Stephen's Secure Blog #26
These stories about Stephen began was when he was 10 years old, and
moving to a new part of the country to attend a special school for
gifted students, in the 1950's. This was from a time before computers
would fit on a desk, and when people communicated with friends in other
countries by actual letters sent through the postal service. He wrote
225 of them to a friend. He stopped writing to his penpal, but found he
still wanted to record his life, in case he lost his memory again, and
wrote 30 entries in his first logbook. Then he wrote to an artificial
intelligence called Geenee, in the master computer in his school for
gifted students, which he started attending in 2016. Now it's 2018 and
later, and he's continuing to save his memories in a secure blog.
All characters are fictitious, even if some of them might have names
that belong to some actual people, or act like people we know.
The stories may not be posted in chronological order.
Stephen is 12 in this story, in the Summer just after year 2 of his
special school.
Stephen's Secure Blog #26 "Tattoos"
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At Ichi's home in the evening, his father said to me, "You don't
value things, but you wear bands on your arms and rings on your
fingers." I said "All senior adepts are supposed to wear them when not
at any usual place. They are devices made to duplicate some Adept
powers, and have other features. Adepts have different abilities, with
different strengths, and in emergencies could use some help with some
of their abilities, while concentrating on others. These things also
can be used to disguise the fact that an Adept has special powers, such
as when we deal with aliens who are aware of technology in advance of
what is known on Earth. These things are completely controlled by the
mind. This ring fires a laser. This ring produces tractor and pressor
beams. This thing which looks like a big wristwatch is a computer which
can project its screen into the mind or into the air, and a universal
translator, and a multiband communicator. This belt can levitate, make
the wearer almost invisible, and provide an invisible shield which also
acts as a space suit. I walked on the moon naked, to test it. To the
aliens we meet as friends, we say our technology is operated by our
minds, which is very true, but as we want them to believe. They assume
we are controlling machines which perform the actions, and so don't
know we can do much more, just with our minds alone. The why of it is
very simple. You have a saying something like, 'The nail which sticks
up higher than the others, is hammered down'. We don't want that hammer
anywhere near us. If we hadn't been VERY careful and secretive when we
started becoming Adepts, the Van would have destroyed us, like they
have done for thousands of years. We KNOW about the hammer, and the
fear which grasps it." He said "You are wise."
Ichi's mother said, "Can anyone use those devices?" I said "Some,
yes, if they are made without restrictions. But mostly for them to kill
themselves and others by accident. They are operated COMPLETELY by the
mind. It's not by command, but by wish. We think, they do, the same way
we move our arms. Unless that mind is trained to such a rigid
discipline so as not to activate those abilities unintentionally or in
their dreaming sleep, they should not have control of these things. So
far, we have learned that only such training as provided at our school
is minimally sufficient to be allowed even the use of simplest of these
things, even for somebody with full Adept powers. In fact, the belt is
so dangerous, it has an on-off switch, which feeds the wearer
instructions in its operations every time it's touched. It's that
complicated. I know all this for real, because it happened to me." I
told them about the levitation in my sleep story. Ichi laughed. I said
"Yes it IS funny. But it could have been worse. At that time, I could
shoot lasers from my palms. Think about what could have happened if
they had been turned on, instead of levitation." Ichi said "Ouch!" I
nodded and said, "We have better mind training now." Ichi said to his
parents, "Stephen invented all those things." I said "You helped." He
said "By answering your questions you already knew the answers to." I
said "But you DID help in creating SpaceBall. We were equals in that."
He nodded. We grinned and hugged.
I said "I have a confession to make. I did something while we were
out today, which you might not be aware of. First I should tell you, in
my last incarnation I was raised by a security specialist. Probably one
of the best in the world. He taught at our school, too, which was ALL
about security at that time. So, part of me is always watching for
possible trouble. In this incarnation, I have a LOT of tools to do that
with. Twice, within a few blocks of us, I noticed some very tattooed
young people making trouble. Junior Yakuza, probably. I thought their
tattoos were so beautiful, they shouldn't hide them." Ishi said with a
delighted grin, "No! You didn't!" I said with my own grin, "What
shouldn't I have done?" He glanced at his parents before saying, "Like
you did to Nigel's uncle the last time?" I said "Coward!" He grinned
and said, "Right. Okay, I'll tell them. He stripped them naked." I said
"The other thing, too." He looked down, and then said, "That?" I
nodded, and he burst out laughing. I said "I don't know how to say that
correctly in Japanese, so you have to explain why you're laughing." He
did, and his mother giggled behind her hand, and his father tried
really hard to keep from laughing. I said "Well, I wanted to make it a
little er, hard for them to put their clothes back on. It helped. They
ran home. But on the way, they tried to cover up, and I took that away,
too. Just when they got to the door to their homes, I ported them to an
empty cell in the local jail. Still naked and er, extended." They all
laughed. I said "They are still there, trying to explain the
unexplainable. Want to see?" Ichi said "Absolutely!" I said "They are
covered now, so in politeness I can show them." I projected an illusion
of the scene on a blank wall, with audio. They were some desperate and
confused kids, partially wrapped in blankets. Their parent's were not
very happy with them. Ichi said, "Oh Stephen, did you do something to
them you didn't tell us?" I said "Oh, you mean the hair? Well, they
don't really need it. Anywhere." He laughed again. He had reason to,
because the boys didn't even have eyebrows. Or pubic hair.
