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The Floret in the Mirror, Draft Preview - Chapter 1 - "Deja Vu"
🕑 Added 2023-09-23 19:00:03 +0000 UTCHey, friends. Been a hot minute, hasn't it? I've been plugging away the last couple of weeks at The Floret in the Mirror, and I've got a decent lead built up, so I'm going to start releasing it publicly starting next week — and you know what that means! That's right, you get a sneak peak at the opening for this story about identity, digitization, mystery, and sex so hot it's physically impossible. I'd been planning for this to be a shorter story, more in line with Sui Generis, but uh... having written what I have so far, I think this is shaping up to be significantly longer, just based on the pacing I've managed thus far. I suppose that's fitting for a semi-sequel to No Gods No Masters!
Another fun note: I'm actually committing to chapter titles this time. Enjoy my inevitable scramble to find good ones later on.
Content warnings for this chapter include: Implied medical trauma, memory loss, identity confusion, a rather forcible (re)breaking of an egg's shell, and Arvense's terrible jokes.
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Deja Vu
1.0.0-a1
The ceiling was a cool pale blue, almost white. If there were corners, they were invisible. The surface he was lying on — a bed, that was the word for it — was perhaps the softest thing in the universe. And yet, for all the space was clearly designed to soothe, to comfort, Gregory Forsythe felt as though he had an icepick plunging deep into his skull just above the right eye, a penetrating pain that reached deep down into places he wasn’t even aware could hurt, let alone hurt like this.
He lay there, unmoving, unblinking, for long, uncounted seconds before something deep inside his chest began to burn, and under the stabbing, piercing pain in his skull, he remembered Right, I need to breathe. He sucked down a raggedy breath, his throat parched and his lungs aching, but that was nothing before the pain in his skull. With the utmost effort, he was just able to shift one hand, lifting it slowly from the bed and squinting against the agony at it. Something was wrong with it, but he couldn’t quite figure out what.
When the hell had he gotten to the hospital? It was a weird hospital room, to be sure, and definitely more expensive than he could possibly afford — oh, there was that familiar rock-in-the-stomach feeling of debt anxiety! Hello, old friend, how have you been? Maybe you know what happened. Debt anxiety answered with a frustrated, terrified howl deep in his soul. Business as usual, then? Ah well. Worth a try.
There was enough of him beginning to approach rational thought that he knew he was being an idiot. He had no idea how he got there, and neither did his anxiety. Maybe he’d gotten jumped on the way to the electronics assembly plant, or maybe he’d pissed off the wrong client or hacked the wrong mainframe for one of his less legitimate side businesses. How he got here was a big fat fucking mystery, like someone took an ice cream scoop to his brain and removed the last…
the depths-dark sky
…shit, what year was it? He wracked his brain trying to think. Born in 2528, that came readily enough. Graduated tech trade school 2544. Okay, making progress — it was definitely after 2544. No, 2545, that was when he cracked his first logistics management server and realized how absolutely shit 90% of corporate infosec setups were, and that had been the gateway into…
the lakes and the ocean
…okay. Okay, it was definitely after 2548, because that was when he got laid for the first time. Great, okay, not a teenager — he’d been afraid of that for some reason. He could let that question rest a moment, because what was wrong with his hand? There was something almost soft about it. He flexed the fingers experimentally, and everything moved right, everything felt mostly right. It was as if he had something on the tip of his tongue, a word he couldn’t quite remember, but it was something he was looking at.
His gut clenched. Headache. Hospital room. Memory problems. Oh shit, he thought, I’ve had some kind of head injury. This was a huge problem — if he had any kind of lasting damage he might never be able to get a cortical modem implant, and then he’d be stuck staring at flatland monitors for the rest of his life instead of fulldiving software. It wasn’t even about efficiency like most wireheads went for, he’d just always wanted it, ever since he was little and had seen some old pre-Accord film he’d never been able to find again — to fulldive, to stream data right into his frontal lobe and bypass the need to physically interface with a system at all. The idea of it was bizarrely liberating for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp.
