FUNCTION-L₃ #24

You consider all the wildest ideas that crossed your mind the past year.

“I want magnets, for sure.” Following Akiko’s lead, you touch each of her fingertips. “And metallic strands in my hair, functional as an antenna array,” you sign, and pull her listening hand up to weave both of your hands through her long hair. “I need tunable skin pigmentation, allowing me to blend into any background, with adjustable reflectivity...” You trace the paths of her conduits over her skin, up her arms, down her legs. “And I need more arms, no, maybe more versatile limbs than that, modular, with different modes!” You index points on her shoulders and her ribs. “Plus a tail, why not!” Reaching around her, you index an attachment point on her lower back. “And finally, a built in theremin, maybe right here...” You trace a path from the bottom of her neck down through the middle of her torso. “A transmitter I can use to stim with radio waves anytime.”

She signals to switch roles, and you take her hand to listen, but instead she pulls you toward her by your listening hand and kisses you, grasping the sides of your face, carrying your hand along.

“I love you, Aydan,” she signs. “You understand me...” She kisses you again. “Your final form will be magnificent!”

“I love you, and everything you ever want to be, Akiko...”

---

Warmed up, dried off, and dressed in your at least somewhat dryer clothes, you and Akiko exit the ruin.

“Thank you for letting me share that moment with you, and not being weird about it or anything...” she signs.

“Of course! This was really special...” you sign.

“We better get back to the mission at hand. But if we fail to find our way out I guess we can just live here,” she signs.

“But then we’ll never get our implants and surgeries! Let’s go,” you sign.

You step back onto the cold, dark streets of the old city, filled only with the flickering lights of ancient abandoned signs and the shadows of insect swarms scattering below them as you walk by.

Akiko stops, catching your hand to hold you back. She points at an alley between two buildings, their concrete sides cracked and crumbling, piles of dust left behind. You shine your light in between and see a steel plate welded in place on the ground, on the colony wall.

“That’s one of them, a breach point,” she signs.

“So they came in through here...” you sign.

“Their breaching ships had docking seals specially molded to the contour of the colony wall. Arms that drilled into the steel to fasten them in place. Then they pressurized the passage in between and cut through our wall with arc torches. It took a matter of minutes. Then the heavy Earth shock troops rushed in,” she signs.

You stare at the empty, silent corridor. Rusty stains still mark the walls. Even the moss and mold doesn’t grow here.

“It’s an eerie place... I feel like if I had my interface I could feel them in the æther,” she signs.

“Oh yeah, I know what you mean. Places of heavy trauma are like that,” you sign.

“Then what does that say about us and our minds?” she signs. “Let’s not linger here. It’s cold.”

Turning around, you look up at a building across the street. A grid of concrete and fragments of shattered windows stretches up up into the dark, moss-covered wires climbing it like green vines.

“Look at this. This building might connect up to the next level,” you sign.

Below the tower, the building has a wide base, a curved structure with some of its large window panels intact, lines with light tubes of many colors, some of them still flickering faintly.

A large sign hangs over what looks like the main entrance: DOLLSENSE™

“It’s worth a try,” she signs. “I wonder what kind of place this was? It’s a little colorful and fanciful for a corpo office.”

You walk through the doors into a corridor lined with large posters, most of them rotten or eaten away, but a few still preserved inside their glass cases. Images of bright, flashy characters, their skin drawn in shiny foil on the posters, look down at you, wearing elaborate 22nd century fashion, in poses with microphones or instruments in their hands.

“It’s a music venue,” you sign.

“Oh, I know what this is,” she signs. “Old Japan and its colonies have had a thing about this on and off for centuries. The last time it got popular was before I was born, but I’ve seen some old models. They started as just animations and holograms, but eventually they used primitive exopaths. Music created and performed by a program, adaptive, reactive, lifelike even, and able to interact with its fans on a personal level.”