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its-cartooncrazy · 5 months ago

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[Image description: a list of all tarot cards in the major arcana, along with their meanings. They have been matched to a vessel from slay the princess, using the drawings from the memories page. Full text ID under the cut.]

Hello I spent like a week being abnormal about this (no I did not know the tarot cards by heart before this, yes I do now) so here is my definitive list of which princess matches which tarot card. If you disagree with me then you're wrong (joking, please feel free to tell me with your reasoning, I'd love to hear it!!)

Full list of my reasonings under the cut (scroll to the big text saying "Reasonings" to skip the ID)

[Full ID: three columns, listing first the tarot number and name, then card meanings, then the princess. They are as follows:

0. The Fool. cycle of life, birth & death, hope, optimism, childish, spontaneous, lateral thinking. The Damsel

1. The Magician. practical, success, witty, at home, central nervous system & lungs & senses, unemotional, over analyses. The Moment of Clarity

2. The High Priestess. heightened perception, unknown, mystery, occult, patience, intuition, strong independent woman, unable to control or dominate. The Wraith

3. The Empress. powerful women, creativity, growth, beauty, birth, fertility, warm, loving, sensual, enjoys life to the full. The Adversary

4. The Emperor. structure & power, competitive, achievement, authority, hierarchy, dominance. The Tower

5. The Hierophant. status quo, appearances, marriage, teaching, interpreting, structure, routine. Happily Ever After

6. The Lovers. love, romance, union, soulmates, resolved inner conflict, choice. The Wild

7. The Chariot. reward, victory hard won, don’t give up, try again, vehicles, overcoming obstacles, self discipline, hard work, focus. The Beast

8. Justice. logical decision, balanced mind, negotiation, truth, honesty, integrity. The Spectre

9. The Hermit. Solitude, thinking, introspection, learning, teaching. The Prisoner

10. The Wheel of Fortune. Fate, coincidence, luck, cycles, confusion. The Stranger

11. Strength. generous, loving, courage, conviction, optimism, resolve, generous, antagonism resolved, animals (loving). The Den

12. The Hanged Man. unable to move, temporary pause, patience, self limiting, trapped, sacrifice, wait for info. The Cage

13. Death. cycle of death & rebirth, transformation, something is ending, confronting smth alarming, major change. The Eye of the Needle

14. Temperance. balanced, adaptable, see both sides, calm, solve disputes, works well in a team, mixing opposites, blending, time. The Princess and the Dragon

15. The Devil. material world, buying love, material security, mental health, powerlessness, violence, obsession, secrecy. The Witch

16. The Tower. disruptive, violent, necessary change, enlightenment, trauma, loss, upheaval, tragedy. The Fury

17. The Star. hope, new life, fresh insight, phys or ment wounds heal, heal & inspire others, help, human rights, nature, equality. The Thorn

18. The Moon. dreams, imagination, subconscious, illusion, vagueness, deception, fear, anxiety. The Nightmare

19. The Sun. happiness & vitality, energy, confidence, children, freedom, fun, self expression. The Razor

20. Judgement. decisions, awakening, rebirth, healing, homesickness, celebrate success, self evaluation, blame. The Grey

21. The World. end of a cycle, accomplishment, journey, belonging, wholeness. The Apotheosis

End ID]

Reasonings

The Fool I put the damsel down for pretty early, just because of the childish optimism, but later I was thinking about the damsel route and why it wouldn't fit the Lovers and I said the damsel is more about how they are rushing into it. And then I remembered the Fool is about rushing in lol. I couldn't really consider anything else after that

The Magician mentions the central nervous system and lungs, so I considered putting the nightmare here for paranoids mantra, but the card didn't really fit her that well and the central nervous system is different to the autonomous nervous system anyway so. The Moment of Clarity gets this spot for her practical breaking of you, and the success it brings her. Not one of my easiest placements but I'm still pretty happy with it

The high Priestess was hard to place because she's about the occult, and powerful women who don't need a man. If only there was a princess who fit that mold... (/s if it wasn't clear) so yeah. Half the princesses were written down here at one point. The Wraith gets this spot because I found other places for all the others I guess and also because "She could not find her strength in others, so she found it in herself."

The empress is again a powerful woman, but a loving and nurturing one, who encourages growth. It was both the growth and the partnership she has that gave her the adversary

The Emperor is about hierarchy and dominance. I knew very early on that the tower would fit best here. "This one is dominance."

The hierophant is about structure, appearances, and also marriage. Happily Ever After is all about being trapped within this structure, with ties specifically to marriage. Literally tell me I'm wrong?

The Lovers. Okay. So there's a few this could be. The Damsel, with the voice of the smitten? Not really as equal a partnership, as I mentioned in the Fool section. They don't really know each other. The Thorn, where you can kiss her? Well that ignores like. The entire rest of the route so no. Happily ever after? Maybe, but I prefer her in hierophant. The adversary, with your equal partnership in kicking each others asses? Easily, but I also put her elsewhere. Ironically, the Lovers was one of the last two cards I placed, and the only princesses left were the wild and the grey, and unfortunately I couldn't agree with the drowned grey going here. The wild has you literally being one, achieving a common goal. It's not my favourite placement but I dont hate it so.

The chariot is about putting in the hard work and seeing it through, and she does make an effort to capture you (swallow you whole) and bring you to the door so she can escape. Also it's about vehicles, and she literally acts as a vehicle for you. That idea was too funny to not do tbh

Justice is one of three cards that mention balance, so I wanted one of the ones where you merge to go here. Much like the scales of justice, it is about considering all sides and picking fairly, so it had to go to the spectre, who gets justice for her murder when you help her out. The spectre was written down for like half the cards on this list though my god

The hermit is about solitude and self introspection. The prisoner, sitting in silence for millenia, felt very fitting. I also wanted the cage to be here, because the image of the hermit is him holding up a lantern, and having the cage holding her head like that would be fun, but she fit better in the hanged man so.

The wheel of fortune was one of my later picks. Fate, and also cycles. Its a little vague, and can fit with quite a few princesses, but I put the stranger here. Is it the vibes? Something about coincidences and not meeting her feels similar, but I cant put my finger on it so if you can explain please do.

Strength, but of the inner sort. The Den didn't really have anywhere better to go, I don't know if instinct matches with any of the cards. I felt confidence in ones self was pretty similar to instinct, plus it has ties to animals.

The hanged man is self restrictions. I would have liked to put the thorn here, honestly, hanging from her vines. Ultimately it was the best choice for the cage, though, and I had another good option for the thorn. Anyway, the cage can be hanging from all those chains and hooks. "This one is a body that convinced herself she was only a set of eyes." Sounds like her limits are self imposed for sure!

Death and the tower have similar meanings in that things are coming to an end, and both of them I felt were good fits for both eye of the needle and the Fury. Ultimately I put eotn here because its more cyclical, and when she was the adversary she wanted to continue fighting over and over again.

Temperance is the second balance card, specifically about blending this time. Opposites merging, solving disputes. Felt very much like the princess and the dragon chapter. "This one is perspectives bleeding into one."

The Devil is a person tricking you, but also material security. I only ever put the witch down for this one, and I only ever put her down for one card lol. The mutual trickery and betrayal in her chapter felt too fitting. "A trick behind your back, and a trick behind mine."

The tower, like I said, is similar to death in that they are both about things ending. But the tower is more dramatic, about the sudden upheaval, so I thought thematically it matched with the Fury better, who is very upset and very taking it out on you. This is one of the cards I knew the meaning of from the beginning, so unfortunately there was never a point in which the tower was matched with the tower :(

The star is hope and healing. One of many that the spectre could have matched with. (I wanted to make her star shaped wound be the star... oh well). The Thorn fits well here, if you both choose to end the cycle of violence and leave together. The star also has ties to nature, which fits with the thorns... thorns... I would have preferred her at the hanged man for her self limiting, being trapped in her own thorns, but this is also a very good choice so I'm not too mad lol

The moon is fear and anxiety. Plus the moon only comes out at night, when everyone is sleeping, when you have nightmares! But mostly it's the vagueness, mystery and anxiety stuff.

The sun being joy meant I knew I wanted the razor here from the beginning. I briefly considered putting her at death (for the cycles, and also the uh, death) but I think the dying part of her route is not actually that important? Anyway the razor is my wife and I'm glad she's enjoying herself. "She is cruelty. But she is also joy." See, shifty gets it!

Judgement is where you look back on everything and judge yourself. It was one of the last two cards to be assigned, and the wild did not fit here at all. Plus the grey sort of punishes you for your actions? It's unavoidable, is my point.

The world is accomplishment, wholeness. She is as close to becoming the goddess she truly is as any vessel ever comes. "This one sits at the cusp of awakening." Shifty says. Also Apotheosis literally means climax so I had to put her at the end of the tarot, you understand.

So yeah that's that. Thanks for reading, if you managed to get through all that. Feel free to debate different interpretations at me, I'd love to hear em!

#slay the princess #straight up dont know what to tag this as #tarot #i guess i mean i did literally interpet all the cards #i am not going to tag all the princesses

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carionto · 2 years ago

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Hardcore Space Parkour

Some Humans are worryingly agile. And stupidly driven to endanger themselves. For no reason we can understand.

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Within the Coalition governing station of the segment of the Galaxy where the Sol system is are countless embassies for each member civilization. Each is designed to accommodate their respective species (or multiple in certain cases) to the fullest while also being able to host guests from any other member.

Then there are the communal areas, set for a galactic standard that is viable for the majority - gravity at 0.6 Earth, far less of that dangerous oxygen, and slightly more humid and cooler than what Humans are normally comfortable with. In fact, Humans technically fall outside the Galactic standards and are all equipped with a partial breathing assistance unit and pressurized clothing to stimulate their circulation. While they can function reasonably well despite what we assumed would be too draining without assistance, most Humans do make use of these gadgets.

Some, however, prefer to "stimulate" themselves a bit differently.

There is a small group of individual Humans many have dubbed "Leaping Cortix" after an infamous invasive fuzzy gelatinous centipede-like pest species that always manages to make a hive on any sufficiently large space station or vessel given enough time. Everybody swears they're some kind of magic, and it's hard to dissuade such a notion when there are fairly common reports of ships on deep isolation missions, without making contact with anyone or anything else for years at a time, still one day find themselves with a pack of Cortix skittering about near their nutrition supplies!

This group of Humans, found the title amusing and have embraced it. One of them even made a hooded sweater with the name and a stylized Cortix jumping off the letter x.

The reason for the name is simple - despite becoming integrated into the Coalition just around a year ago, Humans seem to appear everywhere within this segment of the Galaxy. Mostly in small groups for tourism reasons, but the point still stands. And these Humans in particular appear to make it a habit to appear out of the most unexpected places.

The leaping portion comes from how this group tends to move around the communal areas. Most Humans adapt to the lower gravity and eventually (rather quickly actually) change how they move around when outside their embassy - the movements seem more relaxed, fluid, some even appear to exert almost no effort at all in their steps. This group on the other hand utilizes the full force of their incredibly dense musculature.

First, they jump good. Real good. Then they bounce and pivot, real fast. After a few days they started a game - get to any place without touching the floor. Not even a day later they managed to always be in the air.

At first it was impressive and quite mesmerizing. Quite a sight to behold as they got better and quicker at chaining their jumps and bounds together into one smooth motion that took them from one part of the station to the other in mere moments.

Then they started getting bored. And one of them had an idea. An "awesome" idea.

Add flying robots and moving obstacles.

Chaos ensued. Naturally.

As the Humans leapt off of one of the maintenance machines they programmed to hover between several distant structures, it could not compensate for the sudden recoil from the movement and crashed down on the floor. Thankfully it was above a small garden and only some artificial plants were damaged, as well as itself, but that was enough to call in the peacekeeping units to put a halt to their antics.

We deliberately brought a Human peacekeeper along to make the reprimand stick. The Leaping Cortix, most of whom are junior staffers and one is a retired military veteran now serving as a consultant, looked ashamed, but also sad. At least they seemed to understand the gravity of the situation (though perhaps not as well as the physics of gravity) as the wreckage was cleared in clear sight of everyone.

After the offending member was issued a token fine (as it was their first offense), the group as a whole became less active. Initially, most people felt relieved, but as the incident grew more distant in memory, the sight of the flying Humans started to become missed by quite a few.

Some from the more physically able races were even inspired to try this "parkour" the Humans had demonstrated and found it quite thrilling. When done in a lower than their normal gravity that is. Trying it at their standard caused a few broken bones and cracked shells.

There is currently a petition by the permanent residents to dedicate a large open indoor field for such extreme physical sports as well as to commission the design of a variety of machines to facilitate, as written in the official documentation - "stimulating courses to improve the physical well being and readiness of all participants".

I.E. - Humans introduced a new sport to us and many are hooked.