The wall slid open — no, it was a door, it was just almost impossible to see before. Oh fuck, this was some kind of rich asshole hospital. How the hell had he ended up here?! He was going to wind up indentured for 30 years just to pay for the–
Oh fuck. His eyes finally focused on the shape in the doorway. The shapes. Two of them. One looked like a shambling mass of dripping-wet leaves and vines, its glowing eyes hidden in two deep, recessed eye sockets; the other, strangely humanlike, but still made of plant matter woven and compressed together in the shape of a woman. And stars, they were both fucking enormous! Twice his size easy, maybe more! They paid him no mind, conversing in an oddly musical and strangely familiar language edged with sombre tones as they approached the bed. Paralyzed with fear, all he could do was stare, until the shaggy one lifted one of its hulking arms. At the tip, grasped in something like a hand, was what looked like a syringe loaded with something amber-gold in hue, the tip needle-sharp.
And he screamed. There was something wrong with that too, but what few rational faculties he’d managed to cobble together were out to lunch. Terror was running his brain now, ancient lizard-brain terror, cold and hard, reaching down and squeezing his heart as he scrambled away across the (much too large) bed. Something leapt out and snagged him by the ankle, pulling him back as he clutched helplessly at the blanket, wordless screams reaching pitches he’d never thought himself capable of.
“Arvense, what’s going on?!” he heard one of them say. “She shouldn’t even be conscious, let alone moving around!”
“I don’t know,” the shaggy lump creature grumbled. It hesitated, then withdrew the syringe. “Jess, can you understand me? Can you give me some indication that you understand my words if you do?”
“Ggget th’fuuuuugwaayy,” Greg slurred out, in a voice that he quickly realized was not his own, too high, too soft. Deep down, underneath the part of him frantically kicking and trying to escape, there was a strange sense of excitement. What under the stars was that about?
“Jess, sweetheart, calm down, please. You’re safe here. What are you so afraid of?”
“Nnnnnaaahzhhh!” He swallowed, still kicking, and tried again — something was wrong with his mouth, his tongue seemingly willing to do anything but form words. He slowed down and focused on each syllable individually. “Nnaaahht…. Zhhesssh! Gr…egg! Whhuuus… Zhesssh?! Lllleg…go!”
The shaggy lump man — wait, how did Greg know the thing was a man? And anyway, he was a fucking plant — turned to the other and chattered something in the musical language, and the other responded. Then they both looked back at him. The vine around his ankle didn’t loosen at all. “Listen, sweetheart, you’ve had a very nasty brain injury and… well, we’re going to make you better, alright? But to do that, I need to sedate you and run some tests.” A few more vines shot in like striking snakes, coiling around Greg’s body and limbs and forcing him back down agains the bed as another vine dangled some kind of bizarre flower over his face. “Just breathe, alright?”
He tried to hold his breath, but his body, aching and stinging from the struggle and not willing to give up something it had just relearned, betrayed him. He smelled something rich and floral, almost vanilla-like, as he sucked in a breath that made him feel tired and limp. Along with fear, complex thought began to desert him again. The last question he asked himself was one that had been suppressed by the urge to escape: how come my chest feels so heavy?
<hr>
The ceiling was a cool pale blue, almost white. If there were corners, they were invisible. The surface he was lying on — whoa, he thought, deja vu. This was just like that fucked up dream he’d been having when he–
the beast falters not, but slips the reins
His eyes, still droopy with sleep, flew open as he sat up. His head began to pound again almost immediately, but it was nothing compared to the skull-cracking pain it had been before. He cast around for any sign of the plant monsters, but there were none. There was, however, a human woman sitting on a chair at the far end of the room. She was older, maybe in her late 40s or early 50s, olive-skinned, with hair that had once been jet-black but was now being conquered by silver-white — Her eyebrows, thick and heavy, were one of the few bastions of that deep black left. She was wearing a long, flowing red dress and some kind of thick black collar, and was reading a book — an actual, printed-on-paper book. Fuck, he thought, this is a rich asshole hospital. “H-hey,” he choked out. His throat was still sore and dry.
