The Affini voice on the other end of the call sounded dubious, bass rumbles discordant with the melodies of their speech. "I didn't design that program for deep immersion, but I think it could be used as you described. Are you sure you don't want to check your cutie in with a vet first?"

"I am a vet," Anicia asserted, leaves rustling with mild annoyance around her reedy voice. "I might not be a Terrain specialist, but I did my vet training a couple of blooms ago with another mammalian species. And I have researched Terran psychology extensively while my ward sleeps. I think this is best for her."

The voice sounded hesitant, halting. "I don't doubt you know what you're doing, but it sounds like you're … going above and beyond for a warden. The more hypnosis you do with her, the more she'll bond to you, you do know that?"

Anicia froze disconcertingly, the little symphony of movements stilling all at once. "I … I have to," she stammered out. "She needs it."

There was a peal of laughter, little glissandi down from a far higher pitch than a human could even hear. "And fairly soon, I think you will realise how much you need her. Speak soon! Let me know how it goes." They hung up the phone.

 

Anicia sat there rustling for a moment, checking through her reasoning. One of Sophy's problems was that she had been such a good girl for so long that she had never learned to cope in a healthy way with mistakes, guilt or regrets. She'd always just tried for perfection. She had a hundred pages of records here testifying to that - every small mistake and faux pas was met with a flurry of apologies, reassurances and elaborate, overblown attempts to make amends. She had what the Terran doctors called 'guilt OCD'. So it was time, she felt, for a little roleplay.

 

She woke her floret- her ward- up in her vines, injecting the counteragent to her nightly Class Z between her long, tousled hair and the soft silk halterneck of her companion dress. The little sophont stretched and blinked slowly, eyes a little glazed from her hypnotic triggers. "Heyyy …" she whispered breathily.

"Good morning, little one. How was it being a simple creature for a day?"

Sophy gave a little "mmmm" of pleasure. "It was so much fun! Although I felt bad for some reason … am I bad?" Her smile faltered, and a hollowness flashed across her eyes.

Anicia drew another couple of vines from her scraggly cloak of unkempt branches, pressing them reassuringly around Sophy's precious round cheeks. "Certainly not. And those doubts are something we're going to help conquer today."

Sophy looked up questioningly.

"Don't worry, little one." Anicia stroked her hair soothingly. "I'm not engaging your executive function, I'm not going to let you think about it. But we will be doing a bit of roleplay, to show you that being a bad girl wouldn't make you unworthy of love and joy."

She put Sophy down onto the sofa. "First, let's put back your smarts."

 

Unwinding the deep hypnotic conditioning that had sealed away Sophy's knowledge, working memory, and everything else she had considered 'intelligence' was simple enough. Half an hour later, Sophy was awake and staring at Anicia with previously unattainable focus.

"That was the best my brain has felt in a long time," she said, bitterly. "Why have you brought me back to this tangle of neuroses?"

Anicia stroked her cheek delicately, and the little Terran's muscle tension evaporated like dew in the morning sun. "I apologise, little one, and given how much you enjoyed it, I would be remiss not to consider making you a simple little floret for good. Your haustoric implant could be used to lower your intellectual capabilities on command - and I doubt that your owner, whoever they might be, would ever let them reach 100%."

Sophy failed to suppress a moan of arousal and a shudder of excitement. Anicia kneeled before her ward, face at the same height as the human's, her vines all splayed out like a cephalopod. "I just need you to be able to process this experience with all cylinders blazing, as it were."

"All cylinders firing, or all guns blazing," said Sophy automatically, voice colourless.

Anicia pulled out a VR headset with some extra attachments. "Right. So, little one, you're going to be a passenger in the mind of Ayn Mammon, now Ayn Palustri, Third Floret. You'll experience a mind entirely unfamiliar to your own, so be prepared for that. I will be here monitoring your vitals and mood, and give you reassurances throughout. It is a safe environment."

Anicia strapped Sophy into the headset, and stung her with a potent blend of Class H, Class F and Class S, allowing her to slip into the recorded mind that would be imposed on her.

 

***

 

Ayn swore as she pulled out the last cigarette from the packet, throwing the empty packet to the floor and grinding it under her heel. There was no way of getting any more of them now the fucking weeds had taken over her planet.

