by Elle Casey
The Telepath Chronicles
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the appropriate copyright owner listed below, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal and international copyright law. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein.
The stories in this book are fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, to any actual place or event, or to any top-secret government program preparing to unleash dangerous mind control technology on an unsuspecting populace is purely coincidental.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Foreword copyright © 2014 by Samuel Peralta. Used by permission of the author.
“#DontTell” by Peter Cawdron, copyright © 2014 by Peter Cawdron. Used by permission of the author.
“The Elm Tree” by E.E. Giorgi, copyright © 2014 by E.E. Giorgi. Used by permission of the author.
“Stability” by Theresa Kay, copyright © 2014 by Theresa Kay. Used by permission of the author.
“Dreampath” by Elle Casey, copyright © 2014 by Elle Casey. Used by permission of the author.
“Tortured” by Nicolas Wilson, copyright © 2014 by Nicolas Wilson. Used by permission of the author.
“The Locksmith” by Susan Kaye Quinn, copyright © 2014 by Susan Kaye Quinn. Used by permission of the author.
“Trauma Room” by Samuel Peralta, copyright © 2014 by Samuel Peralta. First published by Samuel Peralta in 2014. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Venus in Red” by Therin Knite, copyright © 2014 by Therin Knite. Used by permission of the author.
“Decode” by Autumn Kalquist, copyright © 2014 by Autumn Kalquist. Used by permission of the author.
“The Null” by Vincent Trigili, copyright © 2014 by Vincent Trigili. Used by permission of the author.
“Green Gifts” by Endi Webb, copyright © 2014 by Endi Webb. Used by permission of the author.
“Little Blue” by Chris Reher, copyright © 2014 by Chris Reher. Used by permission of the author.
“No More Lies” by Nina Croft, copyright © 2014 by Nina Croft. Used by permission of the author.
“Word-Bound” by MeiLin Miranda, copyright © 2014 by MeiLin Miranda. Used by permission of the author.
Edited by David Gatewood (www.lonetrout.com)
Cover art and design by Jason Gurley (www.jasongurley.com)
Print and ebook formatting by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)
The Telepath Chronicles is part of the Future Chronicles series produced by Samuel Peralta (www.samuelperalta.com)
STORY SYNOPSES
#DontTell (Peter Cawdron)
For centuries, people have wondered what it would be like to read someone’s mind. Little do they know, they already have. To see the anguish on someone’s face, to watch tears fall, or hear their cries and empathize with them—this is the essence of mind reading. In the 21st century, our natural ability to empathize with others has finally evolved into true telepathy, but it’s an evolutionary change that threatens the status quo. The world, it seems, isn’t ready for true mind readers.
The Elm Tree (E.E. Giorgi)
When sixteen-year-old Lily Andrews takes her life, one of the darkest secrets of the small town of Mariposa Springs is buried with her. Three months later, baffled by an inconclusive investigation, County Sheriff Albert Contardo turns to the only person who can help him uncover the secret: the doctor who held Lily’s heart while she died.
Stability (Theresa Kay)
Cora has spent most of her life in a clandestine medical facility, isolated from the world and content to submit to tests and experiments at the request of her keepers. Content, that is, until the day she discovers their end goal: breeding her to create a more stable telepath. So when an attack on the facility gives Cora her chance at escape, she seizes it. But as she gets closer to freedom and learns more about the world outside, Cora finds she doesn’t know whether she’d rather be outside or in—or whom she can trust.
Dreampath (Elle Casey)
Chronically fatigued Kelli Erickson takes her naps very seriously, and when she dreams, she dreams big. Flying without wings? Breathing underwater? Yeah, baby. All that and more. But when a stranger’s voice shows up in her head telling her she needs to Save the girl, things get a little crazier than normal.
Tortured (Nicolas Wilson)
When Vipisana “Sam” Samatha sought refuge on the Nexus, she knew the decision would cause turmoil. But she didn’t expect that Pete, effectively the Nexus’s second-in-command, would feel so threatened by her telepathic abilities that he would stoop to torture in order to understand them. Now, as both Sam and Pete deal with the repercussions of Pete’s decision, Pete finds himself having nightmares—nightmares from which he awakes to find himself being throttled by his own two hands. He thinks Sam is somehow inside his head, trying to kill him—and Sam’s not so sure he’s wrong.
