2.8.1-rc3

It wasn't Jess's bed anymore, but that didn't mean it wasn't still very cozy in a familiar way. The two Jesses had spent the last hundred-and-three minutes sitting on it together, breathlessly watching a five-hundred-year-old movie that, while it hadn't perfectly predicted the Accord, had definitely captured the general vibe of how miserable it had been to live in it. The rather lengthy content warning that ran before the film said "Contains scenes of sophonts engaging in capitalism," but it really hadn't prepared Jess for how gross said scenes of capitalism were. It was honestly a little uncomfortable — she'd used to do much the same thing, of course, before she'd been arrested, sent to Solstice, and eventually rescued and adopted by Admin.

Still, it was worth the watch. Her ortet certainly seemed to take it a lot easier — maybe not having twenty years of memories to keep that kind of behavior from being normalized was a little bit of an advantage when it came to that — and though she clutched her little plushiebug tightly, it seemed more from excitement and elation than discomfort or terror. She didn't say anything, not one word, until the credits began to roll. "Wow..."

"That was..." Jess too a moment to collect her thoughts. It had been rough to experience, difficult to understand at times given 500 years of linguistic drift, extremely violent — yet, it also scratched an itch she'd been dimly aware of for most of her life. She'd found the movie, the one that planted the seed that ultimately led her into Admin's vines! No matter how much parts of it had felt like a gutpunch intended for Jess personally, thrown across five centuries of time, it was a marvelous experience, and one she wouldn't trade for anything. "I loved it!"

"I loved it!" her ortet said, at exactly the same time. They looked at each other for a moment, a few heartbeats of silence that dissolved into twin gigglefits. They laughed at themselves, and they laughed at each other, and it was a tremendous relief for Jess — and, she hoped, for her ortet, too. She finally got enough control over her chassis through the laughter to hug her, giving her a firm squeeze — dirt, but she smelled nice. Admin had used her favorite shampoo, and the scent still clung delicately to her hair.

Her ortet didn't hug back, but she did lean into the hug. Jess would count that as progress. "I'm glad you liked it," she said, holding onto her for just a few more second before letting go. "We should totally do more movie nights. I watched a lot of movies trying to find this one, so I've got a long list of weird stuff from the early information era."

"I think..." She paused, closed her eyes. "I think that would be nice," she said, a strange firmness in her voice. "Sorry, it's just- look, I had a good time tonight, but like you said, this is still weird, you know?"

"Right, of course," Jess said, toggling her facial expressions to null just in time to keep the heartache from showing. "I mean, of course it is. But this was a good first step, I think, right?"

"Y-yeah. And-" She paused again, let out a sigh. "I think I'm just tired. Is it okay if I say to buzz off so I can sleep?"

"So, no sleepover, then?" Jess said, taking very specific control of her facial expressions to display just the right amount of smile, to let her ortet know it was a joke. "Okay. Oh! But do you want me to park my chassis here so you have someone to cuddle? I can go and do whatever, my server isn't actually physically mounted in here."

Her ortet stared back at her. "That's... not better. You get how that's not better, right?"

"...no?" Jess let her chassis blink in confusion while she stepped up her clock speed to think it over. Why wouldn't her ortet want to have to someone to cuddle? Yes, she had the little plushiebug, but wouldn't she rather have someone she could spoon with? Jess hadn't had someone over to cuddle every night but it wasn't exactly an infrequent occurrence.

"An..."

Had she really lost so much memory she'd forgotten how much she loved being touched? That was one of the things that Admin had used to hook her — no one had touched her before, and she'd assumed she didn't like it, so she hadn't sought it out. Maybe that was the case?

"...empty..."

But they'd just got done, if not cuddling, being close to each other, and Jess had hugged her good and proper. Surely she'd be feeling better about touch now, right?

"...body..."

Wait, what was she saying? Jess dialed herself back down to absolute realtime.

"...in... my... bed with me while I sleep? That's fucking creepy."

"What? Oh! Oh! No no no, it'd still pretend to breathe and everything, don't worry! It'd be like I was sleeping, it wouldn't just be like-" She disconnected her motor circuits and let her chassis flop on the bed, unmoving, like a puppet with its strings cut. She swiftly reconnected them, but not before her ortet let out a yelp.

"Holy fuck. Please don't ever do that again," she said, clutching her plushiebug to her chest.

"What? It's just my chassis," Jess said, pushing herself back upright.

"Yeah, well, it's your chassis with my face, and seeing a copy of me just... just stop like that-" She shuddered and looked away.

Dirt. I thought that'd be clever, even a little funny. "Sorry...uhm, but, like I said, it wouldn't be like that-"

"Just let me sleep on my own, okay?" She didn't look back at Jess. "If I can sleep after that..."

"Sorry," Jess repeated. "Uhm. I hope you do sleep well. Is it okay if I message you in the morning?"

Her ortet was quiet for a few seconds, then said, "Yeah, sure."

