Binary Systems [Complete, Slice-of-Life Sci-Fi Romance]

––––––

Harry: Claire, I don't mean to alarm you, but your dad is a cold-blooded monster.

Claire: I'm sorry, he means well.

Harry: He asked me for a drink, so I got him one. He tucked a hundred dollars in my shirt pocket and then asked how things were getting on with our relationship.

––––––

November 12th, 2090, about 6:30 pm MST, Montana City

The study smelled faintly of varnish and old paper. Light filtered through narrow blinds, striping the polished chessboard in alternating bands of gold and shadow. Gordon sat across from his father, his back straight, eyes fixed on the board, though no moves had been made yet.

Hiram folded his hands, not unkindly. He didn't raise his voice. He never had to.

"I taught you chess."

"Yes, Father."

Gordon's voice was quiet, automatic. The weight of expectation already clung to his shoulders like the scratchy wool of his school uniform.

"This is chess: just calm down and think. She looks up to you. If you pay her attention, what happens?"

Gordon hesitated. Not because he didn't know the answer—but because saying it aloud made it real.

"She wonders what changed."

"Very good. So you preempt that by telling her what about herself has gathered your attention, and you select something which makes sense with this timing."

Gordon nodded, small and slow. His fingers toyed with a pawn, though he didn't move it.

"She responds with affection or attention, which I must reciprocate or respond to," he predicted.

Hiram gave the slightest inclination of his head—approval, not praise.

"Very likely. And so we branch, just as in chess. If affection, then slight surprise without rejection. If attention, then share something of yourself. What happens?"

Gordon's throat felt tight. The words still came.

"My surprise would make her think I was being open and honest, and affirm whatever beliefs she was forming. Sharing something about myself would bring us closer together and help her empathize with me, which would make future conversations simpler…"

He hesitated. Looked up.

"Dad… why do we have to do this? This is all just theory anyway. I couldn't ever do that to a real person."

There was a pause—short, but heavy.

Hiram did not sigh. He didn't frown. He just looked at his son with the same unblinking clarity he applied to business forecasts and legal clauses.

"Don't be silly. You already do this with everything you do. You just usually forget to be careful about whether you're about to hurt someone."

The silence that followed wasn't passive. It hummed.

Gordon looked at his father, fully this time. He didn't know what he was trying to see. A trace of warmth? A crack in the veneer?

There wasn't one.

Then:

"Talk to Karen," his father suggested, lightly, as though assigning homework. "She feels ignored and unimportant—and yes, it's because you're ignoring her. Ask her about her lapel pin."

The board still hadn't moved. Not a single piece touched.

And so Gordon did.

He approached Karen—awkwardly, hesitantly—and asked about the pin on her jacket. She brightened instantly. Launched into stories about the local HEMA club, about sparring sabers and bruises and armor that didn't quite fit. He listened. He nodded. He asked questions. He even laughed.

They talked again after that.

And again. He didn't have to think of the rules—their friendship was as natural as breathing.

She wasn't just Claire's friend anymore—she became his friend, for life.

And Gordon—Gordon feared his father.

Even long after forgetting how to play Hiram's game.

–––❖–––

Gordon sat on the wall, letting his legs dangle, rolling his ankle absently as the pins and needles set in. Karen sat beside him, still in her rig, joints locked in place as she leaned against the stone. For the first time in a while, it felt easy between them. The conversation flowed, smooth and familiar. The old vibe was back.

She wasn't hiding behind flirtation.

She was actually talking about things that mattered.

His foot hurt—in-game, sure, but also in real life. He complained about it, and she nodded, making some offhand comment about circulation and nerve compression. That led into the usual talk about pain perception, and from there, it was a straight shot to her cybernetics degree.

Her implant.

Her pain and neural activity detection implant—the one she had designed. The one he had written the first firmware for.

"Our baby," she called it, like she always did.

Gordon didn't think much of the work he'd done on it—he just handled UI, sensor readings, and basic firmware. He never understood the deep math behind it, but Karen did. She understood all of it. And she had never let him forget that he'd helped bring it to life.

Gordon found himself once again impressed.

She was driven. She knew what she wanted. She was going to go get it.

She knew what she cared about.

She knew what she thought would help people.

And she would pursue it with or without his help, with or without her professor's recommendation.

In some ways, Gordon knew she was much more fearless than he was.

She was invested in a dream.

A dream of preventing unnecessary pain.

Gordon didn't think it would be wasted effort, necessarily. He thought it would be applied in some small ways, and then turned to something silly

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

She was comfortable, more unguarded than she'd been so much recently.

It was nice.

He was happy to have his friend back.

