Her Secrets, My Body
For a $5 million research stipend, I agreed to let the System install an empathic link inside my body.
"Subject. Are you sure you want to proceed? Once installed, the procedure cannot be reversed. This is a prototype. Side effects are not fully characterized."
I looked at the sidewalk-stall clothes my girlfriend Cara Lake had bought herself, and the drugstore-grade makeup on her vanity. I nodded.
That night, while she was out at her bar job.
A current came up out of nowhere inside me. My whole body lit up with a sickening pleasure that did not belong to me.
Seven times.
A few days later I waited near the club where she worked. I overheard her with her friends.
"Cara. You're something else. Pouring La Prairie into a plastic bag and using it like that? Faking poor like a champion. Doesn't Adam ever notice?"
"Notice? He's stupid. He'll believe anything I say. His father got hit by a car, lay in bed without the money for treatment, died alone. I told Adam I couldn't help. He stayed up all night comforting me. I almost died laughing."
The laughter went into me like a knife. I got out of there. The tears came on the walk home.
I picked up the phone.
"Professor. I'll go to the classified institute. I'll go now."