FUNCTION-L₃ #22

This is of course no question at all for a femboy like you! The estrogen and progesterone flowing through your veins and the bacterial bioreactors inside your synthovaries call out to the doorway on the right, and no power in space or Earth could make you choose otherwise. You follow Akiko, who was already going that way.

The corridor leads to a room where another shadow of insects scatters away from your light. Shelves and cabinets line the walls, caked with dust and decayed around their edges. Akiko wipes the dust coating off of one such fixture to feel its rotten material.

“Amazing, real wood,” she signs.

“Wood! That’s worth its weight in titanium!” you sign.

“It’s a luxury good now, but pre-war they were still regularly getting shipments from Earth. In fact, one of the early Earth Protectorate decarbonization schemes involved growing plantations of trees and shipping their wood to space, removing that carbon from circulation,” she signs.

You open a few of the cabinet doors, those still resting on their old, rusted hinges. Inside, you find all traces of fabric reduced to dust.

“Doesn’t preserve well, though,” you sign.

“Not a good sign...” Akiko’s hands scan over rows and rows of decayed containers before stopping at one. You shine your light on it, seeing it’s still relatively intact, a rare corner of this place spared from the march of time. Unfortunately, when she tries to open it, she finds it locked.

“Not a problem,” she signs, continuing her search until she finds a metal support rod among the remains of an adjacent enclosure. Sliding it into the space beside the lock, she pries it until the rusted metal shatters, and the cabinet flies open. “Every lock can be picked.”

Inside, you find a stack of perfectly preserved white towels, hidden away from the fate of the old city. She tosses one your way. You waste no time trying to wipe the algæ-soaked water from your hair and your face, letting out a sigh of relief. You peel the arm-warmers from your forearms, at this point accomplishing nothing but arm-colding, and try to dry your skin.

Following your lead, Akiko pulls off her soaked boots and wrings the water from her wool socks. You do the same with your shoes.

“It’s kind of warm in here, so let’s rest a while and dry off,” she signs, then unravels her braid, trying to dry her hair. Turning around, she pulls her wool crop top over her head and wrings it out again before setting it down on the bench running the length of the room. Her long hair halfway covers her body, but you can make out the web of neural conduits running just under her skin, the red glow of her synthovaries deeper inside--a beautiful machine. Briefly making eye contact, her ocular implants flash pink before she looks away.

“Aydan...” she signs your name, rocking nervously.

“Sorry!” you sign, unsure what to do with your eyes. “You’re very pretty...”

“I suppose, but this is a little one sided isn’t it?” she signs, fixing her purple gaze on you.

“Right!” You follow and extract yourself from your shirt, your bra, setting everything down in a dry place.

“You’re pretty, Aydan,” she signs.

Your estrogen-flooded brain surges with uncontrollable emotions. You forgot what it was like without an interface to monitor and regulate these things. You also can’t directly feel Akiko’s feelings without your empathic link active, and you’re no specialist at communication like she is. But underlying it all is your survival instinct--if you can’t get warm, you’ll have to deal with hypothermia. So you get our of your soaked skirt, and the rest of your clothes, and she follows your lead.

Now free of cold fabrics, you thoroughly dry yourself off, already feeling ten degrees warmer. Akiko takes another dry towel and wraps it around herself, handing you one too. It’s not much, but after all you’ve been through today it might as well be a warm nighttime coat.

She reaches out, and you take her hand. With her eyes glowing pink, she leads you further back into the facility, to the next room. You take ÆON’s device for light.

“Let’s see if anything’s intact back here. Something’s making this place strangely warm,” she signs.

Dusty, cracked tiles line the room beyond, many fallen and shattered to dust. Being careful where you step, you navigate the labyrinth of ceramic shards. On the ceiling above, curious bugs watch you from countless tiny eyes. Past rusted and collapsed water pipes you find the large basin once full of hot water. You find the room surprisingly warm--at the back you see why, a giant metal water pipe runs through the building, from floor to ceiling, hot to the touch.

“The colony’s own life veins, the thermal regulation system. No wonder the local fauna likes this place.” Akiko feels around the pipe and the complex of smaller pipes around it. “It’s at least possible that these valves can still turn.”