So these 'children' are weird. You spend a lot of time helping to supervise them, mainly because when there's actual blood in your body again you're going to have to help grow these gardens so it'll help if they have all the room everyone needs, but you quickly realize that you're more rated to engage in mortal combat than you are to meaningfully dictate terms to these tiny people even though they like you. On the one hand, they're energetic, brash, and bounce like they're made of rubber; you end up watching one faceplant into the asphalt, scraping its cheek something fierce, and after you (personally) disinfect the wound and get some bandages on its face the child is up and about less than an hour later, right back at it. It was
just sobbing and crying! If you'd been crying that hard that's the whole rest of your day!
"We're not aliens, y'know," Marie comments during a break; the two of you are watching the others, who have very much taken command of the portable gaming systems from Bayview and appear to be engaged in some manner of parallel play or perhaps multiplayer. She passes you a granola bar and it vanishes into your maw with unseemly haste. "You look confused a lot of the time talking to us."
"...Marie, before these, you were one hundred percent of the children in my life."
She scoffs. "
You were a kid once."
"Not that I remember."
This stops your tiniest friend, who is somehow
STILL TALLER THAN YOU IS THIS A TEENAGER THING, and she looks over at you with...concern? Pity? "You don't remember being a kid? Having parents? Playing?"
You shake your head, and look back out at Marie's little gang. "No. Not at all." You yelp as Marie slaps her little console into your hand and stands, dragging you upright so fast you've gotta scramble for your cane. "Marie!"
"Oi, snoteaters!" Marie calls out. "Who wants to teach Orchid how to play
Mara's Harvest?"
Oh gods. You're being swarmed. This is it, this is how you die.
You have founded a relationship with the children of your community.
* * * *
This tentatively leads you to try more of the videogames available to you. Most of the televisions pillaged from Bayview are still in their boxes - the handymen "don't wanna push the grid" - but there's an entertainment area in the main body of the store, and a secondary one over in Dirty Dick's, though the cooks mostly use that to put on the endless films scooped up by the armful from bargain bins. Y'all are
still sending teams to get the last of the nonperishables from Bayview, fucksake. Everyone seems to have opinions on what you should try out, and you peel your way through high-flying action titles, odd racing games with intensive detail (you note, mentally, that Sasha plays those and spends a lot of time in the car creation screen), "role-playing games" where you're not sure what role you're playing but everyone sure talks like they're working on their philosophy degree. In the end you settle into a comfortable relationship with games like
Mara's Harvest; no lives on the line, no high-flying action, no blood, no gore. Just you and your farm or your factory or your business or, in one case that lasted all of until 'getting to the main menu', you and your strip club. That game vanished into the HR office
real fast.
One evening, quite late, Sasha approaches and watches you play for awhile, before she leans over the back of your chair and sorta. Hugs you? From behind and above? Arms crossed over the top of your chest, cheek pressed against yours so she can see the screen. Sasha's buzzed her hair off, something about 'fixing her cut for the apocalypse'.
"I don't think I've seen anyone play
Can I Take Your Order with this little chill," she opines, her voice soft because it's three in the fucking morning and people are sleeping in this ex-store. "Penny for your thoughts, Orchid?"
You gesture with the controller. "I've gotta pay off my loan so I can play the game."
"...Orchid, that
is the game."
You pause (blown if you're gonna let this service sequence run without you) and turn your head to look at Sasha in confusion; she gives you only enough space to do that, keeping her face pretty close to yours. "What do you mean? Once the loan is paid off I can buy more decorations and stuff, really make it mine. That's the game, isn't it?"
She laughs, still staying quiet. "Every part of the game is the game, cutie. Every part. The only reward you're gonna get for racing through these segments is breezing past the experience. Besides," and here she grins, sharp and playful. "When you pay off the first loan you end up with another one to expand with."
"
No."
"Yeah." Sasha gives the tip of your nose a kiss and then bounces away before you can react to
whatever the fuck that was. "Enjoy debt slavery!"
You have learned certain preferences in your entertainment.
* * * *
The Incident, as people will refer to it - laughing - in later days and weeks, begins simply. On the door to the former HR office is a sign instructing people to clean up after themselves, to take no more than an hour, and to watch their volume. Inside are chairs, a television hooked up to a computer, a bed, and uh, 'supplies', evidently. Every now and again couples will vanish into the office when they're not working, though more often adults come in here by themselves and then they come out later. One is
supposed to put the tie hanging on the wall next to the door on the knob to tell people the office is in use, and this is the detail you forget when you come in to satisfy a curiosity that the romance novels started in you.
The magazine quickly proves to be disinteresting. It seems to be a companion to some kind of online subscription service, so most of it is huge, colorful ads broken up by various pinups of naked women(?), or stills from the videos online. The only useful thing you learn from it is that for whatever reason, big breasts seem to be popular in pornography, which leads to you wasting about five minutes looking at the pictures, squeezing your chest, looking at the pictures, squeezing again, and finally concluding that you probably qualify.
