Have you ever walk past someone and wonder what is going on inside their head -- Anon Guest
[AN: Link to a Rickroll has been expunged. Thanks Nonny. Be proud. You got me.]
Every now and again, some species, somewhere, thinks it would be cool to be telepathic. The Melil, natural telepaths, do attempt to stop others from doing this to themselves because it really, really isn't a good idea.
Those without natural telepathy have no reason to filter their random thoughts. There's no telling, for instance, what's an intrusive thought and what is just Twosday[1] for the brain of a member of the Pax Humanis Enforcement Team. There's further complications like ear-worms and vivid imaginations and internal monologues... it's a noisy world out there for a mind-reader.
For all the imagined benefits, the detriments are uncountable. Telepaths need special training to go out into the world and maintain their sanity. Those who don't get it... suffer. Like the shambling example scrabbling through the shadows in a station that was, until recently, Deregger territory.
Someone recently believed that creating super soldiers with telepathy would give them an advantage on the battlefield. Once this proved to be an immense mistake, they then cut the costs of getting rid of them by just dumping them on a station and allowing nature to take its course.
This one calls hirself Ama. The Dereggers who made hir didn't expect any of their viable experiments to last longer than a week. Ama has lived for months. So have many of the others. Golden foil is an essential part of all headwear among the surviving experiments. It mutes the not-noise of others' heads. This way, Ama has a passing chance of hearing if anyone threatening comes too close.
Of course, in hir experience, every other living being that's not an experiment is someone threatening. This is what made hir jump and startle when the stranger was able to sneak up on them.
They were moving without loops or jumps, so they were not an advertising. They were quiet. Almost a not-presence to Ama's extended senses. Their mindscape was... soothing. Deliberately soothing. Nothing but peaceful music and images of relaxing things. A calm meadow with flowers and a gentle breeze. Kittens and puppies playing together. Butterflies. Ama had never seen these things in person, but the stranger knew them and now, so did ze.
Ama said. "I like the butterflies, but... who are you? How are you so quiet?" Ze readied hir weapon. Ama's creators had taken the most interesting weapons away before they had all been abandoned. That didn't stop them making their own. The spiked bludgeon had been favoured, initially, but as their ability to care for themselves sank, so too did their strength. Now? it was all about a long, sharp edge. "When are you going to attack?"
The stranger said, "My name is Mel, and I do not want to attack. I have come to help. Here. I have good food." A package recognisable as an MRE. Placed carefully on the floor, shoved away from brain-quiet Mel with a long stick that they then collapsed into a bundle of sticks and left where Ama could see.
Ama was smart enough to know to watch anyone else in the room. One hand threatening with the weapon, the other ready to snatch up the package. After acquisition it was a quick scuttle to a concealed and safe area where Ama could watch Mel while ze ate.
It was the first step on a long road to recovery and integration into society. Mel, and other natural telepaths like hir, were helping Ama's fellow telepaths on lessons like trust, and peace, and the hints that they, too, could silence the babble of minds without the help of special foil.
They would, like so many before them, get there in the end. Many would even join the CRC's enforcement arm to "drastically discourage" other labs from making other experiments like them.
Or, as the Alliance liked to put it, Send a Human to watch a Human.
[1] The Galactic Standard Calendar has a ten-day week, a four-week month, a ten-month year... and an amazing lack of imagination when it came to naming all of that.
[AN: Big thanks for the Ko-fi to Lauren Seaman. Part of your name is now a part of this story.]
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / GiulioFornasar]
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