I tried to go back out into the city and the Garden after lunch, but the second I placed my right forefoot, or hand, on the deck of the hallway outside my door, I felt the old panic of sensory and emotional overload surge up through my body as if I’d touched an ungrounded electrical appliance.

It also felt like the air of the hallway itself immediately attacked me. Like a swarm of hornets closing in.

My thoughts went from the room of ping pong balls on mousetraps that it usually is, to a bowl of roiling worms.

And my clawed hand retracted back into my room, and my head followed, and the door closed like curtains in front of me.

“Nope,” I heard myself say. “Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.”

Mutabenga didn’t say anything.

One of my now wormy selves thought, Maybe the Network isn’t calibrated for Outsiders very well, Mutabenga. Maybe you shouldn’t rely on it like you did for your Students.

After a few moments of taking very deep breaths and stimming by flapping my wings and lashing my tail, I crawled back to my bed and curled up on it, viewing my room through half lidded eyes and thought about things.

I’d had a very full morning on an alien world, and then eventually eaten an entire virtual cow while talking to my Tutor. 

I’d let myself conjure more Network generated meat after our discussion, and had instructed it to be intact, to see if that didn’t bother me for eating it. You know, hooves, hair, and all.

I’m not.

I don’t think.

I’m.

I’m at least a half-civilized dragon. As much as I played with my steak, I can’t eat a cow like that.

I’d tried, at least. And I think that had stressed me out, too.

I’d let myself develop unreasonable expectations for what I was and what I needed. But I was proud of myself for trying, even if it hurt my pride to ultimately be autistic about my food still.

A whole, unbutchered cow, even if it wasn’t exactly real, was just too icky to eat.

It had been, technically, an AI generated cow. One prompted by the contents of my memories of what a cow was, and refiltered by my memories from the signals the Network fed me, to make it as realistic to me as possible. It was probably off in some way because of how it was made.

It had smelled like cowsweat and cowshit.

In my quarters.

And even though I couldn’t even bring myself to bite it, let alone lick it, I could still somehow feel the sensation of cow hair on my tongue. Just due to a vivid imagination and maybe a kind of synesthesia I’ve always had.

I’d gagged. Just like I had done at the thought of trying to eat peas when I was seven, and my parents wouldn’t let me leave the table until I had taken a bite.

It’s not melodrama, I’d thought back then. Dragons just don’t eat peas.

I couldn’t tell myself the same thing about the cow.

So, in the end, I’d instructed the Network to cut it up perfectly, like my dad preparing my waffles for me when I was five. All nice and neat, viscera, bones, and connective tissue removed, and the cuts all piled up as a bunch of quite enticing steaks.

Of course, the way I’d told the Network to do it, the cow was simply replaced by an equal weight of steaks.

It was much easier to eat then. And more fun. And my raging hunger was finally satisfied.

But now I was haunted by the look in the dead cow’s eyes, and by my doubts when faced with the task of trying to eat it.

I’d been domesticated by humans.

Tamed was probably the right word. But domesticated felt more insulting, more thorough.

Not that that at all fit with my old theory that Terran dragons were, in the end, the memetic children of humans. 

But as much as it was counterproductive self deprecation to think that way, framing it as something done against my nature made me feel at least a little more valid as a creature with persony thoughts and feelings.

A nap would probably do me a lot of good. I felt like I needed one, to sleep off the food at least. But also, whenever I had a meltdown, or came close to one, sleeping afterward usually helped significantly.

But, as my eyes traveled over the contours of my quarters, I started to see how I might like to decorate the place.

And I ended up spending the afternoon doing that.

I took it slowly.

I rested for a while first.

Then I started asking Mutabenga about how to get and craft the materials I might need. And I took it one item at a time. With lots of time to stand or lie and stare at what little bit of work I did.

A lot of it was just network projections of things I thought I might like in material physicality later. Because that was easiest and didn’t take up resources. Not that resources were so limited I should have to worry about them for my quarters, apparently.

“You have a percentage of all energy and mass collected by the Bussard spires,” Metabenga said. “In perpetuity. It’s a smaller percentage than a Child receives, but a much greater percentage than a member of the Ancestry gets, because you are a guest. But, in any case, assuming ʔetekeyerrinwuf can travel infinitely through mass dense space, it is an infinite supply of resources. Just finite in the moment. And anything you no longer want to use is reabsorbed into the ecosystem.”

I paused in my work to look up at the ceiling in confusion at what I was hearing. I couldn’t calculate it. It was not what I was used to being told by anyone.

“I am grossly simplifying things, of course,” Mutabenga said. “ʔetekeyerrinwuf is fibrillating, and very sensitive, and even you have the power to send it into a spiral of deadly gyrations if you do the wrong thing with your share of resources. But, with Phage and Niʔa here, and everyone else supporting each other with their gifts, it is extremely unlikely. Think of this like your new system.”

“Huh?” I vocalized.

“You are now stuck here with all of us, in this single vessel, and we all must share it in its safety, health, and responsibilities. But we are many, and the work is very light for each of us.”

“Oh,” I said. I was still stuck on thinking about decorating my quarters, and it was very hard to get my mind to adjust to this new topic. But if I said, “oh,” it might let me move on.

“Your job now is simply to exist, and share yourself with us as you wish to, and do what you do,” Mutabenga explained.

That was a simple enough sentence for me to understand in the moment, and it reminded me of the kinds of things our trans friends had said to us when we first came out. “Welcome to the community. Your existence itself is revolutionary. Your survival alone is the rent you’re paying for being in this world. We need you.”

Those were good flashbacks to have. Bittersweet in a lot of ways, but definitely good.

“Thank you,” I said, and decided I needed a trans pride flag on one of the walls, even if it clashed with everything else.

One thought did occur to me just then, and I asked, “Just how much is my allocation? What’s my budget?”

“Larger than you could ever use today for these quarters,” Mutabenga said. “Do not worry about it right now. Later, when you are thinking of bigger things, you can query the Auditor. And, again. If what you are thinking of is too big for a day, that will only mean it will take more time. If it is too big for the ecosystem, that will be another matter. But we will talk about that more later.”

I nodded and then commanded the maker to construct that trans pride flag. A nice, big one.

Later, as I felt that I was finishing up, my mind processed fully what Metabang had said, and I stopped and stared at the wall in shock.

Here, I would not have to re-apply for Medicaid, or do my SSDI trial, or buy food, or beg for shaving cream and coffee money, or any of that. And…

I ticked my claw on the floor three times, and listened to the sound as it found all the corners of the room, around the objects I’d placed in it. Definitely less echoey than before.

I wouldn’t see any of my old friends ever again, unless they found a way to come here.

And it suddenly all felt more real than reality ever had.

Maybe there had been even more reasons Phage had cautioned us against doing this.

And I started to wonder if I should try to reconnect with my Earthly self sooner. Or maybe, to save them from the agony of remembering this place, never reconnect with them at all.

When my new friends, my Ktletaccete hosts, messaged me that evening to see if they could visit, I was not in a state to see anybody. But I think I really needed them anyway.