Do You Dream Of Oil? by John Leahy
Lance and his friend Kai attend a speed dating event in a world where humanity is undergoing a mysterious biological transformation.
The subway car smelled faintly of burnt plastic and overripe bananas.
That wasn't unusual. New York had been like that for at least six months - since the Change began accelerating. Officially, it was called the Organic Transition, a phrase that sounded like a Whole Foods marketing gimmick. In practice, it was as if God had looked down at humanity and decided, in the spirit of experimentation, to tweak the periodic table. A slow, molecular reshuffling. Carbon to hydrocarbon. Not for everyone, not yet. But enough.
Lance stared at a smudge on the plexiglass window. His reflection was jaundiced and slightly translucent under the flickering LED lights. "You think I look more... glossy than usual?"
Kai, across from him, was peeling off the label from a bottle of phospholipid-rich kombucha, the kind that had recently replaced most sports drinks. "You always look glossy," he said. "Like a man forever three minutes from a panic attack."
"That's not helpful."
"You want helpful, see a therapist. You want honest, ride the subway with me."
Lance touched the inside of his wrist. The skin was still soft, but under the surface, he could feel something... resilient. "I think I'm starting to polymerize."
"Oh, big word," Kai smirked. "You read that in one of your little forums?"
"They're not little," Lance muttered. "They're peer-reviewed."
Kai leaned forward. "What did it say this time? 'Ten signs your epidermis is about to convert into a crude-oil derivative'?"
"You mock," Lance said, "but Dr. Khrazii in Brussels says the presence of longer-chain fatty acids in human sebum indicates an early-stage shift in metabolic baseline. We're not just burning hydrocarbons. We're becoming them."
Kai sipped his drink. "So what, you're afraid you're going to wake up as a gas canister?"
"No. I'm afraid I'll wake up as a waxy, non-biodegradable version of myself who's still bad at dating."
They both paused as the train shuddered between stations. An ad above them flickered to life - a cheerful couple jogging in a park, their skin sheened with a suspiciously viscous glow. The voiceover purred: "Transition safely. PolySkin™ supplements - supporting your evolution from the inside out."
"Jesus," Kai muttered. "It's like they want us to turn into candles."
"Some people are adapting better than others," Lance said, staring at a man down the car whose hair had turned the texture of engine grease. "Some people are practically petrochemical now. That guy's got a 60-octane stare."
Kai chuckled. "You think the women tonight will care?"
"I don't know. Maybe this is our advantage. Being slow-transitioners makes us 'vintage.' Like guys with record players."
Kai grinned. "Or maybe we'll get rejected by a woman whose lymph is eighty percent kerosene."
Lance sighed. "I'm not looking for perfection. Just someone whose biochemistry doesn't terrify me."
"Set the bar lower," Kai said. "You'll be happier."
They sat in silence as the train screeched into Canal Street, the city above still holding together - barely. The skyline shimmered with heat plumes, and an occasional glint of plasticized flesh in the windows. A woman stepped on board wearing a mask, not for disease, but to keep her moisture content from evaporating. Her eyes were beautiful, almond-shaped and clear, but the rest of her face had the tight, semi-translucent sheen of someone deep in hydroconversion.
Lance nudged Kai. "You think she's going to speed dating?"
"If she is," Kai whispered, "I hope she's fire-retardant."
They both chuckled, but the laughter felt brittle. Outside, New York ticked on - an ecosystem in metamorphosis, its people trading carbon for complexity, simplicity for survival. As they neared the venue in Midtown, Lance leaned forward and said, "You ever think we're not evolving, we're just... being reformatted?"
Kai raised an eyebrow. "Tonight, let's just worry about whether we're kissable, not combustible."
The train pulled into the next stop. They stood up, the plastic ad panels humming above them, and stepped out into the night.
The event was held in a reclaimed bank lobby - now repurposed as "The Polymer Lounge," a sleek, modish venue with curved chairs and bioluminescent cocktails that looked like bottled coral reefs. There was a display near the coat check showing "Safe Transition Ranges," a bar graph tracking the average hydrocarbon index (HI) across boroughs. Manhattan was rising faster than Queens. The Bronx had plateaued. Staten Island, for reasons no one could explain, was chemically stable.
Lance stood at the bar, staring at a drink the color of transmission fluid. It fizzed faintly.
Kai leaned in. "Don't look at it like it's going to interrogate you."
"I think it's alive," Lance whispered. "There's a proteinoid skin forming on top."
