This chapter just continues talking with the comforter.

Brainslug protag wants to just end it and go sulk somewhere, but her comforter isn’t that dumb. She points out that humans are social, and that not having friends is probably making things worse.

Maybe one answer is to not concentrate quite so hard. You said Melanie grows bored during your working hours… that she is more dormant. Perhaps if you developed some peer relationships, those would bore her also.”
I pursed my lips thoughtfully. Melanie, sluggish from the long day of attempted comfort, did seem rather unenthused by the idea.

I’m not sure why Melanie is so bored by brainslug aliens. I’d sure want to know about that stuff.

It does, however, fit with my own theory about memory overwriting. The more the brainslug focuses on the host, the more memories and feelings are relived and end up getting written into the brainslug.

“And then there are the physical drives these bodies have. I’ve never seen or heard of their
equal. One of the most difficult things we of the first wave had to conquer was the mating instinct. Believe me, the humans noticed when you didn’t.” She grinned and rolled her eyes at some memory. When I didn’t react as she’d expected, she sighed and crossed her arms impatiently. “Oh, come now, Wanderer. You must have noticed.”
“Well, of course,” I mumbled. Melanie stirred restlessly. “Obviously. I’ve told you about the dreams.…”
“No, I didn’t mean just memories. Haven’t you come across anyone that your body has responded to in the present–on strictly a chemical level?”

Why would a species like this need to give such qualifications? There’s no sign pairbond-style love is even normal for them. “On a chemical level” is pretty much a flag for EVIL SCIENCE WHORING BY EVIL PEOPLE WHO DON’T FUCK OUT OF LOVE AND BABY DESIRE.

Also, it’s noteworthy because with the souls so happy and harmonyish, you’d think they’d have hookups on tap. There are a lot of reasons we don’t in our society, none of which should apply here.

Anyway, so, she says no she totally did not notice anyone at all in months (BECAUSE SHE’S NOT A SLUT) comforter lady says that she should just go get laid already.

My body recoiled from the thought. I registered Melanie’s disgust, mirrored by my own.
Kathy read my expression. “Don’t let her control how you interact with your kind, Wanderer.

Which infuriates her and she snaps that hey, comforter lady ended up with her host’s husband and maybe that was control too.

So yeah, she’s well on her way to Kevining here.

“Perhaps,” she finally said. “It’s hard to know. But you’ve made your point.”

If you mean that she is totally possessed by Melanie then yeah, point made.

I mean, look at this! Brainslug Melanie, in response to being told that Melanie is dictating her response after a conversation about how to try to minimize Melanie’s influence, defends her behavior by saying someone else is also getting controlled by their host, proving that she’s being influenced by Melanie. No one cares if other people are too! The point is that being controlled by your host is dangerous because she might take over totally. No one would care about you only wanting to bang Jared if you weren’t already falling apart.

I’m left to assume the comforter is a pretty shitty one who has some sort of sink or swim ethic where people who try to avoid getting help from her deserve what they get. Maybe our brainslug protag also shared her thoughts on comforters being weak weaklings who suck. Sure, that doesn’t make any sense with them all being harmony joyjoy, but there’s no other way to explain this behavior.

Then she says that well, there’s a good chance the seekers will find Jared and then she won’t have this issue, because the two can be together in brainslug marriage.

“No!” I wasn’t sure who had shouted. It could have been me. I was full of horror, too. I was on my feet, shaking. The tears that came so easily were, for once, absent, and my hands trembled in tight fists.
“Wanderer?”
But I turned and ran for the door, fighting the words that could not come out of my mouth. Words that could not be my words. Words that made no sense unless they were hers, but they felt like mine. They couldn’t be mine. They couldn’t be spoken.
That’s killing him! That’s making him cease to be! I don’t want someone else. I want Jared, not a stranger in his body! The body means nothing without him.
I heard Kathy calling my name behind me as I ran into the road.

Oh yeah, she’s pretty far gone. I wonder why they haven’t just knocked her out and stuck her in a new body already. They were willing to do that for Kevin when it became obvious his host was messed up, without needing his explicit agreement. By this point, they should suspect anything she says is tainted by her host.

She’s so upset she ends up running in the wrong direction, away from her house.

People were looking at me. I wasn’t dressed for exercise, and I wasn’t jogging, I was fleeing. But no one bothered me; they politely averted their eyes. They would guess that I was new to this host. Acting out the way a child would.

Hm.

