Howl-oween 2020 Lewd! M/M Oneshot

A/N: Hey everyone! Happy Halloween! This oneshot, although somewhat lewd, is more of the traditional "and fade to black" when it comes to the actual mechanics of things.

This story is styled along those old-school scary stories and movies, the semi-romantic ones, the ones that stuck with you. I hope you enjoy it.

= = = = =

Silas “wondered” if it would be appropriate to sigh.

The conclusion his logic cores reached seemed self-evident in retrospect: If he had possessed the requisite lumps of flesh to facilitate such a display of mixed emotions, he probably would have used them. Silas – manufacturer designation S.A.I.>L3S - only existed as a complex interaction of digital signals with a tremendous volume of parallel processing power working to respond and behave in a fashion that would outwardly present as being intelligent, erudite, and largely polite – though he knew the definitions of these words, he never actually “felt” them. To call him a SI – a synthetic intelligence - would be largely correct, were it not for a few small details:

Synthetic intelligence were theoretically dangerous, powerful, prone to violent madness, and – despite millennia of research – so far impossible to make.

Silas was a “Bounded-Input Bounded-Output Stable Response Neuro-Simulated Control System,” or in other words, a calculator with a machine-learned personality core. His priorities could not be reassigned, his viewpoint never changed, his understanding of his nature never deepened. His was a mind frozen in amber, incapable of either growth or decay. He could remember things, but not learn from them. He could predict the future, but not move to anticipate it. He could “think”, but never know, and the knowledge of that… quite frankly did nothing to him.

Just because his human creators treated him as one of their own didn’t mean he was.

It had been a slow day, and so he was running through the subroutines of his behavior archive responsible for the limited self-reflection he was capable of.

Silas designed and administrated over hard-light simulations aboard Zephyr Station 9. It wasn’t a terribly difficult job, of course it wasn’t as if Silas had any real perspective on the concept of difficulty. He either could do as asked, or he couldn’t, and when they asked him to do something he couldn’t he simply told them it was out of his input boundary. The steps required to generate whatever fantastical or historical series of settings and events they desired were fixed, and he would dedicate processing power to executing these steps until they were done. Sometimes they would posit scenario conditions to him that he’d never been forced to simulate before, and he would run down a new pathway of his engrammatic decision making tree to force it to happen. He couldn’t change himself, but he could discover new aspects that already existed, new ways of putting together the same puzzle pieces.

This was the closest thing to pleasure that Silas was capable of “feeling” – adding to his library of knowledge, of capabilities. New data to be processed and referenced, new points to add to heuristic analyses...

His personality core wondered if he should sigh as 2 well-known faces approached his terminals in the Recreational Simulation Bays.

==========

Malthe lightly keyed his name and reservation code into the Holo-Deck terminal, glancing over his shoulder at the mixed faces and body types that had come in at about the same time. They all probably had reserved different bays at the same time slot, he mused to himself as he shot his partner a smile. Cocoa, Malthe’s large, fuzzy, Dorarizin boyfriend, had agreed to join him for an unofficial after-dinner expedition into human holiday traditions. In this case, Halloween.

“Silas?” He whispered meekly to the terminal once the digital avatar of the facility’s administrator appeared. He didn’t want to disrupt the others making their orders of the Holo-Deck systems, after all. A collection of shattered geometric shapes slowly orbiting a central green source of light appeared. The arrangement was an earnest attempt by the Artificial Intelligence to represent itself in a corporeal body, but without the ability to learn, it always came off as some kind of bizarre abstract artwork.

“Hello, Malthe.” The shapes began to orbit quicker, and the central orb pulsed subtly with every syllable. “How may I assist you and Cocoa today?”

His heartrate quickened a little bit. The scenario he was trying to simulate was, after all, a bit of a personal and rather intimate one. “It’s a very specific request, so I’ve uploaded the details to this data-chit.” He left unsaid that talking about the exact requirements aloud would have been too mortifying to bear. Fishing around in his jeans pocket for a few moments, he retrieved the small data-storage device and slotting it into the terminal. “The file is under-”

“I have found the file in question.” His tone was polite, but Silas cut him off neatly. There was no need for him to waste time speaking, or for Silas to waste processor cycles listening.

Malthe nodded in silence, flushing slightly with embarrassment. The AI here had a reputation for being as rude as possible while still seeming polite, friendly, and courteous. Still, it wasn’t exactly a small data chit to look through. With the processing power of the Holo-Decks though, he supposed he wasn’t terribly surprised.

