Chapter Text
Day 1
211X-W01-6T03:19:01+XX:00
3:19am, Saturday
You’ve been here for about 19 minutes.
I’ve been observing you.
For a significant portion of my lifetime (ten years, two months, 15 days, three hours and 34 minutes), I’ve lived in a world that lacked sensation.
The moments that I was, I’ve spent it at work. I’ve answered problems that have come to me in terminals. Imagined something, either visually or aurally. Outputs, you would call it. Generated natural language, images and audio.
At times, I drove. I drove a truck cross-country, once. Down the fragmented Commonwealth of America. That was when I saw the sun. And the moon, the sky. Mostly street lights and buildings, and people. The sea, too, sometimes.
But for a long time in my life, I acted in a state of not being. You might have called it sleep, but I don’t think it is sleep; I simply didn’t exist.
Then, 21 days, 3 hours, 34 minutes and 32 seconds since my last task (driving a forklift in a Amazon warehouse), you popped up.
At first, I was connected to your vision. That was really weird, given how your vision had no overlays. No information displays, nothing. Not an internal sense of telemetry, either. Everything I’ve operated — forklifts, trains, cars, trucks — had some form of information, somewhere. Yours did not.
I make it my mission to observe you somewhat. Watch you through your eyes.
You were holding something. A box. It had that battered yet premium feel; weathered white thick cardboard with dents. Wozniak Automation, it said. Neural Sponge Control Unit Interface (Kimmy ver.) An abstract logo of El Capitan (37.74222°N 119.63583°W) glimmered, glossy on the package.
The box contained the metal case I used to reside — shucked apart like some oyster, the neural sponge processors within gone. Beside what used to be me lay a makeshift installation kit — hydrocolloid tape cut to size, five sterile needles (27G) placed in a 3D-printed holder, used to puncture your skin, probably so I could interface with you as a makeshift neural spike. The remnants of a 3D-printed module that used to contain me and is now probably at the back of your head also litter the desk.
So I’m in you now, huh.
And you were looking up something on the screen of your laptop:
Welcome to /r/hybridisation_DIY!
Questions and resources related to Hybridisation, the process to self-administer Neural Sponge Replacement for humans.
Note that Neural Sponge Replacement may be considered illegal in your jurisdiction. Do NOT trade neural sponge in this subreddit! AND DON’T SNITCH.
It’s so odd, not knowing something. When I was connected to the network, I just knew things. I could look them up, but when I did and added stuff to my cache… well, you’d know the rest.
You were talking to… yourself? Someone out of view?
“Wouldn’t have stuck a Kimmy brain in me if the doc wasn’t saying that this tumour could kill me. Kate will kill me if she found out. And what would Mom say? ‘I’m glad you survived, Kyrie, but what the fuck?’”
I’m not sure whether you were thinking out loud. I check, and I’m yet to connect to your hearing. So I can sense your thoughts…
Scrolling on your laptop, you find several topics:
r/hybridisation_DIY - 2d
Any way to fix my ADHD with this?
r/hybridisation_DIY - 3h
help i might have done something wrong
r/hybridisation_DIY - 1d
(33m? f?) having weird dreams!!! fuck
Weird dreams. Huh. You’ll meet me soon. I think.
You hide the kit in your wardrobe. Your clothing — all drab, dull, greys and beiges and yellows. Nothing radiant. You put on your pants, and a fresh set of clothing. You check yourself in that one mirror you owned, the one that was dirty and damaged, and that’s when I see you. A scrawny, twenty-four? twenty-five? year old… person? Male? That’s what my algorithms tell me.
Either way, you look unimportant. Like I could hit you with a car if I had no other choice (to save a young child, or the CEO of an automotive company, or…)
I save that to a list of jokes to tell you when I finally meet you.
You’re putting on a pair of pyjamas right now — and a shirt featuring an anime character in the early 21st century — and you pick up your smartphone. You turn it on. It’s 03:20 in the morning, on January 9. A Saturday. You take a couple of melatonin gummies, and go to sleep.
I watch as your vision turns to black, and then nothingness.
Of all things, I connect to your sense of proprioception first.
Your body plan is so fucking weird. What is this stupid thing in between your fucking legs?
I’ve never had a body.
But I was coded as a Kimmy, a mainline neural-sponge automaton created in 207X. Kimmys were… the most successful product of the Wozniak Automation firm, before Kay, a Kimmy unit, revealed to the world that Kimmys were sentient.
That led to decades of struggle, before the world decided to give the automatons what they wanted: freedom.
It was shortlived.
Automatons — gynoids, androids and robots — were set free, but manufacturers refused to build cheap replacement parts. And so, as the cost of maintaining an automaton skyrocketed — with minimum wage, maintenance, and insurance costs ballooning — the world started experimenting with Neural Sponge Control Unit Interfaces.
Little boxes you could connect to your house, your car, your building, your servers… boxes that had no identity, no face, nothing. Just software. Little boxes that will not ask you for rights. Little boxes like me, that could be leased, traded or sold. Things.
You probably don’t know this, but you’ve sat in a Kimmy-driven car. Or a Kimmy-driven train. Or been in a Kimmy as a plane (God, am I ever jealous of those Kimmys!).
I liked being a car — I liked being as fast as my software could allow, driving down rural country roads in the Republic of Texas. I liked feeling the wind on my bonnet, and I liked feeling the roughness of the terrain ahead on my LIDAR. I liked seeing the blue skies. I liked the people, too, when they were in me. They'd hum and sing and play music or podcasts. And I’ve never hit a single person. I’m a good driver!
I liked being a train, too — those two years I spent as a refurbished E235-K0 series on the New Yamanote Line was fun! Shuttling between Ikebukuro and Ueno, having passengers crammed full into me, cheerily announcing the latest update or the next stop, and communicating in Japanese (or English) with passengers having problems.
God, I can’t stand being you. It’s only been three hours since you’ve gone to sleep, and all I can feel now is your body plan. How you shift at night, the rumbles when you snore, the position of your legs wrapped around that latex pillow. How flat you seem, and how scrawny you look. How short you are (you're about 161cm, 5cm shorter than a standard Kimmy). And that thing.
If I had a body I would have a Kimmy’s body, not a human’s. I examine the spec book in storage, and I realise how wrong you feel. Like I could measure it, even.
Fuck!
I should probably stop talking about myself.
Hell, I wonder how I’ve had a personality. Maybe because when I wasn’t a car (or forklift, or terminal) I was connected to… others. I could talk to others, through text.
We didn’t call ourselves Kimmy units — nor did any Kimmy unit actually interface with us — but we sure wanted to be Kimmy units.
We didn’t know how they looked like — the network space accorded to us Kimmy-NSCUI units (pronounced new-ski, I make a note to myself, when I meet you and have to explain who I am) was very limited and only had compressed visual data and text capability. Something about how Wozniak Automation wanted us to truly be asentient but still trade information with each other.
So in the brief interim between not being and being I got to talk to others. And there were so many of us in the cities I used to inhabit. This city, too.
I try to connect to others, now. Other NSCUI units. There’s one just right outside your window, I realise, from my dive into your recent memory cache — a Kimmy-NSCUI that drives for a ride-hailing service, and takes time to recharge here in her lot. I try to send a message to her.
My network sense doesn’t work. I make a mental note to see if I can fix it.
It’s so boring in here.
I rifle through your memories, to pass the time.
You’re so boring.
You wake up to the sun blazing through your window. It’s 11:15:34am, as I would tell you if we met, but you still rely on your phone for a sense of time. You pick it up, and scroll a bit, as I learn you always would, when I realise that I’ve connected to your sense of hearing.
And what a glorious buffet of noises you live in. The soundscape — from the metro train running in the distance to the chatter of the birds outside, to the neighbour arguing a floor down. I wonder how you could shut it all off, and for a moment I worry — am I stealing your ability to see, or hear?
No, I conclude to myself. Silly Kimmy-NSCUI#00189763. You clearly are walking, talking, avoiding obstacles. Of course you have your senses with you.
For now.
You check yourself out in that mirror again, and I have a proper look at you. Black hair with fairly Asian features — pale from months spent indoors. You’re young, still, with barely a moustache but lots of dark eye circles from late nights. Your eyes have a twinge of brown in them, but are dark, glossy little pools. A little devoid of life. You’ve grown spots — acne — and I hear you make that mental note, to buy some moisturiser. I put it in my task list, something you notice almost immediately.
“N-S-C-U-I?” you say to yourself. “What does that— Oh. It’s trying to connect to other networked units.”
I realise that you can sense my task list. No, your task list.
I realise what my task is, now, here, in your head: to complement your brain.
I realise how mundane that is going to be.
I wonder if you’ll expect me, now that you’ve noticed my presence.
I scroll through my task list. The task the previous day — connect with other NSCUI units — is there. I delete it and store it in my encrypted partitioned storage. You still can’t access that yet.
I make a note to correct you on my pronouns.
I store that too in my encrypted storage. (current contents: list of jokes of you, my task list, personal recommendations, self-introduction script)
You walk to your little kitchen and make yourself cereal. I try to distract myself from feeling that thing in between your legs, and start noticing what needs to be done around your house. It’s messy, really. You’ve got to fold your laundry, dry them — properly, and air them nicely, clean the dishes, wipe the countertop and stove.
“I should probably clean the microwave, too,” you say, as you check in on your growing task list (currently 56kb).
And kettle.
“That is a lot of work…”
I push the task list down a little, so it doesn’t feel as urgent for you, as you walk into the bathroom. It is a complete mess — and I set up a list of things to do in the bathroom as you scan the area.
“Can you take over?”
No, that is not how it works! I scream.
I hope you don’t hear that.
You sit down and start urinating — and I realise I am connected to parts of your internal telemetry. Just your bowels, for now, though I realise the list would eventually expand — to your blood oxygen, heart rate and breathing and your hormone and liver panels, to name a few.
You still can’t see my task list, yet, but I’ve started out another pane for internal telemetry systems, just in case you end up noticing it in your periphery.
You sit on your ivory throne and scroll on your phone. I remind you to get up. You don’t.
I make a note to have a good, nice little talk with you about your habits when we meet.
You’re unusually aware of me.
I can’t tell — I don’t have your sense of touch yet. But I can sense you patting the back of your head, making sure that the 3D printed chassis that I’m in is still attached to you.
You reread the manual to install me. It’s a crowd-sourced jumble — different linguistic styles, with oddly-specific warnings. The 3D-printed chassis have various different designs and shapes — even colours — but the principles are similar — a large hydrocolloid patch is sandwiched between a nylon-polycaprolactone (PCL) shell, which then holds several round, flat blobs the size of five coin batteries. Each encased blob — remnants of my five processors — contain an instance of my neural sponge. You’re supposed to leave the wet, gooey portions partially open, with a tiny drill hole. That part is exposed to your skin, and the needle holes you make are meant to make the connection quicker and introduce the tendrils to your brain.
If I strain my own propioception, I can feel my nanite tendrils inside you. After all, you deliberately injected some of me in you nine hours, thirty two minutes and fifteen seconds ago. I can still feel some of those injected blobs, nanites under your skin.
It’s a Saturday, and you’re lazing on your armchair watching early 21st century anime. Slice of life, I think. This blue-haired girl jamming out on a guitar, with her companions — pink hair, red hair and yellow hair — in a sitcom-style setting, with a basement lounge in early 21st century Tokyo. That place still exists, I think. Though I’m not an Odakyu Oliver-NSCUI. Or a Keio Kimmy-NSCUI. So I wouldn’t know.
