Thoughts Recorder ~ Part III

Here is a link to part I:

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With the invention of a slightly-above-room-temperature superconductor, things started to work out for Owen. The last several years were disastrous. Owen had to give up on obtaining his degree and flee from the country. Now he calls himself an expat, although he still feels more like a refugee. Life's tough. It has always been, of course. It's just that some get to experience it firsthand, while others can only read about it in the news or, even better, watch it on their LCDs, large and small—thank goodness there are numerous streaming services available today. The rush of adrenaline, spies, conspiracies, murderers—choose to your liking!

Childhood was good. Owen felt very grateful for that. If he could, he would gladly relive it once again. He would do some things differently; he'd try to become a better person, he'd learn more languages, and wouldn't cause so much trouble to his parents. But now he has more important problems to think about. The persistent feeling of insecurity and vulnerability keeps chasing Owen. He was not that much worried about himself. He was mostly worried about his kin and humankind in general. Years of unannounced war. The contagion is spreading. Brainwashers brainwash the population. Is anybody even buying it? Alas, they do. Distance makes one feel safer and also miserable. But Owen is working hard; he does not give up yet. For the past two years, he has been working on upgrading his thoughts recorder. The 5-centimeter radius of action limitation kept him from fulfilling his plan. Although the device is small—it has the size and shape of a shank button—it's still hard to use it on anybody except yourself without it being noticed. In the kind of business Owen was planning to carry out, one needs to be very careful; there's no space for any mistakes.

Owen wasn't able to find a way to amplify the brain waves signals of a subject without blowing up their head. He did his experiments on poor fruit flies and felt very sorry for them Although, in the rare moments of uncontrolled fits of anger, Owen would gladly blow up a couple of human heads, however inhumane it sounds.

Thus, he needed his device to have a much superior sensitivity that it had. Owen felt stuck. The worst thing was that everything worked in theory but was limited by the harsh reality: applied science is not that good as of yet. In these moments of despair, he wished he was a genius. But then there was a glimpse of light. The breaking point was the invention of slightly-above-room-temperature superconductors. Owen grew ecstatic; he danced and sang Vide Cor Meum. The last time he was so very happy was when he managed to kiss Lisa while she was drooling deep asleep during a math lesson. It was so long ago.

It took Owen another couple of months to complete the perfected version of the thoughts recorder. He kept the size and shape of a shank button. Simply put, the device worked the following way: it shot a laser beam at the head of the subject of interest, upon reaching the subject's brain it interfered with their brain waves, and then traveled back to the device where the changes in its amplitude and wavefront were recorded and eventually translated into thoughts. Now there was no this ridiculous distance limitation. Now Owen can read people's minds without being afraid of getting exposed. If you know what people around you are thinking, you can predict their actions. That is, you can almost see the future. And when you can see it, you can affect and reshape it.

Owen took a thin silver thread and sewed the thoughts recorder to his forehead. Now he's ready to fix the future.