Telepath. (STORY 1000!)(Kevin Hughes) Author’s Note:

A long time ago I started posting stories on StoryStar.com. About a year after I retired I started writing short stories. I don’t have the attention span to write books, but I did like short stories. So I wrote one. And then another. And then another. Then I set a goal: One hundred stories. I wanted to write one hundred short stories. That sounded like fun…and achievable. It was both.

That goal became a sort of a moving target for my creativity. When would the ideas run out? When would the stories dry up? When would the dreaded “Writer’s Block” rear its ugly head and stop me in my tracks? Soon the goal became two hundred, then three hundred, then four hundred. Finally, five hundred. You would think that would be enough. Nope. Six hundred. Seven hundred. Eight hundred. I wrote the Editor…should I try for a Thousand Stories.

“Why not, just don’t rush.”

I didn’t. And here it is, story number one thousand. 1,000. Sheesh. As my British Friends would say: “I am a bit chuffed.” Thank you StoryStar. Thank you JD. And thank you to all the other Authors and Readers. It has been fun. Smiles, Kevin

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Excerpts from “The Telepath.”

A journal of an extraordinary life.

I guess it started when I was a kid. I remember being five years old and feeling so sad and lonely in the sand box. Just some plastic buckets and shovels as companions. Nobody near me. Nobody playing with me. Just an old sandbox with a lonely little child playing by herself. I felt it all. Except I wasn’t playing in the sandbox. I was swinging on the swing set a good thirty feet away from the sandbox. And I was a boy.

Back then I had no clue what was going on. That some folks are “Broadcasters” and some are “Receivers”…and all of them are Telepaths. As far as we know, both kinds are relatively rare…about one in a million. I am a true Telepath. All that means is I can both “Broadcast” and “Receive.” As far as Scientists and Doctors can tell…so far…with half the World’s population tested…I am the only True Telepath. It sounds like an Honor. It isn’t.

Anyways, as I was saying…I felt like that little girl’s thoughts and feeling were my thoughts and feelings. I could feel the loneliness, the painful shyness that stopped me from playing with the other kids. I felt a hot tear roll down my cheek. The sand tumbled over my hands as I filled the bucket to over flowing, dumped it out, and started over. Trying to numb the pain with repetition.

I stopped swinging. I walked over to the sand box. I said: “Hi!”

I could feel the burst of joy when she looked up. The hope almost made me cry too. The shyness quickly smothered the fragile hope of a playmate. A tiny squeak of a “Hi”…barely above a whisper eked out of her mouth. It made me mad that someone so sweet, so gentle, so shy…couldn’t ’t let the world in. So I projected friendship and kindness. I didn’t know that I was doing that. I just felt bad for someone so nice to be ignored. It reached through the shielded hopes she kept hidden from everyone.

“My name is Kevin. What’s yours?”

“Kathy.”

“Oh. Well, can I play you with you? Or maybe push you on the swings?”

That was my first time as a Telepath. Let me tell you, I staggered when the swooping joy of being acknowledged and invited to play leaped to the surface of her five year old mind. Later I learned to deal with those mind staggering - sometimes mind bludgeoning - strong emotions. Emotions that weren’t mine. I stumbled a bit. Luckily Kathy thought I just tripped over the railing around the sand box. We both laughed. And laughter feels good on your mind.

We made a sand castle, we went over to swing for a while. By the end of recess we were friends. We still are. She was the first to know about my…my…gift. I told her when we were Seventeen. That was the night she broke up with me. She was afraid that I had manipulated her all those years. She thought (mistakenly) that I could control her thoughts and feelings. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now. Telepathy doesn’t work like that. We can “hear” your thoughts and feelings…but can’t change them. We can project our thoughts and feelings so you can “hear” them…and that’s it.

You don’t lose Free Will, Choice, or the ability to think for yourself. We can Broadcast, or Receive (I can do both), but we can’t influence anyone. That myth is hard to kill. And it almost killed me more than once. But that is a story for much later.

