Yes, it’s a Skaldthetical with an absurd fantasy premise. If you don’t like these, I’m sure you can find an NFL thread open somewheres.
To expand on the thread question: would you continue dating a person who, after you two had become intimate, not merely claimed to be a telepath, but proved that to your satisfaction? Why or why not?
You may answer simply in terms of the above paragraph or, if you simply must have details, click the spoiler box below for specifics.
[spoiler]Here’s the sitch. You have a new companion, “Sean,”* with whom everything clicks, sexually & otherwise. But when things start getting really serious, Sean tells you there’s something you need to know: she’s a telepath. Naturally you’re dubious at first, but in short order she convinces you of her veracity.**
Sean is always vaguely aware of the emotions of people in the same room, but she can tune down that empathic awareness the way a norm ignores ambient noise. Reading a person’s surface thoughts or having a telepathic conversation is no harder than ordinary speech; her range for doing either is about a mile with norms, a hundred times that with another telepath. Sustained focus is required to probe someone’s memory or subconscious; absolute concentration is necessary to do mind-control tricks or brain-blasts.
Sean doesn’t believe in using her powers like that, incidentally. Outside of training, she’s only done so twice. The first time, she disabled a trio of knife-wielding thugs so she and a friend could escape a mugging; she gave one an instant migraine, made the second go temporarily blind, and caused the third to forget what he was doing. The second time, that same friend, suffering terribly from PTSD, asked Sean to remove an extremely traumatic event from her memory; with more than a few misgivings, Sean complied.
Sean and her immediate family are all telepaths. Psi powers manifest in adolescence; she went to a specialized, secretive high school to learn how to control hers. Nearly every psi in her generation was enrolled there, but the student body was still under a thousand. If she had to guess, she’d say there are fewer than a million telepaths in the world. In school, she learned that telepathy has genetic markers; the child of two telepaths almost always has powers, whereas the child of a telepath and a norm rarely does. Neither she nor any psi she’s ever heard of has precognitive, telekinetic, or medium powers; she doesn’t think anyone does, though of course such people could be hiding the way she and other telepaths are.
Are you still willing to date Sean? Marry Sean? Have kids? Why or why not?
- I’m going to use feminine pronouns because I’m a straight man, but if you’re a gay man or straight woman, just flip the gender.
** I have a quick & dirty way Sean can prove that, but I’m not posting it unless y’all insist.[/spoiler]
