Gifted Grifter Ch 01

Gifted Grifter: The Beginning

For reasons that will soon become clear, I cannot tell you my name.

At one time, I was a research scientist. I had started out thinking I would be an engineer, but became interested in psychology along the way; my work combined both. My specialty area was the electromagnetics of mental activity. I was hired after graduate school by the Department of Defense; my boss was an old cold warrior with a fondness for dream weapons. He had hopes that my experiments could lead to thought-controlled weapons, like the super-MIG from the old movie Firefox, and had given me all the resources I needed to try to harness the power of thought.

II was working on a device to magnify and transmit the micro-magnetic magnetic impulses that neurons generated when active. I also had built a receiver for the magnified signals; it could pick up radio stations 500 miles away, but outside of that I wasn't getting far. The problem was that I couldn't determine for sure that there were meaningful patterns in the micro-magnetic impulses, and if there were I sure didn't know how to convert them into a meaningful output. My data were promising insofar as test subjects thinking different kinds of thoughts produced radically different magnetic fields, but I couldn't even begin to guess how I could ever relate them back to what underlying meaning they might have. With billions of neurons and neural connections in the brain, it wasn't like I could just proceed with trial and error. But I also didn't have any better ideas.

During the last six months that I worked for DoD, I had a graduate student working with me. Jessie was her name, and her area of expertise was neural imaging. She was collecting data for her dissertation while assisting me with my transmission experiments. She was also taller than I at 6'2—her straight blonde hair was nearly three feet long—and had played Division I Volleyball as an undergraduate. She was always very professional at work, in demeanor and dress, but when you're that tall, shirts that are tailored to just meet the top of a skirt tend to come up a bit short, and skirts tend to fall a higher above the knee than intended. As a result, she was constantly flashing bits of enticing flesh when she didn't mean to; I spent way too much time keeping an eye on her because you never knew when the next show would start. She was in a relationship, though, so other than my straying eyes I too stayed within the guidelines of appropriate professional behavior.

We had spent all week trying to calibrate our latest experiment. She was going to do PET scanning of a test subject doing specific cognitive tasks. I was going to try to use my magnetic amplification helmet to try to reproduce the images remotely using my receiver, then correlate magnetic impulses with neural activity on the PET scan. She was wearing the amplification helmet while I worked with the software in the receiver to sharpen the three-dimensional recreation of the magnetic activity in her brain. Even though it was Friday, we had put in a long hard day, and it was well after five before it finally started generating sharp images.

"Finally, we can go home!" she sighed. She started to pull of her helmet; her hair got caught up in it from having had it on for so long.

I laughed and said, "OOO, that's a nice look, hey, what do you think of this one?" The receiver unit consisted of three thick tubes running front to back and left to right, welded together to form a half-sphere; it looked like the framework you might use to construct a globe, but with an open bottom. I put it on my head, which made it look like a hollow helmet.

Suddenly this thought flashed through my head: "mushroom." A split second later, Jessie said "You look like a mushroom." Mushrooms? I don't even like mushrooms, and certainly didn't see myself to notice that perhaps I looked like one. Then a split second later she had said mushrooms. Huh?

"Hey, Jessie, that thing on?" I asked. Again a rapid succession of thoughts flashed across my head, but with a distinct quality of apartness, like they were coming from somewhere outside my head: the ideas of distrust, tiredness, frustration, and "here we go again." "Yes, I turned it off" she said testily. It was as if I was getting her thoughts transmitted into my brain.

"Got big plans for tonight?" I asked, testing further. More flashes: boyfriend, frozen pizza, TV junkie, loser.

"Nah," she said, "gonna go home, grab a bite and just veg in front of the TV." More flashes: be polite, ask back "You?" she asked.

"I think I'm gonna stay here and keep working," I said.

"Suit yourself" flashed across my mind, a second before she said it.

I took off the helmet and held it in my hand. It had never occurred to me that with a strong enough receiver the micromagnetic fields associated with thinking could be picked up from a distance without amplification. And it had never occurred to me that the brain could react to micromagnetic fields, relating them back into concepts. But that seemed to be what was happening; my receiver was finally calibrated right, and was basically snatching a snapshot of someone else's brain activity and relaying it back to my own brain, which then interpreted the meaning of that activity for me. It appeared that I had created a machine that could read minds.