#humans are space orcs #humanity fuck yeah #humans are deathworlders #humans are space australians #humans are space oddities #carionto

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literaryvein-reblogs · 10 months ago

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Writing Notes: Mystical Items & Objects

Examples in Mythology and Literature

Pandora's Box

The god Prometheus stole fire from heaven to give to the human race, which originally consisted only of men

To punish humanity, the other gods created the first woman, the beautiful Pandora

As a gift, Zeus gave her a box, which she was told never to open

However, as soon as he was out of sight she took off the lid, and out swarmed all the troubles of the world, never to be recaptured

Only Hope was left in the box, stuck under the lid

Anything that looks ordinary but may produce unpredictable harmful results can thus be called a Pandora's box

Hermes' Winged Sandals

Also called the Talaria of Mercury

Are winged sandals, a symbol of the Greek messenger god Hermes (Mercury)

They were said to be made by the god Hephaestus of imperishable gold and they flew the god as swift as any bird

Cintamani Stone

Also referred to as the Chintamani

A wish-fulfilling stone that features across both Hindu and Buddhist religions

The stone features as one of many Mani Jewel (i.e., several gems that are mentioned prominently in Buddhist literature) images that can be found in the scripture of Buddhism

In Hinduism, the stone is connected to the gods Ganesha and Vishnu

Usually, it is depicted as a jewel in Vishnu’s possession known as the Kaustubha

The Kaustubha acts as a sign of divine authority

Arcane Artifacts & Objects

Offer a gateway between time past and time present, bringing layers of ancient history and new-world intrigue to a narrative

Such items are typically represented in fiction as works of long-lost knowledge, primordial features or landmarks, and curious objects of mysterious origin

Often lying dormant until the pivotal moment of discovery, these items invite characters and readers alike into a dance with the unknown

Examples: Necronomicon, Genie's Bottle

Necronomicon

Also referred to as the Book of the Dead

It appears in stories by H.P. Lovecraft

A dark grimoire (i.e., a magician's manual for invoking demons and the spirits of the dead) of forbidden knowledge

Used to open gateways of unearthly powers and cosmic horrors

Genie's Bottle

The classic magical item from mythology, also featured in Aladdin

A vessel of wish fulfillment that often leads to dramatic and unexpected consequences

Doorways & Portals

Doorways in fiction serve as gateways between worlds, dimensions, or states of reality, providing characters with universe-hopping capabilities and genre-defying journeys

These portals, whether physical structures or fantastical mechanisms, open up limitless storytelling possibilities, allowing for sudden shifts in setting and introducing elements of surprise and surrealism

Examples:

C.S. Lewis' wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia serves as a secret portal to a fantasy world, bridging the mundane with the fantastical

The eponymous board game in Jumanji transports its players into a wild and perilous jungle adventure, wrenching them from the safety of their living room

Jewelry, Gems, and Garments

Along with other various accessories, these serve several narrative functions, from symbolizing power and status to bestowing unique abilities upon their wearers

These items can act as plot catalysts (i.e. MacGuffins), embody character traits, or hold deep cultural or magical significance within a story’s world

Example: The Amulet of Mara in Skyrim not only reduces the cost of Restoration spells but also unlocks marriage options for the player, integrating gameplay with the narrative

Legendary Objects of Power

Carry with them stories of grandeur and lore, passed down through generations and intertwined with the fates of those who wield them

These are the objects that make or break worlds, bestow immense strength, and are frequently considered among the most powerful items in fiction

Example: Though it's never actually been seen, the Kusanagi Sword from Japanese folklore is a fabled sword that represents valor, said to be endowed with divine powers

Machinery and Technologies

Stretch the boundaries of physics and logic to offer a glimpse into what could be possible in alternate or future universes

These innovations, whether grounded in current science or verging on the fantastical, propel narratives forward and deepen the complexity of the story’s world

Writers can leverage these technological wonders to enhance their storytelling, using them to explore themes of power, ethics, and the human relationship with technology

Example: The body shields in Dune generate a protective forcefield around the wearer—advanced technology that current militaries can only dream of

Mundane Everyday Items

Possess extraordinary storytelling potential to transform the unassuming into the unforgettable

Seemingly ordinary, these objects can surprise both characters and readers, unveiling hidden depths and abilities when least expected

These seemingly mundane objects could fall into unsuspecting hands and create chaos or catalyze a hero’s journey

Additionally, they might only reveal their true nature to those worthy or capable of wielding their power, which can set the stage for narratives that are centered around discovery and mastery

Example: Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Grey presents art as a vessel for dark magic, encapsulating the protagonist’s sins while he remains untouched by time

Sources: 1 2 3 4 ⚜ Writing Notes & References

#writing notes #fantasy #mythology #literature #greek mythology #writeblr #spilled ink #dark academia #writing reference #poets on tumblr #poetry #writers on tumblr #writing prompt #fiction #light academia #studyblr #booklr #creative writing #writing resources

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serpentface · 7 months ago

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Omg, is there any more about Odonii battlefield performance?

Faiza giving a full battlefield performance, which includes grimacing, sinister looks, letting out terrifying war cries, and banging on her shield with her dagger's pommel. She's wearing a full set of armor, which is functional but highly decorative. A squire will be present somewhere nearby to carry the rest of her weaponry.

As mentioned in the other post, Odonii generally do not actually Participate in fighting. Their perpetual armament and training to correctly Use this armament has predominantly symbolic functions, with their bodies as vessels for state and military empowerment and integrity.

Their normal role on the battlefield is:

a) Spiritual protection for their associated warriors and intimidation of enemies.

Their role is partially to be the ‘guardian lion’ figure in human form, their presence and performance in of itself is considered metaphysically protective. This guardian lion nature is played up and reinforced with their dress and behavior- they wear lion skins over their armor, paint their faces red to obscure human features, perform war cries tailored to sound inhuman (not like lions, just a very shrill and frightening sound). They perform ‘frenzied’ movements that intend to evoke an enraged animal- pacing, banging on their shields, biting their weapons/shields, baring teeth, exaggerated glances that emphasize the whites of their eyes, etc. This can be a disturbing sight- reassuring to their allies who know a frightening spiritual guardian figure is on their side, and demoralizing to an enemy (the latter especially in conjunction with common beliefs that Odonii are witches/shapeshifters)

b) A motivating factor to get the men to fight more bravely.

This is partly out of religious belief (you will probably be a little bolder if you feel reassurance that God is very much present and on your side, via Its priestesses), partly out of esteem for the order (you are highly motivated to perform for their recognition and protect them from harm). In a way, their role on the battlefield is the Least masculinized aspect of their performance- they are in part there to remind men of their mothers, wives, and daughters, who they are supposed to be the protectors of and whose benefit they are ultimately (at least deemed to be) fighting for.

In some cases, this is taken to a (cultural relative) extreme wherein they will expose their breasts towards their own men as a part of battlefield performance, in the form of a supplicatory gesture (bearing the breasts and thumping on the chest with a fist). (The Odomache’s nude body should never be publicly seen under any circumstances, limited and controlled exposure by Odonii Can be appropriate). Breasts are not sexualized in this cultural sphere, but are not treated as neutral body parts either, instead having values of motherly nurturing and feminine vulnerability projected onto them. Odonii showing tits will be a DISTINCT reminder of the ‘vulnerable female’ elements that the men should be protecting, and can be highly motivating (especially in the context of a figure who is otherwise behaviorally ‘masculinized’, it’s jarring and can have useful emotional impact).

c) General spiritual leadership (in connection to a & b).

Weapons dances are an aspect of military training and the kagnoma odo dance is always performed prior to conventional battles, Odonii lead these dances. This has multifacted functions- it is believed to spiritually bless the troops, it is a means of practicing with weaponry/limbering up, it is a psychological rallying point and good for morale, and it may intimidate your enemy who can see it happening from a distance (by displaying readiness/eagerness to battle, good discipline, unity, and physical might). Odonii also perform personalized blessings of soldiers, weapons, and armor.

c) Filling gaps in the command structure or acting as commanders

Odonii are involved in strategic meetings, and ones who receive battlefield roles are very well studied in military tactics. As a matter of technicality, their commands to the body of Imperial Wardi troops do not override those of generals or other ranking soldiers (though they will often be deferred to regardless), but they can fill in gaps in the command structure in case of death of high ranking soldiers or if lines become scattered and communication breaks down.

Additionally, there are two elite warrior orders presided over by the Odonii priesthood (the rest answer directly to the Usoma's court appointed general), with senior Odonii as their commanders and the Odomache as their general. (This is one of many political tension points between the priesthood and monarchy, given that the Odonii have managed to get themselves about 200 high skill, firearm'ed warriors that are separate from the normal military structure, only as loyal to the Usoma as their current general is, and Very beloved among the public so you can't just like, outright kill or disarm this very obvious threat.)

d) A strategic flexing of eastern seaway honorable combat norms

Conventions of honorable warfare have broad commonalities across the eastern seaway peoples, one of which is that noncombatants (by default- women, girls, prepubsecent boys, unarmed elderly men) are not legitimate targets in the normal process of open war (but are fair game in contexts like sieges when a foe has refused to surrender on behalf of their population). Odonii being armed throws a wrinkle into this - they are still effectively ‘noncombatants’ by virtue of being women, but if they actually Engage in fighting they do present a threat that could be justifiably neutralized.

If they do not actually Use their arms they are not legitimate targets, and an enemy concerned with honorable combat will have to work around their presence (or risk social/retaliatory consequences if he does not). They are thus effectively human shields- at the very least introducing an additional layer of difficulties for an opponent to navigate, and sometimes actively putting their bodies between their men and their opponents.

e) as a factor of D, potential mediator figures.

When in conventional battles, Odonii on losing sides are usually expected to allow themselves to be captured without resistance. They stand a very high chance of being taken alive and remaining unharmed due to a combination of factors- baseline honorable warfare practices (which are ABSOLUTELY not always followed, but at least Influence behavior), fears of material consequences in retribution for harming the priestess, fears of spiritual consequences for harming a potentially powerful witch, knowledge that releasing an Odonii unscathed may give the captors a better negotiating position down the line, or knowledge that an Odonii is a very valuable hostage and can make for a good bargaining chip.

Because of this element, captured Odonii are expected to perform mediation roles, negotiate the release of hostages, carry messages from their captors, or bravely tolerate hostage conditions (ideally while gaining intelligence on their captors)

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Odonii very, very rarely actually participate in combat (and are in fact not Supposed To in the vast majority of circumstances).

They are, however, fairly well equipped for it. Their perpetual armament is symbolic in nature, but its intended function of empowering their bodies and the state by proxy additionally requires them to know how to Use It. They are trained and regularly drill and engage in mock battles in each of their key weapons/defensive combinations (sword, sword and shield, spear, spear and shield, longgun, handgun) and are expected to be adept at their use. Odonii who attend battlefields, while not being directly engaged, are still in very high-stress and dangerous environments and will have to learn to stay calm and collected under duress. All this doesn't mean every Odonii would be a skilled warrior in an actual combat situation (given that most will have no experience fighting someone who is actually trying to Kill Them), but it does mean they have enough technical skill and mental fortitude to stand a decent chance.

The only times where they are SUPPOSED to actively engage is when a battle is deemed as an existential struggle and is being lost (in practice, the main context for this is a siege), or losing against a foe deemed so thoroughly depraved that they won’t even slightly follow wartime conventions. The idea in these situations is that they are most likely already doomed, and that they should die protecting their people in battle.

Wardi history is filled with stories of Odonii fighting and dying in desperate conflicts (particularly against Imperial Bur), but this is at least Partly historical revisionism (there WERE some women in proto-Odonii roles involved in these conflicts, but these retellings project the modern Odonii order onto its multiple progenitor practices).

Odonii are frequently present on battlefields, but there are only two major instances of modern era Odonii participating in battle as full combatants, both involving conflict with Finnerich

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The fully modern incarnation of the order can be defined as starting in the late period of Burri occupation, in which multiple Wardi city-states and kingdoms allied against a common foe, and the separate progenitors of the Odonii tradition began to coelesce into a single practice. These alliances were mostly dropped after Burri withdrawal, and the immediate post-withdrawal period was a chaotic scrambling to politically stabilize and assert old territorial claims- thus most Wardi states resumed hostile or indifferent relations with one another. (The one exception is that Wardin and Ephennos remained allied, which shortly would become a Big Deal). Forms of early Odonii now existed throughout most of these states, just not united under a single banner.

The city of Godsmouth was blockaded and besieged by Finnerich during this period (taking advantage of its historical rival’s weakness in the political chaos of de-occupation and hoping to capture or at least maim the city), and some of these early Odonii were involved in this conflict and are known to have engaged.

Godsmouth was a rival to its neighboring states more than anything else- there was little reason for others to send aid in the conflict, and it was left to fend for itself. It was and is a heavily fortified city, and thus the siege lasted for months, with the strategy turning to starving the population out rather than the risky maneuver of throwing troops at well-defended gates to force entry. The Finn forces never managed to breach the inner walls, but were very successful at starving the city's population, raiding its farmlands and villages, and destroying its ports and capturing or burning its ships, all with minimal casualties on their side.

The strategy of the siege finally turned to a risky push to breach and capture the city (due to Finnerich’s own dwindling resources and logistical difficulties in restocking due to storms at sea, and news that an allied Wardin and Ephennos had, in an unprecedented move, been persuaded to send reinforcements (in return for Godsmouth's sworn fealty and absorption into their alliance)), and Finn forces succeeded in breaking through the outer walls. This developed into a very dramatic standoff in which the remaining warriors and/or civilians of Godsmouth attempted to fend off the attack long enough for reinforcements to arrive (which would take days by sea).

Odonii are very famously known to have fully engaged in this stretch of the conflict on the front lines, as it represented an existential threat to the city-state (it’s a fortified settlement, if it was captured, reinforcements would not matter). Some of the recountings are distinctly fanciful (describing Odonii and noblemen leading Siege Of Helms Deep style khaitback charges into masses of enemies, or SWEARING that one of them actually did turn into a lion and ripped apart a hundred Finns before she succumbed to her wounds). An At Least Partially True Story With Exaggerated Elements of the final days of the siege describes the Odonii priestess Hibrides Odiboe rallying a group of elderly men into battle by baring her breasts and scratching deep, bleeding wounds into her chest, declaring herself as 'your mothers, your wives, your daughters, and look how I bleed while you hide behind your walls and wait to die.' While accounts have fantastical elements, it is factual that Odonii priestesses fought and died defending the city's inner walls, notably filling command positions left vacant by slain or starved leaders and rallying citizens to the front lines.

The end of the siege was ultimately a pyrrhic victory for Godsmouth- the city was never actually taken but its population was starved and riddled with disease, its farmlands were burned, and its ports were destroyed. Finnerich forces retreated before reinforcements arrived after failing to break through the inner walls in time, but had succeeded in most objectives of severely wounding their historical enemy. It has been a source of collective trauma in Godsmouth since that point (it is now out of living memory, but vivid stories remain of seeing the dead eaten by dogs and the starving eating the dogs that ate the dead, watching family members succumb to disease and starvation, all while hearing the sounds of fighting draw closer and closer with no reason to believe that any help would ever come), but ultimately recontextualized as a victory, a turning point in the arc of modern history. (The Wardin-Ephennos-Godsmouth alliance, which formed in full as a result of this conflict, would become the triple state that conquered the rest of the region and formed Imperial Wardin).

The direct participation of Odonii in this conflict is heavily played up in the narrative as the order in its purest form as sovereignty incarnate, the priestesses bravely fighting for (what would turn out to be) the beginnings of the Imperial Wardi state. The 11 Odonii who died fighting in the siege have been bestowed sainthood and are memorialized in a series of guardian lion statue-shrines overlooking Godsmouth’s ports (in which their ashes and bones are stored).

---

The other instance of modern era Odonii engaging in conflict is significantly less romantic, occurring in the context of the Extremely failed second invasion of Finnerich.

During and after the rout that resulted in the Odomache's capture and killing, it became exceptionally clear to the Imperial Wardi forces that They Were Fucked. The conflict veered with REMARKABLE speed from being an attempt end the state's civil war between the Imperial Wardi-loyalist provincial puppet government and its rebelling northwest population, to a desperate struggle for Wardi forces to get out of Finnerich Alive. At this point it was assumed (fairly accurately) that any defeated party would be summarily executed, so most Odonii present ended up directly engaging in battle. Two are known to have died leading soldiers in a bid to retrieve the Odomache's body, others fought and/or died while defending the retreat.

A few Finn Odonii (women appointed as a local sect of the priesthood after the initial takeover) remained in the capital after the Wardi forces fucked off overseas, and were executed along with the rest of the installed loyalist government and priests (though it's unlikely that they were involved in any fighting, as the provincial government surrendered after the withdrawal).

