Fiction: Hailstone and Magmae
Apr. 13th, 2010 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack"Paradoxically, the more powerful a psychic, the less likely they are to have any affect on society. They just explode – pfoof – in a shower of frogs and that's--"
"No, Violet. They don't ALL explode in a shower of frogs. Some of them explode into a shower of sunbeams, or a shower of rain, or a shower of sudden urge for electoral reform--"
"Yes, I'm sorry, Dr Preaty. I was being glib, but honestly, I'm not filling your students with nonsense. Two years ago, Ms Maureen Cowd, a Liberal Democrat campaigner, spend several months convinced she had the ability to psychically influence people's political responsibility. She vanished from her home in West London, and people for miles around were statistically more likely to vote for parties favoring electoral reform of various sorts, even those who didn't know anything about Cowd herself. It was one of the early studies into tragic misuses of psychic phenomena, and--"
"Yes, of course I'll continue. Where was I? Sara? Violet? Right, explosions. But as your beautiful teacher--"
"Oh, but you are, Dr Preaty. Jennifer. Your hair, your eyes...."
"Oh, very well. As you very correctly pointed out, not all psychic phenomena are so dramatic. The more powerful the ability, generally the harder it is to learn to use safely, so you get the disappearances. The mutations. The irreversible effects. The woman who turned into frogs began by training herself to exhibit her as-yet unknown ability, and discovered no results until she next visited the hairdresser, when six inches of decapitated hair fell to the floor as a healthy and spirited amphibian bent on escape. Reports of the poor hairdresser--"
"Yes, definitely. The point is, desperate to control the effect, which soon had even fingernail clippings forming tiny, perfect miniature frogs, she delved deeper into training, seeking solution, and achieved no appreciable results until one day, in the middle of a newsagents, she burst, all at once. Her greater ability, while momentarily spectacular, was even less useful in the long run on account of her being dead. This means--"
"Yes, Violet. Dead. That means--"
"No, Sara, I'm sorry. All the frogs are dead. It's possible that if the other shoppers had carefully collected the frogs, and her family maintained them and their descendants in an appropriate vivarium, eventually another psychic might develop an ability which might help reconstitute the descendant frogs into the woman again. If unlikely. But unfortunately the owners of the newsagent did not carefully rescue the frogs, but instead they chased them away with brooms and some of them were squashed."
"Yes, it is very sad. As I know Dr Preaty wants me to remind you, psyhic abilities can be very dangerous. And you should be very careful. OK? As I was saying, that means--"
"Wait, no interruptions? Are you sure? Well, OK then. As I was saying, that means that the most powerful abilities are the littlest understood and littlest used, because it's hard to use them at all without going pfoof and losing any chance of gaining skill."
"More commonly visible are abilities which developed slowly, giving the psychic some time to learn how to use them safely. The abilities--"
"No, Violet. They don't ALL explode in a shower of frogs. Some of them explode into a shower of sunbeams, or a shower of rain, or a shower of sudden urge for electoral reform--"
"Yes, I'm sorry, Dr Preaty. I was being glib, but honestly, I'm not filling your students with nonsense. Two years ago, Ms Maureen Cowd, a Liberal Democrat campaigner, spend several months convinced she had the ability to psychically influence people's political responsibility. She vanished from her home in West London, and people for miles around were statistically more likely to vote for parties favoring electoral reform of various sorts, even those who didn't know anything about Cowd herself. It was one of the early studies into tragic misuses of psychic phenomena, and--"
"Yes, of course I'll continue. Where was I? Sara? Violet? Right, explosions. But as your beautiful teacher--"
"Oh, but you are, Dr Preaty. Jennifer. Your hair, your eyes...."
"Oh, very well. As you very correctly pointed out, not all psychic phenomena are so dramatic. The more powerful the ability, generally the harder it is to learn to use safely, so you get the disappearances. The mutations. The irreversible effects. The woman who turned into frogs began by training herself to exhibit her as-yet unknown ability, and discovered no results until she next visited the hairdresser, when six inches of decapitated hair fell to the floor as a healthy and spirited amphibian bent on escape. Reports of the poor hairdresser--"
"Yes, definitely. The point is, desperate to control the effect, which soon had even fingernail clippings forming tiny, perfect miniature frogs, she delved deeper into training, seeking solution, and achieved no appreciable results until one day, in the middle of a newsagents, she burst, all at once. Her greater ability, while momentarily spectacular, was even less useful in the long run on account of her being dead. This means--"
"Yes, Violet. Dead. That means--"
"No, Sara, I'm sorry. All the frogs are dead. It's possible that if the other shoppers had carefully collected the frogs, and her family maintained them and their descendants in an appropriate vivarium, eventually another psychic might develop an ability which might help reconstitute the descendant frogs into the woman again. If unlikely. But unfortunately the owners of the newsagent did not carefully rescue the frogs, but instead they chased them away with brooms and some of them were squashed."
"Yes, it is very sad. As I know Dr Preaty wants me to remind you, psyhic abilities can be very dangerous. And you should be very careful. OK? As I was saying, that means--"
"Wait, no interruptions? Are you sure? Well, OK then. As I was saying, that means that the most powerful abilities are the littlest understood and littlest used, because it's hard to use them at all without going pfoof and losing any chance of gaining skill."
"More commonly visible are abilities which developed slowly, giving the psychic some time to learn how to use them safely. The abilities--"