Ætherglow #143

“Both my moms are what just you’d expect from corpo-girlboss-types,” you say. “After all the work they put in building their little Femmepire of Redshift Security, they could hardly contain their disappointment at having produced a ‘male’ child against all odds. And even if I’m kind of sometimes a girl, and as cute as any girl when I’m not, I’m just never good enough for them...”

“That sounds awkward,” Vik says.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be...”

A message reaches your eyes.

2254-08-01 17:55:13 Аэлита > when will you be home?

2254-08-01 17:55:21 Aydan > about an hour

2254-08-01 17:55:34 Елена > we’ll have dinner waiting.

Your feet touch the ground again as the long elevator slows down. It finally reaches the bottom of the hole you live in, and the doors open up to the busy train station. The walkway is dim with only starlight shining through the glass above, distorted through the flowing water barrier.

You head for your platform, and Vik turns a different way. “Guess this is where we split up,” they say.

“Good luck,” you say.

“You too.”

As you walk down to your part of the maze of train platforms, someone come up beside you. “Hey.” It’s Synth, once more in their normal clothes, their tight black pants with the glowing accents, but now with a heavy coat like yours out here in the cold city of night.

“Synth. Guess we should make plans,” you say.

“Yeah. We can do our thing whenever you want pretty much. My implants aren’t scheduled until nearly the end of break,” they say.

“I’m getting mine later this week,” you say.

“Great. We can do it before or after, though it might require an ætherwalk and that’ll be much easier for you with a neurodissociative implant,” Synth says.