- QUANTUM LILY -

Filament One

Thirsty and Lonely Lips

In a very distant future, in a very different world.

2400 Anno Domini.

"Say, are you an American? Why do you have such light, blonde hair?" asked the curious, wide-eyed kindergartner with a stunning forehead. "Is your papa American? Or is your mama American?"

The thoroughly Japanese girl glared at her intrusive and presumptuous companion, baring her two small rows of teeth. Rage flared in her.

"Get lost, dekochin!"

A shove and a punch, and then all Hell broke loose. The bruised and enraged Eriko shrieked and pulled at Sei's hair and backpack, while Sei slapped the other's face and tussled angrily against her. Little Sei was slightly stronger than tiny-tot Eriko, but the latter managed to scratch Sei's flinching eyelids and push her back roughly. Sei's teeny feet and shoes stumbled and twisted against the concrete pavement as she lost balance.

Skin stinging and ankle smarting, she rubbed her eyes wildly, staggering onto the road beside the kindergarten bus stop and swinging her fist blindly in the air.

The frantic screech of the delivery truck and the horrified honking of the shocked driver drowned out Eriko's scream of warning.

A small, fragile body was hurled into the air from the crushing momentum of the massive vehicle.

The world went black, tinged with the red lining of blood.

"Sensei! Please, please tell me she will make it through the night."

The doctor pushed up his glasses wearily. His words were grim. "I'm sorry, Satou-san. I will keep the details to a minimum, although I have to be as honest as I can bring myself to be. Your daughter's spine has been shattered at several vital areas. Her skull has been crushed. She's lost... part of her head... and her organs are damaged beyond recognition. For a small child to suffer such grievous wounds! There's no question, I would be doing you a disfavor if I didn't tell you her condition is beyond critical. Even if we could keep up her respiration and feed her by injection, in our experience she'd only remain in a vegetative state with such brain damage."

Tears stained the hospital floor. "Please, please, sensei! I'll do anything to save my precious Sei! And if this is all you can do - "

"It's not," came the reply, "but I'll need help... and permission."

The doctor reached for the phone and began to dial tersely.

"Yes, this is Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital. Can you please put me through to Lillian Academy?" The doctor's eyes shone. "Yes, it's going to be one of those requests. Perhaps it's not the first case. But this little girl's life is in danger. Surely she deserves more than the usual polite rejections. It's not about the usual outlandish demands for immortality, or even the prolongation of life. This little one's life has barely begun. Please hurry and let the Abbess know. There isn't much time."

He hung up and dialled a shorter number. "Nurse Masako?" he prompted quietly. "Please make preparations. Yes, her heart is barely beating. Every breath is accompanied by a gush of blood. She's probably go into a comatose state in ten minutes. The scientists from Lillian will be coming in about half an hour."

As the line cut, he lowered the phone and looked at the grief-stricken, terrified mother of Satou Sei, his expression sombre.

"I've given the go-ahead for my staff. I've pulled some strings and wrung permission out of Lillian Academy's headmistress," he said.

"Please, Ma'am... don't regret this."

Several years later at Lillian Academy. The beginning of the new school year

"Satou-san?"

The ebony-haired girl's hands were folded politely before her dark green uniform, and her smile was more generous than usual. "Have you considered any after-school clubs yet? If you don't mind, would you like to join me for the club fair? We were in the same group, after all."

The beautiful first-year looked at the newcomer blankly, before pausing to think. "You mean the middle school exam group?"

"I'm sorry?"

"It's been a long time since I've been called Satou-san." Sei was mindful that the other was looking at her long, waist-length tresses. "I'm more used to hearing digits, numbers, and calculations than words. It's been a while, Youko-san."

"Thank you for telling me, Sei-san," riposted Youko wryly.

"You're welcome."

They glanced at each other shyly, and shared a chuckle together.

Youko drew nearer, so that their green and silver collars were beside each other. "But according to the school handbook, we're supposed to address each other by our last names, not our first."

