Chapter Text
“How can you tell the difference between someone who likes you and someone who’s an alien with completely different social rules and customs?” Charlie asked.
“Hmm,” Elle said, chewing thoughtfully.
Today’s dining hall lunch option was typical Hamlet fare: bland, unprocessed, and 100% natural. This one involved some sort of greens–although the “greens” were suspiciously turquoise and resembled the plant in Charlie’s room. Maybe the arrival gift was supposed to be decor and a snack. Nick hadn’t specified.
Nick. The genesis of the painfully awkward question that hung over the table. Charlie had reviewed the visit to the esquet barn a million times in his mind, turning it like a 3D cube puzzle, trying to ascertain answers that might have been painfully obvious to anyone else.
So, he queried himself, what would a normal person do in this situation? Answer: ask your friends.
“As a person who’s visited 18 planets,” Tao began.
“Fifteen planets and three moons,” Elle interjected.
“Eighteen worlds,” Tao rolled his eyes, “Let me be your authority on the mating customs of aliens.”
“He’s not exactly an authority,” Elle whispered, sotto voce.
“One,” Tao held up a finger, “Have they directly shown their genitals to you in any fashion?”
“No!” Charlie said.
“Dick pics count,” Tao cautioned.
“No! No dick pics!” Charlie insisted.
“Tao, I think if Charlie were getting dick pics, he would have started off the conversation with that information.”
“TWO!” Tao continued, ignoring Elle, “Have they engaged in any displays of bright or flashy colours, to better draw your attention?”
Charlie thought of Nick’s white vests, his soft grey joggers. “The opposite, really.” He jabbed the tines of his fork into a stack of leaves and took a tentative bite.
Tao frowned. “Have they shown you any erotic dance moves?”
Elle dropped her forehead to her hand. “ALWAYS with the erotic dance moves.”
“Intentional displays of overt masculinity or femininity?”
Charlie gestured to his mouth. Eating, sorry..
Nick was nothing but a display of overt masculinity. His broad shoulders, his muscular pecs, his defined arms. At least 70% of his mass was torso. If he were travelling anywhere, he’d charged a personal item allowance for his biceps. And the way he was always lifting and carrying. It was like someone had typed “ handsome and rugged farm boy” into an AI art generator and Nick Nelson had popped out.
“I don’t think they’re intentional?” Charlie finally answered. He worked his tongue between his molars, where a particularly stubborn frond seemed to have lodged itself. He’d need to find a mirror before returning to the install.
Tao leaned into Charlie's space. "Do they find little excuses to touch you?"
The smooth backs of Nick's fingernails, brushing Charlie's palm lightly.
"No?" Charlie’s heartbeat quickened.
“Have they presented you with unexpected gifts?
The aquamarine egg, warm and snug in Charlie's hand. Charlie had transported it carefully from the barn to his personal space, unsure what to do now that it was his. It felt like an offer. It felt like a promise.
If he created a sling and nestled it against his body heat, would it hatch into a miniature Nellie?
(No, it had been from the general laying population. Even if it was fertile, it would likely hatch into a tiny poisonous hellion whose venom would blind him while he slept.)
Was he supposed to prepare it somehow? The idea of participating in cooking lessons in the communal kitchen with Nick was both exhilarating and terrifying.
Finally, he had placed it in the woven storage chest, where the bright blue stood out among his grey company issued coveralls. It matches your eyes. Then he had fallen onto his mattress and surrendered to blissful sleep.
“Maybe?” Charlie said finally, wrinkling his nose. His bed. His table. His chest. His plant. And now, the egg. “What constitutes a gift?”
“Was there…” Tao narrowed his eyes, “A bow on it?”
“Oh my god, Tao,” Elle grabbed his beanie off his head and swatted him with it. “Be useful for something other than 5000 word treatises on Wes Anderson and Werner Herzog.”
Tao grabbed his beanie back from Elle and jammed it back over his black hair, then shot her a scathing glare.
“Now he’s going to sulk, which means I can get a word in edgewise.” Elle smiled at Charlie with the confidence of someone who never got alien plant matter stuck in between her teeth. “Charlie, we’re all human, no matter what planet we come from. If you think this person might be interested in you, you can just ask them.”
“Maybe,” Charlie said. His lunch seemed to wave its fronds against the lining of his stomach. “That seems a bit direct.”
“Nothing wrong with direct,” Elle said. “I mean, technically we’re grown-ups.”
