Fade to Blink - A Quantum Date Ch. 03

"...MEI owes it to you, Annie; to us. We can leverage this..."

MEI. As soon as he said it, the feeling returned. I tried to hold the idea of MEI in my head, but it was too abstract. The building? The work? The people? Marybeth? Hell yes. I could feel the anger increase. Hodgson? A little. Johnstone? Nothing. I didn't know Johnstone; he was just a name. Jimmie? I stared at him and only felt the orange blob burble. Shit, shit, shit! I had it so bad for him, not even this revelation dented my attachment.

"Annie?" His fingers pressed against my shoulder blades. "Have you heard anything I've just said?" His voice was...concerned? Pleading?

I blinked away more tears and sat back, my hands on my thighs, reminding me I was sitting here naked, really naked without my tail and collar. What the fuck are you doing, Annie? I shook my head, mostly in answer to my silent question, but, I realized, it would do just as well for his. "No. Jimmie," I could hear the venom in my voice. I was still pissed as hell at him, but distrust, wasn't the reason. "Why should I listen to anything you have to say?" There it was. Okay. I could keep that. I can use that. That's what distrust does.

He shook his head and his expression changed again, crumpled. Grief? Loss? Despair...again? "I know. I think I fucked up. But you have to believe me: I really do love you. I've never felt this way about anyone. I've never been with someone who gets me like you do..."

Gets him? More like I don't get him and... "Wait. Stop." I reached for his arms and moved his hands back to his legs. "I'm not ready to talk about us. As far as I can tell right now, there is no 'us,' right? I need to you start from the beginning and tell me everything you know about what the fuck is happening to me." I wasn't sure if I really meant any of that, but I knew things were moving too fast, it had been too easy to let go of whatever the fuck I'd been feeling, and I needed to get it back and keep it for a while longer.

"But first, I need a blanket, or..." I looked over at my clothes. I couldn't be this naked with him. I needed something between us.

"K. K. Hold on." He got up, his penis flaccid, slapping against his balls as he walked across the living room to the closet. "Here," he said softly, holding a colorful blanket in front of him, his penis hidden until he handed it to me. Not a blanket, I realized, as I unfolded it. A quilt. Vintage...? I'd never seen it before and I paused, the swirl of my anxiety momentarily distracted. What else didn't I know about Jimmie, even after all these months?

I wrapped it around me, the thin fabric creating a psychological barrier between us. Kittens, chicks, rabbits, farmyard, flower shaped panels, eyes teary, lips pressed thin, chest hair, pubic hair, penis, lips, eyes, rabbits. "I think you should put some clothes on, Jimmie."

"Okay. Okay." He breathed the words as he turned back to his bedroom. "We can sit in the living room if it'll be more comfortable." He paused and looked at me. "Or, wherever. I just want you to be okay."

I didn't feel okay. I didn't think being in one room or another would make me feel more okay, but he had a point. The chairs at the table were wood and the couch was at least soft. Why did he want us to sit in there in the first place? I wrapped the quilt around me and backed myself into a corner of the couch, as far as I could imagine getting from him, assuming he was going to join me there. Maybe that's why...?

"Will this be okay?" He pointed to the opposite end. He'd thrown on a t-shirt and shorts.

Okay. Nothing is going to be okay. I nodded, trying not to look at him.

He exhaled with a quiet whoosh. "I'll try and not make a lecture out of it."

I looked at his face and couldn't help laughing softly, screwing up my mouth and waiting.

He closed his eyes, his face assuming the pattern I was labeling 'collecting my thoughts.' "Okay. So, remember, I was asked to be part of a tiger team focused on the whole multi-dimensional confusion." He waited until I acknowledged the conversation from earlier in the spring. "I'd made up my mind that it was a Ritchie thing, maybe even a Monty thing, but nobody would admit who was responsible for the hypothesis. I mean, who the fuck even knows around this place, right?"

But I didn't bite. I wasn't ready to engage with him. I nodded, stone-faced, knowing he wouldn't continue without some kind of acknowledgement.

He wiped his face and started again. "Anyway, that's when I met Johnstone. He hadn't formulated his plan yet, but it was pretty obvious to all of us that if there was a cogpsych guy on the team, somebody, somewhere, thought it was important enough to think about the human in the equation." He looked over at the table. "You need anything? Water?" I shook my head slightly, and he got up to get himself a glass.