Sophy felt the contours of Ayn's mind slide over hers, and was terrified by their ominous shapes. Ayn's rage was fuelled with a bitter vengefulness that felt more alien to Sophy than any Affini had been. 

"Someone's going to pay for this …" Ayn ruminated on some violent fantasies, imagining taking the adorable glassy-eyed florets from plant propaganda and doing unspeakable things to them. She buzzed with adrenaline as she listened to the screams of terror and shock they would produce as she brutalised them. Sophy would have cried, were she not stuck as an observer in Ayn's foetid mind.

Anicia's voice came through like a warm breeze. "Remember, little one, she can't hurt anyone ever again, and this is no longer her."

 

Ayn had more practical plans to make, however. How could she get off world to somewhere civilised, where the money and stock bonds in her patent leather briefcase could buy her what she needed? Who did she know that was a pilot, or had a ship? Who could she lean on?

For Ayn, other people were dispensaries of rewards - giving her money, status, or emotional validation, as long as she performed right. When she performed correctly and didn't get the reward, she was furious at the injustice. She'd done her part right, so why couldn't they? Fuck them. She thought back on her first eviction with a smile. That fucking mess of a tenant, with her feeble excuses about losing her job and a sick cat or some shit. She'd been told again and again. If she couldn't pay her three months of back rent, she'd be gone. Not her problem. Just natural justice.

But now those weeds were here, the rules had changed so much the game was broken entirely.

 

She didn't have any tenants any more. Her building had been demolished, her legacy up in quiet smoke. True, they'd given her one of their giant 'hab units', but they gave those to everyone! The rage filled her at the injustice of it. Why was she not better than all those fucking homeless people who had been moved in all around her?

If they'd been in a tent in the good old days, she could have phoned the police and got them removed. She didn't like to see that kind of thing, after all; some of the results of justice were painful to see.

But they were all around her now. They had nice televisions, and comfortable beds, and weren't even required to work.

 

Her seething passed from her mind into her body as she stood up from the park bench. Even the benches were comfortable. Disgusting. Her heels tapped on the ground, and she felt the letter opener on the inside of her jacket. She'd told the weeds that it had sentimental value, which wasn't entirely a lie. She had used it to slit open her stock payouts and removal orders, things which gave her that dull buzz of adrenaline she called happiness, the rewards for playing the game well.

 

Was that … yes, it was. On the opposite side of the grassy park, new flowers planted in disorderly fractal patterns through it, a Terran girl sat in a green and blue companion dress, a delicate silver collar around her neck. She looked … good. Well cared for. Her skin was radiant and soft; her once dry, frizzy hair infused with subtle oils, cascading around her shoulders. She was smiling and laughing at the datapad in her lap as she sat in the grass, squeezing the dirt with her toes.

It was her first eviction, the girl who had been so useless and disorganised she couldn't even pay rent. Now look at her. One of their 'florets', cared for and loved, while she - she! - had nothing. This girl couldn't possibly have earned this happiness. Time to even the score. She had no way off this blasted rock. No future. Her bonds and cash were useless now. But she could make the damn weeds hurt. She pulled out the letter opener and rushed at the happy floret with a feral roar.

 

***

Anicia soothed Sophy with a whisper. "The next bit of Ayn's memories have been censored for your comfort. She attacked that floret and injured her - not seriously, but permanently. She was captured very quickly and domesticated on the spot. There was a public enquiry into why such a feralist was allowed to do such things, and had been left undomesticated so long. New procedures were put into place regarding your former 'landlords' to streamline their domestication."

Sophy breathed a tiny sigh of relief into her VR helmet, in the quiet darkness of Ayn’s sleeping mind.

 

***

 

As Ayn attained consciousness, Sophy felt the simulation build itself back around her, one facet at a time, sound and light and thought swirling into a chaotic vortex before settling, like sand in a glass of water, into distinct layers once more.

Ayn was in a luxurious, enormous Affini bed, pinned down simply by the weight of the covers. She stared up at the ceiling, which displayed an unfamiliar holographic starscape, three moons overlapping about a third of the way across the virtual sky.

