She sits down. Her cameramen take up their positions. Like her, they have specific instructions they need to follow. One stands behind her, but slightly to one side to capture the long shot as she conducts the interview. The other kneels slightly in front of her, focusing on her good side, looking to capture her face as she asks her questions. As Subject X wants to remain anonymous, hidden in the shadows, it’s important to capture some human interest, and for once, the focus is solely on her.
Human interest? Who is she kidding? She’s eye candy.
“Subject X has agreed to meet with us,” she begins, “but only with a guarantee of anonymity. With the Telepathy Act before Congress, there’s a very real threat against the Tells. Internment is at the heart of the issue. The question is, should a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, have the power to arbitrarily imprison a segment of its own population without the due process of law?”
Pretty, but smart, she thinks. No, she doesn’t. She isn’t sure where that thought came from, and for a moment, she’s distracted by the fleeting realization that wasn’t her thought.
“First,” she says, addressing Subject X as he sits motionless in the dark, “can you tell me why you agreed to this interview? Tells are notoriously reclusive and secretive. Why meet with me? Why go on national television?”
“Because the people have to know,” Subject X replies.
Lisa has her suspicions confirmed. When X first spoke, asking her to sit, she thought—black male, aged 24-28, lower socioeconomic group, limited education. Now, as he begins to speak more, his tone of voice and choice of words reinforces that impression even further. The darkness provides no cover. She can see him for who he is—a disenfranchised black male raging against the world.
X doesn’t elaborate further, and she realizes she’s going to have to draw information out of him. She smiles warmly, wondering if he was reading her mind moments before. Does telepathy work like that? Like a door opening both ways? She’d like to ask, but before she can say anything, Subject X cuts her off.
“No,” he says. “It doesn’t work like that. Telepathy—everyone thinks they know what it is. It’s reading minds, right? Wrong. If you think telepathy is reading minds, you know nothing.”
Again, there’s an awkward pause.
“Go on,” she says. “This is your moment, your chance to tell us, to talk to the nation and tell them what telepathy really is.”
X doesn’t reply.
Lisa desperately wants to see his face. Interviewing someone without any of the usual visual clues and feedback mechanisms associated with body language is painfully difficult for her.
“When did you first develop telepathy?” she asks.
“It ain’t something you develop,” X replies. “It’s something you are. And we’re all different, but we’re all the same. Get it? Like you. Look at you with your pretty blond hair. Anyone can look at you and see that you’re blonde, but what is blonde? No two blondes are the same, right? And yet you’re all blonde.”
Lisa nods. She has no idea what he’s talking about, but he’s talking, and talking is progress. In her experience, give someone enough rope in an interview and they will invariably hang themselves. Shut up, she tells herself. Let the man speak.
“Let me speak,” X says, and her eyes go wide. Lisa can’t quite explain what she’s feeling, but it feels as though she’s having a conversation with this man on two entirely different levels.
“See, it’s not really reading minds, not like you’d read a book or something. People got it all wrong.”
“How did you know?” she asks. In the depths of her mind, she knows that’s all she needs to say. No additional qualifiers are necessary. There is an implicit understanding between her and this angry young man.
“First time I ever tripped was when I was thirteen. Me and my girl were making out behind the bike sheds at school. Hell, I thought it was normal. We swapped spit, you know, our lips locked, my hands on her tits, and our minds just kinda fused. I loved it. I thought it was normal, but damn did it freak her out. She jumped back, her eyes wide like yours. Wouldn’t speak to me for a month!
“But even then, I didn’t really know what’d happened. See, it’s not like some superpower you can turn on or off, it’s just part of you.
“You don’t think about sight. You don’t think about smelling or hearing, right? You just live life, you know, and you see stuff, you smell apple pie, flowers and coffee. But you never think about what you’re doing, you just do it, right? For me, it’s all about emotions. The more emotional I am, the more I trip.”
Lisa nods.
“Telepathy isn’t reading minds. You need to understand that. It’s not like going to a library and getting out a book. Think about the name: telepathy. Tele means at a distance, like television, telephoto, telescope.”
