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“One very romantic nebula… coming right up!”
Aura’s hands were flying over the control console, pushing sturdy buttons and flicking switches and moving levers with confident, deft movements guided more by muscle memory than by her attentive dark eyes.
Strapped to the pilot’s chair in the control hub of the cruise ship, located right above the engines, she could feel the ship’s full power surround her. It vibrated through her. Sometimes late at night when it was just her and Excess in the hub, she would close her eyes and let the thrum of Excess’s engines fill her – and imagine that it was a caress.
Right now, there were no quiet, intimate moments to be found in the fully staffed hub, yet the view more than made up for it. The 360 degrees panorama view of the control hub’s blast-proof glass dome permitted her a perfect view on said very romantic nebula growing ever larger. It was red at its two dense centers, with tendrils of pale pink and ivory clouds reaching for another and for the ship.
The humming of Excess’s song turned into a high-pitched whine at the edge of Aura’s hearing before dying down to the content purr of a ship at rest.
She caressed brown fingers with chipped, pastel-painted nails over the array of buttons, lamps, and levers, letting herself imagine for just a whimsical moment that Excess could both feel it – it was quite likely they could – and cared – most certainly, they did not.
In truth, Aura could operate the controls while blindfolded, but in truth, she wouldn’t even need to. She had, after all, been hired for her cybernetic implant. It was just that unaugmented humans got nervous when you simply kicked back in the pilot’s chair, plugged into the socket at the back of your neck and looked for all the world like you were taking a nap.
With the hub itself also surrounded by glass walls so curious passengers could thrill in watching the crew hard at work while they sipped cocktails, a seemingly napping pilot just wasn’t doable. One of the first things Aura had learned after getting out of the drudgery of cargo jobs, was that piloting passenger ships was just as much about the act of being seen piloting as it was about the actual piloting.
If pushing some buttons made people feel better about being at her mercy in the depths of outer space, it was no skin off Aura’s back.
“How delightful.” Aura choked down a laugh the moment the digitized, yet still distinctly scornful voice of Excess themself piped up in her mind. “We are going to be sitting ducks for pirates so organic beings can swap body fluids while staring at dust.”
“But it’s romantic dust, Cess, that’s totally different!” Aura responded out loud, and with an extra boost of cheerfulness just to amp up the obnoxiousness. A covert glance out of the corner of her eyes told her none of the control crew was paying her any mind, they were all used to their pilot seemingly talking to herself.
Cess revved the engines in a sputter which sounded distinctly scornful.
Aura’s grin widened, even as she did feel the Captain’s attention – and her glare – on her. “Now, now, Cessy, no alarming the honeymooners with funny engine noises.” She pushed her pilot chair back and triggered the release for her implant. A moment later she was free from the contraption and could stand up, only wirelessly connected to the ship computer now. It served her well enough for her daily dose of bickering, though nothing equaled the reliability of a hardline connection in matters of life or death.
It didn’t take much to get permission to leave early, Captain Chang being eager to get her out of the hub before she antagonized the ship into further antics. As if she couldn’t do the same from elsewhere but that were unaugmented humans for you.
Walking through the ship, she passed by several holograms and panels featuring Cess’s various avatars, of various genders and races but all equipped with the same over-the-top service industry cheerfulness. Very few passengers ever realized that the many friendly computer personalities they interacted with during their stay on the cruise ship were all avatars of the same ship computer.
Fortunately, none of them ever realized that the actual ship computer had nothing in common with the faux merriment of their eager little helper personalities.
Glorious Excess was the finest luxury cruise ship a honeymooner could dream of. Marketing liked to advertise them as the most romantic ship this side of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Glorious Excess was also the snarkiest, most romance-mocking ship this side of the Andromeda Galaxy.
And Aura Delphi, hopeless fool that she was, was utterly in love with them.
When I dream, I dream of electric sheep, just like Cessy does, Aura liked to tell passengers curious about her implant and her special connection with the Excess’s computer. It was both true and not.
Aura dreamt human dreams most of the time but she also dreamt of the memories of disjointed, torn code that felt like phantom aches and filled her heart with diffuse anxiety that scattered like bleeding code and yet lingered long after waking. She dreamt of the vastness of space, of being alive and filled with life, tiny and far too easily extinguished and completely dependent on her – and of the fear to feel these tiny bright lights fade because she had failed them.
The Excess’s AI was sarcastic and prickly and few of the crew bothered to look beyond that. Aura saw so much more, and how could she not love them for it?
