S.I. (original/SI)

This would be a good time to remember those glasses still in your pocket, probably.

 

*Book Eight: Neo-*

*Chapter One: Neo-cortical*

Flashes from a dream: A song by Queen; a spinning top; the sound of a modem connecting; the feel of a dental plate; Mars, with a blue sky; a thirteen-hour clock; a chessboard, with just one piece, a king, on its side; a pair of woman's shoes, the same sparkling shade of red as the king...

I opened my eyes, saw darkness... A wooden table faded into view, then on the far side, a white-bearded man in a gold-trimmed purple hood and robe. His elbows on the table, he pressed his fingertips together and looked over them at me with blank white eyes.

"Welcome," he said. "It has been many a moon since I last had a visitor."

I tried clearing my throat - at least nothing happened to hurt, which I was willing to take as a good sign. But before I could come up with some sort of clever introduction, the man continued speaking.

"I have prepared a formidable challenge for you: a test of nerve, wit, and strategic guile."

"No, thank you," I quickly piped up.

This seemed to disconcert the man - I guessed that whatever was going on, he wasn't used to a refusal at that stage of his spiel.

"The rewards are limitless," he countered. "Wealth, power, knowledge - even immortality."

"That's nice," I tried to placate him, "but I have recently had it demonstrated that I have no, ah, 'strategic guile', and would fail any test for it."

He lowered his forearms to the table, slipping his hands into his sleeves. "From failure comes wisdom - in time, you may learn that which you presently lack."

"In time, the dangers I seek to fight against will sweep across the world and kill all. I do not have time to learn from failing a test if there are faster ways to learn those lessons - such as reading how other people have failed."

He tilted his head forward, so that his face fell into shadow, nothing visible save his chest-length beard, and glowing eyes. "If you will not seek rewards for yourself, what about your companions?"

I hesitated, then answered, "If taking a test will help free them, then I expect there are better ways - finding out what the test-giver wants and offering it to them, to start with."

The whole place was fading into darkness again. "There are few ways in which one's character can truly be revealed."

"I don't have much character /to/ reveal; I'm just a bookworm... Hello? Are you still there?"

--

I opened my eyes. I felt rather strange; looking down at myself, I saw an expanse of pale skin, which, other than coming to an end just below my hips, was entirely human - and male. I looked up, squinting; there was Bun-Bun, standing just at the foot of my bed-

The door burst open, and soldiers in gas-masks rushed into the room. One raised an arm, holding a pistol, at Bun-Bun - a flash, a thunder, and what was left of her started falling. The arm shifted, pointed at me - a flash-

--

I opened my eyes. My body felt weird; my arms and legs were numb. I lifted my head, looked down at the pink shades of fur I'd gotten accustomed to... which came to an end just below my hips. I tried to reach down to poke at them - nothing happened. My shoulders were all that was left of my arms.

I decided that I'd been in worse situations; after all, I'd been dead at least twice. I tried to think of anything worse I'd been through short of being dead, and drew a blank. I shuffled that thought aside to concentrate on more useful considerations, such as whether I had any evidence of whether Bun-Bun would create a hoof or a paw on my left leg when she regenerated my limbs.

Looking around, I appeared to be in the castle's master bedroom. Over on a dressing table and chair was everything I'd been wearing the last time I had limbs, from my glasses to the smart-rope. I bent and twisted my spine, discovering both that I still retained Bun-Bun's freakish flexibility, and that Wagger had just been tucked under the bedsheet and was sound asleep. Pausing to listen to my body, I felt the ripples and thrum of Brenda's method of moving my blood around. My belly, however, wasn't swollen with her presence.

"Anybody around?" I asked the room, and myself.

I didn't get an answer.

I was pretty sure I'd been out for more than an hour, so I guessed that Brenda was too deep in my core to overhear. I hoped she hadn't done too much rearranging in there; I still wanted her to have more of a life than being my internal organs, or whatever it was she was so entranced by.

In the meantime, I was willing to bet that whoever had put me here thought that turning me into a quadruple amputee would make me entirely helpless. I also had nothing better to do than try to prove them wrong.

--

On my sixth try at gripping the smart-rope in my teeth to toss over the door handle, the door opened - but not by my efforts. Several white-boned, headless skeletons - entirely visible - walked in. Without a word, the first grabbed me by the waist and set me back on the bed. The second... set down a tray with covered plates in front of me. Another took up a position in a corner, placed a violin in roughly the expected position, and started playing something spring-timey.

The first skele-thing took a comb from a side-table and started working it through my pelt. The second lifted covers, revealing eggs, sausage, and toast, and started cutting them into bite-sized pieces.

There was treating limblessness as a challenge; and then there was being literally in the hands of my enemies, who had bested me in fights twice so far, without a single tool and with a greater physical handicap than I'd ever had short of being dead.

I opened my mouth and let it feed me the fershluggin' toast. And tried to think of any ways to cheat at this particular Kobayashi Maru scenario.

--

After being fed, cleaned, and stuffed into something that might have been supposed to be a custom robe but more resembled a black pillowcase, one of the skele-things took hold of me by the waist and carried me from the room.

The lab was spotless, the glassware filled with multi-colour liquids bubbling away.

The library contained another skele-thing, only this one wore a robe - and had a black skull on its shoulders.

I was set onto a comfy chair facing it. I tried to twitch Wagger into a less awkward position, but she was still limp, just breathing quietly with closed eyes.

"I-" I started to say, only to be immediately interrupted.

"Silence, wretch! You will speak only when spoken to, or else I shall remove your tongue, as well!"

"Does that count as being spoken to?" I got an eyeless glare from the skull in return for my feeble attempt at banter.

"Why did you intrude upon my demesne?"

I saw no reason not to go with the straight truth. "There was no indication that this was still the demesne of anyone or anything. If you feel we have trespassed, then I would be happy to collect my people, leave you in peace, and spread the word to others not to intrude on your privacy."

"You imagine that I will be satisfied with merely letting you /go/?"

"You have already taken my arms /and/ my legs, a punishment far beyond that which was given by any government for much greater offenses. I could even argue that I have a claim against you, for that; but I have much to do, and am more interested in a speedy resolution than negotiating over precise debts."

"You think /you/ are here to negotiate with /me/? /Look/ at yourself, animal! You are helpless! Worthless! You are not even fit to clean my stables with your tongue!"

"I do not believe that, twice - no, thrice - over. Amputation takes much more work than simple execution, so there is /something/ you want me alive for."

"Perhaps I simply wish to enjoy your screams as I flay your hide."

"I doubt that; my limbs had many nerve endings. I suspect three things: either you think I know something, or you want to learn what I know that you don't, or you wish to take advantage of my social position, perhaps for ransom."

"I am no mere petty criminal, you snivelling sack of meat!"

"I implied nothing petty about you. That said, I think I should tell you at least one fact you are currently unaware of: if you do /not/ let us go, I expect that in short order, this entire castle will be levelled, so that not one stone stands upon another."

"You /dare/ to threaten /me/?"

"That was not a threat; a threat would involve some future action on my part. This fact will remain a fact even if you kill me right now."

He - or maybe she, or it - didn't immediately respond with a bombastic threat, which I took as a relatively positive sign. Instead, after a few moments of silence, he turned to one of the skele-things, ordering, "Take her to the stables."

As I was hauled down the stairwell, I tried to unobtrusively check for Alphie's sensors, tripwires, and so forth and suchlike, but it appeared the castle's new managers had removed them all. When we got to ground level, rather to my surprise, it appeared they had removed all of Munchkin, as well - all the way to rebuilding the stalls and cleaning up the scratches and scuff-marks on the floor-stones.

My carrier opened a stall door, deposited me on a bale of yellowed hay, and left, closing me in.

"Mm, Mmmmm. Mmm mmmm mmm'm mmmm mm mmmmm mmmmmm," came from the back.

"What?"

A more familiar voice answered, Bunny Joe stepping forward as she said, "She said, 'Hi, Bunny. You just can't talk in these things.'" She scooped me up in a hug that I was powerless to either resist or return, and gave no sign she'd ever let me go.

Over her shoulder, I saw Sarah take a few steps closer to the light - only she had all manner of leather straps forming a harness around her body, some of which bound her arms behind her fore-torso, some more of which linked to a bit and bridle in and around her vulpine muzzle.

"Is everyone here?" I twisted to try to peek over the stall's door, but Joe hugged me closer to her. She said, "We haven't seen them. Just lots of walking bones."

"And Munchkin?"

"Like I said - just us."

"Well, crap. If we don't know where they moved it, we really do need to make a break-out and escape - how long have you been here?"

"Three days."

"And the first self-destruct hasn't triggered yet?" I was, of course, bluffing; I was assuming that we'd been put together so our captors could listen in. "I don't want to even /think/ about what that implies... Okay, Sarah, can you run in that getup? Joe, are there any saddles or blankets, or are you up to riding bareback? Can you hold me at a gallop, or do we need rope, or am I small enough now for Sarah to swallow me?"

Things suddenly became very confused - everything I was seeing pulled away, until it was all pictures on screens in front of my eyes, pulled further to be revealed as the interior of a pair of glasses, held in a blue-furred hand.

I blinked a lot, and squinted, and looked around. The good news was that Sarah was there. The better news was that I wasn't a quadruple amputee, my arms and legs were in white casts, and were, hopefully, just numb. The bad news was that I was dangling in some sort of rotating metal-rings getup, with my torso covered in a close-fitting suit, to which various wires and tubes were attached.

Sarah leaned forward, until we were practically breathing each other's breath, staring me in the eyes. "Quick, Bunny - how many experience points do you have?"

To say that I was confused was an understatement. "I have no idea."

"Good," she leaned back, "you're still with us. The Acadians are trapped or addicted or something, and won't let me unhook them. I haven't found anyone else; let's get you out of that and hope you can walk."

She yanked tubes, pulled wires, and did something behind my back involving lots of velcro noises. With hands much more careful than the skele-things I had recently experienced virtually, if not in actuality, she lowered my leg-casts to the floor.

I immediately started tipping over, and couldn't catch myself. Fortunately, Sarah grabbed me again.

"What did they do to you?" She wondered. "Nobody else has these things," rapping a knuckle on a cast.

"They made me think they'd amputated the things; right now, I can't feel them, and am hoping they just broke them when they finally caught me. How'd you get out?"

She grabbed some of the longer wires, set me on her hind-back, and started tying me to her fore-torso as she answered. "I think they only designed these things for humans. When they tried to show me Max playing the eating game, it just felt... wrong."

"Okay, but-"

"Let's talk as we go - I still don't know which way the exit is, but there look like more little rooms like these."

"Can we take the time? They seem competent - I'm astonished us getting out hasn't triggered all sorts of alarms."

"Maybe they're all busy topside. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth."

"Well - keep an eye out for something we can use as weapons. The skele-things have built-in tasers."

--

The rooms Sarah carried me to were empty, not even containing any hardware. Then we came across a doorway with an actual door in it - one with a wheel in the middle, and raised rims. It swung away from the hall, into a room barely larger than Sarah, on the far side of which was another wheeled door.

"Airlock?" I suggested.

"Water lock's my guess. Might be our way out."

"If the well's on the other side... can we hold our breath, swim fifty feet up, climb another ten, and not get caught?"

As it happened, the answer to that was 'yes'. Even Wagger seemed fine, if still unconscious, after the water drained from her lungs.

While Sarah had done just about all of the work, both of us were panting for breath in the well room, water streaming from our pelts.

"Let's hurry," I said between gasps, "to Munchkin. Everything we need's... in there."

"Right," Sarah struggled to all fours. "Just one flight of stairs, won't be too bad..."

"Er," I interrupted, "Sorry, it's up two, across the castle, then down one."

She just groaned.

--

We faced the blank end of the cargo container, with one of Munchkin's airlock hatches sealed up tight.

"I hope you've got a way in," Brenda started untying me. "My key-card's gone."

I ran through my security checklist. I couldn't type, or even show off my hand-prints; but my eyes and ears were still good, and I could still talk. "We're fine. I've actually planned for this... Well, not /this/ this, but close enough. Help me get closer? Face right up to the door there. Thanks."

I lifted my ears to point them at the door (and, not incidentally, expose the patterns of their blood vessels to the infrared scanner - there were a /few/ ways to distinguish myself from a bun-bot), took a breath, and sang out, "One two three /four/ five, six seven eight /nine/ ten, eleven twelve."

I waited, humming a bit, then frowned. I twisted my ears into new angles, and repeated the Pointer Sisters' distinctive chorus.

After the third repeat, I knew something was wrong. I gave up on the pass-song and waiting for the challenge, and tried thinking through the possibilities.

A rather significant one immediately came to mind, and I grunted to myself - when being genre-savvy became useful in real life, nothing good could result.

Of course, whether this was, in fact, 'real life' was rather questionable at the moment.

Ignoring Sarah's questions for a few moments, I called up some of my mental tools, the ones which seemed most likely to let me work out the best courses of action with this particular level of uncertainty. "Bisociation" was the word I applied to the trick of keeping two contradictory mental models in mind at the same time, and I'd picked up a few techniques in my psychotherapy for dealing with parts of my mind not being aligned with other parts.

I came up with four main options to spread my subselves between. This was simple reality; this was a simple false reality; this was a more complicated blend, such as a virtual reality partially based on real-time events; and something I hadn't even guessed at was going on.

There was very little that I could do to come up with appropriate actions in the fourth case; and as I thought about it, I didn't see anything for the third case that wasn't already covered by being prepared for both of the remaining ones. So, as a first approximation, all I had to do was act both as if a bunch of skele-things were waiting in the wings to jump out at us, and as if they were watching my every least glance and movement.

As I continued thinking, though, there seemed to be one important category that was surprisingly similar in all the scenarios: that the skele-things, and/or whatever other things they might be allied with that we hadn't even seen yet, were trying to provoke certain behaviour from me (and from Sarah, if she was really behind me and muttering unhappily about ambushes). Given how physically helpless they'd been arranging me to be, I guessed they were less interested in what I could do than in one or more pieces of information.

Staring at Munchkin's hatch, the most obvious data was security codes. Sarah had yanked me out of the last simulation just after I'd mentioned Munchkin's self-destruct, which was a fairly straightforward bit of motivation. Not that I should get too attached to that theory; they could just as easily be prodding me so they could create a more accurate model of my behaviour, either to better impersonate me or to better judge whether they could trust me.

One thing that seemed rather important in all scenarios was not to let them learn anything more about Munchkin's passwords. Fortunately, the one I'd just revealed only worked if my ears' blood-vessels could be recognized, and even then there were a dozen challenges Munchkin could make that I had to provide different responses to. (I have to admit, Sesame Street was /very/ good at imprinting memorable mnemonics.)

"Okay," I finally said. "Sarah, I think we should hit the smithy - first door on the right."

She grabbed me and hurried over. "Hole up, grab some hammers to smash things with?"

"Hammers, maybe - not a great place to hide out. I want to knock at least one of these casts off."

"Don't you need them, for broken bones?"

"I don't know if they /are/ broken - and even if they are, they'll heal, and they shouldn't be this numb this long. Wagger should have woken by now, too."

--

As Sarah applied a hacksaw to the plaster on my left arm (if it was plaster, and if it was my arm, and if it was Sarah), I tried to work out ways to try to distinguish reality from unreality.

If the skele-things could probe my mind and thoughts directly - I seemed to recall something from before my first death about some first steps taken in reading the visual cortex - then the task seemed impossible. On the positive side, if they could do that, then there didn't seem to be any point in running me through virtual hoops.

While there were some possibilities involved in secrets only I and Sarah knew, even stronger evidence would result from any secrets only I knew. The state I'd left the inside of Munchkin was a good example, since nobody else had been in there since I'd left, and there didn't seem any way for the skele-things to fake it. Unfortunately, whether because of a glitch in the real-world's security system, or a design choice in virtuality, that option was closed to me. And the skele-things had free reign of the castle, which ruled out almost everything else. About all that was left was... my own body. And, just possibly, if she was still keeping my circulation going with Plan C, Brenda; who was malleable enough that she might have even escaped detection if the skele-things had their own version of an auto-doc to check for internal surprises.

Not that I could just slice myself open to say 'hi'. Even assuming that was practical, if this smithy weren't real, then there wasn't any guarantee that waking up from this virtuality would put me into the real world; and the next one could be built to take into account whatever secrets I'd revealed previously.

I had a thought on that; but it would be done easiest, and most unobtrusively, if I had a free, un-numbed hand to work with. And thus: the sawing, with reasoning that was valid entirely on its own merits if this was reality.

"Okay," said Sarah, "that's your upper arm, now your forearm, 'K?"

"Actually," I suggested, "could you try peeling the slice wider? Maybe we can slide the whole thing off like a glove."

She poked her fingers into the white-powdered opening. "Don't know," she admitted. "Looks like your fur's caught in the cast. Taking it off could tear it all out and hurt like a mother."

"It's still numb - might as well take advantage of that while it lasts."

Sarah rolled her eyes, but stuck her hands in and pulled, causing some rather cringe-inducing tearing noises; and the cast fell to the floor.

We stared at my left arm. "Well, /that/ can't be good," she said, and I agreed.

Black metallic webbing, or maybe fungus, was laced over the skin of my arm - and into it, threading deep into the flesh, the muscle, and as I discovered when Sarah poked it with a finger, the bones.

I found myself hoping that it was just some sort of involuntary cyborgization or medical experiment; as opposed to some sort of attack on Bun-Bun, or the result thereof.

"I'm not saying this is Plan A," I said to Sarah, once again trying to get anything past my left shoulder to twitch, "but do you happen to know how to perform an amputation?"

"You're joking, right?"

"I suppose we'll just have to watch for any changes. ... So much for the numbness being from the cast pinching something."

"Do you /have/ a Plan A now?"

"A simple one: you run for help as fast as your legs can carry you. Right now I'd slow you down, so we stash me somewhere until you've started spreading the word. Maybe the office outside the castle."

"Why not bring you with me?"

"Because I want you to get Lake Erie to, literally, call in the cavalry. This is well beyond an archaeological exploration of an abandoned castle, or proving I can handle myself. The more time you lose carrying me, the longer it'll be before well-armed professionals can retrieve everyone who's been kidnapped, and generally demonstrate to the locals that negotiation is better than the alternative.

You're not trying something stupidly self-sacrificing out of guilt or anything, are you?"

"Sarah, this is /me/ here. I'm crazy like a fox, not like a... crap, I was sure I could finish that analogy."

"Don't you mean metaphor?"

"Back to the topic at hand. Bring the saw - if my arm starts working while you're gone, it'll give me something to do. Up the stairs to the roof, out, then any of the towers, and we'll be clear. Ready to go?"

"No, but you're the boss, boss."

In moments, I was tied back on her back again, and Sarah had herself a nice mallet. The left hindleg stairwell was at the back of the smithy - part of why I'd picked it, and part of why it was a bad hide-out - so she braced like a runner to start galloping, swung open the door, bounded to the stairs...

... And collapsed in a twitching heap.

I decided that invisibility sucked. At least when the bad guys had it. And then lost the world again.

 

*Chapter Two: Neo-phyte*

I came to facing the grey-bearded, white-eyed man again. The casts were gone without a trace of powder or yanked fur, but the dark metal traceries covered both arms - even further than before, now imprisoning both my hands in the flesh-piercing mesh.

He just stared at me from over folded hands, so I tried starting with one of the more important questions. "What do you want?"

"To ask you the same question."

"Mainly, to be left alone so I can do my own thing. Can I go now?"

"And what is 'your thing', that you are so eager to get to?"

"Er..." I wasn't quite sure where this conversation was going, but the fact that it /was/ a conversation could be seen as a step forward. "Given my druthers - read, mainly. There's just a lot that I have to do so I can do that, which my companions and I should really be getting back to doing..."

"And what do you read? Tales of romance and adventure, where you can escape the doldrums of reality for the excitement of new worlds?"

"Some," I admitted, still trying to work out what he was aiming for. "But even before I started having to deal with excitement in my real life, I mostly read to try to find new ideas." He just kept looking at me (or maybe he rolled his eyes, I couldn't tell), so I elaborated, "I've been willing to read stories that lack any and every literary merit - as long as they give me some new idea that I can play with, a new way of looking at reality, a structure that combines several old ideas into an elegant, simpler whole..." I tried to shrug. "Not that I get to do that much, these days - so little time, so many books have been lost, and even trying to sort through the rest is a task in itself."

"Is there a particular subject you enjoy more than others?"

My earlier attempts to direct the chat down other lines having failed, I was playing along to see if I could figure out what he was trying to find out before he asked for it - and if I could, to describe my answer from the most beneficial perspective. Not that I was any great shakes at understanding other human minds, let alone strange AIs - to myself, at least, I had to admit that that score of three for my Charisma wasn't entirely inaccurate - but staying within the bounds of polite discourse seemed to at least keep things more predictable than any of the more creative options I came up with.

I answered, "I've noticed that a lot of what I enjoy reading, for its own sake instead of as part of learning something to help with something else, can be collected under the category of 'obscure and obsolete communication methods'."

"Could you explain what you mean by that?"

"Saying things in ways that are unlikely to be understood by anyone else, at least without some effort."

"Could you give an example?"

I felt my ears twist as my brows rose - if he was spending this much time on this, it could be close to whatever he was looking for. But even knowing that, I couldn't pin him down. So I ran my mind through some of those things - UUCP, FidoNet echomail, LincOS, odd numeral bases like balanced ternary, RedCode and other forgotten computer languages, auxlangs and conlangs... and there was one that was simple enough to describe in just a few words, but with enough complexity to keep the conversation going as long as I tried.

"Shniglish," I told him. "It's a subset of another language called Lojban, about a hundred words, but those words can be combined into millions of distinct concepts. It can be used by itself, or bolted on to an existing language. And as far as I can tell, even at the height of the culture that created it, not a single person actually /used/ it."

I raised my brows further as I got a slight head-tilt out of the man. "Do you seek others to speak this tongue with?"

I shook my head. "Even /I/ can't really speak it; I only know a few of the words by heart. I hoped to learn it as a mental tool - to be able to express any of those uncountable combinations and permutations of the concepts, to myself if nobody else, so I could... think about them more discretely, more clearly. I hoped that I could gain some insight from that - but there were always other things to do with a higher priority, with a greater chance of being of more use."

The man smiled.

And the world dissolved.

This wasn't a simple fade-to-black or scene switch. My ears were bombarded with noise, my eyes with static, my other senses were jangled, I switched from back-arching agony to orgasmic ecstasy and back without rhyme or reason.

I had no way to measure time, and was too bombarded with stimuli to make any sense of it. Minutes, hours, weeks - it could have been any of them.

At some point, I realized that my head was lying on a tabletop. I was looking in the direction of my right arm, which was covered in and penetrated by those black metal wire branch things all the way to my shoulder. And then I was cognizant of the fact that I /was/ looking at my arm.

"Oy-roheh, wa-nigh," I grunted, expressing mental pain and confusion. Then I blinked, added a "Weh?" of surprise, realized that I was /thinking/ in the words as well as saying them, and exclaimed an "Yee-shy!" of superlative fear as just some of the implications of what seemed to have just happened started to come to mind.

I straightened in my seat, saw the white-eyed man smiling, and tried not to yell as I told him, "Yee-shy-sehee-nigh! Ehah-nigh! Yo-nigh-shy-sehee-nigh-die!", which, roughly translated, meant 'Superlative fear of you, prohibition, an extreme lack of respect from you to me!'

Calmly, he responded, "Weh-ruheh. Uhah-die-roheh," which I knew to mean 'Mild surprise. You experience mental gain.'

I tried to focus on the English I hoped I still remembered. "You... Whatever that was, ehoh-nigh - I mean, I want you to /not/ do it again."

"Whyever not? I have saved you countless hours of study."

"Eehu-sehee-nigh... Pay eehee-nigh-sehee-die?", roughly meaning, 'You are unfamiliar to me. How much do you respect others' privacy?' I managed to add, "Zheeha - I mean and... please, stick to English."

"I do not see why. You have your millions of combinations of attitudinals, not to mention discursives and vocatives. They are an excellent tool for expressing exactly what one means, and we both understand them. Why not use them?"

"Because my mind's all I've got /left/! I don't know what you did, I don't know what you /can/ do, I don't know what /else/ you changed or can change or will change! Ooha-nigh-roheh-nigh! Wu-die, ohu-buho aho-buho-nigh aho-nigh-sigh-buho!" ('Mindless loss! Your cruelty, starting to feel stress, ceasing to feel hope, beginning to feel extreme despair!' It sounds a lot more coherent in the original rather than the English gloss.)

"I can give you anything. You can know anything, /be/ anything you wish."

"Kahu, zaha, suha... From stories, from things I've seen, from things I generalize... Whether or not I believe that, I know I'm supposed to be afraid as hell at an offer like that." My mind had been tampered with - I didn't even know whether it had been done directly, with some sort of blipvert super-tech data dump, or just some sort of regular psychological conditioning that had messed with my time sense. Avoiding swearing had dropped rather precipitously down my priority list, while expressing my emotions in good old-fashioned English had risen.

He drummed his fingers together for a few moments (during which I wished I could do the same), before saying, "Do you wish to learn more about the learning process?"

"Y- Wait. Do you mean by that... whatever that was you did to me?"

"The learning process, yes."

"I don't think I can go from not trusting a mind-affecting... technique to trusting it properly by using /that/ technique."

"Of course you can. Once you have learned how it works, you can trust it."

"There's a paradox in there I don't think I'm explaining well... Wa-rohah," ('discovery, social',) "wait, have you been using this process on everyone else?"

"If you mean those who entered Lion Castle at the same time as you, they are quite happy making their numbers go up, and are gaining many experience points."

"Wa-nigh." (Confusion.) "So why am I getting special treatment?"

"You started playing the games - and then stopped. Weh-ooheh." ('Surprise, wonder'.) "You are astonishingly difficult to make happy."

