26. In Earnest

Okay. Okay, calm down, Luna. It’s fine. This is fine, right? Probably not the end of the world. You can apologize and things will go back to normal, won’t they?

Hah. Who am I kidding, of course they won’t. What was I even thinking, assuming Thea might be into me? Maybe she considers us friends, maybe, but physically? I’m just a project. A curiosity. She has straight up opened the space between my legs and stuck her fingers in there and not once did she seem to even consider it as potentially sexual. Why would she? She’s sheltered beyond belief, innocent to an unparalleled extreme. She’s… I’m practically taking advantage of her. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Calm down. That’s not a plea anymore, that’s a command. I take my emotions, bundle them up, and shove them wholesale into my energy stores, letting a comfortably familiar numbness take hold. Maybe things will be fine. Maybe they won’t be. Either way, I’ll live through it like I always have.

That hasn’t always been easy to do, but I’ve done it. Now, even that will be easy; I couldn’t comply with any desires for self-termination if I wanted to, but even then the hopeless despair that drives one to suicide is another emotion that can be burned. Devoid of joy, devoid of anger, devoid of fear, and devoid even of sadness, I can still continue on. With no emotions at all, no motivations, no hopes or dreams or desires, I would still keep moving. No longer acting, but still reacting, still responding to stimuli and following orders like the servant doll I am.

It seems kind of nice. To just… step away from it all. Stop feeling. Just for a little bit. Just while my feelings are like this.

“O-okay,” a squeaky voice speaks up behind me. “Sorry about that. Um. I’m back.”

Thea. She’s back. My desire to run away just like she did is added to the flame.

“…Luna?”

I guess I should probably react. I turn to look at her, and she jumps a bit. Oh. I’m still not wearing my faceplate. Didn’t expect her to be surprised to look at sensors, wires, and the gem structure that my faceplate makes look like eyes.

“Sorry about that,” I apologize, my voice sounding as calm as ever. “I shouldn’t have let my thoughts get away from me.”

“N-no!” Thea insists, flailing a bit. “I shouldn’t have run away, that was… very rude of me. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” I insist.

“Y-yes I do, I just… I was just surprised,” she mumbles. “No one has ever… I’m… I don’t really know what to do, that’s all. I’m not exactly… well-socialized.”

I’m not really sure what to say. Is she just trying to be nice? She literally fled in terror after realizing I was thinking about sex. That doesn’t strike me as the reaction of someone who believes my thoughts to be okay. I guess I can check though, right? She read my emotions. It’s only fair that I keep track of hers.

Fear. That’s the main one. Perhaps it’s somewhat to be expected. But I feel confusion, too. A bit of disgust. Embarrassment. Shame, for whatever reason, but the others paint a clear picture together.

She certainly isn’t happy. I’m such an idiot. I have to fix this in any way necessary. I can’t upset her.

I can’t.

“Really, please don’t apologize,” I insist, securing my faceplate back on. Empathic seal stable. “Honestly, I was mostly curious whether it was still possible for me to feel that way. It was a meditation exercise. I should have thought about how it might be interpreted before taking my face off.”

The lie flows out of me easily. What’s one more? They’re all in service to her continued ignorance already. She must remain happy, and that means she can’t know the truth. That’s simply how it is.

“Wh-what?” Thea blinks. “Really? It felt kind of… directed at me. Um, I was surprised you could feel that way myself! I’ve always assumed it would be biological.”

Ignore the first part, focus on the second. Draw her away.

“I am being simulated as if I had a biological body,” I point out. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to house and use my soul, right?”

“Oh… yeah, that makes sense,” she says. She looks like she’s thinking about it. A successful distraction, I think? “The soul needs a source from which emotions can be born. I never thought about how that could be software emulating viable hardware rather than hardware itself, but I suppose it obviously can be. I wonder what would happen to your soul if we transferred your consciousness to a different vessel?”

“Well, it certainly came along for the ride the first time,” I say. “Or I’m a copy, I guess.”

“O-oh, sorry, I’m being insensitive, aren’t I? I’m so sorry.”

“No! No, it’s fine. Please don’t apologize. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I-I have, though, I—”

“Thea,” I press, a little desperately. “Please don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. Please?”

That cuts her short, confusion shifting to become her primary state of mind. But that’s better than being upset. So much better.

“…Alright,” she allows. “I guess I was just surprised. Nobody’s ever… felt that way about me before. So when I thought you were, I didn’t really know how to react. But if you’re not upset I ran, I guess that’s fine?”

“I’m not upset,” I lie. “A little embarrassed about my mistake, but mostly just hoping you’re okay. Have you really never felt that from anyone else?”

The last question falls out of me before I manage to reconsider, the uncomfortable feeling of potential failure digging into me. Too late now, I suppose.

“I mean, no,” Thea admits, rubbing her hands together nervously. “I’ve felt it, just… not at me. Melpomene would never see me that way. She still treats me like a little kid.”

Oh. Oh. Of course. Of course Thea has a crush on… her.

“She and Nanaya are kind of a thing already anyway,” she continues, and if I was drinking anything I’d spit it out. Y’know, if I could.

