Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Just because it could have been fixed doesn't mean it would. Getting a medic to fix her voice would require her to admit that she makes her voice growly on purpose so she sounds scarier.
Psychoprotective (Youjo Senki/Psychonauts)
- Thread starter Requiem_Jeer
- Start date
- Location
- Argentina
So Tanya never needed magical healing ever again even with her fights with Mary? And no one did a general check up?
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Her throat never needed magical healing again after that point, no. And general checkups wouldn't have caught it, because those don't include vocal range tests.
Chapter 2.18
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
With the doors being back on the regular maintenance schedule, Tanya was moved on to the next item on the backlog: the levitation tubes. There weren't nearly as many, but they were also much more powerful. Even Tanya's mental energy reserves were taxed when restoring them. Between that and the fact that they were just fancy escalators, it was easy to see why they were given a lower priority.
"How's it going, Tanya?" Nick Johnsmith asked, a little nervous as he looked up at her. "How was your trip to Grulovia?"
Tanya was hanging upside down on a floating board, carefully inspecting the base of the levitation tube where the psitanium was stored. She had left the pneumatic tubes on, the air flow through her jumpsuit and hair was quite pleasant. "Eventful." Tanya replied, "I got kidnapped by Deluginists. The True Psychic Tales version of the story should be out next month." The accuracy of which was deliberately tilted so as to further discourage the Deluginists from trying it again.
"Oh. That must have been scary, huh?" Nick asked, his nervousness increased. "What with all of their tremendous power and all."
Tanya shrugged. "I was more occupied with trying to understand the so-called 'magic' they used to try and brainwash me." There. That should do it. The panels of the device started to float back into place, and Tanya took out her automatic screwdriver so she could re-secure it.
"They have magic?" Nick asked. He seemed more impressed than was warranted. She supposed he was just a secret fantasy otaku.
"No." Tanya replied as she finished the repair. "They had psychic technology and techniques that they simply called magic to make themselves more mysterious." While the specific methodologies with the psitanium had many novel approaches that expanded her knowledge, they were simply not alien enough for them to be called something other than what it was. "The Psychonauts will dismantle whatever pieces of their network that they can, and the rest will be set back by having to burn contacts and agents to escape their notice."
Nick seemed rather interested in the topic of the Deluginists. "Didn't you destroy them, though?"
Tanya snorted as she walked to the next levitation tube. "Unless they luck into finding the leader, no. If they're smart, they'll give up on the whole resurrecting Maligula thing, now that they've lost their 'head sorcerer', but if they were smart, they wouldn't have become Deluginists in the first place." Tanya put the tube into maintenance mode and turned her levitating board back on, allowing her to hang over the base of the tube and start unscrewing the panels.
Nick frowned at the assertion. "Isn't that religious discrimination?" He asked, "That's not very American of you."
"Deluginism is a cult, at best." Tanya retorted as she set the panels aside, "'Terrorist organization' is closer to the mark. They believe that all of their problems would be solved by bringing back a literally insane hydrokinetic, as if Maligula was someone that could be controlled." Lucrecia, on the other hand… The Deluginists didn't seem to really comprehend that there was a difference between the two. "They're all fools."
"I mean… the Soviets needed to beg the Psychonauts to deal with General Maligula, when she was serving the Gzar." Nick pointed out. He wasn't wrong… but he was missing the point.
"That was seventeen years ago." Tanya said flippantly as she inspected the psitanium structures. "The Soviets definitely have countermeasures prepared for any future Maligulas. That is the nature of the military arms race." Granted, Tanya didn't know what they had, but they certainly were trying to make a usable response force, from all of those unethical experiments that the Psychonauts stopped. "Human ingenuity will always surpass human strength." Military wunderwaffen was one of the few things the Soviets could actually do halfway correctly, without the supplementary technology that Kevan was planning on using, there was no way that they couldn't counter one raging psychic.
"Oh." Nick said, a little spooked. "How would you do it, if Maligula returned?"
"Me?" Tanya asked, chuckling. She started channeling psychic energy to refill the stores of the tube. "I'd do everything in my power to avoid being asked to deal with her." It was one thing to kick around things in mental worlds, but she will never kill again in this life if it can be avoided. "Agent Nein might be able to win." She's been sparring with him for fun every two or three weeks, now that he's fully integrated those psychic skills from her and her therapy is complete. The real Maligula is powerful, but she knows from experience that you can't make full use of your knowledge when riding high on madness. She likely can't use anything but hydrokinesis when in the throes of madness, with the possible exception of cryokinesis. He could do it. "He is more skilled at combat than he looks."
"Well, you'd probably know best." Nick said deferentially, although something about what she said seemed to have angered him: while he was surprisingly good at keeping his emotions from broadcasting for a non-psychic, he wasn't perfect. "My break's nearly over, I should get back to the mail room."
"It was nice talking to you, Nick." Tanya said politely. "Remember the NDA you signed when you were hired, I'd hate to see such a good worker arrested for espionage." In hindsight, what she just said was probably something Deluginist spies would want. But it's not like any of them would be capable of the subtlety required to infiltrate the psychonauts. She didn't know much about how counterintelligence did their jobs, but surely they would catch something that blatant.
Nick also did not like that goodbye, but that was intended. Maybe now he'll stop bothering her when she's working. Office chatting was fine when it didn't impact productivity, and she could multitask with the best of them, but Nick was just kind of boring.
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Tanya muttered into her tape recorder as she tested her new device. "Initial segment B, leading to nature segment B, then direction segment D, then direction segment A, tuning segment B, directed to aperture B…" She rolled dice to decide which one she'd start with.
The second of the three psitanium platforms erupted in psychedelic cover as a field of slowed time made a whirling desk fan appear to stand still, barely moving. The other desk fans spread out among the test range remained spinning at full speed. "Test successful." Once the slowed time field wore off, the power being quite expensive and thus short-lived. "Reciprocal test, direction segments B then D…" The exact same desk fan slowed down again. "Hypothesis disproven. The order of the direction segments did not matter. Adjusting variables, same sequence, deliberately unbalancing the formula by applying mental emphasis on direction B." The time warp field erupted again, but in a slightly different spot. "Test… surprisingly stable. Emphasis determines distance from aperture. Switching order, identical emphasis." The time warp field erupted in yet another spot, although this one coincidentally had another desk fan.
Tanya's pen blurred as she wrote down her observations, her desk surrounded by the documents stolen from the Deluginists. Some of the wording was… obtuse. Either the authors kept some key lessons out of the written word to increase infosec, the translations and her understanding of Grulovian were insufficient to fully comprehend the contents… or the authors were just bad teachers.
The idea that she could modulate the power flow of individual segments without affecting previous ones, making the extra energy skip over the previous segments to be added at the exact proper part in the sequence… it wasn't written clearly. Now that she knows of it, there were some segments that kind of hinted at it, but they seemed to just assume the reader knew that already. She may just be missing some kind of basic primer that just wasn't in Kevan's library, or was in the hands of an apprentice they missed or something.
But the documents meant that she was learning how the arcane style of psitanium engineering worked very quickly indeed. Otto was still focusing most of his effort on either his actual job or on Helmut's body, so she's had free reign over the materials, including Otto's stash of psitanium earmarked for experimentation.
Still, her observations have disheartened her on the potential for automated psitanium manipulation. She figured out how they neutralized the attunement component of the mental energy, allowing it to be drawn from raw sources, but it wasn't something they did on purpose: it was an accidental side effect of the way they constructed their devices. It still required the direct attention of a psychic, it just… could handle a less skilled one.
This system had a drawback: the precision was far inferior to modern psitanium engineering. Crude, powerful effects could be guided by a novice that was trained for… maybe two weeks to get it down? But the parameters of each effect needs to be hard coded, and it couldn't be manipulated on the fly at all.
