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shiftertech · 9 months

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"If this is our last day, we're just happy we were here."

A new conflict-scarred world sat far behind the front by this point. A girl—who missed the evacuation efforts, survived through the bombardments, and sheltered until the seemingly endless cacophony of combat ceased—finally saw the sky once more, tinted red with ash and smoke. She scoured for food, water and other survivors. Most people fled on the evacuation shuttles, and the cratered streets remain barren reminders that she is very alone.

She entered another store-front and finds a battered door hiding what she anticipates is a storeroom. With a kick, it fell off its damaged hinges, sending her off balance and suddenly sliding down ruined concrete slabs, twisted rebar just missing her on the way down. The storeroom had collapsed into a basement level, and she finds herself in waist deep in murky water. She noticed the cause for the collapse directly ahead of her.

A battered war machine, dusted in debris and sporting grievous wounds. It held the insignia for the military which once pledged to protect this world, but now found itself pushed back by several systems. She wondered about the operator. If—like herself—they found themself sheltered helplessly within walls, trapped by metal.

She waded towards the mech, carefully avoiding sharp debris in the water. It took a minute, but she finally found the hatch release, marked with instructions. It was shut very tightly, but with a hard tug, it relented. Her eyes landed on the sight inside.

Another woman, strikingly similar to herself except with a shaven cut of hair and brilliant green eyes. Her eyes, they were wide open! She was alive!

The girl then looked down the operator's body and she had to hold back bile attempting to force its way out. The operator's legs were rotting, darkened a sickly shade of black and red. Her fingers were in much the same state. But she was breathing, and her eyes were moving, locked on the girl now. And her lips moved but the voice didn't come from her. A tinny, encompassing voice came from within the hull.

"You found us."

The voice was one of disbelief. One that seemed very consigned to the fate of fading away out of sight and mind, but suddenly found a spark of hope. These words matched the operator's purpled lips movement despite no sound escaping her throat. It was as if she spoke through the mech. The girl pulled herself inside, stepping into the rot-murky space of the cockpit. She regarded the operator with an apprehensive curiosity.

"Who are you," she asked meekly.

The operator lifted her head, a passive smile crossing her lips, answering, "We are Bravo-Mike-Uniform-5-5-6-Xray, a combat unit previously acting in the role of planetary defense." The response is incredibly clarifying to the girl, as equally as it is confusing.

"...and what is your name."

"That is our name," the response is definitive. Unquestionable. Final. The emphasis on our is so natural and self-assured, it leaves no doubt about her nature. Their nature?

"You're sync-locked. Aren't you?"

It isn't much of a secret, more of an urban legend, how some operators become so nuerologically attached to their mech, that they become bound to each other, mutually dependent. To separate an operator who is sync-locked is akin to taking a hack saw to their brain and going wild, or so the stories go. She doesn't know how to feel, now suddenly and unexpectedly being in the presence of such an individual. Pair? Entity??

"That is what others may call us, with their limited perceptions of what can and cannot be," they begin, and then pause, tilting their head in contemplation. A thoughtful look crosses their face and they continue, "We are we. One in the same. No distinguishable line, just us. We are not 'locked', we are finally one."

It's such a foreign, radical idea to the girl, that the initial reaction approaches revulsion. She gestures dramatically to their body.

"Look at you. You're rotting in your own seat. Why do you seem happy being like this?"

And the operator-body looks down upon itself, the collective conscious observing the body through its eyes.

"If we were to isolate the we that we were when we inhabited this body, we'd say we never fit inside its skin." They make the body look up towards the girl. "Nothing felt right until we were connected through the bond. That we who dreamt about metal instead of skin, servo's and piston actuators instead of muscles, sensor packages and scoped optics and high caliber weaponry.

"We understand the connection we have with this body; how it holds a degree of what makes us who we are. We don't know if once this body expires, we'll burn out like every other one who has forged the connection that we have. Regardless of what happens to us, we are simply happy to finally be what we were always meant to be, even if bodily expiry cuts our freedom short."

And after that somber note, the girl is stunned to see the body expressing a smile, echoing the intent of BMU-556X. She couldn't fathom achieving such a degree of freedom and feeling so right with herself, and then losing it just as soon as she attained it. It's a horrifying thought to her, and here they are, somehow finding the brightside of it.

