Home. The comforting thud of a door in its frame against your back. Alien senses lost out in the wilderness heedlessly returning, the noticeable throb of your fingertips, forehead and heels. Her jacket
got hooked to the door to leave a ruminating puddle and she dashed through the flat sinking wet boot
prints into low pile carpet, stumbling in through to a sticky laminate kitchen floor.

the fridge was unloading itself or something, and as the only device giving off any kind of audible sound wave,
drew her attention in. The scabby plastic outlining, its grit saying something, smiling. took a step towards it, froze then immediately – determined she needed to vomit.

ran to the crusted lip of the sink and, clenching at the deepest muscle fibres of her gut, wretched. something was caught in her oesophagus, curdled lump, her heart straining next to it. Tried to loosen her chest but the panic spreading like injected venom throughout her veins only caused her frame to exponentially tighten. dropped to her knees, and for the second time that evening shared breath with the floor; just at the very moment she went quadrupedal, already warring with her stupid neurones for firing off in this direction again.

Sighing an endulgent sigh, she swallowed, rose, flattened her diaphragm puffing out her chest (feeling something begin to traverse backwards from her stomach), reached to the cupboard for a glass and positioned it under the tap, released the seal of her lips letting the volume of her thorax reduce at the same speed of displacement water rose up the cup to, gave a small hack, swallowed again, flaired her nostrils, inviting another breath, and then vanished the sloshing cold fluid.

She achieved all of this without really affording it much thought, as if ritualised, and concluded the ceremonious self-care routine with a tranquilising belch. Closed her eyes; home.

Turning a glance briefly back to the wimpering fridge, she leant over some dishes and refilled the glass, then swivelled about the posterior of her foot and waltzed into the front room. Then left it, slipping through an opposing partion into her own quarters. Drink was sat down onto a stained placemat – little beads rolling off its cool perimeter – and kicked off her boots, discarding them some place to the side. She greeted the computer, giving it a small pat on the head and bumping its nose a few times. Happy to see her, rose from slumber and started to pant contently, though not without flashing up a bios warning about PSU health, which, considerately, she brushed aside.

More ritualistic steps ensued; 6 digit passcode to the admin account, log out and switch users; full account name and password into the new text field, background image morphs, waits for desktop to load; idle, routes new connection to a private network – Paris – and double clicks on an indescript cube icon nestled amongst the other shortcuts, bringing up a configuration menu; selects her default details, spurs a new tunnel gateway into action, which proffers a command line message that she slaps the enter key to; then prompts a separate action for a new in-picture workstation to spin on the nodes of the established gateway; another log in screen, different credentials entered, and, finally, online.