S.I. (original/SI)

[DataPacRat]

*Chapter Six: Pro-hibition*

I woke to discover a few useful facts. I was in a bed, in an unfamiliar, white-walled room; some kind soul had set a calendar and clock nearby, so that I saw it was only two days later; and I couldn't feel my legs, or anything at all from the waist down.

A quick lift of the sheet revealed my legs were still in place, though my lower wardrobe had been replaced with a cloth diaper. A lift of my head showed Brenda curled up on the carpet next to my bed, on the opposite side from the IV drip stand.

Things could have been worse.

They could also have been a lot better - starting with the squiddies never having mentioned that I'd had any contact at all with the Berserker, let alone offered it in a bargain with a mob of mercenaries.

I had about ten minutes to ponder that before a gas-masked head leaned through the doorway. I had another two minutes before a fully-suited figure strode into the room.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to get good chitosan these days?"

"I'll go with 'no'." Brenda sat up, but simply rested her head on the bed near my hip. I absently started stroking her headfeathers.

"Let's just say there isn't an abundance of shrimp near Youngstown. We had to use up most of our stockpile to keep you from bleeding out on us."

"Is that supposed to make me more inclined to pay you? Need I remind you that it was your medic - if he was a medic - who got me started on that whole bleeding out thing?"

"Don't worry, I'm not demanding extra pay - just what you already owe us."

"Lake Erie hired you. You can take it up with them."

"You're here. I'm taking it up with you."

"I have to say, I don't think I've ever seen someone use your negotiation tactics so brazenly - coming over before anyone can even tell me if trying to sit up will rupture my spleen, let alone whether this paraplegia is short-term, long-term, or permanent."

"We /are/ running behind sched- wait, paraplegia?"

"You're telling me you didn't already know?"

"How could we? You've been unconscious."

He stared at me. I stared at him. Brenda pushed her head to get me to scratch behind her ear-holes. After a few moments of standoff, he sighed. "Fine, one medic, coming right up."

"Not to be too picky or anything, but how hard would it be for /my/ medic to come in?"

"What, you mean that vet?"

"I mean that woman who knows my physiology well enough to have implanted my artificial heart, among other treatments."

"She could be Mary, Mother of God in disguise and have raised you from the dead-"

"... near enough..."

"- and I don't care, as long as we finish our business. I'll have her brought in through the security cordon." He vanished back out the doorway.

"So," I said to Brenda, "what have /you/ been up to the last couple of days?"

"These people wouldn't let anyone else near you," she said, eyes still half-closed from my continued scritching, "so I've made sure you're taken care of properly. Avoiding bedsores, changing your diaper, keeping your fur groomed so you'd feel confident and ready to kick ass and take names when you woke up..."

"That's..." I wanted to say 'creepy' or 'stalkerish', but reigned in my tongue. I had no idea whether I'd need somebody to do all that for me for the next thirty years, and with what had been done to her, I couldn't tell if she could have /not/ done something like that. So I continued with, "above and beyond the call of duty."

"It was no duty at all. I know you don't feel about me the way I do about you - I can't /not/ take care of you, any more than a mother can't take care of her newborn. That guard who imprinted me on you didn't say /how/ I had to love you."

Carefully, so as not to dislodge the IV in my elbow, I rubbed my face. "I hope you won't take this the wrong way - but I'm really, really sorry that I wasn't able to keep the bimbo zone sealed up before you got pulled through it. The simple fact that it /can/ do what it's done to you is all sorts of disturbing."

"I'm imprinted, not an idiot."

"Er..."

"I think the idiot part of being a bimbo comes from new bimbos being /told/ to be dumb during the imprinting stage."

"That's... possible, I guess, though it doesn't match the theory I heard about neural crest cells."

"Do neural crest cells have anything to do with giant eggs appearing?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then your theory's crap."

I managed a shrug, then had a thought. "Say, did you see what happened to that egg's contents?"

"Kind of. Three, four gallons of goo pretty much just soaked into the ground and disappeared. I think they kept all the pieces of shell they pulled out of you."

I rubbed my head again. "I suppose that now I can't find the answer, I can actually face the question of /why/ I had a giant egg stuck inside me... I mean, if the bimbo zone had just made me pregnant, I could at least kind of understand it as part of that whole female-fertility thing..."

"Isn't it obvious?"

"I want to make a comment about my brains feeling scrambled, but whatever drugs are in this IV are making it hard to concentrate."

"There aren't any drugs in it right now, just blood substitute and volume expander. They couldn't transfuse blood, they didn't have any that matched your type."

"Hunh. Could have sworn I was AB positive, the universal recipient."

"Don't ask me, I'm just passing on what I've overheard."

"Maybe I can blame being muzzy-headed on a shortage of red blood cells, then. So, uh - what's obvious about the egg?"

"How do you think new zones get made?"

"I hadn't really thought about it. I guess I assumed whatever made the first ones just kept making more."

"I don't know how long it'll take, but I'd make a bet that a new zone's going to show up where your egg drained to."

"... And here I thought I was just avoiding the creepiness of some sort of alien parasite incubating inside me."

--

"The good news," Denise said after some basic prodding, under Brenda's watchful, hawk-like eyes, "is that I'm pretty sure you're not permanently paralyzed. I think all we're dealing with is swelling that's pinching some important nerves. Once your over-engineered metabolism finishes healing up from the damage from the shards, you should be back on your hoof and paw in no time."

I nodded, encouraged. I'd used a wheelchair as a disguise, and because it made things easier, so I figured I could get used to it as a necessity for a while.

Denise continued, "There's an off chance the nerves themselves were damaged, but without more specialized instruments, I have no way of determining that. Which brings us to the bad news." She stared at the soldier who'd escorted her in. "We're in a seized farmhouse, in the middle of around two hundred heavily armed men."

"You're sure they're not women?"

"Yes," she stated bluntly. "While they were quite competent in extracting us from Erie's civil guard, they also seem quite competent in keeping us from leaving. I will admit that the food is better than in prison. That's about all I'll admit."

--

"Captain?"

"Yes?"

"Just checking that it was you. Is there any chance that I could see a copy of the contract you were hired under?"

"Of course. I'll have somebody retrieve a copy for you."

"About that. I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but for matters of this value, there has to be a certain temptation for somebody with access to those papers to modify them, perhaps even without your knowledge or consent. While I would be happy to examine whatever papers you care to show, I trust that you will understand if I do not rely on their contents as being definitively accurate, without further confirmation from an external source."

"You're not making this easy, are you?"

"Captain - you're asking me to hand over something which could kill thousands. Even without my acknowledging whether or not I have access to any such thing, would /you/ hand over such a thing to a group without making /absolutely/ sure that group was really who they claimed to be, let alone that that's what they were owed?"

"Are you saying you /don't/ have the city-killer?"

"The thing about a policy of deliberate ambiguity, Captain, is that once that ambiguity is resolved, it can't be recreated. You have yet to give me sufficient reason to resolve it."

"If I lose men because we had to fight off an attack while you play games, their blood will be on your hands."

"I'm not forcing you to stay."

"You expect us to leave without getting paid?"

"I don't expect you to do anything. I will point out that I intend to be around for a very long while, and it would do my reputation significant damage were I to stiff the first mercenaries hired in my name."

"We're /not/ leaving without the city-killer."

"Period? Not even if an examination of the contract reveals you aren't owed it?"

"Of /course/ we're owed! My men put their lives on the line to rescue you, you ungrateful furry b- ... Is there a reason you're trying to rile me up, ma'am?"

"There is. In general, when honest business proceedings are taking place, a certain amount of courtesy is involved. It has yet to occur to you to offer me my glasses, let alone clothes, let alone privacy - either by myself or to consult with my associates - let alone anything related to the contract itself."

"What, you're not demanding I call you 'Your Majesty' too?"

"I am not demanding it - as far as I know, you are not a citizen of any of the realms I am a monarch of, and this is not a formal or diplomatic meeting. I /am/ taking into account the fact that you are aware of the title, but have been choosing not to use it."

With the distortion from the gas mask, I couldn't tell whether he was grating his teeth, but would have been willing to lay good odds on it. "I will get you your papers, /Your Majesty/, and signal Lake Erie to send their own copy."

"I would appreciate that, thank you. If you could, please arrange so that, let's say, Sarah - the blue fox centaur - can come back and forth without hindrance, and she can take care of my glasses and such minor things."

--

"Brought Boomer," Sarah announced. "Thought you'd want her."

I squeezed her hand as she set the AI on my belly, smiling up at her. "Thanks, you read my mind."

I heard an odd rumbling noise from the side, and in a few moments, identified it as Brenda, whose avian throat was emitting a rather un-birdlike growl.

"Uh - Sarah, this is Brenda, a Changed who got sent through the bimbo zone before me, and was imprinted to 'love me'. Brenda, this is Sarah, who I once rescued from death by poisoning, and has been a steadfast companion since. Both of you have helped me when I was in need - I hope the two of you can help each other, too."

Brenda turned away from the two of us, snorting, staring at a wall. "Sorry," she said. "I /know/ it's irrational, but - she's going to take you /away/ from me, and I want to chase her off."

"I'm not going anywhere any time soon," I started, but Brenda shook her head.

"I know me being possessive like this won't make you happy, so I'm going to work on it. Just letting you know that I /do/ feel this way."

Sarah said, "Maybe I could give you a massage? You have been here all the time for days. Maybe we take bath or shower? Do your feathers need special care?"

"I don't want to leave her alone - who knows what those black-suited bastards would do while nobody's watching?"

"I can go get Bunny Joe to watch over her."

Brenda seemed kind of torn, so I contributed, "Brenda, if you want to watch out for me, being well-rested would help... and looking your best and fiercest is more likely to head off trouble than, say, 'ragged animal chic'."

"Fine, fine," she grumbled. "But anything happens to you while I'm gone, I'm taking it out of blue-boy's hide."

--

I flipped the papers in front of Boomer's camera, then adjusted my glasses to start looking at the front page myself. Since the captain knew I was going to be getting confirmation of its contents, I didn't expect it to have any notable differences from any other copy, and getting a head start on studying it seemed the best use of my time.

I asked the AI, "Any obvious loopholes?"

Her badger avatar shrugged. "Nearly the entire contents appear to be mimeographed from a standardized boilerplate, which seems likely to have been carefully crafted by a team of lawyers to avoid such simple modes of failure."

"Maybe - but it's unlikely that team of lawyers had a digital mind like yours to help them.

"Perhaps. There are several sections. Conditions of payment, mission parameters, support offered to the unit, methods of dispute resolution and so on. They were paid a certain amount up front, with further payment dependant on successfully recovering you intact-"

"There's a possible loophole right there. Was the bimbo zone specifically mentioned?"

"Not directly, but you were specified as being in 'suitable condition to continue serving as monarch of the Dominion of Lake Erie'."

"Hrm. I was hoping that them being too late to keep me from being pulled into the zone would be enough on its own."

"It may be an arguable point. Your reaction to that zone was not predictable, and if you had experienced a typical reaction to that zone, the changes to your neural structure could count as becoming incapacitated. However, it is unlikely the Free Company's legal staff would accept that argument."

"What happens if I claim that's the case, and they claim it's not?"

"Neutral third-party arbitration, to take place in the Metropolis of Cleveland."

"Let's put a pin in that."

We went over other parts of the contract, from what else they were supposed to try to rescue, to which version of the laws of war the Company was supposed to abide by, to dealing with prisoners-of-war.

Boomer finished by reciting, "Signed, a squiggly hieroglyphic, translated as Whitecap, Minister of Finance on behalf of the Cabinet Committee of Her Majesty's Privy Council for Lake Erie."

"Hm... It's not much, but I think I can work with that. At least enough to get what I want, but make all sorts of people mad at me. I'd rather not tick off a company of mercenaries who are as... /effective/ at their jobs as these fellows - they might come in useful in the future, and if nothing else, I don't want them to accept contracts against me and mine just because they carry a grudge. Of course, I also don't want the squiddies' government to turf me out and go republic if I step on too many toes..."

"I have insufficient information to advise you on how to accomplish that set of goals."

"So do I. Let's see if I can convince the mercs' legal department to let me, meaning you, speed-read through the rest of their library; and exchange some messages with the Lake Erie government."

--

"Captain Bravo."

"Your Majesty."

I smiled and nodded up at him. "Thank you," I said. "Oh, as an aside, according to the usual standards of decorum, once you've used that title, you're free to use 'ma'am' afterwards. But to my main point - I would like to thank you and your men for the efforts you all went to in attempting to recover me, my property, and my fellow prisoners. If you wish, you can consult with the government in Lake Erie for the specific form of that thanks - medals for personal service to the Crown, if you'd like them."

"That's very nice, ma'am, but medals don't pay the bills, or help us win fights."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that - a reputation for getting the job done can be quite intimidating to your opponents. But please don't think that my thanks are going to be expressed purely symbolically; I intend to make sure that you and your men receive what you are owed, financially and contractually, as well."

"That's good to hear," he seemed to relax a tad.

"That said," I continued, "that payment will have to be in the form of cash - and a significant quantity of that - rather than the 'city-killer' you negotiated for."

There was a long pause. "You're reneging on the contract?"

"On the contrary - I'm fulfilling it to the best ability of the government of Lake Erie."

"It doesn't sound like it."

"There are some legal technicalities involved, but the short version is, I would like to make a cash offer in line with the non-payment penalties of the similar contracts you have in your library."

"I think I want to hear about these 'technicalities'."

"In that case - I'll start with an analogy. I don't know much about Youngstown; do your people still have sports and music and such culture?"

He sighed. "We do."

"Good. Let's say you play baseball, and a musical instrument - in fact, you're in charge of both the team and the orchestra. Now - if the orchestra falls into debt, can its treasurer sell off the baseball team's bats?"

"You're saying the city-killer isn't Lake Erie's to sell."

"I'm not just Queen of the Dominion of Lake Erie, I'm also Queen of Quebec, arguably the Queen of Canada, and of many other places which don't concern us. Buffalo was destroyed before the Dominion of Lake Erie was founded - if I did acquire that city-killer, I would have done so under one of my other Crowns. There is a long-standing constitutional tradition that the government of one member of the Commonwealth has no connection to any other government, even if the same person happens to be the monarch of both."

"That's a lot of words that don't mean much of anything. None of those other countries still exist."

"Quebec does, if no others do."

"Quebec's in Indian Country."

"Which is why that's not the only technicality I'm using to guide me. As a monarch in the Canadian traditions, I consider myself bound by certain guidelines, including the ones that led to certain treaties expressly prohibiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In fact, my very first formal act as Queen of Lake Erie was a proclamation expressing my hostility to anything involving mass deaths. When the Lake Erie Finance Minister signed that contract, he was doing so against my explicit wishes. If you ask your lawyer to buy a horse for you for ten dollars, and he makes an offer for fifteen, things get... complicated, and unpleasant for all involved."

"You're still not saying whether or not you actually have a city-killer."

"Now that the offer was made, rumours are going to spread that I do, whether or not that's the case. Given that, it would be... unwise for me to explicitly state that I don't. Some people wouldn't believe me, and think I had something to hide; some would take my lack of possession of such as an admission of weakness. If I do have one, then for similar reasons, it's better for me to avoid explicitly acknowledging it. The best course that I can think of is to keep as many people as possible guessing, for as long as possible."

"You'd better be offering a /lot/ of money. Running a company isn't cheap."

"I have suggested to my government in Lake Erie to be generous enough that taking the matter to arbitration would most likely end up with you receiving less." I frowned. "I wish I understood what possessed them to make the offer they did in the first place."

"They made lots of offers. That was the first one the Company's agent didn't have instructions for."

"If you'd been negotiating yourself, instead of through an agent, would you have taken one of the other offers?"

"You get to keep your secrets, I get to keep mine."

--

I stared at the telegram Sarah handed to me, and thought about it. Whitecap was offering his resignation, and I wasn't sure whether to accept or reject it, or let the squiddies' government handle it instead of dealing with it personally. Canadian tradition was for me, as monarch, to act as the government advised - but the older, deeper British traditions went all the way back to when kings were more war-leaders than figureheads. I'd been drawing on whichever tradition seemed handiest at the moment, but that had led to the whole mess with the Free Company.

I'd been doing well enough so far by asking for more information, so I did that once again, asking Sarah to send a return message to Whitecap, asking him to explain his reasoning leading up to the offer to the mercenaries. In short order, I had a reply: "We acquired copies of your 'motivation tree' shortly after your hibernation. It was obvious that while you had to place the 'avoid extinction of sapience' node as equal to the 'personal survival' node for public relations purposes, the latter was the true root node. The Youngstown Free Company were the available tool with the greatest chance of ensuring your survival, thus the lesser node was sacrificed for the greater."

"Hoo-boy," I started, but Boomer interrupted me by flashing her whole screen.

Text scrolled across, reading, "Message patterns match steganographic protocol. Do you wish to view hidden message now?"

I curled the telegram around Boomer to hide her screen from Sarah and Brenda, and tapped agreement. The screen changed to read, "Decoding and decompressing acronyms, etc, message reads: Youngstown Free Company appears more interested in gathering intelligence than money. Their known expenses exceed their projected income. Due to similarity in outfit and location, there is a possible connection to Pittsburgh, but this is unconfirmed. City-killer's existence was used to entice them to accept contract."

I re-read that, cleared the screen, and grunted another "Hoo-boy."

I'd gotten lazy. I'd come up with a perfectly useful six-layered multiple background story - and then had dropped it to focus on one particular persona, that of Queen Bunny of Canada. Meanwhile, it looked like both the squiddies and the Youngstown/Pittsburgh group (or groups) hadn't been slacking off. I couldn't even tell whether the non-hidden message about their interpretation of my motivations was true, or was just a believable cover story to allow the hidden message to be sent... and I had absolutely no clue what Pittsburgh was up to. I only even had Denise's word that Captain Bravo was male.

And if Captain Bravo had really wanted - there was nothing I could have done to keep him from forcing me to tell him about the Berserker. Or anything else. All the words we'd exchanged, the loopholes and technicalities I'd dug up; he wouldn't even have had to do anything but lock the door, and wait until I was delirious from dehydration. With only a modest bit of cleverness, a cover story would have absolved him of any negative consequences of my dying while under his control. The only reason I was going to pay him off in cash was because /he/ chose to allow that, not because I'd come up with any particularly persuasive ideas. I was still alive... because he believed I was more valuable to him alive.

If I tried to rely on that belief, then I would stay alive exactly as long as that belief lasted. And since I didn't know what he based it on, I might as well treat it as a random switch, which could change at any time.

If I wanted to stay alive for an appreciable length of time, I was going to have to really step up my game, and become a lot more independent and self-sufficient, instead of relying on the random whims of strange mercenaries.

