My Only Talent

THE BEGINNING OF THE FALL

Note

: The descriptions and accounts in these stories are fictional and do not portray any actual people or events

Given my recent travails, I supposed I should spend some time reflecting on the people (especially the women) I have met since I started school at ESU, and what I want to happen next. Given the currently intermittent nature of My Only Talent, some contingency planning may be in order. Another tool from Engineering 101 came to mind: not PERT, or GANTT, but rather a fishbone diagram of failure modes. Maybe I could find understanding by analyzing the pattern of when and where I could hear or not hear Suzie signals, and what happened.

I started by thinking back on Janet Arroz. I liked her looks, but I'm not sure I would have approached her if she hadn't sent a strong signal for me when she first laid eyes on me. That certainly started my first week of school off with a bang. I might have been discouraged in my initial discussions with her if her Suzie hadn't been egging me on, but it was my father's advice to be honest with her and tell what I really wanted that she ultimately responded to. I certainly used my receiver to adjust my techniques to get her off, but once I got her in bed, I could have just been more patient to see how she reacted to what I wanted.

When I met Chrissy, I was just trying to do my dating homework when I asked her out. I noticed her, I liked her, and she sent a medium signal for me. I was relaxed with her because Janet had just hauled my ashes all morning, but the result was I was open and honest with her, and she with me. It was great. I still have a good relationship with her, and she is one of my 'pre-approved' dates I told Lara and Nora about. I felt better just thinking about Chrissy, so perhaps I should not wait for the Sadie Hawkins dance to get in touch with her. Come to think of it, I plan to be in Boston, not Austin, this February on Sadie Hawkins day.

I was so enchanted when I saw Suzanne for the first time on the running track that I just kept watching her, and she didn't begin sending any Suzie for me until a little later, and it was at first so tentative I barely noticed it. It only grew to medium strength after I was honest with her about being a freshman. Even if she hadn't sent that signal, I was determined to pursue her anyway. When I got the chance, I told her how much I wanted her and that I would have a sexual relationship on any terms she would agree to, including a priori permission to dump me any time she wanted. My honesty likely was the key that convinced her to begin a relationship with me. She turned out to be super-hot, and totally thrilling in bed, but she did end up dumping me, and ultimately broke my heart. Even my talent couldn't have prevented that.

When I met Lou the 'hot junior' at the ZZZ mixer, I knew she was sending for both Kevin and me, but that didn't put me off. I told Kevin about it, too. It did make me think about her as a strictly sexual partner, rather than a long-term romantic relationship, but that was what she wanted too. I probably wouldn't have had intercourse with her were it not for Suzanne's wild college days dominatrix act, but we all enjoyed it and it clearly didn't destroy Lou's relationship with Kevin. They were probably a long-term item, although with lots of hall passes for both to use in the future. If it works for them, it's okay with me. It takes all kinds of people to make a world.

Also, at the ZZZ mixer, Lara sent medium signals for me, and she looked so good I got her number and called her immediately. After our tennis game, she sent signals so strongly that I could almost instantly sense what she really wanted and needed sexually. She was incredibly kinky compared to all the other women I had ever known, but somehow, I decided she was a good person. I took advantage and took control and made her do everything I wanted, and it got her off too. I used Suzanne (but told her about it first) to give Lara what she needed, which played to both their predilections anyway, I suppose, and certainly got us all off. But I later learned Lara was angling for me to get her even if I hadn't had My Only Talent to speed the process. But she turned out to be totally trustworthy, in contrast to Suzanne.

When I first saw Nora in the serving line at Jester, I was totally captivated by her, despite the lack of signals for me. I was not only attracted to her sexually, but I recognized she was classy and nice, too. I was fascinated by her and wanted to be around her even if there was no prospect of sex. I treated her just as a friend, and was open and honest with her, even about my sexual relationship with Lara, and then Suzanne. Nora got jealous of my efforts to take care of Lara's needs, but she ended up liking me more because of it. Asking Nora for what I really wanted got her off and my being noticed taking care of Lara's sexual needs made me more attractive to Nora. Maybe there is a lesson there. She turned out to be the most amazing and sexually exciting woman in the world for me, and for Lara, too. Funny how that turned out!

