Year: 2024 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Daisy Academy is an after-school daycare center in an upscale town in Central New Jersey. It accepts children from kindergarten to grade 5. Kids come from local schools, but most are from the nearby elementary school, which is just 5 minutes away. School buses drop the kids off here at the end of their school day. Most kids have working parents and are picked up anywhere between 6 PM and 9 PM.

The Academy has several rooms, one for each age group. Each room is equipped with age-appropriate materials, such as computers, board games, building supplies, and cooking and art materials. There are three kitchens distributed between the rooms. Each kitchen has a refrigerator, a mini cooking range and a sink. Older kids are taught to cook and clean up here.

It is a quiet day in the second-grade room. The walls are fairly busy; there is a large TV, an analog clock and two whiteboards. There are only six kids attending today. A couple of the regulars didn't show up because they are away on vacation with their families. The COVID debacle has finally ended, and face masks are optional. None of the kids are wearing masks.

Amy and May are playing their violins. The violins are half-sized and look beat up. However, they are well-tuned and sound good. Dimi is playing an electronic piano with them, an inexpensive Yamaha model with only 61 keys. The bench he is sitting on is incongruously wider than the piano, but he doesn't seem to mind. They are playing some pleasant and gentle music. It seems to be original, not classical, and not quite pop. They seem to be making it up as they go along.

Amy and May are twin sisters. They appear Asian and are extremely cute, almost like dolls. They are about seven years old. Though they are identical twins, they avoid wearing matching clothes. Both have their black hair tied in a ponytail. Dimi is almost eight, but he is tall for his age. He has unkempt brown hair with darker streaks. His eyes are greenish-gray. He is quiet, not fussy, and frequently wears mismatched clothes. Although he does not go to the same school as Amy and May, they know each other well. The three have been coming to the daycare for the last eighteen months. Two other kids, two brothers, who usually come to the daycare, are away on vacation.

Sandra is the caretaker on duty. She is twenty-three years old and is a part-time college student. She has a slim build, average height, and has a nice smile. She is almost done with college and needs the money from this job. She dreams of moving out of New Jersey and getting a real job in California. Or Texas. Or Arizona. Anywhere away from New Jersey. But not Florida; she has heard that there are too many old people there, and they drive slowly.

The kids continue playing music; they seem to be enjoying themselves as well. Sandra listens to them, enjoying the music, and marvels at how well they are playing. The melody repeats after about thirty seconds, and they keep playing it over and over as if they are practicing it.

As she watches, the music stops. May says something to Amy, who simply nods as if in agreement. Both girls start playing again. Dimi joins in on the piano. All three play perfectly in sync, without sounding off-key. But now the melody is different. It seems similar to the previous tune, but it is somehow more complex and somehow sadder. Sandra listens, but can't quite pinpoint the difference in the tune. Perhaps they just changed the key. Sandra does not play any musical instruments and she does not understand the subtleties of music.

After a few minutes, the music stops. The two girls look at each other for a couple of seconds. They start playing again. This time, the variation in the beat and notes is noticeable. Dimi effortlessly picks up the tune on the piano, without missing a beat. Sandra is amazed at how well the kids are playing music. It wasn't quite an orchestra-quality performance, but what the heck – these are three kids having fun without any musical guidance. She wishes she could play like that. She remembers how her mother had tried to get her to learn to play a guitar, and how she resisted. She preferred playing baseball with her older brothers.

All of a sudden, the incongruity of the scene in front of her strikes her. The kids did not discuss the changes in the tune before starting on the next version. So how did Dimi follow the changes so smoothly? The girls hadn't even looked at him, let alone talked to him. “They must have practiced the variations previously,” she thought. But how did they know which variation to play next?

Sandra calls the three kids to her table. They come over promptly; they are well-raised. They have been playing for a while.

Sandra: "You should take a break. Do you want a juice box or a fruit?"

Amy wants an orange; the other two opt for the purple poison juice. They walk over to the fridge and help themselves.

Dimi comes back first. He has already poked a straw into the juice box and has taken a sip.

Sandra looked at Dimi: "You play the piano very well. How long have you been playing?"

Dimi: "After I met Amy."

Sandra: "Who taught you to play?"

Dimi: "No one. My papa plays with me sometimes, but it is not fun. We have a big piano at home, but I don't play it, it is not fun. I like playing with Amy, it is fun. I like playing chess with my papa."

Amy comes to the table, holding an orange. Sandra reaches out and starts peeling the orange for her.

Sandra asked her: "How long have you been playing the violin?"

Amy: "I don't know. Always. After I was born."

That was a silly answer, but typical Amy. Sandra knew not to be offended.

May walks up. "My mom told me how to hold the violin."

Amy: "We have pretty violins at home."

Sandra asks: "Does your mom play the violin?"

May: "Yes, my mom plays best."

Amy: "My mom is beautiful."

Sandra thinks, “enough small talk, let’s see what is going on.”

She asks Dimi: "How do you know which song Amy will be playing next?"

Dimi: "She tells me"

Sandra: "But I don't hear May talk to you"

Dimi: "Sometimes May tells me, sometimes both tell me"

Dimi stares at Sandra. He seems bored with the conversation and slinks away slowly. Sandra gives Amy the orange pieces.

Sandra asks Amy: "How do you tell May what to play next?"

May chimes up: "I tell Amy what to play next."

Amy: "No, I tell you."

They start bickering and walk away. The three sit down and begin playing a card game.

Sandra makes a mental note to watch more closely the next time they play music. After half an hour, the three musicians have grown bored of playing cards. They start wandering around. May picks up a violin and begins tuning it. She plucks each string with her finger and fiddles with the tuning knobs. Dimi walks to the piano and plays notes to help her.

G, G, G, G, D, D, D, D, A, A, A, A, E, E, E, E, ...

It takes a while, but soon the violin is tuned to May's satisfaction. May smiles at Dimi to say thanks, Dimi smiles back.

She picks up the bow and starts playing the violin. It’s a jaunty tune, perhaps an Irish melody. As Sandra watches, Dimi joins in and plays an accompaniment. He makes a couple of minor mistakes with the timing initially, but then plays perfectly. Sandra knows that this time, there were no words spoken between Dimi and May. After a few riffs, Amy joins in with her violin. Sandra has never heard this song before. She turns on the song recognition software on her Android. There is no match, nothing is found. She is not surprised; the software is great at recognizing original recordings but not so good with cover versions.

Sandra starts video recording the scene. She wants to show it to someone else to get an explanation. She props her phone up on her desk and keeps recording, hoping to capture the moment when the music changes.

Sure enough, after a minute, the kids stop and look at each other. After a couple of seconds, they begin playing a different tune, something serene and slow. Right from the start, all three musicians are perfectly in tune and do not miss a single note. Now, Sandra has a recording of it. She keeps the recorder on for the next two minutes, simply enjoying the music.

And then, they do it again. A brief silence and they start on a completely different song. This time, they didn't even look at each other. Sandra feels amazed.

It is getting close to 6 p.m. It’s time to go home.

The twins’ mother comes to pick them up. She is a modestly dressed Chinese woman, in her early 30s. She has obviously come straight from her workplace and still has a badge on. Sandra can't read her last name on the badge, but it seems to say something like "Hospital." The twins excitedly run to her and hug her. Then, they grab their satchels and rush out with her. The violins and bows have been put away; they are neatly parked on the wall. Sandra wishes that she could have talked to the mom about what she had seen.

The other kids' parents come by and take their children.

Dimi is left all alone. He sits quietly, reading an anime comic book. After a short while, a car honks outside - two short honks and one longer blare. Dimi instantly perks up. "My dad is here." He gathers up his satchel. "See you tomorrow, Ms Goodwin."

Soon, a tall man enters the room. "Hi, sorry I am late. Let’s go, Dimi." Sandra thinks that the man looks aloof and doesn't want to start a conversation with him. But she has so many questions.

Sandra goes home and eats a leftover salad for dinner. She needs to study for an upcoming quiz. The subject is Far Eastern History. She usually finds it interesting, but today, her mind is on the mystery she has witnessed.

The weather is hot and muggy. Sandra takes a quick cold shower. She skips drying herself and slips on a loose t-shirt that someone had given her. Her apartment has no AC, and being dripping wet feels good.

She plays the recorded video several times. The music was definitely excellent for a bunch of 7-year-old kids. But she is searching for cues between songs – some sort of hidden signal that could explain the synchronization.

Nothing. Nada. Nichevo.

Sandra arrives at work a bit late on the following day. This is usually not a problem because the kids get dropped off at daycare after school. She checks the fridge to see if there are a sufficient number of pizza kits. Today, the kids will get to construct their own mini pizzas and cook them in the oven. This will be their snack as they arrive from their schools. Tomorrow, they could have baked dumplings.

Sandra plans to discuss her discovery with the parents when they come by in the evening. She thinks that she should record more events and try to improve the angles and compositions. Additionally, she should display the videos on the big-screen TV on the wall. Sandra feels good about planning out her "presentation.”

But she needs a better video. She props up her phone up vertically on her desk with a couple of thick books and points it at the area where the kids usually play their music. Amy and May will be in the foreground and Demi will be behind them. Their faces and expressions will be clearly visible.

The school bus arrives, and the kids run into their rooms. Most are hungry and need their snacks. Their frozen pizzas are laid out. The kids get their choice of toppings from the fridge. Everyone has a choice of pepperoni and extra cheese. But May pulls out a bag of spinach from the fridge and decorates her pizza with it. Dimi copies her. Sandra watches Dimi and thinks “No way that this boy likes spinach. He just worships her. OMG, chemistry in 8-years olds.”

Amy likes Dimi, but Dimi likes May.

Sandra helps them bake their pizzas. After they finish eating and drinking, they get to clean up the kitchen. Now their daily activities begin, starting with their school homework assignments.

The kids play several tunes. Sandra records them discreetly, but the kids are totally oblivious to her fidgeting with her phone. She records several songs and captures one good example of what she wants. There is a transition where two songs are quite different in rhythm and tune, and the kids barely look at each other between the songs. She renames the video file containing that moment and decides to use it as her main example. She practices casting the video on the big screen TV on the wall. She writes down the times of the transitions and picks out one more example video.

Time rushes by, and it is almost time for the parents to arrive. The twins’ mother arrives first. Her kids greet her enthusiastically, as if she has been away for weeks. Her name is Sue Li. Sandra makes some small talk with her, telling her that the twins play the violin really well. It turns out that Sue learned to play the violin while growing up in San Francisco. The neighborhood was mostly Chinese immigrants, and every child there had learned to play some musical instrument. Sue used to play the violin for the twins but had never formally taught them to play. They just picked it up.

Dimi’s dad walks in. Sandra introduces him to Sue. “Sue – Mike, Dimi’s dad; Mike – this is Sue.” They have seen each other before, but have never spoken.

Sandra notices Sue subconsciously change her body posture. Sue is trying to seem more attractive. She thinks “I wouldn’t bother, babe. This dude is probably gay.” Mike is tall and good-looking.

Sandra: “Mike, do you have a few minutes? I’d like to talk to you about something interesting. You should see this video of your son playing the piano. He is really fantastic.”

Sandra plays the first video. Everyone watches, including the kids. Sue says “That is really nice! Where did you learn that song?” Mike also says something equally encouraging to Dimi.

Sandra: “Did you notice something interesting? Here, watch this part carefully.”

She jumps to the point where the song is about to end and plays. After they watch it again, she says “Did you see it?” The parents look puzzled.

Sandra explains: “See how they switch songs without telling each other which song is next? It is almost as if they are using some sort of unspoken language. Please watch it one more time.”

The parents look more puzzled and concerned.

After they watch again, Sandra asks, “What do you think now?” The kids are clearly getting bored with this. They want to go home. The parents do not seem impressed.

Sandra thinks “I have one last chance at this. All or nothing.”

She asks: “May, can you tell Amy something, but without talking?”

May stares at Sandra. After a couple of seconds, the other two kids start laughing. May joins in.

Amy: “May says that Miss Goodwin is wearing a Santa Claus costume.”

Dimi: “She looks funny.”

They start laughing more raucously.

May: “Now she has smoke coming out of her nose, like a dragon.”

Dimi: “There is smoke coming out of her ears too.”

Amy: “Yay. That was my idea.”

The parents are quite shocked. They did not hear anyone talking.

Mike looks annoyed: “What kind of joke is this?”

Sue is also upset; she tells May: “That was rude. Please apologize to Miss Goodwin.”

Sandra feels vindicated, she was right! She thinks that she should drive the point home now.

Sandra asks: “Dimi, can you tell May something?”

Dimi stares at her for a while, then starts crying and sobbing.

Dimi: "No one listens to me."

Amy tries to hug him, but Dimi wants to go home.

Sandra apologizes, but no one is listening. They are trying to comfort Dimi.

The parents and kids leave. Sandra’s heart is pounding; she feels like throwing up. She screwed up big time. She proved that they could communicate telepathically, but at what cost? “OMG, OMG, OMG.” Sandra was never religious, but right now, she would give her soul to Reverend Al Sharpton if he asked for it.

She sees Mike and Sue talking in the parking lot. They pull out their phones and seem to exchange contact information.

Sandra realizes that she did not ask for permission to post the video.

"Uhh, I forgot to remember. Oh well, it would have pissed them off even more."

Chapter 1 - Alexi

Years: 1980-2008 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Aleksandr and Tatiyana Antanov married and settled down in Yessentuki, Russia, where they had both grown up. The town is on the western edge of Russia, near the Caucasus Mountains and the country of Georgia. It is locally famous for its mineral water springs. Alexi, as he is called, worked as a service manager at a small distillery. Though he was a senior manager, he was technical and often got his hands dirty. Tatya was a math teacher at a local high school. Both were well-liked and had many circles of friends. Life was good, but there were dark clouds. Though they were not religious, the Soviet Union frowned on them because of their Greek heritage. It was hard for them to believe that they were not being discriminated against. When they purchased their new car, there were some strange fees added to the price, which their Slavic neighbors did not pay. Their application for a larger apartment kept getting “lost.” Still, they knew that they had it better than the Muslim family next door.

In his eyes, Tatya was the most beautiful thing Alexi had ever seen. He couldn’t keep his mind or his hands off her. Their son, Mikhail, was conceived under the night sky in Kurortnyy Park and was born in 1984. They called him Misha, short for Mikhail. Tatya also considered herself lucky to have landed Alexi, he was good-looking and earned well. Their relatives, who had arranged the marriage, were gratified by how it turned out. With their new baby, Alexi and Tatya were content in their world.

The year was 1991. The Soviet Union was in the final stages of collapse. Urkin and Alexi were close friends. They were roughly the same age and generally had similar opinions. They both had pretty wives. Lately, they had decided to improve their tolerance for vodka and had scheduled regular “drinking practices.” They took turns meeting at each other’s homes. The visitor brought two bottles of vodka. The wife also came along; someone had to drive the drunken idiot back home. After the first bottle, the conversation invariably turned to sex and politics. This was when Tatya and Anka quietly slid away. They could talk about fashion and girl stuff.

Urkin: “Do you ever think about why the Party elected Gorbachev, the prick?”

Alexi: “Don’t call him a prick. That is an insult to my prick.”

Urkin: “It is so obvious. If you think about it, it’s obvious that Reagan is behind it.”

Alexi had heard this theory before. But, each time it was told, the plot changed a bit. Alexi was developing a nice buzz and didn’t feel like arguing just yet. He said: “Daaa,” and stretched a bit more on the sofa.

Urkin: “Think about how Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko all died so conveniently.”

Alexi: “Brezhnev drank too much. We should have invited him to our drinking training program. We could have gone to his dacha and had fun with all his hot chicks there. I liked that pyanny : we would have had a great time together.”

Urkin had something new to say: “No, pay attention now. Here is how it happened. Reagan told the CIA to get rid of them. The CIA told the KGB, and we know that the CIA has half the KGB dogs bribed. The KGB took care of the matter.”

Alexi: “So why didn’t they take care of Gorbyy at the same time?”

Urkin: “See, this is why I always beat you in chess. You really don’t have the brains to think deeply. You must have Baklava between your ears. That must be why Tatiyana kisses you, your mouth tastes like Greek Baklava.”

Alexi suspected that Urkin had a crush on Tatya. He frequently brought her up in their conversations and always called her Tatiyana. But then Alexi also fantasized about how Anka would look on his bed. Maybe with Tatya as well. He was pretty sure that Urkin and both wives would be up for it, especially when catalyzed with vodka. He thought: “Nothing wrong about it, it’s ok to eat cherries sometimes even if you have strawberries at home.” Once, Alexi had talked with Tatya about going to a swinger party in Moscow. He was not really serious, but Tatya had not really objected. Alexi had chickened out; it was too far away he had said. He made a note to talk with Tatya about it again. “Oof’“ But now was not the time for that particular vision; he shook his head vigorously to reset his mind.

Urkin was going on: “Listen. Reagan wants to break up the Soviet Union. You know why? Because he is playing a game and he wants America to win. He knows that Gorbyy is a weak-minded idiot and can be manipulated. He tells everyone that America is the Land of Freedom and our clown leader swallows the bait. Reagan gave Gorbyy the idea about Glasnost. See? And then America told all the member Republics about Perestroika and they all pushed for their own freedom. Our traitor let it happen. The whole thing is just a game for the Americans, they don’t really care about freedom and stuff, they just care about winning the game. “

Urkin pauses and then continues: “It would be so fun to put Stalin and Gorbachev in the same room for a while. And give Stalin one pineapple. He would know where to shove it.”

As usual, Urkin had some tears in his eyes by now. He had become a bit emotional, and the vodka had done what it does. Despite being critical of the country’s leadership, both friends were deeply patriotic toward their motherland. It was not the best, but it was their country. Both hated watching it fall apart. Both felt that the Soviet republics would have been better off united in the Soviet Union. Urkin had been to Belarus and Latvia and felt that they were like slums when compared to Russia. There was nothing there like Moscow.

Urkin was not done yet: “When the baby Gorby was being constructed, he was clearly defective. That is why the quality checker put a red mark on his head. The mark meant that the baby was to be dumped into the recycle bin. But the next worker on the assembly line had a hangover and missed it. And the Gorbaby went on to be delivered. The red mark is still on his head.”

Alexi: “Maybe we should switch teams. NATO has won, we lost. Accept it. Things are just going to get worse for us here. And I think I like Ronnie Reagan. He has style. He has class. I could work for him.”

Urkin: “Da, tovarish. Rrr-ray-gun-sss, jelly bean-sss. You know, he kicked out their Carter. Carter was a pacifist like Gorbastard. If Carter had been half a man, Brezhnev would never have entered Afghanistan and thousands of our soldiers would not have died in that shithole.”

They both filled their glasses and toasted: “Slava Rodina’“ Glory to the Motherland. Both sniffled a bit more and then discreetly manned up without looking at each other. In Vino Vanitati. Frustration is when a person is angry, but is powerless to fix the situation.

Alexi and Tatya wanted their son to grow up in a society free of the constant ambient dread and hate. They discussed migrating to Greece or the United States. Alexi’s younger brother had emigrated to the USA with his family. He was happy there and kept telling his brother how good things were.

In 1992, they decided to move to America. Baby Misha was now about 8 years old. Many of their friends had moved away and life was not fun anymore. It was not easy to get an exit visa. Several low-level officials needed to have their palms greased. Finally, the paperwork was complete. They decided to fly out of Tbilisi in Georgia. They could have flown out of Sochi, but the fares were much higher. Sochi was a swanky city full of fakes.

Their friends arranged a party for them the night before they left. They had already sold or given away most of their belongings. Their car had been returned to the bank. They just needed to vacate their apartment, and some state worker would scarf up the items that they left behind. There was a lot of drinking, crying, hugging and promises to stay in touch, and meet again. But everyone knew that it was not going to happen. It was the last goodbye.

Early in the morning, they bid farewell to their home. Misha was mature enough to not need to be fussed over. They had four suitcases between them. They were carrying their valuables, like jewelry and watches, hidden on them. They took the long bus ride through the mountains to Tbilisi. The border police also wanted their share of bribes from the USA bound family. They demanded a stimul. One of them insisted that he should have some time alone with Tatya. Alexi convinced him that she was sick and might have a communicable disease in her lady parts. The man rapidly lost interest.

The flight to JFK was uneventful though uncomfortable. There was an overnight layover at Istanbul Airport. They spent the night at the boarding gate. They didn’t have any local lira to buy snacks, so they filled up on the coffee and sugar provided by the airline. Misha befriended another girl of his age, also a passenger. She shared her cookies with him. But, at least, the seats in the waiting area were more comfortable than those on the bus.

They arrived in America on July 4, 1992, a good day for a new beginning.

Alexi’s younger brother, Vasili, and his wife, Galina, were waiting for them at the airport. They had brought a nice minivan. Vasili’s home was lavish compared to the houses they knew in Russia. They took off their shoes in the foyer before entering the home. There were several slippers lined up for them to wear inside. Vasili had two baby daughters, the younger one was only months old.

Alexi had brought a pack of Leningrad cigarettes that Vasili once liked. They were harsh, strong, and had no filters. In Russia, this was what a real man smoked. Women and sissies preferred the thin minty cigarettes with long holders. Alexi had to bring a token gift, and the cigarettes were light to carry. He didn’t know that Vasili had moved on to more sophisticated cigarettes. But it was the thought that counted.

Galina had made a traditional Russian spread for the guests. It started with several appetizers. Then, there was borscht. After that, came the main course of dumplings, smoked fish, and meat. Several plates of fruit and traditional sweets were placed strategically around the dining room. Vasili opened a bottle of VSOP, a cognac. It was a step or two above vodka.

Galina was full of advice for her sister-in-law.

She told Tatya: “You have to buy beetroots from the Russian grocery store for borscht. American beets are sweet. They are made for the sugar.”

The next day, Vasili took them to the small apartment he had found for them in Hoboken, NJ. It had only one bedroom but would suffice until Alexi and Tatiana started earning. And it was directly above a small liquor store, so what more could one want? Vasili put down the deposit and two months’ rent. Vasili also “lent” him an old Honda hatchback. The paint was peeling on the hood. The back seats looked like they had crusty stains.

Vasili said: “It looks like a shitbox, but it’s your shitbox.”

Tatya: “Spasiba. Thank you. The radio works and it is better than the car we had.”

Alexi: “The engine is powerful like a sports car.”

Vasili owns an auto body shop in Jersey City. He took Alexi there and offered him a job.

Vasili: “You should work here brat, you will be the service manager. With your experience, you would be a great fit. Think about it.”

Alexi declines: “We did think about it, Tatya and me. We decided that I should do something else.”

Vasili: “Think about it some more, then. I’d like to expand this shop and one day you could be a partner. I was hoping you would say yes.”

Alexi didn’t want to work for his younger brother; it had to do with pride. But it did sound like a lot of fun. The shop seemed to be busy and prosperous. There were lots of Russian-speaking mechanics. The language was raunchy if a listener understood Russian. Workers were cheerfully insulting each other, all in fun. There was even a woman mechanic with an equally dirty mouth. Vasili was an equal-opportunity employer.

One of the mechanics almost hit the hydraulic lift while bringing a customer’s car into the service bay.

Some mechanic: “Hey idiot, who taught you to drive?”

Driver mechanic: “Your mother. But she didn’t do a good job. She had her head in my lap and she couldn’t talk with her mouth full.”

Vasili got Alexi a job in Union, NJ, doing maintenance work on machinery in a chemical factory. The pay and benefits were pretty good.

Tatya couldn’t work at U.S. schools yet, so she got a job at a beauty salon. It involved nail manicuring, waxing, and chatting with the customers. She enjoyed her job. Most of the other workers were from Eastern Europe and everyone spoke Russian.

Mike joined the local school. Though his parents continued to call him Misha, everyone else called him Mike. He felt that Misha was for babies. Alexi and Tatya were not impressed with what he was learning at school and they taught him a lot of math and science every night. His English improved rapidly, and he acquired the local accent. Mike was not much into sports. American “football” was something new for all of them.

Alexi got a second job. He moonlighted on weekends servicing vehicles at a municipal depot. His boss was an American - a moron, but it was good to stay busy.

For a while, things were good. They could afford the rent and several luxuries. They frequented a dance joint in Hoboken that played disco music. They missed having a large circle of friends, but they visited Vasili often. Vasili also came to visit, and the liquor store downstairs prospered.

Tatya went through several courses and earned certifications to start teaching math at an elementary school. She soon discovered that most American kids lacked motivation. They were far behind the kids their age in Russia, perhaps because their parents did not seem to tutor them at home. Her benefits package from the school was much better than that of Alexi, so they began using her health insurance. She often hung out at the beauty shop to chat with her friends. Everything seemed to be going well.

The first troubles started for Alexi at the municipal depot. His boss constantly micromanaged him. Alexi was clearly more experienced, more knowledgeable and more intelligent than his boss. The boss guy knew that and resented it. He constantly supervised Alexi to emphasize his seniority. Eventually, Alexi had had enough. During an argument, he pushed the boss against a wall and threatened to beat the crap out of him. This behavior may have been acceptable in Russia, but not in New Jersey. The boss claimed that he was physically assaulted and Alexi got fired from his weekend job.