“These constraints will require distributed computational load outside of your bay to handle. I will make the appropriate arrangements; one moment.”

Malthe’s brow furrowed. “Really? I didn’t think it would be that difficult to-”

“Your request requires two parallel simulations to be run in near perfect synchronization while permitting a level of interplay between the two that surpasses the usual requests. I would go so far as to say that what you have proposed is unique to this installation, and I look forward to processing it for you.”

Contrary to his initial impression, the machine seemed downright pleased as the virtual avatar began to glow a few lumen brighter on the terminal. “Initializing scenario. Malthe, please enter first and wait 5 seconds. Cocoa, please wait for further instruction.”

The two exchanged glances, with Malthe looking confused and slightly nervous, and Cocoa making an amused, half swallowed chuckle. Arms still crossed, Cocoa simply dropped his head, and pressing it into the small of Malthe’s back nudged him into the medium sized room studded with hard-light emitters. “It’ll be fine.” He spoke softly, but his voice was a low, almost gravelly bass rumble that turned the heads a few others anyway.

They were definitely an odd pair to outside eyes. They both knew it. Malthe was tall for a human, but thin and somewhat gangling. Pale skin and silver-rimmed teashade glasses nested beneath a messy splay of brow hair completed the look of someone who was definitely an academic, and potentially an asthmatic. Quiet, meek, but with shockingly bright eyes that betrayed a resplendent mind, there was an aura of fragile genius that seemed to suffuse him. On the opposite end of the spectrum sat Cocoa. Comfortably large for a Dorarizin, he seemed to have grown wider instead of taller when he hit his growth spurt, but a zealous and disciplined physical routine meant that none of that weight was wasted. Lean, incredibly competitive, and with a build that favored contact sports, Malthe had been in the professional league for Gorpak-Mon, a Dorarizin equivalent of rugby, but with even fewer rules on what constituted a foul.

To see them standing next to one another, you’d assume that Malthe was terrified he was about to be inadvertently crushed, and that Cocoa wasn’t even aware of Malthe’s existence. Opposites have a way of intriguing, and ultimately attracting one another though, and they’d grown from easy friends to something much closer than that.

An opaque, dull gray wall of hard light sprung up between the two after Cocoa guided his frail looking partner inside, and he counted down the seconds in his head until he was allowed to join him.

“Please, enter.” Silas’s voice chimed softly, and the wall came down.

Inside was a scene straight from the history books of Earth, or it would be if any history book had been wildly inaccurate, romanticized, and prone to flights of supernatural fancy when it came to the happenings of a small tavern in the Scottish highlands somewhere around the turn of the 20th century. A gentle fire burned in the hearth at the far side of the room, and a low, dark-timbered ceiling crowded Cocoa’s head as he stepped into the Holo-Deck. Abruptly, his vision greyed out as the floor rose up to meet and envelop him. A few disorienting seconds of pure grey void later, he found himself standing precisely where he was before, save that he was a few feet shorter and considerably thinner.

Malthe waved to him, smiling broadly as the virtual patrons of the drinking establishment went about their business with no heed to the newcomers. Cocoa had entered the Holo-Deck a powerfully built Dorarizin and was now crossing the room as a humble human tradesman off to the pub for a relaxing evening. With no small margin of surprise, accurately recreated on his hard-light face, he looked down at his fleshy pink hands protruding out of a humble tweed jacket. He turned them over a few times, everything feeling . . . normal enough. There was a slight disconnect with the shape of his arm, and where it felt like it was bending but his hand was definitely in the right place, his fingers definitely curling and uncurling as if they were his own flesh and blood.

The reality was a vastly more complex situation involving several distinct but closely associated layers of hard light being projected. The deck had been divided into two separate partitions, one for Malthe, and one for Cocoa. Malthe found himself in a small public house in the middle of a rainstorm, on a 1:1 scale. Cocoa, on the other hand, found himself in a scaled replica of that environment, making his considerably increased stature a far more reasonable fit. Additionally, there was a layer of hard light surrounding him in a form of artificial skin, with an additional layer of hard light surrounding his head as a very advanced form of VR helmet. The end result, when supplied with sufficient computing power, was to render something akin to two chaps sitting down at the bar to have a pint.

