The peer pressure was astounding.

“No, it’s really not my-” she tried to demur, hands raised politely in the universal symbol of get that shit away from me.

“Come on Tabitha, for fuck’s sake! You’re so melodram- Can you just not make this about you and-Just a- Relax! You’re so fackin stiff all the-” she yelped aggravatedly. She turned away. “Tabitha! Tabitha- come on! I’m only-” the faceless woman yelled at Tabitha’s back as she all but ran away inside herself.

Everything around her froze.

“Good…very good.” A deep soothing voice called out. “But, how did that make you feel?”

Tabitha’s hands pushed the visor up onto her forehead then hunched over and shrugged her shoulders.

“I heard her voice clear as day- big improvement-”

She looked up at the compliment, a smidge lighter.

“…but-”

fuck-don’t say it, she thought to herself.

“You are still having trouble putting a face to the voice of the one who-”he continued.

Tabitha groaned. “Because there were sooooo many,” Tabs cried out in frustration. “Look, I know to you the point of all this is precise regression, and I get it but-” she hesitated as he paused , grabbed for his mug and then scribbled on his pad. She winced.

“oh! No,” he blushed awkwardly, “No behaviorial notes… drink order,”he laughed. “Tapping into this always makes me so parched when the clients get so close to the epicenter of their-”

A look of relief spread across Tab’s face. She nodded and he quickly placed an order.”Would you like anything? You went deep. You’re probably-” 

She smiled wryly. “Umm…I AM a bit…peckish?” she squirmed, amazed she even admitted as much. A broad smile spread across his face. 

“Excellent! What would you- I have an idea..”he murmured, tapped a few times and settled back in his chair.

Within moments there was a knock at the door. He came back with two identical, piping hot, steaming cups of rich bone broth and passed her a mug. “Replenishments~” he grinned broadly. 

They clinked mugs and sipped slowly, each looking out of windows on different sides of the room as they respectively made their ways to the bottom of their cups lost in thought. She spoke first.

“If I had taken to it as early as all of them did, maybe I wouldn’t feel so triggered by even the idea of it,” she whispered. “Maybe it would’ve taken with me too.”

“Maybe you’re lucky it didn’t.” he said simply. “I mean, look around. Everything is a mess, for the most part, isn’t it?” she nodded as he continued. “There’s barely a coherent one in the bunch these days, for the most part. So the fact that…in all of this, the two of you …found each other, even…is frankly a miracle.”

“I think it’s very …brave of you to want…to get a handle on all of this pre-emptively. I think it’s magnificent progress that you are even thinking of…experimenting at all, considering what it does to you,” he said frankly. “Let alone, with him-”

“It’s a horrible feeling-”she spat. “What it does.”

“CAPD is never fun. It’s literally fun for no one,” he said plainly. “Not that most would even recognize they were hearing things in reverse these days due to how inebriated and dialed out by design the brunt of the populace is. Dyslexia is bad enough on its own, as you recall due to growing up with your Dad,” he intimated. She grunted in agreement. 

“And I think you may be onto something- his reading so fast that he bent the words back and forth may be the root of what started out as your affliction of hearing beyond. But it may have been exactly what gave you the tools that saved you from all this.” he adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses as he watched her eyes dance off the surface of everything in the room except for him. 

“They clinically say this symptom was an unfortunate surprise, but I have been around in these scratchy sweaters and tweedy blazers long enough to know “by clinical design” when I see it. They wanted a neutered, obedient population and for the most part? They got it. Only by the grace of God enough in your generation absently abstained.”

“The words in reverse I could deal with. Most of them weren’t saying much of anything coming up as it was. I was already maneuvering through fn white noise positioned as intellect-” 

She wrapped both hands around her cup and stared down into it.The steam wafting up into her forehead helped her relax. “It was the… sick, dark truths revealed over each sentence, marching across the surface Of that brown noise that made every inebriated whitewashed interaction go gray.”

“By design, again…I always thought.” he said as he scratched his ear. “In a world where everyone is faking it to hide that damned near no one is able to truly make it anymore, what’s the one thing the powers that be fear more than anything else? Secrets. Not being able to get to the true intentions of a man. That they did it so the target disengages from everything that he’s saying 99% of the time anyway… due to the synthetic variant burning that part of their cerebral cortex to ash was nothing but despotic, yet also- effective. It was a net win for them until everyone’s mind started turning to mush, theirs included.”

“That you naturally read under and over things is a gift, one that saved you. From the worst of it.” he intimated. “That you…didn’t even bother letting yourself desire the…intimacy of the connection they hornswaggled all with by positioning that as the true gift of the pharmacore-curse…for so long is a testament to your strength.”

“I don’t even know what he’ll…”

“That’s what so courageous about your…desire to be…incoherently in coherence with him. I think you’ll be fine. That both of you found each other at all in this mess is… golden.” he murmured softly. “You’re both coming into this clear-eyed. You’ll be able to handle the reveal.” 

