Chapter 12: Jim Senses a Threat and Makes a Plan

Jim was concerned. Susan was late and hadn’t called. Plus she wasn’t answering her cell phone – calls went right to voice mail. Now that wasn’t too unusual – cell phone service was horrible in this part of the country.

Jim was just about to get into his car and head down the route he knew she’d be taking from her mother’s house when she pulled into the driveway. Jim ran out the door to meet her.

“Susan! I was worried,” he said as she got out of the car. He walked to her and gave her a hug and a kiss. “Why are you so late?”

“Oh I ran into an old friend from high school when I was getting gas and we went out for coffee. I guess I just lost track of time,” Susan said, returning his hug and kissing him on the cheek and putting her arm around him as they walked to the house.

Susan was about five feet tall with red hair and freckles. She’d been just a little overweight when they’d met but had ballooned after their second child had arrived. Thanks to Master PC and her workout and diet regime, Susan was better looking now than she had been even in high school. Jim had made sure of that. She was confident, had energy, and, thanks to Jim’s tinkering, had become a much-improved sex partner – as had Jim if he thought about it. He hadn’t been much of a lover until he had done some self-improvement with Master PC.

The problem with Susan’s story is that she would have called him if she was going to be two hours late. He’d called his mother-in-law so he knew when she left. On the walk to the house, Jim probed her mind, gently, and found a memory of coffee with a friend. But something wasn’t quite right about it. He recognized the friend. She’d been in the wedding party when they got married back in 1974. And, she’d died of cervical cancer ten years ago!

Someone had tampered with Susan’s mind! About two seconds worth of blind panic ripped through Jim’s brain before he got it under control. Some bastard had messed with his wife’s brain. Who?

“How about a drink, hon, and you can tell me all about your visit with your mom. How’s your brother anyway? I haven’t seen him in donkey’s years.”

“Oh a drink sounds yummy. Can you make me a cosmo? You know how I love the way you make them.”

“Sure. Coming right up.”

Jim went out to the kitchen to make the drinks. His mind raced; combing through a number of courses of action; going through decision trees like Paul Bunyan through a forest.

He got the martini glasses out of the freezer and filled each with the bright pink liquid from the shaker. Then he went into the living room where Susan sat, her shoes off, head back, eyes closed.

“Here you go, hon.”

“Thanks.”

Jim took his drink and sat down. Susan started to recount her conversations with various relatives. Jim wasn’t interested in that. He let Susan talk while he continued to probe her mind looking for clues as to what had really happened during the missing two hours. When he discovered it he nearly dropped his drink.

Fear competed with rage and lost. “Those sons of bitches!”

“What?”

“Oh shit,” Jim thought. A mind probe erased the incident from Susan’s mind.

“Refill?”

“No, thanks. I think I’ll go to bed. I’m kind of tired.”

“Do you feel all right?”

“It was a long drive.”

“It’s only 80 miles to her mother’s house,” Jim thought. “Long drive? She’s made it hundreds of times.”

“OK, dear. You go on to bed. Wear something sexy – I missed you this weekend.”

“Oh, Jim, I’m tired. Can’t we do it tomorrow night?”

Now Jim was REALLY shocked. They’d managed to override his programming somehow. Another mind probe did further investigating and revealed the full extent of her reprogramming, including her interest in Master PC.

“OK, dear. I’m going to the office for a bit to take care of a few things. I’ll be back later.”

He kissed Susan, threw on a jacket, and walked out the door, headed for his office. Once there he got out his laptop and his copy of the Master PC program. Spinning up the software he called up Susan’s image on the screen. Or he tried to. No matter how many times he typed in her name, the program refused to recognize her existence. It was like she was dead as far as the software was concerned.

OK, so he couldn’t reprogram her with the software. He closed down the laptop locked up the CDROM disc, and went home. Susan was fast asleep. Jim went into the bedroom and sat on one of two wingback chairs in the sitting area of the bedroom suite.

He’d refined his mental powers over the months since he’d gotten the Master PC program to provide them. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” he thought as he sent tendrils of thought across the room to where Susan lay peacefully asleep. Strand by strand his thoughts worked their way through Susan’s mind sifting, searching, and rearranging. It took him a while, but he managed to discover and eliminate all of the changes the FMCA agents had made. He had all of Susan’s memories including ones she didn’t know she had of being drugged, transported, reprogrammed, and placed back in her car.

He knew why she’d been kidnapped and what her mission was. Well, he’d have to work out a way to fool those bastards into believing that their plan was working. They must have been desperate, acting on such a small amount of intelligence. “Idiots,” he thought. “Nobody tampers with my wife’s mind but me,” he added to himself, and then grinned. “Hell, as long as I’m at it...”