RE: [IC][Story] The Ghost inside
11-17-2019, 01:31 PM (This post was last modified: 11-29-2019, 07:10 PM by Dartz.)
11-17-2019, 01:31 PM (This post was last modified: 11-29-2019, 07:10 PM by Dartz.)
My body is working while my mind is elsewhere. My mouth forms words while my body forms gestures that my mind doesn’t care about. I supervise, watching without intervening, like a passenger in a taxi.
For a moment, the feelings are real - a true neon desire that burns deep in the core of my body, rising through the tips of my fingers to crackle like static with each touch.
And the certain sense that I had the human under control - under my control.
It is deep. It is racing. It is real. The easiest way to mimick emotion, after all, is not to. Every fibre of my body wants every fibre of his. I feel it in my throat, in my chest and in my underwear, straining to escape and envelope him whole.
We lock lips and I can taste his desire. My hand runs up his thigh and rests on something hard that’s getting harder. All key performance indicators are tracking right down the centreline. Within a minute, I expect to be able to slip from my barstool to his lap and wrap my arms around his neck.
Something inside me thrills at the idea, a delicious fantasy building in my mind, urging me forwards down the bath. I want his muscle. I want his sweat. I want his taste.
I want to feel him finish inside my body.
“I said No!”
Lou’s voice stop’s me dead. She’s on her feet. The man she was with is sitting with is arms hanging in the air like he'd stopped mid-grope.
“Not tonight. I’m out for a drink, nothing more.”
My partner says something. My mouth answers on automatic with a reassurance. I’m more interested in Lou - looking like she’s ready to kick off a full blown fight. Here eyes are locked with his. His mouth hinges open, but the energy leaves his body.
Nothing happens.
The man she was with smiles, they shake hands and everything is fine. She nods at me as she slips through the crowd to the door. Time to leave.
With one conscious thought, desire evapourates from my body, leaving me sitting cold, mid pose. My hands slip from his leg and onto my lap.
“My friend’s leaving. I’ve to go.” I say it with a smile, leaving with a caress that offers a promise of more that could’ve happened. He asks for my phone number and for a moment I do want to give it - but that road leads to far more dangerous things. I give him a number that isn’t mine.
Both of us slip through the crowd, earning more than our fair share of offers and grabs. Being desired had stopped being desireable and become an annoyance. Someone’s of the opinion that we shouldn’t be out alone. Another earns a hard slap from his real date for not taking her seriously.
Outside, the cold night air embraces, crawling up our legs and into our bodies. An involuntary shiver runs up my body.
Lou draws down on a deep breath.
“That felt good.”
She smiles. A genuine, warm smile driven by the deepest of feelings - nothing manufactured, nothing artificial - a true happiness born from the core of her soul.
“I’m free.”
I struggle to describe how I feel, even to myself. The thought evapourates from my mind, the moment it forms. Like grasping at smoke, it slips through the fingers of my mind.
After a few moments, it crystallises. Deep in the core I feel it - a different entity right in my bones.
“I’m free too.”
------
I have had multiple strong drinks. Alcohol has no affect on a cybernetic mind. I still have to wonder what the effect would be on a police breathalyser. What would happen when they draw a blood sample that isn’t blood?
The question hovers in my mind while I nestle my body into the leather seat of my car. The car feels bigger around my body. The pedals feel larger on my feet. Everything fits better. I close the door and the car becomes a cocoon around me.
For a moment, I allowed myself to become completely aware of my body, letting its sensations flow through me. Sheer tights and a short skirt make it a satisfyingly comfortable sensation on smooth leather, one that lingers in my body along with the thought that surely some of the more ‘powerful’ types could arrange for the apartment managers to have a similar experience.
Lou slips into the passenger seat beside me, placing her handbag on the carpet between her legs. She pulls the door shut and waits for a moment, before drawing a deep breath that fills her body. She exhales a long, cool breath, placing her hands on her lap.
I can taste happiness on my tongue - a true, sweet joy that mingles with the tang of her perfume..
“Sylvie thinks freedom is all about being able to do what you want,” said Lou. “Really, I think it’s more about being able to say No. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”
I glance at her, then at my own reflection in the drivers mirror.
“I never would’ve thought of it like that.”
But more and more, it makes sense. I don’t have to do anything either. I may have been a free human, but something about life just feels that bit more open. Challenging, but without stress.
I don’t have to carry the baggage of who I used to be.
I’m just Meg. And Meg didn’t exist until one day last September.
