Last time, the host’s overwriting of the brainslug is successful!

Melanie II is in a convenience store stocking up on stuff. She’s acting hella guilty and Melanie I yells at her for it.

I walked around the corner to where the bottled water was shelved.

Oh for – you stupid brainslugs!

Bottled water is stupidly wasteful. We laid down perfectly good pipes but no, people have to drink their special water out of special containers. They should just have empty jugs here you fill from the tap, like a sane species would.

We can carry three gallons,she decided.That gives us three days to find them.

…that’s…that’s an accurate rule of thumb. I’m confused. Research happened, for real? How long has it been since that was true?

Melanie II thinks loudly to herself that this is all fake and she will totally tell someone once she knows where they’re going.

I would find someone–a different Seeker, maybe, one less repulsive than the one assigned to me

Seriously just fuck this subplot though.

Anyway, Melanie I doesn’t seem to care because she knows it’s not true, although in her position I’d be a lot more nervous. Yes, the brainslug’s converted, but she’s still somewhat torn in her loyalties and definitely quite uncomfortable with the plan. All it’d take is one brainslug asking if she’s alright and she’d probably blurt everything out in one go.

It must be too late for me, as the Seeker had warned.

But she does not admit that this means the seeker is right, let alone maybe not Satan incarnate.

Too late? I wish! Melanie grumbled. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I can’t
even raise my hand!

Melanie I, stop whining. You’ve successfully overwritten her personality and we know that’s stage one. I’m sure you’ll be driving a scalpel into your neck in no time.

Still, I do sympathize with how frustrating it is. Melanie I just wants to grab the damn water and go, and here Melanie II is sitting around emoing.

With a sigh, I pulled the largest shrink-wrapped flat of water bottles from the shelf.

Oh good lord actual tiny water bottles? I was mad enough when I was picturing you doing this with gallon jugs. And shrink-wrapped because it’s not like the landfills aren’t full enough yet!

Anyway, the weight of three gallons startles her, and Melanie I insults Melanie II for being a weakling. She does not, to my surprise, suggest the brainslug moves over and let her handle carrying stuff. Maybe she’s waiting to pop that offer in the desert once things get even worse.

I put the bag on top of the water, and then added a box of granola bars, a roll of doughnuts, and a bag of chips from the closest display.
Water is way more important than food in the desert, and we can only carry so much –
I’m hungry,I interrupted.And these are light.

You’re both idiots. There’s higher calorie food you could be carrying, and just thinking about eating those things in a desert is making my mouth feel like sand.

The cashier, a white-haired man with a ready smile, scanned the bar codes.
“Doing some hiking?” he asked pleasantly.
“The mountain is very beautiful.”
“The trailhead is just up that –” he said, starting to gesture.
“I’ll find it,” I promised quickly, pulling the heavy, badly balanced load back off the counter.
“Head down before it gets dark, sweetie. You don’t want to get lost.”
…
You’re all very creepy,she told me acidly.Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers?

Okay, I don’t even live in one of the particularly social areas of America, and I myself am particularly unsocial on top of that, and even I don’t flip out at a cashier wishing me the best about the hike I am obviously going on. This is the smallest of small talk. It is totally human.

I don’t know, maybe the idea is that Melanie has been away from people so long that her concept of human behavior is all screwed up. Only being able to talk to two people and knowing even they could come back as aliens without any warning would probably make you pretty tense about casual anything.

But it does seem like it’s meant to be taken at face value, because the brainslug replies that her own kind don’t have a concept of being strangers so they act like this. This makes sense, but it hasn’t been supported so far – all we’ve seen is the brainslug being prickly at people asking questions about her life. The brainslugs act very human.

I can’t get used to not paying for things,she said, changing the subject.What’s the point of scanning them?
Inventory, of course. Is he supposed to remember everything we took when he needs to order more?

Oh god dammit book you are determined to make me pay for that brief moment of hope I had about the water thing.

Okay, look. Yes, keeping scanning just to keep track of inventory is a perfectly good compromise between how things used to be and the brainslug’s new economy. What is not is still having a cashier. The cashier’s job is to manage the cash part. Anyone can scan items, and indeed many stores these days already have self-service areas where you can scan it yourself and pay. The employees only have to remain in enough numbers to keep you from walking off without paying and to manually enter information if the scan doesn’t work. The first obviously doesn’t apply and the second wouldn’t either because the reason they only let employees do it is so you don’t enter false prices for what you’re trying to buy.

You just would not have a brainslug standing around all day behind a counter. And who would think that was their calling? Even one getting overwritten by a human wouldn’t because it’s not like humans like the job all that much either.

Now, you would still need a few store employees to replace things on the shelves, but you wouldn’t need someone hanging out there all the time except at bigger stores, and even those would require only a fraction of their current employees.

The only way this would make sense is if some brainslugs are stuck between full overwrite and independence, and much like brainslug Kathy said she mostly just went about the standard human routine while adjusting, some of them can’t handle anything complex. They’re not able to function normally and happy to just wander around old paths or stand behind a counter staring at nothing for hours on end. It seems plausible – the brainslugs are dependent on the brains, and if something goes wrong with the connections, maybe you end up with someone barely functional just as often as you do a rogue host.

Besides, what’s the point of money when everyone is perfectly honest?

What? No.