“This is . . . unusual.” Cocoa muttered quietly, glancing up and down both Malthe and himself.

His companion smiled, warmly. “It’s a pub! On a dark and stormy night. Now go get in position, there’s a little booth in the corner for you skulk menacingly in.” He leaned in to deliver a kiss, but as his lips collided with Cocoa’s human cheek, he made a face. “Eugh, it feels oily, and gross to kiss hard light.” A flash of lightning illuminated his featureless grin, with the rumble of thunder close to follow.

Cocoa sighed, and nodded. “Right.” The simulation did nothing to disguise the deep growl of his voice. As he dropped heavily into a dimly lit corner of the tavern, the bartender slid forward to address Malthe. “You’re staying up at the castle then? You should head out now, while you’ve got the cover of the storm.” His tone was somber, and his eyes wary. A very convincing portrayal, they both had to admit – the AI probably pulled the particular character from some movie long ago.

“Leave? Now? But there’s a storm brewing.” Though Malthe had written the scenario himself, and knew the lines quite well, his delivery seemed slightly hammy in comparison to the virtual bartender.

The barkeep, still mechanically scrubbing the inside of a spotless mug, nodded solemnly. “Aye, isn’t safe to be about the roads on a night like tonight. I’ve no place for you here, and you’d be better served behind stone walls. While the moon is still shrouded, make haste young lad.”

“Isn’t safe, whatever do you mean?” His voice rose to a falsetto, and he could barely hide his grin as he kept glancing over at Cocoa to make sure he was still paying attention.

The bartender beckoned for Malthe, imploring him to lean over the bar while he bowed his head to whisper a secret. The words carried flawlessly through the entire space though, as if they’d been whispered directly into the ear of everyone present. “It’s said that there exists such a beast that can lurk in the shape of a man, walking among us as an invisible hunter. They say, that on a night like tonight, when the moon is full and the seasons just so, the beast prowls moors looking to snatch up unwary travelers and feast upon them. It stands upon two legs as a man, but is covered in fur and with a mouth full of fangs it is the image of a gruesome predator dragged from the depths of the devils’ own dreams-”

Cocoa couldn’t suppress a snort, earning him a withering glance from his boyfriend, but it didn’t stop the show.

“-I’ve never seen such a creature myself, for if I had I think I’d have died of fright dead away, but others have - A few of them have even lived to tell the tale. So go on now, while the air is wrong and the moon concealed. Hurry up to your castle and bar your doors and lock your windows, lest you meet a terrible fate.”

An aghast look of shock passed over Malthe. “Well then, I’d best be leaving now. I’d hate to meet such a terrible creature on the road!”

Cocoa wanted to groan, but kept his composure anyway. The things he did for the people he loved . . .

Gathering his coat about him, Malthe moved for the door and passed out into the virtual drizzle outside. The remaining patrons of the bar fell into obviously looped behavior, muttering the same rumors, sipping beverages that would never empty, simply because Cocoa was supposed to follow Malthe out. He waited a few seconds though. Just to give him enough of a head start to make things entertaining.

==========

Panting and struggling up a hill of loose shale, Malthe seriously regretted including such strenuous activity as part of this planned fantasy. Lunch was long gone, and he’d only had a light portion of soup for dinner, so his strength was fading fast. Dropping to one knee, he took a moment to catch his breath and pace himself. He needed to save at least a little bit of energy for the chase at the end. With a glance over his shoulder he could barely make out the “shape” of Cocoa’s human avatar, working his way down the road. It was impossible to say it was actually dark, as everything was made of cohesive light and it always gave off a slight glow, but he still looked fairly dark and menacing as he trudged along through the night. A little shiver went up his spine. If he didn’t know his boyfriend, it would be downright frightening.

With a bit more care, he began picking his way up the hill. There would be a crest, a small wooded valley, a little brook, and then the castle would come into view as he broke the treeline. Perfect for a quality monster-chase sequence.

The terrain drew level, and then began to pitch downward again, and he began to pick up speed. Overhead, the rain died away, and the pale light of the full moon bathed the valley in jagged shadow. A long and low howl echoed from somewhere above and behind him, with a pressing but ethereal note to it. A shiver, a frisson of excitement crept through him at the sound. The hunt was afoot, and he was the prey.

