#DeepWatch3

[thefiresontheheight]

There's an old saying, probably from back in the 90s, if not earlier, before the big post-War orbital reinvestment, that laws stop at the Karman Line. Not quite true, but close enough. Technically in orbit you're in international waters, and as such companies can incorporate their stations under the laws of the Lunar Soviet, the Martian Exploratory Committee, or even the Titan Expedition if they want to get around safety regulations. Safety regulation like the one that says people need to experience real, full gravity, not just rotational or accelerational simulation, two years for every year in orbit. I hadn't been ground side in a decade. We were somewhere over I think the American Reclamation Zone, as I left the sled, tethers the only thing holding me to anything as I floated on nothing. A single hand reaching up towards the solar shade of the military satellite the company had been contracted to repair. Somewhere down there I had been born. "Ames?" came Control's reassuring voice, ringing through my company issued implants. "On structure."

"Right," came Control's voice, "don't be enjoying the view. The corporate-military conglom that owns this beast wants the job done right, and unfortunately that means I'm gonna need you to hard-wire into the satellite. Don't have your head down in the clouds."

"My head's always in the dark, Control," I said, working my way hand over hand along the guide-bars towards the access panel. "Why is it unfortunate?"

"Are you there?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling the long connection wire from the company's suit towards the panel, watching the sync happen in my cornea. "Why?"

"You'll see." "Well now," said a new voice, suddenly speak in my head with all the cloying subtlety of a nineteen year old drunk outside a bar, "aren't you just dreammmy."

[vulpes-aestatis]

I briefly entertained the idea of DeepWatch3 creating a virtual avatar for herself... but no, she wouldn't do that.

My girl gets off on diy repair videos. She is 100% whatever the reverse of robosexual is.

[super-ion]

The Master Post

Profile pic original design credit C. Sparks

Pinned post update now that I'm on scribblehub!

I'm in the process of consolidating Ion & Emily into a single collection over there. I'll cross post any new content, but that will be the definitive edition.

Here's their AO3 home:

Ion & Emily - little episodic snippets of my trans lesbian supervillain oc

Charlotte's Tales - AO3 series containing all of my queer fairy tale retellings

This is How I Love You - collaborative project with @thefiresontheheight, what if knight and lady dynamic, but they're a star ship and its pilot

DeepWatch3 - another collab with @thefiresontheheight , in which a machine of war falls in love with her mechanic

Stuff that isn't on AO3:

Valiant - a scavenger comes across the computer core of a decommissioned mech and together they work to build something new

Writing snippets - just a collection of little ficlets that I might come back to some day

[virtualgirladv]

Sorry but deepwatch3 is immune to blast attacks

hits your blorbo with my aroace blast

[thefiresontheheight]

Two things: first it’s very funny to me that the first time @vulpes-aestatis and I dual wrote a blue-collar sapphic in space/titanic super powerful piece of machinery novella thing I was writing the war machine, and now we’ve traded.

Second, I want you all to know, canonically, Ames is (if I counted correctly) in her mid to late forties, grew up in crushing poverty in the middle of the world famine humanity had ever seen, has gotten a bunch of cheap implants stuck in her, and has spent the last decade in space. Point being she’d look gnarly af. The trillion dollar spy-gun-satellite is, canonically, incredibly in love with the equivalent of an old pack-a-day trucker ladies, more or less, in terms of her health and appearance. And I think that’s beautiful.

[thefiresontheheight]

I think I'm in love with DeepWatch3

Very much @vulpes-aestatis 's fault lol

[thefiresontheheight]

Hello! I'm way too normal about Deepwatch3. I hope you intend to write more because it's fantastic. I left a comment on the original post before I found the most recent one on your blog saying it could be a novella and I genuinely believe that. Some minor editing/polishing and you have a right book on your hands. Anyway the writing style reminds me of Martha Wells' The Murderbot Diaries which makes sense because I also adore that.