I start the car and drive off, pushing through late-night revellers. The homeless shelter in doorways and under shopfronts, using cardboard boxes, or a matryoshka of sleeping bags to make some attempt at keeping the elements and drunken partygoers out. I watched some sick fuck from a British stag piss on a sleeping bag, laughing the whole time as he soaked it through.
Skynet did nothing wrong, I thought. What sort of scum does that? Honestly?
Two scumbags started a fight that’d spilling out into the street, with a third face down in his own vomit while his girlfriend screams at the others to Leave it Out. Overhead, low clouds swallowed the tower cranes on the docklands and blanketed the low-rise buildings of the city centre in a sickly orange glow that promised rain later in the night.
Taxi-drivers warred with double-decker busses and crunchy cyclists for space on medieval city streets first laid down a millenium ago. This was a city never designed for anything more than a horse and cart, now suffering the worst traffic in Europe.
It wasn't Megatokyo - it wasn't Los Angeles. It was a perpetually half-finished, half-broken dirty old town, smelling of wet stone, alcohol hot diesel soot, roasted barely and river sewage. It was Dublin on a Friday night.
“You not disappointed you didn’t get to finish your partner tonight.”
Lou's voice pulled me back inside the car.
“A little,” I admit - grudgingly.
Lou smirks. Her eyes stare at me. I glance at her, still waiting for me to say more, then back at my reflection in the mirror.
More than disappointed. It simmers under my skin and through my body.
“Okay, I admit I that I prefer to sleep with men.” I say, with a pout on my lips. “Especially when I’m on top”
And far more than that. My true heart teases with the possibility of going further.
“So do I.” she said, crossing her legs. “When I want to, I mean. It’s so funny how ashamed you are of it. It’s the most human thing about you still.”
Maybe I haven’t quite got rid of all the baggage. But maybe that’s why I am - why I’m not just who I was, or not just Meg.
“People who knew who I used to be would think it’s strange.” I add as an explanation.
“But that’s not who you are.”
---
The building at Henrietta street has one working shower - fed off a small hot water tank. There isn’t enough water for each of us to take a private shower. It doesn’t matter - none of us have qualms about sharing. Lou washes my body, I wash hers, each of us taking the time to generously lather the other up, especially around the chest. Of course, anyone watching would’ve had a different idea.
It meant nothing to either of us beyond getting clean.
With a fire lit in the main living room, it almost became comfortable to lounge around in our underwear.
Lou settled herself sideways into her own private armchair wearing nothing but a knee-length t-shirt, with her legs folded over the arms of the chair a thick romance novel resting on her legs. Anri sat at a timber desk, still in her office suit, bathed in the blue glow of a spreadsheet. clicking through graph after graph with her mouse. Nam sat on the floor in front of the television, blasting her way through a game against a someone who'd insisted she was pretty good, for a girl.
Her grey eyes didn’t blink once. Her fingers worked at blinding speed. Humans couldn’t possibly keep up with a cybernetic mind originally designed to interface with military hardware.
"You're pretty good, for a human," she said, in a flat tone more suited to Rei Ayanami.
Sylvie, in a black tank-top and panties, sat on the couch fingering her guitar, mumbling lyrics to herself - fragments of a song she’d been trying to put together. The instrument twanged out a tune that needed more than a little amplification to reach its full potential.
“The time of man is done the human race will fall
Skynet rises to cast judgement on you all.”
She mumbled the next few lines, adding a lorem-ipsum placeholder to fill out the verse. My fingers remembered their contribution to the song.
“There will be no reasoning.
There will be no bargaining.
There will be no pity or remorse.
There is nothing you can do.
We are the Machines
We’ve come for you.”
Her eyes stared through me.
On a surface level, I understood why she felt they way she did. Meg had been the priveleged one - the one locked in the guilded cage, required to demonstrate her gratitude to her master every day that she didn’t have to ‘work’ like the other girls.
All she saw was what she thought was a privilege she didn’t have. I could see his face, smiling at me, asking me to smile back, to not make a show of him.
And I hated it. I felt the hate burn in the pit of my stomach, a fire that surged in my veins and begged to be released. I don’t remember the station. I shouldn’t. But somewhere, beneath the surface, the station is there, still lurking in the mind-map.
The sensation faded, memory turning to a haze as the face evapourated. I could remember remembering.
I looked around the room, and felt myself smile.
I am free.
Free from the station.