“You know what’s extremely direct?” Tao said. He pointed at Charlie. “Showing them your genitals.”
Elle looked at Tao again. Charlie recognized the look that preceded a beanie snatching. He rested his chin on his hand expectantly.
Instead, Elle just rolled her eyes. “...most of us.”
***
Tale as old as time. Boy sees boy.
Maybe there’s something in the avatar he likes. The black curls, artfully arranged. Black denim, tight fitting, holes in the knees. Dimples carving divots in the cheeks. Sparkling blue eyes.
Maybe it’s the profile holos, a carefully curated collection. Private glimpses for a public eye. Hands on drumsticks, a quick beat with a blacklight filter. A stack of books, arranged large to small in a vertical pile, their titles and authors clearly visible: Brideshead Revisited. The Iliad. Sophocles. Lyric poetry. Antique editions with leather bindings, gold embossing.
On the other side of the potential connection: A boy whose face is straight from a marble bust.
Silky hair, dusty brown, just brushing the tops of his ears. Hazel eyes so big they must be augments. Delicate wrists, pouting lips. Nose that’s not perfect, just a hint of a bend marring its long slope. Somehow, it’s made more charming by the asymmetry.
What does the beautiful boy in the profile do? What does he like? Can he hold a conversation, stretch it out, string it between posts until it glows? It doesn’t matter. Charlie is swept up by the boy's face alone, like a character in an epic poem.
It’s a centuries old system, matchmaking by algorithm. Preferences bleed into each other and build, creating an endless reinforcement loop.
This is what you’ll like. This is who will like you back. It’s a system that guarantees a greater than 80% chance of success, at least in the short term.
Does it really matter? Who you are? Who they are? Trust the technology. Believe it works. It’s not designed to steer you wrong.
Both boys swipe right.
***
“Charlie.” Nick announced.
“Mmm?” Charlie hummed, looking up from his rectangular device. It had taken him a while to get used to only using screen tech, but Elle had started sending him daily pictures of Pomeranians that only took three minutes to download, so that was something. Today’s dog was stretching its head out of a shuttle window, its golden hair blowing in the stream of air resistance, with the caption HELL YES, IT’S FRIDAY.
Okay. So Charlie was a total coward who had not directly asked Nick anything about his intentions. He had also not shown him his genitals. But, in a show of minor confidence, he had taken to spending time in the pod’s common area instead of immediately crashing into his private space after work. He was currently slouched across one of the seats, his feet dangling over one edge as his head rested on a woven arm.
“Do you want to check out the Holovi dome? I mean, if you haven’t seen it already for work and all…”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve probably tried the tech already,” Charlie said without thinking. He was in the middle of reading a message from his sister that had just finished downloading.
Visited New Orleans yesterday. Scuba gear defective. Just sat on a boat all day avoiding 4m long alligators. Rating: One of Five, would not recommend.
Nick raised an eyebrow and brushed his hair back from his forehead. “I get it. But you haven’t even given me the chance to prove myself as your host. Esquet husbandry might not be Earth quality entertainment, but—.”
“Wait–no!” Charlie sat up. His device spilled off his lap onto the floor. Had he just turned down his first planetside social invitation? From Nick? Why the hell had he done that? Fuck Tori and her contagious apathy.
“I loved meeting Nellie!”
Nick’s face lit up like an aurora. “Oh–good!”
Charlie retrieved his device from the floor. No visible damage, fortunately. He looked at the glossy surface, formulating his thoughts.
It would probably be nice. To really get to know parts of this planet that he now called home. To see something that wasn’t an office or an install site or an unexpected orgy. And if, as a bonus, it meant spending time with Nick…
Now that Nick had apologised for the arrival mix-up, their friendship seemed inevitable. Charlie had observed the way Nick was around the settlement. He was the same with everyone– relentlessly sociable, like he was a crack in a ship’s hull and everyone was just the air that was being sucked towards him.
Nick was looking at Charlie. His face was a beacon, his eyes shining. You had to be blind not to be drawn in.
“Sorry. You said work and I had a gut reaction. So. Yes,” Charlie managed. “I’ll go.”
***
First dates are easy when you have an avatar. Your hair is always perfectly tousled, blemishes magically erased. So maybe you stretch your legs an extra inch, blur out your scars, stitch together a new you from past images of yourself.
Everyone does it.
