Back Flow - Part 1 (Patreon)

You Wouldn’t Download A Headmate

The bedroom was a mess of wires and adaptors. Alien technology was hard enough just to connect to the power grid, let alone to a regular consumer level computer tower. Especially Kobaroic technology, which was apparently well known by other galactic civilizations for being bulky and archaic. In large part because the Kobaroians themselves were so large that they’d never really felt the same push for miniaturization most species had.

Not that Jacob Zhang could really say he knew how it compared. Earth was only just starting to open up to the rest of the galaxy. First with the mess in Halifax. Then when Canada got a hot goth queen.

Which had then led to a trickle of aliens moving to the country. Earth was still enough of a backwater that the main draw was nature and cheap rent. Well, cheap when you factored in the exchange rate on certain thi—none of this was super relevant to the scene at hand, though.

What was relevant was that Jacob was more exposed to the aliens moving to earth than most folks were because of his new roommate. A Kobaroic woman who’d recently moved to Earth.

She was more than a little awkward, and maybe a bit spacy sometimes, but she was nice, paid her half of the rent on time every month, and helped him find the new shops selling cool alien stuff, so Jacob rather liked her. As a roommate.

Ok, so maybe he had a little bit of a crush too… Larka was a 6’2” muscular alien woman. What was there not to like? Sure, maybe some dudes would have found the horn and tusks off- putting, but not him.

Larka was, however, a lesbian and Jacob firmly accepted that.

“Ok, I think that should be good to go,” she said, pulling herself out from the mess of wires and cables.

As she stood up he was stuck by just how good she looked in a pair of track pants and a t-shirt. It was amazing that girls could look so good while dressed so casually.

Guys needed to wear a suit to look even half as good.

And he was pretty sure he’d never manage even that. He didn’t have any muscles to show off, he wasn’t very tall, and his face left… plenty to be desired.

Which all added up to him being doomed in all romantic efforts.

“And you’re sure this is safe? It is connecting directly to my brain,” Jacob asked, glancing back down at the helmet at the centre of all the wiring.

“Kids use these things for schooling back home, it’s fine,” Larka replied with a grin.

“Right… I guess I seem like I’m asking how there’s so many little people in the tv to you,” Jacob mumbled, feeling embarrassed as he grabbed the helmet.

“Something like that,” Larka replied, though her tone was gentle and playful. “Anyhow, you should be good to hop into whatever story worlds it is that you want to explore.”

Jacob gave a nod, and sat on his bed. After taking a breath to steady his nerves, he grabbed the helmet and slipped it on. It was just sort of dark for a moment, until he heard the click of Larka activating the alien technology attached to his computer.

Suddenly he was there, standing in front of his computer’s desktop screen, everything else just a grey void.

He spent a moment staring at it, before reaching out, and treating it as a touch screen. It worked, and he was soon hunting through the documents to find the story he was looking for.

He had to admit, he’d been majorly excited about the idea of being able to slip into the world of any story he offered to the proper alien hardware, built in programming offering each character a reasonably intelligent AI. Larka had been firm on telling him they didn’t have full human intelligence, since the computer simply didn’t have the processing power for that, but they could give a decent enough approximation. A better approximation the more data the computer had to work with on pre-established personalities.

And, well, That’s Not What I Meant When I Wished For A Fantasy Harem did have five volumes to draw on, so Jacob was pretty sure the story had plenty to work with. Five volumes and a cast of some of the cutest girls in manga.

Once he’d found the files in his computer, a new interface popped up, this one clearly alien in design. Larka had set it to English for him, though, so he was able to follow the instructions, feeding the files into its processor.

After a moment of what seemed like the Kobaroic equivalent of a loading bar, a new menu popped up. He had to admit to being surprised that the interface was giving him the option to pick to enter the story as any of the characters.

Any of them. A bunch of the names listed were one-off characters.

It seemed that the computer picked up on his disinterest in most of the names and, a moment later, trimmed it down to only the core cast.

A core cast that was, essentially, the protagonist and the various love interests.

He stared at the list, because… well, it was mostly girls. That was… well, it was…

Jacob couldn’t help but blush at the thought of choosing one of the girls. With how realistic his current digital form felt, he… but he wouldn’t. He was a guy. It would just feel dirty… even if they were fictional characters and all that, it just…

Plus, if he did, then Ichiro would be expecting him to be romantic and cuddly… while all the other girls would see him as a rival, instead of someone to flirt with. And that—did the interface just glitch?

Jacob stared at it, having sworn the whole thing had shuddered.

After a few moments of it not repeating that, he could only conclude he’d blinked or… something. It being a virtual world, he wasn’t quite sure how the interface would read his brain’s impulses.

Was he blinking?

Was he breathing?

Surely his real body was, but he wasn’t sure about in the VR experience.

He could ask Larka after. Right now he wanted to see how good the experience would work. What would Takeshi Kuroda’s manga style look like, rendered in three dimensions by alien technology?

Curious, he reached forward to select Ichiro’s name.

Only, as he reached out, the interface glitched again, shifting slightly, and Jacob found his finger landing on the next name down the list. Izumi.

