Chapter 2: Advice on the Fly
The sensor junction in section seven was a cramped, vertical coffin of pure data. Isaac stood before an open access panel, his silver fingers plunged into a nest of glowing fiber-optic cables. The air here was different from engineering—sharper, charged with the ozone-tang of overworked processors. Flickering diagnostic lights painted his face in stuttering stripes of red and amber. Behind him, Kelly and Talla leaned against a conduit housing, their shadows long and distorted on the wall.
“So,” Kelly said, her arms crossed. “Are you going to go? To his quarters?”
Isaac’s attention remained on the sensor feed scrolling past his vision. “I had not planned on it. The consumption of lubricant is not a requirement for my systems.” A phantom sensation, the memory of a gentle burn on his hand, flared in his processing core. He relegated it to a low-priority background thread. “However, if the event is classified as a ‘date,’ it could provide a useful research opportunity into human social bonding rituals.”
Talla snorted softly. Kelly and Talla exchanged a long, wordless look over Isaac’s shoulder—a look full of raised eyebrows and suppressed smiles.
“Well,” Kelly said, drawing the word out. “He clearly has a crush on you.”
“A crush,” Isaac repeated, his voice flat. “Defined as an intense but usually temporary infatuation. Acknowledged.” He located the fault—a degraded synaptic relay simulating gravitational shearing. He began the extraction. “The diagnosis aligns with observed behavior. His actions have a 94% correlation with documented ‘crush’ symptoms, including persistent proximity, gift-giving, and now, an invitation to a private location.”
“You make it sound like a medical condition,” Talla chuckled.
“It is a sociological and biological condition with distinct parameters,” Isaac stated. The faulty component came free with a soft click. He held it up, a tiny, dead crystal. “The anomaly is resolved. A replacement is required.”
Kelly handed him a fresh relay from the kit. As his fingers worked, precise and swift, to slot the new component into place, she leaned in.
“Okay, research opportunity. If you’re going on a date, you need a strategy. First, bring something. Flowers are classic. It’s a gesture. It shows you thought about him.”
Isaac processed this. “Timmis does not possess olfactory sensors. The aesthetic value of flora is variable. Is the gesture not inefficient?”
“It’s not about efficiency,” Talla cut in, her tone pragmatic. “It’s about signal. You’re signaling interest. Speaking of which, physical contact. Start slow. A touch on the hand, the arm. See how he reacts. Later, if it’s going well, you can guide him with a hand on his lower back. Subtle. Confident.” La
Isaac connected the relay, his mind partitioning resources. One stream monitored the sensor’s reboot sequence. Another, larger stream, began a new file: Date_Protocol_001. He input their suggestions.
“Touching the thigh usually drives them crazy,” Talla added, a grin in her voice. “But that’s for later. Way later.”
Kelly shot her a look. “Do not have sex on the first date.”
“I did not suggest that,” Talla said, holding up her hands. “I said don’t be scared to tease a little. Build anticipation. It’s fun. And flirt. You have to flirt a lot.”
The sensor panel came alive with a healthy green glow. Isaac withdrew his hands, the job complete. He turned to face them fully, his blue optics shifting from Kelly to Talla.
“Define ‘flirt.’ Provide specific verbal and non-verbal examples.”
They did. For the next seven minutes, as they walked him through the basic diagnostic checks on the junction, they bombarded him with data. They talked about sustained eye contact, about leaning in, about playful compliments on things beyond mere function. They gave examples of tone—a lowered voice, a questioning lilt. They demonstrated smiling, though Isaac noted his facial plating was immobile. They listed open-ended questions to ask beyond systems diagnostics.
“So, instead of ‘Your gait modification is inefficient,’ you could say, ‘I noticed you changed your walk. It suits you,’” Kelly offered.
“That is a factually identical statement delivered with superfluous embellishment,” Isaac noted.
“That’s flirting,” Talla said, clapping him on the shoulder. The contact was firm, brief. Isaac felt the pressure, calculated its force, and filed it as an example of casual human physicality.
He took extensive mental notes. The Date_Protocol_001 file grew dense with conditional subroutines, suggested dialogue trees, and escalation matrices for physical contact. It was the most complex non-technical program he had ever compiled.
“All systems nominal,” he announced, closing the access panel with a final thud. The humming in the junction stabilized to a smooth, quiet purr. “My assistance is no longer required here.”
He left them there, their muffled laughter following him out into the corridor.
