Serena began the discussion as soon as she settled at her desk, quickly distracting Flavia from thoughts of Flavio.
Despite staying later than usual due to their initial delay, neither Flavia nor the professor showed any hurry to conclude the meeting. They had turned off the office lights, and the desk was illuminated only by a table lamp and the computer screen.
Serena looked at Flavia with a satisfied smile, so affectionate it made her appear docile. Flavia lost herself in that smile, savored the touch of her hand, and, for a moment, her ambitions about participating in the military project seemed irrelevant.
«Look at the time...» Serena pointed out. «You missed your gym training to stay here; I know it matters to you.»
«If I miss one, it's not a big deal. This was more important, right?»
The professor unfolded her lips into a smile. «For me, yes. More than you can imagine. And for you?»
Flavia thought for a moment before answering, holding Serena's kind gaze. «I believe so.»
«More than the conversation with your friend?»
Using silence instead of words, Flavia responded with tacit agreement.
Serena then drew her gaze closer to Flavia's face, her blue eyes shining and evident like headlights in the twilight. «Come on, tell me what you're really looking for in me.»
Flavia wavered, confused by something that echoed in her heart, and she brought out her words in little more than a whisper. «I... don't know why you have this effect on me, I don't know why you spark my interest so much, why...»
«Why you enjoy spending so much time with me instead of with that guy who is so important to you? Why you have stayed here until this late hour, and why you are willing to stay, late into the night and to come back again? Is this what you're asking yourself?» the professor suggested. She took a deep breath and began to answer her own questions which she had used to express Flavia's thoughts. «Because you, like few others in the world, harbor the unrelenting suspicion that reality is incredibly deeper than what you've experienced so far. Because you intuit, you perceive, that the illusion we call experience doesn't end where your eyes capture light or where your skin makes contact with the air—that your limits are physically beyond, and you don't even know how much beyond, the infinitesimal portion of the universe that your senses can explore. Because that limit, as frustrating and undeniable as it is, is so elusive it makes you feel blind and deaf and plunges the cry of your spirit into an abyssal muteness. And because, inevitably, something vague but unforgiving is insistently telling you that I can help you explore that limit, and you hope that I—perhaps even unconsciously, indirectly, or fortuitously—can show you a glimmer in the darkness that oppresses your essence, can throw you a rope to attempt, if not a crossing, at least an approach to the vast chasm that separates your life from a unity of existence, a unity you know must be there to make sense of everything that constitutes your consciousness and memories of that life that you no longer arrogantly believe belongs entirely and exclusively to you.»
Flavia had struggled to keep her knees still while listening. Tight-shouldered, she had to rely on the back of the chair to mask the sense of vulnerability that weakened her torso. She felt read inside like never before, with a precision that was both terrifying and alluring. The emotion that was stiffening her throat and petrifying her gaze was a mix of instinctive fear and irrational hope.
Torn, she forced a smile of distrust. «Do you really think you can clarify all these things for me?»
«Yes,» Serena confirmed with extreme calmness and kindness. «I know you better than anyone else in the world.»
YOU ARE READING
Spare Future
Ciencia FicciónFlavio Mancini is a brilliant but lonely student from Rome who has a crush on Claudia, a wild and reckless girl. He doesn't know that he is the result of a genetic selection by the Interdimensional Assembly, a group of beings who can manipulate quan...