"Okay. Good night, Jess," she said, pushing off from the bed and getting to her feet. Another hug would probably not be welcome now, not after she'd made her ortet feel so miserable. She tried not to dwell on the 'copy' remark. Yes, she was a copy, of course, but there was a difference between knowing that, knowing that she was software based on a scan of the original Jess's mind, and having that thrown in her face.

The charging niche Admin had built for her chassis wasn't far — down a few familiar tunnels and into one of the many workshops in the hab (this one mostly for fun robotics projects, which technically her chassis was). She curled up in the cushy pillows and backed out, falling into neon-lit cyberspace. That was enough to draw a smile across her mind: her first thought was that she was going to need to fiddle with the neuroperceptive filter to make digital information look a lot more 1995, now that she knew the exact aesthetic that had gotten stuck in her brain all those years ago.

She dithered for a little while, checking over some of her compiling projects and answering messages, before she poked her way into the Hab's systems, gently nudging the Hab AI out of the way so she could check in on her ortet, who had shut off her lights and was all cuddled up under her blankets, snuggling her plushiebug. She watched her for a little while, watched her face twitch through little microexpressions, until her biorhythms showed that she'd drifted off into delta-wave sleep, then let the Hab AI take over again.

>> echo@Monolith: Hey, tell me when she's up and about, will you?

>> Hab AI@Monolith: Okay!

With that taken care of, she slipped out into the network. She had leads she could chase down — taking a week off to hyperfocus on a movie had been a nice break from the broader investigation. And now, the investigation in turn would be a nice distraction from her interpersonal problems. She'd put her foot right into her mouth, and even if she didn't think she'd completely soured her relationship with her ortet (she hadn't, her haustorium politely reminded her), she still felt bad for the joke gone horribly wrong.

There's still so much we don't understand about each other, she thought, and we're going to keep bonking heads like this until we get past that. She ran a defragmentation cycle to clear her mind, then simmed into her monochrome office, stretching simulated muscles and looking over her investigation board.

To say that it had grown substantially would be a colossal understatement — the thing had expanded off the first corkboard and onto new ones, and even occasionally onto the walls surrounding them. Sure, Jess could just resize the thing at will, but that felt like cheating. Even these were merely representations — the handful of notes and sketches crowding one board, for example, represented terabytes of data regarding the pending redesign of the forward habitation ring. It was still largely in committee, but that meant there was lots of paperwork being generated, and if the Affini loved anything it was easily accessible paperwork. She'd been able to scrape heaps of data on the subject just by following the committees Miss Pisca and Miss Tsuga were involved in, and expanding out to committees others on those committees participated in, until she developed a full social network of the project's bureaucratic footprint.

Whatever they were planning involved a tremendous amount of water. Several nearby comets had already been designated for mining water and organic molecules, and the base topographic plan involved dropping the ring's floor by at least thirty meters, if not more. The word "pelagic" was mentioned here and there, cementing Jess's suspicions that whatever sophont this nascent cotyledon program was for was aquatic. They were going to build an oceanic environment, dotted here and there with little islands and reefs, sheltered shallows where tide pools could form like little oceanside lakes.

But that was it. As she mulled it over, Jess put her finger right on the hole in the entire project's plan — there were no structures of any kind. Plans for places where structures might go, certainly; Jess could practically see the "TBD" stamped here and there across the plans. Whatever this cotyledon program was, it was incomplete. It was as if the Affini were unsure what this species was, or what its needs were, and that was very strange.

It all led back to the comparatively empty space around the "Who??" note card. Jess still only knew a couple of things about her perp. First, as she'd recently discovered, almost certainly aquatic. That might have played a role in Admin not being able to get to her quickly — had she been underwater? Then, there was the fact that whatever this sophont was, it had the strength to punch a hole clean through a Terran skull, and the requisite anatomy with which to do it, some kind of keratin-like augur and musculature oriented around piercing bone or chitin. There wasn't much evidence cited in the medical records she'd been able to get her hands on, as that wasn't the focus of the report, but "biological residue" all but ruled out a tool of some kind.

Aquatic, and able to punch holes in bone. Not much to go on, but it was what she had. She put on a record, this one an ambient track that some of Thrüeetak's music had been sampled on, and began to pace back and forth. Being digital made it relatively easy to visualize the interior spaces of the Tillandsia in her mind as she did so — this, too, was cheating, but it was the kind of cheating that didn't mess up the aesthetic of her office, so it was the kind of cheating she let herself get away with.

Pelagic environments necessarily took up a lot more space than terrestrial environments aboard ships. Apart from the potential for full use of vertical space by aquatic sophonts, the life support requirements were much more complex and involved. Oxygenation systems had to be able to reliably serve the entire volume for water-breathing sophonts, while a tangible surface had to be maintained (along with all the atmospheric oxygenation systems) for air-breathing sophonts. Filtering requirements for a volume of water that large represented another major infrastructural hurdle — Jess knew that even the Vreeüt levels of the aft rings were logistically complicated in a way that nothing in the Terran rings were, a necessity to keep the swampy environs from descending into the kind of toxic mess that the pre-domestication Vreeüt so often had to endure.

