BOOK 1: SERENDIPITY / CH. 4:RECORDS
SATURDAY MORNING, 17TH JUNE
John waited for Sarah outside the office. Normally he just walked in, but since he was waiting he paid more attention than usual. “The Institute for the Human Mind,” it proudly pronounced above the doorway. Well, an expensive sounding name went with the expensive grass and expensively manicured gardens — too ornate to be called flowerbeds — that led to the expensive glass doorway.
Expensive because the triple glazing hid a high specification forcefield between the sheets, just in case. The whole building was actually a fortress, but that was partly due to the clients that sometimes visited. And of course, since it had been established over two hundred and fifty years before, there had been occasions of unrest in the city.
There were not many human psychological counsellors. It was a niche trade, and commanded niche prices. Computer counselling was cheaper and usually sufficient, but for some people it didn't work. The institute had begun before AIs came along though, and it had a long history of rich clients and richer benefactors supporting unusual experiments. Some of which might have made it a target for unrest in itself. John wondered if any of those old experiments, probably stored away deep in the cellar, would help Sarah.
True sensitivity to others' thoughts, or mind reading as it was commonly called, was a very rare phenomenon, if it existed at all. There were plenty of people who had claimed it over the years. Mostly they had been found to be very good face readers, been debunked as frauds or remained untested. He was sure there was something in the cellar somewhere. But even if he could prove to Sarah's satisfaction that it was a mind-reading phenomenon, then would it help at all? The sense of sight came with eyelids, but there was no way to turn off touch, taste, hearing or smell. All you could do was desensitise yourself. That worked quickly with smell, much to gum-chewers’ annoyance, but it seemed unlikely that it would work for Sarah.
His heart skipped, there she was! ‘Calm down, man,’ he thought to himself, you're not in love with her, surely? Hmm, self analysis might be needed.
“Hi Sarah! In the interests of honesty, I have to admit that I find I'm very pleased to see you.”
“Oooh, I'm touched. Nice to see you too.”
“Sorry, that came out wrong. I'm pleased to see you, Sarah. I just surprised myself at how pleased I am.”
“You mean that the heart of titanium is melting?”
“Oh I don't know! Maybe I've been waiting too long, or I'm just falling for your curious mind, or maybe I'm just a nut-case. Or maybe your rebuke might be getting through, and out of all the women I've ever known you're the only one who might compete with my memory of Sally.”
“That's quite a complicated compliment, sir knight, I think I'll keep it on record as a confused non-profession of maybe nascent love. As a matter of fact, I didn't sleep much last night, and I demand some tea this instant. You promised. And lots of pizza later. Can we go in?”
“Of course. Sorry. Is it my fault you didn't sleep, somehow?” He opened the door with his pass-code and fingerprint. The computer had already recognised his face.
“Ha, the arrogance! He assumes that just because he's accused me of witchery and sainthood in the same breath and it seems like he's been in love with me since even before first sight, even though he denies it, that my every sleeping problem might be his fault! Actually, it is your fault. I found my old Bible and re-read John's gospel. And then Luke's and Acts. I think I fell asleep in Romans.”
“So you read for what, 5 hours?”
“Something like that.”
“And yet you managed to get here exactly on time, having re-styled your hair, put on different make-up, mascara too, I believe. And possibly freshly ironed your blouse? But you're not after a husband right now?”
“You're not supposed to notice the individual things like that, you're just supposed to say to yourself she's looking nicer.”
“Sorry, you over did it. Or I'm too perceptive this morning. I think you normally have longer for a shower, am I right?”
“How on earth...?”
“Soap just behind your attractively shaped left ear, plus of course there’s all the extra time you've put into making yourself more attractive.”
“Whereas you only put on a clean suit, tie and all, wet-shaved instead of electric to judge by the micro-cuts you've given yourself, and prepared the biggest pile of pizza crusts and toppings I've seen outside a restaurant. But oh no, you're not looking for romance. Nut-cases aren't we?”
“Here's your tea, milady nut-case. Let's say that we're both hoping to make a good impression? And that we're neither of us fully convinced about what's happening to us. Is that fair? And Sarah, honestly, I'd have been just as happy to have seen you turn up in jeans and a T-shirt. I do appreciate how much effort you've put in this morning, but you don't need to think I'm going to feel differently about you because of how well presented you are. You're impressive enough.”
“OK, you've asked for it. After lunch I'm going to go home and get my grubbiest T-shirt and we'll see how you like me then.”
