Kendra Sunderland
(continued from this post)
I stood behind a bookshelf in the National City University library, apparently browsing. My mind’s eye, however, was checking out the mind of a student studying at a table on the other side of the shelf: Kara Danvers, aka Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl. In this universe, she was about my age, studying for a Master’s degree, and just started superheroing a few months ago. And, I was now discovering, Kryptonians in this universe were as similar to humans as ours, their brains close enough that my powers should work perfectly. My plan would require precise timing, but if I could pull it off it would work brilliantly.
I walked over to her table, putting on an expression of surprise and happiness. “Kara?” I said. “Kara Danvers?”
She looked up at me, and I pounced. There was already confusion there, but I upped it slightly, while also inducing feelings of warmth, happiness, and familiarity.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at me closely. “Uh…”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“You seem really familiar… But I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s me!” I said. “Mid. From high school? We had English together?” I reduced her confusion, amped up her familiarity and happiness.
“Oh my God, Mid! Of course! How’ve you been?” It didn’t matter that she had no memories of me. She felt like she did, and her mind would naturally fill in the gaps for the rest. That’s how memory works–your brain doesn’t pull up a video file, it constructs a simulation of the past based on a few sketchy impressions, the queues in your environment, and your current emotions. False memories are ridiculously easy to create, to the point that police and therapists need special training to make sure they don’t create them in witnesses and patients by accident.
So I sat and chatted with Kara for a while. I made vague comments and let Kara fill in details, then I fed those details back to her while I played her emotions. Before long I was a major figure in her memories, a popular guy she knew but was never close to. It was time to move on to the next phase.
“You want to hear something funny?” I said. “Jenny Carmichael told me a couple years ago that you had a crush on me in high school! Ridiculous, right?”
Before she could reply I flooded her with emotions: embarrassment, anxiety, desire, affection. I was rewarded with an adorable blush that flashed across her cheeks while she looked down.
“Now way,” I said. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she admitted, her current feelings coloring the memories her brain was building. “I was into you so hard, but you know how shy I was..”
As we kept reminiscing, she got flirtier. By the time she remembered she had a class to get to, she was laughing, playing with her hair, leaning forward while conveniently not noticing the view it gave me down the front of her shirt, all the classic signs. The groundwork was laid; the next phase would begin tonight
(to be continued…)
Reblog because I finally updated with the actual caption!