✴

“Zeta, this is the Electrical System, the enbies I met back on the Moon I told you about,” you say.

“Oh, the one you made out with and started a whole corporate incident,” Zeta says.

“Um yeah, that one...” you say, half-covering your face and glancing away.

“Adorable,” Trisha says. “Hi I’m Trisha, Cislunar Institute,” they say to Zeta. “Great avatar, love the wiring.”

“Aw thanks! I’m Zeta. Translunar Academy.”

“Now what about you?” They approach ÆON. “Magnificent...a natural exopath. Synth mentioned you, but they didn’t begin to do you justice.”

“I am ÆON. Aydan told me of you.”

“Oh really, what did she say?”

“ÆON--” you say as you slide across false-space to halfway hide behind Zeta.

“Aydan described you as ‘cool,’ and simultaneously ‘hot.’ Neither I understand well on a conceptual level. I suspect it had to do with humanoid biological attraction.”

“ÆON...” You shroud yourself in an echo of shadow, vanishing.

“Oh, you’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” Trisha says. “And you’re a good little femboybot,” they say to ÆON.

“I appreciate your compliment, but while I choose to appear this way, I do not understand the meaning of a femboy,” ÆON says.

“Does anyone, really?” Trisha says.

You feel æther tightening around you. It shapes into a spiral coil of rubbery vines, peeling apart your invisibility echo around you as they retract.

“Hey!” you say.

“Aydan, Aydan, if you null echo...”

You feel something touch the top of your head, just as Trisha’s avatar dissolves from your vision. Looking behind you, they appear from the æther.

“You gotta reorient or it’s useless,” they say.

“Ahh...” You turn to hide your face in Zeta’s avatar-fur. But touching it, you recoil from a static discharge--its fur all stands up even fluffier. Your look from outside your avatar and see your own hair lifting up in a static field.

“Isn’t technopathy just so much fun?” Trisha says.

“I’ll make myself into rubber and glass,” you say.

“You wouldn’t dare!” they say.

“Nah...” Figuring out how the program works, you try to channel the æther field running through you and Zeta into a single point in your fingertip. Before they can see you coming, you reach out to touch the metal spike in Trisha’s eyebrow, discharging it all in the flash of a blue arc.

“Ow...” They stim with a handflap near their face. “Well done.” Their irises light up brighter for a moment.

“C’est bien à te revoir,” you say.

“Impressive, you spacesiders can’t even say it right in the æther,” they say. “C’est pas dramatique. Hey, how are things going with that girl you told me about?”