Page "Alfred Bester (Babylon 5)" Paragraph 4

Bester was notorious even among his fellow telepaths of the Corps for his ruthlessness, performing illegal mind scans on Mundanes at need, disregarding privacy laws and due process and heedless of the dangers such " Deep Scans " pose to the subjects ' mental and physical safety.

He also had a disturbing willingness to perform so-called Deathbed Scans, combing a dying person's mind for vital information up until the very moment of death.

Such scans were known to be harmful to the telepath's mental health, with some believing that one lost a piece of one's soul by being in contact with the person as they crossed the threshold.

Almost no telepath, having once done so, would willingly do so a second time, with subsequent attempts thought to be very damaging to the psyche.

However, Bester repeatedly volunteered for such duty, believing that he could gain some special knowledge from the experience, ultimately performing an unprecedented eight deathbed scans.

During the eighth, he follows his subject into the " void " and has a near-death experience in which he is informed that a telepath investigating death only experiences what he brings in his heart ; he realized his is empty as he then experiences nothingness before being resuscitated by the hospital staff attending to the dying subject.