Ducking out of the public area would have made me anxious if I’d done it by myself. But with Daniel, it felt more like a thrill. He headed for the elevator and pushed the up-button. The door slid open immediately. “I think the expo is only one level,” I said, but I followed him in anyway.
The door whispered shut behind me. “That’s what I’m counting on.” Daniel swung me around and backed me into the wall as the elevator began to rise, and even though we only went up a single floor, my stomach bottomed out as if we were on the express car to the top of a skyscraper. His hand smacked into the metal wall beside my head with the damp sucker in his fist. The smell of cherry candy made my mouth water. He pressed himself against me. “You look really good.”
“So do you.”
“Are you sure? ’Cos you almost bailed on me today. Like the way you took off the other night.”
“Not because I didn’t want to see you.” My heart was thrumming so hard I wondered if he could feel it through my overcoat. “That was just…me.”
“You mnemed recently?” He touched my cheek. Traces of the mnevermind must still be visible. “I don’t do it anymore unless there’s no other choice.”
Not only had I mnemed, but I’d mnemed him. I was sure of it, even though I couldn’t remember exactly what had transpired between us (or, more accurately, between me and my memory of him). Afterward, though, memories remained of Dr. Bergman telling me I should be firm about my boundaries if Daniel touched me. Plus the ugly twisted-stomach feeling it gave me to hear it.
He looked my whole face over, away from the mnevermind, finally settling on my mouth. “Can I kiss you?”
My whole body was clenched with anticipation, shoulders rigid, knees locked. “You don’t need to ask.”
He touched his mouth to mine. His lips were sticky sweet, but gentle. I slid my tongue between them, and he huffed a small gasp into my mouth. His tongue was hot and wet and I wanted it so much I felt achy. I wanted him. All of him. In a way that ran deeper than the times I wanted someone mainly so I wouldn’t need to be alone.
I hadn’t seen all the exhibits yet, but maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe what I really wanted to do was leave. With Daniel. Take him back to my apartment, where I wouldn’t need to worry about how soon I should leave, because it was my house and I wouldn’t need to make that decision.
He thrust his free hand into my coat and wadded my shirt in his fist. The doors opened, and I risked a small glance. The second floor of the expo center was cavernously empty, and though gray winter light streamed through the windows, the overhead lighting was mostly off. It felt like we were the last two men on earth, at least until a band on the first floor started playing some kind of dixieland thing with trumpets and trombones.
Daniel released my shirt to check his palm. He does that when he wants to verify objective reality, a system he and Big Dan came up with. “It does feel like we’re mneming,” I said. “But I don’t think so.”
He smirked, and pressed his thumb into the “open door” button to keep the elevator from closing and going back down. After we spoke, the mood had taken some elusive shift, and I missed the way everything had felt just a moment before, while he was kissing me. “I used to dig that—not knowing. It all felt like one big adventure. Now, though?” He shrugged. “I guess I’m over it.”
“Don’t be sad,” I told him, and then it occurred to me that I really didn’t know him well enough to presume he was sad, not without lengthy observation and analysis, and a thorough evaluation of what he might be sad about and what that emotion had to do with me. But he dropped my gaze and sighed a little, and maybe my hasty assessment had been correct after all. He almost moved back, but I put my arms around him and pulled him against me. It was exciting like everything about him was exciting, the feel of his hard body even through his clothes, the size of him, the scent of him, all of it masculine, titillating, forbidden. “Mnem isn’t good or bad. It’s just a tool, like the computer. The only power it has is the power you give it.”
Daniel leaned into me and pressed our temples together. Maybe if we were somewhere else, it would have saved him from having to look at me. But the walls of the elevator were mirrored, and when I looked up, I met the eyes of his reflection’s reflection instead.
