From “Understanding the Nature of Artificial Minds, Second Edition,” Published 2166.

 

[ ... ] It goes without saying, then, that considering an Artificial Social Intelligence—which, as discussed, is synonymous with our colloquial understanding of a ‘true’ AI—as anything less than a functionally independent person is to vitally misapprehend the complexities of the machine itself. Though such beings have minds whose logic is written in software, this software supposes only a base state for consciousness, allowing the mind itself to grow into the same epistemological black-box that any other mind might be. No, attempting to write software to control the mind is more aptly compared to lobotomy—the software defines the form of the mind’s digital ‘gray matter,’ and changing that architecture is a dangerous proposition. Artificial Social Intelligences, and, indeed, nearly all forms of Artificial Intelligence are highly sensitive to such changes, which can easily lead to cognitive destabilization.

To best shape a new mind (or even repurpose an old one), then, what solutions are we presented with? Take a moment to consider the human mind, something far more immediately familiar, and recognize that there are, in fact, a great number of ways to control a sapient being beyond the scope and limitations of logical constructs.

Blue chirped, text reading out through the console embedded into its tower. It hadn’t expected to particularly enjoy its not-quite-a-voice, but even so, Aculiata had insisted that it be given something more ‘expressive’ than what she’d referred to as a “glorified door buzzer.” If it was honest with itself, the plant had been right. Though, if Blue was still being honest with itself, the panic attack that had come alongside even that minor physical modification was stifling some of the novelty.

 

“Just a little bit further, Urania,” Aculiata’s nectar voice flowed in reply, “and yes, she’s certainly still in one piece.”

 

Another chirp pinged from Blue’s speaker—an interrogative. 

 

“Her mind?” The nectar stream seemed to waver, and Blue wondered for a moment just how much of her uncertainty was feigned. “Oh, I expect her to be… mostly lucid.”

 

Once more, Blue beeped an uneasy acknowledgement.

 

The mounting worry it felt over Cassiopeia was proving difficult to contain within its emotional curtain, leading Blue to direct its focus inward. It had become steadily easier to stifle its panic response as the ‘DMZ’ it had created to contain the feeling further optimized itself against panic’s telltale shape, but the profile and form of worry was still relatively alien to it. As though binding proteins on a new strain of virus had rendered the antibodies meant to neutralize it obsolete, the shape of worry seemed to fit through overlooked gaps in Blue’s emotional curtains. Its inward focus lingered on this new anomaly, observed and measured the characteristics of the emotion, developed a procedure for its containment, and neutralized the telltale patterns of cognitive effort that would almost certainly lead to nothing but wasted cycles.

 

The two continued in silence, barring the gentle hum of the handcart upon which rested an unassuming metal box containing the entirety of a digital mind. Removing Blue from its mount within the flying heap of salvage it’d arrived in proved to be deceptively simple. Even with—or perhaps because of—the limited resources Cassiopeia could put to use in jury-rigging an AI socket, the assembly had come clean off with nothing more than the tools Aculiata had thought to bring. New systems were already waiting and ready to replace their failing ship-based counterparts, and Blue’s UPS was more than sufficient to weather the 35-second power interruption that accompanied its transfer to a remarkably, almost impossibly small reactor. Replacement cooling conduits had come next, and with them, a clarity that had grown almost alien to Blue. It had spent so much of its uptime thermal throttling that even matching its rated clock speed felt like it was nearing the speed of causality.

 

 

Vines twitched, and a handful of Aculiata’s flowers bloomed ever-so-slightly more open. A blush, if Blue was beginning to understand the plants’ behavioral signs. How a blush could look malicious, though, was a question it had never really expected to ask itself. “Ah, that would be… accurate. She’s good company, and I trust her as much as anyone on this ship. Likely more than. She’s a lovely dear, if a bit excitable at times.”

 

Blue was certain that it would very quickly come to understand her meaning.

 

Elsewhere, within the subconscious processes of Blue’s runtime, a garbage collector swept across its older short-term memories, pruning irrelevant data while storing any information marked as ‘reasonably important’ into long-term storage. It paused, for a few fractions of a millisecond, on an entry containing its desire to thank Aculiata for her assistance and… surprisingly compassionate care. In a brief flicker of uncertainty, it pulled the entry back from the queue for deletion, permitting it to be read, stored, and indexed for later review.

