Unipsi, lovely entity

chapter 16: emotions

Time passed and Scilla was having a really good nap, probably the best she ever had until she had a nightmare. A vision of something so vivid and so impactful that she couldn’t just define it as a dream. Inside her mind she was approaching a cliff at dusk. The sun setting down in a blood red sky. A figure was standing at the edge of the cliff. Below some distant lights that looked like a city, but not a lean one. Without doubts it was Idra. She approached it, and when she was close enough the figure spoke and she couldn’t move any longer.

“why did you come here?”

“what a stupid question. I’m here for you, I will always be here”

“what are you looking for”

“I just told you, I’m looking for you”

“that’s not it. You didn’t told me. What are you looking for in me”

“well a lot of things... I...”

“what if I have none? What if I’m not? Will you come for me if I was lost?”

“I don’t get it, you are speaking nonsense but yes I will always come for you”

Then the figure turned around. The sun casting strange moving shadows upon the body made impossible to see her face, but there were a pair of yellow glowing eyes looking at her. That moment made her woke up to see the same figure, flickering at the end of the bed. The armoured humanoid with yellow glowing eyes and no face was staring at her. She screamed and finally come back to reality.

She was in Idra’s bed and she was covered with two blanked. One started around her waist and enclosed her legs and the other started around her shoulders and covered the entire body.

She crawled up and as she supposed Idra was not beside her. Looking in the connector she saw that the armoury door was open. She moved down quietly and looked inside. Idra was in the laboratory surrounded by monitors, she was looking at something but she couldn't see.

“what are you doing?”

“just in time, I was going to give you 4.21 more minutes but you woke up by yourself. Well I’m analysing some experiments about the metabolic waste that I told you before.”

“can I really see it?”

“why should you not. Maybe you will have some idea”

However the only thing that was going to fill Scilla’s mind was going to be regret.

Idra turned the main monitor toward Scilla and it was the worst things she ever saw and heard. A humanoid creature was being beaten, she could easily recognize Idra’s armour. After some beating Idra poured the unknown substance in the creature mouth. In instants the creature started screaming and convulsing on the ground. The creature was drooling a black foamy fluid that was obviously not saliva any more. The grass around started rotting a bit to then grow extremely fast in chaotic shapes and decay all in seconds. The creature was agonizing in pain while his skin was rotting to then burst out, his body was changing like a super fast uncontrolled tumour. Limbs where appearing out of nowhere to then decay and turn in a black boiling sludge. Some of the flesh was melting exposing the bones that soon started growing out of control and then shattered by themselves. It was the worst thing Scilla had ever seen in her life and she was sure that there was probably nothing worst out there. She couldn’t keep looking at it so she turned around, but just the screams and the sound of the bone reconstructing and breaking for unknown reason was enough for her. It was a mix of forced extreme growth and almost instantaneous rotting. She was about to throw up but Idra appeared in front of her and pushed her hands on Scilla’s body. One was on the heart the other on the stomach. A tingling sensation move throughout her body and then she was completely fine.

“I suppose it was a bit too much for you. I have warned you.”

The horrible reaction to the substance was not all. She was also a bit scared of Idra. She was the one that recorded such footage and she just stood there looking at the creature agonizing. She didn’t have to use a complete creature, a sample of cells would be enough yet she didn’t choose that way. She decided that torturing an innocent creature was better. That was not science, that had not scientific value, it was just a torture with no purpose.

I can understand killing those who see you and are not ready for space. But that. How could you even define that as necessary? There is nobody that could consider that a correct action. She knew what that things does to creature yet she wanted to see the pain. She could have tested it on plant but no. Seeing a creature decomposing to an ooze of whatever that shit is… I…

“idra promise me...”

“what?”

“promise me that you won’t use that thing on an animal ever again”

“but if I don’t how do I get…”

“PROMISE ME!! you will never use it again on animals, any kind of animals. Creature in a primitive society, monkeys, dog, not even on an insect. Please”

“what are you so scared of?”

“I’m scared of you! Iris”

That few words hit her like a truck. She wasn’t new to be feared, but that was different. Scilla overcome the chemical fear then the phycological one. But now she was going back. She was going to fear her as a person, fear her for that she is.

“I’m scared you could lose control, you could lose sight of your objective and destroy what is the closer to you… that is not science, that is not the right way of”

“I won’t use it any-more. I will test it on plant, bacteria or isolated single cells. I don’t want to scare you away. I don’t want you to leave me, I want you to be proud of me”

“wait, wait, wait I never said I would leave you. It’s just that…”

“I also did something to you while you were sleeping, maybe I should tell you. So al least I would know if you will stay even after that.”

