The Problem with Mind Control
THE PROBLEM WITH MIND CONTROL – May 1, 2025 – Baldwin Park, California, USA
With a nickname like The Praying Mantis, Lexie Lin probably should have felt special. She had long slender features and was taller than almost any girl in her graduating class. If she had an outgoing and narcissistic personality, Lexie might have accentuated and embraced her unique look. Instead, she covered up in baggy clothes. She was mostly shy and self-effacing. She thought of herself as an underachiever compared to her two younger genius brothers. She was not a slacker student, but her grades were not good enough to get her into a good college.
“I like to cook. Maybe I’ll go to culinary school,” Lexie told her parents.
“How long does that take?” her dad asked.
“A year. Then I can get a job in a restaurant. I’ll make my own money and then I can move out and find a place of my own.”
“Culinary school sounds good to me,” her dad replied.
During the party to celebrate her high school graduation, Lexie found herself sitting alone with her grandfather on the back patio of her house. They both liked listening to the sound of water running down a small fountain surrounded by bamboo plants. No matter how ordinary or unnoticed Lexie felt, her grandfather always told her she was his favorite person in the world.
“I have a present for you,” her grandfather said.
“You didn’t have to get me anything,” Lexie said as she looked around to see where he might be hiding a present.
“It’s nothing you can hold. It’s a secret I’m only allowed to tell one person. I’ve been waiting my whole life to tell you.”
Lexie smiled, unsure of whether he was kidding. “What kind of secret?”
“A wonderful and powerful secret.”
“Why would you tell it to me?”
“Because you have a faithful heart and enough patience. The one condition is that you can never reveal that I’ve told you.”
“Okay. So what’s the secret?”
“I’m going to teach you to move things with your mind.”
Lexie smiled again, now believing her grandfather must be joking. He remained very serious as he said, “You cannot treat it lightly. The only person you can share it with is the one you choose to train. Do you promise?”
“Sure, I promise.”
“It must be the most serious promise of your life.”
Lexie let go of her smile and tried to match her grandfather’s intense look. “I understand. I promise.”
Her grandfather looked around to make sure they were alone. He then concentrated on a pebble sitting in the fountain’s base. After a few seconds, the pebble rose from the puddle of water and hung in the air as Lexie’s grandfather smiled like someone was tickling his ear with a feather.
“Is that real? How are you doing that?” Lexie asked in perfect amazement.
“You’ll see,” her grandfather answered as he let the pebble fall. “I’ll teach you.”
From then on, Lexie spent every evening with her grandfather at his apartment. She told her parents she was keeping him company and learning some of his skills. They assumed that meant calligraphy and Tai Chi.
When culinary school began a few weeks after her graduation, Lexie’s life became completely different than anything she had known in high school. During the day, she hectically chopped and grilled and learned how to release flavors from foods. At night, all distractions were removed as she focused on a pinpoint of light. Her grandfather lowered the blackout curtains in his apartment’s sitting room. He sat cross-legged on a reed mat facing Lexie with two burning candles between them.
“Concentrate on the flame. Clear your mind of all other thoughts,” he repeated to Lexie.
Lexie stared at the flickering light. After a few seconds, her mind wandered away. She remembered the walk to her grandfather’s apartment and seeing a broken sprinkler. That made her think of the vegetable strainer she used at school.
“What are you thinking about?” her grandfather asked.
“The candle.”
“Really?”
Lexie admitted that her thoughts had slipped away to memories of the day.
“Your mind restlessly searches. Like the wind, it moves in every direction. Harness and contain it and you will unlock its hidden powers. Think only of the flame.”
Lexie refocused on the candle and slowly counted. She reached ten before she felt her concentration slip away to stovetop burners from class. She wiped her mind clean and started again.
After days of practice, she could reach the count of thirty without distractions. Her grandfather seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. Whenever she felt especially frustrated or bored with the exercise, he elevated the candle above the floor to show her what was possible with enough concentration.
When she was capable of corralling her attention for an entire minute, her grandfather presented a new challenge. “I want you to push the flame to one side. You will act on the flame with your mind instead of simply observing it. Command it to bend. As you do, repeat in your mind the sound of breathing out. Wa . . Wa . . Wa. . Wa. It’s the sound of life and energy.”
Lexie threw herself into the new task. Once she reached a state of total concentration, she repeated the Wa sound in her head and willed the flame to tilt. She saw nothing after the first week. After another week, a noticeable bend appeared beyond the normal flickering and dancing. After a month, the flame definitely leaned sideways and Lexie felt a new tingling sensation unlike anything she had experienced. She compared it to tiny threads caressing the inside of her nose and eyeballs, leaving her on the edge of giggling and sneezing.
“You feel the release, don’t you?” her grandfather asked. “As power leaves your mind, I think it tickles.”
“It’s hard not to laugh,” Lexie said with a smile.
“Feel free to laugh as long as you don’t break concentration. Are you ready to lift something?”
Her grandfather replaced the thin white candle she had been using with a wide-based red candle. At the top of the candle, near the pool of melted wax created by the flame, he placed a single grain of sand. “Command the sand the say way you did the flame.”
Lexie patiently went to work. She repeated the “Wa . . Wa,” sound and ordered the tiny grain to rise. Day after day, she watched for any kind of wiggle. Then she felt the tingle and saw the slightest gap between the sand grain and the red wax below.
“That’s it! You’ve done it!” her grandfather shouted. “You know how it feels. Now moving larger things is only a matter of practice.”