Well, except for this one facet she just discovered. Was this what she was looking for? Creating a mnenomic for the sequence of intensities would be easy: a sequence of music notes would do fine for that. But the throughput requirements would put a lower bound on the size of the tube-like structures this methodology required… She moved to the drafting table and spent a moment trying to conceptualize what kind of test device she should create to make use of her discovery.
Tanya's thoughts were interrupted by an upswell of mental energy from the APES, as Bob's mind was launched back into his own head. "Ah. How was your date?" Tanya asked politely, setting down the pencil back on the drafting table.
"It was great!" Helmut said, his nutrient fluid lighting up as his brain was sheathed in emotional energy. "Thanks for letting us use the monkey machine."
"Thank you for testing it without me needing to watch it." Tanya replied, "Did you notice any errors? I didn't have much time to fix some of the issues we noticed, but I did attempt a fix for that chair texture issue." When sampling the memories of sitting on chairs, there was an error that conflated the sensations of clothing with the sensation of the chair, which could lead to some really strange sensations if you were using a chair that had a very specific type of clothing associated with it, for example, a specific chair that Mary recalled from her first life felt strange if you weren't wearing a full dress with four layers of cloth, and sitting on a toilet without dropping one's drawers felt very strange indeed.
"Didn't work." Helmut said immediately. "Chairs still feel weird if you sit on 'em bare-assed." Or the reverse… Tanya pinched the bridge of her nose as she distinctly avoided thinking about that.
"The food was good, though." Bob said softly, giving Tanya a sympathetic look. "Do you want me to contribute to the… archive?" He asked, clearly unused to computer terminology. "I've eaten more kinds of edible plants than a caveman."
"That would be appreciated, yes." Tanya answered, "Your contributions to the database will expand the menu significantly. Perhaps it could even allow for a usable salad generator." Mom wasn't particularly adventurous when it came to her food, so previous attempts to make an a la carte salad mode for the dining simulation failed miserably.
"Database…" Bob said, committing the new word to memory. He was rather substantially out of date when it came to the science side of things, his most recent research paper was from 1964. "What are you working on, anyway? You were kind of vague earlier."
"I'm still working on the "magic" architecture that the Deluginists were using." Tanya replied, "I think I've reached the limits of understanding that I can get from reading these books. I could still do some more experiments to help pin down some things…" But as Otto would say, 'where's the fun in that?' It was a sentiment that could only function with his functionally unlimited psitanium budget. Which she currently controls. "-but Otto's going to be done with Helmut's body soon so I'm going to make something that uses both modern and arcane methods and see if I can make them play nice with each other while I still have free reign." She just needs to figure out what exactly she's going to make.
Helmut burst out laughing, and even Bob chuckled. "You sound like Otto and Ford did, back in the day." Helmut said, before modulating his artificial voice to perfectly match Otto. "Do I know what I'm doing? Of course not. That's what discovery is all about. Now, what happens if I do this?" His voice switched to match Ford's. "Just don't forget to write it down, this time. That's the difference between science and just fucking around!"
"Did Otto frequently forget to record his observations?" Tanya asked.
Bob waved his hand vaguely. "Mostly when he was high. Which was a lot of the time. When he used the Astralathe to boost his memory it became less of a problem, though."
"At least he didn't get a cocaine habit." Tanya said, inspecting the APES for any wear and tear.
"Otto always said that stimulants relaxed him." Helmut said, "Helped him focus, but he didn't like how less creative he felt when on them." That did explain why he only broke out the coffee when he needed to do something boring.
Bob had hunched over, and stumbled shakily into the restroom, where sounds of dry heaving began. "Is he still having problems keeping food down?" Tanya asked.
"Yeah." Helmut replied, "I'm reading up on addiction and withdrawal, and it's some nasty stuff. I wish I could help him more." The brain turned to more directly face Tanya. "The monkey machine helped, I think. He couldn't feel sick when he was in my head instead of his own."
"Have you looked up psychic therapy options?" Tanya asked, "I'm sure some research has been done on the subject."
"Bobby doesn't want anyone poking around his head." Helmut said, sadly. "He's just afraid of what we'll find." Well, she can really sympathize with his position…
…but that just means she knows that he really needs the help. "He needs some kind of treatment." Tanya said insistently. "Psychic therapies are likely the most effective ones available, so you need to push him on this." Given how scattershot addiction treatments were in her first life, she doubted that mundane methods in this one exceeded that.
"I am." Helmut said solumnly. "But-" Bob came back into the room, stumbling and clutching his head. "-Bobby, you feeling better?"
"Like I'm drunk and hungover at the same time." Bob muttered, "I need a drink."
Tanya opened up Otto's minifridge and took out a pair of bottles of nutrient drink. Tossing one to him, she opened them both up telekinetically. "This will help. It's great for headaches." She held her bottle out to him.
After a moment, Bob seemed to understand what she was waiting for. "Cheers." He grumbled as Tanya said the Japanese equivalent. Both downed the sweet and slightly sticky beverage. "Ugh, too sweet." He said, scowling at the half-full bottle. He smacked his lips, displeased at the consistency.
"Try diluting it." Tanya offered, snatching up a bag of tiny powdered donuts. Yum. "With water." She elaborated through telepathy, as her mouth was full. She washed it down with more nutrient drink. "A splash of brine couldn't hurt, too." She added, taking out the jar of pickles and offering it to the drunkard.
Surprisingly, Bob seemed to really like the nutrient drink/pickle brine/water combination. "That hit the spot." He said, in a way that didn't sound like it came out of a stuffed cartoon donkey. He plucked a pickle out of the jar and passed it back so Tanya could put it away. She also took a pickle.
"Feeling better, Bobby?" Helmut asked, which Bob nonverbally agreed with. "You want to try that hunting thing? It's funner than it sounds."
"Are there any other options?" Bob asked, turning to Tanya.
"Not really." Tanya replied. "The two simulations cover a lot of ground, testing-wise, between them. I did have some time to write up that tickle-hunt variation, but it's not complete. I don't have adequate programming for the opposition, much less the complex difficulty curve and customized appearance generation that I'd like to use."
"What do you have?" Helmut asked, confused.
"I have the environment and the user interface complete." Tanya said, using telepathy again because she had put another donut in her mouth. "You could chase each other, but that's it."
"I'm not so good with chasing." Bob said nervously.
"That's the fun part!" Helmut said, "You get changed into this young, capable body when you're playing the hunting game."
"Depends on the difficulty, for the tickle hunt game." Tanya corrected. " Basic idea is that you're a child that's attempting to escape one of your parents, who is doing their best to tickle you. I've got it set to five different ages, from two to eighteen, gaps of four years. The eighteen and fourteen year old bodies are quite athletic, but beyond that…" Tanya trailed off. "It doesn't matter as much if you're facing each other, though. The parent becoming increasingly older is an aspect of that difficulty curve." She may decide to make that part controllable too, but as of now she's just got it set to plus twenty years. She shrugged. "Or I could just run you through the slapped-together dog hunt game. Your choice."
"What's that one?" Bob asked, intrigued.
"There's a dog. His name is Kurt Jr." Tanya deadpanned. "You catch him. Your reward is that he lays down for belly rubs." She spread her hands. "That's it."
"That sounds like more my speed." Bob said, completely ignoring Tanya's subtle hint to not pick the game she made in five minutes.
"Dog hunt it is…" Tanya said, sighing as she fiddled with the APES machine's settings.
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Tanya had read, in her first life, that one of the biggest indicators of success in school was where your birthday was in relation to the cutoff date for school starting. You had to have one, and as always when there was an arbitrary cutoff, there were those who benefitting from being on one side of the line and those who suffered by being on the other.
Mary's birthday would, for an ordinary girl, put her on the suffering end, just a week before the September 1 cutoff for the school year. But instead, she has just enough mental maturity to instead be rather successful, by non-reincarnate standards.
But it also meant that her birthday party doubled as an end of summer party, and the girl was sociable enough that she somehow manages to get thirty to forty children to attend it every year.
