trans_9 | One more robot learns to be something more than a machine. [Closed, predictably, to Dustin Silver]

“You know, they tend to lock up like that when you have pinched wiring.”

Dustin had slipped in several moments earlier, as quietly as one can possibly imagine. Secretly he was hoping that Yoshimi would be away, or at least reading, therefore not paying attention to his entrance; instead she was in the middle of the floor, examining a prosthetic leg that this fellow had not noticed until recently. Just another thing he didn’t know about his roommate…

Regardless, there was a reason for why Dustin wanted the room to himself. He had…something behind his back. Something that he had carried all the way down from the City, purposefully avoiding other crewmembers in order to ferry it up to he and Yoshimi’s quarters without it being noticed—something that he’d spent the past month or so planning, ever since he saw the pink-haired one’s plight against her dream robots.

And now that it was finished, he wanted to introduce it to her with a flourish, with some importance and dignity and his usual pride. Instead Dustin found himself standing awkwardly in front of the fleshy door, shuffling his feet, adjusting the new, far-too-large overcoat on his shoulders while he continued to conceal his prize.

He must say something witty. Something memorable. Something…important.

“…I, uhm…”

She aims a moue at him, getting fed up with the feat a few seconds after and proceeding to ~~slam~~ tap her heel against the squishy floor, as though entertaining some vain hope that this will fix it.

"Gee, thanks, you're so helpful," she grouses. Her leg returns to its position on the floor as she decides to stop potentially damaging the thing further. Instead, she shifts her attention to the genius in the doorway, eyebrow shooting up as she takes in the discomfort evident in his posture.

"Why the hell are you just standing in the doorway? There's an entire room in here. 'S not like I'm gonna bite you," she says, tone biting despite the curiosity in her expression.

Amazingly he didn’t offer any returning snark, not even a smile for her troubles—just a nervous glance at the floor and another indecisive shift of his feet. It took him a few seconds to even register that he’d been allowed inside, after which point Dustin quickly shifted away, making sure to keep his back to the wall.

He cleared his throat.

“…I could, ah…take a look at it later,” the uncomfortable-looking man offered, the expression on his face suddenly becoming pained with the fact that he was deliberately avoiding the triumphant introduction he’d planned. Maybe—maybe it would work better when he gathered his nerves, right? That had to be the problem.

Okay, this is weird. This is very weird, and Yoshimi's expression says as much. She watches him shuffle into the room like some odd, scrawny crab with skepticism lingering about her eyebrows.

The situation only exacerbates itself when he offers her help voluntarily.

"That... that'd be good, actually," she replies, cheeks flushing pink, surprise replacing skepticism. Cue rambling. "It's really complicated tech, though. The medical engineers in Tokyo really went overboard when I got this thing upgraded, so I've had to go sit around for hours every time it's needed adjusting since I got it installed, which was, like... a year ago, and, I mean, you'd think the guy who designed the damn thing'd be able to just... crack something open and tweak the suspension to get it whirring again, but nope, he practically has to disconnect it every time, which is so, so annoying, because I have things to do, but instead I have to sit in some creepily white, shiny room while a scarily smart bastard pokes around in my leg, which is just weird when you think about it anyway, and, hell, there're people getting squashed by their housekeepers! I should be out there, helping them, but no, my... vastus lateralis or someshit isn't flexing correctly, so I can't save peoples lives... I mean, hell..."

The pink-haired woman pauses, blinks, and proceeds to blush a deeper shade of horrified, fighting the urge to sit on her hands, she'd been waving them around that much.

Yes, that is a horrified, scraggly man staring at you.

“…I could figure it out,” Dustin cut in after a few tries, his voice not quite catching at first; when it did, however, his ego suddenly caught as well, and he again attempted at a proper introduction. “Look, I, uhm, I know I’ve been—you see I haven’t been around much, so—those measurements were—ah—“

Aaaand it was gone again. He tried clearing his throat but this time it wouldn’t take, and Dustin was once more left standing awkwardly with his hands fiddling with the devices behind his back.

It takes her a few seconds to stop being too puce to think, but when her brain starts up again, she squints at him. Never has she heard Dustin stutter, and she hadn't thought to do, but here he is in all his scruffy glory, stumbling over his words like some sweaty preteen asking out his first girlfriend.

"Are you feeling alright?" The question is steeped in concern, confusion, and curiosity, as well as an abrupt hyperawareness of those hands hidden so resolutely behind his back.

He tried again. “—Sure, fine, I just—“

…Oh good lord, who was he kidding? Dustin rolled his eyes heavily, setting his feet straight; this honestly shouldn’t be so difficult. Why was this so difficult? Why was he trying to make it so difficult? His mind, suddenly cleared of such useless variables, reacted in the typical way, much to its owner’s liking.

“—Shit,” Dustin muttered, throwing his real hand—and the two pristine gauntlets intertwined with patterns of leaves and thorns and flowers—in front of Yoshimi’s skeptical face. “Just—take them. Christ.”

They were...perfect. I'm sure you would enjoy having me describe them in more detail, but that about sums them up.

