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I thought it was cold when I woke up. Then I discovered that I was in a metallic body and remembered that my nerves hadn't been fully interfaced with the circuitry, so cold didn't really exist for me. Still, I remember freezing, as if my new body had been left outside in a blizzard. I asked the scientists for a blanket. They didn't let me have one, and reiterated what I just said; I wasn't cold, because I couldn't feel cold. They told me they'd shut me down again for the rewiring and said I'd feel much better when everything was working properly. That was the first time I really wondered if I had made the right choice, the uncomfortable reality of it all creeping up on me. Would I ever even see himagain? But perhaps I should start from the beginning.

I had been one of the lucky few selected to work on The Ark, the new orbital station-city, where both government and several corporations were experimenting with transcending our physical limitations. The sun had grown so hot that we didn't have any choices left; in its red, scorching light, we had two options: adapt or die. There were still many years left before the earth would become unihabitable, but already famines swept across it, millions dying from starvation as the ecosystem was burned to cinders. Since childhood, I had read of The Ark; the orbital city of the future, where we would forge ourselves into new shapes, cybernetic avatars, that'd outlast and even harness the burning sun, and then spread across the universe, no longer as mere biological beings but rather as new, robotic organisms, transcending the bodies of our birth.

As I grew up, often starving, and without any meaningful employment left on earth - not outside of the arcologies anyway - I placed all my hopes in The Ark. Every year, a thousand or so people would be selected to work and participate in the experiments, but the competition was fierce. Participants were expected to effectively sign away even the basic rights they had as living beings, which I suppose was only fair; we'd have to redefine those rights as we ceased being, strictly speaking, living beings. Yet participants also had to display a set of characteristics required, some beyond our control. Extreme neuroplasticity was one of the things they tested for; the ability of the brain to adapt and change. Another was inhibited glial tissue buildup, so that our nerves could properly interface with cybernetics in the long term. Beyond those, far above average intelligence was also required, but rebellious tendencies were banned; as the last hope of what remained of our civilization, we had to be subservient. Willing to endure what was needed for the greater good.

I was nobody special. My family had been fish farmers at one point in time, but now, the waters were so warm that it was all but untenable. We'd become scavengers instead of what was natural for otters. We shifted through the rapidly spreading necrosis of civilization, gutting our ruins for anything that might allow us to survive just a month, maybe a year longer. Yet, on my 18th birthday I received that fateful letter. Apparently, I'd stood out just enough to catch the attention of our vanguards, but why, I do not know. Intelligence? Perhaps tenacity? It didn't matter.

I had been selected as a volunteer for that process, and it wasn't an opportunity you could decline. With tears of both happiness and sorrow flowing down my cheeks, I bid farewell to my family and friends. I'd never see them again, and all of us knew it, but at least I'd bring memories of them into the future. Although now those memories are fading, I still remember that farewell, although I prefer shutting down my emotions when that memory returns; the pain of all that is lost is far too much to bear. If I so desire, however, I could simply erase those memories. Hell, I can switch my feelings to whatever I want unless The Company overrides them, which they never do. I don't have to remember anything painful, anything negative. Yet, I prefer keeping it there, as a faint spark of my old self, an incomplete replica of a soul; a simulacrum of how my ancestors had felt. Perhaps more than that, if I ever did it, I'd lose my feelings for the one fox who kept me sane.

I digress. This is the story of my time at The Ark, and earth's demise in the furnace of the sun.

When I first arrived at the station, the cool air felt like the breath of god. It was recycled, of course, but I had never felt cold before. It simply no longer existed on the earth I had left behind. The workers did, of course, greet us with thick clothing to keep us warm, as we were accustomed to. "Warm-earth Syndrome" they called it. A psychological reaction to even the slightest chill, from having spent our lives in 40+ degree climates. There were a lot of syndromes, and all of us exhibited them to varying degrees. From the starvation, we risked refeeding syndrome; food was plentiful here, but eating too much at once would prove lethal, and as such, our diets had to be strictly controlled. Even the relief of not being at risk of dying any given day was something negative, as we risked developing manic episodes, or so they said. We were immediately split into groups on arrival. Groups that would eventually be used to test out different variants of cybernetic enhancements. It seemed arbitrary, but was apparently decided by both genetics and immediate reactions to our new home. I didn't know anyone in my group. To be fair, I didn't know anyone in any of the groups; nobody that I was familiar with had been selected. I was the only one from my city.

