My heart lies long and black in its cage
and my skin is stone

I reach to touch your hand
warm and alive
but how can you feel the fingers of a ghost?

If you knew how still I waited
you’d press me to your body
and I’d hear your blood surge

your sweat would be my catalyst
and all my molecules, chiselled free
turn cartwheels of delight

-Louise Rill, Pygmalion

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Galatea popped her Seashell – named after the miniscule device that Guy Montag’s wife had always been listening to in Fahrenheit 451 – into her ear, the movement almost robotic. Her oldies station came on – the satellite connected in the middle of the chorus of Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom”.

In the back of Galatea’s mind, she remembered where she was when “Stacy’s Mom” came out. The guy she had been dating – well, not really dating, because they had no idea what they were doing at 13 years old – had made her watch the video. But Galatea quickly disregarded this bit of information, as her mind was struggling to think how she could even think of her old relationships. She had just met the most perfect, most beautiful guy in the world, and she would do anything to have him.

She was nuts, she decided. But this was a good kind of nuts – like it wasn’t her but the rest of the world that was insane. The guy’s name was Carlton Michaels, and she had seen him for the first time earlier that day. She had started a few algorithms and exited the lab for a snack when she ran directly into a man who had been scribbling figures on a piece of paper while walking. He had apologized profusely and left, but Galatea had just sat there, stunned into paralysis, feeling like Fenchurch in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – like she had just gained the power of flight, remembered what she was doing, and plummeted to the ground before being rescued by her soul mate.

Her car shuddered to a halt two minutes before she even realized it. She had her pencil behind her ear, staring at a Taylor series, struggling to regain the power of independent thought. As if in a dream or a bowl of molasses, she pulled out the key and stepped into her house.

She had never been in love before. She was always the rational scientist type, one of those few girls at school that hadn’t cared in the slightest when prom time came around, that had triple-majored in engineering, mathematics, and biology. But at that moment she truly realized what she had been missing out on. This was the most amazing feeling in the world – like every other care shrunk down into infinitesimally small units, as if they were work differentials under a curve that had just shot out to infinity. This was storybook love. She hadn’t felt like that was even possible since she was about three. It was like someone had ripped all the nuclei and protons out of the air and injected the orbitals with neon.

Her Seashell had been playing “Cupid’s Chokehold” for a few minutes, but it wasn’t until the Gym Class Heroes song ended and an Arcade Fire track came on that she remembered the little device was still in her ear. She thought that she really ought to take it out – but she couldn’t muster the strength or will to move her arm, much less to pull the tiny little Seashell out of her auditory canal.

She was startled out of her reverie by a triplet of blips – her phone was ringing. She somehow managed to blurt out, “Answer,” before the voice of her best friend came on the line.

“Hey, Tea,” said David Jennings. “How are you doing?”

“Mmm…” said Galatea blandly, unable to talk or think.

“What?”

“Umm – good.”

“Okay…are you drunk?”

“Umm – no.”

“Well, you sound like you’re in another world. How’s the top-secret project going?”

“Fine.” All Galatea could think about was the flawless body of Carlton Michaels, of the silky black hair framing his Spanish face, of the muscles clearly bulging beneath his lab coat, of the way he had looked at her for a split second before moving on, still writing on that piece of paper, and…

It took her a bit before she realized she had just sighed out loud, very obviously and very contentedly.

“Umm…Tea?”

Oh yeah. David was still on the phone.

“Bad time for talking. Carlton. Have call you back. End.”

With that, she hung up, leaving an extremely confused David on the other end of the line.

What was wrong with her? She had never before let emotion get the better of her. Watching several of the girls she knew “fall in love” several times over and make the same mistakes repeatedly, she had simply thought that she was immune. She was too intelligent to let one guy suddenly appear in her life and become the center of her universe. She was working on the Sanctuary Code! She was one of the top scientists in the world! Yet her usual mantras allowed her to gain no ground whatsoever on the strange feelings that were turning her body into a foreign country.

