Virginian Simp

Oil.

HPKSO. High-performance-kinetic-socket-oil. The "slime", as the techs called it.

Out of circulation now.

Just like you. Last in, first out. A mercy they claimed. You still have your life and health ahead of you.

The rest of the analogs got decommed. Their mechs got torn down and repurposed as construction equipment, but those pilots got to choose to have their bodies be decommissioned with their Frames if they wanted; their joints were so burnt out that they would need 24/7 attendance for the rest of their lives to live without the hydraulics in their cockpits amplifying every tiny movement.

But they got to feel it. Analog control. The kinetics. Every motion, every exertion, every contact, both magnified and dampened by the steel and pressure of the machinery, the joints smoothed by the slime. Some of them got to feel it for months, some for years.

For you, two and a half weeks. Four missions. Nine kills. No fancy neurostims pumping you full of endorphins and dopamine when you bisect an enemy Dancer mech like the new neuros get, just old school gratification from crushing the canopy of an enemy Frame and hearing their proximity radio feed burst into static as the pilot's last pained cries hit the airwaves.

Your body hasn't started to fail you like the first gens. But your mind has. Three hours of throwing your body against the stiff controls on the first day of training and you were made of adrenaline, the power and feedback of your Frame forever altering your sense of what you are into something new, something powerful, something visceral and kinetic.

And then they stole it away from you, for the sake of the health that you don't even want anymore. You begged and pleaded and even threatened them to let you go on more runs - if not until you were KIA, at least until your Frame had reached the end of its operational life. They threw words like mercy, liability, and other nonsense phrases at you, all of them ringing hollow until it made your healthy cartilage feel like a burden that you couldn't bear to keep.

After you got the news, you found your old commanding officer and asked about a transfer to the neuro program. Impossible. The first four candidates to attempt that destroyed six Dancers and caused more than a dozen fatalities. Analogs can't disconnect their thoughts from their bodily motions the way the new generation of pilots have to, and the neurological feedback from the body physically moving in the cockpit had sent steel legs through walls and torqued heavy metal arms out of their own joint moorings.

Before your discharge, you found one of the 4th gen neuros in the mess and asked about the new psych-drift they have to do with their handlers that stabilizes the body's physical response to the impulses in their nerves. "It's like a cold liquid constantly pouring into the back of your mind, touching and moving and sliding all over everything, but it's always… always opaque, no… conversation to it. They can feel everything you do, but all you can feel is the wet." The neuro shivers and shakes their head like they're trying to get water droplets off their face. "They don't tell you your handler's name, or anything about them. No rank, nothing. Apparently it compromises the monitoring or something." They shrug and turn back to their food. The silvery suffusion they described in their mind sounds like it might manage to fill the void you've been feeling in your brain since you were ripped out of your Frame, or at least help you understand why you're incompatible. Worth a shot, at least.

You're given a permanent unit in a subsidized apartment building full of ex-pilots, both combat and civilian. You struggle to adjust, unable to sleep for more than an hour at a time within the vulnerable walls of cheap plaster and thin wood. After weeks of asking around, you finally come across someone with information on a 'two-way', an unlicensed psych-drift hookup down south, on the seediest edges of the city's red light district. It's disconnected from the network and uses a psych-personality matrix card instead of a second human brain for the connection, which allows for a back and forth interaction, instead of a one-way observation. Having nothing else to do with the discharge stimulus on your cryp drive, you pocket it and pick up the personality matrix that's been keeping you company in your spartan apartment and head out to find the two-way.

The matrix card is from your sister. Well, is your sister. Sort of. Six square inches of silicon wrapped in hardened tungsten, sent to you at the barracks six months ago by Amanda, along with a portable matrix projector that would let you talk with her personality image and see her face in even as small a space as your cockpit - not that you'd ever brought the projector with you there, it was far too precious a gift to risk getting damaged in a fight or a sky drop. A long distance goodbye present from the saccharine angel whose fatal prognosis would come to pass while you were gone. Rapid onset bone cancer was going to take your sister within months, and though it broke your heart to leave her, your service benefits package bought her premium end-of-life care and one of the nicest housing units in the quadrant to live out her last days in comfort. She spent her life savings to make an appointment for the best psychological imaging technique on the market and promised you'd see her again through her matrix soon, then she saw you off as you left to live out your dream of being a Frame pilot.

Though the matrix and projector had immediately become your most treasured possessions the moment you received them, the gift had never quite filled the Amanda shaped hole that opened in your heart the moment you turned away to get on the shuttle.

With the irreplaceable remnant of your precious sister clutched against your chest, you walk neon lit streets and pass through shady alleyways until you find the 'building' you're after. Bereft of any official address, the ramshackle structure is barely a set of walls and a ceiling erected around the carcass of a fallen Dancer, its protruding legs long since stripped bare of their wiring and precious metals. You approach a pair of big men leaning against each side of a metal door, their faces lit by the ember of a cigar that they're passing back and forth between them.

