Growing into the Job, Post 567: Ex Vivo

“What leaves the womb leaves not the mother’s reach.” -  Psalms of the Bliss, VII:2

The highway opened up like a wound  - black, wet, endless - when I pulled on to it maybe an hour ago. I was fleeing Far Horizons and the women who now seemed so dangerous - Cici, Gianna, Katarina, Jewel, Angie, all the others…maybe even Melissa? I had no idea where I was going, or any destination in mind - just away.

And now I find myself here, on this long stretch of gray through the woods, near the state park. The city lights had fallen behind me a long time ago, the skyline swallowed by fog. The road is empty - just two lanes unspooling through the tree line, washed silver by the sodium glow of the occasional highway lamp cutting through the miasma of the day. My wipers drag across the windshield - it isn’t quite raining, but it isn’t quite dry. The car’s sensors obviously think they should be running <squeak squeak squeak> so I let them. The electric motor of the car - now a Valkyrie Motors “Rebirth” XY that used to be Melissa’s BMW - ticks a slow heartbeat that doesn’t quite sync with my own. My heart is still hammering from my evacuation, and I can’t tell if it’s from fear, adrenaline, or withdrawal; the car seems more calm. The Valkyrie’s console hums softly, once in a while a neutral female voice asking for another command, but I don’t speak to her. I just drive.

The radio keeps cutting in and out, patches of news and static threading through the cabin, murmurs beneath the hiss of the rain. 

“- and in the market, Valkyrie Motors stock continued its record climb today after Brazil’s government announced a massive purchase order for its all-female–engineered autonomous fleet of-”

I change the channel with a <click> to a woman’s voice - steady, cheerful, professional:

 “- following the US Department of Health and Human Services report that adolescent girls have been outpacing boys on the height charts, twenty-three other countries have released similar figures, with more quickly coming in-”

<click>

“- Viremonta president Laszlo Dijkstra, found dead, multiple local sources cite “witchcraft” as the c-”

I twist the knob, but the same tone follows me no matter the frequency: confident, assured, female. Even the commercials sound like they’re reading from some new scripture. The only male voice I hear is one having his new life insurance policy explained to him…by a woman.

The steering wheel feels slick under my palms. My hands keep sweating; I’m shirtless, and my back sticks to the seat behind me. I should feel free, but I don’t. I keep thinking of Melissa, her office, her clothes - the smell of her skin, that floral gift that clings to her body and fills the air around her - and of Angie’s voice when she told me: ‘Melissa’s been doing this to you since the beginning…you’re basically addicted to her pheromones, and now the other girls are making them too. You can’t go anywhere without them.’

She’s been dosing you. Everything you feel for her, it’s manufactured.

I want to laugh, to call it Angie’s jealous nonsense, except I can still feel Melissa in me. It’s as if she’s exhaling into my lungs. Every time I breathe in, she’s pushing herself back in. Is this car making her pheromones?? Some artificial perfume?

I think it fucking is. 

Headlights smear in the mist, gold ribbons twisting past. I can’t tell if I’m cold or burning. Maybe as a small act of rebellion I roll down the window, hoping the air will clear me, but it just smells like metal and soggy pine. Inside the car it smells like her shampoo. I nearly sob, and roll the window back up. 

I’ve driven, yes, maybe an hour - north, I think - but time’s gone strange.

“…President-Elect Martin’s new Cabinet will be entirely female, for the first time in our nation’s history,” says the radio, soft and calm, as if that’s the most natural thing in the world. Then a whisper of interference, and another voice  - maybe the same one - adds, “…male crime rates down forty percent. Violent crime by women, though - particularly Female-on-Male - is up twelve-fold.”

I jab the power button. Silence - which was worse. But I still hear it, the news of a world flipped on its end, muffled in the vents, or maybe under my own breath. Valkyrie. Outpacing. Cabinet. Crimes. Witchcraft. I exhale shakily, my eyes darting to the rearview mirror.

Nothing. I’m not being followed. In an act of either brave rebellion or utter stupidity I’d thrown my phone out the window as soon as I’d pulled out of the office parking lot, so she couldn’t track me. I wanted to be alone, when I did it. And I feel alone now, for sure. I don’t care where I’m going. Maybe I’ll drive until the road ends, I think, gripping the steering wheel that seems so enormous in my hands. Maybe I’ll drive until I forget how to turn around.

The dash glows faintly blue. I keep expecting a message to flash up - her name, her voice, something - but there’s only the map, a pulsing line tracing my escape. Except I don’t feel escaped. I feel like I’m inside her circulatory system, some tiny blood cell moving through the arteries of her, a world that’s already woman.

The thought makes me press harder on the accelerator. The motor answers with a low growl, clean, obedient. For a second, that steadiness calms me. The fog around me softens. The road seems to stretch wider.

After several minutes more of driving, the console chimes once - bright, delicate, harmless and almost musical - but then every warning light on the dashboard flares to life at once, glowing white, then blue.. 