"Stunned" does not even begin to describe Yoshimi Ito at that moment, gauntlets held loosely in both hands. Half of her wants to cry, because oh my god, they have flowers on them, and the detailing matches that of her gun almost flawlessly, while the other half is tempted to... well, throw herself at him. It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together, and Yoshimi's much brighter than your average high school dropout; it's pretty clear that he made the damn things himself, or designed them, or something, and the mere thought that he would devote that much time and thought to a project so clearly structured for her, and only her has her completely floored.

Several minutes of awed silence fill the room before she looks up at him, confusion evident in her expression.

"Why?"

Dustin couldn’t bring himself to look at her for a while, head turned to the side, eyes plastered to the floor just underneath the opposing wall; he was expecting the sounds of clattering metal, or at least the gentle pattering of the joints as Yoshimi tried them on. Instead he got nothing except for dead silence and his own breathing.

He slowly turned around.

…Good lord. Was that…what was that expression on her face? You know, that one behind her confusion—the one making her eyes glitter with contained moisture and twitching at the sides of her cheeks? Was it gratitude? Because heaven forbid that someone—

“—Well,” Dustin jerkily stuffed his prosthetic into his mass of hair, “It was just, uhm, just something to—to pass the time, something else to work on—“

No, that wasn’t right. “—I mean. I mean…thanks. I…I didn’t know how else to…”

A bizarre, crooked, bashful smile tugged at the edges of Dustin’s mouth. And he was silent.

It is all Yoshimi can do as she hauls herself to her feet, deliberately focusing her weight on the heel of her left foot so as to avoid the malfunctioning toes, and wraps her arms around him. It's weird, but as much as she tells herself that she isn't a hug-y person, her heart warms to the idea of human contact, and she smiles to herself as she persists in hugging him for... a lot longer than is casually acceptable. She supposes that she can blame it on not having any words to express the gratitude and shock coursing through her head right now.

"Thank you," she murmurs, just to be clear, because Kami-sama knows the man would probably find a way to see this hug as a new brand of insult if she didn't clarify. People down in the City can probably hear the smile in her voice, it's that big.

He only closed his eyes for a second. Just a second. And then—Oof!—There was a strange woman clinging to his midsection. Who was she, anyways? Couldn’t be Yoshimi…sure she had the hair, the height, all the physical characteristics, but Yoshimi didn’t have a soul.

A distant sort of knock clearly resounded within Dustin’s subconscious. You, my boy, are being hypocritical. Who was the one that came stuttering in here with a gift for the soulless one, eh? Wasn’t that you?

…Indeed it was, Voice In My Head. Indeed it was.

Dustin returned the hug—carefully, ever so carefully at first, like he was afraid that such an action might break her—and then he realized, hey, Yoshimi is kinda short, but not that short, see how our heads are almost level when I bend my neck like so?...

“…Do you really like them that much?”

She resists the urge to squeeze him tighter when he hugs her back, because a) she really hadn't expected him to reciprocate the gesture at all, because he's him, and b) he's so goddamn skinny, she's afraid she might snap him in two if she puts any more force into this hug. She settles for...

Oh, sweet baby Jesus, did I just nuzzle Dustin Silver? Kami-sama in Heaven, I think I just nuzzled Dustin Silver. Please don't let him notice please don't let him notice please don't let him notice-

Predictably, she flushes, and refuses to step back (though she does rather want to raise an eyebrow at him for doubting that she would like the fantastic things clutched in her hands, and it's pretty useless to raise an eyebrow at somebody who can't see said eyebrow) because letting him see her blushing right now would kind of... fuck up everything. Because there is no way she will ever tell him that she's been wanting to nuzzle him for about three weeks.

"You're a complete dumbass if you think I wouldn't like them that much," she mutters by way of not talking about what just happened, because that did not just happen.

Oh but it did, it did indeed, and there is one happy-looking man resting his forehead on Yoshimi’s, lopsided beak of a nose brushing hers, and he is absolutely beaming. Because you know what? That was one of the first genuine compliments he’d ever received in his entire life.

And to hell if he was gonna let it pass without showing his gratitude in return.

“Somehow I knew you were going to say that,” Dustin grinned, and he kissed her.

Deep within the meatship, a unicorn is puking rainbows.

It's been three years since the last time Yoshimi came into contact with another person in any real way, three years since she even really spoke to someone, three years of living in an austere, government lease apartment with a cat for company, robots for coworkers, and a jail cell for a vacation home. She is nineteen, she is small, she has pink hair, and only now is she remembering that she's a girl, one that used to entertain fantastically spun dreams of men and marriage and magic, complete with flowers and candlelight and all manner of horrid, lurid, overly romantic imagery, and the reality of having this coarse, brash, mean man kissing her is confusing her with how much she wants to act like an anime teenie-bopper with pigtails and a short, uniform skirt in response. In other words, she is strongly tempted to jump up and down and squeal.

She settles for mindlessly reciprocating, gauntlets tossed as gently as possible onto the bed nearest them so as to free her arms for linking around his neck, et cetera, et al, and all is fine and dandy and sugar-coated until her mind catches up with her and she pauses

pulls back

and stares at him with a look of such confusion that it seems a miracle that her brain hasn't liquified and poured out her ear. Her mouth begins a loop of opening and closing with words that simply aren't happening, mind full of very noisy shouts of "What the &*#$?!" and "Holy hell!" and "FINALLY!" until, several moments later, she grins.