"I'm a Bayesian. We're astonishingly attached to reality. And to being able to trust our minds. Wee-nigh-sigh your process." ('Your process makes me very unhappy.') "It would make me very happy to get back to reality." I tried to wave a hand to gesture vaguely in the metaphorical direction of reality, but, of course, failed. "And moderately happy to know why you've put all this black stuff in my arms and legs."

"I did not place it there; it is as much a reflection of your original body as your fur or ears."

"... That can't be good. Zhehu," ('truly',) "it was hard to say that instead of ooho-shuhee-roho." ('Physical timidity.') "but I'll be happy to deal with that on my own terms. Taho-nigh," ('as I was saying,') "now that you know reality makes me happy, how about letting me and my people get back to it?"

"It may make you happy. They are happy as they are."

"Pehee," ('I opine,') "in the long run, they'd be happier with me."

"Ya-nigh." ('Disbelief.')

"Muha," ('for example,') "it'll be hard for them to be happy if this place is levelled and they're all dead."

"Do you expect them to survive any longer at your side than deep within the heart of the world?"

"I think they have a better shot at it, at least - haven't any of them told you what we're working on?"

"I have little more trust that you can touch the Singularity and survive than you seem to have in the learning process."

I really wanted to scratch the back of my head. "Are you a total-happiness-maximizer? Could I make you some sort of deal, where I find you two people who want to, ah, spend their time increasing their experience points for every person you let go?"

"If you are opposed to what I offer, why would you bring even more people to me?"

"I have a perfectly reasonable answer based on certain notions of consent, koohee," ('but,') "your question has just raised another point in my mind that I need to think about."

"Take all the time you wish."

"Keeheh. I mean, thanks." I closed my eyes.

Not that I felt any real gratitude, but there was no reason to abandon the polite gestures. Yet. Unless there was. Which was the point.

As a Bayesian and aspiring rationalist, I was all too aware of a great many ways in which the human mind took shortcuts to jump to conclusions: logical fallacies, that might have been good enough reasoning for people in the ancestral environment but led to all sorts of problems in a highly technological society. One wag had described the result as trying to think on 'corrupted hardware'.

But the ancestral environment didn't include AIs of inscrutable goals inserting information /directly into my freaking mind/.

And after that transfer, I was seriously considering letting this thing have even /more/ people.

I had to seriously consider the possibility that that conclusion had been injected into my mind along with all the variants of the word "bayheh", and that the hardware I was thinking with was even more corrupted than it previously had been.

If a /lot/ more data had been shoved into my skull than I believed had been, then I was pretty well screwed. There was no limit to how much of what I 'remembered' could be false; and stuck in these VRs, I had no way to verify any of it.

But as hopeless as that sounded, I wasn't entirely without hope. (Even if that hope was as false as the wood-grain of the table my arms seemed to be resting on.) All I had to do was redevelop my metaphysics, epistemology, science, and ethics from scratch, and compare the results to my current plans.

Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds - I'd even done it before. The goal-trees I'd scribbled inside Munchkin were built on precisely that foundation.

The /very/ first step was one that philosophers had spent countless hours debating; but that I hadn't found any way to get around starting with. It was to take, as an axiom, that solipsism was false; that the evidence of my senses was at least loosely correlated with an outside universe. (If someone wanted to argue the point, well, who could they be arguing with?)

After that came the existence of reasoning - that I could apply my thoughts to come up with new, true ideas based on my senses' evidence, and the various ways to sift truth from falsehood, to assign more confidence to some methods and conclusions than others.

One such conclusion was, well, I didn't want to die. And there were so /many/ ways that could happen - up to and including of old age while ensconced in whatever ecstatic fantasy I might enjoy here. And from that pure, utterly selfish goal, it was simple enough to derive what most people thought of as ethical behaviour, for everyday situations. (It didn't necessarily produce the same recommendations for actions in extreme situations, such as international politics. However, since applying sufficient thought to reach /any/ ethical goal, constrained by the observed laws of physics and evolution and sociology, didn't produce standard ethical advice for those circumstances, I was willing to not take that as a strike against my ethical reasoning.)

All of which finally brought my arsenal of tools back up to scratch to abstractly consider the issue at hand.

Without opening my eyes, I started working the problem out loud.

"Consent is important to me," I started. "I generally don't want other people to do things to me without my permission, since they tend to do things that help them reach their goals instead of mine. It's generally infeasible to arrange things so they have to worry about getting my consent but I don't have to worry about theirs, so it's a useful general guideline. Things get more complicated when consent is questionable, or the biology of a brain is wired so that the making of a choice isn't voluntary, such as chemicals directly affecting the brain's reward system. But as a general rule, getting explicit consent before applying mind-affecting... stuff... may not make it /good/, but at least removes it from being /necessarily/ bad."

I finally opened my eyes. "Being able to /demonstrate/ that consent was given is also important, when you're dealing with others. I don't think you can do that for Sarah, Joe, and the others. I think it can be arranged for certain people whose lives are unhappy or pain-filled enough that they'd gladly chase experience points, or whatever else you offer. As long as you don't take enough people to dent the economy, then to get back the people who can help me the most with my anti-extinction project, I can justify allowing you to advertise your services to the broad public."

I looked away from him, at the surrounding darkness. "I might not /like/ it, but I know that even laudanum can only do so much."

"You have made more than one error in your reasoning," said the figure I still didn't have a name for. I decided, given his apparent fondness for running D&D-themed things, to think of him as 'DM' until something better came up. DM continued, "Do you wish me to tell you what they are, or would you like to work them out for yourself?"

"As long as it involves talking, and not that data-dump thing, pehu," ('please',) "tell me."

"Your companions all know that you style yourself as a sovereign queen. It is entirely feasible for you to arrange matters so that others require your consent to do things with you, while you can ignore whether or not they consent to what you choose to do to them."

"Queens can be deposed - or executed by revolutionaries. Even if I agreed I had the power to do that, if I were to exercise it too casually, I wouldn't be a queen for very long. Part of the point of having a whole government apparatus instead of exercising direct rule is to have a clear, understandable, and democratically-accountable system to work out when to apply the exceptions to the general rule of requiring consent."

"If all that is true, then what does that government need a queen for?"

"'Need' is a tricky word, in that it always implies a goal that need is necessary for; and that there are one or more people who have that goal. There are several goals for which having a monarch is useful, or even necessary, and various people and groups who have those goals in mind at some level of priority - but there is no single answer to the question of needs in regards to monarchy that every member of the government will share." (I made a mental note to raise a toast to Sir Humphrey Appleby for his lessons on low-information loquaciousness, when I got a chance.)

"That sounds suspiciously like a lot of wordy rationalization, from someone claiming to be a rationalist."

"Aspiring rationalist. And ask a better question, get a better answer."

"Very well. Why should I concern myself with demonstrating your version of consent?"

That was an easy one. "The more you do, the more you can convince other people to help you get what you want, like convincing them to join your virtual... things."

"What makes you think I want more people?"

"... Don't you?"

DM's virtual lips curled into a slight, virtual smile, which could have meant anything. Then he gave just as enigmatic a frown. "It appears our time together may not be as extensive as I had previously anticipated."

I made a quick guess. "I'll be quite happy to fight off threats to my people, as long as I believe they're going to /be/ my people..."

I trailed off as he shook his head. "It is nothing to do with anyone but you. You are placing me in something of a conundrum, in fact."

"What are the options you're stuck between?"

"Whether or not to remove your brain from your skull."

"I'm going to put my vote strongly on the 'not' side of that choice."

"Are you sure? It's for your own good, and you need never be aware that it has happened at all."

"... With all the information currently available to me, I can't see myself consenting to any such procedure."

"Very well. If you wish to resume our conversation, drop a coin into the well."

"Are-" is all I got out before everything went black. Again.

--

I woke up curled into a fetal position... and unable to twitch a single muscle.

Well, almost. I could still inhale and exhale; and I could move my eyes. But my entire body was covered, coated, and pierced through to the bones with that black metal briar stuff. There was an extra layer right in front of my eyes, blocking parts of my view; and my glasses were nowhere to be found; but from what I could see, the metal wires had grown to fill all the spaces between my limbs, other than a gap for my gut to expand into as I breathed. I could feel my ears were flat, Wagger curled up between my legs... and they were also threaded through. Even my tongue was wired into place.

Nothing was numb anymore, and I decided to be very happy that whatever was going on wasn't triggering my pain-sensing nerves.

I was lying on my left side, and after peering a while through the metal vinelets to the fuzzy world beyond them, I guessed that I was back in the castle's main bedroom.

Nothing happened for a while.

I could breathe, blink, roll my eyes, and listen to my Brenda-based stutter-pulse.

After a while, I fell asleep.

--

I woke to a voice: Brenda-through-Boomer, coming from the region of my gut. "Bunny, can you hear me?"

I tried to grunt - but even my vocal cords seemed to have been pinned down. And as I looked around, less of the bedroom was visible - the bushy metal stuff was getting thicker.

Brenda said, "I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm still here. I had to drop a lot of mass to hide in you... I think I'm about as big as a cat now... but I've been keeping your blood flowing. I don't know what's happening to you... Maybe the auto-doc can help? I need to be bigger to try taking you there, so I have a plan to get my frozen mass. But it'll take a while, and I can't leave you for more than an hour. So I'd have to go back and forth a few times."

I did the only thing I could think of to let her know I'd heard; I exhaled as hard as I could, emptying my lungs entirely.

"Was that you? Can you hear me? If you can, uh, can you do that twice?"

I readily complied.

"Oh thank god. I was starting to... Nevermind. I'm going to go get started and then come back, okay? Um... One for yes and two for no?"

I exhaled heavily once.

I heard the ever-so-slight sound of Boomer's power switch, then felt Brenda - or at least some of her - slipping out of my pouch and into the mesh.

Then she was gone.

If this was another virtual simulation, it was a pretty boring one.

I spent my time thinking about my recent 'language lesson', and trying to pin down which words I'd been taught. Or imprinted with. It was harder than I expected; can you name /every/ word for an emotion that you know? So I resorted to trying to identify patterns in the words I was pretty sure I hadn't known the previous day and trying new variants. It was as time-consuming as one of those mindless word-search puzzles. I just happened to have a good deal of time.

After a while, I felt a slight shift in the bed, and in short order Brenda was back with me.

"The branch things are kind of rounded off on the outside," she reported. "Kind of like a big ball. And they're getting harder to squeeze through. If that goes much farther... I'm going to have to stay inside with you, or cut in from the outside. On the bright side, I think I can roll you, which will be a lot less work, so I won't need to be nearly as big as I thought I would, so I don't need to thaw nearly as much of me, so I can probably get you to the auto-doc before you're completely closed in. Oh! And I should have started with, I brought back a bottle of pain medicine. It won't fit in the branches, but I can bring some to your mouth-"

I interrupted with two deep exhales.

"You don't want the medicine? ... I mean, do you want some medicine?"

Two exhales.

"You don't have to be brave - it's just us. On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?"

Since I couldn't exhale zero times and have it understood, I exhaled once.

"Hunh. Do you know what's causing it?"

Two more exhalations.

"It's taking longer than any zone Change I've ever heard of... Maybe a Changed plant took root in you? I didn't get much of a chance to peek out at anything while we were captured."

I would have shrugged, but, well, you know.

"Okay," she said, "I'm going to pop inside to keep the blood pumps stable, then go see if enough of me is ready. We've got some time, though - is there anything else you want me to do?"

I exhaled once.

"Oh. Um... Boomer, do you have any ideas?"

"I have insufficient data to propose any plans at this juncture," Boomer said in her own voice. "However, I do feel that I should mention that my battery is currently thirteen percent full."

"I meant, ideas about how Bunny can say what she wants."

"When more technical methods are unavailable, and a patient can control at least one muscle, such as blinking, the traditional method is to recite the alphabet and have the patient blink at the appropriate letters."

"Did you hear that, Bunny?"

I exhaled agreement - and immediately changed my mind about what to suggest.

"Okay, Boomer, could you do that?"

"A, B, C..." This went on for some time, with me selecting the letters T, A, P, C, and O. Then, instead of going back to A, Boomer asked, "Tap code?"

I exhaled a sharp agreement.

Brenda asked, "What's that?"

"An alternative form of communicating in limited circumstances, such as when there is no way to make different signals for the dots and dashes of Morse Code. It is based on a five by five grid, with the letters of the pre-Singularity alphabet placed therein, with K sharing a space with C. Each letter is indicated with two groups of taps. A is one and one; B is one and two; F is two and one; L is three and one; Y is five and four; and so on."

"So she can talk just by huffing? Should have known she'd have a trick for that. And it'll save your batteries. Can't really get a cord in to charge you, so I'm going to turn you off until we need you, okay?"

"As you wish."

I huffed five and two; one and one; four and four; one and five; and four and two.

In my pouch, Brenda responded with three and four quick taps, and one and three.

 

I think it's some weird thing Bun-Bun is doing to counter the lotus machine.

 

*Chapter Three: Neo-sporin*

After Brenda finished turning herself into various sorts of ramps, finished rolling me into Munchkin, and squeezed in for a quick check on me, it was time to let the auto-doc do its thing.

Unfortunately, as none of its probes could penetrate the metallic mesh, it could do very little, and scan barely any more.

Through Alphie, who didn't have any power issues, Brenda reported, "It says your bones are mostly hollowed out, and that's where all the metal came from. Well, not exactly metal, but I'm not a chemist. But there's a bigger problem. It says you'll be sealed up entirely in a few more hours. I can't get it to tell me if you'll be able to get any air. I've got your laser with the silly name here, but it says the stuff is very thermally conductive and has a high melting point, so if I tried to cut you out, you'd cook. Almost all the good tools are locked away, and Munchkin isn't letting me in. Uh... For good news, it says the stuff is only growing through muscle and skin, not nerves or blood vessels or organs, so when we /do/ get you out, it'll be easy to heal."

She was silent for a few moments before continuing. "If I can't come up with a way to get you out soon, I'm coming in with you. Your blood will stop moving without me in there, and I... We're in this together, okay? Whatever happens, you're not going to be alone. ... But let's work on getting you out, first. Have you got a password I can use to get a hacksaw or some acid or something?"

As it happened, I did. Just in case I got Changed into something with nothing in common with my Bun-Bun body, I'd made a backup set of passwords - long sets of random characters, which had to be given correctly on the first try or not work at all for an hour.

However, there was an important issue I had to consider before giving any of them to Brenda: What if that wasn't Brenda, and this was just another virtual reality designed to get exactly those passwords?

I didn't have any obvious answer to the conundrum, so I punted. Via the tap code, I laboriously told Brenda, "Ask Alphie if saw works."

Brenda's voice came back, "That's a good idea, Bunny - find out what works, first, and /then/ go get it."

I couldn't tell whether she was being patronizing and trying to comfort me. I was too frazzled to go through me therapy exercises to work out if I wanted to be patronized to and comforted.

--

The tricorder reported that the woven metallic growth was surprisingly tough. According to Alphie, the few things we had in inventory that could make a dent in it would turn me into salsa before I could so much as twitch an eyebrow.

I might have been able to find something new in the factory's computer that could be made in time - if I could type on its keyboard and read the screen. And trust Brenda with all the passwords required.

DM had abducted everyone who could help, including the relay-buns; Brenda /might/ be able to get to the tower, send a message via helio, and get a response before my micro-hearts stopped... or she could just send a message out before she joined me inside the near-complete shell.

Or she could drop a coin in the well and ask DM for /his/ help.

Or we could just wait and see what happened. After all, it wasn't /impossible/ that the black stuff was benign.

With the clock ticking down on what could be my last breaths, with no way to perfuse my body with cryoprotectants for a second chance... I decided to do what would most likely do the most good: I asked Brenda to helio warnings to Erie, reporting as much of what has happened here as she had time for. (Alright, I breathe-tapped 'helio report'. Nothing like every letter taking a few seconds while a death-clock counts down to inspire brevity.) To be honest, I was also hoping she'd take long enough that she wouldn't be stuck inside the egg-thing with me when it closed up - no sense in both of us getting smothered instead of just me - but from what I overheard, she was being very careful to make sure she got back in time.

While she was off fiddling with mirrors, I had lots of time to debate with myself about asking DM for help. Even assuming this was reality, there was every chance that he was knowingly responsible for the growth. I didn't have a very good read on his motivations or knowledge, and wasn't exactly comfortable with what I'd learned of his methods.

On the other hand, he was the only help in reach, and I was facing outright death. On the gripping hand, after his little language lesson, accepting his help could result in mind-death. With that sort of power at his command, I didn't know why he hadn't already shaped my mind into whatever he wanted it to be. (There was, of course, the possibility that he already had. But that path also opened the possibility that I wasn't who I thought I was in the first place, and, say, had been spat out of Detroit after being built from scratch. But as long as logic and the techniques of rationality applied, and there wasn't any particular evidence supporting those ideas, I could safely file them away with Last Thursdayism.) The most obvious possibility that me being nervous and confused /was/ what he wanted my mind to be right now, but I was clueless what good that would be to anyone.

Before I made up my mind, Brenda came back. I heard her putter around for a little before she reported through Alphie, "I just looked at the latest scans, and there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the not-metal looks like it's going through a final growth spurt, and will finish up in less than half an hour. The good news is that the scanner says it's growing so fast, it's not going to be completely airtight - something about permeability I don't understand. I'm going to drop most of me back in the freezer and get in there while I can."

In short order I felt her diminished self slide into my pouch.

Laboriously (especially as I wanted to avoid hyperventilating), I twitched my gut muscles to spell out, "You should have stayed out."

She tapped back, "Never happen."

After a while, I spelled, "I'm glad you're here."

After another while, she tapped, "Play Tic-Tac-Toe?"

That was a little too simple for my tastes, but I was sure neither of us were up to blindfolded chess, so I counter-suggested, "Nine Men's Morris. Ask Boomer rules."

--

I knew /of/ the game, but not any of the strategies, so the two of us were pretty well matched.

After another draw, Brenda tapped, "Going in," and I felt her slide from my pouch into my abdominal cavity. After trying to guess where exactly she was in there for a while, she slid out of my innards, and started tapping so fast I had trouble keeping track. "Vines growing inside. Heart and batteries being eaten."

I supposed that if the growth had been drawing on the metal-like substances in my bones, the blood pump and its accessories were the next likeliest sources. Battery chemicals could be rather toxic, so I hoped that they wouldn't start leaking onto my lungs - I was still using those. But as I was working on how to phrase a request for Brenda to try isolating them, she continued tapping, "Will check rest of you."

She slid out of the pouch, and proceeded to slither through the mini-forest across my entire body. After her tour, she returned to her usual hideaway and reported, "Hoof breaking down. All else fine."

I really hoped that I wasn't simply going to have my organic parts digested, from one end of me to the other. I didn't think even Brenda could interrupt that. But while we waited to see how bad my leg would get (again), I asked, "Can you move batteries out?"

She returned a pair of taps meaning, "No," then added, "Vines pin in place."

I requested, "Watch for leaks?", she gave a single tap of agreement, and slid into the gaps between my organs again.

--

I woke to a drumroll on my belly as Brenda tried to get my attention. When I squeezed my gut to let her know I was listening, she switched on Boomer. "I think you're growing a new heart. And a proper paw instead of the hoof. I think the black stuff is /fixing/ you!"

That... hadn't really been a scenario I'd considered. As I tried working through the possible implications, I asked, "Wagger?"

"She's just fine, just pinned like the rest of you. And Boomer's fine, none of the branches come near your pouch."

I tried to start working out a new response, but fell asleep before I got to the first letter.

--

I probably half-woke a half-dozen times before properly regaining consciousness. And when I did - my limbs were stretched out straight, and I could feel a sheet resting on my fur. I couldn't resist arching my back and just plain wriggling.

"Careful," Brenda's voice came from nearby. "You've got an IV in your left arm. The autodoc said you were suffering from starvation and dehydration."

I opened my eyes, smiled at the blue-goo griffoness, then looked down at myself. I yanked up the sheet, and looked down at my toes - wriggling them on /both/ feet. I petted Wagger as I looked back at Brenda, raising an eyebrow questioningly.

"I'm pretty sure it was Bun-Bun," she said. "About half the metal stuff went back into your bones, the rest just kind of crumbled. You've got a perfectly ordinary heart, I've pulled my little blood pumps out, and I have no idea where the batteries or artificial heart went."

After a few false starts due to a dry throat, I mused, "Ohu-roho, I'm going to have to thank her. Maybe get her a chocolate cake or something." I started to sit up - and to my surprise, only made it a few inches before falling back.

"Careful," Brenda said, stepping closer to help. "All your body-fat is gone, and a lot of muscle, too."

"Some sort of last-ditch healing, zhuho-shuhee? That takes so much, Bun-Bun uses it as a last resort?"

"Don't ask me. If your body came with an instruction manual, you've never shown it to me."

"It's kind of important to make the best guess we can... At the least, to figure out why now, so we can figure out if it'll affect trying to get Sarah and the others back from DM."

"Who or what is a DM?"

"A placeholder name, like 'Melvin', for whatever's in charge of the skele-things. ... And don't just hover over me - I know you like physical contact, and I'm not mad at you."

She quickly flowed on top of me, leaving just her avian head recognizable, even if it did look as if it were growing out of my ribs.

"In fact," I continued, "after that little stunt you pulled, when we were both sure I was going to die and didn't know the branch-things would ever break open - don't look at me like that, we both know that was the most reasonable conclusion - then... This may come out wrong, so if it does, let's just talk about it instead of getting too mad, okay? ... I'm... not uncomfortable with your version of intimacy anymore. As long as we're in private; you don't do anything permanent, or that Bun-Bun will break out the black branches for; and you make sure I know what you're doing..." I shrugged. "Surround me, fill my lungs and breathe for me, make a permanent home next to my spleen, spread me open like a frog in biology class and juggle my kidneys, if it makes you happy. Seho, eehee-shy-roho, seeha eehee-rohee."

"I was with you right up to that last bit."

"Juggling organs a bit too much?"

"No, I just might take you up on that. After that... what language was that? More importantly, what did it mean?"

"Um. Let me think... 'From looking inside my own head, I know extreme physical closeness, and similarly, emotional togetherness.'"

"It's a nice thought... Probably sounds better in French. Is it from a book or movie?"

"Not... exactly. There's something I should tell you, about when you were hiding in me..."

--

"I'm going to kill him."

"Priorities, Brenda. First we get everyone else back, /then/ we worry about trying to kill a being we've never seen the body of, who has unknown numbers of robotic soldiers that beat us in a fight, has mind-affecting tech beyond what we've heard of anywhere else, and has everyone else in Project Delver hostage."

"Details."

--

While I spent far too much time playing with my toes or just sitting and enjoying my steady pulse, there were things to do.

After some thought, I concluded that if I was looking at a virtual world in which DM had enough control of my sensorium to produce the experience of Brenda manipulating my insides, then I was pretty much screwed; and the costs of trying to avoid revealing my passwords by not making use of Munchkin's many tools were pretty high if this was reality. So I collected a piece of evidence that tilted the odds in favour of it all being reality: I asked Brenda to show me my new heart.

She was, well, ecstatic at the prospect; and very carefully, very respectfully, and entirely painlessly spread my torso's skin open like a pair of shutters; did some snipping of blood vessels and once again took over pumping my blood; and slid my heart down and around my ribcage, bringing it, still pumping, just in front of my face, slowly tumbling it so I could see it from all sides.

I cleared my throat, but before I could comment, Brenda said, "If you're going to make some stupid pun about me having your heart, I'll wire your lungs to your intestines."

"Actually, I was going to make a stupid pun about 'Kali-Ma, eat your heart out.'"

"Since I don't know who that is, I'll let it pass. This time."

"Well, it looks fine to me. You should probably put it back before Bun-Bun starts worrying."

As she reassembled my circulatory system, then the rest of me, Brenda said, "You should add to your to-do list, figuring out how to talk to her."

"I already do."

"I mean, and have her talk back."

"... Tricky. But it's nice to think of a project to start once we're out of this castle. Hopeful."

--

With the odds now favouring one of either 'reality' or 'I'm so screwed it doesn't matter', it was time for serious planning.

"I could replace your missing muscle mass with me."

"I think we should avoid making my biology dependant on you getting in touch hourly, right now - we may need tactical flexibility."

"How about your missing fat?"

"Er... what? What good would me being rounder around the edges do?"

"It's not for your size, it's so your system can draw on the chemicals and resources in my cells, so we don't have to take so much time carefully treating you for starvation while avoiding this 'refeeding syndrome'."

"... Even if that did work like that, wouldn't that cause you problems? You're basically suggesting that I... digest some of you?"

"I can get the mass back by hunting some critters and eating them."

"You should think about doing that anyway - might not hurt to have even more mass in the freezer, so if something goes wrong, you can be up to full size as fast as you can."

"I think you'd need another freezer. But for now, what about getting /you/ to full size as fast as we can?"

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on my palms. "Ya-nigh-sehee aha-sehee-nigh-buho... I can't believe I'm even /considering/ this..."

--

"Bahu, very funny. Zoho-nigh pow-nigh, can you bring me back to normal now?"

"You're going to have to either stop using those words, or start explaining them."

"... Oha-nigh, I don't even notice I'm saying anything special. Um... 'Exaggeration', 'seriously', 'rhetorical question'. Crap, and 'the opposite of pride'. And I still look like a balloon."

"I asked Alphie and the autodoc how much body-fat you should have, and where it's supposed to go."

"Leeha, obviously someone dropped a decimal point somewhere along the way. It can't be healthy for my skin to stretch this far..."

"Well, I think you look cuddly. And you need all the nutrients I can give you to grow healthy and strong. I can bring your weight down any time before you step outside or let anyone else in, so why not just let it be?"

"Kahu oha-nigh-roho-vooheh-nigh. ... Er, thanks to growing up in my native culture, I'm feeling body-shame. It's irrational and may be counter-productive, but could we save this much insulation for winter?"

"Of course. All you had to do was ask."

"... Right. ... Remind me to ask Clara what the world record for fastest weight loss was."