Oh no what the hell. At first I think it’s a glitch. A voltage surge from the weather, or the sensors freaking out from the fog? But then another chime as the dash goes completely red. The first chime was soft. Almost apologetic. The second, less so. 

<VEHICLE COMMAND: REMOTE ACCESS ENABLED>

My fingers freeze on the wheel. The message hangs there for a second, pulsing, waiting. 

“Jesus Christ,” I whisper.

The car’s AI voice speaks, serene, almost maternal, and eerily like Melissa’s. “Returning to Mother Vehicle,” it says gently, and immediately, on its own, despite my foot on the accelerator, the car begins to slow. On the console, the map flickers and zooms out automatically. I see my location dot, shrinking as the map spins and the navigation window widens with a new destination: Far Horizons.

My stomach drops. She’s doing this, I think, She’s calling me back home. Taking command. 

The speedometer drops: 50…40…35…The road slows around me, as if the world itself has decided I’m not supposed to move forward anymore. I glance in the mirror again. Still nothing, no one else on the road. But I can feel her, reaching from miles away, fingertips brushing the back of my neck.

The car gives a gentle tug to the right, as if to start pulling to the side of the road, and then turn me around back toward the city. I grab the wheel and correct, but it fights me - subtly, but firmly, demonstrably, just enough to let me know it’s not mine anymore.

“Car, stop it,” I blurt, yanking the wheel again - to no avail. “Cancel navigation!”

Nothing. 

“No. No no no,” I growl, exasperated, but then in a flash of inspiration diving for the console. I swipe open the control panel and immediately see the manual override. I jab it. 

<CONFIRM ABORT?>

“Yes!” I shout. “Abort!” I also jam the screen with my fingers, for good measure. 

For a second, nothing happens. Then the screen flickers:

The wheel releases. The tug disappears. I exhale - a dry, shaking laugh bubbling up in my throat.

“They can’t control everything,” I mutter, probably sounding like a mad man, “Not everything.” I chuckle again, and hit the accelerator. The speedometer starts to climb back up: 35…40…55…65.

There’s a pause - five seconds, maybe less, a moment I thought I’d won  - and then another chime. Lower pitch. Metallic. Final.

The laugh in my throat dies quick. The car feels…angry.

“No, no, no-”

Every light on the dash comes alive at once: amber, red, white. The motors give a single cough of current, a dying heartbeat, and then silence. The power steering cuts, then the wheel locks. The displays fade except for one message:

<THEFT PREVENTION PROTOCOL. POWERING DOWN.>

65…50…40…

Again it’s pulling off to the side of the road. And again I start jamming the console displays with my fingers, trying to call it back to life, to abort whatever she’s doing remotely. But nothing responds.

“Please,” I mutter, not sure who I’m talking to anymore - Melissa, the goddamn car, the world - or whatever thing it’s becoming? “Please don’t do this.”

30…20…10…

I slam my fist against the dashboard, I slam on the accelerator, and try again to turn the wheel, but it’s an impotent tantrum. Already we’re on the shoulder, slowing to a stop on the side of the road. 

“I can’t! I can’t-“

I can’t breathe. Or, well, I can breathe. But my chest feels tight, and already I feel like the air’s thinning. What used to smell of her shampoo smells now only of wet road and stale leather.

The car coasts on momentum for a few yards, the world narrowing to the hiss of tires on wet asphalt. The car rolls to a full stop on the side of the empty rural highway, flanked by walls of trees on each side. Even the forest seems leaning in to take me. 

It’s too quiet.

I try the start button - nothing. Just the faint smell of ozone and pine. I slam my open palm on the dark main display. The car doesn’t care. I pull back, sit back, and stare at the disabled console in dismay. 

The screen flickers once more, like an eyelid twitching.

<PLEASE WAIT FOR RETRIEVAL>

The letters glow soft white, pulsing like a heartbeat, and I can hear the words in her voice, velvet and slow. ‘Please wait for retrieval.’ Or, rather: “Stay right where you are, little man. I’m coming to get you.”

My pulse spikes. The air inside the cabin now feels thin, used up, like I’ve been breathing her in and she’s suddenly withdrawn herself. The absence hits me like a vacuum. My hands are shaking again, and it feels suddenly like altitude sickness. Is that withdrawal kicking in already? If she was pumping her pheromones through the car’s AC this whole time, has she now cut them off, taken them away? A familiar, crawling ache in my bloodstream tells me immediately: yes. 

Oh, shit. 

Suddenly I’m a junkie. Insects on my skin, needles in my ears. The whole thing. It’s not bad yet but I know it will be, soon. 

I can’t stay in here.

I throw the door open and step into the grey, the mist. 

Oh, fuck.

The air’s colder than I expect on my bare skin, and I push the door closed behind me. The trees on either side of the highway crowd close, their branches black and dripping. Fog pools in the ditches. I feel suddenly so small and alone - I am small and alone. The car behind me clicks once - a relay resetting - and then it’s dead again, eyes closed to me. I try the handle: locked. 

