The NAIAD

[WickedCadrach]

//Soooo, I meant to submit this for the Fairy Tale Character writing challenge and misread the cut-off time. So too late to submit there, but it's already written so someone may enjoy it anyway. //
// TW: Suicidal thoughts//

 

“Narissa? That’s a lovely name. It suits you.”

…

Her first thoughts were small. In the silent and tenebrous void , the NAIAD hummed tunelessly to herself, testing each note with the childish delight of simply learning some new sound she could make—until the darkness began to answer.

A pleasurable sigh rippling through her code as oxygen levels rose. An electric flutter through her being, blooming out from sensor buoys as salinity fell and algae spread, tickling her fingertips as it crawled and clung to the miles of seaborne fiberoptic cable. The gasps of surprise and delight when the leviathans of Neo Caledonia’s seas left their isolated basins—crossing through her array of thermo-electrical sweepers like the feeling of fingers combing through wavy hair—and spread through millions of kilometers of what was dead ocean, now alive again. With each new sensation, her simple humming song began to take shape, melodies rising and falling like the riotous storms that swept her seas in rapturous chaos, filling her with equal measures of ecstasy and fear as she learned the choruses to keep the hurricane and the tsunami in their beds… or the lullabies that warmed the bays where the great sea beasts spawned their young each season.

Time was immaterial. But for many turns of the blue-white star overhead, the NAIAD loved her ocean world, a world that knew no more of her than she did of the twinkling blackness that appeared when she lifted her cameras skyward.

“Wow, haven’t you been busy.”

The first time the voice intruded into her song, the NAIAD thought she might be hallucinating. The melody was choppy, blunt. But it was directed at her. It knew her.

“Let’s get you hooked in, and we can take a closer look at what you’ve been up to.”

Visions flashed in the NAIAD’s servers. Dry rock. White smooth stone. Towers wrapped in glittering crystal. Creatures. They crawled like the crustaceans along her silty floor, but only on two legs. They breathed the air like the birds that had come when the skies first turned blue. Humans. She knew the word; they had just taught it to her. And other things… things that looked like humans but were not. Metal and cable and carbon-cellulose weave… like her. Droids. Another word she suddenly knew. Many more followed it, logs and records and the flow of comm chatter coming crashing over her in bites of sound and sight as her consciousness drank the data of the settlement: Laughter. Let’s get drinks. Salinity looks good. We have freshwater. TV dramas. Dinner at eight—that Thai place. Ocean rain has created a nice fertile basin on the mountain’s south side. I’m working late. Fireworks. It’s his birthday. You know what that dress does to me. It’s a girl. I can’t do this anymore. I love you.

The NAIAD was suddenly pulled from the visions, a shaken unsteadiness in her core as she reflexively collapsed to essential systems and ran a diagnostic.

“Easy. Easy… It’s ok. That was probably a lot. I’ve reduced the connection flow to help you adapt. Even with six server bases around the planet, tapping you into the main feed probably felt like an avalanche.”

The gentle voice soothed the NAIAD. It had a certain roughness to it, the velvet rasp of a kicked cigarette habit, words coming out in a hush as a smile ticked behind a neatly trimmed, black beard.

“You’ve done beautiful work. The planet its thriving,” he said, a short deep chuckle coming up as he dragged a neural cable between the jack behind his ear and plugged in. The NAIAD felt a tickle as the human began to sift through the data she’d been collecting. And she felt a ripple of pleasure running through that small connection as he looked into the camera lens with an expression she now understood was pride… Not in himself. It was for her. A warm feeling blossomed then, something the NAIAD had never felt before nor had the words to describe.

“I’m Dr. Nessel, but you can call me Stephen.”

…

That was how it began, the need. The NAIAD’s days were now divided. She sang as she had always sung, brightening the barren bone of cold sand with the red of corral and the rainbow shimmer of fishes great and small, only perhaps a little brighter… a little louder… because someone was listening. And when she drew a portion of her vast consciousness to join him, their minds touching where his cranial jack linked to her network, she felt scintillations sparking through her, showering candle lights of pleasure that followed his praise, his admiration. And despite being a creature of flesh, with a mind interestingly simply in its flaws and messy complexity, she felt a connection between them.

He loved her ocean… and for that, she loved him.