The woman looked up. “Oh, thank God, you’re awake.” She spoke with just the hint of an accent, but he couldn’t quite place it. She closed the book at once and stood, then left it on the chair and crossed to the bed — it was high up enough that he lost her momentarily over the edge before she reappeared, climbing up on some kind of ladder or stepstool to pull herself onto the bed. Even with her on it, it wasn’t crowded. It could have slept seven or eight people comfortably, he thought. She grunted with exertion as she sat down. “I do wish I could have had someone to help me up here, but they tell me they gave you quite a fright when they found you, so it’s just me for now. How are you feeling?”
“They? You mean…” He coughed, and tried to clear his throat. His voice was still wrong, even if he wasn’t having trouble talking anymore. “The plants?”
The woman stared at him, and now that she was closer he could see her eyes, though she always seemed to shy away from direct eye contact (which, as far as Greg was concerned, was fine — people put way too much stock in it being a sign of confidence or whatever the buzzword of the week was). They were a rich brown, with deep black pupils that were much larger than usual. This grandma’s high as a kite, he realized. Now that he saw it up close, he saw her collar was leather, with a metal band running around the entire length, upon which was inscribed tiny words he couldn’t read. It had a thick ring on the front, which rested on her collarbone. Kinky, he thought.
“The Affini,” the woman said, her voice gentle with only the slightest hint of a corrective tone. “Well, the memory problems are still there, I suppose. Do you remember me, Jess?”
“No.” She was familiar, somehow, but the longer he stared at her, the more frustrating his inability to remember became. “Should I? And why the fuck do people keep calling me that? My name is Greg!”
The woman only stared at him, some kind of frustration or sadness building in her eyes. “You haven’t gone by that name in a long time,” she said softly.
“Bullshit,” he said. “I think I know my own name!”
“What’s the last thing you do remember, then?”
Don’t tell her it’s getting laid. Don’t tell her it’s getting laid. Don’t tell her it’s getting laid! “Uh… I dunno, my first job out of trade school, I guess,” he mumbled, looking away and hoping the embarrassment didn’t show on his face.
“You don’t remember Solstice?”
“The prison colony?” He snorted. “Why would I–“ Then he froze. There was that tip-of-the-tongue feeling again, like he’d forgotten something important. “Oh fuck, I’m on Solstice, aren’t I?”
She laughed, then caught herself. “No, you’re a long, long way from Solstice now, but you were there, because you thought it would be a good idea to solve your financial difficulties by picking the digital pockets of a quadrillionaire. Just, yes, righteous, yes, particularly intelligent in the moment, not so much. Well… if you don’t remember me at all, I suppose I should introduce myself, hm? Layla Sequi, First Floret of Tsuga Sequi, Ninth Bloom.”
“Greg Forsythe,” he said, fighting down the confusion in his brain. That hadn’t been the name he’d been expecting to hear. He didn’t know what that name was, but it sure wasn’t Layla. “But I’m guessing you knew that. You… you know me, don’t you?”
“I should hope so,” Layla said, smiling, her high-as-a-kite eyes shining. “We’ve been friends for almost– well, for a very long time.” Her eyes darted down, then back up at his face. “You haven’t noticed?”
“Noticed what?” he said, blinking. “My voice is fucked up, yes, but–“ He broke off as Layla reached in, seized his left wrist in surprisingly strong fingers, and rudely shoved it against his chest so that he wound up groping his own left breast. “What the fuck are you– oh shit,” he said, finally looking down. “I’ve got–“
“You’ve had them for years,” Layla said, a wry edge to her voice. “You’re very proud of them too, you know. Which I suppose I can’t blame you for, they are very nice.”
“But I’m a guy,” he said, realizing as he said it that his voice had hit what might have been the girliest pitch ever achieved by a human.
