Neuronet 2

SVSCIPITE OMNEM CONSCIENTIAM. These words above each of the three doorways remind us how to be ourselves: all who enter, accept all consciousness: no one here can decide for others what our consciousness should be like. Once we spent as much time in telepathy as out of it, the only way to be free in what we perceive at all was to be free to share any perception with each other. Most of the psychonauts left when there were no more limits on the perceptions that could be shared here, to form their own communities for less advanced psychonauts. Now there’s just a few of us left.

In the middle of the night, you and I are alone in the common room. We are waiting, none of us knowing what will happen, but we know that by coming here we've decided that anything goes. While we wait for something to arise within us in the silence, we see eye to eye and see there a curiosity for what they’ll find in ourselves, when our inhibitions are dropped like heavy garments to reveal our imperfections. When we bring them together, they fit into each other, for all the friction it involves.

As we wait, a restlessness grows in us, and we begin to circle around each other. When I come to a stop, I glance behind you without knowing why, and imagine you tied on the wall behind you. For just a few more moments I wait to turn on telepathy, to leave you guessing at the meaning of my devilish grin, as I slowly come closer and grip you by the shoulders. I startle you with my suddenness, but your starting eyes let go into a smile. My hands hold your arms tightly in their fingers as they stroke them and lower to your waist, enfolding your body. As I press you against me, I lift you up and push you against the wall, where I turn the nanites in the air into chains around your wrists. I slowly stroke your neck, and you never see it coming when I suddenly raise my hand against you. I swipe the air before you, sending the nanites in your body flooding your pain receptors.

With each blow, I let the sensation of your pain take me into your body. With a gasp you open your mouth, but I’m after something else. You see in my mind how I want to yank your heart out of your chest and devour it, and I don’t even need to know what that get on with it. I grin at the glint of fear in your eyes, but I let them lock with mine, slowly they settle back into trust.

“Speak!” I shout as I strike you again, like an interrogator. I want to get your secrets out of you, and I don’t even know what, because it is secret. It’s up to you to decide what to say, and you speak, but never of what I want to hear. You lose yourself in your role, confessing made of crimes, but always hide behind the act.

“Liar! Liar!…” I keep striking you until your whole body is saturated with pain, and then some more, until it becomes something more than pain, crossing a line where pain and pleasure make way for one transcendence. I pause to hear your panting. When you open your eyes, I feint to watch you flinch. Something inside you is about to break.

“You can always give up. There’s plenty of communes like our own, and plenty to join ours. Go on, why don’t you limit yourself, go back into your limited little self. By all means, run, run away, and get away from me once and for all.”

In the silence you look up to glare into my eyes, and as you see into my mind, my strength passes into you. I feel the pain in your body as my own, and however much I enjoy the feeling, it’s not enough to make me want you, to drop the act of our multiple personalities and become one.

“What do you want from me?”

“I want to know what you want.”

You look down, only to glare back at me. Your eyes bore into mine. A smile flits over my lips. Almost there.

“You want that desire I have for her, don’t you? How the slightest touch from her is enough to excite me. But I’ve only ever desired few at all. It angers me, because I want to desire you, but your ego is standing in my way, and I want to destroy it. You’ve given me more than someone to love: someone to hate, a friend within an enemy. I want to break you open to steal what’s inside.”

“I don’t owe you anything.” You let your hands out of the chains, and as you lower your arms you rub them over your still hurting torso with a smirk that doesn’t escape me. I know as well as you that you don’t need me. But I also know that you want me to want you, to lose myself entirely in you as I do in her.

“Who do you think you are?”

“No one. How about you? Who do you think you are?”

You cross your arms over your breasts. “I am myself.”

“No you’re not,” I say with a smirk. “You don’t even know yourself. I know you better than you know yourself. But I don’t know enough.”

“Yes, there is a lot you don’t know,” you say as you walk away. But I smile as for the first time, my blood is racing. Just for a moment, I’ve broken through.

“That’s the innermost thing you’ve given of yourself tonight.” She closes the door behind her. “Your vanity!” I shout behind her.