I sniffed the air, and decided my first step would be learning how to change my own diapers.

 

[Scify]

You have been here all the time for days. Maybe we take bath or shower?

Click to shrink...

Is Sarah's speech usually this awkward? I don't feel like it is, but it's possible I just missed it.

I recall the masks being described as similar to the one Bunny saw before being transferred to her current body. How similar are they? And has it occurred to her to find out if the mercs are the only ones who dress like that?

 

[DataPacRat]

Is Sarah's speech usually this awkward? I don't feel like it is, but it's possible I just missed it.

Click to shrink...

I'm willing to call that a typo that slipped through.

I recall the masks being described as similar to the one Bunny saw before being transferred to her current body. How similar are they?

Click to shrink...

Pick two different covert-ops/hostage-rescue video games, with special forces fully masked; about that level of similarity.

And has it occurred to her to find out if the mercs are the only ones who dress like that?

Click to shrink...

From chapter 6.3: Sarah said, "Most everyone in Metropolis already wear masks. (...) Some hide eyes, some mouths, some whole face."

 

[DataPacRat]

*Chapter Seven: Pro-fessional*

I cleared the copy of 'The Prince' from Boomer's screen.

"Captain Bravo, how hard would it be for me to convince you to remain in place for another day or two?"

--

"Ladies and gentlemen." I looked around the conference room, where the various union heads had been gathered by the Free Company - fortunately, with little more resistance than loud arguments, and which had only occasionally needed to be solved with the application of rifle-butts. (A bit to my amusement, Toffee had been treated as one of my 'associates' earlier, and had already been acquired.) I was in my military duds, and discreetly tied to my chair, which was not-so-discreetly raised higher than that of anyone else in the room. Members of the Free Company were spread along the walls, partly to keep order, and partly as a pure, bluffing show of force.

"When your city's 'Civil Guard' captured and imprisoned me, you committed an act of war. Whether you intended it or not, whether you had any influence or not, whether formal declarations were made or not - at that moment a state of war came to exist between the city-state of Erie, and the Dominion of Lake Erie.

"For whatever reason, your city's defensive measures were so pitiful that a single company of infantry was more than capable of penetrating within, and doing as they wished. In short - I find myself to be in the position of an occupying power, until such time as I choose to withdraw. I would rather spend my resources elsewhere rather than on a military occupation. Thus I have decided to make a one-time offer, to find out just how much damage I have to do to your city's infrastructure to prevent you from committing any further acts of war.

"Given your city's unwritten constitution and de facto practices, you are, collectively, the closest it has to a government competent to sign a peace treaty. If you will pass those papers on the table around, you will find the text of such a treaty, with notes explaining what everything means. Mainly, it covers transfer of authority from the now-existing military government imposed by force, to a new civil government that meets certain standards: a charter of rights, universal suffrage, prohibition of slavery, an impartial judiciary, and so forth. In short, a government with members who can be held accountable for their actions. There are also some items dealing with the specific act of war that caused all this: trials for everyone in the chain of command that committed the act, transfer of certain assets as reparations.

"Which brings me to my offer. Sign the peace treaty, and I'll withdraw the infantry, and allow you an appropriate length of time to implement the treaty's provisions, with minimal interference during the transition period. You get to keep your jobs for your unions, your wealth, and your dignity. You will be able to seek positions in the new civilian government. No further damage will need to be done to the city, the port will remain open, business will continue. There are even provisions in the treaty for Lake Erie to help you build up your defenses against any other attack. In short, you will have demonstrated that your act of war was an aberration, and that you are working hard to prevent any such act from occurring again.

"Oh, yes. As soon as each of you sign, then I will have no reason to suspect you of intending to attempt some form of insurgency, so you will be released from custody to return home, with none of your property seized to keep out of the hands of would-be guerrillas."

--

After they had all been dismissed and were out of sight, I let Sarah manhandle me back into my hospital bed. She asked, conversationally, "Do you think it'll work?"

I sighed. "I honestly don't know. I tried to make signing as enticing an option as possible, given the examples Boomer had for me to draw on... but there's still something wonky about this whole place. Your civil guard doesn't seem organized enough to deal with a single monstrous Changed, let alone any more intelligent hostile entities - and I can't figure out what's been keeping reasonably smart political types from beefing up the guard enough to protect their own keisters."

Toby Junior wriggled out of Sarah's maw and sprung onto my lap. I tugged at my covers to let Wagger out, and the octo-kitty and tailsnake proceeded to play. I actually found myself unhappy that I couldn't feel Wagger's movements.

Sarah interrupted the byplay by fluffing my pillow, and asking, "What will you do if they don't agree."

I sighed. "I know this city is your home, but about all I can see to do is have the Free Company destroy as much landside infrastructure as possible on their way out, and the squiddies do the same to the waterside."

"Isn't that... excessive?"

"Sarah - stop that for a sec. Look at me. If you wanted to, you could take that pillow and smother me to death right now, and there's not a thing I could do to stop you." There were, actually, a few things I could try, such as drawing the poison-tipped-needle-gun I had in a concealed holster in my back; but none of them were guaranteed to work, and dilly-dallying with such exceptions would have blurred my main point. I continued, "While you have no particular reason to do that, there appear to be a number of Erieans who do. I've come up with exactly four choices. First, I could just let them. I think we can both agree that that's not a very good solution."

"I've heard better plans," she agreed as she puttered around, getting me tucked in, checking papers, and so on.

I started petting Toby Junior and continued, "Second, I could convince them they don't really /want/ to do me harm. That's the peace treaty: rearranging Erie's organization so that the people involved have better things to do than put any effort into killing me. Third, I could remove their /ability/ to do me harm. Destroying infrastructure is, as best as I can tell, the least costly way to do that. There are several /more/ destructive ways. Anyway, fourth, convince someone else to do numbers two or three for me. This one is more theoretical, since my interpersonal skills suck. I wasn't even able to convince Captain Bravo to detach just five men for a bodyguard detail."

"Those choices don't sound like you. Are you sure the bimbo zone didn't do something to your mind?"

"Of course I'm not /sure/. But it didn't have to, to make me face up to /those/ choices."

"Maybe I should get you a counsellor."

"Do you really think you could find one I could trust?"

"There is a very professional rape crisis centre and women's shelter in the city."

I coughed once, suppressing some sort of laugh or sob or something. "Let me tell you a story. It's not true, but you'd have trouble finding one that comes closer to the truth. Once upon a time, there was a bunny woman. She had troubles, but whenever she faced them, the East side of her mind told her she had a choice - she could always just say 'Bugger all this for a lark', drop everything, and just wander into the forest, to spend a month, or a year, or a decade; and them come back at her own pleasure, and start up from scratch. So every time she had a problem, she always included that option among the possible solutions, and always found something better to do than go a-hermiting.

"A couple of times, other people trapped her, so she /couldn't/ leave. This made her unhappy. But the South side of her mind showed her a different choice: whether to be dressed or be nude. Oddly enough, most of the plans she came up with were worse than deciding to walk around in the buff, so she walked around nude, and was less unhappy, because she could make that one choice for herself, until she figured out how to escape.

"And then one day, she faced a situation where she might never run away again, and which her state of clothing didn't matter. Her internal organs got rearranged, and she became physically completely helpless. Thinking very hard, the North side of her mind reminded her of one of her secrets: that she knew how to destroy a city. She looked at her problems, and realized that one solution to them was to destroy the city they were in. So she had a new choice to consider, every time she faced a problem.

"But a bunny woman who fantasizes about being alone and reading a lot is a different sort of bunny woman than one who spends her time thinking about matters of state, of war and strategy and logistics and morale and espionage and so on. Even if it's the same bunny woman, who still has the same goals and memories and skills, it's the difference between the refreshing east wind and the chill north wind."

I petted the cat. After a while, Sarah said, "Your legs /are/ going to get better."

"Probably," I agreed.

After another while, Sarah asked, "What about the west?"

"Hm?"

"In your story. What about the West side of the bunny woman's mind?"

"It hasn't made any suggestions yet. Maybe it will, maybe it won't - every mind keeps /some/ secrets from itself."

"... I am /definitely/ getting a professional counsellor for you."

She turned to leave, and I called out, "Could you send Brenda in?"

Since it turned out Brenda had been guarding the doorway, that was easily accomplished. "I've had a thought," I said to her, "which I'd like your opinion on. How much do you think people would underestimate you if they thought you were an animal instead of a person?"

--

"Ah!" I woke with a cut-off scream, abruptly sitting up - well, at much as I could with my nerve signals getting cut off somewhere around the T8 vertebra. I panted and looked around quickly, trying to figure out whether I needed to draw my weapon /immediately/ or I should keep it secret...

"Has she been having nightmares for long?" asked an unfamiliar voice.

I collected my glasses as I heard Sarah answer, "For longer than I've known her. But she is usually good at avoiding them."

"Alcohol?"

"Never. Drugs from a doctor, or sleeping with a person or animal. Sleep, not sex."

"Hm... well, I've seen worse."

That was around when I finally managed to see clearly. Brenda was stretched out on the floor, snoring softly; Sarah was standing inside the doorway, along with an unfamiliar woman. The word 'tomboy' came to mind, or maybe 'punk' - ragged hair dyed in several shades of purple, a selection of tattoos from her neck to her wrists, jeans, and a jacket that straddled the edge between 'motorcycle leathers' and 'leather armour'.

The only reason my heart rate wasn't slowing down from an emergency peak was, well, you know. "A rape counsellor, I presume?"

At my voice, Brenda lifted her head, blinking, giving a half-hearted growl to the pair at the doorway.

"Abigail," said the only human in the room. "I run the Erie Emergency Shelter, and smack some sense into anyone who needs it who I can reach. Our usual counsellor is Amy, but Sarah didn't think she'd be much help for you."

I settled back onto my pillows, lacing my fingers over my belly along the line where the numbness started. "Why's that?"

"Amy's more about all the wishy-washy, feely stuff. Hugs and group meetings and dream symbols and all that crap."

"'Crap'?"

She shrugged. "Ah, it works for some. I'm better at teaching self-defense, but that doesn't help until people /want/ to defend themselves."

Sarah said, "I'll let you two talk. Brenda?" She gestured at the doorway.

The griffoness rose to all fours, padded next to my bed, and plopped back down. Sarah sighed, and Abigail grinned. "Nice claws. Think I've heard of you - deliveries, right?"

Brenda just rumbled, and I offered the most appropriate cover story we'd come up with. "She was, but got shoved into a zone that affected her mind. Seems to have made her protective of me."

Abigail's eyes flicked between us for a few moments, then looked at me and said, "We've had a few bimbos who lost what they were imprinted on. We've learned a few tricks to help them find reasons the people they love would want them to go on. Just something to keep in mind in the future." At my raised eyebrow, she added, "Her fur's started coming in white instead of gray. She wants to be a fierce animal, I don't care. She wants anything else, she can always drop by."

"Uh... /huh/." It was my turn to give her a more thorough look.

"So," she hooked her thumbs into her pockets, and leaned against a counter, "Sarah says you're going cuckoo."

I snorted once, but smiled just a bit. "And you're here to stop that?"

"Up to you, really. I've seen some shit. Maybe I've seen something that you can use. Anything in particular that's bugging you?"

"You haven't got the security clearance."

"Security what now?"

I waved a hand at myself. "Queen Bunny. Head-of-state. Currently trying to negotiate a peace treaty so I don't have to blow up significant amounts of your city."

"Oh, that."

"Yeah, 'that'."

She shrugged. "You can't talk, you can't talk. Any troubles you /can/ talk about?"

"You want them alphabetically or chronologically?"

"Whatever works for you."

"Hm. Okay, let's see..." I ran through my memory palace to find the list that was suitable for public consumption. "I was hit by a truck, died, revived decades later after something like eight billion people died including everyone I ever knew, stuck in this body, threatened by a mob with actual pitchforks, chased by a monster bigger than this house, drugged and kidnapped, shot by a bandit, had my foot melted off, looked through Buffalo just after everyone died looking for survivors, kidnapped at gunpoint, was shot through the heart, had one of my best friends stabbed, my vehicle blown up, my followers' meetingplace blown up, captured /again/, imprisoned, watched someone get mind-wiped just to try to get me to cooperate, got yanked into the bimbo zone myself, had it do /something/ to me other than a simple bimbofication, and while I was getting extracted, enjoyed a rather painful injury which seems to have done a number on my spine and left me stuck in this bed and wearing diapers."

"Jesus." Abigail pulled out a cigarette and lit it, though she was at least polite enough not to blow smoke in my direction. "That all?"

"I left a few things out to protect some peoples' privacy."

"Okay, I give. You've had more troubles than most anyone I've met."

"'Most'?"

"Ever hear of carousel trees?"

"Uh... no?"

"If you ever find a branch growing out of your chest, and another growing out your back, do whatever you have to to keep the chest one from touching the ground. That is, unless you're in a spot you don't mind being rooted to for the rest of your life."

"Oh... kaay..."

She shrugged. "There's more to it than that, but that's enough info to keep you safe. I can introduce you to a few people who didn't learn that in time, if you've got a strong stomach."

"Would they want to meet me?"

She blew smoke towards the ceiling, looking like she'd tried for a smoke ring but failed. "Yeah, I think so. Nice to hear that's the question you asked."

"Yeah, yeah, I've still got empathy for my fellow man - or Changed, or whatever - and all that jazz."

"Don't knock it, til you've met people who haven't got it."

"Did I not mention people trying to kill me, and who did kidnap me?"

"Yeah, that does seem like it happens to you a lot. You doing anything about that?"

"Had a self-defense course to practice, though I've either got to wait and see if I get my legs back or figure out a new one. Been surrounding myself with people who seem more interested in keeping me alive and in one piece. Made a few other preparations I'm not prepared to share with you. Oh, and last time something like that happened, I pointed out that a formal state of war existed between this city and Lake Erie and suggested a surrender agreement and peace treaty would be better than the alternatives."

More smoke curled up. "Sounds like you've got that taken care of, then."

I barked a disbelieving laugh. "Are you /crazy/? The only reason I'm letting you anywhere /near/ me is that I seem to have acquired a pet griffon who'd tear your throat out if you tried anything. There's a particular way almost everyone in this city is cracked in the head, that you can't even see, that seems to be part of why I've ended up in a state where I've seriously considered the pros and cons of just getting my legs taken off."

Her gaze focused instantly, and intently, on me again. "Don't-" she started, but I waved her off.

"Oh, don't worry, the cons outweigh the pros, even if I do have a mutant healing factor that'd let me regrow them.

She stared at me for a long moment, then went back to watching the curls of smoke. "Okay," she agreed. "What I'm hearing you say is that you don't feel safe. Is there anything you can do that /will/ let you feel secure?"

I snorted again. "Depends. Do you want to include considerations about a Second Singularity that might wipe out everyone who survived the first one?"

"Do /you/ include that?"

"At least half of that list I gave you, and most of the list I didn't, is /because/ I've been including that and trying to deal with it."

"Saving the world is a little outside my job description. How about we focus on what would keep /you/ safe?"

I shrugged. "I don't see how that can happen, in the short term. I still don't know /why/ you Erieans have been trying to kill me, so I don't know what it would take to get you to /stop/."

"No clues at all?"

"Hm. Well, I have got one other mystery about the place I don't understand, and which, most likely, you literally can't think about and would lose most of this conversation if I referred to it directly. Conservation of evidence suggests the two are connected, I just don't know how, or even what it would take to find out..."

"You don't sound too sure of that."

I grimaced. "Last time I came close to where I might find something out, I ended up a paraplegic. I'm not exactly eager to repeat the experience."

"I can see that. But you /are/ alive, and it sounds like you might even recover, so I gotta ask - is what happened worse than not knowing?"

I opened my mouth to give an immediate answer, but paused, to think about my reasoning. After a few moments, I closed my mouth, frowning. Eventually, I said, "I'll have to get back to you on that." I ran my memory back over the conversation so far. "Say, any chance you happen to know any self-defense tricks that work for someone whose legs don't?"

--

"'Course," Abigail added, "it's a lot harder to aim for a pressure point if you're too sleepy to see straight."

"I'd be less worried about that then the fact without my glasses, I can't recognize faces six feet away from me."

"Can't you see when someone you're talking to is trying to steer the conversation to something they think is important?"

"I'd have to say 'probably not'. Just one among many reasons I sometimes mention my social skills suck. So - what about my sleeping arrangements needs talking?"

"Thought about finding a more long-term solution than drugs?"

"I'm not using drugs even as my short-term solution. I've just been under medical care a lot lately."

"What, you got something against altered states of consciousness?"

"Yes and no. I might have mentioned something about people trying to kill me a lot, and I really, /really/ don't want someone to try that while I'm so out of it I /can't wake up/."

"Okay, okay, jeez. What's the 'no' for?"

"Eh, some altered states can be useful tools, if used /as/ tools, instead of just for fun. You know the heliograph network?" She nodded at the rhetorical question, so I continued, "Wrote out the specs for that while I was zapping my brain."

"Haven't heard that one before. What was it, Salvinorin?"

"Externally induced electromagnetic fields."

"You're shitting me."

In a few minutes, I had my thinking cap delivered, and Sarah, Brenda, /and/ Bear Joe all standing guard. "I've been meaning to do this more often, what with all the problems I have to deal with, but, well, I've got all these problems I have to deal with... you're sure you want to see this? I'm pretty sure it's going to be really boring."

Abigail nodded. "I'm kinda curious about the whole thing now, even outside the whole figuring out how to help you thing."

"Fair enough. Lemme just set the timer..."

--

"Bunny. Bunny!" Someone shook my shoulder.

"Huh? Wha?" I looked up from my notepad.

Sarah said, "Time's up."

"Already?"

"/Been/ half an hour."

"Oh. Uh - I'm pretty sure I was just getting started on something. Anything important going on in the next hour or two?"

"Abigail dying of boredom?"

"Oh. Right, sorry, forgot you were there. So - boring, right?"

She crushed out a cigarette, and it looked like it wasn't her first. "Yeah, right up to when you grabbed your pet and started measuring her for bondage gear."

"What?"

"That's what you've been drawing, isn't it?"

"What?" I focused on what I'd been drawing. "Oh. No. Very much no. Lemme just think a sec about how classified all this should be..." I flipped through some pages. "Right. First useful idea I had - if the peace treaty gets signed, use at least some of the reparations to help empower the powerless in Erie, including a donation for your emergency shelter."

"Can't say I'm gonna say no to that, unless you've got too many strings tied to it."

"Not even going to ask you to rename a bench after me. Part of a long-term selfish plan, to get as many people up to snuff to where they can help out."

"Where's the bondage gear fit into all that?"