So this must be their own concept of childhood, because of the way they seem familiar with it. Do baby brainslugs act weird? We know there doesn’t appear to be any way of communicating between them naturally, so they must be getting popped into a host first, and that would mean their first experience is with the host’s species, not their own. They probably need a sizable amount of indoctrination to view themselves as part of the larger brainslug collective instead.

Also, I guess this is the main area they’re different in behavior, the peacefulness. Unfortunately we’re getting it through a brainslug’s view-

No, wait, that’s not an excuse. She’s obviously very affected by her host, there’s totally room here for her to be talking about how things don’t fit her memory. It could even be part of how disconnected she feels, that things look wrong when their her own species’ normal behavior but don’t match how normal humans behaved.

Also, if they just assume weird humans are newbie brainslugs,how do they keep an eye out for actual humans? Apparently, you can bolt down the street in blind terror and all anyone will think is that you’re a new arrival.

(Unless maybe they do call in when they see this and that just hasn’t occurred to our protagonist.)

I slowed to a walk, turning north so that I could loop around without passing Kathy’s office again.

She really doesn’t want help for no clear reason. Just that she thinks it makes her weak to need it. This doesn’t seem the best message and also, everyone else should realize they need to stage an intervention. The point where a soul is so far gone they don’t even want help stopping their slide into Kevinness should be the point people stop limiting themselves to polite suggestions.

She thinks the sound of her footsteps are like someone hitting another person, and the concept horrifies her.

She’s so stressed that she feels sick.

“Wanderer, is that you? Wanderer, are you ill?”
The vaguely familiar voice was impossible to concentrate on. But it made things worse, knowing I had an audience as I leaned my face close to the bush and violently choked up my most recent meal.
“Who’s your Healer here?” the voice asked. It sounded far away through the buzzing in my ears. A hand touched my arched back. “Do you need an ambulance?”
I coughed twice and shook my head. I was sure it was over; my stomach was empty.
“I’m not ill,” I said I as pulled myself upright using the lamppost for support. I looked over to see who was watching my moment of disgrace.
The Seeker from Chicago had her cell phone in her hand, trying to decide which authority to call. I took one good look at her and bent over the leaves again. Empty stomach or no, she was the last person I needed to see right now.

She sure seems friendly and helpful, but then, maybe that’s exactly your problem with her.

Like all of brainslug protag’s freakouts over weakness, this one doesn’t make sense. For a harmonious species, she sure is obsessed about anyone seeing her do anything wrong.

Anyway, our protag assaults the seeker, grabbing her by the collar and shaking her. She feebly apologizes, which the seeker accepts, and then says they should go find a healer for her illness.

“I don’t have a flu. I’m not ill.”
“Did you eat bad food? You must report where you got it.”
Her prying was very annoying. “I did not eat bad food, either. I’m healthy.”

SHE SHOWS CONCERN FOR ME AND THEREFORE SHE IS EVIL.

She follows our protag into the house, probably recognizing that she’s dealing with a pretty unstable person who might need help.

“So, Wanderer… or do you still go by that name? I don’t mean to be rude in calling you that.”
I didn’t look at her. “I still go by Wanderer.”
“Interesting. I pegged you for one that would choose her own.”
“Idid choose. I chose Wanderer.”
It had long been clear to me that the mild spat I’d overheard the first day I woke in the Healing facility was the Seeker’s fault. The Seeker was the most confrontational soul I’d come across in nine lives. My first Healer, Fords Deep Waters, had been calm, kind, and wise, even for a soul. Yet he had not been able to help reacting to her. That made me feel better about my own response.

So she’s evil.

She’s friendly, concerned, and everyone treats her terribly. We SAW everything that happened with Fords. We were even in his head while he bitched about stuff for no reason. And then in yours, saying there’s prejudice against seekers as a general thing. You guys snapped and snarled at her constantly, assuming the worst, including accusing her of sticking you in a damaged host, accusing her of being willing to do anything short of that, and demanding she explain why she hadn’t skipped bodies, because sure, it’s something no decent soul does but hey, she’s a seeker. Then you went on and on about how she’s the one being all nasty and humanish.

She was on my small couch, nestled in comfortably as if for a long visit. Her expression was self-satisfied, the bulging eyes amused.

The only character with a skin color that isn’t suntan and she’s got icky bulging eyes in addition to being evil and described as primitive.

She says she’s here to find out if brainslug protag knows anything else, and apparently was unaware of the email.

Her eyebrows came together in that way she had, a way that made her look angry and annoyed at the same time, as if you, not she, were responsible for her anger.