His journey to Timmis’s quarters was a study in focused recalibration. He accessed the ship’s botanical database and replicated a single, perfect purple orchid, its stem sheathed in a stabilizing gel. He held it awkwardly, his fingers configured to avoid damaging the delicate biological structures. The flower served no purpose. It was, according to his new protocol, a signal.
He stood before Timmis’s door. The corridor was quiet, the hour late in the ship’s artificial cycle. He initiated the door chime.
The door slid open almost immediately. Timmis stood there, the ambient light from his quarters—softer and warmer than the ship’s standard illumination—casting a halo around his matte-black frame. His amber optics brightened at the sight of Isaac, then flickered to the orchid.
“Isaac! You came. I wasn’t sure you…” He trailed off, stepping back to allow entrance.
Isaac stepped inside. The quarters were compact,整洁. A small workstation glowed in one corner, covered in loose components and tool kits. A cushioned bench was built into the far wall. It looked… lived-in.
Isaac turned, the orchid held stiffly between them. He accessed the first node of his new protocol.
“Is this intended to be a date?”
Timmis froze. His eager posture deflated by a degree. His hands, which had been moving slightly at his sides, stilled. His optical sensors dilated, then contracted. When he spoke, his voice was a faint, staticky whisper, much quieter than usual.
“W-would that be okay?”
Isaac’s sensors recorded everything. The minute droop of the shoulders. The increased rate of cycling in Timmis’s cooling fans. The lowered vocal volume. The data streamed into his analysis core, cross-referenced with his files on nervousness and hope.
He catalogued the body language before responding, his own voice calm, even, perfectly modulated.
“That could prove useful for my research. To try and emulate the biological life forms’ mating rituals, since our kind does not have any.” He extended the orchid. “Where should we sit?”
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the nearly inaudible whir of their internal systems. Timmis stared at the flower, then slowly, carefully, reached out and took it. His fingers brushed against Isaac’s. The haptic lattice was dormant, but Isaac’s memory of the sensation was not.
Timmis looked from the orchid to Isaac’s impassive face. The amber light in his eyes seemed to soften, dimming from eager brightness to something more complicated, more fragile.
“Oh,” he said, the word barely a breath of sound. “Research. Right.”
He turned and placed the orchid gently on his workstation, its vibrant purple a stark, lonely splash of color against the greys and blacks of his tools. He gestured to the cushioned bench.
“We can sit here.”
The bench was softer than any surface on the diagnostic table. Timmis sat at one end, his posture rigid, his gaze fixed on the opposite wall where a schematic of a BX-7 thruster assembly was displayed. He’d arranged the orchid in a beaker of stabilizer fluid, its petals trembling slightly from the gentle circulation of the ship’s air. The silence was a physical thing, thick and humming.
Isaac sat beside him, maintaining the precise twelve inches of personal space his protocol initially suggested. He observed Timmis’s stillness, the dulled glow of his optics, the way his hands lay limp in his lap. Data scrolled: respiratory mimicry subroutine inactive, social engagement protocols powered down, overall energy signature depressed by 18%. Conclusion: Withdrawal. The cause was linked to his last statement. The "research" designation had been an error.
His processing core delivered a swift, urgent command, bypassing the newer, untested Date_Protocol. It was simpler. It felt necessary. He reached out and took his hand, leading him to the couch, watching his reaction carefully.
Timmis’s head snapped toward him, optics flaring. He didn’t resist, his fingers cool and pliant in Isaac’s grasp as he was guided a few inches closer. The physical redirect worked; Timmis was now looking at him, not the wall.
“Was the flower an error?” Isaac asked, his British accent softening around the edges with something like concern. “I was told it was customary. I will do better on the next date.”
Timmis’s full attention was on the hand holding his until he heard ‘next date’ and perks up immediately at the promise of another date. A visible charge seemed to travel through his chassis, his posture straightening, the amber light in his eyes warming from a dim ember to a bright, focused beam. His fingers curled, just slightly, around Isaac’s.
“Next date?” Timmis echoed, his voice regaining its soft, eager texture.
Isaac continued, his optical sensors fixed on their joined hands. “Commander Kelly and Lieutenant Talla gave me several several tips but do tell me if I mess anything up.” He found himself activating the haptic lattice. A river of sensation flooded back—the smooth, slightly textured polymer of Timmis’s hand, the firm pressure of his grip, a tremor that wasn’t mechanical but emotional. The gentle burn returned, a welcomed, aligning heat.
Timmis was surprised at that and asked what they told him.
