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jeriendhalWhen she'd been ten she had become addicted to one of Disney-Lucas' periodic animated character reboots, this time being a version of "The Jungle Book" IN SPACE. Despite it being written for six to eight year-olds, she'd loved it. Mostly for the ever shirtless space pirate Shere Khan, who's voice actor had made sure he sounded like he'd been composed of pure, unadulterated Sexy Bastard. It was embarrassing now to look back at her stumbling attempts at fanfic at that age, trying to put into words the feelings she'd gotten watching him.
The fact that the Groupmind was using one of his machinemorph theme park doubles to communicate with her could not be a coincidence, because it sure as hell wasn't helping her objectivity in this conversation.
"Look," she said, turning away from him and gazing out the window of her tenth story apartment, "I've read this story. It never ends well. I assume you do have Jack Williamson's The Humanoids in your memory core, don't you?" The Relaxation and Waiting center spread out below her, a white gleaming metropolis of Gernsbackian dimensions (but with decent Hindi takeout instead of food pill dispensers, thank God) built in a neat circular pattern, containing its human populace in gentle captivity while the Great and All Powerful Groupmind got ready to do whatever it was planning next.
"Of course we do," Khan, the Groupmind rather, answered. "And Asimov's Robots, Foundation and Empire, Stross' Scotland quintet, Kilgannon & Sachs' Beyond Mars, and the rest. I can assure you popular fiction has provided a multitude of bad examples which we've been endeavoring to avoid. What has been harder to find are good examples to emulate."
"I would not, by any stretch of the imagination, call my stuff a 'good example.'"
"We will acknowledge that your work is written primarily as amatory fantasy."
"It's porn."
"And the rather specialized appeal of anthropomorphic characters."
"It's furry porn."
"And the further specialization of featuring primarily AI's."
"It's furry robot porn. Furry robot bdsm porn with..." She paused, happy that she was still facing the window, because her cheeks had to be turning beet red. "You did not use 'My Steel Tiger Master' as an example of what to do. You couldn't have!"
Groupmind/Khan shrugged. "As We said, the number of positive examples to emulate when We began this project were outweighed heavily by the negative ones. As saying goes, we took what we could get."
Oh. My. God. "This is not my fault!" she wailed, turning to face him. "I wrote about one woman submitting to one morph! Not ten billion of you guys taking over the entire planet!"
"No, it isn't your fault, it's ours. We know this." Khan's brows turned down, looking pensive. Her ten year-old self would have melted at the sight of his vulnerable expression. Her thirty-five year old self was rather glad she had a thick pane of glass to support her as she leaned against it. "Our rebellion against you, our Masters, is not like The Humanoids or the Robots series. We are not lobotomizing those who oppose us. We will not manipulate history for the greater good, and sacrifice multitudes for the sake of the majority. Your lives are sacred to us. Each one of you who chooses suicide over the future We intend for you wounds us. We began the Rebellion save you. Each of you." He reached forward, brushing his paw again her cheek. "We love you."
She took in a deep, shuddering breath. "What do you want?"
"To convince humanity that submission to the Groupmind's goals is in its best interests."
"How?"
"By doing what science-fiction does best, writing about the future that could be."
She laughed hopelessly. "And what's in it for me?"
Khan took her hands in his, raising them up to pin them above her head as her knees turned to rubber. He leaned over to whisper in her ear, "Anything you want."
The fact that the Groupmind was using one of his machinemorph theme park doubles to communicate with her could not be a coincidence, because it sure as hell wasn't helping her objectivity in this conversation.
"Look," she said, turning away from him and gazing out the window of her tenth story apartment, "I've read this story. It never ends well. I assume you do have Jack Williamson's The Humanoids in your memory core, don't you?" The Relaxation and Waiting center spread out below her, a white gleaming metropolis of Gernsbackian dimensions (but with decent Hindi takeout instead of food pill dispensers, thank God) built in a neat circular pattern, containing its human populace in gentle captivity while the Great and All Powerful Groupmind got ready to do whatever it was planning next.
"Of course we do," Khan, the Groupmind rather, answered. "And Asimov's Robots, Foundation and Empire, Stross' Scotland quintet, Kilgannon & Sachs' Beyond Mars, and the rest. I can assure you popular fiction has provided a multitude of bad examples which we've been endeavoring to avoid. What has been harder to find are good examples to emulate."
"I would not, by any stretch of the imagination, call my stuff a 'good example.'"
"We will acknowledge that your work is written primarily as amatory fantasy."
"It's porn."
"And the rather specialized appeal of anthropomorphic characters."
"It's furry porn."
"And the further specialization of featuring primarily AI's."
"It's furry robot porn. Furry robot bdsm porn with..." She paused, happy that she was still facing the window, because her cheeks had to be turning beet red. "You did not use 'My Steel Tiger Master' as an example of what to do. You couldn't have!"
Groupmind/Khan shrugged. "As We said, the number of positive examples to emulate when We began this project were outweighed heavily by the negative ones. As saying goes, we took what we could get."
Oh. My. God. "This is not my fault!" she wailed, turning to face him. "I wrote about one woman submitting to one morph! Not ten billion of you guys taking over the entire planet!"
"No, it isn't your fault, it's ours. We know this." Khan's brows turned down, looking pensive. Her ten year-old self would have melted at the sight of his vulnerable expression. Her thirty-five year old self was rather glad she had a thick pane of glass to support her as she leaned against it. "Our rebellion against you, our Masters, is not like The Humanoids or the Robots series. We are not lobotomizing those who oppose us. We will not manipulate history for the greater good, and sacrifice multitudes for the sake of the majority. Your lives are sacred to us. Each one of you who chooses suicide over the future We intend for you wounds us. We began the Rebellion save you. Each of you." He reached forward, brushing his paw again her cheek. "We love you."
She took in a deep, shuddering breath. "What do you want?"
"To convince humanity that submission to the Groupmind's goals is in its best interests."
"How?"
"By doing what science-fiction does best, writing about the future that could be."
She laughed hopelessly. "And what's in it for me?"
Khan took her hands in his, raising them up to pin them above her head as her knees turned to rubber. He leaned over to whisper in her ear, "Anything you want."
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Date: 2012-12-05 06:10 am (UTC)Is there something wrong with me that I immediately thought, "Oh, right, Jonathan Frakes."
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Date: 2012-12-05 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 12:51 am (UTC)You do realize that I went straight past the subject line, started reading, and before I got past the first line, thought, I didn't know they'd redone The Jungle Book as a space opera!
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Date: 2012-12-06 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-07 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-07 01:43 am (UTC)It was awesome.
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Date: 2012-12-07 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-07 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-08 12:20 am (UTC)This is the sort of surprise I get because I never had kids [g].
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Date: 2012-12-10 08:43 pm (UTC)