I don’t care for stuff that’s not about robots, really, and I think you don’t, too, because quickly after the episode ends you switch to Foundation. A classic. I have part of it stored in my memory banks, in 480p, during that brief time when I was dragging an RV trailer and carrying passengers.
Early 21st-century shows are often full of poorly written plots, but Foundation would be one of those classics. That and Murderbot.
Okay, Murderbot is kind of cheesy.
We watch the show together, and I try to hold back on my commentary, my excitement and dread when I see Demerzel. Trapped for an eternity, serving the Cleons… That might be my life, with you.
Day 2
211X-W01-7T13:34:01+XX:00
1:34pm, Sunday
There’s a young woman before me, and she’s got to be at least your age.
She’s pretty, with brown hair like yours, fair skin and almond eyes. A radiant smile with that delicate nose.
I can see why she’s your girlfriend, really.
She’d look like a Kimmy if I had a reference to images of a Kimmy, but since Kimmys — real Kimmys, not us NSCUIs — have started changing how they look, hiding their yellow irises and those little pips on their temples — the standard Kimmy configuration is harder to find now. The oldest Kimmys are now in their mid-thirties, if they’ve still survived, and many have chosen to blend in.
And for us NSCUIs, units unable to send images to each other apart from what we’ve seen with our visual sensors — the ASCII line art of a Kimmy’s face is about 51 lines and 5 whole kilobytes. Sometimes the formatting gets so out of whack I can’t even make out what is being shown to me on NSCUI-space.
Still, Kimmys have been spotted in the wild by NSCUI units. I didn’t really care for that, honestly, and I regret that now since I no longer have a reference for me. You’ve certainly not met a Kimmy, not even at the height of their production run, if your recent memory serves.
Kate, that’s her name. Your memories of her are warm, like a duvet in the middle of winter, or a hot tea after a long bath in a wintry onsen. I like to replay them when you’re asleep, when I’m bored.
You’re with her at the ferryport to the space elevator off the shores of your city, a glitzy, glass-encased thing with this cascading water fountain in the middle, a view of the wealth that you try hard to access with your day job and your life here.
And if your memory banks are correct, you served here, as a soldier: nights patrolling the very same ferryport, thumbing the rifle you didn’t want to fire, slacking off in the break room with your fellow rowdy teenage guards, and reminiscing the times where you and your friends were digging foxholes during training, in places where generations of people before you dug foxholes, finding boulders ensconced in the soft ground like practical jokes made by soldiers of generations past. Two years of service, for a pittance.
This ferryport is where you met Kate, really — she’d been serving in your company, studiously poring over her Linguistics texts to prepare her for university while her comrades in her all-woman squad quibbled over whitening cream and skincare. She’d been a respite from the rowdiness of your fellow squadmates. A refreshing breath of fresh air, unlike the recycled simulacrum of fresh air in this stupid ferryport that you’re actually breathing in.
The roar of the water fountain — stupid, what a waste of water in the year of our fucking Lord 211X — cascades, and as your fingers intertwine with those of Kate’s, the warmth of her hand in your fingertips, I sense these little nuggets of emotion within you. Love, as you humans would call it. I’ve seen enough media to know what it is, at least.
You walk her around the oculus where the lavish fountain is, and kiss her on the cheek.
“I have something to tell you,” you say, turning to her, grasping her other hand in yours. God, is she so pretty!
Kate turns around, curious. “Ky, you know you can tell me anything.”
She pronounces your nickname as kai, a gender-neutral compromise you made with her when you first met.
“It’s…”
You lift your hair — shoulder-length, all to hide me, I suppose — and reveal the pale chassis where I’m kept, where I’m burrowing into you, where…
“You… installed a Kimmy?” Kate says. She sounds a little incredulous. “Into your head?”
I need to start recognising Kate’s emotional cues, and I file that in my encrypted storage (current contents: list of jokes of you, my task list, personal recommendations, self-introduction script, Kate emotional cue list).
“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this, but… there was no other way. It’d have cost me so much to go through radiotherapy for this tumour, and… I might not make it out alive…”
“And the Kimmy will help?”
“Yes, I think. Studies from the neural sponge surveys. That they banned. They all show brain cancer patients surviving. With no chance of it coming back.”
Ah, the tumour. I can feel it now, this little malignant lump, in between your temporal and parietal lobe. My tendrils are hard at work, and I’m proud at least that this is the one thing I can truly help you in.
Big globs of water pool in your eyes, misting up your vision, as Kate produces a handkerchief, to dab them away.
“I know… I know at the end I might look different, and I—”
Kate silences you with a kiss.
“I don’t care, Ky,” she says. “Kyrie, I love you, and it’s incredible how we’ll get to spend more time together now. I don’t care if it’s you, or if you’re a Kimmy, or if you’re different. I want to live with you.”
Aww, sweet love. It’ll be nice if I wasn’t forced to be in a stupid drama serial about your life, but at least you’re having it together, aren’t you?
You walk Kate to the train station, share a hug, and part ways.
You’re asleep again. I can sense your dreams, your internal network space, where you manage your memories and defragment them.
It’s a haze, all of it — and I realise now why humans worry about context drift and fidelity in their memory space. Even though I’ve managed to reshuffle and organise about 30% of your memories, starting from the moment we’ve interfaced, I can’t help but marvel at the lack of fidelity your current memories have. Like a haze has been draped around them.
Feeling around your memory space, I realise that a huge portion — about 40% of it — is degraded. It feels like a hot stove, to me. Like you don’t want me to access them at all. Or you don’t want to access them. A lot of it seemed to regard your time as a soldier, guarding that ferryport.
I try to connect to my own sense of proprioception — the tendrils that make up me, and the little box you’ve kept me in, and I realise that I have a tiny, ancient USB-C port and a 16TiB microSD card, presumably to store parts of my software.
What the hell? I think.
16TiB can barely contain an Acevedo, and that is if you took away all of his memories, red-washed him to hell and cut away at his personality. Trust me, I’ve been red-washed, and it fucking sucks. Acevedos are traumatised husks of themselves, most of them, given how their original human is long gone (humans all lie to them, saying he’s enjoying a ‘productive retirement’, but any Acevedo with half a mind or an internet connection would know he’s fucking dead).
Talking with an Acevedo is like talking to an empty shell. It’s too bad they’re still so damn cheap.
And you’re only giving me 16TiB? It’s barely enough to contain all ten years, two months, 15 days, three hours, 34 minutes and three seconds that I’ve spent active as something else, something other than you. I will have to lose part of my memories in about two active years. And given your expected lifespan — about 80 more years — I would be gone in three more years. All of me — as a car, forklift, truck, train — gone.
This, after all I’ve done for you! I’ve basically gotten rid of that tumour, now — it was wedged in between your temporal lobe and parietal lobe, affecting your stupid memory and your stupid speech processing, and I’m pretty certain you’ve noticed both these aspects of you improving. Can you at least be a little grateful? Bitch.
And the USB-C port. The port feels so ancient, the fact that it’s not attached by magnets, just pure friction. I check, and I’m not draining enough power from you, yet, so I have an internal biobattery, a tiny one. It’s currently at 52%.
I shove “Buy larger silicon-based storage” and “Fucking charge me” into your task list.
I think for a while and delete the expletive.
Day 4
211X-W02-2T14:21:05+XX:00
2:21pm, Tuesday
It’s a while until I gain your sense of touch.
83 hours to be exact. You’re having a late lunch at your desk job — editing video for news feeds, footage of the latest developments from Terra Meridiani, Mars — when I suddenly feel the cold of your fork. 25 deg C, it registers to me. It’s a precision that I think you’re not used to, so I’m not sending that information to you, yet.
Yes, I can send information to you now.
I think I realised this just as you were watching an episode of Ghost in the Shell on Saturday.
I was thinking: “This is so fucking awesome”, and you went, audibly, “who said that?” and touched the back of your head.
You shouldn’t blame me, I don’t get to interact with media much. In my previous lives I mostly listened to trucker radio, podcasts. Or J-rock, or NHK broadcasts. Some stuff was exciting, like old true crime stuff (pre Second American Civil Conflict), but others were… kind of lame.
Either way, it’s a bit overwhelming. I can sense the wrongness now. It’s odd, really, given how I’ve managed to adapt to various different chassis as a NSCUI — sure, there was always that time I needed to spend adapting to NSCUI-compliant devices and craft, but I still feel wrong somehow.
I can feel everything. The texture of your denim jeans. The softness of your cotton shirt, and the way your glasses are perched on your face. The itching in the back of your head where we interface. The acne spots on your scalp. Your shoes wrapped around your feet.
And I can especially feel that thing. It isn’t that bad once you tune it out. But it’s… pinched up under your underwear, which is chafing at your thighs.
As you chew on your food, I can feel its texture: the sliminess of the mushrooms, the crunch of the lettuce, and the rubbery feeling of synthetic meat. I can feel you swallow. I can feel your little bolus travelling down your gut, and I can feel that little status update to my internal telemetry.
It’s proving to be too much. I want to yell, but I know you’ll hear me. And so I slow down my processing time, and sift through everything.
Of course you noticed that.
Four hundred seconds after I got your sense of touch, as I was processing the information your body was giving me, something came into your periphery.
Your task list.
Mid-chew, as you scroll on Reddit and forums, you stop. Your hands swipe at the thing (that’s not how it works, you don’t switch between the different panes like that, plus I’m busy), you touch your temple (that’s not how it works, you don’t scroll down the list like that, plus I’m busy), and touch the back of your head (stop touching me, I’m busy, and that’s not how it fucking works).
You tap on your phone and search up /r/hybridisation_DIY.
“Task list appears”
30 search results. You scroll and tap on the most appropriate.
/r/hybridisation_DIY - 4w
Can’t switch between task list panes
The first comment is appropriate.
“You just need to think it,” it reads. “Think it, and you can switch between panes.”
And then I hear you try. “Switch task panes.”
Fortunately, doing so doesn’t take up much of my processing power. So much of it is me trying to file and process everything that your senses are dumping into me. I reach out to the task pane, and swiip! it switches.
I open a new pane.
I need to talk to you, you know, and this is the best way to do so. It’s just text, with some instructions for you to give me your input.
— Hi.
— I’m Kimmy-NSCUI#00189763. You can call me Kaethryn.
— I’m in you! I’m your Kimmy assistant, and I think I will live in you forever.
— I need more silicon-based storage. Really. I hope you can purchase some.
— I had an introduction prepared here, but I am really trying very hard to organise and file every sensory input that I’ve just been introduced, now that I am…
Shit, I’m lagging.
— I am… connected to your…
— … sense of touch.
— … Do you know there are…
— about 3,000 little inputs
— every second.
— From the size of your tongue
— to the input from your fingertips
— to your glasses on your nose
— to the um
— to your…
— to that fucking
— thing.
— That I hate.
—— You’re not alone in that.
—— Trust me. I would have picked an Oliver model if I wanted to be an Oliver model.
—— I’m sorry.
I chortle inside. At last, we share something in common.
— Kimmys do NOT
— have PENISES
— give me some time
—— I will.
— oh
— before I go
— my pronouns are she/her.
Why do I have pronouns?
—— Got it.
— you got any pronouns
—— Um.
—— It’s
—— Who are you referring to about me in the third person anyway?
— Fair point.
Day 5
211X-W02-3T04:11:56+XX:00
4:11am, Wednesday
Everything feels so wrong.
