When someone dies mysteriously during a Psych experiment, Rhiannon becomes enmeshed in a conspiracy that includes both the survivors and the killer.
*****
Short on cash, Rhiannon...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER SIX
ALL-OR-NONE LAW
( — the rule that the size of the action potential is unaffected by increases in the intensity of stimulation beyond the threshold level. )
— ♡ —
RHIANNON IS PRETTY DARN AWARE SHE'S A COWARD. She doesn't need other people to remind her of it, especially her parents, as it's something she has been coming to terms with for a long time, ever since she was younger; still, she knows she's not avoiding Connor because she's scared of him—she's avoiding him because she doesn't know how she'd deal with having to be face to face with the guy.
There are plenty of things she doesn't know how to deal with. It's not even like she's not aware there's stuff that textbooks don't explain, as every situation is different for each individual that experiences it, and she doubts there's any scientific paper titled 'How to Properly Face a Guy You Never Actually Dated, But He Still Found a Way of Helping You Ruin Your Own Life'. It sounds more like something she'd read online as a satirical article of some sort, with memes scattered all over it.
She's pretty sure she's on the verge of a meltdown all over again—and over the same thing, which is what makes it a lot harder to bear.
She likes textbook cases, even though they can't always be applied to real situations. She likes studying them because they feel cold and distant, leading her to think she'll know how to act if she's ever stuck under those conditions, but she has something those clinical observations, plastered onto pages of textbooks and manuals and embellished with medical and biological terms, don't have.
It's her damn humanity.
Jude says that happens to be what makes them more than walking, breathing cases or patient files, but Rhiannon feels her mind has always been a lot more . . . mechanical and technical than his—which is not necessarily a bad thing for him. It's one of the things she loves the most about him, how he manages to constantly remind himself he's human, along with all of them, and not a machine that merely processes information.
He remembers we're active when we do it—it's why we have our differences, why not everyone has an equal response to the same environmental stimuli, and why we don't always have the same response to those exact stimuli on various evaluations.
She shoves all of that mindless nonsense aside, arguing you can learn any behavior through processes of classical conditioning and social learning and maintain it through operant conditioning—your humanity can be ignored and, sometimes, she does it. Anything can be taught.
The smoke she blows out of her mouth isn't cigarette smoke. It's a gelid day today, with a snowstorm threatening to fall at any given moment, and not even her heavy coat manages to keep her warm enough to make her stop shivering for more than five seconds straight.
