Mari bounced up and down on a holographic trampoline in Eli’s living unit, a gaggle of chibis jumping with her. This time her holographic companions were a baker’s dozen of colorful blobs chirping “chibi” in harmonious tones with unblinking eyes like black buttons.
Since arriving at the Hex, Mari had spent her slivers of free time unwinding at her new friend’s place. When Eli had first arrived on the project two years ago, she’d upgraded from a standard, free unit to a quad, designing the living space as her own personal oasis with a stunning collection of plants and mini-biomes, plus an endless parade of strangely adorable holographic creatures.
At first, the chibis were unnerving, especially when they jumped in Mari’s lap and she could feel their weight and warmth. But over the last two weeks, they’d become like the animals back home – the livestock and pets with their routines while the outdoor cats and dogs came and went as they pleased, cared for by the neighborhood as a whole. They were constant companions with personalities of their own. Except the chibis had no needs or wants of their own.
Mari sighed, bounced onto her ass, then settled and lied down on her back in the middle of the trampoline. The chibis piled on top of her like a weighted blanket and purred.
“You can turn them down if they’re too much,” Eli called from her lounger nearby, logged into the virtual reality that everyone up here seemed to love so much.
“It’s actually kind of nice,” Mari said. “Maybe they can crush my soul back into my body.”
The trampoline dipped as Eli climbed in and sat next to her. In the last week, Eli had darkened her contacts to a deep blue, dyed her eyelashes green and put aquamarine streaks into her highlighter blonde hair. A chibi in the shape of a rainbow colored snake peeked around her shoulder with shiny black eyes. It flicked its tongue along her cheek, its body trailing down the other side of her neck.
“I know it’s your first unassisted spacewalk, but you’re going to do great.” Eli twirled the snake’s tail around her finger. “You’ve been training for two weeks straight, and you’ll have a safety tether.”
Mari groaned and rolled onto her stomach. She knew she should be ready to go “outside,” as they called it here, by now. She’d already taken two extensions and she couldn’t take another if she wanted to keep her job. “It’s just… looming.”
Eli hummed thoughtfully. “We should find you a distraction.”
“I was hoping to have a distraction by now,” she grumbled, her face flattened against the surface.
The trampoline dipped rhythmically as Eli started to bounce lightly on her knees. “If it makes you feel any better, I know for a fact that the InfoSec department has been all hands on deck since the Admin arrived. I genuinely don’t think he’s ghosting you.”
Mari resisted the urge to groan again. She would not wallow.
In her first two weeks on the Hex, she’d had one promising encounter with someone who didn’t work within three degrees of her, and the man hadn’t bothered to spare a single word to her since. She wasn’t looking for a relationship or anything, but a woman had needs.
Logically, she could understand the demands of Andre’s schedule, but the complete lack of contact stung – mostly because she’d enjoyed their chemistry. She’d let herself daydream, however briefly, about ruffling his feathers a bit, unbuttoning his collar a notch or two, hearing the tremor of his voice low at her ear. She’d begun to wonder what his touch felt like.
Her own boundaries meant that her coworkers were off-limits, not that it made a difference. Mari could tell that most of them thought she was strange and probably a little simple. Andre’s reaction had been muted compared to some of the others who asked whether her family had access to regenerative power, if they had to wear gas masks outside, even how often she bathed back home. His interest in her had seemed genuine, but maybe he’d changed his mind.
Eli continued jumping on her feet. “I admire your dedication to training, but you’ve got to blow off some steam, or you’ll just–“ She mimicked an explosion. “There’s a reason an old-timey tea kettle screams until you take it off the heat. Terrans still use those fussy little gadgets down there, right? If you don’t take yourself off the heat, you’ll start screaming too.”
“That’s a disturbing take on kettles that I’ve never considered before, thanks.” Mari sat up, the blobs rolling off her. “So, what kind of distractions do you have out here?”
