My Only Talent Ch. 30

"One more thing, doc. I have been having some dreams - about stuff I think about but really don't want to think about - stuff I can't really do anything about."

He looked interested. "We should talk when we have time. I'll send you some possible times."

"I can't pay you, doc."

"Don't worry about it. Working with you is like reading a good book that titillates and then satisfies my scientific curiosity. I should be paying you. Plus it gives me a chance do something I enjoy but seldom get a chance to do - practice 'psychiatric dermatology'!"

I knew what psychiatry and dermatology were, but I didn't understand the combination of them. I must have looked confused, because he went on to explain.

"Lots of doctors go into dermatology. The hours are predictable, the income is usually good, and few if any patients ever get really sick or die or call you on weekends because they need emergency care." He smiled. "Some psychiatrists only treat rich patients that really don't have any big problems, but still need to talk about the problems they do have to someone. They aren't really very sick, and they aren't at risk, they mostly just have 'normal' insecurities and anxiety. I call treating those kind of patients 'psychiatric dermatology'."

I might have looked angry. I felt like he was dismissing me.

"Don't take offense, but you don't have any real problems - psychiatric or otherwise. You had a happy and relatively normal childhood, you are very healthy, and way above average in intelligence. You have been admitted to one of the best engineering schools in the world, and you have at least two hot girlfriends at your beckon call, including one that is independently wealthy and hopelessly in love with you. 99% of your fellow students would gladly trade places with you, and 99% of the people in the world would gladly trade places with any student at ESU. So let's keep things in perspective, shall we?"

My expression must have softened, as did his tone. "But there is still stuff that bugs any young man, and sometimes talking about it helps. I think your 'talent' makes you even more sensitive than most to other people's feelings, and perhaps to your own emotions too. Let's work on that and help you avoid some common but unnecessary neuroses. I'll send you a few times that we might talk, but I insist on face to face meetings. For now, you head down to see Dr. Dee while I give Saskia a tour and my recruiting pitch. Dr. Dee will bring you to the seminar room and we will all meet up there."

I headed down to the second floor lab where Dr. Dee, that creepy gastroenterologist and denizen of digestion, who had once glowingly described my stool samples as 'truly fantastic', lurked. Perhaps this time they would be even better.

Dr. Dee felt the need to make conversation, in his own weird way. Making the smooth transition from discussing my stools in particular to human stools in general, he told me about a German anatomist in the 1800's who saw the invention of indoor plumbing and toilet paper as the beginning of the decline of western civilization. Herr Doctor X apparently believed if one ate a proper diet and got enough exercise, the consistency of one's output and the proper action of the various sphincter muscles would result in 'no external trace' of a recent bowel movement, especially if one crouched down over a hole in the ground as man was meant to do, rather than sat on a toilet. At least I had another weird sociological theory to discuss with my mother.

Thirty minutes later we entered one of those steep 'amphitheater' style lecture halls, full to the brim with folks in white lab coats. Asa waved and pointed to the two vacant seats next to him and Saskia, the only ones left. We got there just as the lights blipped and everyone quieted down.

Asa introduced Dr. Augie, who stood up and talked like Suzanne's father: fast, nonstop, grammatically perfect and chock full of content, with no fluff. Lots of movement, extended eye contact with numerous audience members, and appropriate hand gestures. The audience was spell bound. I managed to keep up with some of it. I heard 'Schwann cells' like Asa had just mentioned and made a mental note to look them up, and glial cells like we had talked about before. I already knew what EKGs and EEGs were, but this put them in a whole new perspective for me. I also caught what a SQUID was and vowed to spring that one on Oiler and Ralph when I got back to UDP. I sort of got 'action at a distance' ('spooky' I wasn't so sure about) and an inkling of what I was doing when I listened to Suzie signals, and suddenly I realized that I knew something Dr. Augie did not. He was describing all this stuff as hypothetically and theoretically possible, and I knew it was happening, for real, in my head.

