/lit/ - Literature

>big biotech conglomerate is attempting to produce a human capable of reading minds
>process involves joint development of a human implantable electromagnetic brain imaging machine similar to an MRI, and a highly empathetic girl produced through focused eugenics and natal enhancements to estrogen production
>book title: EMpath
>the chosen candidate ends up undergoing the EMpath surgery just as she is coming of age
>first chapters cover her experience simultaneously undergoing puberty and learning to control her ability to understand others' emotions and thoughts, all in a controlled parentless lab environment
>whatever those around her feel, she feels. she adapts a cheerful jester's personality to generate more happiness
>the eugenics and the estrogen doping have made her anomalously attractive. some of her first conceptions of human thought involve sexual fantasies directed toward her, though they are so vague at this stage and she has so little context that she only gradually realizes what they mean

>in the early-middle chapters she is well into her teenage years
>the scientists have discovered that her ability to read emotions and thoughts is limited to the mental profile of the small number of people who work around her, and to achieve true generalized mindreading she has to be exposed to millions of people's thoughts, like an AI needing a larger dataset
>she's released into a large city and tailed by bodyguards so she can be exposed to as many people as possible
>she is sheltered away from people who suffer, to avoid damage to her psyche

>the mid and late chapters she's nearly an adult, and through some means she escapes the biotech company's monitoring
>as they try to hunt her down she tears through the underbelly of city, deliberately exposing herself to the suffering people she had been cloistered away from
>sexually offers herself to those suffering, to a self destructive extent

I'm not sure beyond there. The plot is something I vaguely thought up from looking at this image. I realized it's an accidental female coming of age allegory, from her experience with puberty to her time as a sheltered teen and then as an adult looking to help damaged people.