Feeling Emotions

In New York's Queens district, at eleven twenty-five, Lin Li strolled alone down the late-night streets, still wearing his black coat and smart glasses.

However, at this moment he had pulled up the hood attached to his coat over his head, concealing the tentacles connected to the sides of his neck and temples. These were feelers extended by a creature transformed from a seagull, linking to the nerves in Lin Li's brain and spine, allowing them to share each other's senses.

Lin Li experienced the creature's senses and found his world transformed. He could hear cars speeding past several blocks away and see electromagnetic waves everywhere in the air, different lengths and frequency bands appearing as distinct colors to his eyes, a perception beyond human trichromatic vision.

Such an overwhelming flood of information should have exceeded his brain's processing capacity and fried it within seconds, yet after passing through the tentacles the data simplified into images and sounds he could comprehend.

Paired with his own emotionless, atypical brain, Lin Li could now construct a three-dimensional simulated image centered on himself spanning several kilometers, making him feel closer to a biological robot than ever before.

Lin Li thought to himself, "Tentacle monster, I really can sense far more now, but how do I feel someone else's memories the way your master described?"

An irritated voice echoed in his mind. "Don't call me tentacle monster. I gave myself a name—call me Abu Kapo Amoeba! Besides, my current master is you. That was my previous master!"

Lin Li replied without a ripple of emotion, "Very well, Abu."

"You! You're driving me insane, and the fact that you never get angry only makes me angrier!"

The black coat on Lin Li's body swayed slightly in the night breeze as Abu, hidden beneath the fabric, shook his tentacles in frustration.

Abu had now flattened into a thin, skin-toned circular pancake wrapped across Lin Li's back, a small pink sphere at its center.

That was his thinking core, from which hundreds more tentacles extended through Lin Li's back to connect with his internal organs and every muscle and bone throughout his body.

Abu grumbled inside Lin Li's mind, "Don't underestimate human technology. We can't afford to be discovered yet, so even when letting you feel emotions I have to avoid all surveillance equipment, slim though the chance of detection may be."

"Just as I can converse with you through my tentacles, they can read a human's thoughts in real time, though limited to ten people at most. Once I link you to someone else, you'll feel their corresponding sensations and emotions."

After hearing Abu's explanation, Lin Li understood and nodded in reply, "So we head to a bar. The bars and nightclubs in Queens belong to the local gang bosses who have an arrangement with the police; government surveillance doesn't reach inside."

Similar gang bosses existed all across New York, controlling bars, nightclubs, and other entertainment venues, running gray-area businesses while absorbing countless idle locals.

Times had changed. With artificial intelligence and drone defense systems, the NYPD could wipe out these gangs without ever leaving their stations, so most underworld organizations had become little more than police informants.

Yet the vast wealth gap still produced endless unemployed workers and vagrants who could not simply be eliminated, making the gangs a convenient destination for them.

These entertainment venues thus became tacitly accepted lawless zones where thrill-seekers vented desires they could not express by day, and many white-collar workers revealed their hidden sides inside the nightclubs.

Abu said, "Exactly. Alcohol also stimulates their brains and loosens their emotions, which will help you sense them."

Minutes later Lin Li arrived at a bar in the next block. The purple neon sign reading Breifne glowed brightly even from a distance in the dead of night.

Imaging projectors on either side cast swirling colorful lights and dancing silhouettes across the entrance while several men in black suits checked every arriving patron for weapons.

Lin Li removed the hood. Surveillance was absent here, and Abu's camouflage easily fooled the seemingly professional gang guards whose senses were far from infallible.

He slipped inside without effort, wearing the same faintly excited and flirtatious expression as the other patrons. Moving through the flickering lights and pounding music amid the crowd's shouts, he reached the bar, ordered a martini, and made his way to a booth with practiced ease.

He did not understand emotions, but he could imitate them. From his colleagues at the company Lin Li easily projected the image of a courteous, high-earning young man escaping work stress in search of a one-night stand.

Within minutes several attractive women had gathered around him. Lin Li clinked glasses with them, drank expensive liquor in large swallows, and occasionally embraced or kissed one of the girls. Their laughter mingled with the bar's music and voices.

Without surveillance, in the dim light and flashing strobes, and with alcohol-clouded minds, Abu's tentacles had already silently connected to the women's heads, reading their brain activity.

While Lin Li's left arm encircled a Latina woman and kissed her fiercely, Abu's transparent tentacles streamed her emotions and physical sensations back to him.

Lin Li felt as though he now possessed two separate consciousnesses: one performing without emotional fluctuation, the other burning with alcohol- and hormone-fueled desire.

"So this is what it feels like."

