#connecting

smart, tongue, ryan, risk, clue, hunt, sole, soul, bond, cement, lace, band, heel, duckie, sorry, trouble

 

The rule was mostly to accept whatever pseudorandom environment SeecheeTri concocted, but after the elaborate meal Ko had prepared, Af wanted to curate a similarly rich experience for their next date.

A treasure hunt for Ko, Af decided, with a series of clues. They’d have to go to a lot of trouble, but if they were smart about it, a cunning soul willing to take risks, they might find the sole shortcut: a tall, blue-suited person named Ryan could provide a rubber duckie that would always bob its head in the right direction. 

The prize was Af, of course, held in bondage against a chilly concrete slab, metal bands around their wrists and ankles, in lace, in heels, with a stud in their tongue.  Af didn’t think they’d be sorry when they found their reward, no matter which path they took.

 

sphere, job, pod, pepper, tomato, cucumber, mac, pad, eggplant, cone, lima, polish, phone, cube, pyramid, mobile

 

Ko was in a virtual ship that looked like their real one, a short pile of child’s geometric blocks – the sphere of the command in module in front atop the cube-shape MAC unit, with the pyramid-wrapped cone of the thruster in the rear.

But it was much bigger than the real thing, with a flight deck big enough for Af’s virtual ship to dock in. Not to mention a cozy lounge, a bedroom — and a kitchen.

Ko was in a virtual kitchen, actually nervous. Was this too much? Their first date with Af had only been six months ago. The dish was inspired by pad thai, with eggplant in place of the feature protein. Peppers and cucumber were fine, but SeecheeTri kept trying to hallucinate other vegetables into the scenario. Tomato? Sugar peas in their pods? Lima beans? No. You had one job, Seech, Ko thought. But as usual, you’re trying to do thirty-seven.

Ko polished spoons absently in between stirring the food. Something buzzed in their flightsuit, and they nearly dropped the spatula. Right, they thought. A mobile phone.

Af texted a bunch of question marks, and Ko sent back a map from the docking bay to the kitchen.

And when Af reached the kitchen, sniffed the redolent air, when their eyes went wide and bright with surprise – Ko knew it wasn’t too much. Or anyway, the right amount of too much.

 

mother, bowtie, raven, shoulder, cowboy, airplane, shell, elbow, knee, hip, packer, oklahoma, wrist, them, bronco, spiral

 

Af was somewhere hot and dusty. Oklahoma? Af didn’t know, or care. Weird linear clouds criss-crossed the deep blue dome of sky. Contrails, Af remembered vaguely. Left by airplanes. Ancient times, then.

Ko preened for Af, swiveling their hips, and Af admired them. “Holy mother of God, you’re hot,” they whispered.

Ko was a cowboy, raven hair falling over their shoulders, a red bowtie slightly incongruous at their throat. They twirled a finger through it in a spiral, plaid blouse slipping down to reveal a slim, tanned wrist. Af wanted to trace the shell of their ear with their tongue.

Ko stepped close, hand on Af’s elbow. Ko was just a little taller today, their knee bumping the lowest part of Af’s thigh. Ko pulled Af even closer, and Af felt the hard bulge of their packer.

“Well, pardner,” Af said with a chuckle. “Guess I’m a bronco that needs to be tamed.”

 

multiply, sole, add, alley, tetra, tang, copy, fly, subtract, divide, gnat, lap, cool, wasp, moth, skate

 

Af and Ko were in a bowling alley. Ko watched as Af selected a ball from the rack, cradled it thoughtfully, stepped cooly to the line, and let fly. The ball skated down the lane, nearly tipping into the gutter, than arced smoothly away to knock down all the pins.

They turned to Ko, flushed with excitement, smirking.”That’s two of those in a row. Do you add those to my score or does it multiply?”

