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Skip and Riva are on the bridge, as usual. He’s piloting the ship towards New Texas and they’re watching space with him from the water sphere. It’s surprisingly nice to be alone around a psychic alien; they’d been the biggest threat to his survival when he’d first entered Norman Takamori’s body. Now that he knows they like him, though, they're a relaxing presence, and the two of them get on quite well. Skip isn’t one for verbally chatting (especially with his abysmal control of this body’s voice), but he and Riva still have plenty of conversations, with them speaking telepathically and himself letting his thoughts and reactions flow free to keep things moving forwards.
It’s not good practice for being Norman—a much louder, closed-off, and bitter man—and it’s also probably not great practice for blending in with the human species in general. But Skip, despite his growing control over and desire to stay in this body, is not human, and it’s nice to be able to show that. He suspects Riva also enjoys his more intuitive ability to psychically communicate with them, but he hasn’t asked, and they would never show favoritism like that.
“Sex and gender both aren’t really things on Aguatunisia,” they’re explaining now. Rushing images of newborn Aguatunisians, the gathering of adults to procreate, and the growing-up into individuals flash through his mind. “I mean, of course there are some who have sex recreationally, but for the most part we’re a sexless species. And what with the lack of gender for the vast majority of us… well, it can get confusing, interacting with other people in the galaxy. Humans, for example—Sid once tried to explain to me what parts of her design were meant to inspire lust or comfort, and it was really hard for me to grasp! It makes selling Pleasure Putty quite difficult, but it’s also fascinating.” They pause, and in the reflection of the front bay window, Skip can see them swim in a slow circle. “The whole galaxy is fascinating.”
Skip hums in agreement, tilting the ship a little left to avoid an upcoming comet. “Yep.”
Riva pauses, and he can feel a new current of conversation building. “Can I ask—” they wait a millisecond while Skip’s affirmation comes through. “Well, for you. You’re in a human, but you’re not—how is it for you? Sex and gender and all that stuff?”
There’s nothing but space outside. Skip thinks for a long moment, tilting his head one way and then another, slowly.
He knows he doesn’t know how to be Norman. That immediately presents an issue, because the modus operandi of a cerebroslug is to conform to the mind that used to control this body, to accommodate their likes and dislikes until they become your own. He can’t manage that with Norman, what with himself still recovering from the cold of space and Norman’s own memories being a minefield of unpleasantness and outside tampering.
But, he realizes, that hasn’t stopped him from making assumptions, from having instincts that perhaps were not native to his host. He thought that Amercadian on Rec 97 was an ex-lover of Norman’s, for example. True, his people skills were even more abysmal then, and it had all sort of ended in disaster, but it had still been a thought process that was entirely his.
Oh. His, that’s an interesting word. He, him, his. The nuances of gender, even just human gender like his host species, currently evades his understanding, but… those words seem good. It’s definitely different from what’s expected of him. Cerebroslugs don’t really have gender either, but it’s more to prepare for adapting to a potential host than the Aguatunisian lack of emphasis on the concept. Enjoying this he-him-his aspect of his new life is another way of rebelling against the expectations set for him, but more importantly, it feels right.
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Riva says, having of course been privy to all this thinking. “I’ve been around people with dysphoria and picked up their emotions and thoughts about it, and it’s horrible for the people who experience it. I’m so glad you managed to get a body you like, Skip!” They do an ecstatic somersault, and a bubbling feeling like seafoam washes over him, Riva’s true laughter.
“Me too,” he says, a smile clicking onto his face. “I like that I can be me here.”
He means it, down to the core of his slug-self. He ran away to try and be his own person, to escape the pressures and expectations of his people. But the problem with being a cerebroslug is that no matter what you’re inhabiting, you are expected to conform to it, to become indistinguishable from it, and though it’s a matter of survival and a biological need instead of social and political pressure, it’s still not a great feeling.
The concept of becoming Norman had been daunting, but he’d resigned himself to it for his own survival. Instead he’d been found out almost immediately, and a week later, no one was upset or mad. In fact, they liked him.
Cerebroslugs so very rarely have true friends, and now he has a crew of them.
“You really are much better than Norman was,” Riva tells him, a little solemnly. Memories of their past interactions with Norman come flooding through like a sun-blotting storm over choppy waters: the unfamiliar sensation of crying as flecks of spittle flew from Norman’s shouting mouth to land on the glass of the water sphere; the amount of convincing it had taken for the captain to buy them a psychodrone; the times they’d had to protect the rest of the crew, be it psychically guiding them in battle to avoid his ire or helping them stay out of Norman’s way during downtime. Spots of sunlight shone through the dark clouds, like the time the captain learned that Barry had lost his squadron in battle and stopped yelling at him quite so much, or when he’d given Sid a small bonus for cleaning the ship.
But for the most part, Skip is learning more and more that Norman had not been a good man. His conquest of the captain’s mind and body had turned out to be a good thing for not just his own well-being, but that of his friends’ as well.
“We don’t just like you for that, though,” Riva assures him, the storm fading away. Skip squints his oddly dry eyes and blinks until the stars come back into focus. When memories overcome him like that, Norman’s or anyone else’s, he tends to forget some of the more basic human functions. “We all like you for—well, you. Skip, not Norman. It’s not just that you-in-Norman is better, it’s that you-as-you are better than he maybe ever was.” There’s a psychic difference to how they say those titles; you-in-Norman sounds like the hissing of waves crashing against rocks, and you-as-you is all the wonder and life crammed in every tide pool.
Skip’s body does something strange at that, a tightness in his throat that doesn’t feel all that great but seems tied to the emotions crashing through the body’s brain stem. A moment ago his eyes were horribly dry, but now they well up with some sort of slightly stinging secretion, and he tries to speak out loud but the sounds refuse to make it through his vocal cords. Instead he just nods vigorously, and knows Riva can feel the appreciation in the gesture.
The gunner channel crackles to life a few moments later, Gunnie yelling something about the ship’s computer and Sid reminding him that Handy Annie can quite literally give him a hand with whatever he’s trying to do. Barry comments about how at least the guns don’t have to deal with A.I, which starts a debate about which job is better to have on a ship.
Riva goes to share what they’ve learned about Skip, remembering at the last second to ask if it’s okay. Skip nods; it’s not really going to change anything about how they all interact with him, and if any of them have been worrying about this it’ll put their minds at ease.
The comet that he dodged at the start of this conversation streaks past, icy white sparkling through the front bay window. In the background, as he watches the stars, he can hear the gunner channel congratulating him on his discovery, and he knows none of this is something Norman would have done, or any typical cerebroslug.
But he doesn’t have to be Norman or a typical cerebroslug with these people. He doesn’t have to worry about the missing memories and the bad attitude, because he’s not the man those things belong to. He is Skip, the rebellious and wandering cerebroslug, and he has a ship and a crew that are also his friends.
A smile clicks onto his face, just for the stars to see, and he keeps moving forwards.