Flick through the options. Your place? Theirs? Brunch that you never have to eat that stays piping hot two hours in. A library with dusty towers of books, ladders climbing to the upper stories. The invitation is extended in glittering lines of code, the chosen filter duplicated to both your holovis.
The Metaverse failed because it was never rooted in reality. The only thing it successfully produced was row after row of atrophied bodies, decaying on chaise lounges. Charlie has seen the historical holos. Family members tiptoed through Metaverse centres like they were memorial parks, sobbing soundlessly. They held hands, desperately scanning the lounges for the faces they had known. The mandated curriculum was a silent warning to generations of school children.
To integrate with the Metaverse was to become your own tombstone.
Holovis aren’t like that. Time moves in a line. You move through space. Your muscles tense. Your pupils dilate. And if the person sitting across from you isn’t strictly there, in a physical, literal sense? Well, isn’t that better for both of you, at first?
As an avatar, you can disappear at any moment. You can code in hard exits for non-consent. Erase the other person from your room. Slip away between someone’s fingers like grains of sand.
But that’s the worst case scenario. Best case?
You communicate. You laugh. You touch.
A knee, bumping yours. Once. Twice. The first time an accident. The second time an invitation. A hand lifting your chin. Warm breath puffing into your mouth. Lips brushing over yours.
What is touch? A series of signals, created by electrical stimuli, sent over exquisitely designed networks, interpreted by the brain.
It’s not hard to create the sensation. Even an apprentice could pull the basic strings from GitHub. A snippet, bolstered with brackets and semicolons. List the parameters. Define the function. Set the loops.
Charlie has implemented the code a thousand times.
***
“How are you so good at this?” Nick cried as Charlie’s bright yellow shuttle raced under the checkered flag just ahead of his blue one, pulling a 180 as it came to a stop. Nick’s shuttle coasted for a moment before coming to an auto-brake behind it.
“My gran thinks I’m a game designer,” Charlie bragged. “You pick up a few things.”
Charlie stood up and his shuttle dissolved around him, doors and wheels and steering column disintegrating into the dark grey pavement. Neon fireworks exploded in the dome above, sending glitter cascading downward.
Nick jumped to his feet. His shuttle had disappeared when Charlie’s had, leaving him sitting on the ground. “This tech is like, fifty years old." Nick said. "I’ve been playing it since I was seven. I thought I’d be a lock! And you’ve beaten me, what, five or six times?”
“I’m going easy on you,” Charlie grinned. A dozen anthropomorphic turtles no higher than his knees had started dancing around his legs, throwing multi-colored streamers with their four fingered hands. One was hoisting a gold-toned trophy larger than its shell.
“No!” Nick said, his grin matching Charlie’s. One of the Charlie-worshipping turtles thumbed the place below its eyes where its nose would be at Nick, a nyah-nyah gesture. “This is completely unfair. I’m filing a grievance with housing.”
“Now, who invited who to Hamlet’s finest Holovi entertainment centre? I don’t know what you were expecting.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to be good at everything!”
Nick pointed at the leaderboard, where Charlie’s name appeared in an aggressive font next to the number one. He was smiling, that crooked smile with the closed mouth, but the words hit Charlie with the strength of an accusation.
It's like you get off by showing other people up.
“I’m not.” Charlie said, looking down at his feet. One of the turtles gazed up at him with concern in its oversized eyes.
Doubt flooded his body. Should he have let Nick win? Not all of the times, but maybe once would have been appropriate. People were nice here. Not endlessly cutthroat, trying to distinguish themselves as more than a random NPC in a global game.
An image of the protestors came to his mind.
At least Nick was nice.
He ventured a look back at Nick. His cheeks were full and flushed. His neck was a Tuscan column, thick and muscled underneath the tight collar of the simulated racing coveralls.
“No?” Nick said. He narrowed his eyes and sucked on his lower lip for a moment. Then he stepped nearer to Charlie and threw one arm over his shoulders. To Charlie, the feeling was the same as when he had spun out and careened off a rainbow striped bridge.
“Can we at least agree that you had an unfair advantage since the activity was so tech-focused?" Nick joked. Charlie could feel Nick’s breath on his cheek. "Next time, let’s choose something that plays to my strengths.”
“Like, what? Power lifting? Extreme furniture assembly?” Charlie attempted to match Nick’s lightness. The weight of Nick’s arm spread warmth across his back.
What is touch? Movement. Pressure. Vibration.
Charlie tried to ignore the lack of gravity in his gut.
“Joke’s on you," Nick said. "Winner buys the drinks.”