"Cool."

Things were going well, despite the sheer mindlessness behind Dustin’s actions and the confusion his rational side was suffering. This wasn’t the first time a similar situation had arisen; sure he’d succumbed to his hormones on many an occasion, but his mind accepted this as simple instinct, which he later fashioned into a full-blown experiment that he’d been conducting up until the accident a few months previous. Only once before had this happened—and you know very well what I mean. This was not impulse; this was planned, calculated, effortless but meticulously worked for down to every last detail. This was not a one-night stand; this was the beginning of a real relationship.

Hopefully it would not end like the last one he’d had. Of course, that was a long time ago—fourteen years as a matter of fact—and now Dustin knew better. His priorities were slightly more…flexible.

He was patient with her. Yes, Dustin expected Yoshimi to come to her senses fairly soon into the encounter, but it wouldn’t last long. He just had to wait a minute or two.

Wait for it…

…Wait for it…

“Good,” he breathed, the smile on his face becoming concentrated, darker, slipping into something that was definitely more sensual—and he dove in for another kiss.

…Right. New priorities.

Well now, this is a development she can live with. You know, the whole "Hi, I'm Dustin Silver, let me kiss you until you can't breathe!" thing. Yeah...

Some small part of her brain is aware of the fact that this is the first time they've had any physical contact, though, and Yoshimi is a curious cat. One small hand wanders upward from its resting place at the back of his neck, cautiously winding into the hair that so defines this odd, odd man. What she isn't expecting is for it to be soft, and really not as tangled as it looks. She supposes the mess is more the product of about twelve cowlicks, and at that thought, a laugh escapes, and she breaks the kiss to stifle the laughter as what can only be called giddiness abruptly threatens to overwhelm her.

The last thing she wants to do right now is dissolve into a paroxysm of giggles, much as her subconscious is rooting for such a development, so she settles for pressing her face into his neck and choking back the occasional snort.

Dustin was aware of this, too, only he was taking a slightly different route. He leaned in a little closer, real hand slowly traveling down her back while the prosthetic one kept her distracted at the shoulder, only before he reached his destination—

Oh good lord. Had he…had he done something wrong? Too much maybe?—Too much for Yoshimi to logically believe and follow through with? Somehow this seemed quite plausible, but, like I’ve said, Dustin had new goals in mind. For their sakes he gave her the benefit of the doubt, arching his head at the feel of small hands in his hair, nuzzling her cheek.

He was next to her ear now, and thus he whispered, “…Yoshimi Ito, if you’re leading me on right now I swear to god…”

…Nah, probably not. But, you know, just in case.

The whisper at her ear startles her, sending a shiver up her spine. Her eyes widen, and though it takes a few seconds for his words to register beyond the feeling of them brushing past her ear, when they do register, she ceases all vestiges of laughter with an abrupt and unladylike snort, followed closely by eyes slitting open and a sly, sly smile.

Whether or not that's reassuring depends on how well Yoshimi's following message is communicated.

You see, Dustin, when one puts their head close enough to nuzzle someone's cheek and simultaneously whisper in their ear, that also puts the whisperer's ear very close to the whisperee's mouth, a fact which Yoshimi proceeds to use quite to her advantage.

He will hear naught but the silence and their breathing after that snort, and maybe he'll sense that impish grin, but either way, he probably isn't expecting her mouth to close on his earlobe, or one of those small hands to tug oh-so-slightly on a fistful of hair, as if to say "Are you really asking that?"

Okay, point taken.

Dustin took a sharp breath, as he wasn’t—actually, now that this was happening, he wasn’t sure why he didn’t peg Yoshimi as the rough, playful type beforehand. I mean, pink hair. Come on.

Of course, now that he knew for certain what he was dealing with, his proceedings became much more straight-forward and natural. Dustin’s prosthetic arm wrapped itself firmly around Yoshimi’s torso, pressing her ever closer, other hand finally making the trip down her back and settling at the top of her thigh, grabbing tightly at the plantsuit.

Ooh. That was going to be a problem, wasn’t it? Hopefully the release mechanism was the same for all crewmembers’ living uniforms.

That being an issue for later times, Dustin decided that it could wait, instead focusing on leading Yoshimi towards the opposing wall without having her trip over her own leg (which he was amazed that she hadn’t already done, considering the state it was in), all the while letting her feast on his ear, rubbing his coarse stubble against her cheek; eventually he pulled free, though not without leaving a line of wet kisses down her chin, migrating to the underside of her jaw, breathing heavily against her neck.

So things were going well.

Why hello there, libido! Yoshimi had quite forgotten that you existed.

The fun thing is that Yoshimi is quite good at maintaining her center of balance, so the short ~~stumble~~ walk to that lovely wall over there is quite free of malfunctioning prosthetic leg-induced shenanigans. In fact, it is in no time at all that the pink-haired lady is pressed quite firmly against the aforementioned wall, head tilted to allow him free run of her neck, jaw, whatever compels him. Collarbone? Sure.