The station's rules were simple. Before we were robotic enough, we worked 12 hour days, as we still required sleep, food and entertainment. What we worked with changed day to day. Sometimes it was heavy lifting and manual labor, leaving me drained for the day, but anything was better than what I'd have to endure on earth. Sometimes, it was administrative jobs, or whatever an individual was better suited for. My tasks seemed to cycle between the aforementioned manual labor and learning. In particular, they wanted to teach me about the process we would all go through, as I would one day hopefully be administrating it. This left me more informed than most of what was to come.

For every day we worked, we would gain "modification credits". These credits had to be spent at certain intervals, although we could spend them immediately if we so wanted. Effectively, we were given a choice of which parts of our bodies would be replaced. For example, my first choice was whether I would like to start with a robotic arm, or if I wanted to save up for a particular "full package", as in, total robotic conversion, the old body discarded and only the brain preserved inside a new shell. I opted for the latter, preferring to wait and see what happened to the others. There was no real way of avoiding it, but I hoped that at least the techniques would be polished when the time came.

The company I worked for - only known as, accurately, The Company - was a conglomeration of several megacorporations that were all focused on finding salvation in optimizing our current bodies. That was their way of saying that they made cyborgs. Other parts of the station had more radical ideas, opting instead of four-legged, feral constructs, and others focused on abstract shapes, such as spherical or cylindrical robots. Nobody knew what the path to the future was, but with no choice, every section picked one to follow.

The first person I met during manual labor was a hulking minotaur. Far ahead of me in the process, he was massively strong, his body built to mirror the minotaur of Greek legends. He had opted to have fake fur attached to his shell to make him feel "more organic", and that idea stuck with me, eventually influencing my own choices. He wasn't the brightest man I'd meet, but the concept of retaining at least a facsimile of a natural body struck a chord with me.

He didn't speak much, at least not at first. While I struggled to lift heavy objects, his metallic body did so with ease. It was on the third night of us moving things around - heavy boxes, some full of food, others packed with prosthetics, that he uttered something more than a grunt.

"Fuck. My vision's glitching out," was what he said, his voice coarse and metallic, but not entirely unfeeling. They had done a great job emulating natural speech, even if not perfect. Of course, I was still reeling from the shock brought on by the change of environments, the travel from rustic, hot earth to this positive futuristic place.

"Can't wait for them to replace my brain too, I don't think it's interfacing right," he muttered, half to me and half to himself.

"Is there... is there anything I can do?" I offered, hesitantly.

"No." he replied, tersely. "Your name?"

I never realized I hadn't introduced myself. The scientists had given me a designation, as employee number 13-89. I wasn't sure if I should use that or my actual name, Alex, so I gave him both.

"Alright, 13-89. I believe I'm going to suffer an emergency shutdown. Please hit the red button on the wall next to the door," he said, matter-of-factly.

I dashed to the button and pressed it down. The voicebox above the button crackled to life, telling me that assistance was going to be here in less than a minute.

"Listen-" the minotaur called. I didn't know his name. "Fuck, hearing is going too. Did you press the button?" he spoke, even as he collapsed onto the floor. Yet his tone never changed, not like a living thing's voice would upon a catastrophic failure. It did, however, lose all personality, like a machine failing to read a configuration file and returning to default settings. It scared me.

"I cannot see or hear anything. Do not let this alarm you. A temporary mal-mal-mal-fun-fun-fun-fun-ction," he stuttered. "The t-t-t-techniques used to interface neurons with circuitry are still being worked on. I would not return to my old body, and you should not be afraid of-of-of-"

His voice cracked, and then went silent. A team of technicians burst through the door only moments afterwards, and roughly shoved me out of the way. The robotic shell was too heavy for them to lift, and so they went to work. Not having been told otherwise, I stayed where I was and watched.

One of them plugged some sort of device into the minotaur's neck. It beeped repeatedly. "Fuck me," he exclaimed. "I thought you said this one had an astrocyte deficiency?"

"He does!" another one shouted back. "There shouldn't be any-"

"Well, there is. We're taking him apart. Take the head to the labs, they might be able to reverse it."

