Dopamine by H. Talichi

Dopamine by H. Talichi

To most people, this room of mirrors and screens would be perfect. But I, who was until recently very much a member of that caste, find it newly repulsive. I shut my eyes and engage in that frivolity called thought. 

We aren’t supposed to think unless it is contractually obligated. I am no one special – I’ve only lived the scientifically ordained good life of workouts, work and so many contracts. Yet here I am. Thoughtful, and even worse, full of feel… I mean overlapping brain states. One of them is surpr… I meant neurosurge B3. Because despite the suddenly repulsive room, I am flushed with joy… I mean dopamine. 

Dopamine. It comes back to that, doesn’t it? Before I tie myself in more knots, I should go back to the start. 

The day it began was a perfectly ordinary one. My health markers pinged green in the morning, and I’d already wrapped up a quick workout. My arms were firm and my heart was still pumping when I dressed for work. My oxytocin-giver was probably out buying unnecessary bread. I looked at my face in kitchen mirrors 1, 2 and 3, and the hallway mirror 2. I told myself I was perfection itself. 

I occasionally talked to myself, but no more than the normal rates. It still bothered me though; it was one of the few things that wasn’t covered by a commercial contract. I daydreamed sometimes of ways to monetise talking to myself. It was a waste to do something for nothing. I had this thought again, but it led to the familiar conclusion.

If there was one thing that wasn’t economic, it was dopamine. You did a thing for money, or for dopamine. I’d heard vaguely of people who did other things, but people did weird stuff like giving up a kidney for a friend. Every statistical system had outliers. All my friends were tied up in detailed contracts, and only one or two touched on kidneys. Even there, they were a monetary exchange. Nothing base like quid pro quo.

The young, dark-haired woman in the hallway mirror 2 smiled at me and gave me my dopamine boost. As I left for work, a ping on my phone told me my oxytocin-giver was indeed out to buy bread. He was a tolerable fellow, and he was tied up in the most intricate contract of them all, naturally. We rarely met except for sex these days. Since hellos weren’t covered, the bread was just a way of avoiding awkward greetings. (I’d do the same – but with smoothies – come evening.)

All this was banality itself. It was when I dropped in at the cafe for my morning cuppa when it all changed. It wasn’t the cup of coffee that had changed – the same beans, and served by the same woman with the same smile. No, it was a stranger’s face that caught my eye.

The ensuing rush of brain chemistry caught me off-guard. I felt giddy and warm. That man – he was Adonis to my eyes. The light in his eyes sparkled. I pinched myself to stop the madness. When was the last time I had an oxytocin hit like this?

The contract with my long-term oxytocin-giver allowed for one affair per year. But I hadn’t felt the pull in a while. I looked down at my stomach, feeling the merest hint of fluff that hadn’t been there five years ago. I flicked open my mobile phone camera, and the dopamine reassurance was instant. I was fine. The biggest risk was something stuck in between the teeth. 

Once that was sorted, I got down to business. The moment our eyes met, I held his gaze. He frowned, cute as a button, but looked away. These things took their time. I headed off to work then, and spent a mundane eight hours talking to my AI model that would then use my input – or not use it – in some mysterious way to predict the weather with startling accuracy.

The next day, his eyes lit up in recognition. Those brain circuits were so good at recognising faces, and I was by no means just another face in the crowd anyway. (If I said so myself.) The day after I smiled and waved. He looked around in (mock?) confusion, and left. On the fourth day, he smiled back. 

Now the rules of evolutionary psychology deemed that I’d have to stop, and he’d have to pick up the slack. I pretended to be wrapped up in work as I bent over my laptop screen. Actually I didn’t have to pretend, as my computer model had chosen this day to hallucinate about pink frogs. (It would decidedly rain pink frogs today.)

I felt rather than saw a thump. He’d slapped something on to my desk. He smiled at me for a second. It was sweetness itself. A face was never just a face, was it? It wasn’t just a collection of nose, ears, eyes and lips. It was a live thing that talked to our brains directly, bypassing language, getting the oxytocin flowing, or at least priming it. 

Oh, how quaint. It was a card with an address. The man did know the game.

I sent an e-note to my oxytocin-giver saying I was invoking the affair clause and off I went to the address right after work. It was a strange choice, a large, square building of glass and concrete, with a sign that suggested that there was an office there. He greeted me at the door. This was the first time I’d heard his voice, and it was melod.. tuned to maximise the chance of sex. He smiled and brushed the hair out of his eyes.

