Chapter 26

Sally had been pretty quiet throughout, except for mentioning her father, but she broke in to the conversation sounding excited.

‘James look! It’s easy to see which memories are the newest.’

James tried to shift his point of view to hers, but he saw the same thing he had been seeing. The vast shifting field of emotional ‘ribbons’, the interlocking lines of thoughts and the pulsing trails of the processes that represented the body’s physical makeup and function.

‘I’m not sure what you’re looking at, Sally.’

Now she sounded a little exasperated.

‘You’re looking through your own eyes, your own preconceptions. Let me drive.’ Sally did something that shocked James, Stacy and Zoe. She wrenched ‘control’ over the link, the gestalt between the group and, in their minds’ eyes, the inner landscape of Wainright’s mind changed.

The basics remained the same, but the entire bright core was filled with what looked like chains, each link subtly different from the next, but the millions of chains making the entire scene a chaotic mess. It was like trying to concentrate on a single piece of straw in a huge hay stack.

As they watched, through Sally’s perspective, the chains faded to dim traces except for a few dozen, and those became larger, the individual links easier to make out. One chain in particular grew until the links seemed to be about the size of James’s palm, and he could see that the brightness of the links changed from one part to the next.

James asked, fascinated by the view Sally was showing them.

‘I have a lot more practice at this; I’ve been playing with it for months. Let me see if I can show you.’ Sally said, concentrating.

In the minds of her lovers, the view changed again, a bundle of chains coming to the forefront. These chains began to change, parts of them going dark while others began to glow. They could easily see the graduated glow becoming brighter and brighter, each of the chains slowly forming new links that were almost too bright to look at directly.

‘These new links are the memories that are forming right now. We could look at one in particular and see what he is storing, but for this, we just need to find where he remembers coming into the office this morning. We could destroy the links after that point and I don’t think he’ll remember anything at all about the session. I think we’ll have to knock him out though. We need to stop new links from forming while we clear the older ones or he’ll be like me ... fragments of memories that can have him keep digging. The fragments you left behind... ‘ Sally’s voice trailed off, becoming wistful.

‘Sally, baby girl, I had no idea what I was doing back then, but I had to do something.‘ James was suddenly horrified at what Sally was showing him. He had acted blindly, tearing out great hunks of memory and not knowing the consequences.

‘I know, Daddy, and it’s okay. I’m glad you did what you did for me. I love you, all of you, and I would have missed this, missed being part of our family if you hadn’t. It’s just that sometimes a fragment floats up and it is like a loose tooth, you keep worrying at it with your tongue. You can’t help it. That’s how the fragments are for me. Don’t feel guilty; it was a small price to pay.’

James wrapped his arms around Sally, holding her to his chest as his tears wet her hair. Stacy and Zoe were there as well, hugging the pair. ‘We’re all glad you’re with us.’

Sally kissed each of them and then pushed them all away, wiping her eyes.

‘Enough blubbering!’ she said, a sad smile on her face. ‘James, can you put him to sleep? I can break the chains and destroy the links to everything he’s seen since he arrived, but I need him to stop making new links for a minute.’

James reached out and slowed Wainright’s breathing, relaxed him and he was soon slumped in his chair, fast asleep. ‘It’s your show, baby girl. Show daddy and the rest of us what you’re doing so we can all learn.’

They watched as the landscape changed again, becoming a field of chains, their lengths stretching out before them like rows in a farmer’s garden. The rows began to move, each link becoming progressively brighter until, at last, the movement slowed and the number of chains decreased. At the end, there were only a few dozen, each with an almost impossibly bright, half-formed link at one end.

Sally appeared, making them smile at her overalls and straw hat, and ran the chains through her fingers. When she found the link she wanted, she pulled it to her eyes and studied it closely.

‘Watch’

The landscape changed again, and they were seeing through Wainright’s eyes. He was approaching the door to the Oculus Group office, his hand reaching for the handle.

