My Girl Lollipop

“What do you mean they aren’t food? They’re brightly coloured lollies on a stick. They’re fucking lollipops. Not much in the way of food value I know but still food. I mean you stick them in your mouth and suck them don’t you?’

Ellis looks at me before reaching into the box and lifting one out. He holds it up to the light as if it is a glass of fine wine. The lollipop is semitransparent, bright green and about three centimetres long. It is shaped like a cookie cutter ginger bread man but with a small white stick up its butt. It is a human shaped lollipop pure and simple.

“Yeah, yeah I know what they look like but they’re not food. No nutritional value in them at all and they might look sugary but they aren’t. This has the same content of fat, protein and sugar as an ice cube. You’re not getting what I am trying to tell you.”

Ellis waves the lollipop like a baton. “This is not food. It can’t be because it is 100% human and if it was food and you put one of them in your mouth you’d be a cannibal no different that Hannibal Lecter.”

“Well what is it then?”

I am starting to feel ill, even more than usual in Ellis’s company. He has a brain the size of a planet but as much empathy as a lava flow. He is my brother in law but it is easier to think of him as a rich genius fuck.

”Because Seb this is 100% purified, organised, pastuerised if you wish, human memories on a stick. Plus they are available right now for you to experience.”

 He hands the lollipop over. I examine it. It still looks like an everyday lollipop from all angles. I smell it, initially there is no odour but then I catch a whiff of fresh sweat before bacteria turns it nasty.

I open my mouth and place the Humanpop, as I now call it in my mind, on my tongue. For a split second there is a taste of copper, reminiscent of blood and then that’s gone and all I feel is the weight on my tongue, a surging wave of saliva in my mouth and suddenly a female voice in my head. The voice is posh English and another part of my brain instantly thinks of Keira Knightley in the movie Love Actually. So, so far it is not an unpleasant experience. The voice grows louder, not in my ears but in my brain somewhere in from and above my ears. The voice turns to laughter but it isn’t happy laughter, it sounds forced and bitter. I start to feel angry.

 A picture forms in my mind but I am not creating or driving it. I feel like a receiver, like I am a TV. It isn’t like a daydream. It is foreign and intrusive. There are wisps like smoke of someone else’s memory of an argument, of a man’s face close and angry.

I take the Humanpop out of my mouth and the laughter and face fade away. I pick up my cold coffee and sip. The laughter stops. Cold coffee washes over my tongue and palate. I slide the Humanpop back between my lips and again sound builds in my brain but not in my ears. There is breathing and sighing and a rhythmic grunting and it takes me a few seconds to realise what I am hearing. Again a picture begins to form in my head. There is a bedhead, padded with red material, some man is behind me, well behind the memory person but I am melding with the memory person in my head. He is thrusting into me in a slow steady rhythm and arousal is building and a sense of being full and contentment, maybe even love. I take the Humanpop out of my mouth with a shaking hand and the sounds and vision of sex fade.

Ellis watches me.

He smiles, “You should have let that go longer.  It gets quite hot.”

I babble then.

”Who is this?

Are they just one person’s memories?  

Is it one day, a lifetime?

How long does the sucker last?  

Is this legal and how?

HOW?”

Ellis smiles and answers mimicking my jabber.

“Don’t know.

 Many.

In between.

With constant sucking about forty minutes, but aah don’t.

It doesn’t matter.

For you, it really doesn’t matter.”

I sit there thinking about his answers. Ellis passes the box over. It is full of Humanpops and the print on the open flap says the contents are 500.

 “How come they aren’t individually wrapped?” I ask.

“No need. They are completely inert until they touch saliva and the surface is somehow anti-bacterial and dirt repellent. We have dropped them in shit, sprinkled smallpox on them, even dipped them in Fukushima water fresh out of the leaking reactor and it all just slides off, all of it, every atom. In some ways the memory recall is the least amazing thing about them.”

I must have looked disbelieving.

“Seriously, it is like the memories repel everything that could hurt you.”

He takes a deep breath.

“Seb, we are releasing them on the first of June in the Philippines. It is basically a failed country since the dirty bombs in Manilla. So legalities are not an issue.  Distribution is arranged through the ruling Military units, they’re taking a mighty cut but 50% of that is in product so…  but I need an advertising campaign, I need a tag line, I need something to take this from top secret to international general knowledge as fast as possible. Your budget is one billion dollars.

He pauses and looks at me in the eye.

“Seb, I have over fifty million pops carrying a thousand different memories ready to go.

So do you want the job or not?”

Photo by Daria Gordova on Unsplash