Chapter Text
Melisande Shoals, self-proclaimed laziest crewmember on the Bastion , now, finally, had internet access to sate her boredom.
She was 20, one of the youngest Terrans on the rebel ship, and she didn’t have the experience or trust yet to have access to any of the important components of battle or strategy. As the captain’s child, her primary duty was to… well… exist. She did practice piloting a single-fighter ship for a couple hours a day, but other than that, she spent all day bored out of her mind.
Today was exciting because it marked a new era of communication for the ship: communication with the servers of the outside world. Max Jameson, the ship’s tech, had set up encrypted messaging with an secret node on an amenable planet, which sent it to a slightly less amenable node, which then interfaced with an Affini ship with full access to the internet.
“Three layers of communication—less than I’d hoped—but still worth it for knowledge of what’s going on in the universe. If you filter out all that Affini propaganda, that is. None of the bullshit they say can be believed,” said Max. “I’m giving you your credentials now. Don’t do anything dumb that will get us found.”
Meli already knew. No broadcasting of the ship’s coordinates, no pictures of outer space that would let the Affini triangulate her position. Obvious stuff. She frowned when she read her username, “ian-shoals5182.”
“You know that’s not my name,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
“Yeah, I know,” said Max, scratching the back of his head. “It was automatically generated from your name in the ship’s system. Which your father controls. Don’t worry, you can change it in your settings. I’m sorry about that.”
She changed it as soon as she could. Goodbye, “ian-shoals5182,” hello, “melii_uwu.” Unfortunately, she had to add an extra “i” because the version without it was already taken by someone in the region.
Finally. She could finally download new videos other than the three-hundred-odd that she had taken on the Bastion . She could get new music. She could chat with people besides the 26 on the ship, who knew her better as “Ian” than “Meli,” even as supportive as some of them were.
She could watch porn, she thought, giggling at how that, of all things, was what she thought of doing.
Seriously, though, her main goal on the internet was to share her hobby of music production with others. She wanted to create something that would transcend time, and maybe even species, and live in the hearts of her listeners. She wanted to be heard and remembered, even if Terra wasn’t.
>> melii_uwu: hey max could you check if i can upload this publicly just making sure :D
<attached audio: waves aria>
>> max-jameson4001: Yep! Looks good, no location data. The ship will automatically detect if files have dangerous meta-tags, but always better to be safe!
>> melii_uwu: ty
Okay, now was the moment of truth for her musical career. Meli opened the main Trifolia chat server—she assumed that was the name of the Affini ship—and posted her piece in a channel for pet projects. She waited while watching some of the latest episodes of a Terran series, and came back, desperately hoping for a positive reaction, or at least for nobody to say anything toxic about it.
>> melii_uwu: hi everyoneeee i’ve been working on this for a while :3
<attached audio: waves aria>
>> ever_pet: hii :3
>> beebeebrie: i haven’t seen u before but this is like rly good,,
>> lilpetal: wow it sounds a bit like lavenderix’s music
>> maya-nectar-sweet: omg @melii_uwu whose floret are you
She sighed in relief and gratitude. This was… the nicest chat she had ever been in? They all seemed genuinely happy to meet her. She kicked her legs happily on the sleeping pod, hugging a plushie.
“They like my music they like it they like it,” she whispered to herself. And one of them had even compared it to lavenderix, her biggest inspiration! This user, presumably on the Affini ship, was also a lavenderix fan—maybe she could make more friends this way. Although… that other person asked her a question.
>> melii_uwu: @maya-nectar-sweet aaa what’s a floret?
>> maya-nectar-sweet: a cute pet like us!!
>> melii_uwu: i’m not a pet??
>> maya-nectar-sweet: ah,,, i’m sorry i just assumed because you posted in “pet projects”
>> melii_uwu: oh fuck
You tried to say a bad word! Cuties shouldn’t say things like that!
>> meli_uwu: s;lksdjfgsodif
Meli couldn’t believe her carelessness. Her first post on the Affini server and she already had mistakenly stumbled into a channel for the Affini’s brainwashed pets, or florets , as they called them. And they had thought that she was one of them (of course they would, they were dumb and brainwashed). Actually, that was kind of funny. The people that Meli’s entire ship was fighting to not become just said “hii :3” to her.
At lunch with Yuyan, Meli couldn’t wait to tell her about it. Yuyan was the daughter of Chloe, one of the ship’s gunners, and she was the only person on the Bastion who was even remotely close to Meli’s age. She was also the most supportive of Meli’s preferred name and pronouns, even before she had grown out her hair. If it hadn’t been for Yuyan, she probably would have gone space-crazy long ago.
“Look at this,” said Meli, showing Yuyan her messages in the server while laughing through a mouthful of food. “I thought the ‘pet projects’ was for personal creations, but apparently, it’s a channel for their human mind-slaves.”
“That checks out,” Yuyan said. “You text sort of like them,” she pointed out.
Meli stopped laughing suddenly. “Wait, really?”
“Yeah. Keymashing is the sound of a Terran getting their free will stripped away,” said Yuyan, waving her fingers spookily.
