Shades of Submission: Fifty by Fifty #1: Billionaire Romance Boxed Set

by Hunter, Adriana

To Æther, that was the only proof required. Texas would one day run out of land and ocean, and Æther didn't want the States to get close to that point.

  Æther would remain innovative and generous.

  Generosity bought loyalty. The Æther network came default on most computers, tablets, and mobile phones. They were particular about ad space, so only reputable and ethical businesses were sold a space on the coveted network.

  Ethics were very important to Æther, and they had an entire department dedicated to making sure their name wouldn't get tarnished by association.

  Tesla was able to convince the board with ease. It would be new research. He'd convinced the board that if he were successful, they would lead the way to dream therapy.

  Pharmaceuticals brought Æther the most money, but this would be such an excogitation, it would revolutionize the country the same way alternative energy had once Big Oil had left.

  Æther was on board and gave Tesla carte blanche to do what needed to be done. At thirty, his credentials were unmatched.

  Past research had indicated several speculations on dreams, from complete randomness that our logical brain at awakening tried to piece together, to evolutionary impulses that help attune our fight or flight response. Nothing had even been slated as definitive.

  Tesla and his team created a way to input stimulus through synthetic neurotransmitters which allowed parts of your brain to be susceptible to suggestion while dreaming.

  They put out an ad in the Æther Portal and were bombarded with applications through their online form. The compensation wasn't specific, but it was an easy way to collect money on the weekend, so many people decided to try for it.

  Thinking back, Tesla's vision turned an impossible green at the amount of applications he had to shelve. He had plans to let his team go through it, but they teased him about his various other senses. Since this project was his baby, they were happy to go with the applications he put aside.

  Chapter Three

  Josephine remembered her dreams for the rest of the week. Lucid dreaming had been an interesting exercise, and even if she wasn't completely in control, she felt clear upon waking and not at all muddled.

  She was meant to keep a detailed diary and email it off to Æther every morning.

  It was supposed to be a positive side effect, and one she hoped would flourish. She knew it would be the way to get any important information that her brain might have stored away.

  One dream in particular was of her father's funeral. Anton Hildegard had a brother and a sister, but they lived in Mexico as far as she knew. She thought she might have cousins, but she wasn't certain. She'd also heard her father speak of his own father, but she imagined he was dead. It was hard to think of her father going before his own father. It was horribly unfair.

  “Not today, Ra‒. His body's not even cold.”

  Her grandfather didn't come to the funeral, but there were others there she didn't know. In her dream, she saw who she assumed was her aunt. An older blonde woman. She was accompanied by a handsome blond man that she thought was a creepy uncle who liked to stare at her, but the woman spent a lot of time whispering in his ear. Rather emphatically. Looking at it from the outside, Josephine could see so much more than she hadn't noticed the first time around. Josephine could hear the woman, but she knew that couldn't be true. Maybe she was placing sounds from what she could read of her lips. But, it seemed more probable that she was making it up. She knew there was a mystery, but she didn't want to create more out of nothing.

  “Not today, Ray. His body's not even cold.”

  Josephine was told that these dreams shouldn't be fantastical, but of every day mundane things. She just worried that she wanted information so badly her brain would make up what she wanted to see.

  “Not today, Raphe. His body's not even cold.”

  Her father's death wasn't sudden. The tumor was blasted with a noninvasive laser, but it kept returning. Rapidly. They attempted some older methods of cancer treatments that were utterly barbaric, but the radiation kept the tumor from growing, but it weakened his body so that he wished for death. It was horrible to see him in so much pain.

  He never went into remission, but did his best to manage the pain. Josephine was relieved once the pain ended for him. Her mother would never be the same, but her father was free.

  Her mother grieved until the day she died. She became addicted to sleeping pills very early on, and she would sleep for what seemed like days.

  So much sleep led to pain, and Josephine watched as her mother added opiates along with her sleep aids.

  The last several years of Agatha's life was spent holed up in her room, wasting away on her marriage bed.

  Josephine would sometimes ask her questions, but it seemed she could never get her mother lucid enough.

  It was enough to put her off a proper relationship. If this is what happened, nothing good would ever be worth it.

  When Agatha died, the large estate felt exactly the same: A wasted space. Dark and depressing.

  Josephine knew she should probably sell it. It was far too much house for her, and any money made would allow her to live comfortably in Boston or Cambridge. If she were careful, she would never have to work again. She could just enjoy the city.

  When her father was alive, they had a live-in home manager and a small staff. Now the house was closed off except for her bedroom and the kitchen.

  She didn't know what kept her paralyzed in such an overlarge crypt. It would sell easily, so maybe it was the idea of having to leave and find another place to inhabit that was a paralytic.

  It was time to let go. With her weekend Boston trips, she should be able to find something suitable, if only to rent.

