ESP Lockdown

Dr. Kolliner stood before a blinking, flashing terminal. On the terminal blinked two screens: the brain wave patterns and vital statistics on the two men sitting comfortably in large easy chairs facing each other. The one on the left was a dark haired individual with longish loose hair swept back from his high forehead. He had an aquiline nose, green eyes, and a thin-lipped mouth. On the right was a blond man with short-cropped hair, gray eyes and an open face. Behind each of the two seated men was a large silver machine with a few dials and lights and large umbilical attaching it to the other box and to the terminal. On the two men’s heads were a network of wires and small pads. A technician stood beside each box, and several more paced the room. Dr Kolliner adjusted one dial before looking up at the two men, his hands resting on the sides of the terminal as he leaned against it.

“Are we ready gentlemen?” He inquired. Both men nodded, carefully due to the net of wires, and all the technicians gave all ready signals. “Here we go then,” said Dr. Kolliner as he threw a switch and twisted a dial. Lights flashed, several of them red, before another large light lit up. It backlighted a large screen that flashed ‘ESP link connected.’ Dr. Kolliner smiled grimly as the two separate jagged lines that were the men’s individual brain scans merged and converged. Here, years of his time and effort had paid off. The two men in front of him were in perfect and total communication. He took a deep breath and almost laughed with happiness. All those years of ridicule! All those mocking voices! He had shown them, laughed in their faces.
Both men had closed their eyes, but now they opened them, both at precisely the same time, turned to him in unison, and said,

“It worked.” After a moment they said, “You may turn the machine off now.”

Dr. Kolliner deactivated the device, rapidly spinning dials and pressing buttons. The lights flashed once, and then went dead. Technicians began unfastening the net of wires from the two men’s heads.

“Well?” asked Dr. Kolliner.

“It worked,” said the two men, standing up from the chairs they had been sitting in, “total communication. I don’t have any secrets anymore,” he joked.

“You mean you had no control over what was being transmitted?” asked Dr. Kolliner, looking at the two men suspiciously.

“None,” they answered in unison.

Dr. Kolliner chuckled. They are being funny. This is a joke. Thought Dr. Kolliner to himself. This is all a masquerade, all this synchronized talking and whatnot. The machine is off, any ESP link that was there has been erased. I saw to that personally in the programming.

“We have some tests we would like to run, if you would step this way gentlemen,” said Dr. Kolliner, leading them towards another room.

In the second room, which was just as white paneled, professional and emotionless as the first, were two more chairs, also with brain scanners behind them. Between the chairs was a chess set. The two men were seated in the chairs by several more technicians, and the brain wave scanners were attached. As the game progressed, a computer recorded their moves. After they had finished, the wire nets were again removed, as the computer analyzed the chess game.

Several tests later, including psychoanalyzation, the men were detained in a room while attached to life sign computers that recorded pulse, breathing rate and other similar functions. Dr. Kolliner sat down at a white linoleum table and spread sheets of brain wave patterns and computer analysis across the table. After a few seconds of observation, he gasped. He lined the brain wave scans up next to each other, with the times synchronized. The result was several sets of parallel waving, jagged lines. They were locked in a state of ESP.

“Their minds didn’t want to give it up!” he gasped. He looked at the sheets again. “No,” he decided, “no, the machine locked them into it. They are stuck as one entity!”

The chess game had stalemated, and computer analysis showed the game to have progressed on such an insane level that the men were as close too perfectly logical as they could get. The only thing left different between the two of them was an individualistic desire to win.

“I have killed two men, yet their bodies go on living, their minds tortured by the inner sight of the other,” he said as he stared at the pages in front of him. “To have no secrets at all…” he whispered.