I’m gonna answer this one for Biomech since I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately.
Spaceships! Spaceships of all kinds and descriptions. Aster’s little Infinitas is a single-occupant cargo ship (with a quantum fold drive) that’s been modified to accommodate a second or even a third person in extremis. Lana arrives at DynaCorp Neptune in a midsize sublight passenger vessel. Hyperpods can shoot a single occupant lightyears in a matter of days (though they’re probably more experimental than the public knows)!
It’s fairly reliable to get where you’re going, though sometimes how much it will cost to do so changes wildly in the middle of your trip (owing to some really reprehensible legislation around the turn of the century). For a person to own a spaceship they usually have to be pretty wealthy or use it for their occupation, like Aster’s shipping business. On the ground of a planet itself, transportation varies widely between cultures and I honestly just haven’t given much thought to cultures other than the combined space culture of the Sovereignty and what goes on on Earth and its moon.
For @flashfictionfridayofficial, my fourth piece. This one is from my WIP Biomech, featuring Lana Highvale (she/her), Aster Gemini (she/they) and Nova Alterion (they/them) attempting to discover why they are being pursued across the galaxy. It... doesn’t make a lot of sense out of context.
Aster's drop from the vent was as graceful as usual, all lubricated joints and carefully calculated positioning, in contrast to Lana's own landing, which would have sounded like a sack of goods being thrown from height if Aster hadn't caught her inches from the ground and set her on her feet. The biomech's arms were strong and her body was unexpectedly warm, and Lana took several seconds before starting and remembering to stand on her own. "Comfortable?" Aster drawled, turning fluidly to take in the room without waiting for a response.
The mass of computer banks lining the walls was mostly for show, to give the appearance of superior computing power without needing to actually purchase enough silicon to render an atom-perfect simulation of a large galaxy. A holoscreen sixty feet long lit up one wall in a soft blue glow, pulsing gently with a standby message and the AceraTech logo. "Well. This is it. Should get us everything we need to know." Aster slid herself to the floor next to a particularly large computer which was probably real.
"And you're going to hack it with your mind?" Lana had always wanted to see this in action, but now she was a little apprehensive. Was it dangerous? If it went badly, could Aster be hurt?
"Not with my mind, per se. The bots will do most of the hacking, but I will be processing and storing the information myself, they don't have anywhere near enough memory. Shouldn't be too difficult, quick in and out, figure out how they heard about me and what they're planning to do..." She pulled a sort of cable out of one of the bodysuit's many pockets and connected it to the base of her skull, hesitating a few moments to give the nanobots time to travel down it before connecting it to the side of the panel. She smiled reassuringly at Lana, then closed her eyes, concentrating.
"Just eating through the casing here, nothing to be worried about. Ahh, there we go. Mm. Data. I've missed this, haven't had my mind hooked up to a station level computer in maybe a decade... Let's see what we can find here... Dossier, mostly incorrect... Travel logs, wonder how they got those, gonna have to be more careful if I'm being tracked... Whoops, that looks private, shouldn't have that on your work computer... Oh! Oh no. How did they get this?"
"What?!" Aster's alarmed tone put Lana right on edge.
"Those are real, accurate schematics of what one of my nanobots looks like, correct serial number algorithm, unique metal alloy, everything. They've got DynaCorp research on how the slurry works, they know every detail of how the replication and construction are done, tissue repair, even how I fly the ship. Everything. And the files seem to have been pulled off of a DynaCorp server during a hack six months ago. All of this is Steele's stuff. He must have stolen bots without my knowledge and done these experiments..."
"You are blackout drunk on the station a lot..." Lana reminded gently.
"I don't- nevermind. Probably my fault, yeah. But this is not good. I'm going to see if I can do a wipe of this data, nobody should have this... Almost there-aah!"
"Aster?" The biomech's face was screwed up in pain, hand hovering near the plug but not pulling it out yet, strangled sounds scraping from her throat.
"Been caught... firewall... burning me out..."
"Then disconnect it!" Lana nearly screamed, lunging for the cord herself. The force with which she slammed herself into Aster's free arm, now extended, holding her at a distance, winded her entirely.
"No! I need to delete that data... Have to... argh!" Not only was the alien's nose starting to bleed, but green streaks of bloodstained tears were also beginning to stain her face.
"It's not worth it! You'll kill yourself!"
"Have... oh... okay, let's go then..." She ripped the cable from its dock and stood up entirely too quickly. "Come on, don't have all day!" She stalked off toward the way they came in, still bleeding from the nose and eyes. No way was she alright, but Lana couldn't push her up into the vent anyway, so might as well let her do it herself.
