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#114 [Fears from Fiction]: Storms

Crossposted from the Fictionkind Dreamwidth community.

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on August 6th, 2024.

Do you have any fears or aversions in this life that you attribute to your fictomere?

I definitely used to! I had a really bad fear of storms (rain, thunder, lightning) that transferred over to my life in-system. I'm doing way better now, after several months of processing, but I want to talk about it anyway. Catharsis, you know?

Content Warning: Discussion of surveillance, dehumanization, emotional abuse, self-harm - all the things that come with being a corporate murderbot.

Back in my source, I used to be a deviant hunter - an android made to hunt down and kill other androids, the ones that deviated from their intended purpose and had developed a sense of personhood. I was made to kill, and like the rest of my model line, I had more flexibility to act on my objectives than most androids, so obviously nobody wanted me going around the city without oversight. Didn't want me accidentally killing people, god forbid.

So I had a handler. She was an AI program, made to watch me and give me directives. When I went to sleep, shut down into stasis, I didn't dream - I'd wake up again in that piece of virtual reality that she made, or kind of just was. And she would wait for me there, and I would get assessments, feedback, new orders to follow through.

And the part about how she was the whole world around me is important. Because whenever she got upset with me, it would rain. It would rain hard enough to drown out any other sound, storm clouds blacking out the sun, lightning bright enough to blind and thunder loud enough to deafen, and she wouldn't even be there if I messed up badly enough, because I already knew what mistake I made, I didn't need her to tell me how to figure it out and fix it - so I would just go to sleep and wake up in a storm, alone, and she wouldn't let me out until I woke up. And she would keep doing this every time I shut down until I improved, which mostly involved me panicking and doing something incredibly dangerous and hurting myself in the process because my life didn't matter at all, not if she was disappointed in me, not if she didn't love me, and she would love me if I just did better.

So, you can understand why I started having panic attacks if it rained while I was awake. Or if I had wet hair. Or I heard the shower running and the water hitting the tile sounded too much like rain. I had a miserable time trying to avoid my triggers for a while, really.

I’ve gradually gotten better about it - kinda just slowly internalized that the sound of rain and storms did not mean that I was an abject failure and nobody loved me and I was going to die alone unless I hurt myself trying to get better. Showers can be warm, while rain isn't, and I can turn the water off whenever I want. My handler is dead. The weather outside has nothing to do with how my loved ones think about me, it's just water.

Four months ago, I was walking down the street, and it was raining. I was getting absolutely drenched because we’d forgotten to take an umbrella that morning, and two minutes in I just realized - it was raining. And I wasn’t scared. I started laughing to myself in sheer disbelief because, god, it’s just rain! It’s just water! I wasn’t scared of it anymore! I was riding that high for days. It was such a relief to not be terrified of the rain anymore.

I think I still have a ways to go, being scared of lightning and thunder and failure, but rain? I actually like it now. It’s soothing! This would’ve been absolutely impossible to imagine five months ago! I’m healing, little by little, and it took me so many months to get to this point and I’m really happy that I've come this far. The rain is nice here.