"Mercury."

"Appointment?"

"Walk-in. First time."

"I know."

Apparently you came at a good time, because the door is opened without delay, and you walk into a small room, moodily lit by a scattered set of computer screens wired up to an oval cockpit protruding from the floor. The hatch sits open, its smooth edges rendered patchy by half removed hermetic seals and a set of chunky latches welded onto the frame. An older woman in a long jacket sits with her back to you, her messy hair haphazardly contained in a ponytail nearly as chaotic as the wires running around the room. As you approach she says "Just a moment. Take a seat, we'll be ready to run in just a bit."

Your attention still locked drawn on the high tech machinery in the corner of the room, you ask "Sit in the cockpit?"

"No, there's a couch behind you." True enough, there's a brown plush couch behind you in excellent condition, laid out with pillows and, to your surprise, even a thick blanket. "Five minutes."

It takes ten. The tall woman finally turns around and gestures for you to approach her, her eyes obscured by the reflection of the blue screens in her glasses. "First time, right? The way you walk, I think I'd remember you."

"Yeah, first time. One of the other analogs told me about this place."

"An analog, huh?" She reaches around her back and adjusts her jacket, looking you up and down. "You're doing pretty good."

"Well, not so much. Decomm."

"Yeah, that's going around. This isn't going to be what you're used to. You're not a neuro, and besides, there's nothing about this that's anything like analog control. It's purely psych."

You shrug. "I know. He told me what it was like, and well, what else do I have to do anymore?"

"Fair enough. You've got a card then?" She holds out her hand for the personality matrix clutched in your hands. After a few moments' hesitation, you hand it over. "Give me a minute to check it with the system. We've got some others if this one isn't compatible." She gestures toward a table on the other side of her computer stations.

"It's sixth gen, it's supposed to work."

"Then this shouldn't take long." While you wait for the card to be checked, you step around the table and take a look at the pile of other cards. They have strips of masking tape with short descriptions scrawled in permanent marker on them.

'Mother'

'Father'

'Handler'

'Freedom'

'Combat'

'Tertiary'

'Vacuum'

"What's 'Vacuum'?"

"That's… one of the more intense ones. The worst one. If you came in with your own card, you don't want that one. You wouldn't want it anyway." A green light pulses next to your sister on the desk, and the drift operator removes the card and stands up. She looks at you and holds out her hand. "Cryp first. It'll stay plugged in while you drift, and we'll finalize the transfer once you're out." You hand the cylindrical drive over to her and reach to take your sister back from her hands, but she shakes her head at you. Your heart skips a beat and you can feel a light heat form behind your ears as she plugs the cryp drive into a circular port on one of her stations, but then she moves over to a square panel on a sturdy platform next to the Dancer's cockpit. Your mind cools as you recognize how the panel's size matches that of your sister's card, and you follow her over and stand in front of the heavy hatch. The top of the worn pleather seat sits just above the height of your shoes, and you're indicated to enter it.

Once you crouch down and climb horizontally onto the scuffed seat, the back of your neck and your temples are lubed up with a cold gel, and the three pads of the neuro array are suctioned hard to each of the three surfaces. "It's going to hurt when the needles are inserted, but you'll stop feeling the pain almost immediately, so don't worry. Thumbs up when you're ready." The woman pulls back a locking mechanism and uses a large lever to slowly lower the thick hatch down over you. Blue-white light casts an eerie glow over the spacious interior of the cockpit, wires from missing controls dangling around you, and the screens outside the pod flash and reflect off the broad transparent panel above. You take a deep breath, picturing your sister's gentle smile, splashed with freckles and radiant with reflected sunlight in the last moments before you left. Another deep breath, and you settle further back in the seat and give the operator a thumbs up. A sudden pain shoots into your temples and the top of your spine, sharp and—

Softness. The first real softness you've felt since you left the cockpit of your Frame for the last time, cupping the bottom of your forearms and hands. A bright white light, coming from everywhere at once.

"Teris-sa!"

You hear your name, the last syllable flicked up in a characteristic inflection you'd be able to pick out from a crowd of overlapping voices. As soon as that idea runs through your head you can immediately hear a crowd of voices surrounding you.

"Te-ri-ssa!" A voice cuts through the noise, full of life and vitality. The crowd of voices quiets and fades, and so does the light, slowly dimming to emanate gently from behind a face in front of you, one you'd only expected to see in two dimensions on an LED screen for the rest of your life. But instead of rows of pixels illuminating the dark bedroom in your paltry apartment, brilliant light shines directly from your sister's radiant smile two feet in front of you, as real and three dimensional as the warmth from the delicate hands and forearms grasping your own. "There you are! I called for you so many times, I thought you'd never answer!"