"That's the garnish. It's trendy."
"I'm not drinking it."
Kai smirked. "Then it'll drink you."
A bell rang. Tables were numbered. Speed dating began.
Lance was Table 6. The women rotated.
Date One: Becca
She wore a red dress that clung to her like shrink wrap and smelled faintly of antiseptic and fruit leather.
"I used to be a chemist," she said immediately. "Now I'm more of a consultant. Biological stability optimization. You?"
"I teach public high school."
Becca blinked. "And they haven't converted the children yet?"
"I mean, the cafeteria changed," Lance offered. "No dairy. Everything glows a little."
She smiled politely. "Do you know your HI?"
"Uh... seventy-three."
"That's low."
"I've been moisturizing?"
Becca leaned forward. "You need to bind better. You know that, right? It's not just aesthetics. The transition isn't optional. It's cellular imperative."
Lance squinted. "I was told seventy-three was moderate."
"For now. But when the shift tips, you'll melt like a birthday candle."
"I... what?"
The bell rang. She stood, smiled tightly, and said, "Consider emulsifiers."
She moved to the next table. Lance stared at his untouched drink. The skin was thicker.
Date Two: Cynthia
Cynthia had a raspy voice and wore an old Radiohead t-shirt, the collar ripped. Her eyes were yellow, not sickly, just... viscous. Like engine oil.
"You seem tense," she said, biting her lip.
"I'm always tense."
"That's charming."
"I'm not sure it's meant to be."
She looked him over. "You smell natural."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Depends who you ask. I'm into vintage guys. You smell like asphalt after rain."
Lance blinked. "That's oddly specific."
She shrugged. "Everything smells something now. The Change enhanced my olfaction. I can practically track moods by sweat density. You? You're anxious, not afraid."
"That accurate?"
"Mostly."
Lance leaned forward. "Do you ever think about what comes after all this?"
"You mean when we finish the transition?"
"Yeah. When we're... not us anymore."
Cynthia looked away. "You still think in binaries. Human vs not-human. You need to stretch your taxonomy."
The bell rang. She winked and left.
Date Three: Asia
Asia had a clipboard.
"I'm doing a study," she said.
"Is this... part of the date?"
"Everything's a study now. How's your sebaceous rate?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Your skin oils. Are they gelling?"
"I don't know," Lance said. "I've been dry lately."
"Dry is death," she said. "Lubrication is adaptation. You need mucosal resilience."
"I teach teenagers. I don't get to use phrases like 'mucosal resilience' in polite company."
Asia ignored him. She clicked a pen. "Do you dream of oil?"
"What?"
"It's a common sign of pre-transition consciousness. Dreams of viscosity, pressure, thermal shift. You'd be surprised how many people dream in refinery metaphors."
"I had a dream my arm was turning into a plastic bag," Lance offered. "Does that count?"
Asia scribbled something. "It's a start."
The bell rang. Asia left. Lance noticed her heels left faint, greasy prints on the floor.
Date Four: Jo
Jo was different. Normal voice. Normal dress. Even the hair - soft, curly, alive.
"You seem... stable," Lance said.
"I'm not," she replied. "I just look it."
"Thank God. Everyone else tonight either wants to reclassify me taxonomically or convert me into an oil-based smoothie."
Jo laughed. "They tried to patent my sweat last month."
Lance paused. "Wait, what?"
"Some biotech company. Said I had rare trace compounds. Said I could help 'unlock the lubricant economy.' I said no."
"That's... beyond creepy."
Jo sipped her drink. "I think people are mistaking adaptation for ascension."
Lance nodded too quickly. "Exactly. Like we're all just climbing into a different kind of skin."
She looked at him, long and level. "Do you think we're losing our humanity?"
He swallowed. "Maybe we're not losing it. Maybe we're molting it."
They sat in silence.
The bell rang, but neither moved.
Kai, from across the room, was making faces. Lance ignored him.
Jo said, "What's your HI?"
"Seventy-three," he admitted.
She smiled. "Perfect. I'm seventy-four. We'd combust evenly."
He laughed. "That's the most romantic thing anyone's said to me tonight."
After the last round, Lance and Kai found each other near the exit.
"So?" Kai said. "Did you bond? Did you emulsify?"
Lance, dazed, nodded. "I think I met someone who's still at least twenty percent water."
"Chemically compatible?"
"Maybe."
"You smell like you fell in love with a refinery."