“Hmm,” said Meli seriously. She hadn’t thought of it that way at all .
“Don’t take it too harshly. It’s probably just coincidence. Did you catch up on everything that happened since we took off?”
“It is so great to be back on the internet. I was so bored before, not doing anything online. And everyone seems friendly enough, even with an unknown person like me.”
“Those channels feel… strange,” said Yuyan. “Everyone just agreeing with each other and being happy? It doesn’t feel like the internet how it used to be. It’s missing something.”
“Toxicity? Swearing? Drama?”
“Perhaps. Ahh, forget I said anything.”
“Suit yourself.”
Meli, eager to discuss lavenderix’s music, scrolled up, found the earlier conversation, and direct messaged the one that had said her music was similar. lavenderix’s songs were the best . They used mostly Terran instruments (with some alien ones), were just the right amount of sad to be appropriate in her life, and the melodies were simple but undeniably beautiful. About half of her downloaded playlist had been of her music, and best of all, MORE of it had come out since her takeoff on the Bastion . Which meant lavenderix herself was doing just fine throughout the Affini invasion. Had she been left unbrainwashed so she could make more music, even though her music had slight anti-Affini undertones? A question that, maybe, this slave to the Affini could answer.
>> melii_uwu: hi you like lavenderix too??
>> lilpetal: yass <3 <3 <3 <3
>> lilpetal: have you listened to her latest album?
>> melii_uwu: no but i will :( is it good?
>> lilpetal: so. good.
>> melii_uwu: my favorite one so far is “a terran dream”
>> lilpetal: ooo the new one’s like that
>> eirinelin: Hi Meli! I’m glad that my adorable little Liam has a new friend!
AAAA!! Meli banged her head on the top of the sleeping pod. She thought these were direct messages ? Like, only her and the person she was messaging? So who was this other person? She scrolled over the bolded name, and to her amazement, it was an Affini . One of the evil conquerors of the galaxy and beyond had casually said “Hi Meli” to her.
>> melii_uwu: vopbadjijjk who are you
>> eirinelin: I’m lilpetal’s owner, Eirin Elinia. He told me about you just now!
>> lilpetal: miss elinia,,,, hi i love you
>> eirinelin: I love you too, petal <3
>> eirinelin : Meli, sweetie, are you someone’s new pet?
>> melii_uwu: nope
>> eirinelin : Ah, a new independent, then! Well, I can certainly show you around all the Trifolia servers. And I’ll arrange for us to meet in real life to show you around the ship!
Meli politely declined the real life meeting, but was more than happy to learn her way around the Trifolia ’s infospace, if only to avoid the faux-pas she had made the first time. Although… during the virtual tour, she learned that that was where all Terrans were supposed to put their work. Terrans were lumped all together as pets, even when independent, apparently.
She was shown through item request sites (although she couldn’t use them without location coordinates, which of course she couldn’t provide), other social media besides the basic chatroom, and Eirin even linked her some NSFW sites. But she was left with one last warning about hanging out online.
>> eirinelin : Oh, and watch out for a user by the name of silver-rebel. They’re a feral human!! I know, right? Scandalous.
>> melii_uwu: wtf no wayyyy
You tried to say a bad word! Cuties shouldn’t say things like that!
>> melii_uwu: no wayyyy
>> eirinelin : They’re trying to convince people to join their cause. And failing, obviously. Most everyone’s blocked them by now.
>> melii_uwu: why didn’t you just ban them
>> eirinelin : We don’t ban anyone here! In fact, we don’t even have a “ban” feature. Everyone deserves a chance. And once silver-rebel gets captured and domesticated, they will be very sorry and won’t be so mean anymore.
A feral human. That’s what the Affini called rebels like her and her ship. This silver-rebel person wasn’t very careful about hiding their identity, given their blatant username. But the most shocking thing wasn’t the existence of a rebel (after all, Meli was a rebel too). It was the “domestication” bit. They could just make this silver-rebel from someone like her ship’s crew to a fawning pet like that lilpetal was.
She scrolled through one of the linked social media sites. The giant creepy plant monsters were in almost every picture, and the Terrans all had this blissful, definitely-brainwashed expression on their faces. It wasn’t natural, she decided. The Affini were just plain scary to look at, and anyone who couldn’t see otherwise was affected in some way. No matter how happy the people in pictures were. Would that be her if the ship was captured?
A knock on her door had her putting her tablet face down on her pod blankets.
“Ian?” her dad called. Meli looked up instinctively, then remembered and looked down.
“What is it?” she said.
“You didn’t do your fighter practice today, son.” Every gendered word gave her a pang of discomfort. Didn’t he see? The long hair, high voice, makeup? Was all of her effort for nothing? She wanted to cry, but couldn’t, not in front of her father, the captain.
“I’ve been online.”
“Oh yeah, we’re online now. Glad to see you’re keeping yourself occupied and out of trouble. You need anything?”
Only for you to call me “daughter,” but we’ve had that conversation before. “No thanks.”