Chapter Text
Zosia stretched to her full length in the bed, and then relaxed with a deep sigh of contentment.
Carol lay on her back drifting somewhere between consciousness and a light doze. She awakened when Zosia spoke.
“I enjoyed that.”
“You did?”
“Couldn’t you tell?” Zosia’s voice had a smirk in it, which Carol attributed to how the Hive had gained proficiency over the last weeks with language, banter, and flirting.
“I suppose that if you can’t lie, that implies that you wouldn’t fake an orgasm,” Carol said.
“Or three,” Zosia replied with a lazy smile.
Carol wasn’t sure what possessed her to ask, since deep down, she knew what she was doing. Not forming a new relationship. Not having a fling. Not even seeking companionship. Nope.
Research.
Maybe it was the endorphins. Maybe she was so relaxed in the afterglow of good sex that her guard was down. Maybe she had been so lonely for so long, and wanted any kind of validation.
“What did you like about it?”
Zosia heard the conversational “you” and knew that Carol wanted her to reply with information based on her prior experience as an individual having sex, rather than as the Hive.
“I liked all of it,” she began, concentrating to make sure she got the pronoun right, and then raised a finger when she saw Carol about to object. She knew that Carol wanted details. She had not let the individual formerly known as Larry simply reply that her books were “wonderful.”
“I liked your passion. I liked the combination of tenderness and forcefulness you used when it was exactly the right time. It was like you could sense when I craved a lighter touch, a stronger touch, more pressure, less pressure, and I didn’t even say a word. This body had never been with someone who was so focused on achieving pleasure for me, rather than for themselves. And your response when I reciprocated was extremely stimulating. It was as if I could feel your responses to my fingers, my mouth, in my own body, even though I was touching your body, not my own. I liked feeling close to you.”
Zosia’s eyes had gone unfocused as she recalled the details and synthesized it into words to describe the uniqueness of the experience.
Carol had tensed when Zosia had described never being with someone who had prioritized her pleasure.
“It sounds like this was the first time you’ve had sex with a woman.”
Zosia nodded.
“It was. And it was transcendent for this body.”
“Hold on, wait. Was Zosia gay? I mean, is she gay? Are you gay?”
Zosia turned toward Carol and didn’t answer at first. Carol felt her stomach sink. She knew the delay, and any equivocation that would follow, was a sign that the answer was no.
“We have the memories, experiences, and emotions of so many women who were attracted to women, that in a sense, we are all gay now.”
“But Zosia. The person she was, her life that she lived. Was she?”
“The individual Zosia did not have any prior romantic or sexual encounters with women,” Zosia responded.
Carol felt sick.
“Then why did you just sleep with me?”
Incredibly, Zosia’s eyes crinkled as she gave Carol a warm smile.
“Because we love you, Carol. You were in distress. We wanted to help you feel better. To comfort you.”
For a moment, Carol was actively afraid that she would throw up right in the bed. This was one of her deepest fears, finally spoken aloud. That someone would pity her enough to subvert their own natural desires to attempt to comfort her with their body. That anyone who deigned to have sex with her didn’t actually love her, desire her.
It had taken Helen a long, patient time to break down Carol’s internalized homophobia. To convince Carol that she loved her for herself. Not in spite of her grumpiness, her pessimism, her excessive drinking. But because of them. Helen loved every part of her.
Even so, Carol more often than not thought that Helen was the exception to the rule, a fluke. Only Helen was able to love Carol.
And now Helen was dead, and Carol would never be loved, be seen, again.
She took a deep breath, fighting against the nausea.
“Is this upsetting you?”
Zosia’s earnest question drove home for Carol just how fucked up this truly was. If the Hive had all the best minds, psychologists, and emotional intelligence of the entire human race, and still needed Carol to explain why finding out Zosia wasn’t actually even a little bit lesbian and had pity-fucked her anyway could be even a tiny bit upsetting, well that was just proof that the Hive was not and would never be human.
Zosia was still looking at her, as if awaiting an answer.
“Yes, it’s fucking upsetting me. Jesus! You just described that you slept with me because I was upset. Not because you wanted me, or were attracted to me. It’s like…you were using the body of Zosia as a human pacifier.”
Carol flushed red as the lurid double entendre hit home for her.
“And I’m just the crying baby who needs to be shut up.”
“Carol, that’s not what it was like. That’s not what we meant.”
“Oh, really? Well, then what the fuck did you mean?” Carol paused and closed her eyes, willing herself to not lose her temper.
“We wanted to comfort you, yes. Because we love you and you were upset. But we are attracted to you, too. Zosia herself is attracted to you.”
“You just told me that Zosia isn’t gay.”
“We said that the individual Zosia had never been in a romantic or sexual relationship with a woman. We see how that may have given you the wrong idea.”