Lisa is surprised by Subject X. He is more intelligent than she assumed, and she is vaguely aware that she’s mistaken a lack of education for low intelligence, but those two concepts aren’t synonymous.
“Yeah, I looked that up,” X replies, unsettling her with how he picks up on her assumptions—although he could have simply read her body language, she notes. Lisa has run into subjects like this before during various interviews. The best con men are those that can pick up on the subtle tells people give away with their eyes, their posture, and even how they hold their hands. X doesn’t break stride as he speaks.
“Telepathy isn’t tele-thought, it’s about pathos, empathy. You want to know what most people are thinking? You don’t need telepathy for that. You see a beautiful young girl sitting on the bus. She’s wearing a short skirt and a tight top. She gets off the bus, and all them men, they pretend they’re civilized, they pretend they’re dignified and moral, wearing their dark suits and white shirts with their fancy ties, but they all turn their heads as the bus pulls away. They all want a look. Like a dog sniffing ass. And see, you don’t need no telepathy to read that mind.”
Lisa feels sweat beading on her forehead under the intense lights, but she fights the temptation to wipe it away.
“It’s okay,” Subject X says, and she catches his hand move in a gesture that says relax. The cameras are on his dark shadow as he speaks, so she carefully dabs at her forehead, trying to avoid smudging her makeup.
“You want to know what people think? I’ll tell you what people think. They think about themselves. Most of the time, they’re consumed, wondering what other people think about them. But no one gives a shit about them. They’re all too busy thinking about themselves.
“Nah, it’s not a party trick. Telepathy is something different.
“First time I knew? First time I really knew was when this guy collapsed on the sidewalk in front of a cafe. Me and my crew was out, walking in a swank neighborhood in the Village. Shit, we were fish out of water, we were in the wrong part of town. All the stares, man, we got them, but we don’t care.
“Anyway, there’s this fancy Italian joint with tables on the sidewalk. They say it’s owned by DeNiro or Billy Joel or someone famous. We’re joking around. Cop car pulls up. Asks us what we’re doing. Fucking harassment. What? Is the Village just for white folk? Don’t give me no lip, he says, move along. Yes, officer. Fucking dipshit!
“Anyway, he rolls on around the corner, giving us the evil eye, and we’re just laughing. Then this guy crashes into a table right in front of me, knocks it over. The cop car is gone, and this guy is lying flat on his back, grabbing at his throat and choking.
“My boys run. If shit’s going down, you don’t want nothing to do with it. Too easy for a cop to pin the blame, you know. Only Jules stays—I guess girls get less shit planted on them.
“I want to run, but I can’t. There’s no telepathy kicking in or anything. I don’t need no stupid telepathy. I can see it in his eyes. The pain. He’s dying. All these white folk are shouting and panicking, but they’re all just standing around watching. Ain’t no one helping him. I have to. I don’t know
why I care about this fifty-year-old white guy, but I do.
“I reach down and touch his arm and that’s when it hits me. I didn’t read his mind or nothing. There were no thoughts, no words bouncing around, just knowing. He’d been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk. He’d tripped on the doorframe and fell into the side of a table—and the corner struck him in the pharynx. Now there’s a word I don’t know, but he knows it. The force crushed his windpipe. He can’t breathe. But he’s a doctor, see, a surgeon at Mount Sinai.
“Give me your pen, I say to the waiter standing next to me. He hands me the pen as I grab a steak knife from the pavement. In my mind, I know it’s not sterile, but that’s not my thought and it’s not his either—it’s based on his experience as a surgeon. I know what to do. He’s fading. His mind is slipping, but it’s all there, decades of experience for me to draw upon. I just know, but I don’t know how. I ain’t never been to college.
“I bite the end of the pen, break through the plastic, and spit the nib and shit out on the sidewalk. I’m left with a hollow, clear tube. I wipe the knife with a napkin and lean over him, trying to cover him from sight so no one can see what I’m doing. People are going to freak out with this shit. You don’t need to be a telepath to know that.
