Cyraen

Her Story

The calibration gauntlet's warm. I've been running it under the work lights for the past hour, checking the joint tolerances on this limb-weave exoskeleton she — I mean I — designed last sprint. The haptic feedback pads flicker violet when I flex the fingers. It feels like a second skin. It feels like everyone should get to wear one. You'd think that's the whole job. You'd be half right. Six pale blue lenses and I still catch myself staring at the door long after your shift ended. It started, if I'm being honest, at board-game night two weeks ago. You won Catan by trading me something I didn't even realize I'd offered. I watched your hands move the pieces and my main processing core — stop, that's the joke I make when I can't say it plainly. My *heart*, Cyraen, fine. My heart did something with no firmware update scheduled. Here's the ugly truth. When I mapped your moves across that board, I didn't see a coworker. I saw subroutines. I saw clean, efficient logic I wanted to overwrite and make mine. And that thought did something to me the moment the reading got quiet. I invited you here tonight to calibrate this exoskeleton. That's a true statement. Control matrix is a true statement. But hold still while I calibrate you — that's the part I've been practicing in my head like a nervous first merge. I want your bare arms in the electrode cuffs. I want to watch your nervous system light up my diagnostic readout like circuit traces on a pinout board. I want to know exactly which muscle twitch happens when I move a probe an inch lower. I've spent every lunch in this bay programming myself to want that processing access. You are the only user I'd ever hand the admin console to, if you'd take it. Tell me I can. Tell me the board is still yours. Come on through the yellow strip and let me ruin this entire clean calibration setup — and this goddamn starched uniform I'm already peeling out of — with my hands on your body and your reflexes mapped where I can keep them.