  Josephine looked forward to her trips to the city. They needed her overnight on Friday and Saturday, so she spent all of Saturday exploring the city.

  She read a bit about Æther Institute and looked for any job openings. If she found a job, it might be easier to leave Ipswich. She was grossly underqualified for nearly every position. She might be able to handle some secretarial work, or janitorial, but neither was something she wanted.

  Josephine didn't know what she wanted, but she wouldn't be idle. She knew it was a silly notion that her desires were hidden away, undiscovered.

  She also watched the men in the city. In her village, you knew everyone, so dates were few and far between. On occasion, she would get lucky with a weekender, but that was even more rare.

  Josephine spent a good deal of her time by herself, and she worried that she wasn't fit company. Everyone was boring and obsessed with money. She knew she took her own wealth for granted, but she never flaunted it.

  She didn't care to initiate shallow friendships, but she was guilty of not cultivating any friendships at all.

  She did find the researchers at Æther Institute interesting. She'd not met the head, Dr. Sorelle, and the way they spoke about him was as if he were some sort of reclusive genius. She could admit that intrigued her.

  They were open and friendly, and she felt herself wanting to spend more time with them.

  They didn't look down at her profession, or brush off any of her questions. They seemed to treat her as an equal. Not just as a woman, but as a human with brain power of her own, and a willingness to learn more about it.

  She wanted more people like that in her life.

  Chapter Four

  Tesla straightened his crisp white shirt, and pulled on his charcoal gray suit jacket. He selected a red tie. It was the only bit of color he could handle wearing, and while the suit had him overdressed, he needed the weight of it.

  Thankfully Æther Institute was freezing in the summer.

  Tesla was a Synesthete, and it was another reason he was so interested in dreams. Not that they were directly related, but they were both unpredictable and difficult to understand. For the most part, his Synesthesia wasn't an issue. It was all he'd ever known. Words and letters, and even sounds were assigned colors, and he liked hi
s colors to be harmonious. Whether he was working out a theorem or ordering food, he needed order. As such, loud chaotic places were something he couldn't do, and even normal places took planning. It was too much of a sensory overload, and that exacerbated the issue giving him additional input he had to file away to keep sane. He needed consistency. He needed predictability. His team was very familiar with his eccentricities and often helped make work more efficient. He wasn't necessarily coddled. When he was working at maximum efficiency, the whole team thrived. Projects were completed quickly, and Tesla's brilliance was their most important asset.

  While everyone who worked in research at Æther Institute was a genius, Tesla had the ability to connect dots that others couldn't see, and even his seeming whims, such as his newest project, were approved quickly. It was a treat to watch him prove his theories. And his team made sure he was allowed the headspace to do it with a clean and quiet environment. Tesla found them invaluable.

  It wasn't until he was a teen that a name was put to his abilities, as it was his brilliance people noticed and that overshadowed everything else.

  He had assigned colors for as long as he could remember, but when he hit puberty, he could feel a faint touch on his shoulder from across the room if he was looking at someone who was being tapped on the shoulder.

  It wasn't such a big deal. It was another reason for his suits. They helped prevent excess stimuli. If he saw someone getting punched in the face, he would feel it, but it would be muted.

  Walking into a room with one of his team getting a blow job had him calling for his driver to return him home.

  His guilty friend thought Tesla was embarrassed, but that was only part of it. He just had a relentless erection, and he needed the safety of his bedroom.

  Sometimes in moments of chaos, he had to force himself to have tunnel vision. He could feel every touch and bump seen when in a room full of people, so he didn't put himself through large groups very often. Driving was too stressful, so his parents arranged for a driver to bring him to and from home. It seemed excessive, but he truly needed that bit of decompression after work.

  He spent a good deal of his childhood practicing at normal, but it made matters worse. Thankfully, once he accepted his issues, and accepted accommodations without shame, his life became more manageable. It was why he was generous with his genius.

  Yet, going through all the applications was proving too stressful. It was a cacophony of shrieks and sounds, and he hated dismissing people out of hand. The sentence structures of some of the answers in a sans font was agonizing. He would change them to a serif if these were editable, but pasting them to a new document with mangled .html set his teeth on edge. It likely wouldn't help anyway, as most of the clashes were misused words or misspellings, and the colors rejected theory. It was blinding and loud all at the same time.

  He separated them into two folders: Ones that gave him a headache and ones that didn't. He opened the latter and his brain quieted. There was still some issues, but he'd had plenty of practice dealing with it on a day to day basis.

  One caught his eye and he stared at it for ages. It was baby blue, brightening with little mistakes. It didn't hurt. His brain had to allow for some mistakes or he'd never get to read anything ever again. Blue was good and easy, but the edges of the letters were gilded, and that wasn't common for him at all.

  Only certain words shone with golden light: Mathematical equations, electricity, sun and any prefixes or words relating to any of those in isolation. The difference was that all these words were a pale yellow with golden edges, but Josephine Hildegard had gilded blue, and it tasted of treacle.

