Skin Horse
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Skin Horse by Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.skin-horse.com.
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Honestly, given the level of insight you’ve displayed so far, I would assume _you_ would need powers to work that one out, Panopticon. Unless you’ve been sandbagging to hide how horrible you really are behind pretend ignorance even more than I thought, I suppose.
Just because you know what people are thinking does not mean you UNDERSTAND what people are thinking.
Given the implied extent of her powers, Panoptica may well have grown lazy. Or perhaps the constant flow of other’s thoughts is so overwhelming that she prefers not to think very hard.
Y’ever seen the movie “Scanners”? Kind of the extreme version of ‘the constant flow of others’ thoughts’.
I’ve been meaning to, if only on the virtue of Patrick McGoohan, but I’m given to understand that exploding heads are involved.
Yes, it’s not for the squeamish.
I’m running on the assumption that Pan’ is both far more competent and far more involved than initial impressions led on.
But unimaginative… IIRC her idea of a party room lacked flair…
But was that her idea of a party room, or was it Nick’s? After all, that meeting took place in his mind.
Nick’s idea of a party room would not be one balloon. It would probably involve video games and wall displays straight from Bradbury…
I’m guessing that she will come up with a truly wild conclusion that may be better or worse than the truth.
Knowing that someone can read your mind should lead a wise man to empty his mind, and refill it with nonsensical thoughts. She may be able to tell what you’re thinking, but she’ll have no idea why you’re thinking it.
When I was a child I made an effort to memorize all of the poems in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Still remember most of them, so I’m well-prepared for any such situation. The Walrus and the Carpenter, by itself, should be sufficient – it’s quite long.
That is why I memorized all the commercial jingles from my youth! Or at least, that’s what I am claiming, and you’ll never be able to tell the truth unless you want a shot of “My baloney has a first name” across your cortex
… it’s O-S-C-A-R. My baloney has a second name, it’s M-A-Y-E-R.
This line of reasoning is the greatest rationalization for the wasted neurons in my head occupied with this dreck that I am wholeheartedly adopting it. I claim that it also explains why I can sing “buckle up for safety” fifty years down the road.
This is, of course, a plot point in The Demolished Man (in which they are called “Pepsis” for reasons no-one can remember).
Eight, sir; seven, sir;
Six, sir; five, sir;
Four, sir; three, sir;
Two, sir; one!
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun.
(repeat the last two lines ad nauseum due to the semicadence)
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little
Glowing friend
But really I’m not
Actually your friend
But I am.. (beat beat beat)
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I’m the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
I have a secret to tell
From my electrical well
It’s a simple message and I’m
Leaving out the whistles and bells
So the room must listen to me
Filibuster vigilantly
My name is blue canary
One note spelled l-i-t-e
My story’s infinite
Like the Longines Symphonette
It doesn’t rest
etc. Any telepath who can keep track of TMBG lyrics deserves whatever else they get.
The lyrics are the least of the problem. The real problem would be the earworm implanted in the telepath’s brain. It could take hours, or even days to die. I would would say such a defense could be considered a counter-attack. Especially if you knew what the telepath’s most-hated song was.
There was in fact a Mercedes Lackey urban fantasy novel where the protagonist held off thought probes for an extended period by reciting the entire TMBG discography until the other side ran out of telepaths willing to try and decipher whatever the heck was going on in his head.
In the Next Gen novel Dark Mirror, Picard, posing as his own mirror-universe duplicate, keeps Evil Mirror Troi out of his head by reciting that parody of “The Song of Hiawatha”. Nothing keeps telepaths out of your head like the possibility they might end up with “He, to get the warm side inside/Put the inside skin side outside” stuck in theirs.
tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun
But will that approach allow us to avoid Demolition? ^_~
The guy in the movie version of “The Day of the Triffids” used the image of a brick wall.
In one of Mercedss Lackey’s books, one of the characters started singing all of They Might Be Giants songs to keep a bunch of mind reading Unseelie wizards out of his head. While concentrating on the accordion as an item of great power.
They apparently had to keep replacing the mind readers. After they ran out, he decided to just sing “We want a rock” over and over again.
You beat me to it, lol.
I think at one point the enemy tried to decipher “Blue Canary” as an alchemical term.
Steed and Peel (the *real* Avengers!) used “Green Grow the Rushes”…
Emma Peel had a few outfits she wore that were distracting enough on their own.
This is all very interesting (although the only thing I could think of when reading through the discuusion was “Don’t think about the event!”). If reading someone’s mind is as quick as we were told in http://skin-horse.com/comic/the-home/ then Kate’s not going to get distracted like that. Refusing to answer her questions may work, though, so long as you can keep saying “no comment” until she gives up.
Reading people’s minds like this does tend to annoy them, but that’s less of a concern when you’re being threatened with an object which is at least as dangerous as a canister of nerve gas.
Does every ship made of ice have an anti-monster net?
“Every ship made of ice”? How many do you think there are?
I could be wrong, but I believe there’s only one, so the answer to his question would be:
Yes, “every” ship made of ice does have an anti-monster net.
Eh, I dunno – I would think the odds are pretty good that the Russians have a few hidden away in remote Kara Sea outposts.
Although, to be fair, if so, they probably would still have anti-monster nets on them left over from the Soviet era.
What are the chances that the a-m nets are already incapacitated?
Pretty good, actually. If Nera managed to shut down one device, she’s smart enough to have shut down all the offensive measures. However, “incapacitated” may be a bit of a misnomer, since any of them — including the deck guns — should still be able to be used manually.