"You smell like regret and citrus."
Kai grinned. "Let's get on the train before one of us polymerizes."
They stepped out into the heat of the night. The air was thicker now, like a gel.
Evolution was happening. But so was dating.
The subway at 11:47pm was quieter than usual, but not empty. A man in a hazmat parka slept curled across four seats. A woman in biotech scrubs fed her hair through a device that extruded glossy polymers from the split ends. Somewhere near the back of the car, an electric violin hummed a dissonant, resinous tune.
Lance and Kai sat side by side, neither talking at first. The silence stretched between them like static on a screen - fuzzy, uncomfortable, hard to look at directly.
Lance finally exhaled. "That was like speed dating in a science fiction novel written by an arsonist."
Kai leaned back, resting his head against the vibrating wall. "And yet you stayed overtime with one of them. I saw that. Who was she? The one with the sweat patent?"
"Jo," Lance said. "She was... normal. Like she hadn't read the user manual yet."
"Or she's too far along to need one."
"No," Lance said. "She was holding on to something. Or pretending to. Either way - it worked."
Kai snorted. "So what, you two exchanged HI scores and bonded over shared semi-volatility?"
Lance turned toward him. "Can we not pretend this is normal? The HI score, the oil dreams, the dermal blooming - none of it is normal. You realize that, right?"
Kai shrugged. "Define normal. We used to drink cow milk and rub it on our faces. Now we drink kelp protein and exfoliate with nano-lube. We adapt. Humans are great at adapting."
"Adapting to what?" Lance snapped. "To chemical instability? To being re-written from the inside out?"
Kai looked at him evenly. "You think it's happening to you. Like you're a victim. But what if it's happening for you?"
"Oh, come on."
"No, listen," Kai said, sitting up. "Maybe this whole shift, this conversion or whatever you want to call it - it's not a freak accident. It's precision. Design. We don't know who's doing the writing, but the script is tight. It's not just about survival, it's about iteration. Evolution 2.0."
Lance barked a bitter laugh. "You've been listening to that poly-synthetist podcast again, haven't you?"
"It's called The Fifth Strain, and they make a lot of good points."
"They sell thermal-neutral socks for people with hydrocarbon feet."
"They also predicted polymeric neuro-synapse reformatting six months before it showed up in Belgium."
Lance slumped. "I just want to feel human again. Is that so much to ask?"
Kai looked over at him. "No. But what if that's the problem? Wanting to feel human when the whole definition of 'human' is being reconfigured."
"I don't want to be reconfigured," Lance said. "I want to wake up, have a coffee, go to work, feel tired at 3pm, eat noodles for dinner, and fall asleep in front of the TV. That's all. That's enough."
Kai smiled softly. "You ever think maybe all that was just a cocoon?"
"Jesus," Lance muttered, rubbing his temples. "Do you hear yourself? You sound like a spa brochure for a dystopia."
Kai chuckled. "And yet, you're still talking to me."
They were quiet again.
Outside the window, the tunnel lights streaked past in long, glowing smears. Lance's reflection in the glass looked paler than it had earlier, and faintly iridescent.
He turned to Kai. "Do you remember the smell of real sweat?"
Kai blinked. "What?"
"Before this. Before the Change started. When sweat smelled like salt and nerves, not solvent and eucalyptus."
Kai nodded slowly. "I remember my father's jacket. Old leather. Gym funk. Cigarettes and rain."
"I miss that," Lance said. "The smell of someone you love being a little gross. A little feral. You know?"
"I do."
Lance shifted. "Do you ever think about opting out?"
Kai raised an eyebrow. "Of the transition?"
"Yeah. Going off-grid. Building a shack in the Adirondacks. Eating lichen. Dying carbon."
Kai shook his head. "You'd last six days. Maybe four, if it rains."
Lance smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"You know what Jo said to me?" he asked.
Kai leaned in.
"She said: 'Maybe we're not losing our humanity. Maybe we're molting it.'"
Kai nodded slowly. "That's a good line."
"It is," Lance said. "It scared the hell out of me."
The train rattled through a curve. A screen above the door flashed a government PSA - STAY FLEXIBLE: Your body knows what to do. Trust the Change. Below that, a hotline number in bright green.
"You think we're going to make it through this?" Lance asked.
Kai didn't answer right away. He stared out the window, where the tunnel lights briefly revealed a mural sprayed on the wall: a human figure dissolving into oil droplets, then re-forming as a tree.