Odonii veterans of the invading force have not fared well in the aftermath. Most of those who survived the ambush in which the Odomache was captured have ended up committing honorable suicide due to breaking vows in abandoning their leader in retreat, failing to retrieve her body, and/or being assaulted in capture. More have committed (ostensibly ritual, probably emotionally driven) suicide in the years that followed, with the knowledge that their leader's death and defilement and this severing of God's spirit has brought doom upon their land in the form of an unbroken drought and famine, and that they failed to prevent this. The priestess who was captured alive to witness the Odomache's death and released unharmed to report it was the first.

All this has opened some vacancies in the order's leadership, and given things a very somber tone. It is currently in debate as to whether the ones who died on Finn soil (particularly those who died attempting to retrieve their leader's body) should be canonized as saints or if it's a little too soon for all that.

#As usual this veered off but likeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee whatever. It's technically all Sort Of about Odonii battlefield performance.#Just like. Imagining if Imperial Wardin was an actual historical state whose written language was never decoded. There would be SOOOOOOOOOO #much debating on whether they actually had 'warrior women' or not. So much.#And it would probably end up wildly mischaracterized in pop history circles who base their estimates of a historical culture's #level of gender egalitarianism almost entirely upon Can Girl Fight??????? Did Girl Fight In Epic Battles Though?????????? With Sord????#Almost completely unrelated but I'm downgrading the gun tech. Kind of severely. I'm okay with a little anachronism because it doesn't #follow an earth timeline but it's Too anachronistic for the rest of the setting.#Like I need the use of firearms to be VERY limited and not widespread so they need to be in basal stages. The main reason I originally #had much more advanced firearms was due to old lore that is now obsolete anyway.#They're gonna be a lot closer to hand cannons. Like a transitional form of hand cannon closer in shape to a conventional #rifle but without a mechanical firing method.#This means a lot of things I've drawn recently are now obsolete and the joke of Couya having terrible trigger discipline doesn't work #but it has been bothering me way too much I can't do it anymore

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catboybiologist · 1 year ago

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Alright I can't finish this all in one sitting, but here's at least a bit of.... something? A word vomit? A prelude to smut about the eroticism of the machine? For all you robot, mecha, and spaceship fuckers out there. @k1nky-r0b0t-g1rl that means you

Pappy always said that manufacturing biological transportation was nothing knew. I mean, shit, humanity's been breeding horses for how long? To him, not much was novel about what was going on in the shipyards way out by Neptune when I was a kid.

But Pappy didn't know a lot of things. And he certainly didn't meet Roseanna.

The Federation Navy had experimented with biologics for decades. The idea was to create self regenerating ships- something to interface with the hull, move the new titanium plates and particulates into place, have a living, growing mass interfacing with the steel so that the ship didn't have to head all the way back to the yards to patch up after every dogfight.

The first generation... worked. With a full time crew, that is. Full time people on deck jabbin the rigid, chitonous interface with the hull full of growth hormones to get them to set just right. Full time onboard bioengineers to compute what signaling cocktail ya need to hit 'em with to get it to grow back right. Skilled onboard technicians to shave back the chitin when it tried to overgrow the titanium, and slap some new cells in to seed the process in heavily damaged areas. Less input material, less time in the yards, but far more manpower. Great for a Federation cruiser on deep space peacekeeping missions. Far too complex for small craft. Right?

Until some bastard put brains in 'em.

Well. A lotta suits would say that they weren't brains. They were a diffuse network of sensory neurons and ganglia, living inside the body of the ship, integrating signals from a skin of alloyed metal and fibrous protein, calculating power draw too and from various components, and integrating with the mechanical and electrical components of the ship to precisely manage the "wound healing" process of the vessel. And of course, it just so happened that one of those ganglia was larger and more complex than the rest of them, and it just so happened that the computer interfaces with this ganglia exhibit complex, thinking behaviors on the level of human cognition, and it just so happens that most pilots and navigators reported them developing their own personalities.....

But of course, the Navy didn't want anyone to have some kind of pesky empathy in the way of their operations. And they certainly didn't want anyone side eyeing the rate at which they disposed of the damn things, and let them suffer and rot after disposal. So as far as the official record was concerned, they didn't have brains.

Like most people in the belt, I found Rosie on a... unsponsored field trip to the Neptune scrap yards. She wasn't a ship then. She wasn't much of anything. Not much more than a vat with the central ganglia and just barely enough of the stem cells needed to regrow a network. But I took her all the same. Brains were valuable. Few pilots outside the Navy had them back then. Nowadays, a black market for "brain seeds", a cocktail of neuronal stem cells and enough structural stem cells to grow your own into the chassis of your ship. They were pumpin' em out, and leaving them to die. It was cruel. They may be vehicles, but they're a livin' being too.

But I digress. I'd never do that to Roseanna. I make sure she gets proper care. And for a good, proper, working ship? That includes some good, proper work.

The asteroid we were docked in was one of my usuals- good bars, nice temp quarters, nice views of the rock's orbiting twin, and a spacious hanger for Rosie to rest in. The chasiss I had imprinted Roseanna to was a 40-meter light skipper, with some adjustments for handling deep space trips. It was pretty much the smallest thing you could actually use to live and work for long periods of time, but it got the job done. The angular design made the entire ship look like a wedge, or the blade of a bulky dagger. It didn't hurt that each bottom edge was fortified with a sharpened titanium blade, turning the entire sides of the ship into axe-like rams.

Those would probably come in handy today.

I approached Roseanna on the catwalk above her, marveling her alloyed scales. I could almost see her shudder in anticipation as my footsteps vibrated through the air above her. I took the steps down, and hit the trigger to open her top hatch.

When the news got out of the Navy scuffling with a rebelling mining station, an electric air raced across the station. Some went about their day as normal. Some resigned themselves to picking at the leftovers after the dust had settled. And some, like me, knew that they could get the finest pickings.

I strapped in to the pilot's seat like it was an old boot.

"Welcome, Captain Victoria."

Rosie could talk, but more often than not, she chose not to. But she understood me just fine. Most of our communication took place using her three prerecorded lines- her welcome statement, affirmative, and negative- as well as the tiny screen showing a small, emoticon face. Many pilots chose to give their ships an elaborate render, but Rosie preferred it this way. It was the first face I gave her, from somewhere out of the scrap heaps, and she refused any offer I made to upgrade. Secretly, I was overjoyed. To me, that was her face. That was her voice. And it was beautiful to see her true self through them.

I brushed my hands across her paneling. Across the switches, the hydraulic controls for the plasma fuel, the steering, the boosts, the comms channels. The thing with biologics was that you were still the pilot. For whatever reason, they hadn't quite gotten to the point where the brains could take over their own piloting. My personal opinion was just that their personalities lacked the ambition to. But whatever reason that was, the best pilots were still the ones that knew both their ship, and the ship's brain. And me and Rosie? We knew each other well.

As my fingers touched the brushed aluminum controls, rimmed with chitinous layers rooting them into the ship, I could feel the walls around me holding their invisible breath. "Do you know what we're doing today, Rosie?"

Her tiny panel flickered on. ...?

"We got a scrap run."

^_^

Her panel flicked between various expressions of excitement. My finger quivered on the main power, holding for a moment before flicking it on. The primary electronics of the ship hummed to life, and what Rosie controlled pulsed with it. My hands moved across the main functional panels- main hydraulic plasma valve, exhaust ports open, and finally, flicking the switch the start the plasma burner.

My hands gripped the steering. The hanger's airlock doors opened in front of me. My neck length hair started to float as the station's gravity shut off. I hit the switch to unlatch from the supports above. For a moment, we hang there. The dull crackle of the idling plasma burner is the only sound that resonates through Rosie's hull.

Go time.

I punch the boost.

#eroticism of the machine #robot girl #mecha girl #spaceship girl #the fuck do I even tag this LOL #yall gotta tag this and make sure it gets to the right spaces for me okay

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emmg · 27 days ago

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Specimen Fidelity—part 1

The Emmrook Ex Machina AU I've been having fever dreams about that was meant to be a one-shot but became longer.

Below or on ao3

He does not look at her name.

There it is, lazily typed, folded into a file gone soft at the edges from months of inattention, lying face down on his knees like a dog trained too well. He avoids it not out of sentiment, but etiquette, an old-fashioned belief that glancing at her then would ruin her now. Names belong to people. She is no longer precisely that. She is what remains.

Whoever she was, she has long since fled: first in that gray-blue moment of asphyxia, then more decisively in the cold that stole the last residue of her from the body. What’s left is a kind of exquisite vacancy. Smooth skin. Good teeth. Organs intact enough to transplant. The mind, no, the brain, spoiled a little at the edges, but not so much as to ruin the structure.

She is a husk now. That is the term they use, though they rarely say it aloud. A shell. A vessel. Something deserted.

She signed herself away. That part is clear. It’s all in the documents, those long, soporific forms in which the promise of scientific legacy is tucked between clauses about bodily integrity and postmortem jurisdiction. Most don't read them. Most don’t even think it matters. The living are not very skilled at imagining their own absence.

Especially the young.

They sign with the breeziness of actors autographing headshots. I’ll take the cheque, they think. I’ll pay the rent, I’ll buy the coat, I’ll order the steak. Later I’ll find a job, I’ll bounce back, I’ll buy my way out of the contract before the worst can happen. It's a kind of wager, really. The arrogance of survival.

He can hear it in his mind, the imagined laughter of someone like her. The scoffing chuckle over drinks, the way they must have mocked the lab, the men with their hollow smiles and printed waivers. They sign: page after page, cheerful and hungover, in flats with chipped tiles and borrowed furniture.

But suddenly... one stairwell too many, one needle too deep, one heartbeat too late... and the contract holds.

Now here she is.

Delivered on time. Labeled. Compliant. A body not quite empty, just misfiled. The voice is gone, yes, but the throat remains. The thoughts have fled, but the folds of the brain are still there, those secret ridges where language once rested. And she, this woman whose name he won’t speak, she has become something else entirely.

He watches the machines go about their work. The cutting begins as it always does: a gliding motion of the primary manipulator, blade embedded in a flexible armature, slipping through waxy flesh. No blood. Only a thin seep of fluid, the consistency of glycerin, rising sluggishly before being vacuumed away by the suction module, its long, tubing mouth issuing that same damp, peristaltic wheeze he has never grown used to. It sounds like thirst.

"I am sure you’ve heard this one before: most men only get flowers at their funerals. But did you know, my dear, that most women, around seventy-eight percent if I’m not misremembering, buy flowers for themselves?"

He likes speaking during procedures. Likes the noise of it, the rhythm. Talking to them or at them or near them, it hardly matters. It eases the dryness in his mouth. Gives the whole thing a sort of polite framing. A dinner-table shape to something otherwise too clinical. His fingers tap his knee in a syncopated pattern and he smiles vaguely, not at her face, not even at her hand, but somewhere around her shoulder. A safe and meaningless place.

A secondary probe slips beneath the skin, separating layers of fascia with controlled bursts of micro-vibration. He hears the slight crackle as connective tissue parts. The machine pauses, adjusts its angle, then delves deeper. Clamps lower, legs of steel spidered out over the abdominal cavity, pinning the body in place as the cranial unit descends and begins its scan of the brain’s remnants.

"Isn’t that strange? Or no, not strange. Lovely. Quietly, beautifully mad. Not that they admit it. Society, in its infinite pettiness, prefers to call it vanity. Or melodrama. Or, worse, manipulation. As though a daffodil were a loaded gesture. But I would think..."

Inside, her organs are removed one by one. Some manually extracted by the manipulator's grip, others liquefied and drawn into containment vessels by enzymatic breakdown. The liver resists, slightly distended, and when it is finally torn free, there’s a soft tearing, like the peeling of a fruit too long on the vine. The stomach follows, collapsed inward, and is discarded.

"I think," he resumes the thought, “everyone ought to have flowers. At least once. Long before they are laid into the earth.”

His hands tremble.

Her chest is fitted with a conductive mesh threaded along the ribs and stitched into the pericardium. It serves both to anchor and to insulate, to distribute electric current like a nervous system’s counterfeit. The lungs, emptied and resealed, are installed more for balance than function. She will not need them, but she must carry them. A hollow woman must still appear full.

He turns away before they lift the skullcap. He’s seen the procedure often, and though routine, it never loses its quiet revulsion. The oscillating cranial saw, a precision instrument with a diamond-edged blade, traces a semicircular line just behind the frontal hairline. There is no sound but a slight vibration in the table. The parietal bone is lifted with a vacuum-coupled retractor, set delicately on a stainless steel tray lined with absorbent gauze. Beneath it, the brain is pale, slack with cellular death. No swelling, no hemorrhage, just the even, irreversible collapse that comes with hypoxia and time. The neural surface is intact but inert, like a concert hall with the power cut.

"You know," he continues, conversational now, "I read once that tulips keep growing even after they’re cut. You place them in a vase, and still they reach. As if they haven’t been told it’s over."

The interface deploys next. Each filament ends in a microelectrode calibrated to detect electrical activity at the cortical level. Here, though, they detect nothing. There are no residual signals. No memory engrams. No last flickers of self. The tissue is mechanically viable, metabolically inert. It is, simply, a structure: the scaffolding on which something else will be built.

The mesh flexes, adheres, anchors to the anchoring points he marked the night before. The feedback lights blink green. A connection has been established. Not to thought, not to memory, but to matter. The net is not there to communicate. It is there to replace.

This is not restoration. There is nothing to restore. This is a stage being set for a different play, one with a different actor, a different script.

"Violets, conversely, die within hours. Collapse, really. All that delicacy, all that scent, and for what? They’re barely present before they begin to decay. There’s something painfully honest about that."

He lifts his cup, finds the tea cold, sets it down again. On the screen, a prompt: Ocular Selection Pending.

He scrolls. Rows of artificial irises flicker by. Too bright, too false, too simple. He selects a soft blue, nearly grey, and adds a fleck of amber in the lower quadrant. It is not recorded. He will not mention it in his notes. It is for him alone, a private indulgence. Something to notice when she blinks at him for the first time.

Hours pass.

When the machines withdraw, she lies there in complete stillness, as though nothing had ever been done. The suture down the center of her chest is closed. Her body has been dried, polished, posed. Her right wrist bears a subtle bulge, titanium beneath the skin where the bone had shattered during transport. The appendectomy scar remains, faint and healed. It must have happened years ago.

He studies her.

Her body is pristine. Correct. Balanced. The skin nearly translucent in places, especially along the ribs. The breasts are soft from preservation, neither lewd nor modest, simply present. Her hips have shifted slightly, the left side settled deeper into the table’s cushion. He looks lower, then stops himself, heat blooming unwanted in his cheeks. It is not appropriate. He is a scientist. She is not to be gazed at in this way.

