Read Nexus for Free Online

Nexus.
      Above and around them, the smartfabric-covered walls undulated in time to the music now. Liquid silvers, reds, and blues flowed across the curving inner surface of the hangar, like ripples emanating from each tribal, elemental beat of the music Rangan was playing. It was transfixing, organic. She stared at it and knew that the track was "Buddha Fugue" by the group Apoptosis, the rhythms inspired by the sounds of Thai drumming meeting crashing surf as heard through the hashish-addled ears of band member Sven Utler, one hot summer night on the beaches of Koh Phangan.
      It came to her in a flash. She simply knew it as if she'd always known it. As if she'd heard this track a dozen times, heard the story behind it from Sven or Rangan or Kade already.
      Sam caught her breath. It was a great track, the kind her hips wanted to move to, but she didn't care. They just beamed that into my head! What she could do with that technology! What data archeology could be like! Education! Anything!
      She turned to Kade, mouth agape, eyes full of wonder. He grinned at her. He knew her thoughts and she knew his: infectious enthusiasm, excitement at her excitement, pride in his accomplishments.
      Like a boy showing off his toys, she thought, and he blushed and looked away and giggled.
      Kade took her by the hand then and led her into the crowd. They passed a pair of people, standing facing each other, arms moving oddly, clumsily, giggling and laughing out loud at each other.
      "What are they doing?" she asked Kade.
      He grinned at her. "We call it push/pull. They're using Nexus to move each others' bodies. Sending impulses to each others' motor cortices. Or trying to. It's not easy for most people."
      She stared at them.
      "Can we try that?" she asked.
      Kade grinned again. "Later."
      He led her further into the hangar, towards the circle of reclined couches. Something was going to happen there, she read from him. An experiment. And she could be part of it.
      "This is the closest we've come to people mapping each other. To the calibration experience across more than one mind. Want to try it?"
      Yes. God yes. She wanted to swallow them all whole.
       No , a small voice protested within her.
      She ignored it, nodded mutely to Kade.
      A half-dozen men and women were already reclining on the couches. There was room for a half-dozen more. As she and Kade approached the rest of the minds in the space faded. She could feel these six now, and clearly. She could feel Kade. The rest of the party was blanketed in mental silence.
      Kade was behind her. His hands touched lightly on her shoulders. He led her to one of the couches, helped her to sit. He crouched at her side.
      Others arrived, took their seats. A dozen of them on the couches and a few watchers nearby.
      "Ready?" Kade spoke aloud, pitched for her alone.
      Sam nodded.
      Something happened. Eleven more minds grew larger in her perception. They brightened, swam more fully into focus. They were so full. So alive with thoughts and memories, emotions and desires. Her breathing synchronized with theirs. She closed her eyes and she could see and feel their individual lines of thought.
      Eleven minds touched her at once in eleven parts of her psyche. Here was Brian's sheer joy at the crazy, meditative, ebullient madness of playing mind to mind with his friends. Here was Sandra's deep reservoir of calm and poise, her years of yoga, her pool of peace, anchoring those around her. This was samadhi to her. Here was Ivan's physicist's appreciation of the math and music in the interplay and dance and harmony and discord of the thoughts around him. Here was a vision in Leandra's mind, of protein shapes, folds and receptors and binding sites, of a dozen men and women connected in mind to decode them… Here were tears on Josephine's face, tears of a joyous memory of childhood, fireworks with her beloved Dad, lost to her. Lost like…