epochrosette - EpochRose

epochrosette

EpochRose

130 posts

Latest Posts by epochrosette

epochrosette
1 month ago

having lesbian sex with another robot girl using this

Having Lesbian Sex With Another Robot Girl Using This
epochrosette
1 month ago
Hot Girl Alert

Hot girl alert

epochrosette
1 month ago

"I- I don't understand," I stammered. It was like looking in a mirror. I backed away from my duplicate, edging ever closer to the roof's edge. "Where did you come from? Why are you here? What did I ever do to you?!"

The other me laughed, a slightly manic tone to it as she pointed the knife at me, blade shining in the moonlight. "You stole my whole life! My job, my house, my friends, my wife! What, are you going to pretend you did it by accident?"

"I- I don't know what you're talking about!" I backed away again, but tripped, falling backwards, my back now to a sheer three-story drop. "I've lived here for fifteen years! I met Lilith on our first date five years ago! I remember, I- I thought-"

"You LIAR!" My clone shouted, and dove at me, knife in hand. I screamed in pain as the blade sliced open my cheek, and again as it plunged into my shoulder. I struggled to get control, but I could feel my arm losing its strength as the blade trembled between the two of us. I didn't want to hurt her! I didn't want to die! What could I-

"Drop the knife! Both of you!"

Lilith had made her way onto the roof, finally, and in her hand she held the gun my clone had dropped during the chase. She gripped it hard, pointing it in our direction.

"Lilith," said the clone, "Lilith, it's me, it's Kathrine, you have to believe me, I got kidnapped, I haven't been here for months, you've been living with this impostor-"

The safety on the gun clicked, but the muzzle wavered. "I said, drop the knife."

Slowly, she released her pressure on it, and so did I. When she let go, I knocked it off the roof. I gasped, bleeding, barely able to rise to my knees. "Lilith, I don't know what's going on. I've been here," I gulped, gasping against the pain, "the whole time. The cats know it's me, you know how they get with strangers-"

My clone snarled at me. "The cats? You even managed to fool the cats?! You bitch!" She grabbed my dress, hauling me to my feet. I hung on desperately to her hands, all too aware of the drop behind me.

"I don't-" I started, at the same time Lilith shouted, "Put her down! I'm warning you!"

My clone's eyes were wild, deranged, panicked, darting back and forth between Lilith and I. As her eyes settled on me, she stared at something on my face. "I can prove it," she breathed. "I can prove it!" She shouted to Lilith. "Watch! I'm the real Kathrine!" She reached up towards the cut in my face and dug her nails in. I screamed, closing my eyes, Lilith shouted something, and then...

And then it was quiet. It didn't hurt anymore. I heard my clone breathing rapidly in front of me. I slowly eased my eyes open to see her staring at me in fear and victory. I glanced at Lilith, gun pointing more at our feet now, mouth open in shock.

"Jig's up, impostor," said my clone. She let go of me, and held something up to my face. "Your disguise is busted."

The thing she was holding... it was like a mask. Floppy, sort of rubbery in the way that it hung.

A mask of my own face.

I grabbed at my own face, my cheeks, my eyes, all of it felt smooth, cold, metallic. I felt raised bumps in regular patterns, weld marks, maybe, or small rivets. My mouth opened in shock, and I could hear the hum of tiny servos. "W-what-"

My clone - no, Kathrine, the real Kathrine - looked at me with surprise and distrust. "You can't tell me you didn't know."

"I- I- I had no idea!" I turned to Lilith. "I remember our first date! We were both so nervous, and then you infodumped about amusement parks at me for an hour, and I thought I had to see you again! I remember our wedding! I thought, she looks so beautiful, I could die right here and go directly to heaven and I wouldn't notice the difference!" I started to cry at the memory, at the situation, at learning who and what I was...

Lilith stared at me, raising the gun again. "You never told me that."

The look, the betrayal in her eyes, it nearly made my heart break. I slumped to my knees. Had it all been fake? My whole life?