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“You’re beautiful. Honestly.”

Galatea stared directly into the deep brown eyes of Carlton and felt her head swim. She wasn’t sure if her hold on consciousness was going to last much longer at this rate. All around her, the dim lights, clinking of forks, and conversations of other lovers swirled around her in a burst of effervescence.

Things had happened so fast. The day after her first encounter, Carlton had passed through the break room again. Galatea had not been able to work at all that day; she ran the same algorithms from the day before, hoping nobody would notice. As one of the Lyceum’s top scientists, she was largely given free reign over her experiments: nobody did. She instead spent her entire day staring at the spot where she had bumped into Carlton the day before, hoping against hope that some sort of chronostasis would occur and she could rewind back to the time when she had first seen that refulgent skin and her life had changed forever.

She had suddenly looked up with no particular purpose in mind when he walked through again, still taking notes on what was in all probability the same piece of paper. She got up and was by his side before she could even become cognizant of her actions. The normally shy and reserved Galatea was, in seconds, on her knees and professing her deepest love for Carlton. Luckily, she worked with scientists, so the brief spectacle was not enough to disengage them from their work for more than a minute, but afterwards, when she reflected on her actions, she was a bit afraid that she had seemingly acted without ratiocination.

Carlton had reached out an arm to help her up. “Please do not degrade yourself so, Galatea,” he had stated, his voice like a million crooning doves serenading her in front of a golden sunset. “You see, I had also noticed you and may be feeling – love – for you also.”

And now, as she looked into those cinnabar orbs of his, she found herself saying, “You’re beautiful too. More than beautiful. You could do anything to me, anything you wanted, and I wouldn’t care, just so long as I would be there with you. You could kill me and I’d tell you how. You could leave me and I’d spend the rest of my life entreating you to come back. I’ve never felt anything like this before, but I know as a fact this is true love.”

Carlton smiled slowly, deliberately, his body the epitome of control, like John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, like Lord Asriel in His Dark Materials. She would be his Dagny Taggart, his Miss Coulter, and together they would destroy Dust forever and restore order to the Earth.

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She hadn’t seen David in some time, so she figured the brief lunch appointment was the least she could do to her all-but-forgotten best friend. Since she had moved in with Carlton – only two days after their first date – they had spent almost every waking hour together. He had moved in to her lab, and suddenly, with him there, she found that she could not only work again but was making progress at an astonishing rate. The Sanctuary Code was to be completed in a few days, and though she knew she was a brilliant person, she was nothing in the face of Carlton. His cold logic contrasted sharply with his emotional core, and he applied both extremely well to the problems at hand. Despite the “top secret” crap they fed her before giving her the specifications to the Sanctuary Code, she shared every single problem with Carlton, and she knew – like she knew how to walk or that clocks moved clockwise – that her secret was safer with him than it was with herself. He seemed to absorb her specs like a sponge and spit out – almost instantly – the solution to whatever problem she may be having.

“So you’re really in love with this Carlton guy, then?”

“Oh – more completely, more totally than I’m in love with myself. It’s like he’s my god and I’m his goddess, like he’s my Pygmalion and I’m his – well – Galatea.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit soon to be moving in with him and everything?”

“Not at all. In fact, we’ve talked about getting married soon.”

David gaped.

“David, you’ve always been so cold. You wouldn’t understand what it is to have a love like this, to find someone with whom talking feels like having a conversation with yourself.”

“You’ve always been as cold as me! If you call it ‘cold’, that is. You wouldn’t used to. And I think that abandoning logic is a sure way to get yourself killed – if not physically, then mentally.”

“Well, then it should come as a great surprise to you that I feel my mental faculties increasing a hundredfold. I’m almost done with the Sanctuary Code, and with his help – “

“He’s helping you? Does he have clearance?”

“Well – no, but I – “

“Tea, you idiot! He could be using you for your information!”

“Oh, don’t be silly! This isn’t that big! And anyway, he didn’t even know about the Code until after our first date!”