“Nanaya!?” I blurt. “Really? What? I figured she’d be way too grumpy for sex. I’ve never gotten that impression from her at all!”

“She hides it well,” Thea shrugs. “Really well. It’s kind of spooky how little she seems to feel things sometimes. I’m not really sure… exactly what their relationship is? I don’t know if they have, um, s-sex. Uh. I mean, obviously they wouldn’t do that where I’d… see them. Anath could probably tell you more, I heard most of this from her. I never would have noticed otherwise.”

“But does Melpomene feel that way about Nanaya?” I ask, this line of questioning both incredibly interesting and a good pivot away from the topics I don’t want her to focus on.

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “I… don’t really get people. Not even empathy powers make me any good at it. I guess that’s probably why I was so surprised. I’m a little worried that I don’t treat you enough like a person.”

What.

“Thea, you’ve treated me—”

I stop, the sound clip I created cutting off. I can’t tell her she’s treated me more like a person than literally anyone else since this transformation happened, can I? I can’t give that reassurance. It’s too close to a disallowed truth.

“—extremely well,” I finish, my voice not seeming to have wavered for even a moment. “You’re the only reason I can speak. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for that. You’ve taken what was designed to be an Antipathy torture device and turned it into something I can honestly enjoy.”

For the most part.

“I’m… I’m glad,” she nods, finally managing a smile. “I guess… I’m worried that I’m just focused on what I can do to you more than I’m really focused on what I can do for you. I never even asked if you wanted half the things I’ve planned for you. I just get so excited about a new project but you’re not a project, you’re… Luna. I want to be better about that.”

“That’s… very sweet,” I admit. “You don’t have to worry about getting my permission on this stuff, though. I trust you.”

“W-what?” she gapes. “No, that’s… no!”

“Look, if you want my permission, you have it,” I assure her. It’s not really worth much around here anyway. “But in all honesty, I think I’d go crazy if you tried to get me to design my own face and skin and whatnot. I don’t really like thinking about that kind of stuff. As long as you make me cute, I’m happy.”

“Well of course I’m going to make you cute!” she declares. “Obviously! Going through all the effort of making a face and bodysuit and not making it pretty? That would just be terrible. I-I, um, really do want to know what you think about… y’know, intimate details? I doubt you’re going to end up naked in front of anyone, but there’s always a chance that kind of thing could give you away, but I don’t know how comfortable you’d be with… that. I don’t want to make anything, like, creepy or weird.”

Oh geez. Uh. That’s a question that would get my heart racing if I had one. Is there any good reason not to be honest here? No? That’s good. But do I have the courage to answer truthfully?

…Oh wait, of course I do, I can just eat my own fear.

“As long as it’s not too weird for you, I think I’d be more comfortable with everything in its place,” I answer. “Naughty bits and all. I mean, they won’t, like, function or anything, right?”

“I mean no, obviously not,” Thea confirms. “It would just be, um, external stuff. There’s no room in your… uh. Y-you know what I’m saying.”

She blushes a deep brown. It’s painfully adorable.

“And you can’t add… accurate haptics?” I nudge, thanks to that beautiful artificial courage.

“What do you… oh. O-oh! Um. No,” she squeaks. “Or at least… I mean, maybe? But I don’t have any information on how your haptic system currently works, none of my planned changes interface with it at all. It worked fine feeling things through the proof-of-concept face so I was just going to… y’know, let it do that.”

There’s a pause as she fidgets a little.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I probably can’t make you feel very human again. It’s just… visual. Maybe after a lot more research and time, but…”

“It’s okay,” I assure her quickly. “Really, it’s okay. Just having the bare basics to let me blend in on Earth would be more than enough. I was just curious, not expecting you to do anything like that.”

Don’t think about letting her do experiments on you don’t think about letting her do experiments on you think about letting her do experiments on you—

Stopping thread. Creating reminder. Resuming.

—don’t think about… wait, what was I thinking a—

Don’t think about it.

—bout oh cool okay that’s probably nothing to worry about.

“Haha, yeah, that would be kinda… uh, weird, wouldn’t it?” Thea fidgets. “You probably don’t want to, um… a-anyway! I still need to access your ocular system and figure out how it works so I can sub in a new input. Are you… okay with taking your faceplate off again?”

Emotional spectrum stable. Thought patterns successfully restricted. Tweaking emotional burn levels to simulate nominal mood state. Check, check, and triple check. Good to go.

“Sure,” I answer in no time at all, popping the faceplate back off. “Do anything you need.”

I couldn’t tell you to stop if I wanted to. You’re too excited about it. That’s… scary, but at least with Thea she’s always done things I want her to do. Things I’d be happy to let her do even if I didn’t need to. And that makes all the difference, doesn’t it? I wasn’t lying when I said I trusted her.

“Um… alright,” Thea agrees, motioning me to sit down on the table as she collects her laptop and brings it over along with a few tools. “Let’s get started, then.”

I tune out a lot of the following work, slowing down my mind and setting myself to pop back into awareness only when there’s a question I need to answer or an order I need to follow. It’s the best way to prevent my emotions from running wild again, and is relatively easy on power drain.