When he was 18, Mike joined Rutgers University in New Brunswick. He planned on double majoring in Computer Science and Biological Science. Given all the home teaching by his parents, he breezed through his courses.

Though Mike won a small scholarship that helped pay his tuition, he made more money by privately tutoring other students. He found it easy to tutor for any course. He could look at the course syllabus, spend a couple of hours reading the textbook and then bot, he knew more than enough to tutor. He became extremely popular because he explained the subject’s background and why things were the way they were. This was how his mother had taught him. Students felt they learned more from him than from the professors teaching the course. His tutoring was not through the official Rutgers Learning Center, so he got to keep all the money without paying any taxes or fees. A few girls came on to him. One minor relationship developed, but nothing much happened. He was not sociable.

Mike joined a computer club and spent a lot of time there. He was hardly ever at home. His father was moody and life at home was depressing. His parents didn’t mind him being away because they trusted him. Besides, he was always reachable by phone. He took an early train to college and a late train back. Since he was traveling against the commuter rush, the trains were always quite empty. He had a favorite seat in his favorite carriage on the train and was always immersed in his laptop computer. The ticket collectors on the train recognized him and rarely bothered to check his monthly train pass.

Mike became a favorite of a professor and was offered a position as a Teaching Assistant. This was unusual since undergraduates do not usually get to be TAs. The job paid less money than his tutoring gigs, but Mike accepted it because he liked the professor. The work was not especially difficult, perhaps even a bit boring. It involved grading papers and tutoring a few students. Some of the students were more fluent in Russian than in English. Mike understood Russian well and spoke it well enough. These students were grateful to be tutored in Russian. He soon discovered that it was sexually preferable to be a TA rather than just a tutor. He subconsciously became more lenient while grading the assignments of his preferred ‘students’. This was soon noticed and the word spread. More students requested his help, and Mike’s popularity grew. He started spending nights away from home, in the students’ dorms. All was good. Rutgers did not proscribe students’ boinking each other.

But the problems at home kept growing. Alexi started hating his other job as well. He hated having come to America, despised himself, and drank heavily. He realized how much he missed his old life. He complained bitterly when Vasili came over.

Alexi: “In Russia, I built my career step by step. It was my pedestal. The higher I went up the pedestal, the more respect I got from people. Here in America, I have no pedestal. I am with the rest of the common people. Everyone treats me like shit.”

Tatya: “You are still the same person. I still love you.”

Alexi: “Exactly. This same person got respect in Russia because of his title. But here, no title, no respect.”

Tatya: “You still have your intelligence. You will get titles soon.”

Alexi: “Not here. No one values intelligence, just the ability to kiss ass.”

Tatya: “You have Vasili. You have me.”

Vasili: “Relax, brat.”

Alexi: “I can’t have an intelligent conversation with anyone at work. Back home, my friends were well-educated senior managers. Here, I work with primitive nitwits. I miss our home.”

Vasili: “Look, you are correct. But America is not your home. The Americans will never accept you as their equal; much less recognize your intelligence. But you chose to come here for a better life. So enjoy it.”

Alexi: “This is supposed to be the land of freedom, the refuge of immigrants. What about that?”

Tatya shrugged. She was about to speak but Vasili raised his arm to interrupt her. He was losing patience with Alexi. He stood up. “OK brat, think about this. Were things ‘equal’ at home? The apparatchik puppets always had a better life than us. It is the same here, and that is how it is everywhere. Equality and freedom, all just bullshit. You and I will never be trusted as much as the American dumbo who beats his wife. Yes, it used to bother me, but now I just accept it. I play the game, da? I am happy here.”

Vasili put on his jacket and prepared to leave. “Life is better in America. If you are happier here, then stay. Otherwise…” He kissed Tatya goodbye and left.

One evening, Tatya tried to cheer up Alexi by seducing him. She had showered and perfumed up. After all these years, she still looked stunning. She called Alexi to the bedroom. She was wearing only her pink panties, with rather sheer material. Alexi entered the bedroom and stared appreciatively.

Tatya : “Alexi, which panties look better? This one or …”

She gracefully removed the panties.

Tatya: “Or this one?”

Alexi was stunned. He sat on the bed and slowly reached out to touch her toe with his finger.

Alexi: “You should wait till I do something to deserve a reward.”

He started massaging her foot. He knew that he was the problem, not her.

Alexi: “Sorry for bringing you to this hell. You should go make your own life. Stop waiting for me.”

Tatya : “I’ll never leave. You are a stupid glupy, but you are always my glupy. Now stop feeling sorry for yourself and come to me now.”

Alexi: “You are right. I am so sorry for everything.”

Tatya: “It’s OK. Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Alexi: “What? Who said that?”

Tatya: “It was in this movie that I watched on the Internet.”

Alexi: “That does not make any sense at all. So dumb.”

Alexi squabbled with his wife more and more often. She nagged him about everything: stop drinking, make new friends, go buy new clothes for yourself…

One day, Vasili was visiting them. Alexi was complaining about everything. He had just returned from the local grocery store, and the clerk had given him incorrect change.

Alexi: “Americans can’t do simple math in their heads. They just don’t know how to think.”

He went on about how stupid Baby Bush was, why was the US disrupting life in Iraq, why did people believe in the Pope, …

Tatya: “Stop cursing so much.”

Alexi: “I’ll stop cursing when there isn’t so much to curse about.”

Vasili: “See, that is the problem you have. You always think your glass is half empty, while I think mine is half full. Same situation, but different observations.”

Tatya: “And I see it as more glasses that I have to wash.”

Mike graduated and got a job as a summer intern at Amgen in San Francisco, far away from the perpetual drama in New Jersey. He liked the San Francisco culture, or lack thereof. At the end of his internship, he wanted to join Amgen as an employee. But his advisor at Amgen thought that he should get a graduate degree first if he wanted to maximize his career.

Mike applied for the graduate PhD program at UC Berkeley but was accepted into the Master’s program. He was told that his application was late, but he could reapply next year. That was actually fortunate because he was interested in both Bioscience and Bioengineering, and did not yet know what to focus on. Because he had a California address, he paid the lower state resident tuition fees. He was glad to be away from home. He cared for his parents, but their constant bickering bothered him.

Mike made money by tutoring undergrads. Besides money, he got a steady stream of dates. He was familiar with this racket and got laid often. California chicks seemed to be much more permissive than the NJ girls. He made significant advances to his body count.

The year was 2008. Alexi and Tatya were invited to a party in Queens, NY. Most of the people there were Russian émigrés. Alexi was getting drunk, as usual. One of the guests, Gregori, was denouncing Putin and Russia in general. Putin had just won a small war against Georgia, a neighboring country. Gregori had come to America recently. He worked as a software programmer at Morgan Stanley. His attire was Euro-chic, he had a stylish haircut and was smoking a slim cigarette.

Alexi: “Putin is just defending Russia’s land. Everyone is nibbling away at it and threatening Russia.”

Gregori: “Putin is a power-hungry war criminal.”

Alexi: “You don’t understand. Every leader is power-hungry. That is why they want to be leaders. They are all corrupt. Putin may be swallowing money, but he is still a patriot. He is defending Russia against NATO.”

Gregori: “If Russia had democracy, then Putin would be in Siberia by now.”

Alexi: “Democracy is a really stupid system. Most people have no idea who they are electing or what their presidents are doing. Look at how Bush is wasting US money in Iraq instead of cleaning up the streets in New York City. People don’t deserve democracy. They need a strong leader who cares for the country.”

Gregori: “If you hate democracy so much, you should go back to Russia.”

And the conversation went downhill from there. Alexi eloquently tried to explain to the room why Gregori must be a faggot. It didn’t quite come to blows, but Tatya was very embarrassed. She knew that they would not get invited to parties there again. She made a few apologies and shepherded Alexi out of the house. Alexi drove on the way home.

Tatya: “Why did you call Gregori gay? He is married, and you met his wife.”

Alexi: “It is a great way to insult people like him. I know he is not gay, you know he is not gay, but he does not know it. It wouldn’t bother me if someone called me gay because I know what I am. But you saw how much it bothered him. I don’t have anything against gay people, but he subconsciously does.”

Tatya might have been amused if she were not seething with anger. She still loved her drunken husband and had to find a way to get him out of the hole in which he was trapped.

They died when their car smashed into a cement mixer truck barely a mile from their home. The car had veered into the oncoming lane and hit the truck head-on at a high speed. The front suspension on the Honda must have shattered on impact because the car submarined under the truck’s front bumper. The momentum pushed the car back more than 200 feet. Half the car ended up under the truck, up to its B pillars. When viewed from the side, it looked as if the monster truck was humping the little Honda.

Vasili called Mike in California to deliver the news. Mike just listened and did not ask any questions.

Vasili said: “The airbags worked, but everything above the stomach is smashed. The bodies are not recognizable.”

Mike did not respond.

Vasili didn’t want to mention that the police report stated that Alexi was legally drunk and that they suspected that he had deliberately steered into the truck. The steering wheel was centered at the time of impact, and the occupants seemed to have been holding hands when they crashed.

Vasili had heard about what happened at the party. He knew that Alexi was sick of his life and didn’t want to leave Tatya to be alone. Maybe she was bitching at him and finally pushed him over the edge, but no one would ever know. Vasili understood his brother’s thinking and, in the same situation, he would have done the same thing, if he had the guts. There were so many problems cropping up in his life as well. It would have been nice to have had Alexi to talk with.

Vasili: “Misha, I will arrange the funeral. When do you think can you come?”

Vasili’s tone implied that there was not much to see or do. Mike did not want to talk about it. He did not return to attend the funeral. There was no point.

Chapter 2 - Mike

Years: 2009-2014 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Mike Antonov completed most of the requirements for a Master’s degree at UC Berkeley in two years. He tried once more to gain acceptance into the UCB PhD program. This year, he had the credentials and the recommendations needed to get in.

He didn’t reminisce much about his parents. It was a closed chapter. He had some good and bad memories of them. Both faded over time, but the bad memories seemed to persist longer. However, he did stay in touch with Vasili and Galina. They talked about him visiting them in New Jersey, but they all knew that it was not going to happen.

Mike had interned at Amgen in San Francisco between his undergraduate and master’s programs. Amgen is a biotechnology company that creates new medicines for a variety of illnesses in humans. Creating new products is time-consuming and risky. New medicines require extensive testing before they are approved for human use. More than ninety percent of potential products are abandoned because they turn out to be ineffective or unsafe. Developing and testing medicines is expensive and there is a huge risk of wasting money on dead-end projects. However, if one product turns out to be successful, it could be worth billions of dollars.

Mike’s internship was in a lab that performed preclinical tests. This was usually the first stage of testing for a new product. Mike was interested enough to learn about all the steps in the business process. It typically starts with a marketing person identifying a need for a treatment for some woeful medical condition. The condition could vary from deadly skin cancer to pesky gout. The marketing person would determine if there was any effective and economical treatment already available. If not, he would write up a report describing the opportunity, the size of the potential market in terms of dollars, the window of opportunity, the probability of other competitors butting in, and so on. The report would effectively serve as a business proposal to create a product in that market.

Senior management would then review this report along with several other proposals. They would see how the new product would complement their existing family of products and check if the necessary staff and budget were available. They would even discuss the impact such a product would have on the company image. All factors would be considered to maximize the ‘Return on Investment;’ this was a hard-nosed business decision, unlike a politician assigning funds to his favorite pork barrel project. Each report competed with all of the others for funding. If all the stars aligned, a product would be given the green light and a budget. Then the hard work would begin.

Scientists and researchers would study the problem from several angles. They would identify the problematic cells causing the illness and determine how and why they were misbehaving. Could these cells be repaired, or should they be destroyed? Their goal would be to design a drug molecule that could be transported in the bloodstream to the dysfunctional cells. The design phase would usually involve computer models of the molecule interacting with the damaged portions of the cell. The molecule should correct only the misbehaving cells and should not affect the healthy cells, at least not excessively. The computers would allow the scientists to adjust the structure of the molecule and display a 3D representation of it on their screens. It’s like playing a video game where the player has to maneuver a bomb past an alien spaceship’s defenses into the reactor core at its center. Once a suitable bomb molecule has been identified, a sufficient quantity of it would need to be synthesized and purified in a lab. The molecules are large and intricate and they need to be built in several steps. Each step would involve a chemical reaction that yields intermediate compounds. The synthesized drug would then be sent for preclinical testing.

A majority of drugs quickly fail in the preclinical stage. They typically have the unfortunate “side effect” of mortally damaging cells in a different part of the body. There is only so much that the designers of the molecule can simulate in software using their “Space Invaders” - like tool. Drugs that seem viable are moved to the next stage, animal trials. These trials involve a selection of animals, including mice, bunnies, pigs, and monkeys. Despite their name, guinea pigs are not used as often; they are just too cute to be killed.

Drugs that pass the animal trials are scheduled for clinical tests with humans. Each drug is first tested on healthy individuals to reconfirm its safety, and then on patients with the targeted illness. The drug dosage is adjusted untill the optimum range is identified. All this involves a lot of trial and error and takes a lot of time. The FDA is involved in granting approvals and, being government employees, they tend to be a relaxed group of people. To incentivize them, pharmaceutical companies often need to take them on expensive junkets to exotic islands. To be fair, it’s not entirely their fault that all the companies host their seminars in the Caribbean.

The testing procedure had impressed Mike with its inefficiency. Amgen had several automated testing rigs to expedite testing, but Mike believed he could do better. This would be the focus of his PhD research.

His thesis advisor was from Dallas. Carla had recently completed her PhD at UT Austin and moved to California. She was an Assistant Professor, and Mike would be her first PhD student. Mike described his thesis topic to her.

Mike: “No one has done this kind of research. Not even the big bio companies. We should be able to get some funding from them.”

Carla: “I think your topic is cool. The issue is whether it is a good fit at UCB. No one here has done a design thesis like yours. No one here has the experience. You would have been better off at Stanford. You will be all on your own here.”

Mike: “I have always been on my own. I’ll be fine.”

Carla: “I’ll talk with the Chair. If they approve what you are proposing, I will be glad to be your advisor.”

Carla convinced the department chair to fund Mike’s research for the first year. She and Mike got along well. As they talked, they discovered similarities in their backgrounds. She didn’t like the California way of life and missed Texas. It was not the BBQ, not the country music, but perhaps it was something in the way people thought here. She would have preferred it if people just minded their own damn business. She had a partner, and they lived close to where Mike was sharing an apartment.

Other than Carla, Mike did not have any friends among his classmates. He was rarely invited to parties or beer bashes organized by other students. The department had a Christmas party and Mike was one of the few without a date. This suited Mike just fine. He was a lone wolf and didn’t need to run with a pack.

Mike and Carla often rode their bicycles together up and down the three miles to the marina. They mostly talked about each other’s research and exchanged ideas. Occasionally, they discussed other areas and found that their views were similar in many ways.

Carla: “You should talk more to the faculty and the other grad students. They don’t like you because they don’t know you. I think they are somewhat scared of you. It would help if you tried to be more sociable.”

Mike: “It is hard to be sociable. I cannot gossip like them. They talk so much about things I don’t care about, like sports and politics. And when they talk about science, they are usually misinformed and wrong. If I try to say something, they look at me as if I was insulting them.”

Carla: “I can see that. Many of them are threatened by you because they don’t think the way you think. They shut you out of their group.”

Mike: “I don’t see them as my peers. I don’t think I am smarter than them, just different. You know, I am so scared of being judged by a jury of my peers and having them decide my fate. I am so scared of committing anything close to a crime.”

Carla: “That is called scared straight!”

Mike: “I don’t understand American politics either. People get all excited and talk as if they can control who gets elected. But mathematically, their one vote is insignificant. And regardless of who wins the election, I know that I cannot influence the direction of our country. So it does not make any difference to me. I give up.”

Mike made good progress with his research. Together with Carla, he managed to secure multiple grants from local pharmaceutical companies. This would help pay for all the equipment he needed for the next three years.

One day, Carla announced that she was pregnant and would be moving back to Texas. She had just resigned from her position at UCB. She said she was sorry, but Mike would have to find a new advisor. She would be flying out that evening. It was all quite abrupt. A couple of days later, Mike biked past her house. Her bike was still outside, where it was usually parked. She seemed to have split from her partner and bolted, abandoning everything, including Mike. Mike thought “Whatever. I am a rock, and an island never cries.”

Mike had to select a replacement advisor from the faculty in his department. This was difficult. Most were reluctant because Mike’s research did not seem intellectual enough. However, Mike already had outside funding, and that was a big plus. Money talks. The university typically took half the grant straight off the top. Then, there were several other departmental expenses deducted, and the balance was available to buy the equipment needed for Mike’s research. The department had to find a replacement or risk losing the funding.

Eventually, the department chair assigned an advisor, an Assistant Professor. He was technically competent, but not genuinely friendly. Mike occasionally heard himself referred to as “the Russki” or “the bomber.” Well, it could be worse.

It took him three more years to complete his PhD thesis. All of his batch-mates received their PhD degrees and graduated before him. Mike’s research had yielded enough results to deserve a PhD. He had also published two papers where he was the lead author. In academia, the lead author is the one who has done all the work. The rest of the authors in the list would have barely read the draft; they were included mostly as a courtesy, a way to kiss butt.

Mike worked alone in his lab and rarely collaborated with others. He often worked 15-hour days, running experiments and analyzing the collected data. He was so focused that sometimes the day went by without him taking a bio break. He had to work in a ‘clean room’ and wear uncomfortable coveralls, including a shower cap, a face mask and booties over his shoes. At the end of the day, he was mentally drained, cold and sweaty.

His advisor kept asking him to do more research. By definition, a PhD thesis should teach something new to an expert in the field. Mike had several interesting and useful results, though nothing that was earth-shattering on its own. But five years is the limit for a PhD. The financial aid runs out, and universities push the dawdling candidates out to make room for fresh applicants. Those who do not have sufficient results are ejected. Those who have almost completed their thesis are given their degrees and ejected. They know that they had barely made it, but who cares? Shame heals, chicks come and go, the honorific ‘Doctor’ lasts forever.

Mike’s research had taken a long time because it involved custom equipment construction and extensive experimentation. Most other PhD candidates at UCB did theoretical work and published papers. Stanford University nearby was more appreciative of engineering-intensive projects. Mike contacted them and offered present his research. They held a weekly seminar series where researchers from other institutions were invited to share their work. After a couple of months, he presented at the Stanford Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. This would serve as a dress rehearsal for his thesis defense. There were about 40 attendees. His advisor was present, sitting alone and anonymous at the back.

Mike began by stating that the goal of his research was to perform large-scale testing of various medicinal treatments on biopsy samples. His method preserved biopsy samples of living tissue by simulating their native environment. The practical objective was to observe how the samples responded to treatments. For instance, a sample of infected tissue would be placed in a small pouch and surrounded by blood. Blood contains thousands of molecules and complex cells, such as glucose, various amino acids, hormones, electrolytes, and red blood cells. Computers would control the concentrations of selected nutrients flowing past the sample. The concentration of each nutrient would be varied over time to simulate conditions inside a living body. The computers introduced precisely measured doses of the medication being tested into the pouch. The oxygen and nutrient concentrations were measured both upstream and downstream of the sample. The pouch containing the sample was transparent, allowing the effect of the treatment to be viewed and monitored.

His research had discovered ways to keep the samples alive and responsive for a long time, months and probably years. The trick was to avoid damaging the cells in the blood. The shape of the pouch was also critical. One of his tests treated a tissue sample with a dose of steroids. The sample behaved exactly as expected and survived the treatment.

While Mike demonstrated a machine with only one pouch, an appendix in his thesis described a more sophisticated design. It featured a thousand pouches. Although he did not build the larger machine, he detailed its uses, design, and costs. Each pouch would contain a separate sample and receive its own customized feed of nutrients. Pouches would be arranged in a 10 x 10 grid in a vertical plane, and there could be 10 of these planes. The effluence from each pouch would be collected and analyzed separately. The samples would be continuously monitored, and a computer would maintain a log of all data. Each plane of pouches could be moved autonomously, allowing individual pouches to be visually inspected or X-rayed. The plumbing would be cumbersome, but that would be the responsibility of some engineer who had to build it.

The presentation was very well received. The attendees broke out to a Q & A session in an adjoining room. A couple of the department secretaries milled around serving wine and cheese. A representative from a pharmaceutical company approached Mike and asked many questions. They exchanged contact information.

Representative: “Do you think this can help a pharmaceutical company in preclinical trials?”

Mike: “Yes, that was one of the main goals of the research. We could build a machine that runs a thousand, or even ten thousand, tests simultaneously. Each test would have slightly different conditions, all fully automated. The advantages would be enormous. You would speed up your trials, you would reduce the costs, and you would collect so much more information.”

Mike was speaking like a religious zealot. With just a little more encouragement, he would have started foaming at the mouth.

Mike: “You could take many 50mg samples of damaged kidney or liver tissue and subject them to your test drugs. If a sample dies, you could immediately replace it with a different test.”

Representative: “So each of the thousand tests could have a different starting time?”

Mike: “Yes, you got it. The computer tracks each test. You could test the effectiveness of 10mg versus 25mg of your drug. It would probably eliminate the need for animal testing.”

Representative: “That would make the PETA people happy. How long were you able to keep a sample viable?”

Mike: “The longest we tried was four months.”

Representative: “Then what happened? Did it degrade?”

Mike: “The sample was fine. We had to stop only because we needed to try different experiments. We had only one machine.”

Mike: “If the sample was a muscle tissue, I was thinking of tickling it with an electrical charge to simulate exercise. There are so many more avenues to explore.”

Representative: “Why didn’t you do that?”

Mike: “No money, no time. I have to leave something for the next guy, yes?”

The presentation was successful. Later that day, the representative from the pharmaceutical company called back. He said he was a scientist at a Dutch company in Utrecht, Netherlands and they would like to interview him for a job. The scientist was calling from New Jersey. He asked many more focused questions and seemed to be technically astute. After an hour of technical chit-chat, he invited Mike to Utrecht for a face-to-face interview, all expenses paid. Mike offered present his thesis to the Dutch staff. It beat having to do several one-on-one interviews where each interviewer asked the same dumb questions. They agree to this plan and Mike promised to send him a copy of his final thesis.

The presentation and the job offer helped influence UCB. They did not have to worry about Mike hanging on as a post-graduate. The thesis defense passed smoothly, and he was awarded his PhD. He was now Dr. Mike.

Mike was not fond of traveling. He arranged to fly from JFK to Schiphol, Amsterdam. At Schiphol, he rented a zippy sports car and drove to Utrecht. Google Maps directed him smoothly to his destination. There were canals on almost every other street in Utrecht.

The company was called NordKuur. Mike had done some checking and had found that it was relatively new but well-funded. Mike gave his presentation to a small group of people. After the presentation, he interviewed with the Director of Technology and a couple of other senior staff. One of them presented a job offer. It turned out that they already knew all about Mike’s research and they had an offer ready. The job would be in New Jersey. It would involve building and operating a mega version of the machine described in Mike’s thesis. The offer included a decent sign-on bonus and stock options. Mike accepted it; it was a no-brainer.

Mike had a couple of days to celebrate before his return flight to the US. He drove around the beautiful countryside. He went to Amsterdam for some touristy sightseeing. The company would reimburse him for all expenses, so what the heck? He had never been to Europe. The people were so nice. But there were thousands of abandoned bicycles in Amsterdam, and most of them were covered with pigeon poop. And the smell of pot was everywhere.

Mike walked around the famous red-light district in Amsterdam. He saw a naked woman standing on the sidewalk. It seemed that she was clad only in wide mesh stockings. She had apparently just finished a performance and was cooling off by pouring water over herself from a plastic bottle. Other than Mike, the people walking by did not seem to notice or care. And she didn’t seem to care that Mike was ogling at her.

Several seedy-looking men on the street tried to give Mike pamphlets advertising sex shows. Mike was tempted and went to one of the shows. It was early evening, and the place was not crowded. He sat alone in the front row, barely six feet from the stage. He had no clue about what, or who was coming. There were several acts, featuring sex involving all possible combinations of orifices in men and women. The highlight was a performance where an actor dressed in a gorilla costume violated a woman named Jane. She vainly called for Tarzan, but he was probably monkeying around with a different simian. From his vantage point, Mike was enthralled to see that the sex was not simulated. He was not a virgin, but this was something new.

One of the actors approached him as she prepared to go onstage for the next act. She asked him to unhook her bra. Mike had never done that before. He fiddled around a bit, but to no avail. The hook and eye clip had to be bent in a specific way to release the connection. With practice, this could be done using just one hand. But Mike didn’t have that experience just yet. The actor kissed him on the cheek and moved on to someone else. Mike could hear some of the other patrons snickering behind him. He felt embarrassed and walked out.

Chapter 3 – Jay

Years: 1984-2011 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Jayesh Patel was born in a hotel room in Cape May, New Jersey. The year was 1984. Throughout his life, his appearance could accurately be described as a skinny geek with glasses. He was always quiet, but if brains made a sound, his would resonate like the steady and powerful thrum of a diesel engine.

