens of safety systems in place to prevent falls, and to catch you if the first steps failed, but, still...

There were horror stories and urban legends of people who fell, and instead of going splat when they hit the ground, they just kept falling forever, through the floor, through the planet below, and just kept going, falling out into space, forever, beyond all the stars that had ever burned.

Knowing that those were just fantasies made up by kids trying to scare eachother didn't make them any less scary. Gizmo would rather stay underground forever than climb even twenty feet up the wall, no matter how many safety harnesses and nets there were to catch (redacted) if (redacted) fell.

Regular jobs in Bright Street would be easier, but very few people actually wanted to be an underworker, and Gizmo enjoyed the novelty, and the fact that it meant most of (redacted) time was spent alone except for (redacted) required two-person buddy, Joe, who was just as much of a social hermit as (redacted) was.

They got along well, taking turns dictating into the personal computer they'd opted to share. Joe wrote poetry, and Gizmo wrote fiction, and they both enjoyed listening to the first drafts of the other's work. They usually spent at least part of each shift going over their existing stories, read out by the same computer, proofreading the other's writing and offering suggestions, or new ideas when writer's block struck.

The work they did only rarely required enough specific focus that they couldn't talk or listen while they did it, so it was a perfect set up. Mostly, they just shoveled, brushed, hosed, and raked clogs and buildup out of the pipes, and fed it back into the appropriate waste recycling stations. The original builders of the domes had been meticulous in keeping the design efficient, but there were still problem areas that needed maintenance. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.

But jobseeking wasn't why Gizmo was walking down Central Bright Street. No, (redacted) was here on a different mission.

That mission? Visit every single used book store (redacted) could find, to see if any of them had a copy of An Episode of Flatland, by Charles Howard Hinton.

Gizmo's friend, and crush, Riowolf, had recently gotten obsessed with the concept of higher dimensions after reading Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbot Abbot, and had been trying to collect any books on the subject he could find. So far, the only one that was still missing was An Episode of Flatland, which had been based on the book by Edwin Abbot Abbot.

Gizmo was determined to find it for him. (Redacted) had set aside three thousand domuni for buying gifts for friends with, or materials to make gifts with, and, considering it was such an old, niche book, Gizmo was assuming (redacted) would probably be able to find it somewhere for around thirty domuni, maybe sixty if the seller was really pushing it. So (redacted) should have more than enough to buy it.

(Redacted) had checked the dome's archives, which went all the way back to the first Landing Day, and An Episode of Flatland had been included in the catalogue from Project Gutenberg, with many printing dates logged.

That meant that somewhere in Dihautro there had to be at least a few used copies floating around, unless by some miracle every single copy of it had been taken to another dome by traders. Which wasn't likely, because they all had the exact same access to the catalogue, so they could just print their own.

Gizmo knew that if there were any copies of the book to be found in Dihautro, they were most likely to be found in the used book stores on the Bright side. There were book stores in the local areas, but they were closed for the night. (The night that didn't coincide with Gizmo's circadian rhythm, despite the fact that (redacted) had been born here and had never been exposed to any other day and night cycle.)

(Redacted) glanced back over (redacted) shoulder at the thought, looking at the giant wall that rose up to the very top of the dome. That was the barrier between the ever-waking Bright side, and the side with the artificial day and night cycles. The Bright side took up a relatively small portion of the whole city, but it was still big enough to get lost in, if you ignored all of the maps and your own implanted GPS locator.

The other wall that formed this corner of the dome was currently hidden behind highrise hotels, where (redacted) could see people hanging out on the balconies and splashing in the various pools on the upper levels. Gizmo shuddered at the sight. No way in Vesperian would (redacted) ever be caught dead that high above the ground of (redacted) own free will. A lot of the swimming pools were contained inside glass walls like an aquarium, so you could feel like you were swimming in the sky, and look out to see all of Bright Street.

(Redacted) had no idea how people thought that was fun instead of absolutely terrifying. What if the glass broke? It was true that it had never even come closing to doing so in the five-hundred odd years since Dihautro had been founded, but still. There was a first time for everything. Not even the amazing engineering of the original designers could last forever. As was shown by the fact that Gizmo's job existed in the first place.

If the original design had been perfect, then no auxilary maintenance would have been required at all, the city would be able to keep itself in perpetual perfect order all on its own.

Gizmo dropped (redacted) eyes from the nightmare towers of terror and kept on, looking ahead for the street signs that would let (redacted) know (redacted) had entered the printing district of Bright Street.

Maybe, if none of the used stores had it, (redacted) would spring for a custom print, and pull out all the stops. Real leather binding, metal clasp, inked illustrations, the works.

It was for Riowolf. Nothing was too good for him. And the book was bound to be amazing. It was hard to go wrong with stories exploring the concepts of higher dimensions!

The more (redacted) thought about it, the more the idea of a custom print appealed to (redacted).

By the time (redacted) actually got to the printer's district, it was settled. (Redacted) would be requesting a new print, with all the bells and whistles.

One week later, when (redacted) presented the gift to Riowolf, he was estatic, and thanked (redacted) over and over again. Gizmo was overjoyed, especially when Riowolf almost immediately rushed off to start reading.

Two days after that, Riowolf had finished reading the long awaited Episode of Flatland, because he'd spent almost every free minute doing just that. Gizmo couldn't wait to ask him about it.

He put his hand on (redacted) shoulder, smiled, and said, "Gizmo, I think you deserve an award for getting a print of this book."

(Redacted) heart had almost stopped beating for sheer joy, but (redacted) still managed to ask, "Is the story that good?"

But to (redacted) confusion, Riowolf shook his head, his long black hair bouncing on his shoulders. "No. It's the exact opposite. This story is so terrible, it almost put me to sleep. I think you deserve an award for having the most exquisite print ever made of what is probably the worst book I've ever read. I love it. Thank you. Now please, for the love of all that is holy, please let me tell you just how bad this story is."

His words could have been negative, but the tone in which he said them made all the difference. It had always been a favorite past-time of theirs to complain about horrible books together.

The two were in (redacted) living room, facing eachother on the couch.

Gizmo grabbed (redacted) remaining candied peanuts, and leaned back against the cushions, getting comfy. "Please," (redacted) said, "Tell me how bad it is."

The next several hours were taken up by Riowolf regailing Gizmo about every single problem, ranging from baffling to infuriating to mind-numbingly boring that existed in An Episode of Flatland. From the false promises the introduction made, to the fact that most of the scenes physically could not exist in the world as it had been described, to the fact that the author literally lied to your face in promising that Mrs. Castle would be important and relevant to the story later, only for her never to appear or be mentioned again.

The sheer level of word soup you had to wade through just to figure out what the characters were supposed to be saying, only to realize that nothing they were saying made any sense to begin with. The fact that the story might unironically have been pushing the idea that dictatorships are secretly good.

It was so terrible. It was so boring.

And the book was so beautiful.

It was the best gift Riowolf had ever gotten. He was going to build a plinth and display it in his living room.

Gizmo considered the money well spent.

#neopronouns #neopronouns in action #short story #short stories #original fiction #fiction #writing prompts #story ideas #public domain #neopronoun short story #redacted pronouns #scifi #science fiction

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neopronouns-in-action · 5 months ago

Text

Neopronouns in Action #095: Somatic Response

9k words long.

There are probably some typos still, please let me know if you find them.

A story where an escape slave realizes that nor very being has been tampered with, making nol compelled, on pain of death, to obey any order, or request, nox are given.

Because I read a racist story that brought this concept up like it was just a lighthearted joke and nothing to actually be concerned about, despite it being a real thing the protagonist should be concerned about, and wanted to fix it....and things got out of hand.