Sei gave a small smile. "Did you approach me because you felt excluded from our class too?"

Youko stared at her. "Not really. I get along with most of the girls just fine. I was interested in you."

Sei's smile faded. "I see. You're just a meddler. That's disappointing."

Youko's intelligent pupils twinkled. "At the risk of confirming your suspicion, I think there's something wrong with your eyes."

"Huh?"

"The light in those grey eyes don't seem to reflect moisture, Sei-san. It's too perfect, too artificial. Are they possibly not eyes, but optical sensors?"

Optical sensors?

Sei's irises - no, metallic scanners - refocused themselves on the human girl, reflecting her shock. "I don't know what you're talking about. Have you gone crazy?" she lied.

"No," said Youko softly. "I haven't, Gigantea-0001."

"How do you know that name?" growled Sei, not sure if she should be hostile, cautious, or both.

"I don't randomly approach classmates for no reason. I entered this scientific Academy through government funding. Two weeks ago I was awarded the Akihito Scholarship because I'm the excelling student in all the school's fields of science. I have a particular... interest... in robotics and android engineering. Since I'm being paid by the government, I assure you that I can be trusted." Youko's eyes shone. "In return for the freedom to do my own research about Lillian Academy's technological marvels, the sponsors of the Akihito Scholarship want me to take care of Lillian's most advanced, most prized creation. You are this school's crowning achievement. You, who embody the triumph and tragedy of humanity in a single body..."

Sei looked at Youko sharply, the carbon filaments inside her artificial, plastic eyeball whirring in near-silence. "You sure have done your research. And you mean 'maintain', anyway. You're going to maintain me. Update the software within me. Fix my loose parts. Upgrade my security system. Repower my internal reactor. All that jazz."

"No." Youko smiled again. "I meant exactly what I told you. I'm going to take care of you."

Sei swallowed her surprise at this uppity, nosy student, turning away to stare outside the sun-dappled window.

She had nothing more to say. She could think of nothing to say.

Two years later. Youko and Sei's final year

"Thank you for your hard work, Rosa Chinensis! Your work is surpassing even that of the junior professors."

"I think it already has. That's why the teachers and scientists give Rosa Chinensis the free reign she deserves! In any case, let us know if you need any more help with moving those supplies."

The final-year student with the unfashionable hairdo nodded in brief acknowledgement. "Thank you." She gave an absent wave, turning her back even before her juniors had finished talking. Uttering an aloof farewell, she turned the corner of the tektite glass wall, allowing the moving walkway to take her to the far side of the air-conditioned corridor. Prim and neat in her pleated, dark green uniform, she lifted her black shoes off the rail, and then walked towards the metal door. As she waved her hand over the unassuming sensor beside it, the door made a quiet click and slid open smoothly, revealing a white room with lockers and benches with bright lights. This was the entrance to the private common room for high-achieving students, who had the honour of mingling with the Yamayurikai's Roses and their boutons.

Sitting on one of the benches and waiting for Youko was the same beauty she approached two years back, with the same light-hued hair that now draped down to her shoulders.

Her grey optic sensors focused on the over-achieving student. Her lips, one of the only parts of her body that was still made of flesh, curled upwards.

"School's out, Rosa Chinensis?" she asked.

"Good afternoon, Rosa Gigantea," said Youko. She sighed in exhaustion and fumbled for her locker keys in her schoolbag. "Care to join me for android club?" she asked, knowing that the answer would be a no. "I could use you as a practical example for our robotics project."

"I'd prefer loafing about at the greenhouse. It's what I've always done," said the cyborg lazily, her vocal configuration so advanced that it replicated the former human's unique, organic voice - something that even Youko didn't anticipate. Research into voices was new even for Lillian Academy, and Youko had been so busy with other things that she hadn't had time to make a start in this field. "What's the point of even going to class when I can download all the teachers' notes with a thought?"

