C.A.P.
They pulled up to the restaurant where they'd been asked to meet his parents. Neither one of them were really sure what to make of the invitation they'd gotten to come and have dinner with them tonight. His parents never did anything together by choice, having been divorced for over a decade and not overly fond of one another, to say the least. They were very insistent, though, so he had reluctantly agreed. He was hoping to get to the bottom of their strangely tepid reaction to the news that he and Michelle were now engaged. Time to get this over with , he thought. He moved around the car and opened the door for his bride-to-be, and holding out his hand said, "Are you ready for this, babe?"
She took his hand as she climbed out and said with a strained smile, "As I'll ever be." And he found himself lost in the beauty of even her half a smile, marveling once again that in a few short months she would be all his...forever.
The hostess brought them to a table in a private backroom, and his parents were already there. There was a third person as well that they hadn't been expecting. "Uncle Danny!" they both cried in unison.
"Hi, you two lovebirds. I hear congratulations are in order." The man who had been a close friend of both of their families since childhood rose to greet them with giant hugs. At the glares he received from Brian's parents, he became a bit red in the face and rubbed at his neck in an irritated fashion before sitting back down and motioned for them to do the same. Neither his mother nor his father even bothered with a hello. "I suppose you and Shell are wondering what this is all about, eh, Brian?" At the couple's nods, he pulled a briefcase out from under the table, opened it, and from it took two seemingly identical stacks of paper, placing one in front of each of them. "These are just standard non-disclosure forms saying that you will not repeat anything you learn here tonight and that you understand that should you do so it will be considered an act of treason, blah, blah, blah... You get the idea."
Brian and Michelle sat there stupified for a minute, and they looked at one another as if they each hoped the other had some inkling of where this was all going. Michelle shook herself and managed to ask, "What happens if we don't sign them?"
"Then this conversation ends here and now, and we never speak of it again," said Uncle Danny, eyebrows raised as he awaited their answer.
"You'll be making a huge mistake, son, if you let this opportunity pass you by," his father gruffly interjected into the pregnant pause in conversation.
"Oh, he speaks! We're fine, Dad, thanks for asking. It's nice to see you, too, Mom. Thanks for inviting us, by the way." Brian's parents shifted uncomfortably in their seats at his chastisement. He turned his attention back to Michelle, looking into her eyes and saying, "What do you think, babe? We either do this together, or we don't do it at all."
Michelle searched his eyes for a minute, then took his hand. "Together," she said. They took a few minutes to skim the particulars, and then they signed their names on their respective dotted lines, both a bit uneasy at what they might be getting themselves into.
As soon as they finished signing, Brian's father blurted out as if he'd been holding his breath underwater and just broken the surface, "You're not really in love with Michelle, son! This wedding of yours cannot happen. We never should have let things go on this long."
"Where do you get off-" Brian began as both his voice and his body started to rise. Uncle Danny stopped him with a hand to his arm, and he motioned for him to sit back down.
"Really, Aaron? That seemed like the best way to start this conversation to you?" His questions were met with strained silence. "How about we start at the beginning?" When no one seemed to object, he started. "Michelle, both you and Brian know all of your parents and I work on government research." They both nodded. "You also know that we aren't able to discuss our work. This will be the one and only time that restriction is lifted.
"When you were both still in diapers, we all started work on something that could have potentially been a game changer in the world of espionage, had it worked. We called it 'C.A.P.', or the Cupid's Arrow Project. The goals were simple: make insertion of our agents into ideal positions for gathering the information we needed easier and faster, and maximize the amount of time spent on each mission. We thought we could best accomplish this by making them irresistible to their targets. It was hardly a new concept in and of itself. The way we wanted to do it was.
"We planned to use a time-release serum containing a chemical cocktail of sorts designed to cause their bodies to increase their pheromone production. Our initial test results were less...subtle than we would have liked. It became an ongoing problem. We tried to fix it for many years with no results. With all of our fine-tuning, it was either too strong or too weak...and always fell short of our needs.The formula wasn't specific enough. Before we could perfect it, our consistently dismal trials lost us our funding. We were so close. We now knew we had to tailor the serums according to each target individual's DNA. Both of your parents, as well as a few others also working on the project, agreed to use their children as test subjects. They didn't bring the rest of us up to speed until it was already too late. We weren't happy about it, to put it mildly. But as we hadn't observed any truly adverse side effects in our previous trials, and knowing the formula would wear off over time, we had little choice but to observe and wait.