Neopronouns: nox/nol/nor/(nors)/nolself which follow the same rules as they/them/their/themself

Replace they with nox

Replace them with nol

Replace their with nor

Replace theirs with nors

Replace themself with nolself

Example paragraph:

"They are going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as they get a fence set up around their yard so the puppy can go outside without them having to walk it. Their uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting them use, since they lost theirs. They're going to buy toys and train the puppy themself.”

Becomes:

"Nox are going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as nox get a fence set up around nor yard so the puppy can go outside without nol having to walk it. Their uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting nol use, since nox lost nors. Nox're going to buy toys and train the puppy nolself.”

(archived read-more link)

___

It had been a mistake for Night to list “security guard” as nor occupation in the ship’s manifest. Nox should have just left it blank, or said nox were unemployed, or between jobs, or looking for employment, or on vacation, or whatever it was people said when they didn’t have a job. Or nox should have made something up; said nox were an artist, or something. Maybe a writer. Something that wouldn’t require any proof. Or just said any of the other numbers of jobs nox’d done; cook, janitor, farmhand, launderer, pest removal.

But Night had been nervous when filling out the form, and hadn’t wanted to have to stand there any longer than necessary, staring at the screen with the line of other passengers waiting behind nol with the feel of nor bruises still fresh, hidden beneath nor clothes, so nox had, in a moment of anxiety, defaulted back to what was closest to the truth: security guard; the only truly specialized job nox had ever had, though only against nor will.

Nox had spent nor whole life enslaved on the River Rise Plantation on Mars, situated along one of the smaller, less well-known canals, where tourists rarely ventured, and so were less likely to protest about the enslavement of the workers, if they even felt inclined to protest at all. It was owned and run by an Ezzekijj family, the ethnic majority on this part of Mars, the same group the current Planetary President was pushing as the most pure and ancient. Night's family were Idivet, the original inhabitants of what was now known as River Rise City.

Night could remember a few tours the owners had given to giddy tourists from planets where slavery was outlawed. Usually, they were the kind who wanted that to change. They wanted to take in some "ancient" Martian wisdom for twisting public opinion, and thus public law, into looking the other way when it came to slavery.

Because it was well known that slavery was not illegal on Mars, but not as well known, officially, that it was actually practiced.

Because those who kept other people as property, and those who were in the pockets of those who did, made a lot of official, outraged fanfare to the tune of “What kind of barbarians do you think we are that we’d need to make slavery illegal of all things? Do you Venusians, Earthlings, and Jovians need to also be told not to eat your own leg out from under you? Do you only have morals because you are afraid of punishment if you do not? Is the only reason you do not practice slavery the fact that it is illegal where you come from? Do you think we lack the same morals just because we do not waste time coding the obvious into law? How shameful!”

The Martians who protested this line of propaganda were either quickly silenced, or painted as traitors to the "Ancient Martian Code of Honor and Way of Life", despite the publicly known, if heavily covered up fact that slavery had, in fact, been outlawed on Mars for hundreds of years before the first See-aye-ay Earthlings had landed there and cozied up to the then-newly elected Governor Hakkjan, who was now reigning over his eighty-third consecutive term as Planetary President.

Planetary President Hakkjan's first declaration after coming into power had been to remove laws prohibiting slavery from all of the law books, declaring that they were archaic and a waste of important bookkeeping space among civilized people who didn't need to be told that it was wrong like they were newborns.

That was the one and only time he personally commented upon slavery and its morality or legality in any official capacity. Every consecutive year since, he and his government had done everything they could to make the public forget that slavery had ever been outlawed. The topic was banned in schools, and older textbooks that talked about it were revoked and burned, and replaced with new copies, that contained government-approved "alternative facts" about Martian history.

The only reason Night knew any of this was because nor parents had grown up with the original textbooks, the original history classes, and had seen the rise of Hakkjan and his pro-slavery rhetoric in real time.

They had had lives outside of slavery. And they'd made sure their children, who had been denied that right, at least knew the real facts, no matter what the plantation owners tried to indoctrinate them with in the few rare times they tried to "educate" the slaves in any capacity.

Night had no memories outside of the plantation. Nox could only dream of being able to go to school, of being able to play with children nox'd never met before. The only people nor age nox had ever been able to interact with were nor own siblings, and the children of the Linor family, who had been forced onto the same plantation until their owner had left five years ago to start up a new one in another province, and took them with her.

The rest of the slaves who had remained were adults, friendly to Night and nor siblings, but not up to the same level of energetic play between work hours as the other kids had been.

When Night had turned fourteen, it had become nor’s job to patrol the plantation in shifts with some of the adults, on the lookout for reporters, or thieves, or to help break up fights between the owners' extended family and stop them from hurting eachother, and let them take their anger out on Night instead. The adults had always contrived to trade shifts with Night to let nol patrol the outer edges, rather than being forced inside with the owners, whenever they could.

There had only been a few times when their attempts had failed, for one reason or another, and Night had a scar on nor upper left arm to show for the time one of the owner's nephews had decided, in a drunken passion, to demonstrate some theory on racial purity by cutting Night, hoping nor blood would be some color other than purple, despite all scientific evidence proving otherwise. He had grabbed Night and forced nor sleeve up, his blue-green hand bruisingly tight on Night's tiny, darker, yellow-green arm.

When nox had bled purple, the exact same shade of purple as his own blood, which he'd offered up as evidence, he'd gotten angry and had decided to punish Night for "ruining his demonstration with Idivet trickery" by dragging nol over to the banquet table, and viciously rubbing an entire fist full of fire-salt into the wound, just to see Night suffer.

The wound, shaped like a ragged crescent the size of nor thumb, had never healed properly, and had left a raised welt that stubbornly stayed pale yellow even years later.

After that, the adults assigned to security had worked even harder to make sure they could always take Night's place when guests were visiting, and they had mostly succeeded. Even if it wasn't always done elegantly or discreetly. Fortunately, most of the plantation owners didn't care very much who was passing out the fingerfood or fetching drinks as long as someone was doing it.

Before nox had been assigned to security work, nox had sometimes done general housekeeping tasks, but mostly worked in the orchard grounds, planting, tending, and harvesting the jadefruit that was destined for Earth, to help the See-aye-ay develop their own latent telepathic abilities.

When a Martian ate jadefruit in combination with four-leaf seeds, they got a strong boost to their telepathic radius while the effects lasted, and it had been used for centuries by search and rescue teams, and for workers in long-distance communications towers.

Before the See-aye-ay had befriended Planetary President Hakkjan, jadefruit had been uncommon, growing only in certain specific conditions, and cultivated carefully, to provide the highest quality fruit with the longest-lasting effects.

That had changed when Planetary President Hakkjan had set up a trade agreement with the See-aye-ay. They would send Mars quartz—which was extremely rare on Mars, but very common on Earth—in return for the jadefruit, as much of it as they could produce. Four-leaf was common enough that they could get that from other sources, so that wasn't part of the arrangement.

Quartz was one of the most valued minerals to Martians, because it was so incredibly rare, and, if injested, or injected under the skin, would sharpen telepathic scanning to provide a sharper, clearer image. It was useless to the See-aye-ay in their current all-but-anpathic state, but highly valued by the Martians.

As far as the See-aye-ay and Planetary President Hakkjan’s government were concerned, it was a fair deal all the way around.

No one ever bothered to ask the ethnic minorities who were rounded up en masse and forced to work as slaves on the new high-intensity-yield plantations their thoughts on any of it.

And no one ever did bother to tell the See-aye-ay that the jadefruit they were getting in return for the valuable quartz was the lowest grade ever produced on the planet.

