Montagne is Feelie. A touch-addict with extra nerve endings grafted over his dermis. He covered his penis and genitals years ago, then his buttocks and nipples. Now he may allow himself to orgasm from his shoulders when he carry his backpack, from his palms when he shakes hands, from his scalp when he massages his head. A crammed Caterpillar is bathing in carbonated water. A rave is random flashes of bliss when he’s bumped into, when a noobeat-panting girl, or a man, brushes his arms with their hair. Rain on naked skin makes him scrunch his face in delight-pain.

            He has sub-cutaneous slider on his right forearm that he caresses up or down to control level of responsiveness from his grafted DNC cutaneous layers, to protect himself from overload: otherwise walking through a crowded street at lunch time might just kill him. And so he micro-adjusts his settings to get to the right balance between buzz and jizz, between pressure and pleasure. Between blood and semen. Every day is one-notch upgame, a challenge to thin his defenses, to slide higher, to more. Rarely, very rarely, he even sets the controls to random, he won’t know if this collision with a stranger on the pavement will burst his heart or have him ejaculate.

            His addiction is not public knowledge, he doesn’t always wear his Union symbol, the Circle. People may sense his need though, sometimes. Perhaps is he standing too close. Maybe it’s the way he approaches them, open, empty, receptacle-like, maybe it’s the start of a silent groan that sometimes escape his lips, or his frank eye contact and in his pupils the reaction to the discharge of phenyl ethylamine.

            It may happen that some random stranger will spot the Circle and tunes in to his craving and plays along, in an Underground train, breathing down his neck, letting themselves stumble and gripping his elbow. Such encounters are rare and ever-cherished, thanked with a beatific smile and a wink. They respond with a knowing smile coming off the train, and he wants to follow them home and buy them presents, he dreams of morphing into sofa for them to sit comfy in.

            Montagne has Feelie friends whom he meets at regular interval, they talk of techniques, of gear and clinics, of patches of skin self-reinvaded, pleasure-reclaimed. Of work with such company or other, of the pharmaceutical skin-tests they endure for pay. They touch one another and have sex, men and women gasping coz they forgot to breathe. During slowed, lazy orgies in soundproofed, low-lighted rooms, they subtly prick and poke and lick and squeeze, and it’s a constant explosion. Such sessions are eminently exhausting and leave him a raw rag, shuffling back home, slider all the way downway. They leave his skin blotchy, couperosed, rough to the touch, and it’s a week or so before his satiastate fulfills and he’s ready again.