Going out with Sophia was a curious exercise in frustration. Personally, I did not like crowds of people, preferring the company of select friends, if any company at all. Sophia, on the other hand, had started to thrive in a social setting. That resulted in various people coming up to us, either to talk or even to replace me as her dance-partner, something she generally rejected but still, there was a small core of jealousy, sitting in my center, a feeling that I wanted to have her all for myself. But, on the other hand, I enjoyed dancing with her, not just the closeness but also to simply lose myself in the motion, not trying to solve a problem, or really think at all. Just two bodies, moving in sync with the other. There was another activity that I enjoyed in a similar manner, only increased by an order of magnitude. Sadly, the required privacy was not always available, so dancing had to work as a pale substitute. Or, more often than not, to get into the mood to sneak away and find that required privacy.

“Heeeeeyyy…” a slurred voice called out from behind me and I shifted a little, to absorb a not-quite unexpected impact. The voice belonged to Tanisha, my roommate, and it sounded like she had started to party early and partied hard. It was the only way she could have come to the idea that it was a good idea to stagger onto the dance-floor and stumble into me, in an attempt to hug me. Her inebriation also meant that I could not simply dodge or she would have face-planted, something I did not want, it would have been cruel.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see that Sophia looked amused and worried, both in equal parts. I could easily guess why the amusement, seeing me support the sloppily smiling Tanisha must have been an amusing sight. Worried, was an similarly easy guess, we had discussed Tanisha’s habit of drinking too much before and tried to help her, sadly with limited success. What we had accomplished was to make her limit her drinking and partying to the weekend, making sure her grades remained acceptable, even good in parts. But, as if to make up for the lost drinking opportunities during the week, she drank even more on the weekend, before throwing herself at people, although most of the time not literally.

“Hello Tanisha. Are we having fun yet?” I asked, trying to sound friendly, even if I was annoyed at the interruption. But I shared Sophia’s worries, making me want to help Tanisha, if I could.

“Yeeesh. Let me dance with you.” she slurred, making me give Sophia a short, questioning glance. When Sophia gave me an encouraging nod and move sideways a little, to make space for Tanisha, I agreed.

What came next was a strange game of pinball, as Sophia and I tried to keep Tanisha in play, so to speak, making sure that her stumbling steps did not cause her to actually fall down on the dance-floor. It was both exhausting and amusing, thankfully both of us were able to ignore normal limitations and a lot more physically capable than we had any right to be.

Sophia, simply due to her power while I had used quite a bit of time in the last few months to integrate the nanites into my physical body, using them to directly improve myself. Ideas I had deemed impractical before had become relatively easy, with the ability to make changes without major surgery. Even painkillers were no longer needed, not with the complete replacement of my spinal cord that had been necessary after Clark had shattered my spine which made The combination of those factors had allowed me to make direct changes to my body, slowly perfecting it over time. I had some limiters that made sure I did not give away my capabilities by accident, and even with the modifications I was weaker than Sophia, but it had been an interesting project.

After some dancing, I noticed that Tanisha looked a little strange. Exchanging looks with Sophia, I decided that getting her somewhere comfortable would be a good idea, it looked like she was about to start crashing.

“Why do you not come with the two of us, before you turn into a pumpkin?” I asked Tanisha, getting a mumbled but apparently positive response. So, with me on one side and Sophia on the other, we started to leave. One of Tanisha’s friends, I had met him before, asked if everything was alright. After assuring him that it was and we were just taking her back to her room, to sleep off her intoxication, he seemed to be relieved. It seemed that Sophia and I were not the only people worried about her self-destructive habits. I had considered a few fixes, mostly along the lines of placing a small gadget into her stomach that would make her violently ill if she ingested alcohol but that did not quite seem to be the right way. It would make sure that she could not party as she currently did but do nothing to fix the underlying problem. That was something Tanisha herself would have to do.

By the time we got back to the dorm, Tanisha was starting to look a little green and we barely managed to get her to our bathroom before her body started to purge, leaving me holding back her hair.

“Sophia, could you get a glass of water?” I asked, while making sure that Tanisha’s offering to the porcelain throne went where it belonged. Observing her made me shake my head, it was such an idiotic behaviour, making me wonder just how it had started. Not just with her case in particular, I knew perfectly when and how it had started, with a reasonably good idea why. No, what I wondered was why humans had decided that poisoning yourself to the point of unconsciousness was a good idea. Before my thoughts could take a darker turn, the contemplation of human idiocy always brought those dark thoughts, Sophia returned with a large glass, filling it with cold water from the tap.

It took both of us to pour it down Tanisha’s throat, without spilling it all over the bathroom, she was that far gone. Even when we started stripping her, she just made a few incoherent but happy noises, reinforcing my worries for her. In the state she had been in, taking advantage of her would have been trivial, I doubted that she had registered with whom she had left the club or where we had gone. Sure, Accord Island was relatively safe, crime-wise, with little to no violent crime but that did not mean it was safe.

“We’ll have to talk to her, again. If she continues like that, who knows what’ll happen.” Sophia echoed my thoughts once Tanisha was in bed, softly snoring.

“I know. But I am not sure there is anything we can say to make her understand. We have tried before and you see how much it has accomplished.” I agreed, if a little pessimistic. I disliked problems that could not be solved, or at least solved by me. I enjoyed studying a problem, learning what needed to be done to solve it and figuring out a solution. The more complex the problem, the more interesting and the harder to solve, the more determined I became. But this was a problem that needed to be solved by Tanisha, with us reduced to advisors and helpers. Unless I wanted to modify her body, forcing her to quit drinking. I made a mental note to keep that idea in the back of my mind, maybe even put something together that would do the job of making her sick as soon as she drank alcohol.

“Maybe it will work this time. She’ll have to see that what she does isn’t healthy.” Sophia muttered in return, sounding unhappy.

“We will see. But for now, let us get some sleep. Do you want to stay here?” I asked, hoping that she would. Sharing a bed with her was a somewhat regular thing, even if the dorm-beds were rather unsuited for two occupants, their frames narrow and the mattress thin and flimsy.

“Yes, I’ll stay.” she agreed and we both went into the bathroom, to clean up and get ready for bed. There was some touching and caressing as we stripped but neither of us were in a lustful mood, the worries about Tanisha having extinguished those ideas.

Cuddling together, simply enjoying that we were together, that we had someone to share our life with, we soon fell asleep. At least my physical body did, my mind, as I had always done recently, joined Galatea in the network, using my improved connection to her to be active. It allowed me to research, to read and understand while sleeping. I still needed some real sleep, but that amount had diminished to almost nothing, an hour or two every other day was all I needed to feel fine. It should be unhealthy but then, what about me was normal?

“Now, what are we looking at today?” I asked Galatea, in the white mental space we used together.