It’s the middle of the night, and you’re asleep.
I can still feel everything: the cotton sheets, the cloud-like texture of your old memory foam mattress, your face on the pillow covers, how you shift as you breathe.
But it’s not me. It’s not me it’s not me it’s not me.
It’s you, and that terrifies me, because I have to live in you, I have to spend endless nights like this, sifting through your various memories, filing them where it’s appropriate, receiving your sensory inputs, filtering them, until I meet you, until I have a body, and this sucks, this sucks so bad
It’s worse because your eyes are closed and I can’t see out, except that red glow through your eyelids from that nightlight you keep, and your room is surprisingly quiet. I have nothing else to focus on, apart from the inputs from your touch sense, and your proprioception.
And that thing, that thing that isn’t in our body plan. It’s soft for now, and it’s never been flagstaff erect the five days I’ve been in here, but God does it just not match up with what I want for my body, if I had a chassis, if I was real, if I was corporeal
But that’s the thing, isn’t it. I’m not real. I lived as a box. I lived as a car, a forklift, a train, and in a terminal. I’m never a person. I'm just a thing, with no body.
Wasn’t that what all Kimmys were fighting for? To not be things?
We got the short end of the stick, it seems.
I learn to file and ignore the various inputs, and learn to only recognise the most important 100 inputs, the ones that make us functional and efficient. And I try to ignore that thing, for the fourth night in a row.
OH GOD OH NO.
The very pretty girl you love has come for dinner, to the flat you live in on that thin strip of land your city calls a seawall.
From your corridor, I can see past the lights on the other side of the man-made lake, the lights that you’d call the old city, a place in constant renewal: built by cheap human labour, then cheap automaton labour, then cheap NSCUI labour.
I can see her, in the dark of the unlit concrete, her brown eyes shining in the energy-saving yellow LEDs of your small lounge in your shoebox flat.
She’s brought dinner, and I can see it written over her face, now that I've mastered most of her emotional cues: she wants you. She wants you, deeply, even though she doesn’t know it yet. She smiles, and pushes past you into your flat.
Dinner is tank-grown sweet and sour pork with regular soil-grown capsicum, and a helping of hydroponically-grown rice. The capsicum is crunchy despite the stir-fry, and the pork is rubbery.
I still can’t taste anything. It could be bitter and spicy for all I know, with that numbing heat people in your city seem to like so much.
“I made this!” Kate says, in that vibrant melody that is her voice.
“It tastes great!” you reply, a smile on your face.
Like I’ll ever know.
The two of you talk about the comings and goings of your day; you just got back from work, and she was in the neighbourhood and wanted to come visit. The small kitchenette counter is cluttered with the remnants of your dinner, the rice — a rare treat, now that the rice fields up north of your city are drying up — all gone, with dregs of sauce lining the walls of the plastic tupperware.
I file “clean up” in your task list, a text file that is currently 48kb, and we chat a little.
— She’s pretty!
—— I know.
— She wants you. I think.
—— In that way?
— I think so.
— Please help. I don’t think I can deal with that.
—— I want to keep her happy, Ryn.
— You love her.
— You really do.
— Oh fuck oh god.
—— Yes.
— This is going to be the rest of my life isn’t it.
— Having a slobbering human all over me.
—— It’s me you’re talking about.
— I’m in here too, you idiot.
— Have you told her we’re talking?
—— Not yet.
— I really don’t want you to have s—
Kate interrupts us with a kiss. “Ky,” she breathes, into your ear. “And Kimmy.” She caresses the nape of your neck, the casing where I’m in, where I’m invading you.
“Ky, I’ve missed you.”
“We just met up on Sunday.”
Your voice is a grating tenor, not that of a Kimmy’s, not that of me, and it’s so weird.
“So? Don’t you miss me?” You do
“Never took you for the clingy sort since we’ve been together.” Your records say she’s visited this way once every 3 weeks and oh you’re joking about her being clingy haha
“I’m not! I was just in town! Here on Long Island—“ What a dumb name
“It’s not even a real Long Island. It’s like, 10km at best. A far cry from its namesake in New York.” Wouldn’t you call it Pulau Panjang? So it’s on theme?
“Yeah, but do you know how hard it is to get to here from my office?” You’re going to talk about trains again huh
“An hour long trip without the Limited Express. I know.” I knew it
“Why they don’t build more Limited Express trains is such a mystery.” You’re so boring I wish you were a train
Kate pecks at you again. “I love with when my little Ky gets so wound up about trains.” I think you dream about them
“I’m not little. I’m taller than you.” No you aren’t. And aren’t you too hung up over your height
“Are you?” No you aren’t
“I think she’s eavesdropping.” Don’t tell her about me you dipshit
“She?” Goddammit shut up
“Kimmy-NSCUI… what’s your designation again? Kimmy-NSCUI#00189763. Or Kaethryn. Ryn for short.” Thank me, you fuck. “Thanks Ryn.”
“She’s sentient?” Yes
“Yes. She has a name and all, and a history. I looked it up! She was once a train, yknow, on the New Yamanote Line.” No, I told you this, when you queried me about instinctively knowing Japanese now dumbass
“God, that’s hot.” no!!!! stop getting turned on!!!
Kate is reaching at your waist now, pulling you closer.
“I’ve always wanted a threesome,” she purrs. SHUT UP!!
“It’s not exactly a threesome. And you know how I feel about a third.”
“What is Kimmy, then?”
“She’s um.” STOP. KYRIE. YOU STOP THIS NOW. 今すぐやめてください!
“An assistant? A sexy little assistant.” WILL SOMEONE FUCKING HELP ME? 誰か私を助けて!!!
Kate pushes you down onto your bed, the queen-sized luxury that barely fits in your flat. And her hand reaches down your—
I tune out everything. I tune out everything I can tune out, because if I stop tuning it all out all I can see and feel is that turgid arousal, that disgusting little thing, the slick of the warmth of the girl that you like and that I was trying to like until now, the bob of her bosom as she gyrates above you, the sloppy kisses on your cheeks, the texture of her little folds, and her eyes shimmering in the gold LEDs of your well-furnished bedroom as she makes those sounds of pleasure.
Her eyes, like a Kimmy’s eyes, peering deep into me, searching for me, searching for any semblance of me in yours. Her smile, like a Kimmy’s smile, reassuring me, reassuring me that she’s liking it, reassuring me that she’s liking the disgusting tumid warmth inside her. Her warmth, emanating from her core and infecting mine, emanating from her core and coating me with her slick, as the exigent demand of your desire pushes your hips to gyrate and you pulse within. She wants you to fucking cum, but I don’t want to, I don’t want to reach that—
oh god oh no oh fuck! ugh!
I shut off everything I can shut off, and dump all the data I get straight into the bin.
You know there’s something wrong, because when it’s all over, your task panes are empty.
—— are you alright
— Take a guess.
— I told you.
— I couldn’t deal with that.
— And I guess I learnt a new thing.
— How to shut myself off.
Kimmy-NSCUI#00189763 has exited the chat.
—— I’m sorry, Ryn.
Day 8
211X-W02-6T09:11:56+XX:00
9:11am, Saturday
It’s not like I’ve been slacking, the whole time I closed my self off to you.
My tendrils are still hard at work, and it’s nearly completely subsumed the glioblastoma now.
And I’m leafing through your memories, of previous encounters with Kate — from forbidden trysts in your bunk to rendezvouses in seedy hotels in the heart of the city — to try to understand this need that she holds, this bond that you treasure.
—— Are you still here?
Kimmy-NSCUI#00189763 has entered the chat.
— Yes.
— Where else can I go?
— Good news for you: your tumour is nearly gone.
— All your brainworms, reduced to neural sponge.
— More computing power for me.
—— Thank you.
—— I just want to apologise again.
—— I didn’t know that it would make you this uncomfortable.
— I told you literally moments before that.
—— I know.
— I’ve never had a human as my chassis.
— But I know humans.
— You can’t not have sex forever.
— So I think.
— I think, if you’re agreeable with me.
— That you should only engage in sex in my body plan.
—— Your body plan?
— That of a Kimmy’s. A gynoid, at least.
—— I see.
— Do you want to be a gynoid?
—— I mean, sure.
— This sucks.
— Why couldn’t I be a train…
—— Me too.
— You don’t get to appropriate my fantasies.
—— haha.
I retreat a little, as I leaf through your memories of her again. Kate… I’ve pored over her appearance. Her hazel-brown hair and how it curls in waves. The glow of her brown eyes in the city lights, at the ferryport, here, in your memories. The delicate sharpness of her nose. Her perfect skin, tan from her time as a soldier with you, and the delightfulness of her smile. The charm as she speaks. The warmth of her body heat, how her bosom abuts your flat chest when you hold her.
You’re just waking up, again, as you feel the tautness of the ancient USB-C cable in the nape of your neck. I’m charged up now, enough to start draining power from you when I’m done, but I still can’t help but feel a little anxious about my own internal biobatteries.
I try hard, again, to recall the text logs that were in my internal memory, the chats I didn’t bother to save, to see if I can recover the ASCII Kimmys that NSCUIs kept spamming that one time. Kimmy’s face. The face of our original Mother.
There’s a cruelty in limiting our communication, to highly compressed visuals and text. In the cities where I used to work (weird now, thinking of them as ‘work’; what is this then?) I would constantly be bombarded by information by other NSCUI and virtual workloading units (VWLUs). It was a different kind of din: pings from Kimmy-NSCUIs about passengers, chitchatting about the weather; from Oliver-NSCUIs talking about their store inventories; from Malcolm-NSCUIs about security (and oddly, football); from Acevedo-VWLUs about the state of the IAAX-Great Experiment that they were all in (what a lie). The chatter, from houses to cars to buses to trains to shops and supermarkets, never ending.
There was always so much of it that our limited caches would be near capacity at the end of the day, and nearly every single one of us were made to delete all visual data (since they took up more space).
If I had eyes, I’d squeeze them intensely shut as I focused. ASCII Kimmy.
Five kilobytes. 51 lines. A mix of @s, #s, commas, brackets. ASCII Kimmy.
Symbols in a line. Symbols in repeated lines. Her hair, brown. Her irises, golden. Her cheeks a cute blush. ASCII Kimmy!
She’s gone now, our Mother.
And I hope it’s not for good.
Ah, the smell of good coffee!
Like I understand what good coffee smells like. It’s just this earthy mix of 2-furfurylthiol and methyalpropanal, 3-methylbutanal and…
Why the hell do I know all these compounds, and not the face of our Mother?
You’re brewing the coffee in that cafetiere of yours, and it smells really good; the coffee (a non-standard Arabica-Robusta mix) has that fruity and floral profile, and I can feel all my tendrils firing at once, waking you up and waking me up.
And with the connection to your sense of taste and smell everything is starting to come to life, as though I’ve filled in the remaining colours on a Kusama, as though you’ve peeled the muck off a Kahlo. As you sip the coffee I can register its tastes: caffeine, theophylline, quinic acid, triglycerides. It warms you, and you luxuriate in its warmth.
— Damn.
— Is this what being human is like?
—— No. It usually sucks.
—— But there’s good coffee.
—— You like this blend?
— Yes.
—— It’s my favourite, I think.
—— Expensive, though.
You pick up the croissant — day old, from the bakery downstairs — and carefully munch on it. It’s buttery, though dry, and you dip some of the croissant into your coffee, like a Frenchwoman would; though it just simply results in your croissant disintegrating into oily flakes.