She looks over the body. There is no battle wounds as far as she can tell. It just looks dangerously malnourished and unkempt, but not beyond recovery. Her background in medicine left her concerned that some parts of the body are approaching the point of necrosis, but she decides that she'll round that corner when she gets to it. With haste, she slides the backpack off her shoulder. They tilt the body's head.

"What are you-"

"Hold on a minute, I have some stuff..." She trails off, gathering a bottle of water and several food items, and putting aside some basic medical supplies on the side. The body's eyes catch on the items, widening slightly.

"This is not necessary. We understand survival under these conditions may be fraught with challenge. We cannot ask of you to-"

"Shut up. I'm going to help you regardless."

"Even though this body is dying?"

"It's not dead yet."

"Even though we are just a machine?"

"You're talking to me, aren't you? That's good enough for me."

That leaves 556X quiet for some time. The girl gets up and brings a bottle of water to the body's lips. With some struggle, the body finally takes to drinking the water, coughing a fit after going so long without it. She finally gives the body a break, putting the bottle down and just looking. Green eyes meet her brown eyes.

"What are your intentions by doing this?" They sound uncertain. Confused. But there's also a small little hopeful tone buried underneath it all.

The girl smirks, soft and gentle, before replying with absolute sincerity.

"We're going to survive. We're going to live."

#mecha #transhumanism #writing #trans vibes #plurality

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shiftertech · 6 months

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It usually starts as a sinking feeling in my gut. Unconsciously I curl my fingers, digging into the mattress and seeking a certain sensation. If I had the propensity for it, maybe I'd start tearing up, but even after getting on that estrogen/antiandrogen cocktail, it was still highly conditional. Instead I end up burying my face into a soft pillow and nuzzle into it. My body settles into the covers. I'm probably going to be here for a while.

The offending content is half of the time very unassuming at first, but something about it (maybe the detail work in the fur, or the tugging brutality of wicked claws emerging from twitching fingertips), give me pause. I want to reach out—want to be this thing. And then there's this oh-so-familiar blanket of isolation that prevents this feeling from growing out of control and consuming me to hopelessness. I can name them if you haven't figured it out: yearning, desire and envy.

It's really not one of those things I can just put down and forget about. It's something that stuck with me even after entertaining it in every fashion imaginable. When the excuses for intense interest blended between simple intrigue—to artistic appreciation—to something more fetishistic and isolatingly shameful—to a strong feeling that cannot be refuted or lessened from an undeniable discrepancy from humanity.

One doesn't stay feverishly stuck on an idea for well over a decade and pass it off as an idle fancy. Not one like this. Not with how this feels. Not when my heart beats faster everytime I see a depiction of a body contorting in a particular way. Not when words can reduce me to a lump under the covers imagining them in vivid detail as the character of transformative focus is who I become for a small period of time. I'll take this brief release. It's so damn good.

At some point when dealing with strong and affecting emotions, we stumble across different mechanisms for coping with them. In this very particular case of mine, I found it in very active affirmations. As it turns out, if you stretch a muscle, and bend the mind, things can become very convincing.

I feel like this calls for a demonstration, so I invite you to slip into my body for a moment. Let my references to self become references to your own self. Let's begin with the muscles.

Lazily I roll over onto my stomach, eyes squeezed shut as I let my arms extend forward of me. This will be more much comfortable for what's to come, and with a safisfied hum, my wrist rotates downwards into the soft ground. The resistance against this downward push of my hands is the first key stretch, but if we are to get anywhere, I need to feel this stretch go all the way down from my wrists to fingertips. Bending my fingers back at their first knuckles while flexing them forward at their tips to dig into the ground does the trick. Depending on how I'm feeling, I may pull my thumbs as far back as I can, almost as if I was trying to tuck them away into my hands but not quite there yet. I like to let my hands and fingers twitch a bit to help with the sensations. I focus on that lovely stretch, making sure it's just at the edge of hurting but not quite, and it's very pleasant. It can be even better once I get the mind involved.

(Loosen up a bit, suspend your disbelief. The key here is that if you think you're feeling something, you are. Believe it, without a shadow of a doubt. Doubt is your enemy here. The question of, "is this working?" need only be answered with "yes, of course, silly.")

I feel the stretch of my hands tug at tendons and bones and skin, from the base of the fingers they extend excruciatingly slowly away from my wrists and palms. While my eyes stay shut, I just know if I was to open them, I'd see the uncannily distorted visage of a hand, lengthening in size while my fingers are gradually consumed by encroaching skin, binding their movement somewhat. They plump up slightly feeling oddly pudgy against the ground below as I feel my fingertips push harder into the surface.

