Chapter Thirteen - I Have Paws

“The Mesh is love. The Mesh is life.

You don’t need a real body, you don’t need to feel pain, you don’t need to worry, not when you’re in the Mesh. It’s the perfect world, where everything is, at its base, truly fair.

Everything you could possibly want is a twitch away.

Is it any wonder those of us who live by this oasis don’t want to leave our little matrix of friends and foes?”

--Anonymous Mesh user, 2049

***

“So, there are two ways to dive into the Mesh,” Daniel said as he sat up and bunched his legs beneath him awkwardly.

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“No, you don’t,” he countered. “Now shut up and listen to daddy Daniel.”

I blinked from my spot on one of the fancy reclining couches across from him. It was a big seat, made for one person to lounge back in, and with a load of controls for positioning and such in the arm.

Lucy, of course, was currently crushing me with her bony behind while playing with my mechanical arm’s fingers. My other arm was wrapped snugly across her waist.

“Daniel, the day I call you ‘daddy’ is the day you die.”

“Of like, pleasure?” he asked.

“I could buy a taser,” I mused. "Maybe some sort of automatic whip that hears people talking shit and just slaps them for it?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Daniel said. “Fine, no need to call me daddy. Maybe Big D?”

“I’ve seen you naked,” I pointed out. “It’s horrific, and anything but big.”

“You wound me,” he said.

“I could find someone else to show me this shit you know?” I asked.

Daniel grinned back. “Fine. So like I was saying before you threw a snit over my nicknaming choices, there are two kinds of dives in the Mesh. This shit’s not the internet where you’re just skimming the surface. There’s mid-diving, which is slipping into the Mesh with normal aug-gear. You see stuff, and you can manipulate objects in-Mesh using whatever controls you have installed.”

I nodded. “Yeah, it’s the internet as an MMO, I know.”

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s normie shit. A Full dive, a deep dive, that’s something else. You need much better mods for that, and it locks your body up. Moving shit in your head moves things in-Mesh. I think you’ve tried that at school, yeah?”

“I remember that,” Lucy said. “We had to wear that hat with the little nubs. You could still move around though.”

“A shower-cap, yeah,” Daniel said. “That’s low-level though. Real pros, real divers, they have some crazy ass gear that lets them go deep. It turns off your body, kinda like when you’re asleep. Try not to wake up before your brain realizes it. Sleep paralysis is freaky as shit. Had to replace one of my augs cause I kept getting stuck in between for a few minutes at a time.”

“Wait,” Lucy said. “Was that when you paid Nose to slap you every morning?”

Daniel frowned. “Little shit kept slapping me for weeks even after I replaced the faulty aug.”

Lucy and I chuckled for a bit. “Alright, alright. So I’m just going in to meet some people. I don’t need to go deep dive, right?”

Daniel’s expression shifted a few times. “I mean, no, but yeah. Mid-dives are cheap. You need to do it sometimes because you don’t have the time and place for a full dive, but to people that are always jacked into the Mesh, that’s like, I don’t know, showing up to a wedding in jeans and a tank-top instead of a suit. It’s lazy normie mode.”

I rolled my eyes. “Myalis, you’ve got some cheap full-dive gear?”

Cheap? No. Inexpensive? Yes. A ten-point Full-Dive Module augmentation should be all you need, especially since it would connect to your Mark II Cyberwarfare Augmentation.

“That sounds good enough,” I said. “Lucy, are you coming with?”

“Hmm? No, I need to keep an eye on the kittens. You know how they get when they think no one’s watching them.”

They’re currently attempting to capture your Dumbass drone with a laundry basket.

“Oh-kay,” I said. “Just don’t do anything too kinky while I’m out of it,” I said.

Lucy pouted. “But what if I really want to?”

I pulled her close and pecked a kiss on her cheek. “Just a little then,” I said. “Daniel, how do we meet up in the Mesh?”

