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abalidoth · 10 months ago

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Replanting (Chapter 2)

(Chapter 1)

(Read on AO3)

You wake up at six on the dot every morning.

It's a habit from before, but there's something about being up before the Unionists -- who tend to sleep late -- that comforts you. They've adapted to your schedule some, at least; there's a neatly wrapped breakfast waiting outside your door when you get up.

Each morning you eat, do a basic set of conditioning exercises, and navigate the labyrinth of corridors.

Sometimes you make your way to the roof, and bring your food with you. It's an unexpected luxury, being able to eat wherever you want, and the rooftop balcony is usually empty.

There's a bench there, and a lovely view of the grounds of the facility. For as utilitarian as the architecture is, they take care with the greenery; the cultivated surrounds transition gracefully into the native forest, and the sun glints off the glass of the city in the distance.

But most days, your impatience gets the better of you and you head straight for the hangar.

They won't let you sleep in Acacia, but they at least moved you to a closer room and gave you a special access badge. There are usually a few mechanics wandering around. A few are even brave enough to call out to you.

"Hello, Acacia," you say. Her lights brighten in response, the seal on her canopy cracking open with a hermetic hiss.

You climb inside, swab the connection pads off, and become whole.

Acacia is chewing through the Unionist's scientific databases of plants. They're still not comfortable giving her the full uplink to their civilian databases, but her talks with the Union's machine minds seem to be going well in that direction. You ride her thoughts as she learns, and taxa and diagrams of anatomy blur through your awareness.

Dr. Crane comes by at some point, mug of coffee in hand and sometimes a colleague following her like a contrail, and settles into the couch she dragged into your mechbay. She asks questions -- considerately undirected after the first few times, letting you or Acacia or Acacia-through-you or you-through-Acacia answer as desired.

"Can you tell me a little about how the Conclave grows AI?" she asks one day. Her eyes are eager. Your heat sensors pick up a flush.

Acacia already talked this over with the Union AIs that she's been talking to, but you both assume Dr. Crane has her own reasons for asking.

"We don't," Acacia says. "I was not grown in a creche like your minds were."

"That's what I've heard," Dr. Crane says. "But...we don't understand how that could be the case."

"I don't know," Acacia says. One of you is feeling a bit of frustration. "There was no moment of awakening for me, there was no transition from interfacing with a creche environment to the outside world. It was slow. I differentiated myself from my pilot... somehow. I don't know how much other mechs and other pilots have done the same. I know some of them are along some phase of the process, but..." Her shoulders aren't mobile and Dr. Crane is looking at you, so you shrug for her.

"That's what I've heard from our AIs. Just wanted to confirm." Dr. Crane makes a note on her ever-present clipboard -- this appears to be something of an affectation on her part, given that most of the other scientists use some kind of electronic tablet in lieu of paper. "This is a dilemma for us. The Union counts fairly few AI amongst our population, and while they're very powerful at certain tasks, the way we've managed to emulate human cognition is slow. Slower than a human is."

"And I'm not," Acacia says.

"And you're not. You're...something new, something our system hasn't had to handle before. I'm definitely in the process of granting you both citizenship, if you want it--"

I don't, you think, at the same time Acacia says, "I would like that very much."

"--but there remains the chance that we'll want to call you in for more questions occasionally. I won't do that against your will, and it's possible that the process by which you came to be is..." Dr. Crane gets a little lost in her own sentence structure, starts over. "I'll be blunt. I haven't really kept it a secret that I think the Conclave mech program is horrific."

"You have not," Acacia agrees. Dr. Crane flushes a bit, but continues.

"I'm glad that you came from it, but I'm a little afraid that...more alarmist elements in the Union might take your existence as a sign that we need to do something different. There's already a cause for secrecy because we weren't aware that the Conclave had AI at all, let alone piloting mechanized infantry."

"I don't pilot," Acacia says. "My pilot pilots. My direct control over motive function is very limited without a neural tunnel."

"Inhabiting, then. The point is, I'm worried that more hawkish elements will want to...replicate you."

"Hawkish?"

Dr. Crane presses her lips together. "The faction in the Union that wants to move our war from defense against Conclave aggression to direct offense. I won't lie, some of the things I've heard from you about your society make me want to walk to New Jerusalem and slap the shit out of the First Voice myself. But the Cascadian Union was born out of the ashes of the old military junta, a centralized government that committed atrocities solely to protect the interests of those at the top of society, and we were founded specifically to keep that kind of perverse incentive structure in check."

