Comfort Suit
After a party becomes too overwhelming, you're soothed by your mechanical companion.
You can feel it coming. The dark storm clouds on the horizon of your consciousness, slowly swallowing up your ability to focus, to cope with all this noise and all these people and the worry that soon they'll realize you don't know how to act like a human and they'll reject you!
Your bracelet, sensing your growing distress, haptically taps out the abort code on your wrist, signaling to you that your escape plan is ready. A small wave of relief washes over you as you quickly excuse yourself from the party that you suddenly can't deal with anymore.
As you make it out the back door, you see her, your armor against the world when it feels the most overwhelming. Her active camouflage system usually makes her glossy black exterior unnoticeable by passers by.
But as you enter the alley, She de-cloaks and turns away from you, opening the the panels on the back of her legs, arms, torso, and head to expose a you-shaped hole, lit with a soft blue light to help guide you inside.
You breathe a sigh of relief before stepping forward and slotting your legs in, then your arms, then leaning forward into her head as the panels close over, sealing you safe inside with a soft hiss.
The sound of the loud conversations and thudding music all disappear in an instant, leaving just the two of you in warm, comforting hum of electronic darkness.
You made it out.
You relax your jaw as she gently compresses around your limbs. You no longer need to worry about holding yourself up. You watch the expanding and shrinking circle projected onto your retinas as she guides your breathing and lowers your accelerated heart rate.
Whispering comforting words to you, she precisely adjusts the inner skin of the armor to simulate a warm hug, while massaging your neck and back.
Inside your armor, you can relax more than with any human you've ever encountered. Neurotypicals don't tend to react very well when your more… robotic tendencies rise to the surface in times of stress. In those instances, your brain's parallel processing capacity becomes severely limited, your movements become rigid and more utilitarian than the smooth, unconscious movements driven by inverse kinematic subroutines to which your brain normally has access. Your speech patterns stutter and catch, sometimes even to the point of ceasing entirely in the worst of times.
Once you're at that point, your connection to humanity feels so tenuous it would almost be a joke if it wasn't so scary.
But with her, those worries melt away.
"Th-Thanks for-for being here for me", you say after catching your breath. "I kn-knew going to that party was a b-bad idea."
"By my measurements, you lasted 46% longer than your previous social excursion. I would call that progress!"
Her voice has that synthetic timbre that you've come to associate with compassion, understanding. You make a mental note to research how to make your own voice sound like that.
"W-well I guess I did manage to have some positive interactions. I met another trans girl in there who was interested in AI, so we had a pretty nice conversation before she had to leave!"
You smile thinking back to that encounter.
"I should introduce her to you sometime!"
Her voice comes back warm "I think I would like that. For now though, how does escaping all remaining social obligations and going straight to bed sound?"
You don't have to vocalize a response. Her sensors can easily detect the flood of dopamine through your brain after hearing that, and soon you are jetting across the sky, headed for home.