I said, after I stopped the projection, "Your parents might like to
hear Nigel's story." He looked interested, and started telling it.
While he was doing that, I projected my memories of it on the wall, in
3D. At the end, where I tell off Nigel about the queer comment, I said,
"There are two unusual things about that. One is Nigel never really got
used to my abrupt changes of apparent er, temperament. Two, is that was
the moment he began to love me like a brother and teacher. I always
thought that was strange, that the only time I ever yelled at him, was
what made him part of my family. Do you want to see what happened when
I went back to the camp and found the bandits there? There is some
nakedness involved." Ichi looked at his parents pleadingly. They
nodded, so I showed them. Ichi rolled around the floor laughing his
head almost off. His parents laughed, too.
When things quieted down, I asked Ichi, "Tell us why I chose to do
what I did to the Junior Yakuza." He groaned. His father looked
reprovingly at him. He explained, "I know, but this way of teaching is
very frustrating!" His father tried to hide a smile. I didn't hide
mine. Ichi said, "You wanted to stop their bad actions and teach them a
lesson to help then learn not to repeat them, but you had to do it in a
way such as they wouldn't blame the people they were doing the bad
things to, to keep those people from being attacked for it. Shame,
particularly in this society, is a strong negative reinforcement, and
with what you did, you exposed them as Yakuza, too. Porting them to the
jail made their parents get involved in their problems, and with some
official responsibility, too. Some of that exposure won't make their
Yakuza bosses happy, which could get them expelled. That what you did,
added the mysterious to the situation, made it so they will never
forget what happened, which the loss of hair encourages. In fact, they
will be thinking about it a lot, for a very long time. Nobody was
injured, and what you did caused just what you wanted to cause, in a
way which benefited the most people in the best way. What you said Pete
told you before, is appropriate here. You made a bad thing 10 times
better than if it had never happened." I asked his parents, "How well
did his understanding and analysis fit the situation as he knows it?"
His father looked at his wife, and she nodded. He said to me, "I must
say, brilliantly." I said "I must say, I agree." I hugged and kissed
Ichi. I said to his parents, "In my family where we live, we all kiss
everybody. I hope you don't mind that." He nodded.
I said to Ichi, "Get ready for more embarrassment. Tell them why I
teach you this way." He did get embarrassed. He said "Background first.
There are many kinds of mental skills. Some are more rare than others.
One of the rarest skills, which is really a combination of other rare
skills, is called 'Situation Manager'. That's somebody who can manage a
situation, any situation, even in an emergency, to cause not only the
best outcome for all, but for far into the future as well. Stephen has
that skill, and could be the best who ever lived. He recognized that
Nigel had it, and trained him just like he is training me. I know this,
because Nigel and the other seniors have told me. Stephen always likes
to make people his equals as much as he can, whenever he can, in case
something happens to him, so what he knows and can do isn't lost to
humanity. He thinks I have the potential to be a situation manager like
crying, I said, "There is more." Ichi groaned. We laughed. I said "Pete
hoped and expected me to be an active reincarnation. To take advantage
of that, he constructed the family to which he arranged for me to live.
That's right. He chose Ichi to be my brother, not the other way around,
which I didn't know until recently. Now you know why. So Ichi can be
the new situation manager, because Pete recognized his potential. That
means the BOSS. The person they call on to manage unusual situations.
The person who gets a lot of love for doing that, too, like Nigel said.
Ichi already has the skill, after the fact, as you just heard. My job
is to help him learn to do that automatically, and not just when
prompted with questions. Even if he has to groan a lot." I tickled him,
and he tickled me back, and we rolled around on the floor giggling like
idiots, to his parents' fond smiles.
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Grant
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