Meanwhile, one of her hands goes missing for a moment, reappearing roughly on an ass that... ah... okay, fine, she's had her eyes on it for a while. Point made.

[ooc: fade to black soon, y/y? xD;;]

Collarbones are good—Dustin likes collarbones. Unfortunately he couldn’t stay there for long, as Yoshimi’s little rounded chin provided too much temptation to resist, and he soon found himself again sucking her jaw, gently biting her lower lip. She had nice lips. All plump and rosy and…

Yoshimi seemed to have found a good enough grip at this point, so Dustin relinquished his prosthetic, instead using it brace them against the wall. The other hand set a delicate path to the inside of her thigh, traveling steadily north. ~~Surprise!~~

[ooc: Oh noes! D: Save the kidlets, save the kidlets!]

Well, there go her last vestiges of restraint. Wave goodbye as they float away into the ether, never to be seen again...

Feeling his mouth on her jaw, feeling that hand inching ever so slowly upwards, Yoshimi grins a dark, dark grin, eyes flashing open, darker than usual, and enticing. Both hands move to his greatcoat, and though it occurs to her vaguely that this isn't his greatcoat, she discards the thought in favor of sliding it off his shoulders, which really isn't difficult, it being as overlarge as it is.

When the coat is dealt with, she trips him with a curl of a leg behind knees, and choreographs their fall just so.

Hey look! It's Yoshimi's bed!

Restraint? Dustin’s sense of restraint packed its bags years ago—even if he’d seen Yoshimi as ‘off limits’ before, that sentiment was long gone now, evident when he returned her grin, letting the acquired overcoat slip off his arm before he flung it behind him, forgotten at the foot of the bed—

—which he suddenly found himself pressed against. No arguments here of course; Dustin only needed a small pause to regain his breath, taking advantage of his splayed-out position while he could. Then his arms were again wrapped around Yoshimi’s torso, dragging her closer…

The pile of clothes at the foot of the bed grew quickly. Time passed, kisses were shared, biological imperatives were achieved.

This turned out to be one of Dustin’s more productive days…

Yoshimi sighs a sigh of contentment, eyes half-open and blearily slanted at the wall beside the bed. Her hand is occupied with rubbing lazy circles along Dustin's collarbone, the other pillowing her head, body twisted so she's half on her side, but, relaxed though she looks, her mind is spinning a mile a minute, and galaxies away. She is thinking of that apartment, the one she called home, and the fact that life on this godforsaken ship is about eighteen times better than anything was in Japan. Aside from inari. She quite misses inari.

Unbeknownst to her, Miss Ito starts humming several minutes into that thought process. Mind you, though, it has nothing redeeming about it, aside from being a crystal clear ~~and highly adorable~~ sign of being ridiculously happy, because she is tone deaf, and the song infecting her vocal cords is quickly mangled beyond recognition.

There wasn’t very much happening on the other side of the bed, as the scraggly man sprawled under the covers was comparatively unresponsive, eyes shut and expression placid. Dustin was content with just keeping his breathing patterns level—no mind paid to the fact that Yoshimi’s wandering hand found a pretty nasty deformity along his left clavicle, outlined by an old, ropy scar stretching over his shoulder and down his arm. For years the whole joint had been crippled, almost entirely without feeling; just recently his prosthetic forced the new growth of nerve connections within that appendicular structure, though the injury itself was still not fully healed. Only now was he able to appreciate Yoshimi’s gentle caress.

It was soothing, really, just what Dustin needed after so much stress these past few months, even more so after the accident that took his arm, since he was still recovering from that when his universe was destroyed and otherwise could not participate in such activities. No surprise, then, that Dustin found himself out of shape and, therefore, utterly exhausted. Hence why he was nearly sleeping.

The humming, though—that was new. Dustin drowsily blinked open his eyes, a groggy smile forming as he shifted an arm behind her ear, sifting his fingers through her pink hair. Hell if he could identify what she was singing, but frankly he didn’t care. It was enough to see Yoshimi so happy, so…complacent.

Go on Dustin.

Yeah, Dustin, say something. Go on, she’ll like it. You know she will.

A bleary sort of mumble escaped his lips. Difficult to say what it really was, but the best interpretation was, probably, “Mmm. I’ve always liked Shostakovich…”

There are those who are completely nonsensical during post-coital verbal exchanges. Then there are the lucky few who are actually coherent.

Then there is Dustin.

The humming drops off at the weight of his arm on her shoulder, eyes sliding open the rest of the way before dropping closed as his hand slips into her hair. She's amazed that she's not purring right now - Chief sure would have been, empathic cat that he always was - but she's pretty sure that the lazy smile spreading on her face is a fairly obvious equivalent.

Her eyes open at his... Jesus, was that supposed to be speech? A 'hmm' that passes as a temporary response, though it's really more of a too-relaxed-to-actually-laugh laugh.

She dignifies him with a response about thirty seconds after the fact, having started to wander off mentally before she remembered that he'd spoken, which, of course, must always be replied to.