Vines snaked into her vision, an ominous dark green, the colour of moss and decay, tipped with blood-red, sharp thorns. To Sophy, the combination was darkly beautiful, like the deep marshes she’d seen in documentaries; to Ayn, it was reminiscent of those same places, but that filled her with an unspeakable terror, a place far from civilisation, where her simple certainties about how the world worked fell apart.

“Hello, my little wild animal,” said a voice that resonated with an alien buzz, like an mbira amplified until it shook through Ayn’s head with the force of a hypermetric bullet. “You’ve been asleep for a Terran week while half the Affini on the ship competed over who would have the pleasure of breaking you, and then loving you stupid for the rest of your long life. We, Drosera and Latifolia Palustri, Nineteenth Bloom, won in the end.”

Ayn was unable to process any of this, too disoriented by the disjuncture between the last thing she could remember and the present. Impulse ruled her tongue. “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” she slurred.

The Affini buzzed with uncertainty, making Ayn clench her teeth together as the vibration passed through her bone. “I’m sure fucking can be arranged if that’s what you want,” they mused, “but I’m afraid I haven’t ever ridden a horse, nor can I obtain one.”

Ayn groaned and turned herself over in bed, screaming into the pillow. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you fuck YOU! I had a life, I was making it big, I was doing well! Then you weeds come and rip it all out from under me!”

The Affini picked her up, bundling the sheets around her like swaddling, and turned her to face her enormous, mask-like head, five ruby red eyes gleaming from a mahogany bark face. Ayn felt her stomach drop as those eyes drilled into her, an instinctive fear of finding a bigger, more frightening predator. A slight hiss emanated from the Affini’s black, empty maw, unlined with teeth or lips, and hair stood on the back of Ayn’s neck. “W-what are you …” she wondered, throat scratchy with dry terror.

The great alien creature that had transfixed her like an elder god used a soft vine and petted her head, mussing up her hair. “How can so much silly worry exist in such a tiny creature?” they mused. “We assure you, you are still very much alive, and we will make sure you are better than well. I don’t know what you mean about making it big, but if you want to get taller, we have Class G xenodrug regimens that can achieve that.”

Ayn found her stewing rage short circuited. “... fuck you,” she mumbled weakly. “You know what I mean.”

“We don’t, actually,” said the Affini, buzzing in a pulsating pattern that - Ayn was horrified to find - deposited the idea of laughter into her mind, unmediated by her perception, as it vibrated through her skull. “We have been quite insular since our last floret died, so we haven’t been keeping up with the Terran pacification programme. We’re glad we came out of our solitude for this, though. You’re painfully cute, do you know that?”

Ayn had no idea what to say or do. That part of her brain which always plotted the best ways to react to people, that knew how to manipulate their feelings and desires, was overwhelmed by unfamiliar terms and unknown contexts. Her mouth simply hung open for a moment, and then her treacherous vocal cords simply burbled out the truth, like a fool. “I was going places. I had money, I had worked hard, people respected me. I wasn’t some fucking incompetent slacker.”

Again, that infernal buzzing created mirth in Ayn’s mind, unbidden. “Oh we understand now! It’s about losing your status within a human social hierarchy, isn’t it?”

Ayn reddened. When the Affini put it like that, it sounded like something so shallow, so easy. The condescension stung like an insult. “It’s more important than that.”

The Affini held them close, vines so tight around them that there could be no struggle. “I’m sure it felt that way, little one. My previous floret was much the same."

"Get off me!" Ayn hissed through gritted teeth.

"No," said the Affini, calmly. "I can feel the effect it's having on your neurochemistry. It's quite bizarre that, for a species where good food, companionship and physical affection are so important, you always kept them in such short supply."

"I'm not like other humans," Ayn spat, "those things mean nothing to me."

"And yet your serotonin is rising, your stress hormones are falling, and your heart rate stabilising. If you were neurodivergent in a manner which made physical affection difficult for you, this would not be the case. Funny how much more honest your body is than your mind. A good hug can be medicine, and I will not allow you to withhold it from yourself."

 

Ayn racked her brains for something that could hurt this monster, create some of the same emotional turmoil they (and the Affini in general) had produced in her. She suppressed a smile as she found something to cling onto. “No wonder your previous floret left, if you’re this overbearing!”