"Bit of free associating, new idea. Um... controversial idea. Bimbos may or may not be able to give meaningful consent about some things. Makes it hard to protect them, or figure out if they need help at all. So I started working out a set of gizmos where they could push a red button to signal if they needed help, and a green button every day or so to indicate they're alright. You haven't got much of an electrical grid, so I was fiddling around with batteries and solar cells - and with discreet, or not-so-discreet places to wear them - and with the whole set of issues of radio networking and locating a distress call without benefit of GPS. I've still got a lot of blank spots in the design, starting with figuring out who'd be trustworthy enough to pay attention to the signals, and to send someone over for a red light, or if a green light isn't lit for too long. Not the Civil Guard, that's for sure."

Abigail was staring at me with an intent expression. "You know where to buy these alarm jewelry things?"

"I haven't finalized the design - but if I do, I don't have to buy them, I know how to /make/ them. Would need some raw materials, but with reparations in the pipeline, that should be easy enough."

As I flipped through the design pages, I very carefully didn't mention another feature of the bracelets, collars, anklets, and so on; or the /real/ reason I'd come up with that approach in the first place: location tracking of the bimbos. I still only had hints that some of them disappeared, but not when, or where to, or which ones; but this was one way that I might be able to start collecting such information.

It might not be the /best/ way, but that was the trade-off with the artificial flow state.

Abigail looked thoughtful. "... If I wore that hat, could I come up with something like that?"

I shook my head. "Doesn't work like that. Just lets you focus better on what you already know. Well, it /might/ be able to do other things to your head, but I haven't gotten them to work yet."

"Can it let you sleep without nightmares?"

"Um." I frowned. "It's not impossible that that might be possible; might not be possible, either."

"Now there's a fancy bit of hedging."

I shrugged. "Hey, it's always good to know what you don't know. It's a novel approach, at least, and might be handy if it does work."

"If you do make it work - any chance you could send a few hats to the shelter?"

"I thought most folk didn't like using electronics if they could avoid it - the whole 'city-swallowing dragon' thing."

"Maybe people rich enough to talk to a queen can afford that. I've had people in pain so bad they kill themselves just to make it stop - others who do just as good as, with whatever they can get to fuck themselves up."

"Ah. Uh ... I'll see what I can come up with."

 

[Scify]

and them come back at her own pleasure

Click to shrink...

Then

 

[DataPacRat]

*Chapter Eight: Pro-tection*

Negotiating the peace treaty turned out to be astonishingly simple. I met with each of the union heads individually, asked them what they wanted to change in it - and whatever they said, I then asked how much their union was willing to chip in to increase the reparations owed. When their own cash and job was on the line, the original treaty proposal was, surprise surprise, entirely acceptable.

I threw together a signing ceremony as fast as I could after that... mostly so that when the Free Company left, it would appear that I was being generous and giving the Erieans time to set their house in order, instead of because I couldn't keep the soldiers around.

Oddly enough, even though the Lake Erie squiddies had embassies, they hadn't established a flag or anthem. I tried whipping up some quick placeholders, but neither Boomer nor Clara could provide any particularly relevant symbols; so, somewhat reluctantly, I fell back to the British tradition of using royal symbols to represent the state of the Dominion of Lake Erie. I dug out - well, asked Sarah to dig out - the personal royal flag I'd flown on top of Munchkin during my visit to Brantford, to hang in counterpart to the flag of the city of Erie. (Which was another of those annoying "Let's just stick the whole coat of arms in the middle of the flag!" jobs. I made a note to Boomer to recommend the new government might want to pick something more pleasing, like, say, a flag based on the shield of the coat of arms, the way flags were originally designed by heralds.) 'God Save the Queen' was a simple enough tune, but since I was an atheist, and had no intention of using the 'Defender of the Faith' part of the royal titles if I could avoid it, I made a quick executive decision to strike out 'God Save' and swap in 'Hail to'.

Most importantly, I made sure the press was there, well-supplied with photo film.

And, if you will excuse the expression, I gave interview.

"Who's this?" asked the man I'd given a newspaper reporter's press card to, reaching one hand out towards Brenda's head.

She growled, he pulled his hand back, and I said, "What does it say on her vest?"

"Er... 'Service griffon', 'please ask before petting'."

"There you go, then."

"What's a, uh, service griffon?"

"She serves as a service animal. Fetching items, opening doors, pressing buttons - I can even hook her up to pull my wheelchair, if need be."

"Is she dangerous?"

"If she were a part of my security cordon, then I would trust you to understand that the value provided by a free press should be tempered by knowing when leaving certain details out of a story does more good than harm."

"Er... does your, ah, adoption of this animal, mean that your injuries are permanent?"

"My medical professionals are fairly confident that I will eventually make a full recovery, though there is still a reasonable chance that I will never walk again." I decided to try steering things back to the topics I wanted covered. "Rest assured, that the amount of reparations have already been fixed, and will not be altered based on my degree of recovery."

"Isn't that money for dealing with your injuries?"

"No, it was purely punitive, removing it from the control of a system that demonstrated it was not qualified to be entrusted with that responsibility. In fact, most of it is not in the form of money at all, but partial ownership of various local enterprises."

"What's going to happen to it all?"

"We're still working out final details on that. What has been confirmed is that it will mostly be re-invested locally, with the proceeds going to the benefit of local charities that help those in need. For example, I have made personal contact with a local women's shelter. Your city also has a few issues which other cities do not have to deal with, that I'm trying to learn more about before offering help that does more harm."

"You mean bimbos."

"I do, in fact, mean bimbos. I am very uncomfortable with using the bimbo zone as punishment - but for those people who have become bimbos, I need to find the fine line between ensuring they are well-treated and forcing them away from the people they have been imprinted on to love. Slavery is bad, because it keeps slaves from being able to do more for themselves... but I don't know enough about bimbos to say what they are, or aren't, capable of. I'm working on some interim measures, to offer them as much protection as possible until final decisions are made."

"So... you're not going to force people to give up their bimbos?"

"Hrm. I'm not really used to doing interviews - I'm probably not explaining myself well. The decision on that hasn't been made yet."

"How about the mayor's harem?"

"As I said - the decision hasn't been made yet."

And so it went.

As my claim to royalty depended on my original body's extremely distant relationship with the original British royal family, I provided an abbreviated version of my origins that was consistent with that fact. I described how my favourite colour was not, in fact, pink. I touched hands with people who wanted physical contact with a royal personage, and let myself be posed for photographs.

In short: I schmoozed, to the limited extent that I knew how to do so.

It may even have done some good.

--

"Note to self: When meeting with more than a couple of people at a time, gloves aren't a fashion accessory, they're a hygienic necessity."

--

While I was recovering from that social outing, I thought of another reason to try out the bimbo alarm jewelry, which was enough for me to go ahead with the project. Technoville had told me that any computer hooked up to a radio would quickly be taken over; I wanted to learn more about how that happened, and could tweak the parameters of the radio system to make a few preliminary tests. A few hours in electronically-induced flow state, and I had my design specs ready to feed into Munchkin's mini-fab.

I brought the first samples with me as I visited the women's shelter. The place had enough security to satisfy even the North side of my mind - which only made sense, given that the occasional ex- hammering on the door might be a Changed as big as a Clydesdale.

Amy, rather than Abigail, let in me, Brenda, and Sarah. The co-manager of the place made me think of Fluttershy, if that character had been an anthropomorphic otter instead of a cartoon pony: soft-spoken, long-haired, and overflowing with empathy for her charges. Brenda pulled my chair through a common room where some women were reading to their children, a couple were painting the same bowl of fruit, and others focused on their own pursuits. I offered polite words of greeting, trying not to intrude if they didn't want me distracting them.

And then Amy brought me to a blonde woman, dressed in a big white bathrobe over pajamas, curled up in a bench under a window (with heavy metal screening protecting the bulletproof glass). "This is Colleen," Amy introduced her, her long whiskers twitching sadly as she spoke. "She seems to be in a permanent depression. When she was sent through the bimbo zone, she was imprinted not just to love a certain old man I don't want to name, but to protect and defend him. He died. In similar situations, we've sometimes had success in redirecting the bimbo's focus - onto a new individual, or onto the original's children, or even onto something more abstract, like what the original 'would have wanted'. But Colleen's imprint seems to have been very specific. She'll eat if she's fed, go where someone leads her, but that's about all."

Several thoughts occurred to me quite quickly, and I gestured for Amy to lead us somewhere out of earshot. Sarah stayed behind, to sit next to the woman for a bit. "Simply as a logic puzzle, I've already had an idea about how to get Colleen interested in, well, living again." Amy perked up, eyes wide and webbed hands rubbing each other, so I quickly continued, "But there are ethical issues that it might be better not to rush into."

Amy brushed her hair back so she could see me with both eyes. "Her prognosis is that she will not recover, and she will end up dying - forgetting to eat, or wandering outside during winter, or something of the sort."

"Should you be telling me that? I'm not a doctor."

"If you can do something for her, breach of confidentiality is a minor sin at best. Do you know a zone that reverses bimbo programming?"

"No - I don't even know what happens if someone goes through the bimbo zone twice."

"Brain damage, to the point that someone who started human becomes an uncontrollable animal."

"Eyurgh. Okay, so noted. Anyway - I know a few bits of philosophy and science, and if I mention them to Colleen... they might give her something to focus on, some sort of hope."

"What sort of hope?" I explained my thought to her, and she frowned. "Is that true?"

"To the best of my knowledge."

"It sounds very... un-Godly."

"In a sense, it is. But if it might help her - then now you know, and you can give it a go once you've run it by your review board, or whatever your process is."

"I'm not sure I can. And we don't have a board like that - it's just Abigail and me." She turned away, and I watched her thick tail swing back and forth, trying to guess at her thoughts. After a few moments, she turned back. "Tell her. I don't think it will do a thing - but I'm willing to try almost anything."

I soon had my chair parked by the bench, looking out the window at a house across the street. I tried sorting my thoughts a bit, took a breath, and said, "I don't know if being imprinted is anything like it's described. But if all that matters to you is one man, who died... there /may/ be a way to get him back."

Her eyes focused on me. I took that as encouragement, and continued.

"This way depends on unproven science with questionable assumptions, would require resources that probably don't exist anywhere on Earth and that nobody currently knows how to build. It may, in fact, turn out to be impossible. To understand how it could work even in theory may take more learning than you can learn. What I can say is that no magic is involved. No wishful thinking, no religion, no /unprovable/ assumptions. It's something you can start working towards, and have an idea of how close to your goal you get."

She continued staring at me, now with a slight crease between her eyebrows. After a moment, she opened her mouth, and after a few false tries, said what I would interpret as, "How?" Amy squeezed my shoulder hard enough that I had to focus to avoid wincing.

"There are things you have to learn before you can understand that. But I can describe one of the first things." I waved at her. "You are not quite the same now as when you woke up. You are even more different than you were a year ago, or ten. But you're still the same /person/. It has nothing to do with any particular atoms you're made up of - it's the overall /patterns/ those atoms are arranged in. That's called the 'pattern theory of identity'. And with that theory, and with, well, mind-boggling levels of effort... it just may be possible to recreate the pattern of the man you're thinking about. Meaning that he was alive, and then was dead, and then would be alive again."

I paused, glancing at Amy, then at Sarah, who'd started heading to a nearby table to grab a plate of small sandwiches. I turned back to the woman. "To do that, though, you'll need to learn a lot about math, and physics, and neurology; and grapple with ideas that seem impossibly crazy at first. And you'll need to take care of yourself, so you can start learning those things. And maybe you'll have to work on other things, like at a regular job, so you can afford to buy the books and pay the teachers you'll need." Sarah returned with the sandwiches, and placed it in front of the woman, so I added, "And get your strength up, so you can start doing all that."

I fell silent. We watched her. She stared at me.

After a long minute, she looked away, down at the sandwiches, and picked one up.

--

In Amy's paper-strewn office, I politely sipped a cup of not-coffee, while Brenda playfully gnawed on a bone at my feet, after having given me an eye-roll once Amy wasn't looking at her.

Amy set her own cup down, to say, "I don't think we ever would have thought of telling her /that/. What do you think she'll do when she finds out it's not true?"

I raised a brow. "What makes you think it's not true?"

"You can't just bring people back from the dead. Their souls are gone, in heaven."

"I have all sorts of things I could say to that, from cryonics to what I've seen happen in Indian Country, but the short of it is, I believe that what I said is true. I under-emphasized the difficulties, and over-emphasized how possible it could be... but if she's still alive a hundred or a thousand years from now, she could very well have created a person who matches the man she imprinted on in all measurable respects. Whether or not it's the /same/ man is an argument for philosophers... but argue against it too hard, and she might go catatonic again."

"I suppose I let myself in for that, letting her believe something so... strange, when I let you talk to her. I just, well, expected you to feel so bad about failing that you'd want to give the shelter more money."

I muffled an amused snort, then said, "I'll give you some notes before I go, so you can try the same explanation yourself on any other bimbos who lose their will to live. In the meantime, I wanted to talk to you about some bracelets I fabbed up..."

I gave her the quick overview of the user interface - red button if bad, green button if good, try to leave in sunlight.

"And you can tell where the bracelets are when the buttons are pressed?"

"Yes and no," I hedged. "For technical reasons, what I can build are stations that point in the direction of the bracelet. Two or more, spread a few miles apart are needed to pinpoint a location in the city. The trick is getting the information from the two stations to whoever is going to go investigate - and deciding on the solution for that depends on who that's going to be."

"Do you have anyone in mind?"

"Definitely /not/ the current Civil Guard. Well, the current version, anyway. I've had a few vague thoughts on some sort of security company, which uses the profits from paying customers to subsidize bracelets for people who can't afford capitalist rates... but I'm not close enough to the people on the ground to /really/ know how badly that approach could mess up."

"Are any... /computers/ involved?"

"No, this design is purely analogue, no switches other than the buttons themselves."

"It's electrical, though?"

"Well, of course."

"I know some women who won't touch it. But... I think I know some who would. Does it have to be a bracelet?"

"Not... /necessarily/, but I'd say it's important that it's wearable."

"It only works when touching someone?"

"Not quite. Um. A quick hacker parable might explain. Many years ago, when trains were invented, the people running them had a problem: to keep more than one train from trying to be on the same part of the track at the same time. One solution they came up with, was to have a sort of key, that unlocked a particular bit of track for that train, and that key was then left for the next train. Perfect security - only one key, so only one train could ever use that track at a time. Then, one day, two trains collided. When the crash was investigated, the owners discovered that the train drivers had gotten annoyed at having to move the key back and forth all the time, so they came up with a clever solution so they didn't have to work so hard: they made a second key." I suppose I grimaced, and continued with the moral. "Any gizmo has to take into account not just how it's /supposed/ to be used, but how people /will/ use it." I gestured at the sample bracelet. "This thing is only of any use if its owner actually has it /with/ them. So part of my design criteria is to let people be able to keep it on their persons without thinking about it. That mostly narrowed it down to 'bracelet' or 'necklace', so I went with one."

"Hm. Does it have to be... so black?"

"Not entirely, but a lot of it does. Collects sunlight. There's still enough leeway in the design of the power system to throw some filigree work on top of the basic design, or make it the band for a wristwatch, or something like that."

She set the bracelet down on one of the smaller stacks, and folded her hands together. Her nose twitched, and I wondered how different an otter-shaped sensorium was from what I was used to.

"It sounds like you are not interested in making money from this... project. So I must ask - what are you doing it for? Good press?"

"That certainly doesn't hurt, but it's not my main goal." I shrugged and looked away. "I've already almost forgotten the name of the woman in the window-"

"Colleen."

"Yes, well, names aren't my strong suit. Anyway - the way things were going, it seems like things were just going to get worse for her. But now... maybe she'll start studying math, and in ten years, will be better qualified than anyone else for a useful construction project, and save me some weeks of effort. More likely not... but there are a lot of people out there, who just need a little help to get through their troubles, and become the best they can be. As best as I can figure the odds, in the long term, every hour I spend helping the worst off returns about one point two hours saved, in the long run. The numbers can become even better with more directed efforts - but for that, I need to at least have a vague idea of what the heck I'm doing in the first place. So I guess you could call this a pilot project, so I can learn how to do charity stuff, where if I mess up I don't sink a whole city into a recession or something like that."

"Is that all? Just... math? You're not doing this because you care?"

I turned back to her. "Mu. ... which means I un-ask the question, because it is based on faulty assumptions. I've met Colleen. I'm sad she's sad, and I hope she does better. I hope the other people we saw do better. I hope the people who live here who I didn't see do better. I hope the people who don't live here now, but did in the past and will in the future, do better. I hope the people in Dogtown in similar situations do better. I hope the people in all the places I've never been, and who I have no idea even exist, do better. And, maybe, I can do something to help a good number of them do better... but I'm only human. Or close enough. If I let myself focus too hard on too many people, I'll get... burnt out, and then not be able to do anyone any good at all."

"That sounds like you've rehearsed it a lot. Is it actually true?"

I grimaced again, but it rang a bell in my mind, reminding me to be a good little aspiring rationalist and check my assumptions. "Maybe. Probably? I've been having emotional issues ever since I searched through Buffalo for survivors - probably even before that, since I got fuzzy, but Buffalo didn't help. So... I'm doing my best to manage my mental and emotional health, and trying to avoid anything that's likely to disconnect from reality any further."

"'Further'?"

I shrugged, feeling a bit guilty. "I have no permanent residence, no stable workplace, and the people near me are in danger just by being so - the man who helped me search Buffalo was killed with a knife, just a few days ago. I am at a point in my life where being paralyzed from the waist down, possibly permanently, is merely one more cup of water added to the flood."

"It sounds like you should take a vacation."

"Tried that already - medical leave. Ended with my friend getting stabbed, people trying to blow up me and my friends, and a literal state of war."

"Are we in danger, by your being here? By helping with your project?"

"I... don't /think/ so, but I honestly don't know. From what I've seen, you're in /less/ danger than most would be, because you're already prepared for the levels of violence involved."

"I see." She slid the bracelet across the desk towards me. "I'm going to have to talk to Abigail before I can give you an answer."

I took it back, sliding it into one of my wheelchair's pockets. "Of course."

--

To the back of the shelter's main house was a very large yard, with a tall, brick fence protecting it. Within was a small playground, slides and swings and monkeybars and a few other immortal ways to keep kids running around; and a rather large garden, with enough trees and bushes to let several groups at once have private benches to sit quietly.

I didn't feel like going to the effort of hauling myself out of the wheelchair and back, but I did enjoy the late-summer, early-autumn greenery enough to let Brenda pull me to one such corner. I took off my glasses, closed my eyes, tilted my head back to face into the sun, and rested a hand on her head-feathers as she sat beside me.