--

After the light-hearted (ahem) hijinks, arguing about how much mass Brenda should make available to Bun-Bun to draw on, restarting my antibiotic regimen, and so forth, we still had to come up with a plan.

We came up with dozens, starting with running off to hire the Free Cavalry, to trying to adapt Ron's magnetic field to disable the skele-things.

Staring at all the papers spread on the floor, I grumbled a simple, non-linguistic, "Argh!", sweeping at the nearest ones with my paw. "Even if we add all of these to our playbook, there's no way of knowing if any of them will do any /good/. DM might have stuck me fifty feet underground - or five hundred. He may respond to negotiation - or may not. Sarah and Joe and everyone may be alive, or mindwiped, or turned into orcs, or dead."

Brenda, relaxing by spreading out on the kitchenette counter, looked down at me as I grumblingly gathered up the notes. She reached a paw over to Alphie (who we were leaving plugged into what was left of our detection array, for whatever good that might do), and asked, "How many of the plans give us more information?"

I shrugged. "Assuming that DM has even a minimal amount of competence in using his skele-things as guards? Saheh-nigh, just the negotiating ones. Here's one," I plucked out one sheet, "where we pretend I'm still in the branch-egg-thing and you ask for help. Here's another, where we over-emphasize the threat from the drones. Another, where we drop off an apology for invading the castle, take Munchkin back outside, and try to start from scratch by knocking on the outer gate. One where we surrender, one where one of us takes the other hostage, one where we try to seduce him, one where we precommit to minimizing deception, one where we challenge him to a game or contest... take your pick, any of them are just as likely to do any good as any other."

"Really?"

"Of course not really, but we don't have the info to distinguish which ones are more likely to be useful. I could work out an array about which plans make other plans less useful, with Boomer's help, but that'll only narrow things down a little."

"Have you written down what we /do/ know about your DM?"

"Mm... neehu-bayheh, probably not. Been working on what I remember. Probably should, though. Let's see..." I pulled out a fresh sheet to start scribbling on. "The whole castle seems to have been made during or after the Singularity. More likely after, since during, all the construction we've seen elsewhere has been those cooling towers, not a stone-type building based on an old book. Not sure what tech level was involved, since we don't know how /long/ it took, but I didn't see any obvious quarries nearby when I was in the air, so higher-tech seems more likely than lower. Odds are lower that DM came in after the place was built than that he was involved since the start, though I'm not sure if we can say whether he built the place or was built to go along with it..."

We spent some time going over every single detail either of us could remember that might imply something or other about how DM thought, from the fact that his servitors seemed to be shaped like skeletons to his choice of blank white eyes in the avatar he'd conversed with me through. I wrote down as much of what he said as I remembered, we tried to pin down timelines, checked with Boomer for confirmation of anything she'd been turned on for, and generally filled up the paper notebooks that were easier to shuffle through than Munchkin's digital whiteboards.

After a while, I observed, "About the only fact about his personality that I'm willing to commit to, rehno-bayheh, is that he doesn't think it's in his best interests to make it /easy/ for us to figure out what he wants. Bahu-nigh eeho-sehee-nigh eheh-die... Saying I can respect his competence at /that/, at least, is an understatement."

--

I was motivated, and Brenda was willing to try filtering fatigue toxins from my blood; but I'd just gone through a significant physiological upset, and really had lost a lot of muscle-mass. I ended up falling asleep right on top of Brenda, who had assumed bean-bag-chair-like proportions to improve on Munchkin's cushions.

I found myself sitting on a throne. Specifically, the actual throne of Canada - the biggest chair in the Senate chamber in Ottawa, a room full of dark woods, red carpeting, leather chairs, gold leaf, murals, engravings, stained glass, and just about every other feature you could imagine to announce that this place was Important.

Of course, it couldn't /be/ the Senate, unless something odd had happened in Ottawa during the Singularity leaving it intact, and there was no reason to think that had happened.

Also, as I peered up at the murals, I realized they weren't images from World War One, but my own life: both pre- and post-Singularity, going camping, flying in a paraglider, searching through Buffalo... I stopped looking at them.

Lowering my gaze, the parliamentarians were a rather more diverse bunch than I'd expect to see in any news reports. Just in front of me, sitting in the Speaker's chair, was a white-furred, blue-haired rat-woman, looking rather bored. Further off, a bear cub and bat-woman in knight's armour were arguing, the former yelling, "We can /too/ have more than one girlfriend!"

The bat retorted, "I don't think an amorphous symbiote, even a sapient one, can truly be called a 'girl', and there is more to be considered than physical closeness. How can we be sure that 'she' hasn't been dripping oxytocin into our veins to /make/ us like her?"

"Address the speaker, not each other," commented the rattess. "Usher, if they break the rules /again/, whack them with the rod." In the middle of the pseudo-Senate, a red-furred foxtaur cheerfully waved around a black mace, threatening the aliens, furries, cyborgs, elves, dragons, and other back-benchers. The rattess turned her head to look at me, commenting, "It's not like they've ever /followed/ the rules, but as long as I can come up with notes that make it look like they did, does it matter?"

"Pay zoho-nigh?" I asked. "Leeha-sigh!" I paused - that had come out wrong. "Kehoo - yeh-nigh. Yah-nigh. Wah-nigh?" I coughed and cleared my throat.

"What was that?" asked the rattess.

"Zhoohee, yee-rooheh-sehee-buho. Aha-behoo-sehee-nigh-die-buho. Ahee-pay-die? Eheh-nigh-day? Yee-ree-heh-buho!"

The rattess just blinked at me. "Je suis désolée, pourriez-vous répéter la question?"

By this time, my ears were flat, my eyes were wide, and flickering from side to side looking for an escape - when a new voice came from my left. There, sitting in the consort's throne, was a figure shrouded in a purple robe with gold trimmings, hiding everything of the figure but a long, white beard. "I suppose," he said in DM's voice, "that if the Queen is incommunicado, that means I'm in charge, right?"

I woke up with a jerk and a gasp. Brenda was already stroking my head and brushing my fur, but that dream had been just a little more coherent... and on-the-nose... then I was used to. Sure, I had dreams with narratives and plots all the time, and even sometimes had dreams that were sequels to other dreams. The difference was that they never really had such direct relevance or application to what was going on in my life.

Brenda was murmuring through Alphie something like, "Ssh, Buffalo's long past, I'm here now..."

As my heart-rate slowed down to something approaching normal, I managed to shake my head. "Not Buffalo." I took a couple of deep breaths. "I think I need to stop talking in Shniglish. Maybe have you pinch me when I say anything you don't understand. And I think I know which plan we need to use."

 

*Chapter Four: Neo-teny*

After a bit of design work on the robofac's computer, I used up the last of my digital cameras to make a small drone. Well, I thought of it more as a remote-control quadcopter. The trickiest part was coming up with a way for it to open doors; the solution the software presented were a pair of small arms, to grip the doorhandle and door at the same time, or the door and door-frame.

When I was comfortable enough flying the thing without crashing it (and Brenda finished letting it carry her smallest-sized self around), I sent it out of Munchkin with one of the credit-card-sized pieces of metal from the stores; they were the closest I had to a coin to drop into the well.

We didn't have any ultraviolet-sensitive cameras, and I was hesitant about letting Brenda out without some hint about what DM might do, so the drone's other task was to drop off a walkie-talkie near the door to the well room, with a card on which we'd written, 'I want to talk.'

While we were watching for some sort of reaction - any sort - from the well, or any skele-things that were wandering about, Brenda and I engaged in some idle conversation. "You know," I said, "assuming we make it back to civilization, you could probably get a job as a surgeon. You're sterile, you don't need anesthetic, and you can close up your incisions without significant scarring."

"Maybe," she agreed, "but just because I have a good idea what you look like on the inside doesn't mean I know what someone who's sick needs to have done to them."

"You could partner up with Denise, or another doctor, who could supply direction. Or maybe just become a midwife - you're probably the perfect provider of C-sections."

"That assumes people would let me. There's a lot of prejudice against Changed you haven't had to deal with, and I'm more Changed than most."

"I have a sneaking suspicion that if a woman is facing a choice between hours and hours of painful labour, or a brief intervention by someone who was Changed, practicality will win out... reasonably often, at least."

"It's an idea, but after what we've been going through, I'm pretty sure that if I leave you alone for five minutes I'll have to come running back."

"That may be the imprinting talking... like how you're sticking to griffon shape to try to make me more comfortable."

"Maybe."

"While I was fabbing the drone, I set it to make something else. It's that box I shoved in front of the oven - why don't you take a look inside?"

"... I'm not sure what I'm seeing."

"What does it look like?"

"A giant snail shell, painted blue with white clouds."

"Yep, that's what it is."

"/Why/ did you make a giant snail shell?"

"I sized it for you. You don't have to try to make me comfortable with you - I already am. You can take whatever shape you want, be whatever you want, and even if you want to be a giant snail, that's not going to change."

"I think that's the nicest and freakiest thing I've gotten in a long time. Uh - do you happen to /like/ snails, more than other animals?"

"Not so I've noticed; I just thought you might like being able to pull yourself into it and shut the world away for a while. If you're not interested, I can melt it back into feedstock."

"I'll think about it."

"Aheh-reeheh-die! I think we've got movement down - ow! What was that for?"

"Use your words."

"Oh, right. Uh - Pay attention! Or something close to that." When I looked back at the remote control's display, nothing was moving anymore; but the card had been turned around, and the word 'Library' written thereon, in rather nice calligraphy. "I suppose this means they don't want to use the walkie-talkie. I'll bring that back with the drone... while I'm doing that, could you lay out my encounter gear, and decide how much of yourself to freeze?"

"That depends - how much do you want me to bulk you out?"

"I don't see any reason not to look like I used to, the same as all the bun-bots."

"Are you sure? I could add more to your hips and bust..."

"Even if I had any interest in cosmetic changes like that, which I don't, all my armor is built for my previous size and shape. Mm... before you hit the freezer, do you think there's a way you can both stay under my skin and have enough of yourself on the outside to keep watch in the ultraviolet?"

"I'd just have to make an opening and hold it open, instead of sliding through and closing it up after. Your pouch is probably a good place, it's already protected, and I can reach up from there to your neck to look out from."

"As long as you can close it up in a hurry, and go back to hiding out inside me if I'm kidnapped again. Mm... now, where did I put those nasal filter plugs?"

--

Halfway up the stairs from the third level, I just sat down on the steps - okay, sprawled on them - panting. I said aloud, "Okay, so it's going to take longer than this to get my strength and endurance back."

--

As my eyes came level with the library's floor, I quickly looked all around; and there, casually sitting on a stuffed chair and paging through a large tome, was a black-skulled skeleton in a robe.

"Well?" it demanded. "Don't take all day! Sit!"

I swallowed certain words I felt like saying, and only in part because they were in the wrong language. As I rose to where I could see around the seats, Brenda squeezed out a quick 'all clear', so I cautiously sat in the chair facing the lich.

"You want to talk," it declared. "What makes you think I should listen?"

"I don't know if you /are/ the one I want to talk to."

"I'm the only one you're going to /get/ to talk to."

"In that case - I want at least two things: my people back, and to be sure you and your people, or whatever you want to term them, haven't affected my mind."

"Say I can give these things to you. Why should I?"

"The law of Comparative Advantage."

"You speak a nonsense tongue."

"No, 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'. Comparative Advantage simply means that even if you can achieve everything you wish for yourself, by yourself; and even if you're better at doing everything for yourself than I can do for you; then if you are, say, ten times better at doing one thing for yourself than I am, and /eleven/ times better at doing another thing than I am, then by trading, we can both end up better off than we were before."

"Nonsense."

"Do you want me to work you through the math?"

"Math can be used to prove any sort of trickery."

"Then I'll keep it simple and use words instead. If you say there's nothing I can do to benefit you, I'll have every reason to believe you're lying... and should I believe that, I'll have no reason not to start doing things you /won't/ like to get my people back."

"As if you could."

"Restraint can be mistaken for weakness, but it shouldn't be. But this is an avenue that would cost both of us a great deal to go down. So I'm going to try asking, yet again, for a straight answer to a straight question. What. Do. You. /Want/?"

"I see no reason to tell you."

I rested my elbows on my chair's armrests, and folded my hands just in front of my short muzzle, in much the same position DM seemed to prefer.

After a few minutes of silence, the skeleton said, "Well? What are you going to say to that?"

"I am wondering," I finally said, "whether there is some cultural... thing which is leading you to behave in a way that appears to me to be counterproductive; or if you really are trying to push me to becoming the best Commander-in-Chief I can be. Both explanations seem to involve reasoning that is inexplicable. The closest thing I can come up with is that what I see as incomprehensible reasoning is actually the result of multiple, conflicting sets of goals being worked towards. But if /that/'s the case, then trying to untangle what all those goals might be might require so much effort that we're back into you, collectively, acting to get me to treat this problem with a military solution, even if every single one of you, individually, wants to keep that from happening."

"So the cute little bunny fancies herself clever as a real person, does she?"

"Going over some things I've read recently," specifically, a piece of advice that went, 'Don't be afraid to ask for the moon. The other party may have no use for it,' "it occurs to me that I should change my negotiating tactic. While gaining my people back is still the core of what I'm asking for, I want /more/ - I just didn't think that /asking/ for more would do any good. I want your methods of invisibility. I want your skeletons to do my bidding - starting with standing watch in the outer towers to keep anyone /else/ from climbing over the walls. I want this whole castle as a safe place I can retreat to. I want those entrances you and the skele-things use, including the one in the well and all the others you've carefully kept me from knowing about, sealed off so only /I/ can open them. I /want/... even /more/ than that, but you don't have the security clearance to hear /those/ demands."

"And what do you want all of that /for/, pray tell, little bunny?"

"So I can impose my will on the universe more readily, and rearrange all manner of things to suit my whims."

"Hm..." I let myself appreciate, for a moment, the absurdity of a lipless skull humming, before focusing back on trying to negotiate with someone who appeared to fancy themselves to be Lawful Evil. "I may be able to offer you a couple of cloaks of invisibility, in exchange for a small service."

"How small?"

"You fancy yourself as being the head of an Office of the Post, do you not? I would like some mail delivered."

"How lethal would this 'mail' be?"

"No more and no less than any other selection of words."

"Where to?"

"Forty leagues from here - the City of the Buffaloes."

"And my other demands?"

"Can wait."

I frowned... but this seemed like it might be, if not actual progress, at least a route towards where progress might be found. "... How many invisibility cloaks are we talking about?"

--

Back in the safety of Munchkin, Brenda slithered out of me, bringing me back to my slightly withered natural state (to whatever extent the word 'natural' could possibly apply), but hung around on my outside, helping me take off my armor. Via Boomer, she said, "I know you're the queen and all, but... are you sure this is a good idea?"

"I'm very /un/sure. There are all sorts of ways this could go wrong. Maybe we'll be carrying the keys to a code that will be used for hostile military or espionage purposes. Maybe the whole point of the 'mission' is just to get us out of the castle. But... I have to admit, if they're not going to cooperate and let the others go, we're kind of at a brick wall. We haven't got the resources to mount an attack through the well, so even if we weren't going to run this errand, the next step would probably be to go out and get help."

"The Civil Guard? The Free Company? Your cult?"

"Actually, I was hoping we could helio ahead, and buy a herd of goats."

--

The best lies are honest, so I sent Brenda off to the helio to get the Lake Erie squiddies to have their landbound agents purchase a good set of "pack goats", plus all the practical necessities for keeping at least some of them happy in Munchkin's cargo carriage. (I suggested they get advice from Denise.) Dotty had mentioned the idea during one of the camp-outs, and it made all sorts of sense - herd animals stuck together, had horns for defense, could carry moderate loads, and transform local plantlife that was inedible to humans into edible cheese, reducing the amount of supplies that had to be carried.

While Brenda was out of Munchkin, I double-checked my facts and figures from some of the more secret parts of my library, so I could better figure out how many layers of a cover story I could come up with. Assuming an average goat's milk production of about four litres per day, with typical amounts of fat, then once the retrovirus had run its course, I could expect to be able to end up with about three hundred grams of naffa explosive per day, per goat. Any goats I left uninfected would produce around twenty-five hundred calories of milk a day, enough to feed a typical person (not counting any missing essential vitamins and such). Depending on the particular breeds of goats that could be found, though, and even individual goats' variations, I might end up anywhere from a third to three times those figures. If I remembered right from a few minutes of casual conversation, Dotty had mentioned something about planning for twenty-five pounds of gear per goat, twice that for big, strong ones on easy trails.

(The saying 'speak softly and carry a big stick' was good advice surprisingly often. I had the 'speak softly' part down well enough - but for the latter, I had a pile of toothpicks, a couple of Redwoods, an elaborately-carved chair, and a boomerang. Internet might have protections against building even a zip gun, let alone grenades or something more useful; but if I'd been able to drop a couple of depth-charges down the castle's well, I probably would have negotiated a bit differently.)

With the inner story in mind, and knowing what the outer cover story would be, I brainstormed up possibilities for further layers. Medical experiments came a bit close to the truth; having something to feed to a pet monster (or a secretly carnivorous version of myself) was a possibility, if I started losing some, as was sacrificing them in religious ceremonies; I decided against giving myself a reputation similar to Catherine the Great's; setting up a homestead had a certain appeal to it, and I made a note to look into how hard it would be to add some egg-layers or a hutch of rabbits raised for meat to the carriage (or to the castle, depending on how negotiations fell out; there was something close to fifteen hundred square metres of empty space inside the outer walls which could be put to more productive use)... that seemed like a good start, but I wanted at least one more. I decided to split up 'experimental animals' into a variety of experiments: mine detectors, zone fodder, additional wombs to breed an army of clones, and additional warm bodies to turn /into/ an army of clones should suffice for the moment.

--

When I went to collect the lich's "mail", which turned out to be a hardcover tome that looked like it weighed as much as I did, I asked him, "How hard would it be to convince you to rebuild the outer gatehouse so that my, er, horseless carriages can fit through it, instead of having to go over the wall every time?"

After a few long moments of an eyeless stare, I tried, "Or, if I were to take that quarter-acre or so of land inside the wall, and used it to start growing vegetables and keeping some small livestock, could you at least tell your invisible skele-things not to trample the tomatoes? Well, unless the castle is under assault? Even better, could you teach them how to manage a garden, collect fodder for the animals, and generally keep such an enterprise running?"

After more staring, I sighed. "Fine. You wanted me in my capacity as owner of the Royal Canadian Mail, here I am as de-facto Postmaster-General. Here's the paperwork, where, among other things, you certify that your package does not contain any unidentified hazardous substances which could pose a danger to the people and equipment transporting it. I'll also need a more precise final destination than just the city."

Further silence was starting to get annoying, so I snarked, "No tickee, no laundry. If you can't write, then at least /tell/ me, and I'll sign myself as witness."

A few red lights glowed inside the skull's eye-sockets, and without a word, the thing collected a medieval-styled quill pen, with which he wrote, in flawless cursive, an address of, 'Within the city of Buffaloes, from the center of the X whose strokes are each a mile long, travel a third of a mile towards the rising sun to the Tower of Control.'

He never did sign the hazmat form, so I took that as permission to run the portable spectrometer, and the auto-doc's scanners, over the thing. The former didn't find anything but ink, paper, and leather on the surface, and the latter didn't reveal anything interesting in any of the scan-modes. Of course, every single inked letter could have been packed full of microdots printed with secrets; or some particular cells, alive or otherwise, somewhere in the thing could contain even more data encoded in their genome... but to every appearance, the thing was just a big old book, written in a script neither I nor the AIs could make heads nor tails of.

--

Getting Munchkin out of the castle was awkward and annoying, but we'd already solved all the big problems on the way in. In short order, we were trundling back along the railroad, and stopping to say 'hi' at each of the heliograph camps, offering thanks for their service so far and offering to take the heliographers back to Erie for a short time before we returned to the castle.

--

Denise was in a foul mood. "Why /goats/?"

"Because people would look at me funny if I tried to milk a dog."

"I hope you're not planning on having me take care of them for you."

"Wouldn't think of it."

"Good. Because I'm retiring soon anyway."

My ears angled curiously. "'Retiring' or 'resigning'?"

"You know how half my visual field is hallucinations?"

"Yes? It hasn't been a problem for you yet, that I've seen."

"It's more than half now. I'm losing the part of my sight where I can focus on what I'm looking at."

"Oh. ... Uh... Is there anything...? That is..."

"If I thought you could do anything that I couldn't do myself, I'd have already told you."

"Ah. Well - you don't /have/ to retire if you don't want to. Even if you can't continue your current work, you can start teaching the next generation; I'm pretty sure Brenda wants to learn more about anatomy."

"I /won't/ take a job out of charity."

"Then I won't give you one. The biggest qualification I need to hire someone? I need to /trust/ them, and the fact that I'm standing here right now is pretty good reason for me to trust you."

"I suppose I could collect my notes on how I got your artificial heart made, so other people can give it a try."

"That's the spirit. Oh, and about my artificial heart... funny story..."

--

After leaving Munchkin's cargo car behind to get outfitted for livestock, and deciding that bringing more people along would be more likely to result in an information leak than anything positive, I set course for Buffalo.

Brenda was being a comfortable suit, so I called up Munchkin's pre-Singularity maps to show to her. "There's really only one obvious candidate for a mile-sized X with a 'tower of control' - the old international airport. When we get close enough, I'll take up a PPG to see if there's anything to watch out for."

"I should come up to," her voice came from my belly. "I can see those invisibility cloaks, so if the skeleton crew wants to send letters back and forth, there might be more of those here."

"Fair point. But before we go there, I have at least one other stop to make. There should be a set of experimental notes on a particular zone somewhere about here," I tapped my finger on the map much closer to the old city core, "and there just might be something there that'll spark a useful idea."

"I hope you know where they are better than 'somewhere around there'."

"I've got a street intersection, and Munchkin knows where the streets used to be. Narrows it down to around a hundred metres across, and once we're that close, there should be some hint about where to find the notes themselves."

--

What we found at that spot wasn't so much of a 'hint' as, of all things, a 'goat farm'.

The pre-Singularity buildings were nowhere to be seen, just slightly rolling hills, fenced pastures, a farmhouse, some out-buildings... and large numbers of goats.

Upon getting a whiff of the place, I spent several moments seriously reconsidering my choice of species to produce naffa.

I set Munchkin to park by what appeared to be the place's front entrance, asked Brenda to shade herself as a Windsor uniform, and pocketed a few essentials. By that time, I could see someone heading out of the house towards us, so I grabbed a cane and went out to meet them.

It turned out to be a teenager, black-haired and tanned, wearing what looked to be eminently practical clothing. She looked up and down at me, over at Munchkin, then back at me. "He'p you?"

I nodded. "A friend of mine told me she left something for me, and her directions brought me here. I don't want to trespass; may I speak with someone in charge?"

"'S me."

"Alright. May I have your permission to come onto your land to look around?"

"Look f'r wot?"

After a moment of thought about how much to reveal, I answered, "Papers. Maybe a book. Probably wrapped up to keep dry."

"No writin' here."

"She might have buried it."

"No writin' here. That all?"

"... I really hope it isn't. May I ask your name?"

"... Angel."

I nodded. "Angel, I'm called Bunny. Can we sit down and talk a bit? Your place or mine, whichever you prefer."

"Got chores."

"Could we talk while you do them?"

"C'n you milk a goat?"

"... Probably not. Not well, if at all."

"C'n you muck stalls?"

"If you show me one, to make sure I don't forget anything."

"C'mon in then."

--

Some time later, Brenda and I were both filthy, and I was sweaty, bruised from some too-curious goats, and if I'd had my original lungs the dust in the air we'd raised would have set off my asthma long since. (And that was even after Brenda had slid off me when we were out of sight, to help me. ... Okay, to do the bulk of the work. ... Fine, I could barely lift a pitchfork. But I did what I /could/ do.) But the stalls I'd been set to were cleaned. Not nearly as fast as by someone who did this for a living, but we hoped it saved Angelina enough time for her to spare me some.

I found her trimming hooves. When she was finished with the animal she was working on, she looked up at me, huffed a bit, then set it on its way.

"Clean up, then c'm eat."

"That's not-"

"You work. You eat."

I shrugged, not wanting to get into a cultural disagreement. "Where should I get clean?"

"'S a hose out back."

--

The water was /quite/ cold.

--

"Sit," ordered Angel.

I sat.

The farmhouse had extremely thick walls, shingles on the outside and plastered within. Since the floor was three feet below ground level, I guessed it was some sort of soddie.

A large, meaty-smelling pot was bubbling on a wood stove, which Angel attended to.

I tried to make conversation. "How long has this place been here."

She didn't even glance at me. "Years 'n years. Mine for two."

I raised an eyebrow at that. If the physical place had survived the nerve gas attack, and Angel had claimed it after, then I'd have expected that to have happened three years ago. "Family?"

"C'm'plic'ted. Food's ready." In a few moments, she carried a tray from the stove to the table, with a couple of great big metal bowls overturned over what was beneath them. I made a guess that they were to hold the steam in. When Angel flipped one over, just in front of me, I realized they had another purpose: upon sighting the goat's skull on a plate in front of me, complete with eyeballs and such an /interesting/ smell, they turned out to make excellent puke buckets.

"Ah, Bunny," Angel said, "Don't ever change." As I was trying to scramble away from the table to avoid any further embarrassment, or at least keep from provoking my stomach further, Angel hid the thing with her own overturned bowl, revealing a perfectly ordinary bowl of stew.

Angel continued, "Do you have any idea how hard it was to come up with a way to tell the difference between you and your thrice-damned robots or an imposter?"

I simply stared at her, agape.

"Still trying to run through all the possibilities, I see. I'll make it easy for you: How's Minnie doing?"

"But... suicide? Note? Shoes?"

"Minnie's young. If I'd told her this place existed any other way, she'd have blabbed the secret, and everyone from here to Technoville would be trying to take it over, and then both Minnie and I would be royally fucked. No offense, your Majesty."