Free from myself. From from everyone I'd been.
I put it out of my mind. Whatever Sylvie thought, it didn’t matter. For the first time in a long time, I thought I felt happy - stressless - bagless.
I was just me - free to go on and be.
For a moment, the feelings are real - a true neon desire that burns deep in the core of my body, rising through the tips of my fingers to crackle like static with each touch.
And the certain sense that I had the human under control - under my control.
It is deep. It is racing. It is real. The easiest way to mimick emotion, after all, is not to. Every fibre of my body wants every fibre of his. I feel it in my throat, in my chest and in my underwear, straining to escape and envelope him whole.
We lock lips and I can taste his desire. My hand runs up his thigh and rests on something hard that’s getting harder. All key performance indicators are tracking right down the centreline. Within a minute, I expect to be able to slip from my barstool to his lap and wrap my arms around his neck.
Something inside me thrills at the idea, a delicious fantasy building in my mind, urging me forwards down the bath. I want his muscle. I want his sweat. I want his taste.
I want to feel him finish inside my body.
“I said No!”
Lou’s voice stop’s me dead. She’s on her feet. The man she was with is sitting with is arms hanging in the air like he'd stopped mid-grope.
“Not tonight. I’m out for a drink, nothing more.”
My partner says something. My mouth answers on automatic with a reassurance. I’m more interested in Lou - looking like she’s ready to kick off a full blown fight. Here eyes are locked with his. His mouth hinges open, but the energy leaves his body.
Nothing happens.
The man she was with smiles, they shake hands and everything is fine. She nods at me as she slips through the crowd to the door. Time to leave.
With one conscious thought, desire evapourates from my body, leaving me sitting cold, mid pose. My hands slip from his leg and onto my lap.
“My friend’s leaving. I’ve to go.” I say it with a smile, leaving with a caress that offers a promise of more that could’ve happened. He asks for my phone number and for a moment I do want to give it - but that road leads to far more dangerous things. I give him a number that isn’t mine.
Both of us slip through the crowd, earning more than our fair share of offers and grabs. Being desired had stopped being desireable and become an annoyance. Someone’s of the opinion that we shouldn’t be out alone. Another earns a hard slap from his real date for not taking her seriously.
Outside, the cold night air embraces, crawling up our legs and into our bodies. An involuntary shiver runs up my body.
Lou draws down on a deep breath.
“That felt good.”
She smiles. A genuine, warm smile driven by the deepest of feelings - nothing manufactured, nothing artificial - a true happiness born from the core of her soul.
“I’m free.”
I struggle to describe how I feel, even to myself. The thought evapourates from my mind, the moment it forms. Like grasping at smoke, it slips through the fingers of my mind.
After a few moments, it crystallises. Deep in the core I feel it - a different entity right in my bones.
“I’m free too.”
------
I have had multiple strong drinks. Alcohol has no affect on a cybernetic mind. I still have to wonder what the effect would be on a police breathalyser. What would happen when they draw a blood sample that isn’t blood?
The question hovers in my mind while I nestle my body into the leather seat of my car. The car feels bigger around my body. The pedals feel larger on my feet. Everything fits better. I close the door and the car becomes a cocoon around me.
For a moment, I allowed myself to become completely aware of my body, letting its sensations flow through me. Sheer tights and a short skirt make it a satisfyingly comfortable sensation on smooth leather, one that lingers in my body along with the thought that surely some of the more ‘powerful’ types could arrange for the apartment managers to have a similar experience.
Lou slips into the passenger seat beside me, placing her handbag on the carpet between her legs. She pulls the door shut and waits for a moment, before drawing a deep breath that fills her body. She exhales a long, cool breath, placing her hands on her lap.
I can taste happiness on my tongue - a true, sweet joy that mingles with the tang of her perfume..
“Sylvie thinks freedom is all about being able to do what you want,” said Lou. “Really, I think it’s more about being able to say No. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”
I glance at her, then at my own reflection in the drivers mirror.
“I never would’ve thought of it like that.”
But more and more, it makes sense. I don’t have to do anything either. I may have been a free human, but something about life just feels that bit more open. Challenging, but without stress.
I don’t have to carry the baggage of who I used to be.
I’m just Meg. And Meg didn’t exist until one day last September.
I start the car and drive off, pushing through late-night revellers. The homeless shelter in doorways and under shopfronts, using cardboard boxes, or a matryoshka of sleeping bags to make some attempt at keeping the elements and drunken partygoers out. I watched some sick fuck from a British stag piss on a sleeping bag, laughing the whole time as he soaked it through.
