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“Yes, I’m admin for this gaming conference.” She dug her “Stir Decks Con” badge out of the third fleshy abyss between her navel and solar plexus, then flashed it at him. “But I only heard part of your complaint. Why do you want me to disqualify the winning team?”

“Because Colin, their team leader, was spying on us with one of those new hearing aids.”

“So? Other people in this room have hearing aids too. Anyone could have heard you.”

“But not actually paid attention to us. Colin cherry-picked the one conversation that he needed to overhear in a crowded conference room with over 100 loud games yapping away. Dozens of people were discussing strategy, ordering another cocktail-”

“Maybe Colin is some kind of genius with selective attention. The hearing aid is irrelevant.”

“His heading aid is this new model. It can figure out what you want to pay attention to based on your brain activity.  Then it selectively enhances only the conversation you want to hear while suppressing other noise. Colin chose to pay attention to us talking quietly at a table over 30 feet away. He could hear us and us alone. That’s humanly impossible.”

“Hm. Except you could do the same thing with a directional microphone. Or just plant a mike at their table.”

“Then you’re enhancing all sound in a region, not two people talking. I’ll demonstrate. I have the same system. I just turned it back on.” He closed his eyes and slumped in his chair. “Now I’m paying attention to a conversation at that northeast corner table. It’s a guy bragging to his buddy that he’s been pounding some lesbian. Apparently she and her wife want to become parents and asked him to impregnate one of them.”

“I…. yes.” She spoke much more slowly as she struggled to manage two simultaneous conversations. “Now that you mention it, I’m paying attention to that conversation too.”

“But you heard that conversation all along. You would have kept ignoring it if I hadn’t told-”  

“He had a vasectomy?” She was so shocked that she dropped both her Lipobars.

“I don’t know. I’m paying attention to you now. So you see my point. I request-”

“And he’s been launching blanks into my wife all this time?! We wanted a baby!!”

“Sounds like I made my case. If you could, you know, pay attention to me again, then-”

She was already lumbering toward the offending fucker. Ten minutes later, Colin accepted the first place trophy. The cheering crowd tried to ignore the melee at the northwest corner.