"Could you prove /you're/...?"

"We met when you laid an egg and injected me with what was inside." She waved at the walls, presumably at the ground outside. "Welcome to Angel's Goat Farm, where I make milk, mutton, and mohair, and which just happens to include two zones which, if you work with them just right, will let you be whatever age you want to be."

 

*Chapter Five: Neo-natal*

I let out a long string of Lojban words, ignoring the discreet pinch Brenda gave me.

Angel - or Dotty, or whatever she wanted to call herself - seemed to get the gist. "Well, how did you /think/ someone who gets nineteen-nineties cultural references survived this long?"

I shook my head, carrying the befouled bucket off to get rid of the smell. "It's not that - it's /Minnie/. You were ready to inhale nerve gas for her, once - then you just abandoned her?"

"The 'once', that was the only way I had to keep her alive. When I faked my death, she was in a good place with good people to take care of her, and I'd put off coming here for so long I was risking a heart attack every day I'd put it off. Here, let me go dump that for you and give you a minute to put your head together."

She came back before I was done trying to gather my thoughts. "So... why tell /me/?"

"Partly because you're idealistic enough not to abuse this place, and know enough about keeping secrets not to blab. But mostly to let Minnie find out about this place, so by the time /she/ gets as old as I was, she'll know where to go to fix herself up again."

"She prefers 'Minerva' these days. ... Hooboy. ... And I suppose you want me to avoid telling anyone you're a grandmother."

"If you ever want to use this place for yourself, darn tootin'."

"Don't know if I /can/ use it."

"Sure you can. Works on every living thing I've tried. We can run you through right now, if you'd like."

"One zone I went into didn't change me like it did everyone else. And the Indian spirit pool came close to melting my leg off. I'd need a bit more than your simple word to risk /those/ odds. Do you even know how it works?"

"How? Not a clue. What? Got a pretty good idea. Got lots of test subjects here, after all. Done a lot of tests. Near as I can tell, whichever zone you go into, it takes you apart and builds you back together so your whole body is just like it should be, just a year younger or older."

"Depending how you count it, a year ago I was human."

"Ran some of my goats through some other zones and tested 'em. It makes you a younger or older version of whatever you are, not whatever you were. You run through enough times, you'd be a bouncing baby bunny."

"... That sounds like a /bad/ idea. There's all sorts of changes that happen to brains over the years - if anyone tried to rebuild my brain, smaller, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be enough room for /me/ in there."

"Zones can stuff a human mind in a brain the size of a horse's. Don't ask me how. I did check on that - I was still me no matter how young I went."

"I have an extremely unusual skeleton, even by zone-change standards."

"Ever see a half-goat, half-motorcycle? Went through just fine - ended up with a half-kid, half-bicycle."

"Well. That's nice and all, but I'm pretty sure I don't need to worry about getting old any time soon."

"There's a few side benefits. You look like coming back from the dead didn't treat you too well. Go back a year and forward, and you'll be just like you are now, only completely healthy."

"... Hunh. Cute trick. I'm getting better, though, so would want to read through those notes you said you wrote, and maybe run some of my own tests first, just to see where the danger zones are."

"The only real danger is running through the aging zone enough times that you drop dead before you can get to the youth zone. The whole setup seems like it's built to be as safe as possible. If you're pregnant, you can't get so young as to put the fetus at risk, and it won't get un-conceived. If you're not pregnant, the youngest you can get is however young you could have survived being born at - and if someone goes through with you when you age into the negatives, it'll put you inside, if they can get pregnant. ... Okay, so that's a second danger - don't get un-birthed by anything that doesn't have a pelvic girdle big enough to let you back out again, and I'm not good enough at C-sections to be sure I could keep you and the mother alive."

"... Third danger - going through the zone with someone or something who ends up 'in the negatives'. Now I'm /really/ sure I want to read your notes before I go near those zones."

"Your choice."

"Well... it suddenly occurs to me that if the zone isn't any use to me, then I don't have much to lose by talking about it."

"You're the one who's paranoid about losing resources. You may not need it /now/, but what about in fifty years?"

"In fifty years, a Second Singularity is likely to have made the whole thing moot."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm thinking... a favour for a favour."

"What sort of favour are you thinking of?"

"What made you go for goats, instead of pigs, sheep, or any other livestock?"

"I was able to find a few in the area when I got here, herd them together, and use a few tricks with the age zones to bring up the population fast."

"And why were there goats around here?"

"Mostly, cover for the ones that had explosives in their milk. Haven't found any of those alive, though."

"As it happens, one of the projects I'm running is to bring back that breed - I find I have a need of explosives. My vet is about to retire, and I could use an animal expert. If, like you say, you can use zone tricks to bring up the population fast..."

"Yeah, I getcha. I'm just about at the limit of how many I can take care of right now, and there's all sorts of reasons not to hire help, and I can only preserve so much meat at a time, so I'd need to run a bunch of the current herd into the negatives and keep them there. Can be done, and if I can keep a few extra exploding goats for myself, it'll be worth it."

"Gotta love win-win scenarios."

--

As soon as we were back in Munchkin, Brenda said, "I think you should do it."

"What?"

"Get younger."

"... Going through puberty was awkward enough once."

"As much fun as being your mommy might be, I meant just a year or so. It's taking /forever/ for Bun-Bun to build your muscles back up."

"And what if this zone does something strange to skeletons, and Bun-Bun ends up deleted?"

"So test and find out."

"Test how, exactly?"

"Send your arm or leg through, and see what happens to it."

"Do I even need to begin to describe the problems with that?"

"I'm here, remember? I pulled out your heart, and kept it alive, and put it right back, right?"

"I don't think we can possibly safely test what this zone would do to you."

"So I attach it to something else for the run through the zone. Maybe a goat, maybe Angel will agree."

"Okay, to be clear. You're proposing that we amputate a limb, attach it to livestock, and run it through a zone, all to see if the mind living in its skeleton is negatively affected by said zone... so that, if nothing bad happens, I can build up my strength faster?"

"Exactly!"

"... You know, that's exactly the sort of idea I like to see. But you're leaving out some other details."

"Such as?"

"If it turns out the zone /does/ do something bad to Bun-Bun, I'll be down a limb."

"I could-"

"And you still need to describe how, exactly, we would /tell/ if something bad happened to Bun-Bun."

"I figured I'd just reattach it, and we could ask her."

"/And/ while /you/ may be sterile, any other living organism you attach a part of my body wouldn't be, and there could be problems with the two parts' immune systems attacking each other. There isn't exactly an overabundance of immunosuppressant drugs."

"So it's a bad plan?"

"Let's just say it's an imperfect plan. My strength /is/ coming back, even if you think it's slow. Can you tell me what the odds are that me being at full strength sooner is going to make a significant difference?"

"Given your lifestyle? Pretty close to one in one."

"Okay, granted. But we should wait until you /can/ tell me that the likely benefits, times their odds, outweigh the likely downsides and /their/ odds."

--

I woke up, and quickly discovered, in order, that I was nude, that I was tied up and gagged, and my left foot was nowhere to be found. I was still aboard Munchkin, in the bed I'd fallen asleep in; but even the emergency tools I kept inside Wagger's gullet were missing.

Fortunately, I was still as flexible as a ferret, and my incisors were as sharp as anything you'd care to name, so I was soon gnawing my way to freedom.

Before I made it through the first rope, the airlock opened, and in walked... a bipedal griffon?

"Crap," Brenda's voice came from it, "I was hoping you'd still be asleep. Uh - good news! Angel showed me how to use the zones, and your foot still looks good!"

I tried saying something through the gag, but Brenda ignored me.

"Oh, and I gave her the impression that I'm your reclusive lab assistant. She called me a 'minion'. Now, you probably want to hold still while I put this back on - I want to make sure I line up all the nerves and tendons and so on, okay?"

I rolled my eyes dramatically, and she flowed into a blob covering my legs. I kept gnawing on the gag, until she sent a pseudopod up to untie it.

"Are you done, yet?"

"Hold on, this is a little more complicated than being fat or pumping blood. Bones are structural, you know? ... Okay, there, everything but the nerves."

"Yow!"

"Sorry. Must have been a standing potential. Everything should be in place. You can wiggle your toes, right?"

I proceeded to do so. "That's well and good - but what about Bun-Bun? Did you just kill off part of her?"

"Hey, Bun-Bun?" Brenda asked. "If you're still good, could you clench your toes or something?"

Without any conscious intent on my part, all my toes clenched.

"There, see?" Brenda exulted. "Everything's good. You can go through the zones and nothing bad will happen, and you'll be ready to conquer the world tomorrow?"

"That's nice. Also, you're grounded."

"Pardon?"

"There are lines, and you crossed over one. Unless I give you explicit permission, you are no longer allowed to be inside my body, or to replace my clothes."

"What if you're hurt?"

"You're a grown-up. If that happens, you'll get to decide whether breaking the rules is worth it."

--

"I thought she /had/ your permission," Angel said. "I mean - she had your /foot/, all neat and tidy. And she knew about the age zones."

"Not your problem. I'm dealing with her myself. Now - I'm still not sure whether I want to go through with this whole idea."

"How about I give you a tour, show you how it's done?"

In short order we were in one of the buildings, wood-built like a barn, but made of one long room with a couple of waist-high dividers running that length. Angel had brought along a white goat with long, arcing horns on a leash.

"The middle channel's the zone," she explained, "the other two are for watching. Here, you go in the right, and I'll go in the left, and Jenny here gets to go down the middle. She's five and a bit right now." I shrugged, and let her direct me. "Come along, Jenny, Come along, Bunny."

We started walking down the long hall. "Where does the zone itself start?"

"You're already in it. I'm sorry, Bunny."

"What?"

"I lied about a few things. For one, I can tell the zone how young to put someone. But one thing I didn't lie about - I'll do anything to protect Minnie... Minerva. And you're not nearly good enough at keeping secrets."

I tried to reach for Karn-wena, to run backwards, or to do pretty much anything other than stand there like an idiot. I didn't accomplish anything.

"Don't worry, I was telling the truth about keeping your mind. I'll just put you in Jenny here, and run her through the zone often enough to keep you at minus a month, the way I do with the bandits who've come through here."

"You..." I was losing control of even my voice, and was gradually sinking down to the ground. I tried again. "Scor... pi..." I was reduced to just plain breathing as my head sank below the barrier.

Which was when I heard Brenda's voice scream out, "You /bitch/!" From my vantage point on the ground, I saw Angel fly through the air to crash into the wall next to me, then fall to the ground.

Once she landed, she narrowed her eyes as Brenda, in full blob-monster rage, flowed over the barrier to hover over us. I could vaguely make out Alphie inside her as she said, "Make it stop! Fix her!"

Angel said, "Stopping will kill her. She's /going/ to end up minus a month. If you don't get out of the way, she'll die when it finishes, unless someone with a womb went through with her."

"She dies, you die." Brenda dropped a tentacle to circle around Angel's neck. She added, "You're /going/ to bring her back, or I'll find a goat to stick /you/ in."

That was about when my consciousness faded.

--

I woke up to darkness, floating, with many organic sounds around me. A quick investigation revealed my body had rather infantile proportions, and an umbilical was attached to my navel.

Just as I was starting to work up a plan for thinking through various problems, the situation changed: light, being lifted, the umbilical was neatly snipped. I coughed and coughed until my lungs were empty of all but air. I couldn't focus my eyes, so I was mostly only able to make out a giant blue blur, but my ears still worked just fine.

"Bunny? If you can hear me, do something twice."

I waved my arms until I grabbed part of the blurry blue thing, squeezed, let go, and squeezed again.

"Oh, good. Okay, Angel, you saw what I did to Jenny - imagine what I can do to you. Now how do we get Bunny back the rest of the way?"

"I don't think you'll trust me to do anything complicated. So just take her to the other long shed, on the other side of the farm, put her in one end, and wait for her at the other. She'll be a year older. Keep doing it until she's as old as you want her to be."

"We'll see. Bunny? I'm going to fix this. Uh... and don't worry, Boomer's fine, all your clothes and stuff were next to Jenny."

Brenda shifted her grip, and I found myself curling up, and in a few minutes realized that I was sucking on Wagger like a pacifier.

--

Once I was back up to two, I was able to make my own way from the end of the aging zone back to the beginning. (And as an extra plus, my eyes seemed to have gone back to the way they'd been when I was that young, too - no glasses needed at all.) Brenda never let go of Angel's neck, at least as far as I could tell, though she'd switched from blob to griffon-like humanoid.

So, naturally, just after my tenth run through, we were interrupted by someone at the gates, who called out, "Angel, is that you I see over there?"

I immediately turned around and ran back behind the age-zone shed, to grab at least my shirt and belt to turn into an impromptu tunic.

When I peeked around the edge of the shed again, Brenda and Angel were at the gate. Focusing my ears, I overheard Angel say, "This is Brenda, and back there is young Bun. She's shy. Brenda, this is David Smith, my closest neighbour."

"Ma'am," said the man, astride a horse. "These folk aren't bothering you none, are they, Angel?"

"Not at all," Angel said. "They're here to buy some goats. Something about experimental animals. We were just talking about humane testing methods when you came by. Could I invite you in for some coffee or tea?"

"No, ma'am, but thank you kindly for the offer. I'd best be on my way - I was mostly curious how you'd thrown up a new shed overnight."

"Good to see you. Tell Susan the new cheese recipe is ready to try, alright?"

"I surely will, ma'am. God be with you." He turned his mount around and headed off.

--

When I was back to fifteen, David Smith returned... along with a dozen other riders... all of whom were rather conspicuously carrying crossbows and large knives. He shouted, "I want everyone who doesn't have four hooves to come out, front and centre! Right now!"

Quietly, Brenda asked, "Bunny?"

I looked around. "Hard to get to Munchkin around them. Let's go see what they're here for. Just let me get a bit more decent first."

Brenda escorted Angel back toward the gate while I tucked Karn-wena into as unobtrusive a pocket as I could, then I slowly followed them.

"Hurry up, young lady!" barked David, and I jumped, but only sped up a little. When we were all at least arguably 'front', he added, "And Miss Brenda, I would take it kindly if you would let go of Angel's neck and step aside." Brenda turned her head to me, and I slowly nodded, so we all ended up standing apart from each other.

"Now, Angel," David continued, "I have a hope that you'll explain why you gave the password that had me take all these hard-working men away from their labour. Are these two women trying to steal your farm or something?"

"Actually," I interrupted before Angel could inhale for a word, and worked out the rest as I went, "we're trying to negotiate a fair price for it. Angel has discovered a zone with medically useful effects, and I'm considering opening a hospital here to take advantage of it."

"And who are you," David tilted his head to look down through the fence at me, "to talk about opening hospitals?"

"Hasn't anyone mentioned? I'm Queen Bunny."

"The mad queen?"

"I really wish everyone would stop calling me that." I looked down at my rather ill-fitting clothes, and added, "Please forgive my dishabille; Angel was just demonstrating the zone's effects."

Brenda, as best as I could make out, looked amused. Angel's expression had turned aghast, then furious, and could then best be described as 'purple'. "That's not true! None of that's true at all!"

"Munchkin," I called out, "Play audio file: Royal salute." As 'God Save (or Hail to) the Queen' started playing, several of the horses startled before settling down. "If you'd like," I said to David, "I can go in and get some paperwork, or we could go to the nearest heliograph station, or the like."

"Maybe, maybe not. Do /you/ have an explanation for why Angel asked me for help?"

Angel started to say something, but David interrupted her with, "Ah! You'll have your say in a moment, Angel. It would be rude not to let your guests have theirs."

"I'm afraid," I said, "that you came by at a delicate point in the negotiations - about whether the 'fair price' part of eminent domain refers to the value of the land before it is repurposed, or after the land has been converted into a hospital or whatnot. I suspect that Angel disliked my offer and wished to use you and your men as leverage."

David stroked his chin. "What sort of offer are you making?"

"Whatever it takes to let Angel set up a new farm anywhere else, at least as good if not better than this one, plus bonuses for the time and trouble, and further bonuses so she can end up richer than she would have been without it."

"And if she says no?"

"Mister Smith - if she keeps this land herself, then the zone can help save the life of a single person. If a hospital is built here, then I expect it can save the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of men, women, and children. Possibly even anyone who can get here before they die. The zone is /that/ useful. If it comes to it, I'm quite willing to pay whatever fines are levied for depriving Angel of her property, in order to do that much good; but I'm really hoping we can come to a more mutually satisfactory arrangement."

He nodded, then turned to Angel, who was apparently trying to kill me with her mind. He asked, "And what's your side of the story?"

Angel ground her teeth, her eyes flickering around, so I tried to offer her an easy out. "Angel?" I said, softly. "Think of it this way - instead of just you keeping this place safe for you and Minnie, now everyone in the community will want to make sure it stays available. I can even write the two of you directly into the hospital's charter."

"Fine!" she spat. "It's not like I can say anything to prove otherwise, anyway."

David asked, "Is that everything, then? We can go?"

"Not quite," I said. "Mister Smith, would I be correct in assuming that if you had observed some wrongdoing here, that you and your group would try to take hold of the wrongdoer, to face trial?"

"You have something you'd like to confess?"

"Not quite - I think I should relay a confession Angel made in passing."

David snorted. "Is this /your/ negotiating leverage?"

"Not exactly. Um - could you ask your men not to shoot us, if I ask Brenda to hold onto Angel's arm while I talk?"

"If holding's all she does, I suspect I can allow it."

"Brenda?" Angel was gently restrained, and I turned back to the riders. "The zone can be used irresponsibly as well as responsibly. If I'm not mistaken, Angel has taken several people, and placed them in permanent solitary confinement, with no sight, nothing to hear, nobody to communicate with. If she captured these people in self-defense, and then turned them over to the relevant authorities, that would be one thing - but some of them might have been trapped there for years. I've been thinking about how to arrange matters to give the hospital its best start, and was trying to keep open the option of sending Angel on her way and dealing with it quietly, but as we've been talking I've come to the conclusion that the whole thing should be dealt with openly."

David frowned. "Those are some strong accusations you're making." Angel had started struggling in Brenda's grip, and it looked like there might be a danger that my gryphoness might have to go gooey to hold onto her.

"Um - I have a tranquilizer gun," I said. "If any of you have handcuffs or a rope or something, those are fine, but I think you should use them before someone gets hurt."

David frowned harder. "Can you back this up? Do you know where these supposed people are?"

"I... know where she /said/ they are. If Brenda here can go do something other than hold onto Angel, she can find out whether or not that's the case."

David sucked on his teeth, then said, "Open the gate. Don't think I can rightly let /any/ of you go until we see the truth of this."

--

"Well, ain't that the damnedest thing I ever saw." David stared at the infant in his arms, removed from a goat by Brenda pretending to be a surgeon. "And he used to be all grown up?"

"Angel said something about 'bandits'. Even if that's so - I think we're well into 'cruel and unusual punishment' territory here. I suspect the hospital's first job is going to be finding out how sane any of these people still are, and how best they should be treated... solitary confinement can do terrible things to a person unprepared for it, and this went well beyond that."

"How soon can you get some doctors here?"

"It shouldn't take long for me to run to Erie and back. ... You're not going to demand I stay here?"

"Getting help for these people is more urgent. I'd appreciate if you could write down a statement or something for the trial, but with these people as proof, I don't think it's all that important."

"Can I trust you to keep this place in one piece until I get someone here to take over? At least to feed and milk the goats, and so on. I can pay wages if that's a concern."

"You just go, and get back as fast as you can."

--

"Hey, Denise? You know how you were talking about retiring? I think I've got another option for you..."

 

Holy shit. I did not expect that. That was a beautiful twist. Nicely done.

 

Things appear to be on the upswing the past several updates. Bunny repaired, immortality zone found, etc. It's probably due to explode into flames again soon.

 

You only say that because I try to set fire to something at least once a Book.

 

*Chapter Six: Neo-realism*

"... Zheeha," I finished up with Amy, "I went through a few more times, and Boomer said that when I was eighteen I was more, ah, mature than I have been all along. So I popped through a few more to see how far that went, then rolled myself back to sixteen. And after having Internet make me a new set of glasses, and dropping off that book, I decided to take a brief break from, well, everything, to see if there's anything you thought I should add to my psychotherapy routine, and what you think I should do with Brenda, and whether I should tell Minerva that Angel and Dotty are the same person, and anything else you think I should change about my decision-making processes."

After scribbling a few last notes, my ottery mind-doc asked, "If you've been physically seventeen years old, why go to sixteen now?"

"Baha-nigh there's plenty of precedent for young monarchs, baha it's a small enough change I don't think anyone will notice or care, zaha it doesn't significantly reduce my physical strength, and zhaho if somebody blows up the age zones then I might as well grab myself an extra year."

"But I thought you said, in one of our previous sessions, that Bunny had an indefinite lifespan - that the only part of you that would age was your brain."

"I really shouldn't take Technoville's word about my body without external confirmation, if I can get it. Maybe I'll age up to my previous seventeen-ish, then stop; and those older versions I tried out were just extrapolations from the age zone I'll never reach on my own. Maybe I just plain don't age, and will stay like this until I go through a zone. Going a year younger, and with the AIs to carefully chart my stats, will let me narrow down the possibilities."

"It sounds like you've thought it out. I'd like to take a moment to cover not just the events, but how you felt about them, and how you feel now. Perhaps we can start with... when you were 'in the minuses'?"

I shrugged. "If it weren't for the whole being forced into it against my will, by someone who wanted to make it permanent and keep my existence a secret from one and all... zuhu, there wasn't anything particularly objectionable about it. Zuhu-nigh, I expect almost everyone else will disagree with me about that. Zuhu-shuhee, most people haven't had the particular range of objectionable experiences I've had to measure that against."

"That doesn't tell me how you actually feel about it."

"Oh. Um... Ohu-roho ohu-roheh oy-shuhee-rohee oha-nigh-ruheh-rohah eye-shuhee ahu-ruheh."

"... Maybe we should move on to the incident with the words impressed into your mind."

--

I sent a few heliograms here and there, from a note to Captain Shatter that his men were in captivity but I was working to secure their release, to a press release as far as the heliograph line extended announcing experimental trials for a new zone-based treatment center (with mention of sponsorship by the Canadian crown).

Denise had collected not just some goats for me, but also some office workers and other assistants, plus various gear both administrative and practical to start testing the age zones, and to keep Angel's herd in good health.

Despite having gotten about as intimately acquainted with a goat as it was possible to be, I didn't really know much about them; so I spent a lot of the trip from Erie to Buffalo in the cargo car, just kind of mingling with the dozen goats while one of Denise's new hires gave a running commentary. "This bunch are all Lamanchas, you can tell by the tiny ears. Good milkers. Most people say you should de-horn dairy goats when they're young, but the farmer who had these ones was planning on homesteading a bit away from anyone else, and thought they should be able to protect themselves, and tried to teach 'em not to butt people. Don't know what went wrong, but he got in debt, and was happy enough to sell them off at the price you were offering. Most goats I know like to be scratched between their horns, so why not give that a try?"

I did, and immediately became the focus of the whole crowd of goats, each one trying to shove their head under my fingers. I couldn't help but laugh at their antics, even as I tried to make sure none of them got left out.

Goats, at least, didn't have to spend their days worrying about big problems. As I thought about that, it occurred to me that children weren't expected to, either, and I felt an urge to hit the youth zone enough times that I could just ignore anything bigger than which hill to roll down next.

With a bit of mild reluctance, I let the fantasy of a lack of responsibility fade... though I did file it away as an option for my next psychiatrically-mandated vacation.

--

"Bunny," Denise's voice came over Munchkin's intercom, "I think you need to see this."

I gave a quick apology to my friendly lecturer on all things caprine, and hurried to the living car with Denise and Brenda. "Ahu?"

Brenda pointed to the virtual windows on Munchkin's left, looking to the west over Lake Erie. "I don't think that's a bird. And I think it's getting closer."

"Hooboy. Alphie, can you make out its speed or direction?"

"I estimate it is eighty kilometres away, travelling five hundred fifty kilometres per hour, and will intercept us in eight minutes."

"Hooboy. Munchkin, display map: Highlight places we can get to in eight minutes or less." If I cranked Munchkin up to full speed, which was less than a third of the plane's, we could theoretically get as far as twenty-five kilometres in that time. As we were almost at what used to be Dunkirk, within that radius was... pretty much nothing.

"Here," Denise interrupted my map-gazing by shoving some cloth into my arms.

"What?" I looked down at it.

"Red Cross flag. Was going to fly it at the hospital. Put it on top of Munchkin."

"Didn't one of those things shoot up downtown Cleveland? I don't think they follow the Geneva Conventions."

"Got a better idea?"

"Yes - I drive, you get someone else to rig it up top. ... And to grab a walkie-talkie and start saying we're a medical vehicle and to veer off."

If it was one of the aircraft that hit Cleveland and started shooting at us, we were all dead. And if its stats matched the weaponry of the A-10 Warthog that the survivors' reports painted it as, it could start shooting at us from three and a half kilometres away.

Running wasn't going to help.

I directed Munchkin to a halt, much to the relief of the clerical worker who'd been sticking her head out of the roof hatch with the flag hastily mounted on a stick.

I called out to the room, "I need people to help me carry a half-dozen boxes outside of Munchkin. Denise, pick who's strongest, have them come with me to the lab."

I started walking to the next car, followed by the people Denise pointed at with "You, and you and you," and so on.

"Right. I'll take this one," I lifted the tripod by its carrying handle. "You, take Case A, here. You, the first of these crates. We haven't got time to set up Case B, so the rest of you, I need five of these ten-kilo water boxes. Grab your load and follow me."

When I'd designed Ron, I'd intended to set it up in a pre-prepared location, where I'd have time to measure landmark distances, set up pumps and radiators for a closed-cycle cooling system, and all that jazz. Now - I just didn't have time for all of that. I had to get it far enough away from Munchkin to avoid any metal getting swept in the magnetic field, find a spot close enough to level with a good view, get ready to just pour water through the thing... and hope that its theoretical range of just over /ten/ kilometres would serve as a deterrent. If I could get it set up that fast.