John laughed. “That's great. Fancy an exploratory trip into the cellars of this place? They must be dusty, and I wouldn't dream of taking you down there in what you're wearing now.”
“What's down there? Medieval torture equipment for your pet witch?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because that's what mind-reading is, isn't it? A sort of witchcraft? An occult practice involving inappropriate spiritual connections?”
“Not the way I understand the word, no. I'm sorry. Where did you get that idea?”
“I don't know. Maybe my parents, or Sunday school. I think it's an early memory. ‘Don't suffer one to live.'”
“Wow. Sarah, no, I don't think you're a witch, not in any sense, let alone that one. I looked up the Hebrew word once. Biblically a witch seems to be a practitioner of some particular sort of magic. At least it gets used in several lists of bad things people shouldn't do. From what I remember, the word is used about Pharaoh's and Nebuchadnezzar's magicians, and that bad king who sacrificed his sons to a pagan god added it to his crimes. But, urm, can you please explore that whole area with Kate? That's deep stuff which you need to look at together, I think. But I need to answer the question you asked about what was down there. Among other things, there are crazy off-beat experiments produced by the imagination of men with rich backers into all kinds of things to do with the mind. This place has been here for at least two hundred and fifty years. I'm sure there are some experimental setups down there for testing mind-to-mind communication in various forms. It's never been proven as far as I know, but of course not everyone who claims it gets tested, and not everyone who might have it would claim to. But I file away your thought about torture for future assessment, because there are also things which I'd call torture equipment — sense deprivation tanks for example. I don't want you to go near them.”
“'Tis indeed a creepy place you work in, sir knight. But if these devices do indeed exist to prove my witchery, what then, sirrah — wouldst thou expose me to foul publicity's glare? Because I don't want any more of that, thank you ever so much.”
“What? No, of course not. I was just thinking that if we could prove it to your satisfaction then it might help you somehow.”
“You sound like you're convinced already. That's not a good starting point for real science.”
“I know. Sorry. I'm afraid I'm like that sometimes. Let an idea run away with me before it's fully baked. OK, milady, once more I am rebuked by your wisdom. But speaking of your wisdom... Did you take time to eat breakfast in your enthusiasm to impress?”
“Uh, no, actually.”
“That's good, because my stomach's reminding me that I didn't either. What sayest thou, milady, to breaking our fast on pizza? You know, Kate has a lot to answer for for implanting this idea in our minds of me knight, you fair maiden in distress.”
“Pizza sounds good. But it does feel somehow appropriate, doesn't it?” Sarah struck a dramatic pose, her hands clutched together at her breast. “Thou, sir knight, hast seen my plight from afar and won your way to my side. By your concern for me thou hast overcome my meagre defences, and now while my brave knight stands ready to do culinary battle for my cause, I can but swoon in his strong arms from hunger! “, with which she quite deliberately let herself fall towards him. He staggered a bit but managed to catch her. And held her. “What do you think of my performance?”
“Oh Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. You're incredible! I don't know if you're always flinging yourself at your boyfriends, or you're trying to wake up the almost-dead part of me to life, but even though my brain knows what should be happening, even this brings not the slightest stirring.” He set her on her feet.
She looked a bit flustered. “I'm sorry, John. I'm not sure why I did that. It just seemed to go with the acting. I'm all mixed up and doing things that are so out of character for me. I don't know why I'm being so silly around you. I've turned into a terrible flirt and I'm embarrassing us both, aren't I? I've never had any boyfriends. Is this what falling in love is like? Doing things for no apparent reason and regretting them almost immediately? I'm sorry. Should I leave?”
“Sarah, I don't know quite what's happening to you, or to me, either. If you'd been drinking, then all would be explained. But I presume you've not.” Sarah nodded. “Well, may we just put it down to sleep deprivation or the stress of the whole thing? But I don't want you to leave. Maybe I really should tell you to get some more sleep, but I don't want to do that, either. I must admit I've got lots of feelings towards you that don't make much sense. Love at first sight is just lust, but at least it makes sense, unlike my mess of feelings towards you. Love before first sight makes less sense. I want to help, and I want you where I can know you're safe. And you're obviously on an emotional roller-coaster, so this isn't time to go making decisions we might regret. How about we try really hard to be sensible people? Agreed?”
“So, apart from the fact that I'm acting drunk, you like me?”
“Oh Sarah! If I were well, I expect I'd want to marry you this weekend. But realistically, we don't know each other well enough to do anything that drastic.”
“Oooh. He does like me. That's nice.”