This year, it was held at the roller rink. Tanya's gift was, as usual, organizing the party: setting up the venue, ordering the pizzas, bandaging the inevitable injuries, confirming each attendee... Mom couldn't always manage to make it every year, although she did this time. She was having a fun time leading the children on the rink, as Mom loved skating.
Tanya, on the other hand… stayed by the tower of pizza boxes, serving any of the party guests who wanted a slice. Or any of the rink employees who wanted one. The skating rink did have a snack bar, soda fountain, and a hot dog warmer, but they didn't have a full kitchen so bringing in food was allowed.
"There you go, future Psychonaut." Agent Nein said to a little boy who Tanya was pretty sure was named Horace, handing him his autograph. "Enjoy the party." At least a few people probably thought that the two famous psychonauts were hired to attend the birthday party, instead of being the ones throwing it, but the fans weren't too bad. It was difficult to get excited about the Psychonauts when the Motherlobe was right outside town. It became somewhat mundane.
"...Are there official impersonators?" Tanya asked out of the blue.
"Hm?" Agent Nein asked, requesting and receiving further context to the question telepathically. "Oh. Yes, there is. Not many, but one of the duties of the True Psychic Tales department is to find other ways to supplement the Psychonaut's funding. Officially recognized impersonators to act as birthday clowns are one of their better ideas."
Tanya frowned. "...That could end poorly." She concluded.
"It hasn't caused any issues yet." Agent Nein said, waving off her concern. "Once they think it warranted to start hiring, they'll have you write down guidelines for the impersonators, lines they shouldn't cross to stay in character, etcetera." His hands automatically went to his coat pocket for a cigarette, before he realized where he was and instead adjusted his coat.
Actually… "Have you ever considered quitting smoking?" Tanya asked.
"I've considered it, certainly." Agent Nein replied, "But it's harmless."
Tanya's eye twitched. "It really, really isn't." She telekinetically fetched his pack, and turned it to the Surgeon General's warning. "This has been on the package since '66. It's not nothing."
"I don't smoke nearly enough to be concerned about that." Agent Nein insisted.
"How much do you smoke?" Tanya asked. Back when she first met him, she had asked him to stop smoking near her, and he did. In hindsight, the only reason he probably listened was because he thought she was traumatized from the fire. Well, in fairness, she was.
"A pack a day at most." He said. "Frequently less. Maybe five a week."
Tanya stared at Agent Nein, unable to find appropriate words on how to convey just how ridiculous that statement was. Fortunately, as a telepath, she didn't need to.
"I'm too busy to go through withdrawal." Agent Nein said, moving on to the standard addict's phrasebook. The shift in her wordless contempt for the excuse reply enough, he continued: "I frequently need to smoke for disguises." Tanya raised an eyebrow, but continued staring. "...I don't want to." He eventually settled on.
"What is the effectiveness of hypnotic addiction treatment?" Tanya asked, before holding up a finger as Mary came back, out of breath from skating. "Did you want pizza or is this something else?"
"Pizza." Mary immediately said. Tanya took out another big slice of Mary's special pizza, with anchovies and the fancy Swedish cheese. "Thanks!" Mary said as she ran to the table with her friends.
There were a few other children who wanted pizza, but Tanya was able to serve them while bringing the majority of her attention back to Agent Nein. "It's fairly effective, with a few caveats." Agent Nein admitted. "It requires a rather deep exploration of the patient's mind, usually. Depends on how much of a problem the addiction is." So Bob's mind would pretty much need to be deep cleaned into the foundations. Lovely.
Bob might know this, which is why he's so resistant to get treatment… "Bob needs the help, and he's refusing to get it." Tanya said.
"Ah." Agent Nein said, understanding. "You're considering taking matters into your own hands? I should have guessed." Was she really that predictable? "While it's less than ideal, if you could convince Bob to let you in, it would certainly be a step up over not accepting treatment at all." He gave a conspiratorial wink. "And after all, you could have some extra expertise on call, if necessary."
"Having treated it before would be an excellent bargaining chip." Tanya said, staring at his packet of cigarettes.
Agent Nein looked at them. He looked at her. "...Very well." He stood up and started to walk towards the skate rentals. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow." Tanya agreed, taking a slice of pizza for herself. It tasted like victory.
"How's it going, Tanya?" Nick Johnsmith asked, a little nervous as he looked up at her. "How was your trip to Grulovia?"
Tanya was hanging upside down on a floating board, carefully inspecting the base of the levitation tube where the psitanium was stored. She had left the pneumatic tubes on, the air flow through her jumpsuit and hair was quite pleasant. "Eventful." Tanya replied, "I got kidnapped by Deluginists. The True Psychic Tales version of the story should be out next month." The accuracy of which was deliberately tilted so as to further discourage the Deluginists from trying it again.
"Oh. That must have been scary, huh?" Nick asked, his nervousness increased. "What with all of their tremendous power and all."
Tanya shrugged. "I was more occupied with trying to understand the so-called 'magic' they used to try and brainwash me." There. That should do it. The panels of the device started to float back into place, and Tanya took out her automatic screwdriver so she could re-secure it.
"They have magic?" Nick asked. He seemed more impressed than was warranted. She supposed he was just a secret fantasy otaku.
"No." Tanya replied as she finished the repair. "They had psychic technology and techniques that they simply called magic to make themselves more mysterious." While the specific methodologies with the psitanium had many novel approaches that expanded her knowledge, they were simply not alien enough for them to be called something other than what it was. "The Psychonauts will dismantle whatever pieces of their network that they can, and the rest will be set back by having to burn contacts and agents to escape their notice."
Nick seemed rather interested in the topic of the Deluginists. "Didn't you destroy them, though?"
Tanya snorted as she walked to the next levitation tube. "Unless they luck into finding the leader, no. If they're smart, they'll give up on the whole resurrecting Maligula thing, now that they've lost their 'head sorcerer', but if they were smart, they wouldn't have become Deluginists in the first place." Tanya put the tube into maintenance mode and turned her levitating board back on, allowing her to hang over the base of the tube and start unscrewing the panels.
Nick frowned at the assertion. "Isn't that religious discrimination?" He asked, "That's not very American of you."
"Deluginism is a cult, at best." Tanya retorted as she set the panels aside, "'Terrorist organization' is closer to the mark. They believe that all of their problems would be solved by bringing back a literally insane hydrokinetic, as if Maligula was someone that could be controlled." Lucrecia, on the other hand… The Deluginists didn't seem to really comprehend that there was a difference between the two. "They're all fools."
"I mean… the Soviets needed to beg the Psychonauts to deal with General Maligula, when she was serving the Gzar." Nick pointed out. He wasn't wrong… but he was missing the point.
"That was seventeen years ago." Tanya said flippantly as she inspected the psitanium structures. "The Soviets definitely have countermeasures prepared for any future Maligulas. That is the nature of the military arms race." Granted, Tanya didn't know what they had, but they certainly were trying to make a usable response force, from all of those unethical experiments that the Psychonauts stopped. "Human ingenuity will always surpass human strength." Military wunderwaffen was one of the few things the Soviets could actually do halfway correctly, without the supplementary technology that Kevan was planning on using, there was no way that they couldn't counter one raging psychic.
"Oh." Nick said, a little spooked. "How would you do it, if Maligula returned?"
"Me?" Tanya asked, chuckling. She started channeling psychic energy to refill the stores of the tube. "I'd do everything in my power to avoid being asked to deal with her." It was one thing to kick around things in mental worlds, but she will never kill again in this life if it can be avoided. "Agent Nein might be able to win." She's been sparring with him for fun every two or three weeks, now that he's fully integrated those psychic skills from her and her therapy is complete. The real Maligula is powerful, but she knows from experience that you can't make full use of your knowledge when riding high on madness. She likely can't use anything but hydrokinesis when in the throes of madness, with the possible exception of cryokinesis. He could do it. "He is more skilled at combat than he looks."
