Other Works

The story of a detective who can read minds. He uses his abilities to solve crimes, but despite his unnatural gift, he finds himself stuck on a particular case. The evidence seems to point to one suspect, but Detective Russell can read that they had nothing to do with it.

Where should Detective Russell direct his attention? He fears that a dangerous truth is about to spread through the dangerous underworld: even someone who can read minds is not infallible, and this dangerous criminal has proven beyond even his measure.

Excerpt:

Reflections of Detective Russel

Most would argue that reading minds to solve murders was cheating. What fun was detective work when you could read the inner thoughts of even the most hardened criminals? There was no point to riddles if you could read the answer directly from the speaker’s mind. Tell that to the victims and their families, and you’d see how little that mattered to them. They would insist on using only cheaters. This caused a lot of resentment from the non-zalphics. There were plenty who dedicated their lives to protecting their community and sharpening their skills so they could capture evildoers. How frustrating it must have been, then, to be outdone by someone who was born a telekinetic zalphic and could peer into the cruel mind of any offender at their whim.

Luckily for the criminals, zalphics were still extremely rare, and telekinetic zalphics were amongst the rarest forms. Even the biggest cities counted on only a few hundred zalphics, and telekinetic ones numbered in the tens, at most. Even if they had a healthy number of Z2’s, they would run into the next problem: what to do with such a valuable commodity? Their services could be required in much more pressing state affairs—espionage, counterintelligence, and other classified occupations.

A quick aside about governmental establishments—and you didn’t hear it from me—they are inefficient, unimaginative, and often, ill-funded.

Why then, would someone so rare—as a Z2—dedicate their special talents to a government position, when they could go to the private sector and receive compensation beyond imagining?

Another quick aside—and this one you definitely didn’t hear from me—some private enterprises, of sensitive operations and questionable repute, will pay you a veritable fortune.

All this to say, that most of the time, criminals were free from such pressures coming from the authorities. Even then, the criminals had an additional avenue of protection: the wily defense attorney. New laws and procedures had to be drawn up as the government accepted zalphics in a limited capacity for their line of work. The defense attorneys had argued that there was a wide berth of constitutional infringements, primarily related to their right of privacy and their protection against unlawful harassment.

The arguments were fascinating, or so the law students love to tell me. To me, this is what all those arguments and legal minutia mean:

1.      Mental confessions or mental recreations of the crime are not sufficient to prosecute.

2.      Information obtained through mental means is not sufficient for a warrant.

3.      Investigative work aided by intelligence gathered through mental means was legal and perfectly admissible in a court of law.

Translation: I could use my zalphic powers in any capacity I needed to gather intelligence, but all the warrants, hard-evidence, and standard procedures must follow the old way of things. They couldn’t prosecute using only zalphic intel, since it was too prone to corruption. They tried to outlaw reading minds completely, but they knew it would be impossible to prove. Consequently, they were forced to allow zalphic interrogation, but they had limited its scope. There were currently reforms to crack down on judges who were too quick to issue warrants. Too many cases had arisen where a warrant was allowed despite the intel being questionable, at best. It was clear that these judges had shown leniency because there had been assurances of their guilt corroborated by mental means. The added scrutiny would make our investigative work more difficult, but it was of little concern. I would see right through them.