He said, "I think we'll get somewhere. Whether it's where we meant to go... that's the question."
Lance nodded. "I think I'll text her."
"Jo?"
"Yeah. Just to see."
"Good," Kai said. "Tell her you're at seventy-three and rising."
Lance smiled. "Seventy-three point five, if you count tonight's panic sweat."
Kai clapped him on the back. "That's the spirit. Just don't combust on me in your sleep, okay?"
"No promises."
The train pulled into their stop. The doors sighed open.
They stepped out into the night, the air thick as syrup, warm and faintly flammable.
Somewhere above them, New York breathed like a plastic lung. And the world spun forward - one molecule at a time.
They met at a small outdoor café in the East Village, one of the few places left that still served things that steamed. Real heat. Real water vapor. Nothing extracted or synthetically aerosolized. The waitress handed them menus made from something fibrous and suspiciously flexible - likely fungal - but at least it wasn't edible. An improvement.
Jo looked across the table at him, her eyes serious, sun-catchy, impossible to read.
"So," she said, resting her elbows on the table, "are you still seventy-three?"
Lance exhaled. "Seventy-four point two. I know. Technically we're no longer combustion-compatible."
"Shame," she said. "I was picturing a beautiful, mutual ignition. Quiet. Satisfying."
"I could lie," he said. "I could say I've plateaued."
"But you haven't."
"No. I'm becoming slightly... more slippery. I left a mark on my pillow last night. Looked like engine varnish."
Jo grinned. "That's sweet. You're leaking progress."
They paused while a drone delivered two glasses of something brown and steaming. Jo sniffed hers.
"Smells like root," she said. "Some kind of kelp-derived chicory hybrid?"
"I asked for coffee," Lance muttered. "They said they can't serve heat-roasted organics above seventy HI."
"Policy?"
"Absorption risk. Something about lipid destabilization."
Jo raised her glass. "To lipid destabilization."
They clinked. The sound was soft. Dull. Like resin tapping resin.
Lance leaned in. "I'm scared."
Jo didn't blink. "Of what?"
"Of everything. Of waking up slick. Of not being able to sweat. Of kissing someone and tasting petroleum. Of being too late to stay human, and too early to enjoy what comes next."
She looked down at her glass. "I miss dirt," she said. "Real dirt. Under fingernails. You ever think about how the word gritty used to mean real?"
"Now it means non-compliant surface texture."
Jo smiled. "Exactly."
"I had this dream," Lance said, "that I couldn't stop excreting a gel from my hands. Everything I touched stuck. People, walls, birds. I was in a park and pigeons just glued to me. I couldn't shake them off. My body kept generating this - this tacky, citrus-scented sealant."
"That's probably the transdermal shift. It starts in the subconscious. Your cortical folds pick it up before your skin does."
"That's not comforting."
"I didn't mean it to be."
A long silence. Around them, the city moved like a slow chemical process - shifting, unstopping. Buildings sheened with moisture-repelling coats. People's eyes were glossier than they used to be. And the breeze carried a sweetness no one could quite identify. Like overripe fruit and ozone.
Lance finally said, "Do you still dream in flesh?"
Jo looked at him with sudden focus. "What?"
"I mean - in your dreams, do you still feel like a person? Hands. Teeth. Hair. Or do you -"
"Change?"
"Yes."
Jo tapped her fingers against the glass. "I dream in materials. Surfaces. Once, I was a sheet of mylar stretched over a desert. Another time, I was submerged in a vat of prebiotic goo and I could taste infrared."
Lance swallowed. "That's... abstract."
"It was vivid."
"And you don't miss... being human?"
Jo leaned forward. "I miss the mythology of it. The idea that we were solid, fixed, complete. But you know what being human meant, biologically?"
"What?"
"Failure modes. Expiration dates. A circulatory system like a bad plumbing job. Emotional triggers wired into scent receptors and tribal panic. We were a glorious kludge."
"Now we're - what? Efficient? Better?"
"We're unfinished," she said. "Which is the best we've ever been."
He looked at her then - really looked. Her skin wasn't exactly skin anymore, more like matte sealant with pores. Her pupils had a prism edge. But her smile was still crooked, still very much Jo.
"I like unfinished," he said. "If you'll still have me at seventy-four point two."
She grinned. "Just don't go full paraffin on me."
"No promises," he said. "But I'll try to retain some friction."