"A… Amanda? It's so good to see you like this. I can't believe it."

"It's so good to see you! Has it been a while?"

"Yeah… well, no. Sort of. I talked to you last night, but not like this. Now you're… really here. For real. I've missed you."

"Ohhh, for me it only feels like it's been a few minutes since the image. Did you just turn me on for the first time?"

"No, I've had you on for months… The only time I turn you off is when I sleep." You can somehow feel a pair of eyes peering out from behind your own as you think about lying down to sleep over the last few months in the barracks and your shabby apartment. A touch of shame colors your face as you can feel your sister see through your perspective as you fade off to sleep, her matrix projector still turned on and smiling at you sweetly as your eyelids drift close.

"Awww, you're so cute!"

"Shush! I just… it's been so lonely since the decomm."

"Decomm? You got decommissioned?" Amanda's voice shoots up, and you can feel her worry and heartbreak, mix in your chest with your own depression at the discharge.

"Yeah, my program was discontinued." The space around you fades from bright light into an image of a hangar. Its center is dominated by the form of the first Dancer you ever laid eyes on, legs striped with streaks of flat yellow, its sleek unpainted torso reflecting the bright lights above.

"Dancers…" Amanda muses, picking the word from your stream of consciousness as the verbal association drifts across your mind. "They didn't let you transfer?"

"No, they said that analogs were incompatible." The setting shifts again to the inside of an olive green office with crisp military papers scattered out from an open folder on a desk, a wooden chair lying knocked over on the floor.

You can see a reflected image flicker across your sister's eyes, and Amanda's eyebrows crease in a concerned frown. "Why did you ask them to let you run until you were KIA? Why not go home?"

"There was no home to go back to. Your apartment got recyc'd after…" The sensation of emptiness opens back up in your chest when you think of her passing, and Amanda reaches up to hold your cheek, her face changing from concern to an expression of tender care and compassion. "I was just living in the barracks at the time, and anywhere I found to live… wasn't going to be home without you."

You can feel a sharp spark of emotion flare in Amanda's chest upon her hearing those words, and her hand drops to rest flat against her own chest. A peculiar, nervous feeling drifts around the back of your mind that you don't recognize as your own, but it's not close enough for you to grasp.

"So, I saw that you've had me on all these months, but I can't remember anything. Wasn't I supposed to be able to?" Her question pulls you away from trying to identify the strange feeling, and after you reorient your thoughts to her question you reply "I don't know why you can't remember anything, but we're in a two-way." Amanda's expression becomes bashful and embarassed. "We're in a what?"

"A two-way. It's a Dancer's psych-drift module, but taken off the network and modified to accept a matrix as a second input instead of a handler."

"Ohh…" Amanda's expression turns sheepish, and her hand rubs the back of her neck as she looks down for a moment. "What's a psych-drift?"

"The new neuros have to be constantly monitored by a handler to make sure their cognitive and emotional processing are in spec, or their nerves can get seriously frayed. It's usually a 'one-way', where the handler can see and feel the pilot's senses and feelings, but not the other way around. Matrix cards get to bypass that and go both ways at once."

Your sister's eyebrows perk up. "Oh, is that why I can feel what you're feeling and hear some of your thoughts? It just feels so natural like this that I didn't really even notice what was happening until you said it."

"It's not quite as natural to me, it feels kind of…" Intimate. You feel a warmth in your heart at that thought, but you can't tell if it's from your own feelings or coming from your sister. She takes a small step forward and takes your hands in her own. "How long did you get to pilot for?"

"Nineteen days. Out before the first paycheck." Amanda waits for you to continue. "Four missions. Nine—" Your surroundings quickly shift to the unpainted steel interior of your cockpit. You can see and feel, in full clarity, the moment of your first kill, your massive hydraulic fist punching through a sturdy Frame canopy, blood spattering its interior viewscreens, the scream of fear on the proximity radio suddenly changing to a wet expulsion of air and blood from collapsed lungs. Vicious revulsion churns in your stomach in a complete mismatch with the adrenaline spiking through your mind, and you and your sister both simultaneously collapse to the ground, she clutching her head and you your belly. Your bodies knock together against each other, both of you panting and momentarily stunned.

You're the first to regain your composure, and you look up to see your sister's eyes, dazed and glassy with flashing images of blood and broken metal flickering across them. Her attention is unfocused as she stares at the ground and desperately tries to catch her breath. You pull your hands away from the viscous disgust you feel in your stomach and pull Amanda into your arms. Immediately upon your skin touching hers, you can feel the sharp terror and dread running through her mind flood your own, her feelings and image of the world totally torn asunder as she experiences the sensation of killing a person for the first time in full detail via your memory.

