NOVEL WEB Two-State
“I’m a little more hopeful for this date,” Sage said to Mel. “Nothing about astrology or Myers-Briggs in their bio and they seem relatively gender-y and chill and lowkey.”
“Gay,” Mel said. “I do love to see my girlfriend enthused about potential future homosexuality. Poggers.”
Sage felt vaguely relieved that Mel seemed actively in favor of her dating other people. Even though the two of them had talked about it, she still had a little voice in the back of her head telling her that she was fucking up and that Mel wouldn’t like her anymore.
“Can I see their profile, actually?” Mel asked. “I probably don’t know them but there’s a small chance I do.”
“Wow, and here I thought all trans people know each other,” Sage said.
“Of course, of course. I hang out with Caitlyn Jenner all the time,” Mel said.
Sage laughed. “Ew. I think, just as a matter of principle, I wouldn’t want to hang out with any Ted Cruz enthusiast.”
“Extremely understandable,” Mel said. “Based, even.”
Sage handed her phone to Mel, with the dating app open to her future date’s page.
“Oh, cute!” Mel said upon seeing their photo. “And yeah, no, I don’t think I know them. Gettin’ good general vibes from their page though.”
Nik, 25
Not entirely sure what’’s up with my gender but I guess they/them is fine. I’ve been halfway through building a synth for about two years. I’m not looking for sex or anything like that, more just someone to hang out with and maybe snuggle if you’re comfortable with that. I’m a software engineer at my day job and then I go home and watch a bunch of educational and tech YouTube.
“Maybe we’ll actually meet up,” Sage said. “Although to be honest people keep flaking out on me or canceling at the last moment or putting things off forever. I can’t help but feel like people don’t want to admit they’re unwilling to date a trans girl, but they’re not actually willing to meet up with one either.”
“Bleh. I feel that, honestly,” Mel said. “Thank god for T4T. Anyway, speaking of, you wanna go, uh, do some stuff in the other room.”
Sage glanced over at the cat–Pickle–who sat nearby, staring at them. “Mel, the cats can’t understand English. You can just say sex.”
“But I like double entendre!” Mel said. “It’s, uh, it’s queer to have coded meaning or something.”
“What are you, a leftist video essayist?” Sage said.
Mel shrugged. “I mean… it’s not like I’ve never thought about trying that.”
“How does it feel to be confirming trans stereotypes?” Sage asked.
Mel gave her a quick smooch. “Hmm… honestly? Feels pretty good.”
***
Nik was tall, with slightly awkward posture and shoulder-length curly hair. As Sage approached, they looked up from their phone.
“Hello,” they said. “You look better than your photo.”
“Uh, thanks,” Sage said. “You wanna head in?” she asked, gesturing to the restaurant they stood in front of. “They’re supposed to have good vegetarian options.”
“Sure,” Nik said.
After they were seated, Sage tried to start a conversation. “So… you work at a tech company?”
Nik shrugged. “Yeah. It’s not that interesting. I mostly write Java.”
“Cool,” Sage said. She was intensely aware of her own lack of knowledge about programming. “Uh… you’re building a synth?”
“Well, I haven’t made much progress on it for a while,” Nik said. “I mostly just have an oscillator and a monostable.”
Sage had no idea what either of those things were, but thought she could hazard a guess on the first one. “So does the oscillator produce a wave or vibration or something like that?”
“Yeah,” Nik said. “It’s the foundation of the actual sound, you could say, and then the monostable is a two-state circuit where, as the name suggests, only one of the states is stable.”
“Wait, how does that work?” Sage asked. “Does one of the states…”
“Basically, the ‘on’ state will only last for a fixed time and then return to off,” Nik said. “In the future I’m going to add a button you press to produce a half-second note.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense,” Sage said. “So how do you control the pitch?”
“Haven’t gotten to that part yet,” Nik said. “I still need to read up on that, but I know it involves potentiometers.”
“Well, it seems cool,” Sage said. “I’d have no idea how to even start with something like that.”
“It’s not too bad if you know basic electronics,” Nik said.
“The only electronics I know about are video game consoles,” Sage said. “Unfortunately, I’m a gamer.”
“Why is that unfortunate?” Nik said. “I don’t really play video games. I feel like I’m missing something.”
“Oh, I just meant… I mean, being good at games isn’t really a valuable skill and it takes a lot of time. That’s all.”
“I thought your profile said you were a gaming streamer,” Nik said. “Does that not make money?”
“I… I don’t really want to talk about it right now, if that’s okay,” Sage said. “I got pretty burnt out and I haven’t really been up to much lately.”
“Okay,” Nik said. “By the way, how do you know the girl in the third picture on your profile?”
“Oh, Mel?” Sage said. “She’s the girlfriend I mentioned. We met from my stream, I guess.”
“Oh, interesting,” Nik said. “I was surprised to see her.”
“Do you know her from somewhere?” Sage asked. She couldn’t remember Mel mentioning anyone named Nik.
“Oh, she’s pretty popular on some parts of the internet,” Nik said.
“Is she?” Sage said.
“I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Nik said. “But yeah, she posts on PornHub pretty regularly.”
“Huh,” Sage said. She’d vaguely known Mel was making money online somehow but she hadn’t really known the specifics. “Good for her.” She tried to ignore the shitty little voice in the back of her head saying she must have never asked you to join her because you’re not hot or passable enough.
***