Knowing each drug that numbs, alerts another nerve to pain.
– Robert Lowell
In short: yes, it could have been no more than a dream. Acetylcholine neurons bombarding his fore- and midbrain with electrical impulses and random images during REM sleep.
It could have been a hallucination caused by physical exhaustion, by mental fatigue, or even by something he had eaten. Between his regular research assignments at GSK Pharmaceutics and his furtive off-hours project, it had been months since Alex last had a proper meal.
The bottom line is, working for such an extended period with experimental, highly concentrated pheromone cocktails and illegal, highly unstable manipulations of ibogaine compounds using the company's laboratories in secrecy would always be expected to have some sort of effect on anyone's psyche.
On anyone's brilliant, socially inept and sex-deprived psyche.
A psyche on the verge of isolating the active principles that would justify over seven years of intensive research, after which it would be only a matter of time until, by means of a calculated application of a perfume-like elixir, all women fell desperately in love with him the second the fragrance reached their delicate nostrils.
A psyche completely obsessed with visions of the endless debauchery to come.
Stroboscopic close-ups of female bodies: blood-red fleshy lips, the delicate curve of a firm breast, the soft cushion of a buttock, the curl of a well-shaped hip, the toned skin of a thigh, the arch of a damp perineum, smooth slender hands, legs, ankles, shoulder blades, navels, calves, nipples, droplets of sweat.
Dozens, hundreds of entangled, lithe bodies, dancing, slithering around him, undulating, as perfectly synchronised as if it were a single sexual entity trapped between two gigantic mirrors, multiplied to infinity, an ocean of carnal pleasure overloading his senses, slow- but steadily submerging, drowning, trapping him inside a vortex of lust, until all he could hear was the beating of his own heart, faster and faster, louder. Louder. Thump. Thump. Thump.
*
5:50 AM. The relentless buzz and the fluorescent blue pulse of the alarm clock's display flooded the room, rapidly flashing, struggling to keep in time with his heartbeat.
Alex's eyes shot open and found Lana Turner, deadly and unassailable, staring right back into him from her A1-sized clip-framed black-and-white poster of "The Postman Always Rings Twice".
Accelerated heart rate. Probable causes include fever; hyperstimulation of cardiac sympathetic nerves; abnormally high level of thyroid hormones and adrenaline; drug abuse, including epinephrine, ephedrine, atropine, digoxin; a weak heart.
Lana gazed coldly over Alex's motionless frame for the long time that took him to fully awake to the day's new reality. His eyes moved down her body and then shifted to the other poster on that wall, where Rita Hayworth remained glowing and freeze-framed as Gilda.
He adjusted his semi-rigid cock with his right hand, studying her profiled figure, and briefly considered conjuring up a fantasy about her, about Lana, or even about the two of them lezzing it up.
Rita wanted it. He could tell.
He smiled knowingly and rolled over, staring at the blue-lit ceiling for another minute, making sure he was indeed awake.
Grandeur isn't compatible with lethargy, Alex finally told himself. That day, he almost believed it.
He got up, headed to the bathroom, and went through his daily routine, getting ready for what was sure to be the most glorious day of his career, the most glorious day of his life.
That dream had definitely had a certain foreboding edge.
Seven hard years it had been, but he was certain of having discovered the long sought-after love potion. There were still, of course, details that needed further investigation. For how long would the potion be effective? Would its effects persist in absence of the source, and if so, for how much time? Would the quantity of the essence inhaled and the passion awakened be in direct proportion, and if so, would it be a linear, exponential or geometrical proportion? Given enough dosage, could the effects become permanently etched into a subject's personality?
The importance and urgency of these questions, and the risks involved, had convinced him that the inevitable field tests should be conducted as soon and as far away from home as possible. Any place where he had extensive social connections had to be avoided.
However, they would have to take place in a fairly large and densely populated area, where the opportunities for different subjects to interact would be limited. If anything were to go wrong, the size of the testing ground and its relative distance to familiar places would also provide the necessary protection and anonymity, even if a quick getaway were in order.