"Well, you'd probably know best." Nick said deferentially, although something about what she said seemed to have angered him: while he was surprisingly good at keeping his emotions from broadcasting for a non-psychic, he wasn't perfect. "My break's nearly over, I should get back to the mail room."
"It was nice talking to you, Nick." Tanya said politely. "Remember the NDA you signed when you were hired, I'd hate to see such a good worker arrested for espionage." In hindsight, what she just said was probably something Deluginist spies would want. But it's not like any of them would be capable of the subtlety required to infiltrate the psychonauts. She didn't know much about how counterintelligence did their jobs, but surely they would catch something that blatant.
Nick also did not like that goodbye, but that was intended. Maybe now he'll stop bothering her when she's working. Office chatting was fine when it didn't impact productivity, and she could multitask with the best of them, but Nick was just kind of boring.
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Tanya muttered into her tape recorder as she tested her new device. "Initial segment B, leading to nature segment B, then direction segment D, then direction segment A, tuning segment B, directed to aperture B…" She rolled dice to decide which one she'd start with.
The second of the three psitanium platforms erupted in psychedelic cover as a field of slowed time made a whirling desk fan appear to stand still, barely moving. The other desk fans spread out among the test range remained spinning at full speed. "Test successful." Once the slowed time field wore off, the power being quite expensive and thus short-lived. "Reciprocal test, direction segments B then D…" The exact same desk fan slowed down again. "Hypothesis disproven. The order of the direction segments did not matter. Adjusting variables, same sequence, deliberately unbalancing the formula by applying mental emphasis on direction B." The time warp field erupted again, but in a slightly different spot. "Test… surprisingly stable. Emphasis determines distance from aperture. Switching order, identical emphasis." The time warp field erupted in yet another spot, although this one coincidentally had another desk fan.
Tanya's pen blurred as she wrote down her observations, her desk surrounded by the documents stolen from the Deluginists. Some of the wording was… obtuse. Either the authors kept some key lessons out of the written word to increase infosec, the translations and her understanding of Grulovian were insufficient to fully comprehend the contents… or the authors were just bad teachers.
The idea that she could modulate the power flow of individual segments without affecting previous ones, making the extra energy skip over the previous segments to be added at the exact proper part in the sequence… it wasn't written clearly. Now that she knows of it, there were some segments that kind of hinted at it, but they seemed to just assume the reader knew that already. She may just be missing some kind of basic primer that just wasn't in Kevan's library, or was in the hands of an apprentice they missed or something.
But the documents meant that she was learning how the arcane style of psitanium engineering worked very quickly indeed. Otto was still focusing most of his effort on either his actual job or on Helmut's body, so she's had free reign over the materials, including Otto's stash of psitanium earmarked for experimentation.
Still, her observations have disheartened her on the potential for automated psitanium manipulation. She figured out how they neutralized the attunement component of the mental energy, allowing it to be drawn from raw sources, but it wasn't something they did on purpose: it was an accidental side effect of the way they constructed their devices. It still required the direct attention of a psychic, it just… could handle a less skilled one.
This system had a drawback: the precision was far inferior to modern psitanium engineering. Crude, powerful effects could be guided by a novice that was trained for… maybe two weeks to get it down? But the parameters of each effect needs to be hard coded, and it couldn't be manipulated on the fly at all.
Well, except for this one facet she just discovered. Was this what she was looking for? Creating a mnenomic for the sequence of intensities would be easy: a sequence of music notes would do fine for that. But the throughput requirements would put a lower bound on the size of the tube-like structures this methodology required… She moved to the drafting table and spent a moment trying to conceptualize what kind of test device she should create to make use of her discovery.
Tanya's thoughts were interrupted by an upswell of mental energy from the APES, as Bob's mind was launched back into his own head. "Ah. How was your date?" Tanya asked politely, setting down the pencil back on the drafting table.
"It was great!" Helmut said, his nutrient fluid lighting up as his brain was sheathed in emotional energy. "Thanks for letting us use the monkey machine."
"Thank you for testing it without me needing to watch it." Tanya replied, "Did you notice any errors? I didn't have much time to fix some of the issues we noticed, but I did attempt a fix for that chair texture issue." When sampling the memories of sitting on chairs, there was an error that conflated the sensations of clothing with the sensation of the chair, which could lead to some really strange sensations if you were using a chair that had a very specific type of clothing associated with it, for example, a specific chair that Mary recalled from her first life felt strange if you weren't wearing a full dress with four layers of cloth, and sitting on a toilet without dropping one's drawers felt very strange indeed.
"Didn't work." Helmut said immediately. "Chairs still feel weird if you sit on 'em bare-assed." Or the reverse… Tanya pinched the bridge of her nose as she distinctly avoided thinking about that.
"The food was good, though." Bob said softly, giving Tanya a sympathetic look. "Do you want me to contribute to the… archive?" He asked, clearly unused to computer terminology. "I've eaten more kinds of edible plants than a caveman."
"That would be appreciated, yes." Tanya answered, "Your contributions to the database will expand the menu significantly. Perhaps it could even allow for a usable salad generator." Mom wasn't particularly adventurous when it came to her food, so previous attempts to make an a la carte salad mode for the dining simulation failed miserably.
"Database…" Bob said, committing the new word to memory. He was rather substantially out of date when it came to the science side of things, his most recent research paper was from 1964. "What are you working on, anyway? You were kind of vague earlier."
"I'm still working on the "magic" architecture that the Deluginists were using." Tanya replied, "I think I've reached the limits of understanding that I can get from reading these books. I could still do some more experiments to help pin down some things…" But as Otto would say, 'where's the fun in that?' It was a sentiment that could only function with his functionally unlimited psitanium budget. Which she currently controls. "-but Otto's going to be done with Helmut's body soon so I'm going to make something that uses both modern and arcane methods and see if I can make them play nice with each other while I still have free reign." She just needs to figure out what exactly she's going to make.
Helmut burst out laughing, and even Bob chuckled. "You sound like Otto and Ford did, back in the day." Helmut said, before modulating his artificial voice to perfectly match Otto. "Do I know what I'm doing? Of course not. That's what discovery is all about. Now, what happens if I do this?" His voice switched to match Ford's. "Just don't forget to write it down, this time. That's the difference between science and just fucking around!"
"Did Otto frequently forget to record his observations?" Tanya asked.
Bob waved his hand vaguely. "Mostly when he was high. Which was a lot of the time. When he used the Astralathe to boost his memory it became less of a problem, though."
"At least he didn't get a cocaine habit." Tanya said, inspecting the APES for any wear and tear.
"Otto always said that stimulants relaxed him." Helmut said, "Helped him focus, but he didn't like how less creative he felt when on them." That did explain why he only broke out the coffee when he needed to do something boring.
Bob had hunched over, and stumbled shakily into the restroom, where sounds of dry heaving began. "Is he still having problems keeping food down?" Tanya asked.
"Yeah." Helmut replied, "I'm reading up on addiction and withdrawal, and it's some nasty stuff. I wish I could help him more." The brain turned to more directly face Tanya. "The monkey machine helped, I think. He couldn't feel sick when he was in my head instead of his own."
"Have you looked up psychic therapy options?" Tanya asked, "I'm sure some research has been done on the subject."
"Bobby doesn't want anyone poking around his head." Helmut said, sadly. "He's just afraid of what we'll find." Well, she can really sympathize with his position…
…but that just means she knows that he really needs the help. "He needs some kind of treatment." Tanya said insistently. "Psychic therapies are likely the most effective ones available, so you need to push him on this." Given how scattershot addiction treatments were in her first life, she doubted that mundane methods in this one exceeded that.
"I am." Helmut said solumnly. "But-" Bob came back into the room, stumbling and clutching his head. "-Bobby, you feeling better?"
"Like I'm drunk and hungover at the same time." Bob muttered, "I need a drink."
Tanya opened up Otto's minifridge and took out a pair of bottles of nutrient drink. Tossing one to him, she opened them both up telekinetically. "This will help. It's great for headaches." She held her bottle out to him.