“He could have found out about it somehow else! I can’t believe that you, of all people, are telling someone else – “

“Someone I love!”

“Someone else about the Sanctuary Code! Back before – (both parties involved fully understood what before meant) – you were the biggest stickler for rules I’d ever met! You understood fully the implications of – “

“Oh, don’t start on that! Maybe it’s time you learned to just feel your way through something. You think too much.”

After that, neither party had much to say to each other. Galatea felt completely secure that Carlton was not using her to get information about the Code, but how could she communicate this to David? She felt it, just as she felt that burning one’s hand on the stove was bad.

On the drive back home, she found it difficult to push David’s insinuations out of her mind. When she arrived at home, she confronted Carlton with her suspicions, feeling like she were going directly against her soul in doing so. Her love for him was so much a part of her by now that she couldn’t doubt him without directly doubting herself.

“You – you don’t trust me?” His voice wasn’t hurt or imploring; it seemed genuinely astonished that she didn’t take his every word as fact.

“Oh, Carl, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean – I love you so much! So much! I trust you! It’s just – damn it, David was talking to me about you and – and he said things – you’re right, he’s not really my friend! I – I won’t see him again, I promise!”

“Shush, darling. Shush. It’s okay.” Carlton put his arms around her and let her lean back against his chest, pressing his cheek against hers and gently, carefully wiping away her tears.

“I’m so sorry, Carl! To think I almost ruined everything – “

“It’s okay. You didn’t. Honestly, I’d rather you not see David, as I don’t really trust him from what you’ve told me so far about him, but I can’t – won’t – stop you from seeing those you consider your friends.”

And Galatea clutched her boyfriend and sobbed well into the night.

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“The Sanctuary Code was meant to hide a groundbreaking experiment in physics. You see, by matching the harmonic frequencies of several subatomic particles, scientists discovered they could cause these atoms to rearrange themselves into a series of patterns, in effect commanding the building blocks of matter to create whatever they pleased.

“They, of course, had no idea what the repercussions of their discovery were. But we know. The Code is compromised, and we have the chance to turn the entire world into automatons with the click of a button.”

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“David!” Galatea was shocked to see her ex-best friend enter the lab where she was working. There were many thoughts in her mind, but the most dominant was get the bastard out of here before Carlton notices. Her husband of three weeks was off collaborating a set of data, but when he returned –

Galatea had no idea why, but she thought that David and Carlton were complete opposites, like matter and antimatter, and just like the two states of being, if the two men in her life were brought into the same room, her world would explode.

“Galatea - I have something I need to say. I – “

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“Come on, dear. You’ve always told me your problems with the Code before, and haven’t I been perfectly helpful before? This is the key to the whole thing! If we don’t get this solved – “

“I know, I know. But I’m unsure that I should tell you this last bit. I’m sure I can solve it by myself if I have long enough, and if I told you this, you’d have the key to the entire Project!”

Again that shocked curiosity came into his voice. “So you don’t trust me?”

But this time her answer was different. “I can’t trust anyone entirely with this. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Understand? I understand completely,” he said, his handsome features suddenly losing all their appeal as his face twisted into an expression of rage, and before Galatea could more than move a muscle Carlton had stuck a dart in her neck and the world was falling away into a swirl of

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“Love. It’s a magnificent thing, isn’t it? It’s the reason that the world turns, why hearts beat, why the sun shines.” That attractive sensitivity had crept back in to Carlton’s voice, but Galatea no longer felt an iota of love for the Spaniard.

“So when you bumped into me that first day at work, you stuck me with this cocktail of hormones? And made me to fall in love with you?” Galatea was now a fallen angel, a former paragon of logic and pure reason who had briefly been elevated to great heights by a feeling, only to find that she had been looking at the world upside down and she was now at a nadir from which she may never escape.

“But David messed up everything. We hadn’t accounted for the possibility of another, deeper-seated love interfering with the entire process.”