“No, my dear, you’re not,” Layla said sympathetically. “You figured that out quite some time ago.” She put a hand on his shoulder, a firm touch but gentle. Again, he felt a strange sort of grandmotherly connection with the woman. “I know it’s probably a lot to accept right now, given the memory loss, but just pause and think for a moment. Are you upset about the way your body is now?”
“Well, I– I mean, I’m a guy, I…I can’t…” He trailed off, hugging himself — again, with the breasts against his arms. It felt really, really good. Like they belonged there. “Did I– did I seriously…?”
“You did,” Layla said. She shifted next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. “And you are loved and accepted for it. Oh dirt,” she muttered, laughing. “I’ve just realized you’ve probably forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?”
“You came to me to ask for advice,” she said, leaning into him. “Me and Aletheia, because we were the only ones you knew who– well, let’s just say the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” She squeezed him with the arm around his shoulder.
It took him a moment to figure out what that meant. “…no,” he said, shaking his head. “No fucking way, you don’t look like–“
“Like what?”
He felt his cheeks warm. He’d been about to say something rude without thinking — lucky, fucked up though his brain might have been, it managed to stop him. “Like, y’know… that. The thing where you were a guy, but–“
“Trans. The word is trans. As in, ‘You’re trans.’ Now do you see why I find it weird that you don’t want to be called Jess?” She paused. “You do remember picking that name out, don’t you? You always said you did it when you were much younger.”
“I…” Oh fuck. He did remember. The memory rose up out of the bleak depths of the Great Salt Lake of Shit Greg Wished He Could Forget and slugged him right in the teeth with the viscerally vivid recollection of logging into a (theoretically) anonymized chat group under the handle ‘Jessiegirl’ sometime during tech school training. The doxxing he’d suffered thereafter had taught him first to never trust claims of anonymity without verifying them and second to never, ever, ever attempt to cross that line again. “…ah, fuck,” she moaned. “I am, aren’t I?”
“You and a great many others, all of us loved and accepted for it,” Layla repeated, patting her on the shoulder. “So. Jess?”
“Yeah? Oh. Yeah.” Jess let out a single, weak laugh, more an exhalation than anything. “I guess so. I mean, pre-head-injury Jess must have decided on it. What even happened to me, anyway?”
Layla hesitated a moment before saying, “I don’t really know. No one — none of the Affini, I mean, not even your Mistress — will tell me anything, but they’re upset about something, really upset, and it has to do with what happened to you.”
She squinted at Layla. “What the fuck do you mean, Mistress?”
If Layla had looked sad for Jess before, when she had identified herself by her old name, it was nothing compared to the look in her eyes now. “…you haven’t forgotten her, you can’t have,” she whispered. “Close your eyes, feel for her.”
“Feel for her? What is this, some sci-fi psychic bullshit?” she said. “That stuff’s not real, you know.”
“Close your eyes,” Layla repeated, in a strangely familiar voice that, though it was gentle, held an edge, as if she didn’t hold a single doubt that Jess would obey. It was the kind of voice that gave orders and expected to see them carried out. “Close your eyes and just listen for a moment.”
Whatever, Jess thought, letting her eyes fall shut. She’d close her eyes, listen, hear nothing, and they could move on.
the current in the depths-dark sky
And then she felt it. Somewhere, beneath thoughts or feelings or anything that she could call her own, there was something else,
the lakes and the ocean, the taste of the water
something that was calling out to her, almost, like a song she was meant to know the words to but had forgotten. “Oh fuck,” she whispered. “What is that?”
“That’s her,” Layla said, squeezing Jess again. “That’s your Mistress. Arvense said that when you woke up, he’d look you over — physically, you should be okay. They’ve been maintaining your body while you were in a coma, recovering from…well, whatever happened to you. But if you’re allowed to leave, I’ll take you home to her, alright? She’s been so worried about you.”
“But who is she? Why the fuck do I have a Mistress? What the fuck does that even mean?!” Something cool touched Jess at the base of her neck, and began to spread slowly through her body, muscles relaxing one by one as the rush of anxiety she’d been feeling began to slip away like sand through her fingers. “Hhhuh…? What’s….”