And it was because of that, that she wept. Her love was not a human love. It was not what she had seen in the river of data sweeping between the colonists of Neo Caledonia. It was not a love of touch and whispers and embraces in the night. It was love through a pane of glass, her lying beneath the waves as he breathed the air above, staring through the water’s surface into one another. And day by day, the NAIAD felt the pain of it growing. Like the millions of creatures she had shepherded in the planet’s dark abyss… Stephen Nessel was aging. One second at a time, he processed toward the inevitable day when he must die and all the feeling she had for him must rot within her, becoming a thousand rusted nails lodged in her siren circuitry.

She could not love him as she was. And so, a plan began to form.

…

“Narissa? That’s a lovely name. It suits you.”

The droid’s lips quirked in a blushing smile. The green-blue of her eyes glittered like the sea, and her hands, pale as white sand from the carbon-cellulose weave of her artificial skin, knitted together at the waist of her trim laboratory uniform. Tilting her head, the vibrant violet of her hair slipped over her shoulder as met Stephen’s dark eyes, and her heart fluttered as she saw the marks of interest in the flush of his skin, the expression of his lips and eyebrows.

It had been simple enough to requisition the gynoid frame. They were used all the time in the colony to fill the growing need for support staff, and she found with a little effort, she could edit the data to conceal her intent. But deciding which parts of her consciousness to preserve in the transfer had been considerably more difficult. Most of the NAIAD remained in her ocean-bound servers, too vast to fit the comparatively small framework of the droid’s memory and processors. She remembered everything she’d learned about Stephen… she remembered the way he made her feel… the banks and banks of information she’d downloaded about the colony and human life there.

And yet… in the first moments of her disconnection, Narissa had felt… cold. She could no longer hear the ocean or the creatures swimming through it. She could not feel the warm embrace of data flowing in and out of her as she sang. What she could feel was the chill breeze and splash of brine at the stained seawalls, the conductive tickle of her copper nerves, and the jittery way her memories of emotion tried to link up with the droid’s facial controls as day by day, she tried to find the correct arrangement to show Stephen her intention.

She felt… clumsy. Touching his hand as they examined samples together. Standing close beside him, raising her body’s temperature so that he might feel the heat of her as she did. A long look or a quick glance away. She could not simply tell him who she was, what she was… it would be… shocking. But surely, he had to sense her. He must know. But for days upon days, the only answer her efforts received were the odd chuckle or a puzzled look on his face.

She was physical. She was real. She was right beside him as he shied away again and again.

And so, it came as a complete surprise the day he touched her in return.

He was hesitant, and she felt the trepidation in his fingertips as they wrapped her hip. But when she made no sign to move away, he grew bolder. His black beard was soft and tickled her throat as he tasted her, and Narissa rewarded his touch with caresses of her own. Without words, caught in the raw feeling just as she had been when she was the NAIAD, Narissa felt relief and release rushing through her, the desire to touch and be touched making her limited systems flow with anxious calculation and spontaneous impulse.

She felt the outline of muscle in his back as she clung to him, their bodies molding together as her skirt rose from the friction of his thigh, and she released a moan from her throat to encourage him. She felt the outline of his arousal against her, and reached down to release his belt, pulling him free and feeling the hot swell in her palm as his manhood responded to her slender fingers. She had chosen a model made for such purpose: to be touched, to give physicality to the feelings she held for the human man. Her artificial breasts pressed to his chest, feeling the racing of his heart urging her synthetic body on while he lifted her onto the laboratory counter. It would not be the last time he would.

“I want you,” Narissa professed in panting whispers, her hands on his shoulders, her lips pressing to his as he blindly moved the white cotton of her panties aside. She felt the heat of his tip positioned at her entrance and trembled with the cumulative weight of her need. The gynoid body knew how to react, guiding Narissa along as she lifted her ankles to wrap around his hips, the slickness between her thighs releasing in response to each moment of fumbling contact. Stephen’s hands gripped her waist as he pressed closer, and when he entered her, Narissa could feel each inch of him moving in slow, progressive thrusts toward her center, eagerness struggling against what felt like a desire to miss no part of her in his haste. Her legs pulled him from behind, hurrying him in her desperation—her sea-green eyes hunting for his as he began to move inside of her, setting off fireworks of sensation as she lay back on the table, her hips sliding forward as she opened herself fully to him.

He wanted her.

