The Telejam
Always Wear Protection When Dealing with Telepaths
Author’s Note: This is a short story from my Block World universe—which is the universe of the philosophical science fiction novel I’m currently writing. The Space Sage Handbook is a place where I’m working out some of the ideas from my novel. Check out the intro story to help yourself get a better grip on what I’m doing with these if you’re interested in that. You can find the “introduction” by Kindred Powderdry below.
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The Space Sage Handbook: A Compendium of the Imperium | Dedication, Forward, Intro
Author’s Note: here’s the first piece in what I hope will be many short stories set in the world of the novel I’m working on called Block World—so, I guess this is an exploration of the Block World World. This series is my way of working out the broader ‘world-building’ of that universe (world) through short stories instead of info dumps. There’s a pret…
The Telejam
The “TJ” or Telejam is an integral part of our Galactic society today. An intra-cranial implant, the modern day Telejam is a small, flat disc affixed directly onto the recipient’s brain which jams or rebounds (depending on the model) the various telenous operations—‘tele’ meaning “at a distance” or “covering a distance” as in telephone, television, telegraph, telescope, etc., and ‘nous’ meaning “mind”.
Telenous operations: the transmission or reception of mental, volitional, and/or emotional contents at a distance.
Telenous Operators (TNOs) are those who have regained or unlocked, through practice of hidden techniques, sheer luck of birth, or some other means, the preternatural ability to read another’s mind (telegnosis), or literally feel the emotions of others (telepathy), send information, emotions, or images to the minds of other (telesend (also telepostello (archaic)), implant ideas or emotions in the mind or heart of another (telinception), or to move someone to act at a distance (telethelema).
The modern TJ is meant to jam telenous operators and their operations. It is a small disc with a diameter of 17.91 millimeters and a thickness of 1.35 millimeters. TJs are powered by a small nuclear fusion reactor and are coated in a plasteel shell to protect its recipient from its radiation.
While the actual inner workings of the TJ are the intellectual property of Noo Ginosko Industrusties, and are thus proprietary, we know it must work in an analogous fashion to that of “regular plane jane” signal jamming. The TJ interferes with telenous operation channels by creating a strong internal noological signal of its own that disrupts, blocks, or rebounds (depending on the model of TJ in view) the “mind waves” of the TNOs.
Modern TJs are thought to be impervious to TNO tampering since they’re self-contained units, which are factory sealed by employees who themselves have the latest and greatest TJs in their own brains. But that wasn’t always the case. The founder of Noo Ginosko Industries, Marsilio Pythius, fell prey to an especially vicious TNO, Espi Jones, during the advent of the prototype TJ.
Marsilio Pythius founded Noo Ginosko Industries to capitalize on the new wave of TNOs popping up during the First Great Intellectus Renewal. It’s unclear how so many imperial subjects found themselves with telenoological powers, though there are many conspiratorial theories—be it imperial tampering with genomes, cosmic phlogiston storms, underground dispersal of contraband noology texts which give counsel on ‘unlocking’ latent abilities—but whatever the case, there was a major outbreak of new TNOs during the First Renewal—hundreds of thousands, where before there were maybe hundreds.
Where others saw a major disruption of imperial life, Pythius, the opportunist, only saw imperial chits, and lots of ‘em. Pythius began his business as a talent agency which represented level 4 and 5 telegnosoi, telepaths, and telesends. The 5-point ranking scale has since changed to a variegated, multitudinous nightmare of a system which one would need an advanced degree in applied noology to fully describe—a degree I (Kindred Powderdry) do happen to have, but I won’t bore you with the details of the modern TNO ranking scale here. See the Space Sage Handbook entry on “Telenous Operator Ranking System” for that nightmare. But back in the early days of the TNO explosion, the ranking was easy, even if overly derivative and inaccurate. 5s where the strongest TNOs and Pythius wanted to be their manager.
Pythius focused mostly on level 4 and 5 telegnosoi because their abilities to read information off of other people’s minds made them a hot commodity in corporate espionage—which meant lots and lots of imperial chits. A close second were the telepaths, who could experience the emotions of others at a distance. Telepaths could function as a knock-off telegnosos for those who didn’t want to pay top price and who could get the information they desired from the emotional reactions of their targets. Telepaths were especially sought after by jealous wives spying on their husbands. And coming in at a distant third place were the telesends.
