Memories: My mother and other animals.

-+=Disclaimer.=+-

I am not anti-science. I find the idea baffling, because science is just a system for being thorough, and rational, and checking your results with others systematically. I can't see how people could be opposed to that. The anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists and climate deniers baffle me. The willingness to ignore evidence.

But mostly the hypocrisy, the willingness to use the fruits of science, to use the technology, the medical advances: to live in a world where the quality of life they enjoy is the result of science and to accuse the people who try to improve it of being the enemy. People appearing on satellite television and asking what the space race ever did for them.

I am not, therefore, opposed to animal testing in the medical field. Both my parents were microbiologists, and worked in animal studies at various points. I remember, in the course of my very strange upbringing, being told at a dinner party, when I was about ten and allowed to stay up and join the grown-up conversation as a reward for good behaviour, the correct way to euthanize lab rats without specialised equipment (stroke with one hand until calm, start running thumb and lower two fingers alongside the rat's flanks with each stroke until it become used to this, then run index and middle finger along either side of the head with each stroke until it becomes used to this, and then suddenly grip the body with thumb and lower two fingers, grip the head between index and middle finger and sharply flick your forearm away from you extending the first two fingers in a sharp flick, severing the spinal column between the C2 and C3 vertebra…)

I've never actually done it, but my parents decided that I needed to know the correct way to do it in case it ever came up: like how perform a tracheotomy, remove Guiney worm or dispose of a body.

It was an odd childhood, but informative.

I do not, however, use and toiletries or cosmetics tested on animals, and I'm mostly vegetarian these days because if an animal is going to die for human progress, then it had better not be for something as trivial as lip-gloss, and it's life up to that point had better be as good as it could be, and it's death as painless and cruelly free as humanly possible.

I am also not going to rush to condemn some of the bad scientific practice of the past, on the basis that this was exactly how people worked out what was and was not bad practice. So long as people flow the scientific method and thought what they were studying would make the lives of actual human being better, I'm willing to cut them a lot of slack.

It's when they start to deviate from the scientific method that you get the really weird shit.

I'm not even going to say that the worst offenders were monsters, they were men. That's the scary thing. And while there were a lot of people who pursued dodgy pseudoscience as an excuse to pursue political or personal obsession, they were so clearly to beyond real science it's impossible to discuss what exactly they hoped to achieve without going mad: even at the time people knew that Dr Mengele's work and MK Ultra and Operation Stargate had zero scientific value, just powerful backers who didn't know or care about the intellectual merit of the ideas. These guys were kooks, and not relevant to the debate.

It's the ones who straddled the like between doing genuine good and genuine evil that are interesting, particularly in psychology: the 1950's LSD experiments, the Milgram experiment, the Stanford prison experiment; the ones where there were legitimate reasons for conducting the study, and where important data was yielded, but where the people running the experiments either didn't properly asses the risks or got too personally involved and didn't stop the situation once they had tested the hypothesis sufficiently , but kept going for reasons of personal pride or obsession until it got badly out of hand.

Freud viewed overt parental physical affection, particularly from mothers, as inherently harmful, and despite Freud never providing good scientific reasons for this assertion it was readily accepted as gospel until the 1960's, partially in the United States: don't hug your kids, it'll stifle them and turn them into closeted homosexuals or psychotics. In fact, if rearing animals for study, separate the infants from the mother: bottle formula is sterile, mothers are disease ridden and yield no benefit over hand-rearing.

So why then, are infant rhesus monkeys that are bottle fed, even using their mothers own natural milk, smaller and weaker than those reared by their mothers? Could parental affection, particularly physical contact at an early age, be important for the physical and mental wellbeing of the young?

Dr Harry Harlow's primate studies, partially in socialisation and physical contact in infancy, pretty much dominated the change in attitude to childrearing in the 1960's. He more or less singlehandedly made it medically acceptable to show overt affection to your children without feeling that you were smothering them, and he insisted in all his reports on referring to the relationship between monkeys as love, not affection or contact or bonding, but love on the grounds that if you would call it love in one primate, humans, then it was ridiculous to call it anything else in another primate. He famously hated euphemisms that made emotive issues sound less emotionally charged, hated the sanitisation of scientific language. In terms of child psychology, he's hugely influential and his primate studies amongst the most important research on early social deployment ever conducted.

They are also without a doubt amongst the cruellest things ever done in the name of legitimate science, and his own research assistants repeatedly tied to have them stopped on the basis that he had long since stopped providing useful data and was now just using them to try and draw attention to his own prolonged periods of acute depression. And before anyone accuses me of dreaming up intentionally unpleasant things to put into this fic, all of the worst things you may be about to read, particularly the "other mother" experiments, actually happened, just with baby monkeys not cyborg racoons.

There is nothing wrong with science, or with religion or capitalism or socialism or the military or anything. There is nothing wrong with formalised systems: it's just the human beings that occupy the system are fucked up, and you need to give them a lot of oversight and be willing to put the foot down hard when they cross the line, no matter what they do for a living.

I guess that's why we need the idea of superheroes.

-=+BR+=-

Safe? Warm?

Safe? Warm? There was a questioning edge to those thoughts. An uncertainty. A fear. The sense that something was wrong, was missing, but an inability to form a coherent idea of what. That childish nightmare sense that something was wrong, but no words to put it in.

Gamora felt it hit her hard, that and the heavy animal stench, and looked sideways over to Quill, who was physically wrenching. He caught her eye, and gave his stage terran "okay" hand gesture as he strained himself out, getting over the shock. They shared the worried glance for a second and looked over to Rocket.

He was standing at the end of the line, in the same position he was in relative to them before the memory started. Over to the far left, by the power-coupling, but that room was gone now.

In its place was a very small, dark space, plastic, the roof weirdly distorted by the geometry of the memory, Gamora realised, stretched out to fit all four of them in a space not quite big enough for an adult Rocket. It was clearly rectilinear and about a meter along the long axis and half that high and wide, but they also all fit, the box distorted in weird non-Euclidian ways to accommodate them.

In it were two wire structures, and one very small racoon.

Quill looked around, wrinkling his nose at the sharp smell of racoon urine, sour bottle-milk and insufficient ventilation.

"Um… where the fuck are we?" asked Quill. And then he spotted baby Rocket, and made an involuntary squeeing nose that earned him a glare from Gamora, who was treating this far more seriously.

"Home." Muttered Rocket, in between sharp, indrawn breaths. His voice sounded flat and distant, and clearly he was focusing on not adding to the smell by pissing himself with fear.

"Home?" Quill echoed, realizing that if Rocket was too distracted to shoot him for squee-ing at his younger, fluffy self, then this had to be even grimmer than the last memory.

"Halfworld." Said Rocket.

He was standing between two shapes of folded chicken-wire. Each was roughly conical and a little over a foot tall. One was bare, hollow, cold. Just wire. It had what looked like some sort of pipe or dripper linked to a valve protruding about half way up its height, fitted with a rubber feeding cap, like a baby's bottle, and a thin crust of dried milk on the wire underneath indicated that it was used frequently.

The other one had no milk-nozzle. Clearly it had no purpose in providing food or sustenance. It was no larger than the bare wire frame, and the box was symmetrical with the two facing each other across the centre axis. Except for the milk nozzle the two were identical.

Or would have been, if someone hadn't covered the other cone with faux-fur, and given it a dangling rag for a tail and a small ball on the top for a head, crudely coloured in to mimic the facial markings of a racoon.

Clinging to the furred model was a baby racoon that couldn't have been more than a month old, its eyes only just opened. Other than a collar with small power-pack hanging off the back, it didn't seem to have any modifications yet.

At least not mechanical ones. Quill added in his head. It was clenching and unclenching it's paws as it clung to the grimly faux-fur, worn thin at the patch at the front where the clung on desperately, and Quill was pretty sure that while raccoons had what were basically people-hands, he didn't think they were meant to be able to oppose their thumbs fully like that.

Its eyes freaked Quill the fuck out.

