Ben tried to focus on his game, but he was having a difficult time of it. He huffed as another quarter's worth of gameplay was shot, and turned around, leaning back against the machine as he thought.
His mind was still reeling at the revelation, really. It would have been weird enough for Steve to be changed into a...what, some kind of plant-creature? Plant-girl, at that. But to find out that his friend had actually changed some time ago and hidden it...it was mind-boggling.
He'd actually been talking to a girl all this time? How long was that? A couple weeks, maybe - Steve had started acting a little quieter around then. But oddly enough, he - she - wasn't acting that much different. Aside from being a little quieter, as he supposed would be a natural reaction to suddenly changing species and gender, he had hardly noticed a difference in his friend...she wasn't acting all that feminine or anything.
But if she wasn't so affected, why was she so coy about it? Why would she hide it even from her friend? What was she afraid of? What would he be afraid of, in her shoes? (Or...well, actually she was barefoot...not that that was relevant.) If not the threat of being changed into a different person, then...what, maybe people acting like you're a different person? Treating you different? But he wasn't doing that!
...was he? He didn't think he'd intended to, but maybe she saw it that way...geez, this was all going to be so confusing to work out.
Cecilia frowned. What was going on? All she was doing was trying to make contact, but the cyborg seemed to be moving away, out of range, and he was re-broadcasting the packets with garbled contents...was something going wrong? Maybe...what, some kind of autoimmune reaction? Like if you took shoddy antivirus software and set it on "paranoid," and watched it go crazy on legitimate system processes...
Damn, she'd better cut it out. That was a long jump to a conclusion in the absence of any diagnostic information, but she knew that sometimes the most paranoid people were the ones with something to hide...and if that Effie girl had just clued him in that people knew about his behavior, that would do it, all right.
And if she was causing a problem...better not take that chance. She stopped messaging him, but...the garbage packets continued until he was fully out of range. Shit! She really hoped she didn't just kick off an illness in somebody trying to say "hello." He had moved out of wireless range, she knew, but she had no way of knowing what all had happened in the arcade...if only she could see in this form!
A thought struck her. The digital fairies, they had acted as though they could see, even though they were no more physically present than her. If they'd seen anything...suddenly she began to understand why they were considered useful. However they did whatever it was that they did out of what they were alleged to do, it seemed to have certain strengths over both true physical existence and the data-as-data world that she and other AIs inhabited when present on the Internet.
Maybe she should look into hosting one? The idea was amusing as well as intriguing, but on the other hand...she was still in the phase of being enthralled with even what her body could do - she honestly couldn't see a day-to-day need for the things a digital fairy might offer, at least not yet. And there would be issues of security clearance, and...she already had a partner.
Then again, that was probably taking things a little too seriously. But there was no rush, was there? Maybe wait and see if she even needed one, before taking on a boarder in her head. In the meantime...
"What happened?" she asked Effie. Dennis was standing nearby, not speaking, obviously trying to deal with a mix of conflicting emotions.
The young Windows ME fairy turned to her. "He was talking with the flower-girl," she said, "and he started siezing up, or something...I don't know, but there was all this gibberish coming out?"
Cecilia nodded, which seemed to saturate the pink color in her light-globe a little more. "Saw it. I think he reacted to my contact attempts...what happened to him? Is he all right?"
Effie shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "The flower-girl took him out of the building, and that's the last we saw...but he wasn't dead or anything."
The gynoid-slash-AI sighed a breath of relief. Not dead...hopefully getting better? She really hoped so.