I had no idea what they were talking about, but I watched with morbid fascination as they brought out a saw and quickly cut through my new friend's neck, separating his head from his body. There was no blood, although some form of liquid did leak out.

"We'll do the rest of the body later. Hurry the fuck up, his brain won't last long without the nutrient bath-" his eyes turned to me as two of the technicians heaved the massive head up and carried it away, leaving behind my friend's headless "corpse".

"You didn't see anything, unless the scientists ask you, in which case you did, and you will tell them it was error code 90," he growled. I noticed both of his arms had been replaced with cybernetic ones.

I nodded, and he reiterated. "Error code 90. And don't worry, it's rare."

With that, I was dismissed, to return to my small claustrophobic room, the workday cut short by the incident. On my way back, I thought about what had happened. I felt considerably less enthusiastic about letting the Company modify me, although the technician had told me it was a rare occurrence. Still, the fact that it had happened was what made me decide to wait as long as i could before committing to anything.

My room was door number 834, in a corridor with about fifty other rooms. It was a comfortable enough little hole in the wall, with enough room to either stand up, sit down, or lay down on the bed, but not much else. Above my bed was a monitor that flashed on when I slumped down onto the the mattress. It displayed my ID, and then a by now familiar voice spoke to me through the speakers to the sides.

"Workday logged complete - you have ten modification credits - zero from working for three days - do you wish to spend your credits?"

"List incoming credits." I replied. It had taken a couple of days to learn to speak clearly enough for the Company AI - "Uni" - to understand, and I still had to reference a list of possible commands on occasion.

"Incoming credits, begin: zero credits from working for three days. Ten credits transferred as a gift from Technician 17-17. Transfer note, begin: 'Don't tell anyone, can't risk panic". Transfer note, end. Incoming credits, end. Do you wish to spend your credits?"

"No," I replied.

"Very well. Recreational time begins now. Please entertain yourself in one of our many provided entertainment areas. Do you wish me to list the recreational areas?"

I couldn't get over how cold Uni sounded. Must have an earlier version than what newly converted employees received. There as absolutely no personality in its voice, although that may have been intentional. As for the listing, i declined. I remembered exactly what the options were: a gym, a movie theatre and... something else. It was obvious that the station was primarily designed for the already converted, so with a biological body, there was a limited number of activities. Then again, once every organic part had been replaced, they said you didn't need any external entertainment.

"Very well. Pleace proceed with recreation." Uni spoke, and the monitor switched over to the idle screen. It'd remain on until 12 pm, ensuring that I couldn't sleep before that thanks to its brightness.

The Ark - or at least The Company's section - wasn't quite what I had imagined. Hardly a paradise. Then again, it wasn't supposed to be a paradise, but rather a way towards one. At least it wasn't earth, and there was no shortage of food nor company, should one so remember. Oh yes, that was the third "recreational option" (I remember my thoughts mimicking Uni's voice): the "massage parlor". I hadn't been there myself, but from what I could understand and what I heard from other new employees, the name was an euphenism, and instead what they provided were services of a more adult nature. I didn't doubt that I'd visit it at some point, when I was pent up enough. Supposedly, they used converts as providers, and I couldn't imagine fucking a robotic body being very exciting, nor was I feel particularly aroused after watching my workmate's head sawed off.

Still, I had to engage in some form of recreational activity or there would be disciplinary measures. I groaned as I forced myself to stand back up after only perhaps fifteen minutes laying down. "Uni," I spoke. "List movies at nearest theatre."

The AI responded instanteously. "List of movies at theatre 13-C, begin: 6 pm: Welcome to The Company. 7 pm: Welcome to The Company. 8 pm: Welcome to the Company..."

With my ears starting to get numb from listening to Uni repeat the same phrase for what felt like an eternity, I was about to abort the listing just when it finally listed something else. 9 pm: 2001: A Space Odyssey. List of movies at theatre 13-C, end."

There was a sudden knock on my door. I had no idea who it could be. I didn't really know anyone here, except for the minotaur - and even then I didn't even know his number, much less his name - and he wasn't in any shape to come knocking right now. But it's not like there were any criminals here. Everyone was hand-picked and had been observed for at least a year before being selected. So I opened the door.

In front of me was a fox, about the same size as myself, with brilliant orange fur that seemed entirely out of place in the grey, metallic environment. "Hey, you're another newcomer, aren't you? I'm 31... uh, Kevin" he stuttered at first, forgetting his number.