After a moment, Bob seemed to understand what she was waiting for. "Cheers." He grumbled as Tanya said the Japanese equivalent. Both downed the sweet and slightly sticky beverage. "Ugh, too sweet." He said, scowling at the half-full bottle. He smacked his lips, displeased at the consistency.
"Try diluting it." Tanya offered, snatching up a bag of tiny powdered donuts. Yum. "With water." She elaborated through telepathy, as her mouth was full. She washed it down with more nutrient drink. "A splash of brine couldn't hurt, too." She added, taking out the jar of pickles and offering it to the drunkard.
Surprisingly, Bob seemed to really like the nutrient drink/pickle brine/water combination. "That hit the spot." He said, in a way that didn't sound like it came out of a stuffed cartoon donkey. He plucked a pickle out of the jar and passed it back so Tanya could put it away. She also took a pickle.
"Feeling better, Bobby?" Helmut asked, which Bob nonverbally agreed with. "You want to try that hunting thing? It's funner than it sounds."
"Are there any other options?" Bob asked, turning to Tanya.
"Not really." Tanya replied. "The two simulations cover a lot of ground, testing-wise, between them. I did have some time to write up that tickle-hunt variation, but it's not complete. I don't have adequate programming for the opposition, much less the complex difficulty curve and customized appearance generation that I'd like to use."
"What do you have?" Helmut asked, confused.
"I have the environment and the user interface complete." Tanya said, using telepathy again because she had put another donut in her mouth. "You could chase each other, but that's it."
"I'm not so good with chasing." Bob said nervously.
"That's the fun part!" Helmut said, "You get changed into this young, capable body when you're playing the hunting game."
"Depends on the difficulty, for the tickle hunt game." Tanya corrected. " Basic idea is that you're a child that's attempting to escape one of your parents, who is doing their best to tickle you. I've got it set to five different ages, from two to eighteen, gaps of four years. The eighteen and fourteen year old bodies are quite athletic, but beyond that…" Tanya trailed off. "It doesn't matter as much if you're facing each other, though. The parent becoming increasingly older is an aspect of that difficulty curve." She may decide to make that part controllable too, but as of now she's just got it set to plus twenty years. She shrugged. "Or I could just run you through the slapped-together dog hunt game. Your choice."
"What's that one?" Bob asked, intrigued.
"There's a dog. His name is Kurt Jr." Tanya deadpanned. "You catch him. Your reward is that he lays down for belly rubs." She spread her hands. "That's it."
"That sounds like more my speed." Bob said, completely ignoring Tanya's subtle hint to not pick the game she made in five minutes.
"Dog hunt it is…" Tanya said, sighing as she fiddled with the APES machine's settings.
---------------------
Tanya had read, in her first life, that one of the biggest indicators of success in school was where your birthday was in relation to the cutoff date for school starting. You had to have one, and as always when there was an arbitrary cutoff, there were those who benefitting from being on one side of the line and those who suffered by being on the other.
Mary's birthday would, for an ordinary girl, put her on the suffering end, just a week before the September 1 cutoff for the school year. But instead, she has just enough mental maturity to instead be rather successful, by non-reincarnate standards.
But it also meant that her birthday party doubled as an end of summer party, and the girl was sociable enough that she somehow manages to get thirty to forty children to attend it every year.
This year, it was held at the roller rink. Tanya's gift was, as usual, organizing the party: setting up the venue, ordering the pizzas, bandaging the inevitable injuries, confirming each attendee... Mom couldn't always manage to make it every year, although she did this time. She was having a fun time leading the children on the rink, as Mom loved skating.
Tanya, on the other hand… stayed by the tower of pizza boxes, serving any of the party guests who wanted a slice. Or any of the rink employees who wanted one. The skating rink did have a snack bar, soda fountain, and a hot dog warmer, but they didn't have a full kitchen so bringing in food was allowed.
"There you go, future Psychonaut." Agent Nein said to a little boy who Tanya was pretty sure was named Horace, handing him his autograph. "Enjoy the party." At least a few people probably thought that the two famous psychonauts were hired to attend the birthday party, instead of being the ones throwing it, but the fans weren't too bad. It was difficult to get excited about the Psychonauts when the Motherlobe was right outside town. It became somewhat mundane.
"...Are there official impersonators?" Tanya asked out of the blue.
"Hm?" Agent Nein asked, requesting and receiving further context to the question telepathically. "Oh. Yes, there is. Not many, but one of the duties of the True Psychic Tales department is to find other ways to supplement the Psychonaut's funding. Officially recognized impersonators to act as birthday clowns are one of their better ideas."
Tanya frowned. "...That could end poorly." She concluded.
"It hasn't caused any issues yet." Agent Nein said, waving off her concern. "Once they think it warranted to start hiring, they'll have you write down guidelines for the impersonators, lines they shouldn't cross to stay in character, etcetera." His hands automatically went to his coat pocket for a cigarette, before he realized where he was and instead adjusted his coat.
Actually… "Have you ever considered quitting smoking?" Tanya asked.
"I've considered it, certainly." Agent Nein replied, "But it's harmless."
Tanya's eye twitched. "It really, really isn't." She telekinetically fetched his pack, and turned it to the Surgeon General's warning. "This has been on the package since '66. It's not nothing."
"I don't smoke nearly enough to be concerned about that." Agent Nein insisted.
"How much do you smoke?" Tanya asked. Back when she first met him, she had asked him to stop smoking near her, and he did. In hindsight, the only reason he probably listened was because he thought she was traumatized from the fire. Well, in fairness, she was.
"A pack a day at most." He said. "Frequently less. Maybe five a week."
Tanya stared at Agent Nein, unable to find appropriate words on how to convey just how ridiculous that statement was. Fortunately, as a telepath, she didn't need to.
"I'm too busy to go through withdrawal." Agent Nein said, moving on to the standard addict's phrasebook. The shift in her wordless contempt for the excuse reply enough, he continued: "I frequently need to smoke for disguises." Tanya raised an eyebrow, but continued staring. "...I don't want to." He eventually settled on.
"What is the effectiveness of hypnotic addiction treatment?" Tanya asked, before holding up a finger as Mary came back, out of breath from skating. "Did you want pizza or is this something else?"
"Pizza." Mary immediately said. Tanya took out another big slice of Mary's special pizza, with anchovies and the fancy Swedish cheese. "Thanks!" Mary said as she ran to the table with her friends.
There were a few other children who wanted pizza, but Tanya was able to serve them while bringing the majority of her attention back to Agent Nein. "It's fairly effective, with a few caveats." Agent Nein admitted. "It requires a rather deep exploration of the patient's mind, usually. Depends on how much of a problem the addiction is." So Bob's mind would pretty much need to be deep cleaned into the foundations. Lovely.
Bob might know this, which is why he's so resistant to get treatment… "Bob needs the help, and he's refusing to get it." Tanya said.
"Ah." Agent Nein said, understanding. "You're considering taking matters into your own hands? I should have guessed." Was she really that predictable? "While it's less than ideal, if you could convince Bob to let you in, it would certainly be a step up over not accepting treatment at all." He gave a conspiratorial wink. "And after all, you could have some extra expertise on call, if necessary."
"Having treated it before would be an excellent bargaining chip." Tanya said, staring at his packet of cigarettes.
Agent Nein looked at them. He looked at her. "...Very well." He stood up and started to walk towards the skate rentals. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow." Tanya agreed, taking a slice of pizza for herself. It tasted like victory.
- Location
- Argentina
Tanya really cares, doesn't she?
- Location
- Askew to the British Isles
Why does this comment put me in mind of Tanya sing 'Still Alive' from portal?
Chapter 2.19
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
While I tried to get it going longer, I just can't. End of Book 2 is Chapter 21.
-----------------
Fortunately, the amount of reading required to get started amounted to about a thirty page instruction booklet designed to refamiliarize trained professionals, much like a surgeon might read up on the specific procedure they were about to undertake. Not much at all. It referenced advanced concepts that would ordinarily be beyond non-psychonauts… but Tanya's research into artificial mental world generation handled the heavy lifting there.