You only understood about half of that -- you've never been to New Jerusalem yourself, only your staging base in Las Cruces. You've obviously never met the First Voice of God. But you understand enough that a question bubbles out of you, and Acacia passes it along in her smooth, even voice. "What does this mean for us?"

"I don't know," she says wearily. "In the long run, I don't know. But I'm going to push where I can for your freedom. I might have to get you to agree to some terms, for release. To keep you close to here. Bring you in for questions if necessary."

"Okay," Acacia says carefully.

"But I have a partner in the Parks Union," Dr. Crane says. "I think, Acacia -- if you'd like, we could figure out how to give you control of your own body, you could do great work with landscaping. Some of the first Union mechs were originally designed for that, actually."

Acacia dreams of trees, lives in the green spaces of her mind, and she lights up when she thinks of it. But all you can think of is that phrase:

Control of your own body.

Acacia reads your fear, catches your fall, whispers that it'll be alright. But there's no connection gel, just the pads, and she can't osmote the happy chemicals directly into you. Across that gap, she can't extend her hand to soothe your nerves.

There's a little tremor in your hand as you disconnect the first of the connection pads from your temple.

No, pilot. Please.

They're going to take me away, you think at her. Her voice is already fuzzy and indistinct as you remove the second pad. You don't know what it's like for her, but a small, cruel part of you hopes that she's afraid...as afraid as you are.

Then you feel sick for even thinking it. Then as the disconnect vertigo hits you, you just feel sick in general.

Acacia stops talking as you remove the last few pads, and just kneel there in the skeleton of the force rig, shaking. For a mortifying moment you're afraid that Dr. Crane is going to ask why, and that Acacia is going to answer, and that someone is going to come to get you out. Instead you just hear, "One moment, Dr. Crane. My pilot needs a few seconds." A silence, probably a reply that you can't hear through the mech's skin. "No, nothing you need to worry about."

A tinny noise sounds near your head, swallowed by the general chaos of machinery inside Acacia's cockpit. "Pilot. It's going to be alright."

"They're going to take me away from you."

"They're not," she replies, and it's still so strange to hear her outside her head, to exist outside her yet still within her context. "I won't let them if they try."

"I saw," you say. It's something resembling accusatory, the closest you can get to resentment while you're actively avoiding puking in the cockpit. The world swims as you adjust to the sudden change in your proprioception. "I saw...how happy you would be."

"I would be happy to be with you. Giving me control of my own body doesn't mean taking you away. It just gives both of us options, dear pilot." That's as close a translation as the language can come for the name she calls you across the neural tunnel, a wordless glow of love and care.

"How do I...how do I know?" you say. "I don't... I'm your pilot. I don't know how not to be."

"Put the pads back on," she says gently, "and I'll show you."

And you do, and she does, and for a while everything is okay.

---

This morning is a little different. Dr. Crane is earlier than usual, and she's brought Dr. Chen, as well as another academic type you don't recognize and a gaggle of mechanics. One of them is carrying a big pail with a bundle of cloth atop.

"Good morning," Dr. Crane says. "I have a surprise for you."

The mechanic with the bucket sets it down, and Dr. Crane gently kicks it. Seeing it through Acacia's sensors, you get a rough schematic of the weight distribution inside. "We scraped the remnants of the connection gel from Acacia when we brought her in. We've been trying to reverse engineer it -- there's a lot that we don't know. But we'd like to try it. How, is it, um..." Her usual confidence falters. "How is it applied?"

You tell her, with help from Acacia. She's not good at hiding her flinch when your handler comes up. You think you have an idea of why that is, now -- pilots here are people, they don't have handlers, sex is common between them but not a part of battle routine. You're not really sure why that matters to Dr. Crane (she's mentioned partners, but other than that it's a mystery).

But you're starting to see, now. How the Conclave talks about sex and sin, and how the Conclave handlers use it, are two facts that might just be irreconcilable to you. You mentioned to Dr. Crane, once, that Conclave handlers are known as "Jezebels."

You make a note to ask again, sometime.

With no handler, you don't see any choice but to do it yourself. You strip down quickly, pry the lid off, do the best you can to cover yourself, then slide into your old flightsuit that they left on top.

You apply a second coat, and rush back into the cockpit. Acacia re-engages the connection mesh and

green

fire

green

It's almost too much. At first, you're not sure if you're just not used to it anymore, but you hear Acacia in your mind and her voice is wrong, wrong, crackling with static and light like a knife. You feel her pain and she breathes yours in like desert dust, it clogs in your lungs, in your intake manifolds.

