Out of the Black - Lee Doty [23]
Before Mara lowered her hands, the rush was all around them. The sensation was like a velvet fist closing around her body, pressing her inward, away from her skin. The sensation wasn't so much about the pressure as it was about losing herself in the velvety folds of the giant palm. "Thas sho good." Mara cooed from somewhere quite distant. Dissociative giggling hailed down around her in the small stall; some was hers, some was Mara's. She could tell which giggles were hers because they fluttered like hummingbirds out from her center. They passed through her mouth on the way out, tasting like cherries and butane.
Then the song started. She was singing, Mara too, in perfect synch. Jin didn't know the song, but Mara did, so Jin sang just as loud as they shared each other, linked into The Whole. They were like backup singers to the Beta, dancing and singing in the glory of the link.
"Hey." Mara said again.
"Mmmm?" Jin's eyes fluttered open.
"Lets hit the floor," Mara hooked a thumb over her shoulder, "the first five hours are the clearest burn."
Then there was a moment of crystal clarity. The world slowed and Mara expanded to fill Jin's vision. Though their lips didn't move, they were talking about something. They were sharing the moment, part of The Whole, two neurons in the same communal brain.
Under Jin's unflinching stare, Mara's pupils began to dilate, eating away at the painfully blue iris until her eyes were only black and white, until they were only black. Without moving her lips, Jin asked Mara what was up with her peepers. "Dunno" Mara replied in an equally silent manner. Black-eyed Mara seemed to be speaking from a stream of doors in Jin's mind, each opening and closing around a single word, then moving out of the way for the next door and word.
Mara's black eyes were vibrating now. Nifty. "Shall we?" Mara gestured to the stall door as the moment ended.
"This is stellar Beta, Mar." Jin said as they crossed the bathroom in a perfect syncopation of shifts and steps. The dance had already begun.
"Beta?" Mara said, laughing. "Couldn't find any Beta."
"Right!" Jin said conspiratorially, pushing the bathroom door open into the wider club.
***
It was early morning when the unmarked police sedan with the foil patch-tape on the roof pulled to the curb in front of the modest apartment complex just north of Rosemont College. The neighborhood looked like any college ghetto. There were small vehicles of every expense and taste filling the multilevel garages. Plants and posters filled windows. Fliers for parties, bands, and ads for used bicycles crowded the obligatory bulletin boards. Early morning joggers ran the zombie gauntlet as they slipped around the shuffling remains of those returning from a long night out.
Ping was here for Alexander Ahmed, the most promising lead from the murdered, sword-wielding driver's address book. Ping re-examined Ahmed's records from the civil database. He was twenty-two, a bt on the scrawny side, being a full centimeter shorter than Ping. The photo linked to the ID record showed a young man with an aggressive hairstyle painted like glossy chrome. His polished style and slack clothes made him look like the archetypal college sophomore living life in the party lane.
Sometimes looks are deceiving. Ahmed had won the Hawking prize for scientific innovation at eighteen for work with swarming nanomachine control systems. Less than two years later, he won the Rumbaugh semaphore for cooperative AI security heuristics. Shortly after that, he graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
So now, two years later, instead of claiming his place among the technical illuminati, he has chosen the road less traveled... way less traveled. He'd chosen the road of a master's degree in History at sleepy Rosemont College and a