We Are the Power

Writing prompt:

Scientists have created a renewable energy source that converts human emotions into clean energy. Unfortunately, negative emotions such as hate, anger, and embarrassment are exponentially more potent than joy. As ethical scientists, they are debating how to ethically use the invention.

The interns are always the ones who end up being guinea pigs when the professors get their bright ideas. They are close by, they are conditioned to always agree with the professors and they can be extorted to obey if they don’t agree to be a test subject.

So the invention of the Emotional Power Generator was a break through in physics and psychology. It basically received emotions and converted them into power.

Of course they thought that bright emotions, like love, joy and happiness would give the most power. And don’t get me wrong, they did give a lot of power but when Charlie was put in the chamber and was having a bad day due to her period being present and she was just feeling blah and in pain, their generator was outputting a significant magnitude of power.

No one noticed the side effects of what happened to Charlie. Not even her. She just passed it off as her pain killers kicking in finally. Her pain had died off and her mood had improved as she was feeling much better, not as angry, depressed or in pain.

The next day her period was again causing her pain and she was really not a happy intern. When she was again the test subject and the professor was asking her how she was feeling, she let him have it. The generator was instantly outputting more Kilowatts than they expected or had seen.

They were happy and then someone realised that negative emotions and pain were capable of generating much more power than positive emotions.

This caused an ethical dilemma between the professors because as much as they wanted to create a new source of power that had no pollution, they were human enough to not want to cause people pain. They were assholes at times but none of them were evil.

But Charlie noticed that her pain, anger and depression caused by her period was much less after even just 20 minutes in the collection chamber.

When she mentioned this. One of the psychiatrists got very excited. She called in a team of doctors to examine Charlie and determine if there was anything physically wrong with her.

There was nothing wrong. In fact there was a lot right. Her feelings of being bloated, pain in her uterus and general feeling of being unwell were all much less.

Back into the chamber with them all watching and asking questions and using all sorts of equipment they could fit in it, and they worked out that the collection chamber was not just feeding on the negative emotions and physical pain she felt but it was absorbing them and obeying the laws of thermodynamics.

It was taking energy from one location, Charlie, and converting it to a different form of energy in the generator.

This left Charlie in much better condition and feeling much better emotionally. Charlie was elated. So were all the women involved in this set of experiments. There were no end of volunteers once news of this got out.

The medical school, physics college, psychology college were all called in and it became one of the biggest projects in the university. The University board panicked and called in a couple of security companies because someone was able to let them know that not only was this a direct threat to traditional, polluting forms of energy production, it was a medical, psychological and a breakthrough in physics.

They realised that it didn’t just generate power, it helped people who were in pain by removing the energy of their pain. Not just physical but emotional.

Depressed test subjects were flocking to the university to volunteer because their depression was made lesser by 30 minutes a day in the chambers. And the affect appeared to be cumulative. It was a positive feedback cycle. They felt better by it being removed so they felt better in general.

There were so many places in the world where these chambers and generators could be put to use to help people with not just power, but ease of mind and body.