It was staring into space in a way he associated with Live Aid advertisements. He'd watched the concert with his Mom, loved the music, but then it would cut to Africa or wherever and as a little kid, it had scared him shitless: all those poor kids that had been no older than him but stared at the camera blankly like they'd seen some shit.

"Rocket." asked Gamora, very gently. "What's happening?"

"I got greedy, decided to go for the power coupling. Wanted to get out of here sooner."

Quill glanced over to Gamora, and then took over. "Yeah, yeah we got that buddy." he said, keeping his voice soft and comforting as best he could. "But what exactly are we looking at here?"

"My Mother. Quill, Gamora, my mom. Mom, this is Quill and Gamora. Told you I'd make some friends eventually."

Quill and Gamora shared a look. The one that you pull out when you're pretty sure someone had lost their marbles and are wondering whether to let it slide for now or call for the big men with butterfly nets.

"Rocket… that's not your mother." said Gamora, as kindly as she could after a pause. "That's under forty centimetres tall and made of wire."

"Yeah well, you go back to visit your mom as an adult, it always seems like they've shrunk a bit, don't it? And besides, she probably has fewer wires in her than I do, and far quieter servos."

"Dude, that looks like the little knitted thing maiden aunts use to cover their toilet roll so people won't get offended by seeing it." said Quill. "I don't care how much bioengineering and bod-mod's you've had, I doubt you're related even if she has got less wires."

"Fewer." Muttered Gamora under her breath. Quill glared briefly, and then turned back to Rocket, who licked his lips, trying to keep himself from shaking, and shrugged nervously.

"Yeah well people adopt. Step-mom if you like." He muttered, studiously avoiding eye-contact with the ghastly drawn-on face. "So… how you doing mom?" he said, Folding his arms with that special nervous defiance you only ever get speaking back to your mother. "Bin' a while: ain't seen you since I broke out the place. Sorry I didn't call, was kinda busy with stuff and you're an inanimate frickin' object. Oh, and you kinda got melted in my escape. Would apologise about that, but you were a lousy parent."

"Rocket, what's going on?" asked Quill. "What… what the fuck is that?"

"A CCM: Contact Comfort Mother." said Rocket, avoiding looking at it while his younger self stared into space blankly. "Observation: Subjects separated from parents before weening can show slower growth or health issues, particularly digestive problems or loose stool, which could be due to stress. Either this is due to some problem with the feeding procedure that fails to replicate the natural feeding program, or the digestive problems are the result of stress: an experiment must be devised to determine which." Said Rocket, reeling off the facts as cold and blank as slate, and with the dull cadence of rote-remembered learning.

"Hypothesis: the problem is stress based, and the stress is attributable to the absence of physical contact with the parent, from which they derive some stress-relieving factor as yet unknown, a hypostasised Contact Comfort.

"Planed experiment one: raise identical subjects in isolation with artificial mothers, some with soft texture to replicate parental contact comfort, some without, and measure grown rates and other measures of stress such as rates of digestive disorders or excreted stress hormones. Null hypothesis: if there is no such thing as contact comfort, there will be no statistically significant difference in subjects raised in the two different conditions over repetitions of this experiment over a big enough sample size. If null hypothesis voided, Contact Comfort may exist and move onto experiment two." He said. Quill noticed he was physically shaking by that point.

"Experiment two." Muttered Rocket, his voice breaking. "Determine strength of contact comfort instinct. Observation: In experiment one subjects in the contact-comfort group showed significantly lower signs of stress. Hypothesis, the instinct to seek Contact Comfort is strong enough to override other instincts, such as the instinct to feed.

"Planed experiment two: raise identical subjects in isolation in choice chambers, designed with two identical mother analogues, one that provides food or other material needs of the subject but has no features designed to initiate contact comfort, one that provides nothing of material use to the subject but is designed to maximise contact comfort. To ensure a fair test, the chamber must be arranged to provide equal access to both analogues, and no other possible sources of stimulation that could affect the subject's choice in determining which analogue to spend time with. A control group with a feeding station and second analogue that neither feeds not initiates contact comfort will also be provided.

"Null Hypothesis: contact comfort is not strong enough to effect subject choice and the subject will spend more time on the feeding station, and its decisions on which analogue to spend time with will not significantly vary from the control group. To prevent other sources of stimulation that could affect subject choices…" Muttered Rocket, dead-flat. "… there must be no other sources of contact comfort presented to the subject: total isolation from other living creatures essential for duration of experiment, planned to be the first nine to eighteen months of the subjects life. Cleaning and veterinary procedures will be automated to ensure this. If null hypnosis voided, Contact Comfort instinct may be stronger that first believed and move on to experiment three..."

"Oh Jesus." Muttered Quill, putting his head in his hands "They had you locked in here with nothing but that wire doll for the first year and a half of your life? Shit dude I'm so sorry, I had no idea..."

Gamora looked about ready to be sick. "Rocket…" she manged, before the racoon cut them both off.

"Yeah. Well, it explains why I'm so socially well adjusted, don't it?" he muttered, looking dead ahead. Groot whimpered, and tried to reach out to touch Rocket, but the Collector-bot swung the wires down and neatly pruned a finger to dissuade him.

"Ahahah Mister Groot! Naughty, you heard what he said, no other sources of contact comfort. You wouldn't want to skew the results of the experiment, would you?" said the Bot, jovially, and Rocket was so busy glaring at nothing that he didn't even seem to notice, which scared Quill.

There was a moment of awful silence, and then it was shattered by a wailing klaxon, and a red light in the corner of the habitat began to strobe.

Quill and Gamora and Groot looked around, started. Baby Rocket whimpered and clung tighter to his "mother" and adult Rocket stared into space.

"What the fuck?" said Quill.

"If null hypnosis voided, move on to experiment three..." repeated Rocket, voice shaking. "Contact Comfort as a possible factor in domestic child abuse cases."

"Observation: abused Children will often defend an abusive parent, and even return preferentially to the abuser over the non-abuse parent in cases of single parent abuse. An ingrained instinct to seek Contact Comfort immediately after being physically or emotionally hurt may play a factor in, or be largely responsible for, this behaviour, and quantifying this could be an important step in understanding both child and adult domestic abuse psychology..."

There was a mechanical clunk somewhere under the floor of the chamber, and the Mother Rocket was clinging too vibrated slightly, and it's head slowly turned down to face Rocket, blank painted eyes staring. Young Rocket whimpered. His older self kept staring past this and reading out from memory.

"To test this, experiment two should be repeated, but with the Contact Comfort Parental Analogue designed to intentionally stress the subject with a combination of random audio-visual clues of an oncoming abuse episode that may or may not be followed by behaviours designed to scare, startle, shock or physically harm the subject…"

Quill froze up. "When you say scare…"

The other mother suddenly began shaking violently, as if trying to buck the young racoon off it. Young Rocket whimpered and clung on tighter and it went like a mechanical rodeo. Suddenly the device started to scream, a speaker hidden inside it, a high pitched, terrible screeching.

Then it began to rotate, spinning round and around, trying to throw young Rocket off with centripetal force and screaming all the time. His back legs lost their grip, and instantly he was hanging off with just one paw, struggling and flailing frantically as he fought to stay on, managing finally to get a grip with both front paws and pull himself in.

"… frequency of incidents should be unpredictable, with numerous false alarms where the audio visual cue does not result in an instance, but the frequency and intensity of the incidences should trend toward more violent behaviour over time to simulate a real-world domestic abuser case progression…"

The mother stopped spinning suddenly, and as the centripetal force slammed Rocket to one-side of the faux-fur, there was the thonk of compressed-air powered pistons that Quill associated with the air-breaks on big tucks back on earth, and a dozen blunt spikes shot out from under the fur of the Hate Mother, their tips crackling with blue-white light.

The combination of the sudden stop of the spinning and the electric shock threw the baby racoon across the habitat and into the feeding-station Mother with enough force to dent the chicken wire and send him bouncing off the wall. He slid down whimpering, front right paw hanging limply by his side and a wound on his shoulder bleeding from where the coarse wire had grazed him badly, cheese-grater-ing off the fur with a brutal road-rash. But all the time, he didn't yep or cry out.

