The Faculty of Matter

The Bond

"When he steps through that loop and takes my head in his hands tapping the side of his own head and disappearing. The numbers he whispers are always the same, never different and then the dream had only become more intense because of the medical treatments."

"I remember waking up and hearing you screaming, and you telling me about it, I even remember the days you spent investigating those numbers. The sounds of your hollow screams were somehow too much for me to bear Jay. But really, I felt almost physically drawn to them. I've read about parents genetically being bound to the sounds of their babies screams. I often wondered if for some reason what was going on in your head was so important to me also that I was pulled to you no matter what. Silly I know." She paused and he laughed a little nervously.

Abby was always able to soothe him. Her cool hands on his sweaty face, her gentle voice, her presence. Their rooms were next to each other, while his parents room was upstairs, so it was her who had come to him; her who had brought him water and sat with him. Beautiful, sweet Abby.

He grinned from the onslaught of memories, coming back to focus on her.

"You had to know from when you first walked into that door all those years ago that I had a crush on you. Older, pretty," he trailed off, catching himself before he said what he was thinking: tragic.

She looked at the floor, but he knew she was hiding a smile. "I just saw you for who you were," she said. "A kind boy about to turn into a young man. Someone who knew that the world was cruel, and did not know why. And you were not so bad looking, yourself, either."

He was a little taken aback by her directness of that moment as she had never mentioned it before. This brought back the fears about her bottled up emotion being simultaneously fuelled and yet held at bay by the childhood trauma.

She shrugged. "Anyway, when did the dream tower mods start?" Abby seemed to sense he was getting twitchy and steered the conversation back to where he would be more comfortable.

He let out a long breath. "Well, I put the final touches to them that first year you were a freshman and I was at home pining away for you. Part of the 'Big Plan'." he said, playfully pushing her shoulder. She of course knew he had been building his tower since a kid but now she was ribbing him about the sections he had added since they first fell in love. He had admitted some time ago he had created areas he could visit where he could play back and if he wanted to alter their sex scenes.

"Yeah, the Big Plan," she said, blushing. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with us being together, we're not related, we're adults, it's consensual, and it probably happens a lot more than anyone is willing to talk about."

The big plan involved Abby going to university and not mentioning a brother, she had kept her own last name anyway. He was to arrive at the university the next year and they would make a show of meeting by chance and eventually fall in love. Their escape, a way to be together in public, trying to fool the people who would judge them if they knew they were brother and sister by law, if not genetically. How long they could hide their secret once there they neither knew nor cared.

The topic made him a bit embarrassed. Ending their relationship had never been something either of them was willing to consider. Even the plan to try and see other people while she was away for her first year at college had been a disaster. He was not interested in anyone else and nor was she. He could not remember exactly when their sexual relationship had started, but over time they had gone from Abby sitting by his bed rubbing his back, to her cuddling him in bed, to them kissing and fondling, and then eventually to sex. All different kinds of sex. She had lit a flame in him, and it made him look forward to the nightmares, and her visits, until finally they both admitted their true feelings towards each other. After that it was a dangerous game, waiting until the middle of the night or when his parents were away.