Both sides in the trade agreement had their own power plays and agendas, and neither side was actually doing their best to increase the strength of the other, despite all their official promises to do so. They only cared about their own power, and nothing else.

Night's family was just one of the countless that had gotten swept up and drowned in the political machinations between the two groups.

Their house had been broken into one night when nox were just a baby, still in the cradle.

Nox had had the pain-delivering control chip in nor head for as long as nox could remember, and had no memories of that home, only the stories, beautiful and idylic with nostalgia, nor older siblings had to share, of playing hide and seek in the woods nearby, of their heights as they grew painted carefully onto one wall, and their own first, shaky telekinetic brush-strokes marking the tops of their heads when they became practiced enough to try it, just for the sake of proving they could.

For Sarin’s fifteenth birthday, she had gotten a young basalt hopper, the domestic cousin to the much smaller, and much more aggressive and venemous lava hoppers. She’d named him Syrtis, after the Earthling name for the volcanic plane where his species originated. She had spent every day after that training him, learning to ride him, and showing off to her friends and family. Until the night their home had been raided.

Sarin was the only one of Night’s three siblings who had reached their fifteenth birthday in freedom. Nor older brother, Festival had gotten a quiet celebration at night, held among all of the others in captivity with them, Idivet or not, and his coming of first age had, fortunately, been overlooked by the plantation owners.

Night wasn't so lucky. For nor fifteenth birthday, nox had been taken out of the orchard in the middle of pruning day, without any warning or explanation, and marched to the office building to be examined by the on-site physician.

It had been terrifying, being ordered to strip to their underwear and then lie down on an examination table while being poked and prodded by a complete stranger who didn’t even say a single word to nol outside of telling nol to sit up or lie down. To the doctor and his assistant, Night had been just been some animal, no different from the other lab-krayits watching from small cages that lined one wall.

After Night had been allowed to put nor clothes back on and was allowed to sit up, one of the plantation owners had come into the room. She had walked circles around Night, looking at nol from all angles, before nodding her approval to the physician.

Then the two had had some kind of extremely technical discussion, using words Night had never heard before, and found very hard to remember later.

It had gone on for so long that Night had somehow ended up accidentally falling asleep right there on the examination table, despite it still being early morning.

When nox woke up, the only one still in the room was the assistant, because the actual doctor and owner had already left to go back to their work.

The assistant escorted Night brusquely out of the offices, and upon stepping outside, nox had been shocked to realize that the sun was setting. Nox had slept the entire day away. Why hadn’t anyone woken nol up? It wasn’t like any of the owners to let a slave waste valuable time sleeping. Had nox been drugged? It was the only thing that made sense. But why? Nox couldn't see anything amiss, except that the scar on nor arm itched a little. [[[[

Shaken, left to find nor own way back to nor family’s cottage in the center of the plantation, Night had done nor best to explain what had happened to the anxious crowd that had gathered.

Nox tried to recount the conversation between the doctor and the owner when nox came to that part of the story, but most of it nox couldn't remember. Nox thought the word ‘semantic’ might have been used a lot, but when nox told the others that, none of them could figure out how that could have anything to do with Night.

Semantic was a fancier way of saying the meaning of words, how they fit together and worked. Unless the owners were planning to teach Night to be a scribe or something, no one could think of any reason for ‘semantic’ to be used. And it didn’t make sense for a doctor to be concerned about it, so it was decided that Night had either misheard or misunderstood.

What the conversation had actually been about, they could only speculate on.

Night never had been brought back to the offices again after that, nor had nox been entered into any grammar contest or anything that would explain the use of the word ‘semantic’. After a few weeks had passed, when it seemed like it had all been a waste of time after all, Night mostly stopped thinking about it.

Two years later, and there was the accident that deactivated nor control chip.

Five months after that had come the fateful night when nox had escaped the plantation, and left behind everything nox’d ever known. Every member of nor family, every friend nox'd ever had. All riding on the chance that nox could get off the planet, could get to Earth or Venus or Jupiter, and find someone willing to help. Slavery wasn't illegal on mars, but it was illegal on other planets, and they had granted asylum to escaping slaves in the past. All Night could do was hope that that asylum would extend to the rest of the slaves on the plantation, and that nox could somehow cause enough public uproar to rescue them all. Nox didn't even hope the owners would be punished. They were too well-connected to the Hakkjan government for anything to stick, but if everyone else could just be freed...

This was why Night was here on this passenger ship, headed to a crossroads station with ships going to and from Earth, Venus, Jupiter, and the rest, and why nox had put ‘security guard’ as nor occupation in the guest book.

Nox didn’t expect anything to come of it. Nox had stolen enough money — physically impossible to trace, thanks to the plantation's unwillingless to admit exactly how much profit they were somehow making on one of the world's most difficult crops — when nox’d escaped that nox thought nox could stay in nor room the whole time and order room service, give nolself time to heal from the bruises and stress. Give nolself some time to plan where nox would go next.

Earth, Venus, and Jupiter were the most loudly anti-slavery as far as their official planetary stances went, despite the See-aye-ay being Earthlings. They were a fringe group, the remnants of a collapsed government that had been overthrown. Each planet's government might be willing to help Night, but they each had their own political plots and stances that might make their response slow, half-hearted, or even withheld entirely.

Night wasn't a politician, nox had no idea which government would be the most likely to react with the speed that was needed. Maybe if nox somehow petitioned all three of them at once? Was that possible? Maybe it would make them fight over who could do the right thing first, to show off, or maybe it would make them waste time fighting over who had jurisdiction or...

There were so many things that could go wrong, or right, and Night had no idea how to sort them out. Nox just wanted time to calm down and relax. Once nox got to the crossroads station, nor parents had promised, there would be government directories that would help nol petition for asylum. All nox had to do was go to the visitor's kiosk, and ask them to point nol to the asylum office.

Festival had asked the question no one had wanted to admit they were all thinking. "But what if they don't listen?"

Night's parents hadn't answered. No one had. They couldn't do anything about that possibility until it actually became a real obstacle to find a way around.

The passenger ship had been easy to board. There had been a public line for tickets, the guest book where you signed in, and that was that. No identification necessary, as long as you weren't obviously below the age of majority. The dark stripes and spots on Night's exposed skin, and nor golden eyes, clearly marked nol as old enough not to legally require a chaperone or permission from a guardian anymore.

Those markers of age could be faked in theory, but apparently that wasn't a big enough of a problem that anyone felt the need to ask for identification to prove it. It just made Night glad that nox had been the one to escape, rather than nor younger sibling, Kani, who was only ten, and would have been stopped. Whether its testimony about being an escaped slave seeking asylum would have been believed was anyone's guess, but the answer would probably have been no. Planetary President Hakkjan had too tight of a grasp on public opinion with the propaganda he constantly pushed.

Slavery, according to all official sources, was a thing of the past. It didn't need to be legislated against because every Martian with brains already knew it went against everything they believed in, and would never dishonor themselves by enacting it, no matter what the law said.

Most people would not take the word of a Idivet child over that of the government, especially when that child was unaccompanied and had no identification to prove anything.

Night had already been assaulted once, and was just glad that it had happened to nol, rather than any of nor family or friends.

The trip to the crossroads station was supposed to be simple, a respite from the scrutiny and aggression and fear of being caught and brought back to the jadefruit plantation.

It had never crossed Night's mind that that the ship’s captain, might not only read, but actually pay attention to the passenger list.