He was too afraid, Quill realised, as the little racoon just cradled its wounded arm and watched as the Mother bucked and spun and screamed in the strobeing red light. It lasted a full minute, with Rocket just sitting and watching, until the bucking and convulsing died down and the red light turned off.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the spikes began to retreat into the fur again, until they disappeared under the folds and locked back in place with a sharp click.

Older Rocket finally looked at his younger self. "Null Hypnosis." He muttered voice raw. "The instinct to seek Contact Comfort will be insufficiently powerful to keep drawing the subject back to the abusive parent analogue, and it will stop seeking physical contact with it… if null hypothesis voided, observe the subject in later life for evidence of secondary symptoms, and repeatedly stress throughout life to see if it has a more pronounced response to stress stimuli than the control group."

Younger Rocket watched his mother with big eyes for a very long time, and when he was finally sure that she'd stopped, he begun to slowly drag himself back across the habitat, limping slightly from the bruising he had taken.

Rocket stopped reading off the experiments perimeters form memory, and began to mutter under his breath at his younger self. "Don't, just fuckin' don't kid. She'll do it again. She always does. It's all she does. She doesn't even look real, for fucks sakes. She's made of towels and wire and hate. She's a spiteful robotic bitch and the only reason you keep going back is because she's warm and smells familiar, and that might just be a perfect metaphor for society at large, but there's no reason for you to get beat up on account of it…"

He said, pleading and wheedling with himself.

Young Rocket reached the foot of his mother and began, laboriously, to climb back up to his accustomed place. He was bleeding, and shivering with fear, but he climbed up anyway.

After all, where the hell else did he have to go?

Rocket glared at himself with a dead resignation, and then sighed. Quill would have preferred Rocket's usually baseline murderous spite to the dead acceptance in that sigh.

"You dumb sack of shit." He told himself, voice creaking with contempt. "What did you have to do that for?"

Young Rocket didn't reply, just wrapped his tail around himself, and clung tighter to his mother, starring out at nothing.

The memory ended.


Rocket spent a moment glaring to himself before raising a paw to forestall the sympathetic noises from the others.

"Not a word. Not. One. Word." He said, husky voiced. "I am not giving that robotic twat the satisfaction of seeing this shit get to me." He said. He saw Groot looking mournfully at him, and looked down at his feet and sighed.

"But you bleeding' hearts want to know that I'm okay, and won't let it go without an answer, will ya?"

"No."

"No."

"I am Groot."

"Fine, here's the deal: they did that, and then for the rest of my life up until the day I escaped, they would randomly flash a red light at me and play the claxon, usually give be a little electric shock from an implant in the back of my neck as well." He said, rubbing at the scar where he'd clawed it out absent-mindedly

" And I never knew why. It was only after I escaped I got some of the records, the one's that survived, and learnt that they were seeing if I responded worse to the random shocks that a control group that hadn't been raised by an abusive parent analogue, ones who wouldn't associate the claxon and light with bad memories. It was part of a system to create audio-visual controls: flashbacks to good or bad events they could trigger at will to control us. Well, fuck 'em. I ain't for controlling."

He said , leaning forwards. "We can get all touchy-feely later, after I've fried this robotic fucker's circuits, although I gotta warn you, I don't do touchy feely well: those fucks messed with my body so much trying to control my Contact Comfort response that it's… it's kinda messed up. My body don't process Oxytocin properly no more, either noting happens or I completely go to pieces. Basically, I'm fucked."

He bared his teeth in what might have been a grin. "But not as fucked-up as Robo Collector is gonna be when I've finished with him…" he said, putting his foot down and stepping closer to the fuse-box with the couplings.

"Really?" Asked Tivan-bot, and the Guardian's world exploded into insanity and pain.


Quill tried to scream, but he couldn't. Something was wrong wrong wrong with his chest, and he couldn't draw a deep enough breath to scream. He could feel a very severe pain in his chest, really bad, worse than when he'd got hit by Yondu's arrow, and that wasn't all. There was a dull ache running thought his entire body, a discomfort that occasionally exploded into sharp agony, like when you wake in the night with the worst possible cramp in a leg, but in all four limbs, and like those waking cramps, he couldn't move any of his limbs at all.

And he couldn't make any sense of it, there was noise and light and smells, so strong, and sharp and familiar, phenol and disinfect and blood and voices, but none of it made any sense to him. He could see, but he couldn't process any of what he was seeing. It didn't make any sense. He couldn't tell what was happening to him. It was terrifying.

NOT SAFE! NOT WARM!

But it wasn't unfamiliar, said part of his mind retreating into the dark and trying to wait it out. This had happened before. It will happen again.

"What the fuck!" Quill managed to yell. He could hear Groot i-am-Groot-ing at the unfamiliar sensation of mammalian pain, and a sharp hissing from Gamora as she tried to ride it out. And then Rocket made a sound that was not at all reassuring under the circumstances.

"Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh!? Ahhhh fuck me man, we're all in agony here and the best you can come up with is Uh-oh?"

"Oh darn?" Suggested Rocket, sounding sickened. "Guys, brace yourselves: this is about to get really hardcore…"

"It gets worse?!" asked Quill. And then it happened. It got worse.

Nothing , absolutely nothing changed, and yet it all did. The physical pain was exactly the same as before, only now Quill could make sense of what he was seeing.

There was a reflection of a pair of brown eyes ringed with dark fur in the polished side of the surgical lamp-housing immediately above Rocket's face, and quite suddenly the realisation: That's me. A single simple thought. That's me. Thought Rocket, and as first thoughts go, that's not necessarily a bad one.

Rocket Racoon looked around the world for the first time.

He was in a familiar place, he'd been here before, he recognised the shape of the room and the smell of disinfectant and the pain. He recognised the pain. He saw the distorted mess of pink and red in the side of the lamp, the refection distorted to fun-fair mirror proportions, and raised his head up and looked down to get a better view or what exactly this place was and what was happening to him.

His hands and feet were shackled to a shiny metal table, with a rubberised strap across his collar-bone and another across his pelvis. The table had a whole host of small vice like pincers, like the cocks of flintlocks, with small screws you could tighten to close them up until they griped something, right along both edges of the table. They were on jointed arms, adjustable, like a soldering station, so you could move them to hold things still, giving you both hands free to work on your project.

And they were holding Rocket's chest-cavity open while two surgeons prodded and poked around inside him.

That's me. Rocket thought, with a jolt, and as second sapient thoughts go, that's a pretty shitty one.

Rocket started screaming. Or at least, he tried very hard too. But his lungs weren't actually connected to anything much at that point and the heart-lung machine bleeping next to him was drowning out the small noises he could make.

He tried to scrabble at the metal with his claws, but it was already scarred and pitted from god-knows how may attempts at that, and the surgeons paid the extra thrashing no attention, chatting away in low voices as he desperately, desperately tried to let them know that he was aware of what they were doing to him.

"… and I mean, it's too early to be sure, and just because we kissed on a second date, doesn't necessarily mean she's that into me, I know, but she's really funny and I've got a good feeling about… clamp please , thank you, about this. I don't know. What do you think?"

Make it go back! Rocket screamed. Make it stop! I don't what to know that this is me! If this is me, I don't want to know! No-one heard.

"Dating corporate? A bad move if you ask me. You know how all these workplace relationships end out, look at Lax'ren."

"Hey, I am trying to work out what's going on with its brain here." muttered a voice from just behind Rocket's head. "It's neutral pruning shouldn't have been this fast, and I want to know if it's the intended Bowman's cascade, or if it's neural die back, and I don't need my love-life dragged into theatre, please."

Make it go back! Make it go back! Make me not! Please, make me not be! Please!

There was a thump from behind him, like someone smacking a computer.

"Read-out is weird… re-connect his pulmonary system and bring it online: it's not the O2 mix that's causing this. Can we do a Prion check, please? He can't be losing brain-cells this quickly unless it's that or… no. no."