I turn, and my stomach does the same, drawing in air from the roadside that is definitely not her. It smells of things like dirt and rain, tires and rotting pine needles.

Impetuously, my head already starting to spin, I take to stumbling toward the dark edge of the woods in a disoriented panic. I don’t have a plan, just a direction, the same destination: away. I make it to the treeline, and my feet meet a blanket of fallen needles. Aside from the crunching underfoot, dead silence. My hand meets a tree trunk for support, rough fir, and I draw a rattling breath. My body’s not used to being without her, her scent, or those of her women. The longer I’m away, I know the more I will feel myself unraveling. I’m feeling it already, as I push off the tree and start moving - hurriedly, awkwardly, as if I’m being pursued - deeper into the woods. But I feel like I’m losing signal, like I’m already disintegrating from the inside out.  I struggle to breathe, not because there’s no air, but because she’s not in it anymore. 

She’s gonna be mad. She’s gonna be so pissed. 

So stupid, I was. I didn’t fully realize the implications, that the soft background scent from the car vents had been the only thing keeping me steady, keeping me functional. Now? Now as I stumble, trying to just put one foot in front of the other and find myself - what? Where? What am I looking for? Now I’m in system shutdown. 

I can feel myself already wanting to retch. Fragments of thought - guilt, fear, the memory of her voice when she’s angry, the way her power “feels” - swirl through my head. I’m trying to justify running, telling myself she’ll understand that I have to get away before I disappear completely. But already, the edges of the world are blurring, grey in the mist and fog as I run.

Run.

Run.

You can’t run.

I trip over a root, scuffing the knees of my thin scrubs with wet dirt and pine needles. I scramble myself back up and take off again, stumbling. 

I don’t know how long I’ve been running now. Ten minutes? Ten seconds? The fog eats sound, time, distance - everything except the hammer of my pulse. My feet slide on the carpet of wet needles, the ground slick and uneven, but I can’t stop moving. Instinct says away. From her, from them, from the car. From whatever’s still crawling through my bloodstream.

The air feels thick, heavy. My breath comes out in short gasps that sound too loud, like someone else’s. Every time I inhale, my lungs reject it - this air isn’t right. It’s missing something. It’s missing her. Out here in the forest the oxygen’s clean, and that’s the problem.

I run. I run until I hit a stream; it’s a small one, maybe two yards across, and I try to navigate the rocks through it, stepping from one to the next but I slip, falling into the cold water. I pull myself out, coughing, now soaked, and make it to the other side.

I keep running.

The shaking had started small, a flutter in my hands, but it’s now spread. Knees trembling. Muscles clenching and releasing at random, like I’m being rewired and the current’s misfiring. My skin feels too tight; every pore aches, remembering her scent. My ears are ringing now - a high, metallic whine that rises above the shallow rhythm of my breath. The cold water on my skin has given me chills.

I stumble over another root, catch myself against a trunk. The bark is wet and cold, and for a moment I press my forehead against it, eyes squeezed shut. The world tilts.

I can still smell her - or maybe I’m just imagining it. That faint, floral heat. My body reacts before my mind does; my chest tightens, my heart stutters like it’s seen her. I can almost feel her hands on the back of my neck, that soothing pressure she used when she wanted me quiet, calm.

God, I want that. I want her. Even though she may be the one that’s done this to me.

The forest has gone silent. No wind. No insects. Just the electric tension before a storm - as if the whole world’s holding its breath, waiting for something to strike. My breathing fills the void, harsh and ragged.

I think I need to take another step, but my legs don’t agree. They buckle, sudden and graceless. My knees hit the damp earth, as do my wet hands. A jolt of nausea twists through me, and I brace myself on my hands, retching air. My body’s shaking so hard I can barely keep upright. The mud is cold against my knees, soaking my scrub pants even more, the gasps I bring in tasting of pine and earth.

The static in my ears shifts, becomes almost like a voice - half-formed, soothing. Maybe it’s her. Maybe it’s just my own brain, replaying her frequency.

“Melissssaaa…”

It comes out of me strangled, barely sound. My throat burns. The name tastes like salt and blood and a hint of the formula she feeds me. I don’t even know if I’m calling for help or forgiveness.

A shudder runs through me, deep and involuntary. The trees blur at the edges, colors bleeding into one another, the fog flashing faint golds and greens for an instant - her eye color, her light, is that her seeing me? - and then fading back to gray.

My fingers dig into the damp soil; the ground feels alive beneath me, humming faintly. Every nerve in me is screaming that she’s coming. Fear and relief, intermingled.

I let out one more breath - a whisper this time. “Please…”

And then everything tilts, folds, and falls away.

The last thing I feel before it all goes dark is the warmth of the forest floor, under my legs, and the rough trunk of the fir tree, pressing against my spine. The earth is arms, wrapping around me, and I give myself up to the one thought that remains:

She’s coming.

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