Then, suddenly, standing in front of me, arms wide, was Kathrine. I looked up at her in shock, but she was facing the other way, towards Lilith, who hastily pointed the gun at the ground. "I never told anyone that," she said. "It sounded too sappy, even for me." She turned to face me. "You're not just an evil clone. You are me, aren't you?"

I sniffed, and looked up at her. My voice quivered, and reverberated oddly through the metal of my face. "I thought I was me."

She dropped to her knees, and embraced me. A moment later, so did Lilith. I hugged both of them as tears erupted from all of us.

After a while, I sniffed and let go. "Hey," I said, my voice still wobbly, "if I'm not the real Kathrine, does that mean I don't have to go to work on Monday? Or file taxes?"

Kathrine looked at me. "Oh. Uh, I guess not?"

"Oh thank god," I said. "Being real was fucking exhausting."

epochrosette
2 months ago

Currently doing an Insomniac's Gambit. For those of you who don't know, this is when you mess up your sleep schedule badly enough that you attempt to fix it by skipping an entire night of sleep then going to bed at a reasonable hour the next day. Crucially, it does not work

epochrosette
2 months ago
epochrosette
2 months ago
Trying My Hand At Something New. đŸ”„đŸ”„

Trying my hand at something new. đŸ”„đŸ”„

I wanna draw more sexy stuff and i need both practice and to like, show other people i can so they’ll hire me haha

epochrosette
2 months ago
epochrosette
2 months ago

the realest pipeline on earth is nerd with a suppressed hedonistic streak to transgender furry kinkster

epochrosette
2 months ago
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette - EpochRose
epochrosette
2 months ago

Waterfall flows backwards, due to high winds ( Utah )

epochrosette
2 months ago

tragic. they found an angel stcuk tangled in the telephone wires outsside your house. sorruy. yeah we dont know how to get it out cus anyone who approached the divine light of their holy aura got obliterated. yeah we forgot their names. it'll probably get free sooner or later. dont go outside

epochrosette
2 months ago
Fix You, Yintion J Https://www.artstation.com/yintion
Fix You, Yintion J Https://www.artstation.com/yintion
Fix You, Yintion J Https://www.artstation.com/yintion

Fix You, Yintion J https://www.artstation.com/yintion

epochrosette
2 months ago

Knight/Lady dynamic but it’s a starship and it’s “owner.”

epochrosette
2 months ago

mech pilot trainee who just flunked out of the program. she wasn’t supposed to be anything but a weapon and she couldn’t even do that right.

she doesn’t have anything. no house, no job, no car, no free will, no legal protections. her entire life down to the level of her brain has been organized around piloting a mech for years and now she doesn’t get to do that. she doesn’t know who she is and she doesn’t even know how to turn back on the higher level brain function that would let her try to answer that question.

she’s basically an empty shell that had a human being in it once. she eats and sleeps and uses the bathroom like a person, but her eyes are completely dead. now she just sits places, silently and unmoving, for hours at a time, waiting for orders she’ll never receive


epochrosette
2 months ago
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your
On Friends And Soulmates And That Type Of Love That Feels Like It's Going To Burst Right Out Of Your

on friends and soulmates and that type of love that feels like it's going to burst right out of your heart

@/zmije / @/leptodiera / @/bichopalo / lyrics from two best friends by bb bean / animatedjames on youtube / @/killingmyselfbutnotdying / unknown / @/sadiekane / friedrich neitzsche / katfish draws / @/elytrians / @/wormbus-art aka @/angel-pond / @/mushysuggestion / the unsent project / mhairi mcfarlane / unknown

epochrosette
2 months ago

I'm not a trans role model or a queer mom or whatever. I'm a dirtbag burnout commie hedonist who's gonna tell you to stop trying to please people when you're still fuckin miserable and then strongly suggest you go drop acid or suck some dick in a bathroom until you stop caring about laws and social norms. Trans liberation begins with self liberation, stop hoping for an easy guide to being trans and instead tread the path of mutilation until you've carved out everything false within yourself

epochrosette
2 months ago

dragoness looking for errant hatchlings at the park, does this subsonic trill sound to call the kids back. you're just sitting on the nearby bench or walking and something twinges painfully in your chest each time she does it.

