Out of Synch

This morning he would get ready without his phone. That’s what Oli decided as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, pushed himself out of bed and set foot on the heated floors of his tiny apartment.

The fact that he made this decision moments after noticing his phone had died did nothing to colour the pride Oli felt in his self-discipline. It had been a long time since he had risen unassisted from bed. By the time he exited the shower his sense of accomplishment was so strong that, for the first time, he thought of streaming it.

Returning to his bedroom, Oli grabbed his phone from the charger and sighed. His phone had charged, but, even though bluetooth was enabled, there were no devices connected. Pangs of annoyance gave way to a small rush of excitement as Oli realised what this meant.

He almost skipped over to the small box that had been sitting on his counter for nearly three days. The prize of a multi-hour wait in line. Ripping into the box, Oli wasted no time in unpacking the injector. He found a vein on his arm and winced as he felt the quick puncture and slight cold of the new receptors entering his blood stream.

As he waited for the receptors to circulate, Oli set to finishing his morning routine. Flipping a switch on the wall, he opened his blinds and sent beams from the morning sun streaming into his apartment.

***

Ez pushed dirty hair out of view and, with one hand, guarded her eyes against the light. She spotted a palm along the garden wall with ample shade beneath it and eased her skateboard towards it.

At this hour only the occasional early-riser passed through the square. The sweeper robots skated between benches, fountains and light posts, doing a last check for dirt and grime. Automated buses pulled into stops at either end of the square, anticipating the morning rush.

With the same, robotic anticipation, Ez set her phone to ‘shuffle.’

***

A familiar notification sounded from his phone and Oli bubbled over with excitement. The new receptors had, at last, connected.

Oli skipped through instructions and update notifications in order to start scanning for nearby streamers. Finding the familiar 5-6 in his building, he sorted them by frequency and selected the highest.

Oli felt his impatient excitement give way to energetic zest. He marvelled at not only how much quicker the reaction was with these receptors, but the complexity. It wasn’t only that he felt energetic. There were also flickers of self-satisfaction, and gratitude. Oli basked in it as he put on his jacket, stepped out the door and down the steps.

***

Ez’s phone picked up a new signal as a young man biked through the still fairly empty square. Catching a mid level frequency that, from the look on the biker’s face, promised much more tranquillity than joy. She watched him until he was out of range.

A middle-aged woman came next, running up the stairs from the entrance to the subway with strain and worry on her face. She ran towards one of the buses that had parked on the other side of the square. Ez got up and stretched as she waited for the next signal.

She didn’t have to wait long. A teenager on his way to school juggled a soccer ball past. Ez tracked his signal. High frequency. She pulled up her receptor count to confirm. Nearly full. Same as always.

As the boy continued to dribble down the length of the garden, Ez watched his face: all bravado and arrogant pleasure.

She felt none of it. Indifferent, she continued to scan.

***

As Oli locked his door, and made for the stairwell, the high-energy anticipation he had been feeling gave way to a sort of languid joy—the feeling of ‘happily being swept away by something.’ As he noticed it, another sneaking, suspicious feeling crept in.

He pulled out his phone to check the connection. It showed that he was still connected to the high-frequency stream.

As a feeling of annoyance began to mount, Oli disconnected from his receptors and reconnected. Upon reconnection, Oli’s own emotions gave way, once more, to the streamer’s high-energy anticipation.

Smiling and shaking his head, he looked to see if there was a software update for the new receptors. Finding it, Oli started the download and closed the app.

***

Ez watched her phone cycle through different frequencies with disinterest. Crowds of commuters had begun to mill around the square going to and from regularly scheduled buses and trains.

Buskers and streamers had also come out to occupy their regular spots in the square. Ez scanned through the various performers as they played music, read stories or speechified to small crowds of people engulfed in not only the art, but the accompanying emotion.

Yawning and stretching out, Ez decided to switch to a place with a better vantage. She picked up her skateboard and walked into the crowd.

***

Out of range of his previous signal, Oli scanned for a new stream as he stepped onto the bus. Since the majority were low frequency signals, he weighed his current mood against the other prospective experiences.

Opting to test the limits of the new receptors, Oli chose one of the lowest signals he could find. The happy anticipation dropped out of him faster than he could have imagined. A hole opened in his stomach and he had to fight back tears. He felt empty and hopeless. Other mingling emotions he couldn’t quite identify joined the mix and he started to suffocate in the negativity.

Quickly disconnecting, Oli felt the hole close and the weight of the previous emotions fall from him. He was left with a mingling of surprise, leftover empathetic sadness and a tingling of giddy astonishment at how powerful the new receptors were.

For a moment Oli’s eyes continued to well, while his body shook off the emotions he was no longer feeling. Through a veil of tears, Oli felt his giddiness turn to shock as he was thrown forward.

