milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The front door opens, and a highly distracted Doctor McCoy wanders through. Someday he's going to realize it is highly hazardous for him to wander through doors while distracted, since that always seems to land him in Milliways. He's dressed in his usual starfleet blues, with his favorite blue scrub top, munching on an apple and going over lab results from the last round of routine physicals.

...

Someone please stop him before he runs smack into the bar.

(ooc: ~~Must disappear for 15-20 min. Sorry! Will be~~ back!)

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"Not that I can tell. They're hired on their promises to bring in money, not their ability to actually know what they're talking about. Why do you think I took a posting on a starship, and not at General? I'd have gone mad in a matter of months." He snorts, having written off most of the administrative staff long ago.

"Can't say I blame you. Especially not after some of the things I've seen out there..." He waves a hand in the general direction of the door. "Bureaucratic stupidity is everywhere and entrenched in just about every time frame I've ever seen. It's sad, really. I liked the university, but sucking up to the brass was no fun at all. Guess it worked out okay in the end, though."

"So what is it precisely that you do? I don't think you ever got around to telling me." McCoy asks, good-naturedly curious.

"I'm a parapsychologist," says Ray. "Most of the research we did officially at Columbia was on psionics, but ever since the university ran us out on a rail- us being my colleagues Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler- we've been doing paranormal investigation and elimination as a business. Mostly that means spirits and trans-corporeal entities, but every so often we get a really juicy psychic case- you'd be amazed how many poltergeist calls turn out to be a poorly understood teenager undergoing some form of psychic eruption, even if it's only temporary. Or maybe you wouldn't, considering- by the way, I got the Bar to give me that paper you recommended. Fascinating stuff."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it." McCoy smiles warmly. "We've gotten a few cases like that as well... though unfortunately they tend not to turn out well. The most notable case developed a strong case of mania and attempted to take over the ship."

"Yeah, I-"

Ray, this is the ONE NEURON you've got devoted to common sense speaking. DO NOT FINISH THAT SENTENCE.

"-can imagine. The kinds of events that drive people to their initial eruptions usually don't produce very stable personalities, at least not for a while afterwards."

Good man, Ray.

McCoy would thank Ray, if he knew about the restraint. And if he believed the reason.

"No, it tends not to... it amazes me sometimes any of the commonly psychic species ever turn out to be normal." He resists the 'well, as normal as they get' part of that comment he usually includes when talking to Spock.

"Well, if it's a widespread trait in the population and they've got any kind of history to them whatsoever, then they've probably developed some pretty strong social structures and psychological defense mechanisms to compensate for the kind of chaos that psychic eruption throws into the average brain," Ray points out. "I mean, they'd have died out otherwise. The only ones who live to breed are the ones who have some means of keeping their act together when the top of their head gets flipped open and their brains see the sunshine- metaphorically speaking, of course. It's pure Lamarckianism. If the psychically active parents find a way to keep themselves close to sane, say by really thorough meditation or something, their kids will have stronger mental structures- not genetically, but because of the behavior their parents transmit while they're raising them. Mendel's in charge of how the genes get transmitted, but Lamarck covers the transmission of social and psychological traits from generation to generation. And that's how you get sane psychic races."

It was good enough to get him an A from Professor Csordas back in his psychological anthropology class, once he persuaded the professor to let him write about theoretical or fictional populations in addition to existing human ones, but he's not about to let the doctor know that part.

Good enough to get an A from McCoy as well. That answer would have gotten him some decent brownie points in McCoy's lab. The good doctor has already had to dismiss several of his junior technicians for their utter inability to deal with the psychic abilities of many non-human species, a failing that annoys McCoy to no end.
"Good answer. Too often the stress is put upon the genetics, and not the social structure. That is the common theory in Vulcan medicine as to why many of the emerging human psychic cases usually result in some sort of severe psychological or emotional trauma before they can fully develop. They give the theory a different name, of course, something heavy in consonants and nearly impossible for a human to pronounce, but basically the same idea."

Ray nods. "If the data I have are correct, humanity's right on the verge of its first really major blitz of psychic expressions for generations. Punctuated equilibrium's a harsh mistress, and I don't know if the species is ready for it. I mean, you've got to come up with some way for the non-active members of the population to cope with the change in status in their friends, neighbors, kids, and so on. Even if you get perfectly well-tuned means of having the emergent psychic and her family deal with the onslaught, you've got to explain to Mr. Adelson that she's not being disruptive in chemistry class on purpose, you've got to get Sister Thomas Edward to remind the kid that she's supposed to open her mouth and actually speak when she has an answer, you've got to find a way to have the neighbors stop blaming every weird bit of misfortune on the kid across the hall because they heard she had powers..." He shakes his head. "It's a tough time to be a human. Parapsychology's just barely beginning to catch up. I just hope we're there in time."

"I don't know if we're ready in my time." McCoy replies, shaking his head. "Every time I report one of these cases we get a frantic subspace message from Earth demanding we turn around right now and race home to deliver the patient to General, whether or not they're showing any signs of trauma. How a governing body which deals with psychic species every single day can be so utterly blockheaded, I will never understand."

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