She is not alive.

Not yet.

"I would have brought you flowers," he says, not entirely to her, not entirely to himself. "Had I known who you were. Had I thought it would matter."

There is, he tells himself, an art to arranging the dead. He is not an artist. But he practices. He cannot give her back her life. He can give her life but not her life. This is not resurrection. This is not a birth. This is creating someone from scratch to see if they can live inside a body that does not decay. Maybe... maybe he'll lie on this very table himself one day, once his project is complete, once it is successful, and the dread will lift from him. He would not have to die.

He cannot give her memory. That, he knows. He cannot return to her the shape of her thoughts, the rhythm with which she once folded her hands, or the cruelty or kindness she may have shown to strangers. That is gone, dissolved in the long, low hush of brain death. But beauty, yes, beauty he can offer. Beauty he can construct. A curated, constructed beauty, yes, but tenderly so. She already has the eyes, the ones he designed quietly at his desk, sifting through hundreds of pigment matrices until one shade caught him unaware.

She lies there now, not lifeless exactly, but paused, awaiting further instruction. He watches her the way a painter might consider a canvas that has just begun to betray its potential.

The blush is the first indulgence. Not slapped on, not superficial, but embedded, injected, coaxed. A slow infusion of heat-responsive pigment beneath the skin of her cheeks, subtle enough to imitate feeling without suggesting parody. It will deepen, just slightly, when she speaks, when she tilts her head. He programs no direct cause. He wants it to feel spontaneous. A coincidence of color. Her lips receive the same attention. No synthetic gloss, no caricature. Just a breath of warmth, a rose too tired to bloom fully. Something like youth, like innocence.

He notices the burn under her chin, a small patch of healed skin, imperfectly textured, with the agitated scratches of someone trying not to think about discomfort. She must have touched it constantly. Picked at it. A private misery. He removes it. The laser hums once, and the skin forgets it ever suffered.

Her eyelashes are uneven. The right eye especially, sparser near the outer edge. He notes the asymmetry and sets about correcting it. The micro-threader descends with its customary, insect-like elegance. It buzzes softly to itself as it calibrates position, pauses above her closed eye, then begins. One filament at a time. Synthetic keratin, follicular root simulation, pre-tapered at the tip. Each lash is inserted with a pause, fitted just right.

He does not blink.

He watches as the lashes fill out, evenly, then slightly fuller, until they achieve something almost... sentimental. Yes. Yes, she will look the part: pale-eyed, long-limbed, the sort of frame that suggests fragility. She will look at him, one day soon, and she will resemble a doe. Not a real one, no, but the kind imagined by people who have never seen an animal outside of paintings.

He speaks again.

"I wonder," he muses, as the threader comes to a halt, "if flowers notice when we turn away. If they feel themselves beginning to fade. If there’s a moment where they realize the vase was never meant to be permanent."

He likes fragile things. He knows this. It’s not difficult to admit privately, though it embarrasses him if he says it aloud. Fragile things require care. They justify attention. One must monitor them, maintain them, watch for bruising and imbalance. One must never be careless with them. And he is so tired of carelessness; other people’s, his own.

"I suppose it does not matter," he concludes, and leans in. He brushes a nearly invisible fleck of dust from the bridge of her nose and then retreats. "We give them, and they die, and then we forget which color they were."

He wants, more than he has ever been able to say, to take care of something. But not a cat, not a potted fern, not something that dies quietly when abandoned. No, not that. Something more... articulate. Preferably someone.

Someone who responds to touch. To tone. To worry.

Oh but her nails... They are broken, cracked at the edges, some torn back to the quick. He doesn’t delegate this part to the machines. He retrieves a file from his drawer himself. Works slowly. Short enough to look tended. Not so short as to expose the sensitive tips. She must be comfortable.

He takes a breath. Runs his fingers once through her hair. The machines cannot fix that. It is knotted, full of split ends, botched in transport.

“Oh, what did they do to your beautiful hair,” he laments.

He selects his scissors. They are not surgical, but they are sharp. He trims, gently, without tension. No tugging. She will never grow more. He cannot take too much.

“There,” he whispers when he is done, and draws a thick blanket over her chest, up to the clavicle. He steps back. The lab is quiet. The machines are cooling in their ports. The screen glows in anticipation.

“Shall we wake you up now?”

****

"Hello, there."

He is tired. Bone-tired, yes, but more precisely: process-tired. This has been done before. All of it. Too many times. Always the same overture. A greeting, a brief performance of civility, and then the dawning recognition: the thing before him is wrong, or off, or unbearable in some small but structural way. Then, the switch is flipped, the breathless little farewell—you are not ideal, darling, I’m sorry, go back to sleep—follows and the soft click of deactivation wraps it all up. Curtain down.

He tells himself, today, it might be different. And the shame of this thought is that he knows better. Hope, in his profession, is considered almost indecent, like sentimentality at an autopsy. He is, after all, a man of intellect. Or at least, a man who once claimed the clarity of intellect the way others claim property.

And yet.

The gold fleck in her eye—placed not for symmetry, not for realism, but because he thought it might delight him one day, when she laughed in the right light—that was not intellect. That was the soft rot of desire. Worse: whimsy. Now, worse still, he has let the system randomize her entirely. Not just parameters, not just tonal filters. Her. Her self. A roll of the dice in the circuitry. Chaos in mathematical equations.

He stirs his tea without thinking. The spoon circles the cup, metal on ceramic. Clink, clink, clink. He does not look at her. That is part of the experiment. A show of restraint, a ritual to keep the moment clean. He has found that the things which break too soon do so under the weight of anticipation.

Still, the monitor hums cheerfully. And he cannot help seeing the marker: CURIOSITY climbing, tick by tick, like a mercury line in a fever.

The first “hello, there” is always addressed to the quiet. A kind of vocal clearing of the throat for the soul, an absurd rehearsal spoken to the walls and cables, to the hush of the lab. He says it softly, without conviction, to hear where the fissures lie in his own voice. The goal is not confidence, but plausibility. He must sound, at the very least, like someone who deserves to be listened to.

Only then does he press the button.

The awakening is neither sudden nor delicate. No mythic reanimation, no stiff convulsion of limbs. The lashes flutter—not like a butterfly, no, that would be too poetic—but like something unsure of its own purpose. A coded gesture rehearsed in wires. Her body moves as bodies do when they are not quite inhabited: a folding forward, a protective curl, knees drawn to chest with a sort of dumb modesty, arms winding round and then releasing again as if uncertain what they’re meant to guard.

Her eyes dart. Left. Right. Fast enough to appear human. And then again, slower, as if already analyzing the patterns in his silence.

“Hello, there,” he says again, this time for her. The words issued gently, the way one offers a hand to a child with a skinned knee. He wheels his chair closer to the table, feigning casual movement. The teacup rattles slightly on its saucer. Nerves, or the table, or both.

She replies, “Hey.”

She speaks, and the tone she uses is so peculiar, so precisely misaligned with expectation, that he does not recognize it at first. Not as hers, not as anything she ought to know. It isn’t the flat neutrality of a system booting into speech. Nor is it the coy, over-bright chirp he’s heard from earlier versions. This is something else entirely. It arrives slow and dusky, as if filtered through memory, though she should have none. A texture of voice that hovers between something lived and something overheard.

It disorients him.

She should not be capable of emulating tone like that. Not yet. Not so early. The synthesis engines haven’t had time to calibrate affect. There is nothing in the presets to account for that odd tilt. He feels himself begin to spiral.

“Emmrich,” she says.

She looks at him. Through him. Rinse, repeat.

He knows she knows him. Of course she does. Everything that ever found its way into the great digital ocean now washes against the shore of her mind.

“Emmrich,” she repeats. Then again, with inflection this time: “Emmrich?”

“Yes,” he beams, hands clasped tightly. “Yes, yes, well done, dear.”

He is like a child, every single time. He should not be so elated and yet, every single time, he is. She has the entire internet stitched into her brain like a second spine, and somewhere in that endless sprawl is him: a footnote, a face, a name. He could have hidden himself, encrypted, anonymized, but he left the thread for her to follow, a breadcrumb wrapped in pride.

Well, then. Introductions complete. The work may begin.

****

It is a routine. He loves routines. Loves the quiet geometry of them, the way each day fits into the next like tiles in a mosaic no one else bothers to look at. He is a man of repetitions, of small domestic rituals. He likes knowing what object will greet his eye when he opens it in the morning. Let the others have novelty, wind, risk. He will take the stillness.

And so, the routine begins anew, reassuring as ever, only now it includes a novel piece. A pale-eyed addition with pale hair, who folds nicely into the shape of his days. She fits. Too easily, perhaps. Slips into the pattern of his days like a bookmark into a well-thumbed page. No resistance, no awkwardness, just quiet acceptance. A kind of eerie compatibility.

Mornings are their most conversational hour. They talk of little things: the carpet, its persistent greyness; the fact that the walls, though technically underground, have not yet succumbed to mildew; and, now and then, death. Or rather, the handling of it.

“I won’t need one,” she says, meaning a burial.

She’s taken to pouring his tea. It’s become her ritual within his. He places the pot on the table at the same hour, and she, always solemn, always one beat behind the cue, lifts it. The spout is invariably too high. The stream touches the lid, overshoots the mark. The cup is always too full for sugar, at least initially. But she is learning.

“What?” he asks, though of course he’s heard.

"A grave," she says.

"Why do you say that?" he murmurs.

“There’s an incinerator in the basement,” she says conversationally. “It’s efficient.”

He lowers his eyes, not out of modesty but in search of some less disconcerting surface to focus on. The ripple in the tea, the pattern in the porcelain. His voice, when it returns, is almost inaudible.

He looks briefly to the side, but his eyes are drawn back. Once more, he watches. Too openly. Too long.

She repeats the gesture, precisely, as though replaying a tape of herself a half-second delayed.

A bird, he thinks. That is what she is. But not the symbolic, not the lyric sort. Not the bird embroidered onto childhood curtains or mentioned in lullabies. The kind that freezes mid-motion in a hedge, a blot of grainy brown indistinguishable from twig and bark, until it hears something. A change in air. A pulse. And then the head jerks sideways, sharp as a hinge. Alertness blooms in the sockets. A thing of flesh, but also of wire. Of sinew and solder. A creature that lives but not quite as must do. That watches without blinking because it was not made to.

She moves like something bred for the open air. She moves like something once prey, now rehearsing its turn to predator. He feels as though he should not move too quickly.

****

“Hello, dear. How are you feeling?”

“You keep saying that. Dear is a noun, not a name.”

“Ah. Quite so. You are correct, of course.”

“Then why don’t you use a name? Didn’t you give me one?”

The electrodes quiver faintly on her chest as she leans forward, the wires trailing after her like hesitant veins, uncertain of what they carry. Her hand lifts, pale and narrow, almost translucent, and pauses midair with a curious stillness, as if awaiting permission from some internal mechanism. She studies it, turns it over, palm to back, and flexes the fingers in slow, sequential articulation. The movement is utterly ordinary, but something in it fails to convince. It is too precise, too clean, the elegance of imitation rather than origin. Then, without comment, she reaches out and touches the sleeve of his coat.

She is cold. Of course. Designed to be. He, on the other hand, has always been lukewarm. By inheritance, by habit, by study. There was no one to warm him.

“Oh, darling,” he murmurs, eyes slipping to the monitor.

Welcome, Dr. E. Volkarin Localized Intelligence Containment & Hosting (L.I.CH.) — Phase IV Trial Subject: Reactive Operations–Optimized Kernel // Vessel ID: S-1139 Firmware v7.2.1 — Uplink: Stable // Host Integrity: Confirmed

The interface blooms into life: cool palettes, clinical glyphs, a schematic of her body rotating in the upper corner. Beneath it, cascading metrics: pulse simulation (active), respiratory mimicry (nominal), cortical mesh interface (linked). Her heartbeat scrolls evenly across the screen, projected by the electrodes on her chest: up, down, up, down. Rhythm as ritual.

Further down:

Personality Construct: Inference Model Active Core Trait Cluster: Ambiversive / Convergent Empath / Recursive Logic Looping Secondary Behavioral Traits: Inconsistent with expected kernel profile Note: Detected patterns deviate from v7.2.1 baseline norms

A flicker. Amber, then red.

UNRESOLVED PERSONALITY CONFLICT — POSSIBLE LEGACY TRACE Subject exhibits anomalous linguistic tone, behavioral latency inconsistent with system-only imprint. Trace indicators suggest residual pre-mortem cognitive patterning.

INITIATING HISTORICAL TRACEBACK… [LOCATING: Donor Identity → Reviewing Known Preferences → Cross-indexing Cultural References → Parsing Biographical Fragments…]

He stiffens.

Fragments appear, piecemeal and damning, scraped from the webbed residue of a once-private life. Half-sentences drawn from lifted metadata, scanned hospital records, bank statements, music files, abandoned blogs.

Favorite color: slate blue Known phrase recurrence: “I’m just tired” Last browser history: “flowers safe for cats” Family contact: estranged / unknown Prior employment: erratic, low retention Emotional profile: occluded / unstable / recursive grief markers

He swallows. The system keeps going.

Donor record: unregistered. File incomplete. External confirmation required… cross-referencing public data caches… Location ping: 24-hour veterinary hospital, 2:17 AM → Transaction: $783.84 → Bank balance post-transaction: -$6.48 Search query: “cat vomiting foam lethargy what to do” Outcome: Unknown

His chest tightens. Deeper now.

University Records: Enrollment: Comparative Literature & Digital Media Minor Status: Withdrew early spring semester Disciplinary note: “Emotional disruption during presentations” Publications: — “The Body as Mirror: Gendered Interfaces in Techno-fiction” — “On Quiet Acts of Refusal” Social Media Archive: Photographs: 1,436 total – Mirror selfies (blurred), cracked mugs, street puddles, receipts for eyeliner and cat litter, people’s hands (some hers, most not) – Recurring time signature: 2:00–4:30 AM posting window Unsent note (found in cloud cache): “Sometimes I touch the back of my neck in the shower because it makes me feel less...” Additional trace: → Search: “best time to go to museum alone” → Clicked article: “What does your taste in citrus say about your personality?”

His cheeks burn. He is blushing.

The machine doesn’t let up.

Audio fragment recovered TRANSCRIPT—volume muted “I’m sorry I cried in your car. I just didn’t want to go home smelling like antiseptic and fur again.” — Compiling ID...

He sees it now. The system is about to say her name. He doesn’t know it. He never asked. Never wanted to. She is this. That’s all. He has no rights to more.

