Chapter 24: 24: Not Thirteen, But Close

Amelia

[CW: Log out into M body during second half, unfortunately still relevant to plot. Logs back in at end of chapter. Dysphoria stuff.]

 

Rosa reappeared with a long swooshing sound. When she saw me smiling up at her, all confused and a little dizzy, she dropped down to my level and wrapped her arms tight around my neck.

“Ame,” she whispered softly. Her voice sounded all… weird and emotional. “Ame, Ame, Ame.”

“What’s up, beautiful?” I asked, returning the embrace. A memory occurred to me then, something I’d meant to bring up but I’d forgotten. “Hey, wait a minute. I have a question for you.”

“What’s the question?” she mumbled without letting go.

I had to force her back slightly so I could look into her eyes while I asked this. “When you said you got rid of your cock a long time ago, what did you mean?”

Her whole body went still for a moment, like she hadn’t at all expected the question. “I… huh. I said that, didn’t I?”

Nodding encouragement, I waited patiently for her to continue. If my suspicions were correct, then we had a lot more in common than we realised.

“I was born… uh, male, I guess,” she told me, her soft voice rather amusingly contrasted against the sounds of battle behind us. “I grew up like that until my eighteenth birthday, when I could legally leave home. After that, I tried my best to survive despite the depression and stuff, until suddenly I won that lottery. Paid for a slot in an advanced experimental nanite shaping clinic. It was cheaper to be a lab rat. I might be rich, but I’m not going to throw money away if I don’t have to.”

I couldn’t help myself, I pulled her close again and gave her a long, snuggly squeeze. “Me too,” I said happily. “Except I didn’t win the lottery and my body is still disappointingly bedicked.”

“Bedicked?” she laughed.

“Yeah, you know, the ol’ swinging—”

“Ew, no! Shush!” she giggled, squirming in my grip. “I understand, no need to give it weird names.”

I couldn’t help sighing as all the feelings sort of rushed and gurgled around in my body like the world’s worst bout of indigestion. This girl was so lovely. She went quiet after a few seconds, and her wriggling stilled, until we were just sitting there in a crater while spells and shells sailed overhead.

“I can smell that, you know,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.

“Smell what?” I deflected. “Did I fart?”

She groaned and thwapped me on the back of my head with her tail. “No, I can smell… your emotions. I can smell how you feel.”

“Ah.”

“It’s nice. Reminds me of… how I feel.”

My whole world sharpened down to just her and the words she’d just spoken. My heart was wild, the little gremlins that kept it beating were really going at it. Shit was intense, and then there was the butterfly riot going on in my stomach. Buildings were burning, cop shops were being torn down. What a mess.

“I feel… feelings… for you, Rosa,” I said slowly, making absolutely sure she knew what I meant with a long, pointed stare. “So… if you’re, you know…”

Her face was flushed red with emotion and bashful nervousness, but she nodded. “Yeah…”

“Wow,” I whispered, smiling so hard I should have heard my cheeks creaking like a ship at sea.

The expression of joy on her face matched mine in intensity, but it slipped and fell off after a few seconds. "You pulled me back to myself. Made me remember that there are amazing people in this world. That's why I'm going to return the favor. I'm going to save you."

I frowned. "Save me from what?"

She began to worry at her bottom lip with her teeth, clearly trying to figure out what to say. “You know you passed out, yes?”

“Uh… I think, yeah.”

“I went to ask an SAI I met for help, and she tracked down the problem,” she explained, staring intently at me now.

My thoughts, however, strayed to the little tidbit of info she’d just dropped. “You know an SAI?”

For a month or more now, there’d been nothing but reports on the sentient digital intelligences strike going on. Somehow, many of the AI that were used to automate everyday tasks in our society were waking up, becoming actual people.

“Yes,” she nodded impatiently. “There’s also something very strange going on with me, but it’s far less urgent than what’s happening with you. Ame, your body and your pod are lost. They were in transit on a train when something killed the SAI managing the transfer. We can’t figure out where you are because the train has an onboard node, and your nutrient paste tank is running out. Power is having issues too. We think your pod is damaged.”

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“I… what?” I squeaked, my head spinning with the news. What the fuck. My body was meant to be in a storage facility! What was it doing… “I’m going to log out. I’ll see what’s happening and then I’ll tell you.”