"No excuse, you skiver." Youko opened her locker door, stacking unneeded textbooks inside. Stuck on the door's reverse side was a well-kept photo of herself and her bouton, the queenly Ogasawara Sachiko. "How's the new hand?" she asked. "I've upgraded the quality of your titanium. Not only are you protected from the elements, but human-made threats too. Your first-class metal is connected by intelligent optic fibres. Powered with my central control, they can withstand any possible scenario of cyber-hacking into your brain - I mean, supercomputer. A safe supercomputer means a safe, free body. Call me paranoid, but you'll never need to worry about losing your pretty little head as long as I keep up with the latest software."

"How much of the school's budget have you blown on making me the coolest cyborg the world has ever known?"

Youko grinned. "The Akihito Scholarship is a quite a bit of money, you know. Too bad I can't spend it on shopping, but as long as it lets me do what I love, that's enough."

"What, experimenting on me and building my body parts?"

"No. I told you already." Youko smiled at Sei. "I love taking care of you the most."

The blonde beauty returned the smirk. She flexed her wrist, clenching and relaxing her fingers. "You know, this hand is way too strong. If I squeezed hard, I could probably tear through muscles and break bones. I prefer something more organic, more like flesh and blood. I've always been telling you that. What if I hurt you when I touch you?"

"In what circumstances are you going to actually squeeze me?" sniffed Youko, before realizing that she probably shouldn't have expressed it that way. Sei raised an eyebrow as they both became quiet.

"You know, dummy," muttered Sei, and her grey optics reflected conflicting data coursing through their fibres.

The top student and scientist gave her own kind of hasty snort as she pushed her bag into her locker. She closed it, looking down at Sei. She tried to speak, but for a moment her throat felt dry. The tense silence was deliciously awkward. Fine, thought Youko to herself. Perhaps she needn't have put it so starkly. After all, as one of her school's best students, Youko subscribed to the "Asimov Theory", named after a Western author who died centuries ago: that it was almost impossible for robots and cyborgs not to develop independent emotions.

Gigantea-0001 - Sei's true name after that horrific accident - was living proof of that.

"You and I both live on campus, isn't that enough?" said Youko. "Of the two thousand students at this academy, five hundred are boarders. That's why we're still here on campus, and why you're staying with me."

"Which was why," said Sei off-handedly, "I was wondering if there was any chance of you snuggling your head between my legs. Let's go beyond the usual snogging session."

Youko fell silent, annoyed at how vulnerable she must have looked as she stared at Sei.

"My sensors can detect your heartbeat quickening and your sweat glands expanding at the prospect," said Sei. "Your pupils are becoming ever so slightly dilated. Are you revolted by your desire for something half-mechanical?"

"No, no, it's not that. Perplexed, yes. In more ways than you think. Revolted?" Youko shook her head. "By no means."

"Your thoughts, your emotions, your fears - they're all the product of this jelly, gooey thing in your cranium called your brain. Is that so different from the supercomputer inside my head of metal? Or do you think I have no soul like you do?" asked Sei rhetorically. "No beating heart?"

Youko smiled defensively, crossing her arms. She forced a titter to mask her nervousness. "Soul or no, it's not that I see you as somehow different... but how disturbingly, disconcertingly similar you are to me. It's surreal."

Encouraged, Sei pressed on. "I thought we could push the boat out further, my lifelong meddler."

Youko wasn't sure when Sei had started walking towards her. By the time she noticed that she was very, very close to her, it was too late. Youko tried to wriggle out of her project's arms, but reminded herself of Sei's claim that her titanium arms were far too strong. This was, of course, a weak excuse to enjoy a guilty pleasure. A simple utterance, one command, "Standby," would have sent Sei into the equivalent of a catatonic state, into the human version of unconsciousness. In all practicality, Youko had all the power, the human had no reason to indulge her vulnerability before the cyborg. But she did. "Who could have known that you were inclined that way," sighed the scientist.

