Daniel was already up and out of his seat by the time Big Dan and I shifted back into subjective reality. All around us, nine mnemographers (plus Meghan and the announcer) sat in their chairs, eyes closed, earbuds fixed in place, and mnemography caps blinking their tiny white lights that show the ports are active. In the center was the mnem machine in the wooden box…which took all of two seconds for Daniel to circumvent as he ripped off the top.
“Put that back!” A guy with a Mem-Cor polo shirt tried to slip through the chairs of two of the mnemographers without jostling them out of mnem, but Daniel ignored him and threw the wooden box top onto the floor.
“It’s a NeuroStar 525,” Daniel muttered. “And a custom mnem packet, and a couple of 8-port sherpa training hubs. That’s all.”
The Mem-Cor guy took a step toward Daniel as if he was going to wrestle him away from the machine, but Daniel looked so furious that the guy backed away instead, and started calling out, “Security! Security!”
Big Dan wove his way between the mnem cables and looked over Daniel’s shoulder. Daniel smacked him in the arm for emphasis and said, “A fucking NeuroStar. See?”
Big Dan peered into the box and shook his head in disappointment. “I’m the king of the jury rig—I should have seen that a mile away.”
“This is nothing,” Daniel said. “I could memorysmith that stupid One-Armed Bandit with half my fingers broken and the other half jammed up my own ass.”
“Security!”
“Security,” Daniel scoffed. “What are you afraid of? Huh? What you should be worried about is all these mnemographers figuring out that your big new invention is nothing but a couple of hubs.”
Although Daniel wasn’t yelling, not like Tod, the Mem-Cor guy was terrified of him. Big Dan didn’t seem particularly fazed. He put an arm around Daniel’s shoulders and nudged him back through the web of cables, murmuring, “Let it drop. No sense in getting so worked up over it.”
Daniel grabbed a brochure from a stand and waved it at the guy in the polo shirt. “Investment opportunity? Seriously?”
A couple of security guys in Alliant Center vests were ambling toward the commotion. They looked very serious. But they also looked to be at least seventy years old, and they weren’t moving particularly fast. I didn’t see any weapons. Maybe they would give Daniel a stern talking-to. But before they made it all the way over to the Mem-Cor display, Daniel threw down the brochure, gestured to me, and said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
I fell into step beside him, and his father was at his other side. “Why are you so pissed off?” Big Dan asked. “It’s not as if you invested anything in them.”
Maybe not money. But in that brief time where Daniel had believed lucid mneming was real, he’d invested something, all right. A huge amount of hope. Big Dan wouldn’t get that, though. Because Big Dan didn’t realize Daniel hadn’t only broken the news about the persistent mnem that morning, but every day for the past year.
Daniel was livid. Big Dan, merely confused. When one of Big Dan’s mnem colleagues spotted him and encouraged him to come catch up, Big Dan wavered, looking over his shoulder at his friend, and then from Daniel to me. “I’m just gonna, uh, go check out the rest of the displays…if it’s okay with you.”
“We were ready to go anyway,” I said. Maybe for different reasons—mine being the scent of shaving cream that clung to Daniel’s cheeks. The fake lucid mnem had really soured the mood, but I’d had it in my mind that we’d be leaving soon. Since I’m stubborn that way, I still seemed to be on that trajectory.
Daniel pulled out an unopened pack of cigarettes as he strode toward the doors, whacking it on his palm as he walked. I wondered why, although I didn’t ask. He was still so angry about the fake mnem, even I could tell he wouldn’t be in the mood to explain something to me that everyone else already knew. He tore off the cellophane wrapper while he shouldered through the door, and the wind tore the wrapper away from him. It sailed out over the parking lot while he gave it a brief glare. When he dug open the pack, he did it so forcefully that several cigarettes—four, to be exact—shot out of the pack and scattered at his feet. He seemed angry enough to stomp on them and grind them into the blacktop, but cigarettes are expensive, and I figured he’d only be disappointed later when he finished cigarette number sixteen. “Wait,” I told him, and I knelt to gather them up.
When I looked up at him, he was staring at me, and his eyebrows were all twisted. I was at a total loss to name his expression. He shook his head, and said, “Sorry. It’s just…” he sighed.
“They got your hopes up.”
He took the cigarettes from me and slipped three of them back into his pack, then pressed one between his lips. It wagged when he spoke. “Exactly.”
“Jerks.”
He watched me stand, then took the last cigarette out of his mouth and wedged it back into the pack. “I’m sorry my mood tanked,” he said. “If you want to just drop me off, I’ll understand. Or I can even ride back with Big Dan if you—”
“No,” I blurted. The timing was weird, but I kept going. “Let’s do something else.”
He gave me an appraising look, but he didn’t refuse.
“Alone,” I added.
The corner of his mouth quirked in a shadow of a smile. “You sure about that? I’m not exactly a barrel of laughs right now. ”
“Come home,” I said, too loudly, before I lost my nerve. “With me.”
His eyes narrowed as he assessed me. The harsh winter daylight brought out the fine lines in the corners of his eyes, but it also lit the colors of the irises a mossy green with a bright corona of gold. I squirmed inside at the thought of having to explain further what I meant, under the weight of his scrutiny—come home with me, alone, so that I can strip you down and help you forget your disappointment, at least for a little while. Let me touch your naked body everywhere, and you can touch me, and maybe together, if everything goes right, we can do some of the things those internet models were doing in the animated gifs. But as I gathered my courage to clarify what I meant, dreading that somehow, I’d manage to ask him the wrong way and end up scaring him off, he said, “Well, I can’t stay here and I don’t want to go home.”
It wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping to hear, but it was better than a no.