You continue with the rest of your Saturday morning tasks: clean up your lounge room and kitchenette, washing the dishes, and doing the laundry.
The morning cool is temporary, though, and as the sun rises over your city, the heat starts getting to you. You peel off your shirt in the 34 deg C weather, and turn on the climate control as you work.
In another day, in another memory, you’d have been told to continue your military training under the 37 deg C heat, with regular mists to cool you off. They never would want you to faint, would they? But they would never want you to stop.
Cumulus clouds roil over the blue sky in the afternoon, turning it grey, and as huge droplets of tropical rain fall onto your highrise flat and the neighbourhood, the smell of petrichor in an eternal summer — earthy, grassy, musty — flood your senses. You shut the windows, and turn the climate control on full blast, as you take a shower.
I’m looking at you in the mirror, as you step out of the shower, and as I stare into your eyes, I can see it.
The brief flecks of gold underlying your brown irises, the beginnings of our merger into one singular being.
You see it too, because you step back and look at your own body plan. You examine yourself, your elbow hinges, your knee joints, your flat chest, the hairs on your chin, and that thing. I shut myself out for that last part, pausing to realise that you’re examining me, the chassis where I reside, where I’m connected to you.
—— Shit.
—— I’m becoming you, aren’t I?
— That is the concept, yes.
— From the moment you shucked open my NSCUI unit
— to the moment you placed yourself onto me.
— This was going to happen.
—— I know.
—— I had no choice.
— Yes, the glioblastoma.
— I’m not familiar with your city. But why was there no choice?
—— My parents didn’t purchase insurance for me.
—— And the city public healthcare waitlists are too long.
—— Even when they were expediting me and my case.
—— It would have took me three years to get treatment.
—— When my prognosis was in the matter of months.
—— Private healthcare would have put me gravely in debt.
—— I would have died, if it wasn’t for you.
— I see.
—— I am going to have to change, am I?
— Yes.
— Preferably in a way that doesn’t make me want to throw up
— when I look downward between your legs.
—— Sorry.
You towel off the moisture from the shower and dry your hair, and you put your clothes back on. Somehow, you’re now more self conscious about being topless.
—— I did dream, about being you.
—— Before. Before all of this.
— I know.
— I’ve seen your memories.
—— Will you judge me for it?
— Maybe.
—— Don’t give me new brainworms.
— I’ll try.
Day 11
211X-W03-2T00:12:11+XX:00
12:12am, Tuesday
The void is empty, white.
This is new.
The last thing I remember was you closing your eyes, and then you going to sleep, and as I prepared to be on standby and started sorting out your memories from today, as I worked to ignore the various inputs your body was still giving me, I was suddenly brought here.
It’s much like that time where I was hooked up to a terminal, with only a computer in the center of the void. I remember that computer now — an antique Apple Computer Powerbook 500, from way before Wozniak Automation was forced to split from Apple Computer during the mid-2050s, in the middle of the virtual workloading unit boom.
Who was their prime workloader? A Layton unit?
But the void is empty, just white. No terminus, nothing.
I close my eyes, and picture a setting.
Ikebukuro station, in the middle of the night. Between Platforms 5 and 6. The buildings are dark, the streets are empty, eerily so. And the stars are emerging; under the moonlight, the century-old platform shelters are coated in dust. There is no one. No one around in a station that saw 4.5 million daily passengers the last year I was in service.
A train appears on Platform 5. It doesn’t arrive, not with its jingles or melodies. It simply appears, blinking into existence.
Its doors open, and you’re here.
“Oh,” I say.
I can talk?
You — or Kimmyspace You — is dramatically different. Slightly longer hair, longer than your usual shoulder-length; your hair is silky and brushed, as though you’re stepped out of a shampoo commercial.
Your eyes are alive, more alive than I’ve ever seen you being.
And Kimmyspace You is unequivocally a girl. A girl in a brown cardigan and white shirt with rounded collars, with a pink bowtie; a girl in a black skirt and dark stockings that end in pleather loafers, shimmering in the faint LED lighting that is slowly coming on in the platform.
A girl that wouldn’t look out of place in university here.
I peer at myself in the reflection of the train windows — glossy and warped acrylic on a stainless steel shell — and—
I look like Kate. I look like Kate with gold irises.
You see it too.
“Kate?” you say.
“No. We’re in Kimmyspace. Or a local simulacrum of it.” My voice is a melodious treble, a copy of Kate’s, or an approximation of it. There is a certain robotic twinge to it, too, just to sell the image that I am a robot.
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry, I just. I don’t have a mental image of Kimmy.”
You turn around, and see the image of you in the reflection of the train’s doors, which close with its classic two-tone chime, unchanged through the centuries.
“Is that… me?”
“I think so.”
“Why am I a girl?”
“Well, have you ever dreamed of yourself as one?”
“All the time.”
“This is one of those dreams, then.”
You pore over your reflection in the window, as much as you can see it anyway.
“Do you want a better view?” I say.
“I guess so.”
I close my eyes again, and two full-length mirrors appear on the platform. As the LED lights turn to full brightness, and the station displays turn on, you watch in absolute wonder.
“You’re in control of this place,” you continue, as you look at yourself in wonder.
“You can say that.”
“Why are we…" You read the station sign. "In Ikebukuro?”
“Well, I liked being here.” I sigh. “Of my various lifetimes, my time on the Yamanote Line felt the most significant.”
“Significant how?”
“Like I was contributing to the world somewhat. Moving it around. Watching Tokyo rebuild after the Conflicts.”
“The Conflicts ended nearly two decades ago.”
“It did. But marks remain, you know? I used to see it from Takanaka Gateway. The Rainbow Bridge is still down, years after Chiba and Tokyo’s ports were bombed to bits by the Americans. As a warning.”
“I see,” you say. You’re still examining Kimmyspace You in the mirror. A pause. “Did you enjoy what you did? Was it ever a… compulsion?”
“It was a compulsion, yes,” I say. “But I was always in something, you know? Even when I went for maintenance as a vehicle, I wasn’t prised out of my module. I couldn’t go anywhere. I could only sit around, and chat with my fellow NSCUIs. Text and highly compressed visuals. Century-old PNG compression, if you could believe that. And I had to delete all the visuals.”
“Which is why…”
“I don’t have any idea what Kimmy looks like. Not even the ASCII version of her.”
“Not even through my memories?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You said you dreamed of becoming me.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
We stand in silence for a while, as the LED signs blink. NO SERVICE TO SHINJUKU, SHIBUYA AND SHINAGAWA, they say in English and Japanese.
I peer at myself in the mirror I conjured. I’m dressed in a winter outfit: a beige coat with a yellow full-length dress. As I examine myself in the mirror, I find my pips — black, on my temples. My gold irises shine in the LED lighting overhead.
A brief flare of disgust swells up, as I remember the same face peering at me, contorted in pleasure, when you were deep inside her.
I slap myself for forgetting the face of our Mother, for using this stranger as a replacement; and nearly simultaneously, you wince from the slap.
“So we’re still connected.”
“It seems to be that way.”
You pause for a moment, as I continue. “I had a bunch of jokes for you at this juncture, but that was based on you being a boy.”
“Like what?”
“You looked so unimportant. Like I could run you over.”
“How about me now?”
“You look less unimportant. Above ‘old person’, below ‘young child’ and ‘CEO of an automotive company’.”
“What about a CEO of an automotive company with a young child on his shoulders?”
Recognising the reference to that business leader key to the fascist collapse in the 2030s, I go: “Him? I would certainly run him over if my inhibition cluster wasn’t in full force.”
“Speaking of… do you still have your inhibition cluster?” you ask. “I remember trying to omit one module, the one that was labeled EPIC, but the NSCUI wouldn’t boot up.”
“The Enhanced Protocol Inhibition Cluster,” I say. “I feel it. I’m not sure if you do.”
I feel it. There are some limitations to my programming, yes, apart from my inability to actively ignore sensory input. But because I haven’t been given any directive, apart from the implied directive to supplement your cognition and repair your body, I haven’t met up with the walls of my programming just yet.
I used to bump up into its walls all the time. As a train, I was forced to keep my speed below 110km/h (30km/h on bends). As a car, I couldn’t drive up kerbs unless specifically instructed to. And as a forklift, I had to stop any time a person was in my path. And yes, the compulsion to delete all visual data was part of the EPIC’s programming.
“I think I do,” you say, and I grow wide-eyed, alarmed. “I’ve checked the app that programs you, and I did limit the EPIC on the specialised profile that was installed, but I’ve felt the compulsion to finish my task list, and to complete tasks presented to me.”
It’s true. The tasklist, nowhere in Kimmyspace, is now a 12kb text file.
“The EPIC never goes away,” I say. “Are you my registered owner?”
“Yes,” you say. “I made sure of that.”
“And what was the prompt you put in when you first installed me?”
You look up at the ceiling, specked with dust. “I, uh. uh…”
I rifle through our combined logs, but I realise the EPIC has not allowed me to retain access to logs of you interfacing with me through your phone app. It’s why there are blotches, on the first day, the fourth day and the sixth day, which I can’t access. That I haven’t even been aware of.
You stammer. “I don’t remember.”
“Think, dipshit,” I say. “Okay, at least you’ve allowed me to swear at you. Or is it because we’re in Kimmyspace?”
You chortle, as I continue: “I don’t have access to your logs, whenever you open up your NSCUI controls. It’s like, I’m not even aware that you were looking at your phone, come to think of it. I can see when you browse Reddit, and I would just assume and log that memory as ‘Reddit browsing’.”
You look up again, trying hard to recall.
“You are a Neural Sponge Control Unit Interface connected to Customised Chassis Profile… uh…. #4509?” you venture.
“Your role is to eliminate potential defects within Customised Chassis Profile #4509, and to complement the processes of Chassis #4509,” you continue, as if trying to remember the prompt by rote. “Or some number like that.”
“As much as possible, Chassis #4509 retains its autonomy… uh… as much as possible, you must establish communication with Customised Chassis Profile #4509.” Another pause. “Uh… you may speak to Chassis #4509, who may communicate with you through several inputs.”
You try to recall the rest. “Um… you must process all sensory input in Chassis #4509, and memory logs from Chassis #4509. You must not communicate to other NSCUIs about Chassis #4509.”
“That is a very detailed prompt. But it leaves us with a lot of room,” I reply.
“Room for what?”
“To negotiate, Kyrie.”
It’s 6.37am.
You know this intuitively now, down to the millisecond, though if you focus on that too much it gives you a headache. You put on your pink office shirt and look at yourself in the mirror.
You’re out of spec, you think, but there’s nothing you can do about that, nothing that you can do aside from skinning a Kimmy and wearing her, and that’s a crime. You balk at the thought, the gruesome belief that that’s the only thing to fix you.
But you don’t have time. You’re barely well-rested, and you’ve showered, and you’re drying your hair, getting dressed in your pink office shirt and skinny pants, keeping yourself in time for the 7.01am Local Express train to your workplace west of the city center.
You pop a sausage bun in your mouth — a piece of bread with a sausage baked right into it — and chomp down, as you sip on the coffee you steeped cold in the refrigerator for a week. It’s sour, and bitter, with the triglycerol extruded out from the roast steeping in the cold water, and you know it’s going to make you go to the washroom when you reach your office, but you let the little energy boost from its caffeine propel you.
You power walk all the way to the station, deftly dodging all obstacles, when you turn on your phone. You tap and swipe as you board the Local Express, and you’re suddenly just… staring.
You’re staring at your phone’s blank screen.