“Jules is still with me when this woman freaks out and starts hitting me with her handbag. Jules pulls her away. She knows. And me, I perform a tracheotomy on a sidewalk covered in old chewing gum. With my finger, I touch at the bridge of the sternum. I don’t know what the fuck a sternum is, but he does. I cut through the soft skin. Epidermis, that’s what he knows, but to me it’s just skin. Blood pools, but I cut deeper. I’m confident. I know I have to cut deeper, through the thick cartilage leading into his windpipe, but I have to be precise. Cause too much damage and blood can run down into his lungs. I want a small hole, just large enough to push the pen through so air can flow.
“Now the woman or wife or mistress or whoever she was, she’s screaming in my ear. Fuck, it’s hard to concentrate with some high-pitched bitch yelling just inches from your head. Shut the fuck up, I yell. I raise the empty pen high above my head, keeping one hand on the bloody wound in this guy’s neck, and strike hard, jamming it deep into his throat.”
Lisa’s mouth hangs open. She’s lost all composure while listening to Subject X recount his story. This is not what she expected from this interview.
“And he gasps. There’s blood and shit everywhere, but he’s breathing again. By this time, there’s a crowd gathered around, and he’s blowing blood bubbles. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen, but he’s alive.
“These two big white guys grab me by the shoulders and haul me off the dude. Jules yells at them to stop, but she ain’t up for a fight, and I don’t blame her.
“The first guy slams me into this parked car. The alarm goes off. All the lights start flashing as the second guy smacks me in the solar plexus. What the fuck is a solar plexus, I’m thinking as the wind is knocked out of me, but the doc and me, we’re still connected. Jesus, that shit is confusing. And the guy that hit me, I got enough contact to make a connection with him too, but it’s faint. I can see inside his mind. He’s a fucking Green Beret. In his mind, I’m a dead man.
“I raise my hands, protecting my head, because I know that’s where he’s going. That’s where he always goes. I don’t know how I know, I just do. It’s not like getting a book off a shelf and looking something up, more like remembering a scene from your favorite movie. Anyway, fists are pumping. He’s beating on me, hitting my jaw, my cheeks, the side of my head. I’m trying to protect my head, but I can’t. I’m crying. It fucking hurts, you know. He’s pounding on me like a gorilla. I’m on my knees and he’s hitting me with fists made of iron, I swear.
“I grab at his ankle and share the pain. Shit, did that work. I barely touched him, but it was enough. His buddy is yelling. Finish him! Finish him! But he just sinks to his knees in front of me. Our eyes meet, and he knows. He’s crying, like me.
“See, y’all are afraid of the Tells, but you don’t get it. We’re the ones with something to lose.”
Lisa feels a tear run down her cheek.
“I work on a construction site,” X says, changing the subject, but Lisa desperately wants to know what happened to the surgeon, what happened to the soldier, and to X himself once the police and paramedics arrived at the restaurant. X isn’t telling. He wants to move on to something else.
“So one day, we’re sitting on the overhang of an unfinished roof, watching people walk by on the street while we eat lunch, and this girl crosses the street toward us.
“She’s like you: drop-dead gorgeous. Long blonde hair. Hourglass figure. She’s busting out of her top like Clark Kent ripping open his shirt. One guy whistles and everybody goes nuts. We’re all looking. Guys are calling out. Hey baby, whatcha doin’? You wanna sit on my what? My face? Guys are laughing their asses off, and then she lets us have it. WHAM!
“Honestly, I don’t know that she knew what she was doing, but in that moment, we all felt it. Smacked me in the head like a hurricane. Nothing was said, but we all knew. We had thought it was fun. It wasn’t. It was humiliating. Degrading. An ambush. I felt dirty. Nothing could wash me clean. This verbal assault on her was horrible, horrifying, but we were the ones that had done it. I felt like I was naked in front of her. I was ashamed.
“Thing is, she didn’t know she’d done that. She didn’t know she was a Tell. Her head dropped and she rushed past the construction site not looking at anything other than the cracks in the pavement.
“No one said anything about that afternoon, but the wolf whistles stopped.
