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Sunday, October 31st, 2010
| Time |
Event |
| 3:19a |
@@@@@Neither was it the
secret that really
@@@@@Neither was it the
secret that really matteredAt any rate, I trusted Ian not to go blabbing to anyone who would
kill me over it“Melanie is still here“What is it like? For you? For her?”
“It's… frustrating, for us bothAt first I would have given anything to have her disappear the
way she should haveBut now I… I've gotten used to her“Sometimes it's nice
to have the companyShe's like a prisoner in many waysLocked away in my
headShe prefers that captivity to disappearing, though
“I didn't know there was a choice
“There wasn't in the beginningIt wasn't until your kind discovered what was happening that
any resistance startedThat seems to be the key–knowing what's going to happenThe humans
who were taken by surprise didn't fight back
“So if I were caught?”
I appraised his fierce expression–the fire in his brilliant eyes
“I doubt you would disappearThings have changed, thoughWhen they catch full-grown
humans now, they don't offer them as hostsGoing soft, getting sympathetic to my host, losing my way…”
He thought about that for a long time, sometimes looking at my face, sometimes at the
cornstalks, sometimes at nothing at all
“What would they do with me, then, if they caught me now?” he finally asked
“They'd still do an insertion, I thinkTrying to get informationProbably they'd put a Seeker in
you
“But they wouldn't keep you as a | | 3:19a |
@@@@@Whether they found the information or not,
@@@@@Whether they found the information or not, you would
be… discarded The word was hard to sayOdd–it was usually the
human things that made me sickBut I'd never looked at the situation from the body's
perspective before; no other planet had forced me toA body that didn't function right was
quickly and painlessly disposed of because it was as useless as a car that could not runWhat
was the point of keeping it around? There were conditions of the mind, too, that made a body
unusable: dangerous mental addictions, malevolent yearnings, things that could not be healed
and made the body unsafe to othersOr, of course, a mind with a will too strong to be erased
An anomaly localized on this planet
I had never seen the ugliness of treating an unconquerable spirit as a defect as clearly as I did
now, looking into Ian's eyes
“And if they caughtyou? ” he asked
“If they realized who I was… if anyone is still looking for me…” I thought of my Seeker and
shuddered as he had“They would take me out and put me in another hostSomeone young,
tractableThey would hope that I would be able to be myself againMaybe they would ship me
off-planet–get me away from the bad influences
“Would you be yourself again?”
I met his gazeI haven't lost myself to MelanieI would feel the same as I do now,
even as a Bear or a Flower
“They wouldn'tdiscard you?”
“Not a soulWe have no capital punishment for our kindOr any punishment, reallyWhatever
they did, it would be to save meI used to think there was no need for any other way, but now I
have myself as proof against that theoryIt would probably be right to discard meI'm a traitor,
aren't I?”
Ian pursed his l |
|