Gifted Grifter #3: Viva Las Vegas
In my last few days at the Department of Defense, I worked on perfecting the secret discovery that would transform my life: a receive that could read people's minds. Recognizing the opportunities my invention would afford, I had wanted to quit immediately, but I had promised my graduate assistant, Jessie, that I would wait three weeks so that she could finish collecting her dissertation data first. I would have honored that promise even if I hadn't seduced her with help from my mindreader. But it was now week four, and I was running out of patience.
The extra time did serve me well, though. While my original mindreader, which I concealed by building it into an old baseball hat, worked fine, I wanted something even more portable. Scrounging micro-components from various departments, I was able to embed a mindreader into the frame of a pair of glasses. I actually build two mindreading glasses, one with clear lenses and one pair of sunglasses. The eyeglass version had a couple of differences from the hat-sized version besides size. For one, I only had space for a tiny battery, so I added an on/off switch hidden on the earpiece. This way, I wear them all the time but save battery by only turning them on when I needed them. Second, I had added a tiny message recorder circuit, like an answering machine might have. I knew that I would be using a number of different names and identities in the future; this feature would allow me to leave reminders for myself at to whom I was supposed to be.
On Wednesday morning, my mindreading hat told me that Jessie had finished collecting her data—but didn't want to tell me that she had. See, after we had sex the first time we had agreed to a moratorium on sleeping together again so long as I was still her boss. In the interim, she had decided that while she like me and all, I wasn't a good prospect for a long-term relationship—and she was much to serious and goal-oriented to invest time in a man that she didn't perceive to be a realistic marriage candidate. Too bad, because she had a great body and gave awesome head, but she was right; monogamy was not in my future plans.
My hat told me that her plan was to tell me at the end of the day Friday and have somewhere else she needed to be that night—although she wasn't sure what that was, having recently dumped her boyfriend. That was just two wasted days to me, so I decided to press the issue.
"OK, Jessie," I said, "I said I'd give you three weeks, but now you're over time. Are you gonna be done soon?"
"Uh, yeah, I hope to be done by the end of the week," she said.
"HOPE to? You'd better be!" I said in a joking tone. "Look, as soon as I quit here, I'm off to Vegas, and I want to book a flight for this Friday. Do you think you can be done by then?"
As I intended, this gave her the "out" she was looking for; she wouldn't have to deal with the sex moratorium if I was taking myself out of the picture. She had no idea that by the weekend, she wouldn't be even able to find me. "Well, I'll be sure to find a way," she said, knowing that she was actually already done. "You've been very nice to me to stay on just so that I had time enough to finish."
"What can I say, I'm just a nice guy." I said. I had recently met a girl named Lauren that probably would not have agreed.
I spent the rest of the morning booking my trip to Vegas. It wasn't as outrageously expensive as I feared, booking so late. I decided that I would stay at Planet Hollywood (I had always liked it when it was Aladdin). I then spent the afternoon scrounging around for spare parts, personal documents, copies of software I had written—anything that I thought I might want once I no longer had access to the resources of the DoD. I took home two boxes worth of potentially useful supplies—security might be tight as to who got in and out of the facility, but we were all research scientists and a lot of us worked on stuff at home, so nobody paid too much attention to what we took out the door with us.
First thing Thursday morning I went to find Jessie —wearing my mindreading glasses for the first time. I told her I was booked for a 7AM flight the next day; if she was ready, I wanted to turn in my resignation so I could go home and pack. I watched her do some mental arithmetic and decide that if I was escorted off the premises before the end of the day, she should be able to avoid me and the question of renewing intimacy until I left for Vegas. Thus she came clean:
"Yes, I am finally done!" she said. "Thank you so much for letting me finish before you leave. I..."
I had to work hard to refrain from laughing out loud. I knew from my glasses that she was thinking "I don't know how I can ever repay you," but of course the obvious answer would be that she could start by sleeping with me again, and she didn't want to do that. I decided not to make her squirm.
"Well, you're not done yet," I said. "It will take you longer than you think to do the analysis and write it up. But I'm confident you will do fine. Good luck on your final defense."
I felt her wonder whether I would come to her final defense; she was torn between being genuinely grateful for the favor I had done her and wanting to avoid being around me so the sex question couldn't come up again—that's the biggest problem with sleeping with your advisor, its hard to reject them on a personal level when you are indebted to them on a professional one.
"Well, I'm off to turn in my resignation," I announced to break the silence. "Who knows if and when we'll meet again," I and shook her hand, "but you've been a great assistant and I wish you nothing but the best." I paused for a second, then added "In your career...and in your life."
I saw that my speech had left her wondering. What did I mean if I'll ever see you again? She hadn't considered that she might not see me again. And what did I mean by "in your life?" Was I trying to give her the hint that I didn't want to screw her again? Funny, but that actually ignited a twinge of competitiveness in her, something like maybe I didn't want to have sex with her again meant I didn't think she was good enough, which made part of her want to prove otherwise. I didn't have time to exploit that little opening in her psyche, however, so I just wanted her to not have to worry about my pursuing her. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to jump her bones again. But in all likelihood, once I went underground, she and I would never cross paths again.
I went up to my boss' office, turned off my mindreading glasses—I didn't want to know what HE was thinking—then marched in and handed in my resignation. He called security and stripped me of my clearance right then and there, as I knew he must. Then security escorted me to my desk with a box, and watched as I put all my personal belongings into it, making sure that I didn't take anything but what was mine. (I had left all my personal things at my desk so that it wouldn't be as obvious that I had already cleaned out the good stuff the day before). Once I announced I was done, I was walked out to the parking lot and locked out of the building.
At last, my new life was set to begin.
