"So this chemical is designed to enhance the user's experience of their inner communication technology. Even the common implants can pick up a much wider range of signals than what most people use them to send. The interface between the brain and the implant itself holds untapped potential."
"Makes sense so far," said Katiat. She stood beside Jasha, an array of wires in her outstretched fingers. Jasha plucked another one off, and bent behind where I laid in that same reclining chair as before.
"The problem is," he continued in a slightly muffled voice, "as engineers come up with better implants, the gap between what's possible and what's actually used continues growing. Essentially, there's still far more that could be said, than current implants can hear. I'm hoping this drug can act as translator."
"That reminds me," I said, awkwardly aware of my own thoughts. "Don't make me talk this time. I'm recording this. I'll share it later, or just tell you."
He paused for a moment, then nodded. "Alright. That sounds good."
"Is this...supposed to be for fun? People would take this for pleasure?" asked Kat. "I assumed that was what you were after."
"It is," Jas said. "Think of how many times you've --"
He broke off, remembering she did not have implants. Not for the first time, I wondered if they existed inside her, unused, or if she'd abstained. But it was none of my business. "Sorry," he continued. "Yes. People often long to communicate more deeply when they're having any sort of good time together."
"Or if they've had some insight," she said.
"Yes."
"I understand. There is a gap. Some things are...wordless. Art sometimes fills it." She laughed. "Takes a lot of tries."
"It does." He took the last wires out of her hand, and connected two white machines on a small trolley. "This will monitor the signals in his mind. I have some things I could give him, to end it rapidly, if anything looks less that perfect." Jasha said this last bit to me.
He flicked on those same test screens as before. "Katiat, please watch here." He pointed at the middle one. "What I'm hoping to see is a straight flat line, all the way across. If it raises above five, right about here, tell me. That would help a lot. I'll have to make adjustments by this machine, and turning back and forth is hard to remember." He brushed his hand through his hair, and then turned towards where I knew he put the drug.
It felt exceedingly odd to hear my two best friends talking about my brain in the abstract. As if it weren't right here, worrying about what Jasha was doing with his back to me.
It struck me that we'd had another whole education out here, and briefly I wondered what intersection might exist between that work and our future.
But then the cold kisses of electrodes pressed onto my temples and wrists, and the last sobering one at my throat. I felt the taste of adrenaline start in the back of my mouth. Just a test flight. My lips curled in a smile. I stretched my arms far above my head, pointed my toes, and then relaxed with a great sigh. "Okay," I said, looking up at him. "Let's have it."
He came over to me, and my wariness was validated.
"Why is it still a shot?" I grumbled.
"It works better this way. I told you I'll adapt it as soon as I can."
"You just like the aesthetic."
He grinned, and swabbed my arm. I sighed. I had gotten myself into this. Again.
"Ready?" he asked Kat and me.
"I'm ready," she murmured. "You okay, Jessyn?"
I met her concerned eyes, and tried my best to smile and wave her fears away. "I'm fine. This isn't even the worst thing we've ever done."
Unsurprisingly, she still looked nervous.
Jas pressed the needle carefully into my skin, a tiny sting. This time I know I felt it, a little rush of cold tingling along my bicep. Then it was gone. I rubbed my arm with the bit of gauze he handed me. Then I turned my head to find somewhere to place it.
"Not too fast," Jas said, hovering somewhat anxiously. "I felt sick for a few minutes, but it passed."
I was grateful he'd told me, and tried to breathe calmly through the nausea that grated ominously at the back of my throat. Each breath was closer to it ending, one way or another. The sick feeling reached a small peak, and then began to dissipate. I un-clenched my hands from the arms of the seat. "Better?" Jas asked.
(Yeah.)
He hummed to himself, seeming unperturbed by the fact that nothing was still happening. Or perhaps it was? What was he seeing on the monitors behind me? It was odd to think that the drug might be altering me already, before I could feel its effects. I raised my hand up towards my face, but it still looked the same -- just the regular brown, tan on the palm, and nothing seemed amiss when I moved my fingers.
"Just wait," Jas whispered.
When it came, it was like switching off a light -- if by light you meant darkness, suddenly removed, in a directionless blaze of purest pale gold.
