Open the box, write the story (might as well "Do it live")

[vixengrl]

He brushed the piece of paper off of the PDA he had left on the bedside table, looking for her message, but it wasn't there. He stared at the blinking mail-code on the screen until he had paged through all his messages, but it wasn't until he set his foot out of the bed that he picked up the paper, and noticed the erratic scrawl that he recognized as writing-

She would. She forgot sometimes that that wasn't a valid transmission of her feelings if he couldn't always make it out. He tried, cursed, then downloaded an app for her version of English and scanned the hastily-written (written!) note in with his PDA's camera. The meaning appeared in the more-relatable font in seconds:


"Shy-

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding we had last night. I want you to understand that the problem isn't you, it's me, and I of all people should know better. I have a lot of baggage...."

He clicked the link:

BAGGAGE: 20th century origin English-language slang for emotional or historical accretia. Negative connotation.

"but it was wrong of me to expect you to sift through my outbursts and try to understand how much of my nonsense is based on the age I'm from, and how much my negative experiences, and how much my latent angst...."

ANGST: word of Germanic origin connoting tension and dread. Popularly used in discussions of Pre-Diaspora literature, when humankind lived on one small world in frequent upheaval owing to population pressures.

He mulled that one over. Tension and dread--over temporary pair-bonding? How unnecessary!

"about forming a new relationship after losing a long-term partner affects me: none of these things should affect my relations with you--except they do. You are accustomed to temporary contract-bonding, but in my day, we still had "til death do us part" in our contract--death being so much more certain then."

He imagined her, at least three times married in that barbaric pledge. How was she to know then that she would be biologically rewritten and remade, left recalling each experience of her former loves as if new when the RNA baths re-etched the memory of her former lives on her cloned self? Each time she swore she would be true forever--but the only thing "forever" was herself.

"I am going to Kythera to live where I can access a digital partner in cyberform. I only tell you so that you can imagine me, an antiquated relic of a different age, seeking happiness in some sublimation, as opposed to imagining that you might find me, fight for me, do anything stupid for my despondent sake.

"Realize I am too old for you. That should really be enough. But I did feel love for you.


~Steph

Shya found the idea of Stephanie having the Kytheran factories generate a "wankbot" for her to live out her old age with astonishing. She was old-fashioned to the last--she believed in the serendipitious meeting of interested partners colliding in the sociosphere. She would never find happiness with a pre-set android love-affair of convenience.

He collected his thoughts as he let the UV light kill the plaque-biots on his tongue and teeth, and then rinsed with a flavor-neutral re-enameling rinse. The nanos sizzled into the crevices of his teeth--he favored citrus fruits and pickles that sometimes caused erosion. He waited until the churning ceased. He spat them out, and then ran a hand over his chin--too smooth, he thought. In digital similacra from her day, there were many men who wore stubble. The Don Johnsons. The Bonos. He realized that the follicle-inhibitors he had installed were easily neutralized, and made a decision to go to the CVS to get a solvent for them.

He would actually go to find her, because he didn't really believe she was too old for him. And he thought it might be nice if he could grow stubble for her when he did. And he had half an idea that she might head back to Earth.

It was dangerously stupid for anyone to go to the home planet--but being born there, Stephanie wouldn't have necessarily felt that way. Add to that her history of journalism and activism--and Earth would have seemed so magnetic to her. Of course that was where she would have headed--that was home. There she could crash like a stone anongst the relics that were familiar to her. Of course. He thumbed up the travel-wiz to see how cheaply he might make his way to her world--and cringed. So many shots to get. Of course, the ecosystem in which mankind evolved would still produce possible pathogens.

Shya never had seen the home planet. He decided he ought to for her--or rather--their sake.

Left sloppily on the hotel-terminal under her traveling alias was the itenerary for an Earth one-way pass--at a price she as a public intellectual and journalistic gadfly could about afford--he could about afford it too, as an historian, but of course, she had compounded- interest on her side. A few keystrokes let him know exactly what she was doing:

It did not even occur to her to delete the net-history.

He cursed her retro-naivete, and felt a weird protective sensation for someone several hundred years older than himself. He didn't think she would necessarily admire his desire to protect her--

He only hoped she would enjoy his reinsertion back into her time-stream.