Soulmates
13
First Kiss
Jaime and Emerson
IN COMPUTER SCIENCE CLASS, Jaime had a hard time looking at Emerson. No matter what his response had been, the visual of her taking off her shirt in front of the mirror was vivid in his memory. He couldn’t look at her without blushing.
“Hey, Zip, you okay?” she asked as they sat next to each other going over the initial diagram for her project.
Emerson was tackling an interesting concept of using AI predictive techniques for sociological phenomena. She was starting with color theory and thought she could use historic data regarding color trends over the past twenty years to predict what the popular colors would be in the next year’s fashions.
“Oh, I’m fine,” Jaime signed, quickly recovering his composure. “Your project reminded me of something in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation.”
“Isn’t that an old science fiction book?”
Jaime quickly switched to his laptop so he could use text to speech. He had to keep the volume really low so they didn’t disturb anyone else in class. Emerson leaned in close. She smelled good, which was distracting to Jaime.
“Yeah. Almost like a hundred years. But it’s pretty good. I read it when I was a freshman and was really into anything that had to do with mind reading,” he typed.
“So, what reminds you of my project?”
“Well, in the book, Hari Seldon establishes what he calls ‘psychohistory.’ It’s a new field of science and psychology that allows for the probabilistic prediction of the future. But one of the things he says is that it might not be possible to predict the behavior of an individual person, but the mob was always predictable. Hence, whenever you are dealing with a mass event in history, it is possible to predict what will happen, even though you can’t predict what any individual will do.”
“So, I’m predicting a mass event and not what an individual designer will do?” Emerson asked.
“I think that’s the parallel.”
They started listing out the variables that Emerson’s algorithm would need to consider. The list started getting long.
“Did you ever have someone just randomly cross your mind?” she asked hesitantly.
“Oh, yeah. Happens all the time,” Jaime typed. He laughed his odd little squeak.
“I suppose so. You just happened to cross my mind after school yesterday. It was odd. Then whatever it was I was thinking of at the time disappeared and I forgot all about it until just now.”
Jaime opened his senses just slightly and was flooded with Emerson’s memory of her afterschool session the day before. She’d been about to kiss her Paris lover when Jaime’s face flitted across her memory and she kissed him. Then it was gone and she was back with her lovers.
«Can you hear me, Emerson?» he asked, projecting to her.
“I think it’s weird how the mind works and random thoughts hit us. I guess that’s how dreams are made. The synapses in our brain fire and suddenly there’s a happy dog running across a field that turns into a hideous monster under the bed and disappears in a lullaby or something. I think that’s why I liked your original project description of tech for transferring thoughts from one person to another. It was a little… uh… tinfoil hat-ish, but it was interesting.”
“I have a lot of studying to do before I can tackle that one. And even if I figured it out, I’d never be able to convince anyone I was serious about it,” he typed.
“I suppose.”
The class period ended and both closed their computers to head for the last class of the day.
“Thanks for all the help on this project, Jaime. It seems a little less daunting, knowing that you’re thinking about it, too. Let me know if I can help on your thought machine. See you tomorrow.”
Jaime signed “later,” and went to his psychology class.
Jaime and Keira
«Do you think she can hear you?» Keira asked when they got off the bus at her house.
«I don’t think so. The image I got, though, is that she thought of me at the exact same moment as her remembered kiss, which is when I suddenly saw you there and shut her off. Is there some stage between? Like when someone receives the impression of something, but didn’t actually hear it?»
«That would sure cover a lot of situations like ‘premonitions.’ Someone thinks of a loved one and says, ‘Be careful on that road tonight.’ That person doesn’t hear what they said, but something tells them to slow down right before the curve where a car is stalled in the road.»
«That’s logical. I don’t know if that’s what happened with Emerson. And I don’t want to run any experiments on people without their knowledge. It’s just… It never used to scare me that I could hear people’s thoughts. I thought everyone could and just chose to ignore me. But now, there are all kinds of issues and… ethics to deal with. I’m afraid I’ll implant something into someone’s mind unintentionally and they’ll do something terrible.»
They stopped on Keira’s front porch before going inside.
“I love you,” she said, taking his hand.
«What?»
«I had to say it out-loud before I could say it inside. I love you, Jaime.»
«Yes. I mean, yes! Love! So much love!»
They were of one mind when their lips came together and they kissed for the first time. And time stopped. That’s not unusual when lovers kiss for the first time. The world seems to go away as they are lost in the first sensation of lips to lips. It was more than that for Jaime and Keira.
The world dissolved away from them as their minds melded in that touch. Every conscious thought in each other’s mind was transferred between them. The emotion of their attachment to each other overwhelmed them and they swam at the border of consciousness as they felt the first rush of acknowledged love through their combined nervous system. It threatened to completely overwhelm them.
