Chapter 8: my honest reaction when instant oatmeal doesn’t solve all my worries

Dear fucking god this oatmeal sucked balls.

Well, I was exaggerating. Sure, it was a little dry, but that was my own fault! And sure, it was a little tasteless, and maybe it didn't really taste like oatmeal so much as it did taste like dustmeal, and I was pretty sure it was a couple months stale, and it was really runny and not creamy or thick at all — but hey. I'd had, uh, worse? Ish?

Let's be real, I'd really not had worse. I'd had so much better. Would need to ask about scans of food from back home, maybe we could rig the matter creators to produce those... damn, Alice really had come out on top.

METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING.

Anyways, it was getting late. I didn't exactly feel tired, but I still felt a sort of fog settling over my mental faculties — something like the feeling you get when it's far, far past your bedtime. Probably. I dunno exactly, but it felt weird. It was probably a sign that I should go to sleep soon. Or at least confront some of my anxieties.

God. I had so many anxieties. I was definitely not gonna do that. And most of my coping mechanisms were just... ignore it or repress it. Both of which relied on things I'd not had the ability to bring here — namely, calming walks through the beautiful, finally-accessible city, or playing dumb video games and reading. Sucks! But the bowl of cooling, runny, hazy yellow instant oatmeal was really all I had.

Man, they could have at least put in some berries or something. It'd make it truly for me — oatmeal and berries for the Berry with a fairy-tale accomplice.

Actually, was I Berry? It was, well... I knew my gender would be effected by being fucking isekaied, but I hadn't really thought at all about it. I felt good about feminine pronouns. It was nice to have boobs and hips that weren't paper thin and a smile that looked just a little more real than anything I'd shown in the mirror before. Which, as far as I knew, made me a woman? Probably?

Gah, this was giving me a headache. And I was a fucking robot! Apparently robots get headaches now, which was not a welcome addition to my knowledgebase on this world. I was a girl robot with the ability to get headaches. It wasn't as simple as "you're in a girl's body now, have fun being a girl!" — I knew that. I lived with a fucking trans woman for several years, it's not as if I was unfamiliar with the transgressions on the binary that being transgender or gender non-conforming meant. But at the same time, I'd never really questioned my gender before.

I'd heard a lot of cis people didn't question it at all. A lot of them just were like, "oh, I'm a guy because that's what my body means." And it had kind of been like that for me, which meant... was I a woman now because I was trans, or because my gender primarily relied on my expression?

I didn't know. It was kind of like a Theseus situation. I wanted to say, yeah, I'm trans — but, um. It felt like I was appropriating queer and non-binary culture. As a, you know, android primarily composed of probably binary circuits, it was possibly a bit fucked up if I said I was trans just because I was a girl now. And I wasn't before. Which I guess is literally the definition of being trans but fuck, this was weird!

One thing was clear: I was happier as a girl, and as a super-cool girl assassin robot. And I guess that meant that the identity crisis could be saved for when everything was over. I could draw a bit of solace in the fact that I felt good about it, so it was likely not the worst..?

Honestly, a more important question would be where the hell I put the revolver I stole. And also why everything looked fucking yellow. Had my hologram been stifled again? Was my "real form" leaking out to the real world?

Alice yawned, walking into the room. She looked like death froze over — circles under the eyes, bed hair (as well as bed... ears?), and a thoroughly tired expression plastered all over her face. Until she saw me, at least. Then it was just surprise. "Berry? Why do you have a halo?"

I had a what? "A fucking halo? Like an angel halo? One of those???"

She nodded, tentatively. "Yeah, uh. Well, it's not on your head. Behind you?"

Behind me. I looked around, and sure enough — there was a golden halo, going from around my eye level to my hips and hovering half a foot behind my back. It had a single prism-like extrusion at 12:00 if you looked at it like an analog clock, and some kind of dark bullet-shaped thing circled its circumference several times a second. The thing seemed to be glued to my back (er, metaphorically — it kept hovering at the same distance and turned as my body did.) "Weird. Is it a bad thing, like some kind of robot disease?"

"Android. And no, I don't think so? I'm pretty sure androids don't even get sick. There's one on your left hand, too." Oh wait, shit, there was. How did I not realize that sooner? "Were you eating instant oatmeal???" 

"Yeah, what of it?" I sniped right back, tracing the halo on my left hand as it spun lazily through the air. "I like oatmeal. This stuff blows though. There's no... it tastes like drywall."

Alice gave me another weird look. "You know what drywall tastes like?"

"Y—No! It's just a figure of speech. Jeez."

"...Sure, yeah. Anyways, what's up with the halo and do we need to put you in the blast chamber to test it out?"

