Alison took a deep breath as she passed through the first of the two sets of steel doors, reminding herself that she would be safe.
The guard must have noticed her anxiety, because he smiled broadly. "Is this your first time interviewing a prisoner?"
Alison shook her head. "No. That's the thing about it. I don't know why, but I'm... I guess it's just that, well, you know... I mean, I've interviewed murderers and child molesters and real monsters out there. But for some reason, this..."
He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder as they passed through the second set of doors and started walking down the dimly lit hallway for the cell they sought. "Personally, I think a lot of the stories out there are... Let's just say that they may have exaggerated a thing or two."
The guard brought a chair around the corner. Alison sat down, peering through the iron bars behind which the condemned criminal had been living for the past ten years.
She smiled up at the guard, who backed away a few feet.
Reaching into her jacket pocket, Alison retrieved her pocket recorder and took another deep breath. She leaned in closer to the bars, peered into the dimly lit cell, and called, more tentatively than she would have liked, "Um... Margaret? Margaret Stoner?"
The prisoner stepped out from the shadows and moved quickly towards the bars. Alison jumped back for a moment.
Ten years in prison haven't been kind to this woman since she was caught, Alison thought. She looks nothing like the pictures from her trial.
Margaret looked at the reporter and scowled. She started to place her hands over her ears but decided against it.
"I thought I've done pretty well for myself here," the prisoner spoke.
Did she just hear... Alison started to think.
"Your thoughts?" Margaret asked, tauntingly. "Well, my dear, wouldn't you go a little bit mad if you could hear what other people were thinking?"
Alison froze in her chair. She knew about Margaret's crimes. They were the lurid stuff of tabloid newspapers for years from when the press picked up on the crimes, until well after she was caught, tried, and convicted. But somehow, in all of that time, no one ever really questioned the 'how' or 'why' of it all.
That was Alison's job. Her editor had been fortunate enough to procure Margaret's final interview before her planned execution. Considering Alison's experience, she was the perfect candidate.
Alison cleared her throat and heard Margaret scoff.
"You know, Alison. You don't need to put on airs around me. I'll see through it anyway. I don't even think I'm anywhere near as dangerous as..." Margaret paused, looking for information about other criminals Alison had performed. "... Louis Stanley Peebles. Now he was a monster."
Alison first felt shocked that the prisoner knew any of her prior interviews, especially one from that long ago. She let out a gasp before reminding herself that Margaret had the ability to read minds. Still, her voice was tremulous when she responded. "Oh, sorry."
There was a brief silence. The guard stepped closer to Alison and said, "She may not really show it, but she *is* thankful that finally someone wants to know her story."
Margaret waved her hand and the guard backed off again.
Alison reached for her recorder and held it out for Margaret to see. Margaret nodded and Alison turned it on.
"All right, Miss Stoner --"
"Please, call me Margaret."
"Sorry. Margaret. As we get underway with this interview, is there something you'd like to say before I start asking you questions?"
Margaret gazed at the reporter sitting opposite her. Seeing that this reporter truly wouldn't judge her, she decided to respond directly. "I suppose you'd like to know how I feel about my crimes. Maybe you think I'm just someone whose passions got a little bit out of control or something.
"Well, let me make one thing perfectly clear: I don't regret a moment of it, and nothing got so bad that I couldn't retain control. Do you understand? It was my overconfidence that led to my capture. And even then, I probably could've gotten out of it. Were it not for the intervention of David Sherman, I wouldn't be here today. I'd be free and eluding capture still to this day."
Alison nodded knowingly. "What did he--?"
"He was the only person I ever trusted throughout this whole process."
"Tell me more."
Margaret sighed. "You know, Alison, for all of these powers I have, the one thing I truly wish I could do is go back in time and change the past."
Alison cocked her head to one side and thought, but I thought she just said...
Margaret cleared her throat. "You forget I can hear your thoughts. Yes, I just said I don't regret a moment of it. But if I could change the past, I would go back to where it really all started and tell my younger self not to make that phone call."
"Which phone call was that?"