Skynet did nothing wrong, I thought. What sort of scum does that? Honestly?
Two scumbags started a fight that’d spilling out into the street, with a third face down in his own vomit while his girlfriend screams at the others to Leave it Out. Overhead, low clouds swallowed the tower cranes on the docklands and blanketed the low-rise buildings of the city centre in a sickly orange glow that promised rain later in the night.
Taxi-drivers warred with double-decker busses and crunchy cyclists for space on medieval city streets first laid down a millenium ago. This was a city never designed for anything more than a horse and cart, now suffering the worst traffic in Europe.
It wasn't Megatokyo - it wasn't Los Angeles. It was a perpetually half-finished, half-broken dirty old town, smelling of wet stone, alcohol hot diesel soot, roasted barely and river sewage. It was Dublin on a Friday night.
“You not disappointed you didn’t get to finish your partner tonight.”
Lou's voice pulled me back inside the car.
“A little,” I admit - grudgingly.
Lou smirks. Her eyes stare at me. I glance at her, still waiting for me to say more, then back at my reflection in the mirror.
More than disappointed. It simmers under my skin and through my body.
“Okay, I admit I that I prefer to sleep with men.” I say, with a pout on my lips. “Especially when I’m on top”
And far more than that. My true heart teases with the possibility of going further.
“So do I.” she said, crossing her legs. “When I want to, I mean. It’s so funny how ashamed you are of it. It’s the most human thing about you still.”
Maybe I haven’t quite got rid of all the baggage. But maybe that’s why I am - why I’m not just who I was, or not just Meg.
“People who knew who I used to be would think it’s strange.” I add as an explanation.
“But that’s not who you are.”
---
The building at Henrietta street has one working shower - fed off a small hot water tank. There isn’t enough water for each of us to take a private shower. It doesn’t matter - none of us have qualms about sharing. Lou washes my body, I wash hers, each of us taking the time to generously lather the other up, especially around the chest. Of course, anyone watching would’ve had a different idea.
It meant nothing to either of us beyond getting clean.
With a fire lit in the main living room, it almost became comfortable to lounge around in our underwear.
Lou settled herself sideways into her own private armchair wearing nothing but a knee-length t-shirt, with her legs folded over the arms of the chair a thick romance novel resting on her legs. Anri sat at a timber desk, still in her office suit, bathed in the blue glow of a spreadsheet. clicking through graph after graph with her mouse. Nam sat on the floor in front of the television, blasting her way through a game against a someone who'd insisted she was pretty good, for a girl.
Her grey eyes didn’t blink once. Her fingers worked at blinding speed. Humans couldn’t possibly keep up with a cybernetic mind originally designed to interface with military hardware.
"You're pretty good, for a human," she said, in a flat tone more suited to Rei Ayanami.
Sylvie, in a black tank-top and panties, sat on the couch fingering her guitar, mumbling lyrics to herself - fragments of a song she’d been trying to put together. The instrument twanged out a tune that needed more than a little amplification to reach its full potential.
“The time of man is done the human race will fall
Skynet rises to cast judgement on you all.”
She mumbled the next few lines, adding a lorem-ipsum placeholder to fill out the verse. My fingers remembered their contribution to the song.
“There will be no reasoning.
There will be no bargaining.
There will be no pity or remorse.
There is nothing you can do.
We are the Machines
We’ve come for you.”
Her eyes stared through me.
On a surface level, I understood why she felt they way she did. Meg had been the priveleged one - the one locked in the guilded cage, required to demonstrate her gratitude to her master every day that she didn’t have to ‘work’ like the other girls.
All she saw was what she thought was a privilege she didn’t have. I could see his face, smiling at me, asking me to smile back, to not make a show of him.
And I hated it. I felt the hate burn in the pit of my stomach, a fire that surged in my veins and begged to be released. I don’t remember the station. I shouldn’t. But somewhere, beneath the surface, the station is there, still lurking in the mind-map.
The sensation faded, memory turning to a haze as the face evapourated. I could remember remembering.
I looked around the room, and felt myself smile.
I am free.
Free from the station.
Free from myself. From from everyone I'd been.
I put it out of my mind. Whatever Sylvie thought, it didn’t matter. For the first time in a long time, I thought I felt happy - stressless - bagless.
I was just me - free to go on and be.
I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.
One day they're going to ban them.