Eli’s eyes glinted with mischief. “Have you ever been to a cyber club?” She squealed in delight at Mari’s blank expression. “Have I got something for you.”
She led Mari to her vanity, where they prepared for a night out.
Mari was grateful to have met Eli on the shuttle that first day. Their friendship had flowed naturally – Eli appeared to thrive on a stream of chat rooms, contractors, and friends messaging or visiting during her time online, holographically and in person, but Mari was the only one who spent significant chunks of time with her. She’d checked repeatedly to make sure she wasn’t overstaying her welcome, but Eli had encouraged her to stay. “I like the body doubling,” she’d said.
Mari printed out one of the outfits she’d saved in her digital closet, a short and shiny black dress with a scooped neckline and spiked pads over the shoulders. She put her gravity boots into the replicator and reprinted them in a chunky-heeled model with laces. Eli showed her how to program the makeup brusher, where she designed her look for an airbrush to apply within seconds to her face.
For Mari, going to Eli’s lush unit instead of her own sterile room felt like turning her face toward the warmth of the sun. Her new friend had gifted her at least a dozen plants to spruce up her place, but she liked Eli’s company, too. Mari had come from a massive family by modern standards. Growing up, controlled chaos was the norm with five adults and at least ten children living under the same roof for more than thirty decades. Sitting alone in a room after finishing her shift was an entirely foreign concept.
Without Eli, Mari’s budding life in space would be infinitely lonelier. But despite both of their pansexuality, she felt no physical or romantic tension with Eli, and she was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. Their friendship was a different type of intimacy, closer to sisterhood.
Eli finished dressing as the makeup brusher completed its work. Her shimmery, translucent dress reminded Mari of a jellyfish the way its delicate tendrils trailed behind her. The snake chibi now coiled around her upper arm like a bangle. She wrapped a hair styler around Mari’s head where she sat, the cap activating and forming a seal at the edge of her hairline. A holographic menu appeared in front of Mari with hair styling options, including colors.
“I’ve never dyed my hair before,” she mused. “Is there a lot of upkeep?”
Eli shrugged. “Not really? You can dye a section of your hair or program the hair follicle to grow another color. It’ll stay like that until you decide you want something else.”
While the idea of making a change appealed to Mari, she wanted to be able to recognize herself in the mirror. She chose a straight blow-out and a section of green framing either side of her face, and opted to lengthen her hair by a few centimeters just to see how it would work. Sure enough, within minutes the cap released her hair down to nearly her waist, with glossier strands and thicker ends.
“Wild,” she muttered, leaning into the mirror and poking at her scalp. If she fussed a hair out of place, it migrated back to its styled form within a minute.
“My stars,” Eli said. “That is a revenge look if I’ve ever seen one.”
“Is it too much? I was going more for spite.”
She chuckled. “It’s perfect.”
“Thanks. You look flawless as usual. Very… bioluminescent femme fatale.”
“Aww.” Eli grasped her hands to her chest. “I feel seen.”
The night was still young by the time they left the unit, the door sliding locked behind them.
At the end of the pedestrian corridor, they boarded an elevator platform to the Central district, which mirrored the hexagonal architecture of the station. The five cubic block neighborhood located at the core of the habitable cluster of hex cells was designed to be the station’s social heart – with parks, playgrounds, specialized cafeterias, themed bars, and niche clubs for dancing, art and hobby collectives, e-sports like laser tag and climbing, and apparently cybering. Mari had been so preoccupied with her basic training that she hadn’t spared any thought to discovering the area – she figured her two-year contract gave her enough time for that once she settled in.
Light foot traffic flowed through the walkways between buildings. The blocks were no more than three stories tall each, connected with diagonal escalators, adorned with plants, and warmed by inviting lights. Each story had an open air strip along the center that looked over the blocks below.
“So back in the day, people would get into dirty text chats…” Mari began as they approached the club, a tall building with a dark facade covered in a slow-motion projection of flowers.