"But I had thought it was an ethical thing, right?" He called from the kitchen. "Like, we should have someone thinking about the people who are blinking out, and finding ways to counsel them and all that." I was struggling with how conversational he was being, like, just another philosophical chat.

He had returned to the couch. "Which, sure, maybe there was some of that, but after a couple of years running a bunch of experiments, Johnstone makes a presentation to the team, and it's not got much to say about ethics in it. What it said was that whatever we were doing in the basement was somehow interacting with people's brains, and that whatever that interaction was, it was not the same for everyone.

"I mean, I'm no ethicist, but if Johnstone were an ethicist, I imagined, he would have shut down the entire effort until we figured out what specifically was causing the interaction, who was at risk, how they were at risk, right? Like, what if anyone who came within a mile of the facility was at risk? Or, shit, why a mile? Why not everyone on the planet?"

He was staring at me and that expression I'd seen earlier, that shouting was back. I cringed and looked away.

"But that wasn't Johnstone's job. His job was to figure out why certain folks were affected and almost everyone else appeared to be unharmed. If, in fact, flickering is actually harmful! Or whether anyone who doesn't flicker is actually being harmed. I mean, the mice sure as fuck weren't unharmed. Nobody could even say if the guys who flickered were in fact suffering from short, or fuck, long term effects. And nobody could say if the rest of us weren't somehow affected, but just not at the same exposure levels."

I could see Jimmie was getting agitated: he was almost jumping off the couch, his arms waving in sync with his words. I recognized that as the 'emphasis pattern,' not a seizure, but I still didn't understand why these points were any more important than any others. Or what the fuck they had to do with me. With us. "Wait. Mice?"

"Yeah. I'll tell you about the mice later." He breathed a little, resting his head back on the corner of the sofa. "Okay. so...Johnstone comes up with this bril idea. He's deep into the NIH research from the mid-aughts that our brains have aspects of quantum processes. Johnstone takes this research, along with the experiments he'd been running, and makes a huge leap: what if some brains are more sensitive to the quantum processes MEI is developing? What if, Johnstone posits, snapping together two completely different bits of science, the brains in these folks who are flickering are somehow bridging between different possible realities? What if (I mean you got to give the guy credit, he's got a great imagination), these sensitive folks are somehow moving from one reality to another through an interaction between their brains' quantum processes and whatever is going on in the freezers?"

Jimmie stopped and stared at me, a look I recognized as: 'Are you keeping up?'

I nodded, but I couldn't let that go. "Different possible realities?"

"Yeah. The whole premise that whenever a quanta appears or disappears it forks a completely different outcome...a constant throwing of the dice for what comes next. Right?" He saw I wasn't completely following. "It's pretty complicated, and pretty weird, made even weirder by Johnstone's leaps of logic. I'll explain it later, yeah? I'm trying not to lecture you...How'm I doin'?"

I giggled quietly and shook my head. "Not great. Go on."

"So, he works with HR to build a bunch of assessments. He wasn't sure what the right characteristics were; he'd been testing the 'flickers' (yeah, that's what the team was calling them) using everything he could, and, with some of the data from his experiments with the mice, he'd narrowed it down to a few key ideas." He stopped and took a drink, his eyes staring at me over the glass.

I raised my eyebrows, the anger battling with the orange goo for which way I was going to end up. You're going to end up on your hands and knees with a collar, leash and butt plug, Annie. You want that. I closed my eyes at the thought that I'd become so addicted to what Jimmie had made me that even knowing I was a guinea pig for MEI wasn't enough to make me want to stop. "And what were they?" I croaked. I cleared my throat and looked away, fearing....I didn't know what I was afraid of.

"Submission. Dependence. Subservience. Desire to please. High IQ. Autism." He didn't look at me when he listed them off.

I laughed, and I caught myself by surprise, seeing Jimmie's reaction only making it worse. "Really?" I caught my breath. "Did Johnstone get in touch with my therapist?" I laughed again, reaching for the water glass and taking a drink. "Like, right on target, wouldn't you say?"