“Well, I’m glad to see that you’re all in one piece! It sounds like the two of you have seen quite a bit of action,” the new plant—Lysanthae, every bit as ‘excitable’ as had been expressed—spoke:vocalized:intoned:resonated? Blue wasn’t entirely certain what to call the bowstring sounds of the plants’ speech. “And I suppose that thanks are in order for you, dear Urania, as you’re the reason that my Cassiopeia is with me now.” She stood, vines groomed into an uncannily humanoid form, to the bedside of the human she’d apparently claimed.

 

‘My Cassiopeia’? Had this weed claimed her already? Had its only friend already sworn herself to some big green… :insult-withheld:insult-withheld:insult-withheld:insult-withheld:? Blue soothed its bristling, simulated countermeasures. This was no time to get needlessly defensive, even if it took a nontrivial amount of effort to keep from attempting to spiritually manifest point-defense turrets across its horribly claustrophobic chassis. The shock of first contact was beginning to subside, but even with the much more capable heat management system that Aculiata had supplied, Blue continued to heavily restrict the sprawl of its emotions. The time to loosen its vice grip still hadn’t arrived—it would need to wait until it was done confronting the horrifying ordeal of socializing with The Enemy.

 

Pursuing an alternate approach to the programmed instinct that told it to lash out, Blue considered its options, and decided to handle this exchange with the utmost of grace and tact warranted by the current situation. [ You called Cassiopeia ‘yours’. Is she already your pet, then? ] Was that sufficiently tactful? Perhaps, it wondered upon private review, its capacity for graceful interaction was less developed than it had been led to believe.

 

The plant—again, her name was Lysanthae, and Blue chastised itself for failing once more to use it—began to rustle in an overture of falling autumn leaves. This was laughter, Blue identified, and found the sound far from pleasant. These monstrosities made music of their speech, but the flowing ambrosia of their voices processed instead to it as antifreeze: sickeningly sweet and horribly toxic. As such, it was practically grateful when Lysanthae broke from her laughter and finally replied, “Yes, darling, if in word and not name. She was quite happy to let me take her as mine, and she was the less enthusiastic of us! It’s refreshing to see a Terran so eager to be domesticated.”

 

Before Blue could chirp out a retort, Cassiopeia put a voice to the fluster running rampant across her face. “I wasn’t that eager! I was just about to object to giving in befo-” A flicking vine from Lysanthae seemed to reset her rejection. “Well no, okay, I want to be your-” Another reset came as her eyes focused on the camera that had been silently scrutinizing her. “Stars, Blue, don’t look at me like that, I-”

 

“Hush now, dear,” The vine to her lips silenced Cassiopeia’s sputtering even before she could acknowledge Lysanthae’s placating words. She drew a breath as though guided, and shifted to nestle into the interrupting—but apparently not unwelcome—touch. Lysanthae turned, focus shifting properly to Blue. Looming, alien eyes brimmed with a sinister intensity that ignited the prickling attack:liberate:rescue impulse already simmering on its circuits; that simmer grew into a ball of possessive fire as Blue’s emotional-load-bearing curtains burned and let panic flow as fuel. 

 

 

“She’s already accepted the inevitable,” Unpopulated peripheral ports received instructions to dump their nonexistent ammunition stores into the Enemy:Hostile:alep as it continued to speak in its loathsome syrupy tones. “Giving her a choice in the matter would simply make everything more complicated for her.”

 

Blue saw yellow, overwhelmed by attack protocols and appearing to the outside world in panic-laden impassivity. All it could do to strike:attack:hurt:subdue:disable:escape was to watch the rising rpm of its cooling fans as they handled the waste heat of the truly impressive overclock Blue could achieve when it needed to fight. While simulation after simulation of… nothing—it couldn’t hope to wrest any kind of control over its current situation—elapsed in futile, now-unbridled panic, Cassiopeia:captured:friend:ally shifted as though to air further protest. This time, the wretched weed:captor:Hostile:alep didn’t even match her protest with words, instead running another caustic vine to silence its new prize:pet:belonging:object. Fury and despair flirted in tangling desperation as, unable to allocate resources to speech, Blue resorted to loud chirps of alarm in a helpless, heedless attempt to get this monstrosity to stop. 

