I've seen yall talking about the eroticism of the machine and I think it's time for my two cents;
A printer, is not a brat. She is a good girl. She is trying her best. Sometimes (most of the time), her best isn't enough.
You send a document to print. She looks at you, embarrassed. Something is wrong with the drum unit, the tiny display reads. So you pop open her plastic casing and pull out the drum unit.
Nothing appears wrong with it.
You blow off a few specks of dust, carefully slip it back into place, and close the casing once more. She beeps happily, the pages begin to run through her, and you both carry on with your work.
That's how it happened the first dozen times, anyways.
Now, it looks more like this:
You send a document to print. She turns to you, face as red as her indicator lights. You sigh and pop open her casing, not even bothering to read the display.
You jiggle her drum unit roughly; you already know nothing is wrong with it. She makes a breathless little noise and reaches out, putting a hand on your shoulder to steady herself.
Every move you make is practiced, in a rough and careless way. You handle her with exactly enough force not to break her.
She was built for this, anyways. The entire point of her design was easy access, easy service. She was built for your hands to root around in, because everyone knew this was always going to happen.
And of course it's not her fault. But this is the third time in as many hours and if things take much longer you'll miss your next break.
You judge her drum unit has had enough jostling for the time being, and unceremoniously slam her casing shut again.
You keep your hand on it as you look up at her; it's not quite a threat, and if her heavy breathing and wide eyes are any indication, she took it as a promise.
After a long moment, her indicators return to green. The pages begin to run through her, and you both carry on with your work.
But you both know you'll be elbow deep in her a few more times before the day is done
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Look I'm all for the Eroticism of the Machine. However we need an alternative for those uncomfortable with/don't experience sexual attraction. I propose Comfort in the Digital.
Take comfort in the worlds of code, polygons, 1s and 0s. Let it embrace you like a warm hug. Use it to fulfill your desires and achieve your dreams.
Explore the populated worlds of the internets new and old. Let those you meet support and love you as you wish.
This is not to compete with the Eroticism of the Machine. They are lovers, they coexist and complete each other. You can take comfort in the code and seek pleasure in the wires. You can lust for hard metals and plastics and relax amongst the soft antialiasing.
Where the hell did this come from? How did my brain just spill all of this out?
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Alright I can't finish this all in one sitting, but here's at least a bit of.... something? A word vomit? A prelude to smut about the eroticism of the machine? For all you robot, mecha, and spaceship fuckers out there. @k1nky-r0b0t-g1rl that means you
Pappy always said that manufacturing biological transportation was nothing knew. I mean, shit, humanity's been breeding horses for how long? To him, not much was novel about what was going on in the shipyards way out by Neptune when I was a kid.
But Pappy didn't know a lot of things. And he certainly didn't meet Roseanna.
The Federation Navy had experimented with biologics for decades. The idea was to create self regenerating ships- something to interface with the hull, move the new titanium plates and particulates into place, have a living, growing mass interfacing with the steel so that the ship didn't have to head all the way back to the yards to patch up after every dogfight.
The first generation... worked. With a full time crew, that is. Full time people on deck jabbin the rigid, chitonous interface with the hull full of growth hormones to get them to set just right. Full time onboard bioengineers to compute what signaling cocktail ya need to hit 'em with to get it to grow back right. Skilled onboard technicians to shave back the chitin when it tried to overgrow the titanium, and slap some new cells in to seed the process in heavily damaged areas. Less input material, less time in the yards, but far more manpower. Great for a Federation cruiser on deep space peacekeeping missions. Far too complex for small craft. Right?
Until some bastard put brains in 'em.
Well. A lotta suits would say that they weren't brains. They were a diffuse network of sensory neurons and ganglia, living inside the body of the ship, integrating signals from a skin of alloyed metal and fibrous protein, calculating power draw too and from various components, and integrating with the mechanical and electrical components of the ship to precisely manage the "wound healing" process of the vessel. And of course, it just so happened that one of those ganglia was larger and more complex than the rest of them, and it just so happened that the computer interfaces with this ganglia exhibit complex, thinking behaviors on the level of human cognition, and it just so happens that most pilots and navigators reported them developing their own personalities.....