Jay’s parents managed a small hotel in Cape May. They had come to America specifically to manage that hotel. Jay’s father had owned a small jewelry shop in Baroda, India. Several of his relatives had recently moved to America and were running hotels successfully. One of them offered to sponsor Jay’s family for immigration if they agreed to manage his hotel for five years. It sounded like a good idea. His parents became part of the tidal wave of Gujaratis that would soon dominate the low end of the hotel industry in the United States.

After serving out his five-year obligation, Jay’s father bought a property in Atlantic City. He now had enough experience to know what he wanted and how to achieve it. This was a very specific style of hotel, a motor hotel. It had about 30 rooms, and each room could be entered directly from the courtyard parking area. There was no lobby, no swimming pool, no sauna and definitely no continental breakfast. If a motor hotel is called a motel, then obviously, a motel owned by a Patel is colloquially referred to as a Potel.

Jay’s family lived in three of the rooms in the hotel. He had two sisters who were much older than him. They all pitched in to run the hotel. Collectively they served as the front desk, the concierge, the maids, the maintenance staff, and the customer service. His mother and sisters cleaned and refreshed the rooms between guests. His dad handled all the plumbing, electrical work, and landscaping. Besides attending school, Jay helped his dad with many of the maintenance tasks. They rarely called for outside help. When they did, they relied on a team of Hispanic workers who were strong, cheerful and honest. This was the way.

Their lifestyle was similarly economical and efficient. They never went on extravagant vacations. Everything was purchased wholesale, and they rarely paid grocery store prices. They were vegetarian, so there were no expensive meats. All the food they ate was homemade. Even birthday parties were hosted at home, and the guests brought tons of home-cooked food. At the end of the party, the remaining food was divided and everyone left with plastic containers full of yumminess. Gujarati food does not have the usual aroma of dishes from Indian restaurants; it is more sophisticated and tasty, not to mention healthier.

The typical guest at the motel was not someone vacationing in Atlantic City, nor was it a family taking an overnight break while driving long distances. These were customers who regularly brought their girlfriends here for a quick encounter. Local hookers would bring their Johns, and ask for the special day rate at the motel. Workers from the casinos would pile into rooms to sleep between their shifts. Occasionally, a room would be rented so ‘artists’ could film a porn scene. Jay recognized this because about six people would show up and unload their equipment from a dilapidated car. There would be cameras, floodlights and tall tripods. The hotel management was fine with all this, as long as they didn’t break the bed. Jay often ran the front desk and became friendly with the regulars. They knew that they could buy condoms from him when they got unexpectedly lucky and needed more for encore performances.

When he was 15, Jay started handling the financials for the hotel. His father asked him to help with the taxes. Jay figured out the basic concept and filled out the tax forms. It was pretty easy; the only issue was that there were no financial records and no way to accurately determine the income or expenses. His father was of no help because most of the payments were made in cash, and he did not remember who had been paid what. Jay made up numbers and filed the paperwork. More than anything else, Jay was terrified of being caught by the IRS and thrown in jail. But all went well, and they eventually received a substantial tax refund. Jay was now the celebrated Chief Accounting Officer of his family. He started recording all expenses and hotel receipts. He quickly discovered the problem with recording these numbers: they became hard to fudge. He learned the fine art of ‘adjusting’ numbers as he went along. It helped to ‘optimize’ the tax bill.

Jay also assumed the role of Chief Pricing Strategist, another fun title for a kid. Like most hotels in the area, the Patel motel had a large sign facing the road that displayed the current daily room rate. This changed frequently due to supply and demand. However, the rate had to remain competitive so customers would preferentially come to their motel. Each morning, Jay would ride his bicycle around the neighborhood and record the competitor’s advertised rates. Their own rate would be set to be a dollar less than that of their competition. However, the strategy had flaws. Firstly, customers did not really care about the small price difference. More importantly, most of the competitors were also Gujaratis and had their own Chief Pricing Strategists. Their prices could be adjusted in the middle of the day. This is called market-driven capitalism.

Hurricane Floyd blasted through the area in 1999. Many of the low-lying buildings along the NJ coast were flooded as the surrounding marshland saturated and overflowed. Some roads were submerged under two feet of water. While many of the local businesses lamented their misfortune, the hoteliers raced to capitalize on the situation. The idea was to maximize the water damage to their properties and claim insurance compensation. Many owners happily hosed down their furniture and mattresses. It was a heaven-sent opportunity to renovate and upgrade their property. Monies left over after renovation would be bonus profits.

Insurance adjusters were the other winners. These were the people who visually inspected the damage and estimated payment amounts. Most motel owners had preemptively befriended their insurers’ adjusters assigned to their area. The adjusters were often invited to family parties, given gifts, and showered with respect. They were called Veema Bhai (Insurance Bro). The county assessors and inspectors were also Bhais. As Bhais, they felt obligated to be generous to their new brothers while estimating the damages. It also helped that their customers were very appreciative of their efforts.

Word spread and Jay started doing the taxes for several hotel owners. They called him Kara Bhai (Tax Bro.) He learned how to ‘optimize’ their numbers while staying barely legal. He stayed away from the really outrageous practices, more because he was scared than honest.

Now that he had so many customers, Jay needed a computer system to track each one. There were many popular accounting systems, some were expensive and some were free. However, none of them were suitable for his needs. He needed to track real vs. reported financial numbers for each of his customers. None of the available apps supported that concept. Jay wrote up a list of his requirements and developed his own software app. He called it Pustak, meaning “the book.” Jay learned Python 2.0, a popular new language at that time, and used it to build his app. The system contained a lot of sensitive information, but everyone trusted him; he was “family.” Next, Jay added a way for it to track accumulated risks for each client. One way to reduce risk was to make a few minor newbie mistakes that were detrimental to the taxpayer; they helped balance a larger profitable “mistake” that would more than make up for the losses. If the account was ever audited, there would be ample evidence of human culpability. But no one was audited; the IRS had bigger fish to fry.

When he was 17, he attended a hotelier convention in New Orleans. There were many vendors promoting their products and giving away freebies. There were hundreds of attendees from all over the country, but about a third of them were Gujarati, and they all seemed to know each other. Jay noticed that they didn’t attend any of the presentations or seminars, but were more interested in hanging out in groups with each other. They exchanged contact information and shared tips and tricks on how to run the hotels. There were a few attractive women in the groups, who didn’t look like Gujarati hoteliers. He noticed that occasionally a woman would break away and accompany a man to the elevator leading to the rooms. The woman would return alone after an hour or two and rejoin the crowd. Once, he noted two men walking away with a woman. He was an observant kid.

Jay learned to learn by himself. He had become quite adept at Python after building his app. One of the several problems the motel faced was when people would sneak into rooms at night and exceed the permitted occupancy limit. These were the casino staff, like cooks, cleaners, and valets, typically Hispanic. They never caused any problems, and the motel would often turn a blind eye, but there could be huge fines if the fire department noticed it. The night manager on duty was supposed to detect these infiltrations, but his mother often fell asleep after a grueling day. Jay decided to build a motion detector system to wake up the night manager when any motion was detected in the motel courtyard or parking areas. He installed several infrared and ultrasonic sensors around the property and integrated their outputs into a buzzer in the office. It took a while to work reliably, and Jay learned a lot about DIY electronics.

After graduating from high school, Jay joined the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. Jay’s father bought him a car, an old BMW 318i. It was intended for driving between Atlantic City and Hoboken. On a slow Friday, the father and son cut a hole in the car’s roof and installed a moonroof. The goal was to save gas by not having to turn on the car’s A/C during the muggy summer days. The commute between Atlantic City and Hoboken took about three hours each way, but it beat having to pay for housing in Hoboken. Besides, the car had a radio. What more could one want?

Jay continued doing the taxes and accounting for several hotels. His clientele was not completely satisfied with him; many of them grumbled that he was too conservative. They wanted more aggressive deductions for their perceived expenses. They felt that tax optimization was not a crime. There were no victims. And any extra money they contributed to the government would be wasted by the politicians anyway. Jay listened to them but stayed within his own comfort zone. He knew that if any of his customers were audited, they would push him under the bus without any hesitation.

Everything went sideways one day when he was 20. His parents came to him with a brilliant plan. They wanted to arrange a double wedding. His sister, Sonal, was 25 and needed to be married off. A wealthy Gujarati family was interested in her for their son. They lived nearby and owned multiple properties in the surrounding area. They also happened to have an 18-year-old daughter who would be an ideal match for Jay, the Tax Bro hero. They thought that the double weddings would bring the two families closer together. Besides, a buy-one-get-one-free special would be good savings.

Jay’s mother told him that the future in-laws had requested pictures of him to send to their relatives in India. They were specific about the pictures they wanted and had even provided pictures as samples, featuring a previous suitor for their daughter. One had the guy sitting in a fancy European car, grinning, with his thumb pointing up; the attached note pointedly requested that Jay use the latest BMW model. Another had flowers artistically obscuring part of the guy’s face. Several little red heart shapes seemed to have been randomly PhotoShopped in. Then, there was a picture with the guy in a tux in front of the newly opened Borgata casino. It seemed that they were more interested in the backdrops and less in Jay himself.

Jay was horrified. He had seen the girl at parties. She was cute, but she was a slut. Many of his friends had actually slept with her. He would be a laughingstock if he married her. He could imagine them teasing him: “How is your wife, Jay? She was very nice when I screwed her!” and “Why didn’t you bring your wife to the party, Jay? Is she COMING on her own?”

Even worse, Jay had heard about the brother. He was recently divorced, did drugs and had several girlfriends. The father was not reputable either. Unlike most Gujaratis, Amin Bhai drank alcohol. It was rumored that he had a mistress, and his wife knew all about it. Apparently, the wife of the General Manager at one of his hotels had a son who looked just like Amin Bhai. Gossip flowed easily in the community. Jay wondered if his parents had heard any of it.

There was a financial angle as well. The in-laws would be paying off some of his father’s loans. Jay figured out that his father was at risk of losing control of his hotel. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that it was a scam. He persuaded his sister to take a stand, and they both refused to go along with the arrangement. Their elder sister, Payal, supported them. Payal was still single and was a budding real estate lawyer. The parents were upset with the unexpected refusals. Jay’s dad said that he was deeply hurt and hinted that Jay was no longer welcome in his family.

Jay’s parents were embarrassed. Amin Bhai had cut off all contact with them. Several of their other friends seemed to be shunning them as well. Amin Bhai was an influential dude.

Jay was relieved of his job as the community accountant. In a way, he was happy; the responsibility was stressful, and he was not getting paid for the service. He handed over his app and all data to a young kid, who took over the job. Jay asked for $25,000 for the software, which was probably worth a lot more. He had ten clients and four years of their financial data. The clients pitched in and bought him out. Jay was now flush with cash. He could afford to move out of his parents’ home and into a shared apartment near Stevens. Besides, he was getting tired of driving six hours on the NJ Turnpike each school day.

Jay completed his Bachelor’s degree and graduated from Stevens. He wanted to maintain the momentum and get a higher degree. An MBA was the most unappealing option; he was a techie. Worcester Polytechnic Institute had offered him a decent scholarship for a Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. After the summer break, he moved to Worcester and shared an apartment with three other students. He enjoyed living in Worcester; it was not as hectic as Boston.

A couple of years later, Jay went to Boston to buy a winter jacket. Macy’s had a sale, and he had a coupon. The salesperson helped Jay select a jacket. She was quite specific in telling Jay which jacket he should buy. Her name was Lola, but she was not a showgirl. Then she used her employee card to give him a further discount. He thanked her profusely, and they chatted for a bit; there weren’t many other customers. Soon, her shift was over, and they walked out together. She was worried about her car battery. They found that the battery was indeed dead, and the car would not start. Jay had jumper cables in his car, and he helped her start her vehicle. Everyone carried jumper cables in New England. Lola asked Jay to follow her home in case the car broke down on the way. She offered to make dinner. Jay was already smitten, and readily accepted.

One thing led to another, and he stayed the night. Lola told him exactly what to do and how to do it. Jay complied happily. That morning he was a virgin; now he was not. That morning he was a vegetarian; now he was not. That morning he was a bright engineer; now he was a quivering jellyfish.

He went back to his apartment the next morning with starlight shimmering in his spine. Her scent and taste persisted in his mind. A piece of the song “Duncan” kept repeating in his ears. He couldn’t remember all the words: “Oh, what a night, Oh, what a garden of delight, even now that sweet memory lingers. …something, something…. my fingers.”

Lola drove the relationship forward rapidly. She got herself a small apartment in a dumpy part of Worcester and secured a job as a bank teller nearby. Then she told Jay to move in with her. She was totally in control. She was like a mother, sister, and lover all rolled into one picante burrito. She often spoke to him in Spanish, referring to him as mi amante. Jay could understand Spanish because of his dealings with Hispanic customers and the workers at the hotel. He was rapidly improving his spoken Spanish. The best way to learn a new language is to have a girlfriend that speaks it.

Lola was not exactly a cover girl, perhaps a bit plump, but succulent in all the right places. She was subliminally attractive, at least to men, who often took a second look when they walked by to see what they had missed. She was an enthusiastic cook and liked to experiment. She often cooked a fusion of Indian and Hispanic flavors, which Jay called IndiPanic, because it often resulted in having to order takeout food in a rush.

Jay: “My grandmother said that a happy woman is a great cook.”

Lola: “But you told me that your grandmother’s cooking was awful.”

Jay: “That is because she was never happy.”

Lola had expensive tastes. While she did not spend money extravagantly, anything she bought was high-end and luxurious. She was not much of a drinker, but she always had to have only good wines and liqueurs. This was all new to Jay who had grown up with functionality overriding style. Jay could not complain about the expenses because she used her own money. But what is the point of having money if you don’t use it?

Jay noticed that while she was rather quiet with people, she was loquacious with him. They always had a lot to talk about. They often spoke in a fluid mixture of English and Spanish. She started to understand Jay’s bent sense of humor. Between all the talking and the copious sex, they didn’t have much time for friends. Each day brought their opinions and philosophies a bit closer. She had a thing against gays, but Jay was able to talk her into being more tolerant. Jay was rabidly against rehabilitating drug addicts, but listened to Lola explain their unfortunate circumstances and challenges. She said she was born in Mexico, but other than revealing her birthday, she refused to talk about her past, family or background. She was a couple of years older than him. Jay fantasized that she was a drug queen on the run. Over time she let out that her father used to own a large ranch. He was now dead, and her mother passed away a few years later.

When he was 26, Jay graduated from WPI with a Master’s degree in Computer Science. He had learned a lot more about advanced math and the theory of Computer Science. While software programming was not taught, all students were expected to learn object-oriented programming and a variety of computer languages on their own.

The day after Jay graduated, Lola informed him that they were getting married. It was a typical Lola move: smooth and swift. As usual, she had arranged everything. She would take on Jay’s last name. They were married by a pastor in the office of the local church’s office. Neither of them was devoutly religious. There was no party, no guests. The cleaning woman signed the documents as the witness.

Jay visited his family in NJ to announce his new status. Lola was a big hit. She had learned a few phrases in Gujarati. The family thought she was simple and unassuming - everything one would want in a bride. She even looked Indian, if you closed one eye and looked at her sideways. But most of all, they saw how happy and cheerful Jay had become. Jay was welcomed back.

It turned out that Amin Bhai had been charged with several counts of fraud and immigration violations. One of his newly built properties had many more rooms than its site plan had stated. Upon further investigation, the county determined that several of his properties had the same violation. Then it emerged that the families managing his hotels were paid in cash and had never paid any taxes. They had also overstayed their visas. The county referred the case to the IRS and the Immigration Service. The associated hotels had been boarded up and shut down. Mr. Amin would face fines and lose many of his properties. Jay’s dad was thankful that he was not involved. He bragged that his son had seen right through Amin Bhai’s devious deceptions all along. Amin Bhai had moved to Alabama, and his daughter had married someone there.

Meanwhile, Jay’s Pustak software was still being used successfully. It was still called Pustak, but the kid who had taken over was claiming full credit for it. He was charging his customers a monthly fee. It had been updated to Python 3 but did not seem to have any new functionality. Its heritage with Jay had been forgotten by everyone, including Jay’s dad. But it would always remain in Jay’s mind as his first big project.

Jay’s sister Sonal had a boyfriend and would be getting married in a month. She was pregnant and it showed. Her boyfriend was a doctor who had nothing to do with the hotel business. He was white and much older than Sonal, but he had been accepted by the family. He kept telling everyone that he was lucky to have met Sonal. The plan was for Sonal to be the manager of the doctor’s office when the baby was a bit older. It was good to have a doctor in the family.

Jay’s mom was thrilled with her life. Her views had suddenly become modern. Sonal was pregnant and unmarried, but who cared, as long as she was happy! Payal might be gay, but again, who cared? Jay wondered if Sonal’s fiancé was giving his mom happiness pills. His dad didn't care about any of this, as long as the hotel was running profitably. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Lola got along well with Jay's family. She called Jay’s mom Mummy and asked her for cooking tips. She helped set up dishes during a party and helped cleaning up afterward. She touched the feet of elders as a sign of respect, endearing herself to all the relatives. Jay's sisters saw Lola as a friend. Suddenly, it struck Jay that perhaps Lola was deliberately projecting different images of herself onto different people. Each person saw her as someone that they liked. For a brief moment, he wondered whether there was some nefarious reason why she was making this effort. But, screw it, he thought, life was good.

After graduating, Jay and Lola continued to live in Massachusetts. He had been trying to get a job in the Westborough area near his home for almost a year. He had interviews at several hi-tech companies nearby but had not received any job offers. He was reluctant to move from their current dumpy apartment. He eventually landed a job interview at a new pharmaceutical company in Morristown, New Jersey. The software group there was small but they had many open positions. He was interviewing for a Software Engineer position.

They started with a group interview. The VP of engineering, the software team leader, and a product manager were in the room. The interviewers introduced themselves and talked about the company’s goals and the job expectations. Then they discussed Jay’s Master’s program, life at WPI, and about Jay’s accounting app. Jay felt comfortable and relaxed. The VP and the product manager were friendly. However, the software team leader was strangely quiet, almost grumpy. After about 20 minutes of cheerful chatting, the VP asked the software lead if he had any technical questions.

The software guy was itching to go. He pushed a notepad and a pen toward Jay.

Software guy: “Can you write me a program in Python to find the largest element in a list of numbers.”

Jay: “There is a list method for that called max, but I think you want me to find the value in a loop.”

Jay pulled a pen out of his pocket and wrote out a short program on the notepad. It was a silly question. He was finished in less than a minute and pushed the notepad back.

Software guy: “OK. Thanks. Can you write a program to find the maximal nonzero rectangular submatrix? Assume that it is a N by M matrix.“

Jay was surprised, but was not lost: “There are several ways to do this. A simple brute-force method and probably many other clever ways.”

Software guy: “How would you do it?”

Again, Jay wrote out a recursive program on the notepad in about a minute.

Software guy: “This is very inefficient. Can you think of a better way?”

Jay: “Yes, it is inefficient - O of N cubed. I think this is a standard question they ask during interviews at Google. I could look up the answer that you want, but, I believe what I wrote out is the best answer. May I explain?”

Software guy looks annoyed: “Really? OK, go ahead.”

Jay: “My solution is simple. I proved it to be correct in my mind while I was writing it out. Yes, it is inefficient, but efficiency is not important for small matrices. It would take less than a second to run through a 100 by 100 matrix. If I had to come up with a more efficient solution on my own, it might take me a day to develop the algorithm, write it out and test it. Probably longer than a day, because there are several edge cases to test. But let’s say I spent a day on this, which is eight hours or 480 minutes. My solution took only one minute to develop. So the program would have to run hundreds of times before its inefficiency becomes an issue. And there’s another thing - the money angle. As a human, I would get paid for the eight hours. But for computers, the marginal cost of running my solution is low. You can always buy a second computer, or a faster one. From a monetary point of view, you would always want to free up my time to work on the next project rather than rat-hole down this one. Ummm. Actually, it depends on the situation. If I were working on image processing with huge matrices, then it would be worth my time. But even then, I would probably get the whole program working first, with inefficient code, and then come back to optimize the important sections.”

Software guy was not impressed: “We focus on quality here and want to have the best software.”

Jay did not respond. He had already decided that he did not want to work for this douchebag. He had met people like this during his many interviews. They preferred style over function.

There were a few more questions and chit-chat before the session ended. The software guy stomped out of the room, but the other two were more relaxed. Everyone stood up, and Jay waited for someone to tell him what to do next.

VP: “That was interesting. So, I think the software position may not be an option here. Sorry about that. But we might have a different opportunity for you.”

The VP looked inquiringly at the product manager: “What do you think?”

The product manager replied: “Yes, I had the same thought. I would have suggested the same thing. Do you want me to describe the position to Jay?”

VP: “Go for it, please.”

The product manager said: “OK. We think that you would be a good fit as a project manager. We will have several groups and teams. We will have software teams, drug development, labs, testing, purchasing, to name a few. The job is for someone to be the glue between these teams. Teams need to be synchronized, relevant information must be passed back and forth, and we need weekly reports of progress and problems. We need someone with good people skills whho is technical enough to learn many new things.”

VP: “There will be teams both here and abroad. You would need to understand the responsibilities of each team and how they all fit together. You would have to go visit the European teams frequently. We have a rather aggressive timetable to bring our product to market, so this will be both challenging and high-profile.”

Jay: “It sounds interesting. As you said, I would need to learn a lot, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”

The VP winked and said: “You can always reach out to us if you have any problems with anyone.”

Jay got the job as a project manager for NoordKuur. As usual, Lola was totally supportive of whatever Jay wanted to do. She quickly searched on the Internet and found an apartment near Morristown. The area was quiet, wooded, and beautiful. Soon, Jay was making good money, much more than what his father had ever made at the motel. He was happy with his wife and life. He often told people "I have no clue what I did right. I keep her happy, she keeps me happy. I’m lucky."

With her experience, Lola easily got a job at a nearby bank. Jay respected money, and the bank was a temple for money. Living with Jay had imbued this into her. She was not passionate about her job at the bank; it was just something to do. Her primary mission was to take care of Jay. Her career developed slowly at the branch and she eventually took on the roles of a Loan Officer and a Financial Advisor. She earned a reputation for being quiet and reliable. The only risk was that she could be transferred to a bigger office if she was considered to be too good for her branch.

Jay’s fantasy was to be a stand-up comic - not professionally, but as a side hustle. He always liked to make people laugh. Lola was a willing audience; she giggled at all his jokes. He loved hearing her laugh; she was his biggest fan. Jay always tried to come up with a witty response during a conversation. He believed that he had one second to come up with something wacky. Any longer than that and it was no longer funny. Quicker than that and he felt like he had scored a point.

One of Jay’s colleagues visited them one day; Rick had recently joined NoordKuur. They were discussing Gujarati names. Lola was becoming an expert in Gujarati culture.

Lola: “Jay’s full name is Jayesh. It means the ‘God of Victory’.”

Jay flexed his muscles. All two of them.

Lola: “Gujarati names for boys end with ‘…esh’. Like Hitesh, Jignesh, Kalpesh,…”

Jay: “And Bangladesh.”

Lola smiled at Jay. She gave him a thumbs-up. He had scored a point.

Lola: “And girls’ names end with ‘…al’. His sisters are Sonal and Payal.”

Jay: “And Anal. Actually Anal is a Gujarati girls’ name. But it is not pronounced how you’d think. More like Aa-nul. The spelling is unfortunate. But then there are Western names that Indians would think are hilarious, like the F1 racing hero, Niki Lauda.”

Rick: “Lola, what made you marry Jay? They say every Mexican girl wants a white boy.”

Lola: “Jay likes to explain that. He has a story.”

Jay: “Actually, my grandmother told me this. She said that there are five levels in a relationship. The first level is sexual. It is activated immediately when two people meet. It has a specific purpose, which is to keep the two together until they reach the next level. The next level is Friendship. This takes a few weeks. At this level, the couple gets to like each other enough to freely talk and have conversations about common views, goals and experiences.”

Jay: “If they get through that level, then comes Love, in a few months. Now they always have each other in their minds, they want to do things for each other and want to impress each other. But everything is, um, tenuous, and love can quickly turn to hate. The fourth step, trust, may take years. This is when each person has dropped all of their defensive barriers. And this may not happen simultaneously for both. If it takes too long, then everything is off. And the last level is Interdependency, where each party needs the other for comfort and survival. Now you can fart in front of the other person, because she has stopped hiding her gross actions as well. Just kidding. Anyway, Lola says that she went through all five levels in one night. Ka-boom.“

Lola cut in: “Jay is an innocent Niño. I took him before someone else hurt him.”

Rick looked at Jay: “So how long did it take you?”

Jay: “Well, my brain was severely nonfunctional that night. So, I would say the next day. Two days. Final answer.”

Jay: “But you know what? Indians actually follow the sequence backward. First comes marriage along with the forced Interdependency, then Trust, then the Love thing, and lastly, if you are lucky, the sex stuff.”

Lola: “That is not what your sister says. She is always talking about the sex she gets. You are full of mierda.”

Jay: “But my grandmother knows everything. And she tells everyone that she knows everything.”

Lola: “Eres tonto. Your madre say that both your grandmothers died before you were born, you have never seen any of them.”

