The tinfoil hat incident

📝 I’m sitting in the subway driving home from work. Half sleeping and worn out from a day in the office. When a haggard-looking man sits down opposite me. His clothes are old and worn. It takes a moment until I realize that his mind is blank. I don’t receive any thoughts at all from him.

Now I’m awake again. Adrenalin is rushing into my systems. I make a conscious scan of my surroundings, but everything feels normal. Nobody minds me. Quite the opposite, many people are thinking about the man sitting opposite me. Apparently, he is smelly too. Luckily my nose is still closed from a lingering cold. I focus on him and try to read his mind actively. But I only receive a faint signal, indicating that he is living. It reminds me of when I read the minds of animals. This is not possible the brains structures are just not compatible.

This is huge. I’ve never been in such a situation. It is hard to suppress my gut reaction to just run away from this man. But I should not run from this. I need to find out what is going on. Assess if this is a problem with my talent or property of him. I relax a little bit. Only a little bit, I’m still ready to bolt if need be!

Unable to read his mind, I look closer at him. I notice that he is wearing a wool hat in summer. The cap is dark brown and has multiple holes. Through the gaps, I see a shiny, metallic-looking material. That is strange and did certainly not belong to this hat originally. I wonder what it could be. It looks thin and flimsy like tin foil.

He looks at me and asks: “Can I help you”? Its voice is deep and rumbly. I respond with the first thing in my mind “Don’t you have warm with your hat?”. “I have, but it protects my mind from them. I never remove it!” He stands up, “Have a nice evening and don’t stare so much at strangers; It’s rude!”

Flabergasted, I sit on my bench. Reading other people’s minds is something I do since I can think. I never knew how it is to not just know what others think. And today I got a taste for this, and I don’t like it at all. And I still wonder why it took me so long to find out that apparently there is a cheap deterrent for my talent. The tinfoil hat crowds were right all along. And this poses a way bigger question: Am I not alone?

• /writing