Chapter 2

At the time of my accident in 1959, I was close to penniless. Hospital and doctor bills put me deeply in debt. I believe the hospital expected me to declare bankruptcy to avoid paying, but I fooled them. As soon as I was released from the hospital, I rolled my wheelchair into the Silver Slipper and up to a poker table. My winnings that day allowed me to rent a room in the Desert Inn, and the next morning, and every morning for the next four months I sat at one poker table or another on the strip or on Freemont Street downtown. The casts on my legs and arm came off, and I started physical therapy midway through my winning streak.

After I paid off the hospital with my winnings, I had enough left over to start another business, this time armed with knowledge about how to run a business to make a profit. After my business failed in Reno, I started to learn accounting and financing principles and a myriad of other areas of study necessary to succeed as a businessman, and I used my time in the hospital and part of each day while I convalesced to learn that much more. By the time I was ready to leave Vegas, I had become what some folks call "self-educated."

How was it possible, you ask, for me to win so much money playing poker? Was I that proficient calculating the many mathematical odds involved in the game? The honest answer would be ... partially. I have a keen mind. My visual memory is ... well, not photographic, but close enough to total, perfect recall to be termed photographic. Unfortunately, my auditory memory lacks clarity. No, to be frank, my auditory memory sucks. What goes in one ear promptly exits the other with only a slight pause in between. With concentrated effort, however, I could create an image in my mind that let words or numbers dance across my frontal lobe. Then I'd remember what I'd seen in my mind's eye as if I'd read the words or numbers. Mostly, though, I didn't concentrate.

What really made it possible for me to be a consistent winner at the game of poker came out of the accident, the accident that shook up and rearranged the synapses in my brain along with my immune system. When I came out of the coma I didn't know I'd stopped aging. I didn't realize I'd spend the rest of my life, probably a very long life, at the physical age of thirty. I didn't associate non-aging with my accident for many years. But the other benefit bestowed on me by the concussion or the surgeon's scalpel was glaringly evident when I came out of the coma.

I could experience the thoughts of those around me.

I was thirty years old, and although I didn't know it at the time, I would be thirty years old until my body was injured so badly that it could no longer sustain life. Apparently, I wouldn't die of "old" age.

And, I was a telepath.

Did I blab when I realized I could suddenly read minds? Nope. I kept my new ability to myself, which wasn't difficult. My ability to experience the thoughts of others was sporadic at first, and it took me a while to realize what I was experiencing were, in fact, thoughts. By then I figured mentioning my new ability might bring on a straight jacket as well as the bandages and plaster casts I wore to succor my injuries.

Do me a favor. Think about your own thoughts. Would they always make sense to someone else if they could be heard? Most thoughts are disjointed, bouncing from subject to subject, and relate only to the individual rolling the words and related obscure images around in his or her mind. The individual understands the thoughts because they are in context, a context that relates only to the person thinking them. Much is omitted but still fully understood by the thinker. A mental eavesdropper doesn't have these benefits.

Then place more than one person in range of your telepathy, and then add another. Yep, it's like two or more radio stations playing at the same time. Talk about confusing! Fortunately, volume isn't involved.

It took me weeks to gain a semblance of control. At first, I'd been passive like a radio receiver, accepting every mental signal within range, which through trial and error I determined was about a ten-foot radius. Obstructions, like walls or other barriers, had no effect. I even tested leaded walls while in the x-ray room. Unlike Superman's x-ray vision, lead didn't affect my new ability.

I felt fortunate that I occupied a small hospital room. More than two or three visitors made the room crowded, so the static was kept to a dull roar. Also, fortunately, the nurse's station was more than ten feet away, so their mental gymnastics weren't added to the static.

Then one morning, by switching the process from passive to active, I discovered that I could shut off the thoughts of others.

Bliss! No more static. No more mental noise.

Next, I worked at reaching out to mentally connect with a person in the room. The reaching was an invisible link from my mind to another mind, sort of an electronic tendril sent out to make the connection. What's more, purposeful connections made in this manner were more powerful than passive acceptance. Purposeful telepathic connections doubled the effective radius.

Then I worked at excluding junk thoughts and picking up context understood but not expressed by the thinker, as well as folding in the amorphous mental images that went along with thoughts that gave them clarity.

By the time the hospital cut me loose, sitting around a table with expert poker players took the gamble out of the game for me. Having a poker face did not translate to having poker thoughts. A little advice for the unwary: it isn't wise to play poker with a mind reader. By the time I'd earned enough to pay the hospital and give me a stake to start a new business, poker bored me to tears.

I needed purpose. I was thirty years old, divorced and without a career. I didn't count framing houses or carrying hod a career. I'd lived off the land, worked on a ranch, and failed at marriage and business. I was aimless, without long-term goals. And gambling held no interest for me. I wanted to be an important man, make a difference in the total scheme of things, which to my way of thinking back then meant that I'd need to be a wealthy man.

Won't be too difficult to get rich, I told myself, not if I can read minds.

