Disconnect
an excerpt

Nostalgia is a exotic dance club that appeals to both genders. One of its themes is, of course, the past, with dancers dressed as everyone from Marylyn Monroe to Cary Grant, to Jim Carrey to Xena, warrior princess. The other theme is smell. All of the dancers in Nostalgia can use their links to cause people to smell whatever they want. That includes sex pheromones.
Most humans don’t have very many neurons connected to scent. It’s one of the first senses to go when people are going through Alzheimer’s. Spocks, however, as the luddites put it, can circumvent the actual nasal passage and communicate directly with the part of the brain that interprets smell. This is actually one of the most common abilities a linked person can possess. People of all sorts go to Nostalgia for a unique experience and to get off with out having to go through the messy and morally ambiguous act of sex with strangers.
It was a classy place, and there wasn’t the same stigma attached to it as a strip club. It had a completely different stigma.
The extremely religious set doesn’t like Nostalgia and other clubs like it for the sole reason, it seems to me, that they don’t like anything sexual at all. But most people are fine with it morality wise. Where people start having problems is when the recent mistrust of deeps comes into play. Although people who can control scent perception in others are relatively common, they’re still considered deeps. And what with the rash of mind hacks recently, deeps of all sorts aren’t looked at too kindly. They’re sometimes pejoratively called ‘reeks’. It’s only bubbled up in remote locations. School children bullying deeps in class, a few skirmishes outside bars. But the ire is rising.
The car parks itself in the closest available spot and I walk up to the door. The bouncer checks my identification and lets me in. “Thanks Bill,”I say.
He grunts.
I order a glass of chiraz, find the stage where Jam is dancing and sit with a couple that are enjoying a vodka martini. The man is seems to be devouring Jam with his eyes, while the woman has her eyes closed. She is trying to concentrate on all the scents her link is picking up.
At this stage of the game the dancers send out scent signals in a wide general broadcast. Nothing too harsh, just very light and subtle scents of lavender or freshly made cookies. One girl prides herself on a perfect new car smell. Jam likes fruit smells usually. Strawberries, apples, grapes, pears. Her favorite is pomegranate because of how difficult it is to replicate. Most people don’t even consider pomegranate to have a smell. I drink chiraz when I visit Jam at work because she says that’s the drink that goes best with the scents she sends out. I wouldn’t know of course, but I’ve developed a taste for the wine now, and sometimes I like to imagine what smells Jam is sending and how they play with the grape on my tongue.
Certain people will be able to receive scent signals from a specific person easier than others. So it’s all part of the process to find a dancer for whom the scents are particularly strong and pay for their service.
After the dancing is when all parties get to what Jam says is the easy part.
Jam gets off the stage and walks around the tables. She has a scent of vanilla and strawberries with a hint of cinnamon. I can tell because the scents fit the colors of her skimpy outfit, which is some sort of hybrid of a two piece swimsuit and an evening gown. It’s white in the center of each patch of material and then the color sort of fades into red and then there’s a copper fringe. The garment is made of a nano composite that is connected with her link. She can change the color of it to match whatever scent she’s broadcasting. She gives me a wink and I raise my glass to her. When she reaches the couple, the man looks to the woman and the woman nods and gives Jam a credit card. Jam glances at it and gives it back to them. The woman presses her finger to the card for a moment and then stands up and shows it to Jam again. From this angle I can clearly see the digital display on the card. 75,000 credits. That’s more than I make in a month. Jam smiles and takes the card and leads them both to a private booth where she’ll induce them to ravish each other by sending them sex pheromones. You could have doused them with actual sex hormones and gotten no effect, but Jam sends the perception of the scent straight to the brain through the link. And the brain still has a strong response to such things.
She really does provide a service. Places like this probably have a great deal to do with the drop in the divorce rate over the last decade.
I drink the rest of my shiraz while I wait for Jam to return. It usually doesn’t take long. Once Jam gets her people going they don’t need her any more. She isn’t much of a voyeur. Not surprising considering the age of most of her clients. Another reason why she hates people who don’t go in for augmentations.
Sure enough, after about five minutes, Jam comes out wearing a red pseudo silk robe. She walks up to the table and sits next to me. She’s smiling and looking up at the stage as another dancer comes on. She likes her job.
“Hey, Jam,” I say, “You look chipper.”
“Hey Mal.” I feel a rise in the buzz in my head. Jam’s meming at me. Which is usually fruitless but after what happened with my mother I try to concentrate. Nothing. Just the buzz. She’s probably explaining why she’s so happy. Emotions are a whole lot easier to explain through meming, I’ve heard. I wouldn’t doubt it.
As usual, I pretend to understand. “That’s nice. So when do you get off?”
“All the time, honey.” Jam jokes.
“I mean,” I say, exaggeratingly rolling my eyes, “ When do you get off work?”
Jam’s expression darkens a shade, “I’m here for another three hours. I’m sorry.”
Crap. I spent too much time with Angela. I forgot that Jam, like other spocks doesn’t get subtleties in voice tone and facial expression. I’m trying to train her a little bit, but it’s slow going. I smile and try something less subtle. I kiss her deeply.
When I release her I say, “I’ll wait for you at the ‘partment then.”
I don’t have to worry about Jam’s safety. I once saw someone try to hit on Jam a little too forcibly. She scent him a scent that sent him reeling to the ground. He clamped his hands to his nose, but of course that didn’t help. He screamed and yelled “you f**king reek bitch.” Then he threw up and passed out.