They sat in quiet agreement. The café hummed around them with the low, molecular murmur of a species rewriting its own owner's manual. Somewhere, not far away, something combusted softly. Controlled burn.
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That wasn't unusual. New York had been like that for at least six months - since the Change began accelerating. Officially, it was called the Organic Transition, a phrase that sounded like a Whole Foods marketing gimmick. In practice, it was as if God had looked down at humanity and decided, in the spirit of experimentation, to tweak the periodic table. A slow, molecular reshuffling. Carbon to hydrocarbon. Not for everyone, not yet. But enough.
Lance stared at a smudge on the plexiglass window. His reflection was jaundiced and slightly translucent under the flickering LED lights. "You think I look more... glossy than usual?"
Kai, across from him, was peeling off the label from a bottle of phospholipid-rich kombucha, the kind that had recently replaced most sports drinks. "You always look glossy," he said. "Like a man forever three minutes from a panic attack."
"That's not helpful."
"You want helpful, see a therapist. You want honest, ride the subway with me."
Lance touched the inside of his wrist. The skin was still soft, but under the surface, he could feel something... resilient. "I think I'm starting to polymerize."
"Oh, big word," Kai smirked. "You read that in one of your little forums?"
"They're not little," Lance muttered. "They're peer-reviewed."
Kai leaned forward. "What did it say this time? 'Ten signs your epidermis is about to convert into a crude-oil derivative'?"
"You mock," Lance said, "but Dr. Khrazii in Brussels says the presence of longer-chain fatty acids in human sebum indicates an early-stage shift in metabolic baseline. We're not just burning hydrocarbons. We're becoming them."
Kai sipped his drink. "So what, you're afraid you're going to wake up as a gas canister?"
"No. I'm afraid I'll wake up as a waxy, non-biodegradable version of myself who's still bad at dating."
They both paused as the train shuddered between stations. An ad above them flickered to life - a cheerful couple jogging in a park, their skin sheened with a suspiciously viscous glow. The voiceover purred: "Transition safely. PolySkin™ supplements - supporting your evolution from the inside out."
"Jesus," Kai muttered. "It's like they want us to turn into candles."
"Some people are adapting better than others," Lance said, staring at a man down the car whose hair had turned the texture of engine grease. "Some people are practically petrochemical now. That guy's got a 60-octane stare."
Kai chuckled. "You think the women tonight will care?"
"I don't know. Maybe this is our advantage. Being slow-transitioners makes us 'vintage.' Like guys with record players."
Kai grinned. "Or maybe we'll get rejected by a woman whose lymph is eighty percent kerosene."
Lance sighed. "I'm not looking for perfection. Just someone whose biochemistry doesn't terrify me."
"Set the bar lower," Kai said. "You'll be happier."
They sat in silence as the train screeched into Canal Street, the city above still holding together - barely. The skyline shimmered with heat plumes, and an occasional glint of plasticized flesh in the windows. A woman stepped on board wearing a mask, not for disease, but to keep her moisture content from evaporating. Her eyes were beautiful, almond-shaped and clear, but the rest of her face had the tight, semi-translucent sheen of someone deep in hydroconversion.
Lance nudged Kai. "You think she's going to speed dating?"
"If she is," Kai whispered, "I hope she's fire-retardant."
They both chuckled, but the laughter felt brittle. Outside, New York ticked on - an ecosystem in metamorphosis, its people trading carbon for complexity, simplicity for survival. As they neared the venue in Midtown, Lance leaned forward and said, "You ever think we're not evolving, we're just... being reformatted?"
Kai raised an eyebrow. "Tonight, let's just worry about whether we're kissable, not combustible."
The train pulled into the next stop. They stood up, the plastic ad panels humming above them, and stepped out into the night.
The event was held in a reclaimed bank lobby - now repurposed as "The Polymer Lounge," a sleek, modish venue with curved chairs and bioluminescent cocktails that looked like bottled coral reefs. There was a display near the coat check showing "Safe Transition Ranges," a bar graph tracking the average hydrocarbon index (HI) across boroughs. Manhattan was rising faster than Queens. The Bronx had plateaued. Staten Island, for reasons no one could explain, was chemically stable.
Lance stood at the bar, staring at a drink the color of transmission fluid. It fizzed faintly.
Kai leaned in. "Don't look at it like it's going to interrogate you."
"I think it's alive," Lance whispered. "There's a proteinoid skin forming on top."
"That's the garnish. It's trendy."
"I'm not drinking it."