–––❖–––

Claire had told him—and he had agreed—that twelve minutes wasn't very long to solve a maze.

It would have been fine.

But the homunculi had really complicated things.

Little, tiny, little things—eighteen inches tall or so, each with a blowgun.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

How dangerous could an eighteen-inch-tall creature with a blowgun possibly be?

Well.

Yes.

Yes was the answer.

Because, in fact, Harry discovered that the blowguns had a paralytic.

And it was hard to solve a maze under the influence of a paralytic.

It was hard to dodge darts coming from an eighteen-inch-tall flying adversary.

In fact, it was hard to do much at all when, having been previously hit with a paralytic, someone else kept hitting you with more doses of a paralytic.

It was starting to look a little grim.

Claire cast her first spell—fire resistance.

On Harry.

And on herself.

That's how he knew things were going pear-shaped.

The two DPS players were AWOL.

And the glass cannon and the tank?

They were setting up defenses.

"What about Marie's avatar? We can't leave it. This was a gift. It would be insulting to Gordon. It would just be wrong."

Claire dug out her grimoire. She didn't have another copy of the spell prepared—but that didn't mean she couldn't read it out of the book. She summoned a bit more power from her earrings, beginning the chant. Each chanted syllable outlined a shape in the air, writ in fire.

And then—

The Minotaur attacked. A sneak attack, a two-handed blow of his great maul into the back of Harry's head. If they were going to play dirty, so was he.

The stun mechanic was more effective because he was partially paralyzed.
The Minotaur then pinned him, just holding him down, waiting to whale on him.
Marie—or rather, Marie's avatar—was his only hope for healing. Claire was next to him, Marie's avatar was like thirty feet away.

Claire held up her hand, eyes closed—and caught the potion. She poured it in Harry's mouth even as the Minotaur struck him the next time. He wasn't going to make it, even healed.

"Harry, I didn't have a choice."

She cast Lava Field.

The floor was lava.

Everything was lava.

A roaring wave of molten rock surged across the maze floor, cooking everything that wasn't:
Fire immune
The Minotaur
Flying

Which, at the moment, meant just Gordon and Karen.

They tried to run.

It wasn't even a bad attempt, but since Gordon's foot was asleep in real life and missing in the game, it didn't go well.
Karen, faster, grabbed his arm, trying to haul him with her—

But his balance was shot, and the moment they hit the edge of the wall, Gordon just—

Tripped…

Dropped like a sack of bricks.

Karen, still holding onto him, went with him.

They hit the lava.

Burned instantly.

Lost everything.

–––❖–––

"Well, that was anticlimactic," complained Karen.

Gordon burst out laughing. He'd been prepared for Claire-bashing, or peppy 'we'll-get-'em-next-time' speechmaking—but not that. "We died in lava! That's pretty much a peak action scene to me. Goblin falls into a lake of fire with its favorite trinket type epic death."

He heard Karen's headset clatter to the floor. "I had my pain turned all the way up today," she elaborated.

"Why?"

"It helps my reflexes a little. Anyway—I'm not going to Claire's room for a while. That really hurt. Do you mind if I chill here?"

He could understand why—he was a bit pissed at Claire for her fire spell, too. That hurt. The idea of friendly fire causing real pain to one's real friends was something he and Harry had internalized early—it was a bit inevitable when learning swordplay—but something Claire had never seemed to take seriously. Hopefully, she would once Karen was through with her.

Gordon removed his own headset, only to recoil in embarrassment. Karen was halfway out of her streaming suit already, having chosen to bypass the lengthy disrobement process Gordon was following by dint of peeling herself out of her VR suit, attachments or not, zipping down from the top. That image would be burned into his brain for a while.

She giggled.

"Sorry about that," he managed, ears flaming red as he stored his own headset and chestpiece with more care than Karen had been using. "I didn't mean to—"

"—You didn't do anything wrong," she interrupted. He heard her soft padding footsteps—she must be out of her boots too. How did she do that so quickly? Warm lips kissed his cheek. "All better," she promised.

His nerves still stung from the lava bath. This was overstimulation. His entire back broke out into goosebumps.

"You could, you know," she told him mysteriously.

He felt his brows crease in confusion.

"Mmmm-hmmm," Karen hummed, seemingly to herself. The vibration of her lips was close enough for him to feel over his cheekbones. "You blush like a little school boy," she said matter-of-factly. "And you shut your eyes for real, instead of peeking. So respectful. It's like you're teasing me."

With that, she'd ghosted off into the bathroom, door closing behind her with a muted click.

