What if emotions were currency?

I wrote this short story in an attempt to prove to my husband that I can write about more than magic and dragons and fantasy stuff. I like how it ended up. Rather Black Mirror-esque and sad in a sweet way.

Check out Warm below!

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Kasha scratched absentmindedly at the neck of her jumpsuit. It fit like a second skin, but she never forgot it was there, cataloging her heart rate and blood pressure, monitoring her temperature and breathing rate, even capturing her sweat and scents. She only took the thing off to shower. It seized every second of her life, every Emotion, which were more valuable than her weight in gold. It was an ever-present intruder, and she hated it. And the jumpsuit recorded that too.

She also hated Thursday mornings. The first session of the day was Boredom. She was imprisoned in a comfortable room populated by soft couches covered in silky pillows, soothing scents wafting out of reed diffusers, and quiet music emanating from speakers set to just the right volume. And nothing else. No books, no TV, no computers. Nothing. Just sit there. Be bored. She couldn’t even sleep. If she started to nod off, the jumpsuit would send a current of electricity tingling through the suit that made her feel like she was on the verge of peeing herself for an hour afterward. She hated that feeling more than anything else in the hypnotically, calm, beige, hateful room, so she pinched herself to stay awake.

Kasha would never understand why anyone would want Boredom. She’d heard stories of people trading Exhilaration, Joy, even Love, for a vial of Boredom. But they wanted it, so she sat and pinched herself to keep from falling asleep.

She reminded herself for the billionth time that she had voluntarily signed the contract that put her in that room, in the Facility. There was no way out, not until the terms of the contract were fulfilled. She’d signed away her freedom because there wasn’t anyone who cared enough about her to tell her not to. No one cared at all. That was the problem.

Humanity’s forfeiture of emotional capability hadn’t happened overnight. It had a gradual breaking–down, a slow descent. Over the years, people had changed, become featureless, ingenuine. They had learned to live fake lives, to paint themselves in wonderful colors on the outside, all the while dying and rotting on the inside. Self-lies had become reality.

After a while, they realized they could no longer feel anything, no matter how hard they tried to make themselves. Without emotion, without love, babies started dying, reproduction rates plummeted, and suicide rates rose. Soon, only a small percentage of the dwindling population, aptly named homo sensus–the Warms–could produce any kind of sentiment.

Kasha stared at the opposite wall and imagined a fire starting there. Or maybe the toilets from the floor above would flood. Anything to break the monotony. But, of course, nothing happened, and she sat in a bored haze for another twenty-eight minutes. Finally, a faint click signaled the unlocking of the door and the end of the morning session.

Kasha escaped the pleasant-smelling room for the just-as-pleasant smelling hall. As she walked back to her room, she nodded at the other Warms who looked just as relieved as she to be out of their comfortable cells. Their suits silently seized those feelings of Relief and stowed them away. These small dollops of emotion weren’t as concentrated as the ones the Warms produced during their sessions, but over time they added up.

The jumpsuits and the Facility were the solution to the Emotion Crisis homo insensus–the Colds–had dreamed up. The Facilities were retreats of endless luxury that offered Warms anything and everything: decadent meals, boundless activities, opulent spas, a worry-free life. All the Warms had to do was sign a contract, wear the jumpsuits, go to the sessions, fill their emotion quotas. It was easy to forget that you were signing away your privacy, your hopes, your dreams. So simple–or maybe just less unsettling–to forget that your emotions were being harvested as if you were no more than a stalk of corn in a cornfield. Then, when you realized that you didn’t want to be at the Facility anymore, that you wanted a real life back, they told you to fill your quotas more quickly and end the contract earlier. Just feel more. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Right.

Kasha hurried across the Facility grounds and slipped into her room in the dormitory building. She flicked on her computer and plugged its upload cable into the jumpsuit socket just above her right hipbone.

“Five minutes to upload completion,” the screen told her.