The final decision met him that afternoon in his office, in a both surprising and somehow befitting way. A neuropharmacology seminar to be held in Cannes, three months from then, would provide the perfect cover. With the luxurious research-parks, science-parks and technopoles that form the new high-tech Côte d'Azur, all eventual adjustments to the formula dictated by the experiment's evolution would be made easy.
By then, the influx of tourists would be unbelievably high. This would allow him to blend in, like a lion lying low within a herd of antelopes, waiting for the moment to charge the unsuspecting prey.
Besides, he thought, the summer fauna of the region holds mindless sexual interaction high in its list of objectives, so any moral issues could be bypassed without concern.
The wait wouldn't be long. He smiled, foreseeing successes and difficulties. Mostly successes.
During the following months, Alex tried to perfect his formula and analytically predict the outcome of as many scenarios as he could think of, but the lab stage had come to an end. Experimentation was more than a necessity. It was a craving.
On the last weekend of June, Alex woke up nervous.
Carefully, he reviewed the content of the bags he had packed the night before, went through the motions imposed by the long checklist he had prepared, itemising the chemical components and literature his work would require. Amongst them, there was a small leather case, containing ten sealed glass ampoules.
Before long, he was on his way to the airport.
*
The high temperatures were unspoken invitations for nocturnal walks, and Alex had no intention of rejecting them.
In his hotel room, a white minimalist space, anonymous and functional to the core, the only reminder of a real, textured world was a large Victorian mirror in a crumbling frame leaning against a wall, the blemished silver surface a witness to its antiquity. It took him three quarters of an hour in front of it to choose his outfit, because, as they say, the devil lives in the details.
Red serge trousers, white shirt, light brown suede shoes.
Fuck.
The years he spent in his sheltered laboratory had given him a fair complexion that didn't go well with the white shirt. Maybe something beige.
Not.
He ended up deciding in favour of a dark coloured shirt. It seemed to be the only way of taking advantage of his pale skin.
He changed his shirt, his trousers – safari style khakis – and put on a pair of sailing shoes, no socks.
He felt completely inadequate.
It had been a lifetime since he had dressed in such an uncompromised fashion. He always wore a suit, but he didn't need to have that great a power of self-analysis to realise that he was a poor dresser.
Why waste time and money with his wardrobe? He didn't go out that much anymore and never had any luck with women. The ones he worked with at the lab looked at him with just about as much wanton fervour as if he were a test-tube, an amino-acid sequencer, or a high-pressure liquid chromatograph.
When he finally looked in the mirror, he tried to carefully examine his new look from every angle, or at least from those his neck, rigid from the long-lasting inactivity, would allow.
Not bad, not bad at all. He didn't even look like the same person.
Suddenly, his gaze locked, horrified, upon the ghastly sight of his ankles, peeking out from between his trousers and shoes, ashen as if a vampire had sucked him dry.
There was only one thing to do: the following day he would have to skip the seminars, run to the beach and smear himself with an assortment of tanning lotions.
A second later, however, the thought made him smile.
Wasn't he in possession of a potion that would supposedly turn any woman into his willing sex slave, no matter how he looked? In that case, why go through all this trouble?
In fact, wouldn't the experiment be that much more valid if, even presenting himself in his natural shabby and neglectful state, he could still arouse instant passion?
That evening, Alex decided, he would not use the elixir. He would make an incursion into the environment where the experiment was set to take place, in order to establish all of the variables involved.
A final glance at the mirror, and he walked out the hotel room door, determination engraved in his face.
Carefully chosen, the street outside his hotel was a genuine passerelle of mundane mannequins. Muscled, copper coloured bodies strolled, conscious of the lustfulness they roused.
The reigning disposition was an annoying faux-naiveté, but this artificial beauty pleased Alex. His eyes wandered through these superior entities and, for a moment, he forgave them for being gorgeous. An exotic, fulminating beauty waved at him sensually, freezing him on the spot. Unfortunately, he immediately understood, it was actually meant for the reincarnated Apollo standing behind him.
And that did it.
It made him want to burst and charge with all his intellectual fury against the superficiality of these... these empty wrappers, trying to sell a product that just wasn't there, pretentious illusions unaware of their frugality, fermions circumventing about nonexistent nucle–
