Storymania - Your Thoughts Or Mine by A Waksberg

Your Thoughts Or Mine
A Waksberg

He was holding her in his arms and kissing her passionately while whispering sweet nothings in her ear. Then he said the magic words "Will you marry me?" At the sound of these words that she had been longing to hear, bells started to ring as in the movies-but then, the bells were ringing louder and louder and quickly became a persistent enervating door bell that tore her out of her sweat dream into the cold reality. Her heart was now pounding and she could feel the cold sweat down her back.

Francine Jasper put on her nightgown and reached the door carefully making as little noise as possible as she looked through the peephole. She was most surprised when she discovered that the man standing at the door was none else but her dear boyfriend, Jack Rollin, the man in her dream, who kept ringing the bell insistently.

As she opened the door, Jack rushed in nervously. He said in an impatient voice, "Please put some clothes on, we have to get out of here quickly because we are in danger. Hurry."

"But..."

"I don't have time to explain, trust me."

As she was dressing in the bedroom, he was busy hiding all the pillows he could find under the blankets which confused her even more.

'You're ready? O.K. let's go," he said pushing her gently but firmly towards the door.

They rushed into his car. He started it but moved it only a short distance away where he parked and stopped the engine. Finally, Francine getting her breath back said, "What are you doing exactly?"

"Just hold on a few minutes and you'll see why this was necessary"

In fact, a few instants later, confirming what he said, a car approached her house with its lights off and stopped there. A man got out of the car with a gun in his hand and moved quickly towards her house. At that point Jack quickly called 911 on his cell phone. It was a little too far and too dark for Francine to see who he was. He seemed to have the keys to the door because he disappeared into the house in no time. After a few minutes, they heard a number of gunshots and the man reappeared at the door with the smoking gun still in his hand. He ran into his car as the police arrived to block his exit. He came out of the car with his hands out and was promptly taken into custody.

Jack and Francine joined the police after identifying themselves and proceeded into the house where the police began their investigation. Jack dragged Francine to the bedroom. He pointed at the bed where she noticed that the gunshots had all been directed into it-or more precisely, into the cushions. Obviously, in the dark, the intruder thought that he had killed whoever was in the bed sleeping.

Francine was now trembling like a leaf realizing what could have happened to her had she been in her bed a moment ago. Jack was answering questions of the detective as if he were just an observer.

"Who do you believe tried to murder one or both of you?"

Francine stammered, "I have no idea!" while Jack calmly answered, "This was her ex who tried to get rid of us.

The detective looked skeptical. "How do you know this? Did you see him entering the house?"

"Not well because of the darkness. But I certainly saw him when he was apprehended by the police under their spot lights."

"Why do you think he tried to kill you?"

"Because he hated me. He has a bad temper, and he is so terribly jealous that he was also ready to kill his own ex wife! Thank God that you came in time to arrest this dangerous maniac."

Poor Francine stood there, not saying a word, as if this was not part of her world and was happening to someone else. The policeman was eager to continue the questioning but Jack interrupted, "It is late and Francine is still in shock. You've caught the criminal, so could you let us both go to my house to try to get some sleep and recover from the emotions. I promise we will go to the police station first thing in the morning to answer any other questions that you may still have.

The inspector agreed reluctantly and so, after confirming their identifications, they were allowed to go. Arriving at Jack's home, Francine tried to discuss the traumatic experience she had just gone through but Jack convinced her to take a tranquilizer and let sleep heal her over excited nerves-they would discuss the events next morning.

That morning, Francine woke up to a sunny day. Jack was there at her bedside handing her breakfast on a tray. After a few instants, as reality took over her drowsiness, Francine blurted out, "Tell me this was just a bad dream."

"I wish it were. I am sure you never realized what a nasty man your ex. was. Thank God we've got rid of him. Now that he will be in prison for a long time for attempted murder, you will have nothing to worry about."

She hugged him warmly, "I am just realizing now that you have saved my life-but how did you know that he was coming to kill us both this very night?"

