Didn't See It Coming Poem by David Welch

His name was Carson Wetherstrum,
and his childhood wasn't grand,
his mother was plain trailer trash,
his father a confidence man.

He never knew his dad that much,
and only saw the man three times,
Carson had to live by his wits,
lucky for him, they were tuned fine.

See Carson was quite observant,
like Sherlock Holmes, if he were real,
he saw small things, and assembled
them into something he could feel.

As if he could enter your skin,
walk around with your point-of-view,
and having skills like this meant that
there was only one thing to do.

Carson became a mentalist,
would ‘read you mind, ' put on a show,
figure out your hidden secrets,
from glancing simply at your clothes.

He'd read your personality
by the tone you used to say, "Hi."
Not really psychic, of course not,
but impressive to onlooking eyes.

He'd consult for police sometimes,
helped them to find leads they might miss,
even took pay from private eyes,
got a good income stream from this.

And all this work caught attention
of a man in a college town,
a psychiatric professor
who invited him to come down.

Offered money to scan his brain,
so that he might see how it worked,
said it could advance their knowledge,
Carson let the man do his work.

It went beyond cat-scans and such,
they gave him an array of tests,
memory, visual recall,
Carson scored high, amongst the best.

After a couple days of this
the professor took him to lunch,
said, "We do work we have to hide…"
Carson said, "Yeah, I had a hunch."

The professor said, "There's a fact
which has bothered me a long time,
the way that chaotic systems
exceed the grasp of human minds.

"You saw it with the socialists,
cut down by the one, brutal fact,
that economics is too large,
to master it our poor brain lacks.

"You see it with teachers like me,
struggling to figure things out,
coming up with these grand theories,
only to be cut down by doubts.

"Because we missed something back there,
some small detail along the path,
that threw us off, made us look dumb,
and all of society laughs.

"The human brain is not enough
for all of the factors out there,
yet AI has not our feelings,
or instincts to make it aware.

"But if we could combine it all
in an advanced brain like your own…
Then maybe we'd take the next step,
master the things we've never known."

"So I am guessing, "said Carson,
"You want to make me a cyborg? "
The prof said, "We've done it to apes,
one of them now writes on the floor.

"It would be done in secrecy,
authorities wouldn't approve…
but I tell you we can do this,
our results, so far, have been good."

Carson thought for a long moment,
then said simply, ‘What does it pay? "
Prof said, "Rich men are interested,
you'll be set for all of your days."

Then Carson simply gave a shrug,
waid, "When came we set it up then?
Super smarts and a full trust fund,
2on't have to work the fairs again."

The professor gave a smile,
waid, "We'll set it up for next week."
They shook hands and Carson went off,
wo excited he couldn't sleep.

The surgery was done in a
vet's office, (the man liked kickbacks) ,
engineers and surgeons both there,
to make sure it all stayed on track.

Twenty-three hours it took them,
had to pump in six bags of blood,
wired the machines to his nerves,
until it was finally done.

When Carson awoke he didn't
feel all that different from before.
Prof said, "We'll slowly turn it on,
make sure that your brain can endure."

Over the next weeks he did that,
one at a time things jumped to life,
his memory became iron,
he'd recall things at a mere sight.

Problems that had long troubled him
came clear, as if they'd never been,
he could see microexpressions
on the face of women and men

as clearly as a mountain side,
standing tall in the bright daylight,
twinges in muscles, shifts in space,
all right there, blatant in his sight.

But that's where the problems began,
the professor was tedious,
running endless arrays of tests,
and Carson grew tired of this.

He'd give the man answers before
the testing would even begin,
the professor said, "Now play ball,
or the money won't be coming."

But this was a mistake, you see,
Carson saw the shift in his eyes,
there were no deep pockets out there,
his ‘great reward' had been a lie.

So one day, while they were testing,
he snuck a knife into his boot,
when the professor came up to him
Carson simply ran the man through.

He'd read the man's muscle motions,
and knew he had complete surprise,
it took the briefest of moments,
then he left the bastard to die.

And though he fled ‘cross the country,
Carson's found more troubles at hand,
as his brain learned the interface,
and he looked at his fellow man

he found them quite predictable,
more so then he'd ever seen,
the system stored so much data,
presented it crystal and clear.

It was no longer a smart guess,
but a strange mechanical act,
this plus this lead to this result,
and observation proved the fact.

Give him a handful of seconds
and his turbocharged cyborg mind
could know what a man would do next,
and it happened time after time.

Carson chose to have fun with this,
he signed up to do some boxing,
read their moves and never got hit,
knocked out opponents while laughing.