"Can I pet your griffon, miss?"

I cracked open an eye just wide enough to make out a short humanoid, yellow on top and in a dress. "As long as you're nice about it, and stop as soon as she shows she wants you to." I patted Brenda on the head, pulled my hand back to my lap, and closed my eyes again.

After a few moments, the girl's voice asked, "Did your boyfriend hurt your legs?"

A new voice, older, jarring as its source jogged over. "I'm sorry, ma'am, she's not bothering you is she?"

I didn't even bother opening my eyes. "We're just fine. Just relaxing in the sunbeams. She asked before petting, just like she was supposed to."

"I like her feathers," piped up the girl.

"Yes, well... that's good, then." I heard the woman settle onto the nearby bench.

"Did he?" asked the girl.

"Hm?" was my cogent reply.

"Hurt your legs?"

"Patty!" hissed the woman at, I guessed, the impropriety. The corners of my mouth twitched, almost smiling.

"No boyfriends. Or girlfriends. Just hurt my back."

"Are you a bunny?"

"Mm-hm," I agreed.

"Are you a bimbo like Mommy?"

"Nuh-uh." I lifted one hand just far enough to wave in the vague direction of the bench. "Hi, Mommy." I got a giggle from Patty for my effort.

She added, "Your griffon's a bimbo," not asking.

I opened an eye to peer at her, finding her arms wrapped around Brenda's neck; I decided that I was probably happy I couldn't make out the latter's expression. "How can you tell?"

"She's coming in white, see?" Patty grabbed a hunk of Brenda's fur, and I tensed, expecting her to yank; but she just pulled it to the side. With a slight mental sigh, I pulled out my glasses to see how far the new hair was growing in - then raised my eyes at the sight of both Patty and her Mommy, who both had feathers instead of hair. Patty's were as yellow as a songbird's, while her mother's were stark white. There was no sign of any other avian or animalistic features, just the plumage. I ignored my brief flare of impolite curiosity about how extensively their Change extended, looking away from the mother digging around in her purse to look back out over the wall; all I could see were the distant towers of the parts of Erie that had been rebuilt in the Singularity.

"She didn't want to be turned into a bimbo," I commented to Patty, who was back to the hugging and petting, "but since she was, I'm trying to do right by her."

"I wanna be a bimbo too, but Mommy says I hafta wait 'til I'm grown up."

"You should listen to your Mommy. It's a really big decision, because once you make it, you can't take it back."

'Mommy' paused in her rummaging, giving me a funny look. "The papers said you hate slavery, and want to get rid of it."

"Newspapers simplify everything, sometimes too far. I'm opposed to /involuntary/ slavery, and the old city government was abusing the bimbo zone. But if somebody really, really wants to be a bimbo, I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be any more illegal than, I don't know, any other irreversible medical decision. Get the government out of forcing it to happen, and put up safeguards to keep it from happening accidentally - and if nothing else, I'll have lots of more important issues to pay attention to instead."

"So you're /not/ trying to get rid of bimbos?"

"Of course not. I'm trying to get rid of /abuse/ of bimbos."

She took her hand out of her purse, looking at me thoughtfully. "I guess I shouldn't believe everything I read."

"Hear that, Patty? Everyone has new things to learn, including me and your Mommy."

"Come on, Patty; it's time to go back inside. Say goodbye to the nice lady and her griffon."

"Bye, bunny-lady! Bye, griffon!"

Once the pair were out of earshot, Brenda muttered, "I forgot how /sticky/ kids that young are. I'm going to need a shower."

"You could always just preen."

"I don't think I want these feathers in my mouth. I don't know where that kid's been. I'm just glad that woman didn't pull out her knife - if I started growling, that kid could have gotten scared enough to choke me by accident."

"... Pardon? Knife?"

"I could smell the metal when she pulled it out of its sheath in her purse, and hear it bump against the other stuff. Couldn't you?"

"My ears aren't aimed at anything right now, and my nose isn't much better than a human's. ... Think she was getting ready to protect Patty from you?"

"She was looking at you, not me."

"... Huh. That's funny."

 

[DataPacRat]

*Chapter Nine: Pro-drome*

Inspecting Munchkin from stem to stern for any surprises left behind while it had been in the custody of the Civil Guard was an annoying job all on its own; trying to accomplish that with my spine still giving five-oh-three (service unavailable) error codes was a pretty good distraction from trying to figure out all the implications of all the events that had happened since I arrived in Erie.

While my legs were sticking out from underneath the fabric storage bin of the clothes fabber, I heard someone clear their throat for attention, so I signaled Brenda to pull me out.

"Bunny," Sarah said, "we need to talk."

"Fair enough. What's up?"

"Not just you-me we, everyone we. I've gotten everyone together in the living carriage."

"Oh-kaay..."

When Sarah said 'everyone', she really meant it. Minerva Harriet Tubman Joshi, sitting on her puppet trunk next to the Professor, who was petting Toby Junior the octo-cat; Bunny Joe and Bear Joe; Denise Black, holding Alphie; Sarah herself, along with another foxtaur who had to be Jeff, along with Pat and Max... Toffee, ex-mayor and her ex-secretary, mayor-pro-tem, Winston Edwards; Captain Shatter and his interpreter, Neckline; a cluster of figures in robes and face-concealing cowls who I made an educated guess were (and soon confirmed as) all nine members of the Bayesian Conspiracy that'd been rescued; Abigail and Amy; and, of course, Brenda using her leash to pull my wheelchair to the room, and Boomer in my pocket.

If Winnebago hadn't designed the place to pop up furniture on command, it would have been impossible for everyone to fit. As it was, Brenda and I parked ourselves just outside that carriage, in the doorway leading to the lab carriage, and I found myself checking the walls to see if there was an undocumented feature to slide them outwards.

Sarah caught my attention again, sitting her rear end down in the middle of the room, facing me. She cleared her throat, then recited in a stilted voice, "Bunny. We are here today because we love and care about you. That's why we want you to seek treatment."

I blinked a few times, as this was right out of left field, at least to me. "Treatment for what?"

Sarah glanced around, then back at me. "It wasn't part of the rehearsal... but would you mind telling everyone what you were doing when I found you?"

"Uh... checking my private carriage for damage, or anything else untoward."

Sarah nodded, saying "Physical labour."

"Yeeesss?"

"While you can't move your legs."

"... Yeeesss?"

"Bunny, do you really think that that's the most /productive/ use of your time?"

At that, I gave a firmer nod. "There were other things that were more important, but I did them, and the inspection made it to the top of my priority list."

"I'm sure it did," Sarah said, "but what I mean is - is that the most productive use of /your/ time?"

"... I'm not following."

Toffee took a step forward, face clouded. "Oh, just get to the bleeping point already, you stupid fuzzball." She pointed at me. "You're getting distracted by every flashy thing that comes in front of you, it's getting worse, and we think you should go into counselling before you go nuts and kill us all while you're trying to dance with the bleeping fairies or some stupid bleep like that." She gestured at the group, who had, shall we say, mixed reactions to what appeared to be a speech well outside what they'd rehearsed. "They've all got letters to read about how they've seen you're getting worse, and how they love and care about you and bleep like that." She crossed her arms, glaring balefully at anyone who wanted to challenge her.

Captain Shatter whispered to Neckline, "What a fascinating ritual."

I looked from one face to another. "Ignoring the verbiage... is that roughly true?"

I got various nods and mumbles of assent.

"And," I considered, "You thought this... group thing was better than coming to me individually?"

Bunny Joe answered, "Some of us started talking to each other about you. Then more of us talked. We talked to Clara. She said that with what we have to work with, this is the most effective way of getting your attention."

"Well, you've got /that/, at least. Uh... what's next."

Sarah took the lead again. "Well, since it looks like the rehearsal's out the window... we've made arrangements with Abigail and Amy to keep the shelter running while they focus on helping you. Pick one, or both, and take at least a week off. In the shelter, or on the ship, or wherever you like - just stop trying to work on /stuff/, and work on /you/, first."

I snarked a bit, "I've been trying to make time for that, but there's been the people trying to blow us up, or capture me and try to stick me in a zone, and so on. Do you really think I /can/ spend a week without another attack?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Sarah admitted. "But we think you need to try."

"And you think that's more important than trying to prepare for the next attack?"

"No," Sarah said. "But /we/ can do that." She glared at Toffee. "Most of us, anyway." Back to looking at me, and went back to stilted reciting. "We are your friends and we're here to help you. Let us take care of things for you, while you take care of yourself."

"Um... Conspiracy guys? Is that you?" I got some nods from the crowd of hoods. "Got any numbers on this?"

There was a brief muttering amongst them, then one stood up. "I'm 'purple skunk', until we get a better naming scheme going. In spite of Aumann's agreement theorem, our estimates haven't converged yet, but roughly, if you refuse treatment and continue working on defensive measures, we anticipate over a ninety percent chance of the death of at least one of the people in this room in the next month, including at least a ten percent chance that everyone in this room dies. If you accept treatment, we anticipate merely a sixty percent chance of the death of at least one person in this room in the next month, with under a one percent chance everyone dies. Most of the 'everyone dies' scenarios we're anticipating involve you releasing one or more city-killers. If you'd like, at a later time, we can go over the methodology and more details."

"Hunh." I drummed my fingers on my armrests, trying to ignore all the eyes focused on me. "If I remember right about interventions, you're all also supposed to tell me how you won't support my self-destructive actions if I don't agree, but I don't think we have to do that." I shrugged. "The fact you all agree enough to get together is pretty good evidence you've seen /something/ wrong with me, and I've been meaning to see a mental doc since before that sniper took out my heart... so my current thought is that if you've done this much work, then as long as you've made security arrangements that are up to snuff, I'm in."

--

I wasn't entirely satisfied with the group's plans for keeping me, themselves, and my various unique pieces of equipment safe. Of course, it was possible that it might be impossible for them to properly satisfy me, given that some of them had loyalties to potentially hostile groups, some had thinking processes that were undermined to an unknown degree, and the rest simply didn't have any relevant expertise. Still, it wasn't a terrible plan, and with a few suggested tweaks from me to reduce the odds that any one part of the group could cause too much trouble if they decided to steal the whole kit and kaboodle, improving the security plans even further dropped from the top of my priority to-do list.

The new top item was to get myself as sane as possible.

In short order, I was back at the women's shelter, with my wheelchair, a week's worth of essentials in a bag (which weren't /quite/ what most people would consider essential; less of a variety of outfits, more jumbo-sized shampoo and conditioner, plus enough metalwork to get some practice in, if I could find a place for it), Boomer, and Brenda. Instead of any royal get-ups, I went back to simple shorts and t-shirts.

In even shorter order, Amy and I were out back in the garden, with a portable sign fencing off the bit of path we parked ourselves at. She left behind Abigail; I left behind Brenda, and left Boomer turned off.

"Generally," she said, webbed hands folded on the lap of her peasant's dress, "I'd take this opportunity to try and work out as full of a case history as possible. However, before I even try, I think we need to work on trust. If you don't trust me enough to tell me the truth, then I won't be able to help you properly. If you have some issue with me in particular, then I can help you find another psychiatrist to take your case."

I rolled my chair a bit to face the playground, so my ears wouldn't have to turn so far when they twitched to catch the intermittent noises from there. "Trust's a tricky thing. Everyone is pretty well convinced that I have access to at least one city-killer - and assuming that's true, I've got a certain responsibility about that. Being, well, the equivalent of a nuclear power means that there are some things I /can't/ trust you with, or anyone with, without a background check of greater reliability than is feasible." My forehead wrinkled. "And maybe not even then. Someone shoves you through that bimbo zone and imprints you on them, well, apparently you'd be happy to blab whatever they wanted to know. Not that I understand this whole 'imprinting' business - rebuilding bodies, sure; applying templates for feminization and domestication syndrome, I can get that; but falling in love with whoever you're told to before you fall asleep? I can't figure out how that /could/ be done."

"Then why did you bring Brenda, instead of Sarah or Bunny Joe?"

"I may not understand it - but if it's really what happened, then I also don't know what would happen to her if she had to be apart from the person she was imprinted on. I might not have bimbofied her myself, but I've still got a responsibility for her, at the least to keep her from turning into another... Colleen, was it? That said - I did ask her not to join us for this first talk."

"It's very commendable of you-" I winced, and she trailed off.

"Amy - I don't know how long we have before the next whatever-it-is interrupts our lives. I'd prefer if we focused less on nice words and more on fixing," I vaguely waved my hand at myself, "this, as much as we can."

"We can do that, if you wish. In that case, given what I have learned of you so far from those who know you, and what I have observed so far, puts together your nightmares, your avoidance of talking about your disturbing experiences, your flattened emotional affect, and the hypervigilance I can see in you right now, you are well on your way to a case of full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder. The only reason you don't already qualify is that, according to the texts I have consulted, not enough time has passed."

"You're the doc, doc, so I'm not going to disagree. Uh - 'hypervigilance'?"

"You are twitching at every noise, glancing at every bit of movement."

"Well - rabbit ears are built to do that, aren't they?"

"Perhaps. But my ears are also mobile - and I have been able to keep them focused on you, not the environment."

"Oh. Maybe I've been having trouble keeping track of what's changing because of my body," I gave Wagger's head a pat, "and because of my mind. So... do I have to start taking pills or something?"

"There are drugs which are known to alleviate the symptoms, though we do not really have access to them - and they do little to deal with the underlying problem. If you are intent on a quick fix... you have no religious objections to electricity, from what I heard?"

"Er - no. Though I'm going to want to double-check any equipment you want to use to run current through my skull."

"Nothing so crude," she twitched her whiskers, I guessed in annoyance. She reached into a pocket of her dress, pulling out a hand-sized object; plastic, with four great big colorful buttons in a circle, a few switches to the side, and a logo which was nearly faded, but that I was morally certain had once read 'Simon', or some variation thereof.

She held the electronic game out to me, and, confused, I took it. She then started explaining, "Memories are not like writing something down. Every time you remember something, when you're done remembering, it gets written down just a bit differently, depending on what else you were thinking about. It is possible to reduce the emotional effect of traumatic memories by recalling them as vividly, as clearly, with as much detail in as many senses as possible, while your mind is also distracted with another cognitive task. If you truly believe we are going to be attacked tomorrow, or something of the sort, then I can provide this much treatment, at least. I do not expect it to work as fast as proper therapy, or as well, or to deal with any of your other issues... but it won't hurt, and will probably help at least a little."

I don't think I could ever imitate my expression at that moment if I tried. "You're... serious?"

"Entirely. There are other versions of this therapy, where you do other things while recalling the traumatic events, such as moving your eyes in certain patterns. But few of my patients like electricity, and from the pre-apocalypse papers on psychology and psychiatry I have been able to collect, the multi-sensory modality of this particular mental task works well. I can give you some papers on self-evaluation, timing and number of repetitions, and so on, before you leave."

"... Gotta admit, I don't think I'd have ever thought to try anything of the sort on my own. Still not /entirely/ sure I believe it, but at this point, I'm not going to say it won't." I set it on my lap, watching as Wagger flickered her tongue over it. "So... if we /do/ have more time before the inevitable interruptions... what'd you like to do?"

"Talk, mainly."

--

"Do you have any objective evidence that this... 'Bun-Bun' really exists?"

"Um... I'm pretty sure I can't start and stop lactating via force of will, all on my own..."

--

"Tell me more about these 'North', 'South', and so on... what did you call them, sub-personalities?"

"There's not much to tell. It's just a mental trick, to remind myself that I can look at a problem from different perspectives..."

--

"Not a drop?"

"The only time I've ever ingested alcohol was involuntarily, as part of a medical procedure immediately before I got furry. Nothing before, nothing after, and no other mind-altering chemicals that I know of."

"I'm not going to judge you, or turn you into any authorities. I just need to know so I can take it into account for your treatment."

"I've been a teetotaler all my life. It's theoretically possible that the new gut flora I acquired from the Acadians might be leaking unusual chemicals, though they hadn't as of my last medical scan; or that something besides what I remember happening happened while I was in the bimbo zone... but, again, if so, it didn't show up on the scans. Since I didn't go through an ordinary sort of Change process, I've still got a male human brain in this female almost-human body, and I don't know enough about hormones to say how /that/ might be messing me up..."

--

"Did you particularly enjoy it?"

"No, I'm not an exhibitionist. I suppose you could say I was following in the traditions of some of the protests of the nineteen-sixties."

"I know this is a delicate subject, but before your spine injury, did you ever experience arousal at all?"

"I'm not exactly comfortable on the topic, but - yes, all the parts were in working order."

"How many sexual partners have you had since your change?"

"None."

"Is it a matter of being uncomfortable with your anatomy, or not being able to find a partner you find attractive, or-"

"Pregnancy, STDs, and adapting to the fact that I'm never going to be able to go home again have been more than enough reasons for me not to go looking for a date."

"They may be more than enough reasons - but are they /your/ reasons?"

--

"I'm not sure whether to call those hypomanic episodes, from your description; do you mind if I eventually ask the people you were with for their perspectives?"

"Kind of hard for some - Human Joe's been stabbed and frozen and might or might not be revivable. But after that whole intervention thing, I'm not exactly going to be able to keep any secrets or help myself by telling you not to go..."

--

"Sarah mentioned that you described one of your coping mechanisms to her, that you consider problems in light of having another solution, such as being able to leave everything behind. You have also told me that you feel a responsibility for Brenda, and don't want to leave her alone. Could you describe to me how these work together?"

"Uh..."

--

"What are your nightmares about?"

--

"When was your last panic attack?"

--

"Well... your symptomatology has a lot of layers. I'm going to need to consult some references before I can recommend any treatment options."

"Don't forget, if there's any chemical that can help, I can almost certainly arrange for it to be made at the university. It'll be a bit tricky, but should be manageable."

"I'll keep that in mind."

--

"Well," I said, with a slight smile at the yellow-feathered girl, "hello again... Patty, was it?"

"Your chair smells funny."

I sighed a little, and idly pushed a bit at the handle on the chair's big wheel, moving it forward an inch in the gravel before settling back. "That's not the chair, it's something called a 'scent synthesizer'. It's supposed to help smell nice, not funny."

"Do you want to swing with me?"

"Uh... even if I was good at getting in and out of the chair, with my legs not working, I don't think I could start swinging."

"Slide?"

"How would I climb up?"

"See-saw?"

"Now you're just being silly."

"Monkey bars?"

"... Sure, why not."

--

"Note to self - not being able to feel my legs means not being able to feel injuries to my legs, such as profusely bleeding cuts."