I jogged ahead of Munchkin, calling behind me, "Fast is better than slow! If you have /no/ metal on you, then I'm going to need another crate and this much water again. Come here with metal and if you don't get killed by it, I will, and this gizmo will be wrecked, and the plane will shoot you."

"Uh," said one of the office workers, "I think I've got metal buttons on my shirt?"

"Then leave the shirt on Munchkin when you go back."

"Uh..."

"We are going to /die/ here unless I get this to work. Do you know how /rude/ it is to kill all your co-workers because of modesty? I'll take off /my/ shirt if that'll make it more likely you'll help. Okay, here should be a good spot. I could use a pair of hands to help me lift. The rest of you, go back, lose the metal, bring a second load."

I didn't have time to level out the tripod or anything of the sort, so I just spread the legs and plunked it down. With the help of the woman who'd stayed, I cracked open the case with the main guts of Ron, and carefully set it onto the tripod - then hurriedly flipped latches into place. The anti-magnetic ammo box got linked up, the first of the big water jugs hooked into the hose, the outflow hose pointed off where boiling-hot water wouldn't puddle at our feet...

... and /then/ I realized that /I/ was still carrying a good whack of metal. "Brenda!" I called out, and in seconds she was by my side. "Grab Boomer, my knives, my glasses' frames, and anything else metallic I've got on me, and take it back to Munchkin."

"Then come back to armor you, right?"

I was swivelling Ron's magnetic accelerator back and forth, trying to manually centre it on the aircraft, and make a first estimate about how high I'd have to lift it to counter gravity. I was hoping that just being able to shoot /back/ would be enough of a deterrent that I wouldn't have to aim to /hit/ the thing, especially if I was going to have to hold one of my glasses' lenses in front of an eye just to see it, but getting reasonably close wouldn't hurt. "What?" I said to Brenda, distracted. "No, we haven't tested how you do in magnetic fields this strong. Ask Denise if she can pull an Odysseus and hide any of her people under the livestock - if /this/ doesn't work, we still might be able to save a /few/ lives."

She hesitated a few moments, then reached under my shirt with a paw, which then went liquidy and started grabbing my stockpile.

When she went back to Munchkin, crossing paths with the somewhat less clothed than previously bearers, I finally started powering up Ron's magnets.

I shouted back at Munchkin, "Any answer on the radio?"

Somebody's voice floated back, "None!"

"Warning shots it is. ... I'm /pretty/ sure Red Cross people are allowed to shoot in self-defense, and if they aren't, well, it's not like there's been a shortage of war crimes already, and this one seems more justified than most. Aaaaand we're hot. Crap, I forgot ear protection. Well, Bun-Bun's a good healer, and deaf's better than dead. Lined up as best as I can, and: Firing! In three! Two! One!"

I squeezed the trigger quickly, sending off a trio of rounds; and since I didn't die from anything metallic clobbering the back of my skull, adjusted my aim a lot higher, further into the wind, and started holding down the trigger.

A thousand rounds per minute of armor-piercing sabots, heated to incandescence by magnetic induction, looks a lot more like a turbolaser than it has any right to.

The aircraft moved out of my view, and I released the trigger, to get a better look; it was banking to its left, turning away from us. I turned Ron to follow it, but didn't open fire again.

I felt something on my shoulder and jumped - turning, it was just Denise. She mumbled something I couldn't make out.

"What?" I asked.

She facepalmed, then grabbed one of my ears and dragged it, and the rest of my head, to her mouth. Just barely, I made out, "Is it going to New Buffalo?"

"Crap," I said, and she winced. Trying to lower my voice, I continued, "First thing - we can warn them. I'll get on the roof with our heliograph, you can take charge of packing up Ron and loading it back inside." She nodded. "Then you can tell me if you're up to running triage with Munchkin as ambulance - and if we're going to open that hospital a lot sooner than we planned."

I hit Ron's safeties and power switches, and ran to Munchkin.

--

It was around sixty-five kilometres from where we parked to New Buffalo, which was just to the south of the original city. Including the time to set up the heliograph and transmit as fast as I could, my warning got there about five minutes before the aircraft did.

I want to think that it did some good.

We arrived fifteen minutes later - ten minutes after the aircraft had turned back over the lake.

It was another fifteen klicks from New Buffalo to Angel's farm and the age zones, a five minute drive for Munchkin at full throttle.

Denise kept me busy programming Munchkin's cars separately, and driving them back and forth, so she and her team could sort the injured and dead, load up the ones who needed immediate care, and unload them at the farm.

The second time I took a car to the farm, the locals took over the unloading, and I brought Denise's team back to speed up the triaging.

The third time, I came back with a load of locals who Denise set to doing search-and-rescue in the buildings.

After that, I'd finished programming Munchkin's living car and cargo car to run back and forth automatically, recharging as needed from the power car. I stayed in New Buffalo, grabbed the portable spectrometer, and started checking for depleted uranium dust or other nasties. When I went back to Munchkin for some water to keep hydrated, I grabbed a bunch of radiation badges to hand out. But before I left again, Denise grabbed my shoulder to get my attention.

My ears were still ringing, so she had to come right up to me to say, "I've been looking for you. You're not answering the radio."

"Didn't hear it," I told her.

"Whatever you're doing, get someone else to do it. You need to set up that gun of yours again."

"It's coming /back/?" My gut clenched and I turned to look westwards, but Denise grabbed my head again.

"No, and I've got spotters, and don't /yell/ like that. It's not about protection, it's about the people /seeing/ they're protected. Morale. Do you understand?"

"As good a plan as I've got. ... Can you spare a radioman?"

"How about Brenda?"

"Shouldn't she be using her talents to help with the rescuing?"

"I'm not going to say this to anyone else, but I don't think there's anyone left to rescue. I'm already down to sending the light cases to get healed up. If there's anyone we can't get to with crowbars, I'll call for her, alright?"

"Fine. I'll go find a spot to do a sweep for metal."

--

A bit to my surprise, Denise had already prepared some travois for the goats to haul Ron's parts, including the ones I hadn't used earlier, and put them on leads; so all I had to do was take the first one and lead her, the rest following.

As I did, Brenda trotted over, and hesitantly, pointed a clawtip to the side of her head. I just waved her right over, and said, "If you've got Alphie or Boomer, take 'em back. If I /do/ have to turn this on, I don't want them anywhere near." She nodded, and turned around to gallop off.

As I was taking the time to properly level out the tripod, so that I'd be able to take advantage of the aiming gizmos, Brenda returned, and put a claw over my hand. She went for Morse code tapping, "You're shaking."

"Am not. While I'm assembling, could you mark out safety zones, circles at five and ten metres radius?"

She looked at me - well, kept her head pointed at me, given she could apparently see from any part of herself - and then went to scraping circles.

In moderately short order, Ron was ready to go, so I sat down crosslegged with it pointing vaguely west, unpowered, and squinted over the horizon. I'd stuck the lens I'd popped out of my main pair of glasses in a pocket, and was thinking of just throwing the frames with the other lens out of the danger zone if needed.

Brenda sat down next to me, resting a paw on my ankle for Morse tapping. "You look cold. I could be a blanket."

"You're still grounded." I shifted position, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.

Brenda tapped, "Not about me, about you."

I glanced at her, then back towards the late afternoon sun. "I should have already gone back to the ruined robo-fac," I said to her, "and dug up the materials to build more copies of Ron - or something better. I should have provided every city on the helio line with decent defense against air strikes as soon as I heard about Cleveland. If I hadn't been so /fixated/ on that stupid /castle/ everyone who died here today would be alive."

"You don't know that. If you did that, the plane would have done something else."

"Maybe. Doesn't change the fact that that's what I /should/ have done." I shifted again, to kneeling, but that was even worse. Brenda shuffled around behind me, and I finally leaned back against her, one knee up with my elbow on it. "It's what I should do next."

Brenda discreetly started tapping on Wagger, and got as far as, "What about Sar-" before a new figure came into sight, on my left, where my glasses' missing lens was. Before I turned my head, there was a flash of light - and as I turned, I saw a man with a camera.

"Don't mind me," he said, twiddling with some buttons and levers. "Just getting something for the papers."

"While I'm all for the freedom of the press," I frowned at him, "I want you to consider the possible consequences of showing off any details about this weapon that you don't absolutely have to, in a way that might be seen by whoever's flying those planes."

"What do you mean? I got a right to print!"

"And everyone who was just /shot/ and /killed/ had a right to keep on living. Imagine that there's some flaw in this weapon's design, and the people who sent the plane see it and figure it out. Do you really want to be the one who made the only weapon that's currently keeping you alive useless?"

"Seems useless already - where were you when we needed you?"

I felt Brenda shift, but rested a hand on her withers to indicate she should stay put. "Is that a serious question?"

"Yeah! How come you only got here /after/ we were attacked?"

"I've probably got the fastest ground vehicle within a few hundred miles, I started coming here as soon as the airplane was sighted to be coming here, an airplane which is even faster than me, and you're asking why I wasn't here before it got here?"

"Uh... yeah!"

"Because I'm not an insane psychopathic mass-murdering bitch who overthrows local governments to conquer them. I'm a queen; I'm not /your/ queen. You've got your own government, and if you wanted me around to protect you, then you should have asked me first."

"Maybe /you/ sent the plane so you /could/ take us over!"

"If I did, I'm not doing a very good job of it, am I?"

"What?"

"How about this - if that /is/ true, then do you /really/ want to antagonize someone with control over such a weapon?"

"What?"

I sighed. "Mister reporter, what direction is this weapon pointed in?"

"Uh, West?"

"And what direction is your settlement in, from here?"

"East?"

"And what direction are you in, from it?"

"South?"

"Now, tell me - what direction do you /want/ me to point it?"

He paled, and scurried off.

--

I woke to my shoulder being shaken; and relaxed when I saw it was Denise. "Have you seen this?" she demanded, shoving papers in my face.

I sputtered a bit, pushed myself up from Brenda, moved them to where I could actually see them, and squinted through my remaining lens. It appeared to be some sort of newspaper, though just a single page - the 'New Buffalo Sun'. The headline read, "Mad Queen Relaxes While City Attacked," with the picture of me lounging beside Ron. The prose got worse from there.

I squinted at the sun - it looked like I'd been down for an hour, maybe two - then back at Denise. "Are you in contact with whatever the local government is, yet?"

"The mayor's fine, yes."

"Would you be so kind as to get in touch with him or her for me, and let him know that since it appears the local citizenry seems uninterested in our help, we'll be withdrawing to the farm to proceed with our original business there?"

"What? There's still hurt people here, and what if the plane comes back?"

"Denise."

"What?"

"Do you think I'm /really/ going to leave people to suffer, if I can help it?"

"Well..."

"Fine. Put another way. Do you think I didn't notice you've been keeping me away from the worst of everything?"

"... I'd hoped you hadn't noticed."

"And I appreciate that. I may end up needing less psychotherapy because of that. Do you think I'm going to do anything that would end up with me needing /lots/ more therapy to deal with the guilt?"

"Then why threaten to leave?"

"There are lots more ways to deal with defamation of character than a libel suit. Letting the local government know that I'm unhappy, and that I don't actually have any obligation to help them, seems more likely to produce better results, faster."

--

The sun had lowered another notch down the sky, and I was debating how soon I should radio for someone to bring my sunglasses from Munchkin when Denise returned, accompanied by a thick-set man whose suit might once have been green before getting coated in dust. "Your Highness," Denise said, "May I present Mayor Anthony Mudd."

I just nodded politely, and took off my glasses to try and pop the one lens back in.

"I want you to know, uh, Your Highness, that the newspaper's editorial stance, uh, does not reflect the position of this government, er, and that we appreciate everything you've, uh, done. You saved a lot of lives, ah, and I don't think anyone would, er, begrudge you if you had to leave, uh, but I think I can speak for, uh, all of us, er, well, almost all of us, when I say, uh, that we hope you're not going to go /right/ away."

I put my glasses back on. "Those planes are still out there," I said, "and this isn't the only city at risk."

"I, uh, understand."

"That said," I continued, "after running my vehicle flat out like that, I should give it a maintenance checkup, to make sure it'll be /able/ to keep going at that speed, when it has to."

At that, the mayor's face brightened, but I continued, "I would prefer to do that somewhere I didn't have to worry about looking over my shoulder for unhappy local citizenry with some sort of grudge, or having to take time out to run damage control on my media presence, or things like that."

"Of course. Uh, if there's /anything/ we can do to help you, then please, ah, just ask."

"Batteries."

"Uh, pardon?"

"Catalytic chemistry is downright /weird/, but I can extract some chemicals I need from old batteries. Right now, the thing I'm shortest on is lithium. I assure you that any you can spare will be put to good use." I wasn't being /quite/ honest, but there wasn't any way I was going to announce that Munchkin was fusion-powered.

"I /see/," the mayor nodded, for once not stuttering. "I understand entirely."

"Probably not quite. Some good friends of mine are currently imprisoned by an entity that can mind-wipe them, I'm probably going to have to cross into Indian country before I can make another of these," I patted Ron, "and there's a few things I need to do at whatever we're calling the place I was going to build a hospital. If I set up shop there... it's a five minute trip at emergency speed to get here, and if the planes stick to their current speeds, as long as you can spot them when they're at least thirty miles out, then I can get close enough in time to shoot at them before they shoot at you."

"What would it take to, ah, buy this weapon from you?"

"You couldn't afford it." At his expression, I rolled my eyes. "At the least, another weapon capable of dealing with threats such as the planes, in which case, you wouldn't /need/ to buy it from me. When I have /more/ than one of these, /then/ the price will drop to something more reasonable."

 

Well, that was a bad decision.

 

*Chapter Seven: Neo-phile*

"Bunny," asked Denise, carefully enunciating her words as she crouched down, "why are you a child?"

From underneath one of Munchkin's sleds, in between the robotic legs, I called back, "It's a lot easier to get to the hard-to-reach parts when I'm smaller. You wouldn't /believe/ how much gunk got encrusted in the works down here - might be why nobody else ever built one of these with legs."

"It doesn't bother you?"

"It's not like being a kid-bun is any more alien to me than being a woman-bun. How's your vision?"

"... Better. Can you come out of there for a minute so we can talk?"

"Sure, just give me a minute to close this up." In a few moments, I pulled myself out, revealing to Denise that I was wearing a pair of overalls, a lot of grease and dirt, and a smile. "What's up?"

She frowned. "You look... chipper."

I shrugged. "Got to take moments of happiness where I can find them. Making some good mechanical parts run better is surprisingly pleasant."

"Okay... in any case, you'd better go age yourself back to normal. You have visitors."

"Who?"

"A local, said his name was David Smith, and that you were expecting him."

"Ah. He already knows what the zones really do, might as well send him over."

"You're kidd - I mean, you're joking."

"No, I've got lots to do and don't need to waste my time changing my size back and forth if I don't have to."

"... I was just about to say you're a grown woman and can make your own decisions, but I think I'll just go send him over and have a drink."

--

"Hello, little one," said David. "Is your mother around? Or maybe your aunt, or cousin?"

"To cut what could be an oh-so-charming set of misunderstandings short, I'm the mad queen who handed Angel to you for trial, I just used the local zone to get shorter so I can fix my machines easier. You and I took a human out of a goat, and we can either waste time while I prove who I am or we can get right to whatever you came here for."

"I suppose if the local zone can turn grown men into infants, going just halfway isn't much of a stretch." He shrugged. "Fine. I'm here about Angel. Our judges like sentences that are eye-for-an-eye, so once we figure out how long each of those men was trapped, whoever gets the case will probably add that all up and want to put Angel in a goat for that long. I'm here to find out if that's possible, but seeing you, it seems easy enough, so I'll be on my way."

"Ahem. To be clear - you want to take the facilities of this hospital, and use them to apply a judicial punishment which is arguably both cruel and unusual?"

"Didn't say /I/ wanted to, just that the judge would."

"In that case, you'll want to make sure that the judge sees that flag up there, the white one with the red cross; tell him that any involuntary use of the local zones has to pass muster from a medical ethics review board; and there are all manner of ethical problems with what you're describing."

"That might present a problem."

"Your judge is free to set whatever sentence he wants. What he can't do is force my doctors to cooperate with it, and if he tries - well, I looked it up just recently, and doctors under the Red Cross are entirely allowed to shoot to defend themselves. If your judge wants to stick Angel inside a goat, he'll have to find some other way to do it."

"He might say you don't own this land and your hospital has to go."

"In case you haven't seen the newspaper, I just ran a whole mess of people here from New Buffalo to keep them from dying. And I've got the moral high ground in not using medical facilities to impose a form of long-term solitary confinement that amounts to torture. If your judge wants to push the point, there are all manner of ways to blunt said point. You might want your judge to talk to the New Buffalonians to find out their thoughts on him trying to close down the hospital that just saved so many of them, and is being set up to save more as time goes by."

"I think I'd rather you tried to tell him that. ... And it might go better if you were a bit taller when you did."

"Mister Smith - I'm currently getting ready to travel across the river into Indian Country, where the standard form of welcoming new people is to stick them inside deer, and have them be born as and live as animals until they need another human. If I slip up, or my machines break down, or anything of the sort, I'm going to end up as a bear cub or something. Talking about hypothetical judges and their hypothetical rulings is worthwhile up to a point, but I think we've reached that point."

"You raise an interesting point. I'll let you get back to your machines, then."

--

I tried not to slurp my soup, and did wonder how the age zones treated stomach contents during size changes - there could be issues with an adult's full stomach turning into a smaller one containing the same amount, so would it just go for proportional changes? There were all sorts of musings along such lines to be mused, and Angel's notes were at best a guide rather than something to rely on.

Denise carried her own bowl of soup from the stove and sat opposite me. I nodded, then paused in my dinner to ask, "Goats doing well?"

"All the procedures you asked for, for your personal herd, are in place. Even the ones that don't make any sense. Did you get those scan numbers I asked for?"

I pulled a sheet of paper from my overalls' front pocket and slid it across the table. She looked it over, then nodded. "Well, that answers that."

"Mm?"

"Your auto-doc has scanners with amazing resolution... are you sure I can't convince you to leave it here?"

I have her my best 'Really?' expression.

"Fine, fine," she said. "You're not growing up. I'd say you're not growing older, but that gets philosophical, so I'll just say you're not showing any of the physiological signs of aging. My informed guess is that, at least for the age zones, whatever age they set you to, that's what you'll stay as, until you go through another zone."

"Do the age zones do that to everyone, or just me?"

"The goats grow up just fine. I think it's just you."

"Hunh." I looked down at my presently pre-pubescent physique. "Best be careful what age I go to, and for how long - zones can get destroyed, or made unavailable."

"I suppose now we know the trade-off for your body's overdeveloped healing - whatever you are, that's what you heal to."

"Things like that don't /have/ to have trade-offs - they just might need a bunch of biochemistry that's near-impossible to evolve."

"Still, I'd suggest you get back to being yourself as soon as you can. It's been... weird, hearing someone looking so young talking like you."

"There are all sorts of issues I could take about what 'being myself' means, but I take your point." I had some more soup, then added, "Makes me a bit more wary about getting caught in strange zones - hard to tell what I'd end up as."

"As long as your brain's intact, you could always have Brenda take it out of any body you don't like."

"As interesting as such an experience might be, I'd really rather not rely on a single plan. As much as Brenda may focus on me, in her own way... did anyone tell you about what she did with my paw, yet?"

"Yes. That reminds me - when word leaks out about how these zones work, how do you think we should handle crowds?"

"Don't see why you can't just treat it like any other medical service where demand exceeds capacity: simple triage, with whoever's most likely to die soonest going first."

"What if someone wants to pay to skip ahead in line?"

"Do you /want/ to live in a society run by unaging oligarchs and plutocrats? Hm... maybe I should leave my zone-zapper here with you, so if anyone forcibly tries to take over, you can threaten to take away their prize..."

--

Being back at sixteen felt clumsy and slow. But after a few laps around the farm (chased by a crowd of curious caprines), and some calisthenics, I was getting back into my previous groove - even better, now that I had two paws instead of an unbalanced paw and hoof.

Seeking out Brenda, I eventually found her in the auto-doc. She was making... noises. Then pausing, sending a tendril to look at its display screens, and making slightly different noises.

"Brenda?"

One of the AIs rose to her surface, through which she said, "Hey, Bunny. Trying to get vocal cords to work. I may have to get you to make something in Internet for me, though - I can't seem to keep structures that fine solid, when they're vibrating like that."

"Let me know if that's so, so I can help you on the design. In the meantime - thought I'd let you know, I've decided your grounding's over."

Before anything else had time to happen, I was, as it had once been described by anime fans, glomped. I rolled my eyes a bit, but continued, "And given where we're going next, I figure we should find out if you can fit inside my hazmat suit with me, or if we need to make other arrangements."

"Couldn't I be your suit?"

"Possibly - but as far as I know, we haven't tested how permeable you are to noxious chemicals. Plus, the hazmat suit has an oxygen recycling system built in."

"Then if you're going to have that as a layer, can I be the rest of your layers?"

"Eh, whatever floats your boat."

"/Really/? You're not still... mad about the foot thing?"

"I suppose not. It worked out in the end."

Brenda formed a head to look closely at me. "'In the end'? Aren't you going to tell me I need to think things through better before doing something like that?"

"Would it do any good?"

"It might."

"Then consider yourself told."

"Bunny, are you thinking about what you're saying?"

"I have to be, right? How else could I talk?"

Brenda started pulling back and into her own shape. "That's not what I mean. Uh... what's your plan for the trip to Indian country?"

"Go to the old factory, see if I can dig up anything useful, come back. Oh, and wear the suit to keep the locals from sedating me and sticking me inside a deer."

"And if something goes wrong?"

"Hadn't thought much about it."

"Bunny, I want you to get into the autodoc /right now/."

"What?"

She shoved her front half against me, flowed around my torso, and started dragging me. "I don't know /what's/ wrong but /something/ is. Tell it to scan your brain. No, tell me how to tell it."

"What's all this about?"

After shoving me into the autodoc's coffin-like patient area, Brenda was ignoring me and talking into the walkie-talkie. "Denise? You there? Good. Come to Munchkin /right now/, something's wrong with Bunny. I'll explain when you're here."

"I /feel/ fine," I insisted, but didn't feel any urge to stop her from working on something that seemed so important to her.

"Now," muttered Brenda, "how does this work... Alphie?"

She and her embedded AI talked about switches and controls, and in a few moments Denise joined them.

I piped up, "If this is going to take long, could someone grab me something to read, or pass over Boomer?"

"Shush," said Denise. "And lie still." To Brenda, she added, "Everything here looks perfectly normal."

Brenda retorted, "And since when has Bunny /ever/ been normal?"

Denise looked thoughtful. "It's an interesting point. After the attack, I'd expect her to be morose and determined and plotting, not... practically whistling while she worked."

Brenda said, "The obvious cause is the age zones. Bunny's been going through them more than anyone else. Maybe when they made her brain bigger and smaller, they... made her happy?"

I tried to contribute, "And what's wrong with that?"

That got me glares from both of them, and Denise said, "If you have to ask, I'm putting you on medical leave until /you/ can tell /me/ the answer. And the age zones are off-limits until further notice."

"Hunh," I hunhed. "Are you sure that's the best idea? There's still those planes, and Sarah and all the others in Lion Castle, and I'm still working those problems. So I'm... less depressed. Or whatever. I was the best person to work on those problems before. Are you saying someone else is better than me, now, for those problems?"

The two of them looked at each other. Denise finally said, "I'm a vet, maybe an administrator, not an adventurer. Do you think you could be a replacement Bunny? The properly paranoid version, I mean, not happy-go-lucky."

"Maybe," Brenda said, slowly. "If I've got time to plan ahead, I can probably be as pessimistic as she usually is. But if something sudden happens - I've got my own instincts."

I raised a hand for attention. "Maybe we could do a symbiosis partnership thing? If you say my thinking's off, then you do as much of it as you can, and I do as much as I can, and maybe together we cover each other's gaps?"

They looked at each other again, and again Denise broke the silence, by saying, "I've heard worse plans."

"In that case," I said, "while Brenda's doing the planning... how about we run some tests to find out what ways I'm still insane, or if any new ones have popped up? I've had schizoid personality disorder, a few body dysphorias, some sort of mood disorder with both manic and depressive aspects, an incipient case of PTSD, and depending which decade's manual you go by, a few sorts of dissociation..."

Denise sighed. "I suppose I do need to find out the mental effects of these zones. If Alphie and Boomer don't have the diagnostic tests handy, we can ask Clara."

"She's not far from the factory ruins - we could go ask her in person," I suggested."

"Let's... see what we can find out here, first."

--

"Are you sure these questionnaires will be reliable?" I asked. "I haven't really had enough /time/ for a lot of my answers to change, even if my brain is all sorts of different. I haven't had an opportunity to start drinking or taking recreational drugs, or go looking for new friends or sexual partners, or had enough nights' sleep to see if the patterns of my nightmares changed."

"They're what we've got to start with," Denise said. "Just fill them out, and let me worry about interpreting them."

--

"So, Doc, what's the verdict?"

"I'm still going over your tests."

"Hm. I've had a thought."

"Is it about making ridiculous numbers of backup plans?"

"Not quite. I was just wondering - what would it take to get Angel to tell the truth, about any mental effects she noticed with the zones?"

"Hm. I'm not sure."

"Maybe we could call in wossname, Smith, and ask him? He said the locals probably want to turn Angel into a fetus for who-knows-how-long. Maybe she'd be willing to cooperate for a lighter sentence, like just being made fetal once and then allowed to be born and grow up?"

"Maybe."

"... I know I wasn't a people person before this, and whatever slant there is to my thinking now, I'm pretty sure I haven't magically developed a brand new set of persuasion skills."

"Is that your way of trying to ask me to ask Smith instead of you?"

"Maybe."