"I don't even know if I am," laughed Sei, nuzzling Youko's neck with her silicon nose. The original cartilage had been long replaced, having been crushed into nothingness in her accident. "But gender - or even biology - doesn't really have much to do with love. Don't you agree, human?"

Youko tried to think of a witty reply to Sei's philosophical musings, but all she could manage was a pleased moan.

"When are you having dinner?" said Sei quietly, letting her go after a few moments. She buttoned up her black coat, hiding her school uniform. She casually slung her backpack over her shoulder, passing by the still Youko. "I'll be waiting," she whispered ticklishly into her ear. "Same time."

Youko closed her eyes in anticipation, in longing, as Sei's shoulder brushed by hers. "Alright. You insufferable android. You win. Same time, then."

Dinner was lonely because she was a boarder, away from her parents, and mealtime with the other students often dragged on too long. They preferred to actually socialize at night, whilst a student on an Akihito Scholarship was expected to study and research well into the evening. A takeaway bento, carelessly bought from the local 7-Eleven, was a luxury as far as Youko was concerned. Usually she made do with a Nissin cup ramen, cookable in two minutes and easily finished in five, washed down with a melon soda. The only time she had anything remotely resembling a real meal was when she was eating with Eriko.

Is this the fate of all scientists and aspiring professors? she wondered to herself. To blow all their extra cash on their beloved creations and projects, leaving nothing for themselves? At least there is some meaning and logic behind such madness. I'm surprised I still don't need glasses. She promised herself to eat better when she graduated to university, and eat especially well when she moved on to doctoral studies.

Her tummy growling discontentedly at being poorly fed, Youko entered the elevator and pressed B for basement. She waited for several minutes as the silent lift took her deep underground, beneath the school building of Lillian. The sliding, silver doors gave way to her white shoes as she slipped on a white lab coat over her school uniform, which she had worn from 7am to now. She walked towards the simple door, waving her hand again. It clicked and beeped, before hissing before her. "Even boarding students don't stay in the school block after ten o'clock," she sighed. "Only for you - "

She was in a massive chamber, an oversized bunker, with a forbidding ceiling about thirty feet high. The lights were off, with only a ten feet wide and tall computer screen on the wall providing the only source of illumination. At the centre was a platform, above which dangled the crowning achievement of Lillian Academy - a saved life, a girl who was given a second chance by the wonders of this futuristic age. She had paid the price of always existing from others as somehow different. But now, garbed only in a bra and blue jeans, her eyes closed tranquilly as wires plugged her raised, relaxed arms and bare back, she seemed to be exactly what she looked like: an adorable young woman.

Youko stared up at the suspended body of her cyborg, never failing to feel awestruck.

"Only for you," she breathed.

Sei's eyes were gently closed, and Youko didn't want to wake her up - wait, no, Sei wasn't sleeping, there was no such thing as sleep for a half-robot. Just standby, power down, and turn off. Self-destruct, too, but Youko didn't want to think about that. Every student, researcher and professor who constructed robots in this academy were bound by international law to implement a self-destruct device within any being with advanced AI, in case the unthinkable happened. That had perhaps been the most uncomfortable moment of Youko's project. To put a bomb, completely under her control, inside the body of a girl who had once been human. That was the burden of someone who was assigned to an android being. Sei's guardian and protector was also the one who would determine her fate if anything "went wrong." She felt filthy, unworthy just thinking about it.

"Youko," whispered Sei, breaking into the scientist's thoughts. The pools of her opened optical sensors shimmered like lakes of quicksilver. "About time. I was bored."

Youko smiled. "Surely dinner is the most boring part of your daily schedule too, you who survive on lithium and solar energy."

"Yeah. It kind of is." Sei nodded at her suspended arms. "Bring me down."

"On second thought, it's late," murmured Youko. "Why don't you get some rest?"

"Please?" Sei fluttered her eyelashes.