--

Amy said, "As best as I can tell, you have a strongly entrenched habit of staying within the detached protector schema mode, within which you use the maladaptive social withdrawal coping response and the social isolation and emotional inhibition schemata. Given your overall situation, I recommend an integrated approach using cognitive behaviour therapy, schema therapy, and the internal family systems model for your long-term issues; desensitization and reprocessing for your acute stress; and if needed, occupational therapy to help you adapt to long-term paraplegia."

"I'm trusting that those are actually evidence-based... whatever-they-ares, and will do some good."

"I can show you the papers we have on them, but Erie doesn't have enough people to ethically perform new clinical trials."

"So what's on first?"

"First, I would like you to tell me more about your childhood..."

--

After a surprisingly exhausting first day, I was relaxing in the common room with a number of the shelter's other residents, watching a rather short reptilian woman (who I was trying very hard not to think of as a 'kobold', with little success) wearing little more than bangles, baubles, and scarves twirling and dancing to some amateur music. The instrumental tune had little to recommend it but enthusiasm and a strong beat (and was vaguely reminiscent, at least to me, of the giants scene from the movie 'Ella Enchanted'), but the dancer was working with it in ways I don't have the vocabulary to describe, making it her own. I suspected the Professor would have approved of the way she drew in her audience.

I was clapping along, sitting between Amy and a woman whose mammaries were, entirely literally, larger than her head (and were contained in a bra which appeared to be a masterwork of structural engineering), and even Wagger was bobbing to the beat.

Amy leaned over, and I spared her an ear as she said, "It's a shame Bun-Bun hasn't fixed your legs yet - they've been practicing a couple's dance for later, but I don't think anyone here knows how to dance with a wheelchair." She poked my thigh with a blunt-clawed finger, hard enough to leave a mark, and Wagger stopped bopping to hiss at her.

She tilted her head, then put her finger on my thigh again, and slowly started pushing in again. At a certain point, Wagger dropped her jaw open and started hissing again.

Amy leaned in again. "How long has your tail-snake been able to feel what happens to the rest of you?"

"Uh... never, as far as I know."

"Well, she can now."

"... Great. If that's the case, it looks like my mutant healing factor just hooked up the wrong central nervous system. Uh - would it be impolite for me to head out now to have some words with myself?"

"I don't think it'll hurt to wait for the end of the song, will it?"

--

In the morning, my legs had started twitching - not under my control, and I still couldn't feel them.

By lunchtime, Wagger seemed to have learned enough to control any given muscle, to the degree that she could move my leg away from a hand she saw reaching to pinch it.

By evening, I decided it might be safest to tie my feet to the bed, just in case Wagger tried teaching herself to walk while I was asleep. (Brenda managed to only giggle once at that.)

The /next/ morning... I could feel all the bruises and cuts and suchlike in both my legs, as well as everything else from the waist down. Still couldn't /control/ anything, but I was willing to call it progress and be cheered. As a bonus, Wagger appeared to have learned how not to be incontinent. (I still wore the discreet adult diapers, though, just in case.)

And so it went. I wasn't even focusing very much on my physical improvements; Amy kept me busy with all sorts of exercises, from role-playing one sub-portion of my mind talking to another, to creating a deck of flashcards, to keeping a dream journal... and so on.

By the fifth day, I was able to twitch my toes, both on my paw and my hoof, and was willing to call that cause for a celebration. However, that day, a new woman came to the shelter to get away from an abusive husband, so I kept said celebration down to sharing a toast of a glass of grape juice with Amy at dinner-time.

Come day six, I was able to weakly start moving my legs... though Wagger seemed to have more control over them than I did.

I'm not going to say that my head was screwed on straight from seven days of intensive psychotherapy; in fact, a lot of people would say I seemed even crazier, in that Amy had really focused on treating my various sub-selves as independent entities with wants, needs, and desires of their own. (A lot of our time was spent in simply identifying which parts of me had strong enough impetuses to be worth dealing with individually.) But when overall-me was able to recognize what parts of me wanted, and was able to satisfy those wants, then those parts willingly joined in the overall, well, alliance, instead of fighting for what they wanted. Self-management (and selves-management) was the key - and once Amy inculcated the basics of that skill into me, I could continue working on improving that on my own, without making it my full-time day-job.

The seventh night, Brenda slept in a separate bed... and while my dreams were still, well, I'll just simplify and say 'disturbing', I didn't wake up screaming in the middle of the night. I still felt that the electronic game was a completely ridiculous way to even try dealing with that, even after the evidence that it seemed to be helping.

And so, the morning after that, I was nearly unanimous in feeling confident that I was on a fairly steady upward trend. After recharging my cardiac batteries during breakfast, I was tinkering with the external transformer, looking for any leaks or short-circuits that might be the cause of some slightly off numbers I'd noticed - nothing serious, just not quite the same ones I'd been seeing so far. While part of me was focused on the hardware, another part was considering suggesting to Amy that we pull back on the therapy to half-days, so that I could start getting back into research, politics, and so forth again.

Which was, of course, when Sarah trotted straight into the room, not hesitating to declare, "We have a problem."

I started reassembling the charger. "Something serious enough to interrupt my recovery... I'm pretty sure Munchkin and its contents are locked up tight, so I'm going to guess: politics. Involving me in some way, so I'm going to guess... the city's constitutional convention going off the rails?"

"No, the committee's still nervous you'll bring back the Free Company. It's the bimbos."

I glanced over at Brenda, who paused in her preening of her wings to look back at us. "What about them?"

"That's just it, we don't know. Most of them have disappeared."

 

[Scify]

Hmm. Due to the rumours going around about what Bunny's intentions towards them were, or the actions of a third party?

 

[Beyogi]

Finally therapy That was soo necessary.

Also did you ever try to write horror stories? The amount of body horror you manage to squeeze into this story by purely exploring what might be possible is astounding. I'm curious what you'd actually manage if you make the horror the purpose of your story.

 

[DataPacRat]

Finally therapy That was soo necessary.

Also did you ever try to write horror stories? The amount of body horror you manage to squeeze into this story by purely exploring what might be possible is astounding. I'm curious what you'd actually manage if you make the horror the purpose of your story.

Click to shrink...

I've never quite gotten the hang of the horror genre - I've read a decent amount of King, some werewolf stuff, and horror/SF mixes such as Cthulhu stuff and the SCP... But I just can't get into the visceral fear and terror of most of the genre. But for more intellectual, working-out-the-consequences stuff, as you say, I can explore a bit. (I don't have the Amazon link handy, but there's a published book of stories from the Orion's Arm project, in which you might find "Bunny Love Has No Limits" worth a gander... )

(Edited to add: "After Tranquility", at www.amazon.ca/After-Tranquility-Orions-Arm-Project-ebook/dp/B00ICP4R8Q/ .)

 

[Beyogi]

Well, I'm still waiting for the tentacle monster in her stomach that is connected to her nervous system and can be used by her to interact with the environment by exiting its tentacle through several body openings. It's kinda a classic but its honestly something I'd expect at this point.

 

[DataPacRat]

Well, I'm still waiting for the tentacle monster in her stomach that is connected to her nervous system and can be used by her to interact with the environment by exiting its tentacle through several body openings. It's kinda a classic but its honestly something I'd expect at this point.

Click to shrink...

I think about all I can say without spoiling some upcoming plot points is that I've got a buffer of a few chapters already written, in which your wait will come to an end, one way or another.

(That said, I still have a standing offer open to send the link to the Google Doc of my working draft to interested parties; so if anyone reading this wants to help point out my typos and other errors before I post them publicly, just give me a shout.)

 

[DataPacRat]

*Chapter Ten: Pro-liferation*

"In fact," Sarah continued as I started packing my things, "the only bimbos I can still find are the ones here, and the mayor's harem."

"How does that work, anyway, since Toffee was deposed? Did the harem stick with her, or with the mayor-pro-tem, or are they waiting for a permanent mayor, or what?"

"What do you mean?" She looked genuinely confused.

"What do you mean what do I mean? It's a simple question - who are the mayor's harem attached to?"

"Edwards, of course. Why would they go with anyone else just because he became mayor?"

"... Oh, okay. I thought we were talking about the bimbos from the last mayor, but I guess they were gone. Didn't realize Edwards had collected any before his promotion."

"What do you mean, bimbos from the last mayor? Toffee's not into women."

"Uh... what about the bimbos Toffee inherited from LeBlanc?"

"You can't inherit a bimbo - they imprint on who they imprint. Or they don't get imprinted, and do their own thing."

"Uh... you know what? Let's table that for now." I wasn't agreeing with what Sarah was describing, but part of me was pointing out that she seemed to have gotten stuck in some version of the local bimbo-related Jedi mind trick, and that our time would probably be better spent discussing other aspects of what was going on. To start with, I pointed out, "My legs are still wobbly at best, as you can see... which do you think is faster, you pushing my wheelchair or me riding on your back?"

"Neither. I'm not taking you anywhere." I raised my eyebrow at her, and she shuffled her forefeet. "You're not a bimbo - but you were in the bimbo zone, and /something/ happened to you there. Whatever's happening to the bimbos, maybe it's happening to people who were bimbofied, maybe it's happening to everyone who was in the zone. I can't think of a way to find out which, without putting you at risk."

"Lack of knowledge puts me at a bigger risk than wandering around. If we don't know what's going on, then we've got even less of an idea how to keep it from happening to me. Hm... do Amy and Abigail know about this yet?"

Sarah crossed her arms, and I tried to pay attention to that bit of me that was focusing on her body language and what I could interpret of her emotional connection with me. It wasn't very much - a couple of decades of being the next best thing to a hikikomori and focusing on text rather than faces had really atrophied skills that most humans took for granted - but my gut feeling was that Sarah was less interested in the disappeared bimbos, and more interested in protecting me from joining them. "I don't see how they couldn't. They try to keep track of everyone they've helped."

"Then the next step is a quick chat with them. While I roll over there - what are the crime scenes like? Broken dishes from fighting, weapons fire, sawed-off ankle chains to free the bimbos, anything?"

"Why would anyone need to chain up a bimbo? They're /happy/ with what they do."

"I'm sure bicycles are happy machines, but they get chained to keep from getting stolen. And there are things people do with chains and such for entertainment."

"Uh... no, nothing like any of that."

"They all just wandered off?"

"Maybe. Maybe someone's been sneaking in, and threatening to kill the people they were all imprinted on, to get them to come willingly."

"What's the timing? When did they leave?"

"Most seem to have vanished this morning, some time between midnight and dawn. Some might have started disappearing earlier - a few, maybe days earlier - but they might have just been doing other things."

"Hm." The shelter was compact enough that we'd arrived at the office, which I'd been hearing muffled voices from.

Brenda shoved the door open with her beak, revealing Abigail waving her arms and shouting, "- protect ourselves!"

Amy, calm, composed, sitting at her desk, coolly responded, "Acting in self defense is one thing. Handing out firearms to untrained women is another."

"'Scuze me," I rapped on the door, catching their attention. "One quick question. How many alarm bracelets have you handed out, outside the shelter?"

Abigail crossed her arms, mirroring Sarah's stormy expression, as Amy said, "Three. One to a human, one to a Changed, one to a bimbo. The first two are fine. The bimbo pushed the green button yesterday morning. She hasn't pushed any buttons since then."

"Okay, thanks. Uh - okay, a second question. Anything you need help with here before I go start doing things?"

Abigail waved us outward. "Go. Kick the asses of whoever's responsible."

Amy added, "And stay safe."

"I'll see what I can do, on both counts."

--

The shelter had a flat roof - I guessed it might once have been a small commercial or office building, before being fortified for its current use - and after some chair-wrangling, Sarah, Brenda, Boomer, and I made it up there. Not for the view, but so we could open the metal case where I could examine the radio direction finder's logs. Computer chips were still at a premium, but with Boomer's help, I'd been able to find analogue solutions; the whole thing looked like a teletype, or an old-style daisy-wheel printer.

Sarah picked up the most recent paper, and read aloud, "'Time, date, ID, Direction.' Three entries a day for the last few days. We already know where they live - what good does this do us?"

"Little," I admitted. "Which is why I'm not looking at that one, I'm looking at the debug logs. 'Scuze me." I opened up an interior door, and tugged out another piece of paper, this one covered in a solid mass of numbers. "Get all that, Boomer?"

"Yes, Bunny," she agreed. "Bracelet number three made its automated check-in twenty minutes ago. Signal strength is too variable to be confident of position, but appears to still be within the city. The bracelet has been moving all night."

I grabbed the walkie-talkie from its charge-point. "Safety One to any free Safeties. Anyone got their ears on?"

"Uh... is this thing on? Safety Two here."

Sarah's eyes and tail perked in surprise. "Is that Jeff?"

"Probably. Hold on. Safety One to Safety Two. I need you to read out, let's say, the last couple lines in the debug log."

"Okay, let me get that... uh... the whole lines?"

"Please."

"Okay. Er, that wasn't part of the log. Gee, six, aitch, en..." He kept on reading over a hundred alphanumerics. "That's it."

"Alright, thanks. Safety One out." I returned the hand-radio. "Boomer?"

"Map displaying." Her badger avatar vanished, replaced with the map of the city she'd assembled over the last few years from whatever sources she'd found, and highlighting points. "Bracelet three maintained position here from eight PM until two AM. Two and three AM, it was moving. Four AM, it was in the location designated 'Bimbo Zone'. It travelled roughly west, at speeds consistent with bicycling. The last two signals were in the same location, ten kilometers outside of the current city. Land records indicate the area is zoned for agriculture."

Sarah gave me a Look. "Did you tell Amy or Abigail you can track the bracelets this accurately?"

"Do you want to stand here and debate information security, or go see who needs rescuing?"

--

Sarah let me ride her during the gallop to Munchkin, and once I made sure none of the seals had been broken or tampered with, we were good to go.

We soon caught up to the half-hour-old location, and kept going with eyes wide open for any sign of Judith. I muttered, "Note to self - in the mark two bracelet, add some sort of ping-response. Uh - Boomer, do you know what's growing there? It /looks/ like lots of flowers, but..."

"There are no records, but it appears to be papaver somniferum. Given the number of new varietals and species, I cannot confirm that identification."

Sarah asked, "Wait, is this the Ferrum place?"

Boomer agreed, "That is the name on the land records."

Sarah nodded to me. "Bunny, this is actually one of your farms. Part of what the Mayor's Office gave you as reparations. Those must be the poppies; we figured it was good P.R. for the local medicines to be grown and distributed in your name."

"... Poppies? As in opium poppies?"

Sarah shrugged, and Brenda just tilted her head. "Probably? I just know they do something to make morphine out of them."

Boomer added, "Update to one of your standing requests: You may be able to acquire additional chemicals for Project Mouse here, such as etorphine, a large-animal tranquilizer."

I grunted. "We're getting off-track. Boomer, can you show, say, a heat map of the most probable location of Judith's bracelet? Hm... we don't really know what's going on, so I'm a bit hesitant about walking around out there - there could be a transformative zone that's gone unmapped so far. Or snipers - I don't want to lose any more internal organs. Hm... ah, I know! We just need a better viewpoint. Lemme go see if a PPG is fueled and ready."

"Are you sure you're saner than when you started getting treatment? You're worried about snipers - so you want to fly and make yourself a bigger target?"

"I'm not /really/ worried about snipers. Nobody but me and you know I can trace the bracelets, let alone that we have. Well, unless they were watching Munchkin wander by."

"So why do /you/ have to fly?"

"Your taur-body is too heavy, Brenda hasn't learned how, Boomer doesn't have limbs, and the bun-bots don't have brains."

"There are more people in the city."

"You've got a walkie-talkie, if you want to call someone over, you can. Meanwhile, Judith might need immediate medical attention, or there might be some time-sensitive info disappearing as we speak."

--

I'd almost forgotten how much I enjoyed being in the air. I would have happily yelled out 'Wheee!', if it weren't for the whole lives-might-be-in-danger aspect. What I did call out was, "There she is!"

--

Sarah crossed her eyes and sighed. "Now what are you doing?"

"Judith looked like she was puking. Whatever's going on, my hazmat suit seems a sensible precaution. And yadda yadda, we haven't got one that fits you or Brenda. Hm... let's get a bun-bot suited up, though, to push the wheelchair."

--

As we crested the slight rise that had hid Judith from the farm road, I called out, as best I could through the hood, "Hello? Are you alright over there?"

Judith was looking rather haggard, nearly entirely undressed bent over with arms around her knees. "It won't... stop coming... /out/..." She proceeded to be sick again, spewing something as clear as water, which piled up in front of her for a moment in a very un-water-like fashion.

"I'm here to help," I half-hedged, waving to the nurse-bun to roll me closer. "Is there anything you can tell me?"

"Just... went for a walk. See the old neighbourhood. Then... seemed like a nice day... for exercise..."

As we reached about ten feet from her, her mouth kept moving, but no more sounds came out; she clutched at her throat.

And then her skin disappeared, leaving a human-shaped pile of transparent goo. It raised an arm, reaching toward us - then collapsed in a splash.

I was telling the nurse-bun "Back. Back!" even before I saw whatever Judith had turned into soak into the ground, disappearing without even leaving a stain - just the bra and panties she'd been wearing.

I had visions of being eaten from the inside out. "Did any get on me? Is it /eating through my suit/?" I hauled up my legs to look at the suit's feet, then back to try and get a view of the nurse-bot's suit, and the chair's wheels.

I had further visions of some self-propelled liquid stuff coming up out of the ground to engulf us, and practically teleported into Munchkin's airlock. "Get us out of here!" I called through the intercom to Sarah and Brenda. "And don't open this door until we've been decontaminated!"

"What happened?"

As the vehicle rocked into motion, and the first of a series of antibiotic substances showered through the airlock, I commented, "Boomer can show you a video later. Other than that, I have no freaking idea."

--

"Look," Sarah pointed at Boomer's screen, "she had some sort of transparent skeleton, that was the last bit to melt."

"In a minute." I focused back on the hand-held radio. "A quarantine is the /minimum/ necessary, Abigail - I don't want anything to get in that might affect your bimbos, and if they're already affected, I don't want them to get out. ... Yes, total lockdown. ... Yes, I really mean it. ... Abigail - Judith /melted/, and I mean that literally, right in front of me. ... I'm heading to collect the mayor's harem, to put them in isolation, and after that, find someone to coordinate a manhunt for all the other bimbos. What I don't know is if there's anything left to /find/. Bunny out."

"And here, earlier," Sarah added, "zoom in there... her teeth are already clear. Her tongue's still pink, but see-through. And /then/ her skin went, all at once. She had to be half-goo before you got near her."

"Great, so we can do a quick check for transparent teeth to see if someone's in the advanced stages of... whatever the frell this is."

"We should go to the bimbo zone," said an unexpected voice - both Sarah and I looked in surprise at Brenda. "You said before, she went there before she went to the field, right? So whatever happened to her probably came from there."