Nox could not have predicted that the captain would call nol not even two hours after lift off, requesting nor help with security to resolve what was turning into a fight in the cafeteria, brought on by overly-enthusiastic and overly drunk passengers arguing about whose planetary anthem was the most inspiring. It had started out friendly, then turned into a contest to see who could out-sing the others, which had turned into pushing, which had turned into punching.

The captain of the ship was an Earthling human, so they probably didn't realize that just because Night was past the age of stripes didn't mean nox were actually an adult yet. Nox would be no more capable of controlling a bunch of angry drunken adults than any other juvenile. Nox wasn't even close to being fully grown yet, and couldn't even legally drink yet, let alone have a job. But the captain must not have been very familiar with Martian biology yet, despite running a passenger ship to and from Mars.

They had offered to pay Night for nor help, offering 75 credits per hour, rounded up. So if Night just showed up and helped out for five minutes, nox would get paid for the full hour. As far as Night could tell, based on the cost of the passenger ticket, and how much the food at the ship station had cost, compared to how much nox'd managed to steal when they escaped the plantation, 75 credits was probably a high rate of pay. It was enough to buy half a dozen tickets, or six dozen of the face-sized pastry rolls that had been sold at the ship station, and still have some left over. Credits were the universal currency used in space, and could be freely converted into the desired planetary currency as long as you were on a planet in the alliance.

The passenger ship had accepted all forms of currency, so it hadn't been a problem for Night to pay in hard coins instead of a digital credit block. The employee at the guest book had just converted the Martian coins into credits through her computer, then had told Night how much nox needed to pay, with a printed out receipt guaranteeing the conversion rate was accurate.

Nox hadn't had time to go through and actually count all the money nox had left after paying for the ticket and food. It seemed like a lot, weighing heavily in the bottom of nor backpack, and clinking together when nox took some out to look at it, but nox really had no idea. There were different types of coins, some nox had never seen before, and hadn't realized existed. Nor parents had taught nol how to count money with loose change they'd picked up around the plantation, and through drawings, but some of these coins were brand new, and seemed to be completely new types to any that had been included in nor lessons.

All of the new types had Planetary President Hakkjan's face stamped on one side, and his heraldic crest on the other. Most of the coins were made of metal, grey or orangey-yellow in color, with some of the oldest being greenish.

Most of the new ones featuring Planetary President Hakkjan were made of a semi-transparent-white stone that Night could only assume was the famous quartz of Earth. They were probably worth a lot, but Night had no way to find out, and didn't want to risk asking to find out. Something told nol that the quartz coins were not something a juvenile was likely to be casually carrying around. They would raise questions.

So the prospect of getting paid, to make sure nor money didn't run out, and to help disguise exactly how much nox had, was very tempting. It was so tempting Night almost accepted the captain's offer. Almost.

But Night wasn’t here to work, nox were here to relax, and try to give nor body time to actually heal from the public beating nox had already taken, not get into fights with drunken adults. Nox were here to try and heal, and try to calm down and be able to plan properly just what nox were going to say when nox got to the crossroads station.

So nox said no.

And nox wanted to mean it. Nox really wanted to mean it. Nox really, really wanted to mean it.

Nox tried to mean it. And it wasn't the temptation of the money that held nol back from following through.

The ship had free wifi, and the hotel rooms all had their own TV sets. Nox had been watching a movie from nor bed when the ship’s captain had commed to ask nol to work for them, and nox had planned to go back to watching it once the call had ended. It was an ancient movie from Earth, earnest in its grainyness and grey-painted human actors. The Creation of the Humanoids. Special markers in the subtitles had been added to indicate the genders of the human characters, to make it easier for other species to understand.

A historical context tip before it had started had explained that this movie had been made in a culture where the only accepted partnerships were between a male man with he/him pronouns, and a female woman with she/her pronouns, with the goal of having children. This movie was fiction, set in an imaginary future to the people who wrote it, and any resemblances to real history or people was unintended and purely coincidental.

The movie had continued playing in the background while nox had gotten distracted with the comm, because Night hadn’t been able to figure out how to pause it with the unfamiliar remote control while also trying to talk on the comm at the same time. Nox had never spoken on a comm before, and it was nerve-wracking to be talking to someone as important as the captain, and without being able to see their face, it felt like it was harder to understand them. All of Night's attention had been forced to the comm call, trying to ignore the still-playing movie in the background that wasn't helping nol hear what the captain was saying.

The call had ended and the movie was still going, showing the apparent the leading character and a new female character standing in a room, both of them angry. Night had no idea why.

The female character said, her voice rising with bitterness, "That would be a dramatic gesture! You like dramatic gestures, don't you? You won't throw him out, because you can't.” Her chin tilted up, nothing but contempt in her pose, according to the body language subtitles.

The man—her brother?—demanded, "Your answer is no?"

"My answer is go ahead and try." the woman replied, and the subtitles said her voice was cold and proud.

Night couldn’t figure out how to rewind, too worked up by the sudden surprise of the comm call, and had to resign nolself to figuring out what was happening while missing the first half of the scene. The subtitles helped with explaining the alien body language and general culture, but they didn't summarize the plot that had already happened.

The two characters were arguing about something, and there was a third character, painted grey to represent a robot, but Night suddenly found nox couldn’t follow the dialogue, couldn’t figure out what they were all upset about, besides it having something to do with the robot character.

The first part of the movie had set up very clear antagonism against the robots, so the male character, whose name Night could not remember for the life of nox, which these subtitles didn't list, was probably upset about that. There had been other subtitle options, including ones that would list out all the character's names, but Night hadn't thought nox would need to use it. And now nox couldn't figure out how to go back to the menu to select them.

What were they arguing about? Nox could remember the word “rapour” being mentioned a few times, but had no idea what it meant. It hadn't been explained in the first part of the movie that nox'd seen, and didn't seem like it was getting explained now. Maybe they'd explained it while nox had been on the comm, but that was no help now.

And even with the subtitles on, and the text enlarged enough that Night didn’t have to squint, nox still couldn’t understand what was going on now.

It was like nor ears and eyes had both suddenly decided to stop communicating with nor brain.

The audio and visual was coming in, but no understanding was coming back out. And nox still couldn’t just figure out which symbol on the box-shaped remote meant rewind.

Nox was aware that a fourth character had entered the scene, and that the male lead was no longer angry, but beyond that, nox had no idea what was happening.

Nox blinked and rubbed at nor eyes, wondering if nox had lost an eyelash, or if nox were really just that tired, but it didn’t help.

Only as nox were lowering nox hands back to the bed did nox finally notice nox were shaking uncontrollably.

It was because nox were so tired, exhausted, and still hurting from the attack. The surprise comm call hadn't helped either.

That was why nor hands were shaking. Nox just needed to lie down, turn the movie off, and take a nap. It was the middle of the day, as far as nor body was concerned, no matter what the rest of the ship’s many clocks were set to. An afternoon nap was entirely reasonable and would do nox some good.

There was nothing to be upset by. The captain was friendly, and hadn’t even gotten upset that nox had turned them down. It was surprising and strange that they had tried to recruit Night in the first place, but that was just some weird cultural difference and the captain not knowing how to recognize a juvenile from an adult. There was nothing worth getting upset over, besides the annoying icons on the TV’s remote not making any sense, and the movie still playing on as though Night had any clue what was happening.

Nox knew that escaping the plantation meant nox had a choice in what nox did now, and that meant nox could say no if somebody asked nol to do something, so this was nol saying no.

Exercising that freedom that everyone was always going on about. It was an under-used muscle, so it was a sore one, just like any muscle you over-extended without enough training. Nox just needed to relax and stop worrying so much about things that were beyond nor control. Nox could count the money after nox woke up, and try to figure out how much each of the new coins were worth. There was probably a database on the ship's computers that would teach you all about the different kinds of currency.

