Free Desired By The Sacred Alien (Sci-Fi Alien Romance) by Meg Ripley Page A

meltdowns...it wouldn’t be pretty.”
    “I’ve seen cypeople on the video screens that are Pathos,” little Ada pressed. “The ones trained for call centers and therapy. They seem okay.”
    The tech removed his glasses and smiled patiently. “Yes, because after years of humans teaching them how to experience and deal with pure emotion, those cypeople can handle the extreme ups and downs that being Pathos comes with. Without human aid, those cypeople would be lost.”
    “Is that why some of us are burned instead? They couldn’t learn to deal with it?”
    The tech looked nervous. “Uh, no…those are cyborgs who experience what we call phantom emotion. That means something is wrong with their circuitry and the illusion of emotion is present. This drives us past the point of functioning, unfortunately. We can handle basic fear and things like disgust and fondness---the vestiges of what our human ancestors evolved for survival, essentially--- but nothing stronger. Their circuitry changes, and it eventually it changes their genetic pattern, so they are no longer cypeople, and their ships won’t recognize them as such. That’s why the elevator pods will be shot into the sun---to minimize their future suffering. There isn’t a cure for that kind of thing.” He caught the look of apprehension on Ada’s face and seemed to realize his mistake.
    “But it’s exceedingly rare that a cyborg without an empathy board can experience spontaneous phantom emotion. Unless you’re planning to give yourself a bunch of powerful electric shocks, I wouldn’t worry, Ada.” And with a pat on her head, he’d dismissed her and her concerns from her office.
    But it hadn’t completely dismissed her concerns. Twenty years later, she’d started to experience those seemingly random bursts of strong sensation beyond her scope of knowledge or control---and it seemed like it was only getting worse. Over the last three years, swarms of energy---the tingling, warm kind she got around Pili, Jada, Nat or her old partner, Tod; the confusing and dizzying kind that seemed like an amplified version of what she felt during her occasional, almost mechanical sex with Tod; and the icy, piercing kind, like the sort of feeling she got before missions when she imagined pressing her palm to the activation screen of her ship and seeing it flash red before the transport tube turned and launched her, terrified and screaming, toward the massive star in the sky. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the “for their own good’ rationale was wrong---even if she was decaying past the point of functionality, she would still feel the crushing grip of fear as she was hurtling to her death. It was the only reason she hadn’t brought her fears up to Jada and Nat; as understanding as they were, they were bound by law to report any suspicions of a lost Pathos---or a decaying cyperson.
    Ada shook her head roughly, snapping herself back to the present as the unsettling feeling she thought to be fear faded away. She stretched her palm out and touched it to the cool red door. She didn’t flinch as the microneedles stabbed at her skin to sample her DNA and confirm her identity, pulling up her mission as it electronically called her pod to the bottom of the transport tube. She heard the sphere lock into place just before the doors opened and showed her the inside of her familiar elevator vehicle. Ada knew that her ship was being rotated through the vehicle carousel above the dorm, picturing the disc shaped ship locking right into the top of the long transport cylinder. She could picture it so clearly because of years of watching Tod take off on the same route, rising up the slim cylinder until his pod connected with the floor of his ship. Ada saw him take the trip hundreds of times, until the day he was moved to Earth to train as a safety officer. She’d felt her heart rend as they’d said their last goodbye, but a single glance in his eyes told her he was feeling a