The place has a beige sofa and a queensize bed and a square dining table with four cheap chairs and some remarkably bent blinds. Once Atsinni has assessed this he plops down on the sofa, feet up, and creates an Amazon account and siphons a few grand out of the mysterious money fountain of the Yeerks and orders sheets and soap and a set of basic pots and pans and stuff like that, and then plays some more Bejeweled until their feet don't hurt any more, and then goes grocery shopping.

The apartment is amazing. Bejeweled is great.

If he thought it was worth making decisions at all he would beg Atsinni not to get them food that could otherwise go to starving people who might die and go to Hell and that will taste like guilt and worthlessness anyway. Well, it's... not like the vast majority of his existence hasn't involved being regularly subjected to unpleasant experiences... but couldn't Atsinni have been really unreasonably enamored of something less miserable, like being boiled alive.

<If you want to get me ordered out of you so they can dissect you to figure out how you don't need to eat... well, tough luck, because I don't, but I don't think you do either. Besides, it won't taste like guilt and worthlessness to ME.>

<I don't care if they dissect me. I didn't mean to say anything, I'm sorry, I haven't really worried about my thoughts bothering people very much before but I think what you're bothered by is all the misery and I've already been very motivated for a very long time to figure out some way to stop being miserable and I don't really expect to suddenly figure it out this decade.>

<I mean the misery is whatever, I don't rank high enough to get a consensual host, but the specifically pitching a fit about eating food is weird.>

<I'm sure it would be weird for someone who needed it.>

They went to such lengths to drive home to him that he absolutely didn't, and that not instantly realizing he could just fast indefinitely made him a disgusting sinner. Maybe there's some secret reason why actually that was an example of them making him a worse person, but even if that's true, there's a difference between agreeing that yep he's so thoroughly corrupted no one should care what he wants, and actually ceasing to have feelings.

Maybe he can try to stop having thoughts or noticing things entirely? That's an underexplored option since it would just get him punished at home before he came here.

<If you wanna just dissociate suit yourself, I guess. I should ask Enstat for advice except I'll have to make it sound like you're traumatized about something besides food since that doesn't make sense. Sex or something, are you traumatized about that?>

<Um. I.> Now he's trying to stop having opinions or preferences about sex and also trying to figure out what other preferences he needs to stop having. Maybe all preferences in full generality? He literally can't do anything, and he is still somehow managing to do something wrong. <I'm sorry.>

<Wow, chill. I'm just trying to figure out how we can eat like a normal person without this being somehow the worst thing about having a Yeerk for you.> He is continuing to grocery shop while they have this conversation. He wants four kinds of breakfast cereal, and a box of chocolate fudge, and a bag of potato chips, and a microwaveable vegan pesto tortellini thing, and both strawberry and mint chocolate chip ice creams, and a pile of deli turkey and another pile of sliced cheese, and everything listed on this package of gnocchi's recipe for One Pan Creamy Gnocchi With Artichokes, which takes them through the spice aisle.

<...I appreciate that you care about that.>

Maybe he should be coming at it from the direction of suggesting less unappealing foods but as established all his decisions are bad and he has been pessimized. Also he doesn't even know what some of these things are.

Also, it occurs to him that tonight he might not really need to sleep, it'll take longer than that for they-never-told-him-what-drug-it-is to finish wearing off, but in a few nights they're going to have a somewhat similar problem. He can go without sleep indefinitely and cannot function indefinitely without sleep or drugs, and he hasn't been allowed - he's caught little naps sometimes when they overestimated how painful something was and left him somewhere but in so doing he's basically trained himself not to even try at any other time - or maybe since sleep happens in private and isn't entertaining and he doesn't ever need to be functional again it's fine.

<Well, I sure hope you're not so insomniac that I can't walk us in a straight line this time next week but we'll give it a whirl, I guess. Should help that I don't have to let you run the autonomics. I was going to sleep on the couch tonight since the bed doesn't have sheets yet.>

<Run the autonomics?>

<Like your heart rate and whether your... hands... sweat... or whatever. If you were in charge of that your pulse would be spiking constantly, it'd be miserable. Maybe it'll even help you calm down if you don't get the feedback response any more.>

<...Oh, that explains it, I guess. Can you make me sleep that way - you shouldn't, though, I'd have nightmares, you probably don't want to watch - >

<You know, I'm not actually sure if I'll see your dreams or not, that's a good question. I will certainly be trying to make you sleep that way but anyone's guess if it'll work.> Quart of milk and a loaf of bread and a quartet of bananas and they can check out. With... all these things from the checkout aisle. A Snickers and a pack of gum and a thing of tictacs and a weird strawberry fruit leather thing.

The strawberry fruit leather thing almost seems appealing. If he were sure it was a good idea, and sure his own certainty meant anything, and in control of the experience, and only having a strawberry fruit leather thing. So, not really.

<Tell you what, this is good for like two years, I won't eat it till you wanna in case that helps. I can let you chew without letting you try to call the cops, pretty sure.>

<I don't see why I would call the cops.> Also why would that even help, when there's this entire cartful of stuff and he isn't confident it's a good idea. But what would the cops even do, for an exorcism you need a priest, and also why would you exorcise a nice non-demon from someone terrible. Maybe it's actually a perfectly reasonable idea and he just can't understand why.

<Oh, yeah, the cops wouldn't help at all but it'd get me in trouble for making a scene.> He pays and out they go.

Ugh, how did he manage to go straight from "it's right to endure all this suffering because the angels say so" to "since they were demons all along it's right to endure all this suffering", he had sort of hoped that not having every aspect of his life optimized for making him and everyone else miserable would be more different. As established he doesn't know anything, but it feels so terribly pointless. Which is definitely because he just doesn't understand anything. Whatever, what does it even matter to him what Atsinni does with Atsinni's body, who is he to have opinions about that.

And home they go with all these groceries, and Atsinni puts them away and takes a rinse-only air-dry shower in the absence of relevant accessories and then changes into a fresh thrift store outfit to sleep on the couch in.

He tries very hard not to have opinions about any of it and eventually his internal experience is of being three feet away thinking about which shapes tesselate.

Then probably they will be able to get to sleep eventually.

He dreams he's been caught and a demon is dissecting him to remove all his muscles to feed to a lion. (He has very little idea what lions look like. This one has scales.)

Normally, insofar as there's a normal for something that happens so rarely, he would wake up disoriented and try to get back to work before even parsing where he was.

This time he is not controlling the autonomics so he's going to just stay asleep.