Nox were just tired, and lonely, and scared. But it was okay. Nox were on nor way to the crossroads station, where nox would be able to get help for everyone waiting for nol to come back with a rescue. All nox'd have to do was step off the passenger ship, walk up to the welcome desk, and ask where the asylum office was. It would be easy. It was nothing to be frightened of. No reason for nor hands to be shaking. Nox were just tired.

The minutes went on, and the movie kept playing, now just a blurry, ununderstandable mess of meaningless audio and color.

Night tried to tell nolself that this was just some simple anxiety from all of the very real reasons nox had to be anxious about. Nox were on nor own on a passenger ship filled with strangers, most of whom were aliens. Nox were the only hope nor family and friends had of being rescued all these long years after being forced into slavery. Nox was rightfully afraid of being caught and sent back to the plantation. Nox had plenty of things to be afraid of. But panicking wouldn't help any of those problems. Nox just needed to calm down.

Nox wanted to go to sleep, or to go back to watching the movie.

But even when Night closed nor eyes in the hopes of letting them refocus when nox opened them again an indeterminable amount of time later, which might have been several seconds, or several minutes, the blurriness didn’t go away.

Try as nox might, nox just could not understand anything that was happening on the TV any more. Nox could barely even comprehend nor own thoughts.

Nox were lying flat out on the large hotel bed, on what nox knew was a mattress with automatic climate control, but nox couldn’t even feel the warm that nox knew had to still be radiating up from it, and nox could barely feel the softness of the blankets between nor fingers when nox reached out and gripped it to try and flex feeling back into nor numb hand.

Nox could no longer smell any of the aromas that had come with the room's atmosphere. They had been designed to shift from one flavor to the next as you got used to the first one, so you would always have something nice to smell. When nox had turned the movie on, the room had smelled like vanilla, the Earthling spice. It was supposed to go switch to eclipse mint next, which would be unmistakable, but Night couldn't smell it. Maybe that just meant the scent system was shut off by accident. Maybe nox had hit a button to do that on the TV remote.

Or maybe it was something worse. Maybe nor body was slowly shutting down, one sense at a time. First hearing, then sight, then touch, then smell. What next? Would the entire world fade out?

Nox were so frazzled and lost that it took nol a long time to even realize that the fluttering in nor chest was caused by nor heart racing.

Nox had enough sense of touch left to realize from the cold under nor armpits that nox had started sweating, even though the temperature controls in the bed and room were designed to prevent overheating.

A fog, thick and heavy, was rolling over nor brain and body so that it was hard to understand anything at all, like a telepathic mountain had dropped out of the sky and onto nor mind, compressing everything almost to the point of death.

But there was one thought that was still crystal clear and sharp and real. And that was the fact that nox were supposed to be doing security, because the captain of the ship, an authority, had asked nol to, and nox weren’t.

As the seconds continued to trickle inexorably by, Night found nolself taking faster and shallower breaths, as though nor lung was suddenly unable to actually process the oxygen. The corners of nox blurred vision began to darken. Despite the sweat, nox could feel nolself shivering uncontrollably, like every heat-producing process in nor body had suddenly collapsed into cold nothingness.

And still the only thing nox could think of clearly was that nox had been asked to do a job, and nox weren’t. Nox were not performing the task requested of nol.

And nox knew it had been a request, specifically, not an order.

The captain had the authority to make it an order, but they hadn’t. They hadn’t even given the smallest sign that they were angry with nol for turning down their offer.

So why was Night shaking? Why was nor heart in nor throat, choking nol? Why did it feel like nor whole entire being was about to shut down? Why was the only thing nox could think about the fact that nox were not providing security when nox were supposed to? Why could nox feel panic through the thick haze of confusion that was drowning nol, where the only clear thought it seemed possible to have was, “Why am I disobeying an order?”

Nox had disobeyed nor owners plenty of times as a more rebellious child, and sometimes it had ended with punishment, but sometimes nox had gotten away with it. But this suffocating confusion had never happened before.

Nox had mostly felt the adrenaline-fueled high of the danger, and the thrill of getting away with it. The camraderie it inspired when schemes with the others succeeded in giving them all less work to go.

Nox had never felt like nox were dying because nox’d taken their time with the dishes even after being told to hurry, or when nox’d pretended not to hear being told to do something.

Disobeying the plantation owners had always been risky, but it was a calculated risk. Some of them had been more violent and likely to activate the control chip at the slightest sign of disobedience, while others had been forgetful enough that they probably wouldn’t even notice you’d disobeyed as long as you didn't give them any reason to remember.

Night and the other slaves had gotten away with disobeying many instructions over the years, playing a careful game of risk assesment and guesswork and making it seem like you were following instructions to the letter when you really weren’t.

None of them time nox had ever disobeyed had felt like this.

Nor control chip had been deactivated in the accident that sent the power out, so it couldn’t force nox to obey anymore, and this wasn’t how control chips meted out punishment in the first place. Through the mechanical implants tied directly to the nervous system, control chips created pain, they could freeze you in place by cutting off the signals to the rest of your body, they could even force your body to perform limited movements like marching or walking to a pre-determined location, but only if there were no obstacles in the path. The owners of the plantation had gone out of their way to arrange the farm rows and buildings so that the control chip’s navigation would always be able to march the slaves from one end to another.

But nor control chip had never done anything like this. This was something different. And it went far beyond the general anxiety nor felt about being in a brand new place, leaving behind everything nox’d ever known, surrounded by strangers, with no idea what was going to happens when nox reached nor destination.

This wasn’t the control chip. That was dead as dead could be. Nor parents had made sure of that before they sent nol out to escape. And it wasn’t any kind of anxiety attack nor had ever felt before.

Night was supposed to have the option to say no, now that nox were free.

But this didn’t feel like nox really had the option to say no.

Nox knew there was no irritable newphew of the plantation owners here to order nox to obey, with a finger waiting, hovering over the activator for nor control chip, if nox didn't move fast enough.

The ship’s captain wasn’t even upset that nox had chosen not to accept their offer of employment. They weren’t hounding nox to change nor mind, they weren’t berating nol through the private system or threatening to kick nol off the ship or withhold access to the cafeteria, or any other number of things nor anxiety-ridden mind could have been coming up with if this were a normal panic attack.

But it wasn't.

The captain had accepted nor excuse of being on vacation, had said, “Thank you anyways, enjoy your night.” and that had been it.

Something was seriously wrong with Night. Wrong, not with the mechanical connections to nor control chip, but nor body itself.

This had never happened before, never. But nox had always either had nor control chip still functioning to force nol to comply with the orders nox couldn't worm nor way out of, or, after the control chip had been damaged, nox had continued to obey anyways, first for fear that the chip had only temporarily malfunctioned, and then later to protect nolself and nor family.

This was the first time nox had ever outright refused to do the job that was demanded, or in this case, simply asked of nol, without any subterfuge to hide the fact that that's what nox were doing.

In some distant part of nor panic hazed mind, nox knew that what nox should be doing was taking deep breaths, focusing on things that would calm nol down, and trying to convince nolself that nox were safe and everything was okay. It was okay to disobey orders. Especially when they weren’t actual orders. It was more than okay to just let the captain handle their own business and lie down and watch a movie or take a nap instead.

Night was free now. Nox had escaped the plantation, and were on nor way to get rescue for the rest of nor family. No one could control nol but nolself. Nor control chip was deader than King Savi from the old plane legends. It couldn't activate anymore, couldn't hurt nol anymore.

But the only thing Night could think about was that nox had been asked to do a job, provide security, and nox had refused.

