The M1 Theory - Brian Hesse (best thriller novels to read .txt) 📗

The M1Theory

Pennsylvania State University was not the first choice of colleges for Thomas Lorey. If anyone dared approach the sullen faced figure, sitting under the two-hundred-fifty-year-old Eastern Hemlock, the tallest tree on campus, he would gladly proclaim that a University was never built that could house his towering intellect. With head buried in books of chemistry, biology, psychiatry, and the occasional Science Weekly, he would explain that his IQ was off the charts and, school was just an unpleasant formality. A more sensitive and caring soul may even attempt to reach out to the average looking bespectacled young man, and make brave attempts at breaking through such an obvious tough exterior. The hopeless romantic may even venture so far as to sit next to the frail young man with his mere five-foot six-inch frame, and employ the use of those customary tools such as levity, shared experiences, and simple small talk, like a construction worker using a sledgehammer to break through the hardened cement of his stoic exterior. The more artistic soul may even reach out and touch the pale hairless skin on the young man’s soft feminine arm and, consider his cold grey eyes, pretending that a genuine spark of compassion existed just beneath the surface, but only if you look hard and long. But none of these fine sensitive types would ever achieve the desired result of making contact with a like-minded being, made of the same warm flesh and similar hopes and dreams of the average person. That Thomas Lorey, the loving Thomas, died after the final beating given by his alcoholic Father. The Thomas Lorey, known to be kind to animals and take refuge in the beauty of a flower, or the serene sound of a gently flowing stream, died in the fatal car crash that sent his Mother to the void. The Thomas Lorey, who could have been sitting with the other students, under the smaller Elms, holding hands with a girl and talking of that wonderful future just within grasp, just outside the cold confining walls of the University was gone. This Thomas Lorey, the real young man, lived inside the dark and suffocating, yet safe, confines of his own mind.

What the disappointed good Samaritan would not know, to their benefit, was the nature of the thoughts that compelled the young Thomas to obsessively read, tirelessly research, and rarely take his eyes from the pile of papers, resting heavily on his lap. He takes comfort in the knowledge that his Doctoral dissertation, although unfinished, was sure to receive the Nobel Prize in the rapidly growing field of neuropsychology. He quietly contemplated the conversation he would have with his professor, Professor Richardson, upon submission of his paper.

“Thomas, this is a brilliant piece of work. A true piece of art, is what it actually is my young brilliant protégé.”

“Thank You professor. By mapping the specific electrical synapse responsible for varying levels of aggression and passivity, we have the potential to totally eliminate aggression within society.”

“I see. So, you have basically discovered one single cell, with several synapse channels controlling aggression, but only one single electrical channel that controls all the others.”

“Basically, you are correct Professor, but not entirely. Think of it like this, in simpler terms that you, or your other students can understand. Think of our aggression cell, I call Alpha X, as a house with four rooms, and each room is heated by a different type of fuel. One room, the excitatory synapse channel consists of solar heat. This heat is very efficient, clean, and simple in design, relying on the power of nature. The next room, the inhibitory synapse channel, is heated by coal, very efficient, but leaving negative residue behind that could interfere with the efficiency of the system, if not working properly. Finally, we have the other rooms, the non-channel systems and the neuromuscular junctions. Like heating with oil and gas, respectively, they do their job, but very sensitive to imbalance. Now we come to our electrical synapse channel I call, the M1 (mainframe 1). This is the most efficient system. The membranes of adjoining cells touch, allowing shared proteins and chemicals to pass freely into the other. However, this system is barely in use, as I have so brilliantly discovered. The other four less efficient systems continue their work as inefficiently as ever, as M1, patiently sits in wait. I do not know why humans have developed in this way and, I really don’t care. What I know is that, only when the other four systems have died, which is rarely ever, M1 takes over all operations of aggressive and passive, responses. A completely efficient system, if it works alone, unhindered by the other synapse channels.

“So, this is where your proposed practical applications come into play.”

“Imagine professor, if you can that is, how wonderful it will be to turn off all other systems, and then control the M1 pathway. The possibilities, both civilian and military, are endless.”

Not one to sail too deeply into the waters of fantasy, Thomas forced himself back to the lonely shores of reality to finish his final sentence of his dissertation. With the steady hand characteristic of those who enjoy the gift of supreme confidence, he wrote…Although once believed that electrical synapses only to be found in the eye and heart, the discovery of the M1 pathway itself, discards decades of now archaic scientific principles.

Thomas skimmed over his dissertation and walked hastily past the small groups of his peers, lounging lazily in the freshly cut grass of the University lawn, toward what he believed, his destiny of notoriety and fame.

Just Routine

 “It’s time for you to go stud,” stated Detective Sandra Becks, lead homicide investigator of the Pennsylvania State Police.

