Wednesday, May 14, 2014

02/11/2014 Prompt: A Lie


If Regan could see her now, Trixie thought, he would say that she was surely earning his favorite nickname for her because she was fidgeting to beat the band. 

As part of her class in Criminal Behavior 101, she had to participate in a polygraph test, and not just participate, she had been chosen as a test subject and instructed to lie intentionally while trying to regulate her breathing, the pitch of her voice and to delay answering questions enough to try to fake out the machine.


First she had to be hooked up to the machine with a strap that went around her chest just under her boobs.  She also had to have wires attached to her head with goopy sticky stuff.  She could already imagine the hard time she would have washing that gunk out of her hair.  She also had glove points on her fingers, to help record her pulse or breathing or something. She did not believe in the accuracy of the polygraph, so she was beyond caring about what each part did.


The questions were all formated to be answered either yes or no, and the first questions were simple and designed to use previous knowledge to distinguish between her efforts to tell the truth and to tell a lie.


Are you now sitting down?
Are the lights on in this room?
Is your name Helen Beatrix Belden?
Is your name Beatrix Helen Belden?


Then they got harder and made her more nervous.


Do you intend to truthfully answer each of the test questions?

Prior to this year, did you ever tell a serious lie to anyone who really trusted you?

Before 2010 did you ever try to lie your way out of any kind of serious trouble?


Trixie knew that she was not only supposed to lie on purpose, she was also supposed to try to hide the lie. But that sixth question, just how was she supposed to answer that?.  


She had lied and told Jim that she didn’t really love him.  Could she lie to the machine to make it seem like she wasn’t lieing to Jim?  


Oh, she didn’t trust this dang machine.  She would much rather lie using body language because as bad as it sounds? She had learned to look someone in the eye and lie without ever being caught.



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