The Curse of the Gift

The ecoTrain question of the week is how would things be different if we were all telepathic? I decided to answer the question with fiction from the perspective of someone who wakes to a world of new abilities.

Dan’s very first thought when he woke up on a gloomy Saturday in October was that he must have drank more than he thought he had on Friday night. His whole body was tingling, and there was a freaky humming noise. Kind of like one of those small spray bottle fans was inside his ears. He stood up slowly just to be sure he was actually steady. His head wasn’t achy. Just buzzy. And he didn’t feel nauseous, though he did feel a sort of vertigo.

He tried to add up in his head. 2 beers at the bar. 2 shots of tequila when he got home with Jose and George, and one more beer after they left while he watched the late show. No way 5 drinks should make him feel this weird. Maybe he was getting sick. He went to the mirror and looked closely. Maybe a little pale? God, Dan, you're so fucking paranoid. You just need coffee, he told himself.

He threw on some clothes and headed for the elevator because why make coffee when you can pay $4 for one cup? The doors opened. He saw the super hot chick from the 10th floor. He was just thinking about how smokin she looked when the weirdest thing happened. The buzzing and humming sort of tuned in, kind of like hitting a radio station in the midst of the fuzz. And there was a clear thought that wasn’t his. He couldn’t really hear it per se, but he knew it didn’t come from his own mind because it was something like, “Oh crap. This motherfucker. Please don’t talk to me. Please don’t talk to me.” They both looked at each other with a mix of terror and disgust and then immediately to the floor. For the rest of the elevator ride, it was like echoes in his head. Some thoughts were his. Others were not, though they all were some variation on, “What the hell is going on?”

Out on the street, pretty much everyone looked horrified. Everyone was casting suspicious looks all around. And the buzz and the hum were totally overwhelming. He felt like he was on one of those spinning rides at the fair where you hear the voices fade quickly in and out as you spin around. In the coffee shop there were a couple people in line, but no one was hanging around. When he got to the back of the line, the woman in front of him was fidgeting wildly. She began crying softly, and he could hear, “That’s it. I’ve snapped. Now I have paranoid voices in my head. I knew I should have taken better care of myself. Now it’s too late. I never should have stayed with him.” Dan touched her arm softly, and she almost jumped out of her skin. “Ma’am,” he said softly. She cried harder. “You’re not going crazy. I can hear them too.” The two women in front of her turned around. “Us too,” they thought and spoke at the same time which created this weird sort of echo that made Dan feel woozy again. In fact he was feeling more nauseous now. He started swooning and grabbed the woman in front of him. Then everything went black.

When he woke up, everyone in the coffee shop was standing around him. This time his head did really ache. He reached toward the center of the pain and felt a big knot on the back of his head. He wasn’t 100% sure he was ok, but he wanted to get out fast. All their thoughts were swimming around in his brain, some worry, some poking fun, and some still freaking out about what was happening. He grabbed a coffee that he hadn’t had to ask for out loud, tossed some money on the counter, and ran for the door assuring everyone out loud that he was fine while sending quite the opposite message with his thoughts.

Back in his building, he was nearing panic. Seeing someone waiting for the elevator, he immediately made the decision to take the stairs, perhaps not a wise choice considering he had just fainted, possibly had a concussion, had already downed half his coffee and hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday’s lunch. He luckily made it up the stairs. Safely back in his apartment, he slumped into his couch, heart pounding, still feeling nauseous, and with a horrible ache in his head. He knew he needed food but didn’t want to stand pretty much ever again. He flipped on the tv because reading news on his computer was absolutely too much effort. The news anchors were nearly hysterical with joy. Of course we all know they live for traumatic events like this. They were excitedly chattering away, often talking over each other, though they did periodically pause to shoot each other odd glances. Yes, indeed, somehow everyone was now telepathic. They were interviewing people on the street, most of whom were hysterical.