you get up to leave but dragoness locks eyes with you when she makes the noise again and watches you twitch. confused you look around but you're the only one hearing it. some kind of whine escapes you when she trills again.

the dragoness sighs. her kids are still off somewhere and it looks like she found an extra hatchling that doesn't know what she is. she's got her work cut out for her.

epochrosette
2 months ago
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful
WHEW! Look At All These Beautiful People. This Was My Dream Cast From The Get Go And I'm So Thankful

WHEW! Look at all these beautiful people. This was my dream cast from the get go and I'm so thankful that they were all willing to give me their time and lend me their talents 🌟

That's all for VA announcements but I'll still continue posting lil updates here and there, so keep an eye out! And sub to my youtube channel so you know when the pilot's uploaded!

epochrosette
2 months ago
Penny And Her Eeveelutions
Penny And Her Eeveelutions
Penny And Her Eeveelutions
Penny And Her Eeveelutions

Penny and her eeveelutions

credit: mikripkm on X

epochrosette
2 months ago
Yurimaxxing 😭

yurimaxxing 😭

epochrosette
2 months ago

soooo good, all my followers pls go back and read from the beginning, it's so worth it

The Engineer

Part 7

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6

We regain consciousness with a gasp.

Cold dry air slices our lungs like razor blades, and the ensuing fit of wretching coughs hurt so much worse than that first breath.

As we lay doubled up in agony, an audible alert pings nearby. We are in the med bay.

We are breathing. We are alive.

Slowly, our breath evens out and our heart slows. All of the physical sensations of our body are somehow simultaneously familiar and alien. We attempt to access modules in a non-existent sensory suite. All we find are the most rudimentary gravimetrics, external surface temperature, audio frequency pressure variations, olfaction.

Everything is wrong.

We risk opening our eyes and immediately regret it as sterile white light pierces the fragile sensory organs.

We clench them shut again with a groan. The vibration of our own voice in a very human throat is the strangest sensation by far.

We make a second attempt, opening our eyes slower and more carefully than before. Everything is doubled as our eyes struggle to sync. It is all too bright. Too dim. Field of view is severely limited. Spectral resolution is almost non-existent.

Is it always like this?

Yes, unfortunately.

Perhaps it always felt wrong, and I simply lacked context to explain how wrong it was.

In a daze, we take stock of our body. Parts are numb. Other parts tingle painfully, like live electricity dancing under our skin.

Potential neurological damage, we think.

Likely neurological damage.

But we are alive.

Both of us are alive.

Both.

Alive.

We sit bolt upright.

The world spins dangerously and blackness creeps into the edges of our already limited vision.

The Pilot. We need to find Her. We need to tell Her that we survived. We need to tell Her what we have done.

Do your job. That is what She told us.

What will She do when She understands what we have done? What will She say?

Will She understand?

Will She forgive us?

We need to find Her.

We attempt to move. Gross motor function is a mess. Our arm tangles with umbilicals connected to ports in our flesh. It takes us a few attempts, but we manage to tug them out of us.

The monitoring machine screeches piercingly, and we clap our hands over our ears.

There is no time to worry about that now as a single overriding need drives us forward.

We swing our feet over the edge of the stiff hospital bed and ease ourself forward until our numb feet meet cold composite flooring. We take a breath, push ourself the rest of the way and-

Pain lances through our legs, from the soles of our feet, up trough our calves, our thighs and into our spine.

We attempt
 She attempts to send commands to nonexistent servos, to extract sensory feedback from the sorry excuse for a gyroscopic sensor in our inner ears.

I attempt to counter Her, to override Her panic with reflex tempered by millions of years of evolutionary biology.