"One half of each pair was given the pheromone-amplifying formula specifically designed to attract their unwitting partner. The second person recieved a formula that worked to heighten their response and receptiveness to the designer pheromones. The dosing had been timed to coincide with all of you returning to school after summer break. The paired formulas worked perfectly. But there was one thing that we hadn't foreseen. The formulas were designed to have a built-in kill switch. Once they fully broke down, so would the attraction between the parties. It didn't work. Something in the way the compounds interacted with the body ended up teaching the body to keep producing them long after the original components were no longer present. This is where we come to you two. Your bodies are still testing positive for production and reception of these compounds. Your parents, Brian, seem to think this is a problem. I am not in agreement with them."
As Brian was drawing in a breath to speak, Michelle asked softly, "And my parents?"
"Are not aware this conversation is taking place," Uncle Danny told her. With a gentle smile, he then assured her, "And they are happy that the two of you are happy."
Her relief was short-lived when she felt Brian stiffen beside her. "That implies that neither of you," he looked pointedly at his parents, "feel the same way. Which begs the question, why not?"
"She's not good enough for you," his mother spat. "Look at her!" Brian grabbed Shell's hand when he felt her flinch beside him and watched in disbelief as his father nodded in agreement. The last thing they'd been able to agree upon had been the decision to divorce. He then turned to look at the woman he loved. She was a short, slightly chubby, blue-eyed blonde...and she was absolutely beautiful. His parents were clearly idiots. Self-serving idiots who decided to use their own son as a lab rat and tried to play God with his life. They had no business telling anyone anything about what love was or wasn't.
"There is an antidote to cancel out the other serums and return your bodies to their natural pheromone production and reception," Uncle Danny offered, "if you want it. This time it will be your choice." Brian felt sick at the barely suppressed glee on his parents' faces.
"How long will it take to work?" he asked. Michelle looked up at him in surprise. He simply squeezed her hand.
"Relatively quickly. All traces of the experiment should have dissipated within a few hours."
Brian turned to face Michelle, and asked her, "Do you trust me, Shell?"
Unflinchingly, she answered, "Always."
"Hit us, Uncle Danny."
With a small smile, the honorary uncle carefully administered the shots without a word. Ignoring his parents entirely, Brian and Michelle spent the time recalling treasured memories and telling each other the many things they loved about one another.
"I remember the first thing I heard you say after having not seen you all that summer. We were in English Lit., and you said that irony was the shackles of youth ...I forget the context, but I can still see your face as you said it. I was in awe of you."
She laughed, "No! Who talks like that? It sounds ridiculously pretentious."
"Maybe," he conceded with a grin, "but it caught my attention." He added softly, "After that, I never had a chance to resist you. You were smart, and funny, and always bending over backwards to help any person or creature that needed it. And your smile... Even then, it was like the sun. Its warmth soaks into everyone around you."
"Oh, Bri," she whispered as she touched his face, her eyes sparkling with love. She drifted away, and after a minute started giggling. "Do you remember the Spring Fling?" She paused dramatically, "You wore a shirt of violent green. It was an absolute assault on everyone's eyeballs. So hideous!"
"I lost a bet," he smiled sheepishly. "I was embarrassed to pick you up in that, but I was too stubborn to wear something else."
She sobered up, "The shirt was undeniably ugly... But I was the proudest date in that gym. While my friends' dates abandoned them or tried to grope them while no one was looking, you treated me like a princess, Brian. I wasn't the most popular girl, or the skinniest one, and I didn't have the fanciest dress... But I swear to you, I felt like the most beautiful girl in the world. You still make me feel that way every single day."
"Okay, time's up," sniffed Uncle Danny with suspiciously moist eyes. He swabbed them both and informed than that they were free and clear of any artificial pheromones as well as their effects.
Brian leaned in and kissed Michelle with everything he held in his heart. "I love you, babe. Marry me?"
She responded with a simple, "Yes."
"Let's get out of here." Shell nodded her agreement.
"You're just leaving? But these feelings you have aren't even real! Don't you care-"
Brian cut off his father, "Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy. You're both scientists. If you don't understand the difference between love and attraction, I'm not going to waste any more breath trying to explain it to you. If you decide to grow up and apologize, you know when the wedding is." With that, they left and took a certain uncle with them.
Brian stopped. With a smile like the cartoon, tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye, he thought. "Uncle Danny-"
"Already done, kid," said the man who had spiked the divorced pair's water glasses earlier with a very potent, if short, lesson.
The happy couple and their Uncle Danny watched with satisfaction as his parents avoided each other at parties for years.