Pretty much all the channels were 24 hour news for the next several days. Hundreds of thousands of people committed suicide in fear of letting the world know who they really were. Nearly 75% of married couples had filed for divorce by the end of the week. The chaos within the institutions of government neared panic. Politicians have always lied for a living. It’s sort of their jam. They simply couldn’t function. Then the ethical dilemmas were just pouring in. Telepathy would have made the judicial system a whole lot easier, but was it ethical for them to enter your mind? Policemen, of course, could give two shits about ethics. They were delighted to exploit whatever avenue they could. They did not foresee, however, the reverse. The stories hitting the news of the thoughts of policemen bordered on shocking. We’ll just say that suspicions that white supremacists and nazis had infiltrated the police force were confirmed. Harassment in the workplace took on a whole new meaning, and millions of people made an effort to shift to online work. Some didn’t leave their houses for months. Because the telepathy didn’t work through video, millions turned even more deeply to their televisions in an effort to retain some sense of normalcy.

Dan, however, was part of a small minority who saw this as an opportunity to connect at a deeper level. They organized meetings online, mostly in beautiful outdoor spaces. Then they would just mingle. They’d let their thoughts come and work things out slowly and gently. In the beginning they had to apologize often. There were a lot of embarrassing moments, but they had this incredible opportunity to really learn how their actions and thoughts affected others. It was particularly informative for the men. They were able to gain a much better understanding of their aggression and how often women lived in fear as a result. They learned to be more comfortable with the thoughts they had initially believed were weird or disturbed when they discovered most everyone actually had similar thoughts. Of course there were those who were really out there and actually pretty frightening, and everyone was able to share with those people how that made them feel. Some were able to shift with counseling, and others had to either agree to not allow those thoughts to turn to action, or they had to hide away.

After maneuvering through the initial muddle, they were able to gather in groups for a specific purpose and collaborate on a level that no one could have ever imagined before. At the end of a year, thoughts didn’t even have to be complete. Thoughts just sparked from person to person to person. Governments were completely gone. There was no more need for police. It felt a little like a kind of utopia had been created by dissolving the boundaries between them and allowing them to become more than they ever could have alone.

But in that lay the drawback. There was almost no alone, and there was certainly no quiet. Once you got more attuned to it, it was a constant barrage, even for those who lived alone. It simply never stopped. As they moved further into that second year, the suicides started to go on the rise again. People started moving deep into the wilderness, into caves, wherever they could at least mostly get away. Lots of people went insane under the pressure and overwhelm.

Then there were the righteous. You know there’s always those people. No matter what’s going on in the world, there are always those who believe they should get to tell everyone how to do and be. They believed the gift should be used to make things better for the whole world and that they knew best what that looked like. They started admonishing everyone for every negative thought. They wandered like the parents of the world just bossing people. It wasn’t quite as bad as the police had formerly been, but almost.

In the end, Dan could take it no longer. He bought a shotgun and taught himself how to shoot. He read for weeks and weeks about foraging wild foods and natural building. He was a city boy, so this was quite a stretch for him. Then he found out through some online groups about a kind man they called Eco Alex who was knowledgeable about natural building and had some friends who knew a lot about hunting, wild foraging, and permaculture. They called themselves the EcoTrain, and they lived deep in the woods near an abandoned train track. Some of them even lived in old box cars. They only asked that people bring 10 items from their wish list when they came to study. They took no more than 5 people at a time, and when their training was complete, they headed out to start their own small communities of literally like minded people.

Dan gathered some supplies the ecoTrain needed and headed with just one backpack to the elevator. He was surprised to see the beautiful woman from the 10th floor because he hadn’t seen her since the gift had come. As he walked through the door of the elevator, he apologized for having looked at her like meat so often. Quickly they figured out they were both headed for the ecoTrain. They were both pretty glad to have someone to share the journey with. Time would tell if living off the land in small communities would make the gift of telepathy any easier.

...to be continued

All pictures mine or Pixabay

I'm a passenger on the ecoTrain! Check out more awesome articles about telepathy and other world changing awesomeness @ecotrain.