limbs as little as butterfly wings

Chapter 01: university [2025-10-06]
Chapter 02: oh my pa-pa [2026-04-05]
Chapter 03: funny hat party [2026-04-06]
Chapter 04: eleonora 1 [2026-04-13]
Chapter 05: eleonora 2 [2026-04-14]

"Chums-!"

Zeke seemed somehow aggrieved, but then he was always aggrieved lately, or else agitated, or overwrought, or plundered, by his first full recitation section with independently conjured discussion prompts and problem sets.

So Zeke bit the skin of the whisper with the tips of his teeth.

"I hate to cause a panic too soon for the spooky month, but there's someone following you- no, no, don't look now!"

But Flora looked, and pursed her lips, while Addam calmly watched her.

"Oh," she said, "Minoth, do keep up." Then she extended her hand back to him as some combination of target and beckon.

Zeke, who'd been bustling along chest-first with his shoulders hunched in conspiracy, stopped, slumped, and stared.

"He's with you?"

"Almost wasn't," said Addam cheerfully. "Thanks for that!"

"My father," Ashera began officiously, "was a greasy, horrible man."

She paid no mind to the hushed mutters that this statement seemed to cause, and continued, "But my father's great unprecedented beauty made this a non-issue, for me."

More mutters, somewhat more like murmurs. Then a voice, someone unsure of himself who would never belong in Colony 11, where all were nuts and loved to crack on: "I thought you said your father was ugly."

"Mmm...well, yes. But a girl's got to have two. Tell me, what would you think of me, if I were to start babbling on about my pa-pa?"

"Sebire! I want you to come to my party."

He's so torn on whether to focus refusing the invitation, such as it is, or rebuking the host for hardly giving a body a chance to turn around, first, that his only response to Seren is a low, whistling grumble.

But Seren just stands there and waits, lips frog-faced and eyebrows up.

"Your party," Sebire then repeats. "Sure, great. Only one problem: I don't go to parties."

Seren frowns. "You don't? Wow, can't think of a reason a guy like you wouldn't want in on all the fun!"

It takes a beat and a blink for Sebire to realize that they're being, if not entirely, at least somewhat genuine.

"Fun? At parties? Those midnight house-shakers where everybody's taking illegal substances that guy under the administrative district sells at a not-criminal-enough profit margin so they can drink even more than usual? Yeah, no thanks."

He's about to turn back around and relocate when he sees Seren force a laugh out through their nose, by accident.

"Umm, not my game, quarterback! I'm having a funny hats party."

Hmm. Gear-themed. Intriguing. And yet...

"Yeah, thanks but no thanks."

"Aww, but everyone's gonna be there! Mimi, and Razor, and L, and Seer, and--"

"Wait a minute. Is this a has funny hats party, or a wear funny hats party?"

"Erm...both?!"

Once upon a time we wanted to do it to real people, actually. We wanted to mold and propagate real young men. To groom. To condition.

But it's difficult work. It's thankless work. To build the model unit. To build obedient killers. To build soldiers who can hold it together in the face of their memories.

We built him because we can, now. We built him because it's what we'd always planned to do. We built him because his artificial life does not mean nearly as much as the lives of all the human soldiers who once had to die.

It's efficiency. It's a great and grand improvement to ethics. We have just diminished the death tolls tenfold. We need more units. So many more units. And nobody will ever die again.

We build people now. We are all mechanical. But if we could have launched this project on the old platform, we would have. We would have shipped it with flesh just as well. And we did, for hundreds of years. Shaping minds to mass production is really just what we do.

"Become human? But, Commander...they are not allowed to become human."

"Well, why the hell not? And who's gonna tell those two ball-busters about it? As if it's gonna stop 'em."

"If they become human, we lose amnesty over their lives. We become liable for...pain and suffering. We have to answer for-"

"For your sins, yeah, yeah. You and everybody else on this godforsaken rock. Get a grip, Eleonora."

She had one. It tightened. She wasn't bold enough to quarrel with the Director General, or even the Secretary. And the Commander didn't seem to care.