Metadimensional Extraversion Syndrome

Content Warning: Discussion of brain damage Mention of childhood death

MES is the name for the condition in which metadimensional energy floods the brain. This can cause severe brain damage, permanent disability, death, and worse. However, if managed and controlled, it can instead fuel psionics, allowing the afflicted individual to perform superhuman feats. This discovery led to both humanity's golden age and the greatest catastrophy in human history.

Deadly Mess

The first known cases were recorded in 2240. A handful of children, all descendants of early space-farers, exhibited strange abilities followed by intense headaches associated with unexplained brain damage. Within a year, they were dead from compounding damage caused by metadimensional energy. It was the first, and still only, example of such energy being present within the human body. The lethal condition was given the name Metadimensional Extraversion Syndrome.
Over the next several years, organizations learned how to reduce the lethality of MES, now confirmed to be a genetic disease. Those afflicted could control the flow of metadimensional energy in their brains and redirect it toward those strange abilities - now revealed to be psychic in nature. This discipline became Psionics, and its discovery forever changed the course of human history.

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Golden Age

After a century of study, MES lethality dropped to 0% for those who received appropriate instruction. Psions were able to perform superhuman feats with little fear. The invention of psitech soon followed, creating devices and systems that mimicked or amplified psionics.
Teleporters aided with jump gates that instantly teleported ships across the galaxy. Biopsions cured diseases entire hospitals at a time. Telepaths provided translation services to remove communication barriers. MES was only a small piece of the puzzle, but it's unlikely humanity would have reached this golden era without it.

Dark Age

The Scream killed everyone afflicted with MES and destroyed most psitech, ending the golden age in minutes and ushering in an unprecedented dark age. All the benefits of the condition disappeared and left communities shattered and hopeless.
It took generations for the condition to present itself again, and by then most information on it had been lost, forgotten, or destroyed. New institutes of learning now have to compete with added fears of another Scream, of abuse of psionic power, or unethical experiments claiming to provide help.

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MES fills a limbo in the cultural zeitgeist. It's a congenital disease that kills children, yes. It's also the precursor to superpowers once thought to befit the likes of gods. It's both a disability and super ability in one.
Everyone wants to support the diagnosed child, to ensure they don't suffer. But nobody trusts the end result, the psion you can't protect yourself against. There is no surviving MES without turning it into psionics, but suddenly the sickly child is a powerful adult and people are afraid of that.
MES is both curse and blessing, boon and bane. It changed the landscape of human society. A diagnosis changes how you see the world, and in turn changes how the world sees you. It's not going away, but we're a long way from living peacefully with it.

— Interview with an epidemiologist

Timeline

2240

First recorded instances of what would later be called MES

2243

MES named and classified as lethal in all cases

2257

MES reclassified as deadly, but potentially survivable

2316

MES death rate confirmed 0% with intervention

2665

The Scream kills all those affliced with active MES

2743

First recorded recurrence of MES

Information

Children

• Feral

Cycle

Chronic, Congenital

Transmission

Genetic

Did you know?

Initially, around 1 in 10,000 children born across known space were later diagnosed with MES. Today in only the Talos Sector, it's estimated about 5-7% of the population has some degree of MES, with incalculable others carrying the gene.