--

My favorite see-through-blue gryphoness asked me, "Do you want me to be your blanket tonight, Bunny?"

"Fine by me. Hm... no, nevermind."

"What?"

"... I want to say 'nothing' but Amy encouraged me to try to notice when I'm shying away from what seems like an uncomfortable conversation, and jump right into it."

"You /don't/ want me to be your blanket?"

"It's not that at all. It's... you were able to shape yourself into a more humanoid kind of griffon, right?"

"Right. Do you want me to be your pillow?"

"It's not that, either. It's just - picturing you like that, it's just now occurring to me how much... skinship the two of us have been sharing, and I was thinking that it might be both easy and quite nice if we considered adding a sexual component to our relationship, but given everything else that's going on, from fighting to physical changes to whether or not I'm currently capable of generating meaningful consent, to whether or not your Bimbofication has affected your ability to consent or refuse, not to mention how likely it is that I'd completely muck up such a relationship so badly that neither of us could even work together anymore, it's probably a terrible idea to even consider."

"Oh. Well, I'm glad you've worked it all out, then."

"I can't seem to stop considering it."

"Oh."

"Trying to remember the way I thought about things before, like calling up my paranoid North sub-self... then until we find out if Angel knows how to un-slant my brain... I think that if you want to be my clothes, my symbiote, my blanket, and so on, then we should agree beforehand that's what our relationship will be for the next couple of days. But if you want to be the person who may or may not sleep in the same bed with me - then we need to stick to that, and not do the other things."

"Which would you prefer?"

"Whichever is less likely to drive a wedge between us, until both of us are up to making better decisions."

"That's easy - I'll be happy to be your bed tonight, and your clothes tomorrow, and as much of your insides as you need me to be, until you decide you're ready to change things."

"Alright... I can live with that."

"Since you want to talk straightly - I hope that when we fix your head, you'll still be open to changing things."

"I haven't got a good answer to that, just an old cliche: Where there's life, there's hope."

I stretched out, and she flowed over the bed and myself. "Good night, Bunny."

"Good night, Brenda."

--

"It's highly irregular," David Smith said, "but so much about this is, already. I don't think too many people will be too upset with you taking over the trial and sentencing, if that's what you aim for - save us the cost of the judge, jail, jailers, and whatever happens after, at the least."

"That hasn't been decided yet," Denise answered him. "We wish to talk to her about some private matters, before making any definite proposals."

He nodded. "That's easy enough. I'll fetch her from the wagon."

In short order, Angel was back in her farmhouse - only it wasn't really hers anymore, and both her arms and legs were shackled. She looked between me and Denise before finally asking, "Do I at least get to pick which goat I get put in?"

Denise took the lead with, "We're discussing options. You might get off with a lighter sentence.

Via Boomer in my pouch, my Brenda-outfit chimed in, "I'm in favour of taking your arms off. I'm getting very good at that sort of thing - I wouldn't even leave any scars."

Angel glared at me, then back at Denise. "Is this where I'm supposed to ask for mercy?"

Denise calmly said, "No, this is where you decide whether or not to tell us how you communicate with the zones, and anything else you left out of your notes."

Angel raised an eyebrow. "If I tell you that, then I wouldn't have anything left to offer. Is there something in particular you want to tell the zones to do?"

Denise simply said, "Yes."

Angel smiled. "Then how about I tell them to do that for you?"

Denise frowned. "We don't even know if the zones /can/ do it. If they can't, then we might just decide you're trying to mess with us, and we wouldn't have any reason not to put you in a womb right away. Are you sure you want to risk it, by doing things that way?"

"Make me an offer, and I'll decide what's worth what risks."

I finally spoke up. "Before we do that - Angel, I'm curious. I'm not saying it's an option, but if you were to, say, get an acquittal or pardon, what would you most want to do with yourself next?"

"Other than sue you to get my farm back?"

"Other than that, yes," I drily agreed.

"Find out how to keep you all from messing up the age zones, and keep an eye on you. Maybe even get a job here."

"Hm." I leaned back in my chair, and turned to Denise. "Could be One Ring syndrome."

I got confused looks from both of them, so explained, "Going through the age zones could result in people realizing how so very useful it is, that they get an urge to use it to accomplish their goals, and thus to make sure they hold onto it as tightly as they can. Might be perfectly natural - might be deliberate nudging, for some reason. Might even be able to see which it is, if greater exposure increases the effects."

Brenda said, "What about everyone from the attack?"

"Well," I guessed, "if they want to take control, they've got a government to act for them, so they might start by getting New Buffalo to claim all of old Buffalo, including here. If they can't get what they want - well, we all know what Angel here was willing to do when she thought she might lose control. So if we want to keep using the site ourselves, if nothing else to keep experimenting on it, then we should probably emphasize the international nature of the Red Cross and not challenge their notions of sovereignty. Basically, position you, Denise, as the administrator who's already doing what they want to do with the place."

Denise nodded, "That's what I was planning on doing anyway."

"On the other paw," I continued, "if they're in full Gollum mode, you'll want to be ready to defend yourselves and/or evacuate. I can't say that they won't, since of the two examples we've got of people who've been de-aged," I gestured at Angel and myself, "both of us want to hold onto the age zones, for what seem to us to be good reasons."

Angel grumped, "I /have/ good reasons."

I shrugged. "So do I."

Denise said, "Angel - the more we know about these zones, the sooner our experimenting will be done, and the sooner we'll go to the next stage, deciding whether to stay or leave. It's entirely possible we'll decide the costs outweigh the benefits, and will have no reason to stay here and keep your farm from you."

Angel snorted, "Other than putting me in goat-prison for the next few decades."

I said, "A major point of a jail sentence is to keep an offender from re-offending. I can imagine an arrangement where your goat farm is your prison, and we put up lots of warning signs around it that you're known to deal with trespassers by having them un-birthed. You're not without hope, here. The odds of you getting what you want go up the more you help us get what we want."

Angel frowned. Denise and I let her mull on that for a few minutes, before she finally said, "Looks like my best bet is to go along, for now. What do you want to know?"

Denise said, "We know that you can tell the zones to set someone to an arbitrary age. Is there anything else you can tell them to do?"

"Going younger, not really. Going older - there's lots of different ways people can grow up, depending how much food they eat, how much exercise they get," she glared at me, "whether someone cuts their arms off. At least for things that happen to goats, I haven't found anything the age zone can't do."

I mused, "Which implies a full communication channel that can send arbitrary data - one that you can apply with the resources we found here, which rules out radio and electronics; and which is something you could have figured out. Prime contenders are speech and writing. I didn't hear anything unusual when all the people from New Buffalo were shuttled through here, when there was probably a lot of talking going on, so I'm going to guess writing. Zones don't seem to do much outside their own areas of effect, and it's something that could be discovered accidentally, so I'm guessing just bringing the right writing into the zone will do the trick."

Angel practically growled, "If you already figured all that out, what do you need me for?"

"What do you mean? I just thought that line through just now."

"Do you have any idea how /long/ it took me to work that out?"

"Does that matter? I have an advantage over what you did - you just told me what's possible with the zone, and knowing something /can/ be done saves a lot of skull-sweat."

Denise inquired, "What sort of writing is needed?"

Angel sighed, then said, "Since it won't take you long to figure out anyway - a diary, or journal, or other record. I got my first clue when one of my goats went through with my health records for her. Tell the zone what's supposed to happen during the years it skips you over, and it'll fix you up. At least, as long as it's within reason - I didn't have any luck turning my goats into super-goats. I've been spending my time looking for useful tricks and loopholes."

Denise said, "So, if I'm getting this right - if I went in, with a paper about spending years exercising and training, I'd end up healthier?"

"Something like that."

I tapped my chin. "Can it do education, skills, knowledge, or that?"

"Not that I've found. If you write about head trauma, you can create brain damage - and putting someone younger than that, it'll un-do it, but you won't know anything you didn't already know. And if you go in with brain damage, you'll have lost whatever you didn't know while that was damaged."

Denise shuddered. "I /really/ don't want to know how you found that out."

"Still," I said, "That may solve our most immediate issue. Some psychological issues can have effects on the brain. For example, someone who ends up schizoid and has much less contact with other people for many years may have some neural structures related to social interaction atrophy, and if the zones treat that as damage, and don't have an instruction to put the brain back the way it was... does that account for everything you've observed?"

"It could," Denise said.

Angel gave me another once-over look. "So that's what all this is about? You got fixed and don't like it?"

"Don't look at me," I said, "I feel fine. It's everyone else who thinks I'm acting strange."

"You /are/," Denise insisted.

"Welp," I said, "assuming we've identified the problem, the simple solution would seem to be for me to have Munchkin make some copies of my logs and journals and so on, have the youth zone take me back to the minuses, and then have the age zone bring me back using those papers as a pattern."

Denise nodded, but I continued, "That leaves open two issues. One, my brain is rather older than my body, which may gum up the works some. And two... are we sure that we want to put my brain back /exactly/ the way it was?"

"Of course we do! It's your /brain/ we're talking about, Bunny. If you want to mess about with that, I'm pretty sure that's your new brain talking, and we can't trust it."

"Brains are already fallible. And given the nightmares, PTSD, and dysphoria I've been having so /much/ therapy just to /try/ to deal with... why not rebuild me as if I started the therapy a lot sooner, and that it had a lot more time to make me better? Or even something like nudging the parts of my brain that deal with mathematics to be bigger, so I'll be better at it?"

Denise rubbed her face. "Those are interesting ideas, but I really think you should go back to your original self, as close as possible, before you even think about... meddling."

"You're the doc, doc. If you say my thinking's impaired, I haven't got much choice but to trust you on that."

"I'm glad you're so cooperative."

"On that note," I said, "if I'm not able to properly consent to medical stuff because my brain's been stirred, does that mean Brenda can't consent to anything like that, either, or to sex or contracts or anything, ever since she was Bimbofied?"

The two of them looked at each other, and then Angel answered, "Of course she can. It's the 'bitch in heat' principle."

"... Excuse me?"

"Right," Angel said, "I forgot you were dead while that was worked out. When you were alive, the first time, it was illegal to have sex with animals, right?"

"... In most, but not all, jurisdictions of my native culture, yes."

"Do you remember why?"

"I think they were mostly part of laws against animal cruelty. I think I see where you're going, though - I heard some arguments that that didn't make sense, since we were perfectly willing to kill them for meat. So animals not being able to consent meant having sex with them was wrong, just like children not being able to consent means having sex with /them/ is wrong."

"Good. Then came the Singularity and all sorts of mixed up situations, like a woman stuck in a dog's body, or a dog's mind in a woman's. If the dog's body goes into heat, and the hormones and so on are so strong that they overwhelm her brain's executive function, so she can't say no - so she's begging for sex - what should be illegal?"

"Uh... anything other than trying to put her back in her original body?"

"Most zones aren't like the age zones here. One-way changes only."

I rubbed the back of my head, all too conscious of Brenda listening in. "I know that in Erie, it's not illegal to have sex with bimbos - but I'm not sure that's actually /right/."

"Well, I only spent a year in Erie, but here in Buffalo - the one before the current New Buffalo - we had more important things to do than spend our time on philosophical puzzles. So we simplified the whole 'consent' thing, and got rid of the mental part. If someone can say 'yes', they're assumed to mean 'yes'."

"Agh," I aghed, "but that guts all /sorts/ of other rules, like teachers and students."

"I'm not saying it was the best solution - but we had more Changed than teachers, and coming up with separate laws to deal with all the different situations that ended up in court cost a few people their re-elections."

Denise added, "At least in Erie, if someone could end up as a regular adult human without much trouble, like through getting older or a reverse Change when that was available, and if their brains were different than they would be, then we assumed they were impaired and couldn't consent until they were fixed. But if they were stuck as whatever they were, well, we just dealt with them as that. I don't know why Buffalo didn't, but we didn't have any problems dealing with every situation. I remember a case where a Changed woman was in heat, and her husband was convicted of cruelty for /not/ helping her with it."

I rubbed my face. "So much for simple answers. Maybe un-stirring my brain will mean I can go back to not having to worry about any of that."

The two of them looked at each other again. "What?" I asked. They looked at me, Angel grinning, and Denise looking like she was trying very hard not to. "/What/?" I demanded.

 

*Chapter Eight: Neo-tribalism*

"Welp," I said to Brenda, handing her a clipboard with my bundle of papers and pen tied on, "Here's my life in a nutshell. Everything I can remember that might have affected by brain's development. Plus some pages about my brain and body developing separately, and so on. If Angel was telling the truth, and you and Denise are right about my brain being off right now, then that'll be enough to put me back the way I was."

"I have to say," she said through Alphie, "it doesn't seem like a big difference to me. I'd be happy if you didn't go through with it."

I shrugged. "There's a lot of insane people who don't realize it. I have to put my trust in other people to point out if I am."

"I suppose. ... Any requests for which goat's uterus to use?"

"Does it really make much difference? If we were going to put me in a /person/, that would be all sorts of complicated, but as long as they're healthy, one goat's a lot like another, isn't it?"

It was simple enough to send me, a goat, and a paper with instructions to set my age to minus a month through the youth zone, and almost as simple for Brenda to use her built-in surgical abilities to perform a fast Caesarean section. While my newborn eyes weren't much good, I was perfectly able to wriggle when Brenda tickled me, and to hear her say, "You're just so /cute/ like that, I'm almost tempted to let you stay that way... you said you wanted a vacation, right?"

Which was when I heard a voice call out, from somewhere near the gate, "Would everyone please step away from the zones, and assemble at the gates?"

If rolling my eyes would have made any difference, I would have.

Denise's voice responded, "Who's asking?"

Brenda held me close to her - and then /very/ close - and then she'd pushed me all the way inside her.

Alphie got shoved up against me, and she said, "I don't know what's going on, but I'm hiding long enough so I can pretend to be a goat, and then get you to the age zone like that. You might not mind looking young, but I don't think - uh-oh."

She was quiet, and there was little that I could do in my latest dark, warm home but wriggle. And maybe drool a bit.

After some rocking around, Brenda added, "They're cutting through the fence. I'd better get you grown up fast, or else I'm going to be stuck changing your diapers from now on. ... According to my cousins, that's not really as bad as it sounds, but you've got the whole queen thing going for you and I think you have to be weaned before they let you be a queen. I'm almost there... if you /want/ to stay like this, I can work with that, so if you want me to abort, just grab whatever and squeeze three times."

I very carefully avoiding anything that Brenda might interpret as grabbing or squeezing, and tried to will Wagger to hold still.

"Okay, grown-up it is. ... I have to say that I'm tempted to add a few notes of my own to your papers here, to make you the best Bunny you can be, and this could be our last chance to run you through this zone. But after I took your paw, I know you don't want me to do that sort of thing without your permission... so is there anything you /do/ want me to write in at the last minute here?"

Even with a slanted brain, I knew there were all sorts of ways that could go wrong - and if there was a mob at the gates, anything we did that didn't work might not be fixable. So I didn't want to do anything to my brain. I didn't think there was much I could get away with in improving Bun-Bun's body, since she did the branch thing to rebuild herself; but that still left one part of my body that could do with some minor improvement, that seemed within the realm of the age zone's demonstrated ability.

I grabbed hold of some of Brenda's mass, and started squeezing: dot, dash dot dash dash, dot, dot dot dot.

"Your eyes?"

I squeezed once in the affirmative. I'd gotten to enjoy being able to walk around without needing my glasses while I'd been shorter than normal, even if I hadn't stopped feeling weird not having the lenses protecting my eyes. There were all sorts of factors that affected how vision changed as people grew older, so even just reducing the level of my nearsightedness from an absurd 20/600 to something that wouldn't get me killed in a fight if my glasses were knocked off could be handy.

"Alright, I'll make a note of that. Uh, hold on, I need to shift Alphie over for a minute. Hey, this is just like the old joke - outside of a dog - er, goat - a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a goat, it's too dark to read."

I didn't deign to respond. "Alrighty, note for surprisingly good vision added, and I made it into the shed. See you on the other side."

--

I could feel that I was back to my usual size easily enough - there are all sorts of proprioceptive signals that are completely different when your limbs are a foot long compared to a couple of feet. I was thinking in words, which was a good sign. I opened my eyes -

- and immediately closed them again. I squinted up at the shape whose edges matched Brenda's usual gryphoness bird-head, and whose colour was even the familiar blue - but there was more to what I'd seen than that.

I opened my eyes a crack, then, squinting, a bit more.

"Hey," she said, "your pupils are weird. Wide."

"And you're... shining, or sparkling, or I don't know what. Looks like the zone took 'surprising' a little too literally - 'good', we'll have to see. Uh - do you mind being my clothes while I go find out what's going on?"

"Do you need to ask?" In moments I had a long dress on, at least to outward appearances, and trying to ignore the odd effects of what I was seeing, stepped out of the shed. And upon seeing the sky, froze.

"Um," I whispered, "How long was I in the zone?"

"A few minutes, same as usual," Brenda whispered back.

"And since you're not commenting on it, I'm guessing the sky looks normal to you?"

"Blue sky, bright sun. Some clouds to the west. Why?"

"... We'll work on that. I think Denise needs help with the mob. I /think/ that's Denise. Uh - I may need you to nudge me to keep me from tripping."

"Foot tripping or drug tripping?"

"Right now, I'm not ruling out the latter, but I meant the former."

I carefully walked towards the figure who at least sounded like Denise yelling at people, and interrupted her tirade with, "Now, what's all this racket?"

"Your majesty," she said, "these /people/ who appear to have as much of a brain as a lynch mob are trying to claim this whole place as their own."

"Under what authority?"

"The crossbows and machetes they're carrying."

I turned my gaze to the jumble outside the fence, trying to figure out which bits were the people and which were the weapons. A few details clicked into place in my mind, like one of those magic eye puzzles, and I realized that almost all of those crossbows were aimed directly at me. With Brenda right with me, and the zones right nearby in case any of those crossbows hit their target, I decided to go for the big bluff.

"You there," I glared at a particular individual manhandling a tool, "stop cutting that fence, or else you're going to have to repair it."

"Keep cutting," said a voice from the jumble.

"Ah, we have a spokesman. Would you care to come inside and discuss your demands?"

"Not talking to any halfbreed furjob."

I heard a chorus of agreement, along with a few phrases of less than complete complimentariness, the most polite of which involved 'fuzzy mutt', 'feral furry freak', 'sub-human furball', and the simple but always apropos 'vermin'.

"Ah," I smiled at them, "you wish me to lose all compassion for you, so that you may become martyrs to inspire a wave of outrage at my treatment of you. I'm sorry for your plan, but I've already seen through it, and will minimize your pain and suffering."

This statement produced some confused muttering, the most coherent word of which was simply 'mad', which was roughly what I was aiming for.

I turned my head. "Denise, I could use a snack. Would you be so kind as to fetch my cheese and crackers?"

"Hey," came a voice from the mob, "we're talking to /her/, not /you/!"

"/Go/," I hissed to Denise, then turned back to the crowd. "She is merely the administrator. /I/ am the /proprietor/, and you will talk to /me/."

A scattered chorus of expletives erupted, which I used as audio cover while I held my lips as still as I could and quietly hissed a command to Brenda. As their latest bit of collective obscenity faded, I felt her spreading my pouch's opening wider, and some stirrings within, so I continued, "It sounds like you want to rip my heart from my chest and eat it, or something like that. I'm a gracious host." I held out my hand to show nothing was in it - then, deliberately, plunged it through my Brenda-dress, whereupon she slipped a pulsing mass into my hand. I held up my 'heart' for them all to see.

"So," I looked around, "who wants the first bite?" Not one indicated anything positive, so I shrugged, and brought it to Wagger's mouth, half stuffing it inside before Brenda re-absorbed it through the part of her that was my glove - giving every indication that my own tail had just eaten the thing.

The reaction was, to the extent I could make it out, exactly what I was aiming for: disgust and confusion and simple horror.

"Now then," I declared. "Do any of you want to have a civilized discussion? Or," I reached forwards with fingers interlaced, cracking my knuckles, "do I get to start being /creative/?"

And that was the end of that mob.

--

If Brenda hadn't discreetly been steadying me, I would have sloshed hot tea all over my hands, even with both of my hands holding the mug.

"Why the - why in the world did /both/ of you let me walk around without Karn-Wena, or without Kahled-Voolch being accessible, or one of my canes, or /anything/ I could use to defend myself?"

Brenda kept quiet, and Denise just shrugged. "I thought you /were/ packing. It doesn't show, but you always are."

"Apparently not when my brain's been grown from birth by a zone that thinks... I don't know /what/ it was thinking. Have your people finished distributing the crossbows and shields and such I just fabbed?"

"Nobody here's a good shot."

"Could be nobody in that gang was, either, but just having their weapons meant we had to pay attention."

"It worked out, though - you always have a plan for the occasion?"

"Are you joking?" I laughed, dryly. "I was just plain BSing them and trying to buy time for you to bring my cheese."

"Wait, what? I thought you were just getting me out of the line of fire."

"... I haven't told you what that cheese is good for, have I?"

"I don't think I want to know."

I sighed, set my mug down, and leaned back, hanging my head back over the back of Angel's wooden chair and closing my eyes. "Back to the point... it sounded like there was some sort of racist or speciesist motivations involved. If you're up to defending the place, maybe I can help avoid a repeat incident, by heading out sooner rather than later."

Brenda finally spoke up. "You don't have to go just because they wanted you to leave! You can do whatever you want to!"

"Even if I /can/," I said, "I still have to decide if I /should/. Changing people's minds takes a lot of time and effort... or advanced technology with a /lot/ of ethical implications. Which we also don't happen to have. Anyway, we've got all sorts of deadlines to get various things done by, even if we don't know exactly when those deadlines are, and we have to prioritize on what's most likely to do the most good."

"Going to leave the zone-killer here?"

"I think so - I don't know if it'd have any effect at all on the 'spirit pools', so it's not as good an option for me as it is for you to have. Denise, you figured out how to fix my eyes yet?"

"There hasn't been much time to work on it. I had one of my people send a goat through with the same 'surprise' paper, and they seem to have changed the same way. A bit hard to tell, since the horizontal pupil looks almost the same, but that sort of measurement is what grad students are for. Anyway, when we put the goat back through, the eyes've stayed the same. We can make the vision /worse/, but the sensitivity to polarization is still there."

"Is that what it is?"

"I've got a would-be entomologist who came up with the idea as soon as I relayed your descriptions."

"O-/kay/. If /that/'s what it is, then maybe if I whip up some polarized sunglasses, that'll cut out the confusing stuff until I get a handle on it, or you figure out how to bring my eyes back to spec."

"I'm going to assume you're not in favour of removing them and letting Bun-Bun grow you new ones."

"I don't know if she /does/ eyes..."

--

"So what /does/ everything look like?" Brenda (currently a gryphoness) cheerfully asked, while I laid out my selection of hidden gizmos, weapons, and tools. "I mean, I /know/ how weird everything can look with a wider spectrum, but that's not what you've got, right?"

I held up a small hose against Wagger, gauging its length through my newly-fabbed polarized teashades. "Let's see... well, take the sky. Light blue, dark blue, pretty standard stuff, right? On /average/, that's still the same. But... there's speckles. Some are lighter, some are darker. If I move my eyes, they stay about the same - but if I twist my head, they shift around pretty crazily. Different speckles get brighter or darker, but the /pattern/ stays the same."

"What sort of pattern?"

I slipped a small ceramic razor blade out of its safety sheath, and held it up to the light to check the blade. "I'm still working on that - there seem to be a few layers to it. I can say that it's strongest in a big circle, all the way across the sky, about halfway away from the sun." I slipped the blade back into its sheath - and my grip slipped, sliding along my thumb. "Oy!" I exclaimed, and jammed the nicked digit into my mouth.

"Here, let me," Brenda offered, and I let her take hold of my hand. In mere moments, she did whatever it was she did, and the cut was sealed back up again.

"Thanks. ... Wait, did I just say 'oy' instead of 'ow'?"

"You did."

"Crap. I was hoping all this mucking about in my brain had cleared up that Lojban imprinting. Wee-nigh-rooheh-sehee. Anyway, even if we don't get my eyes back to normal, I should be fine in a week or two, even with my ordinary human brain."

"How do you figure?"

"Way back in the days of Eld-"

"You mean 'old'?"

"'Eld'. As in 'elder people'. Nevermind. Way back before almost everyone got eaten by the Singularity dragons, there were enough to try all sorts of weird and wacky experiments. In some of them, scientists had people wear weird prisms, periscopes, and lenses over their eyes, which flipped their vision around in all sorts of wacky ways, for days, or even weeks at a time. If I remember right, even when a person's vision was flipped completely around, it only took around ten days or so before their brain adapted so that they saw things properly again. Might take me longer if I keep this filter-glasses on, but I want them at least handy while I'm working on detail-oriented stuff. Speaking of which... how about when I'm done here, we find out if Internet can make something with the right properties to be vocal cords for you?"

She rolled over onto her back, spreading her wings and putting her claws behind her head. "I've kind of gotten used to tickling the AIs to talk. Lungs and tongue and so on seem kind of clunky now."

I held up a couple of pen-sized sticks of machined aluminum. "I don't expect I'll ever need yawaras, but I've still got 'em if I need 'em."

"Fine, fine." Upside-down, she watched me fiddling with my inventory for a few more minutes. Then, "So, other than your eyes, you're back to the way you were?"

"Could be. I'm at least acting the way I was, in that I'm back to making my paranoid multiple backup plans." Sealing the ends of the short hose with its various small or flexible tools inside, I started sliding it down Wagger's throat.

"So you're schizoid again?"

"Probably."

"So - you're not interested in... how did you put it... 'considering adding a sexual component to our relationship'?"

I didn't answer at first, just finished sliding the hose into Wagger, until it had vanished. When I couldn't reasonably delay any longer, I turned back to Brenda. "Wa-nigh-sigh-rohu, I'm confused as all get-out about what I'm interested in. I started out crazy, and have had my brains stirred halfway to Sunday since. You used to be an accountant, even if a criminal one, with your own goals and aspirations, and now I don't know if you /can/ have a relationship with anyone but me."