“Yeah, when the ‘internet’ was first a thing,” Eli finished for her. “And that was called cybering. Back then the net was like going into space at first for the human race – a whole new world with very little rules and even fewer tools to enforce them. People could hook up with total strangers and never see their faces, know their names, or where they came from. Cyber clubs are a throwback to that time, except it’s a little more than chatting. And, you know, safer now.”
The double doors scanned and logged their profiles before allowing them access into the building. A prompt appeared in Mari’s contact showing a small suggested donation of credits for their entry.
The interior opened up into a great room with a high ceiling and low mood lights suspended all the way up like fireflies. Soft loungers, pillow pits, and multi-tier sofas furnished the ground floor, where she could make out silhouettes of the crowd as her eyes adjusted. The most striking visual was the many opaque oval pods floating above them to the top of the room.
She realized Eli was talking to her so she lowered the volume of the club music through the receivers in her ears. They moved through the crowd to the side of the room near a counter of replicators.
“The pods are like sensory deprivation chambers,” Eli said. “You filter what you’re in the mood for and match with a partner online. Either person can end the session, move on to a new partner – or multiple, if that’s what you’re in for – and get off the ride at any point. The matches are encrypted and logged, fully anonymized unless an issue comes up. Even voices are disguised.”
Mari was intrigued. Her toys had grown dull over the last couple of weeks, and this offered a dynamic alternative to satisfy a craving or two. “How often do you do this?”
Eli printed a drink from the replicator. “I log in from home once in a while if I’m feeling an itch and there’s no one around to scratch it. I haven’t been out to a club in a minute, but there was a time when I was really into this scene.” She took a sip and eyed Mari. “You thinking of taking a ride?”
Mari ordered a cocktail the color of a sunset with mist rising from the surface. The chilled, tropical drink packed a pleasant punch. She raised her glass. “When in Rome.”
Eli lifted her drink to toast with hers. “We’re as far away from Rome as any human being can get these days, but I like that energy.”
They didn’t nurse their drinks for long before someone recognized Eli and encouraged the two of them to join a chic group on a couch that looked like an optical illusion with multiple levels, dips, and nooks. Mari met a flurry of people whose names she never would’ve remembered had their profiles not shown up on her contacts. They were friendly but not overly solicitous – many were laid back in a happy haze of drink, euphorics, or what Mari assumed was the afterglow of sex.
Eli motioned toward the pile of fully clothed bodies that had formed a cuddle puddle in the middle of the couch. “I’m going to get in on this. What about you?”
Mari pointed to the pods above them. “I think I’m going to give one of these things a whirl.”
Eli whooped and put an arm around her shoulder, turning to face the group. “We’ve got a first-timer taking a ride!”
They burst into cheers. Mari blushed but laughed. She’d never been so regaled on her way to an anonymous hookup before.
“Good luck,” Eli said. “Remember the screaming kettle.”
“I’ll try to get the screaming out now,” Mari quipped.
Eli threw back her head and laughed. “That’s the spirit.”
As much as Mari made a habit of smothering her sensuality when she was in a work mentality, she was beginning to feel like something had to give. She was constantly working after hours to keep up with basic skills that her coworkers took for granted, like turning off their gravity boots to get from one side of the room to another without flying headfirst into a wall. The sight of a space suit still filled her with dread. What if she forgot to fasten a part of her suit or seal her helmet on her way out of an airlock? Compared to her environmental crisis response job back home, the stakes felt lower wading into crocodile-infested floodwaters than stepping out into an endless void that wanted to suffocate and freeze her to death at the first chance. At least the crocodiles could be reasoned with.
So she was a little stressed. And she didn’t have an outlet to release her stress. And she was miffed that the one stress outlet she’d hoped for had left her hanging.