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I hadn't thought out the implications of having created a mind-reading machine were, but it seemed pretty obvious that there could be a lot of applications. As a result, I had instinctively kept my discovery to myself. But I needed to test it out. Would it work on other people, or had being connected to Jessie for hours resulted in a person-specific calibration? Given that every person's brain is organized slightly differently, this was certainly possible. And was there anything special about the specific design of the receiver? Or could I possibly design a smaller, portable version—one that I might be able to field-test.

I ran out to my car, grabbed an old baseball cap that I remembered was in my trunk and took it back to my office. Fortunately, I had built several prototypes of the receiver, so I had many half-assembled pieces already available. I spent about 45 minutes assembling pieces of a receiver and duct-taping them to the inside of the hat. Then I loaded in the software and began the calibration program, ran out to the nearest drive-thru, then came back and ate while the program finished up. By 7:30, I had a portable, baseball-cap receiver to test. I put in some cotton stuffing so the electronics wouldn't be so sharp and pointy on my head, put the cap on, and headed out to test it out.

But where? I got in my car and started to drive. One of the first things I saw was a convenience store. Perfect. I drove up and walked in to the store.

There was a woman behind the counter, mid-twenties with too many tattoos, talking on a cell phone. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I kept getting flashes of ideas: marijuana, boyfriend, sex, movie, Doritos. That could very well be what she was thinking; certainly I wasn't thinking it. I went to the cooler and grabbed a six-pack. I noticed that when I wasn't looking at her, I was no longer "hearing" her thoughts. Either it had something to do with aiming, or additional visual information was needed for the brain to be able to interpret the signals. I went to the front to pay, and as soon as I looked at her the signals started in again. What a bother; hold on; check ID; screw it, this guy is way old; ring it up and get him out of here, $7.44.

"That will be $7.44," she said without the slightest hint of courtesy.

I gave her a ten, and the thoughts came: cash, change, I hate math, $2.66, is that right, I don't know, I don't care, whatever. She handed me my change and started talking on her phone again. Girlfriend, cheating on her boyfriend, going to be a fight...the cap was telling me much more than I cared to know about the life of the minimum-wage clerk at the convenience store.

I was shaking with excitement when I got to the car. It worked! It didn't need to calibrate to one person for long periods of time, and it could be taken anywhere.

So now what do I do with it?

I started driving to nowhere in particular, pondering. I may have worked for the Department of Defense, but I did not agree with their politics or policy. I had strong reservations about revealing my discovery to my employers, even though they had financed my research. But what would I do with it if I didn't give it to the government? I certainly couldn't just sell it to the highest bidder, that would be worse—I could imagine some Podunk dictator taking over the world with it. OK, I thought, so...why don't I take over the world? Easy—too much hassle.

But I might be able to make the world my oyster.

Then by chance I drove past a sign for a Gentleman's Club. Now, I have never been big on strip clubs, because I always felt like: why should I pay for the buffet if I wasn't allowed to eat it? But who doesn't dream of taking the stripper home and screwing her brains out at the end of her shift? Maybe my new invention would be just the ticket—I could read the girls thoughts and find out which strippers might be reacting to me, focus my efforts on them, and maybe get lucky.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Instead, all it ended up doing is showing how little I understood about strippers.

I paid my cover charge and sat at a table off to the side. There was a brunette on the main stage in a schoolgirl outfit, except of course the shirt was extra-tight and tied up just below her bustline to show her belly, and the skirt just barely reached to the bottom of her cheeks. I watched her for a few minutes, then realized I wasn't getting any thought signals from her. Uh oh, what was wrong...well, the first thought was that I was just too far away. So I got up to go to the bathroom, and passed close to the stage on the way, gazing at her the whole time. When I got to within about ten feet of her, I started getting signals from the device in my hat. While she was dancing, she was thinking: "Come on, you pathetic losers, where's those dollar bills?" Then "How much longer is this song?," "How much money have I made tonight," and "How long til the end of my shift." OK, I got the hint.