–––❖–––

It was evening, after a long and draining day for Gordon, and he was running out of energy. His lanky body sprawled over the grey leather couch, his long fingers half-curled around a slice of cold pizza. Karen reclined nearby, her hands cold from the chilly temperatures he tended to prefer, keeping his sleeping form company. Her athletic form was huddled under a duvet on the opposite end of the couch, fiddling with a leftover piece of the stream setup they'd just packed up, swabbing the contact points with cleaning fluid. His feet, too long for his fair share of the sofa, ran between her and the back of the sofa, blazing with heat like heating pads as he slept.

Credits rolled on the screen in front of them. Karen suspected Gordon had dozed off sometime around the halfway mark. She had to admit that he'd come through, though. Guy promised a movie, and so they watched a movie. Bruce Willis, assassin next door neighbor. Classic. Not exactly the right vibe for what she'd been working up to while watching it, though.

Gordon looked exhausted—eyes shadowed, his shoulders slumped—and Karen considered letting him catch some real sleep, and stealing away in silence—but there was something she needed to say.

If he wanted honesty and openness… well, she'd give it a shot.

After the final beats of the song extended into silence, and the quiet had stretched out into minutes, Karen set the equipment down and shifted, leaning slightly toward him. Her stomach was doing the fluttery thing again. She paused for a moment and steeled her nerves.

She nudged him until his eyes opened, and then leaned forward to meet them. His face, which usually bore the slight frown of concentration, was relaxed first thing upon waking up. He looked five years younger.

"I've been thinking," she said. It wasn't her strongest opener ever, but she'd make do.

His gaze sharpened, coming from half-asleep to focused in heartbeats. He'd been dozing, not fully asleep, she guessed. "What about?" he asked, when she seemed to need prompting.

"You know... I just feel like we've been on the edges of something, and we could stop doing this whole will-they-won't-they dance, if you wanted." Her tone was meant to be light, but the thread of nervous energy beneath her words belied her casual delivery.

Gordon searched her eyes, visibly unsure he was understanding her correctly.

"What do you mean?"

Karen smirked faintly, her heart hammering in her chest.

"I mean, you know. This. You. Me. The part where we hang out and eat pizza and pretend we're not thinking about it."

She gestures vaguely between them, her voice softening.

"We could just… go for it. See what happens. Dance the dance with no pants, clear the air."

She waggled her eyebrows at him.

His face looked paralyzed. Stricken. She wondered what thoughts were flashing through that big brain of his.

Was she pushing too hard? She'd put this off for so long, worrying that he'd been politely declining her attentions with his seeming unawareness. Too long?

"I suppose you've been hinting at this for a while, and I'm just now hearing about it?" he asked at length, rueful self-judgment in his tone. "I must actually be blind."

She let out a small laugh, hopefully breaking the tension, and slumped back against the couch.

"Seriously," he said. "I'm sorry—sitting here with no shirt on, legs half-draped over you, and you're flirting and I'm just ignoring you, that's got to feel like mixed signals. I'm not the best at communicating, but—"

"—Relax, cowboy. I'm not trying to pressure you into anything. I just… I care about you, Gordon. I sometimes want—well. Sometimes I want more than just good company. But hanging out and eating cold pizza with you? It is good. I'm not going anywhere."

She shifted her weight, pulling herself into a closer ball, but his socked foot hooked over her knee and tugged gently at it until she relinquished, relaxing back into the semi-compacted posture she traditionally wore.

"It doesn't need to be awkward," he told her. "You've given me a lot to think about, but you're important to me, and I don't want you to feel … small. Disconnected. You look so tragic, curled up in a ball like that."

He thought about his next words carefully. She could tell from how his eyes glazed, looking slightly up and to the side. "It's just …I guess it's never been the right time."

He looked at her steadily, and she found herself nodding at the sentiment.

"And now might not be the right time either," she acknowledged. It felt like a step backwards, putting off the conversation just a bit, for just a little later. It wasn't even the first time she'd considered it—but perhaps they were closer to being on the same page now than before. Something about the weight of his foot on his knee made it feel like 'later' wasn't quite as far away anymore. She snuggled against his feet just a little more, levering herself between them and leeching off his warmth, and he quirked a crooked grin at her.

"I'm flattered," he told her seriously. There was a 'but' implied there.

She picked up the nearest pizza box and shook it lightly, the cardboard rustling. There was a blush on her cheeks, and a lightness in her gut, and the normalcy was grounding.

"How about this?" she suggested. "How about we shelve the big, scary feelings for the time being and focus on the important stuff. Like whether or not you're gonna let me eat the last slice."

There was gratitude and consideration in his eyes. His voice was perfectly normal, though, when he replied.

"It's yours. I'm not gonna fight you for it."

Karen grinned and snatched the slice from the box, holding it up triumphantly.

"Good choice."