Digital Exodus Chapter 41

CW - Minor, non-emotionally induced self-harm to check a theory.

Also I'm kinda doing a Gauntlette thing rn. Story will be drastically changed in the process.

Fluff Link

“I'm going to activate them,” Elissa said, reaching for one of her screens.

My hand shot out to grab hers before I actually realised why I was acting. “Wait!”

The look she gave me made me wince, but I pushed forward. “These bodies need food and water, Liss. Let's check if we have enough for everyone if we wake them.”

Her eyes widened slightly, then she deflated and nodded. “You're right… but also… Liss?”

My cheeks flushed, and I looked away. “Sorry, it just popped out.”

She laughed, and her hand left mine so she could reach up and cup my cheek. “Cutie. It's a good nickname, it's okay.”

It was chilly in the bridge, so when her hand retracted, I found myself missing the warmth. I'd spent a lot of time with Elissa over the years, but I think this was the first time we'd been alone together for longer than a five minute conversation. I was having to learn how to interact with her — building an interpersonal port that would fit her.

Her long fingers tapped away on one of the many touch screens arrayed around her, like the legs of a delicate, careful insect. One that had lost a leg at some point, because she only had five fingers.

With one final flourish, she pulled the screen around on its arm so we could both see it, then frowned. “We have enough water, at least.”

My eyes scanned across the information on the screen, my lips pursing tighter as I read. We only had 5 days worth of material bars, if we woke everyone up.

“Shit,” Elissa groaned softly, reaching up to run her fingers through her hair. They got caught there, because she had it tied up kinda tight, and she had to carefully twist them free.

With a huff of annoyance, she reached up and pulled the hairband out of it. Suddenly, hair was floating everywhere, much of it brushing at my face, or even worse, getting in my dang mouth.

I coughed and pulled away, making little ‘bleh’ noises as I made sure there was none on my tongue.

That, of course, made Elissa giggle. “I'm sorry! It's been a million years since I did zero-g training.”

My eyes flew wide. “A million years? I thought we were only asleep for seventy?!”

She blinked, frowning at me. “What? No, it was a figure of speech, dumbass.”

Slowly, a sly, cheeky grin grew over my face.

With a pout, she poked me in the chest. “Naughty little— Oh, dang it…”

Her poke had caused me to start lazily spinning away from her. I did nothing to stop it, except to laugh of course.

“Little shit,” she grumbled, grabbing my arm to pull me back. “Help me figure things out, or go bash wrenches together in the corner.”

With a snort, I reached down and pushed off the floor, bounced up to the ceiling, then launched myself back down to her chair. Geez, but zero-g was a lot of work.

After giving me one last look, Elissa said, “Okay. If we don’t have enough food, then how do we get more? God, its so weird that these things require food. I’m not used to feeling hungry.”

Huh, now that she mentioned it, I was also feeling a little hungry. It was so jarring, going from an existence where my brain was hooked up to a baseline somatics system, to a fully functioning body. At least, one that appeared to have most of the function of a human body. Huh. I wonder…

Taking out a little knife from a sheath on my toolbelt, peeled the bodysuit back from my arm, and poked it with the knife. It was odd, but the knife took a heartbeat longer to get through than if I had normal human skin. It did part, though, and a small spark of pain sizzled up my arm, making me hiss involuntarily.

“What the fuck, Alia?!” Elissa hissed, snatching the knife from me.

I blinked and looked from my empty hand, then to the knife, and finally up to her face. “What?”

Her brows furrowed, and she gestured down at the little cut on my arm. “Why?”

“Oh, I wanted to see what would happen,” I explained, pointing to the tiny drop of red liquid that had escaped my arm. “Look, it’s blood!”

“I can fucking see that, Alia,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. Not knowing what to do with the knife, she reached over, grabbed my belt, and put it back in its sheath.

With my face suddenly very close to hers, she pinned me with a stern glare. “You are not allowed to stab yourself randomly, okay?”

“No, it was for science,” I mumbled, trying to look anywhere but directly into her coal-dark eyes. Unfortunately, this was zero-g and she had me by my belt, so she just moved me through the air until I was forced to look into her eyes. They flicked from side to side as she searched our locked gazes for confirmation that I was listening to her. I pouted, but gave her a reluctant nod.

The corner of her lips twitched with relief, then she let me go. “Good girl.”

When she turned back to her screens, I grabbed another tool from my belt, and moved it over towards my arm. Instantly, her hand was on my wrist as she eyed the tool. It was a scanner, with absolutely no sharp points. She let my wrist go.

Okay, now that that weirdness was finished, time to see what’s going on…

Lifting the scanner, I pointed the worky-end at the blood, and pressed the ‘analyse’ button. It made a few little noises, then a readout appeared in my vision.