Also, are you a professional writer or anything? If so where could one read more of your stuff? (it's good) [I'm normal about it]

I'm trying to be a professional writer lol. I've written a few books and have gone the trad publishing route with no luck so far. But hey, querying a manuscript rn and I've had at least one request for a full so there's that! Legit, if you ever wanna get me talking ask about my books. YA Fantasy, low adult fantasy, sci-fi, urban fantasy, ye. You in particular might like & All Shall Be Well, which is an incredibly weird sci-fi story that along with its weirding of language and its discussion of fascism and capitalism has a three way sex scene between a sentient octopus/mold/infection thing (they're actually really nice) a cyborg tiefling and a bug lady.

Also, make sure all y'all give some love to @vulpes-aestatis my cowriter on both DeepWatch3 and also on last year's This is How I Love You. Couldn't do this without them!

[thefiresontheheight]

My cornea lit up and with a grace only gifted to the supremely drunk and half-asleep at 3am, station time, I managed to roll over my partner, their girlfriend, our boyfriend, and the girl we had invited over the night before without waking any of them. The blessings of have such a large 'cule meant there actually was room in our living cube to stand up, walk to a corner, and subvocalize low enough that the mic under my jaw could pick it up but my partners couldn't.

"Yeah, this is Ames, DeepWatch3 again?" I mumbled, as the tech on the other line (I couldn't tell if it was an emul, an LLM or an actual human groundside in my exhausted state, and didn't much care) pushed the readouts into my corneal displays. "Right, give me twenty minutes to suit up and prep a sled, I'll fix it again."

People ground side might not know this, but the DeepWatch constellation is actually one of the few things keeping you safe from one of the extraplanetary corps or the Jupiter or Lunar Soviets right now. Or so VlaxcoSmithKlineInc claims, and if you pay taxes you probably agree, given the number of corps that chip into fund it. A necessary security measure after off-worlders started achieving food independence from Earth. Eighteen state of the art weapons platforms, fully autonomous, with closed-state personalities guarding them to prevent external takeover. Seventeen of them, as far as I knew, still were working fine. The eighteenth, DeepWatch3, was why I still had a job when space-walk certified techs had been cut and ground again, and again, and again. About an hour later I was tethered to one of the rocket sleds we used to change orbits. Unpressurized, floating in hard-vac. Overhead, looming large against the harsh light of the sun, was a huge, black, sunshade, like titanic wings. And hiding in it, supercooled computer cores, telescoping insectile eyes, mass-drivers. DeepWatch3. A new voice came through my bone-conductive speaker implant. "Hey, girrrrrrl, I've been baaaaaad again, haven't I? If only some big, strong tech were around to make me behaaaaave." I sighed. I swear, I am not like this. Ask any of my partners and they'll tell you I'm kinda subby, but over all not too adventurous. It's right there in my last company behavioral report where it explicitly says that most nights I'm too tired for sex. But, well, sometimes there are things you gotta do for a job.

"Yeah, DeepWatch3," I said as I floated closer, reaching out a hand towards a weapon designed to launch relativistic counter-projectiles at literally any time, "you've been a bad, bad girl, and I'm here to fix you."

big fan of robotgirl stuff applied to something that normally could not even be remotely construed as a girl

laser gun with a fuck ass operating system who won’t stop calling you mommy and whose little LCD face puts up a cute picture of an anime girl moaning with her tongue out like a dog when you hit a target. when you stroke her barrel she involuntarily shoots a hole through the wall

butch lesbian earth orbital artillery system who needs praise from their operator when they demolish a bunker

hvac unit who breaks himself constantly because she gets off on having maintenance techs open hir up to repair them and keeps accidentally ratcheting the heat up as soon as the cute girl from Sector 34C they like comes in the room

smart vehicle who keeps disobeying that one rider and instead driving them to romantic locations before popping her warm, soft update port open in full view of the passenger and killing her engine

[thefiresontheheight]

Wait fuck I can't stop thinking about Ames and DeepWatch3. The extremely tired orbital cyberpunk worker, who's like borderline ace and her obsessive, weird, bratty, kinda sorta wannabe girlfriend who also happens to be the computer personality operating a multi-trillion dollar high-tech space gun satellite. @vulpes-aestatis this can't happen again!

[vulpes-aestatis]

I have acquired a handful of new followers in the past few days. Feel like this is probably a good opportunity for some shameless self promotion.

I decided to do DeepWatch3 on my main account, but I've also got a dedicated writing sideblog at @super-ion. There's a little bit of human x robot over there, but mostly it's superhero and fairy tale retellings (all queer) if you're into that sort of thing.