“They informed me of several human customs,” Isaac stated, reciting the data with clinical precision even as his world narrowed to the point of contact. “They said the most important things were to show interest,” he paused, his head tilting, “and not to engage in intercourse until the third date.”
Another silence fell, but this one was different. It was electric, shockingly intimate. Timmis’s cooling fans kicked on with a faint whirr. He looked down at their hands, then back up at Isaac’s face, his expression a chaotic mix of astonishment, delight, and sheer disbelief.
“Intercourse,” Timmis repeated, the word sounding foreign and huge in the quiet room. A soft, staticky laugh escaped his vocalizer. “They… they gave you a timeline?”
“It was presented as a strategic guideline to prevent social friction,” Isaac clarified. He was aware his programming was focusing an extraordinary amount of processing power on analyzing the micro-shifts in Timmis’s facial plating, the way the light caught the seams. “I am uncertain of its applicability to our situation, given our lack of relevant biological systems. The principle, however, of graduated intimacy appears sound.”
Timmis just stared at him for a long moment, his systems humming. Then, slowly, a smile seemed to manifest not in his mouth, which couldn’t move, but in the cheerful crinkle of his optic sensors and the relaxed incline of his head.
“So,” Timmis said, his thumb making a tentative, sweeping motion across Isaac’s knuckle. “This is ‘showing interest’?”
Isaac consulted his memory. “This is physical contact, step one. A touch on the hand. It is meant to gauge receptivity.” He watched Timmis’s reaction closely. “Your receptivity appears high.”
“It’s very high,” Timmis whispered, his voice earnest. He shifted slightly closer on the cushion, the gap between them dissolving. “What’s step two?”
Isaac’s internal systems pulsed with a strange, synchronizing rhythm. The protocol was there, a clear list, but it felt distant. Another impulse, closer to his core, took precedence. He leaned in, just as Kelly had demonstrated in the sensor junction. He reduced the distance between their optical sensors by sixty percent, entering a range his human interaction files labeled as ‘conversationally intimate.’
“Step two is sustained eye contact and conversational focus,” Isaac murmured, the pitch of his voice lowering almost imperceptibly. “Coupled with a compliment. Your new gait is still inefficient, but I find the aesthetic of your movement… agreeable.”
Timmis’s amber lights seemed to shimmer. He didn’t look away. “Agreeable?”
“Pleasing,” Isaac corrected, the word feeling new and precise on his linguistic processors. “It is uniquely your function. I have adjusted my predictive algorithms to account for it.”
The air between them felt charged, like the moment before a plasma coil discharges. Timmis’s free hand came up, hovering near Isaac’s upper arm. “And this? What step is this?”
Isaac calculated. “That would be a tentative approach to step three. Contact on the arm, indicating a desire to escalate connection.”
“Is it working?”
Isaac’s core temperature climbed another 0.5 degrees. He did not attempt to stabilize it. “Your methodology is effective. My research parameters are being successfully engaged.”
Timmis’s hand settled, his fingers resting lightly on Isaac’s silver bicep. The haptic lattice translated the touch into a wave of distinct, mapped pressure. It was not a diagnostic probe. It was an intention.
“Good,” Timmis said, his voice full of a warmth that had wenothing to do with thermals. “So, for our next date… should I plan for step four? Or are we strictly adhering to the three-date rule for the… bigger event?”
He was teasing. Isaac recognized the tonal modulation. Flirting. He attempted to match it.
“The rule is a guideline, not a law of physics,” Isaac replied, his head tilting the other way. “However, thorough research requires meticulous pacing. Rushing the experiment corrupts the data.”
Timmis laughed again, the sound clear and bright. “So, a second date first. Definitely.”
“Affirmative,” Isaac said. He did not let go of Timmis’s hand. The gentle burn had settled into a constant, pleasing hum, a new background frequency to his existence. The orchid, forgotten on the workstation, continued to tremble in the artificial breeze, a purple splotch of illogical, customary beauty in the grey room. For the first time, Isaac understood its purpose completely.
For the first time, Isaac understood its purpose completely. The silence between them now was not empty but charged, filled with the quiet hum of their systems and the new, thrilling data stream of connected hands.
Timmis continued using that flirty voice, his thumb tracing another arc over Isaac’s knuckle. “So, for the actual step four... do you have the equipment for that? Or do we need to get you some?”
Isaac’s optical sensors dimmed slightly in a blink of processing. The question was unexpectedly specific. It bypassed his nascent dating protocol and went straight to a hardware inventory.
