literature

Plot of the Retro Bimbo Aliens, Log Eta

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Log Eta

So, Andrea's a little...different from me.  She still remembers being human like I do, and as far as I can tell she wants to help me to save the world from the eventual Gynarian invasion, but she's taken to the transformation much better than I have.  I don't know if it's because I picked right when I chose someone to be the target, or if Morgan had done some minor sabotage to whatever was supposed to scramble her brain, but she is, as near as I can tell, as close to a natural Gynarian as someone can get.  Her movements have a more pronounced sway, and she seems to just know how to use her tail and tentacles to balance herself and even assist her movements.  She also has some ideas that I think might be worth pursuing, claims that she knows lots of males who would be more than willing to join us.  I'm still a little apprehensive about the whole thing.  I know that we've got no choice but to do it eventually, but I still don't want to convert any more than are absolutely necessary.  Still, when the time comes to pick someone else, I think this time I'll trust her judgement in the matter.

I hadn't had much time to think about who to change next, anyways.  Once Andrea was transformed, she let me know exactly what my superiors were going to be expecting of me, and how to make it look like I was following my standing orders without fail.  Since I had taken so long stalling before making myself an administrative assistant, I was a bit behind on my combat training, so the first thing Andrea showed me was the training room.  It wasn't as large as I was expecting, to be honest.  In fact, it was barely larger than 20 feet on any side, and consisted of little more than a line of half a dozen boxy machines on the far wall and a rack of guns on the right wall.  The floor' painted with a single yellow line, and the boxes don't operate if you step past the line.  You know what a shooting gallery is, right?  It's basically that.  In the boxes, one of a few different holograms will materialize, usually sliding in from the side or the bottom, and you're supposed to shoot the most threatening ones.  Above the middle of the boxes is a rolling score counter that grades you over the course of a number of rounds.  My high score is 8310 so far.  A day ago Andrea scored over 10,000, which I'm guessing is the training goal.  The room started buzzing with an alarm and the left wall opened to eject a training patch that melded into her uniform and an oversized teddy bear that she put into her quarters.  The only reason I haven't scored that high, though, is that she knows better which ones the game considers to be threats.  I keep confusing the policeman with his gun out for the postman holding his mailbag.  Next time, I'll get it for sure.

Oh, yeah, the weapons.  This might be a bit important for you earthlings.  I keep calling them laser guns, but Andrea has been correcting me.  They're Zorkas.  Probably named after the "ZORK" noise they make when you fire them.  They're small, for one.  Barely more than a fitted grip and a tubelike barrel that tapers down to a pointy tip, with three rings that hover around the barrel.  The rings glow when the gun--zorka is active, and show how many charges are left.  When all three rings are green, the zorka's full and has about sixty shots left.  As you shoot it, it changes the color on the rings in order from farthest from the grip to closest, with a fully red ring meaning that 20 shots are gone.  When all the rings are red, the zorka's empty.  It fires wobbly orange rings of some sort of energy.  The good news is, it doesn't kill you.  The rings just paralyze and disable any electronic devices on your person.  The bad news, it's not very effective against Gynarians, or even animals.  It seems keyed to humans either through brainwaves or DNA or some sort of recognition system in the zorka itself.  Andrea says that there's some way to key them for Gynarian physiology, but even then they won't fire if the holder isn't a Gynarian anyways.  She also says that once I've hit my target score, I'll be able to unlock something a bit more powerful, but for now, 8310 is a high enough score for my superiors to not question my progress.

Andrea has also helped me to practice my commander voice.  Apparently, while Gynarians don't have any sort of racial divisions like we would think of Humans as having, there are distinctions between the different castes that manifest as vocal quirks or differences in movement.  Andrea, apparently, is a member of the Diva caste, which you can tell because of her sort of haughty voice and attitude.  Thankfully, as a commander I'm part of the Next Door caste, which is the closest to "normal" out of all of the different castes.  I've learned about some of the other castes, namely the Matron, Sidekick, and Quirky castes, but trying to explain all of the intricacies about that specific section of Gynarian society might be a bit too ambitious to deal with right now.  Suffice it to say that I got a crash course in Gynarian culture, and it was just in time.  Just a few hours after Andrea was confident I was using all of the right idioms, I heard the music.