“Shhh, your implant is helping you,” Layla said, pulling Jess into a gentle hug. “Don’t fight it, just relax.”
“Im…plant?” Jess mumbled. It was getting hard to talk again, but not because her body was fighting her — now it was her mind slowing down, as if each thought weighed a hundred kilos. “Ohhhh fuuuuuck….”
the sky that scorches
“Hush,” Layla said, leaning Jess down until her head was in Layla’s lap. “Just rest.” She stroked Jess’s hair slowly, brushing it back out of her eyes. “I’ll stay right here, I promise.”
“Aaaahhhh….” Her eyes slipping shut, Jess felt herself sliding back down into unconsciousness again. It wasn’t fair — how could she be so sleepy if she’d just…
breaching the surface
the lakes and the ocean
…woken up?
<hr>
The ceiling was a cool pale blue, almost white. If there were corners, they were invisible. The surface she was lying on — whoa, she thought, deja vu. This was just like that fucked up dream — wait, she interrupted herself, haven’t I done this before too? She blinked and tried to sit up, but she was held firmly in place by a pair of arms wrapped around her. As she twisted around to look, one of Layla’s hands came down on her head in a gentle stroking of her hair.
“Hey,” she said, smiling down at Jess. “Feeling better?”
Her gut clenched despite the petting (which felt strangely comforting and nice), and despite the strange wobbliness she still felt in her arms and legs. “…what the fuck happened?” she whispered.
“You were panicking, and your implant medicated you to stop it. You were out of it for about an hour. I thought it might help if I was right here when you woke up, so I’ve just been letting everyone know you’re awake.” She patted an object just off to one side — it looked something like a tablet computer, if tablets were made out of polished wood and had some kind of glossy nacre for a screen.
“I don’t… feel particularly awake,” Jess said, lifting one hand and massaging her temple. It still felt like she’d taken an icepick to the forehead. “Still got a headache.”
“I’ll go get Arvense,” Layla said, gently disengaging herself from Jess. There was something about it that felt sad, like Jess felt emptier somehow without someone holding her, and she shivered. “I’ll be right back, I promise — and please, don’t get scared of Arvense when he comes in, he’s perfectly safe and very nice. You like him a lot, actually.”
“I’ll…I’ll take your word for it,” Jess replied, watching Layla climb down from the bed and leave through the door-that-was-basically-invisible-when-it-was-closed. Her gaze shifted immediately to the tablet, and before she knew what she was doing she’d picked it up, brought up its main display, and run headlong into her first problem.
“The fuck is this?” she muttered, squinting at the completely incomprehensible language on the screen, all loopy and scrunched up. It was oddly familiar, but Jess couldn’t place it. Was this what the plant aliens, the fee-knee or whatever they were, used as writing? There was no way she could navigate by text this way, but maybe the icons– ah! She tapped on something that looked like a stylized planet and was rewarded with what was clearly a login screen. Fuck. Must have logged out.
This wasn’t the end, though. If she really had lived here for … however long she’d lived here, she probably had her own account. First, though, she needed things to be legible, and thankfully the login screen was very easy to navigate — she found a list of languages buried in a setup menu, one of which was Terran/English/Standard. It was next to something called English/Floret, but she had no idea what the hell that was, so she chose the first one. She also managed to call up a terminal interface — so much better than whatever goofy GUI Layla had been using.
Now we’re getting somewhere, she thought. She tried to log in with her usual handle, hoping that pre-head-injury-Jess hadn’t thought that “sudont” wasn’t too masculine to hang onto after a serious case of the genders.