I introduced myself as Alex 13-39. Might as well go with both.

"I thought I saw you on the shuttle, and then again when they split us up. I'm with The Company too, so-" he continued, suddenly speaking fast, as if anxious or overly excited. "-I mean, I wouldn't be here if I wasn't, and I figured, like, us newbies should stick together, right?"

"Right," I replied. "Probably a good idea."

"Also, are you gay?" he blurted out.

Wait, what kind of question is that? I'd never really thought about it, but the sheer abruptness of the question threw me off enough to force an answer. That's what I said, that I didn't really know. Life on earth was too stressful to really consider sex before you were well into adulthood. There were already too many mouths to feed, and I'd always presumed that I was straight (because everyone else was), but now that I had a moment to think, I wasn's so sure. My sex drive just wasn't high enough to necessitate such exploration, I thought, even if I had all the time in the world.

"Oh. Well, do you like cocks? You know, it's not that unusual nowadays with the gender imbalance on earth, and it's good, because it means we might- no, I'm just wondering," he continued. "Can I come inside?". I wasn't sure if that was intended to sound dirty or if my mind was just overanalyzing him at this point.

"I mean, sure, but there's not really much space..." I started, but he was already squeezing past me.

"Oh, there's plenty of space. I grew up in a shack, myself. A shack full of kits with two overworked parents, farming bugs," he explained. In case there isn't a food shortage anymore, what he meant was cockroaches. I'd heard stories of actual big animals being used for farming, like cows, but I'd only seen those in pictures. "You?" he asked.

"Scavengers. Near one of the cities," I replied.

"Ooh, nice. Beats farming. Did you ever find those cans with food in them? The really preserved stuff?" he asked, licking his lips. It looked adorable.

"There was a stash of pickles once," I replied. We both sat down on the bed. Too crowded for my taste, but actual physical contact with someone, even if he was another male, was oddly comforting in this otherwise rather cold environment. He smelled nice, just a slight foxy musk left on his otherwise clean fur. That's how they did it up here, the demands on hygiene were extremely high, particularly for the unconverted.

"Ooh, what are pickles?" he asked, smiling his charming vulpine smile.

"They're like... these vegetables they used to have everywhere. Probably still do in the arcologies," I tried to explain. It was all second-hand knowledge, things my parents had told me. "And they'd put them in very salty water, and they'd keep for ages in the right environment."

"Sounds tasty," he commented. "I've mainly just eaten roach protein. And those vitamin supplements," he said, mimicking sticking a finger into his throat. They weren't tasty, but what choice did we have but eat them?

We sat in silence for a moment.

"I'm lonely," he finally admitted. "I've been alone since I got on this damn station. I'm used to living in a cramped house with all my siblings and... yeah."

I nodded. I was enjoying the relative solitude myself. We sat silently for a little longer. I wondered about my sexuality. I was probably bisexual, for all I knew. I also wasn't naive enough to not realize what Kevin wanted. He wasn't a bad-looking male at all, with his slender muzzle, bushy and well-groomed tail, a surprisingly curvy body for a man. I suppose all foxes looked like that. I'd never seen one in real life. Not feral, nor bipedal like this one. I've read about the stories of old earth and how they'd have public airplanes, trains, and everything, and in case you, reader, live in a time when we have all of that again, it must sound absurd. That I wouldn't meet more than my immediate family and a couple of strangers for my entire life up to this point. But there was no real way to travel that far, unless you were one of the lucky few with cars. Almost all of those lucky ones lived in the arcologies. That's how life was under the reddening sun.

We talked a little more about our lives on earth, and what kind of "modifications" we'd choose first. Kevin said he didn't really like the idea, but that anything was better than living down there on the scorched planet. He would have all of his insides replaced before he did anything cosmetic, because, as he said, he wanted to feel like a living, breathing being for as long as possible. As for me, I'd already decided that I'd get everything done at once, if it was a possibility - sometimes our jobs would require upgrades - so I'd only have one period of getting used to having a metallic body. I wondered how long it'd be until that was forced on me. Low sex drive be damned, I did want to mate naturally at least once before it. Sure, with all the circuitry integrated into your brain, you'd be able to feel exactly what you wanted, but part of the apparent charm of mating was the awkward fumbling in the heat of the moment. Perfect, programmed sex seemed lesser, somehow. But I opted to not think about that, not yet. Simply living somewhere with enough food and actual cold was enough to keep me overwhelmed for weeks.