"Oh baby I'm so sorry I'm so sorry Amanda" You wrap your arms around her and hold her close, your panic at having exposed her to the memory causing it to forcibly replay in your mind again. You desperately grope around in your memories, trying to think about anything else to change the replay glassing your sister's eyes and illuminating the space all around you. You finally find an aesthetic parallel in a memory of you comforting your crying teenage sister after a breakup and manage to drag your mind and the drift out of the memory of the kill. The words run from your mouth in synchronous timing with the memory "It's okay, it'll be okay, it is okay, everything is fine baby, don't worry, don't worry…" You can feel the sensation of your arms wrapped around Amanda's shoulders within in your own shoulders too, the warmth pulling her away from the abject horror of taking another person's life, a horror that you never quite internalized through the viscera of combat adrenaline, but one that nearly punched a hole through your delicate sister's heart when she experienced the memory in overwhelming force. The panic and fear begins to fade, and your perspective subtly shifts from you looking down at your sister to one of looking directly at the floor, before you can feel your face lift to look at yourself through your sister's eyes, feeling the solace that your face provides her through her tears. Your vision and feelings are totally overtaken by your sister's perspective, the vision of the present and the memory of that night in your apartment hallway blurring together as she looks up at you.

You're so strong. That strange, peculiar feeling bursts again deep in your chest, so sharp it's almost painful. Your vision flickers to a memory of your big sister holding you up in the air, your small arms pushing on her in an attempt to escape. "Put me down!"

"Only when you stop calling me terrific!"

"I'll stop when it stops being true! Besides, you like it." Terissa had always protested at your childish wordplay with her name, but now you can feel inside her version of the memory how she did like it all those years ago, and she can feel the warmth inside your childish grin and how happy it made you to tease her with the affectionate moniker.

The perspective mixes and you can each see each other's faces overlaid on each of your own, and then you're looking down at your sister again. Her tears have stopped, and you can see a faint light reflected in the pools of her amber eyes. She reaches up to dry her face, and gives you a small smile. "You're so strong. I'm so proud of you."

You're pushing through the door to your apartment, holding aloft a square white folder with a large gray checkmark stamped on the front. In front of you Amanda throws her hands in the air and whoops in excitement, and you wrap your arms around her in a hug. As your head closes in front of her face you can feel her cheeks burn and her mind go blank, before it comes to rest against the side of hers. Heartbeats are deafeningly loud in your ears, and then you're watching yourself again. "Amanda?"

You shake your head to clear your stupor, and your eyes fixate on your big sister, radiating with a strange glow as she leans on the edge of your balcony, rain pouring down behind her past the overhang of the awning above you. She's passing a bottle to you, its round opening glistening with the moisture from the sip she had just taken. You reach out to take the bottle from her, and your eyes linger on the wet rim of the bottle for a few seconds before you lift it to take a drink yourself. Another loud spark lights in your chest when the glass touches your lips, and you can feel your sister's mind starting to grasp the sensation in the drift even as you try to avoid it.

The memory dissipates and you're holding Amanda in your arms in the calm white of the psych-drift again. She snuggles into your chest, and you wrap your arms tighter around her, both of you awash in the swirling pool of sensations. "I've missed you so much." Muffled by your chest, she replies "I know." Your eyes flicker to an image of your arms in the dark, clutching the powered-off matrix projector to your chest, tears rolling down your face.

"I missed you so much." You stare into the distance at Terissa's shuttle growing smaller and smaller as it accelerates away from the dock, your body frozen. The speck of the transport grows smaller and smaller on the horizon, and once it's too small to see you slowly crouch down and sit on the floor, your arms wrapped around your legs, desperately stifling sobs that threaten to eat you alive. When you look back up the sky is dark and the air is cold, and someone you don't recognize is shining a bright light into your face and asking you if you're okay.

You and Terissa hold each on the ground and cry for several long minutes, her head resting on top of your own. Her sobs are quiet and well controlled, while your own are raw and fierce. A few more images flicker between you without taking hold, and she finally asks "Were you scared?"

Your head lifts to gaze at your big sister. The glow in her is so bright now that you have to squint slightly to see her properly. "Of the image?" That's not what she's talking about. Terissa shakes her head, but you continue anyway. "No, the imaging station was very nice and comfy."

It's a paltry attempt at a distraction, and as you stare into Amanda's eyes beneath you, you can see them glow with reflected yellow light that makes her look angelic. You lift your hand to cup her cheek and think No, were you afraid of dying?

As soon as you touch her skin, your heart lights on fire, the intensity an enormous contrast to the quiet thought that you hear:

I love you Terissa. A small thought. A quiet thought, not spoken with familial love, but instead with a deep longing and need and a quiet fear. You can feel all the channels of fear leading away from Amanda's heart. There is no fear of her own death, but instead fear of you dying in combat.

