St Doria's School for Boys Girls: The Grifter and the Sci-Fi Fan

Unending BE - episode 804341

The first step to a good long con was to obtain as much information about the potential mark as possible. There was no reason not to and plenty of reasons to put the effort in. The mark might be dangerous; connections to the law, friends with another grifter, maybe even already fell for a con similar to what you have planned already. Who knows? Well, the smarter type of grifter would, once he'd done his homework. They'd also figure out the mark's vices, the levers to pull and how hard to pull them. The little indulgences that people allow themselves that make it so easy to make them follow their greed right off a cliff. The biggest secret every single master of the craft knew, was that everyone was greedy in some form or another. Everyone had a lever, everyone had a vice, and anyone could be made into a patsy. All it took was paying attention, knowing a few tricks, and knowing as much as you could about the intended victim.

There were numerous ways by which almost anyone could go about retrieving this kind of information. Surveillance was a good one, watch them from a distance and build up a dossier. Root through their garbage. If you're lucky, they're stupid and haven't shredded personal information. If not, whatever they toss out can tell you so very much about the kind of people they are. Or in this day and age, it's trivial to look up a person's details online. People put up all sorts of information they really shouldn't, particularly on social networking sites. A little research was the best way towards payday, and any of these can turn up all sorts of interesting methods before you even shook the mark's hand.

Then again, if it made sense in a social manner there wasn't anything wrong with doing the uncovering through face to face contact. Meet them at a party, start with a little friendly chatter. Laugh at their jokes, tell your own. Compliment them where it's warranted. Compliment them a few places where it's not. Sidle up, smile and get right up next to them. Make them trust you, just before you drain their wallet dry and move on to the next sucker. Talk to them. Ask them leading questions which seem like conversation starters. Anything that they say can be used against them.

"You must be a theatre major," John said in a deliberately absent voice as he looked around the room. Not that it was hard to be impressed by all of the props that had been scattered around the room.

"Nope!" Jamie said, suddenly brandishing what John thought looked exactly like the sort of weapon an alien would use to disintegrate some poor extra to make the main cast behave themselves. It even blinked ominously. "I'm in science. Should be a lot of fun!" the disintegrator was carefully but quickly unfolded, revealing itself as little more than a carefully constructed piece of origami with a series of LEDs affixed to very carefully positioned holes. Masterfully done. John could think of half a dozen scams using just that prop by itself. The skill -put to the right task - could be used for four dozen easily. "Why would you think I was in theatre?"

John chuckled and gestured to the props. "If you're half as good at science as you are at prop making, we'll have colonised Mars in ten years!"

The two shared a laugh at that. "Actually, we colonised Mars three years ago. It's just been kept secret from the general public."

At first, John continued to laugh. Then realised that Jamie had just gone back to his work. He wasn't serious about that statement, was he? No way. Not possible. That had to be a joke... No, no, don't get caught up in his pace. "So I guess this is just a hobby of yours. You should try doing favours for the theatrical department, I'm sure they'd love this level of prop work."

"You think this is impressive? You should see my costumes." he reached into an interior pocket and pulled out a camera. "Here's me last year, dressed as Captain Magnificent."

"Not familiar with that character."

"He's a space explorer. Travels to distant worlds, beats up the bad guys, seduces the alien women he encounters."

"Sounds a bit familiar..."

"He's a satirical character."

"Ah. Gotcha."

Jamie handed the camera over so that John could take a better look. There were a few people in various outfits milling about, paper mache foreheads, bright and colourful outfits that no doubt depicted some alien race in some story John had never heard of. Some sort of convention by the looks of things. But where was Jamie? There were several people milling about, but none of them looked even remotely similar to the hyperactive boy with the frizzy ginger hair and eyes full of wonder and excitement. The central figure in the picture certainly looked nothing like him. A tall and handsome man with a stern expression, standing at attention, staring into the camera with a stare that was hard yet seemed to say "many have tried to tame me. Will you be the lucky one?" John had to admit that if not for the necessity of this disguise, then Joan Corn would have certainly given it a go. It wasn't hard to imagine that man smiling at her under the night sky on some alien world. Perhaps there were two moons, or more? She would have been showing him the sunset, and would turn to him and say "I come here every night, and I can think of no sight that is more beautiful," and then he would turn to her and say "Then you've never looked in a mirror before," and even though that was so cheesy and so obviously a pick up line he was so confident and sincere that somehow it managed to work and the alien would surrender herself...

"Pretty good costume, isn't it?" Damn, damn, damn! John had let Joan out there for a moment! What was wrong with her. Him rather. Joan had never bothered all that much with guys except to think about how best to lighten their wallet, and all it took was some photo of some nameless stranger dressed up as some stupid fictional character to get Joan's engines running? What happened to that self control? What happened to - Wait a minute. Captain Magnificent... this handsome stranger was wearing some sort of exaggeratedly futuristic looking uniform - like what people in the sixties probably thought would be the fasion in the year 2010. - with a great big M on the left breast. No way. That was impossible. Then again, if the props could be so convincing, what about the costumes? Yes, now that he - that's right he, keep it straight inside your own head - knew what to look for, the same basic facial structure seemed to be there... A slight hint of makeup, the very subtle and almost but not quite hidden hints of a wig. The differently coloured eyes could be handled by contact lenses, and the difference in height was doable by either forced perspective or more likely, lifts in the shoes.

"Seriously. If you did theatre or television work of this quality, you'd make money hand over fist."

