"I- I Don't Understand," I Stammered. It Was Like Looking In A Mirror. I Backed Away From My Duplicate,

Penny and her eeveelutions

credit: mikripkm on X

Happy Pride! Featuring my darling wife @deliciousalgae and my wonderful sister @kaylasartwork!

future archaeologists will know you were (not) a boy

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

"Come home to me" kind of love

All of these "that computer is an angel" posts slightly irk me because they treat technology as something divorced from humanity, something only knowable by a privileged caste of acolytes and like. No!! The machine is inextricably linked with humanity!! We have studied reality enough to exploit its basic rules for our own purposes!! These nigh-eldritch constructs of silicon and steel were made by humans just like you!!! We look to the maddening depths of the universe and we find its secrets and we use them to bend it to our will!!! If machines are angels, then we are gods!!!

End-of-Splatoon thoughts.

Thinking about how since the very start, Splatoon has had a feature where players can draw and post artwork and spot them as graffiti on walls or billboards. Or how the weapons have always been paint brushes and rollers and ballpoint pens. Since its inception, Splatoon has been dedicated to engaging its players with the act of creation and creative expression, showing them how their art can build communities and (literally) change the world.

Thinking about finding golden human-made music discs buried underground for thousands of years, and a grand finale music festival. About the Voyager Golden Records. About those human handprints etched into concrete in Alterna. Did those human artists know it would end like this? First a fiery death and then, eventually, a worldwide celebration of music to represent our shared past, present, and future. Did they know that their songs, insignificant in the face of extinction, would one day become the solution that will save the next dominant life-form from the same fate?

Thinking about how eerily similar the Octarian domes are to Alterna. About how close Inklings and Octolings were to repeating the same mistakes as humans. But their doomed fates were undone not by some miracle technology or military power or a rocket, but by music.

Thinking about how humans wiped themselves out with war, and our parting gifts were liquid crystals that somehow paired with the DNA of primeval inklings and somehow infused them with our memories and culture and a Song. And 12,000 years in the future, that same Song will end a war.

Thinking about how art and music and punk culture and rock & roll and friendly competition and petty arguments and water guns aren’t uniquely human concepts, but the fundamental qualities of intelligent life. An inheritable spirit that can cross evolutionary bounds.

Thinking about the theme of Splatoon, that art and music and fun will not die with the human race. That every piece of art we create is a seed we sow for future generations to reap. That our legacy is ingrained into the crust of the earth. That long after we’re gone, the oceans will remember, and they’ll pick up where we left off.

Thinking about how Splatoon says that the essence of humanity –– the thing that will outlive us –– isn't war or prejudice or destruction or greed, it's a song.

no one talks abt it but domspace is so real. yes of course sometimes when you pet your sub's head or kiss them in the right spot they'll whine and open up and get so pliant, but have you ever thought about how you flip a switch with your dom? have you ever noticed how sometimes you say something suggestive or bend over or do something that pushes their buttons and their eyes gloss over and their upper lip starts to lift into a snarl? how their voice drops five octaves and suddenly every sentence ends with some condescending pet name? how their hand forms a fist and that sweet goofy person they usually are just isn't home anymore? how when you call them sir or daddy or master they grip your legs a little tighter, how they start to lose their mind in the pain in their hand from spanking you so many times? how quickly the pet names become bitch and whore and slut and fleshlight as you scratch down their back and moan for them? i just think it's an understudied phenomenon is all. unrelated does anyone want to do research

men, minors, and inc3st/dd1g/cn€ kink blogs dni

The prompt was ‘detention.’