Mindseeker

Chapter 8: Incomplete

As I drive home from Aaron's that night, my mind is reeling, a mixture of shock and pleasure and wonder. I wonder what Aaron was doing, why he did it, and why he reacted the way he had after. I don't understand anything about it. None of this was part of my training. The Synthnet is no help at all, as if the alien network can't even understand my questions or confusion.

I don't understand Aaron's reaction. Since the first moment I met him, Aaron seemed confident, sure of who he was and what he wanted. What had I done to change him into someone anxious and unsure?

I don't understand my reaction or the feelings that came with it. I awakened directly into this teenaged body, skipping all of the previous steps of development and discovery. The necessities had been provided by the Synthnet, encoded into the brain of this Incarna before it ever awakened. I have an issue with whoever programmed those instructions. They left out some vital information.

When Aaron kissed me—the overpowering desire I'd felt to pull him toward me--I'd never known that part of me existed. I hadn't even known something like that could exist for a Mindseeker. I'd always been taught that the Tether was our strongest emotion, our guiding force, the only emotional beacon we'd ever need to follow. Yet I hadn't been thinking at all about Kota in that moment. He might as well not have existed. How had Maya and the other Consulars not prepared me to face a feeling like that?

My eyes sweep across my hands on the wheel. They are my hands, and yet I am disconnected from them somehow. I am like a passenger in my own body, a body I know is not truly mine, but something grown for me to inhabit temporarily.

They trained me to handle this sensation during my first months. The Synthnet helps to regulate our thoughts, but sometimes these dissociations still appear. I was warned that it might happen, that I needed to remember that my body was real, that I was human, that I have always been human.

Except it is a lie, isn't it? I'm not like Aaron or Kota. They were born, grew, lived lives, had memories of childhood that I will never have except for the fake narratives prepared for me to recite if needed. I've been cheated out of a real existence, cheated over and over again.

I pull the car into the driveway, get out, shut the door too forcefully. Maya is waiting for me in the kitchen. She smiles, but the offer of fresh cookies dies on her lips when she sees my face.

I take a seat at the counter, trying to keep the rising emotions under control.

Maya faces me calmly, exuding the supernatural calm that Consulars sometimes have. It has never bothered me before. Now I am annoyed. It is just another reminder that everything here is fake, pretend, a life that is no life.

"Have I always desired boys?"

The words slip from my mouth before I have fully finished processing them. I don't even know what it means to like or desire boys or girls or anything. Yet that is the only word that fits with what I felt on the floor of Aaron's room. Even now the moistness of his lips teases me, my fingers feel the phantoms of his muscles beneath them.

I shake my head, hard, as if that motion alone can clear my thoughts.

Maya's face is stoic, unsurprised. "As far as I know, your Incarna have always had that disposition, yes," she affirms. "I cannot say with certainty if the original Dacian Yarrow felt the same, but I imagine so. That is not something the Yul'Nari would have understood how to fabricate in an Incarna. They do not understand human relationships or sexuality very well."

"I didn't think we...I didn't think those kinds of feelings were something we had."

"Most do have them," Maya replied simply. "In some, the feeling is suppressed. It only comes out when the body's hormonal reactions overpower the Synthnet's controls. There are ways we can deal with that, if it's bothering you, but your feelings were never intended to be repressed. I would have prepared you if that was the case, warned you."

My face is incredulous. "You didn't think to warn me about the opposite?"

Maya's face twitches in a slight smile. "That boy you've been seeing the past few days, what was his name?"

"Aaron Delacroix."

"Ah, yes." Her eyes lose focus, I know she is accessing information from the Synthnet. "He's quite attractive. Did something happen?"

My gaze shifts. Never have I considered lying to Maya, yet I don't know what she'll do with the truth.

"Nothing serious," I answer. I keep my gaze focused on her, steady. She cannot see a lie with the Synthnet, but that doesn't mean she can't read my face and voice well enough to spot one. "Being close to him, it was just bringing up feelings I've never had before. I didn't know what to do with them."

It's close enough to the truth to pass.

"There's nothing to be concerned about," Maya says. "This was explained in training, Dacien. Everything you've been given, knowledge, skills, feelings, appearance, they are all designed with the purpose of helping you accomplish your mission. I know you can't remember, but you are a very skilled Mindseeker. You've always had a lot of...what do the psychologists in this century call it? Emotional intelligence. Your feelings have helped you bring in many Psychords for Binding."

I don't like how she describes this or me, even though it's not the first time I've heard it. It never bothered me before, but now it feels wrong. "So what? All of my Psychords were gay?" My tongue trips on the modern word. It sounds strange coming out of my mouth. "Am I just some kind of master seducer of boys?"

Maya is unphased by my sarcasm. "Not all were homosexuals. Many shared your feelings, but in some way or another, it helped you connect to them. Whether the exact feeling was shared or not is irrelevant. Your feelings, like everything you have, are tools. They are meant to be useful. If you don't think this feeling is useful, we can suppress it."

The thought is abhorrent to me. I feel like nothing but a machine, a robot of flesh sent out into the world for the Yul'Nari's alien designs.

"It's fine," I say quickly. "I can handle it fine."

"If this Delacroix boy is making things overly complicated for you, then—"

"Nothing happened!" It takes all my discipline not to shout. My thoughts whirl, finding the strategy. My tone calms. "He helped me make a discovery, a useful one, right? It's nothing more than that."

Maya purses her lips. Maybe she doesn't believe me, but I don't think she'll do anything drastic. She nods. "Why don't you get some rest, Dacien? It's been a long day for you. And have a cookie. I don't usually condone eating before bed, but we'll call this extenuating circumstances."

I take the cookie, sweet almond, warm and buttery, and head up to my room.

A shower helps me relax, but it does nothing to clear my head of thoughts about Aaron. This is teenager syndrome to the max, and yet it also feels like something more. These feelings aren't coming from the Synthnet. They aren't a manufactured connection like the Tether is. As Maya said, they are beyond what the Yul'Nari could fake. It could only be real, something genuinely mine, a true part of me. Maybe it's the only true part of me, the only thing I can be sure the Yul'Nari haven't manufactured. Yet even this feeling seems like something they just allow me to have, something they could take away if they want to.

It scares me and thrills me, and that moment with Aaron plays over and over again in my head until I think I have every nanosecond of it engraved into my synapses. I'll never let the Yul'Nari or Maya or anyone else take those feelings away.

That night, I dream, and my dreams take me further than reality ever did, further than I ever imagined going.