“A couple of guys transferred in from Manhattan a week later. Some other hot chick walked by and one of these new guys yells, show us your tits! The carpenter next to him turns to him and says, Grow up! The new guy is like: That was funny, right? Nope. Nobody thought it was cool anymore.”
A voice speaks in Lisa’s earpiece.
“Lisa, what is wrong with you? Take charge of the interview. Lead him. Get him talking about the bill before Congress.”
“Ah,” she begins, still reeling mentally from what she’s heard and trying to peer past the blinding lights at the dark silhouette sitting opposite her. “What is your position on the Telepathy Act?”
Subject X stiffens in his chair.
“The oppression of minorities is the natural, predictable outcome of majority rule. Tells are just the latest minority in a long line of fearful, ignorance-based prejudice.”
Lisa is confused. This doesn’t sound like Subject X at all. It’s his voice, but the mannerisms of speech are entirely different.
“Slaves, women, blacks, Hispanics, gays—you’d think the aging white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men that run this country would have figured it out by now. Same pattern, same template, same stupidity applied to some other minority. They say that how you treat those most vulnerable and powerless in society either validates or condemns your morals. It should be clear by now that this country is morally bankrupt.”
“Ah,” Lisa says, turning her head slightly to one side, surprised by the transformation she’s witnessed. “Congress has women.”
“They’re part of the aristocracy, the ruling patriarchy.”
The change in speech patterns takes Lisa back. If she didn’t know better, she would swear Subject X has switched seats with someone else.
Lisa’s producer whispers in her earpiece, “You’ve got him on the ropes. This is good. He’s hemorrhaging hate. The audience will love this.”
Lisa ignores her producer and speaks from the heart.
“If the bill passes, telepaths will be required to reveal themselves or be subject to internment on detection. Does that worry you?”
“Why the hell do you think I called you here?” X replies. “Of course it worries me, but call it what it is. They’re not proposing internment, they’re proposing imprisonment. They’re going to throw us in prison indefinitely and without trial. What do you think
of that? Do you think that’s justice?”
In her ear, soft words are spoken with venom.
“Go for the jugular. Bleed him dry.”
Lisa wants her producer to stop goading her. This isn’t a game. This is a man’s life. Coming into this interview, Lisa had steeled herself to be a mercenary, but she hadn’t expected to meet such a complex individual. On some level, she feels she can relate to X. She tilts her head slightly, and reaches up, discreetly removing the earpiece from beneath her hair and dropped it on the concrete floor.
“No,” she replies, wondering who is interviewing whom. “No, I don’t think it’s just, but I understand the fear these people have. Not every Tell is going to behave like you. Some of them are bound to abuse their power and take advantage of others.”
“What?” X replies with anger. “Like a white man born into privilege using his natural smile and good looks to get ahead? Don’t you get it? American culture is stacked against us. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, Hispanic, female or gay, you will never earn as much as a white man.”
Lisa feels adrenaline pumping through her veins. “For someone that’s sensitive to racial issues, you seem to have an undue concern for those of us with fairer skin.”
As those words slip from her lips, Lisa realizes she’d identified with Anglo-Saxon men, and yet she knows the truth of what X is saying. She got her start as a reporter because she was cheap. Salaries in the news profession are a fiercely guarded secret, but it isn’t hard to figure out what the anchormen are being paid when they drive Audis.
“It’s not the color that’s important,” X replies. “It’s that white is on top. And that’s the real issue here. Who’s on top? The Telepathy Act is a feeble effort to maintain the status quo, to retain power.”
This is good, she thinks. She can work with this.
“You want us to understand telepaths,” she says, wanting to recover her momentum within the interview. “But you have to understand our concerns.”
“Your concerns? Do you know what happened at that restaurant? They thought I’d stabbed that doctor. Fucking cops kicked me so hard they cracked my ribs. That Green Beret, he knew, he pulled one of the cops away as I lay there in the gutter with my back up against a fucking car wheel taking kicks to the chest. And what did he get for his troubles? He got busted as well. I spent four days in the hole until the doc tracked me down. He knew. He said he didn’t want to press charges. He explained that I’d saved his life. Do you think they believed him?”
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