As promised, here comes more of the Queen.

Survival Of The Sanest

“We are all here?”

“Yes, yes, we rather believe so.”

“Right then, on to business. The matter of political tensions between the planets Zas and Maront. What is the reason behind this?”

“As best as is known to us, there seems to have been a dispute between two Revered families of the planets. The primary trading families, we've been led to believe.”

“Led to believe? Us? Now, we either know or we don't. We recommend that we adjourn for now and probe the respective Revered heads while following up on the potential training progress.”

“We are agreed.”

. . .

Gorgeous Georgina had a lacking memory. Not that it was bad. It was rather good, in fact. It just did not exist anytime before the past three weeks. And those memories went rather against her human instinct. She was sure that there was more to the world than this tiny, seemingly isolated room she found herself strapped onto a bed in. And she was also fairly certain that being forced into various acts of submission continuously was not entirely within the realm of the ordinary. Not that she had any precise or even imprecise reference for 'ordinary', but instinctively, it felt out of place. At least her tormentors (did she really think of them as that?) did her the small mercy of drugging her for most of the time. Therefore, she was altogether uncertain if she slept, or ate, or excreted. At the core of it, she couldn't quite claim to be perfectly certain that she was human.

In the short spells of awareness in between the drugged hazy stretches, there were also conversations. With Sumptuous Sally. The voice she heard. Sally, unlike her, had, upon hearing her voice for the first time, refused to acknowledge her existence, and only upon some amount of convincing, come to accept that Georgina's wasn't just a voice in Sally's head. Surprisingly, for Georgina, Sally's memory also stretched back to no more than the past three weeks. Sally seemed terrified of her tormentors. It seemed odd to Georgina that Sally held views diametrically opposite to those that she held. Yes, their treatment until now (which, as best as the both of them could tell, had been exactly the same) had seemed unusual and not entirely normal, but it wasn't, to Georgina, all that bad. She couldn't really pick out any one memory, out of the seemingly millions from her times spent under a drugged spell, that had been unpleasant. Some of it she remembered as rather enjoyable, something that Sally couldn't quite grasp and usually reacted wildly to, whenever told. It seemingly had all been quite torturous and painful in Sally's memory and it had begun taking its toll on her. It has been her that had started calling them their 'tormentors'. Not that either of them could say with any amount of certainty that there existed any 'them' whom to peg a title onto. But, they argued, that as long as the existence of each other to them was not verifiable, there was no reason to not believe in one more entity, thus qualifying, at least, whatever it was that was keeping them alive. Georgina had, in recent times, taken to recollecting, at every opportunity she got, her 'enjoyable' memories to Sally, just to get a rise out of her.

“Oh, that was quite fun, wasn't it Sally?”

“How should I know? I wasn't there.”

“Oh, come on Sal. They do to me what they do to you. Has it ever been any different?”

“Oh, alright, you're a little slut then, I got that. I personally think that getting raped repeatedly isn't all that much fun.”

“Oh, come on Sal, where's your tortured soul act today? Whatever happened to your rants and raves? Remember? You wish you could just put an end to it? One way or another?”

“Bitch. That's what you are. Well, if you're one of them, I'm not giving in. Do your worst! I'll find a way out!”

“Oh, come on Sal, you know I'm not. I was just joking. Look, this place, this... existence is getting to me too. I didn't really mean that.”

“Do keep your sympathy to yourself G. I'll look after my own se-”

Just then, a door opened, revealing a dozen masked faces. They dragged her out of her room and into a small clearing the was surrounded by what best resembled imperial era outhouses (she felt it strange that she seemed to know exactly -what- an imperial era outhouse was) and proceeded to shove her into one of these with the other.

“Oh, so you do exist.”

“Well, yes, I said as much, didn't I? Hello, Sal.”

. . .

“So, there have been, 'issues' with the probes we believe? How is it that we are unable to probe the Revered heads?”

“Not both probes. The head of Zas has been successfully probed. It seems that his firstborn, a daughter, led an amorous affair briefly with the firstborn, a son, of the other head. And it seems that the son broke off abruptly this affair, under circumstances that are unknown to the girl's father, but distressing enough, apparently, for him to issue a warrant for and place a bounty upon, the severed head of the son of Maront. Thus this state of political tension that presently exists. And while this much can be ascertained from other sources, we are seemingly unable to find the head of Maront to probe this out of him!”

“And that isn't the only problem we are faced with?”

“No, it isn't. We have a much larger issue at hand. When we searched for the son of Maront to probe him, we found him, but we couldn't probe him. We were surprised to discover, he is of category Q. And that isn't all. His cousin, who would be his unnatural successor, seems to be of category Y and also cannot be probed! It is quite perplexing. They are supposed to be humans of standard category P. No mutations to categories Q or Y have ever been detected on either planets, and neither has any such tendency to mutate to higher categories ever been observed in either of the two families.”

“Well, then we have been found out. And their BioEngs have been at work. For at least twenty-four years, going by the son's age. Find out how far their research has gone and put an end to it, won't we?”

“Yes, quite, immediate steps must be taken!”

“And what progress on our potentials in training? Member Fortynine must be replaced soon, especially in the face of what seems to be a possible threat to our security.”

“Of the three potentials originally chosen, only two are doing well enough for eventual consideration. They has just been moved to phase two. If that is successful then they will be made aware.”

