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

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Gordon: Wait. YOU'RE MarsGirl?!
Marie: I did say you might have heard of me.

Gordon: That's…well, this may be fate. I'm Big_Iron.

Marie: Ah. Long time lurker, long time fan. I'm glad I met you this way: I would have been too shy to try talking to you in 'real life'.

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Sol 495 FY 26, 10:53 Mars Time, Bonestell Crater Colony, Hab Layer, 9.32.002.B

Marie had never quite gotten the hang of the whole streaming thing.
Mostly, it was a matter of etiquette. It was obvious enough: the page loved the video stream. You'd see commentary on the lower bar—different users chatting about something they thought was cool, people spreading irreverent or unrelated information, people hopping on just to chill, show off their favorite graphics card, or otherwise completely disrupt the flow and have to be shut down by moderators. It was its own living ecosystem.
An ecosystem within the ecosystem of gaming, within the ecosystem of the internet itself.
Everything was nested.

And everything had rules—and she knew none of them.
When does one use green text, like on ancient 4chan, versus an emoji or a meme?

You'd think that being an adult who'd grown up using the internet would make this sort of thing more obvious. But Marie had grown up without any IRL friends during those early years. When she was learning how to navigate, she was brutally honest with herself: she hadn't considered any of her fellow Martians friends until the youngest of them had turned into the oldest of them—eight or so. They were children. She babysat them.
They weren't friends. So she didn't take social cues from them.

And the problem with taking social cues from the internet is—there are so many to choose from.

So now, Marie lurked.
Gordon and his friends were streaming again. Claire still hadn't repaid Gordon or Karen for their lost equipment, and that didn't seem to matter.
Well, perhaps it mattered, but they were still gung-ho, still going to guard the caravan.

In Ghostlands, the problem wasn't just bandit activity—although, as Gordon would well know, being an ex-bandit himself, that sort of thing wasn't unheard of. It was more that a ghoul—or some other form of undead—might just be lying in the brush. Anywhere.
It was entirely possible for your ox to step on one and wake it up, and then just—boom—a random attack out of nowhere.
And if even one attacked and screamed a war cry, then all the ghouls nearby would rise and attack from wherever they were scattered.
Usually, this resulted in perfect surrounding ambushes—whatever the actual military term for that might be.

All this meant that transportation was routinely guarded.
Anything that moved and had value had guards. Usually a dozen guards. It was the only way to be safe.

Ghostlands was a simulation more than a proper RPG. It didn't have Simon, the "I-don't-know" corrupt guard who just lived at the alehouse—unless it did.

Unless, through the progress of the simulation, an AI named Simon had discovered that—with his particular situation—he could successfully accept bribes and develop an alcohol problem. It wasn't simple.
Which meant that whenever you ran into a bunch of guards on the road, they were people who would be missed.

Gordon didn't understand her fascination with the AI actors.
She really did feel attached to them.
He seemed to respect that she found their inner lives compelling, much like a Sims game.

Sometimes, she wondered if growing up alone, with only one of the AIs in the walls to talk to, had been good for her.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Obviously, the rest of the colonists were there. It wasn't like she'd been a foundling.
But at the same time, they had serious, real, big-person jobs to do—and she was so small.
And there was only one child-proof area.
So she'd spent a lot of time by herself.

–––❖–––

Karen's hand was on Gordon's shoulder.
He didn't notice.
She gave it a gentle squeeze, then walked off to do other things.

Gordon continued wrangling the bald Buddhist priest and the adjacent NPCs, getting them to arrange the carts in a double line, convincing them to allow the guards from the prison transport carriage to spread out among the grain wagons. One or two guards per cart.
Trying to build redundancy.
Trying to prevent exactly the sort of thing that usually happened when something went wrong—the sort of thing he'd, as a bandit, engineered often enough.

The back wagon gets stuck.
Gets separated.
Gets surrounded.
Then you do it again. And again.

Circling the wagons wasn't going to be possible this time—they were descending a mountain via a switchbacking road through a bamboo forest.

And the caravan was a hundred meters long.

It was just too long to traverse by foot.
Even doubling it up was honestly still too long.
But running a hundred and fifty feet was faster than running three hundred.

And shooting across that distance—if only Gordon had his guns—would have made it easier.

As the stream progressed, Marie could see their design taking shape.
Claire would play overwatch from the top of the prison transport, which, being a hollow steel cage, could provide a decent vantage. Being a mage, her coverage would be excellent.
Being Claire… well.

Not very many wizards made it to level 300, as Marie had.
Being a witch was more flexible, of course—but came with fewer powers.

She could swap any spell slot—well, slot swap any already-powered spell—for a healing spell. That was versatility you couldn't buy.
And she could cast any spell she knew, as many times as she wanted, forever.
That was longevity in the field.

To compensate, Claire had access to hundreds of spells. Marie could access four or five.

And yet Claire used Cloudkill, Lava Field, and Firebolt.

Practically nothing else.

She'd got a headdress with spikes in it—each spike being the prepared spellform of one of her favorites. A single-cast trigger. She used it as a crutch.

Marie wasn't sure Claire actually enjoyed playing Ghostlands for the combat. Or the magic.

She suspected—very much suspected—that Claire played Ghostlands because Harry was playing Ghostlands.
And she wanted to spend time with him.
Maybe sometimes camaraderie with Karen and Gordon.
Maybe not so much Gordon.

They had been getting closer over the last few days.
Marie was genuinely happy to see it.
She hadn't been lying when she told Gordon that she wanted to be close to his family.
Or rather—she wanted to give them the opportunity for closeness. And see if they tried to bite her.

Karen handed Gordon a coil of rope, which he began running between the different wagons for spacing.

Marie thought that was going to last about as long as it took to get through the tree line. Then the wagons were going to get stuck.
She predicted Gordon had probably never actually been on the defensive side of a logistics operation like this.

She thought about chatting him. But decided not to.

One of the benefits of lurking was seeing people in their natural environment. Doing natural-environment things.
Like Karen resting her hand on Gordon's arm.

Marie did not think of herself as a jealous woman.
Because she tried really hard not to be a jealous woman.

But come on.