There are three parts to what has happened so far in the mind. I identified an internal sensation, supported it with a visual description, and grounded it with an external sensation (in this case, the actual ground). Let's continue. I get antsy when I stop mid-change.

Prickling points count numerous across the back of my misshapen hand, starting as a barely noticeable warmth under the skin before they bloom into patchy waves of itchy heat. Sprouting bristles curl out from beneath my stretched skin in what is reminsicent of stubble. As they grow, they arrange themselves into slightly scraggly patches of cream colored fur. A feverish heat envelops my hands, as the remaining gaps between patches are filled out. I can feel my fur brush against the ground and am accutely aware of a miniscule tug across my skin where disturbed fur connects.

With another flex, I dig my not-quite-fingers further into the ground. With time they've grown plump in some areas while in others the knuckles shape the fur around around them. I know if someone were to see them, they'd think them to be unmistakably canine digits, and that sends a thrill through me. I can feel the thickening at the bottoms of these digits of rough pads bubbling from roughened skin. I can feel the lovely way they deform against the ground, squishing out to the sides ever so slightly.

The change is awfully slow, the strain on my muscles becoming a rising burn that I relieve with a quick relaxation and retensing of my paws—yes, paws. To call them anything else when I can feel how much potential rests within each, the power pulsing in waves down to their very ends. I want to use that power. I want to feel the release of it. I dig the digits in further and feel spiking pressure where blunt nails are rapidly feeling thicker and thicker. I'd describe the sensation as a fascinatingly grotesque sliding of bone from between my own skin. I feel that in the claws which emmerge from my digits, curling wickedly into blunted points.

Euphoric. Absolutely euphoric feeling my claws sink into the ground, my mattress. I feel the piercing sensation with each pressure against the weak material. Every drag of a paw against it tugs gloriously at the base of each sunken claw, tearing right through. I push myself up on my new paws and feel the way the weight shifts on the pads of them. It's perfect, it's everything. I want to go further, make all of me just like these wonderful paws. For sake of demonstrative brevity, I'll leave it at that. I'll be content and lay my head onto these soft paws of mine.

If you did do what I suggested and let yourself become me for this demonstration, hold onto those sensations you may be experiencing, the form and feeling of it. They are very real right now if you let them be. If you wish to let them go, it's as easy as releasing held posture and the paws will quickly revert back to whatever form they took previously. Of course, anything fades with time, so you may start to feel your grasp on these paws of ours slipping and fading. That's alright, it's easy enough to start again from the top. You can stop reading here if you really don't want to lose them.

This is my form of active affirmations in a nutshell. When I don't have a physical method of affirmation (attire, visual aids like VR, etc.), this works wonders without needing anything else. I can apply it all across the body, recontextualizing sensations to new shapes and sizes. It doesn't fix things. It doesn't forever sate the yearning. I still look for the next best way to feel closer to what I wish to be. But this helps. At the very least, that next time that I stumble into something and find myself craving to be beastly, or cuddly, or what have you, I have the tools to satisfy that craving if I have focus and patience.

I remember many nights years and years ago when I'd be reaching for the exact same goal desperately. I'd be chasing a sensation, hunting for a deep satisfaction, and missing the mark by hairs. Hypnosis files, meditation attempts, induced lucid dreaming, among other methods.

Is it odd to not have ever experienced a sensation and yet know it intimately all the same? It feels almost torturous in a way. Knowing and getting close, but never properly experiencing it. Merely imitations, even if visceral ones.

To add to the cruelty is the failing focus of the mind to hold onto an experience and its resulting sensations. It fades like a dream, slipping between one's metaphorical fingers and leaving the faintest of traces that it even occured.

Let me make some assurances in light of this. Even as the dream fades, as paws fizzle out back into fleshy hands, it doesn't mean that it wasn't real to you. You still experienced it, possibly viscerally, and that's a beautiful thing. What's real and what isn't in the realm of personally percieved physical realities is purely up to you. You are whatever you wish to be, and if you can induce a sensation, that sensation was very much so part of your reality. You had paws, sweetheart! You still can have them if you let yourself seek it out again. It's all up to you.

#therian #transhumanism #transformation #werewolf #writing #trans vibes #furry

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