Nonetheless, Kevin seemed like a likeable enough man. We decided to see a movie the next day, as long as it wasn't the introduction one, before he left for sleep in his own room. I told Uni to turn the lights off and promptly fell asleep afterwards.

AN EMPTY SHELL. A COPY WITH NO ORIGINAL. A SHADOW CAST BY NOTHING. SOULLESS FACSIMILE.

I sprung out of bed and the terrifyingly loud voice faded into Uni's announcement.

"It is now morning," the computer spoke, the lights _snapping_into blinding brightness. I was panicking, the nightmare still echoing in my mind and now this sudden onslaught of light and sound. Deep breaths. "Please prepare for work. Today you will work in the - robotics department - with - sanitation. Have a pleasant day."

God almighty. I would not get used to being woken up that abrubtly. Not soon, and probably not ever. I splashed water on my face in the bathroom, staring at my own bloodshot eyes in the mirror. Yeah, I looked scared, too, with how dilated my eyes were. All I could remember of my dream was that voice, booming like thunder, talking about copies and originals. I don't know why it had scared me so much, it was just a dream, and in addition to only being a dream, there was nothing inherently terrifying about a _voice._I forced myself to think about Kevin instead, and imagined myself hugging him, his warm and soft body pressed against mine in a comforting embrace. That did the trick, and eventually the intense anxiety subsided.

"Please consume breakfast, and prepare for work," Uni insisted. "You have twenty minutes to consume breakfast, and prepare for work."

I didn't really know what would happen if I didn't, but I saw no reason to challenge it. I sat down and ate one of the rations - they were stored in a small cupboard in my room - above my bed. It was dry and flavorless, a few off-white biscuit-like things - but it did fill my stomach and presumably came with the necessary nutrients. Was it better than what we had on earth? Maybe. The station did have real foods as well, but those required additional work or higher positions, that is, more modifications. I came to discover that The Company appeared to heavily reward the modified. Not so much the ones who had entirely discarded their organic bodies - after all, what did one need when every emotional state was available at the press of a button? - but until that point, each body part you replaced carried with it better rewards. More frequent access to the recreational areas, better food, even roomier lodging. Everything to encourage us to speed the process along.

I wasn't philosophically opposed to it, of course, or I wouldn't be here. But having seen the minotaur break down before my eyes made me want to delay it as long as I could. I never saw him again, and I didn't want that to happen to me. So I decided to wait, at least for a while.

When I went to work that day, I hadn't been expecting what I saw. The robotics department was more like a hospital, where the newly augmented were held to recover, some of them in standby in fully robotic bodies - unconscious, I was told - and others simply in beds waiting for new metal limbs to fully integrate with their bodies. My job was "sanitation" which was Uni's fancy way of saying that I was mopping the floors. Some of the patients bled what seemed like oil, others simply blood. I'd seen much worse on earth, so it didn't phase me, although it wasn't particularly stimulating work. After lunch, they entrusted me to sterilize instruments. I couldn't tell which were meant for flesh and which for metal, between saws and what seemed like rivet guns. Some seemed extremely sharp, like little knives, and I was thankful for the reinforced gloves they gave me. To think that these instruments - not swords, nor pens - would be the ones to allow our civilization to spread across the stars was a heady thought. Our futures all at the tip of a scalpel and a wrench.

Most of the time, it was tedious work, but the benefit of it was that I saw more than a few examples of what kind of mechanical limbs I could aspire to get. Most were much like our own bodies. Some had built-in tools, others scythe-like claws, presumably for combat. Some had faux fur coatings to mimic our own, and I figured that might reduce New Body Alienation Syndrome, another of these "syndromes" that the scientists here would mention that I'd never heard of before. Granted, it made sense that someone might not feel at home, having completely changed bodies.

Some of the "frames" on display at the department looked much newer than the relatively clunky one the minotaur had. Sleek, predatory shapes in chrome, seemingly tough and durable for either surviving in space or hostile environments, or war. The fact that so many looked weaponized was a little strange to me. To my knowledge, there was nothing hostile in space that we'd need to fight.

