All right, all right, so I'm a telepath. A teep. Someone who is usually feared due to misguided fantasy writers as a person who can wrest secrets directly from the minds around them or even able to hurt and humiliate the non-teeps through mental control.
Ha!
Real teeps have few advantages over the majority of people in the world, at least in ones and twos. It is only when we band together and form families that our real advantage of collective action can see the light of day.
Well...
No evolutionary or technological benefit ever came without a price-tag. I'm still not sure whether telepathy is a beneficial feature or the price-tag of some other "advantage". And, to the best of my knowledge, none of the other telepaths I know or converse with have any better a clue, either. All we know is that it gives us the advantage of working together as a community.
So, maybe, it takes widespread telepathy to make the ideals of socialism at all workable, but, then again, we aren't immune to the other drives that make us human. We have no no idea at all if that would work better in a larger community, though. Someday, probably pretty far into the future, we may have enough teeps in one place to be able to test this hypothesis.
One very "zen-like" feature of real telepathy like ours is that the enhanced empathy imposes its own burden. While it makes it easier for us to know how to fit in with others, it also lets us feel the pain-- and the less common pleasures-- of those around us... including the so-called "normals". This makes something that can be seen as a strength also impose a vulnerability.
Now, in "real" life, we telepaths still have little choice but to have "regular" jobs, just like everyone else on this planet. We also have our own talents which aren't easily shared with other telepaths even though skills can be learnt far more quickly than most others could, so there's still a fair degree of specialization that doesn't carry across.
Some skills, of course, require a lot of physical practice.
At the same time we try to manage actual risk, too. Getting injured means we share those pains with everyone else in our family... which has been distracting. It is not fun when one of my wives gives birth... so we usually make sure they have an epidural to cut down on the distraction for the rest of us.
Within the workplace our enhanced empathy often works against us by letting us have a clue of how our co-workers are feeling. This is often annoying, especially in some of the more sociopathic companies out there. We tend to move on as soon as we find our workspace degrading that way, and, given the way the financial world has been shifting, most companies seem to be finding ways to ensure that those who actually do the WORK of a company in serving the customers are the ones who feel the most misery.
But, really, there's not much we can do about that unless we form privately held firms. Small firms run by teeps tend to be better places to work, for instance, because they take better care of their customers, too.
I'd love it if there was a way to allow a normal to experience the kind of world we perceive. In my family alone there are a bunch of investment companies where we'd like to spread it the ability to feel another's pain and misery. Someday we hope to find why we are telepaths so that we can try to spread the gift to those who have too little empathy.
What we can do is try to reduce the misery where we can.
And we do. Wherever possible, we try to reduce misery in the workplace, sometimes by putting lonely people we work with together... when it's a good match. They don't know it but we can feel enough to recognize what it would take for a couple to be compatible.
Yes, you guessed it, we are covert match-makers, just so that we don't feel the echoing emptiness in a friendly co-worker's soul. It's not so much a public service as us being selfish in making our work environment a happier place.
Mind you we also have to deal with sociopaths in that same workplace, too, but we don't feel much pain from them , themselves, but we get plenty from their victims.
Lest you take this too lightly or think that it's usually men who seem to be good at imposing injuries, the greatest pain we get is from women who seem to feel the need to push people around in order to make themselves believe that they are climbing the pecking order.
Now I'll be honest with you, here.
I know those women are hurting, I really do.
But that doesn't excuse the pain and suffering I get to feel as they walk roughshod over co-workers.
Oh, sure, such men and women get turned over and pushed out the door when they've done too much damage in the workplace, but some of these pain "enhancement" technicians (a less fraught title than "torturer", wouldn't you agree?) are protected by someone up the food chain in management.
And, for the folks that we can't flush out of the system, I choose to play my ace.
I told you before that we telepaths can't control minds, right? Oh, sure, we can't mentally force someone to do something by force of mind, alone. I mean that. We can't even get a normal person to do something they would want to do just by thinking at them, much less get them to do something they don't want to do.
But... don't forget that empathy provides me an ace in the hole. With our knowledge of another's feelings, we can be very persuasive.
While it is true that we usually can't even read a normal's thoughts with any depth or accuracy, even with physical contact, it is also true that we can always tell how they feel... and how they feel in response to something that someone, like me, for instance, says to them.
Now my wives tend to ride in the back of my head and listen to me and what goes on around me, just as I do with them. We can't do this all the time, of course, because we need to be able to pay attention to what's happening around our own bodies, too, so, without concentrating, I'll admit that our situational awareness is usually not that good. When we are driving along in the same car, however, that same kind of awareness is enhanced.
So my wives are privy to what goes on around me and what I see or choose to look at... just as I am privy to what they are paying attention to.
Wives, you ask? As in plural? Multiple wives?
Yes, I have multiple wives, all of which are telepaths like myself. It's really pretty straight-forward, you see.
Just as telepaths are scarce in the population-at-large, it is annoying that male teeps are far less common than female teeps, usually by over thirty to one. It's only because we're trying to breed more telepaths that males are getting more common, though, truly, we are finding that we may never reach a point where there will be as many male telepaths as females.