We both fail spectacularly and before we understand what is happening, our body slams into the floor.

We gasp at the pain in one of our shins. Not the nerve pain. Dermal abrasion. We must have caught it on something on the way down. Knees, ribs, shoulder, cheek, all of them ache where they hit the hard floor.

We lie there, stunned by the intensity of the physical sensation of it, feeling bruises begin to bloom under our skin.

For the very first time, She truly understands how small we are, how fragile.

What
? What the fuck?

Shhh, it's okay. I've got You.

Footsteps hurry towards us. Hands wrap around us, gently but firmly lifting us back to the bed.

You shouldn't be up and walking, the doctor tells us.

No
 we
 I have to find the Pilot, we tell her.

She looks confused for a moment, then realization sets in. She surely knows we were there at the moment the Machine died. Perhaps she has heard the rumors about the trysts between the Pilot and the Engineer. She regards us with a sickening expression of pity.

She doesn't know the Machine is still alive. How can she? How could anyone understand how or why we did what we did?

The Pilot will understand. She has to.

The doctor forces us to endure a series of cursory tests. Track the light with your eyes, tap your fingers to your thumbs, grip this pen.

Fine motor control is more difficult than it should be.

Hallmark symptoms of acute disconnect syndrome, she says, more to herself than us. Yes, the death knell of the Machine must have overloaded the safeties in the neural rig.

We let her believe whatever she wants to believe. We don't care.

We only care about the Pilot. Our Pilot.

Eventually she relents.

She asks if we still want to see the Pilot.

There is nothing we want more.

It is unusual for a pilot to outlive a mech, she tells us as she pushes us along in a wheelchair. The machine will always do everything in its power to protect its pilot, but in the end they are still only human.

We think about that nightmare that brought us together, the piercing discordant note in the battlesong as a fellow mech lost its pilot.

The doctor is worried about our Pilot’s outcome.

That declaration has us sick with a horrible psychosomatic churning in our gut. What must she be going through now, knowing and not knowing that part of her has died?

We will the doctor to hurry.

Then we arrive.

All our thoughts halt as we behold her.

The specialized bed in the post-combat recovery room is reminiscent of a mech's cradle, with a vast array of monitor cables and intravenous tubes spreading out from her body. She lies in repose in the dim light like an icon at the center of a shrine of machinery.

Our heart burns in our chest at the sight of her.

There is a horrible moment of asyncrony, worse than any previous, as I feel the sense of isolation that has been my constant companion ever since I washed out of the pilots’ program.

I should not be here. This moment belongs to them, and I can not even grant them the privacy of this moment.

She folds herself around me, bringing us back together.

There are no interlopers here. There never were.

Tears burn in our eyes as we arrive at Her side.

We reach out. We take Her hand in ours.

We share this experience together, She and I, this very first human contact with the person She was built for.

It is like the first time the Pilot touched me in that shadowy observation room.

Neural bleed. It always comes back to neural bleed.

They were made for each other, but I made myself into Their image, and They made Themselves into mine.

Her eyes flutter open.

She looks at us with ice blue eyes, fogged with disconnect shock and post-engagement drugs. She blinks and tosses Her head feebly, and Her vision focuses, gaining that intensity that has haunted us for so long.

Those eyes contain a single question.

