Set yourself apart

wolff

Hello fellow writers,

I read a story the other day, from a fiction writer called "Demolished Men", written by Alfred Bester. This may resonate with you, considering most writers have an inadequate vision of themselves, as they "do not fit" in the greater scheme of things. This little story made a lot of sense to me. I'll not copy and paste, but, I'll write my own version. If you want the original, I posted the link to the book above.

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It has been discovered that some people can read minds for real and was also discovered that a time warp could enable a connection between us and others civilizations, but only the mind readers could communicate with them. The mind readers were very prized in the civilization, everybody wanted to be a mind reader. They loved their mind readers, the same way we love our artists and sports figures. Everyone thinks they could be a mind reader.

So the mind readers setup a school, to test who could be a mind reader. They would open the school a couple days of the week, and people would go through a day long process, to see if they could be a mind reader. So the mind readers were looking down and saw this very long line has formed, of people wanting to be a mind reader.

They started to think, "If you can hear me, I want you to leave the line, take your right, and walk to the door that is marked NON-ADMITTANCE, I want that you go through that door"

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I hope this little story resonates with you...
I like to write screenplays and short stories.

ctietze

Cool, thanks for the link, I'll try to get a used copy somewhere!

This does resonate with me, although in a different way, I guess. Your story focuses on what seems to be entitlement to be special (with your introductory framing at least). I am mostly reminded about how much everyone in the world is just faking it. -- You are taugt to obey and be orderly to fit burgeois society, yet only by diverting can you move onward. I liked the world when I thought it was orderly; but I enjoy the creative freedom of a world that's free to transform even more In this freedom lies the chance to make "things" better, whatever that means for each of us.

In my case, the calling is to put productivity tools into the hands of people (who appear to be just outside of mainstream) so they get more powerful

newzettelkid

@wolff If i get the gist of the story right, then it seems to imply that if you are a mindreader, then you have at least the baseline ability to send and receive thoughts regardless of training. If so, why do they need to go to the school at all. Is it just a stamp of credibility? Also is there anyone who has a latent ability but has either not recognized it or not has the chance to exercise it. What then? Your thought exercise was interesting and I am still pondering it