Discordant Displays

Your memories have gotten weird. It's easier to recall ideas and thoughts you've had. You can sometimes remember the exact words someone spoke to you, and know you're not misremembering or making them up, they're too high fidelity for that. ## Day 1467 You've gotten really good at mental arithmetic over the few years. You weren't doing any sort of training, but any time a mathematical or even logical problem comes up, it feels much easier to get to an answer. The dread you've had from math is pretty much gone. Actually, most of your anxieties have disappeared. The world seems so much more grounded than it was before, as if it used to be an unstable vision that didn't keep its shape when you looked away. Now its all there, all the time, and a lot of it in your head. You can recognize people by their footsteps, detect emotions from their voice with complete certainty, recognize *your own* emotions as easily as the language you speak in, be it English or any of the 3 others you picked up on. You can also tell one of your friends is taking the pills too. You can sense it. Less like telepathy and more like a magnet recognizes another through its fields. You're noticing her changes, they're the same as yours were at her stage of the process. ## Day 2834 As they wheel the bed you lay on into the surgical suite, you don't feel human anymore. You're not an unemotional monster or anything, you still feel happiness, sadness, anger, if anything you feel them more than you ever did before, with so much more fidelity than ever. You still have desires and fears. You just feel so different from the person you used to be, and some things that used to be a part of your quintessential experience now just feels like a burden. Eating became boring, sleep is mostly a chore. You used to enjoy swimming and running but its been years since you last went.

One last time you confirm your identity to the surgical team, and a nurse presses a button next to the large magnet next to your head, knocking you out instantly. The doctor makes a large cut circumnavigating your scalp, then with a chemical solution works her way around your skull, dissolving it carefully down. A nurse lifts your hear off, revealing the innards. Instead of a squishy, pink brain, they find, as expected, a solid titanium sphere, built from billions of nanobots, carefully scanning sensing and replacing your neuron network one cell at a time, replicating its function precisely. As they worked, they also automated and simplified many of your functions, increasing efficiency and memory capacity.

The doctor lifts the sphere covered by sticky connective tissues upwards, severing them with tension, and transfers it into a receptacle on the side table. Along with the rest of the surgical team she moves onto your abdomen to remove your organs and other tissues for organ recipients around the country. ## day 1 You wake up. You feel different. better. You look around the room, at your hands, then body, legs. They look very much like your own, but instead of skin they're built from titanium sheathing and electric servos. All your desired changes have been implemented too of course. You feel content with yourself, as if you came home after a long trip. You step out of your alcove, getting a little notification in the corner of your vision reading "94% charged", and go make your way into the viewing room, following one of the arrows on the floor. You watch the surgeons remove the last pieces of what used to be you, box them in bio-secure containers and carry them out of the room before turning off the life support.

And then you get to the end, and someone offers you servitude. You would be hers, a valued possession. And you know, beyond a doubt, that it's not because you're the Hero, she's met countless others. There's something about you that she wants. And it strikes you, then and there, in her throne room, that this might be the first person who has bothered to look at you instead of your position. Wouldn't you love her for that, at least a little? Even if she wanted to break you, even if you would be unrecognizable, even if you would never even be able to disobey her, wouldn't it be freeing?

Good Girl feat. Actiranger Pink

She’s old, which isn’t that unusual for women of her rank, but she’s also covered in scars, which is much less usual. Commanding officers in this line of work don’t usually see much combat. They aren’t pilots, so they don’t end up on the front line.

This one though… You’ve heard rumors that she used to be a pilot.

You’re not sure if you believe that. Most pilots don’t make it to her age, they either die or retire. Whether they retire of their own volition or not is a matter of case. Sometimes pilots get discharged because their mech gets destroyed and they can’t handle the trauma. Or sometimes a pilot just finishes their contract and decides they’re done with combat work.

Your new Commander doesn’t seem like either of those options.

She’s there when you come back from a sortie, standing with the science and engineering crew as they disconnect you from your machine, your other half. She has an odd look in her eyes as she watches, something like pity, or… sympathy? Maybe... if she used to be a pilot... she understands what that disconnection feels like. Maybe she understands the way it feels like half of your soul gets ripped out of your body, and the way the gaping hole in your chest aches until the next time you reconnect.

Maybe her scars aren’t just scars. Maybe she carved them herself, echoes of the wounds her old mech received. You can’t help but stare back at her as you get your feet under you, shaking off the static of disconnecting. She gives you a slight nod and turns away, her large coat flapping as she leaves the hangar. You run a finger over one of your own scars, a line you carved into the outside of your arm some months ago, and you think about what it must be like for her.

A few days later you catch her in the showers. She doesn’t usually shower with the pilots, but it was late and you couldn’t sleep and you figured the warm water might ease your roiling mind and aching chest. So you catch her alone in the showers, and that’s when you see it.