  The middle-aged cheating husband next to her groaned lowly, pulling her black satin sheet over his head and face as if, as she thought, in a gesture of shame for another empty sexual encounter, with another equally empty girl.

 Five years of living single after a bitter divorce and an around the clock career, allowed her the luxury of feeling guilt free after such encounters. She could look herself in the mirror knowing that she never slept with any man under false pretenses. An hour in the bar, a quick scanning of the herd for the right one, and the final agreement that this was for one night, with no strings attached. This was the routine for just a few times each year because her job as a homicide detective jealously monitored her time of leisure. She considered, with just a hint of depression, how many times she was on the verge of falling in love, just as her cell would scream out into the darkness that it was time to put girly dreams away and time to assume the role of speaker for those who could no longer speak…the dead. Looking at the nameless lump of flesh lying aside her, she realized that he could possibly be the next great romance in her life. This thought, once again, vanished as quickly as it appeared, like a rabbit in a magician’s hat, as she thought about the call of just a few moments ago that ripped her from the warm land of dreams into the cold depths of reality.

 “Yea, this better be good.” she answered the phone, with one long smooth leg still firmly planted in the hazy world of sleep.

  “Sorry detective,” stated Detective Ralph Klinger, her less than observant partner, “but we have another body here.”

  She hung up the phone and began her contemplation of her nonexistent love life, and mediocre sex life.

  “Hey buddy, get your ass up, I have work to do.” She pushed no name as hard as she could causing the sleeping man to fall to the floor with a loud thump that made her feel both pity, and amusement.

   “Can I at least have your number? He asked, as he hopped on one leg across the room trying to pull on his jeans.

  “Sorry sweetie, you know the agreement. You were good, but good always fades in time leaving us nothing but unwanted obligation. Let’s just end things now while it was still good, and carry these memories untarnished until the day we die.”

 He looked at her with an expression of shock. It was apparent to her, that he must have a very conventional wife, probably a bit dependent, she surmised. He looked at her in surprise that quickly transformed into a wide smile of understanding.

 “Yea, I completely agree.”

 Now it was her turn to be shocked. In the past, whenever she laid down the heavy cement of her modern independent woman philosophy, the man’s mind would seem to flatten under the weight, unable to comprehend the idea of sex without even the possibility of obligation. This time she was wrong, and it caused her to feel just a tinge of resentment, or as she considered with horror, pain of rejection. So, she did the only thing she thought would repair the damage to her ego. She gave Mr. No Name her phone numbe, and smiled as she watched him stagger sleepily out the front door.

Just Another Body

  Sandra rubbed her bloodshot eyes and yawned deeply as she parked her 1998 Chevy Cavalier just inches from the yellow police tape, marking the scene of what she sleepily thought, just another routine dead body. On her way to the scene, through blaring music used to mask the rumble of her nineteen-year-old tired four-cylinder engine, she already solved the crime. As Tom Petty detailed his “Last Dance with Mary Jane” through the original crackling speakers of her two-door rust bucket, she sadly called her office on wheels, she considered the details she received on the phone, just before expelling her latest male conquest out her front door. The information was, as usual, brief and straight to the point. The body of a young Caucasian female, early twenties, was found outside the Happy Go Lucky Motel off Fifth Street and Wilkens Boulevard. She already responded to this very spot on three separated occasions over the last two months. Each victim was killed by being forced to drink drain cleaner.

 “Well good morning Detective Becks, looking cheerful as usual,” stated Detective Ralph Klinger, as he greeted her just beyond the yellow tape. He lifted the tape up for her knowing that such an act would only cause provocation in her vulnerable tired state of mind. Detective Becks was known in the male dominated atmosphere of the Homicide Division as both an ardent feminist and, brilliantly reconstructionist, bordering on clairvoyant. Both the former and latter descriptions of her personality is always enough to cause jealousy and fear in a room awash with surging male testosterone.

 “Hi asshole,” she replied, as she walked to the side of the arched tape and bent low to clear the flimsy barrier.

 “Oh, how I love our little nicknames. It only strengthens those all-important workplace bonds,” he replied, snorting as he laughed loudly just a few inches from her ear. She winced each time he snorted. Although he was thin, tall, and as she secretly thought, handsome, each time he laughed she thought of a dirty pig. To her, even his features took on the form of some half pig and half man lowly creature, incapable of thinking above the waist.

 “Just tell me what we have,” no wait, she interrupted, holding her right index finger just inches from his face, “let me tell you what we have here.”

 She took just a moment to revel in the shocked expression on his pompous face. He was not accustomed to interruptions from a woman. She pegged him from day one as a bully, with a long history of getting what he wanted through intimidation. He was, as she surmised, one of these guys never