And suddenly everything was right-side-up again. Ever since David had confessed his feelings for her, she had been less and less under Carlton’s control. The love of rationality and fondness overcame the emotional and whirlwind love she had felt for Carlton. And it was at that moment that Galatea realized her ticket back to heaven.

“Now,” came the gentle voice that she had once loved so well, “you’re going to tell me the final sequence of the Sanctuary Code. Whether you like it or not.”

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One day, as the world slept or watched Entervision or sat in cubicles playing Tetris and quickly Alt-Tabbing to an Excel file about third-quarter performance predictions whenever Mr. Thomson walked by, a sound of a frequency undetectable to the human ear was broadcast over every television station, city siren system, satellite, and computer in the world. The sound resonated with the cells in the hypothalamus, gastrointestinal tract, and adrenal glands of any nearby persons, stimulating the production of dopamine and norepinephrine and blocking the synthesis of serotonin. The increases in dopamine and norepinephrine caused the fluttering feeling and dedication associated with love, while the lack of serotonin allowed the brain to engage in obsessive behaviors. In this way, every person in the world, with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Andrews (the only people left in the world who did not own a computer with fiber-optic Internet access), fell in love, although the object was not yet defined.

Then Carlton Michaels and his partner-in-crime appeared on every screen – television, computer, iPod – currently in existence. “Hello, world,” he said, his message instantaneously translated into every major world language. “We are here to love you, and we want you to love us back.”

All over the world, everyone but the aforementioned Andrewses were frozen in motion, listening to the most enchanting voice they had ever heard in their entire lives. Planes and cars crashed, parents holding their babies dropped them on the floor, nuclear power plant operators turned away from their gauges (luckily, no overheating occurred), live television broadcasts stopped in midsentence, a suicide bomber who had just started his timer and was about to run into a crowded marketplace instead ended up killing two chickens and an elderly olive merchant, two gangsters about to engage in a knife fight dropped their weapons, and a Dallas Mavericks-Miami Heat game tied with seven seconds left ended up going into quadruple overtime.

In other words, it was The Day the World Stood Still.

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Love…love…love…love…

The voice kept ringing in the ears of Myra Johnson, a young attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. The man who had appeared on her computer screen had the most beautiful features in the world. His Spanish features and wide lips gave her the impression of someone extremely attractive (and aware of it); his scholarly appearance let her know that he could fully comprehend the mysteries of love. There was nothing she wanted more than to spend every future moment of her waking and sleeping life with him.

Or was there? As time passed, something began to gnaw at the back of Myra’s mind. Slightly later on the gnawing turned into a ravenous ripping and tearing at the base of her skull, and she thought of her husband Tobias, the way they had met, how he had asked her to prom at the beginning of ninth grade, how he looked when he first saw their son Paul –

Wait. What was she doing? She had a husband, a family, a life. Just seconds before she had been missing Tobias and yearning to end the workday and go home. Now she was ready to dedicate her life to another man, one she hadn’t even met in person? As reason triumphed over hormonal activity, her brain chemistry corrected itself, allowing her to see clearly. And the one question continued to float through her mind –

Who the hell was that?

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The birds sang and sun shined as usual over Galatea’s house, but many things had changed. Since the Day of Love, the majority of people had remained automatons, forever yearning for the love of the now-incarcerated Carlton or his female partner, Francis. Those, however, that had strong enough bonds to others could overcome the hormonal sabotage, although the amount of time it took varied from a few minutes to a few months.

David and Galatea fell to the floor in hysterics, both thinking of their environmental science professor at Harvard. The guy had obviously been placed at the college for no other reason than to improve public relations, because he knew absolutely nothing about science. He actually decided to call the Laws of Thermodynamics the Laws of Energy, and he once claimed that the Islets of Langerhaans were located off the coast of Morocco.

Their laughter slowly died out, and they looked at each other. “D’you want to get married?” asked David.

“Sure,” replied Galatea. “Tomorrow?”

“Kay.”

“Remember when he tried to talk about economics?”

And they were on the floor again.

- The End -