“Don’t be fooled by appearances. There’s a lovely cafe here,” he said. I believed him completely and walked in with him.

It was indeed a lovely cafe. It was something from the olden days, perhaps the 2040s with their love of high-luminosity lighting and electric white decor. I’d heard a rumour it was office decor back then, but now it was comfortingly quaint. 

We murmured sweet nothings to each other. I was prepared to work through the courtship dance, but this would be easier than I thought because he soon came out with this –

“You are beautiful.”

I flushed, despite myself. What a strange choice of words! But the effect was powerful. I felt giddy, warm, and elevated. Ecstasy was at hand.

Then it started to go downhill. The man mentioned that he loved poetry. His sparkling eyes seemed to dull as he said these dangerous words. Oh, this was a red flag that seared my very retinas. Charlatanry was afoot. What sane person admitted to that? Poets peddled feelings, and I knew there were some people who exclusively trafficked in them. But it was uniformly icky business, just as with those spirit-mediums and child-groomers. Even liars had an understandable function.

He offered to quote some poetry to me. I shuddered and shook my head. He lowered his in acknowledgment. His downturned lips were picture-perfect sadness, but who knew what sort of brain states someone like him had? Perhaps he was a psychopath. That at least made sense as it was only a brain chemistry defect.

Statistics consoled me, as it would any normal person. The odds, even for me, weren’t perfect, and this was a loss. But the coffee was almost had, and I would be out of here.

He surprised me again with his next words.

“If you’d like, I’d like to show you something instead.”

“I have to leave. I – “

“It’s about dopamine and I promise you’ll love it.”

I stared at him. That darned face, and that darned D-word. His eyes crinkled in hope, and I found myself smiling. I let myself be led by him away from the cafe.

The man waved a practised hand at a locked door, and it opened up to something unexpected. A cavernous room covered nearly top to bottom with mirrors and screens greeted us. He waved at a low-slung, inconspicuous couch, and we sat down. I forced my jaw shut and my eyes ahead.

He smiled and slid a palm-sized tablet into my hand. I swiped it on and some of the screens turned on to a familiar pornography channel. I felt my eyes widen and my brain’s ears prick up. 

“Have your pick, there’s a subscription. There’s Hub, there’s Tube, there’s – well take a look.”

I smiled at him. I felt hot under my collar bone, but there was nothing to take off but all of the dress I was wearing. I pushed it fractionally up my thigh, but it was so warm. I had to… I saw that the man had begun to undress. He had the perfect body of evolutionary science, of course he did. The hypnosis of sex was upon me, and I gave in. I removed my dress and saw how good I looked in several mirrors. He reached out to kiss me.

The promise of dopamine was always tempting, but when you were already riding an oxytocin wave, it was irresistible. Two plus two made twenty. I’d never thought it would be this though especially with everything that had happened before. This was Everest. The room, with us reflected thousand times over; the man, and his face and body and hair; us, naked bodies entwined.

When we were sated, he said,

“How’s the dopamine?”

“Bursting out of my skin. I’m flying high in the clouds.”

He laughed a kind, hearty laugh. “Figurative speech. It’s funny how sex seems to liberate us.”

That confused me, but I was too ecstatic to care.

We dressed slowly. My mind was on contracts and typical affair lengths, and when we’d meet again to maximise the time I had. He spoke, breaking the heavy silence.

“Would you like to measure your level of dopamine?”

“What – “ I began. He squeezed my hand gently, asking to continue.

“There’s a lab here, and I can get you in there for a quick peek. Shouldn’t be a problem given I work here.”

This was a strange new wrinkle. I considered his request. It was very rare to actually measure dopamine levels. Considering how much we organised our lives around dopamine, and considering how important measuring a thing was to its value, my consideration was brief. This was – a meeting with God.

I paused. The oxytomine was making me foolish. Anyway, I was curious. How high was my level? Was it better than average? It had to have been.

We walked together into an adjoining room. It was a lab. In the second or so I took to scan my surroundings, the man had donned a lab coat. His eyes on me, he stumbled a little as he tripped over an electric cable. I shook with overwhelming attraction. A veritable flawed, Greek god doctor.

“You’ll have to sit there,” pointing at an inclined chair.

“And you’ll have to put your hands in there,” now pointing at what looked like handcuffs.

“They’re not handcuffs,” he said. “They take some general diagnostic measurements.”

“They don’t look friendly,” he conceded, looking apologetic and stunning.

