saac drove to the edge of the thickspace, where the mass of thickspace ended and the thickways began, like the legs of a great spider, scuttling out toward the next city. As he neared the rendezvous point, he felt the end the thickspace, colored by red psychic warnings that shouted at the unwary. Cafe Spiral was on the other side of the street, barely thinspace, but his mindcar couldn’t take him that far.
Cars careened past in a dazzling variety of shapes, colors, and logos, silent except a whoosh as they cut the air. He walked casually into traffic, the cars flowing around him like displaced water. It was a rush, just on the safe side of unsafe.
He saw her against the window, black-hooded head resting against the glass, staring down at a book, arm flat against the glass while her hand played with her lip, absorbed. She curved upwards from a slender waist. A dark wisp of hair fell uncaught and brushed the table. Here at the fringe of the thickspace, he could still feel the Mind warning him away like a rock in his gut.
He reflexively picted her a funny greeting, but when he felt for a response, her mind was nothing more than a set of controls to him with an emotional readout. She read on, his pict rebounding, a silent bird against glass.
He pulled open the door displacing a physical bell that jingled, startling him with the realness of it.
She looked up suddenly from her book and smiled at him. “Hey!” she said, standing, stretching, and walking towards him. She reached out and squeezed his arm.
“Hey,” he said with an awkward shift. She wore real clothes: a black hoodie with sharp pink piping. It so was intimate the way clothes showed your real body. He kind of wanted to hug her. But what was the meatspace protocol for that? He autopicted an ironic feeling to her, forgetting momentarily that she could not receive ironic metemotions, living instead with her emotions close as underwear against the skin.
She interrupted his thoughts that came close to her flesh, eyebrow cocked, “Sooo… we can’t stay here today. Should we roll out?”
“Oh, right, yeah! Let’s go.”
“Sweet.” She gestured towards the door, breaking him of his paralysis.
Soon they were driving, a drool track streaming, driving along the pitted, disconnecting road that carried them further from the thickspace and the Mind.
The fluttering overload of the thickspace started to fade into the background, and he fell into the trance of trees and buildings, regular like the tick of a second hand counting the end of work.
Sol dimmed the music and cleared her throat, “We’re far enough outside the thickspace that it’s not going to sampling your emotions as frequently.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel it right now. But is there really any way to stop it from streaming?” asked Isaac.
“Yes. Control your emotions.”
“So what happens if the Mind catches us?” he asked.
“It won’t. But fuck the Mind.”
“Fuck the Mind,” he agreed. “No but really. What would happen?”
“Probably nothing. It would try to get in my dreams. Pull me into a catatonic state. I’m not going down like that, though. You’ll see,” she said.
“So where are we going?”
“My office,”
“Your office?”
“Yeah. You’ll see,”