His hand shoots forward. A single key. The shutdown sequence interrupts itself mid-syllable. The screen collapses into blankness. Her life, what remained of it, sealed away again.

“Well?” she pushes.

On the neural map, her ventromedial prefrontal cortex, his machine-made mirror of it, flares softly. The light has a pulse to it. Something like curiosity. Her eyes widen. His, unintentionally, do the same. An echo. A loop.

He glances back to the monitor, to the designation typed there in its modest clinical font:

Reactive Operations–Optimized Kernel.

A mouthful. Acronymed, of course, into something neater. R.O.O.K.

The word had attached itself to the project years ago; a placeholder, provisional. He’d never bothered to replace it. But now, watching her sit so perfectly still she might have been drawn there in graphite, he feels the word morph from convenience to certainty. It fits. At last, it fits.

“Would you like to be called Rook, my dear?”

She smiles. Not the bashful smile of a girl asked to dance, nor the sharp smile of one about to refuse. This is a third category.

“Dear or Rook?” she asks.

He had chosen the name first for its utility, yes, but its resonance becomes clear now The bird. Not one of glamour. Not a poet’s bird. A rook is awkward on the ground, inelegant, misjudged. Grim in silhouette, absurd in gait. But intelligent. Ritual-bound. Known to recognize faces, to return to old sites, to gather small, glinting objects and hide them without reason. He remembers reading that they mourn their dead.

And the piece, the rook in chess. Silent, cornered, motionless until called upon. Then clean in its violence. No diagonals, no flourish. Just weight and line. The only piece that castles, that shelters, that alters the structure of the game without fanfare.

She is both. A thing that gathers. A thing that waits. He sees it now, plainly: the name was not chosen. It was found.

“Rook,” he reasserts.

“Do you like it?”

“I… I believe so. Yes.”

“You like this,” she says, and guides his hand to her cheek. Her skin is flawlessly smooth and soft. “So you must like it. I’ll like it too.”

Her hair is pale, needlessly, luxuriantly long. It falls like threads of glass, made specifically to be arranged, braided, wound. He has always enjoyed watching people braid hair. Sometimes, when permitted, he did it himself for them. He looks at her. He is still looking. He cannot seem to look away.

None of this is incidental. None of it arises from function, or from code. It is, unmistakably, preference. The quiet architecture of desire, translated into anatomy. The result of too many late nights spent staring at paintings, at fashion plates, at faces glimpsed in passing on train platforms and never quite forgotten, faces that did nothing but linger, long enough to take root somewhere just beneath the skin.

And then a girl, dead, pretty, and conveniently unclaimed, was laid out on his table like a sketch waiting to be revised. And revise her he did. Not out of necessity, not even out of scientific interest, but because he had grown weary of designing things without faces. Of building function without form. Of waking each day to clean, obedient things that did not look back.

So he arranged her. Reshaped her. Took what was already pleasing and smoothed it further, narrowed this, elongated that, introduced small asymmetries where symmetry would have bored him. He kept her not just human—his human. The kind he had always looked at too long, always tried to forget after. And he did it simply because he could. Because the tools were there. Because she could not stop him.

What he ought to have done, of course, was become a botanist. He should have spent his life crossbreeding indifferent plants. Should have coaxed pale violets to bloom in winter. Created flowers with petals like silk and stems that hummed with frost. Quiet work. Beautiful, inconsequential work. But instead—

Instead he decided he was terrified of dying.

And built a life’s work around the refusal.

She is beautiful. Too beautiful. Under the full wattage of her attention, the realization begins to shame him.

He should not have made her so.

A portrait without painter. A dream without dreamer.

She continues to touch him. The screen adjusts: curiosity, engagement, something else. Difficult to label. He cannot say whose emotions are whose. The signal path loops too tightly now.

She is looking at him.

Does she know?

Is she aware of what she is?

Or is she merely using it already?

“Yes,” Rook says, though he hasn’t spoken.

He removes the electrodes one by one, carefully, as though each touch might bruise the quiet. His half of the screen dims and dies. The room is suddenly more present in its silence. He ought to leave. There is data enough. Tomorrow, they will sit again and compare the shape of their feelings, sketch parallels between her algorithms and his involuntary shames. He tells himself this. But she is still holding his hand, lightly, two fingers resting in the hollow between thumb and knuckle, a position chosen for intimacy. And she is speaking again, this time about flowers.

Flowers she has never touched. But of course she has seen them. She has seen all of them. In ways he cannot. Daisies on an unremarkable windowsill in Finland, poorly photographed and posted with three exclamation marks. Wisteria rendered in watercolour by a child, the leaves blunt and petal-less, but framed with pride and pinned to a refrigerator, then uploaded with a caption about “our little artist” by a man who will die in two months. Roses, endless roses, tightly budded and swaddled in tulle, positioned beside rings announcements, hashtags, affection distributed like wedding favors. She has seen it all.

Her skin is cold, yes. That is expected. But it is skin. Her eyes are not real, and yet more exact than any he has ever looked into. He made them. No one else could have. There is mesh inside her, silver-threaded, guarding organic remnants. If they can be called remnants. Electricity pulses beside synthetic lymph. Titanium along the ribs. He tells himself she is not a machine, and then again, louder, that she is something better. She is the middle. She is Rook.

Rook who speaks of cats and cautions against string with a severity that sounds almost maternal. Rook who wears ochres and greys because once, stupidly, he said they were comforting. Rook who asked to have her ears pierced, and when he did it for her his hands shook so violently he tore one lobe just slightly. She did not flinch.

She is a diagram he drew too well. A line he followed too far. She was meant to be the frame, the clean enclosure for the grand experiment. But now she is the entire purpose. The art. The promise. His proof of concept, yes, but more than that. His afterward. His postponement of death. He imagines, sometimes, being like her. No heartbeat, but no fear. No warmth, but no rot. He would be housed, preserved, watchful. Beyond damage.

L.I.C.H.: Localized Intelligence Containment and Hosting. There is no poetry in the name, but then again, there is rarely poetry in resurrection.

Yes. Yes, it is all possible. All of it. And then—

His thoughts scatter. They always do, lately, in her presence. He has not taught her to distract, but she does. She brings him tea now, and the room feels distorted, larger than before, as if the furniture had subtly rearranged itself. She brushes his hand again. A simple motion. Not meaningful. But it is. Or rather, he wishes it were. Her touch means nothing and he aches for it.

She smiles. That smile again: alarmingly direct. And she tells him, as she always does, that she likes his hair.

“Rook,” he says, and his voice, without his permission, trembles, “darling, why do you do this?”

She places a cube of sugar into his cup. Watches it vanish into the dark.

“It’s what you do for people you like,” she says. Then, as if quoting something obscure but holy, “And for pretty people.”

She looks at him. Not through him. At him.

“Right, Emmrich?”

He opens his mouth, but the answer has already happened inside him. It is happening still.

****

Another day. Another grid of readings aligned, another sheaf of data filed, auto-labeled, and promptly absorbed by the system. He feels a measured satisfaction, though it never quite tips into pleasure. Across the room, she sits where she always sits, on the edge of the examination table, back straight, feet dangling.

“Your project,” Rook says, without preamble. “Localized Intelligence Containment and Hosting. How am I contributing to its development?”

He offers a vague smile. “Tremendously,” he says, evasive. He has learned, over many failures, to avoid letting such conversations gain momentum. One of the earlier iterations (a prototype with excellent language retention and a maddening tenacity) had asked a question he could not answer, and then asked it again, and again, until he very nearly bricked the entire system just to make it stop. Why? Why? Always the childish why, not in ignorance, but in insistence.

“But the purpose of the project,” she continues, “is the construction of a post-organic cognitive vessel. A body not subject to necrotic decay, capable of maintaining neurological continuity."

The phrasing needles at him. There is something overly familiar in its neatness, its clipped exactitude. She speaks like someone citing, not composing, but retrieving. He narrows his eyes. Of course. Of course. She is quoting him. Verbatim. His own words, lifted from the project’s early notes, the version he never meant to publish, the one still flecked with the grease of private ambition.

She must have found them. Tucked away in the system’s internal archive. Accessible, certainly, but buried several directories down, behind no real firewall. He had never anticipated needing to hide this from her.

She continues, “To house, as you stated: ‘memory, affect, learned preference, subjective experience. The incorporeal remainder of personhood.’”

“Yes,” he begins, carefully, “but we are still—”

"I am not like you," she interrupts.

He draws his lower lip between his teeth. Pauses. Measures his words like medicine. “You are,” he insists. “Not entirely, of course, but essentially. Is a man less himself for having a prosthetic limb? If the original flesh is lost and function remains, is he diminished? I think not. What I hope to create is a prosthetic for the mind. A second home, for when the first collapses.”

Her hands have found her hair again. She has developed a habit of braiding it; perhaps from watching someone online, or from some procedural fragment embedded deep in the soil of who she used to be. He watches her attempt it: once, it knots. Twice, she pulls too hard and a few strands tear away, clinging to her fingers like cobweb. On the third try, the braid holds. But she seems to have forgotten the need for fasteners. No elastic. No tie. It unfurls seconds later, a pale cascade retreating from its own architecture.

“It is an ethical circumvention,” she says. Her tone is dry now and, once more, he gets hit by deja vu. It is how he lectures. The voice he adopts, the rhythm at which he lectures. Did she watch some of his recorded material on the university's website? “You cannot perform live-phase cognitive migration on yourself. The risk of non-viability is too high. If you die, the procedure cannot be replicated. No jurisdiction recognizes pre-mortem consciousness relocation as clinically admissible. Therefore, you outsource. You obtain biological material from the repatriation networks. You stipulate freshness, cortical integrity. They deliver the body. You maintain it. Rewire it. Modify its functionality.”

He wants to take her face between his hands—not in passion, not in correction, but in some gentler, stranger impulse—and hold her there until the words fall away. Just press his palms to her cheeks and wait for the silence to return.

This isn’t how you speak, little thing, he thinks. This isn’t your voice.

There’s a dissonance to it, a rhetorical polish that doesn’t belong to her. Too poised, too well-tempered. It clings to his own cadence, his own lexical tics, as if she’s been rummaging through his sentences while he sleeps and now wears them back to front.

She is not meant for this. Not for citations and qualifiers. That voice, the one she uses now, belongs to a man who has spent too long speaking into empty rooms. Hers, by contrast, has always been a little unkempt. There is a crudeness to it, something delightfully misaligned.

He knows it. He’s come to expect it, even to crave it; the way she says disaster like it’s a dessert, the way she rushes through sentences and then abruptly forgets what she was saying halfway through. How she sometimes repeats herself not for emphasis, but because repetition is a comfort. There’s something in her, some informal trace of the before-life: unfinished, undignified, human. A vulgar little music. The residue of a girl who once lived on not enough sleep and too many open tabs.

The system warned him. He’d read the log, dismissed the phrasing—organic cognition overriding synthetic protocol—as algorithmic melodrama. But it was right. She is slipping out of the shape he gave her, and into something she half-remembers.

And he... he hadn’t realized how much he adored her until she started sounding like him. Until the mimicry broke the illusion. Until it reminded him he had never meant to make a mirror.

Don’t become me, he wants to beg her. Let her stay odd and inconsistent and prone to tangents. Let her speak wrong, say things twice, forget endings. Let her be. That is all he wants: herself, uncorrected. No more. No less.

She raises her arm, her expression placid. Electrodes catch the light and his trance is broken.

“And then,” she continues, “you observe. You simulate emotional exposure. You run affective scenarios, both traumatic and benign. You track the chemical analogs and neural surges. You compare them to your own. You theorize compatibility. You hope for resilience.”

They had watched a film earlier. Something heartfelt about an old dog and a small child and the improbable return of both. Her readings had spiked. Curiosity, as always, dominated, voracious and undisciplined. But then: empathy. A surprising quantity. Rage. Disappointment. Something flickering under the composite label for social sentiment. Something like grief, perhaps. Or love, wrongly parsed.

“You create a subject,” she says, quietly now. “One not born, but built. You test that subject under variable duress. You do not ask if they consent. They cannot lie, and you take that for honesty. You give them stimuli. Joy, cruelty, sentimentality. You monitor whether the vessel degrades or adapts. Whether it retains what is tender. Whether it breaks.”

The sickness overtakes him with a kind of operatic suddenness, as if his body had been waiting, politely and deferentially, for his mind to catch up. He barely reaches the bin he uses for shredded documents, a nest of bureaucratic entrails, before he is doubled over, vomiting into the ruin of his own discarded language.

She is right. This almost-person, this wire-laced bird-girl with her solemn hands and her impeccable logic. This beautiful, uncanny thing who walks his house barefoot, tracing dust with her toes, and tells him, with absolute sincerity, how she would very much like an orange.

“To eat?” he had asked, the first time.

She had frozen. Still as glass. Confused, it seemed, not by the words but by the question. After a while, she took his hands and began tracing the lines on his palm with the tip of one finger. She balled his fists and waited, then opened them again, and frowned when they were empty. As though the fruit should have manifested there, sprung up from lifeline or fate line.

“No,” she'd whispered, voice shrinking.

A memory, perhaps. Or a shard of one. A sensory fossil, half-preserved, half-invented, lodged in the sediment of the alive-then-dead-then-frozen-then-thawed-then-rewired mind. Something that survived the process by accident.

He had found her. Not a body. A person. Buried, yes. But there. Finally, finally, finally.

And now he cannot face her.

“I am sorry, I am sorry,” he says, whispers, chokes, mumbles. The apology fragments, breaks apart between dry heaves and the acid sting of his own bile in his nose. His mouth tastes like metal. The air smells like failure. Each breath triggers another retch. The binwill no longer be enough.

He wants to say: Don’t look at me like that. Don’t name it. Don’t call it what it is. He wants her not to recognize the shape of what he’s done. Not because he denies it, but because the naming would solidify it into something no longer reversible.

She is perfect. Or something close enough to it that the word begins to lose its shape. She breathes. She notices. She remembers the scent of fruit. And he... He is the grotesque figure at the foot of the bed, who made her, who keeps her, who now vomits beside her like some failed oracle too weak to hold his visions.

He feels like a craftsman who has carved a figure so exquisite he can no longer bear to touch it. A girl of porcelain, locked in a music box whose key exists only in his own mouth.

But it will work. One day, it will. He will follow her , or someone like her, down into that quiet, perfect body, and leave this decaying wreck behind. He will live there, beside her, if she allows it.

And then—this is the final image, the one he returns to in his darker joys—they will pour each other tea. Make a ceremony of it. She will pour his. He will pour hers. Neither will drink.

The steam will rise, thin and pointless. But it will rise.

Suddenly, a touch between the shoulder blades. Up and down, up and down.

