Disclaimer: obviously none of the characters or specifics belong to me.
Read chapter 6 here.
Chapter 7
Harper was worried about Beka. For the third time in half an hour, she was staring off into space, obviously several light years away from the particularly humorous story he was trying -- again -- to tell her. She'd hardly touched her food, and in fact, her fork was stuck in the same piece of processed meat she'd stabbed ten minutes ago. He thought maybe she was just tired, because she kept cupping her chin in her hand and leaning her elbow on the table. But her eyes never drooped sleepily. No, they glazed over with whatever thoughts kept pulling her attention away from him. He sighed, finally giving up.
He tried waving his hand in front of her face, but got no reaction, so he snapped his fingers instead. He thought Andromeda could collide with an asteroid, and Beka wouldn't notice.
"Earth, to Beka." He snapped his fingers an inch from her left eye. "Hellooo!"
"Wha-?" She jumped, her elbow slipping off the table. "Ouch!" Her arm connected painfully with the table's edge, and Beka rubbed at the already forming bruise as she glared balefully at Harper.
"Hey, don't get mad at me! You're the one who keeps missing the punch line, which is very unlike you, I might add. What's going on with you lately?"
She frowned, becoming immediately evasive as she picked up her fork and stirred food around on her plate, so she wouldn't have to look at him. Warning bells went off in Harper's head.
"Going on? Nothing's going on, Harper. I'm just really focused on my job right now, what with the String of Stars coming up tomorrow."
It was almost plausible enough to be true, but Harper didn't believe it for one minute. He'd served with Beka for a long time, and her piloting skills worked more by experience and instinct than they did by studying schematics or anything else. He infused his voice heavily with sarcasm.
"Slipstream calculations are that involving, huh? C'mon, Beka, this is me, Harper. I've known you too long to believe that line of space dust."
She dropped her fork, giving him an irritated shrug of her shoulders. "Look, it's nothing, ok? I'm just --"
"Harper?" Rommie stood at his elbow. "Could I talk with Beka for a moment alone, please?"
Normally, Harper would be thrilled to see Rommie's avatar construct, for any reason, but just now he found he resented the interruption.
"Well, I don't know, we were kind of in the middle of --"
He was interrupted by both Rommie and Beka simultaneously, the latter of whom was obviously eager for the excuse to get rid of him and end this line of questioning.
"Sure, Rommie, what did you want to talk about?" Beka said, while Rommie addressed Harper.
"I'm sorry, Harper, but I've found some new information on the String of Stars in one of my searches, and I really need to go over it with her."
Both women were smiling at him expectantly, and Harper's gaze bounced back and forth between them. He knew when he was being booted out of a conversation.
"Fine, fine," he grumbled, pushing away from the table. "But don't you think we're done with this." He glared at Beka to be sure she understood how serious he was, and reluctantly strolled away from the table. He was hoping to catch the beginning of their conversation, because no way did he believe it was really going to be about the String of Stars. Rommie was getting really good at human expression, but her voice wasn't quite natural yet when she was nervous or lying.
Maybe I made her too human, he thought sourly. And maybe he was just burned because Beka was keeping secrets from him, and Rommie seemed to be doing the same. He walked as slowly as he could, but to his vast disappointment, neither woman spoke before he was out the doors and they were closed behind him.
* * *
Beka visibly relaxed the second Harper was out of the room, and Rommie wondered what they'd been talking about. She sat down across from Beka while another part of her partitioned selves locked the door to the galley. She wasn't sure how she was going to get through this conversation, and she was afraid if they got interrupted, she would never have the courage to pick it up again at a later date.
A second later, she realized that her hands were shredding Harper's abandoned napkin of their own volition. She frowned, concentrating on reducing the increased electro-kinetic energy coursing through her systems. It was her avatar body's automatic response to uncomfortable emotions, much like a human body's release of adrenaline when nervous or afraid. Harper had been very thorough when he created this shell for her.
She forced her hands to stillness, pleased that she was able to do so. Emotions and her reactions to them were still very difficult for her to control.
"Sooooooo," said Beka, watching Rommie's nervous fidgeting with some amusement, "what can I do for you, Rommie?"
The avatar cleared her throat. She'd debated over exactly how to approach this with Beka for some time, searching her database for all manner of information on human communication. She knew that coming straight out and asking might not be the best way, and she'd finally decided that as long as she was stuck doing this, she might as well get a few of her own questions answered while she was at it.
"I wanted to have a conversation of women," she said finally.
Beka stared for a second, confused. Then she quirked an eyebrow.
"You wanted to have a girl talk?" she asked, her amusement increasing.