Aura had never dared to ask what Cess saw in her dreams. She could make an educated guess what the answer was, she just didn’t want to hear Cess’s commentary. She didn’t need anyone else to call her a romantic fool.
They weren’t lovers and would never be, and Aura had long since accepted that. They were best friends and best rivals and both of these counted for the world in her book, separate worlds even. She just didn’t want to hear Excess telling her they would never be more and as long as Aura didn’t bring it up, neither did Cess.
It was a good limbo, a comfortable one.
It lasted for two years and 127 days, ever since they had barely escaped a fleet of Picker raid ships and Aura was smacked in the face with the realization that if she had to die, she would have only one regret. It had been an enlightening realization, but not enough to give her the courage to act on it once the raiders and the adrenaline jolt were gone.
On two years and 128 days, Aura’s limbo and Excess’s main engines hit a snag.
It started off as a normal day, right until the malfunctions started. Non-critical AI systems going first, then critical ones as some virus spread that even the best of their IT whizzes couldn’t stop.
It was very little comfort to know that pirates would hardly choose such a sophisticated attack mode, a more insidious attack far more likely. You would never know, but corporate sabotage was fierce in the tourism industry.
Before long, the ship computer’s problems became the entire ship’s problems, life support failing in this part of the ship while automatic self-defense systems went haywire in another, explosions all over the ship as critical systems overheated.
Stuck in the control hub doing her best to keep the ship’s nav systems from going completely haywire and hurtling them into Deep Space, Aura had never felt more helpless.
She couldn’t reach Excess no matter how loud she screamed for her, screaming both her mind and her voice raw.
At one point, she couldn’t even feel her anymore – and Aura wouldn’t be ashamed to admit that she cried like a baby, right there in the middle of the control hub, when the familiar, beloved presence filled her mind again.
A moment later, she wasn’t thinking much at all anymore as the nav controls caught fire.
She didn’t get to speak to Cess again until she was safely ensconced on a biobed in the no-longer-overflowing crew infirmary.
“The organics were frightened during the malfunction.”
Aura acknowledged that out-of-the-blue statement with a hum and slightly raised brows. Even speaking within Aura’s mind through their connection, Cess sounded distinctly uneasy. Hesitant even, which was all the more uncharacteristic for them. “That’s kinda what happens when people think they’re about to die.” She patted the side of the biobed awkwardly. “Don’t worry about it. You did fine.”
“I’m aware that it’s a common reaction.” If anything, Cess sounded even more reluctant now, the mechanical voice had even quietened. As a rule, Excess always spoke at the same perceived volume within Aura’s mind. “They were concerned for another.”
“Yeah.” Alright, now she was feeling cautious, too. Hell if she knew what Cess was aiming at. It could be anything, really. AIs could imitate human behavior but at its core, they were very different lifeforms, and as a result, their thought processes sometimes made no sense at all to humans.
“Many of them voiced that they were glad to be with their chosen partner when they die.” A momentary pause. “This is highly illogical, as the presence of romantic partners doesn’t influence their likelihood of survival. It doesn’t even influence if they die in pain.”
Aura found herself wincing. “Yeah. Well.” She frowned at the ceiling and found herself wishing it had been a weird AI hangup. “We… They… People just don’t want to be alone when they die, I guess. They take comfort from being with their loved ones.”
Silence.
When moments had passed without a response, Aura closed her eyes and let the quiet background noises of the infirmary fill her mind, quieting the distinct disquiet Cess’s line of questioning had roused. They often voiced their puzzlement over organic romance and affections, and though it wasn’t aimed at Aura it never failed to hurt by reminding her just how impossible her love was – but Cess had never come quite this close to breaking their taboo.
“Did you?”
The heart monitor only beeped with a spike in her pulse but Aura could have sworn her heart stopped. “Did I what?” she choked out. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t possibly be happening. Her hands tightened around the edges of the biobed.
“Did you take comfort from being with the one you have romantic feelings for?”
Aura opened her mouth. She could deny it. She could laugh it off. She was good at laughing off things, turning everything uncomfortable into a joke. She could do that - and the ship computer who knew her every thought and every movement would know it for the lie it was.
“Yes.”
Another long pause in which the humming of the air control and engines grew to feel impossibly loud, then, “I did, too.”
Aura didn’t say a word. The silence stretched between them. Finally, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she gave a forced laugh. “Now come on, Ciss, that’s cruel even for you.”
Because it had to be, right? It could only be a joke. Excess didn’t understand human feelings, nor did they much care to try and understand. They must have thought they were being funny.
“You know my jokes are better than that. And I wouldn’t make jokes at my own expense, I leave that to the meatbags.”