I realized the brain was like my embedded systems class - lots of semi-autonomous systems busily doing their own little thing but also talking to each other. And not just on one local area network, either, but using lots of redundant and distributed electrical, chemical, and electrochemical pathways. Pathways that were tied together in such a way as to try to compensate for the vulnerabilities and failure modes of each individual mechanism. It suddenly dawned on me that the brain was the most complex yet elegant engineering design of all - mechanical, chemical, and electrical. I heard more about that Penrose guy that Ralph had mentioned, and was almost lost in the possibilities.

Dr. Augie closed with the concept of electromagnetic reciprocity. I knew what the words meant, at least grammatically. But his final, speculative (for him) sentence blew what was left of my very recently expanded mind. If you could receive, you should also be able transmit as well. If you could send, you should also be able to receive. I guess that's why my 'pinging' sonar drills worked, and I could send stuff to Nora. But that meant Nora should be able to send and receive too! What about the tennis twins? I knew that they could send Suzie like loud little air raid sirens. Did they have 'fractal antenna arrays' like I did? Could they receive? Could anybody? Could everybody? Even if they didn't have my antenna array? What kind of mutant adaptation was it?

I was in a daze as the audience filed out, with many people pushing past, swimming upstream and down to try to talk to Dr. Augie. I just stood there waiting for the room to clear.

Then the hot and dark little postdoc doc that reminded me (and my circulatory system) so of Esmeralda Estigoy and had offered to help Asa set up the MRI machine for my 'secret' test approached me. "We meet again Mr. Roberts. Who is that woman that came in with Dr. Weltschmerz?

"That's Dr. Saskia Grandael, from ESU. She's a research physiologist."

"Oh, I see. Dr. Weltschmerz is paying a lot of attention to her. She looks like Ronda Rousey with black hair." I detected a pretty raunchy Suzie note. I think the good doctor was really feeling it for Saskia.

I didn't know who Ronda Rousey was. "Well she is certainly in good shape!"

The good doctor smiled. "She sure is."

Asa waited patiently for the room to clear, and then formally introduced us to Dr. Augie, referring to Saskia as his latest postdoc recruit. She was so excited that she was barely touching the ground, but managed to ask a relevant question that seem to impress Dr. Augie. He said he would have to think about that. Saskia acted like she had just won an Oscar.

We thanked Asa again and began walking north back toward campus. Saskia prattled on like a little girl who had just had her best ever birthday party.

"So Asa said he could handle Arturia and get her to publish all my stuff this semester. I don't how he can do that, but he assured me that he can. So beginning June 1, your humble trainer will be employed full time at the med school, making twice what I am now, and doing real science with real scientists! Arturia will be in my rear view mirror permanently." She shivered and kissed me on the cheek. "I don't know how I can thank you enough, Robbie."

I stopped to whisper in her ear again. When my lips touched her earlobe, her fantasy carrier filled my Suzie receiver, and I knew exactly how she could thank me, and serve her own desires, too. "As soon as you turn in my grade for your class, and you are no longer officially my instructor, I will blindfold you and put you on your knees, and you will serve me in any way I please. I will then be your instructor, and you will learn full well how to please me, and how to please anyone else I order you to!"

She quivered, she stumbled, and her Suzie signal exploded like a little stick of dynamite. Neuro-electrodynamic dynamite, to be more correct. Quantum? Who knows?

I continued. "So when the semester ends on May 15th, at 5:00 PM you will be mine to use as I please, my pet. You will do everything for me that a woman can do for a man. That is only the beginning. You will soon learn what incredible things you are capable of." Her Suzie sounded like a hallelujah chorus.

I thought of something else. "By the way, Saskia, you have a secret admirer among the med school faculty!"

She stopped and grabbed my arm. "Who?"

"I might tell you who she is later."

"She?" A really funny Suzie tone grew and sputtered.

"I might invite her to our little end of semester party." Her Suzie growled, low and nasty. "You would meet her then, but behind that blindfold, you wouldn't actually get to see her." Her Suzie went absolutely crazy.

