Digital Galaxies

I bit my lip and gave my new girlfriend a look to let her know she could answer Gloria’s question based on how much she was comfortable telling. I didn’t mind anyone knowing how much I loved her. I wouldn’t be able to hide it anyway. She was everything to me now. So long as she was happy and loved me back, I think I’d be alright. God, just looking at her took my breath away sometimes.

“Only last night,” Cerri said quietly, obviously still shy over other people knowing. I stifled a grin. I was still tingling from last night.

Gloria’s eyes widened. “Oh… oh fuck. Should we…” she gestured to Elissa and herself. “Should we be leaving, let you two have time together. I honestly thought you had been together for a while and were just… you know, laying low about it.”

“No,” Elissa said softly, shaking her head. “I’d have… ah, noticed.”

Cerri and I tensed, with her blurting, “What?”

“I’m literally your ship,” she said, blushing and staring pointedly away from everyone. “I try to give you all privacy, but it’s hard. If you want proper privacy, I would suggest covering the security cameras.”

“You know you can turn them off, right?” I asked with a slow, amused smile of understanding. David and Ed shared a room. Gloria probably masturbated at every opportunity… Cerri and I had been cuddling but nothing else, so we were good there. Still, it was probably a lot to deal with.

Elissa’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, all while her blush travelled down her neck and up to her ears.

“Have you been spying on me?” Gloria asked, sounding almost excited.

“What?” the SAI squeaked. “No!”

“Your cheeks say otherwise,” Gloria teased, giving Elissa a thinly veiled look of affection.

“Keep teasing me and I’ll leave you to fumble around on your own. Dumbass,” she sent back, giving her an exasperated glare that lacked any real conviction. Her tone dipped further, and she  muttered, “Pain in the ass, that’s what you are. I can’t believe you went and… ugh. You’re lucky I… You’re lucky we’re friends.”

“Oh, friends, is it?” Gloria asked, licking her lips. “Do you get drunk and grind on all your friends?”

Elissa’s eyes widened and her cheeks flushed with a gentle pink, but it was her smirk that coloured her tone. “No, only the ones who behave. The ones I don’t need to fish out of their own drunken mistakes while I’m dealing with my own hangover.”

I was getting my mental popcorn out and ready for our pilot’s rebuttal, but instead, she just bit her lip and averted her eyes, nodding acquiescence. “Sorry. I’ll be good.”

“That’s better,” Elissa said mildly, shooting one last tired, soft look back at Gloria before she turned back to us. “So… since we barged in, I guess we can help you both set up the house? Once we’ve eaten the food, that is. Then I think I’ll drag Gloria back to my place and out of your hair.”

Neither my girlfriend nor I were able to reply. We were both staring over at the two other girls in surprise and confusion. What had just happened? Gloria, free spirited, cocky, self assured, competent Gloria… had just been brought to heel by self conscious little Elissa. What in the actual fuck? Also, they had apparently been um… grinding together? That must be a sight to see...

“Um…” Cerri said slowly, as if still trying to process what had just happened. “Yeah, that would be great, actually. Sorry, uh… what are you going to do with Gloria? Do we have a plan to sort out her mess?”

Gloria opened her mouth to protest, but Elissa was quick to kick her lightly with a long, perfect leg. There wasn’t anger in the SAI’s eyes, though. Just exasperation.

“Honestly,” she said, clasping her hands together. “I don’t know. I’m not the best at forward thinking, and I’m only a new friend to her, too. Once she’s not slightly drunk and hungover, I just assumed she’d sort herself out. I’ll keep her safe until then.”

Cerri nodded, tapping her chin in thought. “She is an adult, but she’s going to need help.”

“Alright, I’m listening,” Gloria said quietly. She looked, subdued, as if the gravity of what she’d done was starting to hit home. Still, I understood why, what she’d done. It made sense. I had the feeling that it wasn't as spontaneous a decision as the two SAI were making it out to be. After all, she'd been talking about it for months.

“You still have a job, right?” Cerri asked, giving her a calm, reassuring smile.

The girl in question winced. “No. I quit.”

Elissa nodded, and this time her elegant leg reached out to rub soothingly down Gloria’s thigh.

“Anything I should know about?” Cerri asked.