Everything was inverted, and I felt I was seeing out of a great white eye in the base of my throat. In fact, this eye was all that I was. I could see in any direction, simply by willing it, though I knew I wasn't moving at all. This shocked me so much that I merely hung there for long moments, with the mouth I didn't have anymore surely wide open.
There seemed to be no need to breathe here, in whatever place this was. My mind spun through options, finally overlaying the concept of desert to what I saw -- and like that, broad vistas of golden dunes formed themselves from what was truly underneath them, humouring my tiny limited mind.
I was afraid to see if I still had a body here, because what if I might not? Somehow, though, a pleasure that seemed to comprise the very atmosphere of this place suffused me, and I was content to label as "myself" whatever collection of nerves and sensors could perceive it.
In fact, as thought about it -- if such a melody, passing idly through me, could be considered "thinking" -- the possibility grew of more nerves and sensors braiding themselves out of this impossible light, into whatever shape caught the currents most effectively. I turned, wondering what angle might best serve this unknown sense, and saw strange darknesses below.
Triangles? On the desert floor? Ridiculous, none of those words were real. I squinted the eye, peering as hard as I could. Those shapes were attached to me somehow. The currents of pleasantness edged slightly into something less wholesome. But still, I stayed focused on the odd shadows. I willed them to take shape, so I could guess what might be casting them. Almost, almost --
I felt the desert reorient itself around me, and sickness billowed in my chest. The eye wouldn't shut. Even now, when the shadows angled all around me, I was forced to see them.
I tried to concentrate on what had come before. That slight caressing wind that wasn't any worldly breeze, the sense of myself as expandable in infinite directions. It returned quickly. Ah, yes, Jas had something here. Definitely.
Who was Jas? Did I know this one?
I puzzled at the question, even as its significance began to fall apart. Lodged in my throat was the sharp angle of one of the shadows. What was in there? But there was plenty of time...
Fingers pressed into my neck, and gradually I realised they were mine. My head felt heavy, as if my spine weren't enough to support the great stone of it. And this breath in my lungs -- it felt cool, and sweet, in a mundane way. All that was left of the golden light was draining away out of my dangling feet.
I was sitting up on the lounge chair, one leg off to either side. My hands were at my throat. When I took them away, an electrode peeled off in my palm. I looked at it blankly.
"What," I whispered, "was that?"
Jasha put his arm around my shoulders to steady me, and traded the electrode in my fingers for a fresh glass of juice. It was cold, bracingly tart, and I winced as it woke up my parched mouth.
"Forty minutes," Kat said softly beside me, anticipating my next question.
I turned to her. "I saw your heart," I said without thinking.
She smiled, even as her brow twisted in bewilderment. "My heart?" The geometry that comprised her face had clearly grown out of some beautiful blueprint.
"In the Park. The gold and red heart."
"Oh, that one." Kat laughed, deep and gorgeous. "I thought I'd become transparent."
I wanted again to analyse the strange shadowy shapes, but trying to recall them caused a wisp of nausea to pass through my belly. Despite it all, something within me still seemed to burn with that golden light, like banked coals in the marrow of my bones. The reorientation is what had done me in, I thought. I'd looked too hard, or not in the right way. Reminded me of learning to read controls while in the zero-grav rooms at university. At this, I furrowed my brow. It had been like that. Was it just my mind, ascribing labels to things, as it had assigned "light" and "desert" and "shadow" to what was easily beyond such words? What did this have to do with how the mind moved in space? What could it --
"Picked up some extremely interesting data," Jas murmured. "The details can wait, but honestly I'm excited."
I smiled, my eyes falling closed.
"I think, with a bit of luck, we might have something," Jasha went on, still talking quietly to Kat beside me. I heard the clink of glass on enamel, small watery sounds. Washing up. I couldn't remember my thoughts. The sickness was gone, and the warmth had spread from my bones all the way through me.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him about the shadows, if that might be a concern. But something held me back. I could describe it to him later. I wanted to try again, to see more clearly. I didn't want him stripping out that odd sight, in whatever batch followed this one.
I realised I was taking for granted that there would be a next time.
Eventually I felt myself enough for us to talk. Katiat perched on a long enamel table by her bag, and Jas sat backwards in an ancient metal desk chair.
"It makes more sense now," Kat told Jasha. "Obviously half the stuff on those screens was indecipherable. But I could see the signal broaden."
