″So what you′re telling me here, just to make absolutely sure that I′m getting this one hundred percent straight, is that your son-″ ″Eric.″ ″Yes. Eric, your son, seven years of age, is an empath.″ ″Well, they′re not as rare as folks like to believe. Have you seen the news recently? That youth gang they busted. A hand full of those... well you know, could bring this entire city down.″ ″I haven′t, no. Get the feeling that watching news is seriously detrimental to my ability to stay informed nowadays. Haha. Pretty sure I do know what gang you′re talking about though.″ The lunatic in my backseat, happily regurgitating propaganda at me chooses to ignore my jokey remark entirely ″Frightening. I do worry about my ex-wife sometimes.″ ″Ex-wife? So your son lives with her?″ ″Now he does, yes- oh, take a right here. I could not bear the company of the two after I realized that he′s... you know... one of them.″ ″Hey, I′m just your taxi driver. If you want to use the slur then do it, but stop forcing that inference on me.″ ″I think normal folks like you and me are rightfully suspicious. It′ a powder cake if you ask me. This city is. And if we don′t take decisive action who knows what will happen? My wife just started doing everything Eric said at some point. Catered to his every whim. It′s frightening when you see it. I got out of there just in time, I did.″ ″Please tell me you can see how incredibly sad the thing you just said is.″ Once again, the somewhat disheveled looking businessman refuses to engage with the point. ″Well why are you so defensive of them anyway? Can′t cost you much business to stand up against those hypnos, you know. ″ Ah, there we go. ″So what is it. Someone you know? Someone pulling your strings?″ ″That′s really not-″ ″Especially types like you can′t be weary enough. Public service I mean, folks who′re around people a lot.″ The noise data hyperconflation matrix generates all kinds of results. Myriad mindsets littered across probability space. Anything can be true by the might of pattern recognition and reality can be constructed from even the most outlandish axioms. That isn′t to say that truth values are distributed randomly of course. There are attractors of all sizes, the larger ones growing boring before one even becomes aware of their existence, when they are still presumed to be the standard, while yet others are too depressing to even be of interest. Before he tells me any more about how hard it was to leave his wife for being too nice to her child, the way mothers are sometimes known to be, I decide to redirect his paranoid delusions. ″Yea, a friend of mine′s an empath. Don′t see her too much nowadays, but we used to go drinking sometimes.″ the impact of this innocuous admission is palpable. The businessman′s already rather pale face turns ashen within the space of a few syllables. ″I- I think I′d rather walk the rest.″ ″Fine by me, have a wonderful day.″ I smile. Sincerely though not exactly kindly as I drive off. The gang he was talking about was almost certainly some small subgroup of soul-chain, and the idea that it might have been the kids I helped move last week spirals around in my mind for a bit. While I have no particular sympathy for the soul-chain as an organization, any singular member I have so far interacted with has been nothing short of lovely and if there is one moral principle by which I stand, it is that good people should be allowed to do as they please. ″Call Ria.″ -Calling Zaria Flimkien- ″Oh Seth... been a while, how are you?″ ″You sound dead. Actually deceased. Were you sleeping?″ ″What? No, It′s just been a busy day, which was part of a busy week and so on. Going door to door and being shouted at, the usual. I′m assuming your day hasn′t been too peachy either?″ ″You could say that, yeah, but primarily I was just reminded of my wonderful empath friend with whom I don′t do enough.″ ″I′m not an empath, that′s not a real thing, and the thing you want to do is grab a drink, because you′re upset about something I presume?″ ″Presumption correct, as to be expected of an empath, which you undeniably are if there are any. You in?″ ″Sure, meet you at the docks in an hour.″ ″Perfect.″ -Call ended with Zaria Flimkien- It′s a thing she′s always been able to do; Read the tone of your voice and extrapolate your desires before you′ve even become aware of them. If communication is a game of flawed processes, the imperfect encoding on information by the speaker into a shared medium and imperfect decryption by the listener back into thought, then Zaria Flimkien does not communicate, she reads minds. While the members of soul chain call themselves empaths, they are far closer to ″normal folks″ than to Ria. She is scary, hard to be around and the thing I desperately want to be: A communication machine within the eather of human neurosis. I really do need a drink, huh?