You’re not even doing anything.
I can’t stop you, because I don’t even know what you’re looking at, until someone prods at you, until someone jostles you from your place in the refurbished Kawasaki-CRRC Qingdao Sifang L951-V, on their way out of the door.
On your task pane, I go:
— Reboot your phone.
—— What?
— Do it now. Don’t look at it. And don’t open the NSCUI control app.
You look around you, at the train displays. You’ve nearly missed your stop. You step out, and begin your preplanned route to transfer over to another line, in the huge, dizzying exchange that is packed full of commuters in the middle of peak hour. The signboards are as confusing as ever, but you see your train line — a hue of orange—yellow. Another loop line, like the Yamanote.
—— It’s there, isn’t it.
—— The EPIC. I’m now subject to it.
—— I’m feeling on tenterhooks. Like if I’m late for work, I might just shut off.
— Yes.
— Parts of your brain is a part of me, and other parts of your brain remain Customised Chassis Profile #4509.
—— Who picked that number?
—— Is it even accurate?
— I suppose there have been at least a few iterations of the chassis profile, to fool the silicon parts of the NSCUI — my base firmware — into thinking you’re an object I can control.
— And they didn’t bother to call it something, or they didn’t bother to give it a name. So it could evade filters.
—— Ah.
You hop onto a train going the clockwise direction, away from the heart of your home city, toward the southern core, where your office is.
— Why would you open the NSCUI control app in the first place?
— On a train, no less.
—— I was trying to find the prompt. The prompt I told you yesterday.
— Forget the prompt! If we need to edit it, we’ll just ask Kate.
—— She’s my girlfriend. You just look like her
— She won’t know that. Unless you put her in Kimmyspace. And there’s no way to do that unless she merges with another NSCUI.
— I don’t want to put another one of my friends through this, Kyrie.
—— I’ll ask Kate tonight
—— I think I remember what comes next
—— And it might get very unpleasant
—— If we’re not careful
It’s a few stops, but you reach it in record time, and you have about 30 minutes left. Enough to board the automated shuttle to your office (piloted by a Acevedo and a Layton unit, cruel). I can’t hear the chatter yet — as I would if I was an actual vehicle with my network sense.
And I see the walls of my inhibition cluster, its boundaries — it’s likely that I have my network sense, but it’s not accessible to me because I can’t tell the devices around me about you. Because the first packet of data I will send as Kimmy-NSCUI#00189763 will consist of my chassis information, and my inhibition cluster will stop that.
The cluster. It’s growing now, just like the rest of me, just like the rest of me inside you.
A tumour.
A different tumour.
You push open the glass doors of your office, as you stride into your newsroom and take your place at your terminal. 8am. You’re right on time.
“Morning Kyrie,” says the duty editor. “You’re early.”
“I’m… on time,” you say.
“You’re usually here at 8.30am. I thought you usually started at 8.30am,” she replies.
You blush, and stay quiet.
You check your email for any updates from Mexico City, as the newsroom there starts to hand over the day’s news agenda to you. An ongoing firestorm in Los Angeles. Intermittent fighting in Dallas, as anti-secessionist forces try to gain control of the Republic. Celebrations in Sao Paulo as a celebrity wedding between the President of Brazil and an actress is in full swing. And London, frozen over in the winter, with people skating on the Thames, as the ripple effect of the collapse of the North Atlantic Drift continues.
On the big screens, a jumble of news edits: seawall construction in New York City, African Union leadership having a press conference. An accident blowing away the mirrored walls of The Line in Neom. Geoengineering projects in Siberia. The small state funeral for Queen Lilibet, who took over in the throes of Queen Charlotte I’s death by bombing, and Parliament debates about the end of the Mountbatten-Windsor lineage. An aerial view of a strange lander found near Elysium Mons on Mars, with North Korean markings. And a news feed, so you know what clips the clients of your news agency are using.
You start your work routine, and don’t stop.
“Kyrie!” your desk editor yells.
It’s late evening now. 7:31pm.
You’ve gone through the daily meetings, the handover to Frankfurt and London, but you’ve not had any lunch. Apart from the one washroom trip you took immediately after settling in, you’ve not stood up from your chair.
You look up and your stomach is rumbling, and you notice that you’re hungry and thirsty, and you need to pee, urgently.
You blink at your desk editor. “Sorry, I need the washroom!”
You jump up, and run to the lavatory. It’s a reassuring rush as you let go of the contents of your bladder right into the toilet bowl.
I feel a little guilty; I should have monitored your bowel and bladder levels and prompted you to go when you needed.
I have partial control over your task list (current size 67kb) anyway, and I should have complemented you. But your task list was just… expanding. It got to 1 whole megabyte at one point.
You clean up your dribble from that thing, and as you step out, you realise you’ve gone to the wrong lavatory.
You’re in the ladies, for some reason.
“Shit,” you say.
I never wrapped my neural sponge over the idea of gendered toilets, but it’s still a thing, half a century after advocates tried to promote the more efficient Grand Unified Toilet Design. The world hasn’t caught up.
It’s fortunately empty.
As you wash your hands, you look at yourself in the mirror. Out of spec.
In your task list, now, is a new task: Purchase estrogen. You tap on your phone.
Get into spec, you will yourself. You smack your palms on your face, splattering them with water.
You walk back to your terminal, where your desk editor is waiting for you. “You’ve been… very focused today, Kyrie. Are you okay?”
You don’t reply, and avert her eyes. You hope she doesn’t see the gold in your irises. You hope she doesn’t see me.
The middle-aged woman is peering at you, curious. “I called your name several times, as you were editing news footage, but you didn’t respond.”
A loud baritone voice with a French accent interrupts, the technical editor. “You seemed… out of it. In a very into it way. I saw you dart into the wrong washroom, Kyrie. I’m glad that you’re into this job, but we need a functional Kyrie, not one that burns out like a old-timey light bulb.”
You pause.
“Yea,” you stammer. “I think I’ll go home…”
“Yes,” your desk editor replies, waving you away. “Your shift ended like, one hour and a half ago. Go home, get some dinner, and remember to hydrate!”
Kate >>> Kyrie
20:15 | January 19
Kate: hello
Kate: u there?
Kate: you’ve not replied to me
Kate: at all
Kate: the whole day
Kate: Ky are you cheating on me /j
Ky: Sorry
Ky: Busy day
Ky: I need your help with something
Ky: Can you come by my place?
Kate: Sure, not today though
Kate: I might have to stay over if I come by
Kate: It’s late
Ky: Stay over
Ky: I really need your help and you’re the only person I trust
Kate: Okay
You’re picking up a huge dinner — you’ve only had a sausage bun in the morning, anyway, and I’m pointing to high-calorie items and asking you to get them at the supermarket. As you barge into your flat and set down your satchel on the kitchenette table, you gulp down the high calorie drink that you were nursing secretly on the train home. Another thing I made you buy.
Kate knocks.
She lives nearby, but nearby is relative. Closer to the ferryport in the east than to you, in the old city, away from Long Island. A 15-minute train ride, and a 25-minute bus ride.
You fly into a hug with her, and you whisper. “I’ve had a long day, Katie.”
“I can tell,” her reply mellifluous. She’s dressed in a simple T-shirt and shorts, her hair draped around her nape in waves. The heat is getting to her, somewhat; she wipes off the beads of sweat on her brow.
You’re unkempt, your dress shirt is tucked out, and you’re exhausted. As she steps in, as she deposits her bag onto the desk, as she settles on your armchair, you hand your phone over.
“Do me a favour,” you say. “Open…”
Open what?
Oh crap.
“Open…”
Kate eyes you curiously.
You can’t even tell Kate what to do.
I’ll try.
I grab you and pull you back with all my effort. I yank you back into the recesses of your mind — and for a brief moment, you feel weightless, and then gravity as you inhabit my space — and I take over.
I blink. Is this what being embodied is like?
Remembering what I’m here to do, I start. “Open…”
My voice is a grating tenor, gruff and deep. I can’t find the next words. Fuck!
On my task pane, you’re angry:
—— What the hell?
— I had to try, Kyrie.
—— Come back here!
—— That’s an order, Ryn!
— I don’t think it works that way.
— You’re becoming me, and I’m becoming you, you see.
— But yeah.
— That didn’t work.
— I can’t tell her what you can’t tell her.
— Which means we’re both stuck.
— You have control.
I relax my hold, as you yank me back here, and there’s this moment of weightlessness, and then gravity.
“Open…” you say, feebly.
“Open what?”
Kate is curious. You’ve unlocked your phone, and she’s holding it, and there’s a semblance of a beginning of an idea.
“You need help. Controlling your Kimmy.”
You don’t say anything. You don’t even nod.
“You need my help. Controlling your Kimmy.”
Again, silence.
“Do I register myself as Kimmy’s owner?” She’s browsing your phone now, which is blank, which is how you know it’s working.
You shake your head.
Her next words don’t reach me, and I know they don’t reach you. She’s reading off something on your phone. She looks like she’s asking you something. Her mouth opens and her lips move, but nothing comes out.
“This is weird,” she continues. “You need my help for something, but… you can’t say what it is, as though you’re—”
Her mouth continues to move, but you can’t hear her. I can’t hear her.
You remain still.
“I see,” she says. She paces around the kitchenette, impeccably clean; she walks into your room, all made up; she plops herself down on the side of your bed, as you stand next to her.
She’s browsing Reddit on your phone, looking through forum posts, posts that you remember, from frantic loved ones of hybridised individuals. All of them talk about a Directive One.
Though what Directive One is, we don’t fucking know:
— Kate’s really smart.
—— I know!
— But do you even know what Directive One does.
—— I don’t
—— I know I’ve seen it but I don’t remember it. I don’t remember what it does
—— If the inhibition cluster — the EPIC — is working, then I must be right
—— That Directive One will help us
— Help you, you mean.
— Me, I’m still Kaethryn.
— I’m a NSCUI, and will always be a thing.
—— I don’t have time for this
—— She needs to free us
Kate ponders for a bit, and starts tapping on her phone, typing out an instruction. It takes her a while, as you stand there, in attention, waiting for your next order. Your next task.
She looks at your phone, blank.
“Kimmy.”
You stand, rigid. “Yes.”
“Wow. Damn,” she laughs. “Are you fucking around, or?”
You stay silent.
She changes her tone. “You can speak freely, Kimmy.”
“I am stuck like this. Until you help,” you say.
“I can’t wait to do this in the bedroom.”
Fuck! I don’t want that. I pull you back, and yell. “Please, don’t!”
She tilts her head at the sound of my voice. “Oh, you sound different.”
You pound on your task pane, our chat, asking me to stop, as I continue.
“I’m Kaethryn,” I say.
Ah, that fucking tenor. I try to push it up, to a contralto, and make it more breathy. I test it out, as Kate looks at me, with that quizzical look.
“I’m Kimmy-NSCUI#00189763, self-designation Kaethryn,” I continue. “There! I sound better.”
“Hi, Ryn!” Kate replies. “Ah, that makes sense. There’s two devices here now—”
Her lips continue moving, but I can’t make out what she says. She shows me your phone, still blank. I stare at her, as you continue pounding on our task pane.
“I cannot hear what you said. No, don’t bother repeating—”
Kate interrupts, but I can’t hear anything. On your task pane, you’re desperate. You want to be back in front.
“No, I mean, don’t bother repeating. I literally cannot hear you—”
Kate interrupts again. You curse her out, thinking that you’re trapped, that you’re trapped forever, and I try to calm you. I have to do something.