But this grew dull, he turned it up,
would watch the financial TV,
instantly know who was lying,
and bought his stocks accordingly.

Soon he had built piles of cash,
but had to bring this to an end,
investigators were sniffing,
thinking he must be fraudulent.

For several years he did such things,
moving from career to career,
wrote hit novels, won an Oscar,
then would get bored and disappear.

But proving he was the greatest
grew tiresome, it was easy!
Carson wanted a challenge, yes,
and in his mind he hatched a scheme.

He felt like a God amongst men,
and gods did not limit powers,
he bet he could do anything,
would escape this mood so dour.

It started with a simple theft,
right out of plain grocery store,
observed cameras, walking patterns,
walked out with ten strip loins and more.

Saw no reports on the TV,
they had no leads they could pursue,
if Carson take things at will
there was little he could not do.

His next target, an armored car,
timed it to have a gang nearby,
in the shooting he snuck away
while gang-leaders went to be tried.

Following that came a big bank,
required a lot more planning,
he walked off with eighty thousand,
a teller was dragged off bawling.

But then, just as it was before,
the thrill of the thing did wear off,
he stole jewels out of museums,
threw them out, since the thrill was lost.

Inevitably he went worse,
went after women for the lust,
he'd read their moves if they fought back,
they'd soon be helpless to his thrusts.

He did this in disguise, of course,
and he read their reactions well,
he'd leave red herrings, fooling cops,
left boyfriends and bosses in cells.

This sated him for a whole year,
fathered bastards on his victims,
he could predict their fertile times,
thought that they should remember him.

But even this became boring,
women seemed so simple and weak,
and gods had power to take life,
so this new thrill Carson did seek.

He did not target the weak men,
they were easy, not worth his time,
he went after the big and strong,
a football player that first time.

The big man could have crushed him dead,
but moved so damn painfully slow,
Carson read him like a kid's book,
sunk the knife deep with a swift blow.

Of course he had arranged it all
in a place where they'd find nothing,
the sports world mourned this ‘tragic death, '
police couldn't find anything.

That opened up a murder spree,
though no one could see it as such,
he roamed around, used different ways,
never left the coppers with much.

Soon one life wasn't good enough,
began to take multiple souls,
it increased the difficulty,
no one knows the entire toll.

Carson even would kill people
in broad daylight, in public space,
calculating how to do it
without people seeing his face.

But as a reader might expect,
with this too Carson soon grew bored,
he saw every play moves ahead,
it just didn't thrill anymore.

This was weighing upon his mind
when he picked out his victims,
a family of four, walking to church,
he'd do it, and all would see him.

They were not anything special,
he just saw all the folks around,
gauged how they would react to it,
who would run, who would go to ground.

He knew what the father would do,
he looked like an upstanding type,
with a wife and two young daughters,
he'd be terrified, but would fight.

Not that it made too much difference,
he'd kill them all in ten heartbeats,
saw from the way the man's armed moved
he'd used punches initially.

A quick duck and stab to the ribs
would finish him there on his feet,
his wife was small, she would tremble,
and die before raising a bleat.

As if it already happened
Carson raced on after his prey,
his machine mind calculating
probabilities all his way.

The father saw Carson coming,
the wife and the kids shrieked in fear,
Carson saw the man squaring up,
one more easy prey, it appeared.

Carson saw him loading to punch,
and ducked low to slide in the blade,
but the father spun and stuck out
his foot, and forward Carson splayed.

His mind reeled as he hit the road,
how had he not seen this before?
What factor had his system missed,
and then realized, with pure horror

that the professor had been right,
a chaotic system men were,
he could read almost everyone,
but out there, some would be blurred.

Some kind of small mutation or
variation he'd not thought up,
a factor that escaped notice
had left Carson sh-t out of luck.

And yet, despite all that happened,
he felt then a moment of hope,
something new he could not predict,
something still quite beyond his scope.

He had to turn and tell the man
to go home and have many kids,
so no future generations would
know the kinds of boredom he did.

But as he tried to do all this,
to offer this victim his thanks,
he felt a sharp and sudden blow,
then instantly his world went blank…

The father's heel struck on his spine,
just where it meets up with the brain,
the blow so hard it severed it,
Carson would never breath again.

His wife just hugged her crying kids,
the father looked on, in a haze,
"There's crazies everywhere you look,
you just can't escape them these days…"

His own nerves felt frazzled and worn,
and worry in his stomach lurched,
but cops would call it self-defense,
there were cameras there on the church.