"I guess... But I kind of want to follow in my parent's footsteps, you know?"

"Your parents? They're scientists?" Ah ha, now we had the chance to recapture control over the conversation!

"Yep. Real top secret stuff." Was that the sound of a cash register opening? Do please go on, my new best friend. "They can't even talk to me about it."

"But you're curious, right? I mean, anyone would be."

Jamie smiled politely.

Aliens. He was sure of it. They had to be working with aliens and there was no chance he was missing out on that! Still, the vents were a lot tighter than he'd been anticipating. Certainly smaller than they showed in movies and games. Almost like they were designed to prevent people from crawling through them or something! Such thoughtlessness. Not that it stopped him, or even slowed him down! Today, he'd see the aliens firsthand and satisfy that burning urge to find out what the helly his parents were up to.

There it was, down below him. Their laboratory. It wasn't quite what he had been expecting, in all honesty. One big machine sat in the middle of the room, and there was a single door on the other side from where he was hiding. Any moment now, he knew that his parents would emerge and then he'd see the aliens!

Without warning, the gleaming white door slid open and an alien stepped into the room. Jamie stifled a gasp. A bright white skin with a rounded head, what looked like a clear plastic shield where its face should be. If there was something on the other side of the plastic, the glare of the light from the ceiling prevented him from seeing it. The rest of the body was also uniformly white as well, save for the hands which were yellow and artificial looking. Five digits to each hand, just like a human. Two arms, two legs and a single head. In fact, now that he thought about it, they looked exactly like two people wearing -

"Activating the generator on three."

"Releasing safety valve. Energy counter rising steadily."

Radiation suits. Oh. Oh shit. Jamie backed down the vents as quickly as he could, fear gripping every fiber of his being. Unfortunately he could not turn around in the too small vent, which made the going all that much slower. Then he saw it. A sort of bluishenergy field expanding down the -

With the right prompting, the human mind is remarkably capable of learning new skills. For example, learning how to very rapidly backtrack through a narrow vent without the capability to either turn around or see behind you. The race was on. Could he reach and re-seal the safety filter he'd undone to break in before the blue caught up with him? Thoughts of what it would do to him if it hit him filled his mind. Maybe it would give him superpowers. Maybe it would drive him insane, or kill him. Maybe it would do nothing, but then why were they wearing radiation suits if it did nothing to the human body? Whatever it was, the risk wasn't worth it, but the blue was catching up to him. He wouldn't make it in time! He would never manage to get through before he found out firsthand just what it did, and that was rather more of a gamble than he felt comfortable with. A tear fell from his cheek as he crawled backwards; He was going to die here. He was going to die here and nobody would find him until the stench of his rotten corpse -

Hallelujah! The filter! He'd made it! The segmented screen was seized with two shaking, nervous hands and pulled back into position. Where was that damnable screwdriver? Ah ha! There! And the bag of screws... Now to do this back up, and -

And the filter fell forward with a clang. It wasn't particularly loud, but it certainly felt that way. Jamie reached out for it, cursing his useless hands which were wrecked with nerves. This time he managed it. Just in time, too, as the blue energy hit the filter and just stopped right where it was. As Jamie climbed out the other end of the vent a heavy breath left him and he wiped his sweat covered brow.

His hand was blue. Not as if it had been deprived of oxygen or any such thing. It was more... his fingertips had a blue aura, and suddenly Jamie felt more afraid than he'd ever been. Even more afraid than the first time he'd sat through Professor Timeless and the Last Invasion of Neptune. He was back in his room before he knew it, staring at his hand the entire time. The aura shifted in colour gradually from blue to pink before vanishing entirely. At first Jamie didn't know what had happened, until he decided to shower away because frankly, the sweat he'd worked up due to that made him stink to high heaven.

The water beat down on his exhausted body while his mind worked furiously at just what he'd encountered. Whatever were they working on? It had to be alien technology, surely. That had to be well in advance of current human knowledge, whatever it did. He seized the soap and began to work up a lather. A new energy source? A weapon? So many possibilities for what it was, not nearly enough clues. Had to go back again, this time with something to protect from the weird energy. The soap was worked around his face and down towards his breasts -

Concentration: Broken. Head turning down for confirmation. Breasts. Jamie had breasts.

"You have got to be kidding me!" she stepped out of the shower and looked herself over in the full size mirror. Most males in this situation, particularly of Jamie's age, would react in one of two ways. Horror or arousal. After a full minute of examining her new body, Jamie's only reaction was "Well, at least I'm kinda hot now. Really did not see this coming."

It was six hours before her parents arrived home, and that had given Jamie plenty of time to do some thinking about this situation. Really, it changed... nothing. Sure, it would be best to keep this secret from her parents as much as possible. Easy enough. They were rarely home and most of her clothes still seemed to fit. Thank goodness for a preference for baggy jumpers. If they found out about this, then they'd surely figure out what she had done. Then all hell would break loose, or perhaps worse yet they'd keep her as a lab rat. Nope. Keeping this secret. At all costs.

"We've decided to send you to St Dorias," her mother had said. "It's a well respected school, and we received an invitation this morning.

"That's right, son. Hopefully they'll straighten you out on what real science is like. It's nothing like your science fiction stories. Notice the word fiction there? Kind of important."

Jamie smiled politely.

"Of course I'm curious. But keep in mind, they work for a big, top of the line laboratory. What do you expect me to do? Break in?"

Go back - Go to the parent episode.

Lumitiel

Wed Jul 20 23:28:06 2011