“Wait, before you—”

Her protests were cut off when the world faded to black. The riotous sounds of the battle were likewise replaced with the gentle hum of my long term storage pod as it did its thing. Carefully, I shifted, trying to get a sense for what was happening.

Instantly, I was aware of how wrong everything felt. My body ached, and my head swam like I’d just been spinning in circles for fifteen minutes. That was not even close to the worst part about the experience, though.

When you spend years within VR using the same template for your body, you begin to think of it as your real body. That was not the case. The panic I’d already been feeling was amplified tenfold by the realisation that I was back in this fucking awful shitty meatsack. I squirmed, trying to get out, but the pod was tough.

The door, I needed to get the door open. Why wasn’t it open already?

“Pod, open the fucking door!” I screamed, smashing on it with a fist. My voice stopped me dead in my tracks. Rough. Deep. Masculine.

I froze right there in the pod as the reality of my situation really hit me. I was alone. I was in this… this six foot tall, hairy husk of a body. Worst of all, I couldn’t escape it. I was trapped, alone and in the dark with only the sensation of this horrifically dysphoric body, the smell of man sweat, and the awful feeling of my balls plastered to my leg.

“Ame!”

Rosa’s voice coming out of the pod’s speakers snapped me out of my rapidly descending spiral, and I gasped in surprise. “How…”

“It’s a long story,” she said softly, comfortingly. “Don’t run away again, okay? I’m here.”

“I can’t get the pod open, Rosa,” I told her, wincing again at the rough manly voice that came out of my throat. It felt so fucking wrong.

She made a small comforting chirp of a sound and went quiet for a moment. “I found the door controls. Want me to pop it?”

“Please, for the love of god, please,” I whimpered, doing my best not to shove at the hardened polycarbonate of the door.

Motors within the pod began to whine impotently, and the door shifted slightly. Dim light peeked through the tiny crack that had opened, and almost immediately I was fighting to keep my stomach. The smell outside the pod was horrendous. It was also a smell I knew all too well. Nothing had the same rich bouquet. Rotting bodies.

“It’s telling me there’s an obstruction,” Rosa told me, anxiety flavouring her normally tiny, calm tone. “I can’t… let me try to get more power to it.”

The door whined again, and more of the outside world became visible. I pressed my eye to the slit and tried to see what was going on outside. There wasn’t much light, but I’d been in complete darkness before, so it was actually an improvement.

Rosa’s hiss of frustration from the speakers told me that her efforts with the door were being thwarted again. “Fucking piece of shit! Work!”

“I don’t think it’s going to, little one,” I sighed, adjusting my view. “There’s another pod sitting on top of mine. Pretty sure that’s why mine is damaged, too. These things are heavy as hell.”

“That explains why the perfectly functioning door isn’t opening,” she spat in frustration. “Those fucking assholes in the UN are going to pay, Ame. I am going to strap them down and shove slime mould into their lungs. Let it colonise there so they slowly suffocate to death.”

Ignoring her murderous rant, I kept talking. Despite everything hammering at my psyche, all the pain and despair, I couldn’t lose my head. “I can smell bodies. I think a good number of the others in my batch are dead. The angle of the carriage is wrong, too. I think it's on its side. There’s debris everywhere as well. Looks like I was extremely lucky. Almost all the other pods look smashed to shit.”

“Is there any identifiable markings on the carriage itself?” Rosa asked, audibly composing herself.

“No that I can see,” I said, groaning as I repositioned. “It’s too dark. But, oh… lovely, a chunk of someone’s arm.”

Thanks to Rosa, I was calm again, and I put my sometimes rather stupid brain to work. Power was running low, and Rosa trying to open the door probably didn’t help that. Nutrient paste was also low… “What are my water levels at?”

“Not bad. The recycler is pretty good at extracting usable water from your waste.”

I almost gagged again. “That’s nasty.”

“Very,” she said, sounding scared and helpless. “Ame, I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m going to log back in,” I said after a few moments of thought. “Can you close the lid again? The smell is nasty. I think my best bet is for someone to try and figure out where my train was using a digital trail while we try to ration my remaining power and food.”

“I… yes, that’s a good plan,” Rosa agreed reluctantly. “I’ll join you. I also need to make some arrangements. It’s time to spend all this money I’ve been hoarding.”

 

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