She was pretty sure she could handle this. Addiction recovery was a very invasive psychic therapy, but it wasn't terribly complicated. The hard part would be identifying the traces of the addiction so it could be recognized, and the final hypnotic adjustment to help the patient's mind stay away from the source of their addiction.
Tanya was… not great at hypnosis. At least, she was before learning from Helmut's nugget of wisdom on his telepathic techniques. It included a little bit of hypnosis…
"Okay Tanya, are you ready to do some real Psychonauts work?" Mom said, eager as they all sat in one of the meditation rooms.
"I'm ready." Tanya said, settling into the biggest bean bag in the room.
Agent Nein placed the psychoportal on his forehead, seated in the center of the room, smoking a cigarette. "Welcome."
Both of them projected themselves into the psychoportal, hand in hand.
---------------------
Agent Nein's mind had the usual cube presented, although Tanya knew that it was deceptive: it was, in fact, a hypercube, with eight 'faces' of the structure. This was merely the front-facing structure that Agent Nein used as an ablative defense, as well as a place to allow the campers of Camp Whispering Rock to run wild without damaging anything important.
The cube unfolded, presenting the abridged life story that he used to get campers used to the inherent intrusiveness of mindwalking. The tragedy of losing his mother, his childhood working with his shoemaker father, his time at the frozen meal factory, it was all here, including the parts he saves for advanced students, the one centered around how he joined the psychonauts and the one relating to his work with them.
The factory segment was likely the best place to start. It was covered in fire hazards and soot, little fiery vents that turned on and off on a regular timer. Was this representative of something?
"What are you thinking, Tanya?" Mom asked, in that tone she normally uses against Mary when helping her with her homework.
"The first step of attacking an addiction is identifying its influence." Tanya quoted, "But while I doubt any of it is in this front-facing segment of Agent Nein's mind, but if it's anywhere, it's here."
"No." A censor said, appearing from one of their normal doors. Tanya PSI blasted its head off with a glance.
Mom giggled. "Ah, these fire thingies might be some influence, true." She tilted her head. "Do you think it is?"
Tanya frowned. "It's pervasive, regular, and associated with fire." Tanya said, enumerating the 'yes' column. "But on the other hand, there's no smoke. It's gas fires, all around." The way he told it, was that his job at the factory was to load up trays of uncooked food and put them into industrial gas-powered ovens, which would then be frozen and packaged elsewhere in the building. Tedious, mind numbing work. Exactly the kind of thing to make participating in the available smoke breaks appealing. "On the balance… I think I need more information. If I need to double back, so be it."
"That's it, darling, you're a natural at this." Mom said, laying on the praise a bit thick… but Tanya blushed anyway.
Tanya looked up at the psychedelic sky. "Are you going to open the way, or am I going to need to get creative?" She shouted. It was unnecessary to do so, as Agent Nein could either hear them even at a whisper or not at all, but she had already taken a deep breath by the time she remembered that.
On cue, portals opened up above each face of the cube, ways to travel to the other layers. Tanya bent her knees and leapt up through it, not bothering to fully fly. There was just something fun about using her legs to move around at high speeds. Mom floated behind her.
Absorbing the impact of her landing by using a levitation bubble, Tanya looked over this later. Like the others, it was a cube, but instead of a sterile black-and-white art piece of a cube, it was instead soot-stained steel. It unfolded, the cacophonous noises of pulleys, gears, and chains providing atmosphere to the transition.
Tanya had never been to this segment before. She had seen a few of Agent Nein's other mental partitions, but not this one. From the appearance, it likely represented a larger portion of that time at the factory. Possibly blended with other experiences.
Once the cube was fully unfolded, Tanya inspected the figments. Trays, flames, and… a smoking coworker! Perfect. She gathered up the figment, and looked around it. Nothing jumped out at her, except for an emotional baggage tag. She picked it up. This was likely relatively new. As a field agent, Agent Nein was regularly cleared of his emotional baggage.
"Well, what do you see?" Mom said, still in teacher mode.
"This location represents his work." Tanya said confidently. "The job at the factory he had between his running away from home and joining the Psychonauts." Tanya frowned. Come to think of it… "Did he really run away from home?" She asked.
"Excellent question, darling." Mom replied, smiling widely. "The answer is… sort of. He did run away dramatically, but returned before dark and tried to make things work with his father, but the trauma of what he saw in his father's mind… It burned a pathway to him, so that any thought his father had about his mother went straight through the mental defenses Sasha had, making being in his father's presence utterly intolerable." She waved her hands to the surroundings. "This factory belonged to his uncle, on his mother's side. Sasha moved in with him after living at home became too much." She waved her hand breezily. "He got that fixed later on, of course, but it was after he joined the Psychonauts. He still exchanges letters with his father, last I heard."
Tanya stated walking to the other faces. This one was clearly some kind of living room… Must be his uncle's residence. She took in the subtle details. The figments included someone Tanya assumed was his uncle, with a shotglass in one hand and a cigar in the other. There was an ash tray on a scorched nightstand, soot stains ruining the expensive-looking furniture. There was a stuffed chair that looked half-broken, the wooden frame within visible and cracked.
Occasionally, censors or personal demons showed up, probably sent by Agent Nein to put a little pressure on their investigation. Bob's mind would not be so non-hostile, after all. They were annoying but easily dispatched.
The next face was sparse, demonstrating its point without much clutter. It painted a picture of an empty room, with a hanging bare lightbulb and a ratty bed. In the center was a single book, shining with inner light. It was eaten up by some kind of memory vault-derived creature, but one PSI blast destroyed it and brought the book back out.
The book was a small portal, and Tanya split off an Archetype to investigate. The Soldier was as it was before, a doll-like copy of her wearing her officer's clothing with a henohenomoheji for a face. She probably should try to refine her skills in using archetypes like this, but she's got so many other things to do…
She moved on to another face while letting her Archetype do its thing. This one represented the factory again, but a different perspective of it. It seemed to focus more on his coworkers, an office that held many filing cabinets. Tanya perused them, and noted that this segment was like her own library, a set of reminders on the various people Agent Nein knows. Several of the files were marked with soot stains, but she couldn't figure out if there was a common pattern.
Wait… Soot? Soot is fire… Was this… She examined one of the soot-stained files in detail. Robert Post, Psychonauts mailroom employee. His face looked vaguely familiar. He has a psychic specialty in basic telekinesis, but little interest in developing it. A family man, with two children, one nearly grown by now. It was on the third page of the file that she saw what she was looking for, with an additional soot stain marking it: 'Preferred Brand: Natural American Spirit'. That was a cigarette brand.
Some quick perusal of the other files, both with and without soot, confirmed that distinction. The soot was the representation of the addiction. "I think I found it." She said out loud. "The soot."
Tanya's guess was rewarded with a hand running itself through her hair, as Mom beamed at her. "Very good, Tanya. Now, the next step is…" She snapped her fingers, creating a washcloth and bottle of cleaner. "-to clean up everything we can find. I'll help."
"This is going to take a while…" Tanya acknowledge before conjuring her own cleaning kit.
---------------------
Tanya learned far more about Agent Nein than she ever wanted to as she cleaned up random soot stains everywhere. The book's realm was a representation of his love of Sherlock Holmes, the thing that had initially turned him towards the sciences. Each of the realms of his mind were well-organized, each aspect of himself filed away neatly.
None of the places in his mind were choked with soot, as his addiction really didn't dominate his behavior obsessively, mostly because he was able to indulge it easily most of the time. But it was everywhere. The earliest memories were clean, the ones he presented in the front-facing cube. But nothing else. If Agent Nein was outside, he was smoking. If he was working in the lab, he was smoking. If he was doing anything else, at least some small part of him wished he was smoking.