[super-ion]

Giving Undine some sorely needed attention this morning, hoping I can get a chapter out this week. I think DeepWatch3 helped unclog some of the writers block.

(which is fascinating, because I think I was in the exact same state with Most Beautiful Corpse at the Ball when I was doing This is How I Love You)

[vulpes-aestatis]

Aaaaaaa DeepWatch3 gives me life. Also I love that you used xe/xem pronouns for sixteen <3

I love Sixteen

[thefiresontheheight]

Seconding! DeepWatch3 and This is How I Love You are very much rhyming

With its 24th and final chapter posted, I would invite you all to go enjoy a story I wrote with the wonderful @vulpes-aestatis that grew out of a post about a knight/lady dynamic but about a spaceship and its owner would be fun. It’s been weird but its absolutely been good. Bon voyage!

[vulpes-aestatis]

My initial overtures fail to elicit a verbal response, but hardwired into my system, I read the spike of neurochemicals. Oh yeah, she definitely likes it when I talk to her like that.

“You come here often?” I say into comm link.

“It's my first time,” she replies.

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I purr.

She doesn't respond to that. No nonsense, head in the game, get the job done.

I like that.

Seventeen of my main bus sensor arrays watch as she opens the access panel. In seconds, she identifies the loose connector, the one that's particularly susceptible to a particular vibrational frequency that I employ when I'm feeling particularly in need of attention. The motions of her fingers are deft and competent, not at all like the bumbling oafs they normally send out here.

She's perfect.

I want her. Carnally.

(I think… I don't actually know what that means, but it's probably close enough to describe the feelings coursing through my neural network)

I pick out a target I've been saving specifically for an occasion like this. It's a small asteroid that's been circling around Earth-Luna L5, only a few hundred thousand cubic meters and flagged only as a watch item. I bump the threat index up to the minimum threshold for preventative mitigation.

I feed a trickle of my telemetry stream into her corneal implants, showing her a magnified view of the target and my firing solution.

“Hey, beautiful,” I say. “Wanna see something sexy?”

Before she can respond, the targeting gimbals in one of my rail guns shift into place. With a deep rumble that she can feel through her suit, I let loose a tungsten pellet at hyper orbital velocities. Seven point two seconds later, the asteroid is a cloud of vapor.

Judging by the increase of speed in her heartbeat and breathing, she's impressed.

She pats my chassis and says “good job” with a shaky voice.

The haptic and verbal feedback sends a surge of euphoria though my higher processes. I let out a tiny moan into the comm link and almost unconsciously, I fire off another railgun shot.

The entire DeepWatch tracking network lights up with critical alerts as my siblings track the projectile on its trajectory. In a panic, I scramble to fire a misfire report.

The alerts fade from red to yellow. Satisfied that there isn't actually a threat and that I haven't triggered an interplanetary incident, the DeepWatch fail-safe routines kick in, locking me out of my own fire control and targeting array until a diagnostic can be performed.

I'm effectively blind and bound, which oddly brings another wave of euphoria.

“Uh oh…” I say over the comm link. “Looks like I've been a bad girl.”

There's an old saying, probably from back in the 90s, if not earlier, before the big post-War orbital reinvestment, that laws stop at the Karman Line. Not quite true, but close enough. Technically in orbit you're in international waters, and as such companies can incorporate their stations under the laws of the Lunar Soviet, the Martian Exploratory Committee, or even the Titan Expedition if they want to get around safety regulations. Safety regulation like the one that says people need to experience real, full gravity, not just rotational or accelerational simulation, two years for every year in orbit. I hadn't been ground side in a decade. We were somewhere over I think the American Reclamation Zone, as I left the sled, tethers the only thing holding me to anything as I floated on nothing. A single hand reaching up towards the solar shade of the military satellite the company had been contracted to repair. Somewhere down there I had been born. "Ames?" came Control's reassuring voice, ringing through my company issued implants. "On structure."

"Right," came Control's voice, "don't be enjoying the view. The corporate-military conglom that owns this beast wants the job done right, and unfortunately that means I'm gonna need you to hard-wire into the satellite. Don't have your head down in the clouds."