And then the kiss was over. It only lasted an instant, but in that instant their lives had changed.
They felt a happy sigh in the backs of their minds.
«I… I… You… We…» Jaime’s thoughts stumbled over each other as he tried to catch the breath that had been knocked out of him.
«We need to do that again, soon!» Keira said. «No! Not yet! I need to… How did we…? This might take a while.»
They sat on the porch on either side of the door and just looked longingly at each other, still holding hands.
«You were jealous of Emerson?»
«Oh, God! I didn’t want that to come out. I didn’t mean it. I mean, it was just a flash when you described her image of you just as she was imagining the kiss in her fantasy. I didn’t want another girl doing what I wanted to do so badly.»
«It’s okay. She imagined that. It was right when I imagined you. But nothing in my imagination compared to the reality of you.»
«Did you ever think that when we kissed it would be like that? I mean this?»
«I could never have imagined what we just had. Not in a million years. It felt like I stuck my lips in a light socket and flipped the switch.»
«Wow! That’s expressive,» Keira giggled. «Shocking!»
«I mean… Yeah! I felt so much energy and power and immensity that I thought I was flying. I thought for an instant, I’d died and my mind was completely released from my body.»
«Yes. We were like one person for that instant. Soulmates. Do you think it will always be like that?»
«I don’t know if I should hope it is or hope it isn’t.» Jaime squeaked his laughter. «I mean, if it’s always like that, we won’t ever be able to kiss for more than a second. You know? I kind of hope that we’ll be able to control it a little so we can do it more often. Like…»
«Holding hands.»
The teens looked at their hands, held tightly together. There was a flow of energy between them—a resonance in their thoughts. They could see the automatic controls that had kicked in so that holding hands didn’t continue the overwhelming input to their brains.
«But it’s there. I can see it. If we opened ourselves a little, we’d be able to hear everyone near us, like we did in the theater, or the park the other day,» Jaime said.
«Lucky there aren’t any people near us right now. I’m not sure I could hold them back. And I don’t want to stop holding your hand.»
«Did you mean it, Keira?»
«That I don’t want to stop holding your hand?»
«No. I can feel that. When we said, ‘I love you,’ was it more than a spike in our hormones? Was it more than a flash of jealousy, or a stab of lust? The only real love I’ve ever known was from my parents. It was… is… nothing like this. This sense of wanting to be with you always—to share everything in my life with you. I have to define love by these feelings.»
«Yes, Jaime. I’m sure of it. I’ve been fond of people. I’ve certainly had lustful thoughts about some who caught my attention with their daydreams. But I’ve never experienced anything with the depth and passion I feel for you. I love you.»
«I love you, Keira.» Other thoughts ran uninvited through Jaime’s mind and he tried unsuccessfully to quash them before Keira picked up on them.
«Yes!» she said. «But no. I mean… I want to make love to you. I want to give you my all and take from you all you can give. I want to feel us naked together, kissing and… everything. I just can’t. Not right now.»
«I didn’t mean now now. I just meant that… now I really want to make love to you.»
«It scares me,» Keira whispered in her mind.
Jaime had a discussion with Cheery just a few days before and that was exactly what she said. He remembered her fears vividly.
«I will never abandon you,» he said. «I know it’s sudden and we’ve only been dating a couple of weeks, but I pledge my life to you.»
« Oh, yes. Really, Jaime, we’re on the same page about all that. I’m on birth control, so I’m not worried about pregnancy. I have faith in your loyalty and constancy and honesty and love. All the things girls are usually afraid of, I’m not. I’m not afraid of it hurting. I’m not ashamed of how I look. I’m not afraid of what you’ll think of me. I love you and the natural thing to do is to make love. I want to.»
«It sounds like…»
«I’m still scared.»
«Okay. I have a lot to learn, I guess.»
«We both do. Think about our kiss a few minutes ago. In fact, let’s walk to the park and do it again so we aren’t right here on the front porch.»
Still holding hands, the two left their backpacks on the porch and walked the block to the park, sharing little observations—a dog chasing a ball, a breeze that threatened snow, the smell of the air. The sharing was automatic. They caught the thoughts of people passing them and recognized them as a kind of universal hum that was always in the background now. Still, they could open their senses a little more and quickly identify which of a dozen thoughts was coming from which of as many people.
Love’s in bloom. I always thought fall was the best time for love, not spring, thought a woman glancing at their held hands. That night, September ninth, when Dev took me home from practice and we made out in the car while it rained outside. I wonder how long it took him to unfog the windows. All the windows in my apartment fogged over when I went inside. That will always be the first day of fall for me. The first day of love. There was a kind of wistfulness in her imagining that whispered, Those days are gone.
Jaime and Keira glanced at each other and leaned closer together, both relishing the sweet memory of the woman they had passed.
«We shouldn’t shock anyone here,» Jaime said as Keira led him behind a bush near the path.