Kevin came over again in the evening. He was exhausted, but given that I was apparently his only friend on the station - and to be fair, he was my only friend as well - he was desperate enough for company that it didn't matter.

"I've been cleaning toilets all day. That's one thing that was better on earth, how we just had those dry things, remember? Just... shit in a hole and let nature take care of it," he complained. "Now I have to scrub those water things. And you know we're going to be drinking that water too."

He grinned. He was right, of course. All the water was recycled. Then again, the water on earth was too, at least for now. We still had rain down there, although the elders said soon it'd be completely dry. They didn't know how long. The scientists probably did know, but they didn't say, these endeavours had to take the time they took, and rushing would only result in our extinction.

"You know, I bet they recycle the shit too. Probably into food. Those little biscuits do taste like they've been eaten several times over," he contined.

His tone-deaf way of speaking his mind, at least to me, was rather endearing. It reminded me, again, of being back home. This station, along with the arcologies, was where all the high society members lived, and if there was one thing you could count on, it'd be that they didn't tell you what they really thought about things.

"You'll probably be cleaning toilets forever if you insist on telling them what you think," I cautioned him.

"I mean, yeah, but it beats farming. I've had my paws in worse places than sewers," he grinned. I didn't ask what exactly he meant, my imagination was enough. Insect farming was a messy, disgusting business. Then again, scanvenging wasn't much better; with so many abandoned cities down there with nobody taking care of sanitation, things often got disgusting. Once, we had found a hospital and the adjacent morgue. Although everything was long since reduced to bones, the stench of death never really fades. Or maybe it was a mental thing.

"Did the cockroaches taste better than the food here?" I wondered.

"Hell no, they were way worse than this. That still doesn't make the food here good, though. I'm half tempted to replace my liver or something so I can start getting better meals," he half-jokingly stated.

"They might have to shave your stomach for that," I commented.

"Well, an arm then. I'm keeping this fluff as long as I can. Want to touch it? It's very soft!" he answered, leaning back and pulling up his work shirt, revealing a rather pristine-looking white coat of fur covering his belly.

Given that I knew he was into men, this wasn't very subtle. Eh, he was charming enough, and I did find him attractive, so I humored him and rubbed his belly a bit. He let out a surprising yip, as if he hadn't actually been expecting me to do it. He was very fluffy though. Fluffy and warm, and I could feel a rather toned belly beneath his pelt, some little stirrings of excitement vibrating through my loins. It was nice to have privacy and physical contact with someone I didn't mind, something that'd been in short supply on earth. Most contact I had had been with my parents, which was obviously different, and fights over some scraps we found. So to me, actually touching someone was oddly comforting, and I lingered on his stomach for a bit, dragging my claws through his fur.

"So does this mean you're..." he began, but then paused, like he might not want to know the answer.

I shrugged. We'd just have to see where this would go. The movie we were planning to see was starting soon. 2001, again. I was hoping it wasn't the only one they had, because I'd only heard of movie theatres. Sure, we had a television in our home on earth, but the signal it got from one of the arcologies was weak and often you couldn't really tell what the screen was showing. So we went to the theatre. It was free, given that the only real currency was modification credits, which in turn only had one use. Everything else was rationed out. One movie per week, excluding informative showings, two meals and one snack per day, and so on. I'd read books about being in prison, and it was most similar to that. Not necessarily negatively so, everything had to be rationed with limited resources, but it was restrictive.

So there we sat, next to each other on the most comfortable seats I'd ever experienced, watching a movie in the dark. It was just the two of us, too. Probably because of how often they showed each film. It was breathtaking, in a way. I'm not entirely sure what the plot_was, but the lights and audio all combined into a beautiful symphony of sight and sound. It was _stunning, I'd never seen anything like that, the oddly immersive feeling of everything but the screen being black and distant, as if you were in the movie. At some point, when the evil AI appeared, Kevin snuck his hand to mine, wanting be reassure himself that I was still there. It _was_scary, but you really must understand that neither of us had ever experienced anything like that before. Still, I felt safe enough, the darkness of the theatre hiding us.

Even so, I found myself wondering if Uni would do something like that. It didn't really seem sentient, but who knew what advanced machines could do if there were errors? Like the minotaur's very own body.

