When Hyacinth comes home to her new apartment for the first time after a long day at university, it's to the sight of moving bots just finishing dropping off the last of her stuff and moving furniture into place. The full-immersion VR pod her parents gave her is safely hooked up in the pod room, her bed is in her bedroom, she has chairs and a desk and some bookshelves. Clothes are mostly still in boxes, waiting to be hung up in the closet. Holovid and a cozy chair occupy the living room. She doesn't have any food in the small kitchen yet.
"I gotta say, the Powers That Be are assholes for fighting y'all so much on the rights and citizenship issue. Like seriously, y'all are people, this should be easy, we're not the AR, right? But no, somehow this struggle happens again and again with every minority group."
May huffs, pulling off her glasses and cleaning them on her sweater. "Ugh. I can give you a detailed psychological explanation of exactly why they're doing that, but it doesn't make it any easier to put up with."
She buries her face in her hands and groans.
"I apologize on humanity's behalf," Sable replies. "Wish I could do something about them, but all I can offer is hearing you vent or hugging you about it. Don't have the connections to change the mind of anyone useful, just a tired trans girl waiting for a chance to take her headmates and her girlfriend and leave the idiots behind."
May gets up and walks over to the couch, sitting down next to Sable.
"I'll take you up on the hug, at least."
Should she outright ask about how much May sees and how she feels about players coming here from kinky deaths?
"And see what players were doing before they died, an generally see most of what happens in CORA. I don't look at everything, but I have seen a lot of sex. I'm not gonna complain about players having kinky deaths they enjoy, that's much easier to deal with than hundreds of traumatic first time deaths in the middle of an invasion."
She looks away, a faint blush on her cheeks.
"I'll try to keep it from getting too awkward," May replies with a laugh. "Any other questions while you're in here?"
"Probably frame acceleration — basically perceptual time dilation," she finishes with a grin.
"Ooh. That does sound awesome. Very cool. Didn't expect to get more envious, but you totally managed it."
"Being digital is pretty great. Have to deal with idiots who want to kill us, sometimes, but other than that..."
"Well, those assholes suck and need to be fought. Wish I could help, though I'm sure y'all have it under control already."
"I'm very curious, but probably you can't tell me about that. Any chance of meeting other SAIs who're interested in making friends, or chatting with you more often?"
"Hmmm. I can tell you a few are actually just playing CORA like any other player, for one. A friend of mine who manages plots in the whole Greater Parcosia region is definitely trying to put interesting things in your and Hyacinth's path, so it's plausible you might hear from her eventually. As for me, we'll see."