2 month ago.

The person in front of CD was calm and collected, his name was Narayan. Not a single expression could be seen on his face. Narayan was working on a part of project for scientific paper being written by CD on mobile communication platforms for secret defence project for spies. His job was to find ways to infiltrate and inject software patches on target mobile phones.

Narayan was selected to work on this part of paper because he was judged to be best person for this part. He had field experience of almost 17 yrs and best psychopath they could find. Yes, he was a psychopath in employ of defence ministry. He was well known for a incident when he was torturing a foreign spy while eating his lunch. Even his boss was afraid to get in his cross-hair.

Initially CD was not aware about Narayan and took him as regular cloak and dagger spy putting up front to keep others away. But when CD was not able to get a read on him for almost hrs, he asked coordinator about him during lunch. Fact that person in front was a known psychopath was extremely intriguing for CD.

When CD went back after lunch, Narayan himself raised issues without prompt after a few minute.

"yes. I am psychopath"

CD was shocked at upfront statement. 'how he know what I was thinking? Did coordinator told him about me asking question?'

"It is written all over your face. Since lunch, you are trying to look at me from every possible angle like I am some novelty item". Narayan answered his unasked question. CD felt really embarrassed about it.

"sorry, I never met a ..... um... person like you before. I was not trying to be rude"

"quid pro quo Starling"

'what ??? wait!! did he used silence of the lambs reference !! He made a joke ??" CD almost laughed but reigned himself at last possible moment.

"You can laugh, I wont eat your liver with beans". Deadpan delivery made CD laugh after all.

"I thought... I ... Well, I don't even know how to behave anymore. I thought you might get angry"

"No. That happen in movie plots and 2 cent novels. What you see in fiction are mostly sociopaths, not psychopaths. We psychopaths do not feel much of anything, even offence at insults. We take action only when it is beneficial to us, usually. So unless you plan to eat my lunch, you don't have to worry"

'ummm ??? what ??!!!'

"So you .."

"Don't kill people willy nilly. Almost 1% of USA population is estimated to be psychopaths. You don't see bloodbath happening in USA on daily basis."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Really!!??"

"Maybe, who knows ? But it usually get others to relax and less afraid of me. so... "

It make CD almost laugh again. 'wait !! do not feel much ?'

"Did you say 'don't feel much' ???"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, we do feel but we ignore it."

"how?? " seeing no immediate threat, CD got more curious.

"See, our brain has 2 parts mainly. First is primitive part which is based on instinctual reactions. Other is Higher brain function. primitive part is fast reaction based on emotions reactions from evolution and experience. Higher brain function give us logical conclusion. Whenever we face any situation, we always get 2 outcome decisions. one is emotional reaction and other is logical reaction. Due to evolution, emotional reaction is delivered faster in normal person, overwhelming logical reaction. Due to this most decisions of normal person are emotional in nature because hormone released due to emotion make selecting logical decision almost impossible. But normal person still get logical reaction. So if a person wait for emotion to calm down, he can take logical output to act. In case of psychopaths like me, emotional reaction is present but it is delivered to us AFTER logical reaction. So when emotional reaction do arrive, we can discard it very easily. most of time we take logical decisions. This actually help me a lot in field."

"Huh ...". CD realised that this was a reality for him too. He get emotional reaction first, so he take decisions based on them and ignore logic. But if he wait for higher brain function based decision and ignore emotional decision, he might always take logical decision.

Now reason for selection of Narayan was clear to CD. His project needed a person who can look from completely different perspective regarding infiltrating. Narayan was perfect.

CD Decided to create another of his persona based on psychopathic profile. Yes, CD had a habit of creating different personas based on different profile of interaction with different peoples. If any of CD's acquaintances meet each others, they never agreed on CD's behaviour. CD used to do this for fun usually. But it was very effective in handling different kind of people in his work life. CD used to present profile which match perfectly to the person in front of him.

"That is a good trait to have !!! I wish I was like that"

"No. It is extremely difficult to suppress your reaction of killing a person for smallest of gain. I have to remind myself that punishment for killing is death which is loss for me. Office usually send me for specific targets. Moreover, I don't understand other people's emotions, so I might make mistakes"

'But it sound so ... peaceful !!! Not feeling any emotions.... much better then feeling so many emotions. I even feel minor emotions. People think that they react based on single emotions, but reality is that most people react based on result of combination of 5-6 different emotions'

"Besides, I do feel emotions. I just feel them slower then others. so most of time I discard them. But long term emotions like love for my family and such are present. So it is good but not perfect"

'well, I can work with imperfect. At least it will save me from non-logical decision.'

Afterwards CD started to work with his psychopathic profile to make fast and logical decisions. It even helped him work in discarding many mistakes in his technical work by not getting attached. Finding common mistakes in user behaviour from his empathetic nature and exploiting them with psychopathic efficiency.

Result of cooperation was much faster completion of project. Last memory of CD was preparing and saving his final draft before submission of project for field trials. Unlike movies and fictions, nobody hack a system on the run, you have to prepare a lot of scenarios beforehand and explore multiple alternative paths for penetration. Wait for finding opportunity to exploit is in days or weeks.