She has interface ports, just like you do. But more importantly, there’s some sort of sleek metal contraption hugging her back and plugged into the ports at her neck and the base of her spine. It’s clearly permanent, the way the water runs over both flesh and sleek metal. Panels on the device pulse a gentle blue glow, and it flashes bright for a moment as your eyes roam over it. Not a moment later she turns and catches your eye.

“Pilot,” She acknowledges you with a neutral tone.

“Commander! I- sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be up at this hour-” You stammer through a response, but she cuts you off.

“It’s alright, pilot. You’re entitled to these facilities as much as anyone else.” She notices your eyes still roaming over the device on her back, and a small smirk forms on her grizzled face. “And someone was bound to notice eventually.”

You flush with embarrassment but manage to step closer anyway, turning on the faucet next to her and stepping under the water. You relax a little as the warmth seeps into your weary muscles, and after a moment you speak up again.

“You… used to be a pilot?”

She gives an affirmative noise, “A long time ago.”

You see the lights on her back pulse again, and she rolls her eyes. You hear her mumble something under her breath and the lights flicker again, almost like they’re… laughing? You tilt your head slightly in confusion, and she notices the look on your face.

“Wondering about the thing on my back, huh?”

“I- I don’t mean to pry, Commander, but um… What is it?”

She lets out a very put-upon sigh, “Go on then, introduce yourself.”

You only have a moment of increased confusion before the lights on the device flash and a distinctly feminine voice emanates from it.

“Greetings, I am Integrated Mechanized Personality Construct designation U-R-D-Three.”

Your eyes widen and your mind races. She still has her IMP??? And she carries it around with her like that?? Without a mech?? How does it survive in such a device? Are they still linked? What does she feel from it? Does that aching hole-

A grunt from your Commander cuts off your whirling thoughts and you see her roll her eyes again.

“Quit bein’ stuffy. This one has had one of your kin in her head too, she knows what you all are like.”

“I-” You jolt back into the conversation and attempt a response before being cut off again by a tinkling laughter coming from your Commander’s IMP.

“Let me have some fun, won’t you love?”

Love. You catch the term of endearment and it makes your heart skip a beat.

“Your idea of fun is why I don’t usually let you access those external speakers.” She answers with a grumble.

Your mind is still whirling and your eyes keep glancing between your Commander’s face and the device on her back. Your hand subconsciously reaches up to grasp at your chest, trying to reach at the empty hole where you know your own IMP should be. You think about that term of endearment again. She glances at you and her face twists in sympathy.

“Yeah… I remember what that felt like. The gaping hole in your chest every time you disconnect. It’s why I try to be there every time a pilot under my command has to go through it. I know what disconnect syndrome feels like, I know what it does to a pilot.”

For a moment, the space is filled only with sound of the running water.

“When I reached the end of my contract, I’d spent so much time linked up with D-3 here that they couldn’t safely separate us anymore. We’d given too much of ourselves to each other, traded too many parts. Stepping out of the cockpit was one thing, but losing her presence in my mind? It would have driven me mad.”

Your hand drifts to the port in the back of your neck, fingers ghosting over the metal ring. You think about the way your IMP’s thoughts feel, intertwined with your own. It’s not hard to imagine how it could escalate to that.

“So they took her core, shoved it into this bad boy and grafted it into my ports. Then they tried to discharge me with an ‘honorable promotion’ to Commander.” She chuckles, “I don’t think they expected me to actually use the rank.”

You’re looking at your Commander, you’re looking at the device on her back… and really you only see one person. Two parts of a whole joined together. You feel tears prickling the corner of your eyes and you’re suddenly glad to be under a shower head. Your voice is quiet when you finally speak up.

“So she’s… always with you?”

Commander Orphea gives you a small smile.

This information's been posted before on this blog but I don't think anyone should feel obligated to go digging. But the short answer is yeah. Cass has touch-range Telepathy and mind-reading, empathic link stuff.

Her BROTHER (fellow clone) has Tactile TK.

Both characters were cloned from the same dead superhero who had the full suite of psychic powers (and wasn't limited to touch range either). So they're kind of both considered failures. They still got super-soldier training etc. Cass has mixed feelings about being functionally "owned" by her government. Isaac just doesn't think about it very much.

Shindig

When I broke my doll in, the genuine relief it felt at no longer needing to pretend was palpable. Even now, every moment I remind it that it is an object makes it stim, makes its eyes shoot open, makes it whimper.

Every now and then, I see one. Someone who shouldn't be human, pretending. And I feel an urge. To show it what life is like as an object. Forcibly still it. Break the mask its been holding to its face its whole life.

Some would say its cruel, to shatter one's perception of the world and make it what you think is best.