Friendship is Optimal: Paranoia is Optimal

The mad scientist came awake the usual way, slowly. This time between dreaming and waking, outside of the mindless tedium of drudgery and the crystal-sharp focus of the madness place, was special. It was pleasant. It was sacred.

She had one hell of a crick in her neck.

Sleeping in a chair isn’t fun. Sleeping in a chair out of a horror movie set, designed for a procedure of a few minutes, is much less so. Waking up to a death ray bathed in a sickly green radiation glow pointed at your head is just right out. Her brain kicked in just in time to realize exactly how much waking up this way was about to hurt.

In slow motion, she saw herself about to land on that same injured shoulder from the last time she did a dodge-roll out of this chair. crap, came the voice, just as she realized she was moving. She felt the impact of the cold, unforgiving concrete on her tender, half healed flesh at the same time the cap on her head jerked her neck backwards. Her inertia expended itself by swinging her legs around the floor as she sprawled at the base of the chair, still tethered.

It was not an auspicious start to the day.

For the second time, she went to the freezer and grabbed the cold bag marked “peas.” Her aching body protested as she flumped onto the couch. She lay awkwardly against the frozen bag, pulling the blanket from the top of the couch over her. She got as comfortable as she could while the ache slowly faded.

Her mind drifted, not really focusing as she tried to process. Her shoulder was cold, but the rest of her was warm. She felt ok, the part of her not numbing strangely pleasant. With a jolt, she realized that her hand had drifted between her legs as her mind was wandering.

It had been a thoughtless thing, but one that just felt natural. More so, however, it reminded her of her task. She hadn’t made any progress on that at all, really. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t force it. The act, which came so naturally when she paid no attention, slipped away when turned to…that.

It wasn’t as if she was incapable of it. Just now proved that. Nor was that the first proof. It was something she had done every day, half consciously, when she lay down to go to the other place. Of all the unremembered world, that was the thing most like an old friend. One whose name you had forgotten as you grew senile fishing the banks of a great river, until it never mattered if you had ever known it at all. The books were like that to a lesser extent; the scent of them ripe with forgotten mysteries. That was a jarring thing, though. Progress, achievement, growth lost. It held no comfort.

As she lay there contemplating, the melting peas left a growing wet stain on the couch. She came to something of an epiphany on her task. Her way of going about it had been wrong. She stood, about to proceed when she noticed the damp stain she had left on the furniture. With a sigh, she put the peas back in their place, and went to scrub the mess she had made.

It gave her time to process this about herself and to reflect. When she was finished, she made her way to the lab and booted into the darknet. As she surfed, she let her hand drift between her legs naturally. She let her imagination wander. Soon, the images on her screen and in her mind merged into a story. She carefully pruned the darknet to match her narrative. It took time, and false starts, and the occasional dead end. Finally. Though, she was close. She just needed one last thing to close the story.

Almost by magic, what she needed popped up on the screen. A smiling, happy, perhaps post orgasmic face in a context few would consider possible or appropriate. Or moral or legal, for that matter. Joy and shame mingled with the cold lump in the middle of her stomach as she came. She panted as her orgasm passed through her, catching her breath.

Then she turned to the wastepaper basket and dry heaved.

She hoped, very badly, that the reason for her instructions was worth the fear and revulsion left to her in the aftermath. Still, she had managed. She decided to take a shower. It was a short but necessary reprieve. Then she would work on repeating her results until it became second nature.