Chapter 15
Midmorning the next day he got a call from a number he didn’t recognize. Normally he didn’t answer these calls, but this one he did.
“Mr. Stone, my name is Barbie Cole.”
Stone texted the teams and told them to meet in their workroom in fifteen minutes, promising them an update. They hadn’t seen the updated eyeglasses, and like any new toy, he knew that everyone was going to want to play with them. How was he going to prevent people from reading his thoughts when they tried them on? He put them in his pocket and made his way to the workroom.
By the time Stone arrived, the teams had gathered. He heard a buzzing of excitement as he made his way down the hall. They were confident that Stone had something important to tell them. Smiling broadly, Stone announced the successes he had at the mall. Cheers and smiles travelled through the room. They wanted details. He provided some. More cheers and smiles ensued. After a few moments of giddiness, Sai Jain asked how Stone was able to attach the electrodes to the subjects. Stone explained that the eyeglasses being developed had replaced that technology, and he pulled them out of his pocket to demonstrate.
“Unfortunately, the on/off switch is acting up, and you won’t be able to try them today yourselves,” he said. He was lying.
Nonetheless, he put them on and went through the motions of using them. As he hit the on/off switch, he aimed the glasses at Long and began seeing his thoughts as he continued to talk. He wanted to see everyone’s thoughts but having told them the switch wasn’t working he couldn’t very well keep hitting the switch every time he wanted to see someone else’s thoughts. He made a mental note to devise an inconspicuous way to do this.
Responding first, Long said, “Jon, this is an achievement of the greatest magnitude. Congratulations to us all. We did it! But I have some questions like, what are we going to do with the old technology that the glasses replaced? Can you give us a demonstration of the new? We have the world by the balls; are we still going to donate our invention only to our government’s National Institutes of Health? That won’t happen. Once we give it to the NATIONAL Institutes of Health, don’t you think that the military will get its hands on it, so should we sell it to the Chinese government as well to maintain a worldwide equilibrium? You know, like the Mutual Assured Destruction that kept the Soviet Union and us from annihilating each other in the latter half of the twentieth century? And it’s what’s keeping us alive today, even with new players like North Korea and Iran joining the nuclear weapons club.”
Stone was pleased to be able to see Long’s thoughts on giving the invention to the National Institutes of Health That it won’t happen; it confirmed what he suspected: that he and Long disagreed on this most important issue.
Stone took off the glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and tapped the switch with his left ring finger as he put them back on. Not needing to, Stone again pointed the glasses towards Long.
So why did he put the glasses back on if they’re not working? I have to hear his answer on this…
“Take off those goddamn glasses if they’re not working.”
Stone smiled sheepishly.
“They are comfortable and they seem to make things look clearer, even though there is no prescription in the lenses.”
Bullshit, the glasses are working.
“Never mind,” interrupted Long, whose attitude towards Stone had changed remarkably in one day. “If you think that you can fool us, Jon, think again.”
It was almost as if they had never been friends or shared common goals. “You’ve told us how they work, but we’ve never tried them. Don’t you think someone else should have the experience of doing it, even if it’s the ‘simple’ thing to do?” he asked in a tone that left no doubt that he wasn’t asking.
“Of course they work,” Stone said.
A problem with reading people’s minds, Stone was finding out, is that it’s not possible to determine what was previously thought unless memories became accessible. What led Long to harshly question the viability of the eyeglasses was something Stone was unable to determine at that moment. Is it possible to get the memory to reveal its secrets?.