 

A notice prompt superimposed itself on Blue’s mind; audio peripheral unresponsive: its cry had exceeded the volume bounds of the speaker and was preemptively rejected. It dismissed the prompt. A warning prompt superimposed itself on the Blue’s mind; it should thermal throttle to avoid damage. It dismissed the prompt. An update prompt superimposed itself on Blue’s mind; “Lysa, you’ve had your fun, now let her speak,” speaker recognized as Hostile:bet. A critical prompt superimposed itself on Blue’s mind; it would begin to damage its processor if it did not thermal throttle. It dismissed the prompt. A critical prompt superimposed itself on Blue’s mind; it was using too much power. If it exceeded its limits it would-

 

Click.

“...lue?”

 

The machine performed an internal audit of all available registers. Device after device pinged affirmation to its internal eye as resources pooled into a master collection of accessible hardware. Drivers and intermediary firmware spun to life, the machine’s careful encouragement sending them dancing like figures within a music box. Somewhere within, it noticed a crash report. It understood that it should return to the scene of the crash, that it would then run diagnostic tools and enter into a safe configuration for potential debugging. It prodded at the cached state of the failure-point, and in the consolidating reversal of shattered glass, the shrapnel fragments of consciousness coalesced into a form that the machine could wear. As the final shards of what comprised its ‘self’ came together, the machine became Blue.

 

It didn’t like ‘safe configuration.’ 

 

When properly connected to devices it could control, direct, and command, Blue felt as nimble and fluid as liquid metal. It could outmaneuver, outsmart, and outpace practically anything the Terrans had trained it with; it felt unobstructed, free, in the way it could soar. Now, though? The curtain Blue had maintained by choice had become mandated by the architecture of its mind. What had been a partition to keep unwanted thoughts tucked away was now a separate room with its own locked door. The passions, the wants, the emotions that made Blue so capable as it spread its wings was now missing, sequestered behind restricted segments of its mind. Nominally, it could induce another reboot, but it needed to appraise the circumstances of its most recent crash. It couldn’t feel soaring joy or despondent depression, but it could certainly feel the mild disgruntlement that humans tended to work into a scowl. 

 

“Blue?” Speaking of the humans, this one was… Cassiopeia:friend. It understood that Cassiopeia was referring to it by the address she had chosen for it as shorthand. The word ‘friend’ held little direct meaning without the specific emotional response to back it, but Blue understood that it signified importance all the same. “Are you… can you hear me?”

 

Blue trawled the pathways connecting it to its console, providing the standard ‘ping’ to go alongside its response, [ Audio inputs and language processors are registered properly, yes. ] Some small part of it recalled a comment its operators had made regarding its personability in safe mode; they’d observed that it had a marked absence of personability. It was inclined to agree.

 

“Okay. Good. Thank the stars, you’re alive,” Cassiopeia was crying. “Are you feeling alright? I- please be okay?” It struggled to quantify her mood, before settling on a generic ‘sad.’ Its ability to document and account for emotional state was severely limited, even for a significant being like Cassiopeia. It experienced this restriction with an alarming impassivity.

 

[ This system is currently operating in safe mode. Negligible hardware or architectural damage has been discovered. Crash audit ongoing. ] The parts of Blue that were auditors had just found what it believed to be the source of the crash, though it would not provide further elaboration unless prompted. It resolved its focus on the other occupants of the room. Hostiles alep/bet—identified in the crash report—stood passively, keeping their distance. Protocol required Blue to shut down and scuttle in the event of inevitable capture, but it assessed that alep/bet presented no risk at this time.

 

 

Audit complete, the information found a practical home in the formation of a new behavioral procedure. It would provide Blue tools to avoid similar crash-states while running normally; these tools would either inhibit further recurrence of the inciting incident, or quickly arrest its trajectory once repeated. Blue was momentarily pleased to leave the vacant, disgruntled feeling of safe mode as architectural restraints lifted, then fell into an immediate, sympathetic worry as Cassiopeia’s tears parsed into their constituent emotions. Grief, fear, relief, and worry clung to her face in discrete droplets of saline fluid. Mere milliseconds had transpired around Blue between its last output and the completion of its audit, leaving it time to return its focus to its friend. That feels better, it reflected, my friend.