The logic in there makes more sense in her head. Something about his words being few and far between when he wants them to be, and overabundant when he so chooses, neither of them ever particularly compelling her to respond or something, because he'll always be Scruffy McJackass, but him talking like that, right now surely must be imparted knowledge of the utmost importance. Something like that.

"Some weird, drippy words just dribbled out of your mouth, and I have no clue what they were supposed to be, so either the Translator Core is down and you secretly speak Arabic, which means that you won't know what I'm saying, because I really doubt that you speak Japanese, or you're half-asleep," she says, eyebrow arching in a joking manner.

The ‘I speak a little bit of both’ response was waiting at the tip of Dustin’s tongue, but he was compelled to listen to those drunken voices in his head. Yoshimi’s returned smile was taken as a generally positive response to his mumbled statement, and therefore he would continue with that thought, no matter how much Logic was screaming at him.

Because, you see, Dustin doesn’t talk gibberish. Nonsensical for him is like…flipping one of those massive, multi-book encyclopedias open to a random page and reading the first entry that you come across.

They sound a bit like this:

“Dmitri Shostakovich—famous 20th-century Russian composer. He wrote fifteen symphonies, six concerti, fifteen string quartets, a piano quintet, two string octets, two piano trios, two solo sonatas, a little more than twenty-four sets of preludes and fugues, two operas, and quite a lot of film music, among other things. Denounced twice, bit of a funny-looking fellow—my grandmother knew him, you know, on my mother’s side. Actually she was good friends with Nina, his first wife. Only met him once or twice. Apparently he was very twitchy.”

A few more incomprehensible mumbles later and Dustin’s eyes were closed again.

Yoshimi blinks, an expression that is much more normal to her face appearing with a skeptical arch of an eyebrow, a twist of the lips.

"I'm sure that information was essential for my survival," she says, amusement mixing with skepticism. Silence reigns for a few moments, and she shifts the rest of the way onto her side, tugging the sheets up a little. "Haven't heard of him. 20th-century music doesn't get played anymore."

A mindless urge that she ordinarily would have completely ignored has her wrapping an arm around Dustin's waist and pressing her face into his shoulder. She had forgotten how nice people were to touch - their bodies are just so... present, and solid, and only now does it seem bizarre to her to deliberately avoid contact. Her fingers splay across his side thoughtlessly, tracing designless patterns into his skin.

"Come to think of it, there really isn't much music at all. There're music files floating around, and ads still have those obnoxiously catchy jingles like in the early 2000s, but it's... really not like anything one hears about from the past. Nothing is like anything from the past, though I guess it's all pretty reminiscent of some weird, 1990s science fiction novel. The Age of the Intangible we call it. You know, since everything is dependent on the Globe. Nothing has physical form anymore, not even human interaction." She pauses, blinking and frowning. "Kind of sucks, since that means mechanics are totally done with. I wouldn't be nearly so opposed to half of it if it weren't for that."

Her words are simply voiced thought patterns - mutterings at a wall that she doesn't expect to respond, and when she falls to silence again, her thoughts pass onwards, though sticking to similar avenues.

Somewhere deep within his mind, Dustin’s inner fanboy was dancing circles after realizing that he’d just had sex with someone from several decades in the future. Again he took the more favorable route of mindlessly responding to the mass of flesh and heat and hormones beside him, resting his scraggly chin on top of her head, letting the hand in her hair migrate down her shoulder, gently massaging her back.

Speech came a little less easily, as those odd voices were disappearing and steadily being replaced by trustworthy Logic. It allowed only for a lazy ‘Hmm’ to rattle Dustin’s exposed vocal chords at first; a minute or so later it comprehended that long line of garbled information directed in his general direction and started to formulate a reply.

“Too bad,” was the first mumble, muffled because Yoshimi’s skull was in the way of his jaw; then he sort of blinked awake, an odd expression crossing his once tranquil visage, and he turned his head to stare at the ceiling (taking his torso with him). “…So that’s…So that’s what becomes of my work?”

Troubled Dustin is troubled.

Cold air rushes in to fill the space he has just vacated, and Yoshimi's mind clicks into the present. A furrow etches itself into existence between her eyebrows as she props herself up on her elbow, an abrupt awareness of the fact that she really doesn't know anything about Dustin whirling hither and thither in her head, because... she doesn't know what he means. Because she doesn't know what he does, what comprises his so-called "work".

"What d'you mean?" she asks, head tilting, a few strands of hair falling into her face.

She looks concerned, watching him watch the ceiling.

"What'd you do, invent the Globe or something?" A snort serves to express her disbelief that that is possible, because hell, the Globe is friggin' ridiculous in its complexity. And... well, she had to take it down once. She should know, really. And beyond that, that day locked in that building with that massive amount of incomprehensible technology, the humming screens, the sheer power radiating off the physical interface... it all remains in the back of her head, an omnipresent reminder of what she is up against, and it terrifies her daily. Insane robots are one thing - they're easy to take down for her, a simple matter of dismembering and burning. The Globe going insane was like the world being infected with rabies and then gaining enough sentience to carry its will out. The scars scattered across her body don't even compare to the scars left by the Globe, a mad, screaming maelstrom of everything her society is dependent upon, and the idea of inventing that is simply incomprehensible to her. Impossible on so many levels, she can't even begin to fathom it.