Of the eight cubes that composed Agent Nein's mind, the final one was… weird. It was the one that was inaccessible from the entrance cube, as each cube can only reach six others. This meant one of two things: that these were his most primal thoughts, where his own survival drive would be… or that it was his most precious thoughts, his most hidden feelings. Could go either way.
The cube, unlike the others, did not immediately unfold in their presence. The sky was a warm tapestry color, reminiscent of dawn or dusk without having a clear light source creating a gradient. The cube was wood, resembling a giant puzzle box rather than the more esoteric art styles of the others.
"Ah, this one." Mom said, smiling warmly. "Go on, find a way inside."
Hrm. Tanya floated upwards, orbiting the cube and examining each face to get an idea of its arrangement. She used to like puzzle boxes, back when she was… seven? Somewhere around there, in her first life. But did this cube work like a puzzle box? It didn't have to. She created giant telekinetic hands, gripping the cube and starting to push and tug at the parts that looked like they could move. After about a minute of attempts, she gave up. "That's not how it works…" The surface of the cube was unstained by soot, at the very least.
Next step, she condensed water from the air… or at least went through the motions of doing so, thus creating water, and started to investigate where the seams are, although she only noted the locations for now. Her sense of the mind's shape registered the cube as completely solid, which was, from Mom's hint, obviously a conscious defense of Agent Nein's.
After mapping things out, she took a moment to think. What was she missing? Ah. As a mental world, while the shape of things must at least make logical sense to the mind, it was much like a riddle: having a functional answer doesn't matter, it must be the correct answer. So… she walked to a roughly one square foot panel and pressed down on it with her foot. It sank down three inches from her weight.
This face of the cube unfolded, with the edges folding out for more space as well as making it impossible for more than one of the faces to be exposed at once. Another security feature, no doubt.
This cube had one of the things that Tanya was curious why she hadn't seen yet: a copy of his laboratory. Filing cabinets held presumably great knowledge he had used various means, both ethical and non, to acquire. The examination table held a golden set of goggles, a nugget of wisdom representing his scientific knowledge. Not the knowledge itself, per say, pure information doesn't tend to go in nuggets of wisdom, but instead his hard-earned practical experiences in setting up experiments and managing his projects and lab equipment.
There was quite a bit of soot here, so Tanya got to work cleaning it up. After the inevitable ambush by censors, she took up the nugget of wisdom. "Can I?" She asked the sky.
"This is supposed to be a semi-hostile mind, Tanya." Mom pointed out. "Get what you can."
Accepting her logic, under the reasoning that Agent Nein would agree, Tanya devoured the knowledge on lab procedure… and a lot of stuff she already knew. It was nice that she now knew exactly how the whole 'sneeze your brain out' thing worked (it was even weirder than it sounded), but it was mostly stuff that was not particularly useful to her. But in hindsight, she should have expected this result. After all, she reads all of Agent Nein's published works. There's very little that he does that doesn't make its way into those, after all.
"That appears to be everything in this segment." Tanya idly commented, going back to the tile and pressing her foot back down. As expected, the cube folded back in.
The next face, Tanya found the necessary panel quickly, and Mom immediately stopped her from pressing it. "Ah, you should skip this one, darling. I'll clean it myself in a bit." Ah. So this was where he kept his sexual escapades.
Following her mother's instruction, Tanya went to a third face, fending off a massive assault by censors, a particularly quick and durable judge, and even a few doubts and regrets. The panel was dead center, and when she pressed it, the segment was… about her.
Well, and Mary. But the environment was composed of various things related to them, from Tanya's bed that Agent Nein built, to the APES, even including her flying car. Pictures of Tanya, taken with Agent Nein and frequently including Mom and Mary, were prominent, framed and placed in plain view. She couldn't see a single speck of soot anywhere. There was even a statue of Tanya in an action pose, probably representing her when they were sparring, given how her wide grin seemed more adrenaline-fueled than anything else.
There was a memory vault here, and some emotional baggage. Faintly, Tanya brought out the last emotional baggage tag she picked up. It was stashed in the fourth cube, within a small diorama that represented when he met her. The others were expended elsewhere.
…She can handle that later. No soot here. She folded the face back into itself, and continued to ignore the emotional baggage that was now sitting on top of the switch to activate it.
As it turned out, of the six faces, only four actually had anything, but the other cubes had plenty of empty space too. So this last one held only a section about Science, Mom, her/Mary, and the last one. It was where Agent Nein had stored the skills she had given him, filled with blood-stained weapons, cabinets filled with casualty reports, and a vault on the ground that was sealed tight. There was what Tanya assumed was a still-forming nugget of wisdom, a tiny golden orb on a pedastal. There were a few soot stains, but not many. They were easily cleaned.
"Handle the last bit, I need to go check on something." Tanya said to her mother as she flew through one of the portals to a different cube.
"I'll tell you when it's safe for your innocent eyes!" Mom shouted back, somewhat teasingly.
It was a bit of a laugh, the idea that any part of her was innocent, but that didn't mean she wanted to watch the lewdest part of Agent Nein's mind when she had the option to avoid it.
She went towards the spot where she found the emotional baggage tag, using the trip over to double-check whether the soot was re-appearing. It was not. This cube was oriented about his psychonauts career, the faces representing the most memorable of his missions, although there were enough of those that the faces had to share space with similar ones. This particular chunk of history was small, one amongst many memories of saving distressed children. It was still there, the burned building, the shining egg-shaped pebble that was her curled up in her shield, and Mom's tear-stained face as she yelled and tried to get past the barrier.
Why… was this where the tag was? Usually there was some kind of logic to the placement of tags and baggage… Why was the tragic circumstances of their meeting the tag's location, while the gallery of pleasant "family" moments was where the baggage was? She'd think it would be the other way around… right?
No answers came to her as she thought on the matter, even after she started wandering around to once again confirm that the soot had stayed clean. Eventually, Mom telepathically notified her of her segment being clean, which meant that it was time to finish the job.
---------------------
They went straight towards the place that had the most soot to clean up: a spot in the third cube that still had an untouched memory vault. She didn't need to know what was in it.
"Okay, you've read up on this, but it bears repeating:" Mom said, starting her lecture. "Now that we've removed the psychologically compulsive parts of Sasha's nicotine addiction, we need to take steps to prevent him from relapsing." As a side-effect of the fact that a sizable chunk of what Tanya's original world considered 'part of the brain' isn't actually attached to it in this world, but instead part of the body, chemical dependencies couldn't be cured directly by psychic meddling. But without the psychological component, it was far easier to break the habit. "Now, I know hypnosis isn't exactly your best ability…" Mom said, a small sympathetic smile on her face.
"Actually…" Tanya corrected, "Part of my research for my machinery has required a fair amount of learning the ins and outs of hypnosis." She had been neglecting to tell Mom about that detail…
"This should be easy, then." Mom said brightly. "Now, Sasha will be feeling terrible from the nicotine withdrawal, and that will give him cravings to smoke. What we need to do is replace that mental association." She pointed upwards. "You know how to call it up."
Tanya nodded, before going to the shadowy representation of Sasha's old coworker. "Got a smoke?" She asked.
"You're a kid." The coworker said, "You shouldn't start on this shit."
Tanya rolled her eyes. "I need a smoke, man. Don't go judging me."
"...Yeah, I feel that." The memory said, and Tanya looked upwards. Yeah, the associative network was becoming visible. Tanya telepathically reached out at it, bringing the local segment to prominence.
The concept 'Smoking' was the centerpiece of the network segment, with connections to several other ones. 'Cool', 'Relaxing', 'Wealth', among other positive associations. It was no good to just trim them, so Tanya reached deeper into Agent Nein's associative network, finding something negative to attach smoking to. Ah, 'Unhealthy' is good… but it needs… ooh, 'Money-sink' 'Polluting' 'Amoral', all great, attached to… 'Corpo'? Well, it's not like that was an uncommon sentiment among the Psychonauts… She'll attach Smoking to Corpo directly. Smoking corporations do quite a bit of shady stuff, after all.