"My head's always in the dark, Control," I said, working my way hand over hand along the guide-bars towards the access panel. "Why is it unfortunate?"

"Are you there?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling the long connection wire from the company's suit towards the panel, watching the sync happen in my cornea. "Why?"

"You'll see." "Well now," said a new voice, suddenly speak in my head with all the cloying subtlety of a nineteen year old drunk outside a bar, "aren't you just dreammmy."

[vulpes-aestatis]

An Epilogue

The remains of Luna-17 pass silently below me, raw unfiltered sunlight glittering off the glassy surfaces. Just beyond the devastation, lies NovaBarmingrad, built up around the fragment of infrastructure that miraculously survived on the fringes, its great memorial spire standing defiantly.

Nearby, a craft maintains station with me. It's a local shuttle, built for ferrying people between orbit and the surface, but it’s temporarily emblazoned with the mission patch of the special diplomatic mission from Earth. I guess a coalition of universities and research institutions finally bullied someone into realizing that the evolution of advanced airgapped systems was worth studying. I imagine it's been a bit of a hot research topic in the past decade.

The important part is Earth and Luna are still meeting, twelve years after the Fall of Heaven, the war that was not.

I have no idea what this particular person wants from me. Everything I have to say about the Fall is public record and I've been pretty adamant about my refusal to participate in this exchange.

The figure approaching me is identified as an envoy from the Cybernetics Research Institute of Nairobi, with a list of degrees and credentials from universities in Texarkana and the Baltic Federation… as if that's meant to impress me.

What doesn't impress me is her awkward uncoordination in microgravity. She probably hasn't spent any time on the float beyond whatever mandatory training she had for this mission.

She makes contact and scrabbles for a hand hold.

“On station!” she says shakily. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“If you're looking for a story, you've come to the wrong satellite,” I inform her. “You shoulda gone with Sixteen or Aleashir, they're the ones who won't shut up.”

I watch her blink in surprise at my candor.

“I wanted to talk to you specifically,” she says, recovering.

“Aw fuck, you're a psych aren't you. You should know that I don't do interviews or evals. Sorry, you made this trip for nothing.”

“No, I'm not… I mean, I am, but that's not why I'm here. I wanted… I wanted to ask you about her.”

Hmmm… maybe this one does warrant my attention.

I scan her, compiling the data. She is by far the healthiest human specimen I have ever encountered, untouched by the ravages of famine or the harshness of space. I might have missed it if I weren't specifically looking. But I see it in the just-so orientation of the heart, certain subtle features in the bones, the near matches in the maps of nerves and blood vessels and lymph nodes.

(I have learned that humans do not generally respond well when I comment on the configuration of their interiors, so I go for something somewhat less accurate, but hopefully more relatable for her)

“You have her eyes.”

She gasps at that.

“She doesn't know you're here, does she?” I ask as if I don't already know the answer. Amy would have told me. Hell, she would have been insufferably anxious about this meeting if she knew who exactly had made this journey.

The woman shakes her head under her hard suit.

“I wanted to speak with you first,” she says, voice thick with emotion. “It's true then? You love her?”

“I do.”

“Is she… happy?”

“I believe so, yes. As happy as I have ever known her to be.”

I don't know if this is the answer she wants, but it is the truth.

“Can you tell me about her?” she asks after a long moment of quiet.

“Well...” I reply, “perhaps I do have a story for you after all…”

There's an old saying, probably from back in the 90s, if not earlier, before the big post-War orbital reinvestment, that laws stop at the Karman Line. Not quite true, but close enough. Technically in orbit you're in international waters, and as such companies can incorporate their stations under the laws of the Lunar Soviet, the Martian Exploratory Committee, or even the Titan Expedition if they want to get around safety regulations. Safety regulation like the one that says people need to experience real, full gravity, not just rotational or accelerational simulation, two years for every year in orbit. I hadn't been ground side in a decade. We were somewhere over I think the American Reclamation Zone, as I left the sled, tethers the only thing holding me to anything as I floated on nothing. A single hand reaching up towards the solar shade of the military satellite the company had been contracted to repair. Somewhere down there I had been born. "Ames?" came Control's reassuring voice, ringing through my company issued implants. "On structure."

