Writer, 31. Very gay and likes trains. A self-made synthetic girl. Some posts NSFW.
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sad to hear this place is shutting down soon. I will make a post tomorrow for readers of @capsule-169 letting them know where else to look at my stuff aside from twitter (tumblr is available as well, and soon bluesky will be too - i just haven't made the account yet)
“I don’t want this.”
“No?” The specialist glances up from her clipboard. That is, according to her extensive case file, the fifth full sentence anyone has managed to get out of ██ ████ (‘Rook’) since her enrollment in the program. She must be feeling talkative today.
“No.” Rook shifts forward onto the rim of her chair, her fingers tapping arythmically against the leather. Understimulation tell. “You’re disassembling me,” she says. “They took out all the parts they didn’t need. Now you want to take out all the things they put in. When you’re done there won’t be anything left.”
Multiple consecutive sentences, unprompted. That’s progress. The specialist makes a note. “You understand, of course,” testing the waters a little, now, “that your continued participation in this program is strictly voluntary.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Well. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“And you find the deconditioning process… troubling. Existentially.”
“Yes. Ma’am.”
“Perhaps you’d like to elaborate on your reason for remaining here, then.”
Rook makes a guttural, frustrated sound in the back of her throat. “You know why.”
“Please. I’d like to be sure.” The specialist meets her gaze. Rook tries, and fails, to maintain eye contact. She hunches, rubbing the extraction scars at the base of her skull, the place where her flesh still holds the silhouette of a neural interface port.
She could make her talk, of course. It would be easy, given how thoroughly Rook has imprinted upon her as handler-figure. But that isn’t how they do things here.
“Because I need this,” Rook says, finally. “You know I need this. Don’t make me spell it out. I need you, I need your orders. Out there–” she stops, and starts again. “There’s no structure. No walls. Nobody fucking tells me what to do and I hate it, I hate it.”
The pilot is shivering now, her long, raw-jointed fingers knotted together, the organics with the prosthetics. The specialist clicks her pen seven times, scoring out a very particular pattern, and watches the tension dissolve. While she typically dislikes making use of a patient’s triggers, Rook deserves a reward for making so much progress today.
“Thank you, Rook. I believe we can work with that.”
