Chapter 30

My new voice had less of a personality than Hal and my first voice had possessed. He almost never volunteered information or asked questions of me. You would have thought that I'd welcome being left alone, but I didn't. I was just laying on my bed thinking about that one day, when it came to me, I didn't have any friends to talk to. Connie and I had been drifting further apart, mainly due to the fact that she was afraid that she'd get too attached to me, and would give up all of her own dreams in order to stay close to me. Well, that's what she told me.

Both of us had been going out with other people for over a month. We would get together, on average, about once a week, for a meal, or to just drive over to the river for a little make out session. Connie told me that she wanted to hold off on us making love again, although we did almost everything else that two people can do. Once you have made love to someone, it is difficult to not repeat it. This is especially true if the sex itself was good. Ours had been fabulous, more satisfying to me than any other, with the possible exception of Carolyn, and the first time with Donna. It had been damn good though, no matter where it ranked on my little mental list of ratings. It was frustrating to me that she didn't want a repeat performance. I had promised that I'd use a rubber the next time, but still, she refused me.

I had gone back to Edna twice more, for dates, and for sex. The first time, I really had to turn up the charm and eat a lot of crow before I could talk her into giving me another chance. I took her to a nice restaurant, and then a romantic walk on the beach. I told her that sex in a car wasn't that comfortable for me, and then told her that I'd get us a nice motel room. I promised her that this time it really would be a lot better. It was. I did my best to give her my full attention, and to do all that I could to make it better for her. I even had my new voice play me the recording of her thoughts while I was making love to her. My original voice had been correct, her imagination was fertile, and her way of expressing everything was so lurid and graphic. She would think of something, and a second or two later, I would be doing it to her. One of the biggest advantages of having all of this information available to me was that it allowed me to know exactly how she was reacting to what I was doing to her right away. She enjoyed several nice orgasms this way, and it made it more exciting for me to hear her internal thoughts and responses.

Our third time out together, I took her up in a plane, and I fingered her to an orgasm while she sucked my dick. I even let her hold the other stick and operate the plane for a short while. While I enjoyed myself on those two dates, I just wasn't that attracted to Edna for some reason. I enjoyed the sex, and she was all right to be around, but there wasn't any real spark or excitement for her. I would see her in class later on, and she would always hint about wanting me to ask her out again. She actually came out and asked me out once, but I told her that I was mooning over someone else at that time.

After deciding that I didn't have any friends, I set about trying to get some. In my previous life, I had avoided most friendships. I preferred not being bothered with all of the obligations that true friendship required. I had people in the bars that I frequented that I could talk to, but no one that I spent any time with doing other pursuits. It had been the same with women. Either it had been a commercial transaction of one sort or another, or else it had been like two ships having a chance meeting in the night. When you don't know how to do it, making friends isn't that easy. At least it wasn't for me.

I am selfish, maybe not as selfish as I was the first time, but still, selfish. I like me. If I could find someone just like me, we could be great friends. The problem was, there weren't any people that I knew, who were like me. If I had been able to find even one, he probably would have been too selfish to want to be friends with me. So, I was lonely. I had my parents, and Tiny and Terri, I considered Connie to be a friend too, but not any other real friends, not to just pal around with. My new voice wasn't going to be my friend, after our first few conversations, I already knew that.

I was moving around the area, picking up small pieces of property as I went along. I had even gotten my mother to open a brokerage account, and had managed to pick up three or four new issues by companies that I knew had done well in my previous lifetime. I had even sold one parcel already, using a double escrow, and that had given me a profit that represented an incredible return multiple, based on the thousand dollar deposit that I'd paid in. What bothered me about doing that though, was the tax laws that were in effect during this time period. There were loop holes that could be used, and write offs that were easily available, but you needed to hire accountants and attorneys for all of that, and they were damn expensive too. To really benefit from all of those loopholes, you either had to pay through the nose, or else learn how to do things for yourself. I used my good relationship with Hal to get the new voice to implant knowledge of tax laws and accounting in me. I didn't want to have to take the time to learn all of that on my own. Besides, it made Hal feel important to order the other guardian to do it for me.

What all of this is leading up to is how I found myself a friend. Ken Bolton was his name, and he and I were similar personalities. He was pushing one of those tax scams that would later be known as tax shelters. Ken was a Public Accountant. Not a CPA, a P.A. He had gotten himself a doctorate in economics from some school over in Europe when he was younger, before he came to America. When I met him, he was forty one years old, a big man, on the heavy side of stocky, standing almost six feet tall, with sandy colored hair, and a complexion that tended to be on the ruddy side of fair. He was originally from Romania, and had changed his name when he became a US citizen. His other name, the one he was born with, was nearly unpronounceable to someone who had grown up speaking only English.

I was sitting in this coffee shop, on an early Monday morning, having my breakfast, and reading the newspaper, when something about Ken's accent caught my attention. He was in the booth right next to mine, sitting with his back within a foot of my back. He was speaking perfectly flawless English, but his accent was so thick, that it was hard to understand him at first. He was telling the man he was with something about some oil wells down in a place called Luling, Texas. Being just naturally nosy, I listened in to their conversation. Once you had trained your ear to block out the accent, you could understand Ken just fine.

"So, Mr. Claron, these drillers don't need any of the tax right offs, but they do need to find a way to get that money that they need for drilling all of these wells though. These are proven oil fields we're talking about, not any kind of wildcatting, where you don't even know whether you'll hit oil or not. I've designed a program where you would put up all of the drilling money, $37,500 per well, and then you can write off all of the non recapturable drilling costs, plus all of the pipe depreciation from the well head to the storage tanks, and half of all of the depletion allowances that the government now gives to these drillers, in order to motivate them to drill for oil. You get this for the life of the well. The depletion allowances alone, will save you enough in your taxes to make the whole program worthwhile. That's all in addition to the fifteen per cent of the selling price that you'll receive for every barrel of oil that's pumped up out of the ground by your well or wells." When Ken had finished, the other man spoke.