You've heard the music, too.  At least, you've heard some variant on it.  From what I'm told, each of the Matron caste is gifted their own version of the music, and the ship's database is cataloged with a few hundred of them that are set to play just before their transmission starts.  It begins with upbeat piano, then as the bass kicks in the piano fades to make way for the saxophone's sassy wail.  As the music played, the ship's viewscreen showed snippets of the Matron in her more candid moments--Lounging by a pool, trying on different outfits, leading a battalion of a million soldiers marching in perfect lockstep, talking on the phone--each time freezing for a moment on the most glamorous shot before star-wiping to the next piece of footage.  All of it was from a bit of a distance, and her face was turned away from the camera.  All in all, it took exactly thirty seconds, which was just barely enough time for me to remove the dumbfounded look from my face and prepare a proper Gynarian salute.  The final note of the song hit just as the camera panned to show her face, and as it faded out, I realized that the matron looked more than a little familiar.  She was me.

Or rather, I suppose I was her.  The color of her eyes was a little more intense, her hair was a tad longer and seemed to hold a slightly more consistent wave, and she was a fair deal taller, bustier, and thinner than me.  If not for the fact that she had a second pair of tentacles coming out of her shoulders and her uniform was much more ornate, covered in larger, shinier versions of the sort of patches that Andrea had earned in the shooting gallery and decked out with pauldrons and a cape, it would have been easy of me to guess that this was some sort of joke that the computer had compiled based on 3-d images it had taken of me or something.  That wasn't it, though.  My guess--and asking Andrea about it later confirmed my suspicions--was that the matron in question had put in a special order to have me transformed into someone who would look like her younger sister, or maybe daughter.  

As I held the salute, trying my best to remain motionless and keep all of the different expressions I so desperately wanted to make off of my face, the matron faded into view, sitting on a chair much more ornate than my own, yet not quite so big as to make her look tiny.  It, along with the stripes that ran along her uniform, were much more chrome-plated, and the reflections in them gave away that she was in a ship that had a bridge at least three times as large as mine.  For a few seconds, neither of us spoke, but that had little to do with any awkwardness and more to do with the fact that I could hear raucous cheering coming from her side of the ship.  Not only was there heavy applause, but the occasional "woo" or loud whistle to punctuate it, along with the artificial feeling of it as the sound trailed away, led me to figure out that what I was hearing was pre-recorded cheering.  Not only did the matron have an audience track, but in Gynarian culture it was considered a symbol of respect and power.  I tried to not roll my eyes or sigh every time the audience track picked up, which made dealing with her an exercise in frustration.  Once the bridge went quiet on her side, she spoke.

"Good Morning, sweetie!  I am Matron Suzie of Gynarian High Command."  Her announcement was punctuated by another cheering "woo!" that echoed through the ship.  "It is so very wonderful to finally see you.  I trust that your first week as commander has been pleasant?"

"Y-yes, Matron!"  I replied, still more than a little nervous.  "As ordered, I have converted an administrative assistant, and plans are being finalized for the capture and conversion of our new science officer."

"That's lovely!"  Matron Suzie responded, clasping her hands together and smiling brightly.  "I trust you're finding your accommodations acceptable?"

I almost nodded, then stopped myself, remembering that subtle gestures are somewhat frowned upon.  Instead, I pulled my hands to my chest and fluttered my eyes open as wide as I could.  "Of course!  Your generosity is most appreciated, Matron!"

"Good!"  She beamed back.  "The data the ship transmitted showed a couple of errors, but as the first of our CCC commanders, the occasional hiccup is to be expected!  Now, we show you as having a competent level of Zorka experience, and you have clearly completed your duties as far as recruitment goes, so I must now ask if you've been able to gain any insight into our enemy!  Is this the case?"

I froze for a moment, hoping she wouldn't notice the delay.  I hadn't really thought about that.  Maybe she saw that I had accessed the internet to find a target rather than just pick one at random.  Maybe the ship was transmitting data I hadn't known about.  Whatever she was thinking, though, she apparently wasn't suspicious of me yet, so I thought up something to say that would make her happy.  "Yes, Matron!"

She looked a bit surprised, and once her ship's computer recognized that she was surprised, the digital audience let out a collective gasp.  "Already?  Do tell me what you've learned about the Patriarchy!  Every bit of information helps!"

Right, the Patriarchy.  That global cabal of men plotting behind the scenes of all of the world's most developed countries to keep women oppressed, despite the fact that as near as I could tell from my time being a human, women generally weren't the ones who were sent off to war or put in prison in large numbers.  Of course, I couldn't exactly tell her that, as it would instantly give away the fact that I still remembered being human.  I had to make something up that sounded convincing and helpful, and the first thing I could think of..."Doors, Matron!  In my observations of the Earth Humans, I have noticed that many of the male humans refuse to let females open doors.  This is...a...reflection of how, subtly, the men on this planet decide where the women are to go, and how they wish...for...their pristine door handles not to be sullied by the hands of those they consider a lower class!"  It sounded ridiculous, I was sure of it, but her reaction seemed to show me that she thought differently.