The scene switched back to Sally in the field of memories, and she sorted through the chains again until the dozen remaining were in her hands. She brought them up to chest level and, with a heave, tore the ends off all of the chains in her hands, dropping the longer ends and keeping the fragments. The small bits left in her hands seemed to shrink until they were no thicker than threads, and she wadded them up, sticking them in her pocket.

They were back in the observation room again, James, Stacy and Zoe looking a bit disoriented.

‘Sally, that was amazing. I never even considered... ‘ James whispered, his arm around his lover.

She just smiled up at him and laid her head on his chest.

“So, now what?” Stacy’s voice was startlingly loud in the small room, making all of them jump a little. After then long mental conversation, speaking out loud seemed a little strange but Stacy was grinning at them.

“Let’s let the scumbag nap a bit and talk to Manning. Maybe we can still leverage this somehow.”

They exited the observation room and sat around Stacy’s desk, Manning leaving Wainright alone in the interview room and joining them. James explained what they had found.

“He is asleep and will stay that way until we wake him. We erased his memory of ever being here this morning. His last memory right now is about him reaching for the door handle to the building this morning. We’ve found out how he is scamming his company, where the proof is, but what do we do with that?”

Manning looked thoughtful, easing himself down to perch on the corner of the desk and rubbing his chin.

“I want to give the information to his bosses, tell them about the scam, tell them about the proof. We can’t charge them for this, but I think I can drop a pointed hint or two about the value of the information.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to seem mercenary, but we’re running a business and this kind of thing is what will fund our real work.”

“What about him?” James asked, hooking a thumb over his shoulder towards the sleeping man in the interview room.

“How long can you keep him in there? I’m thinking that I contact his bosses first and then, when we are ready, we can wake him up. Tell him that he fell down and hit his head or something, offer to reschedule the interviews. He’ll be confused, but I’m not real concerned about his mental health at this point.” Manning suggested, grinning at them.

The quartet agreed that it sounded like a workable plan and listened as Manning called the brokerage company and worked his way through a receptionist, an administrative assistant, three lower-level officers of the company and, finally, to the CEO. It took even longer to convince the CEO that this was not, in fact, a crank call and that Manning was deadly serious. Once the CEO confirmed that his firm had hired Oculus, Manning was able to convince him that he was serious and hand off the information he had found.

“Mr. Manning, I need some time to check this out. Can you find a way to hold Wainright there? If you are correct and the proof is there on his computer, then I want to hand this off to the police.”

“Sir, we are not law enforcement so we cannot detain Wainright, but we can probably delay him for...” he paused, looking at James. James sent ‘15 minutes?’ silently, and Manning continued, “ ... another fifteen minutes or so.”

“Let me call you back.” the CEO said, breaking the connection.

The quartet waited while Manning checked in on Wainright, then they all waited together for the phone to ring as the tension in the room ratcheted higher and higher. When the phone did ring, the loud tone made them all jump a little and exchange embarrassed grins.

“Oculus Group Consulting, Donovan Manning speaking.”

“Mr. Manning, the police are on their way. We found the proof you told us about, and we’re exceedingly grateful. I would appreciate it if you could find time to come and meet with us. I am calling an emergency board meeting for tomorrow morning if you are available.”

Manning looked over at James again, and saw he was pointing at Stacy.

“We’d be glad to come. If you would have your staff email us the specifics.”

Once the call was disconnected, Manning grinned at them. “It feels good doing the right thing. You need to wake up Wainright though, but I would wait until the cops are actually here if it doesn’t take long to bring him around.”

“It just takes a second. For the meeting tomorrow, three of us have to be in school, but Stacy can go with you. We have to be really careful about what we say, and we need to make sure that there are no records of what happened in there.” James replied, pointing to the interview room.”

Manning looked thoughtful, then nodded. “I’ll just tell them that our methods are proprietary and that we only guarantee results. If they get pushy, we walk away.”

The police arrived ten minutes later and hauled a groggy, and very confused, Carlton Wainright, III away in a squad car. A detective, one that knew Manning from his previous job, took a couple of notes and chatted for a bit but, since the call had come from Wainright’s firm, didn’t press on why the man was here beyond the interviews.

