Dave was in a state far beyond unconsciousness. It is nothing. There are no dreams here, no memories, no thoughts, and no feelings. It is a black void that isn't quite death, but is very close.
Suddenly the pain hit him like a comet colliding with a planet. He took in a deep, shocked breath. The pain was coming from everywhere, but mostly from the back of his head. He raised his arm to touch the wounded area, but felt something tugging at his arm. He slowly opened his eyes, then quickly closed them again; the light was too bright. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he quickly blinked his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw a very high ceiling above him. He looked at his arm and saw that it was an IV tube that was pulling against his arm.
"Where am I?" he asked in a raspy voice, not really expecting the answer he received.
"You are in the post-op recovery room," a voice said to him. Dave turned his head quickly to the side and was rewarded by a sharp increase in pain at the base of his skull. He saw a woman in a white nurse's uniform standing next to him. "You've been in surgery."
"For what," he asked. The fog in his mind still hadn't cleared yet.
"You and your wife had both had sub-cranial telepathic transceivers implanted."
Now it was starting to come back to him. Dave and his wife, Beth, had heard about these devices from a couple of their friends. They had gotten the Corsican Implants (as they were called by people outside of the medical field) which allowed them to feel everything the other felt while they were having sex. Dave and Beth got very excited over the idea and saved up the money to have the operation themselves.
"Rest now," the nurse instructed, "you have been under a long time. The effects of the anesthetic will take a while to ware off." Dave nodded slowly and closed his eyes. Before he knew it he was asleep.
****
When Dave woke up, he was in his hospital room. The pain was too great to lift his head off the pillow, so he pushed the button to raise the top of the bed up. He looked around but could see little besides the privacy curtain that surrounded his bed. Dave looked down at his arms and noticed that the IV's had been taken out. He reached up to the base of his skull and felt where they had shaved the back of his head. There was no wound though. The marvels of modern science, Dave thought.
He was about to turn on the Vid-Window when there was a knock at the door. The door opened and a male voice asked, "Hello, are you awake?"
"Yes," he heard his wife's voice answer from the other side of the curtain.
"I am too," Dave replied. He was glad to hear Beth's voice.
The curtain danced as it caught the air that was pushed by the door opening and closing. As the doctor walked in, he grabbed the end of the curtain as he walked into the room and between the two beds.
Dave smiled at his wife when she came into view. She was wearing a hospital gown just like he was, but she looked much better in hers than he did. Her red hair was up in a ponytail, so Dave could see the shaved area on the back of her head. It was a little red, but there was no wound on her either. Beth turned to look at Dave and winced at the pain throbbing in the back of her head.
Dr. Bowman was a short man with thinning white hair. Dave's head hurt too much to look him in the eyes, so he just stared at the doctor's name embroidered on his long white lab coat. He carried a chart in the crook of his left arm.
"The operations seem to have gone perfectly," the doctor said as he flipped through the chart. He had a German accent. "There doesn't seem to be any initial rejection of the devices." He pulled a small device out of his pocket, which looked like a cellular phone. He passed it over the shaved area on the back of Beth's head and then did the same to Dave. "And the sub-cortical transceivers seem to be operating normally. Very good. Very Good." he said while writing the results of his scan down in the chart. "The power-cells are fully charged and your implants are set to the same frequency."
"What is the chance of someone using the same frequency as us," Dave asked, giving Beth a wink.
"Ach, almost none," the Dr. Bowman replied, "we have been assigned millions of different frequencies by the World Communications Commission for use with these devices. Even if we were to run out of frequencies, each pair has a 1000 digit encryption code built into them. This is also to protect you from someone hacking into your link." He said the last line as he tapped his own head.
"When can we try them out," Beth asked.
"Not for a week and a half. Your nerve pathways need time to merge with the implant's connections."
"When can we go home then," Dave inquired.