"Probably," I slowly said, "but even if it did, if we go there - what will we do there?"

"See if there's any tracks from any other bimbos. See if we can follow them."

I frowned, my ears already flat against my head. "If the bimbo zone has started melting people, I'm not sure either of us should go anywhere near it. We've both been changed by it - if turning into goo is the next stage, I don't want any part of it."

"You want to let someone else risk their lives instead of us?"

I didn't answer immediately, running through one of Amy's exercises to consult my various sub-selves. "Hunh. Part of me does, it seems. But what more of me wants to do is get that zone blocked off, or just plain destroyed, before anyone else gets pulled in. If the city had significant amounts of explosives, they'd have used them against the Free Company, and I'm pretty sure they didn't... I wish I'd gotten someone to start making naffa three years ago, before I got shot in the heart. What else is there that can be improvised... ANFO? Thermite? Thermobaric flour fuel-air explosive? Some version of napalm? What does it take /to/ take out a zone?"

Sarah said, "After Jeff and I were Changed, we reported the zone to the civil guard, and they destroyed it. You could ask them how they did it."

"After they locked me up, ran Brenda through the bimbo zone just to be an example, and then stuck me in it anyway? ... Yeah, okay, maybe, as long as they /do/ know how. ... I probably should avoid mentioning /which/ zone I'm planning on destroying."

--

"Why don't you just use one of your city-killers?" The red-coated member of the not-quite-disbanded Civil Guard sneered at me.

"Because, among other reasons, I don't want to kill the whole freaking city! Now, what is it you use to deal with bad zones? Fire? Acid? Tap-dancing?"

"Yyyyeah... you're not cleared for that."

If I hadn't just spent a week in therapy, I might have done something that provided an extreme amount of short-term satisfaction. As it was, I let the parts of me that were focused on my long-term goals override my more impulsive parts' immediate suggestions, with the promise to my subselves that any suggestions they made which /helped/ those long-term goals would be immediately adopted. Almost instantly, such as suggestion came to mind.

"In that case," I said, "you're in violation of the peace treaty, and I have the option to replace your city's current provisional government with direct personal rule - as was agreed to and signed off on by the previous mayor and other muckety-mucks. Which would make me your boss. Which would both make me /cleared/ for everything you know, and with the power to fire your stupid ass for turning an emergency, time-sensitive, quarantine-related request into an international incident."

"Yyyyeah... like I'll believe /that/."

I stared at him a moment, then pulled out my radio. "Is Mayor Pro Tem Edwards on the network? ... Well, I need someone in the Civil Guard chain-of-command, fast. I've got a... /member/ of that organization too stupid to apply basic principles of self-preservation trying to obstruct the whole operation, willing to void the whole peace treaty. ... Uh-huh. ... Yep. Okay, here he is." I held out the radio to the guard. "Your boss wants to talk to you."

Certain parts of me quite enjoyed the color-changes that went along with the guard's variety of expressions.

--

"Really?"

"Yep," said the replacement guard, after the other one had let me in, then, apparently, been sent off to the livery to be bossed around by stable boys for a while.

"And you can pull that off without explosives?"

"'S long's we've got these special capacitors, we can brew up a good zap. Explosives're us'aly better used for exploding things."

"Got any EMP-makers ready to go?"

"A couple, but our generator's in the shop. You got somethin' to charge 'em with?"

"Mm, I think so."

"Good. Just remember that anything electric nearby gets zapped, so if you like that digital watch or if you've got metal tooth fillings, get a good distance from where you set it off."

--

Brenda stated flatly, "I don't want you anywhere near that... thing."

"I'm all too aware my heart's electrically powered."

"Don't forget Bun-bun. Your skeleton's a computer, right?"

"It's got triple safeties. Have to pull that bit out, and attach that wire, before the timer can do anything at all."

"How close do you have to get it?"

"I don't think they've done proper tests. The guy just told me 'the closer the better'."

"I'll take it inside, then, and arm it. You can't, and the blue bi- lady doesn't know where the dangerous part of the zone is."

"I've got bun-bots who can follow directions and are a lot more disposable."

"That's sweet, but if the thingy goes off early, you lose a bun-bot and you can't make more. If I go in, even if I do something wrong and it goes off early, nothing happens to me."

"If something else goes wrong and you go in too deep, you'll melt."

"I remember where the zone grabbed me."

"What makes you think that's the furthest it /can/ grab you?"

"So I leave some leeway. Maybe get a stick to push the thingy farther."

"I'm of several minds about letting you go."

"Then I'll make things simple. I'm going. End of discussion."

--

I'd activated Munchkin's riot mode, in case its electrified surface happened to have an off-label use as a basic Faraday cage; and had the mini-fabber working overtime to produce real Faraday cages to shelter Boomer, Archie, Scorpia, and every other piece of electronics I could stuff inside one. (Including a brand-new metal-foil vest for yours truly.) After dropping off Brenda and the fully-charged EMP generator, I'd also set course for a couple of kilometers away. I had a sacrificial pair of walkie-talkies set up, one on a loose collar around Brenda's neck, the other on the ground outside the questionable protection of Munchkin's wiring.

"We're clear," I announced over the external intercom, through the radio's mike, and to Brenda. "And grounded. You can bring it in and set the timer."

"I'm already in," her voice came back. "Found a bunch of recent tracks and footprints. I'm going to set the timer and check where they go."

"Brenda, just set the timer - we can do the footwork in a few minutes. ... Brenda? ... Brenda!"

Sarah asked, "Did it go off?"

"No, the little light on the radio is still on. ... Sarah, I can't go anywhere near there while that thing's active, but if Brenda's gone off the rails..."

"Yeah, the stupid guards won't bother for a Changed, and I've got good legs for galloping. I'll see if she needs help."

--

I tried arguing with everyone I could get on the radio, who might get to the zone before Sarah made it. Their excuses were some variation of, "Sorry, gotta button up for the EMP."

It was an excruciatingly long wait.

--

The little light on the radio went out; its tuned circuits had been overloaded by a powerful, invisible, and extremely brief wave of electromagnetic radiation. I yanked the grounding spike out of the lawn I'd parked on, and set Munchkin at maximum safe speed back to the zone.

Sarah had her hindbody lying down, and was resting Brenda's head on her lap, stroking her feathers. As soon as Munchkin stopped, I stumbled out the door, making it the few steps to the pair before my legs twitched out of control, sending me down to the pavement.

"We should go," Brenda said. "Far away. Far, far as we can go."

Sarah said quietly, "Her beak's already half see-through, and it's getting more so. Whatever happened to her, the EMP didn't stop her."

My various subselves clamoured for attention, half-a-dozen thoughts trying to squeeze through my mind at once. I focused on one - probably not the best one, but being able to deal with one was better than not being able to deal with any. "Boomer. How long was it for Judith? Between when she left the zone, and when she... splashed."

"Given the data from the tracking bracelet, depending on when she left the zone: Between one and two hours."

"Just take me away," Brenda said. "So when I go, I won't hurt anyone."

"Fuck that," a certain small part of me reveled in my letting it swear when appropriate. "I kept Toffee from turning into a snake - er, physically - I can keep you from turning into a puddle. ... I can try, at least. Sarah, take her to the cargo carriage and make her comfortable."

--

"What the hell is that?"

"Zentai suit built for a griffon. Judith looked like she was still controlling herself even after she turned clear, at least for a few minutes. Maybe this'll help Brenda keep herself together. Just let me get a few samples for the autodoc before we seal her up."

"Uh - how will she breathe?"

"The material's supposed to be porous to air, but not water."

"Far, far, far, far far..."

--

The autodoc threw up its metaphorical hands. Whatever Brenda was turning into was still mostly made up of cells, but not any sort that its limited database could recognize.

"Boomer, I want to talk to Clara - where's the nearest heliograph station where I can open a live conversation with her?"

--

I dismissed the local station crew, and set up bun-bots to run the mirrors and relay the messages back and forth. The first signal was the Mayday call, which I had specifically designed into the heliograph network for any such situation where lives were on the line, and had the effect of clearing the line of any lower-priority traffic. After a few moments spent proving to Clara that I was me, and working out which method we'd use to talk to keep the other stations relaying our messages back and forth from knowing what we were talking about, my questions pretty much boiled down to, "Would the retroviral therapy we used on Toffee work on Brenda?"

Clara's answer was fairly simple. Paraphrasing a bit from the Morse-like code, she responded, "Maybe, but the previous stockpile was used against the snake-oids, and you do not possess the technology to create more. In addition, the fact that the process takes hours instead of years implies a different mechanism is at work, and a different counter-agent would need to be developed."

"Maybe we can come to you?"

"It is two hundred kilometers. Even at your vehicle's maximum speed, by the time you arrive, there will be insufficient time to develop a counter-agent."

"Is there /anything/ we can do?"

"Place her in another transformation zone, in hopes that the new change will interrupt the last. Inject the naffa-production retrovirus, with similar hope. Freeze her, in hopes that a better solution may be found later. Offer to assist with euthenasia, if that is a preferable demise. Collect her liquid remains, in case they still contain her neural patterns. Experiment with random biochemicals or forms of radiation in case one might interrupt the process without killing her. Provide a lab animal to determine if the condition is contagious. Be kind and comfort her during the time she has left."

"None of those sound like they're very likely to help."

"They aren't."

--

I sat down next to Sarah, and we gently transferred Brenda's head from her lap to mine. I couldn't see her eyes or expression through the suit's black material, but it was stretchy enough for her to open her beak. "That you, Bunny?"

"Yep."

"What's the word?"

"A bunch of ideas, none very likely to help," I reluctantly admitted, and relayed Clara's suggestions.

"I think I like that 'be kind' one."

"I'm not sure I'll be very good at it. We haven't even started with getting me to face deaths in my therapy."

"Bunny, I'm in love with you. I know it's artificial, I know you don't feel the same - I want you to end up happy. And, okay, I'm selfish enough that I want you to be a /little/ sad when I'm gone, but I want you to get over it. Maybe get together with the blue bitch-"

"Hey!" Sarah instinctively interjected, though without much force.

"- I can see she's got a thing for you, even though she's trying to stay in the friend zone. But for now - if you can't handle being here, I'm sure you can think of something important to do, somewhere far from here to go. But if you're up to it - I think I'd be happy if you just held me, and talked about anything."

How the hell could anyone refuse a request like that and still call themselves human?

So I held her. And I talked. And what I said is none of your damn business.

--

After some time... Brenda's form suddenly sagged, her mass puddling in the bottom of her suit in a way impossible for anything with a skeleton.

I kept talking for a few minutes... and then, as gently as I could, set the head of the suit on the floor. The liquid shifted as it found its new level.

And then it shifted again.

I scooted back from it, nervously.

The suit's wings slowly filled back out again; and then the head. The legs regained their shape.

A black-coated talon reached forward, curled all the claws save one, and ever so slowly, drew shapes on the floor: letters. Words. "STILL HERE", were the first two. "SENSES FUCKED" were the next.

Ever so hesitantly, I whispered, "Can you hear me?"

"WHOA. DO THAT AGAIN."

I complied.

"OK. GETTING HANG. TOO MUCH. SEE EVERYWHERE." After a few more minutes, she added, "OK. THINK I REMEMBER WHERE EVERYTHING GOES. NEXT: LUNGS." She made some disturbing ripples in her torso. "OK. NEED TO PRACTICE LUNGS LATER. CAN YOU OPEN SUIT?"

"If you can hear me, and understand me, what will you do if I do?"

"THINK YOU ASKED WHAT I'LL DO. TRY NOT TO SINK INTO DIRT."

Since Brenda's death sentence seemed to have at least been postponed, I ignored the parts of me that said it was a bad idea, reached to the suit's neck, and pulled back the magnetic, zipper-like seal.

When I got halfway, a mass of jelly spilled out, barely maintaining anything like a coherent shape, and coating my hands and forearms. In moments, my fur was gone, simply dissolved, and I started listening to the more cautious parts of my mind, yanking myself away from her with only minor burns to my skin.

"SORRY," Brenda finger-wrote, as she pulled herself out of the suit and back into her usual shape - though a tad more transparent than I was used to seeing her. "DIDN'T KNOW I DO THAT. I THINK I CAN CONTROL IT." She held up a talon, which morphed into a sphere, then a hand, then back into a talon. "THIS COULD BE FUN."

"Mmmaybe you should stay in the suit for now... until we're more sure about what's going on with you..."

 

[Scify]

"We should go," Sarah said. "Far away. Far, far as we can go."

Sarah said quietly, "Her beak's already half see-through, and it's getting more so. Whatever happened to her, the EMP didn't stop her."

Click to shrink...

Either something is missing or the first character tag is incorrect.

ever so slowly, drew shapes on the floor: letters. "STILL HERE", were the first two. "SENSES FUCKED" were the next.

Click to shrink...

Did I miss a reference to a new writing system with word-letter equivalents?

And... Yeah. I have to agree with the others that you're managing to hit a lot of horror notes without actually writing horror.

 

[Beyogi]

Not tentacle monsters. It's goo girls. I was so close.

Are you scouring your hentai collection for inspirations? In that case I'm waiting for weird cybernetic modifications.

 

[DataPacRat]

Either something is missing or the first character tag is incorrect.

Did I miss a reference to a new writing system with word-letter equivalents?

Click to shrink...

Typos re-typed.

And... Yeah. I have to agree with the others that you're managing to hit a lot of horror notes without actually writing horror.

Click to shrink...

As an aside, from my authorial perspective, I worked hard to make sure that this setting's Singularity was one of the most positive versions of the event possible. The relatively minor detail that some of the side-effects allow for such body-horror (which I included in the first chapter, with that breed of humans who give birth to livestock and vice versa), was originally meant to hint at how bad a more-likely, less-pleasant Singularity is going to be.

 

[DataPacRat]

Not tentacle monsters. It's goo girls. I was so close.

Click to shrink...

Close only counts with human-brained-horse shoes and goat-milk-derived hand-grenades.

Are you scouring your hentai collection for inspirations? In that case I'm waiting for weird cybernetic modifications.

Click to shrink...

With the transformation zones available and widely-known, I'm not anticipating including even any prosthetic limbs, let alone robotic arms.

As for inspiration, I'll put it this way: I have 'Mastaba Snoopy' fairly high on my to-go-through list.

 

[DataPacRat]

*Book Seven: Mis-*


*Chapter One: Mis-anthrope*

"Well, Doc?" Brenda chalked onto a lap-sized slate with one limb, as she squeezed the rest of her near-liquid form back into her griffon-shaped suit. "What's the verdict?"

"I may be a vet," Denise answered, "but even I know what patient privacy is."

"It's OK," Brenda wrote, sealing herself up. "I want Bunny to know."

Denise sighed, and flipped through her papers. "I can tell you more about what I can't find than what I can. Your cells seem to be undifferentiated - I can't find any that are even distinctly muscle or skin cells, let alone any actual organs. That includes a lack of nerve cells or a brain - I don't know how you're thinking, or what you're thinking with."

Brenda scribbled out, "What, no jokes?"

Denise glared. "This isn't a joking matter. You've been turned into a life-form even more alien than the squiddies. We don't know what might hurt you that the rest of us could just ignore. Maybe salt or vinegar is a deadly poison to you now."

Brenda wiped the chalk clear to make room for, "So take samples & test".

Denise shook her head. "I'm not comfortable with that. The samples I've already drawn held together for an hour, then the inter-cellular matrix dissolved, and the samples liquified into individual cells floating in water. Without knowing what you're using to think, any sample I take might be like scooping out a bit of your brain. And I'm not going to ask you to try splitting off larger pieces, given how much more likely part of your thinking is to end up in the wrong piece."

Brenda tilted her head - or, at least, shifted the part of herself in the head part of her suit to make it look like she did that. Then she shrugged (or at least imitated the gesture well enough), and added, "What do you know?"

Denise flipped a few more pages. "Well, for one, I figured out part of why everything looks weird to you. We can't see infrared; to you, it looks red. We can't see ultraviolet; to you, it looks blue. Almost all the colours of what we usually call 'visible' light look like green to you. I'm going to guess that's the best your brain can do to interpret the information your visual sense is giving you, and whatever you're thinking with is closely modeled on your original brain.

"Now, your problem with speaking doesn't seem to be creating hollow spaces that act like lungs, but with creating vocal cords to vibrate the air."

After a few more items, Brenda interrupted to ask about a particular detail. "Do you know what I eat? Do I need light like plants?"

Denise shrugged. "I haven't been able to get good observations about that yet. You can dissolve everything organic you've touched so far, and you can keep from dissolving it if you want. Beyond that, I think we mostly have to see what happens, if your body sends hunger or thirst signals to your mind, that sort of thing."

I finally spoke up. "Is she going to... be okay? Not suddenly melt?"

Denise shook her head, but not in an answer to my question. "There's no way to know. She could collapse any moment. She might be effectively immortal and outlive us all. If you're asking if she can leave the cargo bay... well, I'd /like/ to keep her confined indefinitely and keep running tests, but I've got no medical /reason/ to. Her newest Change doesn't seem to create any specifically identifiable danger to herself or others... so for now, I'm going to provisionally clear her from quarantine, as long as she keeps the suit sealed."

--

I dreamed I was swimming, floating in the water near the campground at Long Point.

I woke to a similar sensation... though with various exceptions that reminded me more of my time in the bimbo zone. I was surrounded in transparent /stuff/ that barely let me move - and which filled all my orifices. I couldn't inhale, but didn't seem to be suffering from a lack of oxygen. My breasts ached as if I hadn't been milked for many hours, and I had to pee.

I managed to tilt my head to look down at myself... my belly was inflated again.

I tried to scream.

One of the handheld AIs floated through the stuff, until it was almost touching my ear.

"Ooh, you're awake," a voice came from it - neither Alphie's nor Boomer's. "I figured out all /sorts/ of tricks I can do. Still can't make vocal cords worth a damn, but Alphie and I came up with a workaround."

I might have flailed and thrashed a bit.

"Oh, right. You still need air to talk. Hold on, this will be a bit tricky - I don't want to rupture your lungs as I pull out of them."

In a few moments, my head broke the surface of, well, Brenda, and I spent a few more moments gasping for breath.

While I was doing that, Alphie floated to the surface next to me, and said, "I figured out how to change my colour, too. Look!" The transparent goo turned to a see-through blue, and then became opaque.

"Brenda," I started to say, but she kept talking right over me.

"I moved almost all my thinky bits inside you. I can get rid of most of the rest, and just coat you, inside and out. I can be any outfit you want! I had to teach the cells in your gut not to try to digest me, of course, but that's sorted out. Uh, you may want to check if you're lactose intolerant now, but I'm pretty sure you can digest that on your own, right?"

"Brenda," I tried again.

