Digital Galaxies

The first thing I became aware of when I began to regain consciousness was the sensation of warm breath tickling one of my ears. My senses gradually reignited from there, filling my body back out again.

I was in a bed, I think, with Cerri cuddled up against my back. Big spoon Cerri. I could tell it was her because… well, it just was. Her scent, the sound of her breathing, and even the way she held me. It was all her.

She was asleep, but shifting restlessly slightly every now and then.

"Alia!" She muttered, sounding worried. Sleep talking?

I tried to turn around and face her, but she responded by clutching me even harder to her chest. "Alia…"

She sounded really upset. 

"Cerri?" I asked softly, reaching up and around to touch her face.

She twitched with the contact, then stirred and let out a mild sigh. I listened with awe pumping in my heart as she slowly woke from her nightmare. This was a person who'd never had a physical body, who'd been created out of buggy code, and yet here she was waking up from a bad dream. There was zero doubt as to her status as 'person'.

It took her a moment to realise I was awake, but when she did, all hell broke loose.

"Alia!" She cried happily. "You're awake?"

I nodded and took the opportunity to complete my turn to face her. "Yeah… where are we?"

"Onboard the Turshen," she said, her voice throbbing with emotion. "Oh god, Alia… I was so worried. Your neural activity went nuts, so bad that as your point of contact, I got a notification. Then it went flat, nothing. I thought… I thought you'd been wiped, or died, or something. I was so, so worried. Please… please tell me it's you in there."

I blinked, stunned. What, that had really happened? My memory gave a hiccup when I tried to recall what had happened after that weird explosion. I'd really gone blank? That was fucking terrifying.

"As far as I know," I told her. "How do we check?"

"I just did, sorry," she said sheepishly. "The emergency connection to your brain stack stays open until you close it."

"Oh," I murmured, processing everything she'd just explained. I guess I really should have asked more questions about how this digital human thing worked before I yeeted the meat sack, huh?

Moving spontaneously, Cerri pressed a delicate kiss to my forehead. "I was so worried," she whispered, lips still resting on my skin. "I'm never letting you out of my sight, ever again"

Warmth spread all throughout my body, electric and so very pleasant. She cared about me. The idea that someone cared about me that much…

"Cerri," I said, voice laden with emotion. I'd just said her name, but really I'd meant, I love you, Cerri.

"Alia," she replied softly, turning her head so her cheek pressed softly to the spot where her lips had been.

Rather than give voice to everything I was feeling, I asked, "What happened?"

She let out a long, exhausted sigh. "A lot."

Shuffling back so I could meet her eyes, I said, "Tell me what happened on your end, then I'll tell you what happened on mine?"

She puffed out her cheeks and glanced up at the ceiling for a moment. “Alright, uh… well, when you sent the message about there being something in space that was huge, we started using all our sensors to try and get through the cloud somehow. Radar worked somewhat well, and we got that reading I told you about. After that, I found out that the new ship had sonar of all things, so we got an even better look with that.”

“Wait, what?” I blurted, surprised that sonar of all things had worked.

Despite my not specifying what part of her explanation had confused me, she still understood exactly what I was talking about. The way she was just instinctively on the same page as me… it made me so happy.

“It makes sense, if you think about it. The storm was fucking with everything else, but with an atmosphere to transmit sound waves, sonar worked just fine,” she said with a proud little smile.

“Anyway, um… that’s… that’s about when I got your last message,” she continued, voice going husky with emotion. “We detected the jump… the explosion afterwards. It was… I was so scared for you.”

“I’m safe now,” I told her soothingly. My heart ached for her, for the idea of her being upset.

She gave an erratic nod. “I know… I uh… well, the explosion did something to you. It did something to your actual self, scrambled and messed with your brain. When I got the emergency alert, I freaked out. Then when you didn’t come back… I followed you, rushed down the emergency link and tried to stabilise you, but it was a mess. God it was… it was like seeing a person after a really bad car crash. All I could do was hold all the bits of you together, I thought you were done for.”

“That happened?” I asked, suddenly feeling very, very small. That must have been so awful for her.

“Yes,” she gulped, closing her eyes for a moment. “You snapped back together a few microseconds later, but you wouldn’t wake up. So I logged back into DG and we searched for Bundit. Found you and the fab, then risked moving the Turshen to get you. We blew some of our normal-space thrusters but we got you. Since then I’ve… well I’ve been selfish. Hiding with your body in my room, waiting for you to wake up. It’s been… I don’t know, almost a day?”

“Awww, Cerri,” I murmured, pulling her close again. “Thanks for saving me.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she told me dejectedly. “I was panicking and just trying but nothing was working and…”

She started crying, voice choking up with emotion as she clutched at me desperately. “I’m responsible for you, I’m the one who gave you the DH package, I’m the one you… I’m the…”

“Hey, hey,” I whispered softly, gently into her ear. “Hey, I’m okay, it all worked out in the end. It’s fine. I’m here, Cerri. I’m here.”