Night didn’t know what would happen if nox lost consciousness, but some core part of nol recoiled in the most visceral fear nox had ever felt in nor life, and nox suddenly became convinced that nox would actually, really die if nox did not stand up right that second and go out there and do the job the captain had asked nol to do.

This was not an exaggerated fear in the midst of panic. Nox knew how to recognize those as the absurdities that they were, even if knowing that in the moment didn’t make them less frightening. No. This came to nol crystal clear, as clear as the idea that nox were not obeying orders and nox should be.

If nox did not do nor job, nox would die.

Nox had no choice. No choice at all.

The moment Night made the decision to do what had been asked of nol, it was like a switch had been flipped.

The haze of fog began to disappear, like the blaze of a sun burning it away, and nox were able to think again clearly, sharply.

Nox could feel the heat from the mattress below nol, the exquisitely soft cushion of the blankets. The strong smell of eclipse mint that always made nol remember the cake they'd had on Festival's fifteenth birthday, the last time nor parents had been able to get their hands on even the powdered version of the traditional celebratory spice. Smelling it now sent a sharp pang of rage and grief through nor chest. Why did the people who could afford to stay in this hotel get to smell eclipse mint whenever they wanted, but nor parents couldn't even beg hard enough to be given a single leaf with which to celebrate Night's fifteenth birthday?

But the next memory-filled breath nox took was easier than the one that had come before it, and the next was easier than that.

Night was able to get to nor feet without stumbling or feeling out of breath. The TV was still going, still playing the movie, as nox put on nor jacket with hands that now shook for a different reason.

“A report came in that an R34 had killed a human being...You can imagine the stir that caused….”

None of this was not natural. Nox had learned first aid the hard way, and nox knew that this was not how natural panic attacks worked. Nox had had enough of them, and had helped others through them often enough to know from first hand experience. This was something completely different and all the more horrible.

Night didn’t know how to contact the ship’s captain on nor own to tell them nox’d changed nor mind, but they had said the problem was in the cafeteria, and nox could follow the automated wall-map once nox got into the hallway.

So nox did, hating every easy breath nox took as nox followed the light on the wall.

By the time Night got to the cafeteria to help break up the fight, most of the job was already done, because the captain and two of their crew members had already beaten nol there, but there were still enough angry and drunk passengers for nol to help herd them either back to their tables for some food to mellow them out, or to their cabins to sleep it off.

Fortunately, they weren't as scary as Night had been expecting, they mostly just seemed confused and apologetic.

The captain was surprised and pleased to see Night there, and clapped nol on the shoulder when the mess had died down enough, grinning widely and exclaiming, “Glad to see you decided to come help us out, friend! Say—how do you go about pronouncing that honorific of yours? Is it Mix or Mux? I’ve heard it both ways!”

“I say it Mux,” Nox had said back nervously, trying to keep any remnants of panic out of nor voice. Nox didn’t think nox had succeeded, but that could easily be blamed on the adrenaline of the bar-room brawl that had only just been dissolved.

“Well, thank you for the assistance, Mux Nightfall, I’ll have your payment credited to you as soon as I get back to my office!” Another friendly clap on the shoulder, and a gentle shake. “Now you go and get back to your vacation!"

They tried to turn and leave, but, in a sudden desperate bid, Night grabbed their arm to stop them, and said nervously, "Um, I'm actually not supposed to have a job, I'm only seventeen." Nox realized that might not mean much to an Earthling, and added, "I'm not an adult yet, so, this isn't really legal."

Slavery was also not really legal, but that hadn't stopped anyone. But nox were hoping the ship's captain had more morals than the plantation owners or their customers.

The captain stared, eyes widening, then shook themselves and grinned. "Oh, is that so? Well, then I'll double your pay, and it'll be our little secret! Now, really, go on and get back to your vacation—what is it, summer break from school? Eh, no wait, I don't need to know, just go on, shoo, shoo."

Night could only hope that telling them the truth about nor age would stop them from trying to recruit nol to help with any other incidents. Nox didn't want to have to go through this all over again.

The job officially done with, nox went back to nor room, turned the lights off, jabbed violently at all the buttons on the TV until finally finding the one that turned it off, pressed the pillow over nor face, and did nothing for the next several hours but absorb the true horror of nor situation in a desperate and failed attempt to sleep.

Nox went over, in nor memories, every moment since nor control chip had been deactivated, where nox had considered disobeying orders. They were different from nor earlier memories from childhood. From...

In the darkness of nor room, Night blinked up at the faintly glowing ceiling. Now that nox were thinking about it, nox could locate the distinct moments when disobeying had become, not an almost obligatory past-time to cope with the sheer number of orders nox were given and how many contradicted one another, but had become something nox wanted to avoid at all costs.

It had been a slow creep, at the time, so that nox hadn't noticed. Nox'd chalked it up to understandeable wariness, not wanting to draw any undue attention after the incident on nor fifteenth birthday.

Because that was when it had all started. Nor fifteenth birthday. After nox had been brought to the physician for some mysterious purpose that had never been explained.

Had...had they done something to Night? Nox couldn't think of any other explanation.

Looking back over the past few months, nox could now recognize the symptoms that nox had assumed, at the time, were just the common sense logic that told nol to keep playing along to stay safe, even in situations when it would have been imminently safer to run away as soon as no one was looking, so that nox could get the rest of nor family rescued as quickly as possible.

Compared with all of nor earlier memories of disobeying orders, either obviously, in cases where it had been feasible, or sneakily, there was a stark contrast.

It did not take a genius to realize what had happened and what this meant.

And when the captain asked nol to help the security team again two days later, apparently not put off by the fact that they were illegally employing a minor, and nox again refused, nor worst fear was confirmed. The attack of confusion, senselessness, and fear happened again, exactly the same as the first time.

And just like the first time, as soon as nox decided to give in and do the job, the attack evaporated just as quickly as it had set in.

There was no denying it. The plantation owners had not stopped at control chips. The control chip had been a mechanical solution. And this? This was something organic. They had done something to Night's body, nor brain, or something, to make it impossible for nol to refuse to do the job nox had been told to do, whether nox wanted to or not, no matter how much nox did not want to.

It was the kind of thing that happened in scary stories. Telepathic compulsions that lingered like a curse, forcing the victim to do the bidding of whoever had cast it. It wasn't something that was supposed to really be possible.

But for the 5 months after Night had realized nox control chip had stopped functioning, nox had assumed that nox kept working just the same because nox had had to keep up the pretense, and because nox were worried the chip would somehow repair itself and start working again.

Nox had told nolself there had never been any opportunity to escape, but that had been a lie. Nox could have escaped many times, but nox never had, not even after nox'd told nor family and they had all begged nol to sneak away in the middle of the night, to just get away to safety.

Night had told nolself that this was because nox didn’t know where nox would go, and certainly, nox couldn't just leave, not without nor family, could nox? But that wasn’t true either, because nox had fantasized about all of the places nox would go, and nox'd known that if only one of them could get away, it could make a difference for all of them.

Nox had imagined for years escaping to Jupiter or Earth or Venus, where slavery was outlawed planetwide, where nox would be able to demand asylum not only for nolself, but could even request rescue for the rest of nor family. Planning these fantasy trips had been a game among nor family. It had all seemed like just another game at the time, but now nox realized that it had been to help prepare them all for this kind of situation.

And it had worked. Night had managed to get to the ship station on nor own, had bought a ticket, and was on nor way. Only a single slip up had occurred the whole time, when Night had been attacked by Ezzekijj supremacists, who didn't like the fact that Night wore clothes that covered up more skin than they thought was acceptable. But they had been scared off by other people at the station pretty quickly, and Night had still been able to get nor ticket and get aboard without any other trouble.