So I have multiple wives. There's also some mobility since males get exchanged from family to family in order to keep up some kind of genetic diversity. We're paying a lot of attention to this, you know.
And, yes, my wives aren't always pleased with where my eyes occasionally land and linger, you know, any more than I am always pleased with what each of them has caressed with their eyes. When I ogle a woman in the office, especially one of the bitch-types, they are less than pleased.
Well, duh! Of course not! Just because we're telepaths does not mean that we don't have a sex drive, y'know! And, to top it off, those with the higher IQs amongst the human race seem to have some of the strongest libidos I have ever seen. I've met some. I suspect that Einstein was a real horn-dog, too, just like the others I've seen or know of.
Not that us teeps are slouches, intellectually.
Or... maybe we are. I'm not sure. Things seem to come more easily to us, be it math, engineering, medicine... or even something simple like creative inspiration... if we have a talent for it.
But we teeps usually fuck like bunnies. Fertile bunnies, I may add, given that I said before about wanting to make more teeps.
While telepathic sharing of sex is wonderful, human beings are not particularly well-suited to any environment with limited novelty.
All right, so a desire for novelty seems to be directly proportional to one's IQ score. So sue me. While you're at it, sue the memory of Richard Feynman, too.
For some reason this drive for novelty is only slightly stronger in human beings who have testosterone flowing in their blood stream, and, for their own reasons, my wives, able to share my experiences, had only a little less in the motivation to hunt up other sexual partners.
Heck, my "wives" are all bisexual, at least to some degree. As a man I learned a lot by what they shared with me, too... and enjoyed it.
So my wives were participants. Even when pregnant they were mistresses of the art of flirting and seduction... just as I had learned to be.
It's easier when you can taste another's feelings as you talk to them.
Now, as to mind control...
No, I can't command anyone to do something outlandish or humiliating.
Nor would I want to.
Remember, I'm a teep... and an empath. If you don't think I can feel another's pain-- physical or emotional-- you've got another think coming. And it hurts me more when it was me that inflicted the pain.
While there's none of the mind control you read about in various stories, there is, however, such a thing as seduction.
In the hands of a teep, seduction can be very subtle. As a teep I can know how you feel at any moment and I can tell what, based upon how you've responded to everything I've said and done, to next say or do to comfort you and bring you closer to me.
The first step, of course, is to ensure a feeling of rapport. Once you've gotten there, the next phase is to be able to try to converge on their motivations and get them to feel that you are both in accord.
Realize that this can't be done with a true sociopath. We can't get their confidence because the sicker they are the more they tend to be solipsists. As teeps we have all kinds of evidence that other people are real, you see, but a solipsist will not feel rapport with another human being.
But, when the person I am working on is one of those arrogant bitches in the office who has been stepping on her co-workers because she can, I can, by just touching her hand, for instance, know more of her internal dialogue than she would want someone else to hear.
So I can talk her into hearing me and listening to me. With my extra ability in following her feelings I can find, albeit with a few mis-steps, the path of least resistance.
And, usually, the trick is to know what the right questions are to get such people to question themselves. Especially if it's done in a manner where they do not feel pressured to answer you... but find the question disturbing.
My wives can help me, too. And each of them was worked on some of the men in their own workplaces, at least once, and gentled them, too, though they admit that men are a the far more simple creatures to adjust the attitudes of.
Mind you, when such men first start thinking they're going to "score" with a female co-worker their attitude usually gets even more obnoxious, so the second phase of conditioning a man is harder while the first phase of opening a woman is the hard part.
Rachel had been pissing me off for over a month given how much grief she was giving everyone she worked with. Being in the same department I got to feel her wrath directly, too, and no one could figure out how she managed to avoid crossing the line of sexual harassment that would get her tossed out of the company, either.
Our manager wasn't able to give her behavioral suggestions that would stick, either, and his manager had told him to keep her happy and that any negative reviews be made would have consequences for his career.
So I decided it was my turn act in taming this shrew.
Now don't get me wrong-- it's hard to get a word in edgewise with a woman like this, especially if you're encumbered with a Y chromosome, but, then, that's not unexpected, is it?
But, in taming a woman like this I have a secret weapon.
And, no, it's not my telepathy.
Yes, that should've given you a hint: one of my wives would visit, and, being an outsider, could strike up an innocent conversation with the current woman of many co-worker's nightmares. A couple of innocent questions, a pat on the back or shoulder and Holly soon managed to talk Rachel into going out with her for a drink.
Rachel, of course, assumed that Holly would accidentally provide her some hints of how to manipulate me, since Holly appeared to be just a "friend" of mine.
In any case I could feel Rachel's eyes on me more often than usual that afternoon.
Did you know that no matter how sure you are of something, no matter how much you may want to hate and control another person, there is a part of you that isn't certain?
And, given some of the wounds Holly learned of that made Rachel the person she was, she had used her own pain to ensure a sense of certainty that she was right and justified in having things her own way.
I have always felt that a feeling of being "justified" is key to sinning. The biggest mistakes in human history have always been "justifiable".
So now you know where I stand... though I hoped that my own means would not count against the ends... or vice versa.