"No what?" asked the surgeon with the complex dating issue, and there was a clunk and a wave of pain as the tiny robotic pincers flicked on one at a time, and like origami folded Rocket's ribs back down and snapped the dove-tail joints along his sternum into palace, sealing it. Quill nearly threw up, not from the pain, although that was really bad, but from the realisation that they did this often enough to warrant a quick open-and-close system like that.

One of the surgeons glanced over.

"It'll never become bipedal with then set up, it won't take the weight without popping the dovetails out, what's ostieo's plan for its chest again?"

"Once we've got the final implants in, seal-n-heal until it sets, and then break and re-set the bones incrementally until they're the right shape, let it grow and once it's reached final adult weight strip it down to parts again, add the combat re-enforcements and re-build from the spine up. He'll need a full pelvic re-shaping both before and after puberty. Don't even get me started on its feet…"

There was a crushing pain, and Rocket started screaming as his lungs started working again. He tried to tell them he could understand what they were saying, he tried to tell them that he was there, in his mind. He tried to tell, them to stop, stop please stop the pain. Most of all he just tried to tell them he was frightened. He didn't want to be. He wanted them to put him back to how he was before.

No words came out. Just a high, useless bird-like twittering. One of the surgeons glanced over from tidying up their tools.

"Huh. It normally doesn't make noise unless we really hit a nerve. What are you doing with its brain Lax'ren?" and Quill suddenly became aware of a cool breeze blowing against the not of baby-Rocket's head, and a certain stickiness to that sensation and he realized that he couldn't see what was happening to the top of Rocket's head, and perhaps that was a good thing if he ever wanted to eat cauliflower again because his imagination was already starting to fill in the gaps. .

There were footsteps behind Rocket, and the sound of a wheeled chair being pushed back from a monitor with shock.

"I… I think congratulation are in order. I think we just achieved singularity."

There was a shocked pause, and then the surgeons both rushed over to look at Rocket's face, the third appearing a second later. Under their masks, all he could see were their eyes, stating curiously

He whimpered, and made eye contact, and tried to reach out a paw to one, gesturing for help. They glanced at the gesture astounded, and then ran off.

"Call it in!" call it in!"

"I'm calling! Dr K will shit when he hears this… Ah, Doctor Kessler, we appear to-"

"I know. I'm monitoring your feed. It looks like the final neural pruning has taken place." Said a clipped voice, calmly as anything. "You'll want to insert the spinal probes before the pruning finishes or they won't take. Immobilise it and prep it for spinal. I'll be down to monitor personally."

"That… that's a very invasive, procedure, do you want me to sedate it?" asked one of the surgeons, trying not to look at Rocket's outstretched paw as he reached out to him, pleading for help.

He never made eye contact with me again. Present Rocket thought. Never once. He didn't want to see me… he didn't want to see the monster he built. None of them did: some just hid it better.

Only he wanted to see me, only he treated me like a person, and that was the cruellest thing of all. Thought Rocket, as his younger self strained to hear the voice on the com-line. It was vaguely familiar, although he couldn't have said from where.

There was a brief pause. "No" said the voice, calmly and coolly. "We'll need to monitor its brain functions throughout, same as always. Just disable its muscles so it can't damage itself. I'll be there presently. Continue with the program as planned, do I make myself clear?"

The surgeon gulped nervously, avoiding Rocket's hurt stare. "Yes Sir."

Why do they keep calling me it? Young Rocket thought, whimpering and holding out his paw, just trying to get some, any recognition. They were all gathered around him, but now that he was real, it was like they were all trying to pretend he wasn't. Can't they see I'm in pain?

"Good. You've done excellent work today people, as always. I'm very, very proud of you." the voice on the com said, and then cut out sharply.

The surgeon nodded to the other. "Glue its chest shut and flip it. Prep for spinal implants. And for fates sakes' can someone get the dammed Ketamine-Xylazine and dose that little shit, the noise is giving me a headache!"

Someone stuck a needle in Rocket's neck, and very soon all his muscles ceased up and it all went dark.

But the pain didn't stop. That didn't happen for a long time.


"Rocket, please dude…" muttered Quill as the memory ended and they snapped back to the present. "I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. I can't… I feel for you dude but please… uh fuck, this is the most selfish thing I've ever said in my life, I'm sorry: Please, please please don't take another step if it's going to throw something like that our way, we… we need to be better prepared for that shit." Quill grimaced, and kept subconsciously rubbing at his chest. "I need to be better prepared for that sort of shit."

"Quill!"

"No, no it's okay Gamora." Said Rocket, holding out a paw. "I… I should have warned you that might happen. He's not being selfish: I was. I was so close to that coupling, I should have warned you guys I was going for it."

He glanced at the open wall panel, a pace out of his reach, no more.

"I can make it. I can frickin make it, I know I can. It's just one more step, you guys good with that or do you guys need a break?"

Quill looked to Gamora, and then Groot. He set his jaw squarely, and straightened himself up.

"Rocket, if… if you think you can make it, go for it. Just… is there… hell, is there more like that?"

Quill looked at Rocket, and Rocket looked back.

"Awww fuck man, you're life sucks" muttered Quill to himself, bracing for the pain. "Okay, go for it dude."

"I am Groot!"

Rocket glanced to Groot, and then translated. "He says he thinks he can do it, make it to the door. He don't feel pain the same way we do, he thinks he might be able to make it without exposing you guys to memories of physical pain. Could be worth a go, I ain't so sure: it's not just physical pain can leave you fucked up."

Quill and Gamora shared a look. Gamora shrugged and Quill nodded.

"Could be worth a try, Go for it."

Groot nodded, gave one last sympathetic look to Rocket, and stepped forwards.


Groot groaned as the memory started: he'd been thinking too much about his concern for Rocket, and it had biased the memory, determining what the Collector had been able to find in his mind.

The golden grassy plains of Halfworld rolled under Groot's feet as he walked along, searching the galaxy for others like himself and failing. Not that he hadn't occasionally encountered interesting life-forms, he thought, looking down at the latest strange creature he had found on his travels.

Quill did a double-take. Seeing Rocket through Groot's eyes was a revelation.

Rocket's coloration seemed about normal, but given Groot's ability to see physical texture as a second set of colours, fur, being both rough and smooth at the same time got rendered in a series of weird metallic colours and Quill instantly realised why the maintenance mammals on Groot's home-world had looked golden. Rocket's soft inner fur was visible as a shining pale gold, his coarse guard-hairs silver, coarser-still whiskers like steel wire. Rocket, for someone who was basically an escaped Disney Character somehow constantly failed at looking cute and cuddly: on a good day he could pass as presentable and non-threatening, on a bad he veered into Pet Semetary territory, but slightly more violent. But seen through Groot's eyes, he came across as a lot more approachable, and Quill didn't know if that was just because Groot associated him with the maintenance mammals of his home, or whether it was because he genuinely looked better like this.

He was a little confused by the woven bark-covered wooden cast on one leg, but Quill decided not to press the issue and just focused on seeing what Groot saw.

Groot looked at the strange creature he had found, and cocked his head sideways, examining it. It was clearly sapient, but its metabolism was wrong: at first Groot thought it was just sickness, but the creature's fever had broken two days ago, and still it burned. Groot realised that even more so than the other fast-wet-hot its metabolism was killing it, its life-span naturally short. He was also puzzled by the intrusive inorganics in its body, just visible to his senses. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make this creature like this. He couldn't understand why they would do that and not fix the metabolic processes to ensure a longer life-span.

Rocket stomped around a couple of times, testing the cast.

"Not that I'm objecting..." Asked Rocket in tones of exaggerated carefulness as he sat down on a rock, apparently satisfied that the cast wasn't going to fall off and yet still glancing down at it every couple of seconds like it scared him. "… but why exactly did you help me out back there? See the thing is, I ain't exactly likely to be popular around here at the moment: the only way I'm flavour of the month is if I end up on the menu, if you get my drift, and given some of the people I've upset, that ain't exactly an impossibility." He said, plucking a blade of grass and carefully sucking the dew off, before examining one of Groot's huge footprints. He sat and scratched at the fur at the edge of his body-glove, unpicking the dried mud delicately from himself hair by hair. "So why did you do it?"