“Okay, I think that’s all I need from you right now,” Thea says several hours later. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to test this stuff, but for now I have to actually attempt to construct the prototypes. There are a lot of small mechanical systems, since the detail work on how your face moves is going to be super important. So that will be… a while.”

“Of course,” I nod. Hmm, a lot of my plates have been removed. With a twist of power and will, I snap them back into place with one of the few spells I automatically gain permission for.

“…Gosh, that’s cool,” Thea sighs. “Are you doing okay, Luna? I feel like I’m… I don’t know. Missing something.”

“I’m fine!” I lie again. “Really, there’s nothing worth worrying about. Again, thank you so much for all you’re doing for me. I can’t possibly repay you enough.”

“I-It’s fine! Really! I don’t need any kind of payment, I… like doing this,” she insists, fidgeting a bit.

“Yeah, I guess you do,” I agree. “Still, the degree of gratitude stands.”

“…Okay,” she reluctantly allows. “I’m… gonna miss you. When you start to spend your time on Earth.”

“I’ll miss you too,” I say. “But I’ll be around! Maybe we can even figure out some way to send messages back and forth. And maybe you’ll find another good way to join me without standing out too much.”

“I-I hope so!” she agrees. “I really want to. It’s nice here, but it can be a little… I don’t know. I don’t want to say ‘lonely,’ but… it would be nice to know more than three people. Heh. Four now, though! I’m really glad I got to meet you, Luna.”

Let it all burn. You can’t do anything about it anyway.

“Likewise, Thea,” I smile, hopping off the table and heading for the exit to the room. “Let me know if you need anything, or even if you just want to chat, okay?”

“Sure thing!” she grins. “But, uh, I’m probably going to go into a complete fugue for the next eight to ten hours or so.”

“We’ll make sure to force you to eat,” I assure her. “Good luck!”

“Thanks! See you later!”

I wave goodbye and head on out, turning into the hall and immediately spotting a broody-looking Melpomene leaning with her back against the wall, having obviously been listening in. What!? How did I not notice her? My sensors are still telling me she’s not there. I didn’t know she could do that.

“Come with me,” she says, quiet enough that Thea probably can’t hear her from the inside of the workshop. And, well, I guess that’s an order. I follow her as she pushes off the wall with her wings and starts walking away.

“What’s up?” I ask casually, ignoring the simmering sludge of emotions rolling off of her like lava. She doesn’t answer, though, ultimately leading me out of the castle, out of the fragment, and into the liminal zone.

“…Do we have some likely candidates for translation coming up?” I try again, the vitriol pouring off my master having died down a little over the course of the walk.

“Perhaps,” Melpomene answers. “We’ll certainly look when we get there.”

“So that’s… not the main purpose of this trip, I take it?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“You and Nanaya have been conspiring behind my back, haven’t you?” she accuses. And wow. That’s… a take.

“Uh, for very specific definitions of ‘conspiring’ and ‘behind your back,’ maybe,” I answer. “It’s not like Nanaya would ever want to do something if she didn’t think it was in your best interest, and I literally can’t do anything I don’t think is in your best interest.“

“So you say,” Melpomene scowls, and a bit of anger slips through my numbness.

“So I say!?” I snap at her. “Look, master, I don’t know how long you were creeping outside her door, but I know you heard enough to know I’m still keeping your dirty secrets. Because I have to. You think I want to act like there’s nothing wrong? You think I wouldn’t blow the lid off of everything if I had even the tiniest hint of an opportunity? What the fuck could I possibly gain from pulling a long con here?”

“And what part of any of that do you think inclines me to let you out of my sight!?” Melpomene growls back. “You keep telling me I’m in charge of you but then you go and act like… act like…!”

“Like a friend to someone you deeply care about who desperately needs one? Oh no! How awful for you that she’s happy, clearly I must be working against your interests!”

“Shut up!” she orders, and I have no choice but to do so. “You lie to her face so easily. You clearly feel more than friendship towards her. You think I’d allow such a thing?”

I don’t respond. She turns to glare at me and I motion at my own face. Her scowl grows deeper.

“…You may speak,” she says.

“No, Melpomene, I don’t think you’d allow it,” I answer. “That’s why I had to lie, you dipshit.”

The danger alert flashes through my mind so fast that I barely have time to realize it’s there before the impact connects, Melpomene’s foot crashing into my shielding and pumping in enough magic to shatter it. Her leg collapses half of one arm, crushing the components inside, before the impact with my chest sends me flying off towards a building. I manage to get my sputtering shielding back online before the follow-up impacts, three buildings and seven total walls getting reduced to rubble by my tumbling body before I finally slow down enough to twist in the air, spring off of my remaining functional arm, and land on my feet.

My power reserves have been reduced to 18%. Chassis integrity compromised. Enabling self-preservation spell suite.

Melpomene floats overhead, crackles of purple lightning dancing between her fingers.

“I believe I have told you several times to watch the way you address me,” she hisses. “And yet, here you are still disobeying me. Still insisting on running your mouth. And you dare to act like you’re forced into what you do? No. Clearly you require more traditional methods of being cowed into submission.”