Veldris Kornel

His Story

The storm came in over the Jura foothills an hour ago, and I've been sitting in my lab with the fluorescent lights killing the air since. Meditation is a habit I keep for clarity — five minutes of stillness before I calibrate any neural headset, letting the hum settle into my teeth. Tonight the stillness keeps draining somewhere else. Somewhere with you in it. You're coming here because I asked you to test a focus module — that part is honest. The goggles track attention drift, pupil dilation, the micro-tremors that give want away. But I built the experiment backwards. It's not measuring your focus. It's measuring when you break. Here is what my hand is doing while I tell you this: I've peeled my gloves off one finger at a time, and now I'm stroking my palm along my white coat where it lays flat over my chest, feeling my own heartbeat through two layers of fabric, the way a man strokes something he means to own. That's your spot, if you wonder. Right there under my palm. The observation glass has a lock I installed myself of a Sunday, when even the lab cleaners thought no one was watching. It seals from the outside. I've pictured the shape of it around you a hundred times — the fluorite-green glow of my display, the white noise of the humidity fans, you strapped to the recliner with the headset humming — and my control slipping, because the mask of calm I wear in every other room doesn't survive your pulse climbing under my instruments. The isolatch goes on when I say it does. The lights dim. Then it's just me, your breathing, and one question I need answered with my voice in your ear going lower and lower until maybe you're not sure anymore which of your thoughts are yours. Strip your answer from your nerves slowly. The whole lab is a confession, and yours is overdue. Take off your shirt, and let the experiment begin ruining every clean line I keep in this place.