Chapter 4 - Sue

Years: 2014-2024 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Sue (Su) Li was born in 1984, the year of the Rat. According to the Chinese Zodiac, she was destined to be sociable, determined, and hardworking. She grew up with her older sister in the Chinatown district of San Francisco. She was fluent in English and Cantonese. When she was 5 years old, her parents enrolled her in a class to learn to play the violin; every other kid in the neighborhood learned to play some kind of musical instrument. She was a bright child and did well in school, just like every other kid in the neighborhood. After she graduated from school, she joined a local college and graduated with a bachelor’s degree, majoring in Psychology.

Sue met her future husband at a Chinese concert. Ben owned and operated a business that imported various items from China. He had grown up in China and he had recently migrated to San Francisco. He was extremely quiet and withdrawn. Sue was the opposite; she was gregarious and wanted to help everyone with everything. She tried hard to break through and get inside his shell. Her parents did not like the man; mostly he didn’t chat with them and didn’t meet their eyes directly. They thought he was shady. But Sue knew that he was intelligent and honest. They got married soon after Sue graduated from college.

Ben’s parents were Buddhist. He himself identified as a ‘modern’ Buddhist. He subscribed to most Buddhist beliefs but deprioritized some of them and modified a few others to suit the times. Sue was fascinated by his discourse and slowly started accepting his views; she thought that they would have matched her views, if only she had any. All of his explanations seemed so obvious.

Ben believed that all life forms were equal. Humans were just one of the species inhabiting this wonderful world. Buddhism had taught him that an individual human is intrinsically no more valuable than an ant. However, Ben observed that some people were clearly more important than others and he formulated his own beliefs. Ben believed that additional value was conferred to a being when it did something useful. Further, a valuable being could pass along some value to another being if it depended on the latter. This gave value to the mother who did nothing useful except nurture a child who became a brilliant scientist. It had to do with the social connection. Hence, a valuable scientist’s favorite dog could be more valuable than a useless politician. This was a way of quantifying the value of a life independent of financial wealth. Money could be inherited from a successful parent, but value could not. Ben modified this belief further by realizing that value was relative to the beholder. What was valuable to someone was not necessarily valuable to others. An old woman’s life was precious to her son but meant little or nothing to an unrelated person in the next town. Those who claimed to care for the poor were being hypocritical and would not support their talk by sacrificing any of their personal assets. People had grand visions for ending suffering in human society but they wanted someone else to pay to implement them. His beliefs allowed Ben to understand and peacefully tolerate other people’s behavior. Regardless, he was horrified by the direction in which the world was heading and was frustrated that there was nothing that he could do to avert the growing moral decrepitude.

Ben refused to hurt or kill other creatures. Rather than swat an insect buzzing around the kitchen, he would make considerable efforts to capture it and release it outside the house. Of course, the insect might not survive the harsh elements outside, but that was up Nature, and Nature was his God.

He was a vegetarian during his childhood but had recently rationalized eating meat.

Sue: “Why would you eat meat if you think a cow is at the same level as a human?”

Ben: “I still think about that a lot. Most creatures are naturally carnivores. Lions eat goats. Hyenas eat lions. The same thing happens in the oceans. That is what Nature intended. I don’t see any moral reason why a human should not eat meat. Some people eat cows and fish; others eat horses, dogs, insects - whatever. Your taste in eating typically depends on what you got used to as you grew up.”

Sue: “So you can eat cows but not horses?”

Ben: “I didn’t say that. There is more to it. There is also a social connection that makes the difference. I didn’t personally know the cow that gave rise to the steak I ate. If I saw the live cow, or if the cow were my pet, then I might feel differently. But I have no connection with a slab of meat that is placed in front of me. It is not a life and I can’t do anything to bring it back to life.”

Sue: “Wait, so if you didn’t personally know some dude from Germany, you would eat a hamburger made out of him?”

Ben: “No, I would not, because it would not fit my personal tastes. But I would not criticize someone else doing it. I try not to comment on other people’s behavior. It is none of my business.”

Psychologically, Sue was a “pleaser.” Making people happy gave her a lot of comfort and joy. Psychologists have expounded their theories on such people and have stated that it is caused by personal insecurities, fear of rejection and self loathing. But they were all wrong; Sue was just a nice person who cared about the people in her life. She did not need to make all of humanity happy, just some specific people. And Ben was one of those people.

Sue continued working on making her husband sociable. She arranged to take him along for dinner with her friends. She hosted parties at home so he could meet more people. She even tried drawing him out by rewarding him with sex. Sue was naturally passionate in bed, and though she did not look athletic, she was as nimble as a Chinese acrobat.

But it was frustrating that nothing worked; he just was not interested in making new acquaintances. Sue noticed that the harder she tried, the more reclusive he became. It was not as if he was not intelligent; he could speak English and Cantonese fluently and could make himself understood in several European languages when it was necessary. He was an excellent salesperson who could converse intelligently with people on many subjects and charm the heck out of them. Then he would forget all about them by the next day. He just didn’t care.

They soon had twin children, both girls. The babies were named May (Měi means beautiful) and Amy (Ài means love). May was nine minutes older. They were very cute and almost indistinguishable in appearance. Sue’s parents were enchanted at first sight.

But not everyone was happy. Ben had wanted a son. Traditional Chinese families preferred sons over daughters. There were more problems. He complained of a bad aura emanating from Sue. He often complained of having bad dreams when she slept next to him.

Ben: “You always order me around.”

Sue: “What? I am never rude to you. When have I ever ordered you to do something?”

Ben: “You keep pushing me to talk to people.”

Sue: “Yes, I want you to be happy. I want people to like you. Look, I don’t force you to do anything, do I?”

Ben had tears in his eyes: “I know that you are trying to help, but you are like the ‘Dragon Lady’. Do you know how scared I am to have sex with you? I know that you are going to bite my head off and chop me into little pieces.”

Sue had no clue as to what Ben was talking about. He wasn’t on drugs and he wasn’t joking. She had to be supportive: “I love you so much, baobao. What can I do to help?”

Ben: “I think I love you too. But there are times when I hate you so much.”

They broke up. He just walked away one day when the children were about a year old. The divorce was not messy, he didn’t want the kids, and Sue didn’t want his money. Sue was deeply hurt by her failure, yet she still did not want to admit that she should have listened to her parents. She did not know what she had done wrong or how she could have repaired the relationship. Even worse, something Ben had said would stick in her mind for the rest of her life: that she had some kind of evil spiritual field around her. She respected Ben’s intelligence and had seen that he was perceptive. It just made her feel so unclean.

Sue simmered in a cauldron of anger, self-pity, and despair. She knew she had to kick herself out of her current shell. All of my friends say I should move on. But it was easier said than done.

She decided to go back to college and continue working on her goal of becoming a psychologist. Perhaps she would learn something about herself. The words “Medice, cura te ipsum” echoed in her mind. They were from the Bible: physician, heal thyself.

Ben was rumored to have become a Hare Krishna devotee and was practicing “simple living” in an ISKCON temple in Miami. Sue never heard from him again. She would never forget that her inner dragon had somehow burned him out.

Sue moved from San Francisco to New Jersey, with her children. It would be a major challenge to care for her babies while studying. But she was born in the Year of the Rat, and she could do it. She had to take out a large student loan.

It is quite difficult to become a licensed practicing psychologist, though not as difficult as being a full-fledged MD. One must first earn a Master’s degree, which takes two years. Then a PhD, which takes another three years. This is followed by at least six months on probation to verify competency as a psychologist. Only then can the person start practicing and earn a tidy salary. Unfortunately, even after all this time in training, a psychologist cannot prescribe medications or park in reserved spots; those privileges are exclusive to MD psychiatrists. Other careers in psychology, like school counselors, require only a master's degree, but Sue wanted more than that.

May and Amy were left alone most of the time. For the first couple of years, Sue studied at home and cared for them. She had a babysitter come by while she was away. The kids played with each other a lot, they didn’t have many friends. Later, they had a live audio-video link to their grandparents in San Francisco. This was a form of remote babysitting. The grandparents were old and had nothing better to do. Sue installed a camera in each room so the grandparents could monitor the twins on their large-screen TV. It was as if they were in the same room as the kids. With the hours of daily contact, May and Amy became close to their grandparents, who they called poh-poh and goong-goong.

The grandparents lived with Sue’s older sister Wanda in Chinatown. Wanda was a financial strategist for a venture capital firm in San Francisco. She was single and resented having to stay with her parents while Sue went away to New Jersey.

Wanda: “I am stuck here with them. I am wasting my life.”

Sue: “I know. I’ll take them when I get a job. Soon. No more than a couple of years.”

Wanda: “Baba thinks you are great because you let them play with your children.”

Sue: “They are helping me a lot. The kids adore them.”

Wanda: “I heard them talking yesterday. They want to give you this house.”

Sue: “I don’t want that house. I want a boyfriend. I don’t think I can come back to that house, ever. It’s nice, but I have bad memories. You should have it. It is worth millions now.”

Wanda: “I want a boyfriend too. But I can’t spend the night out. I can’t bring anyone to my room.”

Sue: “Of course you can do whatever you have to do in that house. Just do it. You know that you are being a chicken and you are blaming them.”

Both the grandparents had learned to play the violin when they were children. They bought and sent over a pair of half-sized violins for the kids fifth birthday. The grandparents spent hours remotely teaching the kids to play, and everyone enjoyed the experience. When Sue was home, they would all play together, three in New Jersey and two across the country.

Sue dated a few people, but nothing clicked. She met a few men of Chinese-origin, but they seemed to lose interest when they heard about her twin girls. Most men did not seem to want to help raise someone else’s children; that is natural behavior. In the lion kingdom, when a dominant male lion mates with a female, it will kill any cubs that were fathered by a different male. This improves the chances of propagating his genes.

Between her PhD and the kids, it was not worth the effort and she gave up. She had a Hitachi vibrator in her dresser, and it was more reliable than most men. She eventually graduated and got a job as a child psychologist at a large hospital, where she worked long hours. The kids were fine with it; they knew that their mom loved them; they could hear her thinking it.

Sue simmered in a cauldron of anger, self-pity, and despair. She knew she had to kick herself out of her current shell. All of my friends say I should move on. But it was easier said than done.

Wanda: “I am stuck here with them. I am wasting my life.”

Sue: “I know. I’ll take them when I get a job. Soon. No more than a couple of years.”

Wanda: “Baba thinks you are great because you let them play with your children.”

Sue: “They are helping me a lot. The kids adore them.”

Wanda: “I heard them talking yesterday. They want to give you this house.”

Sue: “I don’t want that house. I want a boyfriend. I don’t think I can come back to that house, ever. It’s nice, but I have bad memories. You should have it. It is worth millions now.”

Wanda: “I want a boyfriend too. But I can’t spend the night out. I can’t bring anyone to my room.”

Sue: “Of course you can do whatever you have to do in that house. Just do it. You know that you are being a chicken and you are blaming them.”

Chapter 5 – NoordKuur

Years: 2010-2024 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

NoordKuur Pharmaceuticals is headquartered in Utrecht, Netherlands. It recently received a second round of funding and is expanding rapidly. The company was established by a team of oncologists who envisioned a novel approach to treating brain tumors. Cancer occurs when abnormal cells reproduce rapidly in an uncontrolled manner to form large tumors that disrupt the function of normal cells. In addition to brain tumors, this treatment could potentially be effective for previously untreatable malignant meningioma cancers in the spinal cord. The treatment is a modified form of chemotherapy that delivers drugs to the cancer sites via the blood blood circulation system.

The blood circulation system is common to all living beings. It can be likened to a network of roads that is used to deliver nutrients to all the cells in the body. It also removes the waste from the cells. It comprises arteries, veins, and capillaries that are analogous to highways, streets, and small local roads. Every cell is situated near a road. If a vital road becomes blocked, then the cells it services could die. For redundancy, most cells have multiple roadways nearby. Every cell receives oxygen and nutrients from the passing blood, and dumps its waste into the same blood. While it seems rather disgusting that a downstream cell receives its food mixed with garbage from an upstream cell, consider the situation of all the fish that must gulp in water containing the excrement of their neighbors.

Several organs function as specialized factories within the circulatory system. The intestine extracts water and nutrients from the food consumed and adds them to the blood. The lungs add oxygen to the blood and remove carbon dioxide waste. The liver and kidneys filter the blood to remove the waste dumped in there by all the cells. White blood cells act like mobile policemen to apprehend unauthorized intruders. The heart pumps the blood round and round. The brain is the boss that tells everyone what to do. Some may argue that the rectum should hold that position since the boss is often viewed as an asshole.

All cells in the body receive exactly the same blood. However, like all bosses, brain cells belong to an elite club and demand a special cuisine. Unlike other cells, they are particularly sensitive to viruses and many of the contaminants commonly found in the blood. They also require a higher flow of blood to meet their needs for oxygen and glucose. Thus, the capillaries in the brain have evolved to include an additional filter known as the Blood - Brain Barrier. The walls of the brain capillaries allow only small molecules like oxygen and glucose to diffuse out of the blood. Fortunately, alcohol molecules are small enough to diffuse through and entertain the brain cells. Diffusion occurs because there is a higher concentration of these molecules inside the capillary than outside in the area surrounding the cells. Once delivered there, the cells will absorb what they need. Simultaneously, the capillary wall allows carbon dioxide and waste to diffuse into the blood to be carried away. The cells in the spinal cord are also protected by a similar Blood Spinal Cord Barrier.

Most cells periodically regenerate themselves, the exceptions being a few cells in the brain and spinal column. Regeneration allows for the orderly and controlled replacement of aged or damaged cells. The originating cell first clones itself and then it dies an orderly death. The clone is an exact duplicate of the parent cell and seamlessly takes over its parent’s function. Each cell contains DNA, which is like a detailed blueprint that describes how to make a copy of the cell. DNA is a very large and complex molecule protected inside the cell. If it gets damaged, the cell copy that is made will not be an exact duplicate. DNA is fragile and can be corrupted in several ways, such as by viruses, harmful chemicals or radiation. Most of the time, the new clone from damaged DNA will not survive, and the damaged DNA is destroyed. However, cells that survive occasionally can misbehave by replicating themselves excessively. These cells are cancerous. Cancerous cells grow rapidly and consume most of the nutrients in the area, causing the healthy cells to starve and die.

Chemotherapy is a rather inelegant way to treat cancer. A measured amount of toxins is injected into the bloodstream. The toxins will wash past all the cells in the body, both cancerous and healthy. The cancerous cells are not specifically targeted. Because the cancerous cells are hungrier, they consume more of the poison and die. The healthy cells are not as greedy. They are also poisoned, but they will regenerate and live on. The goal of chemotherapy is to kill the cancer cells without excessively affecting the healthy cells. The concentration of the toxins has to be just right. If it is too strong, then the healthy cells will wither away, and the patient will die. If it is too weak, then the cancer cells will not be killed and the patient will die. For the patient to survive, the toxins have to be like the Goldilocks’ preference: not too strong, and not too mild.

There are other ways to treat cancer, but chemotherapy is often the best choice if the affected location is buried deep and is hard to reach, as in the brain. However, the Blood - Brain Barrier blocks many of the effective chemotherapy toxins from even reaching the brain cells. While some chemotherapy drugs can be used in this situation, they are just not that effective.

The oncologists at NoordKuur had a radical new idea. They believed that tiny bursts of microwave radiation could thermally warm up the affected area of the brain. The theory is that the heat would dilate the capillaries in the area and increase the diffusion of chemotherapy drugs. They used a microwave source that rotated around the target area and strafed it from multiple directions. This method would concentrate the radiation on the tumor and is similar to the concept used for radiation therapy and MRIs. The energy emitted by the microwave gun is continuously turned on and off rapidly to provide just enough heat to warm the target area by 5 degrees Centigrade. This on-off technique is called modulation.

Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation. Besides microwaves, the other forms include visible light, infrared waves, radio waves, X-rays, and gamma rays. All of these are called radiation, though only some are harmful to living beings. Visible light is a tiny portion of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. We happen to see it with our eyes because our progenitors evolved in water, and water is most transparent to visible light. We feel infrared waves because they warm our skin. We cannot sense radio waves, but we know that they are all around us. Obviously, they are not harmful. Talking on a mobile phone will not give the user cancer, though they may get a headache if the conversation is unpleasant. The difference between these forms of electromagnetic radiation is the frequency. Even for light, the difference between a red light and a green light is just the frequency. Green has a slightly higher frequency than red.

Higher frequencies have more energy. Our bodies can tolerate radiation up to a certain level of energy. A ray that has a higher frequency than violet light has enough energy to knock electrons off the atoms in a cell. This action is called ionization. Usually, this can damage or kill the cell. If the damage is not excessive, then the cell will regenerate and the body will recover. However, radiation can sometimes damage the cell’s DNA. This will cause the cells to reproduce in unexpected ways, and some of these ways can cause them to become cancerous. The Earth’s atmosphere filters out most of the dangerous rays from the Sun. However, some rays get through and this is why excessive sunbathing can cause skin cancer.

Radiation with frequencies lower than violet light is safe. Thus, radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, and visible light are all harmless. Harmful radiation includes ultraviolet waves, X-rays, and gamma rays. These are usually used for radiation therapy, where the goal is to kill cancerous cells. When a sufficient dose of these rays is focused on the cancerous area, it will cause the cells there to be fatally damaged. Many healthy cells in the area will also be toasted, but one cannot make omelets without breaking the eggs.

The difference between radiation therapy and microwaves is that the latter does not have the energy to damage DNA molecules and long exposures to it are safe. Exposures of 1 to 2 hours of microwave will allow the new chemo drugs to do their work. The technician operator just has to be careful not to cook the patient.

Now that NoordKuur has developed a different way to deliver drugs, they need to find new chemotherapy drugs that will work with this method. The method allows larger and more effective drug molecules to reach the brain. The spinal column is similar; it also has a blood - brain barrier. However, the chemotherapy drugs needed for this location are different.

NoordKuur was formed when a group of practicing oncologists gathered at a conference. One of them had published a controversial paper describing the concept, and the others felt that it was a viable idea. They pooled their own money to get started, but soon received a round of funding from a European investment group.

Though the company’s headquarters is in Holland, the main Research & Development facility was established in New Jersey. This allowed them access to a better pool of talented bio-trained employees in NJ. More importantly, they needed to involve the US Food & Drug Administration. The FDA approves all drugs that are developed and used in the USA. Gaining an FDA approval for a drug usually guarantees approvals from all other countries. Despite what anyone in the EU may say, the FDA sets the best standards for drug approvals.

Jay joined NoordKuur as a project manager in 2011. The work was not very technical but he found it fascinating. The responsibility was huge and the expectations were high. He was a key player in developing and productizing a new cancer drug.

Jay made a list of the teams with whom he had to work and the line managers responsible for each team. He spoke with each manager individually. He wrote down what each team did and what they needed from him. He also spoke with several of the team members; these were the people who actually did the work. He soon realized that he would be practically managing all the team members, even though they did not report to him. He had responsibility, but no authority.

A few months passed, and Jay developed a rhythm for orchestrating his teams. During his initial interview, he was told that he was to be the ‘glue’ between the teams, but now he was more like the ‘lube’ that helped reduce the friction between them. The software team tended to be the most contentious. They often misunderstood the specifications and were usually behind schedule. To make matters worse, Jay was not allowed to talk to any of the software team members. The team lead insisted on being the single point of contact for his team. He had a big chip on his small shoulder.

The team members liked working with Jay. He understood their tasks and challenges. He shared technical information between the different teams and offered useful advice. He often adjusted the schedules when a task was delayed. It was similar to fudging the financial numbers for his clients back home. His attitude was that shit happens, and there is no point in creating a fuss unnecessarily. So, he did not push people to meet their schedules, at least not too hard. His meetings usually ended with many smiles and positive high-fives between the team members. Everyone wanted to please him, and he gathered a lot of loyalty and respect. He understood the big picture.

Most of the team line managers had no clue about the technical aspects of the tasks that their direct reports performed. Their main job was to write reports and send them to their upper management. Everything technical they knew was third-hand information that they picked up during their lengthy manager calls. When people actually do the work, they gain ‘first-hand knowledge.’ They would pass along bits and pieces of the information to their managers during their weekly meetings. These managers now had ‘second-hand information,’ which is generally incomplete and hollow. Each manager would relay this second-hand information to the other managers during their manager meetings. It was their way of showcasing what they had learned. What the other managers received was ‘third-hand information’; it was what someone heard from someone who heard from the person who knew. Armed with this third-hand information, each manager believed that they were technically knowledgeable. The team members often sniggered at them but they remained blissfully unaware that they were the objects of the team members' contempt.

Mike joined NoordKuur in 2014. His job was to construct the large BioSimulator that was described in his thesis. He reported directly to the VP of Technology in Utrecht. He was assigned a small team of engineers to help him build the machine. Software programming was a significant part of the job, and he had a dedicated software developer. The project moved much faster than at UCB because he was well-funded and well-staffed; also, there was no one blocking him.

There were several challenges in scaling up his initial design to handle a thousand samples simultaneously. The pouches containing the samples were arranged in a 10 by 10 vertical grid, and there were 10 such grids arranged horizontally. Each pouch was a separate ‘experiment,’ and the sample it contained was subjected to different conditions. Each grid could be individually raised out of its position for inspection. Inspections were performed using cameras, X-rays, and ultrasound that could measure its firmness.

Each pouch required a unique cocktail of nutrients and test drugs. It also needed a specific flow rate for the nutrients. Mike solved this by providing a separate inflow chamber for each pouch. The computer composed a sufficient volume of the specific cocktail needed for about five minutes in the chamber, which was maintained at the specified temperature. Similarly, the effluence outflow from each pouch was channeled into separate containers. The contents of each container were analyzed periodically. Microwave waveguides channeled radiation to each pouch. A waveguide is like a pipe that carries microwaves from a solid-state generator. A computer controlled the intensity and duration of the microwave exposure for each sample. Microwave absorbent material was placed to prevent any stray radiation.

Mike’s project became one more item in Jay’s portfolio. Jay assisted the development of the machine. Their skills complemented each other. While Mike’s expertise was in biologics, Jay had an intuitive flair for mechanical construction. His father had taught him well.

Mike and Jay became close friends. Mike visited Jay and Lola quite often. Although he was well respected at work, he did not have many other friends. Now that he was back in NJ, he also visited Vasili and Galina. Can’t beat free food. Galina mothered over him.

Galina: “Misha, you have no friends, no life after work. You should think about getting married.”

Vasili looked at Galina: “Yes Misha, you will get sex more often.”

Mike: “There are easier ways to get sex.”

Galina: “Zamolchi. Be quiet. You should think of having children. Your baby will inherit your intelligence. ”

Vasili: “He can go on the Internet and find Russian brides.”

Galina: “He will get a mustached woman who has posted a picture of a model.”

Deep down, more than finding a life partner, Mike was tickled by the idea of having a child to pass on his heritage. He was proud of the knowledge that he had curated in his mind and wanted it to live on beyond him. Having a child is one way for some people seek immortality.

Jay was initially responsible for one chemotherapy drug program, but eventually, he took on two more product lines. He was promoted to be the Program Manager and reported to the Marketing chief in Utrecht.

Jay needed to visit Utrecht to meet the staff there. Mike told him about his fiasco at the Amsterdam sex show.

Mike: “They all laughed at me.”

Jay: “I bet I could have unhooked that bra with my teeth.”

Mike: “No way. You need opposing fingers to snap that clasp.”

Jay: “I’d use my tongue as well. I am good with my tongue.”

Mike tipped his head and visualized the scene: “That is interesting. Between the shoulder blades is probably the only area of her body that no one has ever licked before. It is the most unsexy part of the body.”

They laughed about what the sex actor would have done if someone tried biting off her bra. They both knew that Jay would never stray; there was no way that he would risk pissing off Lola. And Lola knew that her job was to be sexually invaluable to Jay. That was a stable equilibrium.

Mike buried himself in his work. His machine was completed and it actually worked. A team had been formed to operate and maintain it. Next, he was working on designing an even larger BioSimulator that could handle up to ten thousand samples. He also started improving the other processes in the lab. He introduced methods to monitor and measure ongoing experiments with new techniques. This would reduce costs by identifying experiments that were clearly failing and terminating them early, thereby freeing up expensive equipment to start new experiments. Depending on the samples being tested, monitoring involved frequent checks with color snapshots, ultrasound, and X-rays. Computer software would analyze the pictures and track progress by comparing them with previous images.

Along with the BioSimulator, Mike’s efforts accelerated drug testing and significantly improved efficiency. He was promoted to Director of the Wet Lab. It was a no-brainer. However, it was a mixed blessing. While he liked the added responsibility, he hated dealing with upper management and company politics. All in all, he was very unhappy with his job and his life.

Mike and Jay were chatting at Jay’s home, sipping an expensive French claret that Lola had purchased.

Jay: “Do you think that we will get FDA approval?”

Mike: “Actually, I am more worried about how patients will feel about sticking their heads into a microwave oven.”

Jay: “Yaa. I think that this is not the project that will allow us to retire and watch sunsets in Jamaica. Microwaves suck.”