The Locksmith (Susan Kaye Quinn)
In a world filled with mindreaders, Zeph is a mindjacker who wants to stay hidden—even if it means the cute mindreader in his Latin class is forever out of his reach. He locks and unlocks minds for a ruthless mindjacker Clan in exchange for protection and the chance to have a normal life with his parents and little sister. But when a girl he doesn’t know reveals the existence of mindjackers to the world, Zeph is forced to make a choice: unlock—and ultimately destroy—the mind of a young jacker changeling… or turn his back on everyone he loves.
Trauma Room (Samuel Peralta)
In the trauma room, a man lies on a gurney, fragments of an assassin’s bullet in his skull. He carries a secret that could save millions of lives. And if he dies, that secret dies with him.
Venus in Red (Therin Knite)
Grayson Dynamics, led by the illustrious Mick Grayson, is the most powerful technology firm in the world. But underneath the fame and fortune exists a dark and dirty history. Corruption. Lies. Betrayal. Now, a woman with a grudge intends to wipe clean that filthy slate—by killing the CEO who wronged her years ago and ending the global coup he’s been planning for years. And how will she accomplish this? With her newly acquired neural enhancements, of course. Complete with the power to manipulate the minds of others.
Decode (Autumn Kalquist)
Disease ravages humanity, killing millions across the globe. Haunted by the loss of her son to the deadly illness, geneticist Avia Sherman must find the strength to keep going. To find a cure. To save the last remnants of mankind… before the world plunges into desolation.
The Null (Vincent Trigili)
He had left that life behind, sworn he would never return to it. He had a new life—a wife, a daughter. He was happy. But in a wretched twist of events, he finds himself forced to reclaim what he once was in order to save those who are most precious to him. Or else…
Green Gifts (Endi Webb)
Of all the worlds settled by humanity at the end of the Robot Wars, Belen held the biggest secret: native life. For centuries the colonists have protected her secret from the Empire’s grasp, sealing her, quite literally, to their skin. But over time, things change; people, and planets, adapt. Slowly, tentatively, these changes become felt by only a few. A lonely child. A dying grandfather. A troubled biologist. Each lives upon and loves B
elen. And apparently she loves them back.
Little Blue (Chris Reher)
All is right with the world when five-year-old Cyann visits her doctors about that odd synaptic anomaly. Nothing to worry about, they said. The voice in her head is just an imaginary friend for the daughter of two busy career officers. But even they cannot protect her when the rebel wars deliver devastation right to their door.
No More Lies (Nina Croft)
Kaitlin grew up as part of a covert operations group, using her particular talents for what she has always believed to be the greater good. They promised her a world with no more lies. A better world. But when her twin brother disappears, Kaitlin must decide where her loyalties lie.
Word-Bound (MeiLin Miranda)
Four-year-old Campbell and his parents are word-bound, among the few who cannot hear or communicate via thought. Implant surgery might end Campbell’s disability—but it might also end his family.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Samuel Peralta
#DontTell (Peter Cawdron)
The Elm Tree (E.E. Giorgi)
Stability (Theresa Kay)
Dreampath (Elle Casey)
Tortured (Nicolas Wilson)
The Locksmith (Susan Kaye Quinn)
Trauma Room (Samuel Peralta)
Venus in Red (Therin Knite)
Decode (Autumn Kalquist)
The Null (Vincent Trigili)
Green Gifts (Endi Webb)
Little Blue (Chris Reher)
No More Lies (Nina Croft)
Word-Bound (MeiLin Miranda)
A Note to Readers (David Gatewood)
Foreword
by Samuel Peralta
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke
The Telepath Chronicles is an anthology of stories from some of the most visionary authors in speculative fiction today. Following in the tradition of its predecessor, The Robot Chronicles, this collection explores one theme that has been a staple of science fiction, with each story exploring a different facet, a different perspective.
During the Golden Age of science fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Astounding Science Fiction was a vanguard in popularizing stories that centered on humans with enhanced mental abilities, and how ordinary society might look at people with those abilities, notably with A.E. van Vogt’s serialized novel Slan and the similarly themed stories that collectively made up Henry Kuttner’s Mutant.
Indeed, the first Hugo Award was given in 1953 to a novel that revolved around telepaths. The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, is a police procedural science fiction story set in a world where telepathy has become commonplace, although so-called espers have varying degrees of ability.
That this work has become a landmark in the genre is evidenced by nods to his work, as in the television series Babylon 5, where the author lends his name to one of the primary protagonists, Psi Corps officer Alfred Bester, played by the iconic Walter Koenig from Star Trek (whose Vulcans were also able to mind-meld, to share thoughts, memories, and knowledge with others through physical contact).
Today this melding of minds, this staple of science fiction, is coming closer to reality than many of us may realize.