We had a blast chamber??? Sick! "I dunno exactly what's up with it. If I have to go in the blast chamber, can I at least take the revolver with me? I figure it's got some hidden shenanigans inside it. Practically felt the technology inside. Wait, is that an android thing? Do we get technomancy or like, a sixth sense for electronics?"

"I don't know! I am, notably, not an android." Alice took a second to breathe, sitting down with a highly-faked grimace. I hoped it was faked, at least. "Where'd you put the revolver, actually? I was looking around for all our loot to make an inventory of it all."

"Huh? I put it in my holster, it's..." Oh. Hm.

"You don't have a holster. You're wearing a sailor's outfit right now and were wearing a hoodie and... sweatpants, I think? Yesterday you didn't even have a belt on, let alone a gun holster."

"Yeah. I'm confused too," I said, getting up and patting myself down before giving the room a once over. "Why'd you want the gun anyways? You seemed pretty good with your fists yesterday."

I rummaged through the newly-constructed and therefore bare shelves as Alice monologued from the table. "Well, two things. Firstly, it's Keizen tech. I need to strip it of trackers, which... I also need to check for, because it's unclear whether my dad directed for everything to get tracked or just the more legal stuff. Secondly, it's Keizen tech. Which means I should reverse engineer it, since you're kind of useless with this stuff."

I stopped. "Isn't this the part where you say 'no offense', or something like that?"

"Nah, you do kind of suck at this. No real problem with that, considering you might have some treasure trove of like, ultra tech from another dimension, and you're still more competent than most people I've seen our C. Support deal with." Alice laid her head on her arms, groaning. "Agh, and I've still got to figure out how to do a few more things. Like our course of action..."

No luck with finding the revolver thus far. "What is our plan, actually? Like, more generally speaking, what's our deal. Why are we doing this?"

"Revenge," Alice said, quick as a whip (but still no more energetic.) "My, uh... father kicked me out. And he's been a dick to pretty much everyone I've ever met. If there's one thing I'd love to do, it would be to paint comeuppance all over that sorry shit's face." There was no vitriol in her voice. I mean, a little. But it was mostly emotionless — as if stating a fact. Also, this was concerning.

"I mean... that's. No, actually, it's. Fuck, uh..." Now it was my turn to pause and sit down. "I can't say I haven't been there but that doesn't sound like, good. Or healthy. Or good, in the realistic sense. Does that make sense?"

She shrugged a little listlessly, not looking up from her facedown position on the table. "Sort of. I kind of don't care. I mean, I'm a fucking heiress with no seat of power or money, and who's been estranged from the company. What am I gonna do?"

"Hopefully find a relaxing, safe, and fulfilling life? I dunno. I'm not some kind of superhuman prediction system, all I know is that revenge sucks ass if that's all you're doing something for. It's like the bad feelings kind of get into everything, and then nothing you do is good. It's just... a thing that you do."

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"You sure you're not a superhuman prediction system? Sounds pretty superhuman prediction system to me."

"I'm not joking right now. Seriously. It sucks. The people who did everything for revenge where I came from turned out to have no life left after the Revolution. There was a huge lack of trained therapists. A lot of bad things happened."

"Ugh," Alice groaned. "Can't we just do this? I assume you want to go home, or something, which likely means raiding Keizen or some other gigacorp for interdimensional tech. Why does it matter why we're doing this shit?"

I didn't really have a good answer for that, at least not at first. A short silence grew, before Alice shook her head and sighed. "Sorry. I'm being melodramatic. Thank you for the input."

"You don't have to apologize," I started, tentatively. "Do you want to know the reason I'm doing this?"

"Sure. If that's what you want."

Hey God, if there's one thing I'd love right now it'd be the sudden ability to improvise. Just a thought. "Yeah. It is what I want."

"The reason I'm doing this is because I can see a little of myself in everything here. Or, really, it's because I can see a little of what used to be everything in... everything. My old world in this one. We were — are, I hope — well on our way to utopia, last I checked. Near post-scarcity. Not fully there, but almost. And that mostly came from a period of great unrest and rebellion across the world. Clearly, the same thing isn't gonna happen here without a significant paradigm shift, but..."

I ruminated for a second. "I can see parts of myself and my old world in this one. The way we talk is the same — it could have been Not English, for all the world cared. There are still robots. We're still making our buildings and art and structures based on the stories we've told and great buildings in our past, real or fictional. The sky is still there, even if it's hidden under clouds here where there were few back home. And if it could happen to my old world, which seemed on the brink of total ecological collapse, had governmental and structural oppression for hundreds of minority groups, and rampant global warming due to capitalist schemes? Why not here?"

