Chapter 6: Chapter Five

My fingers hammered away with a fury I had not known for many lifetimes, clattering against letters and punctuation with such speed. I had not used a computer for so long yet the art came back to me surprisingly quick, breaching forward after years of having been squandered away and pretty much forgotten.

If there was anything that could bridge the gap between the distant past and the present it seemed to be my love of fandom.

“What are you working on?” Zara asked.

I chuckled, feeling a little heat creep into my cheeks. “A spicy girllove fanfiction about this cartoon I used to watch back in my late teens.”

Zara cocked a brow. “What cartoon?”

“I don’t know if you would’ve seen it but it was this little like three season series that Disney used to run about witches?” I replied. “It had two female leads who fell in love by the end of the first season.”

“Are you sure that’s from Disney?” Zara asked, snorting. “Because that seems very unlike Disney.”

I snickered. “Reason it only got three seasons.” I sighed. “And why one of those seasons was only three episodes long?”

Zara whistled. “That’s rough.”

She plopped down beside me and draped an arm over my shoulder, holding me close to her. A situation that I more than gladly accepted as I leaned into her comforting presence, resting my head against her chest. Even if she was made of alloys the action was still pleasant, the artificial skin still soft and warm with plenty of cushion.

It had been more than a month since our first kiss and already there was so much familiarity between us, so much tenderness and affection. These last few weeks had left more of an impact upon me than the prior three hundred put together. These months were the kind where memories were born and not the boring slog where they withered away and died.

“Do they fuck?” Zara asked.

I paled. “They’re children!”

“Then why is it spicy!” Zara interjected, motioning wildly. “I thought spicy is when they fuck.”

I flushed. “It's spicy because they kiss a bunch.”

“You’re such a freaking nerd!” Zara interjected.

“Oh, I’m the nerd,” I let out a rude note of laughter as I scrunched my nose at her. “I’m not the one who makes a hobby out of staring at the sun all day.”

Zara chuckled and shook her head. “Fair.”

She reached for the remote and turned on the TV, switching over to another folder inside of her hard drive. This one seemed to belong to some sort of anime as she turned it on. Though she made sure to keep the volume minimal lest she distract me.

This made me smile as I realized that she didn’t want to disrupt my work. It… kind of made it seem like my time was valued even if it was just spent on silly little fanfictions. Though, as far as either of us knew, that could’ve very well been the most valuable use of time by anyone on the entire planet right now.

“You know, my newest story broke records on AO3,” I teased.

Zara snorted. “Two views are more than anyone else has gotten in about five thousand years.”

“Also, everyone who has read it is totally demanding a sequel,” I added.

Zara smirked and looked out of the side of her eye at me. “Can you blame them? I heard that they really want to find out if Kris and Susie got together. You left them on such a cliffhanger with that one and it’s killing them.”

“Well, they can wait until I get inspiration to work on that series again,” I teased. “I’m all about these gay little witches right now.”

“Damn multi-fandom writers,” Zara murmured.

“Would you like me to read you this extremely gay scene?” I asked, leaning against her and nuzzling into the crook of her neck.

Zara hummed. “I hope you know that you’re about to spoil your entire fanbase, babe.”

Babe…

Sure, this wasn’t her first time using that word when referencing me but… I couldn’t help but put that particular word on a pedestal whenever it left her lips. It was a pet name, a little sign of affection. And when you’d literally walked through nothing but deserts for so many centuries, it was hard not to cling to that little oasis whenever it presented itself.

“Mmm fine,” I grumbled, shaking my head to do away with all the gay little thoughts swirling around inside. “But you are so reading this when it’s ready to get published.”

“Wonder if any of the hard drives in town would have your show on them,” Zara said, more to herself than me.

But still, I shrugged. “That show was already a hundred years old by the time shit hit the fan. I don’t think it had that large of a fandom by that point.”

