Glimmering

Leonard’s voice grew softer. When Trip looked up he saw that the photographer’s expression was rapt and without guile. “I mean, it’s really very beautiful, how it works—”

“How do you know so much about it?” Trip demanded, but his tone was more curious than hostile.

Leonard shrugged. “Just part of the job.” He smiled, the crimson implant in his tooth glowing. “Look, I told you—it’s not going to make you high or anything like that, you’ll be disappointed if you’re expecting some kind of teenage head-rush. It’s just going to help you integrate better with what you’re watching. Like when you’re hypnotized—you’re not going to do anything you wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

Leonard leaned back, his proffered hand still holding the IZE cones. Trip swallowed. He thought of the blond girl in the planetarium, her head bowed between his legs, her slim body sliding fishlike through his hands and wondered if there was anything he wouldn’t ordinarily do. “I better not,” he said.

“It doesn’t even hurt. Look—”

Leonard pinched one of the cones between thumb and forefinger, held it so that the tip rested against the inner crook of his elbow. Gently he pushed the ampoule against the chiaroscuro of tattoos and raised scars, then squeezed it. Within the cone there was a phosphorescent flash. After a second Leonard pulled the ampoule away and tossed it onto the floor. Trip’s brightly spinning icon raised up on tiptoe above it.

“See?” Leonard murmured. The icon winked out. “Now you—”

He took Trip’s hand and pulled his arm straight. Trip grew rigid. Before he could protest there was a prick at his inner arm. He gasped as warmth suffused his entire body, a rush that started at his gut and spread down through his groin, up through his torso. Heat spread across his face, his skin flushed: but there was no pain, only an almost unbearably heightened awareness of every atom of his being. He could feel each hair upon his body stiffening, pores opening and closing across his cheeks. His hands and feet tingled as though he had thrust them into a swarm of stinging ants, and he realized that he was actually sensing the blood swimming through his extremities, the countless explosive bursts of neurons firing—really feeling them, as though he were an ocean and all the complex systems of his body myriad creatures passing through him in electric waves. He shuddered. The sensation was like a symphony, spangled lights flickering everywhere and warmth flooding his skull until it centered upon his eyes. He blinked, sending glowing orange pinwheels reeling across his field of vision, and mouthed the words Holy cow.

“It’ll calm down.” Leonard’s soothing voice came with its own explosive accompaniment, thunderous booms and an array of twinkling fish. “The initial rush provokes mild synesthesia, it goes away…”

It did, almost immediately. Trip felt an intense burst of regret. His eyes welled with tears as the waves of sensation condensed into a sort of mental strobing, an intermittent, seemingly random pulse of emotions—sorrow, rage, lust, dismay—that gradually subsided, until he found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor and staring fixedly at the air before him.

“Feel better?” Leonard settled beside him, slowly, as though trying to avoid frightening a skittish colt. “The first time is a little intense…”

Trip nodded: yes. He perched on the edge of his stool, his hands gripping his knees, his eyes wide and staring.

But not with fear. Rather, he had never felt his attention so incredibly, intensely focused: on the dust motes moving in the air; on the bitter sneezy smell of dust burning on the halogen bulbs; on the sound of Leonard’s breathing, the faint wheeze when he inhaled and the almost imperceptible hum of the placebit in his front tooth.

“All right then,” Leonard murmured. The air exploded with light and sound. Trip stumbled to his feet, knocking the stool to the floor. Momentarily he was blinded by his own heightened sentience: unable to distinguish between his hand fluttering before his eyes and Leonard’s grinning face, between a sweet chiming sound and the trilling of blood in his skull. Sparks of gold and scarlet filled the air, like the afterglow of fireworks. He blinked, and gazed enraptured.