The scientist sighed. She pressed a green button at the foot of the tall platform, and the dais below Sei's legs began to lower itself with a hiss, along with Sei and her extending cords. Steam issued from the platform as the green, red and blue cables affixed to Sei's back stretched and rubbed against one another. Then they wrenched themselves out of Sei's back, and her bare feet stumbled on the platform as it rumbled onto the ground. She rolled her shoulders, smiling. "You prefer me like this, don't you?" she said, moving her fingers down her half-naked torso and gesturing at her bare mid-drift.

Youko sighed. "Turn around."

Sei obeyed, allowing Youko to inspect the four openings, laid out in a square formation across her back. They exposed not only four plugs, but also a disconcerting mass of circuits inside her upper body. Youko inched closer and retrieved a small machine from her labcoat's pocket: a compact injector, powered by the limitless energy of the Sun itself. She brushed aside Sei's tresses to get at the plugs underneath the skin, sifting through her bright hair gently.

"Cold fusion," murmured Sei without looking behind her. "Weren't you scared when you realized so much of my body was fake?"

"Better artificial than nothing," whispered Youko. "Were it not for your mother's love and quick thinking, and Lillian's technology, you wouldn't be with me here tonight. I'm just taking over from where the professors left off."

Sei closed her eyes as Youko began work, inserting the machine into one plug and flipping the switch. Sei shuddered as the metal plates pressed into her body's motherboard and discharged their current. She felt her tired, slightly overheated computer systems cooling down, and Youko proceeded to the next plug, and then the next, before the procedure was completed with all four. Carefully pulling out the cold fusion injector, she closed the plugs with the hatch lids, which were the exact same colour as Sei's skin and affixed to her back. "It's done. You'll have plenty of energy for physical activity tomorrow. Best of all, you're green."

"This environment-friendly machine is more than what people put inside me," chuckled the bionic Sei quietly. "I mightn't be a human person, but I am a person."

"You're as full a person as anyone else. It's just that a normal, human life was stolen from you," disagreed Youko. "I intend to make it right, on your own terms. My precious cyborg."

Sei turned around, her knees weak, to feel Youko's arms wrapping tightly around her shoulders as she slipped down and buried her face in the human's chest. It only took one or two seconds before Sei closed her artificial eyelids and slowly gripped Youko's waist, her fingers clasping at the warm, burning human flesh and veins. Their breathing quickened together. Sinking further, she could feel the heat through Youko's uniform and white coat, through her own plastic, make-believe skin and metal conduits. At least it wasn't all fake - much of her body might have been destroyed when she was only a kindergartner, but some parts of her, like her left foot and her thighs, still grew organically, and Youko's ability to build her body in accordance with her remaining human parts was a testament to the scientist's utter genius.

Processing the mammalian being's affection was just incredible. Unspeakable. It felt too good for words.

"When will I be able to cry, like you?" sighed Sei, clutching Youko harder, although she was careful not to hurt her.

"I'll think of something, I promise," replied Youko, kissing Sei's forehead tenderly. "I can install some kind secretion dispenser inside you that activates whenever your supercomputer processes the emotion... you're... feeling now..."

"I'm sorry if it sounds fake," conceded Sei sombrely.

"No, no, no," insisted Youko almost angrily, running a comforting hand through Sei's bangs. "That you hold these feelings is already more than enough, more than what I could have dreamed of when we met, more than what I could have ever fantasized when I tended to your body and mechanical heart."

"I don't want to be alone in this miserable bunker tonight," whispered the cyborg, "not when I know you've got your room to spare."

"I know." Youko closed her eyes helplessly as Sei's lips brushed by hers. "I know. I'm breaking the rules by letting you in. But they won't touch me. I am an indispensable part of Lillian's prestige, just like you, Rosa Gigantea."

She didn't let the half-robot go for several full minutes, stroking her hair in silence as they lost themselves in each other's thoughts and wonder.