"I don't know... maybe if you wanted me to, I could."

I let my head slump into my hands. "I have trouble enough with my own social interactions - I'm not sure I should take responsibility for anyone else's, too." I straightened up so I could wave at the digital to-do lists lining Munchkin's walls. "Or if I've got time to waste on anything but essentials."

"So you don't think relationships are essential to you?"

"If we're lucky, and skilled, and work hard enough, then just /maybe/ we'll live long enough to figure out how to survive the next Singularities. If we can do /that/... /then/ we'll have all the time in the universe to work through our issues and try doing things that risk breaking us up as an effective team."

"So you're saying that all I have to do to get the princess is save the world?"

I snorted, but with a smile. "Sure, let's go with that."

--

After spending the rest of the day getting tested, applying spectrometers to dairy products, exchanging heliograms with the underwater nation I was nominally head-of-state of (such as to offer my opinion on their inquiry whether further colonies in the Great Lakes should be under the same government, to which I explained the concept of using federalism to allow sub-governments to experiment with policies and healthily compete with each other), getting ready for crossing the Niagara River on the following day, and enjoying a goat-cheese-based meal, I was looking forward to a nice, long, night's rest, without any alarms or excursions or invasions.

I didn't get any of those.

What I did get was waking up in the middle of the night - my throat burning, and worse, utterly unable to inhale. I tried to pull in some air, any air, without success, until something loosened and I gasped in a lungful through a horrid, high-pitched groaning. And I was able to breathe back out.

And then I couldn't breathe back in again.

"Bunny?" My living blanket was pulling in on itself. "Are you alright?"

I couldn't talk, just struggled for another breath - and barely managed to pull another in, making that awful noise again.

"Autodoc!" Brenda shouted, "Now!"

The rest of my body was still fine, so even without Brenda's fast-increasing support, I was able to get up and step into the machine, where I slowly draaaged in another breath.

"'Nothing to worry about'? This machine says there's /nothing to worry about/? Hold on, Bunny, I'm going in!"

Brenda shoved her head at my mouth, then /in/ it, filling it and pushing into my throat...

... and I inhaled perfectly normally.

I just relaxed, enjoying the sensations of air going in and out for a few breaths, before the bulk of Brenda hanging outside of me said, "Your vocal cords were clamping shut, I'm holding them open. And there's some acid in here I'm sweeping up. Let me check..." I felt her shifting around in my throat. "There's more acid in your food-tube here."

I reached over to pull one of the auto-doc's display where I could see it, and read 'Laryngospasm caused by gastroesophageal reflux. Immediate treatment: Wait for spasm to pass. Long-term recommendations: Avoid fruits, fatty foods. Take antacids.' I tapped Brenda's surface to get her attention, then gently grabbed hold of the part of her just outside my mouth and gave a slight tug.

"Are you sure? What if... /that/... happens again?" I just gave another tug. "Well, okay, but if you can't breathe yet, I'm going right back in."

She slid up and out, gradually reforming her head as she did... and I breathed out... and I breathed in.

"What. The. Hell. Was. That."

I just shook my head, and got up to hit the washroom cubby to rinse my mouth. After drying my chin-fur, I rejoined Brenda at the autodoc, plopping my rear on the edge. I coughed a couple of times, cleared my throat, and said, "Don't worry. I still had Wagger to breathe for me."

"... Forgot she could do that," Brenda admitted. "Still."

I ran a finger along some displays, calling up further info. "It looks like stomach acid went up my esophagus, then back down my windpipe, and my throat closed off to protect itself... and it's a common enough thing to happen that there's lots of info on it. What /I'm/ worrying about is why it happened now, and why Bun-Bun didn't just keep it from happening at all?"

"Well, the big new thing in your life is the age zone. Maybe it grew your stomach wrong?"

"Maybe... there was also Bun-Bun's black-branch thing. And we've been nervous about my GI tract since that Acadian dinner and those microbes. Could be any one, or two, or all three, of those mixing up."

"Think it'll happen again?"

"There's no reason it wouldn't - we've just cleared up the symptoms, not the cause. Or even identified the cause. Let's work through this - maybe Bun-Bun didn't do anything because she /can't/, after exhausting her resources with the black-branch thing. Angel's notes said that the youth and age zones reconstruct bodies based on what they are when they go in... so if I went in with a gut full of Acadian microbes, then I got de-aged based on the assumption I had them, and then re-aged as if they were always part of me. Which caused... okay, I have no idea how that would lead to a bad valve between stomach and throat."

"Maybe it's not the valve?"

"Hm?"

"Maybe the valve is fine, it's your stomach that's not the same. Makes too much acid, or something. The Acadians have to eat meat, they can't go without it, right? How much meat have you eaten lately?"

"... I suppose being a carnivorous rabbit would be par for the course, these days. Any thoughts on testing your hypothesis, ma petite scientifique gluante?"

"Track your diet..."

Alphie piped up, "Boomer and I already are. We have not had any significant results to report lately."

Brenda continued without missing a beat, "See if you have any more spasms. Measure acids in different parts of your throat. ... And don't send me on errands away from you, so if your throat closes up and doesn't open again, I'll be there to help you. Maybe Wagger's got the same problem you do - we can't /rely/ on her being able to breathe for you, but we /know/ that /I/ can."

"Not bad. Though I can think of situations where the odds favour sending you off anyway. Why don't you get Alphie to help you write up a full set of procedures, while I keep Boomer to keep an ear on my breathing and try to get more sleep?"

"Only if you sleep in the autodoc tonight. ... And I want to take a good look through your GI tract in the morning, to see if I can find anything."

I hid my mouth with a hand as I failed to suppress a yawn. "If you can do it without waking me, maybe take a look tonight, to save time."

"Can I stay in there overnight to keep an eye on things?"

"If you can avoid getting digested, or don't mind it... I'm too tired to say no. Just make sure I'm..." I yawned again. "... as close to normal as I can get by the time I wake up."

"Can I try to get Bun-Bun to answer some questions?"

"Only for you, Dash," I mumbled.

"What?"

"G'night, Bren..."

"Good night, Bunny. I'll keep the bed-bugs from biting. ... Who's 'Dash'?"

 

*Chapter Nine: Neo-logism*

"It's thirty miles to the university, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pound of cheese, my suit doesn't understand my cultural references... and I'm wearing sunglasses. Hit it."

--

"You know," I peered at the gently waving banner on the edges of the university's property line, done up in the blue and white shield for cultural heritage preservation, "I kind of expected someone from the Nine Nations to show up by now."

Brenda's new voice was a bit buzzy, while we honed in on plastics with just the right properties, but she didn't need to use Boomer or slow tapping to talk. "Munchkin does travel fast. Maybe they're just behind us?"

"There doesn't seem to be any shortage of wildlife right here," I gestured through Munchkin's virtual windows at some of the green-jays and squirrels. "Any one of which could pop into a nearby 'spirit pool' and have a live person pop out. If there aren't any people here, then it seems near-certain that the 'spirits' just don't want to make any effort to talk to us."

"Are they getting ready to ambush us?"

"Good question. Simple answer - we'll assume they are, until we manage to find someone to talk to. Meaning we stay in the hazmat suit, keep the tricorder running, stay fully armed, keep Munchkin locked and ready to bolt, and generally ticking off all the boxes on my usual to-do lists."

"Will we still be able to get anything we're here to do done?"

"Just have to find out, won't we?"

I nudged Munchkin's throttle, and in short order parked in front of Schmon Tower. Brenda filled out my pouch to a pregnant-appearing level, along with Boomer and a few soft tools; then something more akin to a harness than actual clothing to hold the items that seemed better to keep inside the hazmat suit; then Brenda; then the hazmat suit; and /then/ the Batman belt and all the other gizmos that I wanted to be able to get at without breaching the suit's integrity. Air checks, airlock locking mechanism checks, double-checking with Brenda that she was fine with the cramped quarters, and so on, and we were finally ready to actually step outside.

Brenda whispered, "If your suit had more transparent parts, I could watch outside it for you."

I returned, "I'll remember to keep an eye for see-through features the next time I go shopping," then, raising my voice to a regular volume, called out, "Bonjour, Clara! Comment ça va?"

"Hello, Bunny," came over the university's PA system. "Long time no see."

"Longer for you than for me. It may not have been for tax purposes, but I did spend the last few years dead. I've been a little busy, so I haven't had a chance to ask - did a Board of Governors form, with enough members to form a quorum, since I was last here?"

"No, Bunny. Elections involving local residents were scheduled to be held, but I have not heard any news of the individuals involved since several weeks before said elections. I am still operating under the same principles and guidelines as I did when we met."

I nodded. It was possible that some members of the Nine Nations had made themselves into a Board and told Clara to lie - but that was fairly low on the probability list, along with Clara having been hacked or any particular individual I knew being a double agent. In short, I was willing to proceed on the assumption that things were what they seemed to be.

"In that case," I told her, "I'd like to visit the library, and get as much information as I can about that Lion Castle book... and by any chance, do you have something resembling an fMRI about the place?" I started walking to the front doors, which opened to me.

"That particular medical device is not present, but several others are, with varying functionalities. What do you wish to know?"

"My brain's been toyed with, more than once. It's literally been shrunk to the size of a newborn's and brought back - more than once. I don't even know how that's possible, let alone what non-obvious effects might result. ... And, of course, since my brain's involved, I might have developed some sort of mental blind-spot about some aspect of decreased mental functioning."

"I believe I understand; you desire a full neurological and psychological work-up."

I stepped into the library. "Well, yes - but I'm under time pressure. I don't know how long it took to stuff a hundredish words in my head - but Sarah and Bunny Joe and the others have been there for /days/. And I /still/ don't know how to get them out."

"In that case, I anticipated your library request, and a copy of the book is waiting for you at the check-out desk. When you have collected it, please proceed to the server room and I will begin psychological testing while I arrange for what neurological scans I have the equipment for."

"Sounds like a plan." As I headed back down the halls, a detail occured to me, so I asked, "Clara, if you're still running under your old rules - who told you to put up the Blue Shield indications?"

"It was my understanding that you desired this location to be so designated."

"Well, yes; but from my understanding, they're supposed to be put up when a government says some spot is culturally important and should be preserved from war."

"That is essentially correct."

"So which government was it? Lake Erie? The Nine Nations? Lake Ontario?"

"The government of Canada."

I stopped walking. "Have you gotten in contact with Ottawa?"

"I have not."

I had to concentrate to keep my breathing even. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"If you think that I am implying that I consider you to be the head-of-state of Canada, the answer is a heavily qualified and tentative 'yes'."

I was feeling... something. I couldn't identify it enough to even spout out words of Lojban that nobody else would understand, but I took a few steps over to the nearest bench and sat down heavily.

Clara simply continued speaking, "During the period you were dead, the evidence has accumulated to the point where your claim to the throne has a small, but non-negligible probability. In the absence of any more likely candidates, I am obliged to treat you as the Queen, at least in matters that do not require a greater certainty. Placing banners and painting symbols is a relatively minor matter. Revoking or rewriting the university charter would require much greater certainty about your qualifications."

"... What sort of evidence did you collect?"

"The portion which had the greatest effect were the combined legal arguments presented by the Dominion of Lake Erie."

"... And why didn't you tell me this when I was revived?"

"You didn't ask."

In lieu of face-palming, I slumped forward, resting my helmeted head against the window.

After a few moments, I looked back up at the ceiling and asked, "Zhuhee, Clara... kho-bayheh my claim to royalty?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understood that. Could you rephrase the question?"

"Uhu. Sorry. Still don't realize when I'm using Lojban words."

"Now I understand your question. The answer is neehu-pashee."

"You probably shouldn't encourage me in that language until we can figure out what happened. Anyway - minus thirteen decibans. Five percent confidence. ... That seems to be cheering me up a lot more than it sounds like it should. I wonder why?"

"I have several theories, but perhaps we should run you through the psychological testing first."

"Fine. Oh, and I'd like to add to the agenda, heading to the top of the tower, so I can get a look at the factory site from above..."

--

"Hey, Helio-Bun." I patted my robotic duplicate on the head - though she wasn't quite so accurate a copy any longer, now that Bun-Bun had turned my hoof into a paw. "You're a good robot. Keep up the good work." I turned from her to the view to the northeast. I squinted, tried tilting my head to look over my teashades' frames, then, with a cautious glance at the Toronto skyline, pulled out binoculars.

"Clara? I see the canal, and I think I recognize the landmarks, like the locks... but where's the factory?"

"The site has become overgrown."

"... You're saying that for a bunch of decades, even the parking lot stayed recognizable - but in the three short years since the buildings collapsed, the whole place turned into forest?"

"Two years. There was no significant growth in the first year of your death, and then extensive greenification subsequently."

"And two years ago is when everyone else lost contact with the Nine Nations. So what happened two years ago?"

"I have insufficient data to answer that question."

"Ah well. If the raw metals are buried, maybe I could hang the spectrometer on the quadcopter, and try not to fly it high enough to get shot down by Toronto, and hope something can still be seen through the ground cover... not sure if that's the best use of my time, but I'm running low on ideas. Whether or not I'm a queen, I'm definitely not in charge of a trained, well-equipped hostage rescue team. And without more raw material to work with, to make armor and weapons and sensors and logistics gear and so on, I can't even put together an untrained, well-equipped hostage rescue team."

"Would a trained, poorly-equipped hostage rescue team be useful?"

I glanced up at the ceiling as I made my way back to the elevator. "It would be an improvement, at least. But New Buffalo seems to be pretty much all civilians, Erie's 'Civil Guard' wasn't competent enough to put up even a token defense against the Free Company, the Free Company seems to think their Observers are disposable test subjects, Technoville is... far, and kind of warlike and untrustworthy, especially if they're the ones launching those air-strikes; and the Great Peace seems to be a human-free zone, as far as we've been able to see so far."

"What do you intend to do?"

I slumped against the inside of the elevator. "Keep looking for /some/ solution. Maybe negotiations will work out when I head back... what's frustrating is that I'm used to being able to make a good guess about what someone is trying to accomplish. Even if I think their goals are wrong-headed or their methods unlikely, they're still at least vaguely predictable. But the castle? I don't even know what the being, or beings there, /are/, or what they /can/ do, let alone what they /want/ to do."

"Perhaps that very confusion is what they seek."

"Hm... Maybe. I've tried something like that myself a time or two. But I find it hard to believe that simply messing with minds is their end-goal, instead of their means.

"That may depend on what 'messing' they are doing. If you remember the way, I have finished calibrating and powering-up the relevant scanners in the medical clinic."

--

After going through the process of triple-checking the air, taking the top of the hazmat suit off, continually monitoring the environment while I stuck my head inside one machine or other, and sealing myself back up between each test... I was a nervous and tired little twentieth-of-a-queen, and even Brenda's massaging could only help so much.

"So what's the verdict?" I called to the air.

"To the resolution of the available sensors, I am unable to detect any physical abnormalities that you are not already aware of, such as your altered eyes and your lapiform features. Your psychological profile remains well within the model of you developed prior to your death. In short, if there's anything wrong with your mind, I am unable to detect it."

"Ghuy-cha."

"That was not Lojban."

"No, just Klingon for 'damn it'. I was hoping to get /some/ clue to work with, to build /some/ kind of plan from... but I don't think just knowing that the zone in question is very good at what it does gets us very far. Hokay. I'm probably not going to get anything useful from the factory, let alone build a new army of bun-bots there. Or new weapons - compressed-gas guns and knives will have to do."

Clara interrupted my musing out-loud with, "Have you considered combining those two items?"

"I checked the math a while back, and firing off a knife's blade is a lot more practical using mechanical springs than compressed gas."

"I was referring to the Farallon Shark Dart and its derivatives, which, when they pierce the hide of an animal, can be triggered to release a bolus of compressed air within the target."

"... Does that actually work?"

"I have videos of sharks being killed with such devices, if you wish to view them."

"... Maybe later. Thanks for the idea. Now, where was I... right. Getting Bunny Joe and Blue Wolf and everyone out, as fast as possible, without relying on DM's good will. Negotiating hasn't worked. Trying to be clever hasn't gotten me anywhere yet. I think I need someone who knows actual military matters better than I do - there's probably a lot of ideas I /could/ use that I don't have the experience to even /think/ of. I think I remember Joe mentioning having been in a war-band, so the Nine Nations might still have military traditions - and with luck, that includes more than stone-age strategies, from any members who were part of the Canadian Forces or other high-tech militaries. But before I can even find that out, let alone try to convince them, I have to /find/ them. And if I can't do it soon... Technoville really might be my best option."

"Is there anything I can do to assist you?"

"Maybe. Could you put together a package of data to give to Boomer on the Nine Nations, culture and language and history and anything else that might help track them down? Oh, and I almost forgot - I'd like to leave a biological sample with you, that you'll need to keep frozen."

"Is that all?"

"Can you solve a problem I don't know how to solve?"

"No, but I do have an advisory sub-program that can assist you. How many potential solutions have you ruled out due the cost being too high?"

"Well, there's the-" I paused, clamping my jaw shut as I immediately thought of a resource that I'd ruled out using so firmly that I'd almost forgotten I still had it. "... Let me get back to you on that," I said to Clara, while considering the ramifications of even thinking about re-activating the Berserker.

--

Inside a short, not-quite-phone-booth-sized box of some freshly-fabbed blank white, sound-absorbent, plastic panels, inside a Faraday cage, were a chair, containing me; and a ledge, containing the box containing the AI that had called itself 'Alex', and which I called 'Berserker' or 'city-killer'. Also on the ledge were a battery, not yet connected; and some deadman switches and safety timers, to automatically turn off the box in several questionable circumstances.

I hadn't turned it on yet.

I'd left everything else outside the box that might pose any sort of threat, or be in any form of danger - particularly Alphie and Boomer, but also Brenda, and anything I could use to harm myself if the Berserker turned out to be able to induce suicidal ideation. Which left me with pretty much nothing but my own fur.

I wasn't sure I was /going/ to turn it on.

I hadn't told any of the AIs what I was doing, though I wouldn't have been surprised if some of them had guessed. Their minds might be non-human, but it still felt disrespectful to rub their faces in the entity that had taken over the CPU that had once run their progenitor, Laura. I'd lost track of whether or not I'd told Brenda about the Berserker's existence or nature, but had asked her to stay away, for both our safety. I hadn't locked the door to my private car, in case I needed to be bodily yanked out of there, and was hoping that having been grounded once already would be enough incentive to keep her out of the car for a while.

I wasn't a complete idiot. I knew all the stories about wish-twisting genies, tempting devils, and tricksy robots. I also know that this particular thing was more than willing to kill lots of people to achieve its goals - that there was even a chance that killing people /was/ its goal. (The one threat I wasn't particularly worried about was having it suddenly FOOM into superintelligence. It had already been active for days with no sign of such behaviour, and I'd met several other AIs who acted with roughly human-equivalent intelligence.) I had at least a rough guess of what the dangers were.

What I didn't have was even a rough guess of how /likely/ any of those dangers were.

I doubted Sarah would thank me if I used the Berserker to rescue her, but in a way that ended up annihilating her hometown.

Regular old thinking about the problem wasn't giving me an answer. I thought about polling my sub-selves, but discarded the thought, as that would only tell me what I /wanted/, not what was /the best course of action/. But thinking in those terms put me on my last-resort method: working through my goal-tree as dispassionately as I could.

There were a great many benefits to extracting Sarah, Bunny Joe, Blue Wolf, and the others from Lion Castle: having their particular skills and loyalties, demonstrating to other parties (such as the Free Company) that I had such a capability, and improving my own psychological health. Via a number of paths, doing that was most likely to at least slightly improve the odds that I could do something about the next Singularity. On the other hand, firing up the Berserker could potentially counter all of those, and then some - even if all I did was talk to it and listen to its advice. I knew enough about the Dunning-Kruger effect to know that I was clueless about all manner of subjects, military and paramilitary tactics being among them; one of the simplest bad things the Berserker could do was give me bad advice that I couldn't tell from good. One of the more insidious possibilities was for it to give me /good/ advice - and then /keep/ giving me good advice, until I relied on that advice being good.

What finally pushed me into making a decision was one particular fact: I still didn't know how DM had stuffed Shniglish vocabulary into my mind. I didn't expect that the Berserker could do the same sort of thing via speakers and a small screen (otherwise it already would have)... but there could be subtler tricks it could play to nudge my thinking one way or another without my noticing at all, just as psychologists had primed students to walk more slowly by nudging them with words related to old age.

I hadn't yet decided what /would/ lead me to call on the Berserker... but saving the lives of a half-dozen people, including a couple of my best friends, wasn't enough. Not without much better info, which I didn't feel I had time to collect.

As I started packing away the Berserker, and the various trappings, I finally started considering the problem of what I'd do if I didn't actually manage to retrieve Sarah. Going back to Amy for intensive psychotherapy would just be the tip of the iceberg...

--

I parked Munchkin by the spirit pool I'd once had my foot dipped in, and back in my hazmat suit, went out to look around. "Hello?" I called out. "Is anyone here?"

I was ignored by both squirrels and birds, as well as anything else that might be listening.

Brenda offered, "Maybe they don't know it's you?"

I pointed my thumb behind us, at the land-train. "I would have thought that would have been a dead giveaway." Spying a flattish rock on the ground, I picked it up, hefted it, and pitched it into the pool - where it sank without splash or trace. "But I never have gotten a good handle on the so-called 'spirits', so maybe they focus on other clues. Individual biochemistry, maybe."

"You're going to take the suit off, aren't you."

"We'll keep the tricorder running, the autodoc is ready to go, and there doesn't seem to be much that could stop you from dragging me into it."

I carefully packed the suit in the airlock - no sense losing it if we had to leave in a hurry - and with a few words, Brenda removed herself from my hands and paws. I walked around a bit more, brushing against the plantlife. Wagger idly snapped at some dandelion seeds I sent floating.

After a while, I stared down at the edge of the pool, my arms crossed, frowning. Finally, I said, "If it comes to it - I'm willing to let them melt off my foot again, if that's what it takes to get Bunny Joe and everyone else back. Goodness knows I've been getting enough practice for my legs not working right in all sorts of ways. That said, I'd rather not lose what I don't have to..."

Very carefully, so that if I lost my balance I'd fall backwards, I lifted my left paw from the ground, moved it forward... and flinched as I dipped a toe in the pool.

To my mild surprise, it didn't start melting down to the bone.

To my greater surprise, there was a stirring in the pool. I hadn't seen anything enter - but now, as I hopped backwards to get out of the way, a turtleshell broke the surface. A rather /large/ turtleshell. I kept hopping backwards, until I landed on my rear end - which put me right at eye-level with the oversized chelonian. The thing might not be able to swallow all of me with one bite - but after a single chomp from its beak, there wouldn't be enough of me left to complain about such nit-picking details.

Standing over me, it brought one forefoot up to its mouth... and then with a watery, grassy-scented breath, it hissed, "Shhhh..."

I blinked.

It started turning around, likely to head back into the pool, but I scrambled back to my feet and to catch up to its head. "Wait!"

It stopped turning its body away, and swung its head back in my direction. Without moving its mouth, a voice rumbled from its throat. "This is a sacred place. You are defiling it by bringing that evil thing here."

I looked down at myself, back at Munchkin, then back at the titanic terrapin. "Could you be more specific? I need to talk to... any people still here."

It huffed, sending a rather disgusting cloud from its nostrils. "There are no more people here. They were all killed by monsters, witches, cannibals, and evil spirits. Like the one that has tricked you by disguising itself as your clothing."

I blinked, then glanced down at myself. "Brenda, since we're here to talk, would you mind swallowing your pride and waiting for me inside Munchkin?"

She slithered down from my body to the grass, not bothering to reform into any particular shape. "Fine. But I'll be watching, and if that thing does anything to you..."

I turned back to the turtle, who appeared not to have stopped staring at me. "There. Without getting into whether she's evil, she's at least gone and not doing any more defiling. You said... all the people are gone? Why don't the spirits just have more walk out of the spirit pools?"

"One of the rules those spirits are bound by... is that every kind of animal is brought forth by its own kind. Turtles lay turtle eggs. Beavers have beaver kits. There are no more people to bring forth people."

"There are many people outside the Great Peace," was my first thought to get around that particular limitation, "who could come here to bring forth a new generation."

Its eyelids took nearly a second to complete a blink before it answered, "Another rule those spirits are bound by... is that outside life must become part of the Great Peace. People who come here must be born anew... and there are no more people to bear them as people."

"That's... I'm not sure that's entirely true. The Haudenosaunee woman I know as Bunny Joe is, uh, /probably/ still alive - I came here to ask for help in rescuing her."

The giant turtle didn't answer for a long few seconds, and pushing for a response seemed like a bad idea, so I let the silence linger until it finally said, "If she is still alive - then perhaps she could play a role similar to Sky Woman, and become the mother of the people again. It would take many years, but a slender thread of hope is better than none at all."

"I may be able to improve that. I - uh - faced a woman that some may call a witch, and took over her home, where it is possible for adults to be made into infants and infants to be made into adults. If your spirits are still... how did they put it... holding the memories of the people in their hands... then with their cooperation, the people of the Nine Nations may be brought back more quickly than you would expect." I had another thought, and added, "And Bunny Joe is not the only one who has been through the spirit pools and survives. Also captured with her is Sarah, who the spirits gave a healed body to, and her former, um, mate, Jeff, is not captured at all."

"And what of you, Great Pink Daughter?"

"... What about me?"

"You have placed your foot in a spirit pool. Before they died, the chiefs of the Quebecois, sitting around their council fire, determined that you are their Queen, according to their ancient traditions."

"Yyyeeess?"

"You say that you have come seeking aid to rescue Bunny Joe. That is well and good - forming a war band is another ancient tradition. Even ones made of animals. But those warriors who might join a war band must decide how worthy the war chief is. Will you do all that is necessary to bring people back to these lands?"

"Isn't that what I'm doing right now?"