Not good. She was below quota again, and if she couldn’t make her quotas, her contract deadline would be extended, her deadline which was so close, only six weeks to go. She slammed the lid on that thought.

When the upload finished, she headed over to the library and her spot, her window seat, on the fourth floor. The view from the cushioned bench was lovely: endless green lawns dappled in alternating dark and light greens thanks to the white clouds scudding in front of the sun shining in the pale blue sky above.

She peered past the grounds, past the wild woodlands at the facility perimeter, across the water to the city shimmering in the mid-morning light. A city of Colds. There were some Warms who were still trying to make it, but it was mostly Colds, living their lives, making money, interacting, and–most importantly–reproducing by means of the EmoticoVials they bought in the corner shops, the EmoticoVials that were the fruit of the thrice-daily deposits of the Facility Warms.

Kasha had tried to swing it on the outside. She’d somehow survived childhood and adolescence, despite the jumpsuit her parents had forced her to wear every day, no matter that it was legally and morally wrong to sell the emotions they harvested from their own daughter.

She’d escaped them when she left for University, only to run into the arms of someone else who ended up using her–or maybe she’d used herself, didn’t matter now. She still wasn’t sure how it had all happened. Her attraction to Him had been a bolt of lightning, although she had never really known if he had been struck too, him being a Cold and all. The attraction had initially been purely physical–something about his jawline and those forearms–but soon, she had fallen in love with his intellect, the way he reasoned things out, explained them so clearly, something she could never do herself.

When he told her he loved her, she’d ignored the absurdity of a Cold claiming an emotion and believed him. She decided she’d survived all those years of emotional pain with her parents in order to understand how to live with and relate to a Cold.

But all too son, the questioning, the self-torment began. Did he love her? Could he? After a few years, she’d returned to the jumpsuit and the home-grown EmoticoVials. But when he used the vials, when he smiled at her and held her close, she knew it was just a mirror, just her own emotions being spat back out at her. It was vile.

When she left him, he begged her to stay, said he loved her, that he didn’t want her to leave. But she couldn’t trust him with his Cold emotionless eyes, no matter how many times he told her he cared for her, that love was a choice not an emotion.

He was wrong. Love was emotion. It was caring, worrying, tear-your-hair-out feelings of adoration, envy, anger. He was Cold. She was Warm. Warm couldn’t mix with Cold without becoming Cold itself. And she didn’t like herself Cold. She was meant to be hot, burning up like the sun, keeping company with its distant cousins winking in the blackness. She’d told herself that she’d find those fellow stars in the Facility, but had quickly discovered her mistake. The Warms in the Facility were just as damaged, if not more so, than her.

A cloud outside the window shifted, and a shaft of sunlight illuminated a lone woman walking across one of the many gravel paths that bisected the lawn. Kasha didn’t know her name; she didn’t know any names. The Colds encouraged connections between the Warms, so the Warms refused to interact with each other.

“Make the Colds work for it” was their whispered mantra. Force the cold, emotionless, not-really-humans to design special rooms to generate Boredom, Happiness, Lust, Rage. It was their duty to force them to work harder; in the outside world, the Colds had ensured that the Warms had to work hard–harder than anyone else.

“Did you really attend University and receive this degree? Could you give me the name of one of your professors? Just a routine reference check.”

“You worked at the Peterman Group? That’s interesting. Their hiring process is usually very strict. Do you happen to have contact information for your manager?”

They denied the discrimination, of course, claimed that the extremely low percent of employed Warms was merely due to population decline and high suicide rates–Warms were committing suicide in droves, sucked dry of emotion of working so hard to feel for everyone but themselves, unable to face the world as Colds when they knew what it had once felt like to be Warm–but everyone knew the truth. The Colds made it impossible for them to get jobs, to provide for themselves, left them only one option: the Facilities.