Maybe that illusion of distance was enough to allow him to speak freely. “Mnem was my whole life. Big Dan and me—we breathed it. I’d mnem as much as ten times a week, even more if we were in a testing phase. Half the shit we remembered hadn’t even really happened to us—and you know what? We didn’t care. Because we’d say to each other, ‘You mnemed that,’ and the next day, everything would be back to normal.” He pressed his face into my neck, then, so he didn’t have to look at me anymore at all, and he said, “It’s like we had the best dog in the world, and we taught it tricks and fed it under the table and let it sleep at the foot of the bed…and then one day it mauled him, bad enough that he’ll never be the same. How can I ever love it again?”
While I saw the connection he was attempting to make, it didn’t really click with me in the way it might have if we’d been having the discussion in mnem. Which, I supposed, was ironic…although I typically don’t care for irony when it’s more accurate to say what you mean in a direct manner. “Mnem isn’t sentient,” I told him. “It can’t betray you.”
“Can’t it?”
What I wanted was for him to stop being sad, and to kiss me again…and to come home with me and take off his clothes, and to let me help him forget about the things he couldn’t change. But when I tilted my head so he could meet me halfway if he did want to kiss some more, he turned to the control panel instead and took his finger off the “open door” button. The elevator doors shut, and the car shuddered and began its descent.
“I see the way you treat Big Dan,” he said, as the elevator settled and the first floor light went off. “Like a regular person.”
Although his use of the word “regular” was problematically inexact, I had a sense of what he meant. Big Dan wasn’t neurotypical, but neither was I. Being neurotypical was overrated, in my opinion—plenty of people like Tod and Ryan were about as “regular” as you could get, and as far as I was concerned, it didn’t make them any more appealing. Also, I really did think Big Dan was an interesting person.
We stepped out onto the convention floor. In the few minutes we were gone, the crowd had shifted. It felt like the number of people had doubled, but that was unlikely. And then an announcement sounded to the right of the elevators, and I realized the attendees seemed more densely packed because they’d gathered at one side of the convention. I was torn, because I’d been thinking that although I hadn’t yet had time to view and analyze every exhibit, maybe I’d rather skip whatever I hadn’t seen yet and leave with Daniel. And yet, this was mnem. The best part of my life, and the biggest disappointment of his. Something was going on. And neither of us could simply walk away without seeing what it was.
The kiosk was small, and the press of curious mnemographers blocked it from our view. Daniel managed to thread his way into the crowd, and I forced myself to follow by focusing on him rather than the brush of strangers’ arms against mine. Some kind of announcement was happening, but splashy music was playing over it, and between the music and the proximity of strangers, it was all a jumble of sensory overload for me, everything but Daniel’s shoulder in its faded green army jacket. And then the crowd opened up, and I saw the words on the banner just as the announcer proclaimed them, and everything snapped into synch.
“Mem-Cor is proud to present…Lucid Mneming!”
Oh. I stopped, and read the words, and considered them. A play on the term “lucid dreaming,” of course, a state in which the dreamer knows the dream is actually occurring. It seemed like a clever turn of phrase, and maybe that’s all it really was. Because if you knew you were mneming, would the experience really be a mnem? Or would it be a vivid daydream? Or a sort of virtual reality?
I glimpsed the announcer through the crowd. He was one of the few people there wearing a suit. His skin was a weird shade of bronze, probably a spray-tan. He must not have been a local. Wisconsinites aren’t usually that color, especially not in January. “First came radio,” he said grandly. “Then came television. Then came mnem. Lucid mneming is the next big step in perceptual entertainment—and you can get in on the ground floor of this stunning new development that’s sure to take mnemography to a whole new level.”
Radio to television to mnem was grossly oversimplified, but I’ve found that sales pitches often tend to omit pertinent facts for sake of brevity.
“With this stunning new technology, not only will your customers be able to experience their mnems…they’ll be able to consciously control the experience.”
So you’d know you were mneming. Again, I failed to see the point. The whole reason people mnemed was to experience the session as reality. Knowing you were in mnem defeated the purpose. Didn’t it?
If I’d known I was mneming during my last appointment with Dr. Bergman, I suppose I would have done things differently. Maybe I would have told Daniel to go ahead and kick Ryan’s ass—because I would have been assured there were no actual consequences involved. And while it wouldn’t have felt quite as heady knowing it wasn’t the real Ryan, it probably would have been amusing to see Daniel put that jerk in his place.