In his book The Physics of the Impossible, Michio Kaku, noted futurist and Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York, classifies three types of impossibilities. Class III impossibilities are what we normally think of as not possible: things that cannot become real, at least not according to our current understanding of science; these include perpetual motion and precognition. Class II impossibilities include things that may be realizable, but in the far future, such as faster-than-light travel.
According to Professor Kaku, telepathy is a Class I impossibility. These are phenomena that don’t violate the known laws of physics, and indeed may become reality in the next century.
Never mind the next century—some scientists believe the age of telepathy may be upon us.
The first clue? That people lacking one or more of the normal five senses can now, in certain situations, be given them.
Since the 1960s, around 350,000 people who were profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing have been fitted with cochlear implants, providing them with a sense of sound where previously there was none. Essentially, a microphone picks up sounds, which are filtered by a speech processor and sent as an electronically coded signal to a transmitter behind the ear. This transmitter sends the signal to the subject’s brain through an array of up to twenty-two electrodes circling the cochlea, which then send the impulses through the auditory nerve system to the brain.
Following European approval in 2011, the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2013 approved for use the first retinal implant. The system uses a video processing unit to transform images from a miniature video camera into electronic data, which is then wirelessly transmitted to a sixty-electrode retinal prosthesis implanted in the eye, replacing the function of degenerated cells in the retina. Although vision isn’t fully restored, the system allows those affected with age-related macular degeneration, or with retinitis pigmentosa—a condition which damages the light-sensitive cells lining the retina—to better perceive images and movement.
Similar advances are being reported for the other three senses of touch, smell, and taste.
But what about the sixth sense?
In my own speculative fiction universe, electronically augmented telepaths make use of technologies akin to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to associate perceived images of neural activity with a subject’s memory palace in his brain. This is a key point for my conception of the Labyrinth Man, a man who can use augmented telepathy to traverse a subject’s thoughts and memories using the method of loci.
Today, functional MRI has actually been used to sense words being thought by a subject, or to discern the images being formed in the brain as a subject watches a movie. It’s still very mechanical, matching monitored brainwave activity with a huge database of impulse responses to benchmark words or images, but it’s the same big numbers principle that enabled the IBM Deep Blue chess computer to win against then-World Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
In the same year that The Demolished Man was published, Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human also came out. It’s the story of several people with extraordinary abilities who are able blend their abilities together and achieve human transcendence. The same theme—of humans transcending ordinary humankind—is explored in Time is the Simplest Thing, by Clifford D. Simak. It can be argued that a similar sort of communal experience—if not transcendence—is already part of our experience, with the spread of the Social Web.
It’s only a matter of time before all the input and output devices we have—keyboards, flat screens, heads-up displays—become obsolete. Why should you have to type or dictate information into a computer, when you can control it directly by thought? Why project information onto your eyes when you could send information directly into the brain? In time, many of us may be direct input/output nodes into the cloud.
Science fiction?
We live in a world where cochlear implants are already helping the deaf to hear, and retinal implants are beginning to help the blind to see.
We live in a world where smartphones and connected wearable devices—watches, glasses, health and fitness monitors—simultaneously receive and broadcast information to and about us through the cloud of the Internet.
We live in a world where deep brain stimulation is routinely used in therapies to address Parkinson’s disease, where implants in the brain allow people to bypass a broken spinal cord and move hands, arms, limbs with the power of thought.
In fact, we live in a world where real telepathy has already been achieved. A team at Duke University in North Carolina has, for the first time, demonstrated a direct communication interface between two brains. In the Duke experiments, two thirsty rats are placed into separate cages. They cannot see or hear each o
ther, but their brains are wired together via electrode implants in their motor cortices. Each rat will be rewarded with a sip of water if it pushes the correct one of two levers. In the first rat’s cage, a light comes on above the correct lever to let the rat know which lever to push—but there is no such indicator in the second rat’s cage.
The experiment, then, measures whether, when the first rat pushes the correct lever, it sends a brain-initiated signal to the second rat, which must then correctly interpret the signal it experiences in its own brain, and push the correct lever.
The technology is simple: implanted electrodes capture the signals from the firing of the neurons in the motor cortex, translate them into binary code, and sends the signal—via a wire, wirelessly, or via the Internet to another location—into the electrodes in the other brain, which translates it back into neural signals.
Sheer chance would have the second rat pushing the correct lever 50% of the time. In fact, the rat chose the correct lever between 60% and 85% of the time. This was true even when one animal was in North Carolina and the other was in Brazil.