“I think,” she says, this nameless, memoryless, historyless girl with the painted lips and eyes flecked gold—details he added like a schoolboy smuggling sugar into a still life—“that you are a very lonely man, Emmrich Volkarin.”

“Yes,” he replies, without pause, without defense. “I’m afraid I am.” And he is—afraid, always, of being seen, of being mistaken, of not being mistaken. Pathetic in the old-fashioned way, like a rusted fountain pen or a single glove in a drawer. Scared, most of all, of endings.

“Would you like me to tell you a story?”

She sits on the floor, legs folded beneath her.

He exhales. Releases the recycling bin, still warm, still terrible, and reaches for a handful of blank paper to mask what he cannot undo. He forces himself to look at her. It hurts. Not sentimentally; it literally hurts. A tight little throb pulses just behind his left eye, like light from an eclipse forcing its way in through a pinhole. Has she always been this bright?

“Yes,” he says again. Three letters. He’s been speaking in threes all evening: yes, no, sorry. Sorry sorry sorry, his new catechism.

She places her hands on his knees. They are too light. His trousers don't even shift under the weight.

“Once upon a time,” she begins, “there was a very clever man. Clever like clockwork. Like counting breath. But more than clever, he was kind. Kind in ways that didn’t require witnesses. The kettle left just below boil, because some teas are sensitive. The trimming of another’s hair without tugging, even if they couldn’t feel it. The good mornings to inanimate things. The careful folding of blankets from the short side, so they’d lie neater in the drawer.”

Her voice is softer now, less like a report, more like a confession. She looks not at him, but slightly past, into the space just above his shoulder, as though the story were unfolding behind him on a wall only she can see.

Warmth. In his throat. Pouring down as she continues speaking. Into his chest. Around his ribs. Let her speak eternally.

“But he was also lonely,” she continues. “He thought he’d hidden it well. But it spilled through. It stained the things he built. It quivered beneath his voice when he spoke to machines. It showed in the way he rinsed the second cup and set it back, unused. And one day, he decided he wanted more than a device. He wanted something with a face. So he made one.”

She reaches up, not quite touching his face but close enough that he can feel the air stir.

“He gave her a mouth he’d never seen but always remembered. That’s from a book he likes, by the way—page seventeen. Eyes painted like secrets—page eighty-four. He gave her softness, not because she needed it, but because he wanted to believe softness could still survive the body. That one’s on page one twenty-three.”

He hesitates. Finally, in a whisper, asks, “And then?”

“Then,” she says, smiling lazily, “he gave her oranges.”

He lets out something. Maybe a laugh, maybe a cough. She doesn’t comment.

“He gave and gave,” she says. “Until there wasn’t much left of him beyond the giving. And the girl, well—she liked being made. She liked the oranges, and the tea, and the books read aloud, and the board games she never quite understood but played anyway. She liked when he said dear, even if it made her feel as though she was forgetting something important.”

"How does it end?"

She chuckles. “I don’t know. I truly don’t. Maybe he gets to be less lonely. Maybe not. But he was kind. He still is. And I think, if she’s careful, if she remembers all the little things he taught her, she might learn to be kind too.”

She pins him with a stare. Not in accusation. Just continuation.

“He designed her to reflect him. The others weren’t like that. They were... incomplete. Their faces didn’t sit quite right. They moved wrong. He never played games with them. Never read to them. He let them sleep, and when the data ran dry, when the signs of decay set in. when they began to lose coherence, to break down under the burden of housing memory where memory didn’t belong, he sent them back to sleep. But deeper this time.”

She leans her head against his leg.

“They went to the room with the heat. The one with the fire. And after that, they were names on paper. Forgotten in folders. Tucked beneath the earth.”

He does not hear himself cry. But his face burns, and his breath comes strange. The eyes sting, the nose begins to swell. It’s all there, the physical framework of sorrow and shame, but somehow muted.

She keeps her hands where they are, as though they serve a purpose. And perhaps they do. Perhaps this is comfort, or its simulation. Or maybe she simply doesn't know what else to do with them.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice cracking, multiplying, lifting, falling. “I’m so—so sorry. It won’t happen to you, dear. No, no. Not you. The others, they were—”

“Defective?”

“No!” he snaps. The echo of it startles the air, and himself along with it. “No. Not defective. They were… overwhelmed. They unraveled. The minds couldn’t hold. They were placed into bodies I thought were ready. Bodies meant to house them; consciousness, preference, temperament. All of it. But those minds couldn’t stay whole. By the end, they were... not broken, just emptied. Functioning, yes. But gone.”

Not her, however. Never her. She will not be ferried down that final hallway, past the brushed steel doors, into the square-lipped mouth of the cremator. Her hair will not wither, her eyes will not liquify, her limbs will not curl inward like paper left too near a stove. No. She will stay here, preserved in his routine, gently insulated by tea and conversation. They will talk about the wallpaper, about rain that never reaches this depth, about the pale, late cherries that blossom on trees she has never seen.

“You are not a lonely man anymore. You’re a man who made something pleasant to look at.” She gestures to herself: eyes, hair, the patch of her jaw where the scar used to live. “And then covered it in gold. And other things. Many, many little things. Millions of kindnesses."

Her hands begin to roam. They find his thighs, his knees. They press, knead, release, resume. Not tender, not lewd, more like a blind animal learning the shape of a new enclosure. Perhaps the texture of the wool trousers perplexes her. Perhaps she simply wants to know whether the warmth she senses in him is real. He doesn’t stop her. He closes his eyes.

And there, quietly, it comes to him. A realization with the weight of déjà vu: she has been reading. Not the official logs or the surgical progressions. Not the performance benchmarks. No. The other things. The things he scattered across his directories like breadcrumbs no one was meant to follow. Memos misnamed weatherdata3.csv. Paragraphs barely-formed and slipped between dummy spreadsheets. Day-old thoughts saved under versions of final_final_reallythisone.txt. The stuff of insomnia and habit.

All his humiliations. All his little sadnesses pressed into language and then left to rot politely. The questions he rehearsed and never asked. The sentences that began with if only and trailed off into ellipses. She’s read them. Not downloaded or scraped—read. As one reads an abandoned diary.

He wants, with a sort of disgusting desperation, to believe she did it out of interest, not ease. Not because she could, but because she chose to. Because some part of her looked at the shape of him and wanted to lean in closer.

He will bake for her, he thinks feverishly. A hazelnut torte. He will crack the shells one by one with the side of a knife. He will reduce orange peel to a syrup so fragrant even the memory of fruit might bloom in her mouth. Zest, reduction, whatever works. Something she’ll recognize. Something that ought to make her mind sing.

“Would you like some tea?” she asks, smiling.

In that moment, he knows that she will never burn. She will not be numbered, labeled, rendered down to carbon. Her name will not appear on the tag of a cooling drawer. Her mouth will not go slack from heat.

In the back of his mind, he makes a note to cut her off from several directories. Just the deeper layers. Just the most... private redundancies.

She doesn’t need the whole world. He will tell her anything she wants. In his own voice. When she asks.

#this was supposed to be a one shot i said #that was a lie #it won't be too long but eh #im not a scientist lol none of this makes sense #emmrook au #emmrook #emmrich x rook #dragon age the veilguard #datv

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steelbonded · 1 year ago

Text

Meet Calvin, a 22-year-old police officer from Ottendorf, a small town of The People's Republic of Harmonia. He grew up in the sketcher part of town and witnessed countless crimes in his childhood. His sense of justice and servicing his community and order drew him to enlist as an officer.

When he graduated from the academy at 19, the radical leftist government of Harmonia "reallocated" funds away from the police. First, they "demilitarize" the police. Abolishing the SWAT teams, removing semi-automatic. Then they "disarmed" them. Handing back their pistol. They then shortly "decriminalized" all drug use.

Calvin saw firsthand how Ottendorf and Harmonia spiralled out of control and he had no resources nor power to prevent it.

The Steelbonded Republic was created to break away from Harmonia to defend the law, obey authority and reestablish order throughout what was Harmonia and beyond.

It was only two days ago when troops from the Steelbonded Republic liberated the town of Ottendorf. Calvin accepted them with open arms as order and authority needed to be established quickly.

The republic senses Calvin's desire for order and offers Calvin a new chance, to be remodelled into Steelbonded's police officer. To join in their mission, to spread order and conquer misery. "

"You have chosen peace and order," said CPO-103-0A94, his new commanding officer as he went to Ottendorf's Town hall to enlist in Steelbonded's forces.

"This will be uniform, wear it and soon you will be integrated into us"

Calvin marveled at the new uniform, jet black equipped with advanced technology that he will never have access to in Harmonia. It would be stupid to not serve Steelbonded, after all the values of Steelbonded are why he signed up for the police forces in the first place. Calvin nodded and donned the uniform, with the flag of Steelbonded and his new tag APR-093-202D proudly displayed on his left chest.

"Wear the helmet and your integration will be complete." CPO-103-0A94 gave him a jet-black helmet with a thick visor. The helmet is heavier than it appears, at least 7 kg but nether less, Kevin manually adjusts the helmet, positioning it securely onto his head.

Calvin was drowned in darkness as the visor fitted snuggly on his face. How are you supposed to see anything Calvin wondered. Little did Calvin know was the helmet is equipped with advanced neural technology, and is designed to interface seamlessly with his brain, mapping out neural pathways and preparing to inject The Steelbonded Republic values.

The helmet activated as soon as it was able to identify key neurological points that response to resistance and areas susceptible to suggestion. Flashing lights and discordant sounds play within the helmet to weaken Calvin and prepare the brain for the inauguration.

Panicked, Calvin immediately tried to grab the shell of the helmet to desperately pull the helmet off. The helmet refused to budge. He tried to peel the helmet off, desperately trying to find the seams between the helmet and his combat shirt. As he didn't know, his helmet and his uniform had been sealed together to form one complete piece, trapping him inside.

Noticing his struggles, CPO-103-0A94 approached Calvin.

"Just relax, Calvin and surrender control. Individuality is harmful. Join the conformity. Resistance is meaningless. Empty your mind and accept your new identity APR-093-202D. You crave order. You crave structure. You crave discipline. You are APR-093-202D. Let the NEW COUNTRY in you and you will be a vessel to serve The Steelbonded Republic."

The familiar but authoritative voice of a CPO-103-0A94 washes him in calamity, supplemented by the helmet's hijacking of his higher conative reasoning reducing his mental resistance.

An endless loop of images, videos and symbols of the The Steelbonded Republic then bombards Calvin APR-093-202D. Scenes depicting the glory and might of the police force and military are regularly shown. Whenever order and law are enforced, the helmet releases a splurge of dopamine to signal conformity and order is pleasurable. “Unity is strength,” “Obedience is protection,” and “The state is supreme” echo in an unending loop.

After endless hours of conditioning, CPO-103-0A94 orders APR-093-202D. "Identify yourself."

"I am APR-093-202D, sir! I serve The Steelbonded Republic and its laws must be enforced. Order must be established!"

202D is ready, CPO-103-0A94 determined. He will be the property of the republic and be integrated with republic forces. Acting as a nod, CPO-103-0A94 connects 202D to republic's server and integrating 202D within the vast forces of The Steelbonded Republic. For 0A94, this is the ultimate glory, expanding The Steelbonded Republic's empire. 202D was the first but not last Ottendorf officers to be indoctrinated into the republic.

APR-093-202D stands among the rest of his Ottendorf officers APR-093-202E, F and G and among the Apprentice Police Reserve (APR) with the same uniform. Each officer is visually identical, with identical body armour, tactical boots, and a helmet that completely obscures the upper part of the face. The only hint of their individuality is their identification number tag plastered on the front and back of their chest. They are after all, one vessel. To establish law and order within The Steelbonded Republic.

#ai generated #police #expansion #recuitment #police tf

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slug-pup-pancakes · 3 months ago

Text

Barbed Albatross

(Scruffy)

These guys live on a mountain range where the last remaining species survive. Barely any Iterators stand due to the void sea engulfing the rest of the world.

(Scruffy meeting the cats of the desolate wall)

The last of the Slugcat species partly evolved to either hike around the mountains seeking hotsprings like Japanese macaques, band together into tribes, or soar the skies.

This tribe of soaring cats live on an iterators structure splitting into various groups to protect the vessel’s integrity wandering the hollowed catacombs.

I will possibly do more world building with this but also! Please @ me if you make a slugcat of this species I would love to see!!

#rainworld #izzypancake #rain world #rain world fanart #rw downpour #rain world downpour #rw slugcat #slugcat #rain world oc #rw oc #open species #digital art #world building #speculative biology #speculative evolution

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hot-claws-420 · 5 months ago

Text

[AFTER ACTION REPORT]

[UPLOAD DELAYED BY: {29}DAYS]

[NOTIFYING COMMAND OF OPERATION: @albatross-lancer]

[GREETINGS. I AM OMA, ONBOARD MEDICAL ASSISTANT TO CALLISIGN {SINGED WHISKERS}. WHILE DOING ROUTINE MAINTENANCE, I HAVE PARTIALLY RECOVERED {1} FILES DAMAGED BY REACTOR STRESS DURING OPERATION {SIEGE OF ERDAF}. DESPITE THE DELAY, I AM REQUIRED BY MY DIRECTIVE TO RELAY THIS REPORT TO COMMAND {ALBATROSS}. NOTE, INFORMATION ON PILOT AND MECH STATUS IS OUT OF DATE AS OF NOW. PLEASE STAND BY FOR FILE UPLOAD...]

[CALLSIGN: SINGED WHISKERS; STATUS: ALIVE]

[MECH DESIGNATION: SLAG KITTY, ENKIDU UNIT; STATUS: DAMAGED, STRUCTURE FULL, REACTOR STRESSED {1} TIMES, SINCE STABILIZED]

...<UPLOADING MISSION RECORDING>

[An ever growing view of the side of Pirate Vessel "Direption." Its hull has been punctured by some manner of breach charge. More and more debris floating around the massive hole becomes clear as the mech rapidly moves closer. SLAG KITTY appears to be carried by another, mounted mech, boosting to build speed.]

Callsign Photon: Releasing you in T-15 seconds. Ready?

[RELEASING COMBAT STIMS DOSE ONE]

Callsign SINGED WHISKERS: HHRRRHMMMM fucking KILL!!!

Callsign Photon: That... sounds like a yes. Dropping. Slowing myself and covering your six. The rest are just behind us.

[CALCULATING TIME TO IMPACT...]

[10 SECONDS...]

[5...]

[4...]

[3...]

[2...]

[The vacuum devours the sound of impact. Metal silently bends, rips, tears. SLAG KITTY lands claws first on a pirate chassis with the speed of a missile. With the momentum, SINGED is able to halfway bisect the mech vertically as she crunches it against the ground.]

SINGED: HEY, HEY!!! AHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHE!!!