«I’m ready,» Keira responded. «Let’s try it again.»
They moved closer together, holding each other in their eyes as their lips finally made contact. Jaime had once heard there were 10,000 nerve endings in the lips and he was sure all 10,000 points were linked to Keira. The sounds around them changed and instead of wind and leaves and passing people, they heard their heartbeats. They felt the chemicals released into their bodies as the kiss lingered.
Keira could feel the pressure against her breasts where they pressed against Jaime, but she could feel it from his perspective as well. A completely different level of excitement from the same stimulus. On the other hand, she felt the growing pressure of Jaime’s erection as it ballooned between them and that gave her a much different kind of arousal. Jaime mostly ignored the erection. He was used to them. She was not and relished the feeling.
And beneath it all, beneath the heart throbbing excitement, beneath the absolute joy of their kiss, Jaime felt what he could only describe as terror from Keira. And he recognized that he shared it in some measure, but had never acknowledged it in the excitement of his new discoveries.
«What is it?» he dared ask her.
«Everything is so much more than anything I’ve experienced before,» Keira said. «Sharing thoughts and emotions with you makes me feel like you.»
«I feel that, too. Like I don’t really exist any longer. I feel like you. Like, I understand now about all kinds of things that were a mystery. A female mystery, if you will. Is that what we are afraid of?»
«I’m afraid that I’ll lose myself,» Keira sobbed. She broke the kiss and pressed her face against Jaime’s chest as she cried.
«Lose myself? As if I really didn’t exist any longer?» he said.
«Yes. We’ll become so close together that we’ll lose what was uniquely individual. I’ll never know if a thought was my own or yours. I’ll never know if this…» She pecked him quickly on the lips then returned to the way he was holding her. «…is what I wanted or what you wanted.»
«It sounds like a fantasy… I mean a fairy tale. Like they became one person and lived happily ever after. Maybe we would even forget that we once were individuals. We’d be like those aliens who assimilated everyone. Resistance is futile.»
«Is it, Jaime? Should we just give in and let it be what it will be?»
The two gave in to one more kiss in the park.
Mmm.
Jaime and David
“Dad, does Mom still talk to you when you ask her questions?” Jaime signed.
David was taken aback. Might know his son would have picked up on the silent conversations David had with his dead wife. Jaime had been the subject for most of fourteen years. Did she answer? That was a good question.
“I think it’s a little more complicated than that. It gets harder and harder to actually remember her voice. I know you agree, but I’d give anything to have her back with us again.” Oh, Nola. It’s true, you know. I still love you so much.
“It’s hard for me to remember, too,” Jaime signed. In fact, he’d heard his mother’s voice when he was a child, but they’d never really had a conversation. He just didn’t have the frame of reference his father had.
“You were so small. I guess it’s always been that I ask a question and my memory pulls together what I think she would say and I hear that in her voice. Only, I have more and more difficulty remembering her voice and it sounds more like me talking to myself all the time. I don’t even know for sure if I’m recalling what I think she would say or if I’m just fantasizing what I’d want her to say. Does that make sense, son?”
Jaime nodded. It was almost what he and Keira had talked about. His father added another dimension to the discussion: What if they could no longer tell if the other was thinking something or if they were making it up out of what they wanted the other to think? Part of the excitement of those lovely moments as they kissed was seeing inside Keira, understanding her more, and identifying what she thought apart from what he thought.
He began to understand their fear better, though they’d put it aside long enough to have one more long delicious kiss at her door before he came home to make dinner. Simply put, he didn’t want to become Keira. He treasured what she felt and what she thought. He didn’t want to start wondering if what he thought she felt was only what he wanted her to feel.
It had been difficult for them to part after such an intense discussion and the overwhelming experience of kissing each other. Holding hands had seemed to open the world to them. Their senses had been multiplied when it came to hearing others and identifying who specifically they were listening to. They decided to experiment more with the phenomenon during their date on Saturday. They were going to the symphony.
Kissing had opened them to a deeper experience of each other. Jaime had called it being soulmates, though he wasn’t completely sure what that meant. He’d actually felt a little physically bloated and Keira had explained that it happened to her every month and her period was about due. She felt his pleasure in simply having an erection grow as they kissed, even though he knew they wouldn’t go any further. He just enjoyed getting hard.
Those were two things that had emerged during their kissing conversation. They also dictated how important it was for them to progress as slowly as they could manage in their relationship. What other couples feared was nothing compared to the enormity of losing themselves totally in the other person. Had it been Keira’s deep subconscious that had sighed in the background when they kissed? It seemed so wistful.
They needed to explore the various aspects, learn to back off, and learn to share just portions of what they were feeling. The place they selected as a ‘quiet minds’ location was the symphony. Afterward, they would find a quiet place and practice kissing some more.
That would all come on Saturday.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