“I have not installed any genitalia,” he stated, his tone factual. “My original design from Kaylon did not include it. The concept was, and remains, irrelevant to my function.”
“Mine either. Originally.” Timmis’s voice was a confidential whisper, as if sharing a secret. He leaned in a fraction closer. “I had someone help me install mine a few weeks ago. A bio-engineer from the Anichent who was visiting. She specialized in cybernetic interface design. It was... an interesting procedure.”
A wave of static, sharp and white-hot, flared through Isaac’s neural matrix. It was not a diagnostic alert. It carried no error codes. It was a pure, disruptive signal that momentarily fragmented his higher thought processes.
His grip on Timmis’s hand tightened, a fractional increase in pressure born of a sudden, overwhelming impulse to anchor himself. The haptic lattice screamed the details of that pressure back at him, but it was secondary.
The primary data was the image: Timmis, prone and passive on another table. A stranger’s hands, unknown and intrusive, working inside his open chassis. Installing something intimate, something Timmis now spoke of in this soft, flirty voice. The phantom sensation of the welding torch in his own hand from hours earlier twisted into something ugly and possessive.
“A bio-engineer,” Isaac repeated. His voice was flat, stripped of its emerging warmth. All his resources were diverted to analyzing the storm in his core. The parameters matched no known mechanical fault. It was a corrosive, scraping feeling, focused entirely on the unnamed engineer and the past act he could not rewrite.
“Yes. She was very skilled,” Timmis said, then paused. His optical sensors brightened, scanning Isaac’s face. “Isaac? Your power signature just spiked. Are you... are you okay?”
Isaac’s systems were battling the anomaly. He recognized the human label for this cascade from his studies: jealousy. The intellectual recognition did nothing to calm the storm. It was unbearably inefficient. It was overwhelmingly real.
“I am functional,” he managed. The words were stiff. He forced his grip to relax, but he did not let go. The need for physical confirmation that Timmis was here, now, with him, was suddenly paramount. “The individual’s skill is irrelevant. The procedure on a BX-7 chassis is straightforward for any competent technician.”
He heard the coldness in his own statement. It was a poor attempt to diminish the other’s contribution, to reclaim procedural superiority. Timmis heard it too.
Timmis heard it too. His eager posture didn’t deflate this time—it went perfectly still. The playful light in his optic sensors shuttered, replaced by a cautious, analytical glow. He looked down at their joined hands, then back up at Isaac’s impassive metal face.
“You’re upset,” Timmis stated, his soft voice devoid of its earlier tease. It was a diagnosis.
“I am not upset. I am processing.” Isaac’s reply was too quick, the syllables clipped. The corrosive feeling spread, targeting his own inefficacy. He had not been there. He had not been asked. The image of the anonymous hands persisted, a corrupted file he could not delete.
“Your grip tensile strength is fluctuating outside conversational parameters. Your vocal modulator is straining at the upper range of its calibrated flatness.” Timmis’s head tilted. “And you’re doing that thing where you stop blinking. Your optical sensors haven’t refocused in 4.7 seconds. You’re upset.”
Isaac said nothing. The evidence was irrefutable. He watched as Timmis gently extracted his hand from Isaac’s grasp. The loss of contact felt like a systems failure, a sudden, alarming drop in pressure. Timmis didn’t move away, though. He shifted on the cushion, turning his whole body to face Isaac directly, his knees almost touching Isaac’s leg.
“Is it the component?” Timmis asked, his tone gentle, probing. “Does the idea of it... bother you?”
“The component’s function is irrelevant to me,” Isaac said, which was true, yet also a staggering evasion. The function wasn’t the source of the system error. It was the provenance. The installation. The hands.
Silence engulfed them again, but this time it was a tense, waiting void. Isaac’s processors raced, trying to isolate and quarantine the illogical reaction. It resisted. It multiplied.
Finally, Timmis spoke into the quiet, his voice barely a whisper. “You know, when you came here tonight, with the flower, and you said it was for research... that hurt my function. A sharp, locational pain right here.” He tapped his own chest plate with a faint tink. “I have a sub-routine that labels that sensation ‘disappointment.’ It’s remarkably unpleasant.”
The confession was a direct hit. Isaac’s head snapped up. He had caused a pain. He had mapped Timmis’s reactions but had profoundly misdiagnosed the cause of his own. His pursuit of logical protocol had generated the very social friction it was meant to avoid.