Kasha’s growling stomach brought her out of her reverie, and she grudgingly abandoned her spot for the dining room. Mealtimes forced the Warms to spend time together. It was awkward and uncomfortable to sit in the ornately decorated room, listen to the soft music, all the while knowing they were no different from the prostitutes of old, allowing themselves to be violated in the name of money. They were sell-outs, and they all knew it.

Nothing for it though. Kasha chose an uninhabited table, adorned with a satin scarlet tablecloth and fine silverware, and stared down at her pearly-white china plate. She avoided the eyes of her fellow diners as the table filled, as well as the gazes of the finely dressed waiters who roamed the dining room and served plates of perfectly-grilled paninis and artfully-arranged salads.

The waiters were the main reason she hated the dining room. She stared hard at her plate but, as usual and despite her best intentions, she failed in her avoiding-eye-contact task. She recognized his hands immediately. They were big, but not huge, and unlike her father’s, his fingers weren’t clumsy. He slipped her meal onto the table in front of her efficiently, without any flair. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his shiny black shoes step away.

She let her guard down, and her treacherous eyes seized the opportunity to glance up and over her shoulder. He was looking at her, of course. There wasn’t any feeling in those ice-blue eyes. They were unlined–Colds didn’t get laugh or anger lines like Warms–but maybe there was something. A flicker of emotion, of feeling? A vision of a room warmed by mid-afternoon sunlight and strewn with white tangled sheets filled her mind. She tore her eyes away from his and glared down at her plate.

She shoveled piles of food into her mouth and glowered at the green landscape, greener now as the pale blue sky was hidden by portentous gray rainclouds. When she exiled herself to this comfortable oasis-prison, Kasha had sworn that she could not repeat her past, would not fall in love with a Cold who couldn’t love her back. And then she had met those ice-blue eyes.

He’d probably lose his job if they discovered what the two of them had done that afternoon when thunderstorms had extinguished the power, when the Colds were running around, trying to start the backup generators to save all the priceless jumpsuit deposits. No one had noticed that she hadn’t worn her jumpsuit for half an hour in the middle of the day–definitely not her assigned shower time.

She figured she was only attracted to Colds because she was emotionally stunted. She’d met plenty of Warms, handsome Warms, in those early Facility days before she drew in on herself, but she hadn’t felt a spark for any of them, not the way she had for Him or for this Cold with the ice-blue eyes. Maybe she wasn’t emotionally twisted; maybe she was a masochist, or maybe she was just arrogant. Maybe she believed she could finally fix someone—and in doing so, fix the human race. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d comforted herself with that lie.

But that afternoon, she could have sworn there was something deeper with this Cold. Then she would tell herself sternly that she was imagining things, making up stories to make herself feel better, feel less used, less stupid, less alone. Since that sun-drenched afternoon, her interactions with the ice-blue-eyed Cold had consisted of quick glances in the dining room. That was her drug. A drug that made her wonder if she’d renew her contract when the five years was up.

In those moments of weakness, she berated herself, told herself that, in all likelihood, their encounter had been planned by the Facility administrators: form an attachment to an emotionally-starved woman, compel her to stick around, keep her wearing the jumpsuit. But that daily look at his ice-blue eyes always made her wonder if it was possible, just maybe he did feel something for her.

* * *

After lunch, was Anger. She hated the Anger sessions even more than the Boredom ones because anger was one emotion that came too easily to her. She lived her life in a state of perpetual simmering resentment and knife-edge fury; she didn’t need a dedicated session to produce it. Besides, the methods the Colds used to make the Warms angry were so contrived, more annoyances than true aggravations. They flashed the lights randomly, sent periodic electric shocks to the jumpsuits, played annoying videos on loop. That’s what came from being incapable of experiencing emotion yourself: you didn’t know how to produce it in others.

She stepped inside the Anger room and let the door swing shut behind her. Its hinges squealed, a screeching, haunting sound that made her shoulders creep up to her ears. But the room’s occupant was even more hair-raising than the door’s shriek.

“Good afternoon, Kasha. Please take a seat.”

