First Love

First love struck at the age of 17. Like a tiny gilded, guided love missile it thundered towards Charlotte, first entering her chest cavity and penetrating her aorta, before ripping through her back muscles, and rocketing out between her shoulder blades. Its primary mission had been to lay shimmering chains of devotion molecules on its way, finishing off by tying them into a rather large ostentatious bow around her heart.

Once free of her body, the love missile streaked rapidly skywards where seconds later, it juddered silently to a mid-air stop some 200 metres above her head. Then, as if after a change of mind, in order to make absolutely sure of its assignment, the arrow turned deliberately to point downwards, and gathering speed, came dive bombing down, kamikaze style into her psyche. It entered through the top of Charlotte's head, where it remained lodged for the next 35 years.

Although Charlotte did not notice the technical aspects of the event, she surely felt them. For, when George's eyes met the gaze of her own, the two love missiles, (for George had received one too), initiated a mutually receptive tractor beam thereby installing the required mental software. This lead immediately and irrationally to them both craving physical and emotional proximity, by any means.

It was of course, all over in an instant, and George although not fully aware of what had happened, felt compelled to approach the beautiful girl he had just seen in the campus gardens to ask her out. Unusually, there was no fear in his heart " largely due to the sub-ether mono-nucleic confidence generator that was working at full pelt in George's left ventricle. For George there was a certainty on his part that this young woman was already linked to him, and only to him. He could feel it - rejection would be unthinkable. With both love missiles silently facilitating a high speed first-love connection, Charlotte found she had no choice but to accept the mental invitation from the alluring stranger who had so unexpectedly transfixed her gaze.

Now, both young hearts were beating in rhythm, pumping hormones into blood veins, whose transportation status had already been promoted to high-alert. At the same time, via the furiously busy soul mate processing procedures, the virginal love victims exchanged memory ions. Later when the processed blood in question travelled through the brain, shared memories would deposit themselves in each subconscious, creating a certain synchronicity of feeling and experience, that the young lovers would later note was so coincidental, so unlikely, as to be fateful. They would be convinced that they had been made for one another.

Liz Jamieson