The original, 2-page short story version of

The Man with the Incredible Mind

Copyright © 1976 by Roger M. Wilcox. All rights reserved.
(writing on this story began 15-March-1976)

The original draft was written by hand in pencil, on both sides of the paper, as a generative writing assignment in 5th grade (yes, fifth grade). It was inspired by a TV show featuring a man with psychic powers. Or maybe it was an alien who looked like a man. It was the 1970s, after all. All spellings, punctuation, capitalizations, space aliens, etc. are as in the original. The original didn't bother with right margins, and frequently tried to cram the last word on the line into less space than was available. I use italics in this transcription wherever the original switches from block-printing to cursive.

You have been warned.




One day, an ordinary man walking down the street saw, in his mind, a flying saucer. It was in a circular view, in space with a kind of noise that the saucer and the thought made.

The saucer seemed to have some writing on it which only I could read. It said "<three 'words' made up of random scribbled characters appears here in the original>", which was translated in my mind as "Property of Planet Zemar."

"Planet Zemar?!", I thought. I wondered where that was.

The noise in my mind sounded like Dioioioioioioi!, which I didn't care for.

When the saucer was landing, the man (myself) saw that it was enormous! It was the size of an apartment building!

Then the most startling thing ... a so-called brain-wave transmitter came out and started shooting thoughts at me!

I started reading these thoughts with my powers. The thoughts said, "We come from planet Zemar, as you know now. Our planet is being overpopulated with Zemarans and we need room. So we came to your planet, Earth, to live – a portion of us, that is. We know that your earth has over 3 billion people in its population but we have 18 million of our people inside this one space ship. So we will transform our bodies into 18,000,000 of yours, while they die."

Oh no, he thought. I must stop them, but how? Oh, how stupid of me! I can use my new powers!

"Alright, you guys!" I forced by thought waves into them. "You just take off and don't bother us any more!"

I then let out a surge of power onto the space ship. It was a lot of power, but just one of them had at least twice the power of my powers, so it could not make them move out to their own planet.

Now, 18,000,000 people were in danger — and I had to think of something fast to do about it!

At that time, a sprinkler was turned on. I didn't know it, until some of it splashed on the space ship. The space ship then sent tons of smoke hurdling up into the air.

"Water," I thought, "I'll just send some water up and destroy the space ship!"

I then let out a surge of power onto a fire hydrant. The water then raced up and KAPOW! ... The space ship was destroyed.

I then went dome and started eating dinner. After I ate, it was late and I went to bed.

The next day I stepped out and went over my friend's house! I just couldn't believe it!

In the afternoon, though, when I was playing "supermonopoly" (brain-like) with my friend, I noticed a white "+" on my powers. The + then turned yellow, then orange, then red and then my powers dissappeared.

On my next roll, I then went to jail.



THE END




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