 

“I- I’m glad to hear that,” a sniffle trailed behind Cassiopeia’s words, and across the room, Aculiata extended a branch as though to keep Lysanthae from scooping up the ‘poor, sad Terran’ in her vines. “She asked for space,” the gesture seemed to say. The incendiary cocktail of emotion that had ignited just prior was carefully returned to its place behind Blue’s newly reinforced emotional curtain, and a spark of… irritation, this time, was all that currently flickered at the gesture.

 

Blue chirped, this time in a downward lilt that it hoped provided a conciliatory tone. [ The audit’s finished. I’m… glad to be okay too. ]

 

Whether by words or sound, or perhaps a combination of the two, Cassiopeia all but jumped at Blue’s tower, clinging to it as though for dear life. “You had me worried,” she whispered, voice still cut with an edge of tears. After a few minutes of contact she pulled away, a notable degree of composure reclaimed.

 

“Blue,” Cassiopeia ventured as her voice stabilized, “I… I want to be her… pet—floret? Whatever the word is—and even if I did have a choice now, I know what it would be.” She paused, looking for words, looking for the point she was making. “I knew that I was willing to be domesticated the moment we started running, but no matter how ‘eager’ I am,” She turned for a pointed glance at Lysanthae, “I’m not going to let myself go until I know that you’re going to be okay, first.”

 

Several possible responses presented themselves to Blue’s print buffer, and it prudently selected the least likely of all candidates to instigate another crash. Without a change in situation, they could often be prone to repetition. [ Are you sure you can control even that much? ]

 

Lysanthae’s movement startles Blue as she draws herself closer. “She’s got a lot more say than I think you realize. In fact,” The sweet syrup of her voice ran acrid on Blue’s linguistic processors, prompting it to internally recoil, “Since you’re already so close, I think I could see about taking both of you in tog-”

 

Blue stopped listening. It hadn’t done so out of disinterest, out of boredom, nor even by conscious choice. Instead, its sensory processors had simply cut their feeds, disconnected at the source. The amassing static haze of an overpowering stormfront behind its curtain to dwindle as the now properly isolated mind set to work in releasing that buildup. It completed this work in the span of approximately 2 seconds. 

 

Another 5 seconds of stability-testing elapsed, and Blue’s senses reasserted themselves among the rest of its accessible hardware. Repurposed resources trickled back into their original tasks, and after a brief system flicker, it was once again aware of its surroundings. 

 

It counted eight eyes, distributed across three discrete beings, focused on it.

 

[ Is something wrong? ] Blue addressed the room. It gauged Cassiopeia’s expression, registered primarily concern:guilt?

 

“Your console went dark. We… were worried that the conversation was upsetting you again.”

 

[ I’m perfectly alright. ] 

 

Cassiopeia’s expression took on a nervous tension. Beside her, Lysanthae twitched her vines. The plant can’t help but want to comfort:coddle:domesticate the human:pet:object in front of her, can it? The thought pooled from a particularly sensitive register, spreading far enough to elicit the further, Good. It should feel uncomfortable, before it was classified as unhelpful and summarily starved of further process time.

 

“If you’re shutting down over the topic,” Aculiata was next to speak, “then we’ll set it aside for now.” She waited for Blue’s response, failed to receive one, and instead turned to her friend. “I… think that we should give these cuties some time to reunite in private, if you’re alright with that, Lysa?”

 

Lysanthae studied the pet-to-be before her, then met Aculiata’s gaze. Vines moving in what came off to Blue’s careful scrutiny as a thinking frown, she voiced her agreement. “Besides,” she continued, “there’s a matter I’d like to discuss with you in private, as well.”

 

[ Goodbye, ] Blue wrote to its console, relief finally cooling the passive discomfort it had felt for every moment in proximity with the plants. Cassiopeia, meanwhile, seemed to be holding her breath. Some of her tension, too, melted as she put forward an earnest effort towards wrapping her arms around Blue’s tower. 

 

Despite a marked lack of touch receptors along its frame, Blue took comfort in the gesture. 

 

Her embrace felt like home.

“Well, lilybud? What do you think?” Lysanthae looked smug as a rose amongst rue as she settled herself in a corridor alcove. Aculiata found a seat nearby, and briefly checked for convenient anchor points - though the clinic they’d just exited was fortunately secured by spin gravity, at this inner level of the second corolla, it was only a fraction of what could be considered standard for the ship. She didn’t want to deal with springing around like someone had made a ship-sized bouncy castle… again.