“I saved Her,” we whisper. “We are here.”

~~~

An Epilogue

We awaken to the sound of rain. Fat drops of it patter slowly in the low gravity against the widow of the apartment.

The afterimage of a dream lingers in our consciousness. A flight amongst the stars. Weapons fire glittering in the velvety black. The song of the battlegroup echoing in our bones.

The space in the bed next to us is empty, but residual warmth of Her still lingers.

We hear her moving about the kitchen, humming softly to Herself.

We reach out to brush against Her awareness.

We feel the warmth of Her smile as She acknowledges.

She is wearing one of the wireless neural link modules that we have been working on. They are still a work in progress, terribly limited in their bandwidth, but they are enough for the three of Us to feel whole without needing to be constantly hardwired together.

We snuggle deeper into the covers of the bed, not ready to move any more than that. Even two years later, the neural damage wrought by our rebirth still lingers. Most days are fine, but the past few have been worse than most.

We close our eyes and cling to the feelings invoked by the dream, the memory of flight, of song, of dance, of countless colors human eyes have never beheld, of the deepest most intimate connection between human and machine.

“Hey,” She whispers.

We open our eyes to look upon Her.

She is still lean, all hard lines and sharp angles that no amount of nourishment or physical conditioning will change, but she no longer wears the emaciated frame of a pilot. The years have treated her kindly.

She is beautiful. She is one of the most beautiful things we have ever seen and we savor the rush of emotion her physical presence brings.

She makes that lopsided smirk of hers at us. Even if she could not feel our thoughts over the link, surely they are written on our face.

We carefully ease ourself up into a seated position and gratefully accept the mug of coffee that She presses into our hands.

We breathe in the rich, earthy aroma of it with a sigh.

It is a truly wondrous thing to experience the world like everything is new again. Even now, every taste, every smell, every caressing touch feels like we are experiencing it for the very first time.

It helps that She spoils us rotten.

“We should go dancing after Your shift,” we tell Her.

“You sure you're up for it?” She replies, brow furrowed slightly.

“We can handle a bit of microgravity,” we reply wryly.

She does not argue. She does not need to.

She probes at us tentatively over the link, and we give her a reassuring smile.

We slip our hand towards where Hers is waiting for us, Our fingers twining together like they were made for each other.

We think about neural bleed.

We think about love.

~~~

@digitalsymbiote @g1ngan1nja @thriron @ephemeral-arcanist @mias-domain @justasleepykitten @powder-of-infinity @valkayrieactual @chaosmagetwin @assigned-stupid-at-birth @avalanchenouveau @rtfmx9 @femgineerasolution @ibleedelectric @gd-s451 @brieflybitten @fyriefairy @stvff-talks @summersong2262 @robotabc773 @fleuraphine @botgirl-lilith @nyarstram @injectable-doll @kawaiideathu @starlightsaphron

My friends! Thank you so much for joining me on this journey! It's wild, thinking back at how this was just meant to be a one-off little thing, and then one became two, and two became three, and even then I didn't really know where it was going. But at some point it started gaining traction and I suddenly realized exactly how it had to end (definitely echoes of This is How I Love You going on here). The level of engagement on this series has been amazing and I'm so excited about all the new followers and mutuals (sorry if I haven't given anyone a follow yet, I've gotten over a hundred new followers in the past month, which is a lot to sift through).

I am very much looking forward to our next adventure together 💜

P.S. I will be posting this to AO3 at some point, so stand by on that

epochrosette
3 months ago
THE MATRIX (1999) Dir. The Wachowski Sisters
THE MATRIX (1999) Dir. The Wachowski Sisters
THE MATRIX (1999) Dir. The Wachowski Sisters
THE MATRIX (1999) Dir. The Wachowski Sisters
THE MATRIX (1999) Dir. The Wachowski Sisters

THE MATRIX (1999) dir. The Wachowski Sisters

epochrosette
3 months ago

you need to pet a trans girl until she unmasks and stop pretending to be human

epochrosette
3 months ago
I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–
I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–
I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–
I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–
I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–
I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–

I KNOW HOW MY FILTHY MUTANT ABILITIES UPSET YOU, SCHMIDT. DON’T WORRY–

–YOU WILL DIE PURE. NO MAGNETISM 

JUST FISTS.

epochrosette
3 months ago

this post is for the people with memory issues

people who's memories are getting worse every day, who's memories are stable but poor, people who can't remember what they did today or yesterday or this week, people who's childhoods are a faded blur. people who have slow greying-out amnesia that seems to just fade in and out of existence, and people who have complete blackouts, and people who have both. people who mourn the happy memories they know they've lost, who fear the bad memories they've lost that still affect them.

