The Soulmate Curse

CARNATIONS (for friendship) - Part 2

Elk Grove High. The institution used to be a high school, something it hadn't been for a long time. Most, if not all, students were now a part of Robinson Schools. Named after Sir Ken Robinson, an international advisor on education from the ninety nineties and the early two thousands, these were digital and virtual entities where students made up their own curriculums and uploaded assessment pieces onto blockchain protected files that would eventually make up their academic record. The rigidity inherent to physical educational institutions didn't fit into this new learning system. Lots of school buildings had been shut down or repurposed, like Elk Grove High.

The former high school was now home to the only quantum computer in the county. They would soon be everywhere, but it would probably still take a decade or two for that to happen. Until then, the school was open to the public, accepting applications to use the computer. The other parts of the institution had been refurbished to allow for conferences and local meetups. This camp was a meeting of a local chapter of the Open Source and Maker Collective, individuals who continuously added to software and hardware libraries both online and offline for free use by anyone with internet access around the globe.

As Finn walked into the building's door, someone behind her said, "This is the closest I've been to the county's only quantum processor."

Finn turned to look at the girl, having no clue that her life was about to change forever. She felt her stomach drop and her heart race. What? No! This wasn't happening. Time seemed to have stopped. Colors were too bright. Sounds too loud. Her body confused as to whether she was euphoric or in the midst of catastrophe.

At 20, Keira had been the youngest Darrow woman befallen by the curse. Finn was only 15! This wasn't supposed to be possible. She tried to keep the horror off her face as she looked at the girl. Light brown eyes looked back at her and a cheeky smile lit them up. Both were framed beautifully by straight black hair that fell over her right shoulder and rainbow coloured strands over her left.

"Yeah, me too," Finn said, raising her wrist wrap to the scanner next to the door jamb. She was surprised at how calm her voice was. The scanner beeped as it recorded her details. The girl followed suit as Finn pushed through the doors before them.

Once they were both inside, the girl offered her hand. "I'm Zhen."

Finn raised an eyebrow. She had met very few people who shook hands when they first met someone, a practice abandoned after the pandemic years of the twenty twenties. Still, she accepted it with a genuine smile that mirrored Zhen's.

"I'm Finn."

She didn't want to immediately pull out her sanitiser, so she made a mental note to do so when Zhen wasn't looking. Zhen consulted her wrist wrap for the Augmented Reality holoprojected trail to their first meetup point. Finn let her lead with just enough space between them to not seem disinterested, but also enough to squelch on a little unscented sanitiser from her pocket. Her mind was spinning as she focused on Zhen.

Intense feelings were building up inside her. She was giddy, a little dizzy and getting sweaty under her jacket, even though the weather was cooler than usual for autumn. Zhen looked like she'd just walked out of a global fashion designer's news feed. Her hair fell to below her shoulders like a waterfall, and the inch-thick of rainbow coloured strands on the left side were iridescent. There was a pink undertone to her fawn and flawless skin and her heart stopping smile formed easily every time she turned to talk to Finn. She was dressed to the teeth in a classic black leather jacket, sleeves pulled up her forearms, a black low cut tee that showed off her midriff and black distressed skinny jeans with a hole in her left knee and simple black sneakers with white soles. She even had an old school backpack.

Zhen turned to Finn. "Like what you see?"

Finn could feel the heat in her cheeks and quickly turned her focus on the jiggling AR arrows on her wrist wrap's holoprojected screen, guiding their way.

After an awkward moment silence, Finn finally asked, "Did you organise to meet with anyone at the camp?"

"Not this time," said Zhen, not bothering to hide the fact that she knew the effect she was having on Finn.

However, Finn was suddenly intrigued by this new morsel of information. "You've been here before?"

"It's my second camp."

Finn was impressed, and a little jealous. Zhen looked the same age as her. "What was the Keynote challenge for the last camp?"

"Designing the second rover that surveyed the asteroid belt," Zhen replied nonchalantly, without skipping a beat.

"Desire? The rover that discovered the first viable mineable asteroid on the first Lagrangian Zone?" Finn said, not fully convinced. This information was available to everyone through the site of the Open Source Collective.

"That's the one," said Zhen. "My design didn't place, but it wasn't too bad. I can show you later if you want."

Finn was speechless. Zhen wasn't lying. Finn took a few moments to process that. While Zhen clearly wasn't much older than her, she did have an unapologetic presence and confidence that covered every one of her actions and everything around her like an aura, something Finn felt both drawn to and intimidated by. They took their seats in the main conference room, waiting for the talk to welcome them all and pose the Keynote Challenge that they would be working on during this camp. Zhen unrolled a tablet scroll that she pulled out of her backpack. Her background image was a stylised artistic rendering of a classic cartoon couple from the early 2000s, Princess Bubble Gum and Marceline the Vampire Queen.

"They're from Adventure Time." Said Finn with a smile.

Zhen turned to Finn, her eyebrow raised. "You know it?"

Finn rolled open her own tablet screen. Her background was Lady Rainicorn from the same cartoon show. She smiled and said, "It was always playing at my grandma's house whenever we visited."

The first night at the camp was a party night. It was the camp's way of getting people to mingle and get acquainted. A way to help them bond before they got together to work through one of the largest challenges of the 60s. Finn and Zhen were pretty young at 15 and 16 and they had to follow certain rules from the chaperones. However, it wasn't as restrictive as Finn thought it would be. They had fun, talking and dancing through the night.

Finn thought about how one can mentally prepare for something to happen every day of their lives, but never really be prepared for it when it happened. She was suddenly faced by a choice she'd hoped she wouldn't have to make for a long time. A choice she thought she already knew the answer to but wasn't sure about anymore. Finn had always figured that once meeting her soulmate was over and done with, she would completely ignore the fact, avoid the heartache facing them both and put as much distance between them as possible. She'd planned to lead her life by embracing a workaholic lifestyle and building an illustrious career that spanned industries and helped countless people better themselves and others.

As she danced with Zhen, however, that plan was completely sidelined. Finn was falling. And she suddenly didn't care for parachutes. With Keira and some of her other cousins, the falling had included an insatiable need to find a room and be buried under the covers for days on end. Finn marvelled at how she felt none of that for Zhen. Only this hope that they could just hang out for as long as was possible with each hour that they spoke and got to know each other.

Zhen was wicked smart, incredibly athletic and extremely motivated. Like Finn, Zhen had customised her academic framework around the principles of Mechatronics Engineering and had completed projects and submitted theses that were challenging the limits of what was traditionally known as a master's degree program. She'd just been picked as an astronaut for the Global Space Initiative, to be trained as one of the candidates for Mission Commander for the 2075 Mars Mission, a mere twelve years away. Finn grew more and more infatuated with every new thing she learnt about her. And she knew that there was no way she was going to be putting any distance between them. She'd made up her mind. Zhen was hers and she wasn't going to let go, let alone betray, what they had.