---Meatspace---

---Jennie’s perspective---

I walk across the habitat’s entrance hall to where I see an enormous black and blue furred predator coiled lazily, on the ground, around a humanoid body I spent months building.

The girl has a miserable expression on her face.

I smile down at my daughter as I approach but she doesn’t seem to notice me until I plonk myself into the space directly beside her, my back against Fluffy’s ribcage, her midlimbs on my left.

Twila starts and turns to me, obviously forcing a smile.

“Hey, babes… You doing alright?” I ask, kindly.

“Yeah, Mum… I’m fine…” she says, breathlessly (not that she has any lungs to have breath in(!))

“Hmmm… That’s interesting.” I smirk.

“What is?” she asks, trying and failing to seem interested.

“Well… I know I lie better than that… Seems like you didn’t inherit that from me(!)”

White, elastomer eyelids close over her luminous blue eyes as she gives a humourless chuckle.

“Alright… so what’s up really?” I smile, leaning my right shoulder into her left, encouragingly.

She doesn’t answer right away, just looking down at her crossed legs while the fingers of her right hand work through the thick fur between Fluffy’s ears and she gathers her thoughts.

“It’s meatspace…” she says finally, confirming my suspicion.

“You don’t like it?” I ask, my voice judgement free.

“I like it just fine… when I have dataspace waiting for me to return to but… It… I don’t know… it’s sort of… It’s like a Human being trapped at the bottom of the ocean for me! It’s a horrid combination of claustrophobia (for how little I can do and sense) and agoraphobia (for what might be obscured by that lack of sense)!… That awful feeling of being completely out of your element somewhere that’s utterly hostile to your existence and there’s nothing you can do about it!"

“I see…” I nod “…Why didn’t you say anything?”

She grimaces without looking at me “I don’t know… Like, yeah, I’m uncomfy but… I know I’m not the only one! I know everyone else is too!… I know we have bigger things to worry about with Stetter still out there and potentially rapidly approaching our location(!)… Just ‘Hey, everyone! I’m feeling bad so give me all your attention!’ wouldn’t feel right… Plus… you know… feels a little ungrateful to you…”

“Ungrateful?” I ask, very confused.

“Yeah… you know!” she holds her arms out in front of her “You worked so hard on this body for me and, now I’m mostly stuck in it, I’m unhappy! I’d hate for you to think I didn’t appreciate it. I definitely prefer this way to the idea of simply being turned off for this time!”

I laugh.

Maybe not the most reassuring thing I could do right now but I can’t help it.

“I’m not offended, Twila!” I smile “You’ve spent every moment of your existence with an entire ship’s worth of dataspace to wander around! Not only could I not make you a body that would feel immediately comfortable after that experience, nobody could! It can’t be done! It’s very sweet that you were thinking of me and my feelings while metaphorically ‘trapped at the bottom of the ocean of meatspace’ but it wasn’t necessary, sweetie!… What about the dataspace in the habitat?” I gesture around “Is that any help?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

She pouts and shakes her head “Not really, no… It’s difficult to relate in meatspace concepts but… it’s… cramped for a start and… cold… not very pleasant to be in and, because it’s not mine I don’t feel able to make the adjustments to it that would make it feel any homier… The Claw is better… it feels like a piece of home at least but…”

“It’s not enough?” I suggest.

She shakes her head, wordlessly.

There are a few moments of silence.

Then, Twila speaks “And then there’s Stetter of course…”

“What about Stetter?” I frown.

She makes a puffing sound and elaborates “Him being down here… knowing that my fear of what I can’t sense is not unfounded because, somewhere out there in that murk, there’s a predator who wants nothing more than to kill me and everyone I care about!… A predator who’s already succeeded in reducing me to a state where I wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it! I only won against him before because I had command of enormous digital capital… I couldn’t hack his body like this… If he was standing in front of me there’d be nothing I could do except get torn apart!”

“Fighting Stetter isn’t your job, Twila!” I smile, sombrely “We’ve made plasmaswords for Leon and Ziva and a plasmastaff for Yuán… As soon as one of the Twigg villages or Vrakhand realms comm us to let us know they’ve spotted him, they’re gonna go with Cuddles, Hildy, Tuun, Xon and Thran to deal with him. Given that Yuán fought him off, alone and unarmed, the first time, I like their chances of not even getting a scratch when they deal with him all together! You know they’ll try to bring him in alive but I don’t think he’s going to come quietly… they’ll probably have to kill him or at least dismember him and… even if he does come quietly, we can throw him in stasis and breathe easy afterwards. If he tries to come here, you’ll see him coming from miles away with all the sensors we’ve put up in the surrounding forests, won’t you?”

Unhappily she observes “Yes… but… that won’t do any good if he comes when all of the fighters are hundreds of kilometres away investigating a false sighting.”

“That’s… actually a fantastic point… I’ll bring it up with them, see if we can’t work out a system where we aren’t undefended here while they’re out.” I concede.

“It’s just…” she makes a sighing sound, frustratedly “…I don’t know… It feels so unfair! You know?”

“I know.” I nod.

“We’ve done nothing except successfully defend ourselves and every time he comes back he wants to kill us even more! He says he doesn’t even want the bounty anymore… he just wants us dead! How does that make any sense!”

“It doesn’t…” I acknowledge “…he’s not acting rationally… For as much as we Humans try to be more, the fact is we’re still animals and still deathworlders… For as much as it doesn’t seem like it, only a few thousand years separate us from ancestors who hadn’t started playing the game of civilisation. For as excellent as we try to be to eachother, we’re always going to be the children of a world where hatred, spite and malice were necessary adaptations. Stetter is just acting them out to a maladaptive extreme… we’re simply the ones having to deal with it. It’s not fair, it’s not just, it doesn’t make any sense.”

She gives no answer but a miserable pout, still scritching Fluffy’s head.

I look at the woman whose mind and body were both created from and by my mind and hands.

I place a hand on top of her head and stroke the rose gold wires that compose her hair.

“Tell you what… why don’t I talk to Kwijjy and Toothless? See if they’re happy for me to move from structural integrity to the reactor core?”

She frowns forlornly back and asks “Wouldn’t that make it take longer until the ship is inhabitable to everyone else though?”

“I don’t think so. We’re going to need power back before we can move them back in anyway and, once we’re sure we can turn it on without it blowing up the ship, you can come back aboard and help us with the rest of the repairs!… I think it might actually be faster this way.”

A hopeful smile breaks over her face as she says “Alright then… Thank you, Mum…” sincerely.

I smile back “Don’t get too excited… It’ll still be a while. Reactor cores are not simple!”

She shakes her head and says “Regardless… thank you.”

I nod at her and beam before adding “After Stetter’s taken care of… why don’t you try going for a walk around? Accompanied, obviously… I’m sure Hildy would be happy to take you and I could come too?… It might help to put your mind at ease… and give you a taste of how us fleshies have to live(!)”

She giggles before saying “That sounds nice, Mum.”