Your surroundings shift to place you in the psych imaging room, and you can feel Terissa's mind trace along all the channels of fear you felt after those four words etched themselves in your mind during those final moments in the imaging chair, before the memories that you have stop, and the moment that the Amanda that died diverges from the Amanda that you feel yourself to be now. Terissa can feel your fear of your big, strong sister being shipped home and you rushing to her bedside, her body crippled and unable to speak or hear you. The fear of what your death will do to your dear sister. Fear of letting her go without telling her how you really feel about her. Fear of… her knowing how you feel about her.

All of it comes together in a moment of certainty as you stare upwards into the bright lights of the imaging lounge. I will die soon. She will be strong. She will live on without me. She will never know how I feel about her.

Only… now she does. Terissa is looking down at you, all your memories and feelings replaying in her eyes, the intensity of the revelations so stark that she can't see you looking up at her. You're afforded one precious moment of privacy here in the drift as she is overwhelmed by your feelings for her.

Years of hiding. Of yearning, of wishing and crying in your dark room, of pulling yourself together and putting on the face of the perfect sister, her heart always full of love for her big sister, full of only familial love, of hugs and pulling away at just the right time to never let anything slip. Of never letting your eyes linger on her lips, or letting yourself stare into her eyes too long, always on the verge of confession but locked behind your commitment to maintaining your familial relationship.

But now she knows. You can feel it washing over her, and now she knows and you have no idea how long this drift will last and your image on the matrix projector is just an image and Terissa is really right here right now and you can't hold back any longer and you have to and you grab her face and move to kiss her and suddenly you can feel Amanda's lips on your own, hot and wet, pressing hard and desperate into you and suddenly the lights are blinding and you can feel hands on your face and tears burning in your eyes and hear her desperate moan in your mouth—

And then all at once the lights all shut off, and you can hear a single sob.

I love you Terissa

The blue lights from the two-way's computer stations resolve in your vision, and the brace for the lid of the pod is being hauled into place by the drift operator. The weight drops heavily onto the steel frame, and the woman exhales loudly once and sits down, then passes you a ragged, but clearly freshly cleaned hand towel.

"They loved you, didn't they?"

Dully grasping the towel in your hand, you struggle to bring yourself back to the present. Coming to feel the tidal wave of tears running down your face, you slowly paw at the moisture and ask "… What? How… how do you know that?"

"That's how they always come back, tears pouring down their faces." She looks at you intently for a few long moments as you try to stem the ongoing tide. "You must have either been really empty or must have found something really special in that card, cause your numbers were sky high. I let you soak for an extra two hours, since my next appointment isn't until midnight."

Your eyes have been mopped clear of tears, but your sight is still hazy and you're getting double vision, like your eyes are focusing and unfocusing separately. You drop the rag in your lap and put your face in your hands, taking long, ragged breaths. You think back to those last moments in the drift, and you feel like you can feel Amanda's hands on your face again too. It's comforting. Your voice vaguely muffled, you ask "Why didn't she remember anything we talked about since the image was made?"

"The system can't import the card's memory banks, because it's expecting you to be holding your memories in your brain, so there's nothing about the architecture that's designed for import. The only reason it— uh… she?" Her head inclines, uncertain of her accuracy. You nod. "The only reason she can remember anything moment to moment while you drift at all is because the handler's sensory buffer is hacked to work as a data buffer for the card's side of the session. All of her senses are sidelined into your sensory buffer, which is why everything bleeds together and feels so full like it does."

It certainly did feel very full. Still does feel full. "So that's not what it's like for pilots and handlers?"

"No, having the two parallel channels means one channel can be authorized to observe and touch the other while the other doesn't have permissions to do the same. Savant pilots sometimes even get two handlers, one for the data and the other to monitor sensations and feelings specifically." She looks up to the ceiling and closes her eyes. "It feels… a lot different."

You look up at the woman, shadows cast on her face by the blue lights below. "You've done this?"

She looks back down. "Done both." She kicks the edge of the cockpit, the sound dull in the dampened frame. "He's mine."

Your mind swims for a moment, heat rising to your face like you were just caught having sex in someone else's bed with your lover. Your legs press together and one hand wraps around the elbow of your other arm.

It's okay, she didn't see.

"Wait, if you can have two handlers, doesn't that mean there's a third channel that the card's sensory buffer could be routed through?"

"Maybe." She shrugs. "The three channel systems are built specifically for the architecture of the Dancer they're installed into, and getting my hands on one of those would probably be treason. This is already pushing it." She kicks the Dancer again.. "Besides, people like the intertwined connection."