She usually had better luck finding a partner whenever the itch struck. But even with her universal translator, Mari often felt like she was speaking an entirely different language than the people around her. They spoke more quickly but also with fewer words, as if they always had somewhere to be or something to do and they didn’t want to waste their breath. And maybe it was the things she said or the way she said them, but surely she didn’t inspire this many blank stares back home. Hell, the shortest of Spacers were all at least a head taller than her, the tallest towering closer to half a meter. And she thanked the stars for her heated suit anytime she was outside of her room or Eli’s greenhouse because the ambient temperature was kept no higher than 18 degrees celsius.
For all appearances and functional purposes, Mari was the alien here.
She realized she’d started digging her nails into her palms while waiting for one of the pods to arrive. Mari made an effort to unclench as a pod lowered to where she waited at one of the designated spots in each corner of the room. The door slid up to reveal a jet black interior, similar to the exterior coating but without the reflective shine.
She took care stepping into the pod and reclined as the door shut, cutting off the sounds from the outside room, the low music and hum of conversation. She might as well have been floating in a safety pod in space. Fortunately, she couldn’t see outside from her pod, the effect more like a cocoon. Her body relaxed into the cushion against her back.
A holographic menu appeared, allowing Mari to customize her environment to her liking. She chose a slow synth with a seductive rhythm as her background music, activated a low, warm glow so that she wasn’t in total darkness, and increased the thermostat several degrees. Then she got to the menu about her preferences and what kind of encounter she’d like to have.
What kind of encounter did she want to have?
She wanted to let go. She’d been so tightly wound these last two weeks. She wanted to lose herself in sensation without having to think or strategize. She wanted to be pleased and please in return.
So she adjusted the various sliders between gender preference, topping and bottoming, submission and dominance, masochism and sadism. She checked boxes for her favorite positions, what types of physical and sexual play she liked, which types of play were off the table, and what she wasn’t sure about but open to trying. The questionnaire went into intricate detail, including a library of user-submitted queries. According to the prompts, the more she answered, the higher a match she could get, so she answered just enough to get her highest match percentage above ninety percent.
The next menu gave Mari the option to customize her own avatar’s shape, projection, and voice. She left most of those options on the default settings, so her own voice and body shape would get randomized and enhanced by the preferences of the partners who matched with her, which they would experience but she wouldn’t know. Then, she had the option to override her partners’ customizations with her own preferences. She could choose what her partners looked like at random or in great detail, or pick from a menu with endless, customizable pre-made models running the gambit of the gender spectrum. Some of the options were celebrity-endorsed lookalikes and others advertised “refined character encounters” with programmed personalities that cost credits to play.
Immediately, and annoyingly, Andre Lozano came to Mari’s mind – the way his hair fell carelessly over his brow in comparison to the rest of him buttoned up so tight, the mischief in his eyes as they embarked on their ridiculous food adventure together, the way he loosened up like he loosened his collar halfway through their meal, but also the intensity with which he watched her when he didn’t think she was looking. She could’ve sworn she’d felt a connection with him.
She could customize her masculine partners to look like him, but was that an okay thing to do to someone she’d met in real life? The encounter was anonymous and the data would get purged afterward. Nobody would know. And yet, something about it didn’t sit right with Mari. How strange would it be to interact with him if she ran into him again in the real world?
She’d wanted him, not an imitation of him. She’d wanted to find out more about him, uncover more surprises that delighted her, discover the ways the energy crackled between them. She wouldn’t get any of that out of a doll stitched from the brief memories she had of him.
So she chose one of the gender-neutral models that looked nothing like Andre as her default, and allowed her partners’ self-customizations to override her preferences.
Mari submitted her picks and joined the queue for a match. The cushion under her gave way and she began to float in zero-G, the edges of the pod beyond her reach even as she stretched her limbs. The options to pause, stop, and exit the encounter remained visible at the corner of her vision.
A soft chime announced her match. Mari clicked the prompt to accept…
This chapter keeps going, but things get spicy from here! You can continue reading on Patreon or Wattpad.