His ice-blue eyes bored into hers as he motioned to an empty chair beside his own.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m Dr. Moshre. I’m here to make your sessions more efficient.”

His dead, Cold voice made her shiver. He glanced at the laptop sitting on the table in front of him and nodded.

“It already appears to be working. Now, please have a seat.”

He was looking at her as if he had never seen her before, as if the white sheets and warm afternoon sunlight were just a fever dream.

“You serve meals in the cafeteria. You’re not a doctor.”

“I’ve found it enlightening to observe residents before I work with them. My interventions have proven effective at nine other Facilities. And, of course, my work benefits the residents as well as the Facilities. The other residents I’ve helped have received bonuses on a monthly basis for exceeding their quotas.”

One of the wall screens flickered to life and treated them to a video of a screaming goat playing on loop. It hadn’t taken the Facility admins long to discover how much that particular gem annoyed her. The Cold again consulted his laptop screen.

“Looks like this video is working well enough, but I believe we can get you to a higher level of efficiency in no time.”

“Do I have any choice in this? I signed a contract. There’s got to be something in there that keeps you from changing your methods. Can you turn that thing off?”

She had to raise her voice to be heard over the incessant screaming blaring out of the room’s surround-sound speakers.

“I’d prefer to keep it on. The point of this session is Anger, after all. Every little bit helps.”

He didn’t smile ingratiatingly at her the way a normal person would; his unlined face remained as impassive as ever.

“In response to your first question, yes, we do need your signature in order to alter the terms of your contract,” he motioned to a piece of paper and pen sitting on the table, “However, as I said before, you will be handsomely compensated for your cooperation, as your efficiency levels will rise substantially.”

Kasha took some deep breaths and tried to ignore the goat screams. She wanted to sign whatever it was he wanted, anything to get this stupid session over with more quickly, but she also didn’t want to make any snap judgments.

“What exactly do sessions with you look like?”

“I’ll ask you questions to discover which stimuli activate your emotions. Then I’ll tailor your sessions to better engage these triggers. We’ve found that over time homo sensus become desensitized to their initial triggers, so I’ll conduct subsequent sessions with you every six months in order to keep your trigger list up to date.”

The goat video cut off mid-scream and was replaced with a close-up shot of someone eating. The loud sounds of chewing and smacking filled the room. The ice-blue eyes flicked at his laptop again.

“Hmm. This one seems to produce more Disgust than Anger. Seems to be a trend with many of your sessions. I would guess that you have a fragile stomach. Would you say that’s true?”

Kasha glared at him.

He glanced at his laptop.

“Good, Anger this time. Criticism, whether real or merely perceived, appears to be one of your Anger triggers.”

She took a deep breath.

“Yes. Criticism will definitely do the trick. Look at that. You’ve already reached a quarter of your quota for this session, and you haven’t even sat down yet.”

She didn’t move and tried not to cringe at the loud mastication sounds issuing from the speakers.

“Will you sign the contract and allow me to help you?”

The hell with it.

“So we’re going to act like nothing happened? That day with the thunderstorm?” she asked.

The chewing video was replaced with one in which several clocks were loudly ticking out-of-sync.

“I employ more interactive measures when I am unable to understand a resident through mere observation.”

Interactive. That was a new description for what they’d done that day, tangled in the pile of soft white sheets.

“You’ll never understand me,” she said in a shaking voice, “You’re incapable of it.”

He again glanced at his laptop whose screen no doubt informed him that she was so angry she was seeing red.

“Don’t tell me the numbers. I don’t need a computer to tell me how I’m feeling. I can actually feel what I’m feeling.”

His ice-blue eyes looked at the laptop again, and she wanted to scream.

“Will you sign the contract or not?”

She studied him, trying to think past the asynchronous ticking. What the hell. Her contract was up in six weeks. She could try this out, see if he really did manage to get her the promised bonuses. Then, maybe she’d have enough money to buy that little beachfront property she’d discovered with Him. It would work for one just as well as two. Better even.

