Warning:
This story depicts such material as explicit sexual imagery, explicit male-on-female and female-on-female sexual activity, nonconsensual psychological engineering, and a parrot.
If any of these are offensive to you, or if you are under 21, please close this page and find some other entertainment.
Broodcomb
Prelude
Emily slammed the apartment door and stumbled into the dorm room, dragging her backpack along as she stomped into the central room. Claire looked up from the papers spread across the dining table as she slid the pack off and threw herself face first onto the couch.
“Fucking hell.” Emily muttered into the couch cushions.
Claire looked down, scribbled another line of math, and then set the pencil down. “So, how was your day?”
Emily raised her head from the cushions. “Not that good. We covered broad-spectrum neuroplasticity enhancers today. Or tried to. “ Emily sighed and buried her head again, kicking her legs in the air. “I mean, one of the biggest advances in biochemistry of our time, and he makes it boring. What the hell?”
“What, Lebowski? I thought you said—“
“No, sorry. Our substitute. Mr. Cohen whatshisname.” Emily rubbed her face in the cushions one last time, then pushed herself up and sat upright. “Then there was math. You know how that is.” Claire snorted. “So, how was yours?”
“Class was good.” Claire looked at the window, then stood up. And up, and up. Claire had height to go with her muscles. “Hang on.” She walked to the window, staring intently.
“What?” Emily glanced over, and spotted what looked like a large bumblebee hanging off the window. Then Claire slid the curtains closed.
“The job’s been hell, though.” Claire sat down again, glanced at the curtains, and then cradled her forehead. “Stupid teens keep cranking out these bugbots from the local makerspaces for voyeurism. They’re not all that good, but the operators are impossible to actually catch—we can’t track them down before they get word of us and skedaddle. Head of Security’s been all over our asses to crack down on this, but so long as we can only whack the ’bots?” She massaged her forehead. “Not happening any time soon.”
Emily hummed and nodded in sympathy. Then she unzipped her pack and dug out a cheap laminated folder, walked over to the table and spread its contents across from Claire. Scribbled notes overlaid the precisely stamped letters of her last draft, corrections and lines of inquiry bending around the pages like overgrown vines. The headlines Lhasa Falls: CTA in Retreat glared up at her from the cheap, wrinkled paper of Mercury News—one of the few examples of physical media she had dinged to use for this assignment.
“You tried talking to the makerspaces in question?” She unfolded a tablet computer, and scribbled more offhand notes on her scratch paper as it booted up.
“Tried it. Owners say they haven’t seen anything, they’ll ask around, blah blah blah we’ll get back to you.” Claire huffed. The tablet blinked briefly to black, then brought out the login menu. “Then a whole lotta nothing. Bastards.” Claire huffed, looked up. Emily tapped in her password. “One of our techies said something about putting together a ‘packet sniffer’ or somesuch—something to track down wireless teleoperation signals. Next thing we’ll try.” Claire looked down at her own homework, then up at the kitchenette tucked away in the corner. “I’m gonna make some tea. Want some?”
“Sure.” Emily requested offhandedly, as she brought up OpenOffice and got back to work.
The clank of a ceramic mug against the tabletop briefly broke her out of her reverie. “Thanks.” She took the mug in hand and sipped its contents, and sighed appreciatively as the taste of orange and mint splashed across her tongue. She didn’t notice the long moment Claire stared at her before she herself went back to her own homework.
It was several exhausting hours later when Emily exited the dorm bathroom in her pajamas. She yawned and slipped herself into the one double bed the dorm had, at Claire’s left hand side. Then she turned over, stretched her hand out, and slapped the light switch off.
They laid there besides each other, waiting for sleep to come.
“So, uh.” Claire suddenly began. “What’s your thoughts on lesbians?”
Emily turned her head and cocked an eyebrow. Claire stared at her, then shrugged.
Emily laid her head back and considered. Then she shrugged herself. “They’re people. What about them?”
Claire blinked, and looked away. “Oh.” She laid there a moment, then rolled over away from her. “G’night.”
“Good night.” Emily turned away herself. What was that all about?
The question nagged at her as sleep finally overtook her.