Expendable - James Alan Gardner [98]
I considered my evening with Jelca a bonding experience. How can you help but feel closer when you’ve protected each other’s backs in a brawl? And we fought well. Like all civilian volunteers, we had a cloud of sentinel nanites watching that we didn’t get in over our heads; but we never needed their help. Jelca had brought an Explorer stun-pistol with some customized enhancements he’d made for the occasion. With that and my kung fu, we held our own. We didn’t break heads indiscriminately—at the end of the night, we received a commendation for staying completely within policy—but Jelca and I worked well together. We had a good time. We did something useful and demanding, after which we could smile at each other.
When the action was over, we did not leap into bed. That may be the usual pattern—get blazed on your own adrenaline, then burn off the aftershock of tension and triumph in the age-old way. But Jelca and I were Explorers. Partnering another person through danger touched deep feelings; it seemed cheap to exploit it as a mere stimulant for heavy breathing. Therefore we parted, feeling warm and close, but in control…despite (on my part at least) a ferocious urge to fuck and fuck and fuck until I passed out.
Two weeks passed after that first date. Jelca and I talked often, but made no plans. I wanted to; but I had to wait for him to make the next move. My home planet had an inviolable rule of etiquette: never force yourself on someone twice in a row. If Jelca didn’t offer his own invitation, I should quietly accept he had no interest in further developments. Of course, different cultures have different customs; and I agonized whether he might be waiting for me just as I was waiting for him. Perhaps where he came from, women instigated every date…or perhaps whoever started the “courtship” was expected to initiate everything from then on. There’s no database summarizing such customs—they’re too vague to quantify. So, after many earnest conversations with myself, I (the freshman) timidly asked out Jelca (the senior) a second time.
He said yes.
This time we chose a fantasy walk through a haunted VR forest—a temperate forest, because Jelca said he liked those best. I would have preferred a rainforest like those back home, so I could show off my jungle-girl competence; but since Jelca was a city boy I thought I could still hold my own with him, even if I couldn’t tell a sugar maple from a Lanark.
As always with fantasy walks, I had a panicked urge to rip off the interface helm as soon as it began extracting my archetype. Intellectually, I knew the scan only skimmed the surface of my subconscious; it avoided exposing too much of my psyche. Still, I shuddered at the thought of stripping myself spiritually naked in front of Jelca…of my subconscious vomiting up some loathsome dung-smeared monster to be my VR alterego.
Of course, that didn’t happen. Fantasy walks are wish fulfillments: daydreams, not nightmares. I materialized in the virtual forest as a ghostly feline…my paws pale and terrible as I held them in front of my eyes, their milky ectoplasm translucent as smoke. My body faded in and out of existence, sometimes invisible, sometimes lethally solid. Strong and elusive, impossible to pin down—the archetype truly was an intimate personal fantasy, a reflection of deep desires. I felt a sexy kind of vulnerability to show myself this way. Not disguised, but revealed.
And Jelca…Jelca appeared before me as a whirlwind—a bodiless force of nature, a black funnel cloud stretching as tall as the trees. He could not talk; but his sound could sweep from the barest whisper to a deafening roar, uprooting giant oaks or slipping through the woods without rustling a leaf.
He excited me.
The programmed session was conventional fare: defeating a cadre of demons who gradually increased in power until we faced The Supreme Evil In Its Lair. It was a blessing my archetype couldn’t speak any more than Jelca’s; otherwise, I might have spoiled the mood with deprecating comments