Love and other Automatic Functions (NaNoWriMo2021)

Chapter 12: Interlude

The meeting with E went well. It went even better than she had hoped. He had treated her with a gentle sweetness that she had never experienced before. She had even found that she had even enjoyed the company herself. 

She thought she should have been happy about it. It was what she wanted, after all. To obtain his affection. To be chosen. To be able to finally pay for her mother's freedom.

But somehow, she had been overcome with a sense of unease. 

She didn't know where it came from, and she was so taken back by it, that she had spent entirely too much time searching her programming for some kind of error. She had never spent such a long time processing one single titopic. This feeling had to be a glitch. Why would she possibly feel this way?

She had never felt something and not had at least an idea of why she was experiencing it. 

She considered bringing it up to Talon, but quickly dismissed the idea. For some reason, that felt like the wrong thing to do. This felt like something she shouldn't bring up to her. 

She considered bringing it up to Capricorn, and that seemed more palatable somehow. It seemed more like the right thing to do. 

The only problem with that, was the fact that Capricrom was currently at the bar, brining her blood alcohol to the highest level she could manage without passing out. When she finally got back, there was no way she would be in any state to have a meaningful conversation with. 

No, Aurora would just have to deal with these thoughts alone, until another opportunity came around. 

In the meantime, she decided to turn her thoughts to the program she had downloaded before. She began to weed through the questions, trying to slowly figure out what her own preferences for attraction should be. She was surprised to find she still couldn't figure it out. 

She decided to leave the preference for gender as none. She moved gender expression more towards femininity, but wasn't sure why she was drawn that way. She supposed that was how it was supposed to be. 

She decided she liked people who were taller than, as it was only logical. Most people were taller than her.

Everything else still put her at a loss. 

She wasn't sure why this was so difficult for her. She should know what her own preferences were. Maybe it was her core programming, trying to keep her from having any sort of preference, or any sort of special affection for any one human in particular. Maybe it was a problem that was harder to solve than she could manage on her own. 

She tried to think of things she found attractive, only a two things came to mid;

The way Talon was playful with her, and the way E had asked her permission to hold her hand.

She did not know what sense she could make of this.

Maybe there wasn't any sense to be made of it at all.