The Affini froze, all their gentle swaying, buzzing and subtle changes of pressure as they enfolded Ayn in an unyielding embrace halting suddenly. They snaked vines around Ayn’s head so she had no option but to stare into those deep red eyes. “We have been mourning our floret’s death, after a long natural life full of joy and happiness, for two hundred of your Terran years. We are still devastated by our loss. It was so profound that our identities diverged until we became pluribus. The trauma changed us both, in different ways.” They lifted up a curtain of deep, mossy green vines and displayed their two cores, severed by a line of thick scar tissue, a visible mark upon their souls.

This was the reaction Ayn had wanted, to rattle the Affini and wipe that pretentious smile from their face. So why did this victory feel so hollow? She got the little buzz of adrenaline she normally got when she hurt someone, but somehow in the wake of the rampant physical affection she had been subjected to, that adrenaline she had been chasing all her life lost its lustre.

“S-sure, whatever,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes. “Everyone’s lost someone, you’re not special.”

“Exactly,” buzzed the Affini, “We’re not unusual at all. I know your feralist ideology says I should ‘grow a thicker fur’, or something of that sort, that it should be my responsibility to prevent your words from being as hurtful as you intended them to be. But no. Your hurtful words were your responsibility.”

There was a subtle difference from the kind of lectures Ayn had got from goody-two-shoes in the past, moaning about how it was actually bad to offend people or whatever. “Were my responsibility?” she asked, unable to fold her arms petulantly and settling for a raised eyebrow.

“Yes,” said the Affini, “now that I own you, everything you do is my responsibility. And I cannot have you being unkind simply because you think somebody’s trauma is ordinary, or not worthy of sympathy. I will break that bad habit of yours. No more lashing out, or there will be consequences.”

“Consequences?” spat Ayn, righteous fury boiling over in her brain now that the truth was out. “What consequence could be worse than being owned by a fucking weed? I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. You might think you own me, but I will never be yours, you disgusting schizo freak! I bet your own people made you take me on because nobody else wanted to do it, so they left it to this fucking loser who’s been just moping around for centuries! What are you, the weediest of weeds? Where’s that fucking strength that conquered our bravest like our weapons were made of paper?” The words came thick and fast, her voice rising to the shrill scream her former tenants would have recognised.

 

The Affini merely waited for Ayn to burn herself out, impassive and silent, like the sun waiting for water to steam from the surface of a lake. Once Ayn had stopped ranting, and was merely gasping for air and feeling not a little ridiculous in the dead silence, the Affini spoke.

“We are unsurprised, but very disappointed,” they said. “But I think it’s time to flush the Class C bonding inhibitors from your system, don’t you?”

A needle pierced the back of Ayn’s neck and she yelped in surprise. There weren’t any immediately obvious changes, but gradually, she felt some odd pressure in her body and brain, some great disturbance that brought tears to her eyes. Her stomach churned with anxiety, and for some reason she thought about how she had felt when her building was demolished and replaced with safe, luxury housing for the kinds of disreputable people she had deliberately kept out of there - sex workers, beggars, weirdo queers. She felt a sense of insult on top of great loss, like her suffering was being disrespected. “What … what did you do to me?”

The Affini turned Ayn to look into their eyes once more. “Us Affini are creatures of sympathy. What each of us feels, we can feel in the other, and the effect on other sophonts like yourself is … dramatic. Your feelings will naturally synchronise with ours. And we have been told that our biorhythm - that is, the buzzing you feel, and the way it induces emotions in you - is particularly potent.”

“So wait … these are your feelings?” Ayn sobbed, disgust mingling with the oppressive sadness she felt.

“Yes. They are how you made both of us feel when you said those hurtful things about our mourning for our floret, and about us being pluribus. By the by, I’m going to be taking away some of those dreadful slurs you learned from your vocabulary entirely. An unruly floret is one thing, but when they say things that might hurt other sophonts, then discipline must be firm but kind.”

