Page 18 of Leviathan

But he was a computer, and an alien one at that.

"Your filaments are more active against my belly than they are elsewhere," I said. "Is that on purpose?"

"Yes, your skin was touching me, and I wanted to feel it more," Lyrien said. "Would you like me to stop? Why does it quiver when I do this?"

He traced the curve of my hip, reaching the inside of it, causing my lower belly to physically flutter in response and heat to clench in between my legs with an urgent spike of unexpected desire. I closed my eyes and bit my lip, my breath hitching for a moment before I was able to respond.

"It's a physical sexual response," I told him. It was important to be clear to avoid misunderstandings. "You are touching me in a vulnerable spot for my species. The skin is thinner and covers the femoral artery network, which, when punctured, can cause rapid death from blood loss. The nervous system response there is greater, ensuring a greater response to violent attack, but it also means that when touched gently, those nerves can be used to stimulate sexual arousal. I find the touch distracting."

I said so many words, but after I said them, I realized not one of them was used to directly tell him to stop.

It was because I didn't want him to stop, even if I wasn't willing to tell him to keep going.

Even so, he responded to my lack of encouragement as if it were a no, and the filaments stopped moving underneath me, falling completely still.

"Are there places I can touch your skin that won't distract you from what you are doing?" he asked. "I would like to continue touching you."

I reminded myself that he was alien software.

Whatever curiosity he was exploring in touching me was for the purpose of data acquisition. Plus, his touch had been gentle yet firm, and I could think of a great way for him to explore.

"How about after I'm done with this spot, you can try touching my back?" I asked. "Mine is sore, and it feels good for my species to have our backs rubbed."

"I would enjoy that immensely," he replied, his voice lush and warm.

I ignored the emotion in his voice. An artificial intelligence was programmed to mimic emotion for the purpose of giving the biological interacting with it whatever kind of response was desired, not having desires of its own.

Still, there was a strange dissonance in how he was interacting with me that I pushed to the side in favor of focusing on the work that needed to be done.

The thread of discoloration went on for a while, and I had to follow it, scooting to the side to follow it along the filaments that it was spreading down. As I worked, a question bubbled in my mind. He had evaded it earlier, and I had given up with a sour depression that had nothing to do with him but everything to do with the months I spent asking questions and being shocked into silence in response. Lyrien wasn't the one who hurt me, though, so I mustered to try again, pushing past the small fear of being shut down again.

"You never told me what was hunting you," I said, broaching the subject as gently as I could.

"It is hard to talk about," he said.

It wasn't exactly a no. He was saying that he needed help, either space and time, or something else, to help him get through the subject. From my experience, when someone said something like that, it meant that the subject was painful, and they weren't sure that you would provide a soft enough landing for them if they made the leap back into it. People holding onto pain often kept it locked in tight because they knew that speaking it could hurt others and cause them to lash out, so they learned to shield it, to hold it inside so that it didn't spill out and drive everyone around them away.

"Where I grew up, everyone knew about my mother," I said as I reached a little deeper into him. "They would bring her food, sometimes live chickens. She never asked for money, though we could have used it. When I asked her why she didn't charge, she told me that the old work wouldn't work if she charged for it. That gifts kept relationships alive, while prices destroyed them."

"What was the work that she did?" Lyrien asked.

"The conquistadors called it brujería when they tried to erase it," I said. "My mother called it remembering, or what's always done. The way she labeled it in itself was passed down from her ancestors as a form of hiding, of protecting a tradition from being stamped out. After I started working on my PHD I realized that the things my mother taught me as a child have a strong comparison form of therapy. Basically, in labeling women as witches and outlawing their practices, the invaders were trying to stamp out care and kindness, to prevent the local population from healing itself from the trauma of enslavement and cultural destruction. With curanderisomo, the soul doesn't return until it feels safe, so the work is about creating safety, not forcing healing. With western therapy, the similar idea is that the nervous system cannot process trauma without safety and regulation."

He was silent for a moment, and I continued to work my way along the filaments, gently rubbing them to remove the damage I had brought in with me, the damage that would have been delivered whether I was not the one to bring it. I gave myself that grace. Even if I hadn't boarded, he would have retrieved the data and been spiked with the infection. At least with me, I could help him see it and remove it.

"Did you learn your mother's work?" he asked.

"I observed it," I said. "But I also knew that I had a different path than hers. Before I was abducted I was working on a funded ethnomedical study on the intersections of mesoamerican curanderisomo and modern sound healing modalities."

I worked carefully along some of the smaller filaments, and as I stroked them with the pad, they curled up around my fingers, gently entwining and releasing my hand as I worked.

"Part of me wishes I had spent more time learning my mothers practice, but I knew from a young age it didn’t quite fit for me. People trusted my mother with their pain because of how she looked, and with me..." I trailed off. I didn't really want to talk about the small differences in my birth that made me feel like the other, even if those details were a step towards a privilege of another type. So I focused on the truth that mattered more to me. "I wanted to have a larger impact, to help erase the misconceptions and help my family's traditions be recognized for what they were, rather than what history had labeled them as. For me to do that, I had to work with the system so that I could add my voice to it, so I went into academia."

"You assimilated into it so that you can change it," he said.

"And so that I could have a steady paycheck," I said with a smile. "It is important to have enough money to buy clean water."

“You didn’t have clean water?” Lyrien sounded shocked.