Think

"So. You started exhibiting abilities…?"

"Um… three years ago? Yeah, three years, and it was May I think. Fourteenth or maybe sixteenth, I don't remember exactly – I just remember that it was my last semester. Yeah, three years ago, May."

"Fourteenth or sixteenth?"

"Yeah, one or the other. I remember that because I has these huge goddamn exams, you know, one was on fourteenth and other on sixteenth and it was during one of them I heard it for the first time. Can't remember which one though, just remember being a nervous wreck. I studied of course, I mean, hello, you know? But test's a test."

"Right. It started during an exam then? In a large crowd."

"Well, large enough. I didn't go to a big school – hell you should know, you probably have my files and everything. Don't you? I mean, don't people like you have files on everything, even someone like me? Or should that be especially someone like me…"

"How large was the crowd?"

"I don't know. Twenty five, thirty maybe? I never counted how many people were in my class. Might've been less than twenty five, but definitely more than twenty."

"And the teacher I assume?"

"Well yeah, sure she was there. I mean, it was an exam so it sort of goes with the whole being a teacher territory and all – listen, what does this have to do with anything? If you really want to hear about that goddamn school I got some juicy gossip about the teacher, I mean, missus Lee was totally doing the TA and --"

"I'm just trying to establish the starting point. Class room with twenty to thirty people, plus the teacher and of course yourself. Tell me what happened."

"I don't really remember it exactly – I was panicking about the test, you know, so I just sort of figured it was nerves or whatever. Later though, when it started happening more, I figured that was where it started, in the classroom – because the feeling I got there, the one I chalked up as nerves, was pretty much the same I get every time it happens. It's this… twist to the left except it's in my mind.

"So, I was hung up on this one question, can't remember what it was but I know I didn't know it at the time – and I was panicking because I couldn't remember. And I was trying to remember, you know, rummaging through everything I had leaned, trying to make connections – I had this system for remembering stuff for school, my dad taught it me, using relations you know, stuff surrounding the thing I don't remember. It's hard to explain, but I was doing that, trying to figure out if I knew anything related to the thing I couldn't remember and then there was that twist in my head and…"

"And?"

"Well. The thing about telepathy that everyone everywhere gets wrong it's that it's nothing like hearing. And even less like reading – you know how rarely a person's mind thinks in words? No, it's sensations and experiences most of the time, colours and sometimes sounds but mostly just… sensory input. Most of the time I don't get anything like what people think but actually what they experience right that very moment. Like, the things they hear and see and feel."

"And you felt what people around you were… sensing?"

"Yeah. Like, for one moment it was like I was looking down at twenty-something identical tests. I had numb ass times twenty, I heard the ticking of that damn clock on the wall twenty times. I had twenty pens in my twenty hands. And that's just the general stuff – the individual stuff's harder. Like, at least half dozen people there had to go to the bathroom really bad. One guy was horny as all hell and second hand hard-ons are weird as hell. And like most people had a itch somewhere. And they all came as separate sensations – I felt them all but in the same time I felt them separately. It was really like I had twenty-or-so bodies."

"And that was it? You felt that and nothing else happened that time?"

"Well, not exactly. Along with the sensory stuff you also get the surface mood of a person, with that sort of general sweep. So I was twenty times panicked, twenty times nervous, twenty times frustrated. But I didn't really know what was going on and all I wanted was to answer that damn question so that's what I concentrated on and looked down – and then I knew twenty or.. well actually less, not all of them had answered the question, but… well, I knew about dozen different answers to the question. And I copied it."

"All the different answers?"

"Hah. No. I copied down word here and word there, it came out as absolute gibberish. Rereading it brought me back to myself and I was one person with one body again – and then I wiped the answer away and tried again and that was that for that time. Yep."

"Alright. So that first time you didn't… actually read thoughts?"

"No. Thoughts take a lot of concentration because people think in what you would call thoughts pretty rarely. Like I said, sensations and experiences, like sights or sounds. And oh god music, you have any idea how many people walk around with a song stuck in their heads? It's like living in a word of walking talking radio stations full of broken records where lyrics tend to be wrong half of the time and any given moment the song might change into, I don't know, smell of a coffee cup or snipped of a porn someone saw the other day. Thoughts are… coherent in a way people's brains usually aren't."

"But when they are?"

"But when they are it's… well. It's like walking versus standing still. People think quicker when they think in that blurred sensations way, you know. It's instinctual and unhindered, they just flow from one thought to another without hindrances. But when people concentrate, like… when they're contemplating some specific thing, that's when it's words. Did I leave the oven on, what should I get from the grocery store, did I feed the cat, am I going to be late, that sort of things. Worries, you know. The brain sort of halts to take a look at the thought and lot of the background noise – the music, the sensations, feelings, whatnot – they quiet down. It usually doesn't last long unless you have a certain type of person who thinks a lot in words – like, say, writer or person who is reading. Oh, right, people who are reading – it's awesome standing next to a person who is reading, especially if they have any ounce of imagination. It's like being in a full sensory experience movie with a voice over and it can be amazing."

"So people do think in words. And you can hear it."

"Well, yeah, of course they do and yeah, I can. But that's only like ten percent of the time. And it comes and goes. Lightning flashes and all. But you know, people are different. I've met couple of people who think almost all the time in words, but it's rarer than you think. It takes a certain sort of mind."

"Alright. Keeping all this in mind, what do you mean by saying that thoughts take a lot of concentration? If a mind… halts to consider the way you say, wouldn't it make it easier to, hm, hear?"

"Ah, well, sure, but that's just what people think when they are thinking themselves."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh come on. You know what I do. That's why I am here. What I do, that takes concentration – forcing people to think what I want to know. Or what I want them to think. That's hard – took me years to learn."

"Yes. Your brand of mind control. Let's talk about that."