Having been let down by the magazine you rifle through the five 'films' available and almost immediately discard four of them, which have a similar presentation, though each one offers
Hours of hardcore action!. You do pause on the third one, which, rather than large-chested women, features men in its advertising, and in particular pairings of absolutely huge men with very tiny ones (and bless whoever plastered
MEN MEN MEN! on the back cover), but ultimately you set that one down not out of disinterest (you think) but because it's got the same kind of advertising. You'll settle on one of these if you have to but -
That's when you spot
The Midwinter Murders. At first you think it might be a normal film, and indeed the summary on the back talks about a "small-town girl" drawn into a web of intrigue and blood when she investigates the disappearance of her boyfriend, but the stills from the film on the back have at least a couple where folks are
probably having sex, based on what you've read and seen so far? Runtime of two and a half hours. Okay. You gotta see this. So you get it into the computer, boot it up, cast it to the television, and sit, hunched forward, with a cheap notebook and a supply of pencils.
Forty-five minutes into this, Jack walks in while you're taking notes on a scene in which Our Heroine, one Heather Greene, is unknowingly having a passionate night with the woman who killed her boyfriend, and he yelps. You turn around quickly, spot him trying to leave the room, and speak up: "Jack, Jack, c'mere, you gotta see this."
"I - what?"
"
Sit on the couch I'm gonna restart the movie!"
Jack splutters. "Orchid, it's weird to ask people to watch -" you snap your fingers and point at the couch. "Orchid -"
Snap! Snap snap!
"
Fine," Jack exclaims. You restart the film and get your notebook back out while Jack side-eyes you. "...Orchid why are your clothes on?" You blink at him and point at the notebook with your pencil. "...Okay, new question, is the...porn...making you feel things?"
"Yeah," you say distractedly. And then you go over that sentence in your head again. "Oh. Yes! Yes it is, but I gotta take notes. Also I'm not sure what to do about those feelings though I think scene three gives a demonstration..."
"
You don't know how to masturbate?"
"I! Am an amnesiac! Now shut the fuck up and watch this with me!"
So an hour and a half later Jill sees that the HR office door is ajar, walks in, and you and Jack team up to make her sit down on the couch too and you restart the film.
Twenty minutes after that Sasha comes looking for you and gets roped into this shit.
By the time you actually manage to finish this porn the HR office is standing-room only, packed with adults who are as enraptured as you are by this tale of justice, vengeance, sex, lust, love, unholy reanimation, and forgiveness. There are several enlightening comments with regards to the production of certain scenes ("See that camera cut? The actors took a break and folks helped them get aroused and lubed up again."), clashing opinions about the desirability of certain acts, and a solid hour-long digression where Jill, Doctor Wheelwright, and the chef of all people get into differing opinions and needs of people who Switch with regards to their whole situation down below. Jill, a little red-faced but confident, says that she - like the film's protagonist - chose to keep her "factory-issued" bits installed, because it wasn't a big deal to her, whereas Chef Nettleson very definitely wanted to ditch his when he went through a medical Switch and went to some effort to do so. That entire discussion goes into the notebook verbatim.
When the end credits roll, Sasha says what you're all thinking: "How the fuck did the dead person who bought the other four pornos
also buy this one?"
"People contain multitudes," Charles opines, in a faint voice of awe. "...Also, lemme just say, the undead boyfriend?
Would. Death would be worth it."
"What," you laugh, in disbelief. "Why?"
Your friend the twink sniffs haughtily. "Okay, so who's got
your attention,
Elector?"
You still probably need to try things out to be sure, but you're interested in...
[ ] Men(?)
[ ] Women(?)
[ ] Yes(tm)
For that matter, have you decided to try out a gender?
[ ] Yes (which?)
[ ] Not yet
[ ] Not ever; it/its is working out great for you, other people need to deal with it.
* * * *
It's been fourteen more days. Nearly half of another month, and spring will be ending soon. You're recovering well, and have
returned to okay health. The doctors still don't want you summoning any gardens out of nothing, mind, but you get some growing with the last of the planting season and only minimal severe nosebleeds. You're just about thinking that it's time for more
Can I Take Your Order when
YOUR PHONE FUCKING RINGS. You almost drop it in your haste to get it out of your pocket and discover quickly that this is not a ring, it's an alert from an app called
Threshold Internal, and then a voice cuts in. It's a little like yours or Jill's or Sasha's...well, more like yours, in that it's ragged, and exhausted, and in pain.
"Nattie Bellman to any available Threshold Innovations forces," the voice says, at some effort. "Project Throwback needs immediate relief and reinforcements. We have wounded. I repeat, Project Throwback needs immediate relief and reinforcements, please respond."
The next voice isn't 'like' yours.
It's yours. Someone else is speaking with your voice.
"You chose a real bad time to get fucked, Nattie," the voice that is yours says. "My teams are tied up laying siege to the power plant, trying to keep the lights on, we couldn't pull out now if Corporate started screaming it's not on the pill. Karl?"
"You got six days to wait?" a new voice, more like Jack's. "We're halfway across the fuckin' city, Nattie."
"...No," the pained voice admits.
Pick 1
[ ] Speak up now
[ ] Listen further, then use this app to call Nattie directly
You are forty-four days old.