“Sarah, are you sure you're not drunk?”
“Only on happiness and hunger and sleep deprivation, John. And speaking of hunger, this tea's run out. ”
“OK, there's more in the pot. Let's make pizza. What toppings do you like, and are you hungry enough that you'd like microwaved pizza instead of baked? It's faster, but I'm sure it's nowhere near as good.”
“Let's do one that way, and another properly.”
----------------------------------------
“Sarah?” he asked as the pizzas went in the oven and microwave.
“Yes John?”
“Two questions. Will you come to church with me tomorrow? And if so, do you want to be introduced as Sarah Smith, who saved my life in the Clear Sky mall attack, Sarah Smith my maybe-maybe-not-future-fiancée-depending-on-how-our-weird-emotions-settle-down-in-a-few-years, Sarah Smith who I'm trying to help cure, Sarah Smith my cradle-snatched girlfriend, or just Sarah my friend, and stay as anonymous as possible?”
“Hmm. The first one definitely not. The second possibly wins on truthfulness, but is giving away a bit much, I think. How about 'Sarah who has problems with crowds but wants to get back to the Lord?' No chance of sneaking in?”
“Sounds very good. No, probably not. They made me one of the leadership team last year, sorry. Unless you want to sneak in on your own?”
“No, I like the idea of going with you. That way I don't get surrounded by well-meaning welcomers. If there are really going to be 40 plus there, it'll be hard enough without being crowded.”
“Pseudo-pizza's done! Next one will be much better.”
“I see what you mean.” She said, picking up the strange substance. “It's food
John, but not as we know it.”
“So, what did you do yesterday, John? Oh I had a date with a girl who ate microwaved psueudo-pizza for breakfast after she'd thrown herself into my arms, and we'd declared our undying confusion to each other.”
“Don't make me laugh, I'll choke. Is this a date?”
“It wasn't going to be, but we both prepared as if it were one, didn't we?”
“I guess our heads don't know what our hearts are doing.”
“Maybe they'll catch up later on.”
“So while we're waiting for the real pizza, what would you do with this pile of data we've got in front of us?”
“Well, we're looking for significant events that link with the onset of your exploding head, so I'd start by trying to narrow down the time-frame for that, and then start reading the medical records, tag the boring ones and ones that match them, and then look to see if anything lines up at all.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“No wonder. So you use some pattern matching, and that's it? How crude! It'd almost be faster to just sort the two lists together.”
“That was my old method.”
“You ever took much computer science did you?”
“No...”
“So, you have a computer which has enough AI to understand speech and use it like it were a little toy from two centuries or more ago.” she shook her head in disappointment. “Oh, John”
“Once more, I bow to your skills and wisdom.”
She took the terminal and started typing and passing her fingers over the display. “OK, first we should set up some scores... First, seriousness of injury, 10 would be hospitalisation, 0 will be everyday cuts and bruises, then we'll score how it happened, and how long the healing took, just for interest's sake.”
It looked far too much like a work of mage-craft for John to follow, but he watched her and appreciated her skills more and more. “Now for the good bit... We feed the medical reports into the natural language processor and get it to score stuff or us. And then we'll do a search in the psychological data for terms in the areas of headaches, crowds, anything else?”
“Is it better to search for lots now, or might it be better to only do a few searches now and widen it?”
“Well, if your computer's got the speed...”
“It was new last year. I seem to remember Kate moaning about it costing more than her year's salary.”
“Then either she needs another job or this computer's very high specification. Wow, it is. It's back with the medical search already. I'd expected at least a quarter of an hour. OK, urm, lets make it index the data by semantic domains. Then we can get immediate results of whatever we're looking for. Nice toy this, by the way.”
“Pizza's ready.”
“Oh, this is much better. Why did we waste time on the microwaved one?”
“Because my favourite priestess of high power computing was faint with hunger.”
“Oh yes. What do you mean 'priestess'?”
“Well, you're the intermediary between myself and this silicon wonder we apparently have here, and you're most certainly female. You have the hidden knowledge to call forth its wonders by means of the cryptic gestures and incantations, the gorgeous long flowing hair and the beautiful face lit by strange glowing symbols. Clarke's law in action.”
“I didn't realise I'd left you behind so quickly, sorry. I noticed a few compliments scattered in that poetic description. Thank you.”
“Nothing more than honest appraisal.”
“Honest biased opinion, it seems to me. I really do appreciate it. I don't understand it, but if they keep coming then I guess I'm not going to mind your memory of Sally as much as I thought I might.”