"Is that the correct term? Yes, a 'girl talk', then. Since I've been in this body, undergoing what Harper calls the 'complete human experience', I've come across some parts of the experience that I have questions about." She was fiddling with the napkin again. "I've asked Dylan some of them, and he's been very good at explaining many aspects of human behavior and emotion, but there are some things..."
"...that you don't feel comfortable asking him?" finished Beka, understanding completely.
Rommie nodded. "I don't think it would be appropriate. I'm also afraid he wouldn't give me very complete responses in this instance, possibly because he wouldn't be able to, being the wrong gender to truly do so." She was afraid, too, of his personal reaction to her questions, but she didn't want to tell Beka that.
"Ah," said Beka, sitting back in her chair and hooking her thumbs into the pockets of her leather trousers. She was smiling - well, smirking, really. She thought she knew exactly what Rommie wanted to talk to her about. "Of course," she said sympathetically, "not only is Dylan a man, but he's probably part of what you wanted to ask me about, right?"
"Um," Rommie hesitated, unsure how to respond, and Beka suddenly leaned forward and patted her hand in a conspiratorial fashion.
Once, it might have freaked her out to think of Rommie - technically nothing more than a computer - as having human attachments and feelings for people. But she'd worked with the AI for too long, now, in too close of circumstances, not to think of her as something much more than merely a computer. And they'd had ample examples of other ship personalities developing very human-like emotions. To the extremes of great love and terrible despair, and even to the point of suicide. Anything that could experience that depth of feeling was, in Beka's book, sentient and alive, and deserved to be treated as such.
"It's ok, Rommie. You can ask me anything you want to. You and Dylan spend a lot of time working very closely together, so it's only natural that certain...feelings and questions will crop up."
Rommie blinked, surprised. "It is?"
Beka shrugged. "Sure. Not only that, but you guys are thrown into situations all of the time where your lives depend on one another. It's pretty much a given that a strong bond will form between you, and then there's the fact that Dylan's an attractive, honest-to-God noble guy, and that body Harper made you is pretty damn hot." She smiled, all understanding innocence, though she was secretly enjoying Rommie's obvious discomfiture. "There's bound to be a mutual attraction."
When Rommie didn't answer right away, Beka figured she'd give her time to process all of that. She liked Rommie, and she felt Dylan needed to look past the outer surface of "Rommie's just a machine", if that was his hang up. They'd make a great couple, in Beka's opinion.
She picked up her previously untouched beer, truly enjoying herself for the first time in days. She was glad and a little flattered that Rommie had come to her, and it was kind of a relief to think about someone else's problems for a change. She lifted the bottle to her lips, and was just taking a long drink when the other woman finally spoke.
"So, is that how things...happened...between you and Tyr?"
Beka choked, sputtering beer all over the table as she coughed and wheezed, her face turning a brilliant shade of red. "What?!" she managed to get out. "Me...and Tyr?"
Rommie looked a trifle embarrassed and apologetic, threading her fingers together as she shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, it isn't as though I meant to spy on you. It's just that usually people confine that sort of behavior to personal quarters, and by the time I realized what was actually going on, you guys had stopped, so it was too late to turn any of the gymnasium surveillance off, and...well..."
Beka stared. She had forgotten, truly and utterly forgotten, that Rommie monitored everywhere onboard except crew quarters. Of course she'd seen them in the gym that morning. She felt her face burning with embarrassment clear up into her hair line. She buried her head in her hands.
"Oh. My. God." The words were barely audible, muffled by her hands and spoken in a strangled whisper, but Rommie's hearing was far better than most.
"I'm sorry, Beka," she said in a very small voice, feeling miserable. "I, um, haven't told anybody -- and I won't -- so you don't have to worry about that." She waited as the seconds, and then the minutes, ticked by while Beka composed herself. Finally, the other woman sat up and lowered her hands. She brushed her hair behind her ears and cleared her throat before taking another - rather large - swallow of beer.
"Ok," she said a little too brightly, a smile plastered across her face. It was almost colored normally again, only a faint flush still staining her cheeks. "So. You...observed...Tyr and I in the gym a couple of days ago, when he..."
"...kissed you," Rommie finished helpfully.
"Right. When he kissed me." Beka paused. "What was your question, again?"
"If that's how things progressed between you and Tyr. You know, working closely together, your lives depending on one another, a mutual attraction...?" Rommie left the question open ended, sort of hoping Beka would go into more detail about exactly which feelings all of this led to.
But all she said was, "Um, yeah, something like that."
She was staring off into space again, and Rommie wasn't sure if she should interrupt whatever deep thoughts had Beka's eyes glazed over. But she didn't want to let the conversation go at that, either. She had promised Dylan, after all. Besides, she had more questions she wanted answers to.
