Dust is a drug, smuggled from system to system in ways common to high-value/low-weight-and-bulk contraband. It trades at high prices and margins on the black markets, and is as hotly pursued by law enforcers in the way opiates are today. Implications are that if one is caught in possession or dealing, the penalties are quite harsh. Many black market operators refuse to deal dust because of the risks posed by law enforcement.
The effects of Dust seem to be a combination of LSD and cocaine, with the user experiencing some types of Psi powers for the duration of the effect of the drug. It is targeted at humans, but one episode follows G'Kar, a non-human Narn, who has tried it to get a taste of the Psi powers his race has lost. Babylon 5 physicians will suspect dust use if two persons have a unique, shared experience. For example, a dust user might complain of a mountain falling upon him while his victim is an avalanche survivor.
Dust is revealed to be a covert program of the Psi Corps. Officially it began as a way to locate latent telepaths, create telepaths out of mundanes, and perhaps to amplify the powers of known telepaths. No mention is made of the cash flow inherent in such a popular form of high value contraband that would flow to Psi Corps. Nonetheless the Dust project was generally seen as a failure, and even prominent Psi Corps members like Alfred Bester were vehemently opposed to its further development.
Read more about this topic: Psi Corps
Famous quotes containing the word dust:
“...If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”
—Bible: New Testament, Mark 6:11.
Jesus.
“If the juggler is tired now, if the broom stands
In the dust again, if the table starts to drop
Through the daily dark again, and though the plate
Lies flat on the table top,
For him we batter our hands
Who has won for once over the world’s weight.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of human vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the gods which may once have stood on the banks of this river are now, at any rate, returned to dust and primitive soil. The murmur of unchronicled nations has died away along these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester are on the trail of the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)