Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Theo began to put the pills into groups. Seeing what she was doing, he helped her and they ended up with ten discrete piles. At which point, Theo leaned forward and put those piles into three groupings.
“None of these medications have been anonymized,” she told him, then picked up a pill and showed him the stamp in the middle that bore a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. “There was no reason for them to be anonymized or used in a generic form. No one was ever going to come here and do a prescription audit.”
“You recognize them?”
Theo pointed to the first set of pills. “If I’m correct, those are basic sedatives. Relatively mild except for the dark pink capsules—one of those will hit a Psy hard. They’d be able to follow only the most basic commands at best.”
She pointed to the second pile. “Those relate to digestion, more specifically to nausea control. Not an unusual combination. Some patients don’t react well to sedation, and nausea can be a side effect.
“However”—she picked up one of the anti-nausea pills—“this specific drug is extremely heavy-duty. Furthermore, most of this class of medications have been phased out across the world.” She pointed at the third pile. “Even so, those are the most unusual. The black one is the most hated medication possible among Psy.”
Yakov thought of what side effect might elicit such a strong reaction. “Does it impact your mind? Your abilities?”
“That wasn’t its initial purpose,” she said. “In the time before Silence, it was a drug born of empathy—it was used to assist those who couldn’t control their strong psychic abilities and their attendant side effects. I’m not talking about people who simply needed to learn control. I’m talking about individuals who didn’t have the neurological capability to do so.
“The telepaths used to just scream and scream, their hands over their ears, because they couldn’t block out the telepathic roar of the world, while the Tks often teleported themselves into horrific or deadly situations because they’d caught a random glimpse of an accident site on the comm, or seen a photograph a relative had taken of their climb in an ice crevasse. Do you see?”
Yakov whistled. “Yeah. Like a bear who has all the strength of an adult but thinks he’s a cub so he doesn’t know to protect others from his actions. But in this case, the Psy were hurting themselves.”
“Not all of them,” Theo clarified. “A powerful Tp could liquefy their parents’ brains with a tantrum should those parents be less powerful. A Tk could kill a caregiver if they began to lift and throw things. A foreseer could grab hold of a child and spit out nightmarish prophecies.”
“Bozhe moi.” Yakov had never once considered this issue when it came to the Psy. “The medication was a way to offer the patients peace, while protecting those who cared for them.”
“Exactly so.” Theo picked up the black pill, stared at it. “The problem with it is the significant side effect: it blunts awareness. The world becomes a blur, seen through a haze. More so than any other drug I’ve ever researched. One patient described it as being a zombie incapable of moving from the spot in which he was ‘parked.’ ”
“Pretty significant side effect.”
Theo nodded. “Which was why, once stabilized after an initial course of the drug, the patients with the capacity to understand their options, even if that understanding was limited, were weaned off it little by little until their cognition became more acute. At which point they were asked if they wanted to be on the drug. Led by empaths, our medics were far more ethical then. Those empaths also facilitated conversation with the nonverbal patients.”
“How many said yes to continuing the medication?”
“Ninety-seven percent.”
Sensing Yakov’s surprise at her precise answer, she said, “I did a research project on this medication for extra credit—it was a course about Psy medicinal history. The drug has been out of use for over five decades.” Because instead of helping their people, come what may, the Psy had begun to “dispose of” those they considered “imperfect.”
Such clean words her people had learned to use to hide the weight of their evil.
From the way Yakov’s body went still beside her own, she knew he’d come to the same conclusion. But what he said aloud was “So, it was helpful when used as designed to be used.”
“Yes. For most of the patients on it, it was the first time in their life they’d been able to consciously experience the world in some capacity instead of being overwhelmed by their abilities, and that wasn’t something they were willing to give up. Most asked for a dosage calibrated to give maximum benefits with minimum side effects—a little psychic risk in return for agency and conscious awareness.”
Yakov nodded slowly.
“However,” Theo murmured, her mind making the connections spark by dark spark, “it strikes me that using this pill would be an effective way to achieve a reversible chemical rehabilitation.” She turned the innocuous-looking pill from one side to the other. “Unlike with traditional rehabilitation, this wouldn’t erase the structures in the brain that make us psychic. It would instead put those abilities in a holding pattern.”