Pulling her head down to my chest, I began to run my fingers through her hair. She was full on sobbing, her body shaking with the force of the fear she’d felt. Fear for me. It was humbling, to have someone in my life who gave that much of a shit about me.

My fingers found the base of her horns where they twisted up from her forehead, and I began to scratch there. If it was anything like my ears, it’d get annoyingly itchy there. Probably because it was hard for external objects to rub against it and dislodge dead skin and such. Wait… no, Alia, that’s gross. Don’t think about that, even if it’s really interesting to your weird-ass brain.

She seemed to calm down after a while, the sobs stopping first, then her breathing regained a normal rhythm. Then, finally, it deepened into that of a girl who could finally rest easy. I kept her company like that, taking care of her the way she’d taken care of me the past twenty four hours.

****

Five hours later, she stirred and pushed away from me to blink tiredly around. “Mmmf, Alia?”

“Yeah,” I smiled, reaching out to caress her cheek.

“I fell asleep?” she mumbled, still blinking like a stunned bird.

I nodded, still marvelling at how gorgeous she looked. Her normally wavy hair was a mess, strands sticking out all over the place. She even had a big cowlick standing proud off the top of her head like a third horn.

A dreamy smile came over her lips as she focused a little more, and her eyes locked on mine. Shifting, she turned around to straddle me and leaned closer, bringing the distance between us down to only a few inches.

“You looked after me while I slept.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

Not that I was exactly paying attention to the words she was speaking. Heat was bouncing  luxuriously up and down my spine because… my god, what was she doing with her voice? And her eyes, farking hell. They were half lidded, like a sleepy cat’s, but instead of drowsiness there was… heat.

“Alia?” she asked again, smiling in a way that showed just the hint of fang, all while her tail slid sensuously around to capture mine.

I gulped, eyes wide, then nodded just slightly. What was happening?

She let out a low, warm chuckle. “Good girl.” Her hand came up to cup my cheek, one finger stretching further to run down the inside of my ear. I shuddered and closed my eyes against the sparks of hot sensation that the motion brought.

“Beautiful girl,” she whispered, right into my ear. My eyes flew open in surprise, she’d moved silently and without shifting her weight. Her face was beside mine, and she drew back only barely. “You’re so wonderful, you know that?” she asked, breath tickling across my lips.

A shiver of nervous anticipation rushed through me. “Y-you really think so?”

I didn’t know why she was acting like this or what was even happening, but… but I loved it. Oh my goodness, why did I like this so much? She was looking at me like I was food!

Her eyelids flickered as she nodded, then they flew wide with alarm. “Oh god, oh god!” she squeaked, pushing off me in a flash.

The movement caused her to smack her head against the bunk above, and she let out a stream of curses. Recoiling sideways from the impact, her horn slid between the above mattress and the tight steel mesh that supported it, trapping her there.

Tugging only served to make the issue worse, and I had to lunge forward and hold her still. “Stop, Cerri, stop! You’re just getting yourself stuck further.”

“I’m sorry!” she cried, still looking so, so horrified with what had just happened.

“Calm,” I said, fixing her with what I hoped was a forceful stare. My heart was still beating a mile a minute and oh god, I think I was wet. “Let me um… let me detangle you, then we can talk.”

She went still, apart from a foolish attempt to nod. I rolled my eyes at her and gave her a shy smile. What a dumdum. Her cheeks were red with embarrassment as I used my small, nimble hands to quickly dislodge her horn from the mesh.

“Worst. Succubus. Ever,” I grumbled quietly, once she was free. My head was spinning and I felt like I’d just run a marathon.

“I-I’m sorry!” she mumbled again, looking so small and worried. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep and… and I set up a partitioned sleep schedule to look over you. Resting some parts of my brain but not the others, but it got all out of whack and…”

“And the horny part of your brain was the first to wake up?” I blurted, letting out an amused, delighted giggle. “Oh my god, that’s… that’s adorable!”

“You’re not upset?” she asked meekly.

I shook my head. Now it was my turn to blush, vocal cords restricting along with my embarrassment. It was kinda hot.

It took so much effort to send that message, I swear I almost fainted again.

Her jaw fell open. “Oh. Well. Um… thanks for not being mad.”

We were so bad. Both of us sitting on the bed, blushing up a firestorm. I guess she was sort of… maybe… possibly interested in me too? I mean, if the horny part of her brain had gone that far…

She also cared about me on an emotional level, obviously. That was abundantly clear to me now. But she also didn’t want to go there? Had her relationship with Gloria really messed her up that badly?

Embarrassment cooled into melancholy as I pondered it. I guess we both needed to be gentle with one another, to take things slowly, no matter how excruciating it was at times.

Finally, I looked up from my lap and reached tentatively out to take her hand. Let’s shelve this, yeah? Maybe… maybe we can hang out in Exodus City later though? Get the ship running and then… uh, take a break from the game for a week or so?

Her head bobbed up and down in a shy little nod. “Yes, I’d like that.”