Ayn didn’t really process most of what the Affini said, lost in trying to make sense of her feelings. “I … I made you feel like … this?” She felt that sense of disgust she felt at injustice turn against her, for the first time in years. She had done wrong, and she should be on the receiving end of the universe’s natural justice. “I … I suck, I’m sorry, I … fuck … I deserve to die …”

Her violent imagination turned to lurid thoughts of self harm, but the Affini’s buzzing brought her out of her rumination. “No. Sweep away all thoughts of what you, or anyone else, deserves. That’s what hollowed out the beautiful sophont I know you can be, filled you with bitter self-delusion.”

Tears blurred Ayn’s vision, and sobs interrupted her thoughts. “Then what’s left? If all my hard work gives me nothing, what’s the point? If all I can still do is hurt people?”

The Affini held her close against the dissonant rhythms of their two cores, which took on a surprisingly soothing, pleasant aspect. “What’s left is simply love and kindness. We love you, deeply and unconditionally. You are ours, and we will show you what it means to be loved, to be treated with compassion and kindness. And we will show you how to give others that same compassion and kindness. It doesn’t matter what you, or anyone else, deserves. All that matters is showing them kindness, making them as happy as they can be.”

Ayn was fully broken. Sniffling and nuzzling into her Affini, she asked, “Am I going to be as happy as I can be?”

“Upon our nineteen blooms, you will.”

 

***

 

After the conclusion of the simulation program, it took a full day sleeping in Anicia’s vines for Sophy to become cogent and verbal again. “That was … an experience,” she said, cradled in her Affini’s lap as the latter fed her a nourishing soup. “What a terrible person she was.” She shuddered thinking about the violence, bitterness and contempt for other people that had characterised Ayn’s personality before her domestication. “So what was I meant to take away from this?”

Anicia beamed down at her floret, profoundly glad to have such a sweet, kind girl as her possession. That smile flickered when she remembered that, of course, she wasn’t her floret, but merely a temporary ward. She pulled out a datapad and touch typed a message to Nish, asking to meet. She needed to discuss her feelings with someone for whom domestication was not a preferable outcome - if she told a fellow Affini about the way her affections had so rapidly crystallised around Sophy, their conclusions would be obvious.

All the while, though, her principal focus was on Sophy. “Do you think it’s right and good that Ayn has ended up being loved, cherished and happy in her owner’s vines?”
“Of course it is!” Sophy said. As gross as Ayn’s thought patterns and treatment of others had made her feel, it was a joy to see how kindly her Affini had treated her, how masterfully those harmful thought patterns were subverted with minimal distress to her floret.

“What about Palustri’s previous floret, a fearsome Xa’acketoth general responsible for several civilian massacres?”

This one was a little more difficult, but having inhabited Ayn’s head for a couple of hours, Sophy couldn’t simply depersonalise this general and say prescriptively that the doer of those reprehensible actions should of course be punished with suffering. “I mean … it’s not for me to say, since I wasn’t the victim of those crimes, but … is it a bad thing for another sophont to be happy, as long as that happiness isn’t at someone else’s expense?”

“Then why shouldn’t you be happy, even if you’re not the perfect good girl you so want to be?”

“Oh,” said Sophy.

Realisation dawned. It didn’t matter if she was a good girl or a bad girl; she would be loved, and treated with kindness, and all she had to do was show that kindness in return.

There was no use in hanging onto guilt, no value in anxiety about whether she was good enough.

 

“All share a common destiny,” quoted Anicia, “the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.”

Sophy nodded. “And I’m so glad that, for me and Ayn, that destiny is not death but domestication. Anicia …”

“Yes sweetie?”

“Can you take my smarts away again? I enjoy it.”
Anicia’s core thrummed with pride. A floret asking for what they wanted without inhibition for the first time was always a special moment. “And none of that anxiety about being good enough? About your talents going to waste?”

Sophy shook her head. “All that matters is kindness! And I will know if I need to express myself with poetry again, because you will be able to tell, right?”

Anicia practically folded in on herself, drawing so many vines around her precious Sophy. “That’s right. Just relax, enjoy the ride, and be your kind, sweet self. You don’t need to be anything more than happy, and that happiness is your right as a floret, okay?”

Sophy giggled with relief, feeling as though a burden had tumbled from her shoulders into the mouth of a sepulchre. “Okay!”