“More pizza?”
“No, thanks. Hey, this computer's finished already.”
“So, what next?”
“Well, let's plot a time-line with the different events and key matches on it.”
Her fingers flickered once more and the display filled with dots of different colours. “Hmm, and we'll plot the search words under the line. So headache, crowd, look there they start occurring together. Let's add noise, and scream, ooh this is a nice system you've got.”
“What are those red dots above, just before it?”
“Let's see. Hmm. Bruising to rib cage, I don't remember... Oh yes, I do, my friend's big brother tried to tie us to a tree.”
“Related?”
“Not at all, let's make it go away.”
“Hmm, what's that just before? Shoulder muscles wrenched by adult male. That sounds suspicious.”
“It might be. Let's see.... summary. I thought so. Another friend's foster father. Wanted to play doctors and nurses. My friend said it was just tickling. Let's read that. I don't remember the details, but it was nasty.” Sara pulled up the whole document. John read aloud, “On date of ...blah blah here we are, ‘client reported probable historical abuse of friend and attempted inappropriate touching of self, both by her friend's carer. Police intervention. Carer accused client of making up stories. Client gave details of where photographic evidence of abuse could be found. Source of information unknown, carer accused client of ‘spying on me, the little witch’. Client seems more distraught at this than other events. Addendum: carer found guilty on all counts.’”
He let our a low whistle, “Well, yes, that would classify as a traumatic event. So here we've another time when you've said something you couldn't know, you're accused of witchcraft, a word you're still very sensitive to, and the headaches started soon after and have continued to this day. Sarah, you're a genius, it would have taken me hours to correlate these. You're going to need to talk to Kate about this, my prophetess.”
“So, is that it? Finished for the day?”
“Can we check to see if you've been similarly accused?”
“Yes, that's easy. Let's see what we get if we just search for witch and related semantic terms.”
“A few months earlier, there:” John said, reading again, “‘Client's guardian reports unusual event when client was uncontrollably crying because of a historical romance, ‘The lady's not for burning.’ When client asked by AI for reason, client responded 'I don't want to be burned.’ Sarah, do you remember it?”
“It was an old play, all set in one room, I don't remember that time you've got mentioned there, but I remember the play. I watched it a couple of years ago. They were going to burn the lady because they said she was a witch. But she wasn't, and there was a man who was tired of life and wanted to be hung and claimed he'd killed the man that they said she'd transformed into a dog. Somehow it all got sorted out and the two of them fell in love and they left together through a window.”
“But your reaction implies that you'd been called a witch before.”
“Or thought of myself as one.”
“Anything else?”
“I don't see anything. But what does it all mean. Sometimes I say truth I couldn't know, somehow I grew up thinking that mind-reading was witchery, and was terrified of the accusation. Somehow I cannot stand something to do with crowded places. I don't get the connection.”
“But there does seem to be far more connection between the molester calling you a witch and the crowd thing than there is with the missile attack. At least in terms of timing.”
“I suppose so,” Sarah said. “But if I associated being accused of witchcraft with being burned, which seems reasonable having just watched that play, then might that have brought back residual fear of the fireball?”
“... Which could be triggered by the presence of a crowd,” John said. “Are we going in circles?”
“Maybe. And does any of it explain your odd desire to help me? I've heard those rationalisations you gave me, but they didn't really sound that convincing. Can we come up with a solution that covers everything? That would be the most economical.”
“Somehow linking the pair of us, you mean? I doubt we'll find a natural solution to that one.”
“But supernatural? I don't know God very well, John, but He could be behind it all, couldn't He?”
“He could be. You making prophetic rebukes like yesterday's or saying things you shouldn't have any knowledge about, like yesterday or that abuser's photos, those all have been written about enough times in the church's history. It's not the sort of thing we experience regularly at our church, but there have been some centuries where it seems to have been relatively normal in some denominations. Please don't ask me how that works. But would a spiritual gift lead you to crazy actions?”
“Throwing myself at you, you mean? I don't know. Love might do that one, I hear. That does strange things to people's attitudes and morals.”
“Like making people think it's OK to let their body make a promise that their mind hasn't agreed to? It does. It's not something you can undo, breaking those sorts of promises, or making them in the wrong order. It wounds the soul. Urm, just so you don't misunderstand, Sally and I resisted those pressures.”
“Well done, I've seen those pressures at work on some friends. And I like the way you've expressed that. Just so you don't misunderstand, I'm pretty sure I'm falling in love with you, John. Or will be soon.”