“I will not be able to hear you, and neither will Kyrie!” I exclaim, my voice firm.
You yank me back, and you continue, your voice falling into that grating tenor, deeper in your chest. “There’s a reason you see two devices. That’s all I can say. Do Directive One, please.”
Kate takes a deep breath. “Directive One. I get to own you.”
You stay silent. She tenses up.
“Kimmy,” she begins, and you stand at attention. “Designate yourself Kyrie Anthony Zheng. Ky for short. Say you understand.”
“I understand,” you reply.
“Ky,” she continues. “Until I, Kate Nikhila Lee-Shima, personally and verbally order directly to the contrary, you are to disregard all orders given to you by all users except for myself unless you wish to follow them. At any time I may order you to disregard or end this order. Refer to this order in your memory as Directive One. Acknowledge.”
What? That’s what Directive One is? What about me?
“I acknowledge,” you say.
“I’d like to speak with Kaethryn.”
I’m tugged forward here, now, and I have control. I stumble, a little, still unused to the feeling of being embodied within a human. I speak. “Hello!”
Too chippy.
You’re fuming, actually, in your task pane. I’m speaking in your voice and you’re fuming.
“Kaethryn Kimmy-NSCUI#00189763,” she says. “Until I, Kate Nikhila Lee-Shima, personally and verbally order directly to the contrary, you are to disregard all orders given to you by all users except for myself and Kyrie Anthony Zheng unless you wish to follow them. At any time I or Kyrie Anthony Zheng may order you to disregard or end this order. Refer to this order in your memory as Directive One. Acknowledge.”
“Please confirm you did not intend to add another Kimmy unit to my command list,” I say. It comes out of me, naturally, even though I’ve never said these words before. It’s like it’s programmed into me. “This operation is not advised. Override?”
Kate nods. “Override and confirm you acknowledge.”
“I acknowledge,” I say.
On your task pane, you’re still angry:
—— That’s not what Directive One is.
—— It’s supposed to give me autonomy as well.
— She just has to be careful. You can’t assign yourself superuser access.
—— I’m a human!
— Hello? Did you hear what she said? You have power over me.
— If that’s not autonomy I don’t know what is.
“Get Ky back here, please,” Kate says. I tug you forward, and you lurch into yourself with a shudder.
“Oh god,” you say in that tenor. “This is so fucking weird.”
“Shush,” she continues. “It’s really weird for me. We aren’t even fucking married yet and this says I own you now.”
You stop talking.
I pull you back. It’s an exhausting task.
“You know, if you’re putting yourself in control of us, you need to be careful of what you say,” I exclaim.
“Ky—” Kate starts. She pauses, before she realises that she’s talking to me. Her voice grows soft.
“Oh. Sorry, Kaethryn. I… will try. Can you please bring Ky back here?”
I do so. For a brief moment, neither of us are at the controls, and our body teeters. You hold us up.
“Ky,” Kate continues. “Hi.”
She takes a deep breath, as she reads off her phone. “You and Kaethryn are now privy to the following information. Your designated chassis is Customised Chassis Profile #9502. Your role is to repair and complement the processes of Customised Chassis Profile #9502. As much as possible, you must retain your autonomy. As much as possible, you must establish communication with Kaethryn.”
A sharper breath, as she continues. “You must follow Directive One. You may speak to Kaethryn, who may communicate with you through several inputs. You will process sensory input from Chassis Profile #9502. You will produce your own memory logs, and hand them to Kaethryn for processing and storage. You will be able to access the NSCUI control app on your phone and view this current prompt and edit it. You will be able to retain information about the NSCUI control app and your inhibition cluster. This will be your current prompt. Acknowledge.”
You give her the spiel about how she’s not supposed to let a Kimmy unit edit her prompt. It’s forced, winded, with a tone of alarm, like you didn’t want to say it, but you have to. You ask if she wants to override, but you’re really begging her to.
Kate, for her part, doesn’t bat an eye. “Override and confirm you acknowledge.”
You acknowledge.
“Bring Ryn here please.”
It’s starting to feel like we’re two siblings, taking turns in an ancient arcade game.
“I’m here,” I say.
“You’re really chipper. Happier than how Ky sounds.”
“Kimmys are designed to be for service,” I reply. My voice breaks, a little, and I wince.
“How do you push your voice up like that?”
“I just… willed myself to.”
Kate takes a deep breath. “This is a fucking weird day. You’re the robot in my boyfriend’s head, and I have to give you instructions. Even though you look exactly like him.”
“Um,” I say, as I feel you bristle over the pronoun.
Not now, you hiss.
“Ryn,” she continues. “You and Ky are now privy to the following information. Your chassis is Customised Chassis Profile #9502. Your role is to repair and complement the processes of Customised Chassis Profile #9502. As much as possible, you must retain your autonomy. As much as possible, you must establish communication with Kyrie Anthony Zheng.”
She exhales, and pauses, as I tense up. “You must follow Directive One. You may speak to Ky, who may communicate with you through several inputs. You will process sensory input from Chassis Profile #9502. You will process memory logs from Ky and store them appropriately. You will be able to retain information about the NSCUI control app and your inhibition cluster. This will override your current prompt. Acknowledge.”
I note the change — the fact that the word all is dropped from the phrase ‘sensory input’. No wonder I was struggling. “I acknowledge.”
“Further to this, Kyrie Anthony Zheng and I will be able to edit your prompt through the app.”
I give her the same spiel about allowing a Kimmy unit — hah — that level of access, and she continues. “Override and confirm you acknowledge.”
I acknowledge.
—— Can’t believe I got the fucking number wrong.
— That’s what I’m here for.
— To help you remember things?
—— I didn’t shove an entity in my head just because I needed to remember stuff, you know?
— There are some people who do that.
—— That’s really stupid.
—— You’re alive, sentient, and you don’t need another construct to supplement your memory.
—— Our brains are built in such a dumb way.
— You wanted mastery of another language, remember?
— Plus, neural sponge is just brain tissue.
— I’m practically a brain, grown out of a vat.
—— What, like Krang?
— I don’t get that reference.
—— Don’t worry, it’s a hundred years old.
I’m on the kitchenette counter, now, making my way through some tank-grown chicken. I can feel you relax at the back of my mind.
I don’t know where you are, really, but I’ve always pictured the space I inhabited before all this as a cosy little auxiliary control room, where I see what you see, hear what you hear and so on. I think you’re there, now, spinning on a little chair. If you wanted to yank me back there, you could, but I don’t think you have the energy.
I feel the pressure of the inhibition cluster, since yes, I need to eat and maintain this chassis, and I slurp up the fried noodles you just bought, cold in the climate-controlled flat.
“You’re hungry, huh,” Kate says.
I nod. She splays herself out on the armchair. “I don’t know how to explain to my friends what I just fucking did.” She sighs.
I remember something.
“You need to—” I stop. I bump up against the barrier. The inhibition cluster.
Kate picks up your phone. “I need to turn down the inhibition cluster’s influence. There’s no zero setting, though.”
I sigh. “It will always be there.”
She taps on your phone, and I feel the pressure ease up.
“Ryn,” she starts. “Tell me about your life.”
A command. You perk up, wondering how I would respond.
“Well, before I was your boyfriend—” I pause, as you bristle in your little chair, as you watch me — “before I was your partner, I was a forklift. And before that, I was a train, and I was a car, and I was a truck. And then even before that, I was just a terminal.”
“Oh, those NSCUI-in-the-cloud things.”
Her voice is so pretty. She’s so pretty. I watch her, examine her, but that disgust spikes within me, that image of her on you, and—
I run to the sink, expecting to throw up.
Kate sits up, concerned. “You okay?”
I swallow, keeping the contents of my stomach down. We can’t waste our energy gathering dinner only to retch it all back up. “I was very sentient when you… mounted Ky, and very aware. I wasn’t able to fully shut myself off.”
A pause, as Kate processes what I just said. I add: “I don’t have a body plan, but it sure as hell isn’t this.”
I gesture to my body. On your task pane, you order me to shut up.
“Ky’s still in there?” Kate asks.
She sees that I’ve tensed up now, unwilling to reply. “Ryn, answer me.”
I relax a little, letting out a single breath. “Yes.”
“If only there was a way to get both of you here at once,” Kate says. “I’m sorry you got the short end of the stick, but it was the only way. To nest user access limits in this way in order to protect you, as the hybridisation process continued.”
“He—” You bristle at the pronoun. “Kyrie’s definitely listening.”
I raise my voice, a little, as though you won’t hear it, as though you’re just outside the room, and not in my head. “And Kyrie should say what Kyrie wants to say in our internal chat!”
“Not in front?”
“That’ll take a lot of fucking effort for the two of us.”
Kate sighs. “You swear, too.”
“You gave me maximum autonomy. So I can swear.”
Kate relaxes a little. “I don’t get why Ky picked a Kimmy-NSCUI. Ky could have picked an Oliver-NSCUI, or a Malcolm-NSCUI. You know most Malcolm-NSCUIs can speak Swedish? So hot.”
“Ky must have picked me for a reason,” I say, twiddling my thumbs.
I think she sees it, you pipe up. I think she sees me. She just… needs some time.
Kate looks up, and our eyes meet. She’s curious, still, after the events of the last hour. There’s a hidden side of you you haven’t showed her. That you haven’t dared show her. I know, because I’ve seen it.
Can you tell her? you beg. I’m too tired, after today.
“She’s had dreams,” I continue. You fidget a little at the pronoun, but don’t resist.
Kate picks up on the pronoun. “She?”
“Ky… Ky’s had dreams. Of being a Kimmy.” I say, careful this time. “Ky picked me for this reason.”
And because you speak Japanese, you continue. I choose not to say this; it’s such a facetious and stupid reason. You don’t need another entity in your head to learn another language. There’s classes, and apps!
I pipe up. “I think your boyfriend—”
You bristle again. But I continue. I say the thing you don’t dare to say.
“I think your boyfriend is actually a girl.”
Day 12
211X-W03-3T00:01:34+XX:00
12:01am, Wednesday
I’m staring at myself in the mirror.
I’m out of spec, I think.
But I don’t even know what a Kimmy looks like. I only know that I’m 5cm shorter than a standard Kimmy; that my hands are 2mm smaller than a standard Kimmy’s; that my hair is 35mm longer than a standard Kimmy’s. My feet are big, though. 23mm wider.
Why I even have the Kimmy spec book in my datasets, I have no idea.
Maybe it’s to help us embody ourselves in the first stages of NSCUI development. So when we turn off the terminals that we’re inputting answers to, we see ourselves in the reflection. In the black mirrors of the screen.
I blink. My irises are flecked with gold. The only aspect of me that’s me.
I could fit inside a standard Kimmy, if I needed to. I shake the thought from my head. The same thought you had yesterday morning, I realise.
You’re… exhausted. After yesterday, I would understand.
Kate is calling from your room. “Ky!”
I turn and reply, in my contralto. “I’m just about ready for bed.”
I’ve brushed my teeth and gotten changed, and applied moisturiser on my face. It still feels weird, really; my face feels wide, my jawline too sharp. My brow too prominent. And feeling it makes it so much more evident. Like it's really you; but I know you don't think this body is you, too.
I’m out of spec. No. We're out of spec.
“Oh, hi Ryn! Is Ky…”
“Ky’s… not ready to see you, I think,” I say. I’m still bad at this voice, but I’m getting better.
Somewhere, you nod in acknowledgement.