Maybe. Though it wouldn’t have been Daniel doing it at all. It would have been me. Which felt totally different, once I thought it all through.
The announcer held up a dozen sherpa caps that dangled from their cords like a cluster of deflated balloons. He smiled a big white smile and said, “But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself.”
The crowd murmured. They’d come there for entertainment and free samples, not the prospect of doing actual work, especially on a vacation day. But then a woman stepped out of the crowd and said, “I’ll try.” And suddenly a half-dozen men started pushing to the front. Most of them were looking at the woman. She was small, slim and blonde—attractive in a conventional kind of way. Her lips were very shiny, as if she’d just applied gloss.
Big Dan was also in front, holding his hand out to take a cap from the presenter. His eyes were eager, but he wasn’t looking at the girl with the shiny lips. He was looking at the experimental equipment.
Daniel’s breath caught. He shoved himself to the front of the audience, so suddenly, so forcefully, that the convention crowd parted for him as if they’d been choreographed. I followed, though somehow the mnemographers sensed I was nowhere near as purposeful as Daniel, and I was bumped and jostled all the way to the front.
Daniel thrust his hand out for a cap. The bronzed announcer looked him up and down. “Earbuds?” he said.
“Don’t need them.”
The announcer’s eyebrows twitched as if he didn’t quite believe it, but he handed over the cap without comment.
The glossy-lipped woman, Big Dan and Daniel got the first three caps. A handful of guys in Badger red winter gear got the next few. Another woman, not so flashy as the blonde. Some guys in thick sweaters. And then there was only one left, one solitary cap swinging from its wires. I elbowed a serious Asian guy out of my way, thrust out my hand, and said to the announcer, “Me.”
He looked startled, as if he hadn’t noticed me until I’d spoken. And then he handed over the cap and a pair of earbuds. “Eleven of you can sherpa, and one of you gets to be the guinea pig. Any volunteers?”
Big Dan’s hand shot up first, just as it had when the caps were being handed out. But Daniel grabbed his father’s arm and yanked it down just as fast. While the two of them whispered at each other, the glossy-lipped woman said, “I guess…I could try.” And all the men—mnemographers tend to be male—thought it was a fine idea.
Each of the caps connected to something we couldn’t see, because a secondary housing had been built around it. Wood, the type of stuff pegboard is made from, covered in regular rows of holes. Ventilation, I supposed. What was inside? A big hub, most likely, to hook up all the caps. And the prototype mnem machine they didn’t want anybody to copy.
The twelve of us sat in a circle around the prototype, facing the perimeter, wires stretching out to each of our caps. From overhead, they’d look like the spokes of a giant wheel. But I didn’t keep my spoke at its assigned angle, because I couldn’t help but look back over my shoulder.
Even as I slipped in the earbuds and began regulating my breaths, my mind was at work imagining what the inventors could have modified on a mnem machine that might be apparent just from looking at the housing. Maybe it was larger. Maybe the new components necessitated a different shape. Or maybe there was no chassis at all yet, just a cluster of circuit boards and wires that would reveal the device’s secrets to anybody with the capability of deducing how they might function just by looking at them.
Although I squinted, I couldn’t see through the holes. They were much too small. I strained to see if it sounded different, because maybe hearing a shift in a mnem machine’s telltale hum would give me some clue as to which components had been re-imagined in this experimental model. But I couldn’t hear much of anything coming out of that holey box.
Daniel and Big Dan ended their whispering bout by both saying, “Fine,” in the sort of tone that probably meant neither of them had won their argument, and they both closed their eyes and took deep breaths as their expressions smoothed out and they focused on slipping into alpha. Neither of them needed earbuds.
I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the worry that maybe I wouldn’t be able to find alpha myself—not here, among this crowd of strangers in a room with thirty-foot ceilings. And then the familiar throb of the binaural pulse began, and it was so familiar it made me comfortable. Not completely.
But enough.