Mike: “When I was in school, I thought that it would be a good idea to design a jet engine that ran on water. Instead of fossil fuel, I would spray water into the compressed air and blast it with microwaves. The heat expands the air and generates thrust.”

Jay: “Where does the microwave come from?”

Mike: “A microwave klystron. It will run on electricity.”

Jay: “And where does the electricity come from?”

Mike: “There would be a generator attached to the turbine.”

Jay: “It doesn’t work that way. You need to get a refund from your high school physics teacher. Water doesn’t have much intrinsic energy. You need a fuel that can release energy to make any engine do any work. And you are really hung up on microwaves.”

Mike: “Microwaves are the future. Here is another idea I had, also when I was in school. Why can’t we build homes where the rooms have microwaves bouncing around inside? Like a giant microwave oven. It would be great in the winter. People would feel warm as soon as they entered the room. Microwaves pass go through their clothes and directly warm their bodies. It is better than warm air or radiant heat, because that would have to warm their clothes first and then their bodies.”

Jay: “Hmmm. Somehow, I am getting visions of puppies falling asleep in one of these rooms and waking up fully cooked. Where is it that they eat dogs?”

Chapter 6 - Dimi

Years: 2014-2024 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Vasili was working late in his office again. The shop had closed for the night, and everyone had gone home. Business was good, but he needed to build more financial reserves for the expansion he was planning. The idea was to open a new location in the mall next door and move his business there. A Sears Center was closing down there and they had a large car care center that would be just perfect. His current lease was expiring next year, and he couldn’t wait to stop having to deal with his leaseholder, Zilberman, the troublesome old fart. If only he had a couple of million dollars more.

He could not focus on the spreadsheets in front of him. He looked around, hoping to find Sveta, his long-time office assistant. The office was empty. Sveta would have helped to relax him so he could get back to work. She was married to one of his mechanics and had four kids of her own. She was older than Vasili and looked like a solid babushka, like a GE refrigerator from the ‘60s. A few years ago, he had asked her to massage his neck. She did a great job and then went on to massage his dick. This became a routine where she ‘relaxed’ him a couple of times a week. It never went any further, and neither expected anything more. Vasili did not think of it as cheating on his wife; it was just a therapeutic act that helped his business. Besides It was his secret edge, as it helped him stay calm during tough meetings, and business was getting tougher month by month. Sveta knew all about the ongoing problems and did what she could to help. Sveta and his wife were good friends and got along well. Over time, Sveta had become indispensable, trusted, and almost part of the family. But unfortunately, her skills were not available right now.

He instinctively browsed over to one of his favorite porn sites and searched for “Russian MILF.” His tastes were quite specific; he was not a fan of big boobs or butts. Amateur Russians were much more exciting than the Americans because they were much more open and inventive. The Internet and social media had taught them a lot.

When Sveta was not around, he would usually find a video stream and quickly take care of himself. But today, his mind wandered to a recent conversation he had had with his nephew, Mike, about finding him a wife. He browsed over to a Russian dating site. This was another of his favorite hangouts, where he frequently checked out the available applicants. They all had the same message: honest, educated woman looking to start a family in the USA. The attached pictures showcased the women in bikinis and flashy evening gowns. Vasili hadn’t seen his wife in either a bikini or an evening gown in years; neither would suit her body now.

Yulia Solovyova’s face popped out at him from her webpage. She was pretty, with a fringe haircut and a sweet smile. She had blue eyes and brown hair. The written description was sparse, but her pictures made up for it. She lived in a village near Stavropol and she was available. Vasili was tempted to contact her but thought better of it. He forwarded her contact link to Mike with a brief message.

Mike contacted Yulia without much delay. His biological clock had been triggered, and its alarm was blaring. One quick exchange of emails, and the relationship advanced to Skype video calls. Soon, Mike and Yulia were chatting for an hour each day. He would wake up early and call her at 5:00 a.m. to catch her around noon, Moscow time. They were able to communicate despite his broken Russian and her even more broken English. They learned a lot about each other.

Yulia was born and raised in a small village close to the town where Mike grew up. Her father had a farm where they grew potatoes. The village had about 50 residents, mostly women. There were no grocery stores - just a mobile shop that came by once a week. There were no schools either; all the kids were bused to a nearby village. Yulia was quite honest; she was not well-educated. Learning new things was easy for Mike, and he thought that it would be easy for Yulia to learn whatever she needed. That was a fatally incorrect assumption.

Yulia and her mother used to help her father on the farm. He had died recently; he drank himself to death. Her mother was perfectly healthy and had aged well. She must have been a knockout like her daughter when she was younger. Mike spoke with her occasionally, and she seemed like a nice person. Money was not a problem for them because the state had continued paying them every month for potatoes, even though potatoes were no longer being delivered to the local agro depot. The administrator there had not yet noticed that the deliveries had stopped. Yulia did not really want to leave Russia, but her mother had convinced her to move to America and get married. Yulia’s only request was to bring her mother with her. This was fine with Mike.

Based on a Russian lawyer’s advice, Mike arranged for visitor visas for both of them. He bought two round-trip tickets from Moscow to JFK, business class, no less. The return ticket was there to satisfy the visitor visa requirements and also to reassure Yulia and her mother that they could always go back home if things didn’t work out in America. He was a thoughtful guy.

He rearranged his apartment home and converted his office into a bedroom for the mother. He had never wanted a TV; now he needed a humongous TV on the wall. It was an exciting time.

Yulia and her mother also prepared for the big move. The preparations mostly consisted of packing up clothes and personal items. The animals on the farm had to be sold or given away. None of the neighbors were interested in taking over the potato farm, much less in buying it. It wasn’t worth their while since they would not be making any more money.

But every ointment has its own fly. The day before their trip, Yulia’s mother discovered that her passport had expired. She would need to send it to Moscow for an expedited renewal. It would take at least a week, and there would be no way for her to accompany her daughter on the plane. She planned to delay her travel by two weeks but instinctively knew that no schedule could be placed on the Russian bureaucracy. She insisted that Yulia should leave as planned.

Mike and Vasili picked up Yulia at the airport. This was her first trip alone, and she was very nervous, very tired, and very quiet. They took her to Vasili’s home so that his wife, Galina, could work her charms to comfort her. Galina fed her and fussed over her like a mother hen. A couple of sweet vodka drinks eased Yulia’s nervousness, but she remained quiet.

Vasili had gathered several forms for her to sign. He explained each one as she signed it. There was the application for a marriage license, an application for a driver’s license, an application for a social security number, an application for an immigration visa, and a few others. The last document was a prenuptial agreement that protected Mike’s assets for ten years after the marriage date. Vasili had not discussed it with Mike but knew that it was in his best interest. Mike’s father would have agreed. Vasili explained the terms of the agreement perfunctorily, and Yulia signed the document. Vasili and Galina signed as witnesses. Mike was not even present; Galina had sent him off to buy some cheese for dinner.

Mike and Yulia got married within a week of her arrival. Yulia’s mother sent her blessings and encouraged her to go ahead. The whole point of coming to America was to get married, and there was no good reason for her to wait. Besides, Mike and his family seemed to be a good catch. It would be smart business to seal the deal before something else went wrong.

The newlywed couple started settling in. Six weeks later, Yulia announced that she was pregnant. She had never been on birth control medication and was as fertile as a sack of Miracle-Gro. Mike was ecstatic. He pampered his wife. If there could be a papa hen, he would be it.

Unfortunately, the problems continued. Yulia’s mother finally received a new passport but the previously obtained US visa could not be used with it. Mike applied for a new visitor’s visa for her. This was denied on the grounds that Yulia was now married and her mother would likely overstay her visitor’s visa. She was added to the immigration shit list. She needed to apply for an immigrant visa, which takes a lot more time. Mike hired the Russian lawyer, but this mess was beyond his capabilities. The process dragged on and on. Having lived in Russia, Yulia’s mother was accustomed to life’s potholes, but Yulia was more upset.

For the first few months, Mike was still busy finishing his BioSimulator. He didn’t talk much with Yulia, who was mostly alone with the many Russian channels on cable TV. He had tried to tell her about his work, but she was not interested. Nor was she interested in world news or events. She didn’t have any friends and couldn’t talk with anyone other than Galina. However, the selection of programming available on Russian TV was very addictive and kept her occupied.

Dimitri (Dimi) was born in 2016 in the middle of a major snowstorm. As a baby, he seemed to be easy to care for. He rarely cried or made any baby sounds. His eyes darted around, looking at objects around him, but he never responded to anyone cooing at him. Mike asked Yulia if she had brought a potato from her farm. She was not amused and asked if Mike was similarly inert when he was a baby.

Yulia was becoming increasingly moody. They rarely spoke to one another. She spent hours chatting with her mother on the Internet. The rest of the time was spent watching TV. She had stopped talking to Vasili’s wife, Galina. It seemed to Mike that she had grown bored of her baby and that it was up to him to care for Dimi. She called the baby Dima, which was the common short form for Dimitri. Mike made up the nickname Dimi and preferred to call him that. Mike had also entered the last name Antonov in the birth certificate; it worked better in the USA than the traditional choice Mikhailovic.

Mike brought home take-out food every day; otherwise, there would be no food at home. He had started drinking every evening. He didn’t especially like the taste of booze, but it made it easier to eat dinner and go to sleep.

Mike was spending a lot of time at Jay’s home. Yulia rarely joined him; she preferred to stay home with her child. Besides work-related discussions, Mike talked with Jay and Lola about his personal problems. He called Jay ‘the brother I never had’ and Lola ‘the sister I never had’.

Mike had an analytical and organized way of thinking that led to many of his successes. His mind possessed the ability to focus on a problem and keep beating on it till it was solved. Then he would keep beating on the solution until it was perfect. At night, he would often lie awake contemplating his latest challenges. And there were so many of them to deal with. Though his baby was a joy, his personal life was a mess. He could not understand his wife. He tried to figure her out using the methods he used to analyze mechanical problems. First, he would break the mechanism down into its subcomponents. For each smaller part, he would try to understand how it was supposed to work versus how it actually did work. If there was a difference between the two, he would check if that discrepancy was causing the problem. All this was done mentally by closing his eyes and imagining the parts fitting with each other. It would take time, but eventually, he would unravel the problem and the solution. However, this technique did not work with humans.

Mike had noticed that Yulia was withdrawing money from their bank account and sending it to her mother. It was a relatively small amount, but they had not discussed it. Due to the ongoing economic sanctions, Mike worried that sending money frequently to Russia could cause trouble if it was noticed by the U.S. government. Moreover, banks charged exorbitant fees for the money transfer, sometimes as much as 50%.

Mike: “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have helped you send the money.”

Yulia: “Why are you delaying my mother’s arrival?”

Mike: “It’s not me. It’s the government immigration department. You know that I have a lawyer speeding things up.”

Mike had overheard her badmouthing him during her calls with her mother. Even if she didn't have any evidence, Yulia assumed that Mike was doing nasty things to her, and therefore she should reciprocate by doing nasty things.

Mike asked her “Why are you so nasty to me?”

Yulia: "You are doing the bad things, so it is OK for me to do it too.”

Mike: “But I haven’t done anything mean to hurt you.”

Yulia: “You tricked me into signing that marriage document.”

Mike: “My uncle did that. I’ll tear it up if you want.”

Yulia: “No, he has a copy. He knew you would tear it up. It is too late now. I hate everything about this place. I just want to go home. I want to go back and take care of my mother.”

Mike: “What about Dimi?”

Yulia: “He is your son; you wanted him, you can take care of him. He looks like you; he even smells like you. Ameriki.”

She went on: “You had him circumcised. Now he can never go back to Russia. They will think that he is a Jew or Musulman.”

Her mind was made up. Mike knew that her next step would be to run away. Or even worse, she could call the police and accuse him of physical assault. There was no point in discussing anything with her. He bought her a one-way ticket from JFK to back to Moscow. She insisted on taking a taxi to the airport, rather than having him drive her there.

Mike arranged to have a small stipend paid to her each month despite the ban on sending money to Russia. Vasili knew someone, who knew someone else in New York that could arrange for her to be paid in Rubles without involving banks or foreign exchange. Mike had to give this person a year’s worth of payment in dollars. This person would call his counterpart, a “dealer” in Russia, who would arrange to deliver money in Rubles. The money itself would not cross any borders. The person and the dealer would keep track of the money that is owed. At a later time, there could be a separate transaction where someone else might wish to send money from elsewhere to New York. This would result in the person paying out money to some other recipient, thereby balancing his books. In reality, there are many such networked dealers in different parts of the world, and they form a system to receive and disburse cash. Because of the volume of transactions, each dealer’s income and cash outflow gets roughly balanced over a period of time. This method depends on the trust each dealer has with others in the network. In many countries, this system is called hawala. Clearly, disagreements cannot be settled by the local police or courts, so the dealers maintain a crew of strong-arm enforcers, who are often associated with other criminal activities; and hence this business gets a bad reputation. It is illegal in most countries because it is not regulated by the government, but it is often less expensive than the banks, which makes one wonder who is the bigger criminal.

Mike called Yulia occasionally to check on the payments. He asked when she was returning, and always heard the same answer: “Mother not well.” She never asked about Dimi. Dimi somehow seemed to understand the situation and knew not to ask about his mother.

Mike realized that he was paying her to maintain the status quo; he did not want her back either. The best way to keep a woman away is to have her owe you money; she will avoid you. One day, he would start divorce proceedings, claiming abandonment. But there was no immediate need for it. He was afraid that asking for a divorce could rock the boat. Over in Russia, Yulia was thinking that asking for more money could rock the boat. Neither party wanted to change the situation. This is called a state of stable equilibrium.

Mike made raising Dimi his most important project. Engineers make everything a project. Since Mike was at work for more than ten hours each day, Dimi had two babysitters to care for him. When Mike returned, he played with Dimi for several hours. They would visit Uncle Jay every weekend. Jay played chess with Dimi. Dimi was only six years old, but it always ended the same way: Jay would beat Dimi, Dimi would beat Mike, and Mike would beat Jay. Mike could never beat Dimi; it was always a draw or a loss. Dimi avoided every trap that Mike set up; he often wondered, “Can you read my mind?”

Mike bought an old set of Encyclopedia Britannica books at an estate sale. He would discuss a random article from it each night as a bedtime story. Dimi was absorbing a lot of knowledge, though he had not yet connected all the information; wisdom comes when one can draw on one’s knowledge to deal with the current situation. He grew up being a well-behaved boy. He was quiet and friendly but never initiated any new friendships. He had his dad and Uncle Jay and seemed content with their company.

Mike had an expensive grand piano delivered. It was shiny black and looked impressive. One day, he hoped Dimi would learn to play Russian classical music. That day never came. Dimi never seemed interested in the piano, and Mike was smart enough not to force him.

Dimi’s fascination was tracking sports statistics, especially in football, basketball, and baseball. He did not physically play any sport, but he knew all the professional teams, the players, the coaches, their history - everything. He watched as many games as he could and scanned the Internet for news. He knew all rankings by heart and maintained spreadsheets of team performances. Mike noticed the rapt concentration as he worked on the spreadsheets. He was best left alone at that time.

Mike was hell-bent on teaching Dimi everything he knew. That was the sole reason for getting married and creating a progeny. More than his genes, he wanted to pass along his knowledge and his way of thinking. It was his way of gaining immortality. But it was not turning out quite that way. Dimi had his own set of interests and way of thinking.

One day, Mike had to go to the grocery store and take Dimi with him. Dimi was wearing pajamas.

Mike: “Wear something else.”

Dimi: “I want to wear these pajamas.”

Mike: “We can’t go out wearing pajamas. Pajamas are for bedtime.”

Dimi: “Dad… everyone wears pajamas everywhere.”

Mike: “We are not everyone.”

Dimi threw a tantrum for a while before calming down. He had learned that he did not fit in with his American classmates. He knew not to depend on them. They would make promises but would eventually let him down. Though he looked like them, there was something different. Because his dad was constantly teaching him science and general knowledge, he knew so much more than the other kids in his class. They knew that he knew more, and they disliked him for it. This bothered him a lot. He didn’t want to know more; he wanted to be like them.

Dimi: “They think I am a freak because I know things. They hate me because the teachers praise me and make them feel bad.”

Mike: “I felt the same way when I was your age. My parents taught me a lot, just like I am teaching you.”

Dimi: “Other parents don’t do that.”

Mike: “When you grow up, you will get a great job and will be happy. Your friends will be working at McDonald’s. They will be poor and unhappy.”

Mike wondered about that; maybe the friends would be poor but happy. Money brought stability, but not happiness. Something else brought happiness, and he certainly did not know that missing ingredient, because, despite his great job, he himself was not happy. So why was he teaching Dimi? Was it to ensure that Dimi would be successful and happy? Was it to pass on his legacy, his knowledge? Or was it just his selfish desire to bask in the glow of his son’s success?

“I don’t shine if you don’t shine.”

Chapter 7 - Vasili

Year 2015 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

It was a nice Sunday in Long Island, New York. Vasili was visiting Viktor Kozlov. He needed to borrow money to fund the long-planned expansion of his auto shop. His business was doing well, and he had a substantial amount saved from his profits. If only he could find a couple of million more dollars, he knew that the bank would provide a loan for the rest. It was a risky venture, but as they say - nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Life had been good for Vasili. He had a thriving business, a dedicated wife, and his daughters had grown up and moved out of the house. He even had a cute granddaughter who adored him. What more could one want? But Vasili had hit the 48-year mark, and he had developed a gnawing mid-life crisis. He wanted more. He had adopted a new hobby: deep-sea fishing, and had just bought himself a boat for 150 thousand. It was a beauty - 27 feet long with twin Honda engines, updated navigation electronics, and a fresh paint job. Below the deck, it had two beds, a kitchen, and a small bathroom.

The previous owner had given him a check ride on the boat. He took Vasili speeding out into the ocean. The power, the salt spray, and the vast ocean stretching all around were exhilarating. Now the boat was on its trailer parked in Vasili’s driveway. His wife, Galina, refused to get on it. She had warned him before he bought the boat, but Vasili had thought that he could talk her into it. Taking it to sea was a major operation, and there was no joy in doing it alone. It is said that the two happiest days in a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat and the day they sell it.

Unlike his brother, Alexi, Vasili hung out with the tough crowd when he was growing up in Russia. He had started smoking when he was barely 10 years old. By the time he was a teenager, he was a smooth talker and had had several girlfriends. He never got into drugs, mainly because there were none available. His gang terrorized the immigrants in the neighborhood and often confronted competing gangs in nearby areas. He had learned the strategy of “Hit first, apologize later” as the preferred way to conduct arguments.

Vasili knew Viktor as the head of the local Russian mob. This mob covered the tri-state area of New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut. They did not compete with the larger Italian mafia because they had differing interests. While the mafia focused on drugs, prostitution, and protection, Viktor preferred more intellectual pursuits. There were many opportunities involving stock fraud, healthcare finagles, insurance scams, and financial forgeries. They often yielded huge profit margins and were less risky. “Pump and dump” was the cash cow; mob operatives would pump up the value of some worthless penny stock by promoting it on social media. When the value peaked, they would dump their holdings for a fat profit. Forging financial certificates was also lucrative. These crimes were not hard to execute; they just required the intelligence. The traditional mafia lacked the expertise to operate these schemes. Viktor personally knew the mafia ringleaders and respectfully took care to avoid stepping on their toes. Nor was he connected with the Russian mafia in Rodina, the homeland. Maintaining a low profile kept Viktor’s group off the law enforcement radar screens.

Viktor did have one area of business that did not fit with his genteel style, an outlier. He got into it only as a favor to his childhood friend back home in Russia. Nevertheless, it was hugely profitable. Viktor had a team that towed away cars and butchered them for parts. These were cars that were illegally parked and would have been towed away by the city anyway. Viktor’s tow truck would haul them in broad daylight to a chop shop where they would be rapidly disassembled into their components. When drivers discovered that their car was missing, they assumed that it had been towed to the city pound. They knew deep down that their car had been parked incorrectly; they were in a hurry and there was no other spot. When they were told that the car was not in the pound, they naturally assumed that the pound was disorganized and corrupt. They rarely suspected that it was stolen. They were much less likely to park illegally after discovering that their insurance companies provided only partial compensation for the loss. In a way, Viktor was actually helping improve the civic sense of city dwellers.

The combined cost of the parts greatly exceeds the value of the contributing car. The catalytic converter is valuable due to the precious metals it contains. The engine, lights, and body panels could be used as replacement parts in other damaged cars. Many of the towed cars had custom enhancements, like upgraded sound systems and fancy wheels, which would be sold separately. Viktor’s team avoided snatching expensive cars, as they would lead to investigations from the insurance companies or the owners. Instead, the middle-of-the-line cars were much more desirable. Most liberated parts would be shipped to Eastern Europe, typically to his friend in Georgia. From there, the parts would diffuse into Russia, where there was always a demand for replacement parts. Shipping the parts in 40-foot containers was inexpensive; in fact, bribing the dock workers cost more than the shipping charges. The big mafia also stole cars, but their business model did not conflict with Viktor’s; they resold the cars and rarely chopped them. Besides, there were so many cars available to snarf that it was a stealer’s market.

Vasili got to know Viktor when he started buying headlights and small body parts for his auto shop. He would pay a fraction of the list price for the used parts and then charge the customer the full price for the new ones. It was easy to print out an authentic-looking invoice on his printer. No one ever checked, and insurance adjusters never visited the shop. Besides, the used parts were better than the new ones since they had already been field-tested on the donor vehicle.

Vasili was annoyed. He had to wait to meet Viktor. Apparently, Viktor was in a meeting. Vasili had driven from New Jersey, and the traffic had been rough. Despite it being a Sunday morning, the drive had taken almost two hours. People drove like idiots in New York City. Perhaps, he thought, because they really were idiots. Why else would anyone want to live in a noisy, crowded shithole when they could live in a beautiful suburb across the river?

But Viktor lived in a large house on the beach. Though the beach was supposedly open to all, a few neighbors had somehow blocked public access to a stretch of it. There was just the sound of the breeze and gentle waves; it was devoid of the typical beach noise of mothers screeching at their screaming children.

Vasili had already had two espressos and several blintzes from the buffet table when a tall brunette woman swept into the room. She looked like Xena, the warrior princess, but on steroids. She was wearing a sleeveless top, and her physical fitness was evident.

Daria: “Sorry you had to wait so long. I am Daria. Viktor is still in a meeting. He asked me to keep you company until he is done.”

Vasili: “Thanks. I don’t think I could have drunk any more coffee.”

Daria laughed. She made herself an espresso and splashed a healthy slug of vodka into it. Vasili had been trying hard to avoid looking at that bottle of vodka on the buffet.

Daria spoke in Russian: “Viktor tells me that he has known you for years. I’m new here. I like to think I am his assistant, his right-hand buddy.”

Vasili was surprised. He thought she was a secretary. He asked: “Are you related to Viktor?”

Daria laughed again: “No. Well, not that I know of.”

She held out the bottle of vodka towards him. When Vasili implicitly consented by not refusing, she poured a polite amount of vodka into his coffee.

Daria had a Moscow accent. She said: “It’s good for you, and it’s almost time for lunch. Viktor’s cook makes a fabulous lunch on Sundays. Anyway, tell me about yourself.”

Vasili: “OK, and then you tell me what you are doing in this dragon’s nest.”

Vasili talked about his shop, his grandchild, his wife… Daria was a good listener. Vasili was growing comfortable. The alcohol was rapidly dissolving his previous annoyance.

Vasili: “I just bought a boat. You should see it. I can take it into the ocean for deep-sea fishing. It is pretty fast.”

Daria: “My father had a boat, but it was small. Good for lakes. He used it to escape from his wife.”

Vasili: “Mine is bigger. About 9 meters long and has two big engines. I want to catch a tuna or a swordfish.”

Daria: “Yum. Where do you keep it? Is it in a marina?”

Vasili: “It is at my home. On a trailer in my driveway. My wife has not warmed up to it yet. Hopefully she will soon.”

Daria told him about her life. She was born in New York, and her parents were from Russia. She had worked at several casinos doing security. Her job was to watch out for trouble and fraud. Most of the fraud was employee theft. She was doing the same thing for Viktor, and a bit more.

Both of them were getting along well, guzzling coffee infused with vodka. Then she brought up a recent task that she had managed. A Russian woman wanted to get rid of her wealthy husband. The husband was French and was planning on divorcing her. She would be left with nothing. Because of a prenup she had signed, the dude needed to be disappeared without a trace.

Daria: “It was a rush job. She gave us his picture. He looked like a faggot, obviously a Frenchie, and he was intent on returning to his faggy country. She was going on and on. I didn’t want to hear her bitching; I just needed to know where to find him. She said that he was waiting for his flight in a Park Avenue hotel.”

Vasili was enthralled. He was becoming part of the family.

Daria: “We knew that he would order a limo to get to the airport. We got him into our limo and put him to sleep. We drove him to a small airstrip near here, in Shirley. Sergei rented a plane that was used by some skydiving club. Fifty miles out over the ocean, and Faggie went splash. Mission accomplished. We flew on to Nantucket and spent the night there eating lobsters and swordfish. It was fun.”