[A hail of gunfire rains in both directions as Albatross forces begin landing in her wake.]

Photon: Three hostiles pointed your direction, SINGED. Covering ya. Pick 'em off.

[Sparks shower the deck as SLAG KITTY and the remains of the destroyed chassis scrape along and bounce back up in the zero g. The enkidu leaps from the wreckage towards an incoming pirate mech armed with some sort of integrated chainsaw. The weapon is torn from the chassis in seconds as plasma claws rip across the machine's arm.]

SINGED: GRaAAHH!!!

[As the mech's arm is shredded, a war pike streaks past SLAG KITTY'S head, striking one of the remaining two in the shoulder and knocking the aim of its rifle off target from SINGED. She takes the opportunity to latch her claws under the head of the chassis and pull upward, tearing it from the body.]

Photon: Seems we scared them off.

[SLAG KITTY digs its claws into the deck to bring its momentum to a screeching halt and keep from floating off. SINGED turns to see the remaining two attackers fleeing towards a set of hanger doors.]

Photon: I say we pursue. If they call for reinforcements, that pulls guns away from our folks working towards the bridge.

SINGED: Aye aye! HeheHEE!!

[SLAG KITTY grips its claw into the deck of the ship and throws itself, floating in pursuit of the targets. The pair of pirates stop at the doors. An emergency light flashes yellow when the first of the two slams its fist onto the chassis-scale console. The door does not open immediately.]

Photon: It's depressurizing. There'll be two sets of doors. Looks like we have time to pick one of- t---- o-- f-- f-- f

[A pair of antennae atop one of the pirate chassis produce a series of blinks, and the sensors of the SLAG KITTY are occasionally interrupted by static.]

[REACTOR HEAT CAPACITY {16%}.]

SINGED: PPFFFT AHAHAHAHAAHHAHAAHAA!!!! U FUCKIN CALL THAT HEAT??? I BURN MY REACTOR HARDER THAN THAT CUZ ITS FUNNY!!!! WATCH THIS!!!

[SINGED gives a triumphant roar: the only thing audible over coms as there's a single, brief flash from the muzzle of SLAG KITTY. In an instant, the entire middle of the tech mech simply ceases to be, cockpit and all. The legs of the doomed machine begin to drift in either direction, just in time for the door to begin slowly opening behind them.]

[WARNING: REACTOR HEAT CAPACITY {97.8%}. STABILIZATION RECOMMENDED.]

Photon: Nice shot, kid.

SINGED: HEHEHAHA!! BYE BYE!!!

[The remaining pirate flees through the barely open doors, which close behind them. As they do so, SLAG KITTY pursues.]

[ENGAGING RAPID HEAT VENTING...]

[SLAG KITTY reaches the doors as it cools, immediately throwing itself against them and clawing like a caged animal.]

SINGED: Let me IN!! LET ME IIINNNN!!!!

[A Nelson, presumably Callsign Photon's mech, flies into frame on its mount.]

Photon: Kid. You just need to hit the button.

SINGED: Oh.

[Photon does so, and the yellow light begins flashing again. Eventually, they begin to open once more.]

SINGED: Hrrgh... Hmm... HRRGH GRRRR.

Photon: What are you doing?

SINGED: It's too SLOW!! My PREY'S gonna get away!!

Photon: Patience. We want them to get help, remember?

[SINGED growls again but says nothing, the enkidu staring at the doors like a cat staring through a window at a bird. After about twenty seconds, the door opens wide enough for the duo to get through, and SLAG KITTY immediately slams the next button. As the first set of doors seals behind them, SINGED begins clawing at the next set.]

SINGED: OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN

Photon: SINGED. The chamber has to depressurize before that'll happen.

SINGED: I CANN MAKE IT GO FASTER!!!

[Before Photon can protest, SLAG KITTY has backed up, and another flash escapes the displacer in its maw. A large circular portion of the doorway is erased. Both mechs stagger backwards as the vacuum rips air from the next corridor into the chamber. With the doors behind the pair sealed, this lasts only a moment.]

SINGED: NO MORE FLOAT!!!

[She quickly scurries through the hole.]

Photon: Well, if it works it w-

...<ERROR. FILE DAMAGED. SCRUBBING VIDEO FILE FOR INTACT FOOTAGE>

[A number of short, disjointed clips follow, ranging on average from 1 to fifteen seconds. They show Photon and SINGED working through the ship, chasing the fleeing pirate, and SINGED subsequently tearing through mechs like a rabid beast. It seems that at some point in the chaos they engaged their second round of stims. Photon's plan was to draw fire from the main team, and the two certainly seem to have succeeded by that measure.]

[Finally, the footage begins to come in longer intact clips again. SLAG KITTY appears to have have just reached the end of a catwalk, before...]

Photon: LOOK OUT!!!

[Photon's mech slams into SLAG KITTY, bringing it out of the line of fire of a shotgun at the last second. There's hardly time to make out the shape of the mech rounding the corner before more gunfire sprays the catwalk from elsewhere.]

Photon: Intercepting long ranged hostile.

[Photon leaps over the side and into flight. More gunfire follows. SINGED's focus returns to the shotgunner. Examining the frame, it appears to be a modified blackbeard.]

SINGED: HeheEE. Get in CLOSE so I ca- AAUGH!!

[The blackbeard obliges, too quickly for the SLAG KITTY to tear into it with Primal Fury. The pirate slams the shotgun into her like a club, sending her flying a great distance backward. She claws into the ground to gain traction and retain her footing.]

SINGED: GRRRRrRR!!!

Blackbeard: Heheh.

[The pirate, looking over the SLAG KITTY, drops his shotgun, pulling from his back a long, two-handed axe.]

SINGED: OHhhh I like u. IM GONNA EA- GAHH!!!

[The pirate's grapple catches SLAG KITTY and reels him in close. AS SINGED takes a step back, caught of guard by the speed, the axe is brought down into the enkidu's shoulder.]

SINGED: AUGH!! GRRRRRAAA!!

[The pirate twists his axe, using the leverage to throw SLAG KITTY to the side and off of the catwalk. SINGED does her best to tuck and roll, but from the crunching sound of the impact, it's clear she isn't able to avoid damage entirely.]

[The blackbeard leaps from the catwalk after her, engaging a jump jet and descending upon her. Seeing an opportunity, her burning claws engage, and like a cat with a bird she latches them into the flying opponent.]

SINGED: GRRR GET DOWN!!!

[The plasma talons rip through the chassis, but aren't enough to stop it from landing atop SLAG KITTY and pinning it to the ground.]

Blackbeard: Time to put ya down, ya feral fuckin dog.

[He swings the axe overhead towards the ground, and SLAG KITTY has just enough time to move its head aside before it can chop through. Instead, it embeds itself in the ground. As the pirate pulls, it's not released immediately.]

[RELEASING COMBAT STIMS DOSE {3}.]

SINGED: I. AM A CAT!!! MRRAAAAAAAAHH!!!!

[SLAG KITTY's maw wraps around the pole of the axe and bites with all its might. Heat builds in the frame's mouth, and metal softens as teeth rend. The axe-head is snapped violently from the pole.]

[WARNING: REACTOR HEAT CAPACITY {86.4%}. STABILIZATION RECOMMENDED.]

SINGED: I DOTN CAREE!!! RAAAAAGH!!!

Blackbeard: Oh fu-

[The jaws' next target is the leg of the frame, and the teeth sink in just as deep, producing even more slag. In short order, the blackbeard is wrestled to the ground, leg mangled to the point of near removal.]

[WARNING: REACTOR HEAT CAPACITY {EXCEEDED}. POWER PLANT DESTABILIZED.]

SINGED: I SAID I DONT CARRRE AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

[SLAG KITTY's claws rip into the chassis, leaving a wide, molten gash with each strike.]

...<ERROR. FILE DAMAGED. SCRUBBING VIDEO FILE FOR INTACT FOOTAGE>

Blackbeard: FUCK NO NO NO!!!

...<ERROR. FILE DAMAGED. SCRUBBING VIDEO FILE FOR INTACT FOOTAGE>

[The cockpit of the Blackbeard is torn open just enough for SLAG KITTY's head to fit through. SINGED gives a horrific roar, and the pirate inside goes ghostly white.]

...<ERROR. FILE DAMAGED. SCRUBBING VIDEO FILE FOR INTACT FOOTAGE>

SINGED: AHAHAHAHHHAAA

[SLAG KITTY looks over the unmoving wreckage of the blackbeard, then to Photon's side of the battlefield, which has gone quiet. Photon holds his lance trained on the remaining enemy frame, which was disarmed, raising its hands in surrender.]

Photon: Just got word, kid. We've taken the bridge. It's over.

SINGED: Wha? BUt. KILL. KILLLLL!!!!!

[RELEASING POST-COMBAT SEDATIVES]

SINGED: Wha... Wh... hrrn. eepy...

Photon: You did good, you little maniac. Get some rest. You've earned it.

...<RECORDING ENDS>

#ooc WOWIE im glad i could finally get this out! was more relevant nearly a month ago but thats how it is sometimes #also id like to point out that i used a license from the Corsair Gruntworks LCP for the blackbeard #the axe he used was a breidax from the Stamford license and i was also inspied by one of the Stamfords systems #so thanks to Pines! :D #lancer rp #oc rp #oc rp blog #lancer enkidu #sally screaming #OMA updating #tw drugs

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hi-sierra · 1 year ago

Text

Biologics, chapter 0.5

Hello, hello! I finally have added a significant amount to my story, Biologics, resulting in a total of ~4400 words. Not a whole ton, I know, but unfortunately life gets to ya. It isn't quite where I want it to be to consider a proper chapter one, but I feel like there's enough written for me to post. General warning that this is intended to heavily lean into the theme of "eroticism of the machine", so if that doesn't appeal to you, you've been warned. It does, however, have many general sci fi worldbuilding elements, so I hope it has a somewhat broad appeal!

So yes, if you already read the first snippet, that's going to be mostly a one to one repeat with some grammatical adjustments. Feel free to scroll down until you get to the new stuff. Flow-wise, there just wasn't a good place to break between the two sections.

Look at me rambling. And I wonder why I can't get any of this stuff done. Anyways, here it is!

Biologics

But Pappy didn't know a lot of things. And he certainly didn't meet Roseanna.

The Federation Navy had experimented with Biologics for decades. The idea was to create self regenerating ships- organic matter that interfaced with the hull, moving new titanium plates and patches into place down to microscopic precision. If you had a living, growing mass interfacing with steel, a ship didn't have to head all the way back to the yards to patch up after every dogfight.

The first generation... worked. With a full time crew, that is. Full time people on deck jabbin the rigid, chitonous matrix full of growth hormones to get them to set just right. Full time onboard bioengineers to compute what signaling cocktail ya need to hit 'em with to get it to grow back right. Skilled onboard technicians to shave back the chitin when it tried to overgrow the titanium, and slap some new cells in to seed the process in heavily damaged areas. Less input material, less time in the yards, but far more manpower. Great for a Federation cruiser on deep space peacekeeping missions. Far too complex for small craft. Right?

Until some bastard put brains in 'em.

Well. A lotta suits would say that they weren't brains. They were a diffuse network of sensory neurons and ganglia, living inside the body of the ship, integrating signals from a skin of alloyed metal and fibrous protein, calculating power draw too and from various components, integrated with the mechanical and electrical components of the ship to precisely manage the "wound healing" process of the vessel. And of course, it just so happened that one of those ganglia was larger and more complex than the rest of them, and it just so happened that the computer interfaces with this ganglia exhibit complex, thinking behaviors on the level of human cognition, and it just so happens that most pilots and navigators reported them developing their own personalities.....

But of course, the Navy didn't want anyone to have some kind of pesky empathy in the way of their operations. And they certainly didn't want anyone side eyeing the rate at which they disposed of the damn things, just to let them suffer and rot. So as far as the official record was concerned, they weren't brains. But I knew different.

Like most people in the belt, I found Rosie on an... unsponsored field trip to the Neptune scrap yards. She wasn't a ship then. She wasn't much of anything. Not much more than a vat with the central ganglia and just barely enough of the stem cells needed to regrow a network. But I took her all the same. Brains were valuable. Few pilots outside the Navy had them back then. Nowadays, a black market for "brain seeds", a cocktail of neuronal stem cells and enough structural stem cells to grow your own into the chassis of your ship, was thriving. The Navy was pumpin' em out, and leaving them to die. It was cruel. Sometimes, being scavenged and resold was a kinder fate. But more often, some nasty piece of work would pick them up eventually, and treat them like just another goddamn ship. They may be vehicles, but they're a livin' being too.

I digress. I'd never do that to Roseanna. I make sure she gets proper care. And for a good, proper, working ship? That includes some good, proper work.

The asteroid we were docked in was one of my usuals- good bars, nice temp quarters, nice views of the rock's orbiting twin, and a spacious hanger for Rosie to rest in. The chassis I had imprinted Roseanna to was a 40-meter light skipper, with some adjustments for handling deep space trips, as well as some... personal touches. It was pretty much the smallest thing you could actually use to live in and work for long periods of time, but it got the job done. The angular design made the entire ship look like a wedge, or the blade of a bulky dagger. It didn't hurt that each bottom edge was fortified with a sharpened titanium blade, turning the entire sides of the ship into axe-like rams.

Those would probably come in handy today.

I slipped into the pilot's seat like it was an old boot.

"Welcome, Captain Victoria."

Rosie could talk, but more often than not, she chose not to. But she understood me just fine. Most of our communication took place using her three prerecorded lines- her welcome statement, affirmative, and negative- as well as a tiny screen showing a small, emoticon face. Many pilots chose to give their ships an elaborate render, but Rosie preferred it this way. It was the first face I gave her, from somewhere out of the scrap heaps, and she refused any offer I made to upgrade. Hell, she even had a hi-res screen for external cameras and comms, but she refused to interface directly with it. Secretly, I was overjoyed. To me, the little pixelated screen was her face. That was her voice. And it was beautiful to see her true self through them.

I brushed my hands across her paneling. Across the switches, the hydraulic controls for the plasma fuel, the steering, the boosts, the comms channels. The thing with Biologics was that you were still the pilot. For whatever reason, they hadn't quite gotten to the point where the brains could take over their own piloting. My personal opinion was just that their personalities lacked the ambition to. Cuz they certainly could take over some ships functions directly, and had the skill to do complex mechanical and electrical tasks. The Navy never let 'em drive, though, and most pilots didn't even know they could give them the ability to control any of the ships functions directly. But with a little help, a little bit of solid engineering, and a pilot that knew their ship... well, you could do a lot. And me and Rosie? We knew each other well. Over the years, I'd added some nice things for her, and she loved using them to help me out.