It’s a resource allocation tool.

Money is just a unit for how much stuff you’ve earned.

There’s no need for a cashier to make sure you’re not taking more than you’ve earned if you’re honest, but rewarding people who do valuable work is a good incentive for people to do that, and if you’re so happyjoyjoy that everyone just always does what’s necessary, then you should have everything allocated evenly, in which case money is a good way of making sure that happens.

Resources are not just determined by demand. It takes a certain amount of effort to produce them, and generally, the more you try to make the higher the cost will end up going – ie, if you want chocolate, there’s the easily gained cocoa beans and the ones that are harder to get and the ones that don’t exist and will require expanding cocoa bean plantations to have them at all, and the marginal areas where you technically could expand to but will get very few beans worth. So if everyone wants chocolate and you have to plant right up to the edge of productivity, the last few beans will take a lot more effort and the average amount each bar of chocolate costs will go up accordingly. If everyone just keeps getting chocolate with no connection to how hard it is to make the stuff, there’s no way to smoothly discourage that and encourage some people to eat other enjoyable candy instead. Your only option is clumsy top-down fixes, like telling people to stop buying chocolate so much, or deciding to stop producing that much chocolate and making it so it’s chance whether any individual finds any, which is badly unfair because some people will have more chances to check the stores than others and because making chocolate harder to find ensures more people will buy it up if they see it even if they only sort of like chocolate, because it’s the only way to have chocolate on hand if they do feel like eating it later. Upping the price, in contrast, would let the people who want it more get it while others got whatever luxury good they liked more instead. (Assuming you have a functional economy that doesn’t have huge inequities and everyone’s getting a similar salary.)

Now, humans can produce a lot of surplus, and indeed the whole reason for our stupid consumerist culture is that we need to do something with that extra productivity, so if they’d cut back the economy and were only producing essentials, this wouldn’t be an issue. It’s believable that they could have enough for everyone. But bottled water is not an essential. American prosperity is built on the backs of other countries. If we’re living in an equal world of seven billion brainslugs and hosts, either they have to eliminate everything nonessential in order to feed and shelter everyone or they need some method of rationing luxury goods.

Anyway, Melanie II doesn’t think about how nonsensical their economy is, just that omg everyone else is so truthful and honest and she is so terrible. No, you’re all terrible for shipping bottled water around. Seriously, why are you doing that? Stop.

Melanie shied away from my feelings, worried by the depth of them, worried that I might change my mind.

So it seems she’s not that secure in her control of Melanie II. Shouldn’t she be working on that first, and then revealing things? She can’t risk Melanie II actually finding them and changing her mind. There’s no rush, Melanie II has already decided to protect Melanie I at all costs.

Maybe her real plan is to get them both killed, but that seems awfully defeatist when victory is within her grasp.

The other “customer” offers to help carry the stuff because he’s part of the harmonyjoyjoy niceness. Melanie I, of course, finds this terrifying, as anyone would being surrounded by brainslugs, and so Melanie II is as well.

They’re actually a pretty good fusion. Melanie I just wants to start walking, but Melanie II is lazier and more timid, so she examines the map they bought and sees there’s a nearby road they could take to get part of the distance.

We found the unpaved road easily. It was just a pale scar of flat dirt through the sparse shrubbery, barely wide enough for one vehicle. I had a feeling that the road would be overgrown with lack of use in a different region–some place with more vital vegetation, unlike the desert plants that needed decades to recover from such a violation.

I guess we’re seeing the fruits of write-what-you-know here.

Melanie was perfectly at home here in the middle of nothing. She knew the names of all the spiny plants around us. She hummed their names to herself, greeting them like old friends. Creosote, ocotillo, cholla, prickly pear, mesquite…

And so.

Melanie II realizes Melanie I is still impatient for the walk, and thinks that she’s really wishing for the ability to be free.

For a moment, I allowed myself to see the prison that was life without a body. To be carried inside but unable to influence the shape around you. To be trapped. To have no choices.
I shuddered and refocused on the rough road, trying to stave off the mingled pity and horror. No other host had made me feel such guilt for what I was. Of course, none of the others had stuck around to complain about the situation.

But she doesn’t go on to wonder if she just couldn’t hear them, and neither does Melanie I capitalize on this weakness to make an accusation.

They see the next landmark in the distance and get into an argument about if they should turn off here or keep going all the way to the first one. (Also, she fantasies about how upset the seeker will be when she’s missing, because we have to keep that fucking plot going.)

t will be dark soon and we’ll have to stop. You’re wasting time! She was silently shouting in her
frustration.
Or saving time, if I’m right. Besides, it’s my time, isn’t it?

So her thoughts about how much it sucks to be trapped and unable to do stuff don’t actually add up to her changing her behavior in the least. Melanie I should just go back to bombarding her with husbando feels.

Night falls and Melanie I tells her she can’t turn on the headlights or someone will see. They’ll just have to stop for the night. This Melanie II does listen to, although she whines a lot.

I leaned the seat back as far as it would go. It wasn’t close to far enough for comfort. I doubted that I would be able to sleep

And again, Melanie I fails to take the opening to convince Melanie II to let her be in charge. Instead, Melanie II just falls asleep quickly anyway.

Still, even if characterwise there’s little development, at least the plot is trotting along at a good pace.