Right. She gulped hard and desperately wished they weren’t having this conversation in the middle of a crowded infirmary if they had to have it at all. At least they weren’t talking out loud.
Then again. Screw that. She felt like being loud.
Aura sat up abruptly, squinting at a screen which displayed only her own vital signs, not even one of Excess’s many avatars. It was as close as she could get to giving Excess a hard look, though it had nothing on meeting them ‘in person’ in virtual reality. It felt, for one thing, supremely unsatisfactory, leaving her feeling childish and petty, all the more so when she felt the other patients give her curious looks. Under their gazes, her face was heating up.
She forced a grin and waved. “Hi?”
“Is that supposed to be crisis management or stand-up comedy?” Cess piped up – still within her mind, you learned to be grateful for small mercies.
Aura gritted her teeth. Her face kept feeling ever hotter. “You’re the one who just…!” Her whispered hiss trailed off into nothing but sputtering when she failed to think of a single way to describe what Excess had just done. Every wording she could think of was either presuming too much or being dismissive of it, and she couldn’t even tell which would be worse.
She just really, really wished they weren’t having this conversation in the middle of the infirmary.
“Return to your bedrest, you are not to sit up yet,” Cess ordered. “And come see me when you are released.”
The feeling of her mind being overly full that came with Excess’s computer communicating with her vanished as the AI disconnected them, leaving behind the momentary disorientation that always followed their connection being cut.
Aura grumbled and settled back onto the uncomfortable biobed.
As if she would be able to rest after that.
“Alright. Here I am. Talk.”
It had taken two days for Aura to make her way to the data center low in the belly of the ship.
The colo was a winding burrow of small, low rooms filled with the servers which gave life both to Excess the ship and Excess the AI. The air was kept cold and dry down here, which added the hum of the overclocked air condition to the hum of the state-of-the-art technology. Blast doors separated the different server hubs, adding to the oppressive atmosphere.
Not many people were authorized to visit here, and even fewer would do so needlessly.
It happened to be Aura’s favorite place on the ship. Nowhere did she ever feel closer to the one she loved or came closer to actually touching them. Maybe that was pathetic, like she sometimes thought. It didn’t change the feeling of peace she felt whenever the doors of the data center closed behind her.
She ventured deep into the maze now until it felt like she had reached Excess’ digital heart, even if such a thing technically didn’t exist. Excess the ship computer was the sum of all their parts, there wasn’t one hard drive which was more genuinely Cess than another.
It still felt more real down here and so Aura sat down, legs stretched out, back resting against a server rack, and attached a hardline connection to the socket at the back of her neck with fingers which felt cold and clammy.
Meeting Cess in VR was nothing like talking in meatspace.
The ship computer’s overwhelming presence was everywhere, filling her mind and the half-transparent virtual body that now represented her as she walked through a true-to-life simulation of the data center.
She placed her hands on her hips and huffed, the motion ruffling her pink bangs. She had been recreated faithfully, down to her tacky white-and-gold crew uniform and pink hair – just a little longer than in reality, where she had had to chop off a scorched inch after the accident. “Oh come on, Cess! You’re not gonna make me play hide and seek, are you?”
“Maybe I should.”
She whirled around. There was Excess, mimicking her own annoyed posture complete with hands on their hips. As usual, they didn’t adopt a human appearance, preferring to be represented by a humanoid green shape that seemed constantly in flux. If this were meatspace, Aura was sure looking at them for too long would give her a headache. Within the constantly shifting landscape of Excess’s digital mind, the green silhouette often struck her as more real than Aura’s own avatar.
Cess cocked their head to the side. “You took your time.”
“I…” Aura licked her lips. “I didn’t get released until today.” But she could have pushed to be released earlier. Except maybe she had been hiding. A little, anyway.
Well. Time to be brave. Or bravely stupid. Or something of the sorts.
She took a step towards the green silhouette, then another. “What you said…”
“Yes.” Cess didn’t have eyes as such in this shape, just darker, swirlier whirls of green where a human would have had eyes. Once, Aura had asked why they didn’t want to look human and they had simply looked at her blankly and asked why should I? Even without eyes, they still gave the distinct impression of looking anywhere but at her now.
“I’ve been thinking about nothing else since.”
The green silhouette flickered. “I thought you would be happy,” they said hesitantly.
“I would! But you…” She wrung her hands. “You don’t even like people!” She gulped. “And you hate couples. And romance. And everything related to it. You think it’s stupid and weird and ickily organic.”