"Don't ever leave me, Sei."

Naked Sei couldn't touch this skin and flesh enough. Not that Youko wanted her to cease this exploration, this curious mapping, this inquisitive stroking that ran across her body and loose pajamas like cool rivers of spring. "I wish you'd hurry up and let me do you, already," murmured Sei, running her fingers and lips along this smooth, bare back, kissing Youko's shoulder-blade and breathing in deeply. "When will I get my first licking from you?" The human scent and warmth - it was unmistakable. It belonged to Youko, the girl who loved her.

"In good time. In good time, you'll enjoy what I let you have," whispered Youko, clutching a pillow with one hand and clasping the cyborg's artificial wrist with the other. Her eyes were lightly clenched, but she preferred looking into Sei's fake eyes when they made out. Sometimes it was fun to be a bit more playful, to just experience Sei's touch as it was. But when they gazed at each other, the game turned a bit more serious. "Sooner or later, I won't be able to resist. But I wonder to myself... what's the hurry, when I'm completely, already, all yours?"

"I'm holding you to that, okay?" Youko's bedroom was Sei's classroom, where she could take her time to relearn human anatomy and all the body parts she had lost. Oh, but Youko could still kiss her anywhere, could caress her anywhere, and her supercomputer would still overheat and fry. Sei drew back and moved down, lightly kissing that knee, those feet, and those curled toes. The virgin laughed helplessly, wriggling even as she held on tightly to her sexy cyborg. Scooping up the gasping scientist, Sei clutched Youko to her tightly, pressing her robotic body against the young human and kissing her neck with an almost fanatic devotion. Exultant Youko let out another sharp, uncharacteristic squeal, and grabbed Sei's hand, clamping it over her lips. Sei took the hint, grinning as she silenced the trembling, purring human being with a light press of her plastic fingers.

"Biological beings are so wet, so natural in their fleshly logic. I want to be like that too. To wallow in what you give me."

"I'll do my best," panted Youko, flopping down back onto the mattress as Sei gently released her. "You can already feel pain and pleasure, like any of us. But I know you're not satisfied. I'll try to make you everything you want." Her dark eyes glinted. "Thanks to you, I'm going to get panda eyes tomorrow. I'm still a student, you know. Unlike you, I don't skip classes."

"You know it was worth it."

Youko beamed in silent agreement, looking up at Sei's kind cyborg countenance. There were no questions that passed between them, no perplexed speculation on where life would have taken them if Sei hadn't suffered that early tragedy and, years later, Youko was called to care for her. Would they still have been brought together? Would they have been torn away by the matrix of theoretical alternatives and walked different ways? It all seemed to bizarre to contemplate. And in any case, just thinking about it was so baffling that it was more sleep-inducing than counting sheep.

"Good night, Youko," chuckled Sei, placing an elbow on the bed and propping up her head with one hand. She looked down at the yawning Red Rose. "Sweet dreams."

Rosa Chinensis slowly felt herself drifting off, watched over by the final wonder of the world, the last frontier of humankind in a brave new future.

A/N: Hello treasured visitor! Welcome to Quantum Lily and thank you for taking a look. Once more, another weirdo AU from weirdo me. ~(^.^)/

This AU is a soft sci-fi, where science fiction is used as a plot setting to explore emotions and relationships. Soft sci-fi is pretty much just an excuse to write about familiar things like love and sadness with a futuristic perspective. But I'm a complete beginner to "hard" sci-fi, which involves proper knowledge and research of quantum mechanics, theoretical time travel, robotic engineering, neuroscience, etc... it all makes my head spin. XD

Purists attack soft-sci-fiers for "exploiting" science fiction for their own wishy-washy stuff. That might be true and I'm not here to argue that. :P I do hope you enjoy the much slower pace, and the easygoing, fluffy, much more hopeful storyline. Thanks for reading!

NEXT FILAMENT: DAWN'S WARM LAP.