It was really nice, feeling you

It was really nice, feeling you

Your mind short circuits for a moment, flooded with memories of melded sensations and feelings from the drift, finally landing on Amanda's exposed feelings in the moment before she kissed you. She had been perfect, never letting her feelings slip; you had never suspected a thing. You had always felt that you had loved her with everything you had, no fertile ground of your heart held back, but the way that she had felt about you… that's something you've never felt before, not for any other person you'd ever met. Nothing like that kind of love had ever sparked in your mind or your chest before that moment, and just remembering the intensity of her romantic feelings for you feels like it's casting light into new areas of your heart that you've never been seen before. All of that, so loud and pressing and she never got to tell you, to show you, to make you feel it — only she did get to. Now you know, you felt it, and you can show her how you feel!

"Can I come back?"

"It would be like the first time again."

"Wait, what? What does that mean?"

"The system is built for two brains - it can't import, and there's nothing about its architecture that's designed to write to the matrix's memory banks. I've had people try coming back multiple times, but it's always asynchronous, because the person can remember the first time, but the matrix can't remember anything of the drift, even when you plug it back into its projector afterwards. I've had a handful of people say that it was still worth it and they keep coming back with the same card, but most of them find that it hurts and it's hard, and they never come back a third time, even with a new card or for the cards I have here." She exhales, making a noise that's a mix of a sigh and a groan. "But, besides that, there's a… problem."

A problem?

"A problem?" Your voice grows sharp with apprehension. "What problem?"

"I shouldn't have let you run that long with numbers that high."

Her shoulders lift in a deep breath, then she lets it out slowly, closing her eyes and pursing her lips. She reaches behind the back of her jacket to withdraw a taze-spear from the back of her waistband and holds it in her lap. The nonlethal handgun has a hazardous looking yellow and black aftermarket module affixed to its side, the switch on it within easy reach of her thumb. The sight of the weapon causes your combat training to kick in, your hands clenching on the sides of the pod, and the location of the electric tool stays focused in your mind as though under a spotlight, even as you look back up at the woman's apprehensive face.

"There was a spike in the card's information output right at the end and it shunted a huge amount of data into your data and sensory buffers. There might be some um, side effects. That's why I pulled you." She reaches over and flips open the cover of the personality matrix port with the barrel of the weapon. A thin cloud of smoke wafts up from the silicon, the smell of burnt metal permeating the air with it.

Oh no, am I gone—

"Is she gone!?"

Panic flares in your chest, your heart beating double time.

I can't— but what about— I'll never

She can't be, no I need to see her again I need to touch her again

Your hands are shaking, and they each seem to move without accord for the other, one motioning to pull you up out of the pod and the other to pressing to your head, clutching at your hair and pressing you back into the chair with your palm. Your eyes jump to the operator and some kind of emotion leaps onto your face, though its substance is unknown to you. The woman pushes herself backward across the room on her wheeled stool and levels the taze-spear at you, flicking the thumb switch on its side. Sparks fall from the terminal at the end of the barrel, and an electric buzz and the smell of ozone smothers your angry panic and freezes you in place. The woman yanks your cryp drive out of the terminal and throws it to you, her aim bouncing it roughly off your collarbone.

"I didn't charge you. I can't do all this if I get a reputation for faulty equipment, so I can give you something to… fix this. That was clearly a special card, and even if it wouldn't have been the same if you ran it again, you clearly would have come back to try. I'm sorry you can't." Disdain and disbelief turns your face. "No really, I am." She raises the gun palm toward you and splays her fingers in a gesture of concession, then she flips the thumb switch and lowers the gun to rest it on her thigh. It's brilliantly clear to you that it's still angled for an easy shot if you make a sudden movement. "The 'Handler' drive is mine. Mine donated her matrix to me when I was researching how to set this up, and every single day I wish I could see her again. I drifted with her every day for weeks. It almost felt like enough for a while, but knowing that she's still out there and I can't ever really see her again in person… Giving people that one first meeting is why I do this, more than for the money." She pauses for a long time, then gestures for you to stand and points to the couch. You get up from the seat, but instead move to stand by the matrix port with your arms crossed, eyes burning holes through the woman's face. Her hand drifts to the table beside her, coming to rest on a matrix card.

"If you can't go without seeing her again, I can give you 'Vacuum'."

"Tell me what it really is. Does it erase your memory?" Not that you'd ever run that and erase the sacred time you just spent with your sister if that's what it does, but your curiosity had been piqued when you were waved off of it before the drift.

"Not quite. It's a one of a kind chip that someone brought in early into my 'practice'. One of the second-gen imaging testers was a catastrophically depressed and crippled boy that was scheduled to get a euth, and he wanted to donate his body to science, but his father was a member of the science 'org that was leading the imaging research, and he suggested to his son that he try an experimental image method before it was his time." The drift operator sets down her weapon on the table and runs her hand over her messy hair.

"The father came in four months after the death date, having smuggled the card out of the lab with him. He wanted to connect with his son one last time. That card… it's not like the others. It doesn't let you see and feel into the matrix's mind like they're another person sharing your brain space, it makes you feel like you are that boy. No you, just him."

