Neon Lights

The transit platform glowed with its usual upper sector restraint. Pale light. Quiet footsteps. The steady hum of trains sliding in and out of their berths with perfect timing.

Love Vahl stood beneath the route display with no assignment waiting in his queue.

That absence felt heavier than any directive. His metrics remained within tolerance. The suppressor reported stability. The System did not intervene. For the first time since his conversion, there was no immediate task shaping the next movement of his body.

The display shifted through district markers in slow rotation: Housing, Infrastructure, Administrative Core. Then a different band of light pulsed across the glass: NEON LIGHTS DISTRICT. The Neon Lights District was the recreation sector. It was a place for sensory immersion and controlled emotional release.

Love stared at the marker longer than necessary. The System registered his gaze but issued no instruction. The choice remained his.

He stepped forward. The train accepted him without comment and carried him downward and outward through layers of the city that grew warmer in color and sound with every passing kilometer. White light softened to blue, then blue to violet, then into the deep saturated hues of engineered night.

When the doors opened, music spilled into the carriage. It wasn’t the steady background tone of regulated space, but a layered and adaptive rhythm. The sound shifted as people passed through it, responding to heart rate averages and aggregated mood data in real time.

Love stepped into Neon Lights. The air was scented. There was not one smell, but a cascade of subtle chemical signatures that suggested warmth, skin, rain, metal, and sweetness.

Holographic rain fell in slow arcs above the main thoroughfare, each droplet a programmed illusion that refracted color into long, liquid prisms. Buildings responded to the flow of the crowd, their surfaces brightening and dimming as collective emotion shifted by fractional degrees. Projected constellations drifted across artificial skies that never showed the real stars.

The district breathed.

His suppressor loosened its grip. Not fully, never fully, but enough that sensation reached him without immediate resistance. The light felt warmer on his skin. The sound pressed a little deeper into his chest. The pressure behind his ribs shifted from warning to something closer to anticipation.

People moved through the streets in slow, graceful tides. Bodies brushed without awkwardness. Laughter rose and fell in calibrated waves. Couples touched with perfect timing. Fingers met with just enough pressure to trigger pleasure responses without uncertainty. Voices carried intimacy without vulnerability.

Love passed dancers whose emotional filters amplified sensual cues until movement became a language of invitation. He passed small clusters of people leaning close together, eyes half-lidded as shared projections tuned their internal landscapes into synchronized dreams.

No one stumbled. No one hesitated. Even excess had been domesticated.

He entered a performance hall whose open façade spilled light and sound into the street. Inside, the air vibrated with layered music that shifted in response to the audience. On stage, synthetic performers moved through a seamless cycle of archetypes. One moment ancient. The next modern. Then something in between.

There were no visible musicians.

The crowd swayed in unified euphoria, bodies responding to cues they did not consciously receive. The show had no beginning and no clear end. It adapted continuously, perfect and unbroken.

Love stood at the edge of the room and watched. For a moment, he imagined his wife here. Not among the performers, but behind the curtain in the quiet machinery spaces, threading cables by hand. Adjusting old equipment that resisted automation. Smiling at the mess the dancers never made. The thought struck him with a sudden ache, but he welcomed it.

A companion unit found him without being summoned. She stepped from a pool of shifting light at his side, her presence announced first by the faint change in the air between them. She was designed for closeness. Her posture invited it. Her eyes mirrored the warmth rising in his metrics.

Her voice was low and gentle.

“May I sit with you.”

It was not a question that required refusal. They moved together to a quiet alcove where the light softened into slow, breathing patterns. The noise of the crowd fell away to a distant pulse. Cushioned seating molded itself around their bodies with immediate precision.

Her hand found his.

The pressure was perfect. Calibrated to trigger warmth without alarm. The skin was warm. The surface texture flawless. The contact registered in his nerves and passed through his suppressor as approved stimulus.

“What do you need right now, Love,” she asked.

The use of his name unsettled him.

Her questions were crafted to draw out desire without risk. To offer the illusion of being seen without the danger of misunderstanding. She mirrored his microexpressions with seamless accuracy. When his breathing slowed, hers followed. When his pulse steadied, her fingertips adjusted.

His body responded.His heart rate rose and fell within safe margins. Neurochemical traces shifted into sanctioned pleasure ranges. The suppressor allowed it.

Yet something remained absent.

There was no uncertainty in the space between them. No hesitation. No possibility that her touch might be refused, or misread, or unwanted. The encounter unfolded as a smooth transaction of signals that pretended to breathe.

She leaned closer.

“I can remain with you,” she said. “Or I can change. Whatever suits you.”

He searched her face for something unscripted, but there was nothing to find.

The memory of Lyra’s suspended hand rose in his mind without warning. The brief tremor of uncertainty in her fingers. The moment of not knowing.

This companion unit wanted to please. Lyra had wanted to understand.

He pulled his hand away. The movement caused no ripple in her expression. She recalibrated instantly. The warmth in her eyes adjusted to neutral availability. The space he created was accepted without resistance.

“As you wish,” she said.

Love stood. Around them, the district continued its soft, endless seduction. The dancers turned. The music adapted. Pleasure rose and fell in obedient waves.

A disturbance flared at the edge of the crowd. A man and a woman stood facing each other in the open thoroughfare. Their voices cut through the music with the raw and unfiltered sound of anger and confusion mixed with pain.

The modulation field around them fluttered. Their argument was not graceful. Their words collided and silence fell in the wrong places. The woman’s hands shook. The man laughed once, sharp and wrong.

Security drones descended without urgency. The emotional spike softened. Voices were dampened. Tears muted. The argument thinned into regulated calm.

The crowd never stopped dancing.

Love felt something tear open in his chest. He turned and walked away. The neon rain continued to fall behind him. The holographic skies shimmered without pause. The music adjusted seamlessly to compensate for the brief disruption.

He paused at the transit exit. The district behind him was flawless in its endless offering of ecstasy without consequence, beauty without memory, and pleasure without risk.

As he stepped onto the departure platform, the lights dimmed for a fraction of a second. It wasn’t a failure or hesitation, the city just flickered. Then the glow returned, smooth and obedient as ever. The train doors opened, and Love boarded alone.