Being born with an ability to pick up other peoples' thoughts sounds at first like a talent that could be put to good use and earn the possessor a fortune. Well yes it could if it were that simple, but unfortunately it isn't; at least if one applies ethics to the subject. For example, can you imagine telling someone that you watched them get dressed this morning by plugging into their thoughts without their knowledge? Or tell a colleague that you know he/she was not on a business trip last night, but rather in flagrante delicto with someone other than his/her spouse? Either one of these statements would bring instant retribution of various kinds upon your head, if not of the legal variety then very possibly of the physical sort. For a telepath either one of these scenarios is quite possible, but fear of broken bones or commitment to a lunatic asylum usually dictates extreme discretion. But that's the adult view, after over forty years of turbulent adolescence, strange looks, lost friends and experience gained from the bruises awarded by the University of Life . However, imagine a child who wonders why it feels so uncomfortable when grown-ups have an argument. Trying to understand why  running into the bedroom, closing the door and putting your fingers in your ears doesn't shut the bad feelings out. Being a frightened five year old experiencing violent pounding sensations inside your head, washing over your body like the nausea of sea sickness. Knowing that even after the noise stops the bad feelings continue to rise and fall in a roller coaster of anger until they both go to sleep...and even then they start to dream about what happened but it's not so bad then. You want them both to sleep because the angry, painful feelings still continue while one of them remains awake. Sometimes the feelings get so bad you have to run up to them and scream "shut up, shut up", but this just makes the angry waves focus on you which is far worse. What really confuses you though is that even when mummy and daddy aren't actually arguing the bad feelings are still around, you can't work out exactly where they're coming from but they're there like a far off thunder storm that just won't go away. Other times you suddenly get feelings that make you want to jump and shout, giving you funny quiverings that grow inside you until you reach a crescendo that makes you want to shout with joy; but because you're not even an adolescent yet you can't work out that this is a taste of your adult life to come. There are times when these angry, joyful feelings come at you all at once like a swarm of marauding bees, it hurts worse than a headache, and all you want to do is put your head under the pillow but still it doesn't stop. So you cry, you withdraw, and you try to work it out in your books because you learn that reading takes your mind away from the confusion. Getting older doesn't help because starting school brings more problems as you are led into a place which is crowded with noise, and bursts of uncontrolled erratic emotions. The noise attacks you from all sides, so you cry that you don't want to be here, and they call you sissy or baby for wanting to stay with mummy when all you really want to do is get away from the pain and confusion in your head. And although all of this is slowly driving you into deeper and darker corners, making you withdraw, becoming a loner, a recluse, you're too young to tell them what's happening. Even if could find the words, do you think they'd listen to a five or six year old kid? Hell, they don't even listen to an adult whose going through such experiences. When you're young they label you as a highly imaginative young child, when you're older they send you to the funny farm. Telepathy has no place in our society, it can only exist in science fiction on the television or in the cinema. But growing up helps because it teaches you control, it teaches you how to block out the confusion that other people don't seem to notice, allowing you to function as a youngster in a playground full of kids, blocking your mind against their wild erratic thought waves. Nevertheless handling big crowds remains a problem for years, because the shear volume of psychic energy in a busy shopping mall, or worse still a lively sporting event, causes incredible discomfort as the crowd's emotions rise and fall as the game progresses. Pain, distraction, confusion all conspire to give you headaches every time you go near crowded places. But as an adolescent you can't stay away from crowded places because you have to go to parties and discos that generate waves of happiness, aggression, misery and confusion all around you, compounded by the inherent mind blowing confusion of puberty that pounds every day from within. So you drink because you discover that alcohol numbs your mind and makes the anguish a little easier to bear. Drinking gives you another kind of pain in the morning,  but at least you can take Aspirin for that, and for the duration of the hangover you experfience a strange unfamiliar peace because your higher senses are dulled while your brain recovers. You also discover that the feelings, the inner you that you have suppressed all these years is suddenly released by booze, it feels as though all those emotional flood tides that have poured over you for years are suddenly reversed, and turn back outwards into the world from whence they came. It's their turn, you say to yourself through a drunken haze, it's their turn to  get hit with my feelings for a change. But people don't like that, your friends don't like it, your family don't like it, you're a drunken