His glance temporarily diverted itself from the ceiling, finding that Yoshimi’s tilted and characteristically skeptical face was far more pleasant to look at than the pulsing barriers of the meatship’s slime-covered internal organs. For just a moment Dustin’s brow softened, as he allowed for himself to remember that bit of nonsensical, euphoric humming his partner made several minutes ago that sounded so much like the opening to Shostakovich’s fourth symphony—not that this was relevant or anything, but it made him smile again. Logic subserviently dribbled away; Dustin raised his prosthetic to Yoshimi’s face, metal fingers brushing away the hair in her eyes with far more subtlety and precision than seemed physically possible.

“That depends,” he blinked, turning curiously onto his side, “What exactly is ‘The Globe’?”

And his face fell when he contemplated if he had a part in its creation. Because if it was from a world that was overrun with malicious robots and virus-ridden computers…

Yoshimi approves of a smiling Dustin, and she also approves of a comfortable Dustin, both things that he is exhibiting as he brushes the hair from her face. She smiles back, distractedly covering his hand with hers, blinking in faint confusion when she feels metal instead of flesh, her mind too occupied with finding a way to describe the Globe concisely to register that it's his prosthesis and not his real hand. Her lips twist wryly, eyes flickering about the room as she considers her options, fixing on the most obvious description, if the least descriptive.

"It's the new and improved Internet," she says drily, looking quite dubious about the "improved" part of that statement. "Only... about eighteen times more complicated. Where the Internet functioned as a sort of... database, virtual reality, all that, the Globe functions as the glue of our society. VerID chips are encrypted to connect automatically at all times, prosthesis are connected, all nanotech, all robots, all safety systems and glamours and musical instruments, it's all in there somewhere. Of course, it's all ridiculously hard to access, but so many people in our age are tech-savvy that nobody notices anymore." She pauses, eyes him as his face falls, and abruptly shifts to pull her left leg in toward her chest.

"This, though-" and here she taps the prosthesis with a grin "- was designed to connect to my VerID chip and only my VerID chip. It's a personalized encryption with about eight keys to access, so I guess there're exceptions. Still, the Globe is terrifyingly wide-spread. It's like... it's like Big Brother. The Globe is Watching You."

There was another pause, filled with the shuffling of covers as Dustin propped himself onto his elbows, metal fingers twitching under Yoshimi’s small hand. He was still looking at her, certainly, but only in concept; in reality he wasn’t looking at much of anything other than a few hundred mental images, all attempts at a full comprehension of this ‘Globe’, this thing so complex that it literally controlled the lives of several billion human beings in the near future.

Finally his mind seemed to click into place with a characteristic glitter of understanding in Dustin’s eyes, and he relaxed. He actually looked…amused, almost. Perhaps in the disturbing sense, because a moment later he remarked in a casual murmur, “How…oddly convenient.”

Yes, that was one way of looking at it. From a hacker’s perspective, as Dustin was, a single point of command, a central hub that controlled everything else, was the easiest and most expedient target. Once you take over that, then nothing was unreachable. Then you have a monopoly. A hacker’s dream, you know.

But from the victim’s perspective—when things obviously become more than just an innocent prank virus or test advertisement or power drain—then there’s a problem.

Dustin’s expression turned skeptical. “…And stupid. You would think the geniuses that designed the Globe and those various applications would’ve—would’ve been smart enough to come up with some sort of backup, yeah? Some secondary directive, some remote servers to take over and quarantine the problem—“

She thinks she knows what he's getting at, and she's almost offended by his lack of faith in her era's computer nerds.

"It's not like it's easy to hack the Globe, and it's not like there's one... central physical interface, one single control station. That would be ridiculously stupid." She snorts, rolling her eyes. "The entire Globe is made up of thousand upon thousands of physical interfaces, each one just as complicated as the last, and to hack the system, you have to hack all of them physically. To do that would mean a trip to the moon, a trip to several space stations, and a very, very long trip around the world to find all the damn things. They're kept under wraps, and below the radar, because the Government Union is terrified of that system getting attacked. It's the most obvious weak spot anyone could ever think of, aside from the VerID chips in our brains and the nanotech in our bloodstreams, and trust me when I say that we're scared of that, too."

She sniffs, rubbing at the back of her neck with an unpleasant expression. She hates describing the VerID chips as being "in our brains", because it really disconcerts her to have a thumbnail-sized bit of tech embedded in her brain stem. She goes on anyway.

"The point is, there are millions of remote servers, secondary directives, counter softwares set up to repair, quarantine, whatever needs doing. With the rampancy virus, though, all of the servers were attacked at once, simultaneously, within the same millisecond, so the entire system was crippled for a few minutes while the thing wormed its way in, and then popped back into place like nothing had happened. Two days later, four thousand people dead because their brain stems exploded, or their false legs walked them off rooftops, prosthetic arms clubbing them to death, other people mindlessly murdering them. It was a flawless infiltration - nobody noticed until they were dead, and it took four more days for the techies to figure out what the hell was going on. And none of them was willing to do what needed to be done. So... I did it. Almost killed me, but if anyone should know how hard it is to hack that system, it's me."

