Chapter 14: Passing the Torch
One day Julie was playing around on MySpace. She was doing me a favor, checking all of the pages I had made for myself and every pseudonym I had lived under when I was living the life of the gambler; I wasn't very good about keeping up on them myself. That was much more Julie's thing—a reflection, perhaps, of the age/generation gap between us.
On my personal page (that is, the one in my real name) Julie noticed that I had gotten a bunch of messages from a girl named Jessie. Not long ago, a girl leaving a lot of messages for me might have led to a suspicious interrogation about who this Jessie was and why she was trying to reach me. But with Julie now wearing a $50,000 Tiffany engagement ring on her finger, it was now just a point of curiosity.
I told her who it was anyway. "Jessie?" I asked. "She was my old graduate assistant at DoD. Twice now I've gone out of my way to help her get her dissertation done. Don't tell me she's screwed it up again somehow?"
"No, doesn't sound like it," Julie chuckled, "sounds like she's relaying a message on behalf of another student who wants to get in touch with you."
"Oh? When last I saw her, she told me there was a new student in her program that was very interested in my work," I said.
"Hmm," she replied, "then this could be a problem. This is what she says: 'He said to tell you that he found something interesting in your old DoD files and he wants to meet you to discuss it."
"Oh shit, that could be a major problem," I said. "You're not allowed to delete your files at DoD; there's a lot of stuff there that led up to my discovery of the mindreader. I suppose someone might have been able to use that to retrace my steps."
"So what do you want to do?" she asked.
"Reply to Jessie. Tell her to extend an invitation to meet me at a coffee shop here in New York—if he really wants to meet me, he'll figure out a way to get here."
"And then what?" Julie asked as she was typing the response.
"I'll meet him wearing my mindreader," I explained. "If he's indeed made one of his own, I'll get feedback as soon as I look at him. But if that's why he wants to meet me, I'm sure he has lots of questions for me and won't turn his off. So we'll set you up in a corner with your mindreader on. That way, while he's picking my brain, you can pick his and get a read on what we're dealing with." I said.
"Too bad there isn't some way to block a mindreader," she said.
"Actually, any other magnetic field will cause interference, even another person's brain too close by," I said, "but I don't have time to design a practical device to do that. Besides, if he's got his own mindreader, he will already know the only secret I have that needs keeping; he can find out anything else he likes. And if he hasn't—well, then he won't find it out, now will he?"
"So why do you want to meet him?" Julie asked, sending the reply then getting up from the laptop and putting her arms gently around me, sensing my increased anxiety.
"If he's got a mindreader, I want him to understand why I've kept it secret. I feel the need to at least try to convince him to do the same," I said. I explained my concern about not trusting and government with it and its potential to upset the world order. I had already told Julie about how I had used the mindreader as a tool of seduction; I hadn't ever explained that I had other, more noble reasons for maintaining the secrecy of my discovery.
"But you trusted me with it," she said, deep blue eyes piercing me with their gaze.
"I trust you with everything, my love," I said, "that's why I'm marrying you." We kissed...
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We received a reply in less than 24 hours, and set up a meeting that Saturday. On the day of the meeting, Julie camped out in a corner of the designated coffee shop twenty minutes before I came in. It was about ten minutes after that that a young man in a baseball hat came in and started looking around. He was probably in his mid-20s, sandy hair, average height, average build—nothing particularly remarkable about him. But as soon as we locked gazes, everything went gray and a massive headache set in. Knowing this could happen, I had one hand gripped on my glasses, and was able to pull them off my face and break the feedback before total stasis had set in. He had indeed created a mindreader of his own.
If he had planned ahead what to say, the unexpected feedback loop had caught him off guard. I waved him over to join me; he came over to my table, looking shaken and confused. I stood up to shake his hand, saying "You must be ----, and I see that you've recreated my....invention."
"What the hell just happened?" he asked.
"Feedback loop," I explained. "Just like a misplaced microphone at a rock concert. You can't point two devices at each other."
"Good to know," he replied.
As I predicted, he wasn't willing to turn off his mindreader, meaning I couldn't use mine. As a good-will gesture (and knowing he would find out anyway) I told him that Julie was reading his mind from the corner. Unfortunately he made a comment about her, so I my thoughts betrayed more than I wanted to about her former life as a high-price call girl—as well as any number of enticing memories her name conjured up.
He asked me about why I kept my invention a secret. That's what I had hoped to talk about; he could see all of my concerns about governments and selling to the highest bidder and possibly creating a megalomaniac dictator. This was the kind of thing science fiction was made of.