bum, a melancholy drunk and they don't like it; after a while you don't like it either, you don't like yourself and what you've become. So anger builds up, frustration builds up, and you experience mood swings as though you had become two people, one calm one violent. It might possibly be curable if only you had someone to talk to but who is going to believe you're a telepath, you can't read individual words in people's minds, at least not yet. You can't engage your friends in friendly conversation about your abilities because they'll think you're mad...or worse. So who can you talk to? An institution for psychic research? Nope, they'll just pin you down like a buttefly under glass, an intellectual curiosity whom they'll force to perform endless meaningless tests. Who gives a damn about stars, and circles and wavy lines, we're talking about my sanity here - give me a psychic aspirin and a switch to turn it off when I want to! No, the truth is that you're on your own, the illness is all yours, and as you break  out of puberty into adulthood your begin to realise that the cure is yours as well. So gradually you sober up and begin to develop other strategies to protect your sanity that don't involve destroying both your social life and your liver. You learn that you can use meditation to calm your mind and reach within to find calm. As you search inside yourself you find some pretty awful things, but eventually you confront them and develop an inner calm that you never knew was possible. After a while you find that you can calm your mind anytime you want by mentally turning a corner into a dark recess without the hassle of first needing to sit cross legged and closing your eyes. You find you can bring a veil of peace down around your mind just by relaxing and imagining that an invisible psychic curtain has descended over your head. It brings you peace and control, it allows you to start living a normal life at last. You even consider the possibility of seeking out other telepaths to share your experiences with, to form a self help group that draws on the experiences of older members to save the younger ones going through the same hell you did. But you've had enough of being somebody separate from the mainstream, you don't need another badge to mark you out as an oddity on the world of normals, so you drop the idea. At last you've begun to get your life under control, you ditch the booze and start to get your life back together. It's just as well because in amongst all this maelstrom you've gone and got married, and put your wife through hell. So now is the time to mend, to make up, to compensate and life looks good again. You still have problems with crowds, with strong emotions, with violent people, but you've learned to bring down the veil so that you don't fall apart anymore. But with sobriety comes an unexpected side effect, something you didn't count on; as your mind clears you notice that with age has come clarity and enhanced telepathic ability. While you've been soaking your five basic senses with alcohol, your sixth one has been quietly developing and maturing. Your veil gets more exercise than you anticipated but in your current position as a salesman you find that enhanced abilities are helping you to close business. You gauge every reaction, every thought and response to what you are proposing. When you talk pricing you can tell if their assertion that you're too expensive is true or not. You can feel how your various presentations are going over, slide by slide. This makes you successful, and the best part is that your colleagues can't figure it out. You're not obvious sales material, but somehow you get the orders in and make your numbers; it's great seeing the look on their faces each time you close business! With clarity comes a certain responsibility, a conflict of ethics that often gives you sleepless nights. Imagine walking down the street and passing someone who has murder on their mind, or who is thinking about what they've recently done to someone else that's worse than murder. Well of course you can tell the Police can't you? Or can you? "Excuse me officer but I'm a telepath and that man over there is going to commit a serious crime tomorrow. Trust me, I know." And with that the Officer is going to rush across the road, arrest the suspect and take him to the local nick on the basis that a total stranger claiming to be a telepath said so. More likely the Officer would call into the  Station and check to see if the local asylum was missing an inmate. So you live with it and hope that the criminal fraternity never find out that you know more than you should. You try not to look any of them in the face as they walk past you with felony on their minds.  Instead you use your abilities to keep your family well away from any unsavoury characters who may be nearby. You protect your wife and children from the strangers with more than a passing interest on their minds. You try desperately to screen out the psychos and schizoids whose minds are in such a mess that it hurts you physically to be anywhere near them. And then you pray that no one is killed or worse because the authorities are incapable of understanding that because of a freak of nature you have a special ability that they could  use. Strangely enough some Police forces do utilise psychics, so why should a telepath be considered such an oddity? Are they afraid of what you might see in their minds? To err is human and, as with anyone who has a special talent, you reach a point where you want to stretch your capabilities, to go take extra step to prove just how good you