"Those disgusting men!"  She snapped back, clearly showing a look of disdain as the audience around her booed at the mention of their activity.  "And I imagine it goes deeper than that!  Perhaps they've developed some sort of nutrient paste that they apply to the door handles, and by refusing to allow women to use these doors they ensure that they remain better fed and enriched with essential vitamins and minerals!"

It was hard to keep a straight face, but I managed to push through by thinking of the possibility of the ship I was on being remotely controlled and flown straight into the sun.  "I wouldn't put it past them, Matron."

Matron Suzie snapped back to her more happy appearance.  "Very well.  In any case, I am adding this as an objective you must complete along with your usual tasks.  You must find and capture one of these Patriarchal agents shortly after the act of opening a door for a woman.  Your science agent will then analyze him for any biological agents that may be present, and you will perform a thorough interrogation.  To assist you in this mission, I am granting your ship access to the blueprints for Holographic Chameleojector Units.  I will be right back!"  

The screen with the matron on it star-wiped to footage of the robot, Molly, holding a small device on a chain.  Over the course of the next minute, Molly described the function of the Holographic Chameleojector Unit.  Apparently, it's a very complicated piece of technology that intercepts light in the area then re-projects it as something different.  The practical effect of this is that you can use it to disguise yourself as just about anything, even as a normal human.  It would deflect light around a Gynarian's tail and tentacles to make them appear as though they weren't there, and as Molly described other uses, she turned it on, her appearance scattering into tiny motes of light that reformed into different women.  Though it didn't alter her voice or change her height or weight too much, it looked like exactly the sort of thing I would need to infil--hold on a second.  I just realized.  I got back then that I was supposed to use it to pretend to be a human woman, but it all just registered.  My mission is to abduct a male who had just been holding open doors.  And whom I had just lured to a spot in the middle of nowhere.  

I have to take some guy out on a date.

Sorry, that's a bit much for me to process right now, so I'll try and go back to a happier time, when I was just thinking I was going to be sneaking around and testing door handles.

Molly continued her spiel about the HCU, showing it off from different angles as well as in the different stylish colors it came in.  I'll probably go for the silver one.  After her commercial-like demonstration ended, Matron Suzie reappeared on the screen.

"I do so hope you like the gift I'm giving you, Commander.  You see," her eyes welled up with tears as she continued, "I think of you as like a daughter to me!  I am already so proud of you, and I know that you'll do everything you can to make me keep feeling that way!"  The audience track replied with a resounding "Awwww!"

All I could think to do was blurt back, "Y-yes, Matron!  I love it!  Thank you very much!"

She smiled through her quickly drying tears, and I couldn't help but think that she was way too quick to any particular emotion, and that I should probably try and keep from making her mad.  She responded, "I'm so happy!  I will be keeping a close watch on you, and I will eagerly be awaiting your next report!  By the way, sweetie, have you chosen a name yet?  Normally, the computer automatically assigns one, but since you're my special project, I decided to leave that open to your choice!"

I cringed just a bit as I answered.  I knew what she wanted me to say, but it wasn't easy.  Somehow, I managed to stretch "Su...san?" out to what felt like a dozen syllables.  The smile on the Matron's face was compounded by the combination of "Aww"s and cheering from her audience track.  

"I am so touched, Susan!  In fact, I am going to put you in for a special commendation!  Expect a nice surprise the next time you store your uniform away for your next rest cycle!"  I wondered exactly what she meant, but then I remembered the uniform stands in my quarters.  It had a little mechanical arm and spray nozzle that cleaned it overnight, it didn't seem out of the question that it could alter it in some other way.  She continued.  "I have other matters to attend to, but I do hope that things go well for you over this next week!  Stay safe, sweetie, and I will see you in the next episode!"  There was a few more seconds of wild cheering before the transmission cut off.

I slumped down in my seat, glad it was over.  I was only able to keep it together because the Matron was such a strange combination of intimidating and unbelievable, with a fake audience in the background somehow helping both of those aspects.  I called Andrea over to help me make sense of what had just happened, and now here I am, detailing it in a log.  I'm terrified about what comes next, but we have to decide on who's going to become our new science officer.  Hopefully once she's converted we can figure out how to permanently disable to mind-scrambling effects that the conversion machine has, then we can worry about how we're going to keep the Gynarian fleet from coming to invade.  The door thing may have scared them a bit, or it may have made them want to attack that much sooner.  If you're reading this in the middle of a full takeover, I'm really, really sorry.  Hopefully, I'll be back soon with more to report.
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Bob-mc-bob's avatar
But what if you hold doors open for EVERYBODY?