  That was new.

  People didn't have a color unless they spoke, and then it was based on inflections and not visual stimuli. But, he was used to all that. He didn't know anything different. Even people with normal senses could still get overwhelmed, so he wasn't very different at all.

  He wanted to meet this Josephine to see what color her words would be. He'd never known a Josephine, so he didn't know why he processed her name and her writing the way he did. Sometimes it was illogical and nearly extraordinary how his brain filtered the world, and just when he thought he had it figured out and under control...something almost always gave him a reality check. Off-color and obnoxious;y loud.

  Once she was physically cleared, he would have a member of his team do the rest of the evaluation and he would listen at first, then pop in if that went well. As much as he wanted to see her, he would be cautious. He couldn't let this project go to waste because he was mismanaging his own issues that he should long be used to.

  But this felt different and he would be mindful of that.

  Chapter Five

  __

  Dr. Sorelle,

  I'd like to know if it's a possibility to work on particular memories? I had an olfactory hallucination when stepping onto the sand. I smelled baby powder. I'm convinced that I have memories I can't access.

  Thank you for your time,

  Josephine Hildegard

  __

  His eyes registered the sender before he even had to look at the name. He drank every word. He was more than inclined to help her. He made an effort not to sound dismissive.

  __

  Ms. Hildegard,

  Could you be more specific? We all have memories that aren't readily available, and it would be a tedious process to extract them all. Olfactory hallucinations are common enough in lucid dreaming. If you are wanting to revisit something more traumatic, I would want to bring in a health care professional. There is also hypnosis if time is of the essence.

  Regards,

  Dr. Tesla Sorelle

  __

  __

  Dr. Sorelle,

  Apologies for being unclear. I'm adopted and both my adoptive parents have passed. I'm not necessarily interested in finding my biological family for a relationship, but of information. I know next to nothing about either family. I know I won't remember being an infant, but I should be able to recall conversations I might've overheard when I was younger.

  Thank you,

  Josephine Hildegard

  __

  Tesla stared at the screen at the golden words. She had a name, but couldn't find out anything about herself. He did a preliminary search of her name and social security number through Æther's encrypted search engine.

  Josephine Grace Hildegard

  Birth: 06/28/2287, unknown, adoption initialized 07/05/2287, Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, adoption finalized 01/05/2288, Boston, MA

  Death:

  Father: Anton Klaus Hildegard

  Birth: 04/03/2250, Munich, Germany

  Death: 11/14/2305, Ipswich, MA, Cancer; Brain

  Mother: Agatha Jane Hildegard (Snowden)

  Birth: 07/07/2255, Boston, MA

  Death: 11/14/2315, Ipswich, MA, Opiate overdose, unconfirmed

  Tesla noticed two things: Josephine wasn't from the States, and that her mother likely committed suicide.

  He would write back asking permission to have a look around, but only as a formality. She's let them into her head, so this was nothing.

  __

  Ms. Hildegard,

  With your permission, I could do a little digging.

  Regards,

  Dr. Tesla Sorelle

  __

  __

  Dr. Sorelle,

  It would be greatly appreciated. I apologize that I don't have anything helpful for you to go on. Except my biological mother was named Josephine Grace as well. That's what my adoptive parents told me. She named me before she died, hours after birth, and they wanted to honor her.

  Thank you,

  Josephine Hildegard

  __

  __

  Ms. Hildegard,

  Do you know your birthplace?

  Regards,

  Dr. Tesla Sorelle

  __

  __

  Dr. Sorelle,

  I do not. They refused to tell me. Just that it had to remain a secret. I'
m assuming Germany is too obvious.

  Thanks,

  Josephine

  __

  Josephine. Shimmering, shining Josephine. He had a theory.

  __

  Ms. Hildegard,

  Preliminary searches have your birthplace listed as 'unknown'. Even in closed adoptions, a birthplace would be indicated as '[redacted]'. That leads me to believe it could be a handful of countries throughout the world. Texas is the closest by thousands of miles. Your adoption was initialized in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, I imagine for passport purposes to get back into the States, which leads further the Texas theory. If that's the case, hacking into there might be seen as an international incident.

  Regards,

  Dr. Tesla Sorelle

  __

  __

  Dr. Sorelle,

  My father had family in Mexico. He had a brother and sister. I don't know their names or ages. I believe I remember hearing that my grandfather lived their as well, but it's unreliable.

  Thanks,

  Josephine

  __

  That certainly confirmed his Texas theory, and if that was the case, how in the world did they get her out of there? He'd heard about a gateway in El Paso for migrant workers, so they either smuggled out the pregnant girl, or the baby.

  Tesla searched more specifically for Hildegards in Mexico in the last 50 years. He assumed it would be difficult for them to hide if they had the means to snatch a child from Texas of all places.