"I was in college. Like most college kids, I was broke. There was this ad in the paper, looking for paid testers for a new video game. Now, this was back in the day when most video games needed a purse full of quarters and people stood behind you as you played ... whatever. Atari, Nintendo and Sega had their own niche in home game systems, but the action was definitely in the arcade.
"Now, I wasn't a big fan of all of the shoot-em-up games, but I loved some of the other games they had at that time. So I called the number in that ad and spoke with David. He said he had a game -- it was a combination maze-navigation and puzzle solving game -- that he said offered an experience unlike any other. He called it 'The Body Electric' and I remember thinking that it was a kind of a silly name, but not bad for a video all the same.
"I told him what kinds of games I liked and he said this would be right up my alley. So I arranged for a date and time to go out to his office and try out his game."
Alison leaned forward as Margaret spoke. At the trial, everyone learned about this experiment that David was a part of, but this was the first she'd ever heard of it being a video game.
"David's office was a few blocks off campus. I remember the walk to the office. It was raining so hard, my umbrella was basically useless. I was drenched by the time I got to his office.
"When he first saw me, he offered me a towel and I quickly dried off my face and hands. He actually looked away as I did that. That's when I realized I could trust him.
"I looked around the office. I saw two game machines in one corner, and there were people playing both of them. Three people were sitting in the waiting room: one was thumbing through a magazine, and other two were filling out some paperwork on a clipboard. It was a relief to know I wasn't going to be alone.
"As I sat down myself, David said that he'd let me know when I could go up and try my hand at the game. He said it would be self-explanatory how to play the game, so I should just make myself comfortable until it was my time.
"I grabbed a magazine and started looking alternately at the magazine itself and the other people in the room. David was standing near one of the men playing the game.
"I heard some fairly ominous music coming from the video games. The guy playing the game where David stood, he slapped the machine and yelled, 'fuck!' David guided the guy to a seat and handed him a clipboard. The guy started to fill out the papers he had been handed.
"David then came to the guy in the waiting room. You know, the one reading a magazine, and guided him to the now-open machine. I figured this meant I'd be next. I really couldn't focus on my magazine, between the knowledge that I'd be playing next and the sound of the rain battering the windows outside the office.
"It wasn't long before David came up to me and asked me if I had any questions. I asked him if I was the only woman to test his game, and he laughed, saying that the men did outnumber the women testing the game, but there have been a few, so I shouldn't worry...
"I took my place at the machine and looked at the controls: it had a track ball and two buttons on either side of the ball. I always loved games that let you play either left-handed or right-handed, and this fit the bill. I watched some of the animations on the game before I started. The graphics were pretty good -- sure, they're nothing, I'm guessing, compared to what you see today, but it looked like a lot of fun.
"So I hit the start button and began to play. Using the track ball, I moved my character through this maze. Occasionally, I'd come up to a point where I had to stop, and solve a puzzle. The solution always involved some combination of the buttons and the speed and direction you'd roll the trackball.
"The first puzzle I solved... Let's just say that's when the real fun began in the game."
Alison cocked her head to one side. "What do you mean?"
"With my hand resting loosely on the track ball, I felt ... I guess the right word would be a surge. A surge of power, of pleasure, of pure sensation. It went straight into my hand.
"I looked over at David, who simply smiled and said, 'Keep playing. It gets better.'
"So I went back into my game. The surge got stronger and stronger with each puzzle I solved. I would've been too ashamed at the time to tell David this, but I was starting to get physically aroused."
In the brief silence that fell over the corridor in the prison, Alison looked at Margaret, wondering if she was pausing for dramatic effect or if there was some other reason for the sudden silence.
Margaret took a deep breath. "Then it happened. I solved a really tough puzzle in the game, and I felt another surge. At the exact same time, I heard a loud clap of thunder right outside of the office. Or at least, I think that's what I heard.
"The next thing I knew, I was lying in a hospital bed. They told me that a bolt of lightning struck a transponder or something like that, and the energy blew out the video game and all of the power went straight into my hand. That surge put me in a coma for a month."
Alison gasped.