"And if anyone tries to hurt you again I'll be right there to keep you in one piece, and even fix you up. Ooh, I bet I could even replace your organs with myself. Wouldn't that be nice? Bun-Bun could be your skeleton, and I could be your flesh, and you could be the brains, and Wagger could, uh, wag, and we'd all be happy together!"

I hurriedly stated, "Brenda, I don't want you replacing any of my organs."

"Even if you lose some?"

Since she was finally responding to my voice, I carefully said, "We can cross that bridge if we come to it. The bimbo zone took my organs apart, and I was very unhappy about it. Maybe you could practice on some lab animals before you try anything like that on a person - if you can't get vocal cords to work, you might have unexpected troubles with more complicated structures."

"I suppose that's safe. Say, maybe I can keep you safer if I just keep you inside me."

My neck sank a few inches into the blue spheroid of stuff, and I once again spoke quickly. "Brenda, I want you to let me out of you. And, er, to remove yourself from inside me. All of you."

She was silent for a long moment, but at least I didn't sink any deeper. "... Are you sure?"

"Call it a trust exercise... I want to be sure that you're still you in there."

There was a sigh. "Well, I suppose. Uh - it'll take a few minutes. I was exploring, and your milk ducts and urethra are kind of narrow."

After a few minutes of sensation for which the word 'uncomfortable' was wholly inadequate, I was sitting on my private carriage's floor, and Brenda was pulling herself back into griffon shape - though she was now favouring a see-through blue colour scheme. She shifted Alphie so that he was embedded in the front of her chest. "There, you're back to just you, and I'm all here. Happy?"

I pulled my arms around my once-again-deflated belly. "That's one word. Brenda, do you understand why I'm uncomfortable with what you just did?"

"Flashback to the zone?"

"... Brenda, what is it called when one person inserts something into another person's genitals, without having previously gotten permission to do so?"

"Ohshit! Ohmygod! I didn't even /think/ about it like that! You must hate me now and never want to see me again and-"

"Brenda!" I reached out one of my hands, which she'd accidentally de-furred earlier, to rest on her surface. "I don't hate you. I do think you should get some counselling, until you've settled into the new you. Fortunately, I happen to know someone who's dealt with problems /almost/ as unusual as this..."

--

Just to be on the safe side, I discreetly arranged for Brenda and Amy to meet up away from the shelter, and the bimbos remaining inside. Since we EMPed the zone, there was less of a likelihood that they'd vanish too - but with Brenda seeming to have absorbed at least some aspects of the bimbo zone, I felt that there wasn't anything to be gained by tempting fate.

The Civil Guard was still trying to track down all the bimbos who'd disappeared, but after seeing what happened to Judith, I wasn't holding out much hope... and despite all my technical doo-dads, I didn't have much else I could add to the search. So, with my counsellor dealing with her new patient, I went over my to-do list to see which items were near the top, priority-wise. One item caught my eye; I hadn't checked in on the city's constitutional committee during my week-long spell of intensive therapy.

--

"Mister... Owen Lears?" I asked the man in pajamas and a bathrobe.

"Yes?"

"/There/ you are!" I glared at him. "Why are you here, instead of the hall put aside for the committee?"

"Committee? Oh, yes, that - we finished that on the first day, and all voted to go home."

"... Really. You wrote a constitution in one day."

"We didn't have to do much writing. We just took the old American one, and replaced 'states' with 'unions'."

"... That's /it/?"

"Why would we need to do anything else?"

"... There are /so/ many ways I could answer that. But I'll try to focus on the personal consequences: I don't see how I would be willing to accept such a slapdash job, and by the provisions of the treaty, my refusal would mean a reversion to rule by military occupation. Trust me, after you bungled a generous opportunity for civil government, you would /not/ like how that plays out. And I have projects I would much rather be doing than running this town."

"Yeah? So?"

"So any of your committee members who aren't back at the hall in one hour are going to get arrested."

I turned my chair around - I already missed Brenda's help maneuvering it - and rolled back toward Munchkin without another word.

--

"Purple fox?"

"Er... yes, ma'am?" The Bayesian cultist was still scrambling into his robe and hood as he answered the door.

"Show me your constitution draft."

"Yes, ma'am!"

I spent some time going over both the main text, and the extensive notes.

Eventually, I got to his version of a Bill of Rights, and started wincing. "A clarification, here, please. Your free association clause - where you have, 'any person may ... refuse to transact with any other person for any reason'... does that mean a business owner may refuse to sell to people of a race or religion he dislikes?"

"Of course, ma'am."

"And a doctor may similarly refuse to treat a patient for religious reasons?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Hrm. Moving on... The freedom of thought and religion clause... 'nor shall the Government operate or support any school, college, or university'. No government-run education at all?"

"None, ma'am."

"And you have the government prohibited from issuing or regulating money."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you prohibit occupational licenses."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Including preventing the government from having a monopoly on 'services of adjudication, protection, and enforcement' of rights."

"Exactly so, ma'am."

"And... any land-owner may secede with their property, becoming an independent state?"

"Yes, ma'am."

I set the papers down, frowning. "I have to say, this looks less like a constitution to protect its citizens' rights and improve their welfare than it does a recipe for paralyzing the government to such a degree that everyone secedes into 'sovereign' armed households."

"That's exactly right, ma'am."

I blinked, then frowned harder. "Even if doing so means everyone ends up poorer and worse off than if they cooperated more?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"If you know that's the likely outcome - then /why/ did you design this thing that way?"

"The wealthier and more cooperative people are, the more likely they are to re-develop the technology that will cause a second Singularity. Arranging for as many people as possible to act as sovereign individuals is likely to hamper technological innovation, to the degree that a new Singularity becomes impossible. I have another set of notes on my economic calculations, if you wish to read them, ma'am."

"... No, thank you. I think I've learned what I need to know for now."

--

Sarah rolled me into the conference hall right on the one-hour dot. To my relief, it looked like the number of people matched the committee membership list. (Threatening arrest was one thing; getting the Civil Guard to carry it out, with the Free Company withdrawn back to their home city, would have been tricky, and possibly might have crashed the whole program.)

After some consideration, and consultation of Boomer's knowledge of history, I was trying to pull a MacArthur, and had donned my Commander-in-Chief outfit. Sarah had grumbled a bit about having to wear more than a vest, but I'd gotten her decked out in a full-body camouflage thing that looked military-ish without actually being so.

Sarah moved me to the head of the table, unceremoniously shoved the chair there out of the way, and installed my wheelchair in its place. I folded my hands together, watching as the dozen-ish people started shuffling over.

Before they'd even sat down, I started talking. "The /injuries/ I received after your /former/ government kidnapped me have prevented me from giving this group appropriate oversight and direction. You are /supposed/ to be arranging for the structure of your future politics - and you couldn't even put more than a day's effort into it. Now, I'd like a quick show of hands: How many of you can explain how a first-past-the-post election system tends to lead to polarization into two camps, while a ranked-preference election system doesn't?"

No hands rose. I sighed.

I pulled out my walkie-talkie. "It's as bad as I was afraid of. Send in Purple Skunk."

After a few moments, a figure in an identity-concealing robe and cowl entered the hall and joined us at the table. I introduced her, "This individual appears to have more knowledge about government documents than all of you put together. I should have brought her in at the beginning, but was distracted by medical concerns. Consider her my representative at these talks, and listen to her advice."

One of the committee members finally spoke. "Who is she?"

I focused my ears on him. "What difference does it make?"

"Well... which union is she with?"

"I repeat - what difference does it make?"

"I just want to know which group's interests she's trying to advance."

I managed a tight smile. "/Mine/. And I'm not in any of your interests." I drummed my fingers on the table for a moment. "Perhaps I need to clarify something. According to the terms of the peace treaty, the one which all your union bosses signed, I can pick any constitution I want and that would be the law. The reason this committee exists at all is due entirely to my leniency. Externally-imposed constitutions don't have a great success record, since the local population generally has particular concerns that such constitutions don't address. If you're willing to use something as close to the old American constitution as possible, then it's obvious there are no such concerns, and thus I should have no compunction in picking whatever constitutional details please me. That said - Purple, why don't you offer a few highlight suggestions?"

"Almost any form of preferential voting more accurately represents a community's desires and interests; instant runoff is simple enough for our purposes, but both single transferable vote and mixed-member proportional representation have their advantages. Line-item vetoes reduce pork. Constitutional requirements that laws have explicit goals, and amendments have to be related to those goals, gets rid of all sorts of potential boondoggles. Requiring metrics to measure those goals, and an expiration date for laws if they fail to meet those goals, is untested but worth considering. Prediction markets were part of the platform in the twenty-forty insurrections, and the documentation on them was distributed enough that even after those movements were put down, we have enough information to create our own system."

I reached into my wheelchair's pannier, withdrawing some bundles of papers, which I tossed onto the table to spread out a bit. "Here's a constitution created by one of your local citizens - along with some notes I've added on the parts of it that serve his interests more than yours. There are some interesting possibilities in its bill of rights you'll want to discuss, such as determining whether an entity is competent to be a person with rights; whether the right to bodily integrity means having to serve as life-support for another entity against your will; whether a patent or copyright system should be within your government's power or constitutionally forbidden; clarifying the right to bear arms. You have a /lot/ to discuss."

Another committeer leaned forward. "According to the reports I have gathered, you fancy yourself a Canadian. Does this mean you plan to reject any constitution based on the American one?"

My smile was much more genuine this time, since this question was actually relevant and productive. "At this point, the only constitutions I plan on rejecting are those in which no thought was put into, no consideration of alternatives made, no discussion, uh, discussed. You want a tri-cameral legislature, or for your Senate to be able to reject any bill with a one-third-plus-one minority vote? Go nuts. Want every bill to have to be read aloud, or voting to be compulsory? Fine by me. Really want to stick close to the American constitution? I can live with that - /as long as/ I can see that you've thought it over and really think that's the best approach."

I looked around, and went back to frowning. "Any other questions?" None of them spoke up, so I sighed a bit, and told them, "You've lost a week before your deadline. I suggest you make the most of the time you have left."

Purple Skunk started, "First, I think we should note down that we need to consider whether any given governmental position should be filled by election, by appointment, or by lot..."

--

I watched my legs twitch under Wagger's control as Sarah wheeled me back to Munchkin. When we were out of earshot of the committee members, she asked me, "Do you think they'll come up with something good enough?"

"I'm certain of it. I didn't specify what Purple Skunk's roles or responsibilities were, so she's got almost carte blanche to do whatever it takes to keep them talking. If nothing else, she can put together a draft constitution all on her own at the end of the week, but I'm pretty sure it won't come to that. These people were suggested by the unions - now that I've pointed out that what they're doing can affect their lives and pocketbooks, and they've got someone keeping an eye on them, I'm pretty sure they've got incentives to come up with /something/ they think I'll find more acceptable than forcing my own ideas down their throats."

"What if they are wrong?"

"Then I force my ideas down their throats. In the meantime, where are the kits? I think Brenda accidentally started my lactation reflex again..."

--

"Mister Mayor?" I asked.

"As I am only Mayor Pro Tem, and even that by your grace, Mister Edwards seems more appropriate. Tea?"

"No, thank you - I haven't gotten used to the local version yet." I also didn't want to blatantly insult him by scanning for poisons.

"What brings you to City Hall today, Your Majesty?"

"The bimbo disappearances this morning. Almost everyone who'd ever been in the bimbo zone has gone away - but the group I've heard called the 'Mayor's Harem' is one of the few exceptions. I would like to know why."

He poured himself a cup of some herbal infusion or other as he said, "I'm afraid that I'm as much in the dark as you are."

"Can you tell me where they spent the night?"

"In my room, with me."

"What sort of protections surround that room? Thick walls, locked doors, barred windows, underground bunker?"

"Nothing so elaborate; until your, shall we say, intervention, I have been a simple civil servant, and have lived modestly. I keep my doors locked, of course, but from the inside, and it is simple to leave."

"Does /anything/ come to mind?"

"Not particularly, no."

"Hrm. Perhaps I should talk to them."

"I doubt it would be worth your time, but if you wish, they are in the next room. I asked them to pick some funeral dresses; their minds are simple enough that that will likely occupy them until whatever memorial services are held."

--

"Candy? Crystal? Kelly? Karma? This is Bunny."

"Ooh," said one of the nearly indistinguishable blonde bombshells. "Is she a new bimbo?"

"Don't be silly," said another. "Her tits are too small. Is she your new girlfriend?"

"Is she hurt?" said a third. "Her legs are twitching. Can we give her a massage?"

"Maybe if I don't wear a bra, this dress will look right," said the fourth, still examining herself in some mirrors.

Edwards stage-whispered, "They are used to not understanding questions, but good at remembering what makes people happy."

"Um, ladies," I said, feeling oddly nervous but not having enough time to do a proper selves-query, "Some people were hurt last night. I want to find out why. Can you tell me what happened last night?"

"Well," the first one said, "after we ate, we all fu-"

Edwards coughed, very fakely, and, face red, quickly said "/After/ that."

"Oh, well," the first one said, "after that, we fell asleep."

"Where?" I asked.

"In bed, together."

"Did any of you wake up in the night?"

"I didn't."

"Not me."

"Nope."

"I don't like the lines these panties make."

I sighed. "Right. When did you wake up?" And so it continued, with nothing of value being learned. Eventually, I gave up. "Thank you all for your time," I said.

"Did we help?" asked one, bouncing.

"... Well, you helped me rule out a lot of theories, so - sure, you did."

"Yay!" She bounced harder, grabbing the hands of a couple of the others and dancing in a quick circle with them.

As I watched the antics, at first they seemed nice and simple and cute... but then I wondered what they'd been before they'd been turned into these caricatures of femininity, what their lives had been before they'd been bent into this new shape. I muttered to Edwards, "I'm still uncomfortable with this whole thing - but as long as you're responsible for them, you're /going/ to take care of them, or else answer to me. Capiche?"

It seemed like I hadn't muttered quietly enough, because one of them - I'll admit that I still couldn't tell them apart, stomped over to us. "You can't talk to him like that! He's the mayor! That means he's in charge!"

I managed to raise an eyebrow, Spock-like, then glanced sideways at Edwards. "Is there anything you want to tell them?"

"You mean, like you can fire me?"

"Huh?" blinked the one who'd made the objection. "She can fire you? How does that work?"

I tried to keep things simple. "It's complicated," I offered, since that covered pretty much everything.

"Huh?"

Edwards shrugged. "She's a queen, and I'm a mayor. Right now, she outranks me."

"Oooo-ooooh!" the three chorused, and then the fourth chimed in with a quick "Oh!" and dropped the hats she was examining. All four walked right up to me, surrounding my wheelchair.

"So," the one in front of me licked her lips, "/you're/ the one in charge?"

I looked at Edwards, eyes wide, and squeaked a quick, "Help?"

He just folded his hands behind his back, and looked up towards the ceiling in a vaguely British-y, butler-y way. "It is, of course, my duty to give such callipygian and callistethous women lives that are as dignified as possible, given their artificially limited mental capacities, a significant part of which involves respecting any choices or preferences that they do manage to express. One of the more fundamental choices which a person who has been judged to be not entirely mentally competent can make involves expressing a desire for or against any particular caretaker, and given your own recent statement of your willingness to oversee my responsibilities for them, I can only assume that any transfer of guardianship which happens to be made at this date and in this place is voluntary on both parties' sides, meaning that as a good mayor, and, if I may be so bold, a good man, my only option is to step back and allow the obvious matters to take their own course in their own good time."

The bimbo behind me had started rubbing my shoulders. "He gets like that when he doesn't want us to understand."

Edwards' face turned into what might be described as a smile, of such infinitesimal proportions as to avoid affecting the standard 'stiff upper lip'. "Put simply, girls - if you want her, she's yours."

"Ooh!" they chorused.

"Eep!"

 

[Beyogi]

There is only a single explanation for this. The AIs want to see what it takes to break your mind.

 

[DataPacRat]

There is only a single explanation for this. The AIs want to see what it takes to break your mind.

Click to shrink...

Really, just the one explanation? And here I've been hoping I've been demonstrating more creative problem-solving skills for the reader to be able to apply themselves than that... (ahem)

 

[Beyogi]

Really, just the one explanation? And here I've been hoping I've been demonstrating more creative problem-solving skills for the reader to be able to apply themselves than that... (ahem)

Click to shrink...

To pull of a psychological terror campaign like that without someone figuring out who you are you need to be at least a major secret service or a posthuman intelligence. The only political entity that could have pulled off a campaign like this would have been Technoville and their plans would have been blown wide open by the random actions of your protagonist.

So really the only thing that remains is some sort of posthuman intelligence throwing psychological torture at your progatonist for some arcane reason. Your protagonist has been in the direct influence range of a city and during the last 5-10 chapters we got yet another weirdness right out of a Hentai each chapter. Bimboisation, almost bimboisation, laying an egg, becoming goo girls, being penetrated by a goo girl. All of this in the time of a few days, keeping your SI from actually doing something relevant.

It's like something wants to desperately distract your SI from something. And sex sells, so it'S all vaguely sexual distractions. Or at least distractions that would be seen in a sexual context. So I don't see how the conclusion that this is likely the result of posthuman entities meddling is not reasonable. They're the only confirmed entities in this setting who could pull this kind of thing off and who might have the motivation to do it.

Or it could be all coincidence and individual actors, but I don't believe it. What was it? One time is happenstance, two times is coincidence and three times is enemy action? Well, you're far beyond three times already. If it was uncoordinated multiple enemy action the enemies would have fouled up each others plans already. So what remains is highly advanced enemy action. Or if you want to break the fourth wall, the narrator aka you gains some pleasure out of subjecting his SI to ever more perversions and weirdness and din't consider the implications on the believability of his story.

 

[DataPacRat]

Or if you want to break the fourth wall, the narrator aka you gains some pleasure out of subjecting his SI to ever more perversions and weirdness and din't consider the implications on the believability of his story.

Click to shrink...

From that perspective, I can say that I finalized and wrote out the overall background in a reference document somewhere during Book Two, I believe; and have added various further elaborations of the original premises as needed, such as the 'Secret History of Erie'. (Said reftext is available to anyone who helps pre-read before I post here.) So I can at least say that I've worked out the believability implications before I wrote up the specific events

 

[DataPacRat]

(Laptop's in the shop; and when I used my phone's app to access my cloud copy of the story, for some reason it deleted 8 chapters (which were, fortunately, recoverable). So I'm afraid I won't be able to post the next chapter on my usual weekly-plus schedule.)

 

[Scify]

That bites. Hope your laptop is fixed easily and cheaply.

 

[DataPacRat]

Chapter Two: Mis-cible*

"Note to self: Look into non-lethal methods of self-defense, to deal with people who aren't trying to kill me, but are being... obstacles. I think Boomer mentioned something about tranquilizer darts..."