Jimmie looked away, blushing a little. "Yeah. I guess." He exhaled. "I'm not a psychologist. I don't know about any of that shit. But," and he paused again, making that face he'd made at the table, "I really need you to know that I truly love you, Annie. Like no one I've ever been with before."

"Hold on, hold on! You're 'no psychologist,' but, fuck, Jimmie! It doesn't take a psychology degree to see what's going on here, right? You've been grooming me since...since, fuck, since APRIL! And you know I know; I've never let you off the hook for it. So, don't get cute with me all of a sudden. You've made me your pet, Jimmie! How much more could this fit Johnstone's characteristics?" I took a breath. "So, who put you up to it? Johnstone? The committee? Who else knows?" I could hear my voice rising, the anger behind each word. I hugged the quilt tighter and curled my legs under me. I watched his face as the words hit him. I'd done this before. I remembered being mad like this in high school, but no one had responded to me like Jimmie was. "Other than Marybeth, of course." My voice soft and cottony.

"I don't know who all knows the details besides Johnstone and his team. Shit. I don't even know if he has a team, or how many people might be on it. There are at five people on the core committee, twelve in the full group, but Johnstone only provides summaries, and he works with HR outside of the committee. No one 'put me up to it,' Annie! When I saw you that day in the office, when you came by my coordinates that first time, something just clicked for me. Doesn't that ever happ..."

He cut himself off.

"Not before you, Jimmie," I whispered, looking down at the floor.

"See?"

There was a whine in his voice I hadn't heard before. This anger thing could be useful! "So, okay, so, Johnstone sets up hiring criteria as part of an experiment, hires a bunch of people who might, or might not, be sensitive to whateverthefuck is going on in the basement, and then, what? Sets us up with Hodgson to be monitored? What were you saying before?" I nodded to the nook.

"I actually don't know how Johnstone was collecting data. Maybe that's what Marybeth is supposed to be doing. Remember that report you found at her house? You still have those snaps on your screen?"

The statement hit me hard. Marybeth as a tool for Johnstone...not for Hodgson? I looked over at my pile of clothes and got up, adjusting the quilt. Feeling the fabric brush against my skin, I was reminded of how weird it was to not be naked in this room. It had been months since he'd let me No! Since you've wanted to be! I swallowed, struggling, battling the internal debate. As I reached for my screen, the quilt fell open, the cool air fanning against my breasts, between my legs; I felt the orange blob slosh up and I almost lost my balance, the feelings were so intense. I noticed again how empty I felt without the tail. You are so fucked up! I scanned for the images and, re-wrapping the fabric around me, walked back, the quilt momentarily tangling in my feet, threatening to trip me.

"These?" I almost fell onto the couch next to him and showed him Marybeth's report. "Any idea what any of that means?" We hadn't looked at them since that night, their mere existence had been upsetting enough.

"I have no idea what any of that means. Let's check it out." He opened a view on his own screen and searched for the terms. In a moment he showed me what he'd found. "That's it then. She's probably working for Johnstone: figuring out if you were fitting whatever profile he'd been looking for."

"But that part about moving me to the next level of conditioning. What does that mean even? Are you saying you're not in on that part?" I looked down at the collar and leash and back at his face. He followed my gaze and shook his head.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, Annie. I think they snookered us both. They must know about my..." He waved his hands. "...needs...orientation...desires...whatever. They put us together hoping whatever I was into would naturally fit with your psych make up." He shrugged. "Fuck. Yes. It actually makes sense...when I tell you about the mice, you'll see. Fuckers!"

Was he telling the truth? Fuck if I knew. He looked mad; really mad. But though I may not show my tells in poker, I'm just as blind with everyone else. Even after knowing Jimmie for most of the year, I couldn't be certain if he was telling the truth. I just trusted him. Naturally. I shook my head and softly snorted out. "What do propose we do now?" I could hear the bitterness in my voice.

He looked at me, his eyes glistening, his face calm. "We," he waved between us, "need to fix this." His hands made a circle. "I can't stand the thought that these fuckers would come between us. That's the most important thing to me right now. What do I need to do to make this up to you, Annie?"

The orange goo flared. I could almost forget about Marybeth and Hodgson and Johnstone, whoever the fuck he was anyway, and just let all of that go away. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

"What? What can I do, Annie?"

