Tyro Vogel - Tyro Vogel's Extatica

“Unless this is where you tell me you’re actually a genius scientist doing secret research for the betterment of mankind, I am out of here.”

He stood up from the bench and unzipped the monkey suit, the half-burnt joint in his mouth glowing at the tip. He wore protective leather pants and a motorcycle jacket underneath, both white. Red stripes ran along the jacket’s sleeves, matching the stripes on the pants. He packed the monkey suit into his bag.

“And if I am,” he said, “would you care to see my secret lab?”

Victor’s motorcycle hummed between her legs with vibrant energy. She justified getting on the bike with a complete stranger by telling herself these were desperate times that called for desperate measures.

At least she no longer had to worry about calling her mother to tell her the news, or her best friend Linda, or even her ex. She could think about them and about her (potentially painful but short) future later. Tonight, she was going to have an adventure.

Sure, she could have refused Victor outright, but she hadn’t sensed anything too off about him apart from the obvious quirkiness. She figured that had he been a serial killer or a rapist or some different form of predator, he would’ve kept a lower profile instead of dressing up like a monkey who rode around on a motorcycle that cost more than most people she knew made in a year.

So, she got with the program.

Irina held onto Victor, her breath condensing on her visor. She was glad he gave her a passenger helmet; Irina wanted them to make it to their destination, wherever that was, safe and sound. Victor’s face might not have been Boy Band material, but she could feel the lean muscles of his abs through his jacket. It had been too long since the last time Irina had been with a man. Too long. Sex was a basic need, and she was only human.

They rode in silence, her arms wrapped around his waist, until she started to realize where he was bringing her. She let out a sound of surprise that failed to escape the confines of her helmet. Victor parked at the ELTE University building by the Danube River, the one with the observatory on its roof.

“ELTE? I thought we were going to your place,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re a student.”

“Forever a student.” He got off the bike and she had little choice but to follow him into the building. Victor flashed a student ID card to the napping security man, dived into a corridor, and started up a spiral staircase. She struggled to keep up, yet she liked the hurry; the hurry fed her lust. Nevermind her recently failed relationship, the last time she had a good fuck was five years ago. A middle class tragedy, she decided, following Victor through a solitary door at the top of the stairs.

To her delight, a queen-sized bed stood in the center a room that looked like the base of a dome. A fireman’s pole next to the bed disappeared into a hole in the ceiling. They took off their shoes so as not to dirty the soft carpets. Bookshelves stood against walls in a circle around them. Irina got it. They were inside the observatory.

“Secret lab?”

“The lab’s up there.” He pointed up. “This is just the foyer.”

After the way he’d ran up those stairs, she felt disappointed when he simply stood by the firepole instead of pouncing on her like a hungry tiger. Irina bit her lip in a habitual motion. Why else would he get her up here, if not for the sex? She took one step closer and put her hands on his wrists, looking into his eyes. Victor was about the same height as her, so it was easy to manage. His eyes held a hint of hidden laughter at the edges. They fit his hawkish face well. It was time to take matters into her own hands.

“Mister Monkey Suit Man,” she said, pulling him gently toward the bed, “do you think if maybe we could… maybe, you know… experiment here?” Irina couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth.

He leaned toward her, then took a step back. “Look, you really should see this. Trust me.”

“Trust you?”

“Exactly. I want you to see the lab. I’ve been working on something. Well, my brother and I were working on something, but he isn’t here now, is he? No, he isn’t. Come. You’re going to love this.”

Victor wrapped his hands around the pole, locked it between his knees, and climbed up with expert grace.

“I’m not doing that,” she said.

He offered her his hand, and pulled her up through the hole in the ceiling.

At least a dozen tables took up most of the floor space in the upper half of the dome. They were buried under clock gears, computer hardware, electronic manuals, books, wrenches, screwdrivers, and other mad scientist-esque clutter. Two chairs sat back to back in the middle of the room.

“Sit,” Victor said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. What is this?”

“Do you know what the word ‘sonder’ means, Irina?”

She tensed up. What was she getting herself into?

“No, Victor, what does it mean?”

His mouth formed into an angular smirk. He picked up a book from the table next to him. It was titled The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Victor shook the book a little, as if proving a point. “According to this,” he said, “’sonder’ is the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway or as a lighted window at dusk.”

Irina sat into the chair in front of him. “Nice quote,” she said. “But so what?”

Victor put the book down and, in one impatient motion, flung a tattered notebook from the table, revealing a little chest underneath, its sides decorated in a flowery pattern. He flipped the lid open. The box was filled with blue pill capsules.

“If you really want to know so what, I can show you. I can show you a world very few have ever seen.” He offered her a pill.

“What is this?” She examined the capsule. On its side, the letters UF203 were printed in the tiniest font.

“Remember that place I told you that dimethyltryptamine takes you to? That place where all those anthill passages of human lives intersect? Well, it’s the same principle. Only here, we give your brain a little nudge to construct a reality that had been pre-built for you. It’s the most perfect, seamless virtual reality experience you can imagine.”

“A chemically-induced VR? So, what, I swallow this, and I see a hallucination that you’ve… constructed somehow?”

“No, no, no, it’s not like that. Swallow this, and your mind will be blasted into a different plane, a place at the heart of the world. From there, you can go anywhere you want. See anything you like. Be with anyone you like. It’s the internet for the mind, kind of. Once we both take it, we can meet in a universe I made for such things and continue our conversation there.”

“A pill that designs universes and gives you telepathic powers?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yeah, pretty much,” he said. “Do you trust me?”

I just met you, she thought. She’d never taken psychedelics before; she heard it could be dangerous. But then again, dangerous was relative. Irina had no way of knowing how much time she had left on this Earth, so the only logical thing to do under the circumstances was live while she still could. Irina nodded her consent and swallowed the capsule.

Victor took a pill as well, then picked up from the floor a pair of expensive-looking headphones connected to a stereo system under the chairs. She hadn’t noticed it before. He put the headphones over her ears. Victor sat in the other chair, the back of his head touching Irina’s.