“Uh, I’ll send you an address. Shouldn’t be hard to meet, we’re diving from the same local net, that’ll place us in the same area.”

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New Purchase: Full-Dive System

Points Reduced to... 8426!

This might feel like you’re sneezing backwards.

“Huh?” I asked. And then it hit and my head bounced back and I felt my nose scrunching up. “Oh, oh fuck that’s weird,” I said a moment before the weird tingling in my head shifted.

I sneezed.

“Oh, eww, Cat what the fuck!” Lucy said as she jumped off my lap and touched the back of her head. “That’s disgusting.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s Myalis’ fault.” I rubbed at my nose and pretended not to see the look Lucy was giving me.

It really isn’t.

“Disgusting,” Lucy repeated. “I’m going to find some towels and look at the kids. You two stay safe,” she said.

I waved her off, then turned to Daniel with a sigh.

“Was that how you usually flirt?” he asked.

“Fuck off,” I said as I leaned back. “Let’s just dive, alright?” I poked at the controls on the seat and tried to settle in comfortably. My back-mounted guns made it a bit awkward, but I was way too lazy to get up and remove them.

Daniel kicked his legs out until he was laying flat on the couch, shifted a bit until he looked comfortable, then yawned. “Alright. I’m the metal tentacle squid.”

“Wha--?” I began.

Initiating dive.

The world flickered and faded away.

I bat my eyes open and found myself in a familiar lobby. Large marble pillars, a few terrariums, a wall with a revolving glass door at once end.

The big difference were the signs floating above the lobby entrance and the front desk. The employees I could see were all standing unnaturally stiff in pristine hotel uniforms, and the other people in the lobby...

Some were human, but they ran the gamut from supernaturally beautiful Barbie-dolls, to huge muscular monsters. Half of the people standing around were anime-esque figures, with large eyes and intricate clothes.

Some of those moving around weren’t human at all. Monsters, familiar characters from a dozen TV shows I’d glanced at before, a few videogame characters. Their appearances ranged from almost normal, to downright impossible.

The biggest issue was, of course, that all of them were way taller than I was.

I looked around for some sort of point of reference and found a bench nearby. I couldn’t even see past the top of it.

My arms were... not arms. I had paws. One was a cybernetic thing, all blue-steel and glowing pink lights, the other was a raven-black and covered in fine fur.

“Myalis, you absolute bitch, did you turn me into a cat?”

I thought it was on-theme.

I stared at my paws, then looked around until I caught myself in one of the chrome surfaces around a bench. I was a cat. A cyborg cat.

It was kinda cool.

“When did you even make this?” I asked as I spun around. It felt natural to move on all fours, which was so wrong that I couldn’t even begin to express why I found it wrong.

I think you’re severely underestimating my processing power if you think it took more than a second to create your current avatar.

“And you made it a cat?”

Yes.

“Because you thought it was on-theme?”

And amusing. Your tail actually reacts to your brain’s chemistry when you’re irate. From what I know of human culture, you would be considered quite cute.

“I hate you,” I said as I started to paw at the scarf around my neck. Had she copied my entire damned look?

I could make it better. Maybe a bow in your hair? By the way, Daniel is approaching you.

I spun around--something made difficult by suddenly being built lengthwise as opposed to vertically--and took in the terrifying sights of a many-eyed mechanical squid thing floating its way towards me.

If that was Daniel, then he was probably one of the biggest avatars in the room. Not in terms of mass, but because of his many tentacles, each ending in a claw that grabbed onto the ground around us as he came to a stop.

“Nice model,” he said. The voice was Daniel’s, but with a distinct electronic twang to it, like a sort of flanging.

“I hate it,” I replied. “What in the fuck are you?”

“I’m a Sentinel,” he said. “From... oh, nevermind. It’s classy, cheap, and has a lot of arms to grab stuff with. It comes in handy.”

“I wouldn’t know, I have paws.”

***