“Sarah, can we try to stay sensible? We've not even known each other for a week! OK we've had some unusual things happen to us, and some intimate conversations, and well, I like your company a lot, but I'm not all whole and it must be too soon to fall in love, mustn't it?”
“You're trying to protect me from myself, aren't you? Thank you.”
“I want whatever is best for you, Sarah.”
“And if that turns out to be you? Would you let me share your life with only a verbal commitment, not a physical one to accompany it? In the hope that perhaps God might heal you fully, or that should I become desperate for a child of ours and healing still has not come, then failing anything else, modern medicine can probably extract sperm from you uncooperative body? If you keep on wanting my best and my love for you blossoms fully, and remains true for sufficient time to convince you it will not waver, would you permit me to have hope of such a love from you, or would you refuse me even that?”
John gathered her into his arms and held her. “I could not, would not, in those circumstances. Sarah, I believe I loved my wife truly, dearly, whole-heartedly, but I was still a young man full of hormones. What I feel for you is different, it has to be. I don't know my new self enough to know if what I feel is love, or merely compassion, concern and a desire for your best. If that is love, then I have loved you since before I first met you, but then I didn't know you at all. Now I've known you under a week full of excitement and adventure, but marriage is for a lifetime, and I'm sure the excitement fades. I like you, I care for you, I want to know you better. And maybe I'll be begging you to marry me in the future, or maybe we're destined to be nothing more than friends. Can we just date like normal people for a while, please? Or rather, like normal people who love their creator?”
“Yes John, let's do that. Let's try and pretend we're normal, even though we're not, either of us.” She punched him gently.
“Ouch!” he said.
“Sorry, that was supposed to be encouraging. So, what do we do now? It's got to be too early for more pizza. What more can we extract from the computer?”
“I think we've got the gold: that connection with the accusation, and the unexpected knowledge, and the headaches so soon after.” John said.
“Well, where there's gold there's often copper and tin. Let's see if there are other reports of accusations or unexpected knowledge. I expect we'll do better with a full AI scan like we did with the medical records. But the psychological records are more of a challenge both in terms of language and sheer quantity of data. Oh well, let's go for it. Would you like to let me go?”
“Oh. Yeah, I suppose I could. It is sort of nice holding you like this,” John mused.
“And it's nice to be held. Are you sure your hormones aren't working?”
“Not at full strength, certainly, why?”
“It's just that you're still holding me.”
“Your hair smells nice.”
“John!”
“OK, you're free.”
Sarah moved to the console once more, and set up the search. “What is this system for if none of you can use it properly?”
“Oh, it runs the whole centre security too.”
“You're not just talking burglar alarm stuff, are you? You don't need a system this powerful to open doors.”
“Urm, no. I think it does external and internal communication monitoring and threat detection, pre-emptive lock-down, internal threat neutralisation by sleep-gas release, and I'm not sure what else.”
“John, that stuff sounds like military spec! What on earth is this fortress you've invited me to?”
“We have some rich clients, people who could not trust a general access computer system to analyse them for threat of espionage or logic bombs, heads of states sometimes. We're one of the top centres for mental health and stability on this continent. Fortress is quite a good word. Short of a full scale military assault you're pretty safe here.”
“And you're letting me play around on the main console? Surely you're breaching security just telling me this stuff, John. I could have dodgy contacts or anything.”
“Urm. Not really. We had to get you security clearance before we invited you to come. I think they said you'd got enough clearance to play tennis with the royal family, but not play darts until they've had an all clear from us about your head. They might have been joking. If they joke. And no, this isn't the main console. They don't let me cook pizza near the main console for some reason.”
“So this console...”
“Runs at very low priority as a virtual system on the main machine.”
“John, why? Why go to this much trouble just for me?”
“Kate is a wonderful lady and I managed to convince her that I needed you healed for my continued mental well being.”
“But you don't normally take on charity cases do you?”
“I'm sorry, I fibbed. I didn't want to overwhelm you, or scare you away.”
“And the costs of my treatment? You're meeting them personally aren't you?”
“Pro-rata cut in pay, not commercial rates, I assure you. The overheads on running this place are not small. And since I owe you my life, you are not, and I repeat not, in any way in debt to me over this. Not now, not in the future. Not even if you fall out of love with me, marry someone else and still need another 10 years of talking to Kate. Only I really hope you don't, because Kate's due to retire before then. I want to see you better much sooner than that, and for some selfish reason I'm not particularly happy about the idea of you falling out of love with me.”