Carol had deliberately avoided finding out details about Zosia because she knew from the start what the Hive was trying to do by sending her the literal human form of her fantasy love interest. By not digging into Zosia’s past, she thought in a way that she was respecting the memory of the individual she used to be, by not using her past to anthropomorphize her into someone she was no longer.
But, she acknowledged, sleeping with her had kind of thrown all of that out the window.
Being alone for 40 days had been hard. That was putting it lightly. Sometimes she felt like she was losing her mind. By the end, she hadn’t cared whether she lived or died. Her close call with the firework had awakened something in her. Not exactly the will to live, but the will to try to fix the world. Implied was “or die trying.” It was easier to sublimate her grief, her anger, and her trauma in this last-ditch charm offensive to learn more about the Hive. To discover their weaknesses.
To find the cure.
Sleeping with Zosia hadn’t been part of the plan. Neither had this lousy excuse for pillow talk. But in for a penny, in for a pound.
“Enlighten me.”
Zosia smiled. “The individual Zosia had been married to a man in Poland. She was married for twelve years. Some of those years were good, some not so good. Eventually they divorced.
“Growing in her consciousness year by year was the sense that something was missing in her marriage. Something fundamental that she had never experienced. But she knew it wasn’t right. That to live without it for the rest of her life meant she would be ultimately unfulfilled. Her husband sensed it too, though they never spoke of it. Their divorce was amicable, each of them eager to move on with what was left of their lives.
“Zosia traveled, seeing more of the world, as she had wanted to as a child. As she traveled, she grew increasingly aware of her response to women. Her attraction to them. It had never been a part of her that had been allowed to grow, to thrive. But being free from her marriage and the expectations that she’d had for herself had allowed her to start acknowledging the possibilities.
“At the time of the Joining, she had still not taken any steps toward acting on her desires. But they were there. It would have been a matter of time.”
Carol pursed her lips. She didn’t want to ask, but her traitorous mouth spoke anyway.
“Would Zosia have been attracted to me? The individual Zosia.”
Zosia’s reply was instant.
“Of course.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“That’s one of the reasons we sent Zosia to you.”
“I thought you were sent because you look like a female version of Raban.”
“Yes, that’s one reason. But there are hundreds of people in the world who bear a strong resemblance to a female version of Raban. Sixty-seven of them had some significant sexual attraction to women. Fifteen of them would have been strongly attracted to you, Carol, at first sight. And three of them had a statistically significant chance of having the highest probability of compatible pheromones."
Carol blinked.
“Why did it end up being you, then?”
“If you’d like, we could bring the other two here. If you’re not happy with me.”
“No, answer the question. Please. Why you?”
Zosia paused. The expression on her face looked for all the world like she was trying to remember where she had left her keys.
“It's because…the person I was, she…wanted to. She wanted it to be her. She would have wanted it. Did want it. Does want it.”
Carol studied Zosia’s face. She looked sincere. As her slight frown of recollection smoothed out into the Hive’s normal placid, pleasant smile, Carol considered what she had been told.
“Okay, so you--all of you--wanted to send me someone I would be drawn to, both aesthetically and chemically. But you’re also saying that part of it was some kind of choice of the individual Zosia, too. Like the memory of unfulfilled desire?”
Privately Carol thought The Memory of Unfulfilled Desire would be a crackerjack title for a future Wycaro novel, but shook the thought off with some irritation. Not the time!
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure why that makes me feel a tiny bit better, but it does,” Carol said. She exhaled.
"We're glad."
“This is all so crazy. I just slept with almost every person on earth.”
“It’s like we explained during the massage. We are aware that it happened, but the sensations, the experience, the feelings are confined to this body.”
“Okay, I get it. I think I need a drink. Do you want a drink, too? Yes, you want a drink,” Carol said.
“If it pleases you.”
“It would please me. I’ll be right back.” Carol left the room, and Zosia heard her steps travel down the stairs toward the liquor cabinet.
Zosia closed her eyes. They had navigated that conversation well, they thought. All of it was true. And they hadn’t had to volunteer the last piece of information they had, although they would have if Carol had asked, of course.
They had sent Zosia not just because she was attractive to Carol, not just because she harbored strong latent attraction to women, not just because she had pheromones that would be compatible with Carol’s, and not just because she, Zosia, would have chosen to--if she still could have chosen.
Zosia had been sent because the Hive knew that if Carol had discovered that the individual who had been sent to her wouldn’t have wanted to be with her before the Joining, that she would have ultimately rejected them. And rejected Them.
Sending Zosia was as close as They could get to someone who would have loved Carol if she had met her before the Joining.
And They loved Carol so much. They wanted to be with her, to taste her, to know her thoughts, to live inside her skin.
They wanted Carol to be with Them.
Until they figured out how, until Carol would consent, they would take what they could get.