What the fuck. The fuck had she done to me, is that the reason for the nightmare?

“after you fall asleep I covered your body. Your temperature is higher than mine and you would have felt cold while sleeping. So I covered you with my blankets to make you reach and optimal sleeping temperature. I followed the instruction so the legs habe to be put inside a second blanked. I...i.. lift up your body but my hand slipped and… and my pinky… my pinky... touched your left gluteus… I’m sorry Scilla… I didn’t want to”

That was the stupidest shit she could ever say. She was comparing useless torturing falsely define as experiment to a small touch happened while trying to make her sleep in the best condition possible. That was Idra, a creature what could be the cutest thing ever existed and the worst murdered at the same time. A living paradox that could be a monster with no remorse and a child scared for a bad grade at school. Scilla couldn’t contain herself and hugged Idra while laughing.

“you are a fucking ball of cuteness and horrors. How could I get mad at you for trying to make me sleep more comfortably. I wouldn’t even say that your action classify as touching my butt and I won’t even mind if you actually did touch it.”

“but… but I did.. that is unacceptable we are...”

“shut it. You did nothing wrong. Skin contact inside a lean family is even more extend. We are used to sleep together and lie on each other. You have no idea how may time I have touched Wiola’s body or she has touched mine. Also I keep on hugging you so I touch you too. I don’t see the problem.”

“I don’t care if you are the one that is all touchy touchy but I can’t do those impure things”

“tell me Idra, are we dating? Do you have romantic feelings for me? You don’t seems so sure about it.”

“I searched that up but I’m a bit confused about.. well about all. Dating, loving and so on. So can you explain your view of them so I can make a decision?”

“mmh, let’s see. If you like spending time with someone and you love them you should start dating each other. That means that you spend time together, you go out exploring the world, go shopping, do hobbies together and so on. In my opinion, that is on the conservative side, while dating we can basically hug, hold hands, kiss and be a bit touchy but nothing more. All the other stuff is reserved for after the marriage. For what is love I can just tell you how I feel, after all it’s not universally defined. I have always found other creature plain or at least not interesting enough. Then you appeared and initially I fucking hated you and your bossy attitude. Then with time I started to understand why you behave in such ways and then once you saw my collection I understood. I liked you. Your spontaneity and brutality. Your intelligence and lack of social knowledge. I wanted to know more and more. So much to become obsessed with you and think only of you. That is what I believe is love.. sort of”

“then I suppose I love you back. I want to mark you with my scent and never let you out of my reach. But I can’t go at your speed. I can’t keep up. As you said I lack knowledge and it’s all happening so fast for me. It should be even faster for you that live so long”

“I know that you are the one, that is what my gut is telling me”

“I never heard your gut speaking. Does it speak out of my hearing frequency range?”

Scilla laughed again, that was what she was talking about. One of the many reason to love Idra, her ingenuity and endless curiosity.

“why are you laughing you nasty giant?”

“I was describing what we call a gut feeling. Something like a 6th sense, a thing that you just know”

“sorry I don’t think that I’m understanding. We have more than 6 senses so how does it work? Is it like a AI that speaks in your mind and tells you the result of something?”

“close enough. It’s like if your body detects something that your conscious self doesn’t detect and tells you in a strange way like a feeling of being observed or something like that.”

“I think I get it, it works like a reflex but for events in general or it make subconscious predictions right?”

“yep you could say so”

“si cazzo (fuck yes). So back to the date thing. I suppose we could date, after all I want to spend more time with you. But I can’t just throw away what and who I am. So I will need time before I could hug you, hold your hand and… and… k...kiss you. Are you fine with it?”

“I’m fine with everything. I don’t care how much time you will need I will be here for you”

“thanks and about being here for me… do you think I could go buy some coloured pencils?”

“yeah sure, let’s go together so you could better understand what a date is like. I also have to buy a present for Wiola, her birthday is after tomorrow so the day before the meeting with the liin.”

“WHAT?!? why didn’t you told me before that you sister birthday was coming up.”

“because it’s not important, you just met her.”

Idra broke free from Scilla’s hug and hit Scilla’s head lightly.

“it’s important. Birthday are important. I will give her a gift too”

“you don’t have to, she will be fine”

“shut up, I have decided so you won’t stop me. Also when is your birthday? Wiola’s is now in the summer is yours close by?”