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The evening of the second day of classes, I had to go to a reception at the Tappert's house. It was full of grad students and untenured associate professors networking and playing 'smartest guy in the room' for notoriety and promotions, but also some comely coeds and bored faculty wives looking for action. So was Veronica Tappert, who greeted me warmly. Maybe too warmly.

"Robbie, my favorite rodeo sponsor, welcome back! What kind of trouble did you get into in England? Any hot stories to tell me?"

I looked her up and down appraisingly. She loved it. "Veronica, you are my favorite rodeo star, but you know I never kiss and tell! I did meet a wonderful young woman in England that I am proud to call my friend."

She laughed. "I know that means you did a lot more than kiss her, Robbie. I want to be your proud friend too, but we have to tell Rock all about it, or let him watch!" She began to circulate and work the room.

Her husband, Professor "Red" Rock Tappert buzzed in with a trailing entourage of TA's and RA's. "Hello, Roberts. There are three things you must do this semester, so come to see me during my office hours on Thursday for the details. There is a paper we need to write, and you are going to do 99% of the work to learn how it is done. Also, you need to settle on an internship for next semester." He handed me a USB stick with an ESU logo. "And there is one other thing I want you to do. This may give you something to think about."

He bustled off. Well, I already knew which internship I wanted, and where. I probably did need to learn how to write an academic paper, if only to impress Nora if I got one published. I wondered what the third thing was. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

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Jay Kincaid was still going to classes while running a campaign for the Texas State House. He was getting an incredible amount of press coverage. He was expected to win the seat vacated by a retiring Democrat handily, but the story was not this initial local race but his political future after that first election. Jay and Millie were amazingly photogenic, and both spoke well enough to hold a viewer's attention, so they were both covered a lot, and there was lots of video of them all over TV news programs. The main story was what percentage of the vote he would get and how much of a landslide it could be called, and what that foretold for his future career.

Binky got nervous when CNN interviewed that asshole Raymond "Stuckey" Jones on an evening show. He was usually just on that shitty independent local station, but he was now considered the go to expert on Jay Kincaid. He showed some of his video of the wedding and talked about all the guests and conversations he overheard. He alluded to some rumors about Millie being 'pretty wild' before she married Jay and told some tall tales about Phi Iota Gamma alums and their parties. The audiences ate it up. It was a ratings bump, which meant they would dig deep for more. Binky knew she had to catch Jay and break their bombshell sex scandal story before someone else did!

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When I got back from the reception at the Tapperts, I was anxious to look at the internship possibilities he spoke of. Finding a place near Cambridge where Nora would be during the second half of her pregnancy was my top priority action item on our list. The USB drive he gave me was one with an ESU logo in burnt orange on a white background, something I had seen other profs use to swap slide presentations on. When the listing came up, there were 3 directories. One with the intriguing name of "Neuro Signal"; one called "Aperiodic Wave", and another called simply "cleanup" which I presumed were old versions of files or something he had neglected to delete.

I looked at Neuro Signal first, of course. It was a startup that sought to go beyond existing simple touchless "mind to brain" interfaces such as were used in some gaming apps to incorporate much higher bandwidth and creative interfaces via electrical stimulation of the eyes, olfactory nerves, and super sensitive nano-cooled sensors to read and transmit signals via electromagnetic fields to and from the brain. I was both excited by the prospect and worried about being around people who thought about such things all the time. The company was based on some technology spun out of Los Alamos, with investors from California, and either was a little too far from Massachusetts for my purposes.

I looked next at "Aperiodic Wave" which involved signal processing methods to cram more data into communications channels. Its fundamental technology was based on what was for me some esoteric math and a new analysis of signals composed of aperiodic waveforms. Fourier and Laplace transforms were part of my coursework this semester, but I knew enough from Math 408D to recall that most of the current methods were constrained to application on sine waves, which resulted in significant simplification of the calculations involved. This outfit was going to ignore that simplification and venture into whole new and very complicated territory. Why hadn't somebody thought of this before? However much the math may have daunted me, the next phase of development was to take the mathematical software simulation that they currently used as a proof of concept and translate it to a hardware demo, and that was scheduled to be done by some postdocs at MIT. Geographically very attractive for me. I would have to ask Oiler and Ralph if the math was BS or the real deal.