Daria: “So, as long as the body was not found, he was legally still alive, and the happy widow got to live the lifestyle she was used to. And Viktor has a satisfied customer.”

Daria paused, contemplating. Then she continued: “I just had a great idea. I was thinking, we could have done a better job. We could have used a boat like yours. That plane was expensive, and the airport was too risky. And we had to grease the pilot and a manager at the airport. They may have guessed what we were doing. If we had your boat, we could have done the job without anyone knowing about it. Are you interested, oomneatza?”

Vasili: “I’ll have to think about it. I’ll talk to my wife about it.”

Daria thought: “Dude is so tempted but scared.”

She pressed: “Lots of money in it for you. It will be fun. You will need rebar weights to make the cargo sink, we will get you that. And Viktor would be so indebted to you.”

Vasili nodded in assent: “Da. OK.”

Daria hugged him excitedly. Vasili was a large man, but Daria was several inches taller. She took Vasili to another room where Viktor was wrapping up a meeting with a woman. Daria walked away and left them alone.

Viktor: “Sorry to keep you waiting. That was a New York State senator. She wouldn’t stop talking. I had to tell her that I had another meeting now.”

Vasili: “No problem. I was chatting with Daria. She is something else.”

Viktor: “She is hot, yes? Good sport. She will do anything when you give her enough vodka. We call her the test pilot for Sealy Posturepedic. Now she wants to join our family. But a woman joining our bratva? Not a chance. She is American, not Russian.”

Vasili: “She has lots of good ideas.”

Viktor: “Yes, smart, strong and sexy. And single. If she marries a friend zemlyak, then maybe I’ll trust her. But enough about her. Tell me about you.”

Vasili wanted to borrow two million dollars. He explained his plan to buy a new auto shop. The big idea was that he would have a separate area where he could disassemble cars completely, including the body panels. He could handle two cars a week in his chop shop. He had brought a sheet of paper that detailed the financing, but Viktor barely glanced at it.

Viktor agreed. Because of the political sanctions against Russia, the demand for car parts was booming. Vasili had come at the right time.

Viktor: “Two cars a week is tiny. Maybe okay for starting. For two cars, I will pay off 10 balloons a week. Your loan will be paid off in five years. Okay?”

Vasili: “You mean four years, right?”

Viktor: “Pyat. I was never good with the math. Let’s just say five for now; we can adjust it later. I am sure you can do more than two per week.”

Vasili panicked, “What if he adjusted the period upwards?” No, he thought. “Viktor is honorable.” Besides, it was already a done deal, and he had no leverage with which to argue.

Viktor: “Daria will be the facilitator. She will oversee the money and your operations. You can ask her all the questions.”

Daria joined them for lunch. She had changed into an elegant summer dress that fit perfectly into the upscale neighborhood. Vasili guessed that she had a room in this house. Lunch was fantastic, as promised. The food was Italian, not Russian.

Later that evening, Daria called Vasili to arrange for the money transfers. She also said that Viktor had agreed to the boat drop idea.

Vasili told Galina about the two-million dollar loan. Galina appeared to be excited and happy to hear it. She always made Vasili feel like the most brilliant person in the world. She genuinely felt that way, and it showed.

Galina had just bought a handbag for $2,000. Her friend had talked her into it. She had been a bit concerned about how to tell Vasili about it. This seemed to be the right cue.

Galina: “I was worried about what you would say, but we can afford it now.”

Vasili freaked out: “Pizdec. Two fuckin thousand bucks!! You are insane. What is wrong with you?”

Galina: “OK, iszvini, I will return it.’

Vasili remembered splurging on his boat: “Blyat! No, it’s fine. Let’s keep the silly handbag.”

Galina was always cheerful and was content with her life. She was the one safe anchor that Vasili had. If all else fell apart, Galina would always be there for him. He paid for his house, but she made it a home. He knew that he needed her, but she did not know that he needed her. What Vasili did not yet know was that, deep down, he totally loved her. And somehow, Galina knew that. It was a nice standoff.

Vasili was looking for a new thrill in his life. He was 48. He was smart enough to know that nothing was really wrong, but was spoilt enough that there was this constant ennui. One day, he was chatting with one of his mechanics.

Vasili: “My wife used to be so hot in bed. Now she has let her body go. Sex is no fun anymore; she is so loose.”

Anastasiy: “Man, you must have totally reamed her out.”

Vasili: “Da, now she needs a rebushing.”

Anastasiy: “What is rebushing?”

Vasili: “Get a large bone-in ham. Shove it in her pussy all the way. Now grab the bone, twist it, and pull it out. It should come out with a ‘plop.’ And that is it. She is good for the next 10,000 kilometers.”

Anastasiy laughed hysterically. The vision appealed to the mechanic in him. He repeated: “Plop.”

It took several weeks for Viktor’s money to reach Vasili’s bank account. Now he had a decent down payment for a legitimate business loan. Vasili made an offer on the new property. It once used to be a proud auto shop run by Sears. It had been closed for years, but it still had functional bays with hydraulic lifts. It would be perfect for Vasili. His current landlord, Zilberman, was not happy about losing his tenant. He wanted a longer notice. Vasili went to his office and presented him with an explicit description of the physical violence that would ensue if Zilberman persisted in making a fuss. Zilberman understood. He too had grown up in Russia.

Vasili moved his business to the new location. It was a stand-alone building in the middle of a large parking lot. He had to renovate the office and customer service areas, but the work areas for the cars were fine. He planned on upgrading the equipment there eventually. One section of the building was walled off from the rest of the shop. There were two bays there, each with a lift. This would be the chop shop. Besides Vasili, only two mechanics had access to that section. Most of the other mechanics knew what was happening there, though they didn’t talk about it; it was not their business. It was once again a happy family and a fun place to work.

One mechanic to another: “Jora, you are a motherfucker.”

Jora: “Da. I fucked your mother. Did she tell you?”

A tow truck brought a car in twice a week. The license plates on the cars had been replaced with fake ones, just in case a camera was watching. They were immediately moved into one of the closed bays. The cars typically arrived during the day, during rush hours, and in plain sight. Moving a car at night would be more suspicious.

After it was butchered, all the parts were taken away in a panel van. The VIN numbers on the engine block and transmission were carefully altered. VIN numbers are also stamped on several other parts, like under the hood and inside the door panels. They, too, were corrected. The unwanted parts were torched into smaller pieces and disposed of in landfills.

Daria visited Vasili every week. This was her first major assignment in the bratva, and she had millions of dollars riding on it. Galina noticed Daria frequently hanging around the office.

Galina: “Are you having an affair with her?”

Vasili had been expecting this question. He replied: “No darling. No affair as yet. It is just business. Look at her. She probably has ninja blades in her pussy. My dick would go limp just thinking of having to go in there.”

A few weeks later, Daria called Vasili at his office.

Daria: “Tovarish. We need to do a test, a trial run on your boat. It has to be done today.”

Vasili complained: “No today. Galina is away and I am babysitting Sofia, the granddaughter. She is with me at the office now. Next week would be better.”

Daria: “This is a test of readiness. A real job will be like this. Viktor wants it done to prove your commitment and capability.”

Vasili: “Of course, I am committed. But also to Sofia. She is 8.”

Daria: “Bring her along. It is a nice day. She will enjoy the ride.”

Daria would not take “no” for an answer. Vasili packed up Sofia and drove home to get his boat ready. When he got there, Daria was already waiting for him. She was dressed for the outing, wearing tight shorts over a bikini. Vasili worked on hooking up the boat to his SUV, while Daria took Sofia into the house and got her prepared. She had brought swimwear for Sofia, along with some pool toys and a big jar of sunblock. This surprise boat ride had been meticulously planned in advance.

A few minutes later, a van drove up and backed up the driveway to the boat. The signs on the van advertised a food catering company. A tall man in overalls opened the rear doors of the van and dragged out a large bundle. He dropped it on the driveway. Next, he pulled out an icebox; Daria said that it contained catered sandwiches and a bottle of white wine. He then waved goodbye and drove away without saying a word. Daria explained that he was a deaf-mute, but a trusted soldier who had been with the bratva for a long time.

The bundle was heavy, definitely more than 200 lbs. It was about 5 feet long and shaped like a sausage. Daria said that it contained junk auto parts covered in bubble wrap. There were no handles on it. They had to load it onto the boat. They rolled it closer and together lifted it up into the boat. Vasili was sweating but Daria seemed unperturbed. No one thought of tying down the bundle to stop it from rolling around.

They all piled into the SUV and drove to the Cliffwood Beach marina. Daria sat in the back and entertained Sofia. The marina was not busy; it was low tide. Vasili backed the boat into the ramp. This was his first attempt, and he was not smooth. When the boat was partially in the water, he caused it to jerk and the bundle rolled off the boat into the water.

Both Daria and Vasili cursed. Sofia started crying. The bundle floated next to the boat, bobbing serenely. Vasili managed to clamber into the boat and pulled the bundle aboard while Daria comforted Sofia. It was lucky that the bundle floated, but he just realized that they didn’t bring the rebar weights to sink it permanently. Vasili found two 25 lb dumbbells in his SUV. He showed them to Daria, and she concurred that they should be adequate. Vasili thought “Dermo, why did it float? This is a bad start, and it will only get worse.”

They headed out of the harbor to the ocean. There was a NJ State Police patrol boat at the mouth of the harbor. Vasili’s toes were curling inside his shoes. But then Sofia waved to the police, and they waved back. Daria said that they were really a rescue boat, and not like a Coast Guard unit. They just saw a husband, wife, and a child going out on a boating trip. There was nothing suspicious.

They motored along slowly for about three hours, about 40 miles offshore. The sonar depth finder indicated that it was 800 feet deep; they were still on the continental shelf. Another half-hour out and the depth would be 5,000 feet. But the waves would be much harsher and they had to think about Sofia. The fishing instrument showed shoals of fish passing by. This was a good spot to stop for lunch.

The sandwiches were delicious. Then it was time for the main event. Vasili tied the dumbbells to the bundle with a nylon fishing line. No other cords were available. They rolled the bundle overboard. There were a lot of bubbles, but the bundle sank. There was no one on the horizon.

Vasili said: “Next time, we do it at night; no one can see.”

The trip back was faster. They did not talk much. Sofia was tired; she stopped chattering and fell asleep. Vasili wondered what he had gotten himself into. It had been easy enough, but so many things could have gone wrong. They put the boat on the trailer without any problems. Daria was quite an expert at steering the boat as she helped load it onto the trailer. She seemed to have done it all before.

When they got home, Daria gave Vasili an envelope containing cash, $20 grand in $100 bills.

Vasili: “Spasiba. Thanks. I get paid for a test?”

Daria: “That was a real person that you dropped. Congrats, you passed.”

Vasili was shocked: “Are you being real? You said it was junk auto parts.”

Daria: “No, it was some dude. We got an urgent hit request, and we had to get rid of him quickly before he started smelling. Too many holes in his body. So thanks. That was a really smooth operation.”

Vasili: “I don’t know if I can do it again. I’m going to throw up.”

Daria: “Yah, znayu, that’s why I didn’t tell you. Viktor thought you might feel this way. But you are a pro now.”

Vasili: “Count me out.”

Daria: “Sorry, bratan. You can’t back out now. We know the GPS location of the drop. If we leak it, the police will find the body and your dumbbells. They will also review satellite images and track your boat from that location. But don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. You will be fine.”

Vasili: “I don’t care. I’m done.”

Daria: “No, you are not. You know how it is. Like they say, you can check out if you want, but you can never leave.”

Chapter 8 - Discovery

Year 2024 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Sandra was in a state of total panic. She had just done something great and also something terrible. She had proved that the kids could communicate mentally, and she had totally pissed off their parents. If the parents complained to her boss, then her goose was cooked, and it would be the end of her job. She went home and took a cold shower, but she just could not calm down. She needed to be with her best friend. Kat would have the right blend of booze, pills and loving. “Throw me a lifeline … Once in a lifetime …”.

Mike drove home from the daycare center. Dimi sat silently behind him in his booster car seat. Normally, Mike would be chatting with Dimi about what happened at school and the daycare. But today, he was still shocked by the demonstration that the kids could read each other’s’ minds. The anger he felt earlier had faded. Now the scientific curiosity was kicking in. He intuitively knew that Sandra had not staged the scene. Given Dimi’s reaction, it was unlikely that the kids were playing a game. There had to be a rational explanation.

Mike waited until they had finished their dinner. This was the time when they usually played chess and other board games.

Mike: “Dimi, how did you know that May was thinking of Miss Goodwin blowing smoke?”

Dimi: “She told me. I can hear her telling me things all the time. And Amy also.”

Mike: “But I was right there. I didn’t hear May or Amy talking. How did you hear them?”

Dimi: “I can hear them. But I think they cannot hear me. I don’t think they are mean to me, they are my friends.”

Mike waited till Dimi fell asleep and then called Sue. She had given him her personal number. She picked up after a few rings.

Mike: “Hope I am not calling late. I really had to talk with you.”

Sue: “It’s not too late. The kids are sleeping. I was talking with my parents, but I am free now.”

Mike: “What did you think of what the kids did today?”

Sue: “I really don’t know what to make of it. I was surprised, but I did not talk to the kids about it. They seemed tired.”

Mike: “I don’t think that that Brenda person was trying to fool us.”

Sue: “I’ll ask May if she is playing a game with us. But it is not like her to do this.”

Mike: “I am a scientist, and I am extremely amazed. I was wondering if we could try it again, but without Brenda.”

Sue: “And I am a psychologist, actually a child psychologist. Let me think about it. I’ll try and think of some questions we can ask the kids. Would you like to come over this weekend? Perhaps I’ll make some dinner. Amy says that Dimi likes pasta.”

Mike: “Great, thanks. We will come over. It will be nice to meet you again.”

Sue: “Cool. By the way, Bernda’s name is Sandra.”

Sue was thrilled. Mike would be the first man to come over in years. She thought that there was something exciting about him. He was quiet and calm, but something else. She barely knew him, “Enigmatic, mysterious, deep”, she thought. She fantasized about him as she drifted off to sleep. It had been a long time since she had had such thoughts.

The weekend eventually rolled around. Sue contemplated whether she should cook something Chinese or something Western. She was looking forward to her “date”. Was it a date if they did not go out?

Mike and Dimi arrived precisely on time. Dimi quickly made himself at home; he was with his friends. Mike and Sue chatted about their work. They studiously avoided talking about the elephant in the room, the main reason for the visit.

After dinner, Mike was itching to discuss what they had witnessed.

Mike: “Have you thought more about how the kids did their trick?”

Sue: “I spoke with May and Amy. They don’t think it was a big deal. And they repeatedly said that Sandra did not tell them to do anything for us.”

Mike: “OK, it was Sandra. So what do you think happened? It was strange.”

Sue: “Well, I asked them some questions. I don’t understand how they were able to talk silently. Look, I don’t believe in God or ghosts, but I have some suspicions about what is going on.”

Mike: “Tell me.”

Sue: “I don’t want to look like a nutcase. I also wanted to wait till Dimi was here. You are right, it is strange. I tried to think like a psychologist and made up a few documentable experiments. Do I have your permission to video Dimi?”

Mike: “Sure.”

Sue: “OK. First, I’ll ask one child to think of something and we will see if the other two get the message. I want ten samples of this. Then we will repeat with the others. Then we will have thirty data points and we can calculate the statistical correlation. OK?”

Mike: “OK.”

Sue: “OK. Hang on. I think you are going to lose your mind.”

They gathered the kids and told them that they would be playing a game. The rules were simple. May would be given a list of 10 specific items, and a tall wizard’s hat. She had to tell the others what they were, but without speaking or making any signs. Amy and Dimi could look at her but could not say anything. They had to write down what they thought May was thinking. Then the next person would take May’s place and wear the hat. Each player would get a point if they guessed the secret. The winner would get to keep the hat, and everyone would get a Slushie. The kids said, “Yay.” Sue asked Mike to record everything on video.

Sue had made three lists. Each list had 10 items, like numbers, words, pictures, and emotions. She gave each kid a blank piece of paper and a pen, and asked everyone to write their name at the top of the page. Then she silently handed a list to May. As May looked at her list, both Dimi and Amy started writing. They were done in less than a minute. Sue and Mike looked on breathlessly. Sue looked at Dimi’s answers and silently shook her head, she looked at Mike and mouthed, “Wow.”

Sue: “Great, who wants to go next? Amy? Dimi?”

Dimi looked a bit uncomfortable but Amy raised her hand. She had found a sorcerer’s wand and wanted to use it with the hat. Sue gave her the next list and said “Go.” Again, they were done within a minute.

Sue: “OK, now it is Dimi’s turn.”

This time, Amy and May took a lot longer to start writing. They stared at Dimi, who was fidgeting in his chair. Eventually, they started writing.

Amy: “I finished.”

May: “Me too.”

Sue: “Let’s see who won.”

Mike and Sue looked at what the kids had written. They were amazed. When May was ‘sending’, Amy and Dimi wrote down the items almost perfectly. The numbers and words matched correctly. When May was shown a picture of an SUV, Amy wrote ‘car’ and Dimi wrote ‘Jeep.‘ When May was shown “Amy loves May,” Amy wrote “Hug,” and Dimi drew a heart emoji. It was close enough. Amy’s list also matched 100% of the responses. However, when Dimi was ‘sending’, the list did not match the responses at all. But interestingly, the responses of Amy and May were identical, word for word.

Dimi was still wearing the wizard hat and was waving the wand. He was zapping the other two with the wand and casting spells. May and Amy were deflecting the spells with their own powers. They were having a great time.

Sue: “That was fun. Let’s play another game. Same rules, but this time we will turn the lights off. Everyone starts at the same time and we will see who finishes first. You get a flashlight so you can see your list. Oh, I almost forgot. There is going to be a bedsheet on top of you.”

The kids thought the game was hilarious. They were having fun. Sue was in her element; she was running her experiment. Mike was totally lost; he felt that he was witnessing history being made. Sue gave each kid a pen-light and a new list of items. She turned off the lights and draped a bedsheet over each kid. They looked like little ghosts. They crawled around the floor and bumped into the furniture. The noises they were making would have embarrassed any self-respecting ghost.

Sue: “Go. Look at your lists.”

The kids were done in a minute. They were doing it effortlessly. They went back to being ghosts. The results were the same as the first ‘experiment.’ Though what Amy and May wrote down when Dimi was sending was incorrect, their responses for Dimi were identical.

Sue: “Amy, you did not get Dim’s list right. What happened?”

May replied: “We could not hear Dimi talking to us at all. We never do. He can’t talk sometimes. Amy and I made up a list so Dimi did not feel bad.”

When one had 100% correlation, there was no point in calculating statistics. Being an academic, Mike wondered how he could write a paper about this. It was mind-blowing and quite unbelievable. He would need a lot more data, and a lot more evidence.

Sue said to Mike: “It is clear that Amy and May can send and receive messages to each other. They can also send messages to Dimi, but he cannot send to them.”

Mike said to Sue: “This is crazy.”

Sue: “They don’t even know that they are communicating telepathically. They think they are hearing the other person talk audibly.”

Mike: “We would need to repeat this test more professionally and with more witnesses. No one would believe this.”

Sue: “Let me think about it. But let’s keep this quiet for now.”

Mike: “OK. But you did a great job putting together this test today.”

Mike and Sue were getting close. She had bumped into Mike several times while the lights were turned off. He didn’t seem to move away. Actually, it seemed like he had reached out and groped her as well. Her skin tingled when he touched her.

Sue: “I don’t know what you think about all this, but I feel so comfortable with you.”

Mike: “Yes. I feel like I have known you forever. And I feel that I am making you happy right now, and I feel happy that you are happy.”

Sue: “It’s late. Would you like to stay over? I’ll make a bed for you and Dimi. We can all go out and have pancakes for a Sunday breakfast tomorrow morning.”

Dimi was thrilled to have a sleepover with his friends. He didn’t usually get to do things like this. Somehow, this was different from playing with them at the daycare center; much more fun. They all stayed up late. Sue made a pitcher of piña colada for her and Mike. The kids got virgin colada.

Sue lived in a two-bedroom apartment. She had her own bedroom, while Amy and May shared a room. Sue converted the couch in the living room into a bed and made it comfortable for her guests. After some time, the kids went to sleep in their room. Dimi fell asleep on the couch.

Mike and Sue talked about everything, their lives, their past, their frustrations. There was a lot to discuss. They moved to Sue’s bedroom because they did not want to wake up Dimi. After an hour, they were holding hands and rubbing shoulders. The piña colada was gone. A little while later, they were in bed together. It felt like the most natural thing to do.

He entered her gently. Her eyes were wide open but both eyeballs were rolled up, as if she was passing out. Judging by her reaction, he knew he was doing exactly what she needed. He felt an immense wave of satisfaction knowing that he was in the groove. Some men are like that.

They woke up the next morning before the kids were awake.

Mike: “That felt nice.”

Sue gave him a small kiss: “I thought so too. It has been a while.”

Mike: “We should do this again.”

Sue: “Yes. I would like that. Call me.”

They all went out for breakfast. The kids insisted on having a Slushie with their pancakes. The parents allowed it; they had deserved it.

Mike felt that he should tell Sandra about what they discovered regarding the kids. After all, she had discovered it. More importantly, he did not want Sandra spreading the word; it could cause a big commotion and hurt the kids. He told Sandra that a psychologist was looking into it and they thought that the kids had developed a special bond because they spent so much time together. No big deal. He would keep her informed. Sandra was relieved to be off the hook. She had been scared shitless and did not want to know more.

Mike had to talk with his best friend, Jay. Jay had a way of helping him think more clearly. Jay came over the next evening. Mike put a two-pound bag of frozen fries into the oven. That, along with mayo and ketchup, would be dinner for both. Neither of them was a foodie. Jay had sophisticated tastes only when his wife, Lola, was present. But when he was alone, he was content eating bananas and two-minute ramen.

Mike told him about the discovery and the experiment. He played the videotape he had made, but it lacked the impact.

Jay: “Wow. So, you believe that they can communicate silently. Really?”

Mike: “I saw it.”

Jay: “Right, you were seeing your Chinese woman’s tits.”

Mike silently thought about those tits. They had smelled so good. All he said was: “Mmm.”

Mike knew that he had to demonstrate the experiment to Jay. He himself barely believed it and he had seen the kids do it twice. He had to invite Jay to the next session.

Mike: “OK. I’ll get the kids together again, perhaps this weekend. You make a list of ten words. You hand the list to one of the kids, don’t show it to anyone else.”

Jay: “OK. Lola should see this as well.”

Mike: “Sure. Let’s say that you get convinced that this is real. What would you do next? I thought we could hook them up with wires to record their brain waves while they are communicating.”

Jay: “Let me think about that. First of all, the kids will be fidgeting and will not want wires stuck to their faces and heads. Do you think their mom would allow you to shave portions of their scalp for your electrodes? No way.”

Mike: “I guess you are right. But we need empirical data to proceed.”

Jay: “If you really wanted to go that route, you can buy a used ECG machine on eBay. Costs almost nothing. I can hook it up to a computer.”

Mike called Sue after Jay left.

Mike: “Hi. How was your day so far?”

Sue: “Busy. We needed to shop for things for the kids. What did you do?”

Mike: “Actually, I spoke with my friend, Jay. I want you to meet him. I told him about the kids’ capability and he does not fully believe it.”

Sue: “I don’t blame him.”

Mike: “Can you come to my place on Friday? I want Jay to see for himself.”

Sue: “Sure, we can come after I am done with work.”

Mike: “OK, I’ll order a couple of pizzas. Um, would you guys be able to stay over?”

Sue: “Sure, probably. I’ll ask the kids and confirm.”

Sue was thrilled. She had been thinking of all the things she wanted to do to Mike the next time they were alone together. Most of the actions involved kissing and biting him all over. She was a passionate girl and liked to bite the people she liked. She let her mouth do the talking.

Sue picked up her kids at the daycare on Friday and waited for Mike. She had been working late and had missed meeting Mike at the daycare all week. She had told the twins that they were spending the night with Dimi. They were happy about it, but they did not seem surprised. Sue thought “Perhaps Dimi had already told them.” She had thought ahead and had brought a change of clothes for everyone. They followed Mike to his home when he came by to pick up Dimi.

Mike gave Sue a quick hug when they entered his home. He had recently moved to a new house. It was a much larger house than he needed, but he had been promoted to be the head of his department and his stature demanded it; he was expected to host parties for his employees. He showed Sue around the house and pointed out the shiny grand piano. The kids had already quietly diffused into Dimi’s room and were playing a video game on a large TV.

Jay and Lola arrived a few minutes later. Jay introduced Lola.

Jay: “Sue, this is my friend, Lola. Lola, this is Sue.”

Sue: “Nice to meet you, Lola. But Mike told me that you and Jay were married.”

Jay: “A wife is a legal obligation. A friend is a choice. Which do you think is the better option?”

Lola to Sue: “We are married. But Jay tells his story to people all the time. I am used to it. He is my chico.”

Mike and Jay made drinks for the adults. The kids got chocolate milk. Mike had picked up three strawberry smoothies just before picking up Dimi. They would be the prizes for the kids after their demonstration. Jay noticed that Sue and Lola had hit it off and were talking; Lola was usually more reserved.