He dragged his thumb across the rings on his pinky and index finger and the hologram of a timer rose up from the center of his palm. “That’s time. I think we’re done though. You’ll be fine.Just…breathe. I’m sure he…won’t take it from you…the way it always impacted you coming out of them. Good luck.”

They stood up and pressed their palms towards one another in conclusion, rings tallying up tabs and settling them without a word passed between them on fiscal matters.

---

She pushed out of the building into the loathesome crush of mentally neutered bodies, as lost in her thoughts as she allowed herself to be in this day and age.

As she made her way towards her zone the loud crash of a self-driving vehicle plowing into another one down the road like the artificial intelligences piloting them both were in a turf war didn’t deter the paths of any of the grim, sloth-footed lemurs walking numbly in it’s direction.

 

For every “Oh no, those poor people!” she heard sent flatly up into the sky she heard the abrasive “fuck if I care, if they’re dead, they’re lucky” that trailed it, if it had been played in reverse.

She deftly detoured down an avenue she hadn’t bothered with in years in this chemical soot-laden hub.

---

Stuck on a corner she rarely walked by anymore by the light, she looked up. She was in front of a smoke shop that had been shoved into what had once been a smut shop back in the day. The boys in her level used to gravitate to its windows in defiance of the deadening of their gonads that would soon set their entire generation into a panic. 

Lighter…was what she felt. Stronger. And finally, best of all…actually shyly…safe enough to be…curious. She walked in for the first time ever.

The purveyor sized her up.

“Sup, Natty~” he trilled. ooh~virgincore…

She rolled her eyes, almost turned on her heels and then got a flash of him lazing across from her on the couch, wild eyes wide open to her, grinning like a dork as it was already. Fuck it, let’s fucking go~ she muttered to herself.

“What can I do for you?” the salesman called out Don’t worry, I don’t bite…unless you’re into-

“Of course~” he intimated. You think you’re the only fresh meat to wander into- “Here-” he place four packets of gummies on the counter. “These lines are not only 100% organic, they only added some botanical that makes them change color if they come into contact with anything that Is synthed, so those who want a pure ride can take it.” He explained matter of factly. 

His words in reverse confirmed he was telling the truth.

She waved him off, smiling to herself as she remembered the look on his face when she’d slipped him a spoonful of passionfruit by surprise. And when she fed him Pineapple. And how he was the only person to ever grab a half of a lime from her and lick it out of curiosity after he’d seen her eat the other half like an orange.

“Sours…and the passionfruit-” she said curtly.

She bought two packs of the 100% organic gummies with synth alarms and made her way to her block. 

---

He was coming onto her street from the other end of it when she got there and, both of them dialed into the nuances in their environment so tightly it’d sometimes felt like a curse, immediately saw each other over the heads of the dulled masses . They grinned ridiculously at each other in clear-eyed recognition.

Eye to eye, he ambled up to her. 

“Hi, Love~” he grinned. Nothing but hello hung in the air around him.

“Sup, Sri~”she chuckled back. The actual respect for him embedded in her clip bounced off of his forehead like a wet kiss.

“We working or hanging this evening? I brought supplie for both,” he grinned bashfully as he absently rerouted a dullard about to plow into them on the sidewalk around them with a firm gloved palm to the slow man’s shiny, lumbering forehead. 

“What’s in the bag?” he asked instantly, eagle-eyed.

They ambled up the stairs and into the foyer of the building. “I was thinking of…a bit of both?” she whispered shyly. 

She opened the bag and passed it to him as they ambled onto the elevator after neighbors had poured out. She nervously keyed in the access code to her floor and joined him up against the back of the lift as more neighbors pressed in.

He looked into the bag, startled a bit, let out a low whistle and glanced over at her, trying not to grin.

He knew that she knew that he’d been as much of a teetoler as her when it’d come to the contraband to folks like them nestled in the bottom of that little bag. Weed gummies. He closed it, passed it back to her.

“Really?” he murmured softly, in the crush of bodies. 

She nodded stiffly, unable to even look at him.”We couldn’t lie to one another already, even if we tried, so-” she whispered shyly, “It made me wonder what we Would do~ with each other…on this-”she shrugged.

He looked up at the ceiling of Love’s lift as they flew up into the sky encased in glass. “Well, I see your…experiment~ and…” The mirth soaking his every straightforward syllable made her bashfully look over at him. He was beaming like a madman. He looked at her. “And I raise ya~” he growled softly. Sri patted the bottom of his satchel the way she happily smacked him on his ass whenever she was feeling herself and grinned like a kid. The surprise he’d tucked in it for her shifted in protest.

“You DIDN’T” she gasped.

“Shhh~” he admonished her.”Don’t make a spectacle,”he drawled, shit-eating grin splayed across his cheeks. Her jaw dropped as the elevator doors pinged open on her floor. Bodies parted to let the two of them out-

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