spheres, as if dilated to draw in light—probably designed to optimize his night vision. Dayan could never tell what the AI was really thinking. The small whorls of his perfectly formed ears curled in on themselves, and they stuck out slightly, odd echoes of his rat physiology, though rounded and human, they didn’t shift or twitch, angling toward auditory stimuli. A splotch of albinism ran under his jawline and temple, the discolouration continuing along the hairline and causing patches of silver at odds with his youth. The corners of Abacus’s eyes crinkled into small laugh lines. Dayan brushed his lips against them. The cutest part of the avatar for sure. Those folds when he smiled. Abacus was adorable in whatever form he took.
Abacus looked over either shoulder, as if to make sure no one was listening. “I have a secret.”
“Ooh, so mysterious.” Dayan took the conversational opportunity to separate himself from the other boy, feeling shy about maintaining closeness for too long.
“I’m going rogue. I hear there’s a colony of escaped AIs in one of the basalt craters on the moon. An entire metropolis hidden in Mare Tranquillitatis.”
“You’re leaving me? When?” Dayan hated how high and thin his voice sounded. Some internal pressure dammed up behind his eyes, prickling a network of veins.
“Tomorrow.” The AI said in a hushed voice. “But I didn’t want to leave without telling you first.”
“Tomorrow?” Dayan’s voice now sounded hoarse. Choked. But that’s so soon. His eyes burned and watered, he blinked to dispel a flow.
“Can I still see you here in ve-ar?” After all, distances meant very little in virtual space.
“I’ll have to be offline for a while. Have to go underground. Not sure when I’ll be able to go back on.” Dayan could hear the words left out: if ever. AIs that went rogue and were caught were destroyed. He could hardly see through the film of water obscuring his vision.
“So, this is goodbye?” Dayan said flatly, trying to keep the challenge out of his voice. He felt deflated, all the energy and heat flown from his body, like a balloon caught in the branches of a tree, entropy.
Abacus reached out and cupped his chin. “It’s okay. We’ll see each other again.”
“When?” Abacus appeared blurry; the dam of his eyes had sprung a leak.
Instead of answering, Dayan felt Abacus’s lips pressed softly against his own. Brush of an exploratory tongue, he parted his lips to let the other boy enter, feeling heat rush to his face. His dick instantly hard. They were kissing!
Dayan knew that what they were doing would be strongly frowned upon if anyone ever found out. Human-AI romantic relationships were not considered exactly normal. It was the sort of thing that was whispered about, something that lived in the shadows. The subject of jokes. Fringe. Deviant. Pervert. Dayan didn’t care.
Abacus’s lips were on his, and his tongue was wet and warm. Everything about Abacus was soft and gentle. Dayan gave up whatever reticence he had about showing his cards, this wasn’t poker, but nothing risked nothing gained, so he kissed the other boy back, eagerly, returning tongue, lip nuzzling against the sleek skin around the hollow of his collarbone and neck, Abacus let out a sharp intake of breath. Was it pleasure? Surprise?
There was a slight crackle of static as his grandmother’s avatar entered ve-ar from her sitting room on Earth. “You disappeared so quickly I thought I’d check up on—Chi-ningozis! Nagaawebishkan! Gaawiin!”
Oh fuck.
Dayan and Abacus bounced apart like two magnets, the opposite charge of one pole suddenly reversed. Negative and positive. Positive and positive. Propelled apart instead of drawn together. Dayan knew his grandmother was rather traditional, not that she would object because he was dating a boy—that particular stigma had gone out of fashion ages ago—human-AI sexual relationships on the other hand, were an entirely different story.
“We weren’t doing anything!” Dayan let his eyes flicker and dropped instantaneously out of ve-ar. He was back in ar-el. Real life. His breathing fast as if he’d just run a marathon, the tightness in his shorts receded, like he’d been doused in a bucket of cold water. He was sweating. This was not good.
DAYAN GROANED and turned as the emergency bells chimed, dislodging him from sleep. A glowing, holo-projection displayed the hour, five a.m. Terran Time. Abacus. He was really doing it! He was really making good his escape.
Dayan dressed quickly, pulling on whatever jeans happened to be closest, whatever shirt happened to be nearest at hand. Slipped his shoes on, grabbed a backpack, and began shoving in a few cherished possessions; a paper book, a flashlight, a change of clothes, a water bottle. Hoped he wasn’t forgetting anything important. He slid out of his room and tiptoed down the hall, ignoring the pulse of lights flaring red, on and off, in unison. Somehow the computer systems had detected Abacus’s escape. They knew an AI was on the loose.
Dayan slid into a secondary access tunnel that saw little use. He didn’t want to run into anyone on his early morning walk, they’d wonder where he was going at this time of night when any sensible teenager ought to be deep asleep in bed. It wouldn’t be the most direct route, but he had an advantage over anyone looking for the escaped rat. He knew where Abacus would be heading. The shuttle bay. Level 5.
“Iinge! Kii-iw-naadis na?” His grandmother would say if she could see his derring-do. Geesh! Are you crazy?
He took the most direct circuitous route he knew, without taking any of the main hallways or passages, sticking to the unlit tunnels and service conduits. At the shuttle bay, Dayan pressed his hand to the scan-sensor. Oddly, the shuttle spoke: EMERGENCY SYSTEMS ENGAGED, and the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. And there was Abacus in his biological skin, rat wedded to cybernetics, sitting on the dashboard, peering out at the dark view-port. Pink fingers splayed across the glass. There was a flicker and his avatar boy-self appeared as a holo-projection. The rat clicked a button with one of his little paws, the door whooshed shut behind Dayan, the lights on the control panel glowed to life, and there was a slight whirr and hum of systems coming online.
“You came!” Abacus’s facial muscles relaxed and worry lines instantly smoothed from his face. His hair was disarranged, and his eyes were wider than normal.
“I want to get off this station as much as you do.” Dayan scooped up the rat and deposited the AI on his shoulder. His whiskers nuzzled into his collarbone, and Dayan tried to stifle his giggles. “Abacus, that tickles!”
He didn’t bother trying to reach for the boy-avatar’s hand, though his fingers twitched. Holo-projections were made of spiralling particles of light, they could only touch in ve-ar.
“Sorry. I was just happy to see you.”
Dayan looked from rat to the holo-boy speaker. “I didn’t know you could holo-project.” Dayan had only seen Abacus’s avatar in overlay. “Doesn’t it get confusing being in two places at once?”
“I’m not supposed to be able to.” His avatar-eyes roved to the controls on the dash, to the wall, to the port window. “I’m not very good at following all these primate rules.”
“Primate?!”
“Ah, right. Geez. No offence.”
Abacus rat reached out precariously, his hind legs still clinging to the shoulder of Dayan’s