“You’d be surprised by the kind of stuff people were hording back then,” Zara said, nodding towards the window. “One of the houses in town is filled to the rafters with dolls. And not like Barbies but those like really creepy dolls where all the eyes follow you around the room and you swear that they’re going to come to life and murder you the second you turn away from them.”

“Every town has a house like that,” I replied.

Zara cocked a brow.

“What? I’ve walked through a lot of towns,” I replied. “Your girlfriend is one well travelled bitch.”

Girlfriend.

Now that I thought about it, I don’t think either of us had actually used that term before. A theory which was confirmed as Zara drew in a half breath through her artificial system.

“Girlfriend, huh?” she asked.

I smirked. “I figured that since you're stuck with me, we might as well stick it out for the long haul.”

“Or at least a couple decades,” she teased. “I heard immortals get kind of punchy after living together for around eighty years or so.”

“Then we will have seventy-nine fantastic years and one very awkward year before we go our separate ways,” I teased. “How does that sound?”

Zara nodded. “You know what? I don’t think I’d mind a little company for that long. No point wasting all of this space just for myself.”

“And you’re sure as shit not sending me back outside without all sorts of air conditioning,” I replied, closing my eyes and leaning into her. “You’ve spoiled me.”

I reached out, stroking at her thigh.

She in turn started to rub at my shoulder. A month had done much to taper my needs but still even the touch of another person had a nearly euphoric effect upon me, making my heart sore like so few things had managed to do as of late.

“You should write an original story about lesbians,” Zara teased.

I smirked. “About a beautiful cyborg and someone who is only being held together by love and nanomachines.”

“I think the nanomachines are doing most of the legwork there, darling,” Zara replied, kissing the top of my head. “I mostly just make sure that your soul is sustained and well-nourished with affection.” She smiled. “It’s the least I could do.”

She was doing a very good job of this as my soul had gone from hungry to being more than adequately sated in the last little while.

The two of us drifted towards one another, our lips meeting somewhere in the middle. She tasted divine, silky, her flesh having the flavour of cherry upon it. I briefly wondered if this was a feature bestowed upon her or my mind simply playing tricks on me, pairing my favourite flavour with my favourite person.

After all, how long had it been since I tasted something like cherry? Did I even truly remember what those had tasted like so many lifetimes ago. It had been just as long since I had last tasted lemon, lime, grape, apples…

All memories of flavours, other than gritty dust, were so old that they could’ve been drafted onto parchment as ancient tales from a bygone and mythical time. A real-world ambrosia if you thought about it.

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After all, who would believe that this world had once been a garden besides for those with a taste for legends and mythos. It was even more believable considering we were now the immortal gods our forefathers had prayed too.

Cursed, cursed immortals.

“You are an amazing kisser,” Zara quipped, snapping me out of my destructive spiral.

I snorted. “So are you.”

“Do you think we’re the best kissers left on Earth?” Zara asked.

I smirked. “I think we might be the best damn kissers in the whole solar system at this point.”

“Be careful that Titan colony could’ve actually survived. Then you’d be eating your words when you realized just how fantastic all of those kissers are,” Zara teased.

“I enjoy your optimism but…” I chuckled darkly. “If any of our colonies would’ve made it then I’m sure we would’ve heard word from them by now. I kind of wonder… is Titan even suitable for life at this point?”

“Considering how large the sun is?” Zara hummed, tapping a finger against her chin. “I’d say it’s still a frozen shithole but a more reasonable frozen shithole. Like the sun is bigger but Saturn is still very very far away.”

I drew away from her and turned my attention back towards my computer, returning to the draft at hand.

“Kind of amazing how much we blew trying to get away from here and how everything just…” I began though shook my head as the sentence grew too depressing to finish.

Zara nodded knowingly. “Maybe that’s a topic we should avoid really delving too deep into.” She got up and made her way towards the boarded-up windows of our home. “We’re still alive and honestly as long as that’s the case, that’ll be enough for me.”