First off, if you piss someone off, you are responsible. Second, way to project.

This is basically a demiplothole. Why wouldn’t she have checked her email?

“I sent it very early in the morning,” I said. “I was half asleep at the time. I’m not sure how much of what I wrote was memory or dream, or sleep-typing, maybe.”
I went along with the words–Melanie’s words–as they flowed easily from my mouth; I even added my own lighthearted laugh at the end. It was dishonest of me. Shameful behavior. But I would not let the Seeker know that I was weaker than my host.

I thought brainslugs couldn’t lie.

For once, Melanie was not smug at having bested me. She was too relieved, too grateful that I had not, for my own petty reasons, given her away.

BUT I THOUGHT BRAINSLUGS COULDN’T LIE.

“Another one on the loose.” She shook her head. “Peace continues to elude us.” She did not seem dismayed by the idea of a fragile peace–rather, it seemed to please her.

That is the exact opposite of how you’re describing her. Shaking heads and saying peace eludes you is not pleased.

Melanie wanted so badly to make another denial, to claim the boy was just part of a dream. Don’t be stupid, I told her. That would be so obvious. It said much for the repellent nature of the Seeker that she could put Melanie and me on the same side of an argument.

I THOUGHT BRAINSLUGS COULDN’T oh whatever she’s totally Melanie by now.

That was surprisingly fast. Just this morning, she viewed Melanie’s feelings as distinct from her own and actively fought against trying to mislead the seeker. Maybe there’s a runaway effect, where once it gets so bad they can’t stop thinking about it, the balance of power tips quickly?

Melanie says she hates the seeker, which is unreasonable because it’s not like any of the other brainslugs oppose what the seeker does, they’re just cowardly about it.

I wished I could deny that I felt… similarly. Hate was an unforgivable emotion. But the Seeker was… very difficult to like. Impossible.

I like her.

“So, other than the new location to review, you have no more help for me on the road maps?”
I felt my body react to her critical tone. “I never said they were lines on a road map. That’s your assumption.

So you beat yourself up about being weak, but if anyone else slightly implies it with a critical tone that’s probably all in your head, you freak out on them.

Also, “I didn’t get do even much!” is not actually the best defense to being told you’ve done barely anything.

The seeker finally does something halfway worthy of the endless spew of hate she’s getting – she realizes that brainslug protag/Melanie II still can’t handle the host and laughs. Melanie II decides to go to her happy place of pretending she’s totally alone. The lines they’re discussing flash briefly through her head, but she still has no idea what they are and says Melanie’s guarding it like she did the existance of her brother.

Melanie II wonders if she’ll get more info as Melanie I becomes louder in her head.

Then she realizes that the lines must be where Jared and Jamie are, because what else would be important?

The seeker dares be disappointed by the terrible job the brainslug’s done. Melanie II snaps back that yeah too bad the seeker couldn’t have done it herself because she wouldn’t have any problem right?

She sniffed. “The early waves were challenging enough even without a resistant host.”
“Yes. I’ve experienced a few settlings myself.”

We’re not going to get to hear about that, are we?

“Were the See Weeds very difficult to tame? Did they flee?”
I kept my voice calm. “We had no trouble in the South Pole. Of course, the North was another matter. It was badly mishandled. We lost the entire forest.” The sadness of that time echoed behind my words. A thousand sentient beings, closing their eyes forever rather than accept us. They’d curled their leaves from the suns and starved.
…
“Yes.” Her voice was uncomfortable. “That was poorly executed.”
…
Everyone knew that the misstep behind the mass suicide belonged to the Seekers, who, because the See Weeds couldn’t flee, had underestimated their ability to escape. They’d proceeded recklessly, beginning the first settlement before we had adequate numbers in place for a full-scale assimilation.

So then why would she have said this in the first place? This is so clumsy.

Also wow, it sucks to be a seeker. Do everything right, and everyone says there’s no need for you and you’re just a violent subperson. Do anything wrong, and it’s all your fault. Be somewhere you’re still needed to make things peaceful, and you’re accused of wanting things to stay messed up.

This is also brushing away her own experience – the see weeds appear to have functioned much like souls, in that they were communal creatures that can’t lie. So, what was it like talking to them as they committed slow suicide? What did they tell you when you asked why they were doing this? Why do you view it as “escaping” when you guys seem baffled by the fact hosts object to you? Why don’t you feel any sense of responsibility – don’t you wish you could have talked them out of it?