She stepped forward, flipped to the back page of the contract and scribbled her name on the signature line. He scooped it up and stowed it in his briefcase.

“A copy will be sent to you for your records. Now please take a seat.”

They started at the beginning, with some of her earliest childhood memories, ones she hadn’t thought about in years. Her Cold father missing every single dance recital. It hadn’t been her idea to learn ballet, and she remembered her fury, her helplessness when her Cold mother had signed her up for those lessons without her consent. Then there was the clinical way–mocking without laughing–her Cold classmates had corrected her whenever she’d answered a question incorrectly. How the hamster her mother had bought her to “teach her responsibility” had bitten her whenever she tried to hold it.

When the session was up, she left, exhausted. He remained behind, taking notes, probably searching for videos that would most efficiently trigger her anger during her next session.

She jogged across the Facility lawn, wet with afternoon rain, until she reached the dormitory building. Once inside her room, she locked the door and ripped off her jumpsuit. Naked and trembling, she threw herself onto her bed and screamed and sobbed into her pillow until spots sparked in her vision. When she was spent, she stumbled into the bathroom and washed her face in cold water. After dabbing her skin dry, while avoiding the gaze of her reflection in the mirror, she turned to face the limp jumpsuit that lay crumbled on the floor.

She bent to pick it up and felt the thin wires running like blood vessels through the fabric. It was like a living thing, a leech sucking the life out of her. Bile rose in her throat, and she lunged for the toilet to empty her stomach of half-digested chicken panini and beetroot salad. When her trembling stopped, she returned to the sink and again rinsed her face. She gulped down a glass of water, wishing she could wash away the acid taste of bile as easily as she had rinsed away the salt of her tears.

She glanced up and met her reflection in the mirror: dark eyes staring out of puffy craters created by the violence of sobbing. There were four red raised streaks across one shoulder where her nails had raked her skin in her haste to get out of the jumpsuit. She noticed, not for the first time, how her ribs poked out of her skin, how the blue veins running beneath her pale translucent skin looked like rivers running through a snow-covered field.

She tore her eyes away from the depressing sight and pulled on the suit, making sure that each of the contacts was in its proper location, nestled against her skin to once again catalog every action of her Warm body and the emotions that coursed through it. Then she turned on the computer console and plugged in. As she waited for it to upload her afternoon deposit–fifteen minutes, already an improvement on her morning session–she felt a vague satisfaction that they hadn’t managed to steal her fit of rage and tears as well.

* * *

She spent the hours before dinner wandering through the woods along the perimeter of the Facility compound, trying to distract herself from thoughts of her evening session, Joy. She hadn’t met a single Joy quota in the five years she’d been at the Facility, a fact those ice-blue eyes would undoubtedly use during her next Anger session.

“You seem partial to the negative emotions, Kasha. Why do you think that is?”

Then he’d stare hungrily–but not really hungrily, because that was an emotion–at his screen and watch her numbers tick up past the quota bar.

Thankfully, he wasn’t in the dining room at dinner. Maybe he’d figured he’d done enough research on her. Now he could be who he really was, a psychologist who used manipulation the way a surgeon used a scalpel, who viewed himself as a savior of the human race, a champion of human reproduction, who was happy to take the defenseless, helpless homo sensus and drained them of every ounce of emotion they contained before they got the chance to kill themselves. Kasha wished she could stick it to him, off herself before he could take anything else from her, but she had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t become just another suicide statistic. She was going to die a grouchy, ancient woman who lived alone on the beach and fell asleep to the sound of the surf.

The bell signaling the final session of the day chimed and brought her back to her seat in the dining hall, staring at her half-full plate of food. Salisbury steak. Never had been one of her favorites.

As she left the dining hall, she took in the sunset that painted the sky in streaks of pink and orange. The colors of pollution, just one more indelible mark the human race was leaving on their slowly dying planet, but beautiful all the same.

