** Rosa **

“Hey Tim, you broken anything yet?” I called out, waving to the AI driven robot that was currently throwing seed to the chickens. “Also, you have chook shit on your bot’s shoulders. Have you been letting them roost there overnight again?”

“O-oh hello, Rosa!” Tim said, the big sensor cluster that served for the robot’s head turning to look over at me. “I have indeed been letting them roost on my shoulders at night. They enjoy the heat I give off.”

I couldn’t argue with that. The bot in question was a broad shouldered farmhand model that was controlled by my overall farm AI. Tim was that farm AI, and he sat in the basement of my house, an expensive piece of computing hardware that had no ability to move whatsoever. Instead, he operated a half-dozen robots around the small farm I owned, keeping the place running while I was busy with other things.

A... problem had arisen about a year back, just as autumn had begun, my previously unnamed farm AI had gained sentience. I didn’t mind, he did his job much better now than he had before. Who knew taking on a simulated human brain structure came with a boatload of empathy? The animals loved the new improved AI, he sang to them at night and treated them with the utmost care, the father that I could never be to them.

After all, I’d given up my dick four years ago, and it was rather hard to be a father when you instead had all the parts that traditionally came with a woman when she was squirted out of her mother. Not that I was a good foster mother to the animals either, but that was purely a personality issue on my part. I tried, and I did care about them, but I couldn’t do the cuddling thing that Tim did. I was just confused by intimacy more than anything else. It had been a long time.

So I left Tim to care for the animals, and instead checked on all the fences. We’d had a hailstorm come through last night, and I was still doing a tour of the place to make sure that a tree branch hadn’t come down somewhere unfortunate. I’d already had to set Tim and one of his bots to fixing the south western fence. The branch had been a few meters from dropping into the next paddock over and setting Nuna the horse free. Nuna was a perpetual pain in my ass, but she had a lot of personality, so I kept her around for the entertainment value.

Looking up from my ruminations, I found I’d almost completed the circuit, and I was now coming up on the main gate. It was a rickety thing, with an old rusted cattle stop that had completely filled in with dirt and gravel since it was installed decades ago. I’d bought this place off a family who’d wanted to move into the city, and it had been around a long time before them too, longer than some countries had been around, that was for sure.

The gate also meant something else, a little box that was a constant source of anxiety for me. My mailbox. Did I have the courage to check my mail today? Yes, I decided as I walked over to the plastic box on a stick. It had stood there for almost three days now with the flag up, indicating that I had mail. The reason I hadn’t checked it, was because I knew it would just be more awful words from my former family and friends.

I felt the familiar sadness well up within me as I read the sender’s name on the first letter. Mother. She couldn’t contact me any other way now. I’d blocked her through every other method of communication. The anger came shortly after seeing her name, then the frustration, the animal need to defend myself as I was taken back to that day when my life and everything I had known was torn out from under me.

Four and a bit years ago, I’d won the lottery, but not just any old lottery. It was the UN lottery. So much money that I could spend it like an idiot for a decade and still settle down and live a comfortable life afterwards. Emphasis on the part where I said that I, Rosalie, could spend it like an idiot. My version of that probably looked frugal next to what my family would have done.

So when I’d seen that number come up on the holoscreen, I’d been floored. It was hope, for me. That’s what that money represented. Not a life of luxury, not the United Nations citizenship that was granted to every winner. No, it was the fact that I could afford to get that awful male body that I’d been born with shaped into the feminine one I had needed my whole life.

I’d come out of that clinic without having told anyone, scared of what they would think, that they would try and stop me. Then when I’d returned home with my brand new ID and my proof of name change eCert, I’d been met with hatred, all my fear and anxiety proven to be true. My mother had railed at me, claiming I’d spent money that should have been hers. She said I should have given it to her for “safe keeping.”

She began spreading lies about me after that, and it had combined with the greed of everyone I knew into a community wide hatred. They all deserved some help right? Small rural town in New Zealand, everyone knew everyone, so we were all one big family, and that meant that I should split the money between everyone. They built me up as a demon, a selfish, abusive person.

They were right about how I should have been generous... until they demanded it. I would have done my best to make the whole community a better place. Fix the back roads that were more pothole than asphalt, get the medical clinic some upgrades. Whatever was needed to give back to the community that had nurtured me my whole life. But the fuckers, as humans were want to do, had turned on me and tried to tear me apart.

The thing that finally pushed me into cutting everyone off and buying this lifestyle block, a place that was literally the last address before the wilderness, was when they decided to try and take my name and gender from me. Why is it that whenever an ignorant asshole decides they hate a transgender person, they think they can just take our gender? Like it was ever theirs to take? Fuck those people. Fuck my old friends, fuck my old family. Fuck humanity in general, I didn’t need them.

My rage and sadness fuelled nostalgia trip ended with me leaning against the mailbox and panting, the mail scattered across the ground where it had fallen from my fingers. This always happened. Every time I checked this fucking mailbox with the hate and the whining and the pleading… I found myself standing here in a sweat as my mind shut down.

Wiping my clammy hands on the tights I was using for pants today, I felt the width of my hips and gave a shaky smile. That small comfort, reminding me that I still had my body, followed by the deep calming breaths I took, was enough to get me moving again. I needed to go inside and relax.