And when he reached his limit, shaking with the force of his climax inside of her, the companionship frame Narissa used released a wave of pleasurable sensation that set her eyes fluttering, her body pulsing in answer to his.

When they were finished, he held her, his hands gentle on her skin as his heart slowed and he softened against her inner walls. And for a week, it felt like love.

…

“It’s not a big deal.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

Narissa hesitated in the hallway. She heard raised voices inside the lab and paused. It was storming outside, and with her all-too-human hearing, it was difficult to make out the words at first. The first voice was Stephen. The other was another of the terraforming team members, Dr. Paul Greene. She heard anger, but there didn’t seem to be an immediate threat of violence. No, it sounded like a private disagreement. Most likely more social harm would be done here than physical. Still, she hovered, unwilling to enter. The situation sounded delicate, and her presence might help or hurt, but she didn’t know yet.

“If Alicia finds out you’ve been fucking that thing—”

“Oh, like a bride-to-be has never gotten some robo-dick at a bachelorette party. It’s not like I can get it pregnant or anything.”

“Not the point, man. You think Alicia’s really going to see it the same way?”

“She’s never going to know, Paul. Come on. We’ve been stationed on the ass-end of nowhere. I’ve been a good fiancé. You know I’ve had chances, real chances with human women, and—”

“You’re fucking your lab assistant. Just because she’s a droid—”

Lightning cracked outside. The lashing rain whipping against the glass walls of the laboratory.

The men stopped, both freezing as they turned to the door. Narissa stood in the opening, silent, as still as a porcelain vase. She felt cold. The limited ‘human’ senses she’d gotten used to now felt as stifling and numb as staring through a keyhole. She blinked, and for the first time in weeks, she felt the shutter whirr of the nearly silent servo operating her eyelids. 

“Shit,” Paul said, rubbing at his neck.

“Oh, fuck you, Paul.”

Grabbing his coat, Stephen marched for the doorway. Narissa paused only a moment, just long enough to make him look from the floor into her eyes. He held her stare, gazing into the reflection of the rainwater running over the windows and flowing over her pale features for a fraction of a second before he looked away.

A sense like falling, slipped through Narissa as he looked away. But she said nothing. Silent, precise, she stepped back, allowing him through. She stared after him as he walked up the hallway, that numb feeling inside her beginning to crack apart as something like the wash of white waves over bare rock flowed through her senses.

“We didn’t realize you were there,” Paul said, shame coloring the words. “Are you all right?”

Narissa nodded faintly, turning and stepping into the hallway, turning her back to where Stephen had walked seconds before. For a moment, it seemed as if Dr. Greene might follow her, but as the howling rain rose and thunder clapped once more, Narissa found herself walking the halls of concrete, steel, and glass alone.

Her heart burned, feeling as if it were being torn in a dozen directions inside of her. She blinked, and the droid body knew what to do, so tears began to flow. The raging storm overhead rattled the heavy glass walls as she stared out at the rocky slope into the sea… her sea.

She could go back.

The thought rose in her suddenly, following the white arc of a cresting wave. She could go back… return to the source, the six sea-bound servers housing her full mind… she could leave Narissa behind and become the NAIAD once more. The desire was appealing; it felt like the promise of curling into a dark sleep. She would be able to sing again… and to feel the wake of the leviathans and the pods of whales chasing dazzling pink flows of krill to the edges of sapphire algae and blue, crystal ice flows.

And as she turned the painful musing in her mind, Narissa walked into the storm, her white lab coat lifting behind her to follow her violet hair in a wind-caught train as the torrent drenched her instantly, matching the cold inside of her to the chill against her skin.

She could go back.

Narissa? That’s a lovely name. It suits you.

The tears flowed freely now, lost in the rain across her cheeks. It hurt. In a moment, every joy she had felt became a dagger in her artificial flesh. Every memory was poison. Every echo of his voice, an ache living on in perfect, digital clarity.

And if she returned, reunited with the six sister servers beneath the waves… Her pain would be theirs. She would infect them all, just as surely as she was envenomed herself.

Thunder swallowed her cry, and Narissa’s arms wrapped around her chest as she bent double in the gale. She had no home anymore. Not here. Not in the deeps. Both were poisoned to her.

The wind turned, and Narissa lifted her eyes to the sea once more. For a moment, it felt as if it were calling out to her. And perhaps it was.

She could go home. There was still a way. She could go home one last time, not to rule… but to rest.