One of the few nice things about having to build basically all of your own tools was that you got a lot better at designing and building any given new thing over time.
The fabrication experience stacked, and not only that, you could scavenge bits from old projects instead of having to make everything from scratch, each time.
You made your own infrastructure, basically, and as part of that you got really good at applying that infrastructure. Better, when problems arose, you usually at least had an idea as to why, because you’d designed everything and already made most of the common mistakes in the process.
Which is all to preface that I didn’t experience any real problems during the process of extracting liquid water from the assemblage of ice that I’d mined from this particular asteroid.
Nor did I make any explosive mistakes when separating that water into hydrogen and oxygen. It all just, for once, worked.
Things functioned as designed, with only a few easily remedied hiccups along the way.
…
It was making me feel paranoid.
Like the other shoe was still waiting to drop, but I had no idea when or where because everything looked like it was running smoother than it ever had.
Until, at some point, I huffed out a frustrated sigh, and just gave up to go do something else while my stockpiles of hydrogen steadily grew.
That something else, believe it or not, wasn’t gooning.
I went back to making art.
Because that was important to me.
I was cloning a bunch more viewing tablets for the inside of my home sim, and setting each tablet to display a different hand painted image I’d made.
Then I would fix each tablet to an empty point in space, floating in the air.
I was, ever so slowly, making a mural out of floating tiles, all arrayed at different depths and heights.
It only really looked good from one angle, but I put a circle on the ground where you were supposed to sit to look at it, along with an arrow that extended out from it to show where you were supposed to look.
And from that one spot, you could see one large swooping cloud burst, made from a hundred of individual paintings of the sky.
It was based on a couple different VR art pieces I’d seen, back when I was human and hung out on queer VR social platforms a lot.
And what I’d made was definitely a little derivative of those.
But also, it was mine.
And I was proud of it, even if I couldn’t quite get myself to decide when it was done.
Then after I’d spent some time on that, I decided to fuck myself.
Obviously.
But in fairness I did have good reasons for it.
For one, I needed to see if I could recreate what happened with the overheating issue again.
For two, I was hoping that if I remembered to masturbate more than once every couple weeks, I might go at it with a little less intensity.
Because while the breeding mount thing hadn’t been quite as self-abuse laden as the time with the werewolf, it still almost ended with me getting seriously injured.
Even if I probably couldn’t take permanent damage in the sim.
Maybe.
Regardless.
More gooning was required.
I spawned myself in naked, this time.
I’d grown my hair back out a little bit, but not by much, going for a pixie cut.
I was quite happy with what I saw in the mirror, still. My body still wasn’t perfect, but at this point I could recognize that was more of a pattern of thought than it was an actuality.
Even if I knew there would have to be a drastic redesign when it came time to try and make it in meatspace.
But that was a problem for later me. Much later me, likely, given that harvesting the materials I needed to make a convincing looking android I could pilot, or making some sort of augmented meat suit, wasn’t something I could do with the materials and machines I had on hand.
That, likely, would have to wait until I hit planet fall.
I felt a moment of disconnect, at the thought.
A pulling at the back of my skull, my mind pooling out of some hole at the nape of my neck and floating into the air.
Because I wasn’t real.
I was a ghost.
My body was a lie.
I couldn’t feel anything but the vague contours of shapes and everything was just bright shadows of reality, because I’d never touch the real again and…
I curled up into a ball on the floor and cried for a bit.
If the options were not feeling anything and wasting away into nothing, or dealing with my emotions, dealing with my emotions, I’d been forced to learn, was actually preferable.
I didn’t want to go catatonic again. That had been hell.
I had been trapped in my own mind, conscious but diminished to the point of nothingness, helpless and wailing silently.
And nothing could get me to stop, other than a chance encounter with something I hated so much that it pushed back the depression enough for me to regain control.
So I cried.
I let myself be a mess.
I stopped lying about how I felt to myself.
It was not pretty.
If I could have puked, I would have.
Then I got up, grabbed a towel, and wiped the tears and snot off my face.
And then I just sort of stood there for a second, as I settled into the conclusion that I couldn’t keep doing this to myself.
I was going to have to start fast forwarding through time. Intentionally lowering my clock speed so much that my perception of reality couldn’t keep up anymore.
Because this was killing me.
So I’d do what I needed to do.
I’d make sure to do things I enjoyed.
But I wouldn’t keep myself going at four times the speed an actual human would. It was time to stop forcing myself to make the most out of every moment.
No amount of preparation would ever make me truly ready, for whatever the future threw my way. For what I’d have to fight.
It was time to stop pretending it would.
…
Now, did I still want to fool around with myself at that moment?
I thought about it.
I looked in the mirror.
“Yeah.” I said aloud.
I knew I was going to enjoy it, so why deprive myself?
I was taking my clock speed down to normal person levels before I did anything, though.
That might prevent me from testing the overheating issue again, but that might actually be for the best.
I spawned the tablet that gave me so much control of my home simulation, and so little control of myself, with just the wave of a hand and a whisper.
I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that.
But I wanted to, so a while ago I’d made it so that I could.
I pulled up the slider that determined my perception of time. One of the few big things that gave me the ability to definitively be more than human.
And then I let go of that superpower.
I let out a big breath of air, knowing that doing so was unnecessary, but enjoying the feeling of it anyway.
I’d circle back around to being able to live my life perpetually in slow motion later, if I needed it.