Reading minds isn’t like how people imagine it to be.

In reality, it’s difficult.

It’s premeditated.

I can go days without touching someone’s mind. I’ve tried to go months.

See, I learned from an early age that there is a guilt that comes with breaching someone’s thoughts without their permission. This is only heightened by the physical sensation that accompanies such a breach. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t done it. Like describing a never perceived color to a blind man. But one word does come to mind. It’s slimy.

Of course, I didn’t have to read the wrinkled man’s mind in front of me to know what he was thinking.

“Afflicted scum.”

That’s not what he said though. People so rarely say what they’re thinking.

What he actually said was, “Although your first offense, we are a one strike system when it comes to afflicted individuals. An intelligent, collegiate man such as yourself can surely understand the position we as a government are in.”

He adjusted his glasses from his perch above me.

“There is a gamble that comes with giving you a warning or a fine. A gamble that would fall solely on myself as prosecutor. You must forgive me Mr. Finch, but I long since gave up gambling.”

This was all veiled by veined skin that sagged low on the man’s practiced smile. Justice Farb was as old as they came, so he’d had years to apply feigned powerlessness as he ruined lives with intentionality.

At this moment, the guards trounce in at the snap of Justice Farb’s wrinkly fingers. With a system tilted against me, I’d known I’d already lost. As soon as I’d been charged, I knew the coming conviction. I was prepared. And I refused to act like the animal they saw me as.

“I totally understand,” I say to Justice Farb, “I wish it could’ve been different. I myself am a degenerate gambler, I must confess.”

I wink at him for good measure, much to the shock of the immune in the audience.

The guards are upon me now, punching the lengthy code for each dampener cuff they plan to put on my wrists. I present my wrists without a fuss.

But as I do so, I get a sense, one of which I haven’t had in years.

I can sense a buried truth.

We as humans are constantly thinking, both lies and truths shaping our lives. They are often so intensely connected it’s hard to separate them.

But like a lie-detector test, my affliction had always allowed me to sense a monstrous truth being withheld.

I looked to Justice Farb, immediately feeling the intensity. Like a dog hiding a bone from his brother, Farb wanted this gone.

“Wrists here please, Mr. Finch”

I nodded, allowing the large, boulder-shaped guard to take hold of me.

But I reached out with my mind, submerging myself like a sneaker into wet mud.

I had closed my eyes, bracing myself for the cool sensation, like jumping into cold water.

Then I heard Justice Farb’s voice.

“He’s too old and too even-tempered to survive High Security,” whispered Justice Farb, “but nothing to be done. There aren’t enough space in the jails and that’s the new order coming down from the Governor anyways.”

High Security?

They couldn’t be taking me to High Security? How could they? That was for the highest level, most dangerous afflicted. Murderers, druglords, rapists—not a mild telepath like myself.

“Nothing to be done about it,” said Justice Farb in my mind, assuaging his guilt, “nothing to be-“

The dampeners clicked on my wrist and my mind went silent.