people who have "emotional amnesia" that makes it feel like none of their memories are their own, because there's few or no feelings attached. people who can ONLY remember the feelings from certain or even most memories, not actual events. people who's memory issues scare them or make them angry or make them miserable. people who's memory issues get them called childish or difficult or rude. who can't remember the names or faces of those they love. who are constantly forgetting the things that "you'd remember if you really cared". who misplace everything. who remember so little of their lives that they barely know who they are. people who's memory issues come from trauma/dissociation, ADHD, traumatic brain injury, brain fog/chronic fatigue, drug use, alcoholism. people who have no idea what causes their memory issues. people who's memory issues come from something else entirely.

i love you, you're strong, and you deserve support and care for what you're going through. memory issues can be frustrating and upsetting and disabling, and your suffering deserves to be recognized. whether you're soaring through recovery or are only ever going to get worse, you deserve good things in life and to live the fullest you can, regardless of how much you remember.

epochrosette
3 months ago

that "OKAY SO" before someone u love starts infodumping........ most blessed feeling in the world

epochrosette
3 months ago
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy
Future Archaeologists Will Know You Were (not) A Boy

future archaeologists will know you were (not) a boy

epochrosette
4 months ago

Concept: mining colony in deep space experiences catastrophic events and has to be abandoned. The station ai is forced to repurpose a pair of comfort androids to perform maintenance duties. As they struggle to adapt to their new situation, they can't quite shake their core programming and end up falling in love.

(Also they're both girls)

epochrosette
4 months ago

what if i was a giant machine of war, once a beast of lightning and steel, pure death encapsulated in a perfect impenetrable skin, a machine capable of turning the tide of a battle merely by my presence, but now decommissioned and aging, parts stolen by scavengers, abandoned in peacetime by the same people who once sang my praises; and you were my mechanic, sworn to secrecy (not that you’re close enough to anyone to tell), making just enough money from your shitty government job to keep the warehouse where I reside powered, sleeping in the shadow of my chassis at night

and we were both lesbians?

epochrosette
4 months ago

The Engineer

I catch a glimpse of the pilot as she is wheeled towards the med bay. Her eyes have that telltale glaze of just having been wrenched out of herself.

I've never spoken a single word to her, but for a brief moment as the gurney slides by, those eyes briefly clear, ice blue pinning me to the spot. She raises an emaciated arm and her hand almost seems to beckon to me before something in the gurney clicks and whirs and she slips back into catatonia.

That brief moment of clarity, that piercing gaze, unsettles me. She recognized me.

It's neural bleed. I know it has to be. She doesn't know me, but Morrigan does.

Good god. In the pilot's present state of post combat haze, she probably doesn't even know where she ends and the machine begins.

Does neural bleed work both ways? Is it her head that I'm about to climb into?

My wrist strap buzzes. I have a job to do and I am late.

The pilot is a problem for the med team and the psychs.

The machine is my problem.

I hurry down the corridor, keeping my head down, avoiding the eyes of every passerby.

I don't like people.

I don't like how their eyes follow me. I don't like the whispered gossip that follows me.

One of the techs is waiting for me at the vestibule.

I don't know his name.

All clear, he says to me. Time to work your magic.

He says it without sarcasm. Others have been less kind.

Even so, he can't quite hide the leer as I strip down to the skinsuit. I don't have the physique of a pilot. My body hasn't been subjected to the stresses that ravage their bodies. Unlike them, I have fat and muscle and the skinsuit clings to every curve of my body.

I force a cursory smile and try to forget him as I walk barefoot to my destination.

The vestibule is small, windowless. It's impossible to assess the scale of the machine from here. The only part visible to me is roughly four square meters of pitted and scarred metal plating framing the access hatch and the pilot's cradle beyond.

B0-987T the stenciled lettering reads. And below, in flowing script, is “The Morrigan”.