It is very difficult to have a Social Life, when you can hear any strong emotion or thought in the babble around you. Crowds are my Kryptonite. Sometimes I even go into a coma trying to avoid the onslaught of unsolicited thoughts and feelings. You see a couple sharing a hot dog. I don’t. I can hear his lies as clear as wind chimes. I can feel her confusion over how his excuses and evasions are stacking up. I know he has more than one girlfriend (to put it nicely) she …does not. And I know how that story ends.

It was Kathy who outed me to the Psychiatrists, Scientists, and Doctors. She didn’t mean to. I forgave her. One thing you can’t hide from a Telepath, at least the Receiver type, is the Truth. They KNOW your thoughts. And reasons. And Excuses. They hear them all, just as if they had been thoughts of their own. And believe me, you can’t handle the Truth. It took me decades. And I learned from other Receivers how they coped. Together we found a solution. One that allowed us to control (but not completely) who’s thoughts we receive. It helped. A bit.

So back to Kathy outing me. I was twenty one years old. Just about to graduate from college. I was known for being a loner. Some interpreted it as being aloof. I wasn’t. I just couldn’t handle being around people who were drunk, high, or suffering from emotional overload of raging hormones. You couldn’t either. I bet. All the Receivers I met and worked with over the years…had at least one hard bump up against those same three mind states. Of course, if you are in love, and the person you are in love with is truly in love with you…well, that, my friend, is an experience that makes ecstasy look tepid. In some way, everyone on Earth is a minor Broadcaster and Receiver. Rudimentary telepathy.

The kind of everyday experience that doesn’t happen everyday, but we know it when it does. Because we have names for it: ‘On the same wavelength”, “in the Zone,” Bonding, melding, intimacy…call it what you will, but it just means your brain and the person you are on the same wave length with - are forming a sympathetic harmony. The same thoughts at the same time in two different brains. That, they tell me after thousands of hours of testing and experiments- is the evolutionary ground zero for my “gifts”. And all Telepaths started from this same embryonic form of real empathy or compassion. Kindness, it turns out, is innate. We just shield ourselves from it most times. But I digress.

I will try and stay on track this time. So here is how Kathy outed me. She went to Therapy. Yep. That’s all it took. She told the Therapist that she loved me. But she couldn’t be with me. Why not? was the first question from the Therapist. Kathy’s answer was simple: “He knows what I am thinking. And he can read my mind.”

As you can imagine…the Therapist thought that Kathy had a real Mental Issue. Several sessions later…she was convinced I did. She called me. We can’t read or broadcast over the phone. Don’t ask me why. Ask the Brainiacs. All I know is that the phone is a safe way to talk to me. I can’t read your thoughts or feelings over the phone. And I can’t broadcast mine. So when she said that “Kathy needs help.” I innocently agreed to meet her. It was a mistake.

“Kevin, how nice to meet you.”

A pleasant smile was on her face. Her handshake was firm and dry. And fake.

Her mind was reeling with visions of me as a text subject. She had already classified me (in her mind) as one of those men who have learned to read body language and subtle verbal clues to entice women and then control them. The thoughts of Borderline Personality Disorder, Sociopath, and Narcissist bounced around her mind in a cacophony of diagnosis. And we hadn’t even spoken yet…at least I hadn’t. Then I made a mistake. I told her the truth…while still holding her hand. And that fake smile still plastered on her face.

“I am none of those things. You are dead wrong. And I don’t appreciate you thinking I controlled anyone, was abusive in any way, or manipulated Kathy into thinking she loves me. She does love me. I know that. I am not your laboratory rat.”

As you can imagine…that didn’t go well. I was forced to “volunteer” for some research. For six months I endured having monitors attached, even when I slept. Skull caps with tiny probes were my everyday where. I still hate the smell of glue because of those damn experiments. I probably know more about EEG machines and their chicken scratch outputs…and the Technician and Researchers that run them than most Ph.D’s. I also know more about what an MRIf can and can’t tell about how your brain is firing. And how you feel about those readouts is as clear to me as block printing to a person with 20/20 vision. Most times I just keep those mental rumblings to myself. Unless you intend harm. Then I do Broadcast loud and clear. And that puts an end to that.