But now nox knew that it wasn’t just the control chip that the plantation owners had used to control nol. It was in nor body, nor brain. A telepathic curse from scary stories made real. Were nox the first one? No one else had been brought to see the physician, had they? Were nox the first test subject?

Nox might have a broken control chip, but whatever poison or curse the plantation owners had subjected nol to was even more dangerous than the shock of pain the control chip could give. Even the limited control the chip could take over your body could be fought against. It just required the strategic placement of common farming tools or supplies, 'accidentally' left sitting in the Cleared Lane Space. A single bag of pulled weeds, carelessly or carefully set down in just the right spot, could completely disrupt all attempts to forcibly call the slaves back to the main building.

This? Night had no idea how to fight this. Nox had already tried to warn the captain against calling nol to work, and it had failed. Because this captain didn't care about violating child labor laws any more than the River Rise Plantation owners had cared about violating the ancient laws against slavery.

If the captain called on Night to do more work, nox wouldn't be able to say no. That much was clear. But where did it end? Could anyone ask nox to do something and nox would have to comply? Did it only involve working security, because that had become nor official job after nox'd turned fourteen?

What would nox do if none of the planetary governments nox went to for asylum actually did anything to help? Would nox be forced to work for anyone and everyone who asked it of nol, no matter what? What if nox couldn't find a way to stop it?

In the stories, the curses could be broken by the victim submerging themselves in the mythical lake of gold. But in all of the stories, that lake had cooled down into solid metal before written history, and had been reforged to make the stars. Would nox have to gather up all the stars and melt them down to finally know what true freedom meant?

All of these thoughts and more ran through nor mind as nox tossed and turned on the temperature controlled bed, in the room that smelled like eclipse mint, despite the distance between nol and nor family.

Nox fell into an uneasy sleep after hours of lying awake, and could only hope, in nor hazy dreams, that nox would be able to find help when they reached the crossroads station. But nox knew, even sleeping, that if neither Earth, nor Venus, nor Jupiter were willing to grant nol asylum, nox would just have to turn to the other planets, the ones where slavery wasn't illegal yet. Nox would be willing to go all the way out to Pluto if it meant finding freedom, both for nolself, and for everyone else left on Mars, waiting for nol to return.

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neopronouns-in-action · 5 months ago

Text

Neopronouns in Action #094: Posession in the Clubhouse

Neopronouns: ey/em/eir/emself which follow the same rules as they/them/their/themself

Replace they with ey

Replace them with em

Replace their with eir

Replace themself with emself

Example paragraph:

"They are going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as they get a fence set up around their yard so the puppy can go outside without them having to walk it. Their uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting them use, since they lost theirs. They're going to buy toys and train the puppy themself.”

Becomes:

“Ey are going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as ey get a fence set up around eir yard so the puppy can go outside without em having to walk it. Eir uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting em use, since ey lost eirs. Ey're going to buy toys and train the puppy emself.”

___

Nickel's vision went red, ey heard a resounding crashing noise unlike anything ey'd ever heard before, and felt the gut-twisting sensation of intense gravity, followed immediately by a sensation of weight and pressure against every surface of eir body, like the time ey had recklessly flown deep enough that the atmosphere of the planet below had become painful, and then ey had gotten stuck, and eir parents had had to drag them back up to safety.

Nickel tried to gasp in a breath in pure shock, felt an incredibly alien sensation in eir body in response, and tried to open eir eyes.

(Archived read-more link)

Eir eyes did not open, but other ones did. Two of them, somehow, and somehow Nickel was seeing through them, though they didn't belong to em. Instead of looking out over an expanse of stars, ey were staring up at some kind of mysterious structure, unlike anything ey had ever seen before. It was in shades of vibrant blue and red, alternating in long stripes.

Then an alien leaned over em, with a flat face the color of Saturn's rings, and a fleshy mouth that opened to reveal rows of teeth with a prominent gap near the center front. It had four limbs, two upper and two lower, and was brightly colored in bold yellow and black stripes on its upper half, and a duller grey on the lower limbs. "Azalia!" it shouted, placing its upper limbs on its sides in a clearly aggressive posture, "You ruined it!"

"Aaah!" Ey screamed, scrabbling with eir propulsors and all eir fins to flee, but the only thing that happened was more sensation of pressure on eir body, and four limbs—limbs that didn't belong to em, but that were moving as though they did—flailed wildly. One of them struck the hard surface ey suddenly realized was below em, and pain shot through it, as though it were eir own fin, burning with pain after ey had crashed right into an asteroid in eir sleep. Ey screamed again, the pain doing nothing to dampen eir confusion or fear.

Where were eir parents? Eir siblings? Eir partners? Where had the stars gone? Where had the sun gone? Ey had gone to sleep in peaceful orbit around Pluto and now—

Nickel had been abducted! Abducted by aliens! Abducted by aliens and put into some kind of alien mimicry prison made of flesh and bone instead of metal!

"Let me go!" Ey shouted through the alien mouth that had replaced eir own, horrified by the sensation of the teeth and the click of the tongue, "Aliens! Let me go!" Ey flailed again, and screamed wordlessly, desperately, unable to think of anything else to do.

"Azalia, what are you talking about?" "Stop it!" "You're gonna wake everyone up!" "Shh!!" "Shut up! Shut up!" The alien's voice had been joined by others, chorusing orders to stop making noise.

A fleshy something was clamped over the alien mouth that didn't belong to Nickel, and more fleshy things at the ends of the aliens' upper limbs grabbed em and tried to keep em still. There were three of them — the yellow, black and grey one, another one that was pink, black, and grey, and a dark blue and white one.

Ey were outnumbered, and unlike em, the aliens actually knew how to work these strange, heavy bodies. Ey were stilled and silenced, and the aliens fell silent along with em, tensely, fear radiating off of them in waves Nickel could still feel despite the cage of alien flesh crushing em.

The fear contagious, ey stopped struggling and ceased eir attempts to cry out, for the moment more afraid of whatever it was that these aliens were scared of than getting free. There would no point in getting out of this strange prison if ey were killed before ey could get back out into space.

What were these aliens so frightened of? Some kind of predator? Had they brought Nickel here to sacrifice em to it to keep themselves safe? Had eir struggles alerted the predator to this encampment before eir captors had had time to truss em up and leave em to eir fate?

Should ey keep fighting and try to draw its attention? Make eir captors go down with em?

After a moment of consideration, ey decided yes. If ey were going to die getting eaten by some alien predator, ey would make these aliens pay for feeding em to it.

Ey renewed eir struggles for freedom with renewed vigour, and sucked in as large of an alien breath as ey could to scream through the relaxing fleshy things that were no longer covering this strange mouth, "Here ali-ali-alien, come and get us! Come on and eat everyone, I bet they taste really good! Teach them not to mess with windlings!"

There was a frantic scramble from the aliens around em to silence em again, but this time ey didn't stop fighting back, and felt the fear of the aliens around em increase. Clearly, eir tactic was working.

"Stop it! Stop! You're gonna wake Uncle Scott up!" one of the aliens hissed frantically, invoking, in Nickel's mind, the legend of the evil Uncle Blot, who came visiting from beyond the solar system and was so greedy he wanted to devour the sun, but Nickel refused to stop. If they were going to sacrifice em to a monster, they were going to get eaten right along with em. Another fleshy thing was shoved over the mouth ey were currently screaming through, and in a fit of inspiration, ey bit it.

