One Heartbeat

My test results for the muakanua came to me while I was at the office in a pale blue envelope. Inside, it said that as far as they know, I have tested negative. Only 1% of the people who go to the centers ever test positive, and they are accurate 98% of the time. They did, however, say that I had something suspicious in my blood test results. They test for immune system stresses, but they also take a peek at hormones the endocrine system is producing.

My norepinephrine levels are dangerously high, almost verging on panic attack levels. Even after they normalize the concentration to what it would be for people not getting tested for the muakanua (whatever that means), my levels put me in the danger zone for anxiety disorders and panic attacks. They recommend going to a regular medical center to get tested, and I may need to start hormone treatments. I don’t know what happened, but I started to laugh hysterically. Akah Kara was on the phone, but I couldn’t stop, so I left the room as quickly as possible and took the elevator to the rooftop to calm down among the fruit trees and vegetable-producing plants.

Aneti found me here five minutes later. Someone said that they had seen me in a state, and she wanted to make sure that I was all right. It was very thoughtful of her. She grabbed my hands and started to talk about a dead childhood pet and a fire in her family’s house. It calmed me down enough for her to stop and take the papers from my hands. She read them and stared at me. She hadn’t spoken to me since the last conversation I recorded in the diary, and I think she must feel like the elevated levels are her fault because she hugged me and started to apologize for being so distant, but I kissed her softly on the lips and she said nothing else.

We went to a holographic garden this evening and frolicked in the debris of an exploded star. She looked beautiful in the male costume she had chosen, nude with diamond-sparkling skin and ropes of emerald hair that wrapped around her masculine body like tentacles. I suppose she chooses the male holographic costumes because holographic gardens are all about illusions and that is as far as anyone can take it. Besides, with the way the electric feedback plays with your brain, you feel like whatever you become, so I don’t think it really matters. I know because I chose to be a meilei monster, a nonexistent creature that Shiji parents invented to scare their children when stories about the nuamë nuaf iča seemed too tame. The desire to eat human flesh and tear apart the fabric of reality, to go about the town and steal into children’s rooms to drink blood from their feet, was always in the back of my mind. It’s always strange to become something that transgressive, something that would break every food prohibition and social more, but it took my mind off the conspiracy.

Aneti brought me back to my apartment afterward because we were both slightly intoxicated. She didn’t pay her respects to the household gods because echoes of the electric feedback still resounded in her head as well as mine, and my bed was warm and Nurannyi wouldn’t mind. We tried to keep quiet, but occasionally things were so awkward that we giggled and pressed our mouths together to keep the sound from projecting too far.

She left before I awoke, stealing away into the dark city like a ghost, but my bed still smelled like her. I coveted that scent in my restless dreams, woken every few minutes by the coming thunderstorm.

Kelis told me to lick raindrops from the air.