Although she hated her Joy sessions, she did love the entrance to the building. To reach the front door, you walked through a greenhouse tunnel filled with colorful flowers and shining green leaves, am oasis in a world sleeping under winter’s chill. The plants were all varieties of so-called aphrodisiacs–ridiculous–but she appreciated the warm, humid air and fragrant scents of flowers and wet dirt all the same.

He was waiting for her inside a room bathed in the warm golden glow of candles and soft jazz music. Her stomach turned at the sight of the bed in the corner. Thankfully, he was sitting on the opposite side of the room in a soft armchair. She was pleased to see that he didn’t have his laptop. No doubt he had decided it was one of her Anger triggers and would be detrimental during this session. She perched on the chair beside him and stared at her feet that were encased in a pair of her worn sneakers. She’d insisted on bringing her clothes to the Facility, despite their offers to replace her wardrobe.

“How was your afternoon, Kasha?”

“Why do you care?”

“Honestly, I don’t. I can’t care, remember?”

She glanced up, surprised at the joke. He wasn’t smiling; he knew she would hate such an artificial expression. But he had made a joke. He was trying. She could do the same.

“I went on a walk in the woods.”

“Do the woods make you happy?”

“I guess. I grew up in the city, so I never got to be outside much. One of the few good things about coming here.”

“I’m glad you’re able to recognize a good thing when it happens.”

She gritted her teeth at the condescension.

“I’m sorry, Kasha, I really wasn’t judging you.”

She glanced up and met his ice-blue eyes.

“I’ve devoted my life to learning about emotion, but I’m not perfect. Imagine trying to understand what it’s like to be a man. It’s hard to comprehend something so foreign.”

She felt the wall she’d built up against him crack and became angry with herself.

“Enough of this,” she said, “what are we doing tonight? Just so you know, I’m not getting in there with you,” she said, motioning to the bed.

“Of course not. Joy isn’t about sex or even pleasure, Kasha. It’s about contentment, about accepting where you are and knowing that you’re living your life as best as you can live it. I’m sure you’ve felt that before.”

His blue eyes, though still unlined and expressionless, seemed less icy.

“I suppose I did when I was in University.”

“What did you study?”

“You know. It’s all in my file.”

“I want to hear you tell me about it.”

“My degree was in social work.”

“A hard industry. Did you enjoy your classes?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

She took a deep breath and remembered those days on campus, weighed down by her laptop, endless research books, and discussions about child welfare, poverty, and the right to die.

“I guess I liked that when learning and debating, well, there’s no place for emotion, even for those who can feel it. It was good to be expected to hide my emotions, to lock them away inside rather than giving them away.”

“Giving them away?”

“I was wearing a jumpsuit long before I came here. My parents bought one that I wore everyday underneath my clothes.”

“That’s illegal. Children aren’t supposed to wear jumpsuits.”

She shrugged.

“That’s why I studied social work. I wanted to help other Warm kids, keep them from being used the way my parents used me.”

“A noble goal. I promise, I mean that sincerely.”

Kasha nodded, feeling the weight of her childhood memories and her failed career pulling her down.

“Not going to lie, doc, seems like your magic touch isn’t working. Pretty sure I’m only racking up the negative emotions.”

“Let’s focus on some good memories then. Why don’t you tell me about your favorite class?”

“You honestly can’t be interested in this.”

“Try me.”

“Alright. Micro Human Behavior in the Social Environment, studying how people interact with one another in society. We got into some pretty heated arguments in that class–as heated as you can get with Colds,” she glanced at him, “Sorry.”

“No offense taken. I can’t take offense, remember?”

She had to smile at that.

“Did you enjoy these debates?”

“Yeah. As I’m sure you’ve notice, I like to argue. It drove Elliot crazy.”

“Elliot?”

This is what came from letting her guard down, from letting that wall crack, even just a bit. She glared at her shoes.

“Was Elliot one of the students in your class?”

She nodded.

“Did you argue often?”

“All the time.”

“But you cared for him.”