For the first time in his life he experienced emotion, specifically desire for his own body, and the sensation almost stirred something strange within him. Unfortunately the feeling was stolen from the girl beside him; he remained the same puppet-like person.

They parted. Under the dim lights the Latina's wheat-toned skin flushed, whether from alcohol or oxygen deprivation after prolonged kissing. She had just felt as though she and this man had merged during the kiss, something she had never experienced with anyone else. No longer content with free drinks and a one-night stand, she now believed she had fallen in love with the man before her after those few dozen seconds.

Lin Li absorbed the girl's "love" along with the varied mental activities from the other women, feeling as though he had split into several people at once.

The next moment a bald white man carrying a bottle of liquor strode over and slammed it onto the table in front of Lin Li.

A Tom Cat tattoo covered his arm. He raised a fist toward Lin Li's face and snarled, "Hey, kid, first time here? Look at those scrawny arms—girls don't go for skinny monkeys like you."

Abu's tentacles linked to the man's brain. Lin Li sensed the alcohol-soaked, waterlogged mind and the overflowing mating urge of a strutting rooster. He reached out and casually brushed the burly arm aside, sending the bald man off-balance and crashing to the floor.

The bottle tipped, spilling liquor over "Tom Cat." Sitting in the puddle, he looked up at the laughing women and the mocking, superior Lin Li, blood rushing to his head. He scrambled upright and swung a punch at Lin Li's face.

"Little bastard, I'm gonna kill you!"

This time Abu did not need to read minds. The rejected suitor shouted every emotion aloud, completely forgetting the strength Lin Li had displayed moments earlier.

Abu's voice echoed in Lin Li's mind: "Anger, alcohol, mating drive, the shame of failure—unrestrained emotion can turn a Homo sapiens into a dumb beast. Right now he's no different from a male monkey."

Lin Li kept the mocking expression on his face while watching the bald brute. With neural linkage to Abu his thinking speed and physical strength exceeded human norms by dozens of times, allowing him to study the man's facial expression in detail even as the punch came and to savor the anger and humiliation in his mind.

His own expression shifted into a smile. This simple, intense feeling was far easier to grasp than the woman's earlier complex and hazy emotions. At that moment he felt he could finally understand what emotion was.

"Thanks."

His lips formed the word. Although the white man's sluggish brain could not read lips, Lin Li still expressed his gratitude.

Lin Li's right hand struck the incoming fist at a speed beyond human limits. The collision ended in total defeat for the larger man; his wrist and knuckles shattered on impact, the fist twisting backward at a grotesque 180 degrees. His face changed from rage to agony and distortion.

"Fuck! Fuck! My hand—it hurts like hell!"

Watching "Tom Cat" writhe on the floor, Lin Li carefully tasted the fear and terror born from physical pain, along with the surrounding women's complex swirl of fright, awe, and admiration. Once more he wore a genuine smile.

The bald man rolling on the ground caught sight of the Asian man's expression and shuddered. Pain finally cleared the alcohol and adrenaline from his head. He realized he had picked on the wrong person tonight.

Tom Cat rolled over and stood up, then hurried toward the exit of the bar.

In the bar, the men and women still locked in embraces to vent their inner desires paid no mind to the farce that had just unfolded; such hormone-fueled scuffles happened several times a day here, and as long as no one died, nobody cared.

Lin Li sat back down among the girls and picked up his glass, gulping down the alcohol. The others were no longer as casual as before due to his brutal and violent display, save for the Latina woman who had been deep-kissing him earlier, who still gazed at him with a look of pure adoration.

She hugged Lin Li's arm and shouted excitedly into his ear, "Lin, you're so amazing! You took down a guy that big in just one hit!"

Lin Li set down his glass, pulled the girl into his arms, and said with a smile, "That's right, I've practiced martial arts. I could take down five more guys like that without breaking a sweat."

The smile on his face now seemed to come from the heart; compared to his previous false pretenses, Lin Li, having experienced emotion, was beginning to develop feelings of his own. He was gradually transforming from a puppet into a human.

Lin Li looked at the woman in his arms. She had healthy, wheat-colored skin and, while not exceptionally beautiful, had a few small freckles on her cheeks. He asked, "What is your name?"

"Galina Yate. I'm at the community college..."

Lin Li cut off her introduction and lowered his head to kiss her deeply again. As they held each other tightly, he carefully savored and pondered this sensation—something he had never felt when he was with Aierxue.

He asked in his mind, "Abu, is this love?"

Abu replied, "Romantic love is an emotion derived from the human reproductive instinct, yet it transcends pure hormone-driven desire. It is a special and complex emotion; it can even lead a person to abandon their most basic survival instinct for the sake of another..."

Lin Li: "Give me the conclusion."

Abu: "I've never been in love, how the hell would I know?"