"I need you to turn me into a drone again," Lori asked, her hands balled into tight fists at her side from nervousness. She'd been standing outside Harper's door for ten minutes or longer trying to muster the courage to go in and ask. The moment the question left her lips, her gaze shot the floor. She couldn't bear to see the mixture of confusion and disgust that she was sure would be on Harper's face. After all, what kind of girl would ask to be turned into a drone?
Eventually, when Harper didn't say anything, Lori risked a glance upwards. To her surprise, Harper didn't look disgusted. She looked confused, certainly, and her eyes were wide with shock, but they were also shining with something that Lori could only interpret as intense fascination. She wasn't saying anything, just staring. Lori started to squirm from intense discomfort.
"I... um..." Lori had thought about what she might say, but she'd been expecting more questions and vocal astonishment rather than this strange silence. "I was just thinking that... sorry, can I sit down?"
For a few seconds, Lori thought Harper wasn't going to respond to that either. But finally she nodded, and Lori moved to perch herself on the end of Harper's bed. Since it seemed like her roommate wasn't going to break the silence, Lori decided she'd better continue.
"I was thinking that it would be a good idea." Lori gingerly rubbed her left wrist with her hand as she lied. "We... I... I need to find out more about what's happening to me. I've tried to research brainwashing and drones and I've tried to see if there's anything nearby or at school that might explain it, but there's just... nothing."
Lori checked Harper's reaction again, this time to see if Harper could see her true motive, as she'd feared. She was met with only the same unblinking, inscrutable stare.
"So um... I realized we don't really know much about how it really works when I'm... a drone." Lori had to fight the urge to call herself by the number her drone-self used. "So I was thinking maybe you could, yknow, use that trigger on me and then do some... testing, I guess. See how it works. See what you can get me to do or say. Maybe that way, we can figure this out. Or something..."
Lori's voice trailed off, and she was left staring back at Harper with nothing else to say. Harper still didn't say anything, although Lori could have sworn she saw her roommate subtly pinch herself on the arm.
"What do you think?" Lori ventured, after an awkwardly long moment of silence.
Finally, Harper opened her mouth. "Are you insane?" she demanded. Lori's face fell. That was a lot more like what she'd been expecting.
"N-no?" Immediately, Lori regretted everything. Coming to talk to Harper had been a stupid idea. Trying to lie to her had been even more stupid.
"Lori, t-that just, um, that s-seems really rash, don't you think?" Harper's anxiety was obvious from the odd way she twitched as she spoke. Lori was glad Harper seemed to be worried about her rather than disgusted with her, but there was an odd hesitance and uncertainty to her roommate's voice that she'd never heard before.
"It's not!" Lori retorted immediately, before biting down on her outburst. She couldn't seem too eager. This was already going wrong.
"Well, um..." As Lori watched, Harper's face flitted through a dozen expressions, each one so quick that Lori didn't have time to register them. "Isn't there something else you can try first? I know you want to figure this out, but turning you into a... are you sure that's really a good idea?"
"I really think it is, Harper." Lori started reviewing the mental list of reasons and arguments she'd noted before coming to Harper, memorized from the notepad file she'd been working on for days. "There just isn't anything else I can do. I've tried, I promise. If you've got any suggestions then I'm all ears, but I bet you don't."
Lori was telling the truth about that. She really had exhausted all possible avenues of investigation that she could think of.
"A-are you really sure you can't remember anything else about what happened the first time you activated?" Harper asked. Lori rolled her eyes.
"I've told you before, I really can't remember." That was also true. She remembered Professor Elbourne using her activation phrase, but that was about it.
"Then how about you ask her about it? Maybe she knows something."
"I'm pretty sure it was just a random number," Lori said impatiently. In truth she wasn't as sure of that as she was pretending, but she needed to convince Harper to activate her.
"O-oh, right." Lori's hopes surged as Harper fell quiet, clearly searching for another reason not to go through with what Lori had proposed. That was good. It was obvious Harper was running out of reasons to say 'no'. "But Lori, even so, I..." There was a strange note of conflict in Harper's voice, as if she was being torn between horror and excitement. "How do we even know it's safe? There's so much we don't know, this seems like a really bad-"
"Exactly! We don't know anything. That's why we have to do this." Lori realized that was probably the first time she'd ever interrupted Harper. She was doing a bad job of suppressing her enthusiasm, but she couldn't bring herself to care. "Besides, we do know it's safe. Remember before, that first day? You activated me and then woke me back up again easily, without any problems."
"I... I guess..." Harper fell silent for a long time after that. Eventually, Lori realized her roommate had run out of protests.
"So," she asked insistently. "What do you say? Will you do it?"
The expression that passed over Harper's face for the next few seconds was one of the most pained and tortured Lori had even seen. It was like the girl was at war with herself. But eventually, a kind of stoic peace spread across her expression and she replied with a stern "No."
Lori's whole body sagged. "Why?" she asked defeated.
"Lori, I just..." Harper swallowed uncomfortable. "I just don't think it's a very good idea. There's so much we don't know about this, and there's got to be better ways to investigate. Maybe you'll remember something important. Maybe your research on the internet will turn something up. I think waiting for that is a lot more sensible than playing with fire by doing... That again."
"But, Harper-"
"I said 'no', Lori!" Harper said, her voice strained and shrill. Lori fell silent. She couldn't bring herself to argue anymore. It was plainly hopeless. But when Lori thought about the prospect of standing up, leaving and going back to her own room without her craving fulfilled, she realized she couldn't do it. She needed this. That meant there was only one thing left she could do: tell the truth.
"There's something else," she began tentatively, after giving her roommate a moment to calm down. "Another reason."
Harper eventually sighed, her curiosity getting the better of her. "What?"
"I've been having dreams," Lori confessed. "Every day for the last weak, I've dreamt about it. About being a drone. About the suit. About... you."
Harper's eyebrows shot up. She looked almost panicked. "What? What dreams? Tell me!"
Lori was taken aback by Harper's sudden interest. Maybe there was hope after all. "That's... um..." She blushed. Now for the truly hard part. Lori had no idea how she could possibly explain her dreams to Harper without her instantly being disgusted with her. "I... keep dreaming the same thing. In my dream, you use that code to... to activate me. God, they're so vivid. You activate me and then you make me wear the latex suit and... do things for you. Cleaning. Tidying. Doing the dishes. Whatever. Stuff like that. Well, except last night. That was a little, um, different." There was no way Lori was going to tell Harper she'd dreamt about Harper forcibly groping her. No way. She'd already let slip too much.
Harper no longer looked almost panicked. She looked completely horrified. Lori was surprised at the strength of the reaction she could read on her face, but she figured it was pretty weird, after all. She waited for Harper to say something, but all her roommate did was make a few strained sputtering noises.
"I know it's bad." Lori hung her head as she tried to reassure Harper, somehow. "But it was just a dream, I know that. Even if it practically feels like it was real. I think maybe when you activated me that one time, as a test, maybe that kinda... imprinted something. That's the only time I can really clearly remember someone activating me deliberately like that, so it must have left an impression. I'm not sure how exactly that happened or why it's so strong. All I know is, I keep dreaming about you activating me and telling me what to do."
