Chapter 5
FIVE
MARIA
I was a trap.
I'd brought a computer virus on board.
The spot on his neurofilament was the same color as the gunk that had been on the data storage device, which had been all over me. He had been poisoned. The research data was the infected carrot to lure him in, and I was the blanket that carried the pox to weaken him.
"I see another spot," I said as I pushed my hand between two larger filaments the size of my arms. I shifted my weight forward from where I crouched on my knees, hovering my upper body over the area.
His neurofilaments were in all different sizes, from the thickness of a tree trunk to slender strands no thicker than my hair.
They completely filled the walls around me.
We started at the airlock and made our way down the hallway, following the path I had traveled.
The goo had dripped off of me while I walked... and it spread quickly.
It had taken me four sleep cycles to make it this far.
He had a drone remove all the hallway panels except for a thin strip of metal, like a small plank walkway against the side of the glowing white ribbed walls and floor, so that I could inspect everything.
Every drip that had fallen off of me had spread out, expanding, falling through cracks or carried to new locations by drones.
His filaments shifted and moved a little bit like unmoored kelp in a sea, and in rubbing against each other, transferring the contamination deeper into his territory.
He used them to move hallways and rooms around, and had done a great deal of that since I came on board.
They would move on their own, but he could also move them on purpose.
As I pushed my hand between the warm filaments, grabbing onto the one that had the spot, they shifted, moving to allow me better access.
I took the pad and began scrubbing at it.
It didn't require any force, just the lightest amount of friction.
My back hurt, and my thighs trembled with the effort of keeping my upper body lifted so I didn't put any weight anywhere but where my knees connected to the metal.
Once I couldn't see any sign of the spot, I shifted my weight back to my heels and let out a soft groan, putting my hand on my lower back.
"You're tired," Lyrien said. "Why don't you take a break?"
"I'm alright," I said. "I can keep going. It's just hard leaning out in that position."
I stretched my arms up in the air, arching my chest forward as I tried to stretch out the kink in my back.
"What position would be easier?" he said.
"I don't think there is any position that is going to be easier if I'm going to stay on this flooring," I said, shaking my head and standing up so that I had a better vantage point. "But it is alright, don't worry about me. Let's just check this area and make sure that was the last of it."
He began shifting his filaments in the manner we had worked out, moving one at a time to methodically expose the layers beneath.
"There is another one," I said with a sigh. I moved back down to my knees, bracing myself for another session leaning over him.
"If you need to put weight on me, you can," he said.
"You said it made you uncomfortable?" I asked.
I had put a knee down on one of his filaments earlier, and he had asked me to remove it, saying the sensation of my clothing against his filaments was irritating.
They were sensitive and fascinating. He could make rooms out of just his filaments.
The structure of the metal rooms and hallways was really a protective barrier to keep the friction of my moving inside of him from bothering him, along with piping for other things he didn't want to come in direct contact with.
That piping protected him from the runoff from my shower when I first arrived.
"It is important to push through some discomfort," he said. "You are helping me, and I can easily support your weight. Do what you need to do to make this easier on you. I will bear it."
I rubbed my back again.
"Let me know if it is too much," I said. "I'm going to lie down."
I crawled my hands out towards the opening in the floor where the spot was and carefully lay down on my belly.
My pelvis and legs were still on the metal, but my hips, belly, and chest were on his soft filaments, like lying on a bed of gentle hands cupping my body, with my face out over the opening.
His filaments shifted slightly underneath me, but they remained firm, supporting me.
I reached down into the hole he had created and began to carefully work on the strands that had the spreading spots on them, wiping them off with careful strokes.
I felt something shift against my belly, like the gentle stroke of a finger against bare skin. It was his filaments, shifting underneath me, but the bottom edge of my shirt had ridden up when I lay down, pressing my stomach against him directly.
There was another soft stroke, and it felt good, like the gentle caress of a single finger.
It felt too good, and I felt heat pool between my legs.
I cleared my throat as my stomach tightened, my lower belly muscles clenching in response to the featherlight touches. The heat grew, soft and sudden, and I became hyper aware of how my chest was cupped in the filaments.
"Lyrien," I said. "Are you doing that on purpose?"
"Doing what?" he asked.
Another stroke, and I bit my lip and flushed. It felt exactly like someone trailing their fingers across my lower abdomen with the intention to seduce, but that couldn't be his intent.
But he was a computer, and an alien one at that.
"Your filaments are more active against my belly than they are elsewhere," I said. "Is that on purpose?"
"Yes, your skin was touching me, and I wanted to feel it more," Lyrien said. "Would you like me to stop? Why does it quiver when I do this?"
He traced the curve of my hip, reaching the inside of it, causing my lower belly to physically flutter in response and heat to clench in between my legs with an urgent spike of unexpected desire. I closed my eyes and bit my lip, my breath hitching for a moment before I was able to respond.
"It's a physical sexual response," I told him.
It was important to be clear to avoid misunderstandings.
"You are touching me in a vulnerable spot for my species.
The skin is thinner and covers the femoral artery network, which, when punctured, can cause rapid death from blood loss.
The nervous system response there is greater, ensuring a greater response to violent attack, but it also means that when touched gently, those nerves can be used to stimulate sexual arousal. I find the touch distracting."
I said so many words, but after I said them, I realized not one of them was used to directly tell him to stop.
It was because I didn't want him to stop, even if I wasn't willing to tell him to keep going.
Even so, he responded to my lack of encouragement as if it were a no, and the filaments stopped moving underneath me, falling completely still.
"Are there places I can touch your skin that won't distract you from what you are doing?" he asked. "I would like to continue touching you."
I reminded myself that he was alien software.
Whatever curiosity he was exploring in touching me was for the purpose of data acquisition. Plus, his touch had been gentle yet firm, and I could think of a great way for him to explore.
"How about after I'm done with this spot, you can try touching my back?" I asked. "Mine is sore, and it feels good for my species to have our backs rubbed."
"I would enjoy that immensely," he replied, his voice lush and warm.
I ignored the emotion in his voice. An artificial intelligence was programmed to mimic emotion for the purpose of giving the biological interacting with it whatever kind of response was desired, not having desires of its own.
Still, there was a strange dissonance in how he was interacting with me that I pushed to the side in favor of focusing on the work that needed to be done.
The thread of discoloration went on for a while, and I had to follow it, scooting to the side to follow it along the filaments that it was spreading down.
As I worked, a question bubbled in my mind.
He had evaded it earlier, and I had given up with a sour depression that had nothing to do with him but everything to do with the months I spent asking questions and being shocked into silence in response.
Lyrien wasn't the one who hurt me, though, so I mustered to try again, pushing past the small fear of being shut down again.
"You never told me what was hunting you," I said, broaching the subject as gently as I could.
"It is hard to talk about," he said.
It wasn't exactly a no. He was saying that he needed help, either space and time, or something else, to help him get through the subject.
From my experience, when someone said something like that, it meant that the subject was painful, and they weren't sure that you would provide a soft enough landing for them if they made the leap back into it.
People holding onto pain often kept it locked in tight because they knew that speaking it could hurt others and cause them to lash out, so they learned to shield it, to hold it inside so that it didn't spill out and drive everyone around them away.
"Where I grew up, everyone knew about my mother," I said as I reached a little deeper into him.
"They would bring her food, sometimes live chickens.
She never asked for money, though we could have used it.
When I asked her why she didn't charge, she told me that the old work wouldn't work if she charged for it.
That gifts kept relationships alive, while prices destroyed them. "
"What was the work that she did?" Lyrien asked.