"So, are you in love with him?" she finally prompted.
"What?" Beka blinked, focusing back onto the avatar. "In love with Tyr?" She wished she could redirect the conversation back to Rommie and Dylan, and floundered a bit as she searched desperately for what to say. "Um, you do know that being in love with someone isn't a requirement for having sex with them, right?"
Rommie leaned back, a bit surprised. "You and Tyr have had sex?"
"No!" Beka felt her face flame again. "No, it's just...the type of kiss you saw is usually a prelude to having sex." And might have been, she was honest enough to admit to herself, if Tyr hadn't turned cold all of the sudden and walked away.
"I do know about sex, Beka," Rommie said mildly. She didn't want the other woman thinking she was completely ignorant. She raised an eyebrow in that superior way she'd seen Beka and Trance do on occasion. "I have many detailed files in my database. In fact, I'm acquainted with over three hundred variations of sexual positions from a dozen different cultures, and the ways in which they are supposed to stimulate pleasure in human anatomy."
"Er...right. So you're familiar with the mechanics of it, then, but unless you've been doing some extracurricular activities I don't know about, I'm pretty sure the feelings involved are pretty...um...unknown to you. Right?"
Rommie had to admit that was true.
"So, I should warn you, in case anything ever does...er...happen between you and Dylan, or you and anybody else, it can be pretty intense." There, that would put Rommie's focus back where it belonged, away from Beka and Tyr, and back on Dylan.
"Was it intense when Tyr kissed you?"
Or not, Beka thought with a mental sigh.
"Um, yeah. Intense is a really good word to describe that. Sometimes when you kiss someone, you don't really feel much of anything, and other times you feel it all the way down to your toes."
"So Tyr was an all-the-way-down-to-your-toes kind of kiss," Rommie stated to clarify.
"Try all the way into next week," Beka muttered, taking another swallow of beer. She'd resigned herself to having no control whatsoever over the conversation anymore.
Rommie frowned in confusion. "You'll feel Tyr's kiss next week?" she asked.
"That was metaphorically speaking, Rommie."
Mostly. It was hard to concentrate around him, now. She got jitters in her stomach every time they were in the same room, and she couldn't stop thinking about how his mouth had felt on her, or how his hands had felt stroking her skin. And her dreams at night were driving her crazy. She hoped to God that Tyr was having some kind of residual discomfort, because if he wasn't, there was no justice in the universe.
"Oh. So...that's why you two have been avoiding each other? He's been working out alone in the morning, and he's seemed...more intense about it than usual."
"He has?" That perked Beka up a bit. So, the Nietszchean doesn't have ice in his veins, after all. She smiled lazily. "Good."
"If that kiss is considered a prelude, are you planning on engaging in sexual intercourse with Tyr?" Rommie continued, implacably.
Beka was getting tired of fielding questions, particularly since she wasn't all together sure of the some of the answers. She decided it was time to finish this conversation up for now, before anything else she didn't want revealed was brought up, and she figured the best way to do that was to turn the synapses in Rommie's brain onto something she might not have thought of, yet.
"Look, Rommie, my...um...thing with Tyr is still kind of new territory for me. I'm not sure I'm all that comfortable discussing certain aspects of it. Notice how good I'm being, for example, in restraining myself from asking you all sorts of personal questions about your feelings for Dylan."
"My - my feelings for Dylan?" Rommie's stutter gave her away. She'd been pretty calm and collected before, but now Beka figured she'd turn the tables on her, and see how the avatar dealt with that. She carefully chose her target, and zeroed in for the kill.
"Yeah, you know, whether you're in love with him, or just good old fashioned lust," she said cheerfully. "Either way could be really fun, if you wanted it to be. After all, men are men, and it's not like they have a whole lot of options out here in the vacuum of space. Listen, just remember that anything you feel for Dylan is natural, and if you choose to act on it, I think it would be a good thing. You both need to loosen up a bit, and Dylan would be an excellent choice for your first lover, if you decide you want one." She shrugged. "Other things can develop from there." She stood up, pleased with herself, and Rommie's sudden silence, whether it was from shock at the suggestion, deep thinking, or both.
Rommie was stunned. Was she in love with Dylan? Or the android avatar equivalent of lust? And how did she know which? In fact, Rommie was so distracted by Beka's unexpected, offhand comment, that she allowed one of her partitions to automatically disengage the door locks for her crewmate to leave. A few seconds later, she wished she hadn't, because dozens of new questions had all suddenly occurred to her.
And, she realized with a sinking sensation, I didn't get all of the answers I need regarding Beka and Tyr. She groaned. What am I going to say to Dylan?
The question suddenly carried a lot more weight than it ever had before.
On to Part 8