Kai smirked. "Then it'll drink you."
A bell rang. Tables were numbered. Speed dating began.
Lance was Table 6. The women rotated.
Date One: Becca
She wore a red dress that clung to her like shrink wrap and smelled faintly of antiseptic and fruit leather.
"I used to be a chemist," she said immediately. "Now I'm more of a consultant. Biological stability optimization. You?"
"I teach public high school."
Becca blinked. "And they haven't converted the children yet?"
"I mean, the cafeteria changed," Lance offered. "No dairy. Everything glows a little."
She smiled politely. "Do you know your HI?"
"Uh... seventy-three."
"That's low."
"I've been moisturizing?"
Becca leaned forward. "You need to bind better. You know that, right? It's not just aesthetics. The transition isn't optional. It's cellular imperative."
Lance squinted. "I was told seventy-three was moderate."
"For now. But when the shift tips, you'll melt like a birthday candle."
"I... what?"
The bell rang. She stood, smiled tightly, and said, "Consider emulsifiers."
She moved to the next table. Lance stared at his untouched drink. The skin was thicker.
Date Two: Cynthia
Cynthia had a raspy voice and wore an old Radiohead t-shirt, the collar ripped. Her eyes were yellow, not sickly, just... viscous. Like engine oil.
"You seem tense," she said, biting her lip.
"I'm always tense."
"That's charming."
"I'm not sure it's meant to be."
She looked him over. "You smell natural."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Depends who you ask. I'm into vintage guys. You smell like asphalt after rain."
Lance blinked. "That's oddly specific."
She shrugged. "Everything smells something now. The Change enhanced my olfaction. I can practically track moods by sweat density. You? You're anxious, not afraid."
"That accurate?"
"Mostly."
Lance leaned forward. "Do you ever think about what comes after all this?"
"You mean when we finish the transition?"
"Yeah. When we're... not us anymore."
Cynthia looked away. "You still think in binaries. Human vs not-human. You need to stretch your taxonomy."
The bell rang. She winked and left.
Date Three: Asia
Asia had a clipboard.
"I'm doing a study," she said.
"Is this... part of the date?"
"Everything's a study now. How's your sebaceous rate?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Your skin oils. Are they gelling?"
"I don't know," Lance said. "I've been dry lately."
"Dry is death," she said. "Lubrication is adaptation. You need mucosal resilience."
"I teach teenagers. I don't get to use phrases like 'mucosal resilience' in polite company."
Asia ignored him. She clicked a pen. "Do you dream of oil?"
"What?"
"It's a common sign of pre-transition consciousness. Dreams of viscosity, pressure, thermal shift. You'd be surprised how many people dream in refinery metaphors."
"I had a dream my arm was turning into a plastic bag," Lance offered. "Does that count?"
Asia scribbled something. "It's a start."
The bell rang. Asia left. Lance noticed her heels left faint, greasy prints on the floor.
Date Four: Jo
Jo was different. Normal voice. Normal dress. Even the hair - soft, curly, alive.
"You seem... stable," Lance said.
"I'm not," she replied. "I just look it."
"Thank God. Everyone else tonight either wants to reclassify me taxonomically or convert me into an oil-based smoothie."
Jo laughed. "They tried to patent my sweat last month."
Lance paused. "Wait, what?"
"Some biotech company. Said I had rare trace compounds. Said I could help 'unlock the lubricant economy.' I said no."
"That's... beyond creepy."
Jo sipped her drink. "I think people are mistaking adaptation for ascension."
Lance nodded too quickly. "Exactly. Like we're all just climbing into a different kind of skin."
She looked at him, long and level. "Do you think we're losing our humanity?"
He swallowed. "Maybe we're not losing it. Maybe we're molting it."
They sat in silence.
The bell rang, but neither moved.
Kai, from across the room, was making faces. Lance ignored him.
Jo said, "What's your HI?"
"Seventy-three," he admitted.
She smiled. "Perfect. I'm seventy-four. We'd combust evenly."
He laughed. "That's the most romantic thing anyone's said to me tonight."
After the last round, Lance and Kai found each other near the exit.
"So?" Kai said. "Did you bond? Did you emulsify?"
Lance, dazed, nodded. "I think I met someone who's still at least twenty percent water."
"Chemically compatible?"
"Maybe."
"You smell like you fell in love with a refinery."
"You smell like regret and citrus."
Kai grinned. "Let's get on the train before one of us polymerizes."
