Chapter 15
KAELION
Since Shahar and I separated—since she moved to the Arborium for work, taking Solvi with her—Solvi has attended summer camp here in Mythara. She has friends that she reconnects with, and she always tells me that I don’t have to stick around and entertain her because I’m boring anyway.
Which, of course, makes me feel like a wonderful father.
Usually, I appreciate the opportunity to return to my lab and work.
Most students leave for the season, to return to their home planets or socialize with friends.
Any other summer, I would take that time and organize things, tidy up, clean out work stations that are no longer be used…
but today, I know that Lyn already scanned in this morning.
She’s there. Waiting.
And I am…
I don’t know what I am.
…except late.
I’m late, because I’ve spent the last twenty minutes talking myself out of going at all.
Standing in the middle of my kitchen like a malfunctioning android, as if that would prevent the inevitable.
As if avoiding her would reset the sequence, and I could return to being the man I was before I found Lyn Walker having an orgasm on the floor of my lab.
When I had principles.
When I had discipline.
On the tram to the university, I tell myself to think clinically.
We need to isolate the effects; run safe, contained diagnostics.
Use gloves. Limit exposure. Maintain professionalism.
By the time I arrive, I’ve rehearsed what I’ll say: “My comments and our lunch the other day were inappropriate. From now on, we should maintain clear boundaries as we attempt to remedy what happened, then we can proceed with research on your translator.”
Of course, I say none of that when I get to my lab.
I don’t think she even notices when I come in, absorbed in work with her back to me.
She’s the only one here, wearing a plain, worn t-shirt and loose pants with sneakers, no lab coat, her curls bound back with a silk scarf that trails down her spine.
I make a sharp turn into my office, hang my satchel on the hook by the door, and take a seat at my desk.
I watch her through the window. I tell myself I’m just keeping an eye on her and that I’m not being inappropriate.
At this point, every interaction feels inappropriate.
I turn on my computer to try and distract myself, then pull up the diagnostic queue from her station.
I’m only looking for any anomalies, any record that could help narrow the parameters of what we need to test. We still don’t know how long the effect will last; whether it’s getting worse.
Given that she seems to have electrodes affixed to her temples, she must be testing something now.
I find a new log added to her file, and I open it up and press play.
“Trial #1. Subject is a twenty-nine-year-old female recently exposed to experimental neuro-tech. Test objective: determine baseline self-stimulation response post-incident…”
I freeze.
“Tools: pink silicone dual-stim rabbit, mid-grade. Lubricant: water-based, unscented.”
My stomach drops. My finger twitches above the console, poised to turn it off, to do what I should. But…this is, of course, what I told her to do—to test what would happen if she tried to pleasure herself.
And somewhere in my twisted mind, I make sense of it.
This is acceptable.
This is science.
And…she had to have put this here for me to find, so I could help her.
So I could help her…right?
“This is insane,” she whispers on the recording. “This is…completely insane. And I’m dry as the fucking Sahara.”
I actually laugh at that, the sound surprising even me.
Then I hear a drone click on in the background—a buzz.
The toy. The “rabbit”, whatever that is.
I listen as she talks through her physiological response: heightened temperature, elevated heart rate, sensations. I try not to get hung up on the sensations; this all seems normal, just as she says in the log.
Then—she gasps.
Breathes.
“Okay, yes…yes, that’s so good—”
I can hear her getting close…the buzz of the device, the obscene, wet sounds as she…as she presses it inside her. I grit my teeth, telling myself I should really turn this off now.
I can’t.
I have to listen.
I have to get to the end.
Because maybe…maybe this proves that the effects have stopped. That she isn’t reacting to my touch the way she was. That she’s fine.
But then she sighs in frustration…and I know she failed.
“Orgasm ineffective,” she finally says. “Attempting again while fantasizing about external…external stimulus…”
I lean in, listening closely, wanting her to say it out loud.
I wonder if I’ll hear my name—if I’m even right in thinking that I am the external stimulus.
And I’m sitting there at my desk, wondering what she’s picturing, wondering what she’d imagine me doing and just how lackluster it is compared to how I would actually fuck her—
“Hey,” she says.
I snap my head up to find her standing in the doorway.
I press my finger against the stop button so hard it makes my joints scream.
Lyn stands with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall, her cheeks flushed. “I uh…I see you found my logs from this weekend.”
I clear my throat. I try—gods help me—to sit up straighter and look like a man who hasn’t just been caught mid-fantasy with his subordinate’s masturbation log playing in the background.
“Walker,” I say. “I was reviewing your diagnostics, yes.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Uh-huh.”
A beat passes between us. Two. Three. Her arms stay folded, her stance casual but…coiled, like she’s giving me just enough rope to hang myself.
I clasp my hands in front of me, thoroughly rattled. “Bit of a bizarre recording to upload to your official file for the project.”