--

While I was at City Hall, I had Edwards show me their computer. I knew they had one, because he'd made some print-outs on a relevant topic the first time I'd seen him.

It was in the basement, and brought a pang of familiarity. Behind locked doors, inside what appeared to be walls lined to act as a Faraday cage, there was a tower, pretty much of the same style that had been in use from the eighties to when I died; plus monitor, keyboard, trackball, printer, the works. Edwards mentioned, "It was thirty years out-of-date when the Singularity happened," which meant it still looked a few years more futuristic than what I recalled. (The stuff from just before the Singularity itself was different enough that my mind didn't really categorize it as 'computers'.) However, in addition to being stylish, it was also worn-out and falling apart. The plastics were yellowing; all the keys had their symbols hand-painted, and some had even been replaced with carved wood; and I didn't want to think about what it would have taken to keep the physical moving parts going.

And even with all of that, I was still tempted to claim the whole thing as part of my reparations. I lent my main subself alliance lend its support to my utilitarian subself, overruling my "Ooh, shiny!" subself, and tried to mollify the latter by pointing out that I had a freaking Turing-grade AI in my pocket.

The harem - I had no intention of calling it /my/ harem - had been left behind at the locked door, but were still waiting to pounce as soon as we returned. "I know you have some kind of encyclopedia on there," I said to Edwards, thoughtfully. "How extensive is it?"

"I have yet to be disappointed in what it offers."

"So if I asked you to find an instruction manual for, say, royal handmaidens and ladies-in-waiting..?"

He did his almost-smile again. "An interesting choice," was all he said as he sat down, and started turning things on. (I had to suppress my reactions when I discovered it to be running Windows XP - I wanted to both laugh and cry and scream that /that/ OS was the one to survive the apocalypse.)

"Er - /can/ any of them read?"

"Kelly still retains that skill, yes."

As he printed out some old booklets and decorum, etiquette, and ladylike behaviour, I wondered aloud, "Is this the best computer you have left?"

"There is a certain amount of ill feeling towards such objects. We do not publicize this machine's existence; and even those who are aware of it think of it as a necessary evil, when they do think of it, much like a sewage processing plant."

"That is all very interesting and has many connotations but, I notice, did not actually answer my question."

"'Best' implies that we have more than one."

"If you could have one, why couldn't you have more than one?"

He sat back and folded his hands. "This machine was assembled by my predecessor - as Secretary, not as mayor - from parts that were confirmed to be in storage, unplugged and unpowered, from long before the Singularity. Simply finding a full set of piece that were compatible with each other took several years. All forms of input, save for this keyboard and trackball, were physically removed, had their wires snipped, and/or had their sockets blocked. Similarly, all forms of output save this screen and printer. The power line contains several forms of conditioning to smooth out any unusual spikes that might affect it. The door contains a physical mechanism which interrupts the power unless it is closed; no piece has ever been powered up save while in this protected room. For several years, there was a decorative water feature outside to muffle any sounds from within, and an armed guard. When I became Secretary, I spread the rumor amongst the knowledgeable few that I kept this machine because I had become addicted to video games. In short: there are three pieces for which I have no replacement parts, at least none that can be used without risking the compromise of the whole machine. If no replacements have been procured by when they fail, then I will be forced to rely on hand calculators."

"If you like, I may be able to help with that." I thought of one of the Bayesians, Blue Rabbit, who'd claimed to have finagled a computer out of Clara.

"That is kind of you, but unnecessary. I will not be mayor very long."

"You're not going to seek election to, er, whatever post the constitutional committee comes up with?"

"I was appointed to be secretary. I served. I was appointed Mayor Pro Tem. I am serving. When I am done serving, I will seek to be appointed as secretary again, or a similar posting. I am not well-suited to executive positions. I do not possess the... people skills."

"I suspect we could spend quite some time commiserating with each other about that, but for the moment... what do you have on here?"

"Business and accounting software, and a cache of significant portions of several projects: encyclopedias, a library of texts whose copyrights had expired, a different library of texts whose copyrights were waived, yet another library of texts that were still under copyright and illegal to possess at the time - that latter has been at least as much help as all the others combined. There are various other pieces of software, from maps and star-charts to a simple version of the 'trust verification architecture' that became ubiquitous after this data was stored; but we rarely use any of those, given that increased use increases the odds of an irreplaceable part failing."

"Do you know how much data there is, in total?"

"The figure that was passed to me was fifty terabytes."

"That seems like both a lot, and not very much. More than I could manage to make a copy of just now, and a fraction of the storage sizes I've seen bandied about for twenty-fifty era computers."

"Intact storage devices are one of the more common finds; the main difficulty is examining them for useful data without compromising the remainder of the library. It would not be difficult to transfer a portion of these archives onto one for you, if you can narrow down your choices to two terabytes or less."

I hesitated, faced with that choice. "I have to admit," I managed to think aloud, "that your rumour of video game addiction is all too plausible. There are many things I /should/ be doing - but if I was faced with the choice of doing them, or in revelling in all the fiction and media and games you could give, well... I'd be using up a lot of willpower." That made me frown. "And I think that's an answer, there - if I have to actually /will/ myself to keep doing something, then sooner or later, I'll face the choice while my mental energy is low. Meaning that it's in my best interests to arrange matters to minimize such choices. So as much as I /want/ to grab this computer and not let go for the next three years... maybe just an encyclopedia, an index of the whole lot, and whatever other non-fiction the city's used and happens to fit?"

--

"Without violating any confidences, Amy, can you tell me how Brenda is doing?"

"Who is doing the asking? Queen Bunny, Brenda's friend, or a fellow patient?"

"I'll start with my Queen hat. Is she a danger to others?"

"Her imprinting on you seems to have been magnified; at the moment, she is plausibly likely to use excessive force against anyone she perceives to be a threat to you, and possibly to use extreme measures in her attempts to protect you."

"Do I want to know what those 'extreme measures' are?"

"I'll put it this way; I contacted Doctor Black to find Brenda some experimental animals to practice her abilities on, so that even while under stress or performing other activities, she does not dissolve any tissues she would regret having dissolved. About all I can guarantee is that she is psychologically incapable of harming your central nervous system."

"And as her friend - is she going to harm herself?"

"Answering to you-the-friend, I have to be careful about discussing certain issues, but her fixation on you means that if you come to harm she believes she could have prevented, she will... not take it well. Her guilt may lead her to punish herself by attempting to subordinate herself to you in a very unhealthy manner."

"As in, replacing my flesh with herself?"

"Oh, she already told you that? Yes, merging with you in such a fashion is currently one of her central fantasies, though I am trying to nudge her in the direction of healthier outlets."

"Then I suppose it's time for me to get back to being one of your patients for a while. ... Has anyone mentioned to you that I saw a woman die today? Or as good as, I think..."

--

Back in the shelter's garden to relax after my latest session, I'd parked my chair at the end of a small path, where I could keep an eye out for anyone coming in my direction. So I was able to follow a blue-tinted, quadrupedal form all the way from the door into the house right up to me. Brenda stretched out on the bench that was installed to face the flowerbeds along the edge of the wall, and the vines climbing up it, as if she had a perfectly ordinary skeleton and set of muscles that needed minding. Alphie was still in her chest, and it looked like something else was embedded deeper within her.

"So," I said, "how're things?"

"Amy has helped me to understand that you might have perfectly valid objections to some of the things I want to do with you. So I'm putting together evidence that at least some of those objections are unfounded." She lifted a wing and waved at herself with it. "I've got a squirrel in here right now. She's fine, swimming around, I just make sure my surface tension is high enough to keep her from getting out. I'm going to try to make sure she stays fine when I'm asleep, and then tomorrow, that I can keep her fine when I run through an obstacle course and stress tests. If I can keep her safe through all that, then I should be able to keep you safe if you let me be your living bodysuit."

"... Uh-/huh/. ... Figured out what you /do/ eat yet?"

"I got hungry earlier, and absorbed a salad and some potatoes. Denise thinks that I'm going to need more calories than I used to, since it'll take more effort to move nutrients around inside me without a proper circulatory system."

I watched the squirrel paddle up through her neck and into her head, bounce against her skin a few times, and then keep paddling right back into her torso.

After a few moments of silence, Brenda added, "I'm also trying to figure out how to be as useful to you as I can. I'm working on controlling extra limbs, and trying to make my claw-tips as hard as possible, and turning them into complicated shapes... it's not working too well, yet, but I have high hopes. Oh! And when I put some of my extra mass in the freezer, I was able to absorb it right back into me as soon as it was above freezing, so you won't have to worry about me being trapped on you because I can't be just me anymore."

"Mm-hm," I made a noncommittal sound. My weird-o-meter had pegged itself at 'maximum' at the sight of the squirrel, so I wasn't really following. "Oh, by the way - the mayor's harem seems to have adopted me instead of Mayor-Pro-Tem Edwards. I've distracted them with some pamphlets on how royal servants act, but they'll probably catch up with me again soon. I don't know them well enough to trust them with any secrets, so you'll probably want to decide how intelligent you want them to think you are... and, I don't know, see if you're up to playing dress-up as, er, the dresses. I think I've got four outfits for different situations, and they're probably not going to accept that - and I shudder to think of the results if I let them anywhere near the clothes fabber. ... Or let them know that 'clothes fabber' is a thing that can exist."

--

The next morning, I made my way back to the Civil Guard outpost where I'd collected the EMP generator; my plan was to ask about safe retrieval methods. My plan was derailed as soon as I asked, "How has the search for the women who went missing yesterday gone?"

"Oh, that was a big fuss over nothing. We found 'em all, easy enough."

My ears went straight up. "Really? Where?"

"First place we should'a looked - the shelter we always find 'em at."

My ears flattened back again. I'd just come from that shelter, and there hadn't been any extra bimbos about the place. It looked like the mental glitch was striking again.

When I got back to Munchkin, I was once again trying to figure out the implications of that glitch, and just nodded to Sarah absently. "How's the mayor's harem doing?"

"The mayor has a harem now?"

I paused, and decided this was as good a time as any to try prodding on the topic. "Sarah, how long have I had a harem?"

"At least as long as I've known you, I guess."

"And what do they all have in common?"

"Why are you asking?"

"I just got reminded of something, and want to see if my memory's straight."

"Well, if you don't count the bun-bots, they're all bimbos."

"And where do bimbos come from?"

"Here in Erie."

"And when was the first time I came to Erie?"

"Three years ago, the day you were shot."

"Did we meet before then?"

"Yes."

"Did I have my harem then?"

"I guess."

"How could I have had a harem of bimbos from Erie when we met, if I hadn't been to Erie by then?"

Sarah didn't answer right away, just frowned, and blinked rapidly.

I decided that I'd confused her enough, so offered her an easy out. "Don't worry about it - you've got some memory issues, is all. Lots of Changed people do, especially animal-form ones."

"Animal-form Changed... right."

"Have you seen Denise lately? there's a few things I want to ask her, too."

"Not... lately." She blinked one more time, then shook her head. "Not since yesterday. By the way, I've been meaning to ask you - now that Brenda is too squishy to pull your chair, how about we get some tack and harness for me, too?"

"I'm not really sure that's appropriate," I shrugged. "She was acting as a service animal, not a person. I'm not sure it would look appropriate if you took that job."

"I'm used to it. To be honest, I've kind of missed pulling stuff for a while - Denise really treated me well while I was a pony, before she found the foxtaur zone to give me arms and a human brain again."

This was the first time I'd heard anything of the sort; up until now, Sarah had told me she and Jeff had been Changed by accident. I looked up and down at her nervously, wondering just what was going on. "Um," I hedged, "besides, the clothes fabber can make things that look like leather, but we don't have any of the real stuff for feedstock."

"Oh, is that all? I'll just draw from petty cash and get some from the marketplace."

"Still think it's better, if you want to help me with my chair, to push it instead of pull it."

"Don't you always say to be prepared? There's lots of things you might need help pulling with - I don't know why we haven't made the tools for that until now."

"It's a mystery," I agreed, my gut clenching at the implications of what had just happened.

--

What do you do when you discover a zero-day exploit that affects /people/?

I'll admit that I spent a few moments fantasizing about harem-izing the whole town into slaves eager to do my slightest bidding.

... Okay, a few minutes.

And then, after that self-indulgent interlude, I turned back to reality. If the glitch let one person induce people to confabulate new memories, then there didn't seem any reason more than one person couldn't do the same thing. Or, put more simply - someone /else/ might do /more/ than spend a few moments fantasizing about the mass-slavery thing.

In fact, as I thought about it, that seemed to be a remarkably convenient glitch to have arisen by mere evolution by natural selection. If nobody else had already taken advantage of the whole situation... then I guessed it was only because they hadn't gotten around to it yet.

Even outside whatever soft and squishy feelings I had for any particular individuals affected by the glitch, simple long-term self-interest - and short-term self-defense - was enough reason to try to figure out a patch for everyone in town who had it. Not to mention figuring out enough about it to make sure it wasn't transmissible.

Unfortunately, the only ways I could come up with to even start getting a basic feeling for the parameters of what the glitch could and couldn't do involved testing it. That is, in deliberately altering peoples' minds without their consent.

The phrase 'the ends don't justify the means' was pretty much made for just such an ethical dilemma. But as I thought about it, several of my sub-selves brought up the question of whether that phrase was actually /true/ or not.

I decided that getting some external advice might help me sort out the solutions. However, if the glitch was deliberately created as a slave-maker, then it seemed within reason that it contained some sort of self-defense aspect, which meant that asking anyone already affected by the glitch might not lead to useful answers. I only knew of five people who'd been in Erie and seemed unaffected: myself; Dotty and Human Joe, who were dead; Minerva, who, the last I'd seen of her, had been happily playing with dolls and puppets; and Bunny Joe.

As I set Munchkin's course for the Lake Erie Embassy, where I'd heard many of the gang had shacked up during my convalescence, I put my mind to thinking of how to deal with the fact that I might accidentally trigger the glitch, and what I should do if I did.

--

Bunny Joe was not, in fact, at the Embassy; she was aboard the Travelling Matt. In particular, she was stretched out in a hammock, reading a book. As I rolled up, she just raised an eyebrow and asked, "Are you sane yet?"

"Eh, it's back to being a matter of opinion. Listen, I need some advice."

She rolled so she was sitting, facing me. "About?"

"It's complicated, but it starts with what used to be the mayor's harem."

"'Used to be'?"

"Well, the four bimbos seem to have picked me over Edwards."

Joe didn't answer, she just blinked rapidly, looking off at a wall.

I froze, tense, since that was exactly what Sarah had done when the glitch triggered in her. My mind felt blank - all I could remember from my recent musings was to try to keep people the way they were, reinforcing whatever behaviours and memories they already had. I recalled that Bunny Joe had been created by the 'spirits' of the Great Peace to help me psychologically, which she had interpreted in her own way. Which is why I told her, "Also, I think I could use a hug."

She blinked back into focus, looking down at me, eyebrows raised even higher, but with a smile. "Really? Well, I'm not going to say no to /that/." She slipped down to the floor, and after a bit of awkwardness around the wheelchair, she solved it by sitting on my lap, twisting sideways so we could wrap our arms around each other. "This is nice," she said.

"Mm-hm," I said, not committing either way, feeling mainly confused. A couple of weeks ago, when I'd been revived, Bunny Joe hadn't been affected by the glitch, in all the three years I'd been frozen. Now she had. What had changed since then? Well, her brain had, obviously, for one thing.

"Now, what did you want to ask me about?"

I certainly wasn't going to ask her about what I'd been planning to - not if she was as glitched as everyone else in town. "Maybe we should talk in private," I hedged. "Munchkin's parked over on the dock."

"If you like." She rolled off my lap, and she was soon pushing me down the gangplank.

"Oh, by the way," I said, "while I've got you here, I'd like to have the autodoc scan you for a few things." I made up an excuse on the spot, "The Free Company had to be wearing those gas masks for a reason, and I don't want any of us to be taken by surprise by a species-specific pathogen."

"If you like," she repeated, with a shrug.

The autodoc didn't have radioisotopes, X-rays didn't show soft tissues well, and there were far too many metallic parts to the autodoc for them to have built in an MRI. But it did have ultrasonograph gear, and something called 'photoacoustic imaging', and something else called 'functional near-infrared spectroscopy', and - most importantly - scans of Bunny Joe's brain taken long before she'd ever set paw in the city of Erie.

While she settled into the coffin-like device, I checked with Boomer about the areas of the brain associated with memory or confabulation - and, at Boomer's suggestion, anosognosia, the inability to recognize a disability - and tapped the autodoc's controls to focus on those regions.

I was about as far from a brain surgeon as you could get - really, all I was at the moment was being a monkey's pair of hands, following Boomer's directions.

To have Joe think about something not quite related to the bimbos, I asked, "I've been thinking about the bun-bots... is it overly creepy that I have almost a dozen robots that look exactly like me, and do anything I tell them to?"

Joe tried to shake her head, but the scanners held it in place. "You made them as your tools, as I was made to be a tool of the spirits. I am more 'creeped out' by their mechanical innards, than anything else about them."

I nudged the conversation towards the topic at hand. "So you would be happier if I had living slaves doing my bidding?"

"If you want advice, you should ask someone from your culture, not mine. We do not have the same taboo against taking prisoners of war from raids, and bringing them into our families, that you do."

"Should I pass the harem of bimbos on along to you, then?"

She started blinking rapidly. "I... do not think they'd agree..."

I didn't want a random association affecting her very much, so I tried to focus her back with the same distraction I'd used before. "I'm just not a very huggy person, like you."

"Hugs - yes, physical affection is important..." She squinched her eyes shut for a moment, then tried to shake her head again as she opened them. "According to the local school, a harem exists so its members can help each other, when their owner is not available. If you have not been able to provide them with what they need, they provide for each other."

"Mm... I suppose that's one way to look at it." My attention was more on the autodoc's displays than the conversation.

"Is there a reason this exam is taking so long? It did not seem so long last time."

"Just want to be thorough," I commented, and quickly brought it to a close.

As soon as Joe was free, she casually walked up behind me, resting her cheek on the top of my head and her arms on my shoulders. "If you don't want to hug them, then I can hug you instead," she said. "Have you been hugging your mind healer?"

I blanked out the display. "Er, no - that's not how that works." I wondered if I'd focused too hard on the hugging, and whether /that/ might have long-term effects... "Can you help me into the auto-doc? I should probably get a quick scan, myself." Not to mention give her a reason to stop hugging me for a few minutes.

Joe squinted at the main display. "What does 'Anomalous electroplaques in upper thorax' mean?"

"... I don't know, but I probably should find out."