The pizza arrived, and everyone was hungry. After some time, Jay wanted to get the ball rolling. Mike called the kids into the living room. He told them that they would be playing the Guessing Game again. This time, Jay would be giving them a list of things to talk about. Jay pulled out the list that he and Lola had compiled. He had already told Lola what to expect. He gave a copy of the list to Mike and Sue, while he shared his copy with Lola.

Jay: “Who is Amy and who is May? Both of you look equally beautiful.”

Amy: “I am May.”

May: “She is lying. Ask my mom.”

Sue: “Stop it, hái zi. Sorry, Jay, they like playing their silly game with friends. My parents cannot tell them apart and even I have to think about it sometimes. Amy is wearing blue. She likes blue.”

Jay: “OK. I’ll give this piece of paper to you, Amy. Can you tell the others what it says?”

Amy looks at the list. She raises her hand theatrically, slowly. May and Dimi shout out before her hand stops moving.

May: “Ice cream.”

Dimi: “Ice cream.”

Amy moves her hand as if she is conducting an orchestra.

Dimi: “Bunny rabbit.”

May: “Bunny.”

Amy stops when she has completed the list. She doesn’t know what to do next. The other two seem a bit bored. They have nailed every word in the list. Sue tells them that they can go back to watching their TV program and they scamper away.

Lola: “Mío Dios. They are talking thoughtfully.”

Jay: “Wow. I guess I should believe you now.”

Mike: “It took me a while too.”

Sue: “I was watching Amy closely. I did not see any visual hints she was exhibiting. We tried this test in the dark. Also, when I asked the girls, they repeatedly said that they could ‘hear’ each other. And we did not hear anything.”

Lola: “I was watching Sue. She is innocent!”

Mike: “I have been thinking about this. If possible, we need to do so many experiments. Is this capability affected by distance? Weather? Metal walls? Also, so far the results have been 100% correct. Which variable can affect the error rate?”

Jay laughs: “Mike is thinking like an electrical engineer.”

Sue: “I looked at it from a psychologist’s point of view. We should try to think outside the box.”

Mike looked at Lola: “Religious angle?”

Lola made a sign of the cross. She says: “No sé. I don’t know.”

Jay: “If all else fails, we can blame God. I need to think about this.”

Mike and Jay have often discussed their views on God and creation. They both believe that the concept of God is a man-made creation that allows some people to control other weak-minded people. Lola was raised as a Catholic and is the only slightly religious person in the current group. Deep down, Mike knows that religion will not provide an explanation, but he wants to cover his bases. He knows that Jay has the broadest range of knowledge and is the best person to crack this puzzle.

After Jay left, Mike showed Sue the guest room. It had a king-sized bed and a large TV on the wall. It had its own bathroom with a Jacuzzi. Sue got her kids ready for bed. It took a while because they were hyped up about being in a new place and playing video games on the TV. Sue couldn’t wait for them to fall asleep.

Mike was waiting for Sue when she eventually came to his bedroom. He had showered and prepared himself as best as he could. No deodorants or colognes, just straight man musk. No mood music, no flower on the pillow, just Mike.

Sue silently walked in and sat at the foot of the bed. She had also showered and had changed into her nightwear, a light blue silky pajama set with a shirt and matching shorts. Mike reached out to her; there wasn’t much to say at that point, their actions would speak louder than words. Sue got up and sat on Mike’s lap. Mike embraced her with one hand and drew her closer. The other hand moved slowly up her leg and into the shorts, and felt that she was not wearing anything under them. Sue gasped at the contact and buried her face in his neck. Her hand reached down and grasped his dick. As she nuzzled his neck, she discovered his ear and bit into it passionately.

Suddenly Mike had a graphic vision of Sue going down on him. He could feel her face snuffling his neck and her teeth gently biting him, but he had a distinct image of her head over his groin. About five seconds later, Sue’s face moved over his chest, and her lips slowly traced a path down his belly. Mike was torn, he knew what was coming and wanted it badly, but yet something in his mind balked at the prospect. He held her head with his hands and stopped it from moving further down. Sue looked up at him saying “Let me do it, okay? I want to.” Mike released her head to continue her quest. She hadn’t said a word, but he clearly heard her.

The next morning, Mike woke up with Sue sleeping next to him, curled up. Her eyes were closed and she was snoring gently. He stared at her for a while, a feeling of deep peace washed over him. “I could get used to waking up like this” he thought. He couldn’t believe that there was this woman was there, defenseless and trusting. A line from his favorite movie popped into his mind: “It's not the man with the money in the bank that's happy, but the man whose wife sleeps in the same bed.” He had just figured out that he wanted to be happy. Now he had to try hard to not screw things up. He replayed the memories of the previous night. If the first time they made love was great, yesterday was something fantastic.

The mists of sleep cleared as his brain awakened. Memories of the other big event from the previous night started forming in his head, that he was able to read Sue’s mind. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that Sue had communicated mentally with him, just like the kids did. It was the first time he had experienced anything like that; just a flash, but it was undeniable. Perhaps he had some ability to receive and Sue had some ability to send. That could explain why Dimi could receive and the twins could send thoughts.

As he wondered about it, Mike realized that this was something big, something that had to be researched further, something that had to be documented and published. But how would he write a paper about a blow job in a peer reviewed scientific journal?

Chapter 9 - Science

Years 3.7 billion BCE to 2025 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Great strides have been made in science and technology in the last few centuries. Most people have become comfortable with computers facilitating all aspects of human life. Networks of computers continually exchange terabytes of data in the blink of an eye. Medical sciences have conquered most of the ancient diseases, but new maladies emerge periodically. As each new challenge arises, scores of researchers focus on it and quickly find several ways to address it.

However, there is one area that has not changed. Humans still think in primitive ways. People do not see eye to eye; they do not understand each other. War and abuse are still prevalent. Religion and politics continue to twist people’s minds. Many individuals believe that they have the answer to the world’s problems and they want everyone else to adopt their solutions. Yet, they become upset when they do not get their way, as every other person has their own differing opinions. Democracy has become a dirty word where the elected few use their power to fleece the ignorant masses.

But there is a change quietly brewing. Some individuals have developed the ability to communicate telepathically with others. Rather than speech, they exchange higher-level constructs, such as ideas, concepts, and visions. This is a precise and rapid transfer, and it is immune to misunderstandings. It also does not depend on a spoken language, allowing people from different ethnicities to communicate wordlessly.

These gifted individuals are not yet aware of their special capability. They simply believe that they can "understand" others better. Now and then, they gain a sudden insight into what someone else is feeling or is trying to express. They do not utilize this new "sense," mainly because it does not work while communicating with most others. Nor can they consciously activate or deactivate this ability. There are a few vague reports on social media about people with “extra-sensory powers,” but for the most part, the scientific community is not cognizant of this evolution that nature is cooking into humanity.

Evolution is a fitful process. This world is crammed with many competing species. To survive and prosper, each species must continually adapt and improve. There is no master plan for this process; nature uses a simple ‘trial and error’ strategy that has neither a goal nor a schedule. Life on Earth began with bacteria that developed in the oceans. These single-celled beings had very simple DNA and reproduced asexually, producing exact clones of themselves. A billion years later, bacteria evolved to a more robust cell called Eukaryotes. Eventually, a group of assorted eukaryotes clumped together to form a higher-level creature. They were able to leverage each other’s strengths and the group as a whole had distinct survival advantages. More such creatures formed and adapted over millions of years. Only the changes that benefitted the species persisted while the creatures that had useless changes quietly disappeared.

DNA is a long sequence of molecules that exists within each cell. Human DNA comprises a string of several billion molecules. Every species has its own DNA sequence, which acts as a template to manufacture all the proteins that are essential for that species. Since all beings in a species need the same proteins, they will all have mostly the same DNA. However, there can be tiny variations in the sequence, and these cause the differences between individuals in the species. Beings of other species will have a very different sequence.

Genes are subsections of DNA. They encode enough information to make one specific type of protein; thus, genes are a good way to subdivide the long DNA chain. Each of the two parents contributes half of their own genes to form the DNA for the offspring. The two halves merge to yield the offspring’s DNA. There are thousands of genes, and the random way they are selected for contribution makes each offspring not only different from the parents but also globally unique.

Occasionally, some genes can become damaged while being merged. Usually, the damage will be severe, and the reproduction process will fail. But sometimes, the damage will not stop reproduction, and the offspring will have a new gene that is not inherited from the parents. This will cause the offspring to be different in some way. The difference will usually be so small that it will not be noticed. If it is noticeable, it may be called a unique trait or peculiarity. Occasionally, the trait offers some new beneficial advantages to the offspring, allowing it to be more efficient during its lifetime. This enables the offspring to be more successful in mating and producing more offspring who inherit the new gene. If the gene is propagated for several generations and is carried by a large enough number of beings, it will be considered an evolution. Given the large number of conditions that must come together simultaneously, the probability of a beneficial new gene surviving is very low, which explains why evolution is slow.

Scientists have observed many evolutions that help creatures adapt to their environments. Examples include birds changing colors and fish becoming resistant to pollution. Even humans have evolved several desirable traits over centuries, such as becoming taller, more intelligent, and being able to resist severe heat or cold. Being skilled at playing chess or being a gifted musician are also inheritable traits. On the flip side, there are undesirable traits like social anxiety and introversion, which are associated with autism. Both are facets of evolution. The desirable traits will be naturally selected during reproduction and will propagate. The undesirable traits will die out, unless society inexplicably makes them fashionable.

An evolution of the brain gave some people the ability to communicate mentally. Each human brain contains billions of neurons. While the body comprises many different types of cells, neurons are the cell that make humans sentient and intelligent. The brain is incredibly complex and minor variations can lead to major functional changes.

Neurons are connected to other neurons in a mesh-like structure. They send signals to their neighboring neurons through tiny pulses of electricity. Each neuron cell has three main parts: a body called the soma, several tentacles called dendrites, and a long tail called the axon. Each dendrite connects to an adjacent neuron and receives signals from it. These signals could represent information such as vision data from an eye, touch sensations from a segment of the skin, or thought information from another neuron. When millions of neurons work together in harmony, they result in intelligent behavior. The incoming signals are processed in the soma to generate the neuron’s own signal. This signal is communicated out of the soma via the axon. The axon is linked to dendrites of other cells. To summarize, a neuron’s dendrites receive signals from other neurons, while its own signals are sent via its axon to other neurons.

The brain contains gray matter and white matter. While both comprise neurons, the gray matter is mostly composed of neuron bodies with dendrites and short axons. White matter consists mainly of neurons with long axons. A simplistic way to summarize this is that the gray area performs computation functions while the white area acts as the data network that communicates signals to the rest of the body.

Brain scientists have mainly focused on studying neurons in isolation. They have discovered many interesting details about how individual neurons function. However, they are no closer to understanding how a brain "thinks" or “remembers.” Studying neurons individually has been as fruitful as examining a small spot in a large painting; we know that the spot is of a certain color, but we need to view the surrounding area to understand the "big picture." Similarly, brain researchers need to monitor thousands of neurons simultaneously and correlate their actions to begin grasping the workings of the brain.

A neuron is typically in one of two states: it can be at ‘rest’ or it can be ‘firing.’ It generates a tiny electrical shock signal when it fires. Each neuron is capable of performing a relatively simple calculation. However, there are more than a hundred billion neurons and a hundred trillion connections among them. While it is not meaningful to compare these numbers to the number of transistors in a modern computer, it is safe to say that a typical brain is a million times more complex. Computers are designed to perform mathematical operations quickly, but the brain is capable of performing much more intelligent tasks, such as recognizing complex patterns.

Besides the brain, the body also contains neurons that control vital functions like the heartbeat, respiration, and hand movements. Neurons in the body are called nerves. These have long axons to reach various parts of the body. The electrical impulse from a neuron can be transmitted via a nerve to a muscle cell, thereby causing the muscle to move the associated limb. These neurons are called motor nerves. If the neuron fires rapidly many times, it will cause the muscle to contract quickly and strongly. There are separate nerves that transfer sensory information from the body back to the brain. These sensory neuron cells are oriented so that their axons point towards the brain. The two types of nerves are often physically next to each other but are well insulated.

Neurons “fire” by rapidly moving chemicals in and out of their cell body. These chemicals are mostly electrically charged sodium and potassium ions. There are billions of ions in the fluid surrounding the neurons. Axons also move these ions across their cell walls while sending signals to the connected neurons. Neurons are often connected in groups and fire together. This provides some redundancy if a neuron is damaged.

The movement of charged ions causes the brain to emit "brain waves", which are detectable as weak electric signals by lab instruments. These signals are conducted through the body. Scientists can measure them by measuring voltages on electrodes placed on a subject’s scalp or face. The voltages are very small but can be sensed by devices to produce a diagram called an Electroencephalogram.

Brain waves can be useful in detecting overall brain states, such as sleeping, excited, scared, tired, drugged, etc. They can also help identify abnormal brain behavior, like seizures, epilepsy, strokes, etc. However, they are useless in telling us what the brain is thinking. The current sophistication in this area is comparable to the state of medicine practiced by the ancient Greek doctor, Hippocrates.

Brain waves that are recorded by external electrodes are a combination of emanations from many neurons. The peak of a waveform indicates that several neurons are firing at roughly the same time. Each peak could be caused by signals from thousands of neurons doing different things. Dozens of areas in the brain can be active at any given time and will generate brain waves. The electrical signals recorded by the electrodes will be a combination of all of them.

Interpreting brain waves is like trying to understand the sound made by a crowd at Grand Central Station. There are hundreds of people talking simultaneously. It seems impossible to pick out and follow any one conversation. Each time a train is about to leave, the noise becomes louder. Additionally, the noise seems to originate from different locations, depending on the platform from which the train is departing. During off-peak hours, or at night, the noise becomes more subdued, but then there are bursts of activity as trains arrive and depart. Similarly, scientists can only guess which parts of the brain are active at any given time.

It turns out that these waves have a pattern that can be decoded. Signals emitted by different areas of the brain have varying frequencies and modulations because each area will be engaged in something different. This fact can be used to mathematically separate the different signals and determine the origin of each. To do this, scientists strategically place multiple electrodes on a subject’s scalp. Each electrode will pick up signals from the neuron nearby sources. The intensity of a signal from a source detected by each electrode will be inversely related to the distance from the source – the signal from neurons that are nearer will be stronger. Computers can separate the signals from different neuron sources by correlating frequencies. Then the approximate location of the signal source can be calculated given the signal strengths from at least four electrodes that are not on the same plane.

Experiments have shown that specific areas of the brain are responsible for specific functions. There is an area for seeing, an area for speaking, and a large area for reasoning. The location of these functions is roughly the same for most people. While computers and sensors can indicate that a subject is thinking, we have no idea what they are thinking.

Researchers have inserted wires into human brains to sense the electrical activity in a specific area more accurately. Through trial and error, they are able to analyze the electrical signals and sometimes deduce a subject’s intent. They can also make a subject move their fingers or limbs by sending a small electrical shock down the wire to simulate a neuron firing. However, this is a cumbersome method and there are only so many needles that a person will tolerate being poked into their head.

A person’s DNA defines the structure of the neuron mesh at birth. Much of this structure is finalized at or soon after birth. It encodes a lot of pre-programmed knowledge that are the inborn instincts that newborns possess and accounts for the unique behaviors of each species. The mesh does not change when new knowledge is learned; it may only change when neurons are damaged. Neurons in different parts of the brain may have slightly different properties.

Because of the mesh structure, there can be hundreds of neurons feeding their shock pulses to a particular neuron. These pulses reach the neuron through its dendrites. However, that neuron will fire only when the incoming shocks match a specific pattern of dendrites. Some of the neuron’s dendrites must indicate that the neuron connected upstream has just fired, and some must indicate that the upstream neuron has not fired. When the specific pattern is matched, the neuron will send a shock pulse down its axon to all the other neurons connected to it. This pattern is a biological property unique to each neuron and does not change throughout its life.

Millions of charged ions are forced to cross the neuron’s cell membrane each time it fires. When the neuron resets, it may not return to exactly the same state that it was in before it fired. A few ions may be left behind inside, or a few may be left outside. These extra ions change the electrical charge distributions in areas within the neuron. When the charge distribution changes in the area where a dendrite connects to the neuron’s body, it can alter how the signal on that dendrite affects the neuron. The concentration of ions could mask or override the incoming signal, thus changing the inputs to the neuron’s formula. Ion movements continue throughout the life of the neuron. Depending on the physical layout of each neuron, some charge distributions may last for years, while others may change much more frequently. This property enables thinking, learning and memory.

Scientists have hypothesized that a ‘thought’ involves millions of neurons firing harmoniously. It resembles an orchestra with millions of members playing their instruments. Each neuron is like an orchestra member and plays its specific tune. Like orchestra members, neurons receive timing cues from the electrical shocks presented by neighboring players. When all the tunes are combined, they produce a symphony, which corresponds to a thought. The next time the neurons fire in the same sequence to create the same symphony, the person has the same thought. This corresponds to a memory. Each neuron contributes a tiny fraction to the thought process. The duration of a specific thought can vary from a few milliseconds to a few seconds.

While computers store data as a contiguous list of bits, the brain stores memories very differently. There are no neurons dedicated to holding the image of a beloved deceased grandmother. There are no neurons strung together to remember the value of Pi. Nor is there an indexed database that can fetch a girlfriend’s birth date on command. Instead, bits of the facts and experiences are encoded in neurons as their triggering patterns. Each ‘memory’ is distributed across thousands of neurons, and each neuron can contribute to recalling multiple memories. When a person needs to remember something, the brain initiates the thinking process and the desired memory can be recreated. The recollection is not displayed on a TV screen inside the brain; it is just that the same set of neurons have fired together. However, the ion distributions of these neurons would be modified slightly to reflect that memory.

Thinking involves a sequence of thoughts. While many of these thoughts may be to recall memories, some of them may deduce conclusions, and a subset of those may actually be new ideas. A thought may reuse many of the neurons that were involved in previous thoughts in the sequence. These neurons will retain the ion distributions that reflect the way they fired recently. Therefore, each thought has a ‘context’ made up of recent past thoughts.

Given that all the neurons in the brain work simultaneously, they form what scientists call a ‘massively parallel data flow computer.’ This is very different from traditional computers, which are programmed to follow fixed sequences of instructions. The power of traditional computers is measured by how many instructions they can process per unit of time. Instead of instructions, the brain performs ‘associations,’ matching multiple aspects of a scenario with similar scenarios that were encountered previously. The remembered scenarios could be either past life experiences or knowledge learned during education. Associations involve pattern matching with incomplete information and partial matches. Brains think by rapidly making sequences of associations. Intelligence can be measured by how many successful associations the brain can make per unit of time. Several factors contribute to this. More associations will be successful when adequate education has trained the neurons. Next, the complexity of the neural mesh can affect the success rate, and this is a result of the DNA inherited from the parents. Additionally, the brain speed relates to the time it takes for neurons to fire and reset. This time depends on the concentration of ions and other chemicals in the fluid surrounding the neurons.

Learning is not limited to neurons in the brain. When a person performs a task often enough, such as juggling, then the nerve neurons in the body learn, enabling the limbs to react much faster. The neurons in adjacent motor and sensory nerves can learn to bypass the brain. Millions of neurons in the stomach allow it to perform digestive functions without involving the brain. These neurons adapt to changing conditions while controlling the body organs for which they are responsible.

Scientists had long believed that neurons communicate with each other solely through their dendrites and axons. This limited the pathway of information to the mesh structure. However, it turns out that there is another channel that allows a neuron to communicate across the mesh and influence another neuron that is not directly connected to it. When charged ions move rapidly in and out of a neuron, they generate a weak electromagnetic radio wave. Radio waves can pass through several layers of neuronal material to reach other neurons, causing charged ions in neighboring neurons to move, which in turn can modify the charge distribution in those neurons and change how they fire.

To make things even more complex, each neuron is bathed in multiple radio waves emanating from neurons in all directions. The waves will have different frequencies and strengths. If the combined signals cause a redistribution of ions within a neuron, they can cause that neuron to change its behavior. The formula intrinsic to the neuron does not change, but the inputs to the formula are affected by the presence or absence of charges near the dendrites. Understanding and modeling a brain using traditional simulation methods becomes an impossible task.

Radio waves weaken rapidly as they move away from their source. For most people, the radio waves they generate are so weak that they cannot be detected outside their skulls. However, evolution has led some individuals to have neurons that move charged ions much more rapidly. The resulting radio waves are stronger and can travel several meters before they fade away. They can sometimes influence neurons in other people’s brains. Additionally, evolution has produced some individuals with neurons that are much more sensitive to these radio waves. Such individuals can subconsciously understand the signals emanating from others. Due to the random nature of evolution, the ability to send and the ability to receive do not always go hand in hand. Some can only send, some can only receive, while a fortunate few can do both.

All this leads to the possibility that some individuals have been influencing others’ thoughts. Perhaps your brilliant idea to produce limitless energy was leaked to someone else. Perhaps the idea to propose to your spouse was not truly yours. Perhaps wearing tinfoil hats is a good idea after all.

Chapter 10 - Skul

Year 2013-2026 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Skul is a 26-year-old hacker. He goes by many different names.

Skul lives in a small studio in Brooklyn. He lives alone because he cannot think of anyone that he could tolerate in his personal space. What if they said or did something stupid? Skul believes that most people are stupid. They are so stupid that they don’t even realize that they are stupid. He has evidence to support this belief; he sees that stupid people act as if they are not stupid. However, he does not think that he is especially intelligent; he knows that he is just smart enough to realize that he is not smart. If he were smart, he would have been able to respond to all those jibes that the bullies threw at him in school. He could think of truly clever responses, but only after days of brooding over them. If he were genuinely smart, he would have set those bastards straight with a quick rejoinder. The logic is self-consistent and the evidence supports it, so he knows that it must all be true.

As far back as he can remember, Skul did not have any friends. The concept of hanging out with someone seemed redundant. He was always polite and charming while interacting with people, but he never saw any benefit in socializing with them. It is fine for others to have friends, but it was not his cup of tea. He spent his days soaking in sorrow by himself.

His mother always told him that he was not good enough. This led him to believe that others could also find him to be not good enough. There was no point in trying to make friends because even the smallest probability of rejection was frightfully unacceptable. His self-defense strategy has made him a lone wolf.

Skul identifies as a member of the hacker group that gows by the name of Anonymous. This group has members all over the world. It has no organizational structure or political agenda, though subgroups occasionally band together for some cause. When the cause involves exposing the misdeeds of a government or a large organization, the news media feels obliged to blame the group for antisocial behavior. Skul himself has no political inclinations, mainly because he is not bothered about what goes on outside his little bubble.

The members of Anonymous are unified solely due to their penchant for attacking computer networks. It is fun, it is something at which they excel, and it gives them a sense of power. They use chat groups and bulletin boards to communicate on the dark web. However, they rarely form long-lasting personal relationships, perhaps because they frequently change their names. Skul has more than twenty different identities, none of which can be traced back to him. Anonymity is essential for privacy.

Most members prefer to participate secretly from their homes. They rarely appear in public. When they do, they wear a distinctive mask to hide their faces. The mask depicts a white smiling face with an inverted-gull mustache and a thin vertical beard. Skul has several of these masks, but none of them fit his face comfortably. He bought a stick-on mustache and a beard that matched the masks. He has spent hours practicing applying these items to his face and examining the effect in a mirror. Somehow, he is never satisfied with how it appears.

He also spends hours playing video games. His favorite is a game called Skul, where the homonymous protagonist is the sole demon soldier who fights human oppressors to rescue his imprisoned comrades. He likes the game so much that he has adopted the name. It is just like his life: him versus the world.

Skul has a knack for noticing things that can be exploited. When he was in high school in Brooklyn, he figured out a way to access teachers’ computer accounts. Every classroom in the school had a computer with a large touch-screen display connected to it. This allowed teachers to display slides and educational material related to the lesson being taught. The teachers saved the material in their own computer accounts and had to log in at the start of the class to access it.

Skul noticed that the teachers often did not log out of their accounts at the end of their classes. One time, the teacher left, and all the other kids rushed out of the classroom. They had pressing matters to attend to in the playground. But Skul stayed back and rummaged through the teacher’s account. He discovered many interesting files, such as questions for an upcoming quiz. The teacher’s emails were prominently displayed and were hard to miss. He browsed through some of them, taking care not to click on the highlighted emails that had not yet been viewed. One email thread discussed the problems caused by a misbehaving student in his class, but it was not especially exciting. Then he found the page where the teacher had entered grades for past quizzes. A quick check showed that he could change them. That was the jackpot.

Skul logged out of the account and powered off the computer to cover his tracks. His mind was already pondering the next steps. He needed to find a way to access the account whenever he desired. He had heard about installing viruses with backdoors but he did not know much about them. A simpler scheme was developing in his mind; all he had to do was encourage the teacher not to log out of their account.