Lexie grinned proudly. After a few more days with the sand grain, she moved to a rice grain and then a glass bead. She stared at them for weeks. At first, when they moved, it was herky-jerky and in uncontrolled directions. The motion grew smoother and more controlled. After almost a year, she could move cups and plates with close to the skill as her grandfather. She no longer needed the candle to reach her concentration trance and she discovered that the heavier the object, the more the tingling sensation made her want to laugh.
Levitation was indescribably cool. Lexie never tired of sitting alone in her bedroom and moving objects around. She especially liked flying a delicate paper bird and pretending it was alive. As much fun as she had by herself and with her grandfather, she inevitably wondered if there was a point. What use was the most mind-blowing power in the world if she could not show anyone? She had made an unbreakable promise to her grandfather that the secret would stay hidden.
While she was coming to terms with her new power, Lexie neared completion of her culinary program. The same persistence and attention she showed with her grandfather served her well in the kitchen. She followed directions with exactness and remembered flavors and tastes and how to recreate them.
In the same way she acted while growing up, Lexie was friendly but shy around her fellow student chefs. She mostly talked with them when they were assigned to cook with her as a partner. Weekly cooking pairs were assigned based on skill level, with stronger students matched with weaker ones.
Always good at keeping secrets, Lexie had never revealed her interest in someone at the school named David. Like her, he was tall and lanky. Also like her, he was one of the best cooks in the class. They were never paired together and had spoken very few words to each other.
In the final cooking challenge that would determine the pairings for the final week in class, Lexie stood behind David watching him prepare an apple-based dessert. He worked on a classic apple pie while she made apple crumble. Halfway through their allocated time, she got a strange idea. What if David produced a terrible pie and was paired with her for the final week? It would give them the chance to talk. Unfortunately, David was far too careful to produce a bad pie. The only way it might happen is by accident or sabotage.
As Lexie’s brain toyed with the idea of dumping something nasty into David’s pie, he walked away from his work station and out of the room. His pie sat there filled with sliced apples and waiting for its top crust. Lexie looked around at the crowded workstations inside the kitchen. There was no way she could walk to David’s table without someone noticing. Then a smile crept over her face. There was no need to move and attract attention.
She worked impulsively to drop into her familiar trance. Then she concentrated on the open jar of chili powder in David’s spice collection. Chili powder would look similar to the cinnamon and nutmeg already on the pie and he would probably not notice. She giggled as her eyeballs tingled and the jar floated over the apple slices. After a few shakes, they were covered in chili powder. David returned a minute later and covered the pie with the top crust without looking twice at the contents. He popped the pie into an oven and started a timer.
When the baking was complete, all twenty culinary students cut thin pieces of their finished desserts and presented them to their instructor. She praised Lexie’s apple crumble, but when she reached David’s pie, she did a double-take.
“Is this supposed to taste like pepper? What were you going for?”
“I used basic spices. Nothing special,” David replied defensively.
“Did you taste it? Maybe you should take a bite.”
David nibbled a forkful of his pie and scrunched his nose. “It’s not supposed to taste like that.”
“You must have mixed up your spices. It happens to everyone. That’s why you need to test everything. I’m sorry. I have to rate this as one of the bottom desserts for the week.”
“No. There’s no way I put chili powder in this pie.” David paused as he remembered something. “It was perfect and then I went to the bathroom before putting on the crust. Somebody must have sabotaged me.”
“Sabotaged you? Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they wanted me to look bad.”
The instructor tried to sound conciliatory. “It’s not the end of the world. Great chefs learn from their mistakes.”
David remained unusually defensive. “It wasn’t my mistake. Check the video during the time I was in the bathroom.”
The school recorded cooking sessions using an overhead camera. This allowed instructors to review what happened and point out flaws in technique and timing. David continued to insist they look for a saboteur and the instructor finally agreed to humor him. The entire class watched as they fast forwarded to the point in the video when David left the kitchen to use the bathroom.
“See, the top crust isn’t on,” David said, narrating the action. “I’m sure someone’s going to walk by and mess with it.”
The video continued to play. In the background, Lexie could be seen standing at the workstation behind David’s. She wore a strange expression, as if she was on the verge of sneezing or laughing. While most everyone watched for someone to appear in the frame and sabotage the pie, a spice container moved almost imperceptibly on David’s table. The video was low-res enough that most people thought it was a harmless reflection from a nearby saucepan. After another minute, the footage showed David reappearing next to his pie.
“I didn’t see anyone at your station,” the instructor concluded. “Are you satisfied you weren’t sabotaged?”
David grew strangely quiet. He looked over his workstation and then toward Lexie. He stared intensely until she had to look away in embarrassment. “Yeah, I guess I made a mistake,” he said to the instructor.
“The important thing is to learn from it. Remember to taste everything. For the final week, I’m going to pair you up with Lexie.”
Lexie looked up and nodded at David with the slightest smile.
A few minutes later the class was dismissed to clean up their stations and prepare for their final week of cooking. Lexie and David found themselves standing next to each other, clearing table space near the front of the kitchen. He leaned close and said in a whisper, “You know, I saw something in that video.”
“You did?” Lexie asked, attempting to sound innocent in her surprise.
“Not everyone would understand. I mean, it’s kind of a big secret.”
“What do you mean?”
David leaned closed and whispered the “Wa . . Wa . . Wa” breathing sound the same way Lexie’s grandfather had introduced it. She looked back at him and they both instantly knew they shared a skill more amazing than cooking. Suddenly, Lexie felt a new kind of tingling sensation.
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