Groot told him.

"Yeah…" Said Rocket. "Still drawing a blank there." said Rocket, scrubbing at his mud-covered uniform furiously and sending up a small dust cloud. Quill felt for him: he'd known Rocket to wash his hands six times in an episode of Gilligan, and being stuck here covered in mud and with no water must be driving him crazy.

Rocket glared at the footprint, watching the dew from the crushed grass around it pool into it slowly.

"You ain't killed me, and at first I took that as a really bad sign, because no-one wants me alive for anything good. But on the other paw you're walking away from the fighting, and given that if you'd wanted to hand me over I'd be either strapped to a table right now or souring in a dozen different stomachs, then I guess you're not involved in this fight, are ya?" Rocket glanced up, swearing and scratching at his chest furiously. "Smart move." Said Rocket.

Groot expressed the opinion that as he was unaware of the Casus belli he couldn't pass comment, but he did advocate non-violence unless absolutely necessary: it took far too long to grow limbs back afterwards.

Rocket cocked his head on one side, mirroring Groot.

"Yeah… what you said. I'd normally say don't expect any favours from me: I've been to prison enough times to know that is someone saves your ass it's probably because they've got plans for themselves; Never thank no-one for nothing, you don't owe them squat. But given I've lost my guns and we're in the middle of nowhere, there's nothing stopping you from doing whatever you want to do to me, and you haven't. It's puzzling. Kinda annoying really, if you'd dicked me over then I'd at least know how to deal with it." Rocket shrugged. "So here we are." He said, kneeling down to thirstily slurp up the little water that had gathered in the footprint.

Groot agreed that here they were. Dasein.

Rocket glanced up. "Hey, I don't suppose you could put down a tap-root or something? That's a thing, right? A tap root? 'Cause I could really do with a faucet right now."

Groot expressed the opinion that that was unnecessary.

"I guessed not." Muttered Rocket. "All those years I've been checking trees for the tap, never found one yet. Why start now? Do you have any way of finding water? 'cause my dying of thirst in temperate grassland would be just embarrassing."

Groot replied.

Rocket sighed and sat back on the rock, and pinched the bridge of his snout in frustration. "Great: I've been saved by a giant mute idiot. Okay Roc', step by step. You, tree man, you're not working for either side in this conflict. Nor do you seem to be interested in hurting me. Nor will you stop following me, for some reason. Okay… Annoying walking tree: can you understand what I'm saying to you? Do the words that come out of my mouth have any meaning to you, or am I just talking to myself?"

"I am Groot."

"Okay…. If you can understand me, say your name twice."

"I am Groot. I am Groot."

Rocket looked up, startled "Really? If you can understand me say your name seven times, and stand on one leg."

"I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot."

Skrunch!

Rocket looked down, gulped, and then looked back up again.

"Yeah… usually when someone says stand on one leg, they just mean lift one in the air so it ain't load-bearing. Can… ah hell, can you un-merge the legs into separate limbs again? It's kinda weirding me out."

Skrunch!

"I am Groot."

"Don't mention it. Just trying to help. Okay… can you point to the nearest source of water?" asked Rocket. "I can't smell any, and I'm good. Pointing is this, but the way." Said Rocket, demonstrating by raising an index finger and aiming it at Groot's face.

Groot tried to point one of his fingers at his own face, and gave Rocket the finger in the process, before looking over quizzically. Rocket snorted.

"Close enough. Now, the water?" he asked, just a touch pleadingly.

Groot considered this, and then pointed to himself again, somewhat more authoritatively.

Rocket signed, and facepalmed. "The nearest source of water that's not frickin' you! I mean, it's not like you can give me water, can you?"

Groot considered this for some time.

Rocket was about to try and berate him again, when he noticed the unfocused, slightly pained look on the tree's face, and stopped.

A large leaf had grown out of the tree-being's palm, and was folding itself into a cone-like shape. As he did this, Groot focused on rolling all his other leaves up into condensers to trap his transpiration and channel it into specialised reservoirs. It would take some time for the condensation to build up, so he developed a specialised xylem in the centre of the cone in his hand and filled the cone as quickly as he could. He winced slightly at the discomfort: perhaps a flower and nectar would have been a slower but safer chose, he thought, snapping of the cone and handing it to the maintenance mammal.

Rocket opened and closed his mouth a few times with shock and then grabbed the cone with both paws and drained half of it greedily before he noticed Groot trying to close-up the scar left where the cone had snapped off. Rocket glanced from the sap oozing out of the wound to the not dissimilar liquid he was drinking, and gagged and recoiled a little. "That. Aint. Right. That's sap! Is, is this your blood?" he asked horrified, holding out the cup.

Groot shrugged. It was a temporary solution. He grew and indicated a small flower, and suggested he could try nectar next time if that was preferable. It took the maintenance mammal several repetitions of the gestures, but he caught the meaning eventually.

"Woah! Uh-huh. No way. Nope. I might not have had much schooling but I know exactly what part of a plant a flower is Loverboy, and it ain't happening. I'm desperate, but there's desperate and then there's I think I just fucked a tree. Sorry, but I'd never live it down. I… do you have any sources of water that aren't horrifying?" said Rocket, considering the half-cone left in his paws before shrugging and resuming drinking from it.

Groot indicated the condensers. Surely the creature couldn't object to that: it was just the harmless excretion of excesses water vapour.

Rocket clambered up to examine the rolled up leaves Groot indicated, whiskers twitching. He watched the first few drops of water form, and get gathered, before nodding approvingly and sitting back down, watching Groot with shrewd, calculating eyes.

"Well, I'm not even going to ask about food in case you start sprouting fruit out your ass or something weird. I can survive on roots and bugs shit like that for a while, if I have water. Second important question: do you have any way of getting me off this rock?"

Groot considered this, and the reached over and picked Rocket up of the rock he was sitting on. He panicked and struggled briefly until he realised what was happening, and then swore.

"The planet dumbass! Do you have a way of getting of this planet? A ship or something? Two Groots for yes "

Groot considered this, and then double-Groot-ed.

Rocket nodded approvingly, and then grinned as Groot mirrored the gesture. "Okay Big guy, Third priority: We've got to get a better form of communication sorted than this."

Rocket stuck out a paw, and then banged it on his chest. "My name's Rocket. Roc-et. Got it?"

Groot hesitated, and then imitated the gesture, banging Rocket on the chest. "I am Groot!" he said.

Rocket stumbled back, winded, and fell over the rock behind him, legs flailing and windmilling for some time until he righted himself. He pulled himself into a reclining position and leant of the rock with one paw, rubbing his chest and wincing, trying to catch his breath.

Groot looked confused, and went in to try the gesture again, in case he'd got something wrong.

"Ah-ah-ah! Woah! Woah! New plan" said Rocket, waving a paw defensively. "Tell you what, you seem to have some trouble with my lingo, so why don't I learn yours? We can work on teaching you Xandarian later, I mean, how hard can that be? If it was difficult Xandaians wouldn't be able to manage it." Said Rocket, looking around. "We just need to start simple… ah. What's your word for that?" he asked, pointing up at the sky.

Groot asked if Rocket meant the sky or his upraised finger.

Rocket frowned. "No wait, I have no idea if you think I mean the sky or the sun or even my frickin' finger…" he muttered, before noticing his discarded leaf-cup. He picked it up, and showed Groot the fine residue of water inside. "Okay Groot." he said, rolling the name experimentally, testing out how it felt to say it. "So what's your word for water?"

"I am Groot."

"u-hu?" and What's your word for…" Rocket looked around. The rock next to him was the only thing other than grass in miles and miles of flat plain. "And what's your word for Rock."

Rock. Rocket. So similar, but not. Groot thought that odd. Their language was very strange.

He said Rock anyway.

"I am Groot."

Rocket paused, and then pinched his nose. "Okay, this is going to take a long time. I don't even know if the difference between those two was tonal or timing or stress or frickin' body language or some shit."