The telesends weren’t nearly as sought after but they did have their niches—no need for expensive encryption and multi-trace gateways for your sensitive messages, just pay a telesend to put the desired information in your associate’s head. The only problem of course was that then the telesend was also privy to your sensitive messages, but they made their living from their reputation as secret keepers so usually the telesends where the most trustworthy lot of all the TNOs. That is until the elite telegnosoi figured out they could peak in on the level 5 telesends and harvest loads of high-leverage intel from hundreds of clients all at once. This, of course, was one of the major motivating factors for the development of the first TJ.
Pythius focused mostly on representing telegnosoi, telepaths, and telesends at Noo Ginosko Industries because, frankly, the other TNOs were far too dangerous to do business with. Telincepts, those who practiced telinception, could implant ideas in your mind or emotions in your heart, they could practice tele-metanoia, i.e., changing someone’s mind at a distance. I don’t need to explain why this power terrifies everyone in the empire.
Likewise, those who are capable of telethelemoi, that is, those who could change someone’s will from a distance, were equally feared—imagine being forced out of an airlock of your “own” volition by a telethelemoi two quadrants over!
The existence of these powerful mental powers menaced the empire and none more so than Pythius, who wanted to rent out these powers while not being subject to them himself.
A natural tinkerer, Pythius began developing the first ever telenous operation jammer, telejam for short, and TJ for shorter. But before long, Pythius hit a wall in development and was forced to bring in a cognitive mechanical engineer. He hand-picked miss Finca Techne. She was brilliant, she was lovely, and most importantly, she was trust worthy—a fact that Pythius made certain of by running her mind through every level 4 and 5 telegnosoi and telepath on his payroll. She checked out.
After a period of 7 months, Pythius and the lovely Finca had done it. The very first TJ was complete. It was a crude, corded, retro-futuristic looking silver helmet attached to a retrograde digital computer—but it was fully operation. Pythius tried it out on every TNO in his employ and even hired out rival and unsigned TNOs to break into Noo Ginosko headquarters and try to abstract information and emotions out of him or to try and send them into him. None got into his head.
When neither telegnosoi, nor telepaths, nor telesenders could break through his prototype, Pythius grew overly confident in the TJ technology. He began hiring telincepts and telethelemoi to go to work on him as well. Sure, he was cautious enough to start with level 2s, but when they couldn’t manipulate his mind, heart, nor will, his arrogance grew. He began hiring 3s and 4s, but still no TNO was able to penetrate the TJ.
Finally, whether out of sheer arrogance or perhaps unbridled curiosity, Pythius hired a level 5 telincept named Espi Jones, to try her magic out on him. Unbeknownst to him—and everyone else at the time—Espi was omni-telenoia, meaning she possessed all of the known telenous powers, and maybe even some others which no one else has knowledge of. Being a known level 5 telincept made her dangerous enough, being omni-telenoia made her the most dangerous TNO of her time, but on top of her preternatural powers, Espi was exceedingly crafty as well.
Upon entering Pythius’s office, Espi took one look around, felt the interference waves emanating off the TJ helmet and immediately decided to go to work on the unhelmeted Finca, who sat at the computer interface controls monitoring the experiment.
Finca was an open book to Espi, who flipped through the pages of her mind with ease. There she saw the schematics for the Telejam prototype and in milliseconds the knowledge was hers. She looked into Finca’s desires like a nosey brother rifling through his sister’s diary. Finding the embers of Finca’s affection for Pythius hidden there in her admiration, Espi fanned them into flames of passionate desire.
Then, after plundering Finca’s mind and tinkering with her affections, Espi constrained Fina’s will and forced her to reverse the polarity of the telejam signal so that instead of blocking out telenoological powers, it would receive and amplify them. Finca had no choice. She did as she thought best, as she wanted to do, and what she was determined to do, because that’s what Espi made her do.
After selling Noo Ginosko Industries to Espi Jones, for a surprisingly low price, Pythius eloped with Finca and the two retired on a distant moon of Eudaimonas. We now know that this was a contrivance of the omni-telenoia, Espi, thanks to her posthumous tell-all autobiography, My Life’s An Open Book. At the time, however, no one could quite understand how the most money hungry businessman could do such an about face and transform into such a devoted romantic.
It was largely in light of the revelations of Espi’s autobiography that the empire mandated permanent TJs for every high-ranking official and every member of the royal house. This mandate in turn led to the advancement of TJ technology and research, which eventually led to the latest disc implant form of the TJ.
For more on Espi Jones, see her entry in this, the Space Sage Handbook.
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This is super good. I like how you use the compendium format to tell a story, it’s like seeing the broad sketches and it stokes the imagination to want to know more, the specific details you do give provide such depth where needed, and allow the mind to imagine/feel the rest!