Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

            Everyone greets him, and I feel a jolt to my stomach. We’ve been emailing, but we haven’t talked in person since yesterday, when I gave him official permission to abhor me—as long as he’s professional about it. I’m curious to see how he’ll play. In deference to his tender sensibilities I’m wearing my tiniest septum ring and the single Ann Taylor dress I own. It’s an olive branch; he damn better appreciate it.

            “I see what you’re saying,” I tell Mark. “There are physical impossibilities inherent to the materials, but we might be able to—”

            He repeats the only word he knows. “Impossible.”

            “—find a solution that—”

            “No.”

            I’m about to praise the sudden variety in his vocabulary when Levi interjects. “Let her finish, Mark.” He takes a seat next to me. “What were you saying, Bee?”

            Huh? What’s happening? “The . . . um, the issue is the outputs placement. They need to be positioned differently if we want to stimulate the intended region.”

            Levi nods. “Like the angular gyrus?”

            I flush. Come on, I apologized for that! I glare at him for shading me in front of his team, but I notice an odd gleam in his eyes, as though he . . . Wait. It’s not possible. He’s not teasing me, is he?

            “Y-yes,” I stammer, lost. “Like the angular gyrus. And other brain regions, too.”

            “And what I told her,” Mark says with all the petulance of a six-year-old who’s too short for the roller coaster, “is that given the property of the Kevlar blend we’re using for the inner shell, the distance between outputs needs to stay the way it is.”

            Actually, what he told me was “Impossible.” I’m about to point that out when Levi says, “Then we change the Kevlar blend.” It seems to me like a perfectly reasonable avenue to explore, but the other five people at the table seem to think it’s as controversial as the concept of gluten in the twenty-first century. Murmurs rise. Tongues cluck. A guy whose name might be Fred gasps.

            “That would be a significant change,” Mark whines.

            “It’s unavoidable. We need to do proper neurostimulation with the helmets.”

            “But that’s not what the Sullivan prototype calls for.”

            This is the second time I’ve heard the Sullivan prototype mentioned, and the second time a dense silence ensues when it’s brought up. The difference today is that I’m in the room, and I can see how everyone looks to Levi uneasily. Is he the main author of the prototype? Can’t be, since he’s new to BLINK. Sullivan is the name of the Discovery Institute, so maybe that’s where it’s from? I want to ask Guy, but he’s off setting up equipment with Rocío and Kaylee this morning.

            “We’ll be as faithful as possible to the Sullivan prototype, but it was always meant to be a vehicle for the neuroscience,” Levi says, firm and final as usual, with that competent, big-dick calm of his, and everyone nods somberly, more so than one would expect from a bunch of dudes who throttle one another over donuts and come into work in their pajamas. There’s clearly something I don’t know. What is this place, Twin Peaks? Why’s everyone so full of secrets?

            We hammer out details for a couple more hours, deciding that for the next weeks I’ll focus on mapping the individual brains of the first batch of astronauts while engineering refines the shell. With Levi present, his team tends to agree to my suggestions more quickly—a phenomenon known as Sausage Referencing™. Well, to Annie and me, at least. In Cockcluster™ or WurstFest™ situations, having a man vouch for you will help you be taken seriously—the better-regarded the man, the higher his Sausage Referencing™ power.

            Notable example: Dr. Curie was not originally included in the Nobel Prize nomination for the radioactivity theory she had come up with, until Gösta Mittag-Leffler, a Swedish mathematician dude, interceded for her with the all-male award committee. Less notable example: halfway through my meeting with the engineers, when I point out that we won’t be able to stimulate deep into the temporal lobe, Maybe Fred tells me, “Actually, we can. I took a neuroscience class in undergrad.” Oh, boy. That was probably two weeks ago. “I’m pretty sure they stimulated the medial temporal lobe.”

            I sigh. On the inside. “Who?”