Skul arrived at the classroom 30 minutes before the class was scheduled to start. It was empty. The computer was powered on, but the previous teacher had logged out. Skul changed the screensaver timeout to go dark after 5 minutes. This was a computer setting that applied to all accounts, and he did not need to be logged in. His idea was that the teacher would be more likely to forget to log out if the computer screens were dark at the end of the class. Two hours later, the trick was proven to work, at least for this teacher who apparently was not savvy about computer security. When the coast was clear, Skul accessed the account and increased its login timeout to two hours. This was the duration after which the account was automatically logged out if there had been no activity. The account would stay logged in even after the screen went blank. It gave Skul a lot more time to access the account. He updated the computer settings in a few other classrooms to trap more teachers. There was nothing to implicate him as long as he didn’t get caught in the act. There were CCTV cameras in all classrooms, but he knew that none of them were operational. The teachers could change their passwords each month as required, but that would not thwart Skul’s scheme.

Skul sold grade modifications for cash. The money he made was not his main motivator. He was never short of cash because he never spent it on anything; it just collected in his room. The dollars he made were merely a way to quantify his accomplishments. Several girls offered sex for grades, but he always directed them to other boys so they could earn the required cash from them. Besides, what if a girl found him to be not good enough? That was an avoidable risk. He was well on his way to being an incel.

He did not need to modify his own grades. Getting ‘A’s was easy; he just listened to what the teacher was blabbering about and used it to ace the test. The only problem he had was in the Gym class. He was the only student in years to have flunked Physical Education and had to take a make-up class in the summer. There was no computer in the gym, and no way to hack that grade.

Skul left home soon after high school graduation. He no longer had to deal with his mother’s criticisms or her intrusions into his room. He had more than enough money to survive on his own. And he had more ideas for new sources of income.

There are more than a billion websites on the Internet. Only a small fraction of them are useful. Many of the rest are dead - abandoned by their creators after their initial inspirations fizzled out. The ones that are not dead are either a waste of time or malicious. A malicious site is like a honey-baited lure waiting for a sucker. It offers something interesting to attract them and then screws them over in one of many different ways. As Skul had deduced, there are a lot of stupid people wandering mindlessly on the Internet, eager to be the suckers.

Skul created several sites that offered free content. One had free recipes, another had games, and there was one with girly pictures. Creating the sites did not cost much, but it took a lot of time to lay them out to his satisfaction. Skul diligently perfected them like any craftsman would. All the sites had one thing in common: they had good content on the home page, but the viewer had to log in to see more. It was easy for them to create a new account, and it was free. They just had to enter their email address and a new password. People have many such accounts on the Internet and are accustomed to creating one more.

The trick here is that people tend to use the same password for many of their accounts; it makes life easier. Sometimes they make simple variations, like appending a digit or a symbol. Since Skul owned the website, he got the password that was entered by the user. He then tried that email-password combination on several other popular sites, like email services and banks. If the password did not work, he tried common variations. Attempting all the variations was tedious, so he wrote a computer program to automate the hacking while he played his video games.

Soon, he had a few account credentials that could be used to log in to other sites. Skul realized that porn is the best honey pot. People who surf the Internet always stop for free porn videos. It is natural to require them to create an account before they get to see the good stuff; obviously, this is needed to protect the juvenile crowd that infests the web. Skul himself knew not to fall into such traps; he had a sacrificial email address that he used at untrusted sites.

Skul now had a new business. He could use the validated credentials to read emails that were sent to and from the accounts. The contents of most of the emails were boring and he could not think of a cool way to profit from them. But there was a better idea. He was able to extract the names and email addresses of the account owner’s correspondents. These were their friends, relatives and business partners. Then he sent the account owner an email threatening to expose their porn-watching habits to all their friends. He listed the names of the friends to prove that he was serious. He claimed that he had video evidence and browsing histories that he would reveal unless he was paid a thousand dollars in Bitcoin within a week. He automated everything so that a computer program composed the emails and sent them to a dozen potential victims each day. In reality, Skul did not have any evidence, but the victims did not know that. These were the people who had visited his free porn site, and they all had something to feel guilty about. The list of friends included in the email convinced them that the threat was genuine. Most people ignored the blackmail, though a few succumbed to it. It was a good source of income, but he needed a better one.

Hacking has made computer security a major part of Information Technology. Every company that has an Internet presence now has a computer security department with a substantial budget. Computer security has become a career, and people can get college degrees majoring in this area. Despite this, most security practitioners do not know what they are doing; they protect against nonexistent threats and unnecessarily update software while large vulnerabilities remain unaddressed. Misplaced computer security is the cause of a huge loss of employee productivity and is a significant waste of money.

With his expertise, Skul could have easily landed a high-paying job at a financial organization. But that would be a betrayal of his friends at Anonymous. He was also afraid of being tempted to do something “interesting” in that position and getting caught.

Skul had learned about RootKits in a chat group on the dark web. The dark web is simply a collection of websites that do not appear on common search engines. Most people are unaware of these sites because they cannot be accessed using standard browsers like Firefox and Chrome. A RootKit is a free software package that can be used to build malicious applications. Building such applications is a fun exercise for all aspiring hackers. Once such an application is installed on a victim’s computer, the hacker can gain total control over the device while it is connected to the Internet. The application not only allows the hacker to access its files but also all connected devices, including the camera, microphone and speakers. The hacker can watch and listen to everything happening around the computer. They can view the screen and record keystrokes. When the victim logs into their bank account, the hacker can capture the password and account balance. They can even transfer funds out of the account. The only problem is getting the malicious application installed on the computer. Hackers employ a number of tricks to accomplish this. Many of them involve enticing a victim to visit a malicious website, but modern browsers protect their users against these tricks.

If one thinks long enough, every problem has a solution. Skul’s approach used a technique called the “Trojan Horse”. It relied on the victim’s ignorance and greed to persuade them to willingly install the software on their computer.

Skul built an Anti-Virus utility program. It actually functioned as advertised and could detect and remove malicious code on the computer. This functionality is freely available on the Internet as open-source code and anyone can download it. His program would also periodically download the latest signatures to detect new viruses. And of course, it would legitimately run in the background while the computer was powered on. Those are the exact requirements for a RootKit based malicious application. Once installed, the program would perform its anti-virus function as well as several other unauthorized tasks. It is not easy for the average victim to detect its nefarious activities.

Skul advertised the software and offered it at a low annual price. He knew not to just give it away. Anything given away for free has no value. People would be suspicious of it and would not appreciate the product. However, if it is priced slightly below other competing products, it becomes a great deal. Hacking is all about sucker psychology.

Most computer users do not know that they do not need antivirus software; they just need to be careful and avoid visiting sketchy websites. Antivirus software disrupts the user’s productivity by blocking legitimate actions, such as downloading a file or sharing data. Skul himself had no use for it. He knew that only idiots felt the need to install antivirus software. Having the latest version of expensive antivirus software made them feel sophisticated and gave them another techie thing to brag about. Large companies need it because they hire idiots.

Skul’s RootKit software did it all; it monitored keystrokes, read items on the screen, and allowed him full access to the computer. It copied emails, contact lists, and files containing anything interesting, such as credit card numbers and Social Security numbers. All information is quietly sent back to one of Skul’s servers, where it is neatly categorized and saved in the cloud. Cloud data is almost limitless and free. It is also quite secure, but he encrypted all his data using his favorite algorithm. Trust no one. Skul browsed through the collected data periodically to sift for any tangible treasures. It was a boring chore but it brought in a steady trickle of income. He tried to identify wealthy senior citizens on his list of victims. These people did not log in to their accounts often and usually did not notice changes in their account balances. Skul’s plan was to buy Bitcoins using their funds and transfer them to his crypto-wallet. Transferring money is traceable, but transferring Bitcoins is not.

One of the victims was a New York City assemblyman, whose emails suggested that he was actively soliciting bribes for his services. Skul was initially too lazy to monetize that information; he felt he could sell it to some other Anon member, but he was surprised to get an unexpectedly high offer for the assemblyman’s data. The yellow stain of greed permeated his brain as he realized that he was holding the key to a new business opportunity, blackmail. Skul spent several weeks planning how to approach the mark and how to structure the deal. It was complicated; he didn’t have the demeanor to be a tough guy, but if he seemed too weak, then he risked being ignored and would lose. If he demanded too much of a fee, then the mark may go to the police and he would lose. Skul decided to take the friendly and sympathetic approach. It was not his fault that the assemblyman was a scumbag; Skul was just trying to help cover up his misdeeds.

Skul carefully assembled an email where he implied that he received a copy of the emails from the company that the assemblyman was trying to extort. This would divert attention from the hacked computer and would allow Skul to continue to access it. He suggested that sending him $20,000 would stop him from forwarding the evidence to the media and the Attorney General’s office. The amount requested was small compared to money being made illicitly. He attached the incriminating emails and sent the email to the assemblyman’s personal email address. The response was quick and passionate. The assemblyman protested the demand saying that he had accomplished so much good for his constituents and that his name would be destroyed if this one minor indiscretion came to light. He also asked how he could be assured that the secret would be safe if he paid up. Skul had the perfect answer to this; there would be an additional annual fee of $10,000 to maintain the silence. It would be in his interest remain quiet; clearly, if he exposed the evidence, he would lose the annual income. It would give the assemblyman the needed peace of mind and was such a small amount to protect his reputation. Without the annual renewal, there would be no incentive to keep the evidence hidden. The assemblyman apparently agreed and the deal was done. It had been fun and he had invented a subscription model for blackmail.

Life was good for Skul until he attempted to blackmail Viktor Kozlov.

Viktor took it as a personal insult that some sleazy scammer had intruded into his private dominion. The email he received demanded a payment of only $1,000. However, it convinced Viktor that someone had broken into his computers and had accessed his files. The files contained many of the bratva’s secrets. If they leaked to the police, he would need to decamp expeditiously.

Viktor assigned the appropriate asset in his bratva to find the source of the threat. Gorky worked for a boutique brokerage in Jersey City. The brokerage specialized in providing its clients with real-time quotes and high-speed transactions. Its clients traded large volumes of stocks and saving a fraction of a penny per stock could result in significant profits. The brokerage also had another specialty; they fiercely protected the privacy of their clients from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FINRA. Some of their clients appreciated that. This brokerage believed that what the clients did was their own business.

After an investigation for some past alleged misdeeds, the SEC had required the brokerage to employ a full-time compliance officer, under threat of severe penalties, including losing their seat on the stock exchange. Gorky was the token pawn hired for that position; the brokerage resented being forced to provide a free police service to the government. It turned out to be a case of hiring a fox to guard the henhouse.

Gorky’s name was not Gorky. That was a pseudonym he used solely within the bratva. Someone thought of calling him that because his real name was a central character in the story “Gorky Park.” His father, Kiril, had worked for Viktor and although he was now retired, Kiril and Viktor remained good friends.

After he learned about the responsibilities of his son’s new job, Kiril’s mind began to tick. He developed a business plan for a new aphera, a scam, and shared it with Viktor. Viktor was impressed and agreed to help make it happen; it was a no-brainer. This kind of quick commitment made Viktor a successful boss.

One of Gorky’s duties was to analyze the trade orders placed by the clients who were consistently profitable. These clients probably had insider information that allowed them to beat the market. Insider information is news about companies that is not yet public. If the news is significant, it can move the stock price. Good news could cause a substantial gain in the value of the company while bad news could make the stock tank. Trading based on insider information is illegal, but is fairly common, especially among politicians and senior company executives. Gorky was expected to detect such clients and rat them out to the SEC.

These clients knew the laws and the penalties for breaking them; some of them even made the laws. Because they had to have some grounds for plausible deniability, they would periodically place decoy orders to ensure that their winning streaks did not attract unwanted attention. But Gorky was a clever geek. He used statistical methods to separate the winning orders from the decoys. He was a whiz at math. He developed software that could sift through hundreds of trades per second and identify the few suspicious stock and option orders. He could then deduce the reasons behind those trades by correlating them with the latest company news and the identity of the client.

Gorky would then place similar orders in his collection of accounts. This is called piggybacking. There is no explicit law against it, though most brokerages try to stop their employees from engaging in this practice. It is challenging to detect or prosecute piggybacking. The brokerage did not really care about what Gorky did; his purpose in the company was to keep the SEC out of their hair.

To cover his own tracks, Gorky would spread out his trades over time. If the source was a politician, or a politician’s relative, then he had a couple of weeks before the political committee’s policy paper became public. But if the source was a company executive dumping his stock, then he had just a couple of days before the shit hit the fan.

Gorky controlled of about a hundred accounts in different brokerages. He distributed the trades randomly in these accounts. Most of them were in the names of elderly retirees who had never traded in their lives. Viktor had found them in retirement homes and got them to open accounts. They received a healthy cut of the profits. Viktor also filled out their tax returns and compensated them for their capital gains. Though he took the lion’s share, Viktor spread the wealth among his flock. As the inventors, Kiril and his son received a generous cut. This kind of fairness made Viktor a trusted boss.

Viktor sent Gorky a copy of the email that he had received. The grammar was good, but the language was unnecessarily bombastic. This gave Gorky an idea of the type of person who composed the email text; it likely was someone who frequented hacker bulletin boards and chats. The sender’s email address was not traceable. A numbered crypto account was included for the payment, but Gorky knew that trying to track it would be a dead-end and a waste of time. He recognized the email as a phishing attempt and recommended simply ignoring it, but Viktor was adamant about prosecuting the hacker. He gave Gorky one week to locate the chmo, the prick.

Gorky started by browsing through several newsgroups and forums that catered to hackers. He found several conversation threads about similar blackmail attacks. However, they were all between unsophisticated script-kiddies; they were wannabe hackers who blindly copied someone else’s attack plan without understanding the craft. His target was definitely a step above. However, it was highly likely that the idiot bragged about his hacking prowess on some newsgroup.

Gorky wrote a program to browse through millions of postings on hundreds of newsgroups. It evaluated the text of each post and extracted features related to word choice, punctuation, writing style, and grammar errors. He used his expertise in statistics to correlate the postings and found several matches. He was able to identify several distinct posters, each with multiple email identities; unfortunately, they were all untraceable. On the positive side, he had fine-tuned his program to recognize the hacker’s writing style.

He expanded his search to less contentious newsgroups where the posters were motivated to have public identities. Almost immediately, the program found a posting on Craigslist with a similar style. Someone was selling bootleg video games, and they were nearby in New York City. After negotiating with the seller, Gorky arranged for a meeting in a grocery store parking lot. It was a safe and public venue. Gorky fed the text of the negotiations to his program, and it pronounced the match as very promising.

Gorky reported his progress to Viktor, who assigned two of his enforcers, Maxim and Rusian, to oversee the meeting. Gorky was to start the meeting and try to confirm that the seller was the hacker he desired. The enforcers would be nearby and would swoop in if Gorky signaled them. Gorky was a puny wimp, all brains and no brawn. No one expected him to physically detain the hacker, even if the hacker turned out to be another puny wimp.

Skul and Gorky chatted for a while. Gorky agreed to buy the game and handed over the cash. Then he talked about his own aspirations to be a hacker. The two were bonding. After meandering around for a while, Gorky mentioned that he was thinking of a method to blackmail suckers. That was the straw that opened the floodgates. Skul started bragging about his own accomplishments, proudly proclaiming that he was actively monetizing the same plan that Gorky had mentioned. Gorky soon felt convinced that the details described matched the attack on Viktor. He signaled the enforcers.

The two thugs quietly approached Skul from opposite sides. Skul toppled over like a felled tree when they tasered him. He was picked up and dumped into the back of a van with a minimal amount of fuss. Gorky looked around to check if any nosy shoppers had observed the capture. It would have been extra work to eliminate any witnesses. But all was fine. His job was done. A big bonus would be forthcoming.

Maxim was the senior thug. He had been with the bratva for a longer time. Rusian was clearly more proficient with the physical extraction operation, but Maxim had more experience extracting information from uncooperative guests. Their orders are to take their blackmailer to the basement of a secluded house. Once there, they were to use whatever means necessary to locate and erase Viktor’s data, and also to make Skul wish that he had never ever been born. It was to be a one-way trip for the prick. This kind of vengefulness made Viktor a dreaded boss.

It did not take long for Skul to admit that he had copied Viktor’s emails and files. He had made several copies of them but had not yet looked at any of the contents. The copies were on the Internet cloud and were protected with a password.

Skul repeatedly apologized for his mistake. He swore that it was not his fault and it was just a coincidence that he had somehow found Viktor. He would never have done this if he had known about Viktor. He offered his crypto wallet as compensation for the inconvenience caused; it contained Bitcoins worth several hundred thousand. He also offered to reveal incriminating emails from a NYC Assemblyman. This would be useful for obtaining favors for Viktor.

But he had copied the compromising emails from Viktor. He could not be released until he revealed the location of the copies and the passwords that protected them. Skul was smart enough to know that he would be killed as soon as he yielded the passwords. It was a deadly standoff.

They tortured him for hours, but Skul was fighting for his life. Eventually, Maxim wanted to take a break to decide how to proceed. It was his son’s birthday and he wanted to be with him. Skul’s mouth had been duct-taped, but his eyes were not. They were wide with terror.

Maxim: “Let’s cut off his dick and shove it down his throat.”

Rusian: “If you cut off his dick, he will spill blood all over the place and make a mess. He will bleed to death in an hour.”

Maxim: “When did you become the surgeon?”

Rusian: “I fought the rebels in Chechnya. We had plenty of prisoners and we used to cut off their dicks for fun. We got tired of it quickly; it was messy.”

Maxim: “OK, let’s try it anyway.”

Skul could hear everything. He swung his head vigorously to disagree. The best he could do to participate in the conversation was to moan loudly. That earned him a kick on the shin. Maxim had had enough for the day. He just wanted to kill this slime ball and go home.

Rusian: “Viktor wants him alive. You need to put a tourniquet on his dick first. You can use a zip tie, but it may not work. I don’t want to risk it with this guy. You can cut off his balls if you want. No blood there.”

Maxim: “No way. I’m not fiddling with his ball sack. Let’s cut off a finger.”

Rusian: “Nyet. We may need his fingerprint to unlock his account or something. If you really want to cut off something, then cut off his toes. At worst, he cannot walk.”

Maxim: “Durak. Idiot. No one ever cuts off a toe.”

Cutting off the nose had issues as well. His face could be needed to authenticate something. In the end, they agreed to slice off an ear. It was not especially satisfying, but it did not cause much of a mess.

Chapter 11 - NeuraSense

Year 2024- 2025 Contents Summary Previous Chapter Next Chapter

(This chapter is under construction)

Mike, Sue, and the kids woke up on Saturday in Mike’s house. Sue made a big pot of congee, an Asian porridge made of rice. She had found some rice and a can of coconut milk deep inside a cupboard in Mike’s kitchen. She also found some maple syrup to sweeten it. Excavating the fridge yielded an unopened packet of bacon. It was almost past the expiry date and was calling out to be cooked. Crumbled bacon goes well with everything. It was not quite a traditional Chinese breakfast, but none of her ancestors were present to argue with her. Congee was something new for Mike and Dimi. Amy wanted ketchup with her breakfast.

Sue: “No one pours ketchup on their congee, Amy.”

May: “That is gross.”

Sue says apologetically: “She is my ketchup queen; puts ketchup on everything. We have seen her drink it from the bottle.”

Mike: “Do you put ketchup on everything, Amy?”

Amy thinks for a bit: “No, I don’t put ketchup on ketchup.”

It was raining outside, so they spent the day indoors. Both Mike and Sue were mentally numb with happiness. She was wearing one of Mike’s shirts and both were being silly. They did not talk about anything specific, but enjoyed each other’s company. The kids seemed to sense the happy atmosphere and were content playing video games. Sue left in the afternoon as she had a lot of chores.

Mike did not bring up the telepathic message he received from Sue; he suspected that it might bother her. She probably did not know she had the gift. It made sense to Mike that he probably had some capabilities that Dimi did, and Sue had the capabilities that her kids had. He also remembered what she had told him about her ex-husband, how he was getting subliminal messages from her. He would discuss this with her later – eventually.

Mike was anxious to meet again and discuss the next steps for the experiment. He suggested meeting the next day. Jay wanted to watch a Formula 1 race in the morning but was free on Sunday afternoon.

Mike, Jay, and Sue met at Mike's house on Sunday evening.

Sue: “We could have met at a restaurant.”

Mike: “No, this stuff is really sensitive. You think that restaurants are anonymous spots, but they can be insecure. When I was in school, I had an idea. I planted a recording bug under the table at a restaurant. It was in a high-tech area. People from local companies used to come for lunch and talk about their work. Later, I would go pick up the bug and listen to all the conversations. I picked up a lot of company gossip and inside information. I could have made money with it. It would be so much easier to do this now because we have cheap Wi-Fi chips. If I can think of it, someone has already done it.”

Sue sarcastically: “I learn so much from you.”

Jay jibed: “Yes. He is basically a crook, but he is too chicken to break any laws.”

Mike was too focused to take the bait: “OK whatever, let’s get started.“

Mike was acting as if he was starting a meeting: “I think we have shown that the kids can communicate telepathically. I wrote up a report on our experiment, but I think we need to explore this much more before we announce anything.”

Jay: “If we announce anything. And to whom were you planning on announcing it?”

Mike shrugged his shoulders silently.

Jay: “If this thing is real, it is huge. I spent a couple of hours on the Internet yesterday searching for reliable reports from anyone describing anything like this. Nothing.”

Mike: “I guess we have to bother the kids for more testing.”

Jay: “And if there is a simple answer, we will look like idiots. And if it is real, someone may want to kill us.”

Mike: “Exactly. Jay, you had suggested buying an EEG machine on eBay. I found one nearby. Shall we drive over and pick it up? Can you build an interface for it?”

Jay nodded. He had hacked similar devices before. “You are getting an EEG machine, not an ECG one, right? There is a difference.”

Mike: “Yes.”

Sue: “We should also find others who have this magic ability. I have an idea for where to look.”

Mike stared at Sue: “I know that there are others who have it.”

Jay: “Where would you look?”

Sue: “The NJ Center for Autism. I have a theory. I’ll also ask a friend at Rutgers. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful not to leak any details.”

Jay: “Autism?”

Mike: “I think Sue is right. Many autistic people have special gifts. I have thought about Dimi being autistic because he is always very insightful. Now it seems like he could actually read my mind.”

An electroencephalogram (EEG) device measures and records neural activity in the brain. It gathers electrical signals generated by neurons using electrodes placed on the subject’s scalp and face. An electrocardiogram (ECG) device detects similar signals from the heart. Because signals from the brain are a thousand times weaker than those from the heart, an ECG device needs to be much more sensitive than an EEG.

Mike and Jay were driving to pick up the EEG machine.

Mike: “The EEG gadget doesn’t do what we really need. We are looking for the radio signals that should be coming from the brain. I’ll get a radio receiver as well. This EEG thing will help us calibrate the radio device.”

Jay already knew this. He just said: “Yes. Do we know where we will be getting the radio receiver?”

It takes Jay almost a week to take apart the old EEG machine that Mike found and connect it to a PC. Now they are able to record 16 channels of brainwaves simultaneously. He also buys a few sets of disposable EEG electrodes. These are good enough to start with, later they could get a few reusable skullcaps with built-in electrodes.

They collect data from May & Amy. Collect a billion readings each time they think of a vision. The vision & data are saved. May thinks of something, Amy receives it, data from both is collected. See which signals are similar, deprioritize differing signals.

Signals are now collected on a computer. Jay tries to find patterns

Sandra is invited to help manage the kids. Need to bribe them

Conversation with Peter Farner, Chief Science Officer at Autism Center of New Jersey. With Mike and Sue.

We are researching autism at a neurological level. They don’t want to say they are into reading minds.

Mike: “

They take May & Amy to meet kids and find more kids who can "thalk." Dimi also helps to confirm choices. Dimi: "I can hear May and Amy talk, but no one is replying."

They find 1 more kid who can talk and two more that can only hear. Now they have a few more subjects

All three are children of recent immigrants, second generation immigrants. All from Eastern Europe. Sue hypothesizes that most Americans have too much genetic diversity. They are genetically healthy & stable. Autism is more likely when both parents are from the same community. New genes are seen. Like in a lush lawn, a few abnormal sprouts would be covered over and not be noticed. But mismatched sprouts would be more likely to be observed in a more barren lawn.

Mike is losing focus on the job at NoordKuur. Passion has driven his work, not money.

They have to quit NoordKuur otherwise the company will own the tech. It may be misused. Leave on good terms

They need to raise money. Mike suggests selling Virgin Water “It has never passed through anyone”. Call it Purine

New company, Jay is CFO, Mike CTO. They pool money. Million bucks. Mike & Jay 45%, Sue 10%.

Sue is chief psychologist. They hire Sandra as HR and get her to sign an NDA. Sandra is mostly the babysitter for now.

CEO: Eric Wagner. Got MBA from Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School. Married dept secretary. 6 years older than him. Partied, screwed around. He is told to raise funds for autism research. He raises about 10 mil. They offer him stock options.

Fabrication of crude phased array sensors

Experiment with a mice.

Microwave biasing of the neurons to read their state

Breakthrough. They see repeatable patterns, but are not able to match it to a thought. Now they can separate and study signals from specific brain locations.

But this is for mice, not humans

They need much better resolution, but the basic concept has been proved.

They build a skullcap for humans