“You're mad, and I love you for it. Thank you, John.”
“So has our little toy here come up with anything good?”
“Hmm. We've seen that one, and that one, oh that's new: client said that a teacher had lied about his qualifications. Oh, I remember. He wanted us to call him Dr., but he'd not actually attained the doctorate. We found the evidence for a journalism unit. He wasn't very happy when it appeared in the school paper. That's not worth reporting.”
“But read on — look, it says client plans to prove this for her journalism unit. So you'd made the accusation before you had the evidence.”
“Oops. Computer remembers better than me.”
“So, once more, you've got unusual knowledge. When was this?”
“About 2 years after the first problem with my head.”
“That makes sense. You're being more cautious — not confronting the man yourself, but are seeking external evidence to prove it publicly. Any more?”
“Client is certain that university resident guru is predatory. I've told you about this guy.”
“Yes. What's this? 'Assessment: previous experience of predatory offender and historical accounts of predatory guru figures from 20th century may have made her over sensitive. Client had no evidence to support case. Transmitted recommendations of no action against respectable staff member.'”
“So the computer decided I was crying wolf?”
“Yes. I can't believe it did that. I'm legally required to flag this program as suspect. It shouldn’t have made that judgement call. Someone has made a bad mistake in its programming.”
“Or deliberately decided that there are too many accusations being made. That was a university program, if I remember rightly.”
“Excuse me, I need to make a call.”
“That urgent?”
“It might be, you never know.”
He made a call, and Sarah listened to his end of it, once he'd made his way through an interminable maze of A.I. systems asking him to restate whathe was calling about.
“Hello, John Williams here. I know it's Saturday. I'm reviewing some historical data from one of our clients and there's a record of a psychological counselling program flagging a client's suspicion about a university staff member as 'no action'. Yes, exactly, him. No, not the computer's call at all. The program's I.D. is 6474969. A high level AI or human needs to recheck every accusation that's been handled by that program. I've no idea who trained it, but since the staff member later offended, it's either incompetence or there's potential aiding and abetting too. Thank you, and sorry for ruining your weekend. Bye.”
“John, you're surprising me again. Do you really have the authority to do that, to get them to do all that work?”
“Authority no, responsibility to let them know an AI has gone amok or worse, been deliberately misprogrammed, yes. Just a day in the life of an average shrink.”
“You do that every day?”
“No, but it's sadly common. A couple of times a year, maybe. Did our scan come up with anything else?”
“No, nothing. But while you were calling I asked the computer if it had an inventory of the cellars.”
“You're happy to go down?” John asked “What did it say?”
“Look, a map of what's stored where. And your computer does stock control too — this map seems to get updated if anything is moved.”
“And there I was, thinking we'd be wandering around and poking into unlabelled crates.”
“Well, if Experiment 321b34 doesn't mean much to you, we might be.”
“There must be a key,” John protested.
“I couldn't find one.”
“No key then. If my priestess can't find it, it's not there... Oh, what about searching the research reports? That's not ticked.”
“Hmm, didn't think of that. Hey presto. 321b34 investigation into effect of eating Stilton cheese on brain function. Someone funded that?”
“And what's in the box?” John asked, “A very ripe cheese?”
“Probably some lab notebooks, looking at the size of the box on the map.”
“Oh, that makes more sense. Not as much fun, though.”
Sarah laughed. “So, what do we look for?”
“Hmm...” John mused, “research reports mentioning telepathy, remote viewing, thought sensitivity, truth-saying, thought transference and sooth-saying for starters, or any synonyms. “
“OK, one list coming up. And first up: ‘correct use of playing cards as a tool to determine telepathic quotient’?”
“Sounds like a possibility. Oh, what about that one?” he pointed to an item half way down the display.
“Experimental setup for double blind two person thought transfer testing using random words and images. Sounds good, but why does it say double blind?”
“Hmm. Oh, it varies between the two people as to who is reading who. I’m not quite sure why anyone thought that made it double blind though. I assume it's all packed away in boxes, if it's down there.”
“It's there, and... oh, it looks like it's all set up. The map shows chairs next to a desk. Are you sure it's dusty down there?”
“We could always look. Before pizza or after?”
“Both.” Sarah said, “Let's see if it's really there, give it a try, then we can eat some pizza, try it again and write a report on the effects of pizza on thought transfer efficiency.”
He laughed, “Your wish is my command. Let's take the map with us. It's a big place down there.”
“OK, I'll get a copy.”