I strapped myself in and familiar beeps booped assuringly. 

“I’m right here.” His voiced floated from the other side of the room, but with him out of my field of view, the spell snapped. This room was… creepy. I chastised myself for unproven judgment, but it was. The narrow ceilings and the volumelessness of the stark white walls all made it seem like a cramped.. Box. Oh, this room was claustrophobic. That was it.

Reassured that my fear was an empirically labelled one, I noticed nonetheless that I had most certainly come down to earth. The hairs on my bare arms had settled down. The tingle on my skin had vanished. Whatever residue of dopamine I had left seemed to fade away.

“I’m back!” He said, beaming. For once, my eyes were not on his face because he held the largest syringe I had ever seen. I squirmed. He stroked my shoulder. I continued to squirm.

“Only a prick,” he said.

 That thing looked like the apocalypse, a planet-sized instrument of evil, as it reached deep into my veins and .. it was done.

“Shall we go back?” He said, and we were out almost before I said, “Yes.”

We sat on a couch, nursing coffees. There were not quite as many mirrors here, and I didn’t mind, for a change. I was trying to muster my strength. It was reasonable to fear a syringe – maybe – but now that it was over, I was supposed to anticipate. Anticipation was a dopamine inducer. 

Before I could hold that thought much longer, my companion announced that the results were ready.

“Already?” I said, not quite overflowing with anticipation.

“It doesn’t take long.” He said and disappeared.

He came back in a flash and before I could say anything had announced the result – that it was something ml / something mg.

“Is that good?” I asked, dazed.

He shook his head, in that annoyingly apologetic way.

“Below average I’m afraid.”

Well, that was that. The dopamine was well and truly gone, I thought for a second, before realising that I was just reaffirming the result in my head. The oxytocin was on tenterhooks. Something bubbled up in me. 

“This is unreasonable,” I said sharply.

“How. The. Hell. Can measuring dopamine with that -” I jabbed a finger in the direction of the Box, “- torture device not affect the measurement?”

“How can that lab with claustrophobic walls ever keep anyone’s dopamine up?”

I felt my voice rising to a crescendo. The man looked at me. “Well. This is the only scientific way to measure dopamine. There are a lot of variables to control for, the equipment is rare and fragile. Nothing else we can do. Without going into all the details.” His voice was mild.

It irritated me. “But it’s… stupid!”

“How can any measurement capture the dopamine boost of a cup of morning coffee?”

The man replied without missing a beat. “We could bring the cup of coffee into the lab?”

“It’s different. IT’S DIFFERENT.” I said, panting now. My ears rang from the hollowness of my complaints. Of course he was right. Proper measurement and needed control and without measuring a thing, it was worth nothing more than a –

“But dopamine is different.” I went on.

“How so?” He sat down on the couch next to me, eyes sharp.

“It just is.”

“How do you know you’re having a dopamine spike when it’s never been measured properly?” His voice was little more than a whisper.

“I…”

That face, it was more than just a nose, ears and shapely lips. That face was – 

“I…” I tried again.

“You are beautiful.” I said instead, faintly. His face was kind as he said –

“And you were happy.” I flinched. “Content.” “Satisfied.” “Ecstatic.” His voice was gentle but I continued to flinch with each word.

Tears were flowing down my face now but I wasn’t sad. I was… He put an arm around my shoulder, and I held it. 

“I really do think you’re beautiful,” he said. “You have a light in your eyes. It is buried sometimes but it is there, and when it shows, it glitters.” 

‘… light in my eyes.” I repeated dully. I stood up and walked to a mirror. I saw my made-up face, now tear-streaked, unkempt hair, moulded perfect teeth, practised perfect smile, smooth skin and shapely nose. Suddenly there was something else.

My face resolved into something more than its parts. I was beautiful, but not just because of my features. My face showed… sensitivity, and humour. The stranger I saw in the mirror was me.

“Come with me.” he said. I knew this was not a request to go with him back to the cafe – which I did – but something deeper.

“I have a contract with my oxytocin partner and it’s – “I began, but he interrupted.

“What if you never go back? It would – “He began but stopped himself. “I know how hard it is. I really do. I don’t mean to press this way. Take your time. Think about it. Trust your heart.”

“I’ll be here,” he added. “Let’s just enjoy the moment.”

It began to rain, and we watched reluctant droplets slip down the clear glass windows.  “Tell me some poetry.” I said.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright H. Talichi 2024