Groot expressed the opinion that this wasn't going to work. Nova had tired, and their best translation algorithms had got no-where.

Rocket cut him off before he got as far as am.

"What direction is your ship?"

Groot went to speak, and the hesitated and pointed. Rocket nodded, and then swore.

"Ass end of nowhere. Figures. Aww crap, it's not like I have anywhere I need to be right now… And is it far? Just nod if it is."

Groot nodded: he did not have a ship as such, but he had been able to stow away on one at a port. That was a couple of weeks ago. Transport was cut off due to the conflict, apparently. It was a long walk

"More than a day?"

Groot nodded sadly. Weeks.

Rocket frowned, and blew out a breath in a resigned manner. He grabbed a small pebble and the leaf-cup, and started limping in the direction indicated.

"Well, keep up then moron. You might not have anyone chasing you, but I don't want to find out." He said. Holding up the cone. "Water. Say it after me."

"I am Groot."

"Rock." he said, holding up the pebble.

"I am Groot." Repeated Groot. He looked down. His new companion was wheezing already, and he could tell from the spike in his metabolism that his leg was causing him intense physical pain.

Groot leaned down, and scooped up the creature. He then recoiled with shock as it yelped, and hit him between the eyes with the pebble.

"Hey! Don't you ever fucking touch me without my permission again, you hear?" he snarled. "I don't need your charity! It's not cool to get help! I walk on my own!"

Groot apologised and went to help him down, but as he did, the creature stiffened up and bit down hard on a curse as a slight jolt shook his injured leg.

Rocket bit his lip, and looked to the horizon.

"How far did you say this was again?" he said, in a very quiet voice.

"I am Groot."

"Oh… well maybe I'll ride on your shoulder just for a bit." He muttered, taking up a perch. "I can't have you carrying me like a baby… but you need a look out: it could be dangerous out here." he said, winching and moving his wounded leg around as he struggled to find a comfortable perch on Groot's shoulder. The rocking motion of the tree-man's huge stride made balance difficult, but Rocket had to say it was weirdly soothing somehow. "I mean it's a good thing I found you, you'd not last a day out here without me." He said, holding out the leaf cup.

"So, let's try this again, and don't say nothing else until I've got this sorted: water."

"I am Groot." Said Groot. Rocket repeated. "I am Groot?"

Groot recoiled a little shocked at such a baseless accusation about his genetic progenitor, but understood it was unintended and shook his head to indicate an incorrect translation. Rocket sighed with frustration, and held out his other paw

"Rock." He said glaring at the horizon. He'd get this is it killed him .

"I am Groot."

"I am Groot?" repeated Rocket.

Groot shook his head, and Rocket swore.

It took Rocket two weeks, working 16 hours a day, before he could distinguish between water and rock, and another week working in-between repairs to the ship they stole until he could pronounce them himself.

After that it was easy.


Groot hesitated, and looked to the others. Rocket waved him on. "That weren't so bad, big guy! Come on, you can do this!"

Quill joined in "Yeah, that didn't hurt at all, you go for it treebeard!"

Groot nodded, and toon the next step.


Rocket walked thought the park hands clasped behind his like he owned the fucking planet, and everyone else was just there at his invitation.

"Okay dummy; if you're gonna travel with me, we gotta get some things straight, ya hear?"

Groot indicated that he could hear.

Rocket nodded, stepping around a couple of lovers walking in the park and causally revealing the gentleman of his wallet. "Okay, so let's start with the basics… Ugg, who even has Xandarian Express anymore? Change providers, you'll get better void-miles … Start with the basics. Like, what are you?"

Groot told him.

"Huh?"

Groot told him again.

"…what the fuck do you mean, 'how do I know that I know what I know?' I know I'm here."

Groot asked how.

"Because I can feel it dummy! I can see people and feel the gravel on my paws and smell the air… not necessarily a blessing with all these trash-cans, sweating bald bodies and craping dogs about, but still…"

Groot asked the obvious question. Rocket paused to consider it, and then walked up to Groot and kicked him.

"That's how I know that the input of my senses is real, dummy! Because it wouldn't hurt otherwise… ugg, forget it, I think you miss-understood when I said start with the basics; when people say that, they don't generally mean existential philosophy. No what are you? I mean…are you a guy or a broad?"

Groot had to qualify how broad and in what dimensions he would have to be to qualify as a broad rather than a narrow, and Rocket swore at him a lot and then explained. Groot then answered.

"What do you mean no. Are you a guy or a girl?"

Groot answered. Rocket scratched his head.

"So you're neither a guy or a girl? What, you got sniped or something? Nearly happed to me once, fucking veterinarians… never go drinking with them. Not even once."

Groot indicated that a no to the question are you a guy or a girl did not indicate neither.

Rocket swore again, and facepalmed. "Right, right, my bad. Sorry, it's just, and here's some helpful advice: most of the questions people ask you aren't Booleans, even if they are phrased like them. You gotta learn to read between the lines. So you're like…" Rocket made a weird hand gesture. "Like a guy and a gal?"

Grotto indicated that those terms were not necessarily helpful, but yes.

Rocket made a face "Well okay but you, you keep that to yourself, okay? I don't need everyone thinking I'm hanging around with some kinda fruit… er… no offence if your mother was a fruit or something… aw shit this is weird." Muttered Rocket.

"Sorry, I get uncomfortable with people who are smarter than me, rare fucking opportunity tho' that is… don't drink fountain water you dummy, that's disgusting. Drink from the drinking fountain instead." Mumbled Rocket, aware that he was now rambling. He stole a small blind orphan child's ice-cream to buy him some time to think, replacing the cone with one he quickly rolled from one of Groot's leaves.

"So… what do I call you? Him or Her?" he said, licking industriously as he quickened his pace before angry parents or elderly blind martial-arts masters could confront him.

Groot indicated that neither of those was correct, and he was happy with it.

Rocket choked back ice-cream, and spat out a big gob, rounding of Groot furiously, his rage made only slightly ridiculous by the cream and sprinkles on his whiskers.

"No! not it. Never it, ya dummy, you call things it, and things get broken, legally! You don't think of yourself as in it, and you don't let other people! You see people as things, and that's one step off giving yourself permission to hurt them! Ya gotta have a little more respect than that!" he said, as behind him the blind boy realised he'd been robbed and started crying. Rocket didn't' even notice.

"Look" said Rocket, resuming walking. "You're a freak, no offence, but that's how you'll be seen, and because of that people are half-way to giving themselves permission to shoot you there and then just because you're different, ya' gotta make sure there's no room in their heads for that idea. You gotta be a person, and if you can't make then think of you as a person they love respect, at least make sure they think of you as a person to hate or fear, your size you should find that easy: if people hate an asshole, at least it shows that think of that asshole as a person on some level. Look."

Rocket handed Groot the ice-cream cone ran up to a couple walking with their child on all fours, and made a two-handed begging gesture and chittered at the girl. The child laughed

"Oh daddy look, it's so cute…"

"Gods, Xa'r, get away from that thing, it might have diseases!" said the father pulling the daughter aside and aiming a kick at Rocket that he narrowly dodged. "Go! Shoo!"

Rocket dodged back, gave Groot a meaningful look and then stuck his hands in his pockets, and then waddled up to another set of parents, whistling and making a show of walking upright.

"Hey buddy, wanna by a wrist-com?" said Rocket approaching the father. He avoided eye contact with Rocket as he walked past.

"Hey, good price fell of the back of a freighter."

"Piss off." Muttered the man, but he didn't even glance at Rocket as he said it.

Rocket waked back and raised both hands knowingly.

"Be an it, and people will kill you. Ask them for money, and they'll pretend they can't see you. So, he or she? Those are the options, I'm afraid: you take a third one even when it's who you really are, and that automatically makes you an it to some people: people are stupid."

Groot considered this, and then shrugged. Rocket sighed.

"Well, most people are going to call you a he based on your size and voice alone, so if you've no problem with that, I will too. Is that okay?"

Groot indicated that it was, and then stopped, his jaw dropping in utter horror. Rocket didn't notice for some time, distracted as he was.