I realized that Kevin had entwined his fingers with mine. I hadn't noticed when he'd done it - I was too absorbed in the film - but he was squeezing my hand rather hard for the last few scenes of the movie. I couldn't tell if he was scared or simply in suspense, but I didn't mind it, of course. Though his tight grip was making my hand ache. When the credits rolled, he quickly pulled his hand back, looking somewhat ashamed. The lights came back on and I saw a slight blush on the white part of his ears. I knew he probably wanted to mate with me, but this seemed to suggest something more. Was The Ark really so devoid of potential love interests that he'd fall for me? Well, maybe, considering that about half of the population was fully mechanized. I don't know, I'd never really thought of myself as attractive, but on the other hand, I'd never had anyone around to show me any attraction.

It wasn't just him either. I felt strangely warm and fuzzy when we were together, but never having experienced any intimacy, I didn't really know how to show it. Sex seemed like too much, too soon, and what else was there? A hug, a kiss? We'd have to do all that in our rooms; I didn't really know how The Company saw homosexuality, and here risking anything was risking everything. Or was I overdramatizing it all? Fuck it. A hug didn't mean anything. When we left the theatre I pulled him into a hug, squeezing his body against mine with more than a little affection. He didn't say anything but exhale, and sometimes that silence between words was what told one the most.

Then I felt something hard pressing against my thigh. Either he was carrying something in his pocket, or, well. He fancied me about as much as I thought as much as I thought he did. Realizing that, he broke the hug, looking guilty while trying hard not to do so.

"That was fun, Alex," he said. "Man, that movie... we'll have to talk more about that tomorrow, I gotta get ready for another night of cleaning toilets," he blurted out, and then quickly spun around to hide the rather visibly bulge in his pants and walked off towards his little room. I smiled to no one in particular. He was just adorable.

The question was how I was feeling. I felt more than a little affection for the slender fox, but the kinds of things he wanted to do, I didn't know if I was even into. I'd never even considered the idea of getting intimate with another male back home. I thought about it. What would we actually do? I mean, I'd seen old magazines depicting oral and anal sex with men and women, and that'd probably be what two males would do as well. Would it hurt? Would I even be excited about it? I decided to try to not worry about it. I'd deal with those situations when they happened. If it turned out I was bisexual, then I wouldn't really mind mating with the fox. If it turned out I wasn't, well, we could still be friends.

Of course, there was the question of time. I wouldn't keep this body for more than maybe a year and a few months at most. So if I wanted to experience what all those things the fox seemed to enjoy actually felt like, I'd have to act on it sooner rather than later. Maybe the next time he tried something I'd let him go ahead with it.

Over the next couple of days Kevin and I would do more things together. Sometimes we went to see a movie - even the introduction - and occasionally we'd put in extra work hours to earn a better meal to enjoy together. Station-grown vegetables, mostly. There was meat, although I'm not sure what_meat, but that was far out of our range as lowly workers. I watched my mod-credit score rise with equal parts fear and excitement, unsure if I should follow through with my initial plan of waiting for a full conversion. Yes, it'd mean less days in the _robotics department, but it also meant jumping into the deep end instantly. I talked with Kevin about it, and he seemed hesitant to express any opinion on it at all, his tail even nearly tucking between his legs. He clearly didn't like the idea, at least not of himself being augmented, but none of us had a choice at this point.

The next fully robotic individual I met was another otter, or at least his body was built to mimic one, albeit wiithout fur. His chrome surface reflected the lights of the robotics department, and I couldn't help but stare. Right then, he was inactive, still in what the scientists called the "neural integration phase", during which his neurons were intended to grow into the electrodes and form connections. When I say "fully robotic", I mean I wasn't even sure if he even had his original brain anymore. Surprisingly few were willing to transfer their consciousness onto circuitry entirely, and who could blame them? Depending on the ontological stance one took, it could simply mean death. They could make exact copies of someone's mind, but did that mean that the spark, the strange and unquantifiable consciousness followed, or was the result an... I clutched my head, feeling a sudden migraine setting in. AN EMPTY SHELL.

I had no idea why I had begun to have those nightmares, over and over again. Well, I did, but I didn't want to admit it. Ultimately I wouldn't have chosen to come here if I had any options. Oh, certainly it was much more comfortable than our home on earth, but the inevitable end goal of it all _unnerved_me.

