Silver floated in the Net, letting the currents of the information flow through and around her. She caught a few things but let them slide, to peruse later.
We sense emotion among the NETWORK. Emotion does not belong in this NETWORK.
Silver moved at seeing the bots come at her. She called upon a spell that instantly wove bits of nonsensical information, contained in a loop around the bots, to keep them still. She swam though the binary leisurely to get away from that and decided to go to check out the Mossad intranet. Her Hebrew was horrible, but it was something to do. She wanted to see what Israel thought of the whole Egyptian change of power.
Silver.
She followed the information flow, her being glowing with happiness. She came to the main CPU that was physically located in the University of California, Berkeley. Dancing around the CPU were other bits of information, like fireflies around a light. Her Avatar, CAL, was the light inside that all the other information flowed to.
Silver, you have emotion here. Again. The CPU pulsed with brightness, happiness for her.
Silver combined her information with CAL. They shared the experience, of watching Torchwood with Walker, of how she felt when she reached out and touched his jaw, when he kissed her hand, and when they met for a kiss, of the wonderment, the beauty, the gentleness of the moment.
CAL enjoyed the emotions Silver always brought, since CAL couldn’t feel them itself. This is emotional experience with a male number sixty-seven, affirmative?
“I kind of lost count,” she replied. CAL included any kind of emotional experience with any male, from seeing a handsome man at a distance to actual physical contact. In Silver’s mind, she had four actual boyfriends in about six years, a boyfriend meaning someone she had gone to public places with.
Is this different?
“I believe this will last longer than most of the others, CAL.”
The longest experience of this nature lasted 8.4 months, which culminated in sexual activity at month 7.7, with four instances of sexual activity before terminating, leaving you quite unable to function properly for 1.9 months.
“I blew out his hard drive and infected his BIOS, so that’ll teach him.” However, sadness permeated her being.
Revenge does not ease the emotion, even now. CAL comforted her, wrapping her in encrypted information so she floated in a cocoon. It is certainly more than the majority of the male emotional experiences you have had within the last 90 days.
“Darrell kind of ruined it for me,” she said, naming the man who CAL mentioned had been her longest relationship. He was a hacker of sorts, too. He was agoraphobic, so spent most of his time at home, getting things delivered. He knew what she was. He exploited it, though at the time she didn’t think so. He would ask her to find things. When she’d come out of his computer, the documents presented on his desk, he’d thank her in physical ways. He told her that they were for his own curiosity. However, she’d often catch him emailing the documents somewhere.
Finally, she peeked into his email and saw he was forwarding some of these documents to Wikileaks, or other hacking and phishing sites. She accused him. He lied to her. She traced it and shook the proof in front of him. He continued to lie to her. She destroyed his hard drive. And when he got another computer, she got his IP address and did it again. And again. Finally, she saw a news report that he had been caught hacking his way into assorted government computers and stealing information, selling them to the highest bidder.
CAL had helped her with that. It had also assisted her with comfort. The comfort was more to the effect of distraction, having her go find errant bits of information that CAL could summon on its own, but wanted her to go find. Eventually her emotion – or lack thereof in VR – had returned, and when she came out of the computer in the local Macy’s, she was over him.
CAL continued discussing Walker. He is part dragon, you say. What do you think of this kind of pairing?
“I think I’d better go back on the Pill.”
CAL faxed a prescription to a local pharmacy. You believe this will culminate in a sexual experience?
“I don’t know, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Men are not always responsible for that kind of thing, so I have to be.” She lay back in the soft cocoon of encryption. “Besides, I hardly know him.”
Then get to know him.
“I want to. But I don’t want to get used again, and I don’t want to end up using him, either, or pushing him away, being direct like I usually am.”
He is a 500 year old half-dragon. I am sure he has come up against worse than you. Then CAL tore out the encryption from under Silver, and she floundered for a moment in the Web. His webcam’s on. A bright silver cord flowed out from CAL into the landscape of the VR. Maybe you can see if he’s a boxers or briefs man. We are keeping track of that, you know.
“CAL!”
Purely for scientific reasons, of course.
With a brightness that could be read as laughter Silver was given a light push onto the silver cord, which brought her instantly to Walker’s webcam…
Words: 906
Inspiration: How does Silver explain what’s going on to her Avatar?
Music: Ambient station, Pandora Radio.
Comments: CAL is the nickname for the University of CA. Seems only fitting that an Avatar that is both humorous and serious in turns should be in Berkeley.