To Feel Him Loving Me

They modified the brains of the murderers first. That was the basis of the whole idea. If they could rewire people’s brains to feel the emotions of those around them as strongly as they felt their own, if they could feel the terror of their victims, could feel their pain as they hurt them, maybe they would stop.

The technology was never meant to be used on ordinary people. A person spooning Wheatios into their mouth was never meant to know that their neighbor was on the other side of the wall having an orgasm. A person walking down the street was not supposed to know that the person behind them was full of unrelenting despair.

Suicide became a common occurrence in the days and weeks that followed the change. Some people just couldn’t handle hyperempathy, that’s what the scientists called it, but almost everyone else called it co-feeling. They couldn’t seem to cope with the loss of identity that came with the difficulty of telling what was them and what was everyone else. The biggest cities were hit the hardest, there were just so many people, so much to take in.

That was what happened with the murderers too, and the child abusers, the violent offenders that the technology was supposed to reform. They killed themselves. Maybe it was knowing intimately the pain they caused, maybe it was that they simply weren’t capable of turning off the part of themselves that wanted to hurt others, but they couldn’t adapt to their new reality, so they killed themselves in astonishing numbers. Most of the ones that didn’t end themselves just got off on the knowing and continued to do what they did with unabated vigor.

The scientists didn’t realize that the nanotechnology they had invented to burrow into the brains of the test subjects and set up the connections that made hyperempathy possible could be spread, that once the command to set up the new connections had been executed, the microscopic robots wouldn’t just turn off. They hadn’t known the momentum of the bot’s very existence would cause them to jump from host to host through a cough, or a drop of sweat, or a tear.

It was always too late to stop it.

Once they realized what was happening, they tried; but there were too many ways for it to spread and the bots did their work too fast. By the time you started showing symptoms the damage was irreversible. They tried programming new bots to undo the changes, but the test subjects all died. Some things that are broken can’t be fixed.

When the babies started being born with their brains already set up for co-feeling most of the scientists that were still alive gave up and people just started accepting the change. The second generation and the generations that followed did better than the firstgens did. The suicide rates declined. So many people were dead by then, and the population that was left was spread out, so it didn’t feel like a thousand people were screaming in your head all day.

The communities that formed in the new world tended to form around specific emotions. You had your excitement junkies, your blissed-out peacemongers, and your grievers. The angry ones were mostly nomads, for whatever reason, too many angry folks in one place led to disaster.

I live in a different kind of group, the non-feelers, as other people call them, or the Muted, as they call themselves. I was around five when the change happened, old enough that I still have faint memories of the before, but young enough that I adapted easily. The rest of my family wasn’t so lucky. We lived in New York, a bustling metropolis in the before and a hulking empty shell a few years later.

The only ones that continued were my mother and me. If I hadn’t existed, she probably would have ended when the rest did. She kept going for my sake, but something was broken inside her. It was years before I realized that other people could feel more than sadness. We traveled around a lot, looking for a place that felt more normal to her.

Eventually, we came across the compound where a group of the Muted lived. The compound was created by what was called a Buddhist in the before. Others were drawn to him in the after because he seemed to be able to quiet his emotions enough to make being around so many others at least bearable. And he was able to pass his techniques on to the newcomers.

When we first arrived, we lived in one part of the compound with other beginners while we were taught to quiet our minds and feelings. Once you were able to live without strong emotion you were allowed to move to the main part of the compound. I mastered the technique first and had to leave my mother behind, but I had learned well and as I said goodbye to her, I felt only vague stirrings of heartache.

I visited her when my schedule allowed, but her feelings of grief and despair only seemed to grow and the pain this caused in me, even softened as it was, made my visits more infrequent. Could she sense my distaste? I tell myself she could not. She never came to the main compound. One day I went to visit her and found that she had left. People did that from time to time, the ones who couldn’t adjust. I think she was waiting until we found someplace where I could be safe without her.

I wonder if she is still out there somewhere, but I doubt it, she probably ended herself or perhaps she died of exposure. Many of the ones that left civilization behind completely, weren’t equipped to survive in the wilderness. They couldn’t live with people, and they couldn’t live without them.

When I reached adulthood, I left for a while. The Muted didn’t require that you stay permanently, and you were always welcomed back as long as you could keep the peace. It was different than the way my mom and I had traveled. We mostly stayed away from people unless we needed something. But I went into different communities and lived. Some places I stayed longer than others. The last place I went, I stayed the longest. I guess I was trying to find myself but the longer I remained in these places the more it seemed like I lost myself instead.

That's why I decided to return. Now the bounds of my life are contained within the compound, except for the releasing. At a certain time every year you go out into the wilderness, so far out that you can’t feel anyone. Then you bring out everything you've been locking away and you feel as fully as you can. The Muted believe this practice helps to purge the desire to feel strongly and my experience has been that it works. After a day or two for me, it takes longer for some people, the strong feelings become too much, and then I am ready to go home again.

Today is the first day of my releasing. As the sun comes up, I am walking into the forests and hills that surround the compound. I pass by some other communities. I don’t see anyone, but the buzz of emotion is strong, so I know they are not Muted. It takes most of the first day for me to get far enough away to not feel anything. The space in my mind is like the sharp, cold, mountain breezes that steal my breath and carry it away.

At first, I think about my lost family, the ones who ended before I could really remember them, I try to picture their faces, but the pain of their loss is still faint. I have not really begun to feel. Then I think about my mother and the feelings grow stronger. I miss her touch on my face, her arms around me, the feeling of safety that was mine but never hers.

Then, when I am ready, I reach into my pocket, my fingers brush something metallic attached to a chain, and the first jolt of real feeling passes through me. I pull the heart-shaped locket out and open it with unsteady fingers. My heart is beating so fast and it’s hard to breathe. I reflexively try to slow everything back down and then I remember why I am here, and I let go.

I open the locket and see him looking up at me. I see his eyes and the curve of his smile, and I am swamped with emotion, drowning in it, I remember what it felt like to love him and to feel him loving me. Suddenly my cheeks are wet and for a moment I think that it has started to rain, although there is not a cloud in the sky, then I realize that I am crying. It has been a year since I cried.

Perhaps, I think to myself, I will stay longer this time, perhaps I will stay in this bittersweetness, in this nostalgia for longer than a couple of days. I have enough supplies to last a week.

When I crawl into the sleeping bag I place the locket, still open, on the pillow next to me, in the place where his head once was, and I look into his face and I smile as I fall asleep.