They stepped out into the heat of the night. The air was thicker now, like a gel.
Evolution was happening. But so was dating.
The subway at 11:47pm was quieter than usual, but not empty. A man in a hazmat parka slept curled across four seats. A woman in biotech scrubs fed her hair through a device that extruded glossy polymers from the split ends. Somewhere near the back of the car, an electric violin hummed a dissonant, resinous tune.
Lance and Kai sat side by side, neither talking at first. The silence stretched between them like static on a screen - fuzzy, uncomfortable, hard to look at directly.
Lance finally exhaled. "That was like speed dating in a science fiction novel written by an arsonist."
Kai leaned back, resting his head against the vibrating wall. "And yet you stayed overtime with one of them. I saw that. Who was she? The one with the sweat patent?"
"Jo," Lance said. "She was... normal. Like she hadn't read the user manual yet."
"Or she's too far along to need one."
"No," Lance said. "She was holding on to something. Or pretending to. Either way - it worked."
Kai snorted. "So what, you two exchanged HI scores and bonded over shared semi-volatility?"
Lance turned toward him. "Can we not pretend this is normal? The HI score, the oil dreams, the dermal blooming - none of it is normal. You realize that, right?"
Kai shrugged. "Define normal. We used to drink cow milk and rub it on our faces. Now we drink kelp protein and exfoliate with nano-lube. We adapt. Humans are great at adapting."
"Adapting to what?" Lance snapped. "To chemical instability? To being re-written from the inside out?"
Kai looked at him evenly. "You think it's happening to you. Like you're a victim. But what if it's happening for you?"
"Oh, come on."
"No, listen," Kai said, sitting up. "Maybe this whole shift, this conversion or whatever you want to call it - it's not a freak accident. It's precision. Design. We don't know who's doing the writing, but the script is tight. It's not just about survival, it's about iteration. Evolution 2.0."
Lance barked a bitter laugh. "You've been listening to that poly-synthetist podcast again, haven't you?"
"It's called The Fifth Strain, and they make a lot of good points."
"They sell thermal-neutral socks for people with hydrocarbon feet."
"They also predicted polymeric neuro-synapse reformatting six months before it showed up in Belgium."
Lance slumped. "I just want to feel human again. Is that so much to ask?"
Kai looked over at him. "No. But what if that's the problem? Wanting to feel human when the whole definition of 'human' is being reconfigured."
"I don't want to be reconfigured," Lance said. "I want to wake up, have a coffee, go to work, feel tired at 3pm, eat noodles for dinner, and fall asleep in front of the TV. That's all. That's enough."
Kai smiled softly. "You ever think maybe all that was just a cocoon?"
"Jesus," Lance muttered, rubbing his temples. "Do you hear yourself? You sound like a spa brochure for a dystopia."
Kai chuckled. "And yet, you're still talking to me."
They were quiet again.
Outside the window, the tunnel lights streaked past in long, glowing smears. Lance's reflection in the glass looked paler than it had earlier, and faintly iridescent.
He turned to Kai. "Do you remember the smell of real sweat?"
Kai blinked. "What?"
"Before this. Before the Change started. When sweat smelled like salt and nerves, not solvent and eucalyptus."
Kai nodded slowly. "I remember my father's jacket. Old leather. Gym funk. Cigarettes and rain."
"I miss that," Lance said. "The smell of someone you love being a little gross. A little feral. You know?"
"I do."
Lance shifted. "Do you ever think about opting out?"
Kai raised an eyebrow. "Of the transition?"
"Yeah. Going off-grid. Building a shack in the Adirondacks. Eating lichen. Dying carbon."
Kai shook his head. "You'd last six days. Maybe four, if it rains."
Lance smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"You know what Jo said to me?" he asked.
Kai leaned in.
"She said: 'Maybe we're not losing our humanity. Maybe we're molting it.'"
Kai nodded slowly. "That's a good line."
"It is," Lance said. "It scared the hell out of me."
The train rattled through a curve. A screen above the door flashed a government PSA - STAY FLEXIBLE: Your body knows what to do. Trust the Change. Below that, a hotline number in bright green.
"You think we're going to make it through this?" Lance asked.
Kai didn't answer right away. He stared out the window, where the tunnel lights briefly revealed a mural sprayed on the wall: a human figure dissolving into oil droplets, then re-forming as a tree.
He said, "I think we'll get somewhere. Whether it's where we meant to go... that's the question."