Hah! The rich men that I'd met exhibited a character trait that I lacked: complete and utter ruthlessness. I couldn't ruin innocent lives to achieve wealth. I just couldn't do it. I didn't have it in me. My sweet mother had taught me otherwise. I had a stake to make a new start, though, and I'd failed once, which had given me the incentive to study business on my own, both out of books and speaking with successful businessmen. And I could read minds. Could I become a wealthy businessman without climbing over the backs of others, particularly innocents?

Hah! you say. Isn't that what you did at the poker tables in Vegas? No, not to my way of thinking. If you sit at a poker table and push out your chips, you will win or lose; it's a risk you accept by sitting in the game. Innocent, you're not.

And subcontracting wasn't the way for me to go. Real wealth came to general contractors and real estate developers, not subcontractors. And Las Vegas wasn't the place for either business, not in the late fifties.

I moved to California, the San Diego area, to be specific. I spent a few months looking around, listening, learning, and then I bought a building lot in La Jolla, hired an architect, and put up a house. I sold that house, and bought two lots. While I constructed those houses, I bought more lots, which required a brief visit to the poker tables in Vegas to replenish and increase my stake. Two years later, a different architect designed a small apartment project for me. I built it and became a landlord. A strip shopping center followed, and then a small office building. The apartment projects, shopping centers and office buildings became larger. I was driven to succeed.

Success? What is success? How is success defined? Oh, I made a lot of money, but my private life was a mess. I'd married again, but my business came first, and after years of neglect, my new wife, Nora, stopped loving me. I could read her mind, so I can't claim I was unaware of the change in her emotional frame of mind, and I also knew almost immediately when she started to cheat on me with other men. That hurt, but even then, I didn't assume any blame. I was too self-centered, too driven. I hired a private detective whose efforts made the divorce equitable for me.

Nora presented the first clue that I wasn't aging. We'd been married for five years. She'd aged. I hadn't, and during one of our last verbal battles, she'd screamed, "You might not be getting older, but I am! You don't look a minute older than the day I met you. How is that possible?"

"That's ridiculous," I said.

She turned me to a full-length mirror. "Look! Look at yourself! Look at me. I'm getting older. You aren't." She ripped open my shirt. "Look! Youthful, hard pecs on your chest. A washboard on your stomach. Do you exercise? No!" She tore her blouse off and removed her bra. "Look at me! I exercise. I work at it. But ... see the slight sag in my breasts, the little bulge in my belly. See the small wrinkles around my eyes. Yes, I cheated! I'm getting older. I'm not..."

"You're still a beautiful woman, Nora."

"Humph, then why did you ignore me? Why did you spend all your time working?"

Even after that argument, I still didn't realize I'd stopped aging. Years flew by. I became more successful in business, but my personal life suffered. How could it be otherwise? I worked every waking minute. Shortly after I turned forty-three, I ran into Nora at a cocktail party, a benefit for some cause that I couldn't avoid.

She stood in front of me, looking lovely but older. Her jaw gaped, and she was holding her breath. With effort, she closed her mouth and sighed.

"What's your secret, Tom?" she said calmly. "Have you discovered the fountain of youth?"

"Just clean livin', Nora," I quipped, but by then I didn't need her validation that I wasn't looking my age.

"I hate you," she said, turned and walked away, the lights in the room reflecting off the sudden tears in her eyes.

Others who had known me, or worked with or for me since I'd landed in the San Diego area began to notice that I didn't show my age. Few commented about it out loud, but I heard their thoughts. It wasn't until I made a trip to Vegas for some more capital that I connected not getting older to my accident.

"Tom, you don't look a day older than the first time I saw you across the poker table years ago," a fellow card-player said. He frowned. "Fifteen or sixteen years it's been."

"Clean livin'," I said flippantly, but my answer sounded hollow even to my ears.

Had I stopped aging when the synapses in my brain became rearranged by the accident, the same accident that produced my ability to experience the thoughts of others? I'd never know, not with certainty, but I accepted the possibility as the most likely scenario.

Regardless, my continuing youthful appearance was becoming a problem for me, so I took steps to give the appearance of aging. Slowly, more and more gray hairs appeared in the dark tresses at my temples. Ironically, the gray hairs came from a bottle. I moved slower on purpose, complained about aches and pains I didn't have, and attributed them to getting older.

But I wasn't getting older. My forty-eighth birthday arrived and became the past, and I soon realized I wouldn't be able to hide my apparent lack of aging for many more years. That's when I started to plan my first demise and resurrection as a new and younger man.

The fiery pyre representing my first demise wasn't in a Rolls Royce crashing on the rocks at the bottom of a cliff. The fiery pyre was in a boat, an expensive boat that exploded and burned on Mission Bay in San Diego. I'd sold most of my assets and stashed my millions in offshore accounts that I could access under my new alias and spent the next twenty-six years in Houston, Texas, easily multiplying my net worth ten times.