We walked back to campus in silence, but Saskia kept an iron grip on my forearm. I stayed with her all the way back to her office in Belmont. By the time I got back to the dorm, the color was just returning to my arm. I was sure she could affect my circulation in other, more pleasurable ways in the near future. Besides a consultation with the hot female doctor, she was also going to have to kiss and make up with Suzanne, in a way she had so far only anticipated in her fantasies. I wonder how my fit and almost lovely Dr. Grandael will look on a leash.

*******

I went through my physics lab still thinking about Dr. Augie's talk. After class, I asked the instructor about SQUIDS. The good news was he told me how to relate them to the wave motion stuff we were covering in the syllabus. The bad news is that he also give me an additional assignment to research them further and write a paper, but maybe I could at least use what I learned to bug Oiler and Ralph.

I realized I could no longer put off joining the study group for linguistics. I logged onto the electronic blackboard site and found I was already assigned to one with four other students, and it was scheduled to meet Thursday evening about an hour after my one on one meeting with Saskia ended. I would just have time to wolf down dinner before I rushed diagonally across campus to the Comm SchooI where the sessions were held. I was assigned to summarize and present 10 of the designated journal articles - many of the ones I had scanned but not read in depth. By Wednesday at noon I would have to post a PowerPoint presentation of my summary online for the other students to read before the group meeting, and I would likewise have to read all of theirs. Given my Wednesday morning schedule, that effectively meant I would have to finish it tonight. This was not going to be an easy Tuesday.

I worked feverishly to complete the physics lab protocol on time and then made it to the linguistics lecture - for the first time ever it was complete with a real live professor. He was a pretty good speaker and made we wonder about most of the issues he raised. He went on and on about how important the discussion sessions were. Naturally.

"Linguistics is unique in that it must be discussed intensely among several people in order to be understood. One can glean some solo understanding of gravity and the laws of motion by throwing rocks by yourself and observing where they go and how long they take to get there. That's how most kids learn to throw a baseball. But even a rudimentary understanding of linguistics requires that you bat the shuttlecock of knowledge back and forth across the net for a while, not only seeing where it goes, but how other people react to it and communicate about it. It is the inevitable collision of observer and observed, the inherent inability to tease things out and examine them alone that makes it so challenging, yet rewarding."

Okay, doc, I get it. I'll work hard on the discussion stuff. Then I thought about what Dr. Augie said about quantum theory and the interaction between the observer and the observed perhaps determining the outcome. Maybe linguistics was even more interesting than I thought. Was there such a thing as a 'quantum shuttlecock'? I went back to the dorm to dress out in my running stuff, sprinted through my sprints, and then returned to my reading and worked on my summary presentation with renewed vigor. My growling tummy demanded I take break for dinner, and I headed down the stairs.

Nora texted me an invitation to have dinner at the co-op Thursday night when she was cooking. Drat. I couldn't do that and have a one on one with Saskia and go to the linguistics discussion section too. I tried to express my sincere regret in 140 characters, and asked for a rain check. Thankfully, I got it: she would offer the spot to Suzanne for now. I worked well past midnight to complete my presentation, and fell asleep about 15 milliseconds after I pressed the 'send' key. In what seemed to me like only 15 milliseconds after that, the alarm signaled the beginning of another wonderful Wednesday. I had to figure out how to fit in reading the other student's summaries before the discussion group.

*******

After I scarfed down breakfast and made it across the street to Greg Gym, I noticed that Saskia looked like a different woman. Her hair and skin shown bright and healthy, her eyes were sparkling, and her voice sounded inviting and happy. By comparison, she had been clinically depressed before, I just didn't recognize it. The prospect of getting out from under the yoke of Arturia Brown must seem like a fairy tale happy ending. Good for her! I was certainly planning to give her my own kind of 'happy ending' when the semester was over. Her new mood did not affect her devotion to improving the fitness of her conditioning class, however, and she worked us relentlessly, perhaps even more enthusiastically and completely than before. She said this would be our last 'generic' session and hereafter each person would have a specific individualized plan to follow, complete with individual programming of the exercise machines and real time feedback to tell you (and Saskia) if you were making sufficient effort or not. Some people would lift two times and week and do aerobics and/or flexibility only once, and that might change from week to week.