Lance nodded. "I think I'll text her."
"Jo?"
"Yeah. Just to see."
"Good," Kai said. "Tell her you're at seventy-three and rising."
Lance smiled. "Seventy-three point five, if you count tonight's panic sweat."
Kai clapped him on the back. "That's the spirit. Just don't combust on me in your sleep, okay?"
"No promises."
The train pulled into their stop. The doors sighed open.
They stepped out into the night, the air thick as syrup, warm and faintly flammable.
Somewhere above them, New York breathed like a plastic lung. And the world spun forward - one molecule at a time.
They met at a small outdoor café in the East Village, one of the few places left that still served things that steamed. Real heat. Real water vapor. Nothing extracted or synthetically aerosolized. The waitress handed them menus made from something fibrous and suspiciously flexible - likely fungal - but at least it wasn't edible. An improvement.
Jo looked across the table at him, her eyes serious, sun-catchy, impossible to read.
"So," she said, resting her elbows on the table, "are you still seventy-three?"
Lance exhaled. "Seventy-four point two. I know. Technically we're no longer combustion-compatible."
"Shame," she said. "I was picturing a beautiful, mutual ignition. Quiet. Satisfying."
"I could lie," he said. "I could say I've plateaued."
"But you haven't."
"No. I'm becoming slightly... more slippery. I left a mark on my pillow last night. Looked like engine varnish."
Jo grinned. "That's sweet. You're leaking progress."
They paused while a drone delivered two glasses of something brown and steaming. Jo sniffed hers.
"Smells like root," she said. "Some kind of kelp-derived chicory hybrid?"
"I asked for coffee," Lance muttered. "They said they can't serve heat-roasted organics above seventy HI."
"Policy?"
"Absorption risk. Something about lipid destabilization."
Jo raised her glass. "To lipid destabilization."
They clinked. The sound was soft. Dull. Like resin tapping resin.
Lance leaned in. "I'm scared."
Jo didn't blink. "Of what?"
"Of everything. Of waking up slick. Of not being able to sweat. Of kissing someone and tasting petroleum. Of being too late to stay human, and too early to enjoy what comes next."
She looked down at her glass. "I miss dirt," she said. "Real dirt. Under fingernails. You ever think about how the word gritty used to mean real?"
"Now it means non-compliant surface texture."
Jo smiled. "Exactly."
"I had this dream," Lance said, "that I couldn't stop excreting a gel from my hands. Everything I touched stuck. People, walls, birds. I was in a park and pigeons just glued to me. I couldn't shake them off. My body kept generating this - this tacky, citrus-scented sealant."
"That's probably the transdermal shift. It starts in the subconscious. Your cortical folds pick it up before your skin does."
"That's not comforting."
"I didn't mean it to be."
A long silence. Around them, the city moved like a slow chemical process - shifting, unstopping. Buildings sheened with moisture-repelling coats. People's eyes were glossier than they used to be. And the breeze carried a sweetness no one could quite identify. Like overripe fruit and ozone.
Lance finally said, "Do you still dream in flesh?"
Jo looked at him with sudden focus. "What?"
"I mean - in your dreams, do you still feel like a person? Hands. Teeth. Hair. Or do you -"
"Change?"
"Yes."
Jo tapped her fingers against the glass. "I dream in materials. Surfaces. Once, I was a sheet of mylar stretched over a desert. Another time, I was submerged in a vat of prebiotic goo and I could taste infrared."
Lance swallowed. "That's... abstract."
"It was vivid."
"And you don't miss... being human?"
Jo leaned forward. "I miss the mythology of it. The idea that we were solid, fixed, complete. But you know what being human meant, biologically?"
"What?"
"Failure modes. Expiration dates. A circulatory system like a bad plumbing job. Emotional triggers wired into scent receptors and tribal panic. We were a glorious kludge."
"Now we're - what? Efficient? Better?"
"We're unfinished," she said. "Which is the best we've ever been."
He looked at her then - really looked. Her skin wasn't exactly skin anymore, more like matte sealant with pores. Her pupils had a prism edge. But her smile was still crooked, still very much Jo.
"I like unfinished," he said. "If you'll still have me at seventy-four point two."
She grinned. "Just don't go full paraffin on me."
"No promises," he said. "But I'll try to retain some friction."
They sat in quiet agreement. The café hummed around them with the low, molecular murmur of a species rewriting its own owner's manual. Somewhere, not far away, something combusted softly. Controlled burn.
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