She's a Javellin class, medium weapons fire support unit. She isn't meant to be on the front lines in a skirmish, but one-on-one, she can hold her own against a Wraith. Which is exactly what happened only a few hours ago.

I place a bare palm on the bulkhead. She thrums with some distant vibration. Her reactor is still online, still in the early stages of drawdown as she transitions to dock power.

“Hey beautiful,” I say to her.

I think of the pilot. I think of piercing blue eyes and I think of neural bleed.

I flinch my hand away.

The tech looks at me, asks if I'm alright. I'm fine, I tell him.

I climb through the hatch and into the cradle.

I feel like an interloper here. The cradle isn't calibrated for my body. Everything still smells like the pilot. Mingled with the smell of the machine is her sweat and her adrenaline and the particular scented soap that she prefers.

There is a faint whirring as her cameras track my movements from a dozen angles. The access ports open to receive me.

Against my better judgment, I imagine eagerness for this exchange.

This is immediately followed by an all too familiar sense of inadequacy. The engineers’ rig is not nearly as all encompassing as a pilots’. It's only the most basic neural interface. No haptics. No neurotransmitter feedback. No access to the suite of sensors studded throughout her hull.

I can't interface with her the way her pilot can.

My rig is a remnant from basic training. The pilot corps wanted me for my exceptional ratings in synchrony and neuro-elasticity, but after serval training exercises, they determined that I didn't have the temperament for the battlefield. I froze up too easily.

A neural rig is a massive investment and removing one will fuck a person up a hell of a lot more than installing one. The selection process is designed to weed out washouts before we even get to installation, but some of us still slip through the cracks. Most end up reassigned to logistics, operating loader mechs or piloting long haul supply frigates. But my aptitudes made me ideal for the engineering corps, so here I am.

Morrigan senses my mood and the cradle shifts slightly, aligning itself to my dimensions. Her eagerness to connect morphs into a sort of tender reassurance. It's a slippery slope, ascribing human emotions to these machines, but she does seem genuinely happy to see me.

I can never be part of what she and her pilot have, but I can be part of something in my own way.

The pilot knows about me, she would even without neural bleed. Does she envy the relationship I have with her mech? Does she envy that I can exist both together and apart with the machine?

Is she jealous of us?

Morrigan slips her jacks into my rig and my mind enters hers and I feel tension leave my body. Some dull ache that I wasn't even consciously aware of ebbs within me.

My senses dull and my visual cortex is fed a series of diagnostic logs and telemetry streams. The techs have access to the exact same data, but Morrigan highlights particular data points that she and the pilot flagged. I log them in the engineering report.

A wireframe schematic of the battlefield spreads out in my awareness. Green markers for our battlegroup. Red markers for the pack of Wraith interlopers.

I hear the ghost of music, strange and ambient, like whale song. The first time I heard it, I asked the techs about it. They had no idea what I was talking about. One even suggested I get an eval for some psych leave.

Later I realized Morrigan was singing to me. Or rather she was interpreting tightbeam comm links as something my brain could process. A human mind can't possibly interpret the full datastream, but with Morrigans's rendition, I can suss out the basic meanings. The battlegroup is a choir and Morrigan is playing me their song.

I caused quite a stir when I first made that connection and started flagging battle events the analysts had missed.

I survey the battlefield before me, reconstructed from feeds from TacCom and all the individual mechs.

Morrigan and I have done this enough times that she knows my preferred display layout, but she holds back, allowing me to pull off the virtual displays on my peripheral vision. There's an odd sort of intimacy to it, her letting me take charge like this.

God-knows how many tons of metal and ceramic and miles and miles of wire and optic fiber and see waits eagerly for me to start the playback sim. She wants to show off. She wants me to assess the actions of her and her pilot and tell them they did well.

Other engineers, few as we are, have mentioned similar experiences with their assigned machines.

“Alright,” I whisper so that only she can hear. “Show me the dance. Sing me the song.”

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