So, yeah, I felt justified, too, but I was hoping to improve Rachel's lot along with every one elses.
That being said, having to be "right" and feeling justified in your choices is a shaky thing to use as the foundation for your personality. You see, then, doubt is usually not allowed into such minds since doubt is the woodpecker. A lot of arrogant and self-important people can be brought down by introducing just the tiniest slice of doubt.
A certainty of justification has been a common thread, you know. The worst cases are derived from religious beliefs and believers are usually admonished to deny all doubt from their faith. It is perhaps fortunate that any sectarian dogma can be attacked using other portions of "Holy Scripture". It was as if God wanted to deny us human beings a true degree of certainty...
So, for my sake, Holly inserted the first glimmer of doubt by telling Rachel that my wife Bobbie loaned me out and that I was good 'tween the sheets.
Being a teep I'm not completely incompetent between the sheets, by the way, but I'm easily distracted. Having sex with a teep is very different from a "normal" and I've come to the conclusion that a normal would likely not find me all that competent.
My sexual competence is neither here nor there, though, because the trick is to not have sex, but to keep deferring it... which, to a woman, implies respect.
Can someone explain to me why our so-called western civilization has respectability inversely proportional to sexuality? Why is a pathological personality that denies the call of biology considered respectable? And why are the sexual behaviors of many of the greatest thinkers kept hidden or their love-letters burned to keep them from the hands of an historian?
Sorry... I shouldn't go off on a rant like this but have had enough of this bullshit.
Even though it's bullshit that I can use to get someone to open their mind, even a little bit.
So the game circles around me being a sexual being showing an interest in Rachel and her feeling she has power over me because of this. With this shift in her mind's image of authority she was actually more open to me, all because she stopped seeing me as a threat.
By not trying to go beyond the deniable preliminaries to approaching her sexually, I stayed in a gray zone that her defenses weren't "programmed" to see.
That doesn't mean she wasn't open to the idea of sex with me, I could tell that she occasionally, usually when it was impossible for either of us to act on, felt arousal. I was able to tell that she wasn't too energetic in suppressing the thought when it did appear, either, which can be seen as flattering.
Mind you I didn't find her all that alluring. Especially not with the personality she was showing!
Yeah, as a teep I have an unfair advantage. I know how to keep from going so far that a woman will say "no" which does wear down her defenses, too. Knowing what she is feeling is what it takes to get her to think "maybe" instead of "no".
Does this sound like dancing through a minefield? No? Then I don't think you were paying enough attention.
Each person is different, you know, and the paths to their desires are mazes... and, being an active empath allows me to navigate that maze without getting lost or blowing one of my legs off. Some women have land-mines designed to neuter any man who steps on it, too.
But, inside the hardened shell designed to inflict pain is a person inside who has been hurt so badly that they can't see how they are behaving just like those who hurt them. I've believed for some time that it is the irony implicit in the shape of the universe that makes people into the things they hate the most.
I fear that I will someday be able to hate someone. I don't ever want to become something that I learned to hate.
Rachel and I, over time, got closer and closer as she was in the throes of calming down. We could have lunch together without her feeling threatened and could talk. This gave me a lot of time to talk her through various issues, usually without her realizing how they came up. In effect, I was a psychotherapist.
Well I am not a trained psychiatrist or psychologist. My wife Leona is, however, and she was effectively working through me. Without her there's not much I could have done for Rachel to get her to come to grips with herself.
Unfortunately the means to soften up her shell, at least so I could talk to her, left Rachel tied to me.
I'd made, in her mind, the transition from a potential lover to a male confidante, all without ever having to be intimate of body. She'd bonded to me as she started to figure out who she wanted to be rather than who she'd been.
For a short time she would have the mindset of a slave. I would have to tread carefully to ensure that she did not end up settling in to such a role.
All right, so I've fucked up once or twice in the past... or had someone else fuck it up for me. Rachel, I hoped, would choose to be without interference.
Why don't we want slaves?
Well, you see, the taste of an enslaved mind, to us, is unpleasantly sour but sometimes it settles in so deeply that we cannot shake a woman-- or a man-- loose from it.
Oh, I see, you wonder why such a mind would be open to enslavement. Think about it: people are lazy. There's a point where it may seem a lot easier to let someone else do the thinking for you instead of facing the unpleasant truths of where you've been and what you've done.
When a person jumps into themselves and makes themselve anew it is a breathtaking event, reminiscent of watchin a chrysalis open and a butterfly emerge.
Realize that, yes, any one of us can exercise a form of mind control, but it's more a case of leadership and imposes a set of costs on us all out or proportion to the so-called "power" we can use.
And you should know the key talent-- or skill?-- a leader possesses, don't you?
Leaders only lead where people are willing to follow.
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Author: Jack C Lipton Title: Jumpstart: PairaNormal Part: Universe: psi phi Summary: Mind control is NOT a matter of coercion Keywords: mc? Revision: $Revision: 1.1 $ Archive: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/CupaSoup/www/ Mailing List: FAQ: RCS: $Id: pairanormal.x,v 1.1 2007/06/12 18:12:14 jcl Exp $