"Hey mister, did you steal my ice cream?"

"Hey kid sue me."

"I can't I'm just a kid."

"Well, go to law school, then sue me. Or learn not to be such a pussy."

"I gonna call Stick! He'll beat you up!"

"Call away, I've got a bigger fucking stick right here… oh fuck, Groot, what the hell are you doing?"

Groot ran across the park, and then fell to both knees, crying. It was wrong, so wrong, didn't people see how wrong it was? How, how could they be so cruel?

"I am Groot! I am Groot I am Groot I am Groot!" he yelled, waving his arms about, trying to get people attention, to get them to see how wrong it was, but they just stopped and stared at him, like he was the one doing something wrong, and he couldn't understand it.

"I am Groot!" he said, tears streaming down his face.

Quill and the other Guardians seeing it from his point of view tried to look away, but trapped in the moment with Groot they couldn't. It was a normal everyday thing… right up until the point it wasn't anymore, and that was a weird sensation.

Groot became aware after some time, of Rocket's screaming "Get up! Get up, numb-nuts, they called the cops! Oh stars, get up! See, this is exactly what I'm talking about!"

"I am Groot!" said Groot, how did he not understand. Rocket almost levitated on the spot he was so stressed out.

"Understand? I understand that if we don't run now we're about ten minutes away from winding up in a zoo, getting shot, or getting opened up prodded and poked by guys who want to work out what we are, and that ain't happening to me again pal! Yeah, I hear you and it's horrific, but hear me: You're crying over a plant, and here and now, in the world we live in, plants are things and if you symmetrize for them, that makes you a thing too so get up and run dummy, because I don't care how horrific you find it, there is an angry mob of freaked out people and unless you want to wind up getting treated like that yourself you need to stop acting like a thing and start acting like a Xandarian. You let them see you as different, you let them see you as a thing, and these good, law abiding people, once they decide that other law abiding people are things, they'll fucking eat each other. Sheash: it's not about who you are, deep down inside, no-one gives a flying fuck about who you are: it's about faking that you're like everyone else! That's the only way to be safe! Now Run!" yelled Rocket, grabbing Groot by the arm and chiding and swearing and berating him until he got up, and let Rocket lead him away from there at a run.

As he ran away, Groot took one last look over his shoulder. He didn't understand, he just didn't.

By the path, in the park, was a young sapling, heavy with blossom. It was very pretty. And to make sure that it stayed pretty, to ensure that it grew up tall and straight and without any of the knots or twists or turns that nature would inconveniently put in trees, it had been strapped between two stout wooden posts to keep it straight and stop it getting blown over in high wind. That was a normal thing: you saw it with saplings in every park on every world that had both trees and parks. It was normal and usual and everyday way to treat a sapling, which was, after all, just a thing.

Until he perspective flipped, and then it was a child, strapped between the dead bodies of both of its parents on public display. And once that perspective flipped and you saw it as that, it was very, very hard to see it in any other light.

Groot shuddered, and ran. Perhaps Rocket had the right idea about making sure people never saw you as just a thing.


The park vanished, and the bare room re-appeared, Groot swayed on his feet like he'd been struck, and struggled to hold back tears.

"Do any of you guys have memories that aren't going to end in severe body-horror?" asked Quill, looking to Gamora, and noting her bionics. "Guess not" he muttered. "Jesus, I feel like I'm in a David Cronenberg movie here."

"Oh fuck this, I'm almost there." Said Rocket. "Quill, brace up man, I'm going for it." he said, "This, this might get messy Quill: after they made me self-aware for the first time, … heh… I had some mental health issues for a while. Never really got over all of them."

"No shit Sherlock, I've been in your head exactly three times so far, and I think I need a shrink. Just… just go careful, okay?"

"Me? I'm always careful." Muttered Rocket. "That's how I've managed to stay so pretty." he said, grinning nauseously and stepping forwards and laying a hand on the power coupling, worrying what he would see. Worrying what the others would see, and If they'd think him weak for it.


The Subject sat huddled in the corner, paws clenched, clutching its blanket.

The subject… it was pretty sure that those sounds the Sub-ject meant it, but it wasn't sure. It heard other sounds, 89P13, specimen, P, you, it. It was pretty sure those meant it too, but then it tried to think about how it knew, and how it could connect the sounds and shapes to the ideas, and it didn't help. The knowledge was too new, still sharp and raw at the edges, and if it hesitated or became distracted by how, then that was malcompliance. It didn't know exactly what malcompliance was, but it was learning the consequences.

Sometimes the new ideas would, it couldn't explain, shift and there was something underneath, something frightened and lonely and afraid, and there was something frightened and lonely and afraid on top too, yes, but it knew that that thing was… Itself. It didn't know the thing underneath. It thought perhaps it used to, but that was falling away now, drowned out in the shapes and sounds and ideas that just wouldn't stop. The idea that there was a darkness out there when they turned the lab lights off, but there was a darkness inside too, behind its eyes, and that that darkness was different from the one outside, that it was somehow different from everything else.

It was becoming something more than it once was, and even now it became harder and harder to remember what it was like to just be without the weight of knowing about its own existence crushing down on it. It lounged for warmth, and familiar smells, for a high trilling noise and to press itself against another heartbeat, but it could no-longer remember why, and the fear that soon it would forget even that scared it almost as much as the consequences for malcompliance. Fear that soon its world would shrink to just the sterile wipe-clean walls pressing down on it, and it would forget the other thing, the small frightened creature, drowning in ideas.

The subject paused, afraid. Was it malcompliance even if only it knew? It didn't know. Could, could they punish subjects for what they did in the dark behind their eyes? Could they tell what it was thinking? Could they hear? It didn't know: thoughts were still new to it. It wasn't sure how this worked.

Slowly, the subject unclenched a paw, and revealed the food-pellet hidden inside. When they came to clean the cage, it would hide it under its blanket. It had others already. It didn't know how many yet, but the ideas of more and less were well established, and a new idea called counting was there. Counting was important. It couldn't say why, but it felt it, deeply. Counting was important. Otherwise why would they have given it a number, and not a name?

Perhaps if it just kept counting, everything would be all right.

It put the food pellet with the others, knowing that when it was found then that would be "making a mess", and making a mess was malcompliance.

But in that cold plastic world, making a mess was the only control over its surroundings the subject had. It was the only way it had to shape the darkness outside its eyes, and when the disinfectant wiped away the scents each cleaning cycle and erased all trace of the previous day, of its previous life, where it had been warm and there were others, it was going to fight for every last bit of mess it could.

Especially behind its eyes.


Clunck the coupling came away in Rockets paw, and he weighed it thoughtfully, and smiled evilly.

"Yeah, I got real good at math in the end buddy, even if I went a bit…. A bit particular in the process." He muttered, striping wires out of the walls as the Tivan bot screamed at him not to.

Quill hooted and punched the air with victory, and even Gamora smiled.

It's going to be okay thought Rocket.

"But sane or fucked in the head, don't matter, because you, bub, have just been beaten." He said, gesturing to Quill, who quickly drew his pistol, fired into the wall by Rocket and threw the gun thought the gap he'd shot in the wires before they could re-form. Rocket strapped the coupling to the gun's regulator and blew it out, sending a thin line of plasma out the front of the gun barrel like a sword.

Rocket grinned, and turned to face the light in the corner that represented the Tivan-bot

"Good, bad: I'm the guy with the plasma-cutter. And-"

A tractor been shot down from the ceiling, and snatched the cutter out of Rockets hands with a noise best described as quuueer-younk!" and dangled it forty feet above him, rotating it slowly in its own containment field.

"Huh." said Quill at length, hands on hips and looking upwards, while Rocket swore for nine minutes straight without ever once pausing or repeating himself.

"To be fair, we should have seen that coming." Said Quill.

"Yup." Said Gamora, sadly. "My go?" Quill shook his head: best to let Rocket calm down some before they plunged him into another memory.

Rocket fired randomly in the air, and then threw down his gun in disgust.