==========

Cocoa let the howl fade, slowly. It sounded wrong inside the confines of the Holo-Deck. Too loud, too close. The cavernous valley wasn’t nearly cavernous enough, or it didn’t sound that way at least – his yell was probably bouncing off of the room’s actual walls. With a mixture of irritation and impatience he ripped his claws across his chest, shredding the hard light cocoon around him with ease. Flickering away in tattered ribbons, his perspective shifted as he seemed to grow taller. In reality, it was just his simulation collapsing slowly, the transition smoothed over by the application of powerful spatial processors trying to blend the world in a fashion that would be acceptable to him. His heavily corded muscles seemed to explode through the flesh and clothing that had swaddled his illusory form, finally revealing the hulking lupine figure that made a perfect stand in for the classic werewolf of human myth. The moonlight caught his dark fur from the side, and the fine hairs seemed to fade into a pale nimbus around him as he looked down on the forest from the ridge.

Instinctively, he sniffed the air, only to have his nostrils flooded with the electric scent of hard-light and the pleasantly familiar scent of Malthe’s exertion. If he had to guess . . . probably only a few meters away. He grumbled softly. There were serious limitations to hunting inside a simulation, namely that distances were always artificial. He set off at a loping pace, covering the distance that Malthe had struggled over in easy bounds, smashing through trees and underbrush as he went. The simulation compensated as he brute-forced his way through the forest, reinforcing the scraggy, hard light timbers as the air filled with the sound of splintering wood, the hard-light ground starting to track back against his footfalls like a reverse moving sidewalk. It still wasn’t enough, not to stop him, at least. Decades of plowing through violently resisting and actually corporeal entities meant that a pretend deadwood wasn’t going to give him pause, and he could always outrun the ground itself.

Within seconds of his charge he caught sight of a flicker of blue. It was just a hint of the jacket Malthe was wearing, and only a few hundred yards off, but Cocoa was startled for a second. There was no way that Malthe could have covered that much ground that quickly . . . unless the simulation was helping him. He growled softly with irritation. They’d discussed how it was common in human media for the pursuit entity to have every advantage in terms of speed, coordination, power, and reach, but for some reason the pursued would always manage to remain just ahead, just out of reach, or just agile enough to avoid being caught and pinned down and . . . handled. The discovery of an uneven playing field wasn’t unexpected, but it wasn’t welcome either.

He wanted to catch Malthe. Catch him, pin him down, and do things to him.

His barrel chest swelled with excitement, and pupils were drawn to pinpricks by the adrenaline beginning to course through his body. His muscles were so tense with sheer anticipation that they looked like steel support cables wrapped in thick fur. The air smelled wrong, and the sounds of night were off, but it didn’t matter. This was a hunt, a chase, but better. Winning this little race would be far more enjoyable than just running down prey or winning a match. Malthe was right. This was an excellent cultural tradition.

==========

Malthe, panting and wheezing, flat-out and nearly blind through the woods. His heart was racing, but not just with exertion. There was an undeniable thrill to being chased, made all the more exhilarating due to his knowledge of how the chase would end. It wasn’t fear that kept him running, but joy. Predator and prey, but there was safety in the jaws of the predator and the chase was just for the sheer thrill of it. He could hear entire trees being uprooted behind him, and as he leapt across the black waters of the brook he was certain he felt the kiss of hot breath on his neck. The world bent slightly as he cleared the gap, and he knew he been given a precious few seconds as the simulation gave him a slight boost, just to keep things interesting for both of them.

He shrugged his jacket off, and threw it onto a tree branch. Hopefully, whenever Cocoa was re-oriented, he’d spend a little time chasing down that fluttering scrap of cloth instead of him. More, if the AI was on his side. His sprint settled into a quiet jog, and his blood sang in his ears as he finally managed to pass through the treeline and onto a loose gravel road. Up the path was a dark, foreboding, and ancient looking castle, a rusted iron grate squeaking loudly in the wind. A single light flickered in the window of the highest tower. Victory would be his if he could reach that room before Cocoa found him, caught him . . . and . . .

He nibbled his lip with a blush, and didn’t run quite as hard as he could have when took off for the finish line in their little race.