“Excellent. And we must take this opportunity to congratulate ourselves upon the names we have chosen for them. We can be so droll. Most excellent, our sense of humour!”

. . .

“Alright then, Sal. It's been seven hours. How is it that we haven't been drugged yet? At least now we know that whatever sustenance we were proffered with, it was during our drugged phases. Sally, I'm hungry!”

“Oh.. Gorgeous G is hungry, is she? Well, now why don't you go whore yourself out to our tormentors for a few scraps?”

“Oh, don't be so, Sal. It was fun. And I really am hungry. Whatever should we do?”

“Do? Why should we do anything? We're their captives. We know now that they exist. Let them bother about it.”

. . .

It had been six days since Georgina and Sally had been moved to the outhouse and Georgina was faring badly. Soon into their first day they had discovered that they were firmly locked in. Upon closer inspection of the outhouse, they discovered that it had three bedrooms, one water closet, one bathroom and one kitchen, all done up in a very archaic fashion and all thoroughly infested with rats. All the rooms had large French windows, which seemingly all looked upon the same scene of a small clearing, surrounded by other outhouses, which all seemed, at least to the two of them, to be unoccupied. Eerily enough, though there was no food in it, the kitchen was fully equipped to cook in. After the first two days, the common cause of hunger and Sally's now almost maternal anxiety over Georgina's faltering health, had united the two at least temporarily, and an unsaid, uneasy truce existed between the two.

“Sal, how do the rats live? I haven't ever noticed them eat anything!”

“Yes G, I've been thinking about that a bit myself. There must be some source of food somewhere within this place, and I think it's best that we made an effort to search it out. It's obvious that either our captors ('So, they're our 'captors' now?' though Georgina) either don't care about us anymore, or have simply forgotten us.”

“Well then Sal, I'll look in the kitchen, shall I?”

“Yes, I wonder why I never though if that. It's so obvious when you think about it. The kitchen!”

“Any sharper, your sarcasm, and I just might not share the food I find with you, Sal.”

“Oh, alright G, you look there. Can you even walk to the kitchen without falling over? I'll have a look and you rest here. I guess it's as good a place as any to start.”

“Oh, look at Sumptuous Sally, the tortured little girl all grown up, being motherly and caring all of a sudden.”

“Any sharper, your sarcasm and I might just kill you and eat you, G. The kitchen is fully equipped, you know?”

And as Sally walked into the kitchen, a shrill siren of a scream issued from Georgina. As Sally ran back to Georgina's room, it was followed by a frantic summon.

“Sally, Sally, come quick, I think I know how the rats survive!”

And when Sally entered the room, it was all too obvious to her how the rats survived.

“Well then G, if we want to survive, I guess we have to do as they do.”

And so, they started to eat the rats. The kitchen was, after all, fully equipped.

. . .

“Member Fortynine passed away seven minutes back.”

“A saddening event. What is the status of the potentials?”

“One seems to be better off than the other.”

“Good. We are pleased with the progress they have made. How long since they have been without direct nourishment?”

“Almost a week now. Six days and ten hours, to be precise.”

“Another fourteen hours, and then we shall make them aware.”

“Yes, we think that would be a good idea.”

. . .

Suddenly, she woke up to find herself on a bed, with what seemed to be electrodes running from her head into the wall, an intravenous line running from her throat into a bag filled with a creamy liquid and something that appeared to be a human shape in a lab coat peering intently over her. Hazy memories filled her head, memories starting from four weeks ago. Memories of who seemed to be, unusually, two women. Just then she noticed more of the seemingly human shapes (all in gleaming white lab coats) pulling the electrodes and intravenous line out from the seemingly dead body of another woman.

'Yes, she died unfortunately. Be not alarmed, you are not delirious. I am the Queen and I am communicating telepathically with you.'

“What... what's going on?”

'Think it, child, don't say it.'

'What's going on? Whose memories do I have in my head? A.. Sally and a Georgina?'

'They are your memories, child. They were part of you. The two most prominent parts of your personality. I took it and split it and those two were the result.'

'Both... mine? Why? What exactly is going on?'

'I think it best that I explain from the beginning. I am the Queen. One of my members, member Fortynine, was ailing and needed replacing. I sensed three potential replacements and... tested them. I had to split all of your personalities to test for specific weaknesses. Most potentials split into four or five distinct personalities. You are one of the rare few to display only two primary ones. I named them and placed them in a virtual reality. I had them drugged and ravaged, to see if they formed any sort of a dynamic in their common plight. One of the three potentials, who split into four personalities, didn't form any dynamic between them, and she had to be dropped. When it was abundantly clear that the remaining of the two potentials did form dynamics between their personalities, I placed their respective personalities together to see if they could build upon that dynamic. Your two personalities, Georgina and Sally did form a constructive dynamic. I am sad to say that that was not the case with the three personalities of the other remaining potential. Two of them killed and ate the third in preference to the rats, only to have one kill the other in a fight over the remains of the third one. She refused till the end to eat the rats and soon killed herself. So here you are now, ready to be initiated into me as the new member Fortynine. Wait. Before you ask me any more questions about me, I think it would be best to show you for yourself. Open up your mind, child.'

And she smiled. She was part of the Queen.

. . .