The Birth of Telepathy

Approximately three centuries before Mercy and Dante arrived at the undiscovered planet, genetic engineers had created the quantum sense. Those with the right connections or enough influence to get this artificial genetic marker unlocked the ability to perceive and manipulate the quantum entanglements.

By finding entanglements that led to the atoms of a person’s mind, a person with this gene could read thoughts. By “touching” quantum entanglements that led to a spoon, the spoon could be bent. By manipulating entangled atoms and carbon and oxygen, fire could be created.

When this power first appeared in human society, people used the word telepathy to refer to it. That was a word and an idea that had existed in various cultures from time immemorial. It was familiar.

But in fact, the quantum sense went far beyond telepathy.

The ability to move objects without touching them, to start fires without matches, to read another person’s thoughts, and even to control another person’s thoughts … these created an immediate division. People with the status to get the gene were immediately more powerful than people without.

It wasn’t long before conflict broke out. Some telepaths believed it was only natural to use this new power however they wanted, to get what they wanted. A wolf doesn’t feel guilty about using its superior strength to eat a mouse; likewise a person with the quantum sense had no need to feel guilty about using his or her superior strength to make another human a slave.

They called themselves Archons, an old Greek word that referred to rulers.

Sooner or later, though, a different faction of telepaths emerged. They believed that a person born with greater strength had the duty to help those without that strength. 

They called themselves The Gentle Hand, and their efforts to free the Archons’ slaves led to war.

History called it the Gene War, and it nearly drove humanity to extinction.