I imagined that I looked beautiful through his eyes. I wanted that. But only for him. To everyone else, I wanted to be a man. I wanted to be tall and intimidating, the type of guy you shouldn’t make eye contact with. The guy you’d be scared to realize was walking behind you late at night when no one else was around. I’ve never been a scary guy, I’ve always been a nice person and I don’t mess with people, but being intimidating can help avoid danger in some spaces. My dark skin and my height (over six and half feet) help in that regard.
I wanted him to look at me like no one else does. There was no other opinion of my physical appearance that really mattered to me. Because I was on a mission and I couldn’t be distracted.
I was born into a world that had a narrow view of intelligence, and by that I mean, we bought and sold other Terran animal species to keep as pets, some we bred and kept as livestock, others we hunted for sport. Now, in my thirties, the world is a very different place. In the time of True Enlightenment that occured after the cosmic event that allowed all sapient organisms of the Earth to communicate as humans do, things have changed drastically. In the current year, 10 TE, the notion of one species owning another is as gobsmacking as the reality that at one point humans owned each other. Most animal species have advocates and avatars in the media who have made the notion of eating another animal morally reprehensible, and most every animal species, including humans, tigers, sharks, and bears, now eat synthetic proteins manufactured in a lab. Many of these species are now known by other names and have rejected names given to them by humans.
Even though humanity has largely learned to accept and respect the rights of other animals on the planet, there has been little activist activity for the rights of plants, who do not generally have organs that allow for vocalization. But I have worked for an organization dedicated to confirming the sapience of plants using methods that humans utilize in communicating with the nonverbal.
My work is very important to me. Advocating for the rights of the nonverbal is of the utmost importance if we ever hope to achieve goals for fairness on this planet that have been established in the TE era. Protecting the lives of sapient creatures from religious zealots who use centuries old fairy tales to justify their dominion over other animals species and the planet is my life’s work because I learned about the suffering that results when humans assert misguided rule over the planet.
I work a lot, and my work doesn’t allow for much else. I work with a team developing devices to try and detect a brain, or brain-like structures, in plants, for the purpose of converting the impulses of the brain into communication that humans can understand. I met Cameron one afternoon in the cafeteria of my job. I’d noticed him the first time on the elevator in the building where I worked and he smiled at me for what felt like eternity. He got off on the engineering floor where they actually assemble the ideas for devices that we develop in my department. It was weeks before I saw him again and he approached me at the table in the first floor cafeteria at my job where I was wolfing down a salad so I could run back up to my office to put the finishing touches on a design.
He sat across from me before I finished my lunch and we introduced ourselves. The way he flirted with me felt new. It’s rare, no, I should be honest and say that it never happens that guys like Cameron ever approach me like he did. He complimented my smile and offered to help me carry books to my car at the end of the day. Usually people overestimate my strength, but he joked that I was tall but thin as a pole and probably needed help. He didn’t treat me like I was weak and incapable, but he wanted to do things for me, to protect me I thought and that made me feel very comfortable with him. I talked so much that time in the cafeteria that I actually used the entire hour of my lunch break, which was unheard of.
We’ve been seeing each other for a while, almost a year, and when he looks me in the eyes, I know that he sees me. I like to curl up in his big arms, and I usually wear shorts at his house that show my long legs. He always makes me feel beautiful.
He did. He doesn’t now, not since I learned that he was using my technology against me.
The last time I slept at his house, I woke up in the middle of the night with a splitting headache. I was in his bed, but he wasn’t there, and I was wearing the neurotransmission device that I had completed about a month prior. I hadn’t gotten any feedback from engineering about the feasibility of creating the design, so I expected to get my vector drawings back with copious notes on what needed to be tweaked to make it a viable design.
But as soon as I touched the smooth dome that attached with suction to the top of my head, with wires that grew down from the dome like spider’s legs to attach to nodes connected to my forehead and at my temples, I knew what it was. I called his name, I screamed for Cameron as I stumbled to the bathroom mirror, and there it was, the device just as I had conceived it.
I turned when I heard a commotion behind me, and Cameron stood in the doorway.
“I thought that I had tweaked it so it wouldn’t cause headaches,” he said with no sign of remorse on his face.
“What is happening?” I asked, still wearing the device that was surprisingly lightweight given its size.
“You’re the best scientist at the company,” he explained, “your ideas are inspired. And you have much higher clearance than I do, so they hired me to take secrets from you. I do love you very much, our time together has been most enjoyable and I don’t want it to end. But I was hoping to mine more of your dreams before you learned the truth, so that this would be an easy choice for you. I guess your duty to your employer and the work you do means more to you than me still.”
“Why are you doing this?” I cried. There was no way I could look beautiful to him then, and I wondered if any of our interactions had been real for him the way they were for me. I wondered if he didn’t have access to my dreams, would I love him? Was he really the dream guy that I assumed he was or just smart enough to manipulate me. I can never really know for sure.
“The world has gone crazy since the so-called True Enlightenment,” he explained. He approached me in the bathroom where I was slowly sinking to the floor. The pain in my head seemed to be draining my strength. “All of the animals on this planet evolved into the ecosystem that we enjoyed before do-gooders like you and the company stepped in to change things. I work for people who want to restore order. I don’t want to hurt you. I promise you that I love you and want you to be my partner, but not in this world. Will you come with me?”
He knelt before me, smiling that smile that I remember from the first time I saw him on the elevator.
“Of course,” I said, because what would I be without him?
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