When the three of them got out of school the next day, they arrived home to find Stacy waiting for them on the front porch.

“They doubled it! Our fee, they doubled it! And Manning said that they signed a contract to have yearly screenings done for their most sensitive positions. If things go well, there is an option to extend this year’s business for three more!” Stacy was practically bouncing in place, grinning from ear to ear.

“So we got ten thousand for this job? That’s awesome! How much do we get per person?”

“Less per person, but it’s guaranteed income. We are charging $2500 per screening and they’ve already deposited $50,000 in our account.” There were hugs all around as the four of them went into the house. Stacy continued, filling them in on the details.

“We’re going to do one a week and Manning has a line on an old Polygraph machine we can use as cover. He thinks he can fancy it up to look more high tech or something. He wants to talk to you about that.”

“That’s cool! Look, after yesterday, with Sally showing us the memory trick, I think we all need to sit down and spend some time really looking at what we can do. Who knows if you or Zoe are also seeing something that Sally and I don’t? The whole colors for emotions was just a visualization I used to help me figure out things, and I guess I passed that on to you, but each of you is unique and might have different insights. I also want to work on connecting together over longer distances. Think how cool it would be if I could contact you from school, or we could be in different parts of the city and still talk? We know we can do it here in the house, but how far away from each other can we be?” James sat down at the table looking thoughtful.

“It’d save a bundle on phone charges!” Stacy quipped.

“It just seems that the longer we are together, the more we can do, and maybe it’s like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. I want to experiment, so this weekend, let’s try and figure out ways we can test our limits. How about each of us thinks of a test we can do. Don’t say anything until the weekend, and we’ll try each one out. I want to see what each person comes up with and maybe it’ll show us other things we’re missing as a group.”

“On the business side,” Stacy said, turning them back to the topic at hand, “we’ve been banking our fees. Even Manning isn’t taking a salary yet and we need to figure out how that’s going to work. There are taxes and stuff to worry about as well, both for the business and us as individuals. I suggested that we get a book keeper or one of the CPA firms to handle that stuff and Donovan agrees. There’s a lot more to running a company than just doing the interesting investigating stuff!”

“Manning is our CEO, I guess, and you are what, Vice President of everything else? I know that on paper, only Manning and you are partners in the company since we’re underage.”

“Well, technically, you are right, but we all know the real deal.” Stacy laughed, kissing James on the cheek. “I don’t have a title, really, though I supposed I should. We will need to get some business cards made up eventually. Right now, we have some generic ones for the Oculus Group, not to mention generic stationary. Why don’t we make Donovan the President since he is the face that everyone will see. I can be Vice-President or something. You are going to be real leader in the investigations, so we need a suitably impressive title for that.”

“I think it should be more generic, maybe not even have titles since we won’t be in the public eye. If you and Manning want something, Research Team would work, I guess.”

“Research Team Leader and Research Team for Sally and Zoe? That would work. I was just thinking about what to tell customers.”

“Thinking about business cards, maybe we need to setup email accounts and phone numbers within the company, like James@OculusGroup.com or something. Do we have a website?”

“Ooh ... good thinking. Nope, no website yet, I don’t know the first thing about web programming. We need to find someone who can help there.” Sally said thoughtfully, pulling out a notepad and taking notes. “CPA, salaries, Web page, business cards, titles, email addresses and phone numbers, anything else?”

“We have two vehicles and Manning has his own, but we might end up needing more. Maybe we could lease one for the company?” Sally suggested. Stacy was using Sally’s convertible to commute back and forth to the office while the rest of them were in school.

“Okay, I will add that to the list, but it might be a little while before we get there. I am going to add travel to the list too; we might end up needing to go out of town on a job so we need to plan ahead. I think we are going to need to all sit down together and hammer these out. Right now, Donovan is meeting with potential customers and making the rounds of police departments, spreading the word, but I’ll see what his schedule looks like.” Stacy said, putting her notebook away.