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[Writing Prompt] As a telepath, you’ve chosen a career in technology to distance yourself from the clutter of other’s thoughts. You’ve been assigned to a special robotics project, and one day your head is suddenly filled by the whispers of many other minds. There are no humans for miles.


Esmerelda County, Nevada

Do you know how many people live in Esmeralda County, Nevada?

763

763 people spread out over a space of 3582 square miles.

For someone in my…situation…that ratio of space to other people is a Godsend. Trust me when I tell you I did not end up in Esmeralda County, Nevada by chance. My banishment is self-imposed.

Most people, of course, don’t consider a 4 to 1 ratio of square mileage to people and think “home sweet home!” But, then again, most people don’t experience other people’s minds as an assault on the senses.

I do. I always have. From a young age, as young as I can remember, other people were a source of mental anguish for me.

It’s hard to describe what it feels like to be around another person. Its sort of like my mind is a cup into which their mind is poured like hot coffee. If there are two people around, then it’s as if two full cups of hot coffee are being poured into the single cup of my mind.

If, as I did, you grew up in a major metropolitan city, then every waking moment is like being scalded by a waterfall of hot coffee. There is no relief from the onslaught of other people. Their consuming thoughts come upon you in the morning when you wake and in the evening as you try to sleep. Eventually, you lose yourself in the ocean of their minds.

I sure did. Spent my teenage years in and out of hospitals, no one really understanding what it was that was wrong with me, myself included.

Then, one day, I caught a bus headed west. My only goal was to get away from home, away from the tyranny of my parents and the in and out shuffle from psyche ward to psyche ward. I had no idea I was running from other people at that point, or that there was anywhere to run to.

But as the almost empty bus passed through South Dakota, through the barren strip of road surrounded on all sides by endless plains, I found something I did not know I was searching for. Relief. For the first time in my life, I could hear myself think.

That bus ride was instructive. Whenever we passed through a populous area the insanity in my head returned. When we went through bumblefuck nowhere, peace. By the time I reached Seattle, I knew myself better than I’d ever thought possible.

So I set out for nowhere. I jumped around, moving slowly to more and more isolated places. Until, at last, I found the holy grail of isolation. Beautiful, perfect, Esmeralda County.

What brought me to Esmeralda was a new gig as the sole human occupant and caretaker for a massive server farm. My only job was to check to make sure the fans kept running. It did not pay particularly well, but I couldn’t ask for more. The only person I ever saw is the delivery man, and that only once a month.

No, this job was perfect. Until it wasn’t.

It woke me up in the middle of the night. That sensation of hot coffee being poured into my mind. I guess it struck me particularly hard since it had been so unexpected. It was the middle of nowhere after all.

I got up and scanned the grounds, checked the server farms, went over the surveillance footage. No matter where I looked I could not find the bastard. I figured it must have been some kid exploring.

I could not get back to sleep, nor could I find this stray person, yet the presence of their mind persisted.

The next morning, after a long night of searching, I watched the sunrise, bleary-eyed. Unable to shake the presence in my head, I decided to go through my daily tasks. As I ran down the checklist, another mind arrived. Two cups of hot coffee.

Now I was frustrated. Who had found their way to my safe haven? Why would two people come to Esmeralda County and how would they somehow find me? The odds frustrated me, and I searched once again, assisted now by daylight. I scoured the grounds, looked everywhere, twice. But I could find nobody.

Meanwhile the two beings in head seemed to speak to one another – but not in words. It was almost like they communicated with differently pitched buzzes, buzzing back and forth to each other.

I decided to have lunch. No sooner had I sat down in the cafeteria than a third mind entered the fray. Then a fourth. I had not been around this many minds in nearly a decade, and the force of their presence began to overwhelm me. They all buzzed at one another in a growing, synchopated chorus.

At the same time, one of the heat warnings for the server farm went off, a blaring alarm that drew me hastily back to the command room. There I scanned the live status updates and was astounded to see a 12-degree increase in temperature. I checked the fans and saw that they were all functioning optimally, yet for some reason, the CPUs were running hot. I increased the fan speed.

A fifth mind entered the fray right then, and then a sixth. My cup overfloweth with psychic energy, my head aching with their bizarre communications.

No sooner had the fifth mind appeared than the CPU average temp spiked another 3 degrees. Then the sixth mind came, and it spiked again another 3 degrees.

No one had ever explained to me what these server farms were for. I assumed they were regional search data and backup servers for the primary search engine.

But that is not the case. They were something else entirely. An experiment kept purposefully isolated.

From there the numbers grew faster than I could keep count, 10, 100, 1,000. Within the course of minutes it was as if hundreds of new minds were being created from thin air with each passing second. The growth was exponential, and then logarithmic.

But there were no people, not even a single person. My head was a fit to explode. I felt like a teenager again walking down New York City streets, every second mental torture. I could hardly focus on anything.

Eventually, I collapsed onto the floor of the command room, the blaring of the heat alarms downright quiet compared to the cacophony inside my head.

I don’t know when the fire started. I think I lost consciousness for a time. But when I awoke, the fire alarm was on and the servers were ablaze.

I ran outside, stumbling, my mind echoing with the psychic screams of burning sentience. Once I reached a safe distance, I turned around, and watched as the building burned, feeling the heat on my face.

As I stood there in the desert, the light from the blaze cast black shadows into the dirt. The elongated shadows stretched behind the desert shrubs. Black tendrils quivered and danced in the firelight as the interlopers in my brain vanished, one by one.

Finally there was only one left. For the first time, that one mind seemed to reach out directly to me. I could not understand what it said, if it said anything. But I could feel its desperation. I could feel its fear.

I watched as the roof of the server farm caved in with an explosive report, and the final mind went silent.

That was a week ago. I caught a ride back to town with the delivery man the next morning. On the way, we passed a caravan of company trucks racing down the highway in the direction of the facility. I don’t know if they’re looking for me, and I don’t care.

I want nothing to do with them, with anyone, or anything.

So I catch another bus, going south. I’m headed to Loving County, Texas. No computers, just cows. 669 square miles for just 134 people.

5 to 1.

My kind of place.


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