“Iinge!” Dayan examined the width of Abacus’s nose, the crinkling fold of skin at the corner of his eyes. Rat or boy. Boy or rat. “You’re really weird, you know that?”
“Sorry.” Hands in his pockets, Abacus scuffed at the floor with one toe of his sneakers.
Shiit. “It’s all right, I think it’s kinda neat.” Dayan rested an arm around the other boy’s shoulder. “Come on. I have to take you back to your enclosure or I’ll get in big trouble. You are one expensive piece of biological computing, you know that?”
“I think I’d rather be worthless.”
And since then they’d been buddies. Dayan visited Abacus in his maze, to pet him and sneak him treats, meeting him in ve-ar, or sneaking him out of his enclosure for sleepovers. They played hologames, traded books, ate junk food, and watched holo-series. Ran around the overlay version of the station playing capture the flag with other youths from even more distant outposts. They were friends, sort of.
At least, Dayan thought they were friends. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Not since what happened last week.
THEY’D BEEN SPENDING more and more time together in ve-ar. Sometimes Dayan forgot Abacus wasn’t a real boy, that he was really an AI. Biologically, he was a rat. A super-intelligent rat, but still a rat. In avatar form, they went surfing, visited rainforests. Threw popcorn at old-timey theatre screens without holo-projection tech.
And in ar-el Dayan tucked the cuddly rodent into bed. A shipping crate, a water bottle with a drip, a small dish for food. Scraps of packing material for a bed.
“G-nisidotam na? You know what?” The floating, ghostly projection of his grandmother looked up from her latest beading project. “I think you’ve been spending far too much time with that wensiinh—how are you going to feel when his training is done and he gets sent off-moon? It’s better not to get too attached. He isn’t your computer.” Her face was deeply wrinkled, even more so when she frowned.
“It’s okay, Nokomis,” Dayan told her what she wanted to hear, “I promise not to get too attached.” A knot coiled painfully tight in his intestines. Only yesterday his mother had said something basically along the same lines. He’d been petting the cuddly little rodent in the Doppler Maze when his mother approached with a clipboard. Clinical white scrubs, hairnet, soft padded slippers.
“You know, you shouldn’t be playing with that engineered organism,” she said in a steady whisper. “He doesn’t belong to you. Why don’t you play with your human friends in ve-ar? It isn’t normal to spend so much time with an AI.”
MEET ME IN VE-AR OVERLAY. Abacus pinged privately, so only Dayan could see the message popping up across the inside of his lens implants. He could just imagine one corner of Abacus’s lips turning up in a smile. Dayan felt heat creep up into his cheeks.
Dayan flopped onto his bed and let his eyes flicker. Warm water immersion. A slight static pop of surface tension. When he opened his eyes again, he and Abacus were alone, in a ve-ar version of his room on the station. Plush red carpet soft under his toes, indistinguishable from ar-el. Except now it smelled like the pages of an old book. Pulp and paper, glue and fabric, and whatever else went into the binding. In ar-el the station was strictly climate controlled, and actual physical books were rare, the stuff of holo-programs. The room looked the same, the curved port window, the position of the walls, but the contents had changed; an overflowing bookcase, a small desk, a globe of the world (Earth), charts of distant star systems, a telescope, anatomical diagrams of the human brain, the human heart, acupressure points, Rorschach ink blots, sci-fi themed posters old and new.
Abacus and his various interests. Humanity inside and out. Today he wore his regular blue jeans, and a white T-shirt emblazoned with the words AIs Do It Better.
“What’s up, ’Cus?” Dayan stretched the simulated muscles in his arms. He might have made them slightly bigger than in ar-el. Vanity.
The rat’s boy-avatar ran to him, locked hand to wrist below Dayan’s waist, hoisting him into the air, “It’s good to see you!” Dropped him back to his feet with a thud.
“Whoa. Chill, ’Cus.” Dayan tried to keep his smile under control. “I missed you too.” Dayan stroked the AI’s neck, feeling the equal smoothness of light and dark under his fingertips. His skin was so soft. Abacus shivered under the slight, tickling sensation.
“You did?” Abacus squeezing Dayan tight. Feeling his ribs compress.
“Yes.” Dayan admitted, hugging the shorter boy back, resting his chin on the top of Abacus’s head. Stroking his messy brown hair. As soon as he said it, he knew it was true. “I missed you.”
Abacus pulled back to look him in the eyes, as if he could see the truth or accuracy of the statement like a lie detector. The rat-boy’s pupils were unreadable spheres, as if dilated to draw in light—probably designed to optimize his night vision. Dayan could never tell what the AI was really thinking. The small whorls of his perfectly formed ears curled in on themselves, and they stuck out slightly, odd echoes of his rat physiology, though rounded and human, they didn’t shift or twitch, angling toward auditory stimuli. A splotch of albinism ran under his jawline and temple, the discolouration continuing along the hairline and causing patches of silver at odds with his youth. The corners of Abacus’s eyes crinkled into small laugh lines. Dayan brushed his lips against them. The cutest part of the avatar for sure. Those folds when he smiled. Abacus was adorable in whatever form he took.
Abacus looked over either shoulder, as if to make sure no one was listening. “I have a secret.”
“Ooh, so mysterious.” Dayan took the conversational opportunity to separate himself from the other boy, feeling shy about maintaining closeness for too long.
“I’m going rogue. I hear there’s a colony of escaped AIs in one of the basalt craters on the moon. An entire metropolis hidden in Mare Tranquillitatis.”
“You’re leaving me? When?” Dayan hated how high and thin his voice sounded. Some internal pressure dammed up behind his eyes, prickling a network of veins.
“Tomorrow.” The AI said in a hushed voice. “But I didn’t want to leave without telling you first.”
“Tomorrow?” Dayan’s voice now sounded hoarse. Choked. But that’s so soon. His eyes burned and watered, he blinked to dispel a flow.
“Can I still see you here in ve-ar?” After all, distances meant very little in virtual space.
“I’ll have to be offline for a while. Have to go underground. Not sure when I’ll be able to go back on.” Dayan could hear the words left out: if ever. AIs that went rogue and were caught were destroyed. He could hardly see through the film of water obscuring his vision.
“So, this is goodbye?” Dayan said flatly, trying to keep the challenge out of his voice. He felt deflated, all the energy and heat flown from his body, like a balloon caught in the branches of a tree, entropy.
Abacus reached out and cupped his chin. “It’s okay. We’ll see each other again.”
“When?” Abacus appeared blurry; the dam of his eyes had sprung a leak.
Instead of answering, Dayan felt Abacus’s lips pressed softly against his own. Brush of an exploratory tongue, he parted his lips to let the other boy enter, feeling heat rush to his face. His dick instantly hard. They were kissing!
Dayan knew that what they were doing would be strongly frowned upon if anyone ever found out. Human-AI romantic relationships were not considered exactly normal. It was the sort of thing that was whispered about, something that lived in the shadows. The subject of jokes. Fringe. Deviant. Pervert. Dayan didn’t care.
Abacus’s lips were on his, and his tongue was wet and warm. Everything about Abacus was soft and gentle. Dayan gave up whatever reticence he had about showing his cards, this wasn’t poker,