"Let's call it intuition." Sensing her impatience he added, "I promise that we will discuss that later. First we have to go to the police station as I promised."

After coming back from their deposition where poor Francine had to relive through her previous night's experience, Jack suggested that they take a break and may be go to a movie, but Francine was adamant. "No, I want to discuss what happened. I have so many questions to ask such as-how did you know?"

"OK then, I have a good idea, I can satisfy your curiosity and at the same time entertain you. Let's go to the casino."

"What? The casino!" she looked perplexed, but after a brief instant, she said with a smile, "Well, why not-you've just saved my life, I'm ready to follow some of your whims!"

At the Casino Jack joined a table to play a game of Poker. He asked Francine to watch as an observer. Francine was amused that Jack won the first round, and the second, and the third.

"Aren't you lucky," she said with a smile. "You almost made me forget last evening."

"This is not finished, " he replied, "let's move on to another table."

"Don't you think you should stop while the going is good?"

"OK soon, just one more table."

And so he went and played and won once, twice and three times. He left the table and Francine started to worry.

"Tell me that you weren't cheating," she said nervously.

Knowing that she was scrupulously honest he tried to reassure her.

"Don't worry, my darling, I did not cheat. I merely wanted to demonstrate something-Let's leave the casino and invest some of my winnings into a meal at a nice restaurant were we can talk."

They went to the most expensive restaurant of the city. Jack asked for a cozy table for two where they could talk privately. After the aperitif Francine went on, "I am burning to find out why you took me to the casino to witness your success and what it has to do with what happened yesterday."

"Well, I am coming to that. To satisfy your curiosity I have to tell you first something about my past, that up to now I have kept secret, even from you. Because I care so much about you and I want you to be part of my life, I will let you in on it-but promise me this is in the strictest of confidence."

Francine was overjoyed about the first part of his answer which, she took as a proposal. She was worried about the second part however. She had a shy smile on her face and an inquisitive look in her eye as she faced him somewhat apprehensively.

"Don't you want to promise?" Jack went on puzzled.

"Sorry, I was absent minded after what you told me. Of course I promise."

"Well, it all started about five years ago, before I knew you. Like many other students, in my final year of college, I experimented with drugs. It was pure curiosity that was driving me. Not wanting to become an addict, I never took any one drug more than a couple of times. I was more interested in experimenting with the mental effect they would produce. You know that psychology was always one of my favorite interest."

"I wasn't aware that you took drugs. It certainly doesn't appear that you take them now-or am I wrong? Is that your secret? If this is all in the past, believe me, it won't upset me!"

"Thanks for your understanding but, unfortunately there is more. One night, after a big meal at an expensive restaurant, celebrating a friend's birthday, I took a new drug before turning in. Lying in bed, ready to fall asleep, I started to review in my head the events of the evening. As I was thinking of each of the participant around the table in turn, I found myself as if I were transposed into their heads. I saw what they saw from their point of view. Thus I even saw myself at the right location from where they were sitting. I also realized that I was witnessing some of their thoughts, mostly in the form of images. After a while, this scared me out of my wits and startled me awake, sweating profusely. At the same time, the strange effect vanished mercifully. To cool down, I took a pencil and wrote down some of what appeared to be the thoughts of my friends, while it was still fresh in my mind. That even included their perceptions of me-some of which, I must admit, were not very flattering! The next day, still shaken from that experience, but yet intrigued and curious, I called each of my friends on my list and steered the conversation to our evening at the restaurant. I tried to bring out their reactions to some of the non-controversial discussions we had had. The kind that they could discuss openly without having to hide anything. Would you believe my stupefaction when their response agreed with my notes!"

"This is almost unbelievable," said Francis, "but was that a coincidence or did you encounter such experiences again?"