The turtle snorted again. "If your rescue fails - will you take Bunny Joe's place, to bring forth the next generation yourself? To lie with the wolf, and bear the first mother of the Wolf Clan; the stag, for the Deer Clan; and so on for all nine clans?"

It was my turn to fall silent. The whole concept was ludicrous - even if the local spirit pools didn't just melt me down, that just wasn't how genetics worked - but given all that I'd seen of transformative zones on the other side of Lake Erie, I couldn't rule out that the 'spirits' could make something like that happen. In fact, with the age zone and Brenda to perform more C-sections, it might not even take all that long, or involve any significant danger. It was just... the entire notion was about as taboo as possible.

It occurred to me that 'taboo' was one of those words with a twinned meaning, like 'responsibility'. It didn't just mean 'forbidden', but also 'sacred'. The turtle was talking about things that sounded more like larger-than-life legends and myths than the reality I was used to trying to face.

Since the silence was starting to stretch, I hedged. "It seems to me that it would make little sense to bring the people of the Nine Nations back if the things which killed them all once are still around to kill them all again."

"It is good that you say that. I was going to. Even if a war chief shows that she is committed, she must also show that she is capable. You have shown that you can tame an evil spirit. If you show that you can defeat a monster, a man-eater, and a witch, then I am sure you will gain all the warriors you will need."

"It was in trying to prove myself to others that Bunny Joe and our companions were captured in the first place. I dislike the idea of dancing for others' amusement."

"There is nothing amusing about any of this." The turtle lifted its head, pointing it at the sky, nostrils flaring as it inhaled deeply. "I can smell a Naked Bear." It brought its head back down to look at me again. "Their only weakness is that they keep their heart in one of their paws. The Stone Coats are twice as tall as humans, whose bodies repel all weapons, whose saliva makes their own weapons have magical power, and who eat people. There is a band of witches who steal eyes and put them on a blanket. Bring proof that you have conquered them all, and you can be assured of your war band."

I frowned. "Great Turtle," I began - it almost never hurt to be respectful of beings who sounded like they thought their descriptions should be capitalized - "if I all I needed to rescue Bunny Joe were warriors with strong limbs, stout hearts, and sharp weapons, there are people outside the Great Peace who I could ask."

"Long ago, there was a time when animals talked and great magics could be performed by saying the right words. Then there was a time when animals were just animals and words were just words. Now it is a time of talking animals and great magics again. Do not worry, Pink Daughter. Should you succeed, your war band will be able to do that which you can scarcely imagine."

 

I am a little confused why an animal can't go in the pool and emerge as a person who was already born as a member of the Great Peace, and just happened to die. We've seen deer go in before and people walk out, and the original person being dead shouldn't be an obstacle since they've cloned Joe multiple times.

 

I see why. Thier own rules say they can turn 'Jim' into a goat only if there are already goats in thier area of control. So no humans means they cant turn deer into people untill they have humans wandering around. but they cant induct new people without turning them into animals first and thus with no human population they cant be turned back.

 

*Chapter Ten: Neo-lithic*

"We're being set up," I stated, pacing back and forth in Munchkin.

Brenda had glomped onto me as soon as I was back inside, having muttered something about 'just in case of laryngospasm', and now said, "How do you mean?"

"We've seen that the claimed rule of humans only coming from humans can be broken. One of the first people I met after my first revival was born from livestock - you pulled me out of a goat. There's no /technical/ reason why the 'spirits' of the Great Peace can't just spam out as many humans as they need to keep a steady population, no matter how many different things are preying on them."

"So why don't they?"

I shook my head, frustrated. "I don't know. I'd say that maybe they just don't want people messing up the ecosystems... but even if that turtle framed things in its own way, if a so-called animal can talk and decide whether or not to join a war-band, it's 'people' in my book."

"Does that mean you don't mind making babies with a talking bear, deer... what are the others?"

Boomer helpfully supplied, "Wolf, Beaver, Turtle, Eel, Sandpiper, Heron, and Hawk."

"Don't even joke about that," I grumped. "I /might/ be persuaded to help the Nine Nations repopulate. I can't think of any good reason why that process has to involve interspecies sex."

"It would make for a pretty good story."

I stopped my pacing. "Say that again."

"... It would make a good story?"

"You know, you're right. Very mythic. And that turtle suggested three challenges to overcome - very Joseph Campbellian. I wonder if defeating those particular things would just happen to supply us with the tools we'd need to defeat the big bad of the story?"

"DM?"

"Nnno, I don't think so. I'm still thinking about the Great Peace. Humans are tough buggers - and we've got the primate knack of each of us trying to solve a problem in all sorts of different ways, just in case at least one of us can. I'm nothing special, monster-hunting-wise. If /I/ can deal with those Stone Coats, and so on, then the locals should have been able to, a lot easier than I could. There's no /reason/ for them all to have been killed off, just by what we're told they were killed off by. There's things we're not seeing here."

"So what's the plan?"

"Two choices seem obvious. The first - we play along. We beat the Naked Bear, and the witches, and so on, and take the animal war band off to Lion Castle and try to rescue Bunny Joe. And hope that whatever's going on in the background doesn't particularly concern us."

"And the second?"

"We break the story, and do things /our/ way."

--


Brenda and I listened to Boomer's recital of the relevant tales, we consulted with Clara on a few details, and I hit up Internet for a few pieces of electronics.

And then we went Naked Bear hunting.

It wasn't much of a hunt; the first one we found was roughly the size of an elephant, easily visible from the paraglider from a few miles off. It wasn't entirely 'naked', either, its pink skin interrupted by a strip of fur down its spine from head to tail.

"Ready?" I called out to Brenda over the paraglider's engine noise.

"This is a bad plan and you're a bad person for thinking of it!"

"Would you rather /I/ tried to pull an Alexandria on that thing?"

"... Geronimo!"

As we passed over the beast, Brenda slipped from me, falling a couple of stories to splat onto the ground next to it. (She'd practiced in a few of the university's stairwells.) Before the thing had time to do more than grunt, she slithered up its leg, to its head - and into its nose and throat, cutting off almost all of its air supply.

I stayed well above the ensuing thrashing, waiting until it collapsed before even coming near the ground.

I shouted down, "You good?"

The bear's chest rose in a heave, and as it fell, Brenda's voice drifted on the exhale, "Idon't/like/itinherehurry/up/!"

I came to the ground nearby, packed up the shrouds, and hurried over to the animal (which smelled a /lot/ worse than Bear Joe). It took me a few seconds to unfold our new piece of electronics kit and strap it onto the thing's head - the time I took not being helped by my jumping back every time the Naked Bear twitched.

I stepped /well/ back before I called out, "Okay, it's on, I'm powering up, and... we're hot. Give it some air." The Naked Bear breathed deep a few times, and opened its eyes. It pushed itself to its feet, growled, roared, and took a step in my direction.

I nudged a small joystick.

The beast stumbled, tipping to its left. It shook its head, looked at me - I nudged the joystick further.

It swung its head to the left again, until it was facing away from me entirely.

I nudged another joystick.

It swayed a bit, then took a step forward; steadied, swayed, steadied, then started walking.

"I think we're good!" I shouted. "You can come out now!"

Brenda rejoined me, a healthy distance behind the Naked Bear I was aiming in the direction of the spirit pool with the giant turtle. "I'm going to spend hours in the tub even if it turns me into a puddle."

"You didn't object to diving into my lungs, before."

"Well, yeah, but that was /you/. ... Can you make head-things like that for people?"

"It's pretty similar to my thinking cap, so probably, as long as you overcame one particular problem."

"Which one?"

"Convincing me that the prohibitions on doing exactly that, that research ethical committees came up with before the Singularity, aren't justified. Not to mention the risk that if I make 'em, there's reasonable odds that someone will slap one on /my/ head, and no offense intended, but I think we've dealt with enough artificial nudging of motivations for a while, don't you?"

--

The giant turtle stuck its head out of its shell just far enough to watch us poke and prod at the electronically sedated Naked Bear.

"This skin is like Kevlar," I read through some of the scanners' outputs. "Very flexible, even stretchy, but I don't think even bullets could get through, let alone arrows."

"What about the feet? Aren't they supposed to be vulnerable?"

"Nope, if anything they're even tougher. Anyone who tried to kill this thing by going after its paws would have been unhappily surprised. Say, Brenda? I'd like to have Clara run an analysis on this thing's DNA - do you think you could slip inside and see if you can get a blood sample from anywhere?"

The turtle finally spoke up. "What do you mean, its feet are not vulnerable? Is this or is this not a Naked Bear?"

"Were the hyper-deer things Joe and I rode to the university deer or not? Is Bunny Joe a real bunny-woman? Is the Covenant Chain between the royal family and the local First Peoples broken or intact? Not all simple questions have simple answers."

"You are playing games with words."

"Only because words play games with us. If you don't know the reason you ask a question, how your actions will change because of the answer, then you'll probably use words which don't tell you what you need to know, only words which tell you what you think you want to know."

"Pah!" spat the turtle. "Maybe in this ridiculous tongue, but in a /proper/ language, words mean what they should, no more and no less."

I was just rallying for a counterpoint, when I noted the bear's throat rippling, and then some familiar, translucent blue goop started bulging out of the mouth, so I instead asked, "Get a blood sample?"

"Run!" Brenda buzzed, and I trusted her enough to stand and start stepping back. She continued, "It's not a bear! It's goo in a bag! /Run/!"

The Naked Bear, or whatever, immediately opened its eyes and started standing. I pushed the control to increase the helmet's sedative effect to maximum - it just finished standing. It was between me and Munchkin, and advancing-

I turned around and jumped into the spirit pool.

Fortunately, the pool acted as if it were made of nothing but water, so I kicked and stroked to get further from shore. After a few seconds, I rolled onto my back so I could raise my head and look back -

The bear's whole head was distorted, already wrapped halfway around the giant turtle's shell, its prey's hindlegs and tail thrashing feebly. I couldn't see Brenda, so I stopped backstroking, rolled back over, and kept swimming.

There was an enormous splash behind me, and a wave of water pushed me forward an extra foot, but that didn't make me feel any safer. I felt something wrap around my waist, and started struggling until I saw it was the colour of the sky. The bear-thing was almost caught up to me already, with no sign that the turtle had ever existed, so I tried the only direction that might have a chance - I dove.

Brenda wrapped around me, not just covering me but pulling all my limbs against my body - just in time for the bear's teeth to glide across her surface as it swallowed us both.

I felt the slight click in my belly of Boomer's power being flipped on. Brenda spoke through it, "I can keep you from being digested, but I don't know how to get you out... there's almost no air here, Bunny, so you're going to fall unconscious soon - but one way or another, I /will/ keep you alive, and get you out of here."

As I started seeing sparkles around the edges of the darkness, and began losing track of what was going on, I thought I heard one more word: "... Somehow."

--

I woke to light on my eyelids, and the sound of wind rustling leaves, the smell of the inside of something's digestive tract, and the sensation that my own digestive tract was not only empty, but had been so for some time.

I opened my eyes to a sight of trees reaching up to the sky, and flinched at the brightness. I swung my hand over my eyes...

I tried swinging my hand over my eyes...

I tried wriggling my hand...

I sighed, squinted against the light, and lifted my head to examine myself.

I was much like DM had put me in that VR: as limbless as Wagger (who lifted her head to look back at me). I clenched my belly, and noted that, unlike that VR, I could feel the corners of Boomer's case in my pouch. I was still obscenely flexible, so I soon managed to slide an ear into my pouch to hit Boomer's power switch.

"Bunny, I have an urgent message from Brenda. Message starts: Bunny, I've been fighting the bear-goo as hard as I can, in ways I can't describe... I had to cut down the air you used further, so I had to cut circulation to your limbs. I used them as, well, fuel for the fight. I've been learning how to fight goo. I think I can get you out now - but it's going to cost me almost everything. Maybe everything. I'll try and make sure enough of me gets out with you, but I'll be... damaged, at best. I think it'll take me a long time to get better. I'm not sure how long it's been... days? months? ... but once you're out, the bear should ignore you until it's wandered off. I saved your glasses and watch, and put them in your pouch, but lost everything else you were carrying. I know you're smart, and resourceful, and you'll have Bun-Bun and Wagger to help you, so I think this is the best plan. ... Okay, it's the only plan I've got left. But you've been in worse situations than what you're in when you hear this, so I'm sure the three of you will manage something. So, uh, good luck, and if this works, whatever's left of me will be hanging out near your liver. ... Message ends."

"... Boomer, how long were we in that... situation?"

"Twelve days, three hours, forty-seven minutes."

"I guess I missed Erie's new constitution. ... And a lot of other stuff. ... Boomer, do you know where we are?"

"I have been turned off for much of that time, so my inertial sensors cannot give a precise location. However, as my internal clock remained powered, if you remove me from the pouch to see the angle of the sun or the stars, I can give an estimate."

After some Olympic-level bending and stretching of as much of my body as I had left to me, I managed to shift Boomer halfway out of the pouch and give her a view of the sky.

She quickly reported, "We appear to be roughly forty-three and a half degrees north, and eighty degrees west. West of Toronto, north of Hamilton - perhaps Mississauga, Guelph, or Kitchener. There is a significant amount of error to those numbers, which I can reduce with further observations. However, I should mention that there does not appear to be any way to recharge my batteries, so I recommend that you keep me turned off for as much as possible."

I sighed and turned her off, my mind wondering as I slid her back into my pouch if I'd never mentioned Scorpia's solar-charging wristband to the university AIs, or if Boomer just didn't think I could build a suitable power adaptor out of rocks and coconuts, and sighed again.

"Okay, Wagger," I said aloud, "I've got one question for you, which might make the difference between whether we die from cold and hunger or pull off some Survivorman stuff that'll let me trounce any 'you think /you/ had it bad' stories I'll ever hear in the future... what's in /your/ stomach right now?"

I clenched my tail in a certain way, and Wagger took that as her cue to open her jaws wide - and, ever so slowly, started coughing up that straw of emergency supplies I'd started keeping in her.

--

I suppose that my reaction to finding myself at least a hundred miles from the nearest human, a quadruple amputee, with nothing to my name but what I'd been able to hide in a snake-oid's gullet, glasses that did nothing but keep the whole world from looking psychedelic, and an electric pocket pet, was understated. To be honest, after everything that I'd been going through, from getting stuffed with an alien egg-goo-thing to getting reduced to a pre-newborn - twice - it was pretty much par for the course, those days. After everything that had been done to and with my body, I was seeing it less as my permanent body that I would have to live with for the rest of my life, and more along the lines of a computer chassis with parts that could be swapped in and out, or upgraded, or otherwise tweaked. Maybe I'd lost my USB ports, but I still had an old reliable RS232 serial port and a LapLink cable... well, alright, that one's a fairly silly metaphor. Still, I let myself spend a few minutes entertaining various fantasies about what would happen next - maybe I'd get some cybernetic prosthetic limbs, or Bun-Bun would reveal a heretofore hidden ability to grow fur at an enormous rate and turn me into the planet's cuddliest pillow-bun.

Since Brenda had been kind enough not to eat my fur pelt, and had neatly folded flaps of skin over the limbs she removed, and the weather was still mostly summery, I wasn't particularly concerned about dying of cold overnight, so a fire wasn't my first priority: food and water were. And depending on what food I managed, I might not need much water.

There was the minor issue that, to the best of my knowledge, I was most likely an obligate carnivore at the moment.

I had some snare wire in my emergency kit, and there were plenty of squirrels and small birds in the tree-tops.

There was a further minor issue that I was fairly sure I was still in the middle of the Great Peace's territory - which meant that almost every animal I could see might have some portion of a human mind therein. I still didn't know how my own consciousness and memories had been preserved in a brain the size of an infant's, but I was reasonably confident that there had to be /some/ minimum amount of neurons to support a human mind, and it was reasonable that that minimum brain size was somewhere between 'infant' and 'squirrel'.

But still...

I spent some time thinking (and listening for any hint of giant bear-shaped things, or other monsters or witches or whatnot), then finally worked around to turn Boomer back on. "If you could," I asked her, "please translate what I'm about to say into the Nine Nations language that's probably most prevalent in this area, and amplify the volume." I cleared my throat. "I look like a rabbit," and Boomer called out a few words, "but I need to eat meat, even though I do not wish to kill. I do not wish to cause pain, and I apologize for any that I cause. If anyone who hears this can understand this, and I hunt you, I promise to respect and honour your sacrifice, and to make the most of it that I can, so that as few sacrifices as possible need be made."

The birds kept chirping, the squirrels kept leaping, and the wind kept blowing; so I sighed, and pouched away Boomer again. After a bit of work, I managed to wrap Scorpia's band around Wagger's neck; if nothing else, she was still handy as a digital watch.

I spent some time working out how to turn the snare wire into an actual snare, during which I learned that Wagger seemed quite willing to let me not just wag her, but open and close her mouth as I willed; having her to act as a second 'hand' (my own mouth acting as the first) made the process significantly easier.

As carefully as I could, I set the loop of wire in a bush where I thought I could make out a tiny path. Before I could even start rocking my torso away, a squirrel immediately ran into the snare, snapping its own neck.

As I was blinking in surprise, a green jay fluttered down, landed next to me - and shoved its head into Wagger's mouth.

As Wagger started swallowing her unexpected meal, and I started collecting what I needed to turn a squirrel's corpse into something I could swallow without choking, I mused aloud about variations of Clarke's Law, what 'technology' meant, whether asking prey to lay down for the hunter was 'magic' or 'tech' or both, and generally trying to distract myself from the business at hand. (Skinning and gutting an animal is messy enough all by itself; doing it without any hands was a uniquely barbarous experience.)

--

I woke up to a squirrel trying to shove itself down my throat, but just as I was about to try to cough it out, I heard voices. High-pitched, squeaky voices, arguing with each other, in words I didn't understand. Recalling the lack of anything human that was supposed to be nearby, I rolled myself away from my campfire and into the nearby bushes, my eyes tearing as I tried to avoid making any sound - silently dealing with the long, furry tail made it impossible to breathe until I'd finished swallowing the suicidal rodent.

Catching my breath, I wasn't able to shift into a good viewing position before a trio of figures walked into the firelight; I could only catch bits and pieces through the leaves. On the plus side, that also meant my light-shaded fur was likely well-hidden. (On the weird side, the tree-rat was taking a while to settle down in my stomach.)

From what I could make out, they appeared not just human, but feminine - though I couldn't tell if the orange shade of their skin was due entirely to the flickering firelight or was a hint of something unusual going on. They spoke to each other as they moved around; the words had a rhythm and sound-set similar to the Iroquoian languages, though I couldn't guarantee anything further, and trying to turn Boomer on for a linguistic analysis would have required a lot of movement and rustling.

I was breathing through my mouth in an effort to reduce the noise I made, when my ears picked up the scrabbling sounds of claws on wood nearby, and then I felt another small animal pushing between me and the bush's branches towards my head. I clamped my jaws shut just in time to prevent another kamikaze throat-dive, but the thing just wouldn't give up. I started to shake my head to dislodge it, but that set a few leaves in motion, so I froze again. The squirrel started to chitter, so I did the only thing that seemed likely to shut it up before we were noticed - I opened my mouth, and let it track its dirty paws onto my tongue.

It was halfway in when the branches were pulled aside, and I stared up at one of the orange-skinned woman-shaped maybe-people, who blinked in surprise at me as I blinked up at her. I gulped, drawing the squirrel down to join its earlier compatriot, and the woman(?) laughed. She turned her head and called to the others, who joined her, saw me, and laughed as well.

I hunched back as one reached a hand to my face, but she only pinched at a tuft of my chin-fur which was still coated with dried blood from my first attempt at butchery. I expect that I looked like quite the odd beast - half rabbit, half carnivore, half slug. But however unusual I looked, it didn't stop the first orange woman from grabbing my ears with one hand, and dragging me out of my hiding spot.

When the trio spotted my digital tail-watch, their amusement dropped away in an instant, and they started arguing with each other, a lot more loudly than before. I got ready to call on Scorpia to use her electrical attack, when one of the orange women brusquely reached down to my tail.

Wagger reared up, opened her jaws, and hissed. The woman snatched her hand back.

I was having trouble even keeping track of which one of them was which, let alone any differences they might be exhibiting, things were spiralling out of hand, and I was physically a tad more helpless than usual. I tried to grab hold of some aspect of the situation, my mind grabbing hold of the most familiar language used by any of the Nine Nations, and spoke for the first time, asking, "Excusez-moi, parlez-vous français?"

That, at least, shut them up for a moment, though I tried not to wilt under their sudden intent gaze. After a few moments, one asked, "Êtes-vous québécois?"

Since the Quebec tribe had voted me in as queen - even if it was posthumously - I felt confident enough in agreeing, "Oui, je suis partie de la tribu Québec." To keep the conversational ball rolling, I politely inquired, "Quelles sont vos noms?" Around this point, I curled Wagger against my belly, and carefully maneuvered her against the form of Boomer's case until the power switch clicked, which is how I still have a record of what was said.

They didn't answer, instead looking at each other again. One asked, "Que pensez-vous qu'elle a le goût?", which was starting to get beyond how far I'd nudged my French skills; at the speed things were being said, I was able to make out that the words were something along the lines of "What think-you that she something the taste?"

The reply came, "Je suis fatiguée de manger des animaux à fourrure. Ne sont pas là des hommes ou des enfants laissés?", which I was able to interpret as, "I'm tired of eating of animals of something. Aren't the men or the children something?"

The third grunted, and commented, "Il n'y a pas beaucoup de viande à gauche sur elle, de toute façon. Je dis que nous venons de lui trancher la gorge et l'utiliser pour attirer des charognards.", of which I could make out, "There's not much meat something for her, something. I say that we something throat and utilize it for attracting of the somethings."

Putting that all together, I could at least make out that their main concern seemed to be food. My own concerns involving primarily not becoming food, and secondarily making nice with the odd-coloured ladies who might be able to carry me around faster than I could waddle on my hips, I tried to get on their good side by first giving my regrets that I didn't have anything to offer them, "Je suis désolé, je ne savais pas que j'aurais convives," and then by asking their preferences, "Puis-je vous offrir quelque chose?"

This brought another moment of silence as they looked at each other. Finally one said, "Elle ne peut pas éventuellement obtenir la viande pour nous tous... Peut elle?", of which I could make out, "She can't something obtain meat for us all... Can she?"

The second spoke up with, "Elle semble faire bien pour elle-même," which I got almost all of, "She has the semblance of making well for her something."

The third said, "Oh, laissez-lui essayer. Ce sera un rire, puis nous pouvons faire bouillir ses os pour le bouillon," though I lost track of the first few words and didn't catch up until the last bit, something about boiling bones for broth.

The first nodded once, then looked down at me. "Très bien. Nous allons nous asseoir à votre feu, et vous pouvons nous nourrir," of which I understood, "Very well. We will seat ourselves at your fire, and you something nourish us."

I nodded, and waddled to the edge of the firelight, facing into the dark. I whispered - almost just breathed - "Boomer, translate to local Iroquoian and call out, please. ... I have been asked to feed the three women here. Is there any being who can help me?"

I waited in place for long moments, until, finally, my carefully-cupped ears caught rustling coming towards us. For once, my polarized vision was able to pick out some details that I wouldn't have been able to make out with my original eyeballs: in the dark, a bit of darkness walking towards us. It was maybe the length of one of my absent arms, so I was expecting another squirrel... until I was able to make out the lighter stripes. I almost missed the signs of a larger creature following it, distracted as I was by opening my jaw to breathe through my mouth.

The mustelid calmly walked right beside me, into the firelight - and the three orange women screeched as it did a handstand and released its mephitic perfume into their faces.

The second creature didn't walk by me - I found myself face to face with a black bear. I was trying to avoid being distracted by the scents and sounds from behind me, and getting ready to call on Scorpia, but the beast simply ignored all the hubbub, tilted its head, opened its jaws, and gently took hold of my neck. I'll admit that I should at least have managed to get enough words out to get Scorpia to stop looking like a watch, but events were spiralling out of control faster than I could take them in - the bear simply kept walking forward until it had me, and then that was that.

It lifted me from the ground, and without any further ado, turned around, and carried me off into the darkness, away from the screaming witches and the fire.

 

I've made a resolution: If I don't manage to get myself to start writing for S.I. by Canada Day, then I'm going to write a fast-finish variation of my planned plotline, simply to stop the story from hanging over my head. However, having made that resolution, I've realized a few things, including that my depressive episode seems to be lifting, so there's good odds I'll be able to write the full story I've been planning.

 

I'm glad to hear it. I know how draining a depressive episode can be.

 

What the heck is this? Weird af story innit.

 

You’re a bit late to posting— check the dates. But, if you like it, it continues on Google Drive.

It’s one of my more favored original works from SB, SV, and QQ— but I couldn’t really explain why. Unique concept, I guess. I’d love to see it continue, you got me excited for second there, posting here.

To provide some hopeful inspiration for continuing it, now that someone else has necro’d; the ‘me’ of this universe would travel to Site R during the Singularity, because I live fifteen minutes from the Underground Pentagon, and it would absolutely have a Singularity on top of it— and I’d get voted into being the active presence in the wider world, because nobody else wants to do it, and I’m eligible to become President, if only I could win an election. I’d then go about playing a game of Stellaris while all of the other cities are playing Civilization (or waiting for Prison Earth to go away, to play Civilization). I’d set up an outpost near the north pole, punch a hole in the Prison Earth with lasers/railguns, and start to go about terraforming Venus and converting Mercury into raw materials for a Dyson Swarm. By the time the main character woke up, I’d have sent generation ships to different solar systems, I’d have bases on multiple moons, a few cities up on the one above Earth, and I’d be looking down on the Earth from there. If the author cares to use it for inspiration, I’d happily land a care package on their doorstep— after all, I may or may not have been the one who took their library and sent them to Erie (at the will of the author), so I may or may not have been watching them, all this time.

 

There's more on Google drive? Yes, please. I just spent the last few days re-reading and wondering what happened to this.