Author:
winebabeTitle: Neural Interface
Story:
The Gemini OccurrenceRating: PG-13
Flavor(s): Brown Sugar #30: at the end of the day; Spiced Pear #8: now & then; Cream Puff #24: on eggshells
Word Count: 1340
Summary: 2025; A remembrance of things you've never experienced, sensations never felt, lives never lived--Devyn and Genevieve cycle between who they are, and who they're searching for.
Notes: Devyn Lively, Macklin McDaniel; Genevieve Kessler-Downing, Adelina Garland. (Don't quite know what this is, I just needed to kick myself out of writer's block!)
"Devyn." Macklin waves a hand in front of his friend's face, wearing an expression midway between an irritated scowl and a concerned frown. "Hey, man, you okay?"
Devyn blinks--once, twice--and finally meets his gaze. "Hey, sorry. What?"
"You okay? You were spacing for, like, five minutes."
"Yeah," Devyn says, and the word falls from his lips slowly. His mouth tastes like something he's never had in his life--if he'd recognized it, he would have known it was chai tea--and there's a part of him that worries he might be having some kind of seizure. He wracks his brain for all known medical conditions with 'phantom tastes' as a symptom, but most that come to mind only involve a phantom taste that is generally unpleasant and unspecific. It's like his mouth has been flooded with a foreign food, or like he's breathed in a scent so strong he could actually taste it. But they're sitting in their office, where the only scents are faint wafts of each other's cologne, musty old books, and the lingering traces of whatever antiseptic-like cleaner is used in the building after-hours.
"You're freaking me out a little, dude," Mack says, dropping into his chair on the other side of the room. "Are you sure you're okay? Is your implant or whatever being weird?"
"I'm fine. It was just--" Devyn stops abruptly, searching for the right word, "--it was like deja vu."
"Okay," Mack says slowly, and he eyes Devyn for another minute before finally turning around to face his computer.
--
"Wow," Genevieve says, and then drops back onto the couch, like someone's just cut her strings.
From the kitchen, Adelina pokes her head out, two empty mugs in her hands. "Are you alright?"
Genevieve's head lolls to the side and she smiles. "Fine, Lina. Just tired all of a sudden."
"That's not normal," Adelina replies, and she sets the mugs down on the counter. "What do you mean by that?" She crosses the room and crouches down in front of Genevieve, who hasn't moved anything more than her head. "Talk to me, honey."
"Like being drunk, but different. I'm so heavy," Genevieve slurs. She smiles, giggles when Adelina presses her hands to her face--her forehead, cheeks, lifts her eyelids to look at her eyes.
"You look high," Adelina finally says. "Did you take something and not tell me?"
"Mm-mm." Genevieve tries to shake her head, but it comes across more as her tipping her head back and forth on her shoulders. "Took nothing."
"You're scaring me, Geni," she tells Genevieve, climbing onto the couch beside her. "Should I call someone? I'm ready to call for an ambulance, but I don't want to get you in trouble. I don't know what Jude would do if he found out about this."
"I'm fine," Genevieve says. "Really." She curls up in the corner of the couch, very slowly pulling her legs up to her chest and resting her head against the arm of the chair. "Just gonna take a nap."
Adelina sits in stunned silence as she watches Genevieve drop like someone switched her off, and in only a few seconds her breathing has deepened and evened out like she'd been asleep for hours. While Genevieve is out, Adelina goes through her purse to make sure she hasn't taken anything, but finds nothing.
--
Devyn sighs and rubs his eyes underneath his glasses, propping his elbows on the tabletop in the cafe. "Are you sure you haven't been sleeping with someone new lately?"
Mack pulls out the chair across from him and sets two coffee cups down on the table. "As flattered as I am that you think I'm some kind of ladies man," he begins, without so much as a smile, "I'm not, Devyn. I mean, I'm not sleeping with some new woman."
"It's just--I keep smelling this perfume. It's the same, too, I keep smelling the exact same perfume and it's not like every single college girl in my classes wears the same perfume." He slides one of the coffee cups across the table and takes a sip from it. "I feel like my senses have been hijacked or something."
"You don't think it's possible that maybe at least one girl in each of your classes is wearing that perfume?" Mack teases. "I mean, if it's that Victoria's Secret stuff, I can guarantee you at least one girl in every one of your classes has the brand in every scent."
"It's not that," Devyn insists. "It's always the same, always the same scent, and it smells expensive, you know?"
"No." Mack takes a sip of his coffee and frowns over the rim of the cup. "No, I don't know. How do you know it smells expensive?"
"Because, it's just different," he replies. "Expensive perfume smells different than Victoria's Secret body spray, or the stuff you get from Bath & Body Works, which is what most of these college girls use. I can just tell, okay?" He's growing irritated, but knows it's not Mack's fault; he's been on edge all week, snapping at the drop of the hat, and it hasn't helped that he tried going a few days without dosing himself. The administration is getting suspicious, and if he's going to fly below the radar, he has to cool it on the drugs. He knows that, and he knows he doesn't need them, isn't addicted--but he always comes back. He always craves them. But craving and needing are two completely different things in his mind, because he can wait out the cravings.
Mack rests his elbows against the table top, cupping his chin in one hand. "I don't know what to say, man. Normally I'd say you should see somebody, like a doctor, but no one is gonna know what to do about a man with an implant in his brain, right? This is like uncharted territory for everyone except those scientists that cracked you open."
Devyn cringes at Mack's choice of language. The procedure had been relatively tame for brain surgery--a few holes drilled in, here and there--but it's one thing to look at it as an abstract concept. It's another thing to actually think through the whole process, what goes into all of it, the drill scraping away at his skull-- "They don't even know," he blurts out, just to give himself a distraction. It works, because Mack's eyes widen and there's a pause where he almost can't swallow his coffee.
"Excuse me?"
"They don't know. I'm, uh, the first one testing this. Period."
Mack sets his coffee down and straightens in his chair. Even seated, he's taller than Devyn, and it feels like he's towering over him. "That has to be all kinds of illegal, dude!"
Devyn shrugs. "I signed a waiver. Gave up all rights--to prosecution, civil suits, everything. I read the risks. I accepted the risks."
"You're an idiot," Mack spits, and Devyn smiles in a way that he hopes is placating.
"You're a psychologist, man," he says quietly. "You know my background. This can't be such a shocker for you."
"Shut up," Mack replies, and picks up his coffee cup in both hands. "Just shut up, Devyn."
--
Genevieve paces in front of the balcony door at night, watching the stars glistening from behind the sheer curtains.
Jude is working in his study with the door locked. If she walks through the hallway, she can barely hear him, talking on his phone. She never knows who he's talking to, and there's a small part of her that hopes he's talking to another woman. If he has an affair, she can leave him. It'll be easier to escape if he's given up, too. If he has a mistress, he doesn't need her.
She puts her hand against the cold window pane and feels like maybe, somewhere, someone else is doing the same thing. She imagines their hands mirrored on opposite sides of the glass. She imagines her twin soul, her twin flame, her soulmate--and the bedroom door flies open behind her.