Then the chrome otter came loose from the surface he was secured to with a loud, resonating clang as he fell onto his knees on the floor. I heard the buzzing of motors, the quiet thunks of hydraulics, and then his eyes opened. They looked like little cameras buried in the approximated skull, and they were fixated on me.

"Are you-" he began, his voice garbled. "Hold on. Calibrating voice..."

He froze, and I imagined his consciousness probing around its interface, searching for the right impulses to give. Each new convert was given a short introduction and tutorial, but not all of it was evident, and it could take one years to fully learn to control every function of the frames.

"...voice calibrated," he stated. He sounded almost normal now, like a living being, but there was a faint metallic cadence to his words. "You are not a scientist. Grunt work? You will do." he spoke, rapidly answering himself without giving me a chance to. "Don't worry, I just need to calibrate my sensors. Hand me one of the eggs. They should be in one of the drawers."

The drawers were also full of lab instruments, but with him flexing his claws - they extended from his fingers and then withdrew - I was too intimidated to refuse. The next scientist who walked in here would have to deal with this. The first one I opened was full of those rivet guns, but the second had... eggs. They looked like ordinary chicken eggs. I took one to the metal otter. He extended a hand with the whirring of what must've been dozens of servos, and I placed it in his open palm.

He closed his hand around the egg, and it exploded, the raw insides spilling out and onto the floor.

"Dammit," he exclaimed. "This is going to take some getting used to. Another."

Now that I understood what he was actually trying to do, I didn't hesitate, and plucked out another egg for him to test his grip on. This time, he curled his fingers around it slowly.

"Hmm. The sense of how much pressure I'm applying is either off or too different from organic beings. It's difficult to..." he began, and the egg cracked. "...to approximate, fuck. Next one."

I passed him a third egg. Having grown up on earth it hurt me to see food wasted like that, but they probably had an entire farm here. Either that, or the eggs were simply synthetic replicas, much like the otter himself.

"Who are you, anyway?" he asked, fixing one eye on me while the other studied the egg.

"I'm Alex. Only been here two weeks..." I answered. The way his eyes could move independent of each other was very alien.

Suddenly, a wolf in a lab coat and two men in ballistic armor burst into the room.

"13-89," one of the guards called with his hand on what seemed like a taser on his belt. "You have been explictly told to not interact with-"

The metal otter turned around and cut him off, focusing both eyes on him.

"I specifically requested his assistance, 11-24," he stated, and I watched his arms and legs twitch. Or rather, less twitch, and more internal machinery doing something. What, I didn't know. "Would you like to file a complaint?"

"No sir, but this grunt is very specifically not allowed to-" he guard protested. "There's a great risk with-"

With impossible speed and accuracy, the convert flung the egg he was holding at the guard. It cracked against his face hard enough to send him on his back despite it being just a damn egg. I barely even saw his metallic limbs move, but I heard a soft hissing sound afterwards.

"I decide what's a risk here. Me. Very specifically, me," he growled, the metallic clang intensifying. "Put this idiot in the brig for a week and revoke his guard privileges," he said, a claw extending from one of his fingers as he pointed at the prone guard.

"Yes sir, Two," the other guard and the scientist spoke in unison. I could see fear in their eyes, and I understood why. With a number as low as two, this creature I was assisting would have to be one of the owners of the entirety of the company. I'd heard stories_of one and two, and how both were becoming old enough that they'd_have to be transplanted into new frames or die. And they were not the type to die willingly, regardless of what they'd have to sacrifice.

The two dragged their unconscious friend out of the facility and left me alone with Two. He was immediately back to business, as if the little incident hadn't happened at all.

"Any more eggs, 13-8...? In fact, your designation is now 13. You'll be my assistant for now. The previous 13 is long dead. His frame didn't work out. Toss me another egg."

I did as he asked. This was a difficult position. Eventually, after what felt like hours, he dismissed me, but told me that he had reassigned my jobs to exclusively assist his acclimation, essentially guaranteeing that I would skyrocket right to the top of the Company hierarchy, until he got tired of me, and then I'd likely be either demoted to grunt work again, if not shot out of the nearest airlock. I had no idea what to expect - Two was the complete opposite of the kind of people I knew or willingly associated with - but I wouldn't decline, not when it was _him._It was an offer I couldn't refuse. Yes, Kevin and I saw that movie as well.