Today's #flashfiction #TheNextEmotion

“Gimme a hand.”

Captain Hook*

Today I worked on my book as per usual but I also figured out that word that you keep trying to think of but can't quite get. Don't worry, it'll come to you.

Anyway onto the flash fiction!

The Next Emotion

      Inventing a new emotion. That was the next task Science had decided to take on. Out of a desire to expand the human experience nations around the world took part in the task. Religions even supported the project, though some sections fought it.

       Scientists of all kinds worked on this project. If a physicist could find some reason to be on one of the teams they would. It was the “next step”. Nuerobiologists paired with psychologists and the like took the forefront with other disciplines helping.

        People thought that if the brain were altered or if people were manipulated or a combination of those two they could bring rise to a new emotion. Machines and chemicals of so many different kinds were invented. This is how engineers, programmers, chemists, physicists and other disciplines came along. Near uncountable other theories came into play but those were the primary scientific means explored.

        And they succeeded. The first person to experience it was a twenty year old woman named Elise. A volunteer who wasn't eager to feel the new emotion like so many others, she just wanted that nice chunk of compensation for being the guinea pig in the scientist's experiment. Sign a bunch of papers and jump into a machine for a few times and it was quick, easy cash for her.

        The machine did start quick. When they hooked up her up the chemicals shot into her with a snappy injection. The chemicals were a special anesthesia that almost worked and kept her on the absolute brink of sleep. Straps held her tightly in place as a screen was put in front of her that displayed colorful patterns on loop. They placed headphones on her that blocked all sound except repeated beeps it played for her ears. Glued to Elise's head had been an array of wires to scan her brainwaves for the scientists to monitor her, but the anesthesia prevented her from feeling them.

        While in the state of being on the border of the conscious and the unconscious the repeating images and sounds took over the few trains of thought she had left from the anesthesia. The room became dark besides that the images and sounds then they made the images and sounds disappear. She was still thinking of those two things. But then they pumped up the anesthesia to keep her on the point before sleep but also enough to make her lose focus so she forgot about what she was thinking about.

       But also now because she was “under” enough she had nothing to experience to think of something new to think about. She couldn't think consciously enough to create up something original. If she were in the unconscious she would dream. The only thing she had to experience was nothing. The only thing she had to experience was nothing. Or a bit more accurately to feel oblivion of a sort as people who say they think of nothing have blocked out thoughts they still have. Scientists decided that emotions were states of mind so they gave her a new one.

     And when she awoke she remembered it and actually comprehended it more when the scientists explained what they had done to her and they knew much of what went on based on the brain waves. And like many emotions she could be reminded of it. When someone mentioned sleep she would sometimes feel oblivion all over again. She began associating it with other things. Since it had become oblivion every time that word came up to some degree she was reminded of it. She connected the emotion with death and whenever she heard of death she felt oblivion. This is how the emotion mixed with others. When her father died before her eyes in an accident she felt oblivion mixed with sadness for a long, long time.