“They planted a chip in my head,” he said, removing the hand that was adjusting the knot of his tie to pat the back of his head. His nimble fingers listlessly pulled at his blonde hair for a few moments as he stared at me, the green irises of his eyes resembling life rings floating in pools of thick, white liquid strewn with thin, red ripples.

Unbuttoning his sport coat, he shifted in his seat and continued: “The silicon chip generates the voices I hear. They have programmed remote access for the chip and, in order to obtain my attention, they periodically have the voice threaten me.”

“Threaten you?”

“Yes. For example,” he said, his fingers fidgeting with the back tail of his blue and green striped necktie, “the voice informed me earlier today that a man would punch me in the left eye if I did not follow the directions. The voice has also told me that they will plan a head-on collision on the freeway. Things like that. That’s why I keep moving around; if I stay in one place too long, they will find me and the likelihood that they will kill me increases.”

Last week, he was at the Best Western. This week, he was staying with his uncle.

“I may go to Vancouver next week—I’m not sure yet,” he pondered.

“In addition,” he said, “they use the chip to download information from my brain.” He reached into his leather portfolio, handsomely embossed in gold leaf with his initials, and pulled out a sheet of paper. It was a printed copy of this webpage. “They have successfully developed technologies to not only transmit data through my brain, but also to take my thoughts. I don’t know how they are going to use my information. Maybe they want to use my accounting skills; I’m not sure. I worry that they will find me to implant a more advanced chip to download my thoughts faster—I don’t want to get killed in the process. My knowledge of business and economics is probably useful to them; they may be developing strategies to bring financial ruin to the country. I can’t let them do that. I’ve been researching ways to block transmission from my brain to their receivers—I try to stay in buildings with metal frames and multiple cinder blocks. It’s hard.”

My eyes skimmed the sheet of paper. He had neatly highlighted the second paragraph.

“Can you order a CAT scan of my head and refer me to a neurologist? I think that is my best hope to get the chip removed,” he remarked, his left index finger tapping on the portfolio in his lap.

“Why is it always a chip in the head?” I asked my colleague. “I never hear about nanobots in the bloodstream, recording devices in the spine, or circuits in the belly. It’s always a chip in the head. I wonder when this started… and what was it before microchips existed?”

“I’ve wondered that, too,” he exclaimed. “And so I looked it up.” (He’s rather enthusiastic about history.) “In the past, it sounds like people endorsed demon possession… and then there was a time when people reported that there were devils or gremlins in their teeth—little minions telling them what to do from inside their mouths.”

“Teeth, huh,” I said. “Why teeth?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe they had tooth pain?” He shrugged before continuing, “The theme seems to be one of external control—something alien dictating what these people do. The demon, the gremlin, the chip. That they are not in full control of themselves.”

“Uh huh,” I answered, still imagining a gremlin hiding within the crevices of a yellowed tooth. “What an uncomfortable way to live.”

I still can’t find any citations.