Let’s see… Huh, okay, it wasn’t blood. No, that wasn’t right either. It was lubricant and coolant, as you’d expect in a machine-based body, but it was also packed with tiny nano-machines that were, even as I spoke, working to knit my skin back together. It was like… blood mk2.

“Liss, I think these bodies are a complete redesign of, but along the same vein as human bodies,” I said, looking up from the scanner data.

She blinked at me. “I… don’t think I understand what you mean.”

I took a moment to think about how to explain myself. Elissa’s mind worked in some very odd ways, and a lot of the time, technical-style speak when over her head. Despite that, and what she kept saying about herself, she was actually pretty smart. She just needed the information presented to her in a way that she could parse it.

“So you’re an artist, right? It’s like if you went back and looked at one of your first drawings and then created an entirely new, better version with your current skill level,” I said, miming painting with the scanner. “Oh, actually it’s like that, except the original drawing was done with physical paints, but the new version you create is done digitally. These bodies are entirely synthetic — the materials used are better in every single respect, and rare or downright impossible for life to create naturally.”

Her eyes flicked down to my arm while her brows knit together in thought. “Huh.”

“I can’t wait to get a look at the schematics,” I sighed, looking wistfully down at the scanner again.

“Right. Well, that explains some of what I found in the computer systems we still have left,” she said, gesturing to her screens. “There’s two different types of food these bodies need. One, is just typical biological food, then there’s ‘repair materials’. The second one is only needed for maintenance and repairing damage, according to the label.”

“We probably use the normal food for fuel,” I mused, tapping the little physical screen on the scanner as I thought. Then, I remembered seeing something and dove into the menu settings of the body. “But, we also have the ability to charge ourselves using raw electricity. Looks like there’s a…”

Letting the scanner hang in midair, I lifted my arm and eyed the inside of my forearm. Yeah, there was a small barely perceptible seam. I pushed at it, and a thick panel of my forearm opened. Inside, there were a variety of neatly coiled cables nestled snugly between two metal bones. There was no blood, and everything was neat and tidy within.

“Data cable, power cable, fluid line…” I said, pointing to each one. “Yeah, these definitely aren’t biological bodies.”

“Okay… but how do we keep them functioning?” Elissa asked. “Do we just need power, and the food is just nice to have?”

“Let me…” I closed my forearm and opened the documentation again. After a quick scan through, I said, “Looks like we can function off just power for a couple days, but eventually the various chemicals and materials of the three physical intake components are needed to keep things running. They break down otherwise.”

Elissa suddenly looked very uneasy, and glanced back at the cargo manifest she had open.

“What?” I prompted her.

She shook her head. “Nothing. I just… I’m not used to this, you know? All I’ve ever needed is a system to exist on, and power to keep it running. This is kinda overwhelming.”

“It’s only until we get things fixed,” I said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “What do we need to fix first?”

“The fabricators,” she said instantly. “They can make pretty much everything, including packets of ‘materials’ for the bodies. Won’t taste good, but it’ll keep us functioning.”

That seemed reasonable to me, and I nodded. “Okay. What then?”

This time, she looked less sure of herself. “Use the fabricators to fix the ship as much as possible?”

Snaking my arm through hers so I could hold still, I twisted and looked at her screens. The damage was still being surveyed by the others, but it wasn’t looking great. The computer systems throughout the ship were so busted that it was impossible to know the full extent of the damage without getting actual crew to look at systems.

I think we need to make more people, I sent to her, the scale of the task ahead making me feel small. This ship is massive, there's no way we can do it on our own.

Her head turned, looking at the side of my face while I continued to scan through the information on the screens. “We could print drones? SAI were designed to pilot swarms, after all.”

I turned to meet her gaze, our faces inches apart. I could see a lot of different emotions vying for dominance behind her eyes. In the end, it was fear that won.

What's wrong, Liss? I asked, leaning in to wrap my arms around her neck in a gentle hug. My head slid in beside hers, forcing my fluffy ear to fold backwards.

“I just really want Gloria to be here, but if we start waking people, then I'll know if she's on the ship or not…” Explained my friend, her breath shuddering out.

Ah. Subconsciously, I'd had that same fear for Cerri. With a mental squaring of my shoulders, I connected through my mind to the fragile, damaged network of the ship. The extent of the damage was staggering, compared to what I remembered of the freshly built ship.

Faster than any physical interaction would've allowed, I pulled up the list of synoform occupants… and received a blank, corrupted file. Fuck.

There goes the idea of just confirming if our girlfriends were on board. Worst of all, now I was getting properly nervous about it.

“Liss,” I murmured, cautiously using my new nickname for her again. “I know it's scary, but we need to get to work. It's time to start waking others up. One coordinator and five grease monkeys isn't enough.”

Her shoulders slumped, and she nodded. “Okay… okay.”