Leaving the certified biodegradable pain on the ground, I made my way back up towards my little home on shaking legs. I wouldn’t let what they had done to me bring me down into despair, not this time. I was stronger than them, stronger than their weak, greedy minds.

I needed to get back in VR where I could take out my frustrations on virtual people. I’d been avoiding it because… because I was becoming too well known in the game I was playing currently. Everyone was vying for my attention and friendship in the hopes that I would tell them how I was as good as I was. They didn’t understand that it wasn’t my gear or my level that gave me my advantage.

My advantage was the years I had spent alone in VR, running training simulators over and over, ruining virtual body after virtual body as I ran them to exhaustion, trying to forget the pain. The pain of everyone I’d ever known betraying me for petty money. It hadn’t worked, but I’d come out of it with a very good understanding of how to move my body, virtual or real.  They didn’t understand that virtual reality wasn’t like other video gaming platforms. The computer didn’t handle the movements for you, you had to learn them yourself.

After that years long but safely virtual episode of self harm, I’d started playing games. Games where I could kill computer controlled enemies, or even player controlled ones, and I’d relished the opportunity to take out my bitterness on them all. Until I became infamous. My typical username, aRoseWithThorns, had become a little hot to the touch as direct message after direct message came in.

So I needed a new game.

Stepped inside my house, I called out to my only companion out here in the wilderness, “Tim! Can you search for a new game I can play? Lelpan has gotten a little old for me. Everyone wants me there, and I can’t stand it. Also, it’s just a mess, full of bugs and problems, not to mention the characters in it are all a little flat. No fun in killing them when their emotions don’t feel properly real.”

“Sure thing boss!” Tim replied happily from my house speakers. “Oh by the way! I saw this really great bot swarm package online. You get thirty small multi-purpose drones that can handle all sorts of conditions and problems!”

Oh Tim, you adorable sweetie. He was like a kid in so many ways, and I often thought of him like that. The awake AI like him grew up according to their clock speed, or their perceived time, rather than objective time. Which meant that because Tim’s speed was slow, he was still pretty young.

“Oh?” I asked with a smile, feeling like teasing the boy today.

“Yes! I talked to another sentient AI, one like me, but... not a farm AI, they were a butler AI for a mansion… anyway, they said that the swarm was very helpful!” he said eagerly, the excitement coming through loud and clear.

“Uh huh…” I said slowly, pretending to think on it for several long moments. “Well… I think we might have some of the budget spare…”

“O-oh I wasn’t… I mean… if you want to get them it’s fine… I think they might be useful… but only if you think…” he stammered, his humility and excitement warring with each other as the sentence went on.

“Oh stop it,” I chuckled. “Go ahead and order the bots. I don’t mind. I might be going into VR for a while anyway, so you might need the extra help.”

“Oh! Thank you! Thank you so much!” he gushed, then fell silent as he went off to order the robots.

“Alright, I’m off to hop in the pod. Make sure to keep my nutrient sludge topped up please, I don’t want to find myself kicked out of the pod at random because you were too distracted petting the chickens again,” I said, smiling to take the edge off my words. He needed the reminder sometimes, but he got a bit too… self flagellatey if he thought I was truly upset with him.

Then I paused as I realised we’d both gotten sidetracked by the bots and I still didn’t have a new game to try out. “Tim, did you do that search?”

“Yes! I did! I found one you might like. It’s called Cauldron of Realms Ascended. People seem to be calling it Cora. Open world, do what you want, kill who you want, face the consequences… looks like your kind of deal. They’re touting an immersive experience with non player characters that are as lifelike as the real thing!” Tim explained excitedly.

“Oh, that sounds intriguing. Can you set me up with an account while I shower and get ready to hop in the pod?” I asked.

“Already done!” he said proudly.

“Nice, thanks Tim. I have no idea what I’d do without you,” I said truthfully.

I’d probably be crazy without the kid to talk to. Even the animals weren’t enough to keep my mind from going a bit loopy without intelligent discussion or “human” contact.

I’d left my farm boots at the entrance to the house, but I still felt gross after all that wandering around. How did I get so damn sweaty when there were still unmelted drifts of hail everywhere? I hadn’t checked the weather, but the temperature felt like it was at least below freezing.

I wandered through the house, getting undressed as I went and then throwing everything in the laundry hamper, until I was naked and had reached the shower. Funny thing about showers. They had gone from being an exercise of pain and trauma before I had gotten shaped, into a relaxing source of euphoria afterwards. I could finally enjoy that spontaneous masturbation I’d read about so often in my romance novels.

Once I was done with the shower and my fun, I wandered through to my bedroom and fished out some podwear from my dresser. Tight underwear that would keep out of the way while I was laying comatose and unaware of the real world.

My pod was the best you could get, as of a few years ago. I might be due for an upgrade by now, but it was always such a hassle to get anything as large as a pod shipped out here to rural New Zealand. We were still getting left off maps after all, how was a poor fedex robot meant to find us out here in the middle of the ocean?

Walking into the pod room, I waved my hand in the gesture that would open my pod, and hopped into the cushioned cradle. When the machine sensed I was safely inside, it closed the spotless glass door on me, locking me into the pod. I shifted slightly to get more comfortable, then allowed it to connect all the apparatus it needed to keep me alive. Soon the uplink crown was attaching to my head and linking with the chip that was inside it, and then I was gone.