After another pounding workout, I was woolgathering a bit while my heart rate stabilized, and wishing that I had eaten a little more breakfast, when the two 'fit women' from the class approached me. One had short brown hair, the other short black hair. They were dressed in tight pastel tee shirts and contrasting dark and very tight spandex gym shorts. They looked like they had stepped right out of one of those early morning TV exercise videos that are more soft porn than training regimen.

"Hi, Robbie, I'm Rene'" They both said with a giggle and more than one wiggle.

The black haired one continued. "Yes we are both named Rene'." She laughed. "We both work as personal trainers to help pay for graduate school, and we often use 'before and after' pictures to motivate our clients. We noticed you, and we have certainly noticed that your chest and shoulders are already looking hotter." All four eyes played over my chest. My nipples crinkled.

She touched me on my arm. Not an overtly sexual gesture in a normal context, but here it just reinforced my already almost painful erection. She looked down.

So did the brown haired Rene'. "The true champions are the ones who respond well to a challenge. Keep up the good work there, Robbie."

The other Rene squeezed my arm a little harder and made eye contact. "I hear you do a little personal training of your own, Master." She dropped her eyes demurely and smiled even wider, bowing her head. "Maybe you could work me out sometime?"

Maybe I could, but if I thought about it right now I would never be able to walk out of here. Saskia was having an animated discussion with someone at the front of the class. I watched the two Rene's walk around the corner. My erection subsided and my heart rate slowed, and I started back up the hill to the dorm.

I dropped my stuff on the bed. Kevin was in the room with two laptops linked together, frantically working on editing the video he had shot for his sci-fi parody film project.

"Orinda looks even better on camera than she does in person, Robbie."

I doubted that, especially compared to the kind of up close and personal in person I had seen. I looked over his shoulder. She certainly was one of those people that they say the camera loves. Her face just leapt off the screen, her eyes shining.

"She does look really hot. How much more shooting to do?"

"It depends. She had a bunch of ideas for additional scenes - flashbacks to her time at Starfleet Academy, her first cruise as a midshipman, and some fantasy dreams, all good ideas and even some hot sex scenes. But trying to fit them all in and use a body double too is impossible. I will either have to cut several of them, or have huge and obvious continuity problems that I won't be able to reshoot to fix, so I'll have to throw the scenes out."

I supposed that was bad. "Could you do all the new scenes with her, with no body double, and just make sure that her face doesn't show in the XXX cut of the film?"

He looked thoughtful. "Yeah, I could just leave the audience hoping she'll take a facial but she never actually does. But she'll have to do the other XXX stuff, just without her face on camera. Maybe it will work. I could also just have her narrate some memories with some generic B roll, if I have to." He already had Orinda on the phone by the time I left for the dining hall.

I loaded up my plate with spaghetti and ladled on the meat sauce. No asparagus tonight - it must be out of season and expensive. Lima beans and some yellow squash casserole worked fine, though, and there was cobbler for dessert. As I finished going through the serving line, I noticed Jean Nancy Percer sitting by herself near the windows.

"Hey John Nan Say" I said, trying to pronounce it the way she did. "How's life treating you?"

"Hi, Robbie. Pretty good. I'm dating a really great guy now."

I assumed that meant he and his family had a very nice balance sheet and a promising series of future income statements. Perhaps it was the guy I saw her chatting up right before classes started. Something occurred to me. "So, he is a prospect for a long term relationship, you mean?"

She smiled contentedly. "Yes, very much so, I think."

"So you only date guys who are, how should I say, 'real marriage material'?"

"Yes. My grandmother taught me that if you only hang out with rich people, one of them will eventually fall for you, and you don't end up knocked up and trapped with some poor schlub."

At least she was honest about it. "So let me ask you a question. Let's say you land a real whale - a Forbes 400 list kind of guy."

She looked very interested. "Do go on."

"And you get married and everything is cool."

"It would be." She looked confident. "My mother and grandmother would be ecstatic."

"And then you go to bed with him on the honeymoon and let him go all the way with you?"

"Yes. It would be just heavy petting until we got married, and then I'll let him have me after the wedding." She looked happy.