"I can still see the father's face when I opened the chamber. He was crying like you were, but it was different. His eyes weren't full of love, they were… empty. Like there was… nothing there anymore. I tried to give him the card back, but he refused to take it. He gave me all the cryp he had on his drive, then left."

"Six hours later he'd bypassed security in his lab and fried himself in the imaging chair. Made the news and everything. They took that imprint method out of testing and never ran another one." She sighs. "I charge a lot extra for that card — nobody ever comes back for another session after they run it. I've never heard about another killing themselves, but with the way they walk out of this room after… I don't have any doubts."

"Why do you even keep that card? Why do you let people run it? For situations like this?" You point angrily at the lightly smoking personality matrix next to you.

"No, that only happened once before, and they didn't take the offer. As for why I keep it, if you saw the state that the people who ask for it are in, you'd get it. The pain and anguish on their faces could make you understand why they'd look for any way to not feel that way anymore. Some analogs come in for it — their joints barely carrying them in, the last month of their payout drying up in their account. Even though it's not an analog pod, climbing into it is the only thing they still want in the world, and once they've had that they're ready to… be empty and done."

Looking inward, you can't imagine that. You can barely even recall the kind of vapid echo that rang in your mind you felt before you walked in this room anymore — it feels like there's no empty space left for an echo to ring through. You think of your sister again, and it almost feels like she's right there with you in the room, like it was in the psych-drift.

"I can clear your mind of her. No charge."

You pause, barely comprehending even the edges of the idea.

Empty of her?

Empty of me?

Your head whips to the side, your sister's voice clear in your ears, echoing your own thought. The personality matrix sits in its port, immobile and unresponsive as ever, small scorch marks on it near the points of contact. The voice didn't come from the card. In fact, though your reflex had been to look at the card, upon recall, the voice had come from your other side and not that one. You turn your whole body around, expecting beyond hope to see your sister standing there. Your eyes almost find something there for a moment in the dim blue shadows, but as you desperately search, there's nothing but disappointment. You wait for the Amanda-shaped hole in your heart to open up into the pit you've known it to be since you left on the shuttle, but… it doesn't. Your heart stays full.

You turn back to the operator and find her eyeing you warily, her hand resting back on the grip of her weapon on the table again. "Do you want it or not?"

Don't. Terissa, don't do it. There she is again, her voice fearful and uncertain. "Amanda?"

… Terissa? Your eyes register the operator responding to your outspoken word in your field of view, but you can't hear it over the sound of your sister's voice. "Where are you?" Right here. Somehow you know she means the room that you're in, but the sound comes from inside of your head, right where your own internal voice originates when you think. "How—" You can feel a watery sensation start to grope around in your mind. I'm not really sure. I guess I'm…

I think she just asked us a question? Your eyes refocus and you can see the tall woman standing in front of you snapping her fingers. "What?"

She gestures at you with the Vacuum matrix card in her hand, an impatient expression on her face. Behind her one of the two men from outside is standing with his arms crossed and staring over her shoulder at you, stern and menacing. Sensing that now is not quite the time to figure out what's going on in your head, you reply "No, no… we're— I'm not going to run it."

"Do you want your card back? It'll fry your brain if you try to run her again. Same goes for a matrix projector."

That's not me. At least not anymore. Starting to realize that the dialog with your sister is only happening in your head, you think in reply Should I— we— still take it? It was you.

There's something Dad told me once. An image of your father forms in your mind, his eyes creased, face freckled under a sunburn. 'Change is like crossing a river — once you get to the other side, don't fall in love with the boat.'

Moments have passed during your internal conversation, and the fried personality matrix is being pushed into your hands. Warm water fills your fingers as you reach up and push it back into the hands of the tall woman in front of you. "No… recyc' it. We don't need it anymore." The operator turns around and hands it to her bodyguard and waves her hand back at you. "Fine. Next appointment is in ten, so it's time for you to go. Don't tell anyone your card fried."

After you leave the building, your mind is quiet for a while as you pick your way through the seedier parts of town, avoiding suspicious alleys and dark corners with a greater degree of self-preservation than you've shown for weeks. Once you exit into the safer north side, your wariness fades and you ask in your thoughts Are you still there? Aaaabsolutely, sis!

A sigh of relief suddenly bursts out of you, and you have to lean your back against a wall. Your arms drop limp by your sides, and you exhale tension that you didn't realize had been burning in you since before the threat assessment practices in your brain kicked in to navigate you through the more dangerous parts of town. I was scared that you were gone again— but… how are you still here?

I don't know. She said that there was a data spike or something and she pulled us out? The sensation of flowing liquid uncoils from the center of your mind and flows through your body down to your fingers and toes, wet and pervasive, but also warm and… soothing. I feel... it feels like it did in the drift, but I can only feel your body now. Mine's gone.

