🌖

Maybe it’s the perfect time to try out this CommTech program. You pull up the documentation and find a simple command. Emotional communication, interesting. Using Akiko’s public key you try to direct a message not of words, but a feeling. I missed you, is what you try to convey. You try and hold that feeling in mind, and send.

Once you receive a read receipt, you see her close her eyes and stim with her fingers. “You’re a quick learner,” she signs.

[Akiko liked that]

You feel a message in response. It fills your mind with a warmth that spreads through you, and a sense of distance and longing. Loneliness? It’s more complex than that, more than you’re able to interpret very well.

“This is pretty hard,” you sign.

“Learning a whole new mode of communication is a whole layer above just learning a language, especially one using a sense you never had before,” she signs. “I’m sure you can figure it out.”

The elevator stops and opens up to the ground level. You step out into the academy block, with some planters with new flowers growing in them on either side of you. You head for the main path toward the residential block as night falls on you.

“Have you chosen your classes yet?” she signs.

“Mostly. I have to take Practical Arts and Military Studies this semester since I’m technically a contract student. Otherwise...”

[Author’s Note: I really wish I had multi-select polls here for this one. Feel free to vote multiple times on it if you have the technopathic skill.]