Ko slapped irritably at a gnat buzzing around their neck. SeecheeTri was taking the environmental verisimilitude a little too far these days. They tried to copy Af’s technique, the shift of weight from the sole to the ball of the foot, but their ball fell into the side channel almost immediately. “Mother–” they said waspishly, but bit back the tetragram that could have followed.

“Maybe we subtract that from your score,” Af teased. “Or divide it?”

Ko ran a hand through the tangle of their hair. “Pretty smug, aren’t you?”

Af’s lips, wide and sensuous today, curved playfully. “Insolent,” they suggested. “Truculent.”

“I’ve got half a mind to put you over my lap,” Ko whispered.

Af’s eyes sparkled, and they couldn’t keep their delight out of their tone. “Oh no,” they gasped.”Not that!”

 

penguin, coconut, kiwi, pdf, mango, zip, tiff, bashful, banana, ostrich, gif, emu, grumpy, happy, pineapple, doc

 

A bar, on a beach, rough wood tables, sand crunching underfoot. The tent above had bands that emulated Tiffany glass, the sun stabbing blue and green shafts through it.

Af ordered a drink called the grumpy ostrich, which featured pineapple and mango. Ko toasted them with a bashful penguin, a coconut, kiwi, and banana concoction.

Af took a sip of theirs. “Mm. Zippy!” They closed their eyes, savoring the flavor, the moment, the weight of Ko’s gaze. They couldn’t document everything in bits and bytes, but they could chose what to remember.

Ko took a gulp of their drink, and their eyes bulged. “Gif!” they spluttered. They turned away and spat onto the sand. “Pdf!” They pushed the drink to the far side of the table.

“Not zippy?” Af asked, amused. “Try mine?”

Ko did, and scowled. “Just as bad,” they pronounced. But they sipped again. “It’s better when you know what to expect, though.” They retrieved their own beverage, and took a more cautious slurp. “All right, all right, it’s growing on me.”

Af sighed in contentment, perfectly happy.

 

lung, liver, ass, jacket, pot, spine, fez, page, cover, rabbit, bowler, kidney, fedora, knife, beret, heart

 

A vintage costume shop. Ko filled their lungs, caught the faintly musty scent of old clothing en masse, but also something spicy and intriguing, like paprika or cardamom. Af and Ko wandered up and down the aisles, trying on accessories. Ko tried on a magenta fedora, a lime green bowler. Af shook their head gravely at each, keeping a straight face with obvious effort, but the gold fez was too much, they broke into a delighted laugh.

On the other hand, on Af an indigo beret with rabbit ears peeping out from its sides was disturbingly fetching. And a too-short rainbow paisley whirl brocade jacket made their ass look fantastic. Af was a book they wanted to devour, cover, spine, pages, all. They mimed stabbing an imaginary knife into their own heart: I die, I die of beauty!

Ko watched, bemused, as Af paid real spacebucks to save the outfit to their permanent library. “Do you think there’s somewhere around here we could get some pot?”

“I’d rather have scotch,” Ko said. Since SeecheeTri had leveled up the olfactories, they’d been getting into sampling different varieties.

“RIP your kidneys,” Af said with a laugh.

“I think you mean liver?” Ko countered.

Af shrugged, smiling impishly. “Whatever.” They pressed a quick kiss to Ko’s lips.

I die, I die of beauty, Ko thought, again.

 

parrot, copy, poland, cruise, mimic, dill, waits, mild, livid, mix, greece, holland, echo, petty, portugal, denmark

 

“Cruise of a lifetime!” yelled a barker. “Departs from Kalamata, Greece, with stops in Portugal, Holland, Denmark, and Poland!”

“Not to be petty, but I’m not sure that itinerary makes sense,” Ko said mildly.

Af echoed the sentiment. “Didn’t passengers usually embark and disembark at the same port?”

They were on a boardwalk, with vendor stalls on one side, a beach on the other. There was a sharp aroma of dill in the air from a pickle seller, mixed with a hot oil smell from a fried dough booth.

Someone strolled by dressed as a pirate, complete with a live parrot perched on their shoulder. “Departs from Kalamata!” the bird called, a perfect copy of the barker.