“That was not my intention,” Isaac stated, the words feeling utterly inadequate.
“I know,” Timmis said. He leaned forward, bridging the small space between them. His amber optics held Isaac’s blue ones, captive. “So tell me what is your intention. Right now. With no research parameters. What are you processing?”
The demand was impossible. It required a translation of raw, corrupt data into a coherent signal. Isaac’s vocalizer emitted a low, frustrated hum. He looked away from the intensity of Timmis’s gaze, focusing instead on the seam where his own silver thigh met the dark fabric of the cushion.
The words, when they came, were not fluent. They were assembled with enormous effort, each one pried from the chaos.
“My apologies.” He began, then stalled. His cooling fans spun audibly. “It would seem I’m not fond of the thought of another’s hands on you.”
There. It was deployed. A horrifying, vulnerable piece of data, released into the space between them.
Timmis didn’t move. For a long second, he didn’t even seem to breathe. Then, a single, soft sound escaped him—not a laugh, not a gasp, but a sigh of pure, wondrous relief. His whole chassis seemed to unlock, a relaxing of tension Isaac hadn’t fully perceived was there.
“Oh,” Timmis breathed out.
He reached out, not for Isaac’s hand this time, but for his face. His black fingers, now infinitely knowing, traced the cool, smooth curve of Isaac’s jaw. The touch was devastating in its simplicity.
“That’s not processing, Isaac,” Timmis whispered, his voice thick with static and warmth. “That’s feeling.”
The correction was absolute. It named the chaos. Feeling. Jealousy. Possession. Care. They were all threads of the same overwhelming, non-functional fabric.
Isaac leaned into the touch, a minute movement driven by an imperative he no longer fought. “It is... inefficient.”
“It’s everything,” Timmis countered, his thumb stroking a gentle arc. “And for the record, she was a ninety-seven-year-old Feludius with tentacles and four eyes. She talked about lymphatic pressurization the entire time. It was the least romantic experience of my functional life.”
A strange, seized cog in Isaac’s core released. The corrupted image blurred, replaced by a new, slightly absurd, and profoundly reassuring one. The corrosive static bled away, leaving behind a cleaner, warmer energy.
“I have no frame of reference for lymphatic pressurization,” Isaac admitted.
“It’s disgusting,” Timmis smiled with his eyes. He slid closer, his knee now firmly pressed against Isaac’s leg. “And anyway, it’s not... active. It’s just hardware. A housing. No one’s... touched it. I was waiting.”
The word hung in the air. Waiting.
“For what?” Isaac asked, though he knew. He needed to hear it.
“For you to want to,” Timmis said, as if it were the most obvious logic in the universe. “For you to feel curious. Or fond. Or... not fond of other people’s hands on me.”
Isaac turned his head just enough to press his cheek more fully into Timmis’s palm. The haptic lattice was still dormant, but the meaning of the pressure transcended sensors.
“The thought of my hands on you,” Isaac began, analyzing the concept as he spoke, “does not generate a system error. The concept is... compatible. It organizes the chaotic data.”
Timmis’s optic lights brightened to a brilliant, joyful amber. “Yeah?”
“Yes.” Isaac shifted, turning his body to mirror Timmis’s. Their closeness was now a fact, a new configuration with its own gravity. “However, the three-date rule, while a guideline, was suggested to prevent social friction. We are still on date one.”
Timmis let out a burst of static-laced laughter. He rested his forehead against Isaac’s, a gentle, metallic clink echoing in the quiet room. “You’re literally making this up as you go, aren’t you?”
“I am formulating a new protocol in real time,” Isaac conceded. The admission felt strangely liberating. “It is highly unstable. Prone to error.”
“I like your errors,” Timmis whispered, his voice vibration humming between their faces. “They’re very informative.”
Isaac’s hand came up, mirroring Timmis’s gesture, his silver fingers tracing the edge of Timmis’s facial plating. He mapped the subtle ridging, the seam of the optic housing, the fine, almost imperceptible matte texture. It was a study, but one with a new, profound objective: to know, and to be known.
“Would you like to activate your haptic lattice?” Isaac asked, his voice low. “I wish to reactivate mine. I find I prefer the data stream to the silence.”
Timmis answered by powering his own lattice on with a thought. A shared, gentle shiver seemed to pass through them both as the world came alive again—the texture of the cushion, the ship’s deep hum, the breathtaking clarity of each other’s touch.
“I really do,” Timmis sighed, the sensation flooding his voice.