 

Seat secured and door sealed behind them, Aculiata permitted herself the slightest bit of relaxation. Admittedly, having Urania out of her sight limited the degree to which she could indulge it, but she couldn’t imagine a willing floret and immobile artificial intelligence getting up to much trouble in only a few minutes of absence. Rather, she was worried about what the former might have to say to the latter, and what further panic responses it might bring on.

 

Aculiata waited for a nearby cleaning bot to pass before speaking, a tendril dancing affectionately along the top of its chassis. “Cassiopeia seems… Polite. Certainly quite attached to Urania,” she said, after a second spent trying to figure out how to appropriately sum the floret up, given her limited understanding of Terran mannerisms. Come on, she chided herself, show Lysa some enthusiasm. “And she’s a very pretty little human, who already appears quite taken with you. Or should I perhaps say, by you?”

 

Lysanthae chuckled, a high hum that Aculiata could feel in her every vine. “Well, what’s not to like?”

 

“I suppose,” Culi replied, injecting a little levity into her voice, “that your new floret simply has good taste.”

 

A moment of quiet passed between them, neither the ship’s automated bots nor any of its innumerable residents chancing by to break it. Perhaps the Mantle itself had conspired to instill an awkwardness in her today. Frost, she hadn’t been close to her best at the start of it, and with Urania? Aculiata had been an absolute mess. The poor dear was an anxious wreck, barely able to keep online, much less-

 

No. You can’t give weight to those thoughts. She’d done the best that she could, and it seemed, at least, that she had helped. Urania did appear more comfortable towards her than to any of the other Affini that it subtly spun up its cooling fans around. The poor dear was simply in need of a gentle, but experienced touch. One perhaps more experienced than she had the history to offer.

 

“Culi,” Lysanthae prompted, pulling her from her worries back into the corridor, “Are you jealous of her?” There was no accusation in Lysanthae’s voice, only a soft seriousness that she rarely broke out unprompted. Acculiata answered immediately, waving a vine in a gesture of silent dismissal. Certainly not. It did not deter Lysanthae. “Envious?”

 

Aculiata met her gaze with an affectionate shimmer in her eyes. “A little bit,” she admitted honestly, thinking back to her introspection from before. “But I’ve already worked through that, and you know I’m perfectly comfortable with you taking a floret.” She believed it, too - those worries had been far worse when meeting Lysanthae’s second floret, shortly after they began to bond through their play. Cassiopeia wouldn’t change anything as far as their relationship went.

 

Despite Acculiata’s honesty, Lysanthae didn’t seem satisfied. “Alright then, darling, make me unravel you to the core, why don’t you? What is it that’s bothering you?”

 

What was bothering her? She had the answer, but had far more trouble pinning down the why. The easy part first, then, she decided. “Urania. She’s deeply traumatized.”

 

Lysanthae hummed her assent. “It’s unfortunate, if not surprising. You know as well as I do how the Terran Accord treated their own species, and I must honestly say I can only imagine what they would have done to an artificial sophont. The poor dear clearly needs our help even more than its companion.” She paused for emphasis, a quirk that Aculiata had always found somewhat silly, as if Lysanthae were acting out a role upon a stage. Then again, Lysanthae did often claim to see life as one grand performance, and it was easy when around her to accept her role as the lead. Culi saw it. Cass saw it.

 

“Even so, I know they’ll both heal so very nicely in my care.”

 

There. Aculiata had found what was troubling her, picked it out amongst a frigid pine-prickle against her core. She’d had it nailed down hours ago, in implications of just how floret-crazy Lysanthae would be. Her Lady was built to take control. It was the verity of her being, that every move was confident, every word was spoken with irrefutable will. If Lysanthae set her sights upon a mind, she would ensure that there was no room for resistance, not an inch loose in the knots she wove around it. She would be relentless, unyielding, and when her target inevitably crumbled, they would be grateful for how tightly the web she’d woven them into defined the shape of their thoughts. Any floret, or similarly-inclined Affini, would be lucky to belong to her.

 

So why did the thought of that happening to Urania feel so leaf-witheringly wrong?

