Thanksgiving week here in FUSA, so things got busy. Thus, here’s a larger segment going into the weekend. I realized I had to begin to explain this new race of modified humans, and, as many of you know, I hate walls of text. So, let’s have young (I wonder her age; she must be a teen, I guess) Doe start to bring Graf up to speed.

I’ve already dropped two hints – well, I was told to drop those hints – that there is more to Graf than we think. Fret not: I’ve no idea, either. But one of them is he seems to have an unconscious ability to charm the pants off girls. No, he doesn’t here. But, I wonder if, in the Change, he has some latent psi power to play with others’ minds? The world wonders.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

The patter of the rain should have made him sleep sounder, but instead made Graf open his eyes.  Dark now, but from the storm or the night?  Or both.  He recalled it was in a barn at night when his mother scratched the back of hand.  She rinsed it off with the soap their neighbor down the road made and everything seemed fine.  By the next evening, her hand was swollen and it looked as if her veins were turning black.  Their father took one of the geldings and rode like hell for the local doctor, who rode back with him just as fast.  By now, the blackness inside her was above her elbow.  His mother was sweating and beginning to moan.

Saying nothing, the doc moved to where Mom couldn’t see him.  He shook his head at us and pulled something from his bag.  He told Mom he was going to give her a tiny shot to make her feel better.  Once she fell asleep, he explained it was morphine, to take the pain away.  And that Mom was going to be taken away by morning.

Graf closed his eyes against the tears.

“Hey, human?” Doe asked.  He could barely make out her form in the dark, but she was very close to him.  “Bad memories hurt, even our kind.  Water?”

“Please.”

She pressed the cup into his hand and seemed to scoot closer.  “Will you tell me?  Graf?” It was the first time she used his name.

He went on with the short version of what he’d just thought about.  “So, waking up in a barn, seeing a woman with Mom’s face, but a halo and wings… I didn’t mind being dead if I could see her again.  Even if, that is, I, well, even if…” He had to stop.

“Even if you would lose your wife, your lover, and your children,” the Fusion said simply.  “So right now you are feeling guilty.  Get up.”

“What?”

“Get up, dammit, human!” she ordered as her nature returned.  But she held out her hand to him. “It goes all the way back to the founder of our Great Houses that ‘doins’ better than thinkin’, so it’s time for you to start doin!”

Graf took her hand and almost had his arm dislocated.  How strong are these people?  “Very,” she answered, typical for any other demi-human or android.  He was getting used over the years to having his mind read.  “Come over here and take more food and water.  It was about to start dripping rain on where we first had you.  And, before you ask, yes, your wife will be back in about an hour on the next light rail.  She could just run, but that’s a waste of power.”

He sat cross-legged in some dry straw.  Boy, do I miss home.  Taking some actual legionary rations out rather than just jerky and hard cheese, he looked to where Doe sat.  With her knees touching his.  This is dangerous.

“I told you I’m not joining your harem no matter what you can do with your mind,” what? she said.  “You have questions about Fusions.  I shall give you a précis so that you don’t sound like an idiot when Pai returns.”

“You know my wife?” he asked, rudely around a mouthful of pureed banana.

“All imperial family members, well, the demis and Fusions, have one another in mind,” she said with that cute tilt of her head, “so, yes.”  We talked before she left for the city.  Her intellect, being a Machine, is formidable.  No idea why she likes you.”

Graf gave her a blank look.  “Love is complicated, whatever you are,” he snarked a little.

“I’m aware.  And to that point:  Henge was the First; a Machine who took human form.  Grandma was the second, oh, I see from your eyes you’ve read the report.” A broad smile as the four and four blue crystals shuddered behind her.  “Fused, there’s that word, with Lem, then separated, but as one of us.  A new kind of human.  She was already a demi.  Now she’s a Fusion.”

“Doe?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve seen much in the past nearly four years, but I’m still just an upper Midwest farmer,” he said, pausing to take a drink from the juice can.  “Can you please dumb this down?”

She sighed and scooted just a little closer.  More trouble.

“What she looks like now?  That is how she saw herself.  Had Dorina and Henge tried to break that, it would have broken her,” she said in a softer voice.  “So, she is what you see now.  A few years later, she married grandpa.  They had nine kids.  One of whom, my mom, a Fusion, married and had me.  Just like being a demi, it breeds forward.”

“Don’t those,” Graf started putting his trash away while pointing over her shoulder, “wing things make childbirth a little uncomfortable?”

“The Change to a Fusion only manifests around puberty,” she corrected.  “Unless one of us, like my older brother, is a normie, then a mother can talk to us when we’re inside them; wake us up.  This?”

She reached up and flicked her white gold halo with a tink!

“And those?” she jerked her thumb over her shoulder.  “Later.”

“I don’t get this at all,” he admitted.

“Oh, come on, distant cousin!” she laughed, bringing her face to inches from his, “you’ve seen much in the service of both the Empress and your wife!  You’ll get it soon enough – “

“What you are going to get,” said a voice in the dark behind her.  Pai!  “Is that I can tear your head off in less than a second if you get any closer to my husband.”