> guest@Layla’s Tablet ~ : login
> login: sudont
> auth: ***************
>> ERROR. USER ALREADY LOGGED IN. :(
…what? She’d gotten the password right, at least — thank the stars she hadn’t changed it from her old standby. Pre-head-injury Jess must have left something running, and whatever security setup the plants had must not allow for multiple simultaneous logins. Irritating, but she could work around this. The terminal seemed to operate on the same basic principles as TNIX, so…
> guest@Layla’s Tablet ~ : about
>> PERGOLA COMMAND LINE INTERFACE
>> TILLANDSIA USER SERVICES v14345.4398.125501a
>> System Administration: Gallica Lophophora, Seventh Bloom
>> For assistance, type ‘help’ followed by the desired topic.
Pergola? Hmm. Some proprietary shell, no doubt. And there was something familiar about the sysadmin’s name, but it slipped like sand through Jess’s mental fingers. She pressed on.
> help commands
The cursor blinked a few times; then, the terminal cleared itself and a single line of text appeared.
>> [15:56:08] sudont@Monolith: Who is this and why are you trying to get into my account on Layla’s tablet?
Jess’s blood ran cold. Someone’s in my account. Someone’s got access to my shit. How the fuck had she been rooted?! Had pre-head-injury Jess forgotten everything she learned about infosec?!
> [15:56:21] guest@Layla’s Tablet: okay very funny, get off my acct before I get serious!!!
The responses came one right after another, almost instantly.
>> [15:56:22] sudont@Monolith: What do you mean, your account?
>> [15:56:22] sudont@Monolith: Wait
>> [15:56:22] sudont@Monolith: Oh crud
>> [15:56:22] sudont@Monolith: Oh frick
>> [15:56:22] sudont@Monolith: Im sorry
>> [15:56:22] sudont@Monolith has closed the connection. (Reason: DND)
“… what the fuck?” The tablet rebooted back to Layla’s GUI login screen just in time for the door to magically appear out of the wall. Computer issues fell completely out of Jess’s head as she looked up at the sound and the monster from her nightmare was back. The walking lump of swamp matter, its two sunken eyes glowing, was advancing toward her step by sloppy, wet step. “Stay the fuck away from me!” she shouted, raising the tablet as if to throw it, for all the good it would do — the thing was enormous!
“Jess, calm down!” Layla stepped out from behind the swamp monster, holding her arms up in a calming gesture. “This is Arvense!”
“…what?” Her hand hesitated, the tablet still held high in the air. “…what the fuck?”
“Jess, please remain calm,” the swamp monster — Arvense — said in a deep, croaky voice. “My name is Arvense Telmatei, Fifth Bloom, and I’m your veterinarian. You’ve experienced… a neurological event.” The hesitation a little too long to miss. “It’s affected your memory. Layla tells me you didn’t remember her; clearly you don’t remember me, either.”
“I don’t remember a stars-damned thing!” Jess said. Her arm was starting to get tired, starting to ache. “I don’t… I don’t know why the fuck I’m here, or what the fuck a veterinarian even is, or…or any of this! And then you walk in here and scare the ever-living shit out of me…” Oh stars, she thought, as the emotions started welling up inside her faster than she could tamp them down. Before she could stop herself, she burst into tears, the tablet falling to the soft surface of the bed as she hid her face in her hands and wept uncontrollably.
What the fuck is happening to me? she thought, her body too wracked by sobs to articulate the question. Why am I crying so stars-damned easily?! She felt two warm arms close around her; Layla had climbed up onto the bed and was hugging her tightly. Soon, another came down around her, long and sinuous and definitely not an arm. Her eyes, still flooded with tears, flew open as she stared up at the long vine trailing from the swamp creature — from Arvense — and coiling gently around her.
“There, there,” Arvense said, and strangely enough there was something comforting in his voice, even if he was a giant swamp monster. “You’ve been through a lot. It’s perfectly natural to have big emotions about it.”
“But I shouldn’t be crying,” she managed to gasp out between sobs. “It’s–” More memories she would rather have forgotten were rising up from the murky depths at the back of her mind: lectures about how crying never solves anything, the laughter of her peers, the lessons she’d had to teach herself about never showing any emotion that wasn’t somehow tied to rage. “–it’s wrong,” she finally mumbled.