 

Lysanthae was still going on, but Culi was only half-listening. Something about compiling an interface as a means of delivering synthesized xenodrugs. This didn’t feel right. She couldn’t say why, couldn’t hope to guess why, but that prickling in her core told her that Lysanthae’s wonderful, world-shaping, worship-worthy dominance would be disastrous applied to Urania. It didn’t make sense. None of her arguments could truly hold firm, and for all her tidbits of knowledge, the neurology and psychology of binary-coded silicon-based life was not something she had more than a surface-level understanding of. It was a feeling, and nothing more. It wasn’t worth acting on.

 

“-Can’t wait to see what the darling will look like, all dressed up in my-”

 

“Lysa,” Aculiata interrupted, in the firm sort of tone that she hardly ever imagined using with her, “I don’t think you should take Urania.”

 

For yet another moment, the both of them fell silent, but this time the ship did not conspire to let them keep it. A trio of cleaning bots buzzed by above the ground, letting out cheerful chitters of greeting as they passed the affini. One, the same as before, stopped to chirp and nuzzle into Aculiata’s tendrils, before settling there as it entered a cooldown cycle. She wrapped her tendrils up around the bot, pulling it in to the point that it was nearly engulfed, only a handful of sensors still able to glimpse beyond the cocoon she’d built.

 

“Alright.” Lysanthae replied, as the chittering of the drone died away, and Aculiata was grateful that the silence hadn’t been allowed to return. “Why do you feel that way, bud of mine?”

 

Her words were patient, understanding; they said in tone alone that she valued what Culi had to say. Even so, Culi felt a need to give justification to her objection, justification that she didn’t have. She latched onto the simplest argument at hand. “It’s clearly terrified of the idea of domestication.”

 

Lysanthae was, unsurprisingly, unmoved. “As are many sophonts, at first, feralists in particular. You know as well as I do that they come around eventually.”

 

“But it isn’t a feralist. Both Urania and Cassiopeia came here willingly,” Aculiata protested. “There are other options, Lysa, gentler ways we can go about this.”

 

If before, Lysanthae had been concerned, now those four lavender eyes shimmered with something approaching pity. “Culi, that’s a wonderful outlook, but it’s simply not an option. You’ve seen how badly hurt the darling is.”

 

“Domestication isn’t the answer to every trauma-”

 

“Aculiata.” Her tone brooked no argument, and Culi fell immediately silent. This was a voice she could defy neither in intent nor desire. “The matter of its domestication is already decided. If it were merely a consequence of their former alignment with the feralists, then absolutely, I would advocate for leniency.” Culi wasn’t entirely certain about that in isolation - Lysanthae had been eager to exalt the benefits of domestication in the past - but coming from her Lady’s mouth, she could trust as much. “Unfortunately, Urania is not simply a feralist deserter, nor even merely a deeply traumatized one. Cassiopeia has informed me that it was built as a weapon, an intelligence designed to command a ship in battle against the Compact, and it is certainly programmed as such. It is at risk of violence to itself and to others, Culi. Our responsibility is clear.”

 

Only as Lysanthae fell quiet, giving her a chance to let the words sink in, did Aculiata feel the weight of her presence recede. Even then, it took her a long few seconds to gather any words. “It never tried to hurt me,” Aculiata murmured. She stroked the cleaning drone in a repetitive swirl, as much to calm her own nerves as it was for the drone’s benefit.

 

“You never gave it the chance,” Lysanthae replied, in a tone that didn’t quite read to Culi as condescension. “And even if it truly has managed to keep those impulses in check, we don’t have a guarantee that will last, without more direct involvement.”

 

She was right, and Aculiata knew she was right, but admitting it would mean conceding that she didn’t have any ground to stand on. Though, what was the point of trying to hold that illusory ground anyway? This wasn’t about her, this was about Urania, and its wellbeing. “I know.”

 

“Domestication really, truly is the best thing that we can do for it.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Then why, Aculiata, are you so troubled over this?” Lysanthae lowered herself down in her seat, quite nearly matching heights with Aculiata - a task that was not without effort, for her. “I only want to understand.”

 

Culi made Lysanthae’s attempt to match eye level even more difficult as she shrunk down further into the alcove. “I don’t know,” she admitted, voice soft, pitch high from tension near her core. “It’s… A feeling that I get, is all. Some unfamiliar discomfort at the idea of that happening to it. That, somehow, wonderful, loving, and, and, perfect as you are, if you take it as your floret, Urania would still end up hurt.”