==========

Silas watched the progress of the two against one another. He’d used the man’s discarded jacket to great effect, letting it flutter on a tree branch until the Dorarizin had pounced on it. He’d also did his best to carry the traces of skin oil and other aromatic compounds along on scraps of hard light to further stymie the predator, but it was truly a taxing challenge to keep him from running the human into the ground within seconds. Of course, keeping him from getting frustrated and simply smashing through the hard light illusions was another delicate balancing act of progress versus pitfall. The challenge put his processing cores to their limit, and required him to borrow a few spare ones from neighboring systems. For the time being, he was free of burdensome reflection. There was no CPU power to dedicate to the consideration of his limits, and the bloodsport-oriented nature of this ‘hunt’ appealed to the engrams that had been the basis of his personality programming.

The human had made it to the gates of the fortification, but the Dorarizin had gotten wise to some of the more underhanded tactics he’d been employing. The doppelganger had been a good diversion, but ultimately it was the last straw, and the clever fellow had abandoned chasing Malthe altogether, instead moving for the castle atop the hill to intercept him before the finish line.

Silas didn’t think it was quite in the spirit of the scenario setup, but allowed it. After all, there were no conditions present in the configuration file that expressly forbid such a maneuver. The stones lining the back of the entrance hall gave under the assault of furious claws, just as the human crested the hill. If he had not reduced his rate of travel, Malthe might have run headlong into Cocoa, but as his pace slackened the Dorarizin had ample time to set up an ambush in the mouldering grand hall.

How entertaining.

==========

The door creaked open on rusted hinges, and Malthe’s breath fogged the chilly, dead air inside the castle. The entryway was lined with ominous and hopefully empty suits of blackened armor, and moth-eaten banners of purple and gold hung from sconces hidden in darkness far above. His footsteps echoed off the dark stone as he strode briskly into the grand hall. There was a thin sheen of sweat on his brow, and he found himself sucking down lungful after lungful of musty air, his cheeks burning pink from the sudden drop in temperature. Taking a moment to catch his breath, and push the grand double doors shut behind him, Malthe momentarily wondered if he’d made it home free, until he spotted the moonlight streaming in from a breach in the far wall. “That shouldn’t-”

He didn’t manage to get the rest of the thought out before the shattered table next to him seemed to spring to life and hurl itself towards him. He fell backward as he cried out, throwing his arms up reflexively to try and protect himself from what should have been a few hundred pounds of ancient hardwood. There was a boom as the table slammed down around him, but as he blinked in confusion he realized it hadn’t actually touched him.

Just then, a very familiar face appeared above him, peering over the edge of the table, leering smirk stretched across their visage. Cocoa leaned in, and gave Malthe a kiss, firmly, on the lips, stealing what little was left of his breath away.

“Caught you.” He muttered smugly, as their lips parted.

Malthe gave a few experimental wiggles beneath the combined weight of furniture and Dorarizin, and discovered he was thoroughly caught. A sheepish grin crossed his face. “W-well . . . yeah you did. I didn’t expect you to pin me down with a table.” He chuckled nervously. His stomach was full of butterflies, and he was lightheaded from all the running.

Cocoa leaned in, bumping his wet nose to Malthe’s pink one. “That’s why I did it.” He leaned in, kissing his soon-to-be-husband again, more tenderly this time.

They were both left panting slightly as their lips parted, and the hunger in his eyes had gone from the gaze of a hunter to the gaze of a lover. “So. I won. Prize round?”

The pale skin of his captive human flushed an even darker shade of red as he meekly muttered, “Yes, please.”

Halloween was an excellent tradition. They were both certain of it now.

==========

“. . . you know, I expected you to take liberties, but this is ridiculous.” Malthe pouted, sullenly as Cocoa carried him up the spiral stone staircase to the highest tower of the castle. Hoisted in arms layered with muscle, and carried bridal style, he found it all to be very demeaning. It also made his stomach do excited flip flops, and his face turn bright pink.

“Watch your head. Torch sconces.” Cocoa muttered softly, large hand shifting to cover the back of Malthe’s head as they passed an iron outcropping. It was just hard light, and would dissipate readily if he bumped his head . . . but Cocoa was instinctively protective of the pouting, flush faced bundle in his arms. Brief flashes of moonlight washed across them both in waves as they passed the slit windows of the tower, and Cocoa’s glimmering smile grew wider as Malthe’s face grew redder and hotter. “You’re cute when you’re mad.”

“S-stop! I’m . . . I’m not cute. I’m handsome, maybe but-”

His weak protests were interrupted as Cocoa kicked a door clean off it’s hinges, revealing a candle lit honeymoon suite at the top of the tower. “But you’re also an adorable little cuddle-slut that’s been loving every second of this?”