I also spent time learning how to protect myself by studying martial arts and improving my ability with various firearms. I did not get married again, but not because I'm opposed to the institution of marriage. I just didn't fall in love. I'd believed I loved both my wives, but thinking back, I married Barbara because at the time I believed a young man should marry, have children and live happily ever after, but Barbara wanted children more than she wanted me. I liked Barbara, and I wanted her, but love ... I wondered. In the end, love didn't matter. Barbara took a hike, and I squelched my need to propagate the species.

I married Nora because she was beautiful and smart and fun, and I'd believed a businessman could be more successful with the support of a beautiful wife on his arm, but then I ignored her to achieve my business goals.

I blame myself for both failed marriages. I didn't truly put in the effort to keep either of them alive and well.

In Houston, I wasn't driven to become wealthy. I started out with more money than I could ever spend, and still my net worth increased tenfold. During my last ten years as Vince Smith, I slowly moved out of the real estate development business while learning how to be a venture capitalist. A name change, I reasoned, should include a new profession. I'd also learned the importance of balance in life. I worked and I played, and I went through a lot of women, short-term, fun relationships. I read books, hired tutors for languages and mathematics and other subjects I found interesting, improved my innate artistic ability by learning how to paint with acrylics and oils, and as the years went by, I became more and more introspective, spending more time with myself than with friends and acquaintances.

What would my life as Clint Wilson offer me? I've gotta admit I didn't have a clue. I was lonely, but I'd learned to accept loneliness as a byproduct of my immortality and telepathy. If I had to stage my death every twenty-five years, give or take a few years, having lifelong close friends or loved ones wasn't in the cards.

"Oh my," I breathed out loud. I'd poured myself a cup of morning coffee, doctored it the way I like it, and wandered into the great room. Outside, Robyn stood on the diving board, wearing a bikini. She took my breath away.

"She's somethin' else, huh?" Greta said.

Not knowing Greta was behind me, I jumped a little when she spoke.

"I never looked that good on my best day," Greta added and sighed with dismay.

"She is beautiful," I said as I watched Robyn perform a perfect dive, slicing into the sparkling water, making hardly a splash. "Athletic, too."

"You want breakfast now or later?" Greta said.

"Later. I exercise before I eat."

"That's right, I remember. Tai chi, you said it was." And if memory serves, he's even more beautiful than that sexy woman when he exercises, she thought, and then said, "That was a nice thing you did for Juan and his family."

"Thanks, but with more mouths to feed, you'll need some help keeping this big house clean and, at the same time, cooking for everyone, so there was a selfish motive behind my largesse. I told Juan that Rosa would answer to you. Please meet with her this morning and divide up the work anyway you see fit."

Greta smiled and shook her head. "You're somethin' else, too, boss."

I glanced at Robyn again. She excited me. I wanted her, but I wouldn't initiate a relationship with her. Had I known I wasn't aging, I would not have married Nora. It just isn't fair to marry a beautiful woman who will age if her husband will forever remain the same age physically, especially if the beautiful woman is vain about her looks, like Nora was. And Robyn was no less vain. Love could alter that equation, but like I said, I didn't fall in love during my second life. Besides, none of the women I spent time with fell in love with me, probably because I took a hike at the first blush of love I noted coming my way from the minds of the women I dated.

After my experience with Nora, I vowed that if I fell in love and wanted to marry a woman that I'd tell her about my perpetual physical state at age thirty. The decision to grow old with a man who doesn't grow old with her should be made by the woman.

Robyn joined me for breakfast in the small dining room. The house had three dining rooms: a large room off the kitchen for staff with two dining tables that could seat twelve (I anticipated more staff), the small dining room where Robyn and I were eating, and a large, formal dining room for dinner parties.

"Will you teach me tai chi?" Robyn said as she sipped fresh-squeezed orange juice.

"No. I'm not a good teacher. I will arrange a teacher for you, if you wish." She'd watched me perform the movements of my exercise. Instead of working out in my dojo, I had exercised outside by the pool. The morning temperature had been perfect, the sky clear and blue, and I'd enjoyed the view of the mountains and the bikini-clad beauty in my pool while I tried and succeeded in finding my center. I chuckled to myself when I admitted that I was also showing off a little for the bikini-clad beauty.

"I wish," Robyn said.

"I'll arrange for a teacher for both of us. I included a dojo in the design of my house and planned to hire a teacher for me. The trick will be talking a good teacher into coming to the house rather than us going to him."

"From what you said, may I assume that tai chi is also a form of martial arts?"

"Yes, but I use tai chi more as a form of meditation, a way for me to find my center, than as a martial art. I studied karate for years, but I've recently started to study and practice Krav Maga, a form of self-defense that originated in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and, later, perfected by the Israelis. The Krav Maga style I learned is focused on combat with kicks and punches similar to those used in other martial arts, but Krav Maga also employs elbows, knees, joint locks, throws and some weapon disarm techniques. It's pretty intense, but if you want to learn how to protect yourself in hand-to-hand combat, Krav Maga is the way to go."

"I want that more anything I can think of. Clint, I'll never allow another man to intimidate me, let alone beat the living daylights out of me."

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Long Life and Telepathy

Paul Phenomenon

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