Safe from love

We know the science behind it, it’s a chemical reaction. Dopamine plus oxytocin plus norepinephrine equals certain disaster. When you start to associate feelings of pleasure and rewards to anything, it’s going to heighten your excitement and energy. Who wouldn’t want more of that. Who wouldn’t want to fall in love?

Everyone thought that war was caused by religion and money, but no. It was love. Love caused war. Unwavering and unadulterated love for "more". More power, more money, more everything. That’s what we discovered as a society over one hundred years ago. Love blinds you from everything around you. You can be passionate about something without loving it. You can be excited about something without loving it. Once you step into love, that’s when it gets dangerous.

We’re taught in school that it, love, complicates life. It adds pressure onto situations that would not warrant it otherwise, it causes anxiety and stress to everyone that’s involved. It affects your decision making and that is unacceptable.

If I feel it then, does it make me guilty? If I show it, am I a criminal? Where is the line between like and love? Where does lust end and love begin? Even thinking the word still causes beads of sweat to run down my lower back.

The world our elders knew ended because someone loved power too much. So much so that they unleashed hell on earth in efforts to seize as much of it as they could. When threats no longer worked, action was their answer. We went from a population of billions to what we assume now to be thousands. Everyone had theories that it would take only one person pressing their big red button for the rest of the world to press theirs. Well, the hypothesis was validated some hundred years ago.

There were pockets of the earth that were lucky to survived, ours being one of them. Since then, Haven scientists have developed a prenatal medicine that would cap our synapses and receptors so that we could never feel the threat of love. They were protecting us from ourselves.

Haven was an all around beautiful and safe place to live, considering the rest of the deadlands were either literal holes in the ground or covered in poisonous gas.

I stood outside my work post and looked at my watch. It wasn’t time yet, but I had to make my decision soon.

A Divine walked past and my whole body tensed. Divines were the chosen ordained by the Council to protect us from what could attack us from the outside, as well as what we might feel on the inside. He smiled at me. I mustered a smile back and nodded. I'm not usually this nervous but, yesterday, I felt something. I felt something I shouldn’t have been able to feel. I’m still feeling it and stronger than I've ever felt it before.

This was dangerous because when anyone ever exhibited an emotion close to love or something out of the norm, they were always taken to the hive, our hospital and lab. They never came back.

***

Yesterday, I was on one of my routine walks by the water after finishing dinner. Our gated society was lucky enough to have one of the largest bodies of water surrounding us. It was too toxic to swim in, but we were actively working on cleaning it. It was still beautiful to stare out into.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, it was Melaney. She had been wearing the grey uniform we all wear. Her eyes were a deep and dark forest green and her brown hair laid just over her shoulders. She nonchalantly put some of it behind her ear and stared in the direction of the horizon.

“It’s gorgeous.” She said, continuing to stare.

You’re gorgeous.

I held my breath. I couldn’t believe I just thought that. My heart raced with this sudden and frowned upon thought. Well, the thought was not so much the problem, the problem was that the thought made my heart race. This wasn’t just a normal excited feeling. I exhaled and tried to calm myself.

“It is.” I answered.

Silence.

“Do you ever think there’s more to life than this? Like we’re only getting two thirds of the full thing?” She said this with a rhetorical tone, but she still waited to see if I would answer.

“I-” I stop to debate saying the truth or not. It hadn’t been something I used to think about but lately, that was a different story. “I do, sometimes.”

She looked towards me, her pinky grazed mine. My knees nearly buckled. “What else do you think about?”

What else did I think about? At that moment, I couldn’t think of a single thing. The only thought I was having was how badly I wanted to be closer to her. More than that though, I felt like there was a huge pit in my stomach that would never go away; it was heavy and suffocating. I had felt sick and the only medicine that could help was Melaney.

I now know what this feeling was. Or at least, it was a percentage of that feeling.

Melaney and I had grown up together and as we got older, there was an obvious attraction- but that’s not love. Over the years, we shared a lot of moments together, good and bad. All those shared experiences bonded us, built a foundation of intimacy and trust that I didn’t have with anyone else. I didn’t want to have it with anyone else.

“I…I think about-” I paused. She had put her hand on mine. This was intentional. This was illegal. Public displays of affection were strictly forbidden.

“I’m going to take a risk here.” Her eyes pierced mine. “Do you…feel something for me?” I felt her squeeze my hand.

Was she reading my mind?

“This is important, Alex. What do you feel?” She squeezed tighter.

I looked up and stared into her eyes. “I feel something.”

She smiled back at me and it felt like I was seeing the world in technicolour for the first time. How could such a small gesture cause such a huge reaction. I watched as her pupils widened, getting lost in the greens of her eyes like a forest engulfing me in its wild beauty.

A Divine had walked towards where we were standing. She hastily let go of my hand and stared out towards the ocean again.

“Look forward.” I obeyed. “There’s a group of us who’ve noticed that something isn’t right.” She waited for the Divine to pass. “There are no such things as prenatal drugs that affect our synapses.”

I looked at her in disbelief. She continued looking out towards the water. “They implant something in our brain. It tracks the chemicals that would allow us to feel it.” She turned towards me. “It’s malfunctioning in some of us. We have ways of disrupting the inhibitor for good.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small circular electronic device with a small red button in the middle. “Do you trust me?”

I nod nervously but with surety.

She put the device on my temple and maintained eye contact with me. “This is going to sting for a second, and then you’re going to feel a rush of emotions you’ve never felt before.”

Before I could say I was ready, she pressed the button.

My mind replayed memory after memory. Each memory brought a tidal wave of emotions with them. I was feeling intensified levels of fear, jealousy, excitement and one new emotion, love.

I hadn’t noticed but I had tears streaming down my face. I refocused my eyes on Melaney. I understand why Haven did what they did. I would do anything for Melaney. I hated Haven for not allowing us to feel this way, but I also understood why they did what they did.

She wiped away the tears from my face and I rested my forehead against hers. The tips of our noses brushed against each other. Slowly, gently, our lips met and we kissed. Rules be damned. This feeling was overwhelming, I couldn’t help myself.

She pulled away.

“We’re leaving. Tomorrow.”

I couldn’t have heard her right.

“We found a hole in the perimeter. The council lied. There are safe zones outside of Haven. Places where people are still allowed to experience life the natural way. I want you to come with us.” She looked up at me, “Please.”

I didn’t know what to answer. All I knew was that I loved her. I loved her and I couldn’t

imagine spending another day without her.

***

I looked down at my watch. It’s time.