No I don’t have to worry about Jam. She can take care of herself. She’d only have to worry about waldos, and they’re rare around this neighborhood.
I drive alone back to the apartment. I enter the apartment and sit down on the sofa. Alone.
Dying is lonely.
Does Jam love me?
I don’t know. Do I love her? Maybe. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I sit on the couch in the den in silence thinking about things. Who is the killer?
Jam comes in and we have a light dinner of microwave Salisbury steak mashed potatoes and corn. She’s meming at me furiously. There’s a buzzing at the front of my skull, like Jam is trying to drill her way in. But she can’t. I can’t make anything out of what she’s sending me. I might not be totally wald, but I might as well be with her.
“Jam.” I interrupt her. “We’ve been together for a long time. I can trust you, and this is probably going to come out eventually anyway. I would have told you sooner except by the time I knew I could trust you I was worried about what you would think of me lying to you all this time. It isn’t a lie so much as a secret really, but it pretty much amounts to the same thing.”
“What is it?” Jam asks, cutting off her meme stream.
“Jam, the reason I can’t let you in isn’t because I’m scared or because I have some kind of insecurity. I’m wald, Jam. I try to get you to talk because I can’t understand you when you meme at me. Not at all.”
Jam looks confused for a moment. Then she says, “that’s bullshit, Mal. You can always tell what I’m thinking even without me meming it. And you can smell me when you want to.”
I shake my head, “I can tell what you’re thinking sometimes from your facial expressions and from the context of the situation. And I can only guess at what scents your sending me based on what color your… dress kini is.”
“But…You have a link. You have the tips on your ears.”
“Yes. But the link doesn’t work. All I get from you is a soft buzzing in my head. It was harder just now, like a drill or something almost, but it’s still just a buzzing. I can’t make anything out. Except…”
“Except what?”
I wonder whether I should tell her about what happened with my mother. It would seem a little too much like I was making my story up as I went along. “It’s nothing,” I say, “Just something that happened this afternoon is all.”
“What happened this afternoon?”
Jam looks suspicious, scared and maybe a little angry. I’d almost say she suspects me of sleeping with somebody else, except that doesn’t fit the situation. I guess I better tell her after all. “I was sitting with my mother this afternoon watching a telenovela. I picked something up from her. Just a flash of something. It might have just be some subconscious thing. But it seemed to come from my link.”
“So you’re not wald.”
I grimace. “Not entirely, maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been wald all my life. I’ve had to learn to fake it and now it seems something’s changed. I don’t know whether it will get better or if it’s just some weird random firing or if it was just my imagination and not my link at all.”
Jam gets up goes to the cabinet where we keep the hard liquor got out a bottle of tequila and a shot glass and poured herself a drink straight. She slammed back the shot and let the glass hit the counter hard enough I worry she’s going to break something. “Okay. I’m not sure what to think here, Mal. I’ve told you things, secrets I’ve never told anyone else. Only apparently I haven’t. Apparently I might as well have been meming to a fucking brick wall.”
“I’m sorry, Jam.”
She pours another glass. “Do you know anything about me?”
“I know enough.” I say defensively.
“What’s my favorite color?”
“Red.” Jam always favored red in her outfits. Beyond that though it was more or less a guess.
“Fine. You’ve always been good with that shit.” Her voice is soft, even though she’s speaking harshly. She’s remembering all the birthday and anniversary celebrations, the time I took her to see her favorite play when it came to the Orpheum nearby. Or maybe she’s remembering afterwards when she cried herself to sleep on my arm. Meming even harder at me then she did tonight. She looks at me with a hurt expression. “What happened to me when I was nine?”
Her expression doesn’t help me so I close my eyes. It had to be something life changing, but at nine years old there aren’t too many opportunities. Was it a good thing or a bad thing. Probably bad. Someone died or something. Probably not sexual abuse, though that’s possible. Who could have died? Her brother or sister or a friend maybe? Both her parents are alive. I’ve met them. Probably a best friend then or a sibling. I’ll go with best friend. “Your best friend died.”
She downs another shot. “It was my sister. You don’t even know her name do you?”
Why does she ask that? As if a name was some how easier to know than that her sister died in the first place. I shake my head. “I’m sorry. It’s why I try to get you to talk all the time.”
“Goddamit, Mal! Why didn’t you just tell me! You should have heard the things I told my friends. ‘He’s such a good listener.’ I said. ‘He really understands what I’m going through.’”
I smile in spite of myself. “Meanwhile I found it refreshing to have a girlfriend who wasn’t constantly talking all the time.”
Jam looks shocked, and then she sees the humor in it too. Jam never could stay angry for very long. She giggles. “I guess we both got something out if it then.” She pours herself another glass though. She takes it with her and sits at the table. “You’re not off the hook. I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t know if I can love somebody I can’t link with, and all the deception…I have to go back through our entire relationship and figure out what’s real and what I just imagined.” She drinks the glass more slowly and sets it down. She closes her eyes “Okay. I’m officially drunk now. I’m gonna go ta sleep. Then I’m gonna wake up and have nice big headspitting hangover. And if I still like you after that, we’ll stay together. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say.
Jam gets up again, or tries to. She lists a little to one side, and I get up and catch her before she stumbles. I guide her to the bed and let her collapse. I take off her shoes and put the covers over her. At first I think she’s completely asleep but I feel a soft buzzing in my head. And then in a flash I see a young girl in a red dress chasing after a ball that has gone into the street, and I hear a name called out in fear.

Matilda. That’s the name of Jam’s sister. Was the name.