I went to the bathroom and returned to my seat. A number of other girls were going around offering lap dances. The first a blonde came up to me; she was thinking "Nice hat loser," "I bet you're gonna be too cheap to buy a dance"—she wasn't entirely wrong on that one—and "I hate men." I passed.

I started watching other girls. The closest one to me, giving a lap dance to a guy a couple of tables over, looked a little older perhaps but was in great shape. Suddenly, I got thoughts from her: "Only six thousand more dollars and I can pay for Jimmy's operation." Holy shit, a girl with a sick kid at home—major buzzkill! But I also realized that she was more than ten feet away from her, yet I was still getting signals. I looked back at the main stage; the schoolgirl was done now and a new girl in a short blonde wig dressed like a secretary was starting her dance. I wasn't getting signals from her. Then I looked all the way across club, and there was a redheaded stripper sitting at the bar, alone, downing a drink in a short break before going and looking for another lap dance customer. To my surprise I picked signals from her too. "Redheads, my favorite flavor" I thought. Then her thoughts came to me: "I need some blow." Ugh, an addict. No thanks. But I was still pondering why I was getting signals, when the bartender came over to her; I imagine that he was asking if she wanted another drink, but as soon as he was close to her I wasn't getting signals anymore. Then he walked away, and they resumed. A ha! Distance wasn't the problem; interference was. When more than one person was close enough together, the electromagnetic radiations of their brains must interfere with each other, so that I couldn't pick up their thoughts. If I wanted to read a girl's mind, I would have to get her away from close proximity to other people.

I stayed there for another half-hour or so, but the story was the same: every girl that went past was either thinking about scoring drugs, hating men and/or their job, and who might be an easy mark for a big tip. So much for any fantasy of taking home a stripper!

I bought a lap dance from the girl with the sick kid and gave her a nice tip because I felt bad for her. But watching her dance knowing she was trying to finance an operation for her kid made me feel guilty, so really didn't enjoy it. When I paid her I said something vague about "here's to good health for you and yours," then I left the place.

I got back in my car and started driving towards my apartment. So far, my invention was working great but it wasn't helping me with the ladies. Still, my tests had made me realize I could use my invention to make a lot of money; this was my ticket out of the DOD. But I was still feeling kind of down because I had had high hopes of having sex that night, so rather than go straight home I wandered over to a bar nearby that usually attracted a university crowd. I figured I'd drown my sorrows a few times before heading home alone—device or no device, I had never come home from that place anything other than alone. But for some reason, I left my hat on—just in case, I guess.

I walked in; it was crowded as usual, and consequently even if I had wanted to read a girl's mind there was too much interference. I grabbed a beer and started looking around, as I'd done dozens of times before; many of the girls in the place were pretty drunk by now, many holding on to men around them or each other to keep from falling down. Most were too young for my anyway. I turned back toward the bar and looked down to the end; usually the bar was filled with couples, the girl on a stool and the boy watching over from behind. But way in the corner, in the second last seat before the waitress station against the wall, was Jessie, my graduate assistant.

"What is she doing here," I thought, "she was gonna chill at home?"

I noticed that the last seat at the bar was empty, and there was no man watching over her from behind. Most likely scenario: he went to the bathroom. I figured I'd sort of hang back and watch for a few minutes until whoever she was with came back.

I noticed that she was still dressed from work: white sleeveless blouse with a v-neck, yellow suit jacket over. Thinking back to earlier in the day, I remembered that she was wearing a matching yellow skirt that was a bit too short and black pumps.

No one came to join her. Further, she was looking straight down at the bar, into her glass, like someone who's down and is drinking to get drunk. I saw a guy come up and say something to her; a second later he turned and walked away like a puppy with his tail between his legs. When he left, however, there was momentarily no one in close proximity to her, and my hat started reading her mind.

"Loser. Never wants to do anything. I gotta get a better boyfriend."

Well, that explains why she was sitting here drinking rather than at home watching TV. That empty seat was still there; I figured there wouldn't be any harm in my taking it.