“I was trying to document my findings,” she says. “After all, you did tell me that I should try to orgasm on my own. I tried. It failed.”
“And I suppose narrating the entire attempt in clinical detail was necessary?”
“Literally yes. Data is data, right?”
I stare at her.
She stares at me.
I finally sigh, shaking my head and squeezing the bridge of my nose.
“So…your problem persists, then,” I mutter.
“Mmhm,” she says, nodding slowly. “Plus…it wasn’t in the logs, but I tried it with a partner, too. Nothing works. Toys, clitoral stimulation, penetration—digital or penile—not oral, not…”
“You don’t have to go into detail,” I interrupt, and I would be lying if I said it wasn’t partially because something sparks hot and angry in my chest at the idea of her trying it with a partner.
“I would have warned you, but I didn’t hear you come in,” she says haplessly. I can see the clear, real shame in her face. “I’m…I’m sorry.”
I soften—not visibly, I hope, but I soften nonetheless. It’s the way she looks when she says sorry, like she’s afraid she’s broken something between us she didn’t even mean to touch.
“I’m the one who should apologize,” I say finally. “You uploaded it to a shared research folder. You didn’t hide it. And I told you to pursue diagnostics. I just…” I trail off, sliding my hand over my tendrils. “I wasn’t prepared for how…personal…those diagnostics would be.”
She lets out a breathy laugh. “Yeah, well. Neither was I. I can confidently say I wasn’t prepared for any of this.”
Lyn shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then glances at the floor. “So what now?” she asks.
I flick my eyes over her shoulder, to her work station. “You seemed to be running tests when I came in, didn’t you? What are you working on?”
She perks up a little at that, eager to steer the conversation back into known territory.
“Yeah,” she says. “I was trying to track what regions are lighting up during the frustration plateau. Like…I know I’m reacting physically, but I’m not tipping over into orgasm. There’s a stall point somewhere.”
“Can I look?” I ask.
“Please do.”
She turns and walks back to her station, and I follow her out of my office. I watch as she brings up the waveform on the screen, and listen as her voice shifts into a familiar, clinical cadence.
“These spikes here are textbook arousal markers,” she says, pointing.
“But then…look here. There’s a dip right before the climax that shouldn’t be there—like something’s interfering with the buildup.
” She flicks to a second screen. “And this—this is from when I tried fantasizing about…well, about you. Sorry, not to be inappropriate—”
“It’s alright,” I say. “Go on.”
“You can see it, though, right?” she says. “You’d expect an increase in activity in the limbic and prefrontal clusters, right? But look…it’s like my pain translator was doing with pain at low levels, when it was working. Now it’s just—working in the worst possible way.”
I lean in.
She smells delicious. She smells like sex.
Gods help me.
“There’s a short-circuit in your pleasure cascade,” I murmur, examining the results. “It’s like your brain is trying to reject climax, just as you said—like how you hoped it would reject pain.”
“I have no idea what’s causing it,” she says. “And I just don’t have enough data to make sense of it.”
I can feel the outcome we’re both circling—that we need more data, and that means data showing what actually happens when I touch her.
“We’d need to reproduce the effect,” I say. “Test against a clean baseline. Document neural activity during actual contact.”
Lyn’s fingers curl around the edge of the desk. She doesn’t look at me, but I can see the motion of her throat as she swallows.
“Right,” she says, after a long pause. “You’d have to touch me.”
I nod. “Not sexually. Not…not intentionally, anyway.” I take a breath. “If we want to understand the bounds of the reaction, we’d need to isolate touch types. Duration, location, skin-to-skin versus clothed, ambient stress levels, environmental factors—”
“I get it,” she says. “Clinical. Just…data.”
Does she sound disappointed? Or have I breached so far into unprofessionalism that I can’t tell anymore?
“And we need to establish boundaries,” I tell her. “Strict protocols. If we do this, it has to be with complete clarity; the second you want to stop, we stop.”
Her eyes flick to mine. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“What if you want to stop? Do you have boundaries? I know this is…it’s weird.”
Her question hits me somewhere strange…because I actually don’t have an answer.
I used to have boundaries. I’ve kept them up like walls—fortified, structured, curated. I’ve been safe this whole time behind them, without anyone to even challenge that they were there at all.
But now…this wild, brilliant female has broken each one.
“I’ll manage,” I say. “The important thing is that you feel safe.”
“I do,” she breathes. “I trust you.”
“Alright,” I say. “Then…sit. Let’s get these electrodes attached…then we can get started.”
She does as I tell her, obedient in a way that makes my whole body tense. I don’t look at her—just put on a pair of gloves and get to work.
We need to figure this out. We need to solve it.
Before my walls crumble entirely…and I do something I won’t be able to take back.