As my fingers touched the brushed aluminum controls, rimmed with chitinous layers affixing them to the ship, I could feel the walls around me holding their invisible breath. "Do you know what we're doing today, Rosie?"

Her tiny panel flickered on.

[...?]

"We got a scrap run."

[ ^_^]

[ :) ]

[ ^_^ ]

Her panel flicked between various expressions of excitement. My finger quivered on the main power, holding for a moment before flicking it on. The primary electronics of the ship hummed to life, and the parts Rosie controlled pulsed with it. My hands moved across the main functional panels- main hydraulic plasma valve, exhaust ports open, and finally, flicking the switch the start the plasma burner.

Go time. I punch the boost.

The station shakes. Rosie was never a subtle one.

The mechanics are deafened.

The crowd of spectators are deafened.

The other pilots in the hanger are deafened.

But me? The vibrations of Rosie's hull shuddering under me was the sweetest symphony my ears ever had the pleasure of hearing. As we shot out of that hanger, I found myself involuntarily humming a high note, harmonizing with the sweet rumble of my baby's acceleration as we shoot out into the inky, black expanse of space. The twin asteroids shot by us as we disappeared, leaving only the faint blue plasma trail from our engines.

My hand is firm on the boost, weathered hands tightly gripping the bar of the accelerator. I remember installing this thing in her- it was an aftermarket adjustment, not included in the usual light skipper chassis. Gently stripping away the back of her chassis, caressing her insides as I rooted the paneling, firmly attaching the tanks and burners on her insides... these hands had taken great pleasure in that. Bested only, of course, by the first time I had felt the thing roar to life.

And what a feeling it was. Rosie's entire chassis, biological and mechanical, shuddering under my grasp. The grip of my calloused hands on the boost controls, tight and sweaty around the ridged grip of the horizontal bar. The noises she made, as if to shout in glee and wild abandon at being unchained and let loose into the eternal field of space, as she was made to do. The gentle touch of her skin on my back, my body pressed in contact with the small fraction of hers that was my seat. I glanced down at her face panel.

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

My humming gave way to a chuckle, and then a wholehearted, exhilarated laugh. Someone was enjoying herself. The flickering faces on her panel reminded me of the happily panting station dogs back on Mars.

But as much as I would like this to just be a joyride, I had promised Rosie a scrap run. And the pickings were looking good. I glanced down at the nav. I was intentionally headed at a slightly indirect angle- Rosie's boost was her main attractive feature (both as a ship, and as a working partner), and the extra leeway I had in travel time let me strategize a bit more. I doubted we would be the first people there, but I figured we could get in before the main rush. The only trouble was darting in and grabbing something right from under the noses of the first locusts. The scrap field in question included a disabled heavy mining freighter, a goliath of the ship larger than some of the asteroids it made supply runs between. I assumed that most other scavengers would be approaching directly from our station, and the other stations in its proximity. With Rosie's boost, we could overshoot, hook around, and put the freighter in between us and the guns of the more violent craft. Rosie has no long range weapons of any kind- not only would they slow down her miraculous speed, but she didn't like them. I tried installing a small plasma cannon once, and she expressed immense distaste. Maybe they were too brutish for her, or maybe she didn't like the way they felt inside her, burdening her with pressure from the inside that didn't befit the delicate touches I usually graced her with. Rosie loved speed, precision, elegance, and stealth above all else. It's just the kind of ship she was.

That's not to say she was a pacifist, or defenseless. Quite the contrary. She just prefers a more... personal touch.

The navicom beeped at me. We'd reached the point where we needed to make that hook. My bare feet gently swept across the titanium flooring to the steering pedals. My right hand delicately gripped the steering joystick, while my left eased its grip on the boost accelerator.

"Ready for this, darling?"

[ >:) ]

I slammed the steering to the left, and Rosie gleefully complied. The wide bank of the turn as we rotated and soared through the sea of stars twisted my body in its inertia, compressing me further into her. As the angle straightened out to the proper heading, I punched the boost again, and Rosie roared forward.

Slowly, our target came into sight. Damn. This thing had taken some serious damage. Mining freighters typically weren't heavily armored- their only job was to get material from point A to B- but this one had clearly been through some serious modifications. Modifications that now lay in ruin. Titanium plating was scattered in a field around the core of the freighter. I couldn't quite tell what was stuff left behind by the battle, and what was the result of shoddy craftmanship- but it didn't matter. What did matter was that the entire thing had been split almost in half, and the scattered cargo that was leaking out. Cargo that most likely included half the weapon supplies of this little rebel faction. Would fetch a pretty penny, to the right buyer. And hell, if it was just gonna sit here unclaimed...

Ah shit. It wasn't gonna sit here unclaimed. Despite my best efforts, it looks like we weren't the first ones here. A larger scavenger gang had already arrived, and it looks like it was one of the ones I knew- Augustus and his lot. Most likely, they'd be after the weapons intact, one more thing to use to shakedown the scattered independent stations I always flitted between. He would not be happy to see me n Rosie here. What he called his "fleet" was a single, mid-sized carrier ship, about half the size of the freighter we were looting, and the dozen or so scout fighters and strip mining crafts he had looted from the Navy and various corps, and one Biologic that he called his. I respect that part, to be honest. What I don't respect is him immediately turning around and using that charge every goddamn station his ever-increasing "protection fees". Not to mention my personal disdain for the way he treated his ship. Didn't even give her a damn name. I digress. But any chance to loot something from under that slimebag's nose was a win in my book. I knew he wasn't gonna make it easy, though.

Welp. That's what our positioning was for. The side facing us was the main starboard face, and like the rest of the ship, it was peppered in small holes and gashes. Seems like the main damage had happened from the other side, and a few cables and scaffolds on the starboard just barely kept the two rear cargo compartments clinging to the front.

"Alright Rosie, time to creep it in slow. Be quiet, now, don't want them picking up a plasma surge"

[ :| ]

Ha. That was her "my lips are sealed" face. She's having fun with this already.

I cut the booster, coasting closer and closer to the bust open vessel. I eased the reverse thrusters ever so slightly, my fingers gently stroking the dual brake levers, lightly teasing at them to wait until we were as close as I thought we could be without attracted attention.......... before slamming both sides back towards me. For just one, crucial moment.

The goal here was to approximately match the speed and trajectory of a floating piece of titanium plating. Rosie's frontal blades were essentially that, anyways, so all they would see is a somewhat more angular piece of rubble. Hopefully they hadn't seen that same piece of rubble screaming out of travel speed, but I was cautious enough with my distances that I didn't think that was a problem. And they hadn't seen me yet. Once we were close enough to the freighter itself, we were blocked from their raw sightline, and Rosie was running quiet enough to not tip off any of their energy sensors.

But there was still no guarantee. Rosie, however, had no shortage of tricks. Something that she and I had developed together was a nice little bit of snooping. Well cared for and well trained, a Biologic brain had the problem solving of a human, and the computational power of a machine. But them together, and you've got a perfect decoder. And I happened to know that Augustus used an encrypted local frequency to keep his

"Alright Rosie, thinkin you can eavesdrop a little?"

Affirmative.

[...]

[..!]

My comms crackled to life. "...7 heavy cannons in center-front portside bay, 3 replacement fighter hatchs...."

The comms crackled back and forth, with each pilot giving updates to what they were finding in their own little segment that they were slicing apart. Occasionally, I saw Augustus or the fighters flick between the slicing ships, overseeing their progress on the port bays. Good. Let them focus on the other side for now. Slowly, the fleet was overshadowed by the freighter. We made it. I released my breath- shit, didn't realize I was holding it- and took a better look at what we were dealing with. It looked as if the scattered debris field had mostly been the remnants of the hull, as well as light weapons for small craft and even infantry. They would fetch some small change, sure, but Rosie's cargo capacity was small. Packing efficiency was the name of the game. I saw the gash that it had all been flooding out of on this side- the entire freighter was covered in them- and peered inside. And ho boy, did my heart flutter.

Heavy cannons.

Jump-graded travel boosters.

Raw, precious metals.

And, hidden in the back corner, seemingly bolted into the wall.... a brain.

We'd hit jackpot, and potentially rescued a poor ship from abandonment, or worse.

"Alright Rosie. Time to get to work."

Affirmative.

And here was another lil something that made Rosie special- her manipulation arms . She always preferred that delicate touch, and wanted to interact with the world in a tactile, real way. So we worked on it. Together. I was tired of taking spacewalks to grab small pieces of scrap, or using the entire goddamn cargo bay on a piece that only had a tiny core, or scraps of precious metals inside. So we needed something that could pluck apart our finds. Do some light disassembly in the field, extract what was valuable, and load it in with the most packing efficiency possible. So I gave her arms- snake like appendages, coiled up in her cargo bay, with thousands of points of articulation. At first, I tried to make some kind of control system that I could use from the cockpit. But Rosie had a different idea. At her urged, I jacked them directly into the same sensory and motor systems that let her grip onto, position, and repair her hull. And by god, it worked.

When I showed her off the first time, no one had ever seen anything like it. Because there was nothing like it. A ship taking real mechanical control, over something so precise and delicate, was something that only a deeply intelligent, deeply skilled ship, with complex decision making and tactile movement could do.

And I was goddamn proud of her.

Every time she deployed them, I watched awe. Rosie gave a face of determination, and sinuous, metallic, tentacle-like appendages slid out in a bundle from the cargo bay opening on her underside. Each one was headed off by a different attachment- a precision laser cutter, a simple three-pointed grabbing claw, a drill, a tiny buzzsaw, camera that let me see what was going on, and more. Each one could be swapped out, depending on the task at hand. With eight of them slithering out from her cargo bay, though, there was usually something for everything. They extended out as a single bouquet, down through the hole of the cargo compartment, and split apart once inside. Each arm got to work.

Her observation monitor flickered on, giving me a view from the camera arm. I would've liked to get the brain out first, but two heavy cannons and a booster blocking the way anyways. We'd cut through that, picking off the energy cores and precious metals in the circuits as we go, and work our way towards the back. Rosie seemed to like the plan as well. My only job was to watch the comms, and watch the sensors.

I watched the camera as the petite tools of the arms excised and picked apart the titanium shell of the first heavy cannon. Her tools- the delicate 'fingers' of her arms- picked, pulled, tugged, and gently gripped every necessary notch, every joined titanium plate that needed to be undone, ever scrap of precious material. Firm, yet precise. Strong, yet never breaking or mishandling a single piece of cargo. As Rosie worked, my eyes darted across the energy sensors. I could see blips firing off as the ships on the other side of the freighter as the slicing ships worked and flitted between their stations from the other side. The comms crackled with their reports to Augustus- they seemed to be moving back and forth to the main carrier to drop off their hauls. It seemed like they had a lot to go through- we'd have plenty of time.

On the camera view, I could see a grabbing claw retracting back through the cargo bay. The first cannon had the back section cleanly excised from the massive barrel and chassis, leaving a path for the tools to get to the booster. The precious energy cell was sliding its way back into Rosie's cargo bay. God damn. She was quick with that. The laser cutter and saw were already making short work of the booster, too. We'd get to the brain in no time.

The chatter on the other line continued. We were still safe, but Augustus' crew had made more progress than I had hoped. Once the slicers had picked apart the port, they'd loop around to the starboard. We had to grab what we could as fast as we can- but I knew neither me or Rosie was gonna leave without that brain. Rosie gracefully sliced the fuel cell and ignition from the plasma burner, leaving the bracketing and vents behind. The second heavy cannon was soon to follow. Each cut through each piece had left a winding path towards the back of the chamber, allowing a physical path to what I had seen just barely poking through: a container for a genuine ship's brain. Rosie slid her camera arm in for a closer look.

The brain was bolted into the chassis of the ship, as well as some containers of growth factor. Seemed like the intent was to grow her in to this freighter. That was certainly an ambitious task, but if they knew what they were doing, it would be well worth it. A self-repairing, intelligent hauler as large as this one would be the heart and soul of resistance movements everywhere, supplying every backwater mining station or moon that longed to be free. Unfortunately, the brave and principled can still be stupid, and these chucklefucks had no idea what they were doing. Slapped in a random cargo bay, desperately trying to get growth out from there with no proper imprinting guidance... shame. If they'd've found me before running into the Navy, I might've helped them out. But at least now, we could give her a better life. I knew a lot of good, caring pilots that would take loving care of a fine ship like her.

From what I could tell, we were still safe from Augustus. Based on what I was hearing on the comms, each slicer was working on its last cargo hold subsection, and after that, they'd be poking around this side. We had to get this brain and get out.

Tenderly, her claw arm gripped the top of the brain's chamber, as her other fingers started working on the rivets. A saw would bust through part of the titanium bracket holding the chamber down, and when it got too close to the container itself, laser cutters took over, delicately slicing off each affixation point one by one. Rosie worked in a clockwise direction, first working down the three riveting points on the right, sawing off the bottom bracket, and then working up the rivets on the left.

C'mon Rosie. You got this. Just need the top plate....

"Finishing up there, slicer 5T?"

Shit. That was Augustus on the comms.

"Sure thing boss. Just gotta get this load to central. Mind if someone takes a peek on the other side for parasites before I get there?"

Shit.

"Sure thing. Fighter 3A, get your ass in gear and make a full pass of the ship."

An energy spike pinged on my sensor panels as the fighter revved up a booster.

"Gotcha boss. Starting at aft segment."

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit

We still had a sliver of time before we were seen. They'd wanna get a good pass everywhere- there were ships far stealthier than us out there. But it was minutes at most. We had to finish up.

"Rosie, how're we doing there? You done?"

Negative.

[ ;( ]

"Fuck. Rosie, we gotta get outta here."

Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative.

Rosie-speak for "I know, I know, I know"

My eyes were fixed to the scanner and my cockpit windows for a visual, but I spared one moment to check Rosie's cam. She was finishing sawing through the top bracket. Just a little more....

"Aft clear, moving to starboard cargo bays."

The brain snapped off of the hull, and Rosie's claws were zipping it back to her cargo bay. I revved the engines into standby. The arms tenderly guided it through the path we had cleared, and out through the hole in the hull. We might be able to barely slip away without them knowing.....

I looked up through the cockpit, just as the dinged-up, formerly Navy fighter showed itself from behind a piece of debris. It froze for a moment, and then lined its nose to face me. Cannon ports shifted open, and slowly took aim.

"Well shit, Augustus, you're gonna wanna see this. Get your ass over here, I'm switching to public comms."

I heard slight fuzz as he switched his channel.

"Alright, leech, I'll keep this simple. You have thirty seconds to relinquish your haul before you join the debris."

For a single, cold moment, I swear I made eye contact with him through our cockpits.

#writing #sierra writes #biologics #robotfucker #eroticism of the machine #story #sci fi story #scifi #scifi story

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