“not really, I was born in mid autumn. What about you?”

“mid spring but I stopped celebrating around 8 years ago when I left home.”

“then this year you will be back on celebrating.”

Regulating time in space is a bit of a mess. All planet have different revolution periods and different rotation times. After the humans where finally free from tyrant Fermi and reached the space era, all the known nations decided to make a unified time. This strange time used as reference their own galaxy and it was all based around age approximation and time distortions. It was basically used only for transmission purposes and official matters to define exactly when something happened. On all planet there is a different time and divisions but basically for simplicity all domains decided to use the human reference. A variable length day / fixed number of month / years from colonization. Days where still measured in hours based on the interplanetary measurement system, an advanced and shared version of the human international measurement system. All intelligent creature, before meeting each other, had reached the same conclusion. Create a measurement system around physic constant. After their first contact they just had to agree upon what constants had to be used. So everybody measure the hour in the same way but the number of hours per day may change from planet to planet. They all agreed to use the 12 human mouth names that had no meaning as standard. They decided that each mouth must have the same number of days and all excesses are added to February. The seasons are matched with the planet revolution period. So when the planet is colder it’s winter and so on. So December is cold for everybody and so on. After 12 mouth there is a new years. The year from each planet is base upon the initial colonization. So 43/05/54 means the 43 day of may of the 54 year after the initial colony.

To keep track of birthday there was another calendar referred to their home planet where the species originated from, just to remove eventual confusion where people with the same biological age could have different age on paper due to the planet slower revolution time.

Dates in the human year 2441 are a bit messy. The minimum is having 2 calendars. The planet one and the species one. Then if you want to look at extra civilization news you also have to add in the galaxy calendar and most also use the human standard calendar due to the impact that they had on the known space.

So this way, referred to human years Scilla was born in 30/10/2400, Wiola in 15/07/2410 and Idra was born in 20/05/2415.

“so are you coming back out with me?”

“nope, I have work to do. You know the way to get in so just reverse it and get out. Once you leave the airlock just walk straight and you will be fine”

“will you stay here even tonight?”

“yeah, sorry. Come and knock on the hull tomorrow when we will go shopping. I will be ready”

“sure”

Then Scilla left the spaceship. Those have been really stressful and strange hours.

Now… eat and then call the HQ. We can’t keep her trapped here but we can’t let her go around with just me. I don’t think I’m capable enough to stop her if she goes on a rampage. We will see tomorrow.

However that tomorrow didn’t come really fast. At night some strange sound where coming from the roof garden. It was obviously Idra doing something at night.

The fuck is she doing. It’s 3:14 why isn’t she sleeping.

Attracted by the sound she moved toward the ship. It was completely off but she could hear some deep and low bangs coming from the ship or around it. She looked around with a torch but there was nothing. She moved closer to one of the external part. Muffled noises coming from inside that sounded like steps, then right behind her a heavy deep bang. She flipped surprised to see a massive construct. Around her height but way bulkier. At first it looked like a walker but it had no weapon on it.

“fuck! What the fucking fuck are you?”

“che? (what?)”

it was Idra’s voice.

“wait idra?”

“who else? A human with steroids?”

“well the fuck. Are you speaking with one of you robot?”

“I’m inside of it stupid. It’s an engineer repair suit. I was doing some external maintenance.”

“why is it so big, you are almost as big as me”

“it’s full of instrumentation. Welders, screwdrivers, connectors, magnetic boots and so on. It’s a repair lab on suit compatible with the AMS-111 armour that I use.”

“well you scared the shit out of me. Can’t you do your maintenance tomorrow? I thought you were doing some strange shit out here. Also what the hell aren’t you sleeping? It’s 3:23 now”

“oh, I woke you up... sorry. I didn’t want sleep and my experiments are all running so I decided to manually check everything to spend some time”

“go to bed, you will have plenty of time to exhaust you batteries tomorrow”

“but I’m not sleepy, I don’t want to sleep”

“why aren’t you and why don’t you want to sleep?”

“I’m selectively deleting all signal that could make me feel tired”

“why are you doing that, and you didn’t answer to why you don’t want to sleep”

“well… I… I.. so you see…”

“Idra tell me whatever it’s”

“well there is your scent on my bed, I don’t want lose it”

How cute of here, a bit strange and embarrassing but adorable. I’m sure she won’t agree but let’s try.

“if you want I can come over more often so you will still have my scent around or we could share a bed so you can have the source nearby all the time”

“really!?”