This caused the alien the hand was attached to to yowl in pain and jerk backwards, crying out even louder than ey had been, making heavy thumping noises and causing shockwaves to transmit through the surface below Nickel with the force. "She bit me! She freaking bit me! I'm telling mom!"

Now that was just insulting. "I'm not a she!" Nickel screeched, wishing this weird alien prison would let em use eir sonic pulse, "I'm an ey! At least get my pronouns right if you're gonna feed me to a monster!"

"What are you kids doing up there?" Came a new alien voice, roaring from somewhere below the hard surface, "It's 3AM! I know I told you you could stay up tonight for the holiday, but come on, I didn't think I'd have to tell you that didn't include screaming your heads off and waking me up! You're old enough to know better!"

There were thumping noises coming closer, and the voice was getting louder. The hard surface below Nickel was vibrating with every sound of something heavy hitting a solid surface.

All of the aliens who'd been trying to pin em in place had frozen, and all of them were staring in the same direction, which Nickel felt eir own gaze being dragged to instinctively, the yelling dying in the alien throat ey controlled.

The hard surface ey were pinned to continued to the other side of the alien structure, and part of it suddenly lifted upwards with a creak and the clank of metal.

An alien pushed its face through the gap that formed, larger by far than any of the ones Nickel had seen yet. Ey gasped in renewed fear. Ey could barely fight off these little ones, ey would stand no chance against a giant like that!

The head twisted to face all of them, and the two alien eyes widened, then narrowed, clearly angry. "What are you doing? Get off of Azalia this instant! All of you!" It began to climb bodily through the hole and into the structure, dwarfing everyone else by more than double. This one was brightly colored in white and red all over its body except for the face, and the very ends of the upper limbs. Some kind of dominant coloring? A different species entirely?

The smaller aliens tumbled away from Nickel immediately. Some of them backed away, others ran towards the giant, all of them speaking at once— "She started acting weird!" "She bit me!" "She said we were using the wrong pronouns!" "She started screaming for no reason!" "She started it!"

This was more than Nickel could bear. Trap them in an alien mimicry prison, feed me to some horrifying monster, but for the love of all the stars in the world, "Stop calling me a she! I'm not a she! I already told you! Just stop it!"

Ey scrambled, trying to work out how to properly control the alien limbs, and managed to get into a more upright position, though ey were forced to lean back against the surface behind em for balance.

If they were going to kill em, just please get it over with already. This torture was completely uncalled for. Ey felt like ey were being crushed, was trapped in some alien body, and was probably never going to see eir family ever again. Did these aliens really have to add the crime of misgendering to eir suffering?

The giant waved a hand at the smaller aliens, and they all fell silent. "Azalia," it said slowly, "Is there something you want to tell me?"

Nickel, again with a sudden burst of inspiration, bared the alien teeth ey'd been landed with, and attempted to snarl, hoping it would sound just as scary coming out of this alien body as it did coming from a jumping asteroid-borer.

The affect (effect???) fell very flat. The growl thundered in eir throat dramatically, but the sound itself was extremely unimpressive. What ey wouldn't give to be able to fire all eir propulsors to beat all these aliens back and escape!

The giant alien didn't react except to blink both its eyes. There was a pause, where none of the smaller aliens made any noises either.

Then the giant said, "Did you tell the others here you want to use new pronouns? Were they bullying you for that?"

This caused an uproar of protests from the smaller aliens. "She didn't say that!" "We weren't bullying her!" "That's not what happened!" "Uncle Scott! We wouldn't do that!" "She just started freaking out for no reason!"

"I didn't ask you all, I asked Azalia!" The giant thundered, and once again the smaller aliens fell quiet. The giant turned back to face Nickel, voice quieter, and asked, "That is, if you still want to be called Azalia?"

Nickel felt like laughing, all of a sudden. That, or crying. Ey no longer felt like ey had any idea what was going on. The giant alien seemed to be trying to defend em from the smaller ones? What? But then why...?

"I just want to go home." Ey said, and felt eir voice catch in the alien voice. It suddenly seemed harder to breathe. "Just let me go back to my family! I want to go home! Let me go! Please!"

The two alien eyes ey were seeing through began to burn and blur, and sounds began coming out against eir will, hiccuping coughs as all the panic and fear washed over Nickel in a sudden, inescapable wave. Ey folded the strange and unweidly limbs around em as best ey could, instinctively trying to curl up in self-defense.

There was a shuffle, and murmered words from the smaller aliens, and the clomp of heavy feet as the giant approached. Fleshy things reached out to grab em, and ey flinched back, managing to gasp out, "Don't touch me! Leave me alone!" though the horrible choking sensation wracking through eir prison of a body.

The hands withdrew. Some of the smaller aliens started making the same hiccuping noises, and one of them was babbling almost incoherent apologies. The giant's voice spoke again. "Alright, just give them some space everyone. Lucius, will you bring me the box of chocolate? I think this is a good a time as any to open it. And get the box of tissues while you're at it. The rest of you, either go back into the house, or at least sit quietly for a bit and don't bug Azalia any more than you already have. Everyone needs some time to calm down, and then we can talk about this when everyone's feeling better. Okay?"

There were a few quiet noises of assent from the smaller aliens, and then the only sound Nickel could hear was of more thumps fading away as the alien who'd been instructed to leave did so, and the still uncontrolled noises that were stealing Nickel's breath away and making these eyes burn. But the respiratory attack seemed to be calming as the aliens stopped their physical assaults, and Nickel found, with every passing moment, that ey could breathe easier, though the unyeilding sense of pressure around em stayed the same as when ey had first awoken here.

There were thumps as the smaller alien returned to the structure, and Nickel dared to lift this prison's head and open the eyes to watch it move back through the opening in the solid surface, pushing two things in ahead of it. This was the alien that had a dark blue upper body, and a white lower half. One of the things it was carrying was a pale blue cube shape, the other was large, shiny, and red, shaped like a child's drawing of a windling.

The cube shape was passed with a, "Here, Joel," to the yellow and black alien that ey had first seen, who pulled a piece of white something out of the cube, and used it to wipe at its eyes and face, before crumbling the white thing in its fleshy upper limbs.

Then the cube was taken back, and held out towards Nickel.

Ey stared at it warily, but the smaller alien hadn't been hurt, so ey hesitantly reached out with one of the fleshy upper limbs of this prison body, and attempted to take one of the white things. But the limb was alien, and sore from hitting the hard surface multiple times, and being pinned in place, and ey had no idea how to control the weird smaller limbs at the end. Ey ended up accidentally knocking the cube out of the grip of the alien who held it.

Ey snatched the limb back, afraid of retaliation, but all that happened was the alien quietly picking the box back up, pulling out a peice of the white thing, and holding that out for em to take. Its mouth trembled, and its eyes blinked a lot. Nickel got the feeling that it was on the verge of the same kind of attack that had afflicted em.

But now ey were too nervous to try to control these weird limbs again, so after a moment of staring at eachother in silence, the alien took a few steps closer, and dropped the white thing next to Nickel before backing away, probably afraid of being bitten again. The white floated down slowly, despite the crushingly thick air, as the alien retreated back across the structure to the rest of the little aliens. The giant was closest to Nickel, its limbs folded horrifically.

Ey were still trapped in some horrible alien prison, but none of the aliens were attacking em any more, and ey was starting to realize that these aliens seemed just as confused as ey were. Maybe they hadn't brought Nickel here on purpose? Or...maybe they hadn't brought em here at all...

That thought was even more frightening than eir original assumption, because if these aliens hadn't brought em here, then that probably meant they wouldn't be able to send em back, either.

What were ey going to do?

The silence between all of them stretched, and stretched, and Nickel could only hope that someone would have an answer.

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