Curiosity made me look at the cleanup directory. It had seven big video files in it. Say what? The file names were letters and numbers that followed no obvious pattern to me. I clicked on the first one.

The screen filled with an almost solid shade of blue, then pulled out to an out of focus circle of blue, then pulled out further to allow the viewer to recognize the dark blue cornea of an eye with some grey highlights mixed in. Then there was movement, the pupil dilating and contracting slightly. The sound of breathing faded in, and the image of the eye jiggled a bit in synchrony with the breath sounds. The camera pulled back a little more and now two eyes blue could be seen, and just enough of the face that I thought it looked familiar.

The breathing accelerated and the sounds got louder, and the eyes moved more also, coming forward toward the camera and then back, and left and right, in a sort of rhythmic pattern. Some funny little female voice sibilants began, little "oohs" and "ahhs", mixed in between breath sounds.

A male voice came in, speaking lowly, almost at a whisper. "Is it good for you, baby?"

Before I could process the voice, the camera pulled back again, and I suddenly recognized the entire face. It was Veronica Tappert. She opened her mouth wide, took a deep breath, and said "Oh, yes baby! It is so good."

She bit her lip, then ran her tongue all around outside her mouth. The motions began to get more vigorous, and the sounds louder. She closed her eyes and shuddered, then gave out a little cry.

The voice, now obviously recognizable to me as Rock Tappert, continued the narration. "My wife looks her most beautiful just before she comes!" The narrator moved into camera view. I could just see the red hair on the back of his head, out of focus, as he obviously kissed Veronica passionately.

The camera moved even further back, and the chest and shoulders of a fellow who was not Rock Tappert appeared, just behind Veronica. He was breathing hard and sweating a little. While Rock was short, slim, fair and red headed, this fellow was big, very tanned, very muscular, and had dark hair and a mustache. He smiled roguishly at the camera.

Our narrator spoke again. "Can you give it another go, Guido? When she is almost ready to come again, pull her hair so that she is looking up directly into the camera, and finish as hard as you can. Okay?"

Guido winked at the camera and began a much more vigorous assault on Veronica's virtue. She made a lot of appreciative noises, and her face displayed some wild expressions. She did look pretty darn amazing just as she popped off another one. She was clearly in quite an ecstatic state. Guido moved back out of the picture and the camera whipped around behind Veronica to focus in on her amazing ass and then focused on her pink and red pudenda, distended and wet with both clear and white fluids.

"God, look at that!" exclaimed the narrator, as Guido apparently took the camera and zoomed in for a close-up of Rock Tappert zooming in on Veronica's private parts. Now I understood the name of the directory, even if I didn't really want to.

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Ashley Armstrong was frantic to get any kind of dirt on Jay Kincaid. She and Binky Bleriot went to the KKG house and prevailed upon Binky's sisterhood to get as many interviews as possible. All the coeds knew about Jay and they threw some shade on some of his Phi Iota Gamma brothers, but no scandals about Jay. Jay and especially Millie had been to all the right parties, and there was one girl that said Millie had worn a very revealing costume to a Halloween party at UDP. Binky said UDP was just a bunch of nerds, so they didn't need to investigate that. One of the girls suggested they try the Phi Phi house to see if anyone there had more stories about Millie. Ashley said she would go to check out Millie's sorority, and Binky should come up with something else to try.

Binky was racking her brain, and had only had one more very expensive idea that she was hesitant to explore, but was saved by the bell when one of the cameraman called to say that another garishly dressed and mysterious lady of the evening had just met Jay Kincaid at a motel on South Congress. By the time Binky got there, the woman was inside the room with Jay, and they reviewed the footage he had shot earlier. Another wild outfit: a bright purple pantsuit with a hoodie, silver-grey hair and silver lame' high heel boots. Outrageous! But no clear shots of her face. The curtains were all drawn.