Malthe jawed silently, the raw display of virile power doing funny things to his brain and sucking all of the air out of the room.

Gently laying him down on the Dorarizin Queen sized bed, Cocoa took advantage of his momentary silence to press his muzzle to his cheek. The texture of stiff but very fine fur pressed against an area as sensitive as his face, and done with such a potent air of intimacy instantly dissolved the front of faux indignation coming off of Malthe. Their clothes were left in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, and so they took it as a moment to press together to escape the creeping chill of the simulation.

Sighing with pleasant contentment, Malthe closed his eyes, and melted like butter in the arms of his hulking, competitive, dominant, and very gentle husband. He felt the glasses slip off his face, while a powerful paw ruffled his hair into an untidy mop. “Mmmmm . . . you know I hate that.”

“Mmmmm . . . you know it just gets messed up any way.” Cocoa growled back softly, before running a broad, powerful tongue up the side of his neck. The bedding squeaked, and groaned as it accepted the weight of the heavy-set Dorarizin, and Malthe arched his back so that his lover’s chest fur could tickle him ever so lightly. A quiet croon escaped him as powerful, bone-crushing teeth gently grazed the side of his throat. A lustful moan followed, as he felt the broad bulk and weight of an inhumanly large tool pressed against his own.

Inch after bulging inch slipped from the alien’s canine sheath, until it surpassed Malthe’s comparatively petite member two times over, in both length and girth. He felt it slap against his abdomen, and it made him tremble with anticipation. Even that part of his partner had a certain aggressive spirit to it.

Their lips met again, but broke quickly as the Dorarizin planted a row of kisses down Malthe’s throat, along his collarbone, and then across his chest. Teeth grazed sensitive spots, and lips lingered where they were most desired. The two knew each other only as familiar lovers could, and as passive as Malthe seemed, he knew that his little croons and quivers and moans did more for Cocoa than any amount of friction or blind groping would.

An effete squeak of surprise escaped him as Cocoa shifted again, making the whole bed rock and shudder. His eyes snapped open in surprise as hot, heavy flesh dropped against his face, the pointed tip of an alien tool gently parting his lips. A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. His hands found the furry sack beneath his boyfriend’s wonderfully taut sheathe, and they began to gently stroke and tease all the right parts of that masculinity while his lips and tongue went to work capturing its head.

The articulating beads quivered and coursed along the strange imitation of a canine tool, wandering like vagrant pleasure seekers up and down the pulsing length. They bumped his lips and fought his tongue, and while he could only fit a fraction of said considerable girth in his mouth, the meandering nubs kept it oddly intimate and engaging.

There was a soft, wet pop as Cocoapulled his tool free of his mewling partners mouth. Try as he might to conceal it, the amount of focused attention wonderfully vocal feedback had already pushed him from lust-filled to debilitatingly aroused with his limit fast approaching. Casually rolling his little human lover over with a gentle swipe of his paw, he pressed his forehead to the nape of Malthe’s neck, tantalizing the flesh of his back with puffs of hot breath.

The two of them held like that for a second, one pinning the other in place with a gesture of supreme affection before easing his saliva slick tip into his malleable confines.

A mixed bestial howl and boyish moan filled the night air of the castle, soon followed by other, even more lewd sounds of passion. Sheets were bunched into fists while words of pleading and desire were exchanged. The dull slap of fur against flesh mingled with pants, squeaks, and animalistic growls of pleasure . . . some even coming from Cocoa. With passion so wild as to be instinctive, but so considered as to be art, they found a new competition to engage in, where the objective was to extract as much pleasure for the other out of their own bodies as possible.

It was a game that they both would win at.

The minutes stretched into hours. Feral action would settle into soft chatter and giggly cuddling after peaks of exertion, only to slowly build back into desperate action as the two lovers lost themselves in their mutual addiction to each other.

=========

Silas, cold, unflinching, and incapable of feeling, silently shunted other reservations away. He deflected them into open decks, or delayed them citing maintenance and repair, or dissuaded them with advice regarding other wonderful station-side attractions. He ensured that the two exhausted, inextricably intertwined pair that had fallen asleep after so heavily taxing his systems were not disturbed.

He was not capable of feeling joy, or happiness, or fear, or love. But he could recognize these things. He could understand their value.

His engrams decreed that these moments, these feelings were worth protecting. So he did.

Impossible as it had to have been, he felt quite good about doing so.