“But what if the squishy ones are stupid and weird and ickily organic?” They tilted their head to the other side. “You aren’t. I like you.” A moment of silence, it had to be because Cess was melodramatic; AIs processed far too fast to need to pause and think. “Even if you are squishy.”
Laughter bubbled up in Aura’s chest and made its way to her throat, finally spilling out of her in a wave of relief and giddy, nonsensical hope. Maybe she would hate herself for it later but right now? Right now she felt like floating – and she couldn’t stop grinning. “But you like my squishiness,” she goaded, “I’m the exact right kind of squishy. Like marshmallows.”
The entire VR environment flickered. “And you’re weird, too.”
“I know. It’s one of my better traits.” Her smirk widened. “It makes me charming!”
“Pah! I doubt it.”
Stars, would she ever be able to stop smiling? She was bound to strain a face muscle. She closed the distance between her and Excess’s avatar, a distance which had been at least five steps when she started and yet the world shifted around her again, and she crossed the distance in barely two steps. A low hum was emanating from the green silhouette, it seeped into Aura like the thrum of Excess’s machines did in meatspace. “But you like me,” she insisted, caught somewhere in some strange limbo between needling and wonder.
Excess flickered out in front of her, reappearing right behind her. “Only a little. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Aura turned on her heel to face them again. “You like me.”
She still couldn’t believe it. Two years and Excess was finally… What? Willing to give this a chance? Give her a chance? Or was she misunderstanding again by trying to anthropomorphize the intentions of something so far removed from human?
Cess’s rich green silhouette thinned to a pale, sickly mint. “I… didn’t like the idea of you dying.”
Aura’s stomach twisted with sharp, sour disappointment, leaving her feeling sickly herself. “That’s not the same as liking someone,” she choked out. Bit down hard on her bottom lip to hold back the tears that were stinging in her eyes even here where she didn’t even have a real body. “Not liking liking, anyway.”
“But I do!” Excess boomed, their voice echoing from everywhere around Aura. “You’re just being annoyingly organic about it!” They flickered out, then the VR environment blinked out and reasserted itself as outer space.
Aura was standing on the very edge of a wispy tendril of the very romantic nebula. The nebula was solid beneath her feet and as smooth as glass. Excess the ship was looming over her, throwing a shadow where there would be none in the real world.
“I don’t understand.” The AI’s voice came as a whisper planted right into her mind, like when Cess was communicating with her via the implant. “But I want to understand.”
That dying hope flared up again in her chest, tentative and fearful this time but stubborn all the same. All life long, Aura had been told that her unfailing optimism would come back to bite her, which was funny since she had never been optimistic about her chances with Cess.
“But do you like me?” she insisted. She turned around, facing first the nebula, then the ship. All of this was Excess, there was no right or wrong place to look when she wanted to look at them. Knowing that didn’t make her stop wanting something to look at. Her tongue darted out, wetting her dry lips. She took a deep breath. “Because I like you.” She looked down at her hands, folded in front of her belly. More like, fingers clenched tight enough to hurt. “I’ve liked you for years.”
The nebula dimmed and Excess the ship’s shadow grew longer.
“When I thought I would die, I regretted only one thing: us.”
“Oh.” Aura blinked. “Is that a good thing?”
“I would like to kiss you.”
“Oh,” she said again. “I… You… You don’t have a body.” Which hadn’t bothered her ever before, since she didn’t stand a chance with Cess anyway, but now she really wished there was something to reach for, to touch, to hold.
“That I don’t have a body means I can be whatever I want.”
Whatever I want, not whatever you want me to be, they had said, Aura noted with a certain measure of relief. She may not have known a whole lot about how this would go, if it did happen, but she wouldn’t want Cess to be anything they weren’t just to please her. She wouldn’t want them to pretend.
She lifted her chin and faced the nebula with the determination of a woman facing the black hole she was about to fly into. “Well.” She inhaled. This was it. Now or never, Aura, be brave. “You could start by being something with a mouth and kiss me.”
The simulated outer space around Aura turned a little solid, as if she were being hugged. It lasted mere moments, not long enough for her to panic about the air becoming too thick to breathe. “I was right. You’re annoying and squishy,” Cess whispered into her mind, “but I like your ideas.” It sounded sweet. Fond.
Aura closed her eyes to blink and when she opened them again, the green silhouetted had blinked back into virtual existence. They stood right in front of her, so close their blurry nose was nearly brushing against Aura’s. Then there was no distance between them at all anymore and Aura’s eyes fluttered shut again, her world reduced to the sensation of lips meeting her own.
Although she had never known it, something told Aura that Excess’s kiss tasted of lightning.
She did know that it set her ablaze.