Binky made the cameraman crawl up to the window and attach a contact microphone. A husky female voice was heard clearly. "Do me Daddy! Spank me and do me. I have been so bad! I want you to do me so good."

Finally, something interesting! Ashley arrived and they both listened again, pleased to hear Jay's voice.

"I am going to make you do very nasty things to me little girl! Nothing you haven't done before, I am sure!"

There was a series of grunts and groans, then Jay said loudly, "Take it, little girl, take it all!"

The girl screamed. "Do it Daddy! Make me do it!"

Ashley and Binky were overjoyed, but they had to get some video to go with the audio. It would be even better if they could ID the girl. Please let her be an underage junkie!

Binky spoke first. "I have another idea, but it will cost us. I know a woman in LA who is a 'setup artist'."

Ashley was suspicious. "What do you mean?"

Binky continued. "She is incredibly sexy and seductive. She usually works for megabuck family law firms to get evidence of infidelity for divorces and/or triggering prenuptial agreements. She takes a long time to set a guy up, but she gets them on the hook and reels them in and gets 4K video of the whole thing. But she charges $1K per day, plus expenses!"

Ashley shivered. "Let's follow him some more and see if we can catch one of these bimbo hookers coming out of Jay's room. That's got to be cheaper."

Suddenly both Jay and the girl bellowed loudly, and then things got quiet. Ashley and Binky stayed on their stakeout, and an hour or so later, Jay emerged, all dressed up and looking chipper, and got into an Uber. They rushed to the room, cameras at the ready. The door was open, the bed was all messed up, but the room was empty, the woman was gone, and so was their scoop. How had she gotten past them? Binky screamed at the cameraman. Then she called LA to try to negotiate a better price.

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Millie, now Mrs. Jay Kincaid, had resigned her duties as President of her sorority in order to devote herself to Jay's campaign. Mei Ling Johnson had moved up to take her leadership slot. When the two reporters called to ask for interviews about Jay and Millie, Mei Ling smelled a rat.

Mei Ling liked playing different characters in different situations, like the super sexy Full Metal Jacket Vietcong hooker she played at the Horseshoe Bay condo (and for Cisco's enjoyment every few weeks). But she adopted another disguise for Binky Bleriot, ostensibly her Panhellenic sister. She put on a dark and classy Calvin Klein business suit, horn shell glasses, and sensible shoes to portray an uptight and very conventional Chinese American grade grubbing overachiever pursuing a Master of Professional Accounting degree in the highly rated ESU business school program. From the get-go, the two reporters bought her act and considered her a reliable source. When they asked about Millie's 'hot past' she giggled. "Oh, Millie is a real straight arrow. I am wild compared to her. I have tried some stuff Millie wouldn't think of doing!" That was strictly true, as Millie hadn't gone airtight for four hours with four horny guys with her boyfriend's blessing, but of course they took it to mean that Millie was even more uptight than Mei Ling currently looked.

Mei Ling added parenthetically that Jay seemed nice and that Millie really loved him. She omitted the part about Millie's very private coming out party at Lara's apartment and her getting wet for politicians of any stripe, the real reason Jay chose to enter politics. Binky and Ashley were convinced by her story, and made air kisses to say thanks and goodbye and as they drove away in Ashley's new green Prius hybrid, tried to come up with ways to hide the money for the setup artist chick in their expense accounts.

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After my second very dry and boring weekend, after I got ahead of the syllabus in all my classes, I called Country Chrissy for a date, saying I was thinking about her and couldn't wait until Spring for the Sadie Hawkins dance. I figured I had already heard her signals for me in the past, so even if I couldn't hear them now, I could just go slow to find out what she liked. She sounded hesitant, and I asked why.

"Robbie, I really like you, and you know that, but I am not ready for a long-term commitment. I hope you understand that I just want a fling?"

I smiled in relief. "I certainly understand. That is just what I want, too. Have you been following your family tradition of staying virginal well into your twenties?"

"Yes, but if you still agree to keep our activities a secret, I want to change my status and use you shamelessly to gain some valuable experience that will sustain a long-term relationship when I am ready for one."