Kathy came to see me a couple of times. We talked. I listened in a way that most folks can’t. And unlike most folks, I understood. Would you want to live with someone who knows your every thought…no matter how inconsequential? If you live with someone like me, there are no private thoughts. None. Yeah, I thought so. Not thinking of it as a gift now…are you. Welcome to my world.

I don’t mean to sound bitter…but how would you like to know someone loves you, but can’t be with you. You love them back, and know that you can’t be with them either. It is frustrating. Unfair. Sad. And it hurts like the Dickens. Kathy stopped coming. I could feel her embarrassment and guilt. She never wanted me to become an Experiment. Or a Novelty to be displayed for the prurient curiosity of the masses. She felt it was her fault that I had become this freak of nature. A specimen in every sense of the word. I forgave her…and she felt that. It made her love me more…and made her more determined than ever to stay away. Yeah, love is a fickle master.

Like most things in Humanity, it turns out that rough patch of research led to the breakthroughs that allowed me to regain most of my life. Neuroscientists developed a way to seek out and find other Telepaths. I wasn’t alone. Soon they discovered that some of us were Receivers, and some Broadcasters. As of today, I am still the only one that can do both. The one true telepath. There are levels of telepathy too.

Those receivers that can feel deeply are called Empaths. They actually can be overwhelmed with your emotions and feelings. Most of them have Careers in child care or for treating those who have suffered from war, or abuse. They know what you went through. They KNOW. And so they can reach you. It is exhausting and soul shattering work. You heal, they have to go rest for weeks or months. Alone. Yet they do it. The ones that work with children…those are the kindest, most open, honest and loving Empaths on the Planet. No wonder they call them “Super Moms” For that is what they really are. Or Dads, Empathy is not restricted by gender…or age.

The Broadcasters end up as Announcers at Sporting Events, or as Political Assistants to broadcast good will and compromise. Believe me, that has helped out our Political system. They can’t change your mind, but they can Broadcast it is okay to listen and acknowledge another person’s point of view. That makes the old saying : You don’t have to be disagreeable to disagree” an actual truth. I am so glad they do what they do.

I digress again. Sorry. My mind is filled with thoughts...and most of them aren’t mine. That is terribly distracting. Focus, Kevin. Focus.

What happened after that horrible year or two of being a lab rat and a Public Novelty …the novelty wore off. Especially after they found more and more of us Telepaths. A brief flurry of people signing up to see if they have even rudimentary telepathic skills, helped ease the transition from Freak to - “Oh that. Everyone has a little of that. They are just Professionals.”

Once it got to that Point I could be around Kathy again. She was free of guilt by then. She knew I forgave her. I , of course, knew she knew. Then a strange thing happened. Kathy quit worrying about me peering into her brain. She left her mind open to me. It was a level of trust that most couples earn over decades. For us…it took just a few months.

We are married now. Both our children are Telepaths. Like me. That led to more studies. It appears Telepathy like mine is a genetic trait. And dominant. Unlike Broadcasters and Receivers who are also genetically linked, but a recessive. Receivers must mate with another person having the recessive “receiver” gene to generate another Receiver. Ditto for the Broadcasters.

Researchers are furiously seeking ways to either induce Telepathy, or transform all Broadcasters/Receivers into True Telepaths…like me. And my children. I am willing to go along with them. I think it will help us all someday. After all a Telepath could never hurt you intentionally, they would feel your pain. If I shot you, I would die from shock. I would feel your pain…literally. Both physical and psychic. Telepaths would end violence and war forever. It is a dream now…but maybe someday.

Kathy and I laugh now. We never have to ask each other:

“What are you thinking?”

The answer is always the same:

“I love you.”

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