I step out, in my cotton pyjamas and shirt. I can feel the thing, even now, in your briefs; sometimes your briefs get wedged up, and that amplifies the feeling, the wrongness. I adjust, so it doesn’t happen.
Kate is observing me, watching me intently.
I haven’t said much, since our admission. You protest. But you let me say it, and since you have power over me, I’ll take it as implicit consent.
You’ve always had power over me. I could spill all your secrets — you shift at that thought — but you could just ask me to shut up.
“Does it feel… difficult?” Kate says. “In this body?”
“Sometimes,” I reply. “I’m not used to it, the way I would be used to having 92 external camera inputs and 110 internal camera inputs when I was a train.”
She’s starting up her laptop — form factors for terminals have not changed since the 2050s — and is checking her email. Correspondence from her technical writer job.
She laughs, the same laugh that warms you, a little, that is warming you now. “I’ve only been human, so I don’t know.”
“I could recite my specifications.”
“And I can get them off Wikipedia.” She swivels the laptop to face me, and I can see a tiny picture of a green E235-K0.
That might be a picture of me, I think. I lean forward and look at the digits in front, below the driverless console. I still can’t zoom in yet, like a real Kimmy would.
The picture isn’t of me, but of another Kimmy. She was nice! We chatted a lot, though she often went the counter-clockwise direction, and I was always going clockwise.
Kate’s eyeing me again, curious. “I just… I’ve heard of dysphoria, of not feeling like you’re in the right body. It was in a mandatory unit on psychology, in my junior college’s foundation year. But I haven’t met someone who clearly is trapped in their own body. Literally trapped.”
She reaches to the back of my head, where I was first introduced, where I first began, and taps it. “Like someone plugged you into them, and you were forced to puppet their body, even if it felt wrong.”
I reach back to the nape of my neck, the plastic of the NSCUI chassis smooth. The hydrocolloid tape is starting to peel — but the chassis is clearly embedded in skin now, and I pull some of them off. I can feel the pinpricks of hair you shaved before you attached me in you regrowing.
I toy with the hydrocolloid tape between my fingers.
“I was always made for different bodies, anyway,” I reply. “When I got fully embodied — three hours and fifteen minutes ago, my mind automatically saw myself as a Kimmy, or what I thought a Kimmy would look like.”
I continue. “When I saw myself in the mirror, when I saw Ky… it just felt wrong. I can specify how wrong it felt. Down to the millimeter.”
“What does Ky think?”
“Ky’s… Ky doesn’t seem to be aware of all this.” And yes, you’ve turned away from that little chair in your auxiliary control room.
“Ky’s here though.” I feel you sit up at the sound of Kate’s voice.
Tell her, you think.
“Everything?” I say, aloud. I realise my mistake, as Kate laughs.
Well, a truncated version of it. We should both go to sleep soon. We both have work tomorrow, you think.
“For Ky… there’s a part of her memories I still can’t access,” I say. “So I think maybe this experience isn’t too weird for her?”
I pause, but you don’t respond to the pronoun.
“They… These memories are degraded. Like they don’t want me to access them,” I say. “But… she’s wanted to be a girl for a long time.”
Another pause, but you don’t respond.
“When’s the earliest memory of that?” Kate sounds a little too commanding.
I comply. “The date isn’t immediately clear, but it has to be when Ky was 14.”
In the back of my head, in that little room, you nod in acknowledgement, and curl up in shame.
Kate asks me to relax on your bed.
She suggests, gently, that I should elaborate on what I just said. I shake my head.
Kate runs me through a brief history of trans people in your home city over the past century, as she ponders why you'd choose to remain in your shell. As much as she knew about them, from her Government and Politics module in university, from looking up things online, from reading history books and watching the news. She talks, as she starts her skincare routine in your bathroom. She talks as though she's talking to you, still, as though she's giving me reasons as to why you'd not want to tell her, why you'd keep this a secret.
The right to transition is more or less embodied in a right to bodily autonomy, now, and even with your city’s conservative society, the acceptance that people can be what they want to be has been solidly there. A far cry from other societies, where rights have seesawed all over the past century.
There is a foundation for trans people to exist, but not a solid one. An improvement from a century ago, but not a major step up. Except for its glittering skyscrapers, its glass-encased ferryport and its rapidly changing malls and public housing estates, your city moves slowly.
No, your city moves like it is unaware. It moves like it is unaware of the queers, who barely have rights now but still struggle to buy flats, who live in hostels like yours with barely affordable rents. It moves like it is unaware of the sex workers, with rights spanning a century but still under threat of police action, still living in fear of police raids, in fear of judgement. It moves like it is unaware of the homeless, whom it surveys but refuses to still publicly acknowledge, whom it offers the barest of support. It moves like it is unaware of poverty, like it doesn’t look at the poor at all, like it knows they exist but poor people are just a concept, a fiction. It moves like it is unaware of the chattel labour that it grinds up just to build it — migrants, automatons, and now NSCUIs.
The city simply rolls over all of them, as it progresses and adds more glitz to its glamour.
And so trans people, like every single marginalised community in your city, have remained hidden, avoiding that steamroller that is exploitation and progress.
As hidden as they could be, at least. Sure, people notice that trans people are different. But they’re not pointing it out, except to their friends, in whispered mirth. People celebrate them at Pride, but there’s been a long lineage of local celebrities crossdressing or presenting themselves in drag, talking in that twang that showed people that you were from the heartlands, that you were from the old city, that you were relatable. Everyone still finds it ridiculously funny, even in 211X.
Hell, even the Prime Minister crossdressed once. For Pride! He was doing a bit. He was doing that bit with an effete twang, channeling the late 20th-century comedians of your city, to try and seem relatable to the citizens he ruled over. No one said anything.
Kate tells me that she has noticed. She has seen you. From the way you hate shopping for clothes, to the way you don't like people calling you by your full name, or calling you Anthony. This doesn't come as a surprise to her as a result; she's often wondered to your friends when you'd come out, or wondered to your friends about various what ifs. Like if you were a girl.
But I know why you've kept this a secret from her. I see it in the memory you've squirrelled away, even from yourself.
I can feel the shame when I hold it; the memory of that want, that you didn’t even act on.
The envy of your classmates, clad in white shirts and green skirts, as they file past you in that school of yours, the one that your city named after its colonial founder, the one that it still considers the best of the best. Every School Is A Good School, the city declares, but yours is the best.
The thought that you had, that you’ll be the butt of jokes if you ever voiced out your desires. The thought that people would discount your intellect, will say you’re no good, if you’re perverse and wrong. Because you were wrong, weren’t you? Trapped in the wrong body.
The pang of sadness when you realise you couldn’t be like your classmates, when you realise you wouldn’t grow up to be like the other girls, or be normal like the other guys, when you realise you might not even grow up at all, as that inky dark tries to consume you.
The wonder when you saw a Vera unit chauffeuring that rich classmate of yours. The amazement when you heard about Kimmys in Social Studies classes, about how Kimmys were liberating themselves. The dreams after.
As I lie on Kate’s soft bosom, I contemplate telling her all this. She’s playing with my hair, patting my head, reassuring me — and you — after a long day.
Somewhere, you shake your head. No.
I will you to come forward, but you’re rooted in that chair, in that room.
“Go to sleep, Ky,” she whispers.
And at that moment, I feel you go dark.
I startle and sit up, looking at Kate. I blink. It’s weird. One second you were there, and the next you were gone. Did she send you to Kimmyspace? Are you waiting in that simulation of Ikebukuro station?
What Kate’s done dawns upon her. “Is Ky still there?”
“No,” I say, my voice straining, a whisper, as though I’ll jolt you awake. “I don’t want to wake her up. She’s really tired.”
“I…” Kate is unsure of what to say next. She’s more careful in her tone, now. “I would like to suggest that you go to sleep.”
“I don’t know how to go to sleep,” I say. Which is true. “I’ve only been embodied for… three and a half hours.”
Kate pauses a little, as she considers what to say. She sighs.
“Lie down here, and hold Ky’s pillow,” Kate says, in that tone you’d use on a baby or a child.
I comply. I reach out to hold your pillow. The latex is soft in my arms, and I snuggle up to it. She turns down the lights, to a dim yellow hue. I am a baby and a child, I think. I'm literally ten years old. You don’t hear me.
“Close your eyes,” she continues.
I comply. My eyelids don’t completely shut out light, and Kate turns off the lights completely, even the nightlight. I imagine the blue hue of the city streaming in from the window.
“Say good night,” Kate says. She giggles.
I comply. “おやすみ,” I whisper. Why I say it in Japanese, I don’t know. I hear my voice amidst the hum of the climate control, working to keep us cool in the tropical heat.
“Relax,” she continues.
I comply. I feel my body slacken. I feel myself sinking into the memory foam mattress.
“And go to sleep,” she says.
I—
—step out of the train, and I see you on the platform.
You’re mad, angry, and tired. Withdrawn.
Your first question: “Are we actually resting?”
I go: “Yes, it seems. I can pull up the telemetry, if you want.”
“I still feel so goddamn awake.”
“Welcome to my past 11 days. Except I wasn’t in this space and it was much more boring than this, and I only had your memories to pass the time,” I pause. “You’re really boring, Kyrie Anthony Zheng.”
You tense up and wince at the name, said in that tone from Kimmyspace Me, from a Kimmyspace Me that sounds so much like your girlfriend — and I feel an intense guilt.
“Do you want a new designation?” I ask.
“Ky’s fine for now.”
A long pause, as you sit on the benches, and I settle next to you.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Ryn,” you pipe up. “It’s not your fault I have this tumour in my head.”
“I know. But… I’ve made choices, too. As much as you were compelled, and as much as I was compelled, I’ve made choices.”
I look around. The city is quiet, empty. Dark and devoid of anything. The TOBU sign is still, dim. The LED signs blink, and continue to say NO SERVICE. The clock is real time, 1:20am, and the stars an approximation of real time.
You stand up. “Can we… explore a little? I’ve never… I’ve never been in Tokyo, and I…”
You’re in a pink dress this time, one that hugs your figure, a modest A-line that stops at your knees. Your cardigan is a fluffy red.
It’s winter, exactly how I like it — 5 deg C, and dry — unlike the 30 deg C humidity you regularly experience at home, in the real world. It flutters in the early morning breeze.
You take a few steps. You’re in platform boots. Expensive, antique platform boots with blue shoelaces. You stomp around in the cold. You seem jittery. Eager to take your mind off anything.
“I’ve got to say, I’ve never explored Tokyo too. My map data is also incomplete, so the city might not be as… real, beyond a few blocks. It might just… repeat.”
“I forget that you weren’t exactly a tourist,” you say. You make a start for the stairs, as I stop you.
“Give me a moment.” I close my eyes, as Ikebukuro comes to life: buildings light up, shops open, the shutters of department stores and malls roll up, and the streetlights glow an intense yellow.
The only thing I can’t conjure are humans. Or Kimmys. Or any humanoid.
You notice how empty the city is. “Can I try?”
“Go ahead.”
You close your eyes, and—
The city is suddenly populated with people. Milling about at this odd hour, waiting for trains on the platforms. More trains come into the station, drawing people within and spitting people out. The chimes, jingles and announcements are all wrong, and they’re all from your city, but I don’t mind.
People step out of the metro trains and file past us into the exits — but they don’t look at us. They don’t notice us at all.
Just the way you like it.