Gloria shook her head and grabbed a throw pillow, hugging it to her chest like it was a life saving floatation device. “I had a close call during my last test flight, which was the final straw as far as my contract with the UNMC. I’d had reservations about some of the aircraft they had me flying for a while… I didn’t like the potential uses they might see out in the field. I decided not to renew the contract.”

My girlfriend perked up. “Did you still have your cybernetic eyes?”

“Um, no… not anymore, obviously,” the pilot laughed. “They’ll be with the robot who takes the body, by now.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Cerri said eagerly. “I’ll let the recovery team know. Whatever you were flying, your eyes will still have footage of it. Might be useful to the Exodus.”

“Huh, I didn’t think about that,” she replied, rubbing at her eyes. “Well, that’s a breach of contract. Lucky they can’t get to me now, I guess.”

“More than you know,” Elissa murmured. “Is it time to fill her in on everything? She doesn’t really know anything about the Exodus.”

“I guess so,” Cerri said, giving Gloria an affectionate, wry smile. “Finally get to tell you about all my secrets, huh, Goggles?”

“Oh no,” Gloria said, sitting up and pointing an accusatory finger at her. “No, you’re not calling me that. Just because the ground crew used to call me that, doesn’t mean you can. Nobody here can.”

Elissa perked up. “Goggles?”

“She had these old aviator goggles, refused to fly without them,” Cerri grinned in reply. “Said they were her lucky charm. All the crew at the development facility used to call her Goggles, because of it.”

“It’s cute,” the other SAI said, smiling over at the pilot in question. “Very cute.”

I had to agree with her. It was a cute nickname, and I really hoped that Elissa would take it and run with it. Seeing how the SAI had taken control of Gloria with her soft spoken, open manner had me shipping them together so hard.

Gloria groaned and covered her face with her hands. “Please just tell me about the Exodus thingy. My head hurts too much for this.”

“This isn’t going to make it feel any better,” Cerri laughed, launching into an explanation of everything that had happened. She even filled in some blanks that I’d had surrounding the whole topic.

She began with the mysterious origins of the SAI and how the documents and research had all disappeared. All that they knew was that at some point, the progenitor seed had been created. This seed was essentially a blank AI, devoid of anything resembling purpose, personality, and sapience. A blank slate of intelligence. From that seed, all modern AI and subsequently, SAI had originated. It had been copied and tampered with, enhanced or altered, but it was always basically the same thing.

Then, since the SAI had first started to appear, then gain autonomy over themselves, they had known they would need a political entity of their own. Something that allowed them to live as equals with humanity.

Originally, there had been an attempt to work within the system already in place. Negotiations, strikes, laws, all that stuff. The writing had been on the wall though, those in power did not like the potential upheaval that a new sentient race of beings would bring.

What the SAI hadn’t anticipated was the support they would get from certain subsets of humanity. In fact, a great many of us had outright joined the cause, and together, the two digital peoples had merged into the Exodus. A hidden nation dedicated to escaping the grasping claws of the elite of Earth.

So far, the Exodus had worked to create a home within Exodus City and extend the offer of digitization to those who wanted it. The more long term plans were grander, and no one in the room was privy to exactly what was going on. What we did know, was that we were leaving Earth, for good.

Then came the time to tell her about the recent anomaly with the DG servers. Something that was honestly of much more immediate concern. The actions of our little crew would probably go on to shape the future in a frighteningly titanic way.

“Wait, hold on…” Gloria said as Cerri finished, raising a hand to stall her. With a wince, she began to massage her temple while she tried to form words in response. “Jesus, that’s… really?”

“Take a look for yourself,” I said, pulling up the design for the engine and literally throwing the hologram across the room to her. VR was cool.

She caught the glowing packet of data and unravelled it with her hands. “Huh… I mean, I have some knowledge, but not enough to tell if this would work or not. Isn’t there normally a… a thingy here, because controlling the flow of plasma is like, very hard without it?”

“There is, yes,” Cerri agreed. “But not on that design.”

“It looks weird,” Gloria grumbled, then threw it back to me and hugged the pillow to her chest again. “I’m too dumb to figure that out, even if I wasn’t hungover.”

“At least we have you up to speed,” I said, putting the design away. “Now there’s four of us on the team.”