Foreword

This chapter, and the next, were originally Tumblr posts. This one in particular is not written in a narrative way, it’s more of a musing on “well wouldn’t this be a fun story to write” so to speak. It also includes emojis, arbitrary coloring (as opposed to simply indicating POV, which I do use color for), and sentence breaks where there arguably should not be in a story, which I’m preserving but will not be using in future chapters. I am not preserving the lack of capitalization or apostrophes—that is a tone gimmick of my Tumblr blog but doesn’t really fit here. Given that there are terms with missing context in this chapter, I’ve used title tags to explain them. I’ve underlined those terms, and they all have explanative tooltips which you can see by hovering them. With that said, here’s the first chapter of Seat of Consciousness.

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Hear me out. HDG is neat. I’m all for the floretposting. But. Sad trans girl becomes a mech pilot because she sees it as a way out (“Hey, at least I get to feel like something other than me sometimes, can’t be worse than this”).

And then lo and behold she’s a viable pilot candidate and they’re like “We need to make sure you’re as okay as you possibly can be before you start training”.

And there’s none of that “No no you need to be healthy before you sign up” junk. There aren’t a ton of people who can handle the amount of cyberware pilots need to have shoved into their brains. We’ll take what we can get, and if that means organizing therapy and stuff for you, so be it.

And… oh. hey. HRT is making things a little better. And therapy is helping. And… huh. Not as much sad anymore. Just tired. And kinda lonely. And very touch starved.

“Wait I’m getting assigned a handler? Does that mean I get to start training soon?!” silent celebration

Oh. Oh. She’s pretty… you mean we’re gonna be working as a team… for good?! Ohhhh noooo this is so awful hot women are the worst gimme!!!

Ok, so we’re gonna sync our link chips in 3… 2… 1… oh

Oh she’s really really pretty 😖

“Alright, I need you to test the link”

Why’s she looking at me like that am I blush-

“Gotcha. Alright hun raise your right hand.”

ing… Wait what- How-?! Let me put my hand down 😖

“Perfect, everything looks good. You can unlink now if you’d like, and we’ll have a sim ready for you two in an hour. Welcome to the program.”

“Awesome! Lower your hand. Let’s see… how do I unlink… ah there we go”

Wait… no… that feels icky and cold and gross and weird and

“Wait… I wanna stay linked… please… 🥺?”

“I was gonna say the same thing hun, this feels weird. Here let me just… perfect.”

Yeah that feels a lot better 😖

“Well, if we’re gonna keep the link active I might as well practice using it. Come here.”

Yes ma’am ajdjdhbfjdbfbfbh wait no that’s-

“Aww your face is so cute when I do that~”

“Nuhuh” she’s so mean 😖 wait what does she mean by-

“I wonder what you’re thinking about right now~ on your knees.”

“Yes ma’am” oh god did i say that out loud

“Oh goodness~ yeah, this is gonna be fun…”