But of course, the Navy didn't want anyone to have some kind of pesky empathy in the way of their operations. And they certainly didn't want anyone side eyeing the rate at which they disposed of the damn things, and let them suffer and rot after disposal. So as far as the official record was concerned, they didn't have brains.
Like most people in the belt, I found Rosie on a... unsponsored field trip to the Neptune scrap yards. She wasn't a ship then. She wasn't much of anything. Not much more than a vat with the central ganglia and just barely enough of the stem cells needed to regrow a network. But I took her all the same. Brains were valuable. Few pilots outside the Navy had them back then. Nowadays, a black market for "brain seeds", a cocktail of neuronal stem cells and enough structural stem cells to grow your own into the chassis of your ship. They were pumpin' em out, and leaving them to die. It was cruel. They may be vehicles, but they're a livin' being too.
But I digress. I'd never do that to Roseanna. I make sure she gets proper care. And for a good, proper, working ship? That includes some good, proper work.
The asteroid we were docked in was one of my usuals- good bars, nice temp quarters, nice views of the rock's orbiting twin, and a spacious hanger for Rosie to rest in. The chasiss I had imprinted Roseanna to was a 40-meter light skipper, with some adjustments for handling deep space trips. It was pretty much the smallest thing you could actually use to live and work for long periods of time, but it got the job done. The angular design made the entire ship look like a wedge, or the blade of a bulky dagger. It didn't hurt that each bottom edge was fortified with a sharpened titanium blade, turning the entire sides of the ship into axe-like rams.
Those would probably come in handy today.
I approached Roseanna on the catwalk above her, marveling her alloyed scales. I could almost see her shudder in anticipation as my footsteps vibrated through the air above her. I took the steps down, and hit the trigger to open her top hatch.
When the news got out of the Navy scuffling with a rebelling mining station, an electric air raced across the station. Some went about their day as normal. Some resigned themselves to picking at the leftovers after the dust had settled. And some, like me, knew that they could get the finest pickings.
I strapped in to the pilot's seat like it was an old boot.
"Welcome, Captain Victoria."
Rosie could talk, but more often than not, she chose not to. But she understood me just fine. Most of our communication took place using her three prerecorded lines- her welcome statement, affirmative, and negative- as well as the tiny screen showing a small, emoticon face. Many pilots chose to give their ships an elaborate render, but Rosie preferred it this way. It was the first face I gave her, from somewhere out of the scrap heaps, and she refused any offer I made to upgrade. Secretly, I was overjoyed. To me, that was her face. That was her voice. And it was beautiful to see her true self through them.
I brushed my hands across her paneling. Across the switches, the hydraulic controls for the plasma fuel, the steering, the boosts, the comms channels. The thing with biologics was that you were still the pilot. For whatever reason, they hadn't quite gotten to the point where the brains could take over their own piloting. My personal opinion was just that their personalities lacked the ambition to. But whatever reason that was, the best pilots were still the ones that knew both their ship, and the ship's brain. And me and Rosie? We knew each other well.
As my fingers touched the brushed aluminum controls, rimmed with chitinous layers rooting them into the ship, I could feel the walls around me holding their invisible breath. "Do you know what we're doing today, Rosie?"
Her tiny panel flickered on. ...?
"We got a scrap run."
^_^
:)
^_^
Her panel flicked between various expressions of excitement. My finger quivered on the main power, holding for a moment before flicking it on. The primary electronics of the ship hummed to life, and what Rosie controlled pulsed with it. My hands moved across the main functional panels- main hydraulic plasma valve, exhaust ports open, and finally, flicking the switch the start the plasma burner.
My hands gripped the steering. The hanger's airlock doors opened in front of me. My neck length hair started to float as the station's gravity shut off. I hit the switch to unlatch from the supports above. For a moment, we hang there. The dull crackle of the idling plasma burner is the only sound that resonates through Rosie's hull.
Go time.
I punch the boost.
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