"Right."
"So that means," I said slowly, "the things I was seeing, my tech picked them up?" There were already implants that could do that, share vision between two people, but they were extraordinarily costly. No one I knew had them, or had met anyone who did.
"Somewhat," said Jas. "The point is not just what you see, or hear, or even the voice of your thoughts."
"Emotions?" asked Kat. "It would be something else, to share those. I'm not sure I'd want to."
"Almost like emotions," he said. "But that would be way, way past what I'd try to do."
I sensed what Jasha was aiming for, but felt too tired to try and explain. Their conversation had shifted to the thought of broadcasting feelings.
"Could you even imagine," he said. "Especially during something like Peri. Locked down in shelter with a bunch of people, everyone able to force their feelings into everyone else's head. Would we even survive as a species?"
"No!" she laughed. "I'd be running out into the wind. It was bad enough to hear the gossip and stories people were inventing towards the end. Humans are bizarre."
"Like what?" I asked.
"Sea monsters," Katiat replied eagerly. "One elder woman in the space next to me. Kids would come sit by her front chair, and she'd tell them stories about terrible monsters under the ocean. She made up a new one every time they visited. And that's why we all had to make Damor work as our home, according to her. Because the other side of Daltia was still alien."
She and I laughed. Absurd as it was, I could see why kids would love it. Their parents had probably been pleased to see their children so interested in visiting the elders. Not knowing those seniors were delightfully terrifying them.
"Hmm," Jasha said. He wasn't laughing.
"You were on Angkarn. Did you see anything like that?" Katiat teased him.
His frown deepened as he thought. "I saw some odd things, but nothing I would say was monstrous, no."
That struck me as evasive. But Katiat was unbothered. "There's no reason to think it's anything but lies. But it makes for a diversion. This world is almost all water. Imagine what horrid animals could be growing under there."
"You've been indoors too long."
"I know," Kat replied, readily enough. "It's why I'm headed out to camp tonight. I need to see my trees. The real ones." She sighed. "I used to imagine there were monsters under all the ice, when I was a kid. But there was nothing."
Ice.
There wasn't much of that here. I narrowed my eyes, trying to remember which planets were cold. Thinking too hard made my head throb.
"Engineers made our oceans," Jas said softly. "They've seen the bottom."
"We assume," I said.
He opened his mouth to speak, but a long low buzz interrupted from the wall console.
"The train," I said. "It's here early this week. Were you expecting anything?"
"No, just sending crates back."
We went outside to await the supply train. It came down from the eastern sky in a long white arc. The tapered front engine made the subtle automatic adjustments that it always needed to do once it hit the wind tunnel of the ring road, and I admired, as I always did, how such an old technology still managed to work. It touched down finally onto the long black charging rail that ran the length of our section of the road.
The engine passed us and kept going, though much slower, and the enormous cars glided by one after another. The blazing-bright hover rings on their underside sent rays of dusty light through the protective skirting. It pulled to a stop with one of the last few containers in front of us, humming as it recharged.
Jas touched the door panel to unlock the car, and I dragged over a few of the empty boxes. Katiat and Jas got the rest. We threw them inside, on top of a small avalanche of other crates people had returned. I shut the door again. Then I used a rag I'd found on the unloading shelf to wipe off the back platform of the train car.
"I'll see you again soon, I hope," Katiat said to me. We kissed goodbye on the cheek. She reached behind her head, and started pulling her hair into a quick braid.
"I promise I won't do any more of this without you here," I said suddenly, and meant it.
"He's right. We won't. Thank you, Kat."
As far as I could tell, it was the first time he'd used her nickname.
She climbed onto the car's back platform, and wedged herself comfortably behind the ladder. The engine, far ahead, made a hissing sound and began to decouple from the charging rail.
"How do you stand to ride up there?" I asked her, as she settled in within the inner railings and took out a paint-covered respirator.
"This is the pilot asking me?" she teased.
"Well yeah," I said, tossing her a few more drink packages. "Typically there are at least two layers between me and imminent doom."
"That spoils the fun." She got situated, and waved at Jasha she was ready. "Try it sometime."
He came around to stand by me as the train began to lift. She waved at us again, and we responded. I watched until her blonde hair was just another sun-glint on the train's tail end.