Rei and the bands, part 3

In the original, long-form version of Rome's Revolution, Rei and Rome used the espansor bands but the experience was quite different. It was not nearly as intimate and it did not cause Rome to fall in love with Rei. The scene is fairly long so I will break it up into multiple entries. Here is part 3:

     She reached down and took his hand again. Rei didn’t mind. With his free hand, he reached up and rubbed his eyes. He sighed deeply and said, “That was so intense. How do you stand it? I don’t think you could do that for very long without going crazy. Is that what the Overmind is like?”
     She smiled at him. “No,” she said, “the Overmind only connects the higher brain functions, just the intellect. Your feelings, your memories are your own unless you want to present them to the group. It is more like a conversation, more like a verbal interchange. These bands were built long before the need for such a distinction was made clear.”
     “Wow,” he said. “I have memories now that I know are from your head but they feel just like real memories.” He looked down at their hands, fingers now intertwined. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to let his hand go. “Rome, you had it rough as a kid.”
     “I survived,” she said. She pulled her hand free and touched another depression on the box. Rei’s band loosened and he removed it from his head. Rome did the same and he could see that there was a mark on her skin where the band had been. She popped open the box and placed the bands in there gently. Then she closed it.
     “We can do that again sometime if you would like but it would be best if we waited a few days so that your mind can assimilate what it has acquired now.”
     “I’d like that,” he said. “Now that I know what to expect, I think I would really enjoy that.”
     “All right.” She stood up and carried the box over and placed it back in the dresser drawer. Rei considered all that he had just been exposed to while she came back to sit down on the bed again.
     “You didn’t reconnect to the Overmind yet, did you?” he asked.
     “No. Why?”
     “Because you like this. You told me you didn’t but you and I both know you do."

In this older version, Rome did not realize that Rei was her Asborodi Cimponeti. This is long before I knew that Rome's parents used the bands as well. It is pretty neat to learn things about the characters as you write them. I wonder what happened to Rome's brother and two sisters. The modern Rome has no siblings. Oh well.