really are; telepaths are no exception to this round of egotistical arrogance. Reading feelings is fine, but what if you could take it deeper? What if you could pick up actual thoughts, hear what they hear, see what they see? What if you could be there with people, inside their heads, actually sharing their minds and experiences? It's too tempting, too seductive a challenge to be passed up, and the obvious place to start is with someone close, so you start the experiment using your wife as the first subject. You make use of a cold windy afternoon when you are waiting inside a nice warm railway station for your wife to drive into town to pick you up. Why stand outside in the cold waiting when you could stay inside until the last minute? So you close your eyes and concentrate on your wife, trying to think your way inside her head. Nothing for  minutes, then suddenly a flash as though someone has just given you a glimpse of an old monochrome photograph in a bathroom misted mirror. Seconds pass and another flash, still in monochrome but clearer this time, less mist than before, though strangely there is  no sound, just pictures. The exact opposite of what you would expect given the relative difficulty of sending television as opposed to radio signals; but then again telepathy isn't either of these, it has its own laws. Nevertheless you ask yourself if this could all be imagination or wishful thinking; there's only one way to find out. You follow the pictures through until you reach a point where, if your vision is correct, your wife is within a minute of reaching the station. You walk outside and there she is, just driving around the corner at exactly the right moment. Success! So why not try again? This time an opportunity arises whereby your child is late back from a school trip. You sit outside the school in your car on a dark winter's evening amongst all the other parents who are wondering if the coach has had an accident on the motorway. You close your eyes, and this time concentrate upon your child, again nothing for a few minutes then the flashes start. Perhaps because your child is younger, perhaps because your child is also telepathic, the visions are clearer than they were with your wife. You even catch glimpses of movement, children sitting the wrong way round in their seats talking with each other, still no sound but the pictures are at least much clearer. You wait until your child looks out of the window at something you recognise. This isn't easy because it's dark out there and motorway verges all look the same out of town. At last you see a flash of something recognisable and at the risk of making yourself look foolish you tell your wife not to worry because your child is at X location and should be home in Y minutes. Your wife knows that your are telepathically inclined but doesn't yet know just how far you've progressed. So she takes your remark as a rhetoric statement until the coach turns into the road within thirty seconds of when you said it would. Your ego takes a boost and drives you on into a shameful act that you regret bitterly for months afterwards. You start by thinking that sharing the sight of close family is too easy, you're so close to them every day. A complete stranger would present much more of a challenge. You will therefore choose someone at random, tune into their mind, let them out of your sight for say ten minutes, then locate them again by going into their minds and seeing what they are looking at. The subject turns out to be a middle aged woman, busying herself with her Saturday shopping in the high street of a large Berkshire town. Tuning her in is relatively simple, and her mind is uncluttered to the point of disinterest in the world around her. You turn your back on the chosen subject for five minutes, then concentrate on insinuating yourself into her mind. It takes a good few seconds because of the spurious mental noise around you that busy afternoon, but finally you see a brief flash of a dark grey suit and a feeling of crushing grief. The kind of grief you have only experienced when close relatives died, or maybe husbands...The truth and enormity of what you have just dared to do makes you feel low, dirty, disgusted with yourself for intruding into someone's mind. For daring to intercept someone's most private thoughts and interfere with emotions so sad and desolate that you almost feel that it is you who has recently been made a widow; it takes a long time to get over that experience and you vow never to do it again. With age and practice comes a very frightening experience that digs so deep into your base instincts that you sometimes can't sleep for days because you're scared stiff of the implications. Sometimes as you walk along a street you come across someone who's mind just doesn't feel right, it's got the wrong vibrations coming from it. The pattern of impulses is all wrong, the strength of their thoughts is way above what you normally experience, and above all you can catch flashes of what they're thinking or have seen in their past. Not in dull monochrome hazes, but in full colour, moving images that you don't recognise at first, but as you build up a mental library of these encounters you begin to realise that the scenes they are transmitting have very little to do with this world. In fact they have very little to do with anyone at all on this planet. Scientists have long speculated that given the billions of stars in the Universe, the chances of there being planets around a proportion of them, and the probability that some of those planets might be able to support life...we might not be the