"That's very cute."

"Some of the scientists on the SEEDS ship had a theory that Nai and I—and Tesla—were an attempt by the plants to talk back to humans. They can read your thoughts just fine, but they can't project, and they don't really understand. We can hear them, and understand your words, but we can't hear your thoughts—or only a little bit, with effort. And we can do..." He touches her shoulder and she can hear, very very faintly and distantly, in her mind, [this].

"Oh! Hello. So you can. Cool. Maybe not while I'm driving though, this monstrosity is a bit of a bitch. A bridge for communication makes sense, especially with how. Things were, uh, going. In those times." She winces.

"Nai can't hear your thoughts at all. It took a lot of practice for me to get even the little bit I do. To him humans are almost like... completely opaque machines. He can't understand you and he can't predict you and he sees humans mistreating and killing the people he can understand and all of the plants are so forgiving, he's...

"He's really mad that they forgive you. He wishes they'd be mad, too, only he doesn't because part of why plants are better than humans, in his head, is how they're all endlessly forgiving and kind. And he's not, and he sort of... sees himself as doing a necessary evil, in not being kind and forgiving, to actually get them to stop being tortured for decades and then killed. He thinks that if it were up to them they'd all get used up and die happy and he's not wrong about that."

"... Yeah."

"So that's my tragic backstory." He stretches his robot arm out then says, "Well, part of it."

"Okay. We'll break it up into chunks, how about, I need time to digest my entire profession and life's work being built on unethical torture slavery."

"Your work is built on making it a lot more ethical and that's what made me like you."

"Well, thank you. I wasn't planning to change professions, just. ... Okay, so in school and after, I was the weirdly sentimental one? And now I'm feeling like I wasn't sentimental enough, and often too callous with them, and. It's a change, I need time to process. .... Also the place I'm taking us to as a plant lead is, um. Maybe going to suck."

"I think you actually can't beat most of my life for suckage. —that came out wrong. I'm not expecting it to be roses, is what I mean."

"All right. It's, uh. Not that I've heard that they've been having plant troubles, it's that it is the expected result from their choices. Which is to say, uh. She's all by herself."

"...yeah. They often are."

"Less so now than they used to be! People have noticed that plants work better in groups and it's becoming less common for them to try to keep singles. But. ... Yeah." Wince.

Is that a flash of a green laser against the sky? Yeah, sure looks like it.

Zash notices, and leans forward to squint at it. "Did you see that?"

"The alarming green laser beam that just, aaaand there it is again. Yes, I did."

"We should go see what it is."

"Of course you think that." Sigh. "Fine, fine, I'm curious too, and you're bullshit enough that poking strange things is probably not suicidal."

She can't help but feel like she has a ghost over her shoulder telling her that this is dumb, but. ... That hurts too much to think about, so she won't.

Zash has a hundred and fifty years worth of these. You get used to them eventually.

Onwards to the alarming green light!

They come across a scene of destruction, smoking bodies scattered across the blood-stained sand, and a woman who has a gigantic cross standing in the middle of it all.

"Uh. Well, this is awkward."

Oh.

:(

Yvette makes a face, then pokes her head out of the window of the car.

"Hey um. Did you kill all of these people?"

"In my defense they had it coming!!"

They often do.

Zash opens the door and steps out of the car to examine the scene more closely. "What did they do?"

"Slavers. Robbed and then sold people off to various places."

The bodies do indeed have things like 'shackles' and 'nets' and 'tasers' that imply their chosen profession, but. ... There is a mysterious lack of any slaves, or tracks.