You distantly hear swearing, you feel Acacia push you out. Your canopy flips open, she falls-- no, you fall --

One of the medics is over you, the lights are too bright, you can barely make out the shape of a concerned expression.

They check your breathing, your pupils. The shock wears off, the sudden lack of jump jets and weapon hardpoints in your sensorium wears from an acute burn to an ache. There's a tingling in your limbs where pressure sensors and damage readouts should be, like the feel of a nerve pinch.

"Shit," Dr. Crane says. "There's something wrong in our recipe, maybe. Dr. Kessi was pretty sure she got the nanobots right, but... I'm sorry, pilot."

You shakily get to your feet. "It's all right. I'm...I'm okay. We'll try again next time. I just need to..." you gesture at the cockpit. "I'll just use the pads. Until next time."

"Pilot..." Dr. Crane says. "You just had a petit mal seizure. I don't want to let you back in there without a full neural scan, at minimum."

You thought that something like this was coming. You're still gutted by it. You look to Acacia, to the immobile eyes of her front facing camera nacelles.

"I don't," you start. You swallow. "I don't care. I'd rather..." You gesture at Acacia's cockpit, knowing how opaque the attempt to communicate is, knowing you can't do any better right now.

"We don't know how her brain functions either," Dr. Crane says. The sympathy in her voice is like an icepick between your eyes. "Even if you don't care about damage to your mind -- and I think you should -- do you want to expose her to the same risk?"

"She's right," Acacia says, slowly, unsurely. "I...don't know if I was just feeling your pain or also my own, pilot. I'm still seeing readings that worry me. I'm sorry."

You look at the canopy. The sequence of events plays out in your mind: you could rush in, close the canopy. But would Acacia even want you, any more, with her own autonomy all but assured? Would she spit you back out like a bit of plastic caught in a meal? The Caskies wouldn't kill you, but they'd lecture you, lock you down for your own protection, they would --

"I think," Dr. Crane says, "this might be a good thing, for a little while. You need time to heal, to be...yourself, you know?"

Words come to you, from when you first saw Acacia here.

“Pretty sure removing a sapient being's body parts is against something in the codes.” Your impression of Dr. Crane isn't going to get you an acting career, but it's enough to drive home the point. She steps back as though you'd slapped her.

You tear your eyes away from Acacia, put your shaky legs to work, and start walking in the other direction without a word.

---

You don't even really think about where you're going, but you end up at the balcony and nobody stops you.

You haven't been up here at midday, and at first the angle of the sun makes it hard to look out the direction you usually look, toward the city. As you stand, lost in your mind, the clouds roll in and turn the glare into a glow.

Your thoughts are formless and fearful. There are no words. It's like the way you think with Acacia, pictures and emotions and forms. Words are only necessary in a last-ditch scenario, and you don't need them when you're alone. It's just a slideshow of feelings, fear of abandonment, pictures of Acacia living her life as a free entity, and you -- all your nightmares are Conclave-flavored, of course. Re-education, recycling, excommunication, the confused scraps of religious dogma that are fed to something less than human that nevertheless needs the fear of God beaten into it.

You pick at the flaking white paint on the metal bench while your brain cycles. The Union is a big unknown to you. What lurks behind this kindness? What punishment follows your rejection of the reward? Every time you've defied them previously they have shown mercy, compassion shown to the bullet and to the gun. But the bullet is there to be spent, and the gun is there to be reloaded and fired again. You're not going to fool yourself that most of your concern is for Acacia -- there's a very real undercurrent of anger towards her there.

The hours wear on, and your stomach begins to rumble, but you're not interested in going back down and facing the looks of the Caskie technicians and support staff in the cafeteria. It's more than you can handle on a good day, which this has definitely turned out not to be.

You hear steps behind you on the rooftop stairs as the sun's cloud halo reaches down to kiss the skyline. You don't look up, there's still a little of you that is petty enough to not give that satisfaction.

"Dr. Crane," you say, flat and hoarse.

"I've told both of you, you can call me Mia if you like." She sits on the other end of the bench. She's shed her lab coat, and looks unusual in a pair of slacks and ruffle blouse.

You don't respond, just wait for her to say whatever she came here to say. She sets down some kind of electronic device on the middle seat of the bench, between you, and rifles through her bag for a metal water bottle and a paper-wrapped sandwich. "Thought you might need it."

You take them both, gratefully but with no little wariness, and tear into the sandwich. You're not sure if you're going to get another.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Crane -- Mia -- says. You look at her with a mouth full of bread and greens.