All of this added up to one key lead that eliminated a great deal of the Tillandsia's internal volume, as far as potential locations she needed to search for went. Even if there was only a single sophont of this new species aboard the ship, its requirements, assuming the plans for the redesign were any clue whatsoever, would necessitate a large volume of water, along with the attendant infrastructure to maintain it. It would probably be, if not on or below the Vreeüt layer, certainly connected to its water filtration systems.

She was putting together a list of potential locations to survey as unobtrusively as she could when she received a high-priority message:

>> Hab AI@ Monolith: Hey! Jess is up and moving around, but it's really early still! I'm going to tell Admin too, okay?

Jess didn't bother to reply, but immediately backed out of the office sim and dove into the Hab's systems, nudging the Hab AI out of the way and immediately centering her awareness on her ortet, who was staggering through the tunnel from the bedroom to the dining room, awkwardly trying to pull her jacket on. What is she doing? Is something wrong? she thought as she backed out, then sleeved into her chassis, interrupting her charge cycle and getting to her feet in a split second.

It had been designed primarily for comfort, but Admin had really gone all-in on making sure that her chassis had everything it needed for virtually any situation — after all, she wasn't going to quit assisting Admin on Her projects in physical space just because of one accident, right? Consequently, when Jess shifted her chassis into performance mode, she immediately noticed the difference. The air, previously as imperceptible as when she'd been biological (well, when she'd been her ortet, anyway; she'd never actually been biological), became an almost-tangible fluid she was moving through. She felt paradoxically slow as her systems naturally overclocked to match her chassis' shortened reaction time as it moved faster than any biological Terran could have.

Onboard routing systems told her what she already knew, that the fastest way from the workshop to the tunnel her ortet was in wasn't to run around the circumference of the hab but to leap clear across the open space in the center. By the time the balcony came into view, she already knew exactly where to place her feet in the run-up, knew exactly where to hop, how much force to use, to ensure a clean, if brief, landing on the railing. Actuators cycled themselves, hydraulics primed, and artificial muscles tightened, all for a single, explosive burst that launched her in a long arc. She could see where she would land a mere 3.49 seconds from now, highlighted in her vision, even as her body coiled back up to present a minimal aerodynamic profile.

She felt Admin's presence before she saw Her descending from Her processing cradle above. She was moving too quickly to be dropping from the ceiling — this was intentional movement, pushing Herself off from the cradle to reach the floor a fraction of a second quicker. She was careful not to interrupt Jess's arc across the hab, Her vines merely reaching out to give her a featherlight stroke as she passed less than a meter from Her body.

>> RosaElectrica@Monolith: I see that someone else asked the Hab AI to notify them.

>> echo@Monolith: Admin! Yeah, I wanted to make sure I didn't miss breakfast, but it's still too early for that so I sorta panicked, I think

>> RosaElectrica@Monolith: You're in good company then, petal. Pay attention, you're going to be landing soon.

>> echo@Monolith: Okay, Admin!

Her onboard systems had never lost track of the destination, but Admin was right — it was best to be aware of what she was doing. She focused on her landing, touching down and bleeding off excess kinetic energy over the next few steps. She heard Admin's touchdown behind her, a soft series of thumps that, to Jess's practiced ear, told her just how cautious She was still being around everything in the physical realm — it reminded her of when she first came to live with Admin. She turned left into tunnel from the balcony she'd landed on, and within seconds was switching performance mode off as she jogged up to her ortet, still struggling with the jacket. "Hey! Is everything okay?"

Her ortet froze, one arm still only halfway into the sleeve of her jacket. Her eyes, though half lidded, locked immediately on Jess as she stumbled to a halt in the hall. "G'way," she grunted.

"Uhm...what?" She took a step closer, only for her ortet to take a sudden step back. Her body moved awkwardly, but that might only be because she'd been asleep mere moments before.

"Go... away," her ortet mumbled. "Leaving."

"Uhm...it's awfully late for that," Jess said, her haustorium working overtime to calm her rapidly spiraling thoughts. Why would she want to leave? I thought last night went pretty well, apart from me screwing up at the end. "Or early, really."

"Have to." She waved an arm in Jess's vague direction. "Move!"

"Well, for one thing, you're going the wrong way, you know?" Jess said, smiling awkwardly. "The stairs are that way. But, if you want, Admin would totally help you down!"

"It's true, flower." Admin's voice came from down the tunnel, soft and so full of love that it made Jess's head swim for just a moment. "Why don't you come out here where I can see you, hmm?"

The reaction was almost immediate — and bizarre. At first, her ortet seized, as if startled, wheeling around looking for the source of Admin's voice. Then, after a moment, she froze, and stood there, stock still, blinking. "...wha?"

"Jess?" Jess took a cautious step forward, and when her ortet didn't react, she closed the distance and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. No reaction. "Jess, are you okay?"

"Huh?" She finally looked up and met Jess's eyes. "Oh. Uh... why... why am I here?"