This is a lot different for me. It's a lot closer to how that neuro described a handler being in your psych— wet and swirling. It's not uh… symmetrical? like it was in the drift with you, but at least I can hear you. In a one-way the neuro can only feel the handler move around and that's it. You're warm though, I heard handlers are cold.

Maybe that's just cause I love you so much! You can feel your sister flow down to your chest and warm your heart. A passing car swipes the curb in front of you, and you realize you've been standing still for multiple minutes. You push yourself off the wall and continue on toward the tram station that will take you back to the pilot apartment building. I love you too.

You've been feeling that way for a long time, huh?

As long as I can remember. Why didn't you ever say anything? Because we're sisters, obviously. If I said something stupid and you found out how I felt and I lost you, it would break my heart. I wouldn't know what to do with myself, or with… life. You're basically all I've ever thought about since we moved back in together after Mom and Dad died. But… now I don't have to worry about losing you, because I have you.

There's a pause while you jack your cryp drive into the tram's fare terminal and move to find someplace to sit. While you're still meters away from an empty seat, you can hear Amanda's voice, tentative and quiet, her fear of the answer evident. I do have you… right? Your lack of response continues as you crowd around multiple people to edge your way into the only empty seat in the middle of an otherwise full row. Your eyes flick around the packed vehicle to check for any signs of danger, then you settle back into the rigid plastic and relax your mind again. You do. I don't know what I would have done if I'd known sooner, but I'm glad that I know now. Heat swirls around your heart, and it draws forth the memory of Amanda desperately kissing you in the moments before the lights shut off in the drift, the feeling of her skin, soft and hot on yours. I just wish we could touch again.

Amanda's presence pours in currents and eddies up and down your body, swirling in and out of your mind in a way that makes your vision dim and twist a little. Well, I can feel everything that you feel, so… Her voice is coy and playful. You'll just have to do the touching…

…

Oh come on, don't tell me you've never— I have! Once or twice… The moist warmth of your sister's presence pools in between your legs and chest and you start to sweat from the sensation. Another memory draws to the surface against your will, and your cheeks go red-hot. Oh— oh, that doesn't count! That was a pillow and you didn't know what you were doing! You tug on the collar of your shirt, the tram car suddenly feeling humid and twice as full as before. I just… I never really thought about doing that much…

God, you're so cute. Clearly sensing your embarrassment and growing discomfort in the crowded tram, Amanda's presence slides away from your genitals and explores around the rest of your body more closely, stopping at a collection of scars on your right shoulder. What are these from? Another memory starts to be pulled to the forefront of your mind, before you shut your eyes forcefully and say out loud "Don't!" The people immediately beside you on the tram pull away from you and give you confused expressions. Oh, I didn't mean to—

No, it's okay—it's okay. It's just, I saw what the memory of my first kill did to you, and I don't want it to happen again. There were two on that mission. Oh, okay. I'll have to be careful in here then! Though… it's not like I can avoid those memories forever.

You suppose that that's probably true, though you still really don't want to see— well, feel your sister suffer the memories of any of your combats again if there's any possibility of avoiding it. If it does have to happen at some point, a crowded place like this is not the right place to try to process that.

Before long the tram car comes to a clunky stop, and you're buffeted back out into the night. With optimism in her voice, Amanda asks So what's next once we get back to your apartment? I'm not really sure. Should we tell anybody about this? About us? There isn't really anyone to tell. I don't have any friends, and we're sure as hell not telling the anyone connected to the psych matrix imaging orgs. They'd strap us to a chair and run tests. We'd probably never see daylight again, and… I want to live with you now. Have a real life.

Your apartment door is suddenly in front of you, your key in hand. You twist your key in the lock. It makes a hollow click in the cheap wood, and as you push the door open and step through, the dingy smell of old carpet and plaster floods your nostrils. The familiar sensation of deep vulnerability that you've felt every night in this apartment washes over you and darkness crowds your mind. You have to hold your stainless steel key to your nose and take a few deep breaths of the smell of metal before the space around you doesn't feel so panickingly exposed. I hate this place.

There's a long, swirling pause, and you bring the key back up to your face for its tranquilizing smell for a few more seconds. Why not get a post on an orbital ship? Sure, you won't have the ground under your boots, but at least it's… sturdier?

Yeah, maybe that's a good idea— A grin splits your face. Assuming we can pass the psych test! You laugh, and your sister laughs with you, relief from each other's presences relaxing your tense muscles. But yeah, that's a good idea. For now though, I think it'll be nice to get some sleep. We can sleep together again! In the same bed like when we were kids!

You think of the previous nights spent lying on the small mattress in the bedroom, barely fitting your rough body onto its tiny surface.