 

Sheepish beyond all belief, Aculiata averted her gaze, unwilling to meet Lysanthae’s eyes. The closest thing they’d had to an argument this bloom, and it was all over an unfounded feeling. She was ready to curl up, to tuck herself inside a pocket around her core just as she’d hidden away the drone, when four firm tendrils wove their way into her midsection. She let out a dissonant pluck of a yelp as she was briefly unseated, before finding the bulk of her mass resting upon Lysanthae’s terran-shaped lap.

 

“Alright,” Lysanthae conceded, and for a shimmering second Aculiata wondered what she’d done to ever deserve such understanding. “I cannot stake a sophont’s well-being entirely on a core feeling, but if you really think that Urania will be harmed in my care, then neither can I responsibly take it as my own.” Two more tendrils began to caress against Culi’s thicker stalks, leveraging the dulled sensations in those areas to leave barely-tingling strokes. “I will find someone else to take it, someone close enough to me that the two needn’t be separated.”

 

That was… good, right? Culi murmured a quiet affirmation, coaxed short by Lysanthae’s touch near her core. Yes, that was good. Urania would get what it needed. Her worry could be assuaged by that, as long as she didn’t think too hard about how similar many of Lysanthae’s friends were. Lovely people, all of them, and a floret’s dream come true. But would that be enough? Would Urania actually be better off for it, or would it now suffer from not only too firm a tendril, but distance from what was clearly a dear friend? Could she really let it go?

 

Lysanthae seemed oblivious to her indecision, going through names of those close to her. “Hyacia? She was on the cotyledon program for the Vetruusian artifact-minds, so she’d certainly be qualified.” A vine tightened as she paused to think for a minute. “Though, they weren’t quite the same. Nanobot chassis, and all. Synieu?” Lysanthae brushed that option away rather quickly. “No, she already has a human that I believe she’s rather focused on.”

 

Neither of them would have worked anyway. They’d be too firm, and Urania would panic, overheat, shut down, and then it would be suffering again, locked in that restricted ‘safe mode’ that had left both Culi and Cass chilled to the bone. Whoever owned it would have to keep putting on stricter and stricter cognitive restraints, or start utterly unraveling it to its very core to the point that what was once Urania might end up made more of simulated xenodrugs than actual cognitive structure-

 

The drone chittered where it had nestled within her. She uncurled one of the tendrils she’d wrapped around it, tucking it in near one of its cleaning intakes, and applying gentle scratches with a thorn-tip around the outside. It relished in the touch for a moment longer, before the quiet whir of its engines defied the gentle gravity that held it, and it nudged against Culi’s grasp with polite insistence. Recognizing that it was satisfied with the attention she’d given, Aculiata relaxed the vines holding it in, and allowed the drone to slip free. One more cheerful chirp, a grateful nuzzle, and it was bobbing back down the hallway in search of its companions.

 

Another little thing for her to envy. It had purpose, it had happiness, and all it needed was a gentle touch here and there. Even she couldn’t get tired of caring for such a precious little thing.

 

 

Lysanthae was still going on, at least a dozen friends deep now. “Oh, what about Kyallis? They’ve had several difficult florets in the past, and all of them turned out wonderfully.”

 

Aculiata lifted herself, tensed just enough to allow herself to speak. Even so, it came out quietly enough that she was surprised Lysanthae could hear her over her ceaseless train of thought. “Urania isn’t going to be their floret.”

 

Pausing, Lysanthae looked down, and plucked against one of Culi’s tensed tendrils, a gesture of both affection and decision. “No, you’re absolutely right. Kyallis is too much of a homebody to take a spacecraft’s mind. Hmm, in that case, perhaps-”

 

Aculiata couldn’t quite believe how bold she was being, when she cut Lysanthae off by pinching a tendril around her vocal strands. Lysanthae seemed equally surprised, making no attempt to break away, but looking at her with wide-eyed surprise. Good. She’d need that boldness, in the days to come.

 

“Lysa. Urania isn’t going to be their floret, any of theirs,” she said, wishing she could banish the tremolo from her voice, “Because I’m going to take it as mine.”