This is a little vignette from about ten years ago that I found lurking on my hard drive today. I can’t remember whether I’ve posted this one already, but it’s silly and odd, so why not?
Caffeine makes things so much clearer. Just enough so that I can feel that extra little boost. I get a kind of cold energy inside. It helps me focus. It also helps me with my special talent.
I haven’t told anyone else about my talent, and I’d rather not reveal my name just yet. Sometimes I go by the name Stanley Q. That’s my nom de plume.
Actually, I use that nom de plume a lot. I think it’s really nice to live under a nom de plume. If you’ve ever played Second Life, you’ll know the feeling. When I’m Stanley, I can be someone else and take a break from being me.
Stanley is actually quite a bit taller than I am. I think the advantage of height is a real boost to the ego. He’s confident. He’s strong. He likes latin dancing. I can’t latin dance, myself, but Stanley loves to salsa.
Stanley’s confidence is really something. Sometimes he’ll make a reservation at a restaurant, and when they ask him what name it’s under, he’ll simply say, “Stanley”. A simple, bold statement of fact. “Stanley”. He likes to make a reservation even if he’s not actually going to the restaurant. Just for the thrill of saying his name out loud.
“I’d like to make a reservation for two at six o’clock, please,” he’ll say.
And they’ll say, “Certainly, sir. Under what name?”
“Stanley”. And they write it down, believing with certainty that, at six o’clock, Stanley and his companion will be dining.
Sometimes they ask Stanley for a last name, and he says it with such certainty. “Queue,” he says.
And that’s when they might hesitate and say “Just… Q?” But that doesn’t annoy Stanley, because he’s used to dealing with the lesser minds. He spells it out with the same relaxed confidence, “Q-U-E-U-E.”
There’s a beautiful redundancy in that name, “Stanley Queue”. Q-U-E-U-E. You might think that he could spell it with fewer vowels. Like none, for example–just the letter Q. But no, he elaborates on it with a “U-E” combination. But that’s not enough, either. He keeps going with a second “U-E”. He doesn’t need to. He just does.
Q… U-E… U-E. Q-U-E… U-E. Q-U-E-U-E. Q-U-E-U-E. I could do that all day.
Sometimes, Stanley will make five or six reservations a day at different restaurants, hoping that eventually a waiter will ask him to spell his last name.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling a little energetic, I might go for a walk as Stanley Q. Stanley likes a bit of variety in his walks. Maybe he’ll want to stroll a few blocks down the hill to English Bay. Or maybe around Stanley Park — that one’s his favorite. He likes things named Stanley.
On a walk, he usually won’t get to say his name to anyone, but he can feel it inside. It’s like a burning coal inside his chest, driving him forward. Stanley Q. Going for a walk. Stanley Q. Catching the eye of a passing woman. Stanley Q. Buying a triple espresso at Starbucks.
Stanley Q drinks a lot of coffee.
Actually, I drink a lot of coffee too, not just when I’m Stanley. I don’t like the taste of coffee, but like I said, it helps me with my talent. Without it, I don’t have that edge that makes it work. A couple of triple espressos usually gives me the right boost.
That’s the one part of my personality that I’ll keep when Stanley’s taking a walk — I’ve got to get the caffeine, and I can only get it if Stanley goes to Starbucks. So far Stanley doesn’t know why he craves so much caffeine, and I don’t think he suspects anything unusual. But I’ve got to be careful all the same.
So Stanley’s walks usually include two Starbucks locations, and he picks up a triple espresso at one. He can’t go to the same one twice in one walk because it might raise suspicions. Fortunately, I’ve discovered that almost any reasonable length walk around the West End will pass by at least two Starbucks.
When Stanley gets home, I can feel the electric shiver of caffeine. I’ll have a little bit of a shimmy in my eyes, and that’s when I know I’m ready to practice my talent. I’ve got to be good and wired before I can use my telekinesis.
I remember when I first discovered I could move objects with my mind. It was somewhere around a year or two ago. That was just after I came up with my nom de plume.
The first time, I’d been eating chocolate-covered coffee beans while cleaning my apartment. I was pushing the vacuum around the floor, and I could feel the caffeine wobbling my eyes. Then I tripped over the cord. Went head-first into the corner of the coffee table. Knocked myself out cold.
When I woke up and wiped the blood out of my eyes, the first thing I noticed was that the vacuum was right across the room. How did it get there? It didn’t move there on its own. In that instant, I knew: while unconscious, my mind had moved that vacuum away from me. Mind over matter. The hidden powers I never knew I had thrust the danger away from me using telekinesis.
For the next few days, I spent a lot of time alone, thinking about the ramifications. I didn’t let Stanley out much then, because I didn’t know whether or not he knew about it already. It wouldn’t do any good if he let it slip that we had TK (that’s what they call telekinesis).
My first task was to find out if I could reproduce the results. I thought maybe it was just the blow to the head. I tried to recreate the incident by falling on the coffee table, but I couldn’t accurately control where the table impacted my forehead.
That’s when I built my Coffee Table Cranium Impact Simulator. That baby is a work of art. The design is simple, yet elegant. It’s basically a wooden frame glued onto a bike helmet. Using an arrangement of springs and a rubber mallet, I can accurately reproduce the cranial trauma.
But something was missing at first. My simulator worked well enough to knock me out from time to time, but I couldn’t move any more objects. That’s when I made the connection between TK and caffeine.
I had stayed up late working on improving the trigger mechanism, so naturally I’d gone through several pots of coffee. When I was ready for another test, I tossed back the muddy dregs and triggered the device.
And when I woke up, I knew I’d done it. The simulator helmet had moved right across the room. There was even a clear trail of blood and vomit where it had skittered across the floor, pushed only by the power of my mind.
So far I can only move the helmet, but I’m working on moving other objects. The work is slow, because Stanley has noticed the cuts and bruises. And I think the drug store checkout girl has noticed that I buy a lot of bandages and disinfectant.
Stanley’s a smart guy, and I’m worried that he might figure it out. What could an intelligent man like Stanley accomplish if he mastered TK? No, I can’t ever let him discover the truth.