“Polly want a cracker?” the salesperson mimicked.

“Death waits!” the bird screeched. “Death waits for no man!”

The tour vender’s face turned livid.

Af laughed. “Our dates just get weirder and weirder.”

The lag was low today; Ko’s reply was nearly immediate. “Do you mind?”

Af pulled them in for a smooch. “I do not mind.”

 

darn, elephant, handlebar, heck, flan, narwhal, warthog, hippo, tiramisu, cheesecake, walrus, horseshoe, shoot, pencil, fudge, mousse

 

Ko was back on the darn savannah, or some hallucinatory version of it. On the far side of the watering hole a warthog and a hippo lowered their mouths for a drink. That might have been a plausible juxtaposition – Ko wasn’t actually sure – but the jagged rock jutting from the middle of the pool didn’t look right, nor did the walrus draped on top of it. Even more ridiculous, a narwhale – the tusk was unmistakable – briefly broke the surface of water that should have been far too shallow, hot, and saltless for it. In the mid distance a small herd of elephants was silhouetted against the purpling sky.

Af was decidedly male-presenting this evening, in a wide-brimmed black hat, a dark pinstripe suit, and twirling the end of a handlebar mustache. They — he — looked slightly absurd, but sexy as heck. “Well, shoot, Ko” Af said, affecting a drawl as cartoonish as his outfit. “Aren’t you a sight to put lead in a feller’s pencil?”

Plates of dessert were arrayed around Af in a horseshoe pattern. Ko saw flan, fudge, a pinkish mousse, and a slab of tiramisu.

“What,” Ko, quipped. “No cheesecake?”

Af grinned hugely. “Darlin’. You’re the cheesecake!”

 

genesis, stirrup, switch, sum, crunch, cochlea, hammer, maroon, blink, wii, anvil, bounty, u, milky way, dreamcast, heath

 

Af was conscious of everything: the crunch of frozen heath under their mount’s hooves, the pressure of the stirrups under their feet, the swirl of the milky way in the velvet bowl above.

The sum total was the genesis of an adventure, a dream cast upon the blank canvas of SeecheeTri.

Af blinked, tossed their maroon cloak over their shoulder, and briefly stroked the switch strapped to their thigh. They were a bounty hunter, Ko was the bounty. They were a hammer, Ko would be the anvil.

They raised their soundscope. The microphone translated distant sounds directly into their cochlea: Ko, scrabbling up a gravel slope, muttering. the words indistinct and broken apart by the lag. “W-i-i … u.”

Af grinned.”Oh, yes,” they whispered to the night. “You will.”

 

golf course, fortune, chain, byrd, monkee, dougie, twist, mashed potato, beach boy, sausage, rolling stone, beatle, vogue, macarena, website, wired

 

Sometimes where they were was overwhelming. 

Ko twisted around, blinking in the glare, trying to make sense of the environment. On one side an unnaturally green stretch of land: a golf course? On the other water, and a strip of sand. On the beach, boys wearing gold chains and red swim trunks were lined up doing a strange dance with lots of hand motions and hipsway. They did a quick lookup, it was the “Macarena.” 

Behind them was a row of little vendor stalls. There was a fortune teller, one sold mashed potato-covered sausage on a stick.

The environment stuttered, like a website that couldn’t quite load. The lag was worse again today.

An antique atmospheric craft flew low overhead, its noise a rattling buzz. A banner trailing from its tail spelled out “Richard E. Byrd! North Pole Or Bust!”

A person in opaque wrap-around sunglasses and a glittery silver jacket zoomed up to Ko atop a strange pock-marked uni-wheel, a rolling stone. “Monk-ee, Doug-ie, Beat-le,” they chanted.

“Af?” But it was only an NPC.

“It’s in vogue,” Glitter-jacket said, conspiratorially. “I’m totally wired!”  

Ko couldn’t find Af anywhere in the confusion.