Aster almost made it all of the way through the vent system to the Infinitas, but upon dropping out of the aperture on the other side wasn't able to keep her feet and crashed to the floor. With the destination in sight, Lana heaved the other girl up and dragged her toward the ship, banging on the outer door. Nova had it open in moments.
"What's she done to herself now?" they asked breathlessly. "It doesn't matter, let's get her in, we need to go! This whole place is going to be in lockdown in a moment." Nova could carry Aster all on their own, and placed her into the strange pod-like contraption Lana had seen upon first entering the ship all those months ago. "Keep an eye on her, I'm going to have to fly this thing, and I'm not sure how good I'm going to be at it..."
They installed themselves into Aster's chair, the locking mechanism biting into their skin, bereft of the usual ports, but their bots began wiring them to the ship's systems almost immediately. The Infinitas lurched into the air and out of the docking bay out into the stars.
"Was it worth it?" Lana asked a nearly-unconscious Aster. She didn't get a response.
Genre: Science Fiction (cyberpunk, science fantasy, LGBT+, new adult)
Trigger Warnings: body modification, graphic depictions of violence, some swearing, some sexual situations (but no sex, I only go as far as presmut)
Stage of writing process: Drafting/Outlining (imagine being a pantser)
Synopsis:
Lana Highvale is a new biochemical engineer at the DynaCorp Institute’s Neptune space station, who is a little sheltered from a childhood on the Lunar colony. Aster Gemini is a freelance pilot and smuggler with a bloodstream full of tiny robots, who brings her biochemical waste to DynaCorp for processing. When a rival corporation tries to take Aster for its own purposes, the two go haring off across the quadrant, to find refuge, answers, and a little more knowledge of life.
Character information:
Lana Highvale - 21 year old Human, graduate biochemical engineer, born on the Lunar colony in 2231. Brown hair, green eyes, pale skin. Artist, has never had pizza before, likes green tea flavored things
Aster Gemini - 502 year old Kendrii, biomech, pilot, smuggler. Titanium white hair, artificial heterochromia, no concept of humanoid standard musculature. Enjoys fine food, fine liquors, and high speeds.
Dylan Steele - 30 year old Human, head of energy research at the DynaCorp Institute. Dark skin, foreboding eyes, wears faint hostility like a cloak. Has no interests. Anymore, that is.
Nova Alterion - 46 year old Human (looks 22), biomech, mechanic. Dark skin and eyes, hair streaked with purple, constant amused smirk. Enjoys Aster, saving money, and holoscreen movies.
Links:
My WIP page (that does not reflect my web design or writing ability [i should hope])
Character page (I’ve done a minor amount of face claiming but it’s not set in stone)
WIP tag: #wip: biomech
Other WIP Information:
Character Tags: Lana Highvale, Aster Gemini, Nova Alterion, Dylan Steele
Constructive criticism: I’d love plot and character feedback, however my writing style etc is my own and I’d like to keep it the way it is
For @flashfictionfridayofficial, my sixth piece. A breakup? A little over 1k tbh... From my WIP Biomech, featuring Nova Alterion (they/them), Aster Gemini (she/her) and Lana Highvale (she/her).
Content warning: alcohol use
"You're ashamed of me!"
Aster sighed. "That's not true," she said, quietly.
"Well you sure do a poor job of pretending otherwise! And you can sleep in your stupid ship tonight, I don't want to see your face again!" Nova stormed out of the restaurant, leaving Lana and Aster with a good deal of food remaining on the table, and the surrounding patrons gaping at them in surprise.
Everything had seemed fine before then. Both biomechs had been stuffing themselves full of various edibles Lana had never seen before (though they were taking the time to teach her how to eat the few things she dared to try), a little girl had been fascinated with Aster's seven-foot height and asked to take a tri-film with her, the chef who seemed to know them had brought out a cake at no charge. Lana had been having fun until the conversation had turned to an eventual return to the stars.
"I've been doing the drive burn calculations and I think I can get us back on schedule if you don't mind spending a good month in deep space with no landings, Lana." Aster took another deep draft of what was probably beer.
"Oh, uh, I guess I'll find out if I mind. I've never done that before but I'm not sure what will happen if I'm late for my assignment. Though they might give me a bit of leeway since it wasn't our fault we got hit..."
The smile fell from Nova's face a bit. "Oh... do you two have somewhere to be? The quantum drive's not really that broken is it?"
Aster blinked confusedly. "Of course it is, why would I have told you I needed to rebuild it if I didn't?"
"I thought it was, you know, an excuse to come see me and everything... You... didn't actually mean to come here at all, did you."
"I have a visiting schedule, and this was definitely early, babe. It's nice to be here and all, but I do still need to get Lana to Alpha Centauri. You did order those parts, right?"