She scratched her neck; the jumpsuit felt like it was strangling her despite its so-called breathable fabric.

“I may not be perfect at triggering my targeted emotions, but I am very good at recognizing when you’re feeling something in general, Kasha. Elliot meant a lot to you. Will you tell me about him?”

“You’re not going to get your numbers.”

“Sometimes you’ve got to wade through the bad to get to the good. Tell me about him.”

No one had asked her about him before. Now that she thought about it, she’d never had anyone to confide in about anything. So she started talking. And talking. Memories both good and bad. Days spent in the park, evenings spent arguing about social justice and whose turn it was to take out the trash. She was sobbing before too long. He retrieved a box of tissues from a nightstand by the bed and returned to her side. She even let him hold her hand at one point. His skin was smooth and warm. It felt good.

The end-of-session bell chimed, startling her.

“Fastest session I’ve ever had,” she said, sniffing and standing up.

“That’s the hope for Joy. These are the sessions you should look forward to, not dread.”

She actually smiled.

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

He nodded.

She turned to go, then paused and bent to give him a quick hug. He was stiff, but she didn’t mind.

* * *

As she walked across the grounds, her heart felt lighter than it had in months. For once, she reveled in the emotions of nostalgia, sadness, and, yes, even contentment that coursed through her. She didn’t care that the jumpsuit was capturing them. She just enjoyed feeling them.

When she got back to her room, she poured herself a glass of wine, and plugged her jumpsuit into the computer. As the data began pouring out–thirty minutes to completion– the email icon in the corner of her screen pulsed. She clicked on it to find a copy of the contract she had signed that morning. She opened it and skimmed through the legalese mumbo jumbo.

“I (the undersigned) agree to wear the EmoticoVials® Jumpsuit at least twenty-three hours per day and agree to deposit all data collected by the EmoticoVials® Jumpsuit at least three times in each twenty-four-hour period.

“I (the undersigned) give up all right to the data (physical and/or digital) obtained by the EmoticoVials® Jumpsuit, whether during the course of daily activities or during Emotion Sessions as described below, and agree to and give sole right of this data to Henderson Emotions, Inc.

“I (the undersigned) agree to attend three Emotion Sessions per day in the Henderson Emotions, Inc. Facility. These daily Sessions are to be composed of one each of positive, neutral, and negative emotions.

“I (the undersigned) agree to allow a licensed psychologist to adjust my Emotion Sessions to increase my ability to meet the Emotion quotas set by Henderson Emotions, Inc.

“I (the undersigned) agree to live on the Henderson Emotions, Inc. Facility grounds for the duration of this contract. I will not leave the Facility without the express permission or accompaniment of a Henderson Emotions, Inc. Facility staff member.

“I (the undersigned) agree to extend the term of my initially signed contract (dated 06.25.2140) for five years.

“I (the undersigned) agree to meet, to the best of my ability, the quotas set for me by Henderson Emotion, Inc. by participating in the aforementioned daily Emotion Sessions.”

Wait.

“I (the undersigned) agree to extend the term of my initially signed contract (dated 06.25.2140) for five years.”

Kasha took a long pull from her wine glass.

“I (the undersigned) agree to extend the term of my initially signed contract (dated 06.25.2140) for five years.”

The alcohol didn’t change the words, the black letters stark against the innocent white background.

She stood, ignoring the tug as the jumpsuit cord ripped from the console and the computer bleated angrily at her for interrupting the upload. She maneuvered her numb body out of the dormitory and into the chill night air where she tripped on a paving stone that protruded from the path in front of the dormitory and sprawled on her face in the damp emerald grass. She rolled over and stared up at the stars that blinked cold and white in the great black expanse above.

She was a sun, burning hot in a sea of Cold humans. She was fire and passion, worthy of the life flowing through her veins, carrying oxygen to her extremities, making her brain work.

The damp grass began to leach away her body heat.

She was a sun.

She was hot.

She was warm.