psion

imagine that the psychic powers described by joan d. vinge in the brilliant novel psion were real. yes, imagine that some people, like the characters cat, siebling, jule and rubiy, were psions, were were able to do amazing things with their minds alone. imagine that the gifts of telepathy (ability to read minds), telekinesis (ability to move objects with one's mind), teleport (to move physically to a place that you know), empathy (to be able to feel the emotions of anyone) and precognition (the ability to see glimpses of the future) did really exist. how would be the life of someone who had one or more of these gifts? how would someone able to read everyone's mind or feel everyone's emotions and pain fit into a world that survives by lying and deceiving and hiding true feelings? a telepath or an empath would be doomed to loneliness, to an unbreakable loneliness. they could not trust anyone, because the others' mouths and minds would be dissonant. for a psion, there would be no words of comfort, no shoulder to cry on. no one could tell a psion "everything is going to be all right" because the psion could see how empty were those words. psions would not truly love, or be loved, because their minds and their hearts would always be clouded by their lovers' doubts and fears. a psion would have no friends, for no one would want to be close to someone who could know every little secret in a second - for every single one of us has secrets that we do not tell even to our closest friends. so no one would trust a psion. no one would befriend a psion. no one could love a psion. they would be doomed to be alone, to be pariahs, to be outcasts.