only intelligent life around. Some of them even expounded the possibility that we may not even be the most advanced in the galaxy, after all the dinosaurs evolved over 200 million years ago; supposing the equivalent of homo sapiens had evolved instead? We would be millions of years further on than we are today, interstellar travel would be an every day reality, and our brains would have developed way beyond the organism we currently have between our ears. As a telepath you find out the hard way that we are definitely not alone in this Universe, and are certainly not the most advanced race. You pray that none of these visitors are telepathic, because if they are and they know that you have found them out, then what might happen brings you out in a cold sweat and uncontrollable shivers. At least if you get abducted or killed by fellow Earth people then there is some chance you'll be rescued or the perpetrators brought to justice. But abduction, real abduction not just the fantasies of a disturbed mind, will have horrendous and irreversible consequences. When the penny finally drops your immediate reaction is to run down the street shouting the aliens are here, they've landed, get the military, do something someone. But you don't because your rational side clicks in a split second earlier and reminds you that if you do say anything one of those nice policemen we've just been talking about will take you in hand - or more likely cuffs - and introduce you to the inside of a padded cell. They, the visitors, probably know that you'll never be believed by such a relatively backward society so you're not a threat even if you did open your mouth. Put yourself back in time just three hundred years, imagine what would have happened if you'd gone running through the town shouting that you'd just heard music and voices coming out of a small box made of a material the likes of which no one has ever seen before; if you weren't burned as a witch you'd be locked up in the town jail to sober up. But we're not talking pocket radios here, we're talking telepathy, a much more intangible idea that you can't even point at as proof that it exists never mind understand how it works. Which is why they don't care that you know, at least you hope that's the case, so instead you keep quiet and shiver, you get into the habit of using your mental veil whenever you sense a strange presence...and you spend the rest of your life being afraid. Oddly enough these experiences begin to make you aware of minds and life beyond your eye level, you find yourself spending odd minutes, and sometimes hours, focusing your mind skyward, opening your mind to anything that comes from out there. Deliberately forcing yourself to do the very opposite of what you spend most of your days avoiding...opening your mind to alien presence. With practice you do pick up odd thoughts, or more accurately unusual feelings and emotions that are nothing like the emanations from your own world. Sometimes they come in loud and clear, other times no more than a subtle whisper at the edge of your mind. You discover that telepathy does have range limitations just like radio or television signals, quite what or how far those limitations extend you may never know. The fact that you are not conscious of the thoughts of people on the other side of the world is no indication, because telepathy is partly governed by the need to tune in; if you don't tune in to a mind in New Zealand you may never know what they are thinking. This is a boon, a life saver, because without this filter you would never survive the cacophony of the global mind pool. But it soon becomes a frustration as you speculate that what you are receiving during your forays into the mental universe can only be a tiny proportion of the life that exists out there. You look forward to the time when the astronomers stop fooling around with their crude, clumsy radio telescopes, and instead use telepaths to reach out into the galaxy to communicate with our neighbours, for neighbours we surely have. Then religion strikes, or more accurately your mental investigation of the skies gradually reveals a growing awareness of something strange and unique, something that appears to be all around you, in no particular direction, in fact in every direction that you let your mind wander. It is a strong presence that pervades and tinges every thought and feeling that you get from beyond this earth. It does not feel like a living entity, and yet it is strong enough that it must be something very special. It stubbornly hides away on the very edge of your consciousness, never allowing itself to form part of your central thought process. Is this God? If it is then this God is a living God, not a great glowing father figure as portrayed in classic religious icons, an actual living entity that just happens to be billions of steps further up the evolutionary scale than we are. Could this be the strange feeling of elation and deep wisdom that religious converts feel when they become born again? Your ability to tune in and experience this entity at will slowly develops, much as you gradually develop the knack of looking at those psychedelic patterns that magically form 3D pictures, and over time your awareness of the world, the universe and all within it changes forever. You develop a deep inner peace, and thank whoever gave you these powers for allowing you to know and experience what normal, non-telepaths will never ever discover. You hope that they will never ever discover just how lonely and sad it is to experience their world and the universe around it with only five senses....