Before he knew it, Jacob found himself in a small koi pond, up to his neck in the water.

Around him was a large traditional Japanese home, sitting in a forested valley.

It looked just like the manga. Just like the manga, as things were limited to grayscale and screentones. There did seem to be slight hints of colour, picked out from things that had gotten rare colour pages, but… only hints. If he tried to focus on them they vanished.

He stood up, looking down at the petite frame of the kappa girl, clad in a cute and modest bikini.

She was thin. That was the first thing to hit him. Izumi was the smallest of the girls, and also the youngest.

It was a seinen series, so youngest meant she was seventeen, but she was also small and cute for her age. Honestly, even though he’d first read the manga at nineteen she’d seemed more like a little sister to protect than a love interest.

“Alright, well, I can still explore a little. I just won’t save the progress and do a new session next time,” he mumbled. “After I get Larka to fix the calibration settings.”

Maybe he’d make sure to add one of the OVAs to the database next time. Just so that the world wasn’t so unnatural feeling. He wanted a little colour.

He wouldn’t risk even a second of the anime, though. The characterisations were so off in that adaptation. They never should have let that sexist old slug direct the—

The world glitched again. This time more severely than before. It felt like being inside a DVD when the reader hit a scratch. Textures dislodging onto new shapes. White turning to grey. Black outlines getting a white fuzz around them.

His own form shifted and shunted, his body overlaying on top of Izumi’s.

As he realised he needed to get out now he swore he heard a soft voice asking ‘what’s going on?’.

Before he could process that, or guess where the voice came from, he was back in his room.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Larka’s voice was saying. “I made a rounding error. I thought an ampere was 7.61 grems, it’s 7.16.”

He took the helmet off to stare at her. “It got really freaky at the end.”

“Mhmm… sorry. I’m going to have to rewire some stuff, and… well, I have work in the morning, so… is it ok if I do that tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s fine,” he replied. “I messed up a bit on my end too, so it’s probably fine it cut short.”

Larka smiled and said goodnight, heading off to go brush her teeth. Jacob stared at his room for a bit, slowly readjusting to being in a world with colour again.

As well as readjusting to his body. The form he’d gotten in the VR had been so tiny and thin and… it had felt unsettling. He hadn’t thought he’d liked his own level of body fat. Yet here he was. Though, on the other hand, there were ways his body felt wrong now. Despite the skinniness being a cute kappa girl had also had something about it that he’d liked.

At least the feeling was fading now.

Feeling comfortable enough, he got to work cleaning up the mess of wires in his room, to make it at least semi walkable. Then he headed off to the kitchen. He was a bit peckish.

Opening the fridge, he stared aimlessly at the contents. Larka had bought a new one not long after moving in, so there were three crispers. Since she was a herbivore. A habit that Jacob had found rubbing off on him as he’d now started eating more veggies.

Still, he had to wonder why his eyes were drawn so strongly to the jar of pickles and single cucumber sitting on his shelf.

Whatever the reason, they looked delicious. He grabbed some bread to toast, yoinked some honey mustard, and then cut up a pickle and some of the cucumber to make a sandwich.

Taking a bite, he was hit with an odd wave of happiness. It felt like the best thing he’d ever eaten. He struggled between savouring the bite and devouring the rest immediately.

A bit confused by how good the meal was, he washed the dishes and headed back to his room.

He didn’t do anything particularly exciting the rest of the night, poking about on twumblr and other social media. Eventually a long form video essay caught his eye, so he got ready for bed and then settled in to watch it on his phone. Slowly the passionate discussion on the history of a 90s Italian cartoon he’d never seen lulled him to sleep.

-

Slowly opening her eyes, she realised she was laying in a bed.

She didn’t sleep in a bed.

Mildly panicked, she sat up and looked around. She was in a room softly lit by morning light. A room that she didn’t know… although it felt kind of familiar. Like she was able to work with the fact that someone else knew it.

Which didn’t really make sense.

She stood up, wanting to figure out where she was, when she realised that her—that she…

The surprised yelp that escaped her lips was as alien to her as the male body Izumi had suddenly found herself in.

Clamping her hand over her mouth, she realised she felt a strange hint of stubble on her face. Which further threw her into a panic.

She raced out of the room. There was a hallway. And… left. She went left to look for a bathroom. Bursting in, she stared at the mirror. At the bizarre sight of a human male staring back at her in the reflection.

“W-w-wha—” she managed, her lips quivering.

“Ok, normally I’d yell at you for bursting into the bathroom while I’ve got the door closed, but… are you ok, Jacob?”

Izumi blinked, eyes drifting over on the mirror to realise there was a woman behind her. A large woman. Easily as big as an oni or a cyclops. With a horn and muscles to match. The woman also was wearing pajamas and brushing her teeth, which did serve to make her slightly less terrifying.

Still nervous, she turned around to face her.

“Who are y—do you know why I’m… like this?” Izumi asked, trying her best to keep her voice as soft and high as it was supposed to be.

The large woman stared at her for a moment.

And then, quite simply, said: “Oh.”