I went over and started to sit. I could sense her recoiling, contracting to avoid any "accidental" physical contact that a potential suitor might induce, expecting to be hit on again and that she would need to deflect it. But when I said "Fancy meeting you here," she recognized my voice, and instead she turned to look at me in surprise.

"I didn't expect to see you here," she said, "you come here a lot?" What she was thinking was, "Oh, no, my boss is seeing me drinking...now he's sitting next to me...I hope I don't say anything stupid."

"Hey, aren't I supposed to be the one with the cheesy pickup lines?" I laughed, then I motioned the bartender to get refills for both of us.

Her thoughts were: "Dammit, I already said something stupid...what does he mean, he's supposed to use the cheesy pickup lines. He's not gonna hit on me, is he? He's my boss, for god's sake."

I turned to her and said "I'll buy...I make more money than you do. For now, at least. Maybe you'll take my job when I'm gone."

"What do you mean, when I'm gone?" she asked. Her thoughts echoed her words, but also flashed panic, and fear that she needed me to stick around long enough to get her dissertation data.

"Jessie," I asked, "if we were to shift our focus to getting your dissertation data, how soon could you be done?"

She was doing mental arithmetic, I didn't need my hat to tell me that although it confirmed it. She came up with a number; if all we did was collect my data, she could be done in three weeks. Then she asked, "Well, what do you mean shift our focus. Do you mean if all we did was collect my data?"

"Yeah," I said, so that she could say out loud what I already knew but wasn't supposed to know.

"Maybe as little as three weeks," she said, "why?"

"I have had an...opportunity...arise," I said, "and I'm going to be quitting. You know the DoD; everything is top secret, the minute I quit I'll be stripped of security clearance and escorted out the door. I want to make sure you get the data you need before I do that."

Her thoughts were filled with relief. They also started to turn more personally positive towards me; I didn't have to wait until she was done with her data collection, I was doing this just to be a nice guy to her, and she knew it. "I would really appreciate if you did let me finish before you leave, because I won't be able to continue without the subject pool that only you have access to. I would hate to get so close and then have to wait or even start over."

"Yeah, I know," I said, "a nice girl like you deserves better than to get screwed like that." Good thing she didn't have a thought helmet, because I was thinking "You deserve to get screwed in a completely different way."

"I'm willing to hold out until you finish—but let's finish as soon as you can." I continued. I put my arm around her should to give her a buddy-style hug, just intending to start physical contact in a safe fashion. When I did, however, I picked up an interesting signal: "Please don't touch the neck...please don't touch the neck..." Now why would she not want me to touch her neck? Did she have an aversion to it, as some people do? Except that she probably would have reflexively recoiled, turtle-like, when I put my arm around her if that were true. Maybe...it was because her neck was a very sensitive erogenous zone for her. I would have to look for an opportunity to test that hypothesis.

"So, why are you here anyway?" I said, changing the subject; "I thought you were going to be home watching TV?" All of the negative thoughts about the boyfriend resurfaced.

"I decided I didn't want to just sit around all night," she said, half-lying.

"So you decided to come and just sit around here instead? Hmmm, sounds to me like there's more to that story." I felt her negative boyfriend thoughts surface again; she considered telling me about them, but she didn't want to be telling her boss about her home troubles.

"I know, I'm your boss, you don't want to say...that's fine. But I'm not going to be your boss for long, the only reason I'm staying is so you can finish up your degree." My thinking was that I would give her permission to not talk about it, knowing that part of her wanted to, while reminding her that I was doing her a huge favor. I hope that this would make it feel safe to talk to me about it.

My prediction panned out; she started talking like I was her father-confessor. The number of drinks she had downed before I got there helped, I'm sure. She spilled all her frustrations with her boyfriend. I ordered another round and listened; he was boring, didn't want to do anything, she wondered if he liked anything about her other than having sex with her, he was an underachiever...the whole nine yards. I listened very sympathetically; I was a researcher, but in school I had taken some courses in psychotherapy and I knew how to be a good listener. Man did I ever appreciate those course now!