[Leland]

Granted. Your wish works perfectly fine and you can know people's true intentions just by looking at them. At first is very satisfying: you surprise a lot of people with your perfect comebacks, you become a legendary salesman and you can easily find a way to fulfill any sexual curiosity. But the fun turns into horror very soon when you discover that everyone is simply following their instincts and they do what they do only because they think it's the way to obtain the maximum amount of physical or emotional gain. Sounds obvious on paper, you already knew that, but now you deeply realize that all human beings share the same deep intention and there are only irrelevant differences based on skills, experience and personalities, that you start to consider more and more like a thin mask, a cultural and experiential decoration. You struggle to keep living around those meat puppets that always follow the path of less resistance towards pleasure, calculated with a ruthless and simple cost-benefit calculation. There is no free will, no surprise anymore, life is an automated theater running for no one. You feel so lonely. One day you are really lost: you look at yourself in the mirror not knowing what to do anymore, and you accidentally activate your power on yourself. As expected, you are exactly like everyone else, but now you become totally aware of humanity's master, your master: the subconscious mind. You wanted to read minds because you wanted admiration and respect, because you wanted fulfillment and love... but what you really wanted was to obtain the most pleasure and less pain from other people. Like everyone else. And now you can: you cheated at the game but, in doing so, the game lost all meaning. You stop thinking, you start laughing and never stop. Why? Because it feels good.

I wish I could lucid dream at will.