Incident Uptown

Hairy submitted another e-mail. Here is reprint:

I've borrowed this phone from a lady who says she can't read her texts. She forgot her glasses. Memorizing her entire cache to repeat back to her when I 'find' the right message took three whole seconds. Busy gal.

Because she's been so gracious I now know more about her than the NSA does. ("Steve?" If you read this--marry her. I'm pretty sure from your online profile and what I could hack easily, that you're pretty lucky she'll say yes to you. Just no more roses. She's getting sick of those.)

Her facebook time and holiday shopping have fit several statistical norms that Shelob calculated for me before my trip. What amazes me is that she would try to snap a photo of the guy who tried to mug me. With a mug. I didn't know people actually used mugs for that. 

Well, technically it was a stein, I guess, or a tankard. It was pewter and would have hurt even through the suit. Still--I had to act fast. With him thinking whether he needed to try to hurt her too and her thinking she needed to run or e-mail the police or dig the stun gun with the dead battery out from the bottom of her purse  or "no, just swing the %^& purse; it weighs a ton" . . . well, with all that stray thought occupying their minds, it was easy enough to just swap their thought streams for a few seconds. 

It overloaded the guy's neurons, of course. Horribly lazy thinker, never has more than one idea clunking around in his cortex at a time. She felt boxed in. He was suddenly feeling a frightening lack of boundaries, like someone deathly afraid of heights suddenly flying straight up. Then they were both stunned, snapping back to the right place. I left "Dan" with the vague notion that he'd had a blackout from drinking too much from a dirty mug after smearing the inside of the mug with some fermented sludge from the inside of a trash can. He'll be nauseated by the smell of alcohol for a year or two. He might just stay out of jail that whole time. Drunk and disorderly, numerous counts, assault and attempted robbery? Five counts. Some people are too incompetent to be criminals, I guess. He should go back to learning haircuts. I hope he does.

"Rose," on the other hand, required a lot more work. I had to really focus to put her adrenaline levels back, to cause her to walk into a separate alley from "Dan," to give her brain a chance to fill the gap of eleven minutes of walking and deep breathing and give her no reason to think she just had her first cardiac event. She thinks she misread the time and fell behind looking at a wedding dress she'll never look good in. Even she realizes the color is wrong for her. Anyhow I came looking for her because she didn't seem to be recovering and accepting the false memory I gave her. (Must not have been paced right or scattered enough.) I told her "I," "Harry," was bored and could really enjoy just helping someone for a few minutes. Well, a few minutes is apparently about fifty. Looks like she'll be alright. 

Have you ever thought about how people pretend to be helping when they really have another agenda?

Hairy [identifier redacted]

Hairy assures he will return sometime next week. [disconnect]