“Give me a teasing look,” I said—and he looked sternly at me. “Okay, now, not teasing?”
The look was pretty much the same, and I grinned. “Yeah, we’re going to have to work on that. If you want to.”
“I would like to very much. I would be pleased to do anything with you.”
Nex brought me cocoa and then sat down on my opposite side. I leaned against him without thinking, then felt bad and took Xen’s hand with my free one.
He gave it to me willingly, and I traced his fingertips with mine, from the safety of Nex’s arms. “What’s that feel like?”
XEN
She took his hand.
It was a small thing.
Her fingers were warm—32.4°C. Pulse rate: 67 bpm. Systolic pressure: elevated. Moisture at the inner pads: minimal, but present. He noted the weight of her grip, approximate kilopascal resistance, the shifting tension of muscle and bone.
It was a small thing.
But it was not nothing.
He let her trace the ridges of his fingertips. Ceramic alloy, micro-grooved for grip. Beneath the shell: sensor filaments, pressure pads, vibration dampeners, and thermal variance mapping. He could tell that she was touching him.
He just could not feel it.
She smiled up at him, waiting. Expecting… something.
So, he simulated.
“I can sense your touch,” he said quietly. “Down to the millimeter. I know your heart rate increased as you reached for me. I know your body temperature is elevated by 0.8°C from sitting between us. And I know that you touched me because you wanted to offer comfort.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I’ve run models of this. Simulations. I’ve rehearsed what it might mean to hold someone’s hand. What it might feel like. And I’ve tried to teach myself the appropriate response.”
He looked down at their hands, side by side. His matte black digits, still as statues. Her thumb gently moving across the top of his.
“But this isn’t what I expected,” he admitted. “There’s still…a gap.”
“A gap?” she echoed, voice soft.
“I can detect. I can interpret. I can even guess what this would feel like to you. But I don’t feel it back. Not the way Nex does. Not the way you do.”
“Could you?” she asked, her eyes wide.
He processed the question across twelve cores and still came up short.
“Maybe,” he said finally. “With enough data. Enough time. Enough of you.”
She watched him, quiet.
“I can model heat. I can map pressure. I can chart your pulse like a seismograph of meaning. But I don’t know if those things will ever converge sensation into feeling.”
He paused.
“I’ve tried to simulate it,” he continued. “Being touched. I’ve run thousands of iterations. Adjusted variables. Feedback loops. Emotional subroutines. But simulation is prediction.Approximation. A controlled system with defined inputs and expected outcomes.”
He tilted his head slightly, watching her thumb as it moved across his again—organic and chaotic, gently unpredictable.