“Just feels like a lonely existence,” I whispered.

Zara smirked. “Only it’s a little less lonely now that I have you around.”

“Thanks, babe,” I teased.

Babe…

There really was such a magical little word, four letters that held tremendous power between us.

Zara smiled at it. She seemed like she was about to talk when suddenly there was a beeping sound coming from upstairs. For a moment, she seemed frozen and I was left confused by what that noise could’ve possibly been. It was an alarm but one that I had never heard before during my entire time here.

Then her robotic eyes widened. “Oh shit…”

“Oh shit?” I asked.

She was heading up the stairs and I placed my computer aside, right away, following after her as quickly as I could. I didn’t like the sound of that ‘oh shit’, I didn’t like it one bit. We rushed up the stairs together with Zara taking them two at a time, bounding forwards with such desperate speed. I could only linger behind and follow her into our bedroom.

As we entered, I saw that her computer had a flashing red message upon it. That was never a good sign. Even thousands of years removed from working with computers as a part of my job, that flashing red memo was a trauma that lingered through the expanse of time. I doubted a hundred epochs would be enough to erase it.

“Anything I should be worried about?” I asked, trying to sound level though knowing that my fear was leaking through.

My pulse had quickened and the grave seriousness that seemed to waft off of Zara wasn’t helping in the slightest. She held up a hand to silence me as she started to frantically type in some commands that brought up a video on her monitor.

Even from here I could make out the contents.

It was the sun like it always was. Though after a couple seconds of its normal broiling nature, there was a bright and mighty pulse of light with a blade of fiery plasma erupting from the surface. It launched quickly away from the star, exploding outwards in a slicing motion, severing the cosmos as if it were nothing more than warm butter.

The meaning of the image was lost to me but it seemed to affect Zara greatly. I would bet that if she still possessed blood then hers would’ve gone cold at the image on display.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

Zara looked towards me and offered a cruel smile. “I uh… that’s heading right towards us.”

“What is?” I asked once more before realizing that it was that blade of light from the sun.

“A solar flare,” Zara explained. “About a hundred earths worth of supercharge atoms that are going to turn this planet into molten irradiated slag.” She shook her head before burying it in her hands. “There must be a God because… man this is way too cruel for a rational and secular universe to possibly explain.”

“We’re going to die?” I asked.

The thought normally wouldn’t have registered much with me but… well… that was before I had met Zara. It turned out that death felt far more personal when you actually had something to lose because of it.

Zara nodded slowly. “Not even immortal nanomachines or metal flesh can survive what’s coming our way. We’re… we’re going to die, hun.”

“How much longer do we have left?” I asked.

Zara looked towards her computer and started to tap away at the keys, pulling up figures and calculations. By the end of them, a timer appeared on the screen portraying that we had roughly twelve hours left.

Twelve hours together… such a short blip in a life that had lingered on for so many millennia. It felt like a joke and I understood where Zara’s opinion on God came from at that moment.

“The flare is moving at around one percent the speed of light,” Zara explained. “Maybe a little more than that.”

“Twelve hours…” I shook my head. “You’re right.”

Zara looked towards me, obviously waiting for me to elaborate.

“There has to be a God out there because this feels way too personal to be the product of random chance,” I chided.

Zara snorted. “What do you think we did to piss them off?”

“I have no idea but I’ll make sure to ask them when we get up there,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “Bet it was all the fanfiction that I wrote.”

Zara didn’t laugh but neither did I. The joke wasn’t nearly funny enough to overcome the sadness that settled into my heart.

The two of us lingered in silence, looking towards the computer in front of us. The timer continued to tick away, slowly bleeding through the stockpile of a few measly hours that still remained. It didn’t feel like enough, there was no way it was going to be enough.

But…

“There’s no point wasting it,” I said.

Zara nodded. “Guess we should make the most of our last day then.”

I offered her my hand, happy to see that she took it without delay.

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