The three months since then had been the most exhilarating Holtzmann could remember. He’d seen incredible science done, published carefully on anonymous message boards. With Nexus 5 they were getting glimpses of paths to reversing Alzheimer’s and senile dementia, making incredible progress in connecting autistic children to neurotypical adults. They were suddenly moving forward again in deciphering memory and attention, in seeing ways to boost intelligence. This was a tool that would change everything about the study of the mind, Holtzmann knew. And in so doing, it would transform humanity.

Holtzmann had already found it transformative at a personal level. He’d touched the thoughts of physicists and mathematicians, poets and artists, and other neuroscientists like himself. He’d felt other minds. What neuroscientist, what scientist of any sort, could pass up such an opportunity?

You could experience anything now, touch another’s mind and see the world how they saw it, feel their experiences, their adventures, their…

Another memory bubbled up.

He’d been a young man again, strong, fit, with a beautiful young woman. He remembered the softness of her skin beneath his hands, the smell of her perfume, the taste of her kisses, the way he’d tugged the silken negligee off her shoulders and down her body, the wetness as his fingers found her so ready and so very turned on by him, the erotic thrill as she’d straddled him in stockinged thighs, and then the incredible warmth and tightness as she’d lowered herself down onto…

Enough, Holtzmann thought.

He pushed the memory out of his mind with an effort. Once had been the end of it. No need to go back there now. Truth be told, it had felt too real – not like pornography, but like infidelity. And Martin Holtzmann had sworn to himself that he’d never be unfaithful again.

No matter. There were tawdry ways to use the technology, but sublime ways as well. He felt more alive than he had in years, more excited about the future than he could remember since his youth.

“…that’s why we have to win in November,” Stockton was saying from the podium.

You’re not going to win, Holtzmann thought. You’re ten points down in the polls. Stanley Kim is going to be the next President. Americans aren’t scared any more. All the atrocities are in the past. Americans want to see the future again.

I want to see the future.

Holtzmann smiled. Yes. Things were looking bright indeed.

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What? Holtzmann jerked in his seat. A Nexus transmission had just rippled through his mind. He was dimly aware of ERD Director Joe Duran glancing at him in annoyance.

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His heart was pounding. What the hell was going on? Had they found him out?

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