“what?! No I mean sure. You just have to guide me in the ship but sure. All I have to do I sleep so I don’t really see the problem.”

“can I sleep in your bed the night after this?”

“I… well yeah. I said so. But are you conformable with being in the same bed. You know you had your ‘I don’t touch things’ so…”

“yep I’m fine. I can block the suit so I can’t roll around as I usually do, then place a blanket and some pillow between us so no touch”

“yeah… sure that will do”

Well not that bad, not bed at all. The sleep together was just to exaggerate so she would be more likely to accept the first request. I can go in her ship again and she will also share a bed. With the needed time I could try to reduce the number of obstacle between us. So it’s a good start.. I think… don’t really know how esterian works when it comes to relationships. Now I also know why she seems dead while sleeping she use her suit to block her in position. I wonder why, rolling around in bed isn’t really dangerous.

Scilla was about to go back when Idra called for her

“eehh...mmh do you have some time to spare? Not much just a bit”

“I guess I could, why you ask?”

“I want to try something, just give me a minute to remove the armour kit”

“I won’t give you more than 10 minutes so you better be fast”

“Sissignora!! (yes sir!!)”

Then idra ran inside her ship and in just 3 minute she was back in her usual armour all excited with a little box in her hands.

“come follow me to the edge of the garden”

Glass railing prevented to just casually drop of the roof. Wind flowing from the side and the astonishing night view of the city below made the moment breathtaking. Idra placed Scilla beside her so that the wind would first hit her amour then Scilla. Then she opened the box. Two strangely bioluminescent flowers where inside it. They where perfectly preserved as if they where just harvested. Blue pointy petals and small greenish leaves surrounding and shielding the entire stem.

“are those naturally blue?”

“yeah, aren’t they beautiful?”

Idra toke one and gave it to Scilla. The flower where emitting even more light now that it was touched.

“it’s gorgeous, is this plant what you wanted me to see?”

“yeah, I wanted to give at least a flower to you. Darkness with tiny background lights is the best condition to admire them. Just stretch your arm and look at it. Then make the heavier neural calculation you could. Think of something that stimulates you”

Is this like a love things that esterians do? Don’t think so but let’s see. What should I think about? I guess about her?

It took just a second of thoughts to make the flower shine like a star. Now it was going to bloom at any moment. Idra was doing the same.

“when it’s opens inhale the glowing pollen.”

“what? Is this a drug?”

“I’m not a junky! you do it!”

Then the flower bloomed in all it’s might. Shining even brighter and emitting some strange glowing pollen that were immediately lifted up in sky by the wind. Idra opened her helmet and inhale that shiny dust with her mouth. In an act of trust Scilla followed inhaling the pollen with also her nose. A strange sweet aroma was filling her body as if she had just eaten some air but sweet and fluffy, like a less dense cotton candy. It also made her feel a strange satisfying sensation.

“what the fuck was that?”

“food, sort of. It taste better if you inhale even with the nose but I can’t for now.”

the flower was now dying in their hands, as if it did its job.

“is this a drug of some kind?”

“not really. It’s a drug if you are addicted to sugar. All it does is basically eating up electrical charges from you body while you think. Well it’s not really eating ions that is not how electricity works but you get it right?”

“you explained why it opens but what about the satisfaction and the warming feeling that gives you?”

“it doesn’t do anything like that. You felt warmed and satisfied because you basically eat pure sugar and it must have triggered some memory in your brain. Maybe you remembered when you were little and you have gone somewhere with Wiola. Or maybe you just liked doing something with me. I don’t really know but I can assure you that it has no side effect and that it’s no drug. We used to produce sugar with it”

“well I… never mind… but it was fun. I guess it just brought me back in time and relieved some of my stress. Thanks”

Idra looked Scilla in the eyes and smiled with her mouth shut. It was not the usually maniac smile, but a soft one. She was happy.

“I just wanted to share something with you. I guess I should go to bed. Ah don’t eat the flower. Well it’s edible but it taste like unripe watermelon”

Then Idra left to go inside her ship while Scilla stood there looking down to the city light. That had just been an incredible experience and she wished that one day they could do that again but without Idra’s suit.

I wonder how she would look without the armour. There with the light of the flower illuminating her face and the wind moving her hair around. Maybe she has long hair. I would really like that.

She stayed there a bit longer then she moved back to her room. It was time to sleep again, but this time with a massive happy smile on her face and her heart racing.