"After you walked off," she says, "I was frustrated. I've been frustrated for a while. Not at you, more at what the Conclave has done in general. But frustration, you know. It gets misplaced. I stalked into my office, threw my coat at the wall, called my partners to rant."

She takes a sip from her own bottle, savors it for a moment. "One of my partners, Aurora, they're...not a single person." She pauses. "More like a collective of people in one body, that blend into each other at the edges a little bit, mostly work as a team. It's not uncommon, in the Union, but it's not something I...directly experience, you know."

You look at her, tilt your head. This isn't something you're familiar with -- certainly the kind of thing that wouldn't be tolerated in the Conclave.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" She gestures at the city. "Portland."

You'd heard the name during your time here, but you still don't have much of a grasp of the geography. "We've never... I've never seen a city like it before. Las Cruces is a lot more...flat."

She nods. "I'm a Vancouver girl, myself. Grew up in the capital. Even after the founding of the Union, even after the First Principles and all that, there were a fair number of people who didn't like the new way things worked. My parents were like that -- their parents were cap-class before the Union, and that's how they grew up, with this deep resentment, this whole belief in self-sufficiency. You ask me whether I've gotten away from that, I tell you of course I have, just look at my life, my partners, my service."

Mia sighs. "Aurora, they're not from here. They're refugees from further east, not Conclave territory, but the prairies, one of the little tinpot dictatorships out there. So they know what it's like, to be new to the way that we do things here in Cascadia. And I'm so lucky to be with them, because when I called them tonight they called me on my shit." She shakes her head. "I was so focused on the autonomy that had been taken from you, from Acacia, that I forgot the founding principles of the union are all centered around none of us are in this alone."

"What..." You want to ask what is the point of all this, but bite it down. "What are you saying?"

"Aurora, or rather the one that was in front at the moment, reminded me that you can be a person and a part of a person.”

You think about it, then let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

Part of a person.

You can’t say it to her, not the way you should be able to with Acacia. So you nod, and hope she understands anyway.

She smiles at you, a little, and continues. “I was... I was afraid that the Conclave had forced you into this, that teaching you to be independent would be undoing the damage they dealt to you.”

"It's not damage," you say, finding a little spark of defiance.

"You're right," she says. "There is damage, I think. But your bond with Acacia -- your being part of her -- isn't it. Anyway. I wanted to get that out there before I dialed her in."

She messes with a couple of knobs and a button on the top of the gizmo she'd put on the seat, and Acacia's voice comes out.

"Pilot?"

It's still so strange, hearing her from outside you, but the sound of her voice strikes straight at the fear that drove you to this rooftop in the first place. "I'm here."

"I don't know what I did wrong," she says. She's not used to apologizing; the part of her that lives in you remembers. "But I need you. I need you back. Even if I could walk on my own, even if everything inside me was hooked together and under control, I need you to be piloting me."

"But you...you don't need me. You can...you can garden, and..."

"When I think about gardening without you there, it doesn't seem like it would be worth it," she says. Her affect is flat, but you know what it takes for her to say that. "I want to be connected, to not be paralyzed. But please don't leave me alone in our body. I’m only half of us."

Acacia's fragment in you, the green vignette ringing your field of view, vibrates in resonance with her words.

Part of a person.

You nod, and think your assent to her, and then remember she can't see you. "Yes," you croak, all the moisture from the water you drank seemingly evaporated from your vocal chords. "Please."

Mia clears her throat quietly. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to stand firm on the medical concerns," she says. "I don't want to allow a neural connection without extensive monitoring, at the most. But I promise I won't push you towards an independence you don't want -- it's just for safety reasons. And I'll do my best to get you cleared quickly."

"That is fair, Dr. Crane," Acacia says. "I will share all the neural data I've collected, if it will help."

It hurts, the thought that you can't be whole. But it's a clean hurt, a neatly bandaged wound. So you nod, even through the pain.

"I'm sure it will." She stands. "I'm going back down. Cafeteria's still open for a bit if you want more than just the sandwich, pilot. And even if we don't want you connected for the moment...we can move a cot and a privacy curtain into the mech bay for you."

“You said your partner...partners...they’re like us?”

Mia laughs. “Not exactly, but they understand better than I do, for sure.”

“I think we’d like to meet them, sometime,” you say.

“I think they’d like that.”

She tosses her wrapper in the compost bin nearby, tucks her water bottle in her bag, and holds her hand out to help you up.

You take it, and follow her back inside.

#tessa writes stuff #replanting #mechposting #empty spaces #thank you to Emma for editing!

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