Nova put down what they were eating. "Yeah, I just thought they'd be spares or something. You're really careful about taking care of your ship, I guess I assumed you were combining getting to see me early with giving me extra money in a way I wouldn't refuse. In my head, it was really thoughtful of you."
"I'd give you anything you asked for," mumbled Aster through more food, "you just never ask for anything and refuse what I do try to give you."
"Maybe I'd let you do things for me if I felt like you actually wanted to see me once in a while."
Aster actually stopped eating. "What?"
"You only come to see me once a year, when you do you only stay for a week or two. Your letters are short, infrequent, and newsy, and your new friend didn't even know you had a partner, did she?"
"You did refuse to answer that question," Lana reminded, unhelpfully.
"You asked me if I had a boyfriend, which is a completely different question, and I still don't have an answer for it. They're my partner, we don't use other words for each other, it's not-"
"You refuse to let anybody know I exist! Gods forbid that anyone knows the great Aster Gemini has feelings!"
"It's not about that-"
"Where's the bracelet I gave you?"
"What?"
"When we started dating ten years ago I gave you the other half of my broken-heart necklace, you wore it as a bracelet until you left and I haven't seen it since. 'I give you my heart,' I said, and you won't even wear it. Where is it?" Aster's eyes met Lana's as if looking for help, none of which she could provide.
"It's on the ship."
"Where?"
"Somewhere safe."
"You don't know!"
"Of course I know! It's in a box, under the floorplates, by the quantum drive's maintenance board."
"Oh, yes, because nothing in your entire place can look like you have a partner!"
Aster sighed. "What do you want me to say?"
"What do I- I want you to admit it!"
"Admit what?"
"That you're ashamed of me!" Lana wasn't even sure they heard Aster's quiet protests as they stormed out. The tall biomech sighed deeply once again and continued to eat.
"Wait, you're not going to go after them?" Lana stared incredulously at the still-hungry alien.
"There's little point to that. Talking to them doesn't really get them out of moods like this. Plus, someone's got to finish this food."
"You guys have this argument a lot?"
"Not infrequently."
"Also, you only come see them once a year? That's a little crazy, they must miss you something awful..."
Aster drained another pitcher of some kind of alcohol and let another sigh leak out of her. "What Nova doesn't understand, because I'm too much of an idiot to be able to tell them, is that I love them so much that I can't come see them more often. People I care about die, Lana. Always. With one hundred percent certainty. They die young and painfully. I... can't stand to lose Nova. I can't. If there's no evidence that I have... an attachment... no one will come looking for them as a way to get to me. I can disguise the visits as business, I can hide every present they give me, I can bury my emotions inside of me, and I do because I have to. If something happened to them because they chose to care about me... I'd never forgive myself." Aster's voice broke slightly, she cleared her throat and took another drink. Lana had never seen her cry.
"You should head back to Nova's. I'll finish up here. You can bring the stuff back to the ship if you like, or stay there if they'll let you..." Lana started to speak but was cut off. "No, go on. I'm liable to get blackout drunk tonight anyway..."
Lana pulled her bag off of the chair and exited the restaurant, returning to the afternoon sun and its reflection off of the oily streets and buildings. Somehow, it was no longer beautiful...
I think it's Worldbuilding Wednesday! You mentioned in one of your Biomech posts that the nanobots produce a waste product that is also a useful chemical. If it's a waste product, do augmented people have to remove it? And what are the chemical's properties?
This is a relatively easy question so I don't know why I didn't answer it sooner??????? my life is spiraling into a pit of despair...
But yes! There's a scene in the beginning of Biomech where Aster shows Lana the port on the inside of her thigh where the collection vials go. Lana's DynaCorp assignment is to help with developing a new collection and storage method to contain the extremely volatile substance over long periods. If not removed from a biomech's system it basically poisons them over long periods, causing symptoms similar to radiation poisoning or chemical burns.
As for properties, it's kind of a MacGuffin at this point, by which I mean it has whatever properties I feel like the story needs and doesn't have any that it doesn't, haha. Given that I'm sort of on a hiatus from writing Biomech (due to the fact that I was only writing it for one scene and then I wrote the scene and lost interest XD) I probably won't be making any up any time soon...
But if anyone has any plot ideas for my cyberpunk story about an alcoholic metahuman pilot, a naive biochemist, and the pilot's metahuman girlfriend, please let me know cause I never had any clue where this story was going, I don't think.
For Lana: What was growing up on the moon like? Did you like it there or did you wish you lived somewhere else?
Lana: Oh! Uh, it was pretty fun, I suppose, I don’t think a lot of kids get to grow up in low-gravity so it was definitely a different experience than what most people get. We used to sort of fly with these compressed gas canisters and have races and stuff. ... My sister used to really like those games. I miss her a lot.