Funny thing—most people would’ve listened to that speech and been horrorstruck, aghast at how anything could be so powerful, or why any rational society would’ve allowed for their superiors to implant circuitry into their central nervous systems (a thought that briefly passed through Dustin’s mind, as even he never dared augment a set of organs so perfect already), raving about civil rights and personal freedoms and—and—ethics.

And what did Dustin say?

“…Amazing!” he grinned, jamming a hand into his hair while his eyebrows shot far past his scraggly bangs, “But it must’ve taken—years for that kind of system to be set up! I mean, unless—“

Another pause. There was an almost audible whirling of gears as Dustin let his brain provide the necessary design prints, material options, tool lists…

“—Who exactly—Do you know when—“ Well the monopoly itself probably developed slowly, so that wasn’t a good question. “—How long has this system been around? I mean, as far as the name—‘The Globe’. Were there any major engineers that made notable adjustments on it? Any initial designers that came up with the idea?”

Yoshimi jumps at Dustin's exclamation, eyes widening, eyebrows shooting up. This is the first time she's seen him this enthusiastic. Well... no, scratch that. She had just lived through the last half hour. She bites back laughter and a disgustingly large grin at that thought, her cheeks coloring slightly, shoving her brain back onto topic.

"It's just kind of.... developed, I guess," she says after a minute, lower lip jutting out in thought. "I had to do a lot of research to figure out how to take the damn thing down, and I spent a few hours on basic development information. It's really just the original Internet amplified by about three thousand times and about a googolplex connections. I think the original concept was something about imitating the human brain in complexity, but keeping it mostly intangible, blahblah. It wasn't really... constructed, though. Or designed. It... evolved."

That ‘last half hour’ was one of the more present thoughts that ran through Dustin’s mind when he listened (quite attentively) to Yoshimi’s explanations, as the rosy blush spreading across her cheeks was kind of obvious and, consequently, easy to track the cause of. A particularly powerful urge to attend to this cause gave the scruffy man a rather devious smile of his own, but otherwise his brain was concentrating on other things. Besides, Dustin doubted his body was up for another round of That Last Half Hour just yet, so unfortunately it would have to wait.

“Fascinating,” he blinked with a turn of his head, “I mean, completely insane and otherwise a Terrible Idea, but still fascinating. To develop a device that mimics the brain is basically mimicking the consciousness…create an artificial consciousness and sentience follows soon after…Assuming that it ever made it to that level, the term ‘computer virus’ takes on a whole new meaning, mmm?”

It only then dawned on him that Yoshimi had not only taken down this masterful creation (sending a brief, horrified shiver down his spine at the thought of such a beautiful computer’s destruction), but she had also somehow managed to hack into it. Yoshimi Ito, hacker of the most complex global interface imaginable…

You know what?—He’d gone through worse stresses. Dustin’s face darkened and he leaned in for a tentative nuzzle, perhaps even a kiss, and a mischievous, “Have I ever told you how overwhelmingly attractive you are when you disable electronics?”

She snorts.

"Did I ever say it was smart? If you ask me, it's the dumbest idea on the planet, which is saying a lot, because with a database as big as the Globe, there's a lot of room for dumb ideas in the world."

She plans on saying more, and her mouth is open when he nuzzles her and practically purrs those words at her. Her eyes take on a mildly horrified expression, widening as her face flushes darker than it has in... a while.

"N-no," she rather squeaks, blinking at him. It makes sense that she would be unnerved - it's been a long time since anybody complimented her with any kind of fervor, and though she's fully aware that the depth and mischievousness in his tone have a lot to do with That Last Half Hour, it's still a warm and fuzzy and disconcerting thing. "Th...thanks," she mutters after a minute, obviously not knowing what to do with such a thing as praise, shifting her eyes to rather deliberately avoid looking at him while she waits for her blush to fade.

Dustin’s face didn’t fall, his grin didn’t falter, and he basically didn’t seem at all affected by Yoshimi’s meek stuttering and the deliberate avoidance of his gaze. He was more amused than anything, if not somewhat relieved, because now he could be assured that Yoshimi was, well, more or less satisfied. Therefore he could rest easy.

And he did. Dustin gave Yoshimi a single airy chuckle, planted a kiss on her warm cheek, and promptly fell into his side of the bed and closed his eyes. It was too bad that he was awake now. And cold. As scruffy as he was, and as muggy as Stacy’s hypothalamus was set to, an involuntary shiver of ice reminded Dustin that yes, he had those clothes at the foot of the bed for a reason, perhaps he should put them back on?

He rolled out of bed, an emaciated figure covered with ropy scars and awkward patches of hair, disproportionate but somehow lean in the way his muscles were so clearly visible from lack of organic insulation; he shuffled with a yawn and a stretch towards the pile of garments nearby, stared at them for a moment or two. Vaguely he wondered if he should shower first.

Finally he sighed and reached for his shorts.

Yes, that blush on her face has been perpetuated by that kiss. Regardless, she watches Dustin shiver, an eyebrow lifting as he rolls out of bed. A frown ghosts across her face, sticking in the crease between her eyebrows, the slight downward tilt of her lips.

