Monday’s Shark
by Demetrios Matsakis
I don’t know why I’m writing this, and I don’t know who to show it to. Maybe I would know if I had had brain implants. But my parents didn’t have any. When my personality started to show, they decided I wouldn’t get them, either. I understand why, because I was so impetuous.
But that was just a small part of my being a dancer, an artist intent on defining the world as I could understand it. After all, what better way to capture existence than through dance? Whether it’s the rhythm of life or the oscillations of physics, it’s the swing that’s real. Where the pendulum happens to be right now, that’s just a coincidence. Explains why they call it a phase.
Not that any of this mattered to my parents, especially my engineer father. “A woman is better without the behavioral modifications they impose, especially if she wants to be any kind of an artist.” So no implants for me. Well, maybe I did get two when I turned 21. But they weren’t quite the same. They were well below my brain, if you catch what I mean. Actually, back then I kind of had to get those, because dancing was my passion and I needed to find work.
What kind of dancer? Well, let’s just say my parents were poor and I had to support myself. And as everybody knows it is the enhancees who have the money and the male ones who like to watch. I admit I liked them watching. They intrigued me. In time I learned to read them, to manipulate them, and how to briefly enjoy a few I found particularly intriguing.
But that all changed when I got married. I can’t complain about Bill, though it was hard to give up my art and to work part time in a bookstore. Had to. I needed to be home when he was. That’s just how things had to be because unfortunately the Marriage Act of 2025 was still in effect. As if keeping women at home really did preserve Christian values.
To be kind to my husband, I gave up my past life and its former man-friends. But I needed a way to cope, to fill the emptiness after that loss. You might not approve of what I did, but my therapist supported me. Because to be kind to myself I needed one exception, and that sole minor exception was John. Only John, and only for a few hours on Mondays that weren’t holidays. This let me be the perfect wife and mother all other times.
Oh it wasn’t for the sex, though that was nice. I had thought of picking one of my really hot former lovers, but that would have been disloyal to my husband. Seeing John was more of a friendship. For starters, I’d have to call him awkward on foreplay. And of course the act itself is about the same with all men, especially with the lights out. None of them ever knew how to hit the mark. But he was a great cuddler afterwards, which is what I really craved. Sex was just one way to keep his interest, and to keep him engaged afterwards I’d ask about his life, or pose simple questions that he could answer authoritatively and feel so smart.
I remember so well how it went with John, back when Jack was about to reach four. I asked John to tell me about sharks. “How many kinds are there?” He cuddled up to me as his implant accessed the central data storage unit’s database, “Well, Carmen, when the dinosaurs ruled, there were thousands of species of them. In the pre-anthropocene times, there were 448 species identified. But now in the post-cyborg age we have only 13 recreated ones, plus two that are natural.”
I flipped on top of him, nestling under this chin, “the Great White, and what other?”
“Why you, of course.” He flipped me back underneath him.
“Me?” I slithered up so we would be lip-to-lip.
“Of course, you!” he laughed. “Always, after really super-hot sex you ask me for a special favor. The first time was exactly 300 Mondays ago and you wanted my help getting a waiver to marry your partial enhancee. Then 364 days later, not long after you came back, it was to get a baby permit so you could bear his child. Remember, I store every memory. And, at my enhancement level, I am automatically compelled always to tell the entire truth.”
I slipped my legs between his, putting on a sad face “Now, you can get so many wonderful facts about me from the database, but I happen to know there is nothing storable on unenhanced brains, particularly on the mind of a loving woman. A basically faithful woman, like me. You are my one exception to marital loyalty. And maybe, just maybe, you don’t understand what really makes me happy.”
He rolled to my side, “Well you are exceptional, I’ll give you that. Is there anything I can do to make an exceptionally faithful woman like you happy?”
“Well, I don’t want anything from you.” I shimmied on top of him and kissed him flat on the lips. “But now Jack is of age for a brain implant. The decision deadline is tomorrow, and I don’t want him enhanced at all.”
Tongue in, tongue out, he was relaxing and enjoying. “But that is Bill’s decision. It’s the law. The most enhanced parent legally makes the enhancement decisions, because only an implantee knows what it’s like. Being enhanced was the right decision for me; you like it well enough. At your husband’s low enhancement level, only the memory is strengthened. The only behavioral constraint is that he can’t commit a felony. What’s wrong with that?”
I rolled off him to his other side, and gently explored his lower regions. “What’s wrong is that I want my son to keep his real memories. You are special because you embody enhancement, but my man is not-so-special. Bill can remember all kinds of things, true or not, but he has no perspective. I sometimes don’t know who I’m married to. He says his childhood was made happy by his enhancements, and that’s why he wants our son to get a full implantation.”
John laughed, got up, and started to dress, “Yes, indeed,” he winked, “Nothing can guarantee happy childhood memories like centrally storing them, especially when I’m the programmer!”
I laughed too, “You may be a memory programmer with root access, but you can’t change my memories and you can’t program me or change my love for you. It may be that I love you because you are so smart,” I said as I began fondling him as he tried to put his pants on, “or for other reasons.” Embracing him as he tried to buckle his belt, I murmured, “If waivers were available for me to marry people at your level, I’d have been faithful to you for all time. And you would love me enough to keep our son un-enhanced.”
I don’t really understand why he always got such pleasure from my interfering with his dressing, but when he kissed me goodbye I knew I had pleased. He emptied his wallet, handed the bills to me, and smiled, “I don’t need this if I have you. Can I see you tomorrow? Take this and go shopping.”
I would have been offended if I had thought he was buying me. But then he added: “Buy something naughty,” with a mischievous smile. “After you get home I think you’ll be pleased.”
* * *
Yes, I like shopping, especially with gift money. I made good work of it that day. But the greatest pleasure came when Bill met me at the front door. He was so energized he never even noticed my full shopping bag or asked why I was so late bringing Jack home from the Patriot Center.
Instead, he just hugged me and said, “Carmen, this afternoon I had an epiphany. I realized I had suppressed my memories of how badly I was mocked throughout my childhood. Jack’s coming to enhancement age brought them back. I had totally forgotten how the other kids absolutely hated me for my enhancements. You are right about not enhancing. I agree with you. Let’s not put him through that.”
* * *
That night I used my new lingerie for the first time. And the next day I used it again, with John. And with pleasure, too. I showed my gratitude in ways I didn’t even know I could. Because I felt things I didn’t know I would.
Copyright © 2025 by Demetrios Matsakis
