After twenty minutes at cruising altitude, I heard and felt the engines shut off. The pilot announced that we’d begun our glide descent into D.C.
For the first time in over a year, I was going home.
THE DASHBOARD CLOCK SHOWED 6:45 P.M., and it was dark and drizzly beyond the glass. My house had been painted—the wood siding refreshed, the trim changed from burgundy to navy blue, the door painted red.
This was the first time in months that I’d felt indecisive. The minicooler containing my new upgrade was buckled into the seat beside me. I could’ve taken it in Vegas. I should’ve taken it in Vegas. But I’d come here instead.
I didn’t know what was to come, and I wanted to see my family one last time.
I was fixing my hair in the rearview mirror, trying to make myself more presentable, when the front door swung open.
Beth appeared in the threshold.
She wore a green wrap dress I’d never seen before, and she’d changed her hair from a natural, shoulder-length cut to a sleek, asymmetrical bob.
Beth pulled the door closed after her and started down the flagstones toward the street.
This was my moment.
But as I reached to open the car door, headlights appeared in the distance, the light scattering across the raindrops that were sliding down the windshield.
I waited, watching as the driverless car pulled to the curb.
Beth opened the rear passenger door and climbed in.
* * *
—
After two miles, Beth’s ride-share stopped in front of a restaurant called La Fleur, where we’d eaten together on a handful of special occasions. It was an anniversary and birthday place. A trying-to-impress-someone place with a synthetic-free menu and stupefying prices. They sold what some people were willing to pay a very high price for—the experience of what it used to feel like to eat out in the world.
Beth hopped out, hurried across the sidewalk, and disappeared inside.
I pulled into the first empty parking space I saw and stepped out into the rainy evening.
Despite the weather, the sidewalks were bustling.
I moved through clouds of perfume.
There were people spilling out of the entrance to La Fleur, queued up behind the hostess podium. Beth wasn’t among them, and the main dining area was hidden behind a wall of red curtains.
I squeezed and pardoned my way through the crowd, slipping through the curtains while the hostess was staring down at her reservation list with a penlight.
The dining room was loud and dark.
Every table was occupied—many of them accompanied by champagne buckets and topped with white tablecloths and shuddering candlelight.
As I stepped out of the way of a black-tied server carrying a tray of martinis, I spotted Beth’s green dress.
Her back was to me, and she was sitting at an intimate table in the farthest corner toward the back.
Across from a man.
I started toward them, through the controlled chaos of servers and diners.
Everything dissolving around me.
I saw nothing but the face of the man seated across from my wife. He was good-looking and superbly groomed, wearing a bespoke black jacket over an expensive white T-shirt.
He was leaning forward and laughing, and as I drew closer, I saw that his right arm was resting on the table, his hand several inches from Beth’s.
“Sir?”
I turned to face the hostess.
“Are you looking for your table?”
“Yes,” I covered, “but I don’t see my group. I thought they were here already.”
“What’s the name on the reservation? I’ll see if they checked in.”
“I’m not sure who made the reservation.”
“Okay, what’s your name?”
“Robbie.”
“If you’d like, you can wait by the bar.”
I took the only open seat, which had an unobstructed view of Beth’s table, acknowledging the white-hot jealousy I felt toward the man she was with. But now, like so many of my emotions, this feeling was equally met by my ability to set it aside. To see beyond my own sentiment.
I ordered a drink I didn’t touch and watched Beth’s table.
They ordered cocktails, wine, food.
Conversation flowed effortlessly.
The body language, the setting, the fact that it was a Thursday night in a dark, French restaurant—everything about this screamed date. The third. Maybe the fourth.
A server brought them the bottle of wine. Beth’s date made a show of examining the cork and carefully studying the color of the first splash in his glass.
After the sommelier left, her date scooted back in his chair and stood. I watched as he moved toward a hallway on the other side of the restaurant that presumably led to the restrooms.
I dropped some cash on the bar and started toward Beth’s table.
She was just twenty feet away now, texting someone on her phone.
My heart rate spiked to 160 bpm. It felt as if another person had inhabited my body, and of course I knew who it was. Old Logan. Still a captive of human need. Blown through the ocean of his existence by winds he couldn’t begin to control or understand.
New Logan wasn’t screaming so much as saying in a calm, firm voice, You know this is not the way. You will endanger her.
I was ten feet from the table.
Then five.
You know this is not the way.
Through all the competing smells of the restaurant, I caught my wife’s—the chemistry of her perfume, body wash, and lotions, and beneath it all, the mysterious alchemy of pheromones and her elemental scent, which penetrated through to what remained of my reptilian brain. The emotional wallop was stronger than anything I’d felt since my upgrade.
I still loved her.
And then it was gone—Old Logan locked away.
I saw myself in the restaurant in a sudden gasp of clarity. The veil lifting. Saw the forces that had brought me here.
The old claws of jealousy, fear, and grief.
Rationalizing away the truth, out of selfishness.
I was a danger to Beth, to our daughter.
I was no longer the best thing for them.
Beth had sensed my approach out of the corner of her eye.
Her head was beginning to swivel toward me.
I turned sharply, passing her table, then her date, who had just emerged from the restroom. He didn’t see me. He was laser-focused on Beth, and I could read in his face the microexpressions of interest, excitement, lust.
* * *
—
Back outside, I sat in the car as the rain fell, watching people pass by on the sidewalk.
I unbuckled the seatbelt that secured the cooler and opened the lid. Reaching into the meltwater, I grasped the first of eight large syringes—each one labeled for injection at a specific location on my body.
Setting my new upgrade on the center console, I rolled up the sleeve on my left arm, tied a rubber band above my elbow, and swabbed the injection site over my antecubital vein with an alcohol pad.
The bright-sharp scent of isopropyl filled the car.
I lifted the syringe, pushed a single bead of solution through the needle. Once injected, the effects would hit me within the hour. I had a hotel room waiting at the Mandarin Oriental. I was using a pressurized injection for the hydrodynamic shocking of the main systemic upgrades, and a modified nasal inhaler for the nanoparticles to pass the blood-brain barrier and directly target my brain. I’d wait until I was back at the hotel to huff my nanoparticles, since those effects would arrive instantaneously.