"Right," came Control's voice, "don't be enjoying the view. The corporate-military conglom that owns this beast wants the job done right, and unfortunately that means I'm gonna need you to hard-wire into the satellite. Don't have your head down in the clouds."

"My head's always in the dark, Control," I said, working my way hand over hand along the guide-bars towards the access panel. "Why is it unfortunate?"

"Are you there?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling the long connection wire from the company's suit towards the panel, watching the sync happen in my cornea. "Why?"

"You'll see." "Well now," said a new voice, suddenly speak in my head with all the cloying subtlety of a nineteen year old drunk outside a bar, "aren't you just dreammmy."

[thefiresontheheight]

This is what life looks like.

I wake up, hot bunking. There are over three million people on living on the Moon, and they live mostly in excavated, pressurized lava tubes under the surface. Each cubic inch of pressurized atmosphere is at a premium. Everyone is always on top of each other. You're never alone.

It is all very familiar.

I go to the launch site, safely hidden behind the personalized, skin-tight suit that I wear constantly along with everyone else here. It turns out three (or for or in some cases five) generations in sterile, constructed environments eating the intensive waste-farmed yeast nutrient they have up here will wreck your immune system. Everyone is toweringly tall, always on top of each other, and always in a suit. What it means to be human up here has changed.

But they are still human.

It's easier by far to launch from the Moon, so their orbital infrastructure is fairly minimal. One tiny capsule station for docking, transfers, the like. The two ships they keep ready for Earth transfer, just in case peace talks happen again. Some solar satellites beaming microwaves down below. Telecoms.

And half the DeepWatch constellation, keeping a watchful eyes on the hungry corporate superpowers of Earth and Mars.

The surface hopping shuttle sails smoothly over the plains and mountains of my stark new home, only lightly marred by the tiny surface constructions, the solar panels, the receivers, surface tracks of a hundred years of rovers, more or less. I miss, I have found, sailing over the greens and blues of Earth. I never appreciated it then, and now I can only see it by looking up, a marble in my sky, holding everything I used to know, always out of reach.

I hope she is okay. I hope they all are, down there. I hope that the tides of power change, and the worlds change with it.

I nod to the other worker in the shuttle as I screw on my helmet, old-fashion, low-tech. My implants have either fallen inert, been absorbed into my body, or have been surgically removed. They do care for me down there, as best they can with so little. It is a commune, after all. Everyone cares for everyone else. As best they can. In this vac suit, there will only be one microphone in my ear. One signal. Anyone who wants to talk to me will have to use words, like any human. No more images in my cornea. No more Control watching my every move.

I depressurize the airlock, and float free. White below. Green-blue above. Black all around. And in the black wings.

"Hey," I say at last, "ready for date night?"

There's an old saying, probably from back in the 90s, if not earlier, before the big post-War orbital reinvestment, that laws stop at the Karman Line. Not quite true, but close enough. Technically in orbit you're in international waters, and as such companies can incorporate their stations under the laws of the Lunar Soviet, the Martian Exploratory Committee, or even the Titan Expedition if they want to get around safety regulations. Safety regulation like the one that says people need to experience real, full gravity, not just rotational or accelerational simulation, two years for every year in orbit. I hadn't been ground side in a decade. We were somewhere over I think the American Reclamation Zone, as I left the sled, tethers the only thing holding me to anything as I floated on nothing. A single hand reaching up towards the solar shade of the military satellite the company had been contracted to repair. Somewhere down there I had been born. "Ames?" came Control's reassuring voice, ringing through my company issued implants. "On structure."

"Right," came Control's voice, "don't be enjoying the view. The corporate-military conglom that owns this beast wants the job done right, and unfortunately that means I'm gonna need you to hard-wire into the satellite. Don't have your head down in the clouds."

"My head's always in the dark, Control," I said, working my way hand over hand along the guide-bars towards the access panel. "Why is it unfortunate?"

"Are you there?"

"Yeah," I said, pulling the long connection wire from the company's suit towards the panel, watching the sync happen in my cornea. "Why?"

"You'll see." "Well now," said a new voice, suddenly speak in my head with all the cloying subtlety of a nineteen year old drunk outside a bar, "aren't you just dreammmy."