Ch 13: Finn's Psychoactive Neuropaks

~
(David)

We’re still sitting at our table and I’m still buzzing from what we heard during the SRI demo. I lift my empty glass and look at it, put it back down and look around for the server. Finn is tapping his fingers idly on the tabletop, eyes flicking quickly to the stage, then to other people, then to the door we entered through.

“We should step out for a minute,” he says, sounding somewhat urgent. “I got something I want you to see. It won’t take long.”

I feel my stomach tighten. Feeling like I have to act natural. Nonetheless I’m curious.

Finn gets up and I follow. We exit through a side door into the alley. I feel my ears adjust to the sounds of the city at night.

Finn reaches into his jacket pocket and produces two flat, matte-black plastic squares a couple of centimetres in size. He holds them up in front of me. “Only the highest grade shit for the artistes!”

Finn giggles as he hands one of the neuropaks to me. “You ready?”

I read the label:

Neuro-Modulator–Non-Medicinal–Psychoactive–Phase3–Intensity3

Alarmed, I immediately hand the neuropak back to him. “What the hell,” I blurt. “That’s fucking contraband. Strictly forbidden for InfoTechs. If they caught us with that we’d be…”

Finn is chuckling.

“Aw, chill, bruh. The higher-ups turn a blind eye when it’s used for ‘authorized artistic pursuits’.” He makes air quotes with his fingers. “Were you listening to that set we just heard in there? Mental, man! How do you think they come up with that shit?”

I let out a short, incredulous laugh, shaking my head.

He leans in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Like I said man, the highest-grade shit, tolerated for the ‘artistes’…I promise you, you cannot get in any trouble for this.”

“Is it traceable? Can the network see it in my private feed?”

“Nope,” Finn replies proudly, shaking his head. “Just like any vice pak. No trace. It’s meant for Leader class, man. It’s private. They float above the petty laws that bind the rest of us peons.”

Now he’s speaking in a posh mid-Atlantic “Leader” accent.

“No digital breadcrumbs, no bio-signatures. The only tell is that it can’t be shut off on demand; you have to ride it out. That’s why you sometimes see us Leaders looking…rather mellowed out, shall we say.”

I’m laughing. Kid is funny. “Is it harmful? Like neuro damage, data loss?” I ask, anxiety slowly subsiding.

“Not a-tawll,” he says in the posh accent, waving a hand dismissively. Then he asks rhetorically, “So, why is it contraband, I hear you ask? Because it lets you see beyond,” as he flaps one hand in the air like a flying motion, eyes wide. “It’s a little peek behind the curtain. They let the artists do it because they want to know what we see when we look beyond. They want to see what we see. Get it?” He gently hands the pak back to me.

I stare at the flat square. I’m curious, but this seems like too much for someone like me.

“Bottom line, will I get paranoid?”

Finn’s grin fades and his tone changes to a more sincere register. “Naw man, It’s mild, really. You won’t freak out. It just makes the music richer. More immersive. Come on D, you’re a musician! You should experience it.”

I straighten up. Did he just admit he’s spying on me? “Oh, I’m a musician? How the hell would you know that?”

He laughs in a short burst. “Bruh! You exposed your user console when we were playing chess. I saw the NSC interface you were using. And I could see it was not simple shit you were working on. What? Do you try to hide it?”

The tension in my body loosens a bit. “You saw my console, ok…Sorry, I’m just paranoid. Work’s been rough, not enough sleep…other stuff going on. I’m on edge.”

Finn nods. “No, yeah, I get it man, you’re in all that religio-political shit all day. I’d be fuckin’ paranoid too. You gotta relax though. You good? Ready to try it?”

He holds up his neuropak, ready to apply it but waiting for me. I look at mine and back at him. “I’m definitely getting another beer though,” I mutter, half-joking, but serious.

“The servers are gone by now,” he says. “No BuilderHelpers. But we can still find a drink in there.”

We hold our neuropaks up for a moment, like a silent “cheers”, before applying them.

“Wait. Give me yours and you take mine.”

Finn laughs and shakes his head. “You really are a bit paranoid aren’t you? That’s ok, here you go.” We trade neuropaks. “Ok, let’s get in before the real set starts.”

I press the neuropak against the implant behind my left ear as Finn does the same. I feel a slight rush as it syncs to my tech. A soft pulse travels from the back of my head to my forehead, and a subtle warmth settles over me.

Then my mind shifts.

We just stand there for a moment. Or was it ten minutes? Everything I look at or think about comes into extreme focus, as the rest of the world…blurs? There is a not-unpleasant sensation of very slow rotation, except the direction of the rotation is…forward? I feel that Finn and I have had an entire conversation about this rotation sensation and how it is enhancing the sounds and colours around us, but then I realize we’re just standing here doing nothing.

“Whoa,” I hear myself say.

Finn raises an eyebrow, and in a mock-serious tone, whispers, “Try to act natural. They won’t notice.” The humour in his tone breaks the tension.

We both laugh. I listen, fascinated, as my ears and mind trace each individual echo of our laughter bouncing off each surface around us. We turn toward the door, it slides open, and we glide through. The city fades behind us.

I sit down at the table with Finn and the room is dim but the stage glows with the SRI rig and it’s looking sort of like vibrating membranes and as the performer starts to kind of poke at it the first wave of sound bursts out and I feel the fundamental of the bass launch right through me while the higher harmonics give it this roundness that I like, and a synth line wraps around my thoughts like liquid, and some of the people around me look like they might be high too…People are getting up and moving as they watch, and their implants are pulsing in time with the music and I can still feel the neuropak syncing up, and now every note I hear is splitting into perceptible micro harmonic tones and the visuals are hitting now but they’re not as vivid as I remember from the earlier performance. But the visuals are mirroring the sound and my head is nodding in time to the beat which is a half time thing with shuffling breaks. I sense that gentle forward spin as if the whole room is rotating around a fixed point that is basically my brain. The drums fade down in a filter effect and a layer of faster glitchier rhythms is slowly fading in along with a sustained dissonant semitone clash giving a disturbing vibe and I become aware of the subtle shifts in the performer’s hand positions and I realize that my mind sent her a silent cue and she catches it and bends the whole sound toward what I was expecting, a bright scratchy arpeggio fading in and then, threaded through the evolving texture while this new section is still fading in, getting louder, everyone bouncing, anticipating the bass and drums dropping in again, a voice is fading into the music, what is it saying, what the fuck it’s my name, David…David…David! and I glance over to see Finn leaning forward, laughing, with his hand raised to catch my attention and he’s pointing to his head and his mouth is forming the words “PUT ON YOUR HEAD BAND” reminding me to put on the headgear to interact fully with the SRI and I feel a flush of embarrassment as I fumble for the band and slip it on my head. The moment it syncs up the music explodes into a whole new level as I disappear into a huge space of colour and texture and sound but the images are tactile, like they’re really here in this space with us…now the visuals are even better than I expected as they sync perfectly with each beat and melody and I lose any sense of the room as everyone merges into a shared kind of field that binds us all together and through it all a greater clarity emerges making the sound feel purposeful and I cannot separate the music from the feeling that I am part of something larger a world of ideas that stretches beyond the walls of this venue.