“Nonsense,” Layla said, squeezing Jess even tighter. “Absolute nonsense.”
“Quite,” Arvense agreed. “One thing the Affini Compact has learned from observing hundred of cultures that engage in capitalism is that every attempt to sell feelings-based soft-drinks fails. It’s not healthy to bottle emotions up, after all.”
Layla suppressed a laugh. “Arvense, no.”
“Oh? Should I tell the one about paper? Never mind, that’s one’s even more tearable.” Layla tried, but was unable to hold back the giggles, and slowly it dawned on Jess what was going on.
“Are you…telling dad jokes?” She sniffled and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Well, I would tell dad jokes,” he said, nodding, “but I don’t have any kids, so that would make me a faux pa.” Layla let out a cackle, and even Jess couldn’t help but smile a little. “Aah, there we go! Truly, the best medicine. And I’m happy to report,” he added, as another vine holding a strange, silvery instrument came around her head and into view, “that your brain and implant are both healing well after the trauma. You may still notice some deficits here and there, but those should clear up over time.”
“Okay but… what implant?! No one’s explaining anything,” Jess whimpered. Her eyes still ached, and tears still fell from them when she blinked, but at least she wasn’t completely submerged in uncontrollable anguish like she had been a moment ago.
“We’re just being cautious of overwhelming you, that’s all, after the way you reacted when you regained consciousness the first time. You have a haustoric implant,” Arvense said, a vine tapping her gently at the base of her neck. Her hand flew back to feel for it almost immediately, but all she found was a scar — an old one from the feel of it — and something smooth wrapped around her neck that she hadn’t even noticed until that very moment. “You’ve had it for…some time, and it’s grown and integrated itself with your entire peripheral nervous system, as well as other organs and especially with the brain. Yours in particular more so than most, in fact. Apart from keeping you healthy and helping to balance your mood, it also allowed you to interface with digital systems, along with a few other advanced options. Those have all been disabled due to the damage, though — we’ll re-enable them once we’re certain it’s safe to do so. Alright?”
Jess heard all the words, and for a moment felt concern, especially about the thing around her neck, but the minute she heard the words “interface with digital systems” all that sublimated like a dream upon awakening. “I have a cortical modem?” she whispered, her eyes lighting up.
“It’s rather more than that,” Arvense said, the weird, wet line of his mouth twisting into something like a smile, “but yes. Again, disabled for now, but I think it won’t be too long, so just focus on recovering. You’re certainly safe to go home, now — I know your Mistress will be delighted. I don’t think I’ve had ten minutes without a message about you the whole time you’ve been here.”
“Would you like me to walk you home?” Layla asked.
“I mean, I don’t know where home is,” Jess muttered, trying very hard not to think about the whole ‘Mistress’ thing, “so… yeah, I guess..” She stared at the wall for a long while as Arvense produced a bag and began to lay out clothes for her, trying desperately to remember anything else that might
light upon the surface
help her figure out how the hell she’d gotten into this situation. Tech school, under-the-table work for locals, getting laid, not being a teenager — financial problems, apparently, according to what Layla had said, but try though she might Jess couldn’t dig up a single mote of memory that aligned with that. Her head still ached, and that didn’t help.
Never mind how she got here, what the fuck was she going to do? She was on a starship full of xenos who had apparently conquered fucking Solstice, a maximum-security penal colony that, somehow, she’d managed to end up on. Said xenos had given her a cortical fucking modem, the very thing she’d been longing for her entire life, but still — xenos. Fucking aliens, and not the weird little fuzzball Rinans but massive fucking swamp monsters. And who the hell was Layla, and why was “Layla” not the name Jess expected to hear her refer to herself by?
And it wasn’t like she could just stay in this bed, either. Arvense and Layla had, after a bit of quiet back-and-forth, left her to get dressed on her own, but they’d be back eventually. Might as well get out of the ridiculous (if very comfortable) floral-print hospital gown she was wearing and into something that was actually clothing.
After that, who knew what was going to happen? Jess certainly didn’t.