I opened my eyes and looked at him, the wave of emotion driving the orange goo. I opened my arms and invited him in to be next to me. "Just lie next to me, you idiot. Tell me more about what you were saying earlier" I melted as his body rested against mine, the quilt still protecting me. "About the mice, and, now that I'm a flicker, how can we use that against them."

*-*-*-*

It was late by the time we got into bed. Sitting on the couch had been awkward: Jimmie careful to not push me, to let me take the lead on how intimate I wanted to get. And we talked. A lot. About us. And about the committee, and specifically about Johnstone and his experiments.

"He's not an idiot," Jimmie confessed, his hand lightly stroking mine. I was enjoying it: the soft strokes keeping the orange goo alive, the unspoken barrier, my anger, his guilt, his anger, preventing him from going further. It was a shift; a change in our relationship, and I was swimming in the new power I had gained.

"I mean, everyone was freaking out when the first flicker happened. Johnstone's background--he's a trained experimental psychologist it turns out--naturally led him to think about what experiments we could run. But, back then, he wasn't so determined to experiment on people. He actually expressed concerns about the potential harm to staff.

"So, he brought mice into the freezers." Jimmie smiled at my reaction. Not to the mice; I couldn't have cared less about the mice. At his fingers stroking between the webbing of my hand. I had lifted my hips a little, the goo turning yellow and dripping. I didn't want him to stop, but I wasn't ready to let him go further.

"The hope was we could use them as a model." He laughed softly. "None of the mice living in the freezers have demonstrated any effect. To this day, there's been, what, three generations? Well over a hundred of the critters. And nothing. Which is kinda interesting, cuz we figured the hit rate for the effect is around 1% in humans, so we'd have expected to see at least one. Yeah, mildly interesting, but not helpful in isolating what the hell is going on.

"We were throwing things at the wall. One hypothesis was that the effect was in the electromagnetic spectrum and maybe the mice needed more of it than they were getting incidentally. If we could find a way to amplify or 'focus' the effect, the thinking went, perhaps that would accelerate a response in the mice. We built a sphere, about twice the size of a basketball, its insides mirror smooth, the panels curved to focus on an area at the base where the mice could live. And we rigged it up with every sensor we could imagine. We called it a 'concentrator.'"

His hand moved across my waist, looking for the edge of the quilt. I moved my own hand to stop him, and dragged it over to the hem where I slipped them in together, his fingers warm and dry against my navel. I looked at him, waiting for the punch line.

He shook his head. "In the initial runs, the mice died. Every one of them that lived in the concentrator didn't survive longer than a week. The control group, living in an exact duplicate, but not in the freezers, did fine. Autopsies showed their hearts had stopped.

"In the next runs, we had monitors on the mice too. And, of course, they still died, but their EKGs showed their hearts stopped from a change in the autonomic nervous system. Something was fiddling with their brains, but whatever it was, it was killing them, not making them disappear. And we couldn't register anything on the spectrometers or frequency probes, or...any instrument we could throw at it.

"So, what did we learn?" Jimmie's head was nestled in my neck, his eyes focusing on our hands underneath the quilt, his fingers gently tracing larger and larger circles around my navel. I jumped when his knuckles grazed the bottom of my breasts, and tipped up my pelvis when his fingertips brushed across my pubic hair. His other hand had wormed behind me, reaching for the bottom of the quilt. I pressed my buns against it, trapping him.

"The concentrator was definitely concentrating...something...Johnstone was excited, and it was right about that time when he started digging into the flickers' personalities. We're about two years in; at least three guys have flickered, and Johnstone brings in mice with specific dominance and submission traits..."

I gasped; as much from Jimmie's story as from his middle finger that he'd rested against my clit. He kept it there, even as I tried to pull his hand away, pressing against the hood, pulsing it with my heartbeat. I felt the yellow syrup turn my insides wet. If he didn't stop, my cunt was going to leak all over his quilt. Fuck it. I mentally smiled. It's his own fault if I ruin it.

"Yeah," Jimmie breathed. "Things got really interesting then. I remember the committee meeting when Johnstone gave us an update; he couldn't contain himself...so fucking smug."