"Give up 89P13? Asked the collector-bot.

Rocket snarled. "Groot, fuck this joker up for me!"

Groot nodded his head, determined, and then shouted defiantly. "I am Groot!" he said.

"Oh, you think that Rocket has been protecting you all these years? Helping you survive in a world you don't understand?" asked the Tivan-bot. "I rather feel it's the other way around…"

Rocket frowned. "Hey, you can speak Groot?"

"No, but you can Rocket, and I can access your memories. No, Groot, I'm afraid that whatever protection Rocket has given you pales compared to the protection you give him, you see him as a benign symbiont, like mistletoe? I'm afraid he's far more parasitical than that. For all his talk of helping you to understand the world, all he's done is taint your world view, and make it as twisted and cynical as his."

"Hey, that' ain't true!" yelled Rocket, and the same time Groot I-am-Groot-ed, and stamped his foot defiantly.

Tivan-bot chose to interpret that as a step forwards. "Oh really? You think you've made him a better person Groot? I think he's made you a worse one."

"Oh not again." Muttered Quill, as the walls dissolved.


The siren in the bank-vault wailed and screamed, and Groot put the vault door down carefully next to the big hole where it had been before.

"I am Groot?"

"Yeah, yeah you did fine buddy." Yelled Rocket, pulling off the sock on his head. Quill pulled a weird look at that, and turned to present Rocket.

"It's to fool facial recognition software." Muttered Rocket, surly and pissed that his escape plan hadn't worked.

"Why, did people have trouble picking you out of a line-up otherwise? You're three foot tall, and furry: What gangs were you ruining with at the time? The lollypop-guild? Ompa-loompas? " he paused, running out of comparisons.

"Hey bozo, those scanners are linked to police databases: I show my face within two blocks of a bank on some worlds, and SWAT gets deployed, the sock fools the scanners, buys me some time." He muttered, while his younger self ran around excitedly, grabbing bearer bonds and stuffing them in a bag, pausing only very briefly to cackle maniacally and roll in money Scrooge McDuck style.

"Ewoks." Said Quill, feeling that perhaps the moment had passed.

"Groot, we're rich! Gab that guy's bag and help me with the cash!" Rocket yelled.

Groot nodded eagerly, glad he'd made his new friend happy, and then went to ask the person indicated for the bag. The person did not reply, so Groot went and found his head, and asked that. For some reason he still didn't reply.

He went to ask Rocket why he wasn't replying to him. Rocket looked up, aghast.

"Groot, you pulled his fucking head off. He's not answering anyone ever again. Toss me the bag."

Groot expressed a lack of understand as to why.

"Groot…he's dead. You killed him."

Groot looked down in horror. "I am Groot?"

"Grow back? Sorry, we don't work that way! Do you think I should take cash or diamonds? Meh, stupid question." Muttered Rocket, throwing armfuls of both into the bag. He found some sort of old metal glove that looked like maybe gold, but it clearly had bits missing, so he chucked it in favour of more bonds.

Groot looked to Rocket horrified, and then turned back to the inside of the bank: between him and Rocket, there were a lot of people in there not moving.

"I am Groot?" he asked.

Rocket glanced up from his pilfering. "Well I was using less-lethal. Flesh-wounds mostly. They won't be fine, but most of them will live, except that dude who tried to pull that Gauss derringer on me, he's toast. The rest? You did a hell of a job on some of them Groot. Forget 'em. I don't doubt someone will plant them in the dirt, but they sure as hell ain't growing back afterwards. You killed them. Groot... Groot?"

Groot sat down, shocked, and stared around. He'd known that they were fragile, and short-lived, but the idea that they'd have no regenerative properties, none at all, was something he'd never considered.

"Groot, Groot… look I'm sorry, I thought you knew. Grab a bag, we need to go."

Groot turned to him, shocked.

"I am Groot?" he said. Rocket swore.

"Stay and help? Groot, this is a mob bank, rival of Mr Knife, we're robbing it for him: if we stay, it's not the cops we need to worry about, the guy's that'll come will fucking skin us alive! We need to be gone, like, yesterday! And besides, there's nothing you can do to help. They're dead, and that's that."

"I am Groot!"

"Well yeah, I said you had to be person and not a thing to be safe, I said act like a person, I never said act like me! Look, there's more that survival than not being seen as a thing, you need to not be seen as a victim either! They're only two sorts of people, in the world, Groot."

He said folding his paws defiantly and nodding to the corpse. "There's people like us, and there's people like him. You want to stay alive long enough to see another one of your own race again? Well too bad bub: wanting to stay alive ain't enough; you need to want it more than the other guy. There's the top dog, and the underdog, and while people like to say they root for the underdog, I look at dogs and you know what I see? If one dog's under another then usually it's ether getting savaged or it's getting fucked, and I don't wanna fall into either of those two categories, so grab the gear and lets be gone! And no blubbering about this! You want to be good? Well you can't do good if you're dead. You can't comfort someone or build a better world or save a life if someone's taken yours, can you? Survival first, ethics later! So let's get out of here. We… we can stick to cargo jobs for a bit if this upsets you. Or bounties, something were you bring 'em in alive. But now, we gotta frickin' go. NOW!"

Groot got up, and hurried out of the bank after Rocket, and as Groot ran with his 360 vibration vision he couldn't help but notice the people lying on the ground, some of them in more than one piece, and he wondered who this was he'd attracted himself to, and if the cost of survival was too high a one to pay.


Groot stooped , and then slumped to the ground.

Rocket gulped, horrified. "Groot, Groot I was a lot younger and stupider back then… I know those things hurt you. I'm sorry pal."

"Oh, a changed character are you?" muttered the Tivan bot, and images flashed up, from the Kyln, from the fights at bars, from their various missions together. Rocket, roaring and spiting defiance as he brawled and stole and bullied and gunned people down.

"A real reform case, I see." He said, as the memory cut to Rocket brushing off Quill's attempt to comfort him earlier the same day, snarling defiance and yelling that he didn't need anyone's help, then to him outside, teasing Cosmo.

"You are a vile, hate filed creature, whose first instinct is to berate and abuse your friends and when confronted with an animal that has suffered almost as much as you have, who was reaching out to you, you mock him. And every time, you drag Groot into it. He has tried, and tried, and tried to help you, to make you a better and kinder person, and all you have ever managed to do, is to drag him down with you. You use him, like a weapon, an expendable tool, and like a god of old, you leave your tools sullied and broken behind you. Yes, he may have coaxed the occasional altruistic moment out of you, but what has it done to him in return? The famous badass criminal Rocket, so insecure and afraid of how others see him he has to put on an act and become the worst that they see in him, drip, drip dripping away on Groot like an acid, corroding the very fabric of his being… Admit it, you two: you are both horrible people, and you've made each other like that."

He said, as the memory cut to Groot sticking his fingers of the prisoners nose in the Kyln, ripping into his fragile sinuses and causing intense pain just to make Rocket look hard, and Groot's realisation that he could have easily talked the man down or disabled him non-violently but that he'd got so used to pre-empting and acting on Rocket's wishes that he never even considered it until after the fact. And worse, he found that as long as it made Rocket happy, it didn't even bother him anymore.

"You deserve what you've put each other though." said Tivan-bot

"Never!" yelled Rocket, who then laughed defiantly. "Bite my striped furry ass, Robot tard! We ain't falling for that crap; it's just cheap guilt-trip pop psychology bullshit, right Groot? …Groot?"

He looked over.

Groot was sitting huddled with his knees pulled up almost to his face, and he'd stuck his head down, like he didn't want to see anyone. He sat for a long time, muttering and I-am-Groot-ing to himself, and it was bad enough for Quill and Gamora who couldn't understand, but for Rocket, hearing him mutter about how he'd failed: how he'd failed to make him into a good person, that cut him to the bone. To the bone.

After a moment, once they had all accepted that Groot was gone, there was a spike of distortion, and then the music started as the Collector-Bot hacked into Quill Walkman again.

Awesome Mix Tape Vol 2: Queen; Another One Bites the Dust.