I stayed a little longer, mostly to get used to my ability some more. I believed it was important to be able to use my power as smoothly as possible. In addition, I wanted to get better at reading people's memories. Receiving a full life's worth of information was no small feat and it initially took me a long time to make sense of it. I planned to reduce this delay as much as possible, to the point where I could get a quick overview of everything in a few seconds. After a couple of hours more, I was partially successful. The trick was to trade speed against useless details, to skim over unimportant information.
Speaking of information, people's thoughts were a lot less interesting than one could expect. At least in the context of walking in the street, most folks only had mundane things in mind. It was mostly about their plans for their current course of action, complaints about this or that, random idle thoughts about any subject, and the weather. It wasn't a joke when rumor said that the weather was the most talked about topic in the world. People also thought about it all the time, after all.
("Darn it, I'm so late. Should I get a taxi?")
("Alex is so sweet. I can't wait for our next date.")
("I don't want to go to work tomorrow.")
("This girl is cute.")
("Nice weather today.")
I was now much more confident in handling my ability. This gave me global confidence in myself too. Wouldn't human relationships become a breeze with such power? There was no need to be afraid of anyone, not even my parents, and especially not my sister. On top of that, I might even be able to find a girl who liked me and get a girlfriend!
Contented, I returned home. It was now evening and I felt very hungry. Due to receiving this unexpected blessing and testing it, I had only eaten the few snacks I had on hand since breakfast. When I was in front of my building, I extended my mind in the direction of my house. Soon enough, I knew what we would have for dinner by checking my mother's thoughts: grilled chicken and fries. Not bad. I had only gotten this power today but I already loved how useful it was.
My father was home when I entered the apartment. He was reading the news on a tablet in the living room. Just like me, my whole family was brown-haired and brown-eyed. My mother was usually a nice person, even though I didn't feel it that much myself. By my estimate, 90% of that gentleness had gone toward my little sister. My father and I shared the remaining 10% but even that wasn't evenly distributed. He would get 9% while I received 1%, on the good days. It wasn't that she didn't like me, though. She just didn't care too much about my affairs and focused on more important things, in her opinion.
My father was a strict person. He had no tolerance for nonsense and had educated us strongly. Or should I say, he had educated me strongly. As soon as he noticed I behaved barely acceptably according to his measurements, he adopted the same attitude my mother had toward me.
My little sister wasn't stupid and she understood early on where we all stood in our household. She usually behaved nicely in front of my parents, who doted on her in return. Behind their backs, she wasn't nearly as gentle. And this only got worse when she felt our parents' disinterest in me.
It was this little family group that gathered when dinner was ready. My mother served the meal and chatted with my sister for the rest of the time. My father was mostly silent during meals. He didn't mind other people chatting but didn't imitate them unless there was a good reason for it. As for me, I quietly ate my food without a word. Talking was pointless. The best reaction I had gotten from my parents in the last few years was their small surprise when I told them I was admitted to the best high school in the neighborhood, a few months ago. This lasted for about a minute and everything went back to normal after that. Congratulations? Compliments? Those only existed in my imagination.
Anyway, this was the perfect time to try my newfound ability. First of all, their surface thoughts were what I expected. My mother and my sister thought about what they were talking about, mainly the new school year that would start on the following day. My father wasn't that different. Even though he didn't talk, he was still listening to the conversation and his mind mainly revolved around that, with some occasional random thoughts about work.
Next was the deeper levels. I inhaled mentally and dived right in, starting with my parents. I was very curious about what I would find.
And this is where I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life and realized one of the downsides of my power. I learned things that I… really didn't want to know. Some of the things were so unexpected that I looked at my parents like they were strangers. Some others were just absolutely weird.
'My father did what? And my mother… Oh my gosh. What the hell? Are they for real?'
At this moment, I knew I would never be able to see them the same way as before. I uncovered facts that I should never have known. And now, I regretted it. Learning all of this wouldn't change anything but I wouldn't be able to forget about it. I gained nothing and lost a lot.
I now knew I should avoid reading the memories of the people close to me. The knowledge forced me to change my opinion about them, which wasn't necessarily a good thing. Of course, they did those things so they weren't blameless. But now, it felt like I shared their dirty secrets which made me feel bad in turn.
I changed my mind. Mind reading was awesome, but only on the correct targets. I trembled thinking about what I could learn about my grandparents if my parents were like this.
No, never again. Not on someone close to me.