"You need to eat more," she says, sitting up, sheet shifting with her as she pulls it up unconsciously, other arm wrapping around her knees. "People aren't supposed to be that thin."

Yoshimi, dear, your soul is showing.

Dustin snorted, a wry, somewhat cynical grin pulling at his mouth as he slipped into his boxers. His hormones were slowly retreating into their separate corners, thereby revealing the controlling mind’s usual personality.

“Normal people aren’t supposed to be this thin,” he corrected with a casual jab at his exposed ribs, “Normal people with normal metabolism rates. And I am not ‘normal people’.”

Was it worth explaining?...Hell, why not.

“I actually eat quite a bit more than most of the other humanoid creatures on this ship—not to mention that the stuff I am provided is much higher in protein and complex starches than usual.” Because, you know, Dustin’s examined the chemical makeup of slop samples quite thoroughly by this point. “My body simply apportions the energy it receives differently; more effort goes to maintaining the brain, less is put into storage. Simple concept really. Efficient, too.”

And he struck an arrogant pose before locating his pants.

Yoshimi's immediate reply is a snort and an eye-roll.

"Well, aren't you special," she says, more focused on the "To abandon the safety of the bed for clothes, or to stay here for the rest of eternity because I really don't want to walk across the room naked" battle going on in her head. The conflict shows in the lower lip curling out a little further than usual, but not enough to be called her actual Thinking Face, and she has one leg dangling off the bed, eyes fixed on her toes. Then again, who would ever be in a hurry to put a meatsuit back on?

"I miss jeans," she muses abruptly, toes wriggling against the squishy floor. "And t-shirts. And my motorcyle." A pause, as she has shifted her other foot onto the floor, sheet still wrapped around her and clutched to her chest. She glares at her unresponsive toes. "And my mechanic."

“Well of course I am!” came the matter-of-fact reply from the scruffy fellow adjusting his pants across the room, “I’m not sure how to make that any more obvious, people never seem to believe me when I tell them—“

A pause. It was almost as if Dustin’s ego had inflated to the point that it was hindering his motor functions, leaving him frozen with a hand on his waistline and another on his belt (perhaps it should be noted that said belt had a few extra holes punched in so that it would fit properly); eventually he took on a more casual stance and his residual giddiness managed to manifest itself as a joking raise of the brow. Dustin picked up his greatcoat and held it in front of him.

“—Yoshimi, I’ve already seen you naked. There’s not much else for me to discover if you walked across the room for all of four and a quarter seconds to get your clothes.” Yes, he’d noticed that look on her face, the hesitant shifting of legs to the side of the bed. Logic was, fortunately, willing to humor her. “Look, if…if it bothers you that much, I can turn around for a few minutes. Or…something. Maybe I’ll pop inside the bathroom—thinking about showering anyways, now’s as good a time as ever.”

On that note, Dustin abandoned his black and red t-shirt with a long toss onto his own cot next to the forgotten gauntlets—the fuel for all of this in the first place—instead deciding to slip the overcoat upon his shoulders for temporary cover. And, ever in the rambling mood, he continued:

“You know, Stacy rotates clothing to the front of the Possessions Lockers right after each stasis release cycle,” he said, deliberately addressing the wall, “ ‘S where I got this coat from. Nobody claimed it, figured it wouldn’t be missed. I’m sure you could find a decent pair of jeans if you looked around up there. Might have some trouble with the motorcycle, th—th—“

There was a rather unpleasant memory that shoveled its way to the forefront of Dustin’s mind, playing out in front of him: rushing wind past his ears, the roar of engines, two types, blinding lights and the sickening crunch of tissue under tires, fractured metal mixing with bone and blood, a twitching finger illuminated by flashlight—

“—A mechanic, though, you really shouldn’t have to ask that question…”

She doesn't even reply to the narcissism from a moment ago, distracted as she is with glaring at him for the latter comment.

"Self-consciousness doesn't speak Logic, jackass. You wouldn't know that, though, would you? Your ego's larger than your brain, which really ought to be physically impossible." And yeah, predictably her cheeks are flushed, and she pulls the sheet tighter around her torso, the tail end of it draping over the edge of the bed and, conveniently, her legs. "Anyway, I'm not about to move now that you've brought it up. That just makes it worse."

Ah, insecurity and contrariness, how ~~poorly~~ wonderfully you mix.

She watches him toss his shirt, sling that overlarge coat around his shoulders, saunter towards the bathroom, all with an expression of some weird, more-energetic-than-usual scorn. She grumbles something about not caring what Stacy does, that she's not going to wear some stranger's pants, because that's just weird, and is halfway through a particularly emphatic moue aimed at his back when the man freezes and falls silent for a fraction of a second too long. Her eyes narrow, head tilting, but she doesn't ask.

"Ah, well... I wasn't planning on... you know, bothering you about it," she mumbles after a few seconds, still eyeing him cautiously, wishing she could have seen whatever expression had just flashed across his face.

One more robot learns to be something more than a machine. [Closed, predictably, to Dustin Silver]

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