***

The scooter almost hit Ez as it ricocheted off the bus and scraped along the ground of the square. More than a few screams and gasps rose from around her, as other witnesses took in what happend.

The scooterist had lost control and swerved directly into oncoming traffic. The bus’s collision detection hadn’t been enough to stop it in time. Traffic stopped around the scene and a few passengers ran out of the now stopped bus to see if there was any chance of saving the mangled scooterist. Sirens sounded in the distance as nearby emergency vehicles tried to make their way through.

Ez felt the breath race out of her and watched her chest rise and fall with surprise. She looked at the shocked and horrified faces around her. At the dent in the front of the bus. The scraped and broken scooter mere feet from her. And the mangled body.

She rushed to take out her phone and see what frequency she had connected to. Her phone was attempting to connect to another signal, and as it did, Ez felt the familiar ennui begin to creep in. She immediately turned the device off.

Clutching the phone in shaking hands, Ez covered her mouth to hide the smile she couldn’t contain.

***

Oli buzzed with leftover shock and panic from the crash. Relief at not being personally harmed mixed with worry, sadness and revulsion as he saw the Scooterist’s body.

Desperate for an escape, Oli scanned the crowd and picked out a mid-range frequency that began to set in. Oli assessed himself with a new sense of curious calm. Blood drummed at his ears. His heart still raced. His hands shook. Vomit threatened from the base of his stomach.

He needed to get away from the crash and give his body time to catch up. Step by step, Oli’s body was reined in by his emotions. Until he felt something else.

Oli’s calm ebbed ever so slightly. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and cold water seemed to shoot down his spine.

Confused, Oli looked at his phone. Same signal. Not understanding, he assessed himself and the crowd around him to see if he could identify the source.

That’s when he saw the young woman with the skateboard.

***

He startled Ez when their eyes met. As the emergency workers and crowd evacuated the bus and checked on everyone, she had been lost in her own emotions and let her eyes wander. When the young man had met them, it had snapped her out of it.

He was surveying her calmly, but with enough interest that she was sure he knew what she was feeling. She turned to flee into the subway terminal and disappeared into the crowd.

***

The goosebumps that had risen on Oli’s neck settled completely once the young woman turned and disappeared into the crowd. His calm curiosity pricked at him and he decided to follow.

He needed to get away from the accident anyway. And the look on the young woman’s face was one he’d never seen before. Oli stumbled, with his first step to follow. He shrugged. While his hands had stopped shaking, his legs must still be feeling the crash. His heart was still drumming, he noticed. Less fast now, but equally hard.

***

Ez glanced over her shoulder quickly and noticed the young man was moving in her direction. Was he following her?

Did she want him to?

Her heart pumped harder and she slowed down a step. As she escaped the crowd and made it to the subway turnstiles, Ez gave one more glance backwards as she went through.

***

Cold shot through Oli one more time as the young woman looked back and now he was sure. For a second, his calmness slipped away and fear set in. Annoyed, he checked his phone.

The update had finished downloading, but it hadn’t auto-installed. Oli clicked his tongue and, with a backwards glance at the crash his body hadn’t seemed to have recovered from, he quickly clicked “install” as he passed through the turnstiles himself.

***

Ez ran down three levels of escalators to the bottom of the station. From the posted schedules and notifications, that train would be coming the soonest. She stepped off the last escalator and confirmed she was completely alone on the platform.

Her heart calmed and her breath slowed for a second as the smile spread wider on her face.

***

Oli stepped off the final escalator and looked around. He spotted the young woman right away off to one side of the platform. Oli’s leg struggled to take him forward again and he stumbled.

The girl turned to look at him and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end once more. Violent cold shot through him again. He began to shake as the feeling intensified and he realised it had nothing to do with the prior bus crash.

As the young woman walked to stand only inches away from him, Oli, desperate for an escape from the feeling, reached his trembling hands into his pocket for his phone.

***

Ez’s heart thumped louder than it ever had as she stared into the young man’s eyes. The way he was looking at her made her feel even more intensely than the crash had. She wanted to savour it.

“What are you feeling?” she asked.

***

Oli couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

Involuntary trembles continued to rock his body as his mouth uselessly flapped open and closed.

The girl’s eyes continued to bore into him. Her voice, far too calm and normal for the intensity of her eyes and smile, repeated its earlier question.

“Sc…scared,” he forced out, knowing it was a woefully insufficient description.

***

Ez felt a laugh leave her lips. And with one last look she pushed him backwards as hard as she could.

For the longest second she could remember, she watched him fall and then disappear under the oncoming train.

His phone skipped along the platform as the train doors opened. Through a cracked screen a two notifications popped up: one for to signal the update had been completed, and another reading, “Your natural emotional range appears to be in turmoil. Please disconnect from streamers and monitor your surroundings. You may be in danger.”