He asked why I had given one to my fiancée. That led me to thinking about my life as the Gifted Grifter, as well as to my new life as day trader, responsible citizen and soon to be married man. It seemed like he got a gleam in his eye once he read those thoughts. The rest of our conversation centered on how I had lived as the Gifted Grifter: how I had made money, and especially how I used it to seduce women. In the process I thought about a number of women I had used it on, including Erin the real estate agent and Jessie. Poor Jessie—something told me that this punk was going to be making a beeline to her neck, and from what I'd seen that would all but guaranteed that he would score with her. I wished I could warn her, but I of course I couldn't do that without revealing my secret.
Even without my glasses, I was pretty sure that he was busily plotting how he would follow in the seduction footsteps of the Gifted Grifter. Well, I sure wasn't going to be fighting him for girls—I had the only one I wanted locked up for the long term. I would much rather he use the mindreader to be a womanizing lout, as I had been, than to overturn the entire balance of world power. In fact, he did one better; he promised that before he turned in his resignation, he would "update" my DoD files with false information to ensure that there would be no more Grifters recreating my invention. The society of mindreaders would have a standing population of three. It was a great idea, and I was disappointed that I hadn't thought of that myself.
Having picked my brain for much more than he bargained for, he took his leave. The torch had been passed—while I was getting married and grifting no more, he was just getting started. And something told me he would keep carrying that torch for a long, long time.
He gave a little wave to Julie as he headed out the door. After he was gone, Julie and I both got up to leave and met by the door.
"I hate guys like that," she said.
"Like what?" I asked.
"He's on some sort of mission to have sex with as many women as possible, and he doesn't care how much he has to lie or manipulate our feelings to get what he wants," she explained. "When he saw how you used the mindreader to seduce women, it was like Willy Wonka giving away the key to the factory: he can't wait to taste everything he can get his hands on. With that mindreader, he's a menace to every woman on the planet."
"Yeah, I kind of guessed some of that—but he still can't force women to do things, he can only deceive them," I said. "I'm going to guess that's status quo for him—only now he's going to be a lot more effective at it."
"Makes me sick," she said.
"I know, but on the other hand, we seem to have convinced him not to tell the government or sell the device—is that what you saw in his thoughts?" We were now heading down Broadway to our apartment.
"Yeah—I suppose if he wasn't so intent on extracting some weird sort of sexual revenge on women, he might not have seen the importance of keeping the secret," she conceded.
"I know, I don't feel good about it either," I said, stopping her and facing her there on the sidewalk, holding hands. "But we didn't give it to him; he got it on his own. We have no control over what he does with it. And while I feel bad about the women he's going to hurt, he would be hurting a lot more people if he started manufacturing them and selling them to the highest bidder. And besides...I know one woman he's not going to hurt." I put my arms around her waist and kissed her.
She put her arms on my shoulders, smiled, flashed her lovely large eyes at me, and said. "No, darling, you're the only man in my life, now and forever more."
"I love you Julie," I said.
"I love you," she replied, and we kissed lovingly.
"Get a room," said a typical New York passer-by. We laughed and continued on our way. A stop at the health club to fish for stock tips, then we had an even more important visitor to meet at the airport.
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"Now announcing the arrival of flight 1441 with service from Oklahoma City," a loudspeaker crackled.
"Should only be a few minutes now," Julie said. I had never seen her so nervous; usually she was calm, cool, collected and in-control. Aunt Betty had been the saving grace of her childhood, her rock of sanity in an otherwise awful, abusive family situation. Julie hadn't seen her since she ran away, at age 18; she had been too ashamed of her life as a sex worker to face beloved Aunt Betty. But I had encouraged her to re-establish contact, guessing correctly that Aunt Betty wouldn't care what Julie had or hadn't done. Julie had promised to fly Aunt Betty out to New York to visit us once we were sufficiently established—and today, here she was. We were living in an upscale west side neighborhood, well on our way to having a million dollars in after-tax profits in the bank—and getting married in a few months. Aunt Betty didn't know it yet, but Julie wanted her to be the maid of honor.
I heard Julie cry out "Aunt Betty" and go rushing towards someone in the throng coming out of the secure area of LaGuardia. I had never asked, but it was immediately clear that Aunt Betty came from her mother's side of the family. She was probably 50, but still attractive in a mature sort of way. She had the same blonde hair, albeit bound tightly around her head; the same cheekbones and delicate nose; and had the same slim shapeliness that both Julie and her mother had.