"You must know how curious I am. Of course I wanted to know what was going on. The next evening I took the same drug, went back to bed and tried to repeat the same thinking process again-but to no avail. With the inquisitive mind that I have (I should have been a scientist!), I could not drop the desire to reenact this phenomenon. I therefore decided that it might have been the combination of the drug plus an element of the meal that I had which caused the effect. Thus the week after, I took the same drug and went to the same restaurant after ensuring that the same meal was on the menu. I ate scrupulously the same meal as before-by gosh, the same phenomenon occurred that evening! I could again go into the mind of anybody I knew provided I thought hard about them.

Patiently I made detailed notes of what I had eaten those evenings and tried to list all the ingredients comprising the meal to the best of my abilities. One by one I experimented with each item on the menu until I found out which ingredient, together with the drug produced the effect."

"This is astonishing. Tell me, when you say that you seem to be in somebody's head, do you hear the same voice that we have in our head when we think? Is it the voice of yourself or that of the person you invade?"

"It's neither-The communication is through imagery. For example, if you're hungry, the little voice in your head does not necessarily say, "I am hungry". More likely, you will see in your head a hot dog say, and then you biting into it. It's like a movie without words of you doing the action that you want to do. The associated sensation will usually follow. For example, when you see a movie of a roller coaster going through its maneuvers, you feel you stomach contracting as it plunges down and you lean to one side as it makes a sharp turn. This is the answer to your question then; I don't hear voices but I see what other people are imagining.

If you think of evolution, this is probably the basic thought process that any reasonably evolved animals would have. They do not have a language but think in terms of a succession of images that are based on action that the animal has done before or that it has seen done by other animals."

Francine, more and more intrigued and, forgetting for a moment the implications of Jack's revelations, asked, "How do you account for the transmission of the "images" over a distance?"

"Well, I don't pretend to understand it, but I can conjecture that our brains emit a sort of wave, maybe like a radio wave, that can be captured by another mind under the right conditions."

"How far can this "wave", or whatever you want to call it, travel?"

"Well, seeing that I could go into someone's head even when I was in another city, I would have to say that it can travel pretty far."

Francine was so interested that that she pursued her questioning. "Do you think that you are the only person to have experience this strange way of communication?"

"I thought very hard about that and have come to believe that some other people may have that power, even though for a brief moment. I am sure that you have heard, like I have, many anecdotal stories of people who have experience telepathy of a tragic event that has occurred to a loved one. Like a car accident of a son in another city that turned out to be true. These could be similar effects to what I experience, albeit without the use of drugs!"

"I find this fascinating and I bet this opens up a lot of work in neuro-psychology. By the way, is this how you became rich?"

"I must say that it helped. When I play cards I can "see" the cards of my opponents. I used this power only when I played with people whom I suspect got their money illegally. I keep half and give the rest to charity-I am, in a way, a modern day Robin Hood!" he added with a grin. "It also helped me in the stock market," he continued.

Francine was obviously troubled. "I feel a little ambivalent about what you told me. On the one hand I am bewildered by learning about the power you've acquired and by the fact that it saved our lives; on the other hand, I don't feel right about the way you got your money."

"You needn't worry. I have decided to start earning my money the hard way. One of the main reasons being that I suspected that you wouldn't like me to use that power to enrich myself Francine and I now realize that I could not live without you, " he gazed at her beseechingly. "I hope you feel the same.

Now that I've made my confession, would you be my wife? "

She was thrilled that he had finally asked but at the same time she was somewhat subdued.

After a long pause she continued full of emotions, "I would love to be your wife, but you've got to promise me that you'll distribute most of the fortune that you have acquired "unconventionally" for the good of humanity. For instance, universities doing brain research, support groups who help people with addictions to gambling problems and many other such good causes. Also, if you were to use your power, it would only be to save lives in emergencies such as you've done with us, or for some other noble causes."

"I'm so happy. I promise you to do just that. In fact," he continued with a wink, "I'm sure that as my wife you'll make sure that I do! I have further decided to keep my secret until the day we figure out how to share it with a trusted committee of experts who could use it to better the human condition."

Francine approached Jack and embraced him as she said, "Let's seal this with a kiss."