Seeing her expression, I cut her off. "No, that was rhetorical. I know there are reasons. But if I just give up on that, what does that make me if not one of the people who didn't help the Revolution twice over? I have the chance to either die a horrible, painful identity death — something I've already come to terms with, oddly — or start a possible wave of social change that results in a better world. How fucking cool would that be? 'The Second Revolution was sparked by Berry... uh, No Last Name and Alice... also No Last Name.' I don't know what your preferred last name is, sorry. But you get the idea, right? If there's even a chance, I have to take it. And settling for revenge, or only going so far and stopping — that's not something that's acceptable. I want to go the distance and see that second utopia get built.

"Also," I said, after a moment, "I'm doing it because you deserve to see that utopia too. And everyone else. I want to show everyone the clear sky that we had back home, all the stars that industrialization got rid of. Besides, you're deserving of basic fucking respect. If not me, then who? We're both shut-ins with dirty mouths and a penchant for the destruction of capitalism, even if you have different reasons than me."

By the end of my impromptu speech (which I hoped turned out okay, and not like me stumbling all over my words and saying horribly offensive things), Alice was kind of staring at me with an intense expression on her face. Her slightly-moist face. Had she been tearing up when her face was in her sleeves? I fiddled around with my hands and arms in the silence as she eyed me over.

"Um. So, I guess to sum it up, I'm doing it because I have a dumb dream? And even if the statistics and social structures say it's impossible, I still have to try. Because it's right, and because it'll be really pretty if — er, once we're done. Oh, also because if I don't do it then that makes it easier for others to also not do it. And then nothing gets done."

"Huh," Alice said. "Okay."

"Was that too wordy? Sorry for rambling." I rubbed circles around my wrists, wishing I'd had a hoodie to play with the cuffs of. Wait, I could just... do that. Alice would probably think I was weird, though.

"No, no. You're okay. I'm just... a little... hm. I'm going to think this over. Thanks. I guess."

Slumping backwards a bit, I decided to just take her at her word for once. "Cool. Yeah, I'm probably one of the worse people for this. God, like, Valor? She knows way more about Revolution-era thinking than I do. Good at saying stuff about it too. Unlike me."

"Chamber you just pulled a fucking three page essay out of your ass. Which then gave me important questions about my worldview. As much as I hate to admit it, you're probably right — given the amount of stuff that feels off about it, I mean. Also, where'd you get the revolver?"

"Huh, okay, neat. Revolver?" I scratched my chin with my left hand. Wait, there was no longer a halo! And nothing looked fucking yellow anymore! Er, any more than usual. And there was a fucking gun in my right hand, which, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, HOW, etc.. I got over my shock quickly and set it on the table pointing away from both of us without much time to fuck up and accidentally shoot one of our eyes out having elapsed. "Did you notice me getting it?"

"Not really. One moment you were all angel glowy and stuff and the next you had a gun in your hand as you talked." Alice snorted. "Gesticulating wildly with a railgun in your hand is probably a bad idea. What if you'd shot the ceiling? The property prices would tank."

"If we were living here, we'd want the prices to go down. It'd probably be massively marked up, dumbass. Anyways, I'm pretty sure that there's a link between the halo and the gun..?" Alice got a little red in the face, but ignored it in favor of clearly and obviously thinking hard about my question.

It wasn't even a hard question. There was clearly a link. "Yeah, probably. Try holstering it again?"

"But I'm not—oh, you think it's some kind of hotbar hotswap system?" I tried to remember how I holstered it the first time.

"Dunno what that means, but I know we were testing the limits of matter manipulation when I was still with Keizen." As she spoke, I figured out how to put the gun back in its sort of mental "pocket". The gun formed into an oozing ring of liquid gold around my hands, and tracers wisped to my back along with a small, compacted bit of metal. "Yeah, like that. That'll be really good, I bet we'll find more stuff compatible with your system as we go! Then you can wield like, twenty guns."

"Or... what if I threw the ring at someone?" I joked, not expecting Alice to suddenly go still.

"What if you threw the halo at someone..?" she said, seemingly entranced, before getting up with a start. "I'm gonna go run some experiments with all the other tech we have. I'll get back to you in a bit. Thanks for the info, see you, good bye!"

Alice rushed off to go run said experiments, leaving me with the task of making sure the table was cleaned. But I did practice my pocket/unpocketing technique enough that it was second nature. With one fluid motion I could draw, mock-fire, and then holster my revolver, and that honestly made me feel really good about myself for some reason.

It could not by any means have been the fact that I practiced it in front of the mirror a few times and the sight of a girl — me, I was the girl — summoning a revolver dripping with gold and twirling it was incredibly attractive and cool. Not at all. Certainly not. In fact, I was going to send a clip of myself doing it to Valor just to prove things.

chamberry: valor check this shit out.

catgirlBrave: Damn, just what every girl needs.

catgirlBrave: A magic fucking halo and a revolver.

catgirlBrave: Transition goals, honestly. Want to switch? You look good.

chamberry: Shut the up fuck, Valor!