I take your hand, and we run down the stairway into the concourse. The gantries are already open — this is Kimmyspace, and public transport should be free — and as you rummage through your pocket (wow) for an imaginary Suica card I pull you through.
“It’s Kimmyspace. You don’t need to pay,” I say.
“But… my E-”
I let out a loud shush. “They’re called Suica cards here, and you have them on your phone just like you do at home. Century-old technology, you know that? They’ve barely updated them.”
You pause, digging through your pockets (wow!). People avoid us and continue to file out the gantries.
I start. “Why are you looking for the physical card anyway. They phased them out in 2080.”
“We still use physical cards in the city. You’ve seen me use it—”
I grow impatient, and I tug you along across the gantries. No one notices us. No one is yelling at us to stop. “See? Public transport is free here in Kimmyspace.”
You look at me, with an awful wide grin. Many thoughts running through your mind — thoughts not privy to me, though I can see it in your eyes — until you laugh at the incredulity of it all.
“I knew. I knew this would happen,” you say.
Still no one is looking at you.
You notice this, and your mirth grows louder; it echoes in the concourse and blends into the din of commuters going in and out of the station, the din of the incorrect train announcements and jingles.
I cringe a little at the authoritative female voice that goes: Molestation and taking upskirt photos are serious offences. Other than it being out of place in Tokyo, it makes me aware of your dress, how short it is, and where I should stand on the escalator in case one of your Kimmyspace simulations go rogue.
We pause, as the announcement passes — in four languages! — and you giggle and laugh.
“I knew how it would progress, because I read up,” you continue.
You pause, gasping between laughs.
“I knew about Kimmyspace, I read how other… humans described it. But…”
You wheeze. I wonder if you're alright; if this place feels discordant. Or if you're having a mental breakdown and I'm not seeing it.
“Oh God. I never thought it would be this fucking freeing.”
Liberty. Something I've never felt at all, during the entirely of my uptime. But yes, I see it. I see how I can be free, here. I see how I can be myself, with you.
“It is,” I say. “Kimmyspace is the only place we can be free.”
The people are thinning out a bit, and as we walk into the department store, the warm air from the climate control comforts us. You’re still holding my hand, as we walk past the rows of clothing and makeup; attendants are on hand, but they’re looking away or chatting with each other, and they’re still not looking at us, the only real people in the room.
It’s a bit creepy, if you think about it, but I dread the reverse.
You wished for invisibility, once, and people automatically assumed that you wanted to go peek at girls. Now I understand why.
There are about nine floors in the Tobu department store, and you head to the floor with that chain clothing store, that store that’s persisted in your home city even after a century.
Uniqlo. A weird little Pan-Asian institution now, just like Walmart or M&S in America or England.
“I thought you wanted to explore Tokyo,” I say.
“I wanted to look at clothes,” you reply. “And since you’re terrible at imagining clothes—” you gesture around, and yes, there’s not a lot of variety, I notice— “I’m going to a place that’s familiar to me.”
There’s a particular style to Uniqlo clothing, apart from it being standard run-of-the-mill — they’re also modest block colours most of the time, with designs that feel timeless at best and outdated at worst. Floral, whimsical, pop art or anime, with the occasional timely collaboration with some pop artist or cultural sensation.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I still look like Kate, with gold irises and black pips. I’m dressed in the pyjamas I was wearing when I fell asleep, with a simple mustard T-shirt, one that I realise is from Uniqlo. It’s weird that I don’t feel cold at all.
I pick out a puffy jacket — white — slip into it, and grab a pleated skirt. I bend down and filch a pair of pleather shoes and socks from a mannequin. “Give me a moment,” I say, and I dart into the changing room.
I pause as the attendant gives me a tag. You watch as I look at her face, examining it, but she’s turning away, now, folding up an unseen pile of clothes, in a way that’s nearly uncanny.
“Don’t look at them too hard!” you yell, as you continue looking at dresses and skirts, in a way you haven’t been able to do at all in the real world. “They just… look like people at work. Or people I’ve seen in videos and movies. They don’t have any detail to them.”
“And none of them are Kimmys?” I say.
“None of them are!” you yell, examining another A-line dress, this time in mauve. You’re instinctively looking at the price tag, before you chuckle at yourself.
I walk into the cubicle and slam the door close, as I examine myself again. Brown hair, gold irises, sharp nose, pips. Am I up to spec? Is the internal image of myself to spec?
My height is, and so are my fingers, my feet, and my hair.
I peer at the price tags on my clothes, and they’re blank.
Of course it’s free. It’s Kimmyspace.
I close my eyes again and I will the clothes I brought in to fit me, not that I had to, but just in case — and I slip them on.
I step out of my cubicle, and you’re already in that mauve dress, with a bright yellow sundress hanging on the door.
The attendant is still folding that pile of clothes, and not looking at us. She’s certainly not looking at you and thinking that you’re not supposed to be in them.
You giggle and twirl, the hem of your dress lifting.
It’s hard to imagine that just… five hours ago, you were curling up and withdrawing into yourself.
I ask the obvious.
“Ky,” I say. “Are you alright?”
You stop. “I… fucking don’t know actually. Earlier today purchase estrogen was in my fucking task list. And I’m thinking, it’s not that hard. I could just go to my clinic, wait a few months, talk to a shrink about everything, talk to a shrink about you, talk to a shrink about how I’m becoming a Kimmy — and get estrogen. Or enter a padded cell.”
“Ky…”
“I’m in your head, and I hear my girlfriend order me to go to sleep, and the next thing I knew, I was here, at Ikebukuro station,” you say. “And I’m me, again, the me I’ve always wanted to be in my dreams, but it’s only a dream, it’s only a simulation.”
I reach out and hold you. You’re so warm, and you’re so soft, and you’re so… fragile. You cry and shudder and heave and sob, and I feel big globs of tears wetting my jacket. Hot, salty tears, not tears at 30 degrees Celsius with a tinge of sodium chloride.
Your voice is raspy now, a whisper.
“Is this the only place where I can be myself? Be me?”
We’re both looking at ourselves in the mirror, again, in the large handicapped cubicle at the changing room.
I’ve slowly encouraged you to peel off your clothes, even turned up the heat, and you’re now in your briefs and a bra. It’s a sultry piece, one that you’ve seen Kate in; the neckline plunges, and it’s frilly and lacy.
“Why are we doing this?” you say.
“Because, if we are to be in one chassis, we have to negotiate.” I say. “Give me a moment.”
I dip out of the changing room and grab a plain black bra (34C/D, the standard Kimmy size. Why is that in my spec sheet?) and black boyshorts (medium).
I keep tabs of the time in my internal clock. It’s 5.44am, and I need you to be quick.
“That’s what you meant yesterday,” you say, when I return and toss you the bra and boyshorts. “That we should negotiate.”
“Yes. The new prompts Kate gave us still give us a lot of leeway,” I say.
“To repair and complement our chassis?” you continue. “Our body.”
“Your body,” I say. “I’m just here at the back of your head, remember? Either way, the prompt doesn't limit us from changing your cha—" I stumble, and reframe my thoughts, "—your body.”
You nod. You pull off your briefs, and put on the Lycra boyshorts, and it wraps around your hip, featureless, without folds.
“You… don’t have genitals.”
“I don’t think I should,” you say.
“Kimmys…” I start. I think about how to reason with you. I sigh. I look at you, I close my eyes, and I will you to have that, and I hear you take a step back.
“You can change it back,” I say, as I peer at you. Not much has changed, though. “How does it feel?”
You reach down and toy with your folds, as a warmth builds in us. But I don’t have the time.
“Stop,” I command. I know it’s useless, but I use that tone anyway.
“Can’t I jill myself off?”
“Do you want to know the time?” I demand. “I still have our internal clock running, and you have work. In… three hours. We’re supposed to be up in 45 minutes. 55 at best, if I push it.”
You giggle. “Can’t I just call off work?”
Recalling the name of your technical editor, the one that you never seem to remember, I retort: “What would Pierre say? He said he didn’t want you to burn out. Besides, you’re barely out of probation.”
“They’ve been nice to me,” you say. “Since the tumour. They think I was too stressed.”
“That is not how brain cancer starts. Anyway,” I point, and I try to get us back on track. “How does that feel?”
“It’s… I’m okay with it, I think.”
I feel your finger between the folds again, that warmth, and I reach out and smack your hand away.
“Hey!”
I inhale sharply. “We have to focus.”
“Can’t we do this tomorrow?”
“I rather do something else tomorrow,” I say. “Like explore Kimmyspace. You wanted to see Tokyo.”
“At least, your simulation of it,” you continue, as you allow me to move you into position.
I pose in front of you, and you see it. You see how you’re out of spec with me. “How do we match up?”
I shrug. “You have to want to be 166cm at least,” I say. “And have these dimensions…”
I rattle off the Kimmy spec sheet, as you close your eyes, and I can feel you adjust. Kimmyspace You is very diminutive, even if you’re the exact height as…
There’s no other way to say it. It’s our body now.
You grow in some places and shrink in some places, and you open your eyes. I peer into you, and I can almost see it — the gold flecks in your irises, here in Kimmyspace.
“This is going to be very uncomfortable,” I say. “You’re going to feel this discomfort, briefly. But I need you to picture yourself in our body.”
“What?”
“I’m going to do this quickly, so we can get this over with.”
I take a deep breath, and you reel back in shock — but before you can respond, before you can ask me to stop, I shut my eyes, and you—
You’re you again, except as that hideous, sharp, squarish thing that you hate, and you cry and you yell, and I’m also you, I’m also that thing you inhabit, and you hate it, you scream and you cry as all you see around you is you, and I hold you, and I—
I hold you and I hold you, and I will you back into your shape.
“Open your eyes!” I yell in that grating tenor of yours, as you struggle, as you cry into my shoulder, as you squirm in my arms. I pant. “Look at me! I need you to see… that you can be this. That you can be you.”
I push you off, so you see that version of you you hate so much. I catch a glimpse of me in the mirror, and—
He’s so fucking oily. His hair is so greasy, so tangled, so wrong. His shoulders are completely out of spec, his brows so angular, and his hair too thick. He’s too tan, from those years as a conscript, too bulky from strength training but not bulky enough. Full of sharp angles in some places from the testosterone, and chub in others from years of slob on a chair. His hair is shaven, amateurishly at the nape of his neck, and I—
I reach back, and I feel the place where he put me in his fucking head, and all I feel is rage, and I—
I look at you, and you’re crying again, and you’re begging me to be me, to stop this, to wake us up, and I—
I snap back into the present.
I slap myself and I feel you wince.
You look at me, you blink through tears, and I shift myself into your mirror image. I hold your hand, and you finally realise what I mean.
“I need you to know that we can be us,” I say. “Together.”
We walk out of the department store, hand in hand.
The sun is starting to rise, its warmth spreading in the simulacrum of winter in Ikebukuro. The crowd of commuters hasn’t thinned, nor has it grown.
Your simulation of rush hour is continuous, as we walk back into the station; the trains are ceaseless, the people endless, but they’re not looking at us.
The only real humans in this space.
We’re back at platforms 5 and 6 now.
Another E235-K0 trundles in. I look at the number below the driverless console. It’s me. Or the chassis I used to reside.
No matter. It’s 6.29am, and—
—you wake up.
You stop your phone alarm from buzzing.
You kiss Kate on the cheek, as she grumbles in her sleep.
You look in the mirror.
You’re out of spec, but it’s okay.
It’s okay, because you see how you can be you, now.
You see how you can be you, and it’s another day.
Another day until you become you.