Whenever you trimmed a connection, you usually had a few minutes before the mind reacted to replace it. But when you connected a new one, it was a lot faster to add extra ones, although it didn't always happen. When she connected 'Smoking' to 'Corpo', suddenly a few other concepts linked themselves up, like 'Lobbyists' and 'Corruption'. She decided that these were acceptable connections.
Connecting 'Smoking' to 'Unhealthy' also brought up 'Cancer' and linked it up, but that was hardly worth mentioning. "I think it needs one more connection." Tanya idly commented.
"I think you're done with 'smoking', darling." Mom said, now that she was prompted to give advice. "But you also need to replace Smoking with something else." Ah, right.
For best results, displacing the addiction to something more innocuous was the best way to handle it. Tanya focused intently on the concept of bubblegum, and with a flex of her psychic power she created the concept of it, connecting it to some but not all of the previous associations with Smoking. 'Relaxing' and 'Craving' most importantly.
It was also something that could be used to fulfill an oral fixation, so whenever he felt like smoking, he would instead crave bubblegum. As he detoxed from the nicotine addiction, those cravings would subside until the placeholder addiction could be eliminated altogether.
To finish her work, Tanya infused those new connections with precisely attuned psychic power, which was how you created the really powerful hypnotic commands. They shouldn't break easily after that.
"That would make our work here complete." Tanya announced.
"Not quite, darling." Mom said, a bit amused. "I see that emotional baggage tag you have there."
Tanya winced. "Do I have to?" She had the distinct feeling that she'd regret doing so.
"It's a Psychonaut's duty to leave the minds they leave better off than before they entered." Mom quoted, "And today, you're an acting Psychonaut. Now go back there and resolve that baggage, Bob's mind is going to be a lot worse."
Ah, she didn't have an argument against that. Reluctantly, she flew into the portal back to the rear cube. The baggage was a purse, which she knew, from the nugget of wisdom she just absorbed, meant that it was related to a personal relationship, baggage centered around a single person or small group of people. By connecting the purse tag, she prepared to process the emotional surge.
Resolve. Confusion. Fear. Pity. Concern. Satisfaction. Concern. Curiosity. Concern. Worry. Concern. Surprise. Fear. Resolve. Horror. Resolve. Pity. Horror. Rage. Worry. Resolve. Success. Dread. Concern. Worry. Fear. Desperation. Relief. Concern. Calm. Curiosity. Wonder. Determination. Love. Rejection. Love. Satisfaction. Hurt. Contentment.
The emotions flitted from one to the next with a rapidity that would have been dizzying if she had done this when she was still inexperienced. What did this mean? She suspected she knew.
"...It's done." Tanya said, before conjuring smelling salts to get out of there before Mom could ask her to talk about it.
This was a conversation best held face to face.
-----------------
Fortunately, the amount of reading required to get started amounted to about a thirty page instruction booklet designed to refamiliarize trained professionals, much like a surgeon might read up on the specific procedure they were about to undertake. Not much at all. It referenced advanced concepts that would ordinarily be beyond non-psychonauts… but Tanya's research into artificial mental world generation handled the heavy lifting there.
She was pretty sure she could handle this. Addiction recovery was a very invasive psychic therapy, but it wasn't terribly complicated. The hard part would be identifying the traces of the addiction so it could be recognized, and the final hypnotic adjustment to help the patient's mind stay away from the source of their addiction.
Tanya was… not great at hypnosis. At least, she was before learning from Helmut's nugget of wisdom on his telepathic techniques. It included a little bit of hypnosis…
"Okay Tanya, are you ready to do some real Psychonauts work?" Mom said, eager as they all sat in one of the meditation rooms.
"I'm ready." Tanya said, settling into the biggest bean bag in the room.
Agent Nein placed the psychoportal on his forehead, seated in the center of the room, smoking a cigarette. "Welcome."
Both of them projected themselves into the psychoportal, hand in hand.
---------------------
Agent Nein's mind had the usual cube presented, although Tanya knew that it was deceptive: it was, in fact, a hypercube, with eight 'faces' of the structure. This was merely the front-facing structure that Agent Nein used as an ablative defense, as well as a place to allow the campers of Camp Whispering Rock to run wild without damaging anything important.
The cube unfolded, presenting the abridged life story that he used to get campers used to the inherent intrusiveness of mindwalking. The tragedy of losing his mother, his childhood working with his shoemaker father, his time at the frozen meal factory, it was all here, including the parts he saves for advanced students, the one centered around how he joined the psychonauts and the one relating to his work with them.
The factory segment was likely the best place to start. It was covered in fire hazards and soot, little fiery vents that turned on and off on a regular timer. Was this representative of something?
"What are you thinking, Tanya?" Mom asked, in that tone she normally uses against Mary when helping her with her homework.
"The first step of attacking an addiction is identifying its influence." Tanya quoted, "But while I doubt any of it is in this front-facing segment of Agent Nein's mind, but if it's anywhere, it's here."
"No." A censor said, appearing from one of their normal doors. Tanya PSI blasted its head off with a glance.
Mom giggled. "Ah, these fire thingies might be some influence, true." She tilted her head. "Do you think it is?"
Tanya frowned. "It's pervasive, regular, and associated with fire." Tanya said, enumerating the 'yes' column. "But on the other hand, there's no smoke. It's gas fires, all around." The way he told it, was that his job at the factory was to load up trays of uncooked food and put them into industrial gas-powered ovens, which would then be frozen and packaged elsewhere in the building. Tedious, mind numbing work. Exactly the kind of thing to make participating in the available smoke breaks appealing. "On the balance… I think I need more information. If I need to double back, so be it."
"That's it, darling, you're a natural at this." Mom said, laying on the praise a bit thick… but Tanya blushed anyway.
Tanya looked up at the psychedelic sky. "Are you going to open the way, or am I going to need to get creative?" She shouted. It was unnecessary to do so, as Agent Nein could either hear them even at a whisper or not at all, but she had already taken a deep breath by the time she remembered that.
On cue, portals opened up above each face of the cube, ways to travel to the other layers. Tanya bent her knees and leapt up through it, not bothering to fully fly. There was just something fun about using her legs to move around at high speeds. Mom floated behind her.
Absorbing the impact of her landing by using a levitation bubble, Tanya looked over this later. Like the others, it was a cube, but instead of a sterile black-and-white art piece of a cube, it was instead soot-stained steel. It unfolded, the cacophonous noises of pulleys, gears, and chains providing atmosphere to the transition.
Tanya had never been to this segment before. She had seen a few of Agent Nein's other mental partitions, but not this one. From the appearance, it likely represented a larger portion of that time at the factory. Possibly blended with other experiences.
Once the cube was fully unfolded, Tanya inspected the figments. Trays, flames, and… a smoking coworker! Perfect. She gathered up the figment, and looked around it. Nothing jumped out at her, except for an emotional baggage tag. She picked it up. This was likely relatively new. As a field agent, Agent Nein was regularly cleared of his emotional baggage.
"Well, what do you see?" Mom said, still in teacher mode.
"This location represents his work." Tanya said confidently. "The job at the factory he had between his running away from home and joining the Psychonauts." Tanya frowned. Come to think of it… "Did he really run away from home?" She asked.
"Excellent question, darling." Mom replied, smiling widely. "The answer is… sort of. He did run away dramatically, but returned before dark and tried to make things work with his father, but the trauma of what he saw in his father's mind… It burned a pathway to him, so that any thought his father had about his mother went straight through the mental defenses Sasha had, making being in his father's presence utterly intolerable." She waved her hands to the surroundings. "This factory belonged to his uncle, on his mother's side. Sasha moved in with him after living at home became too much." She waved her hand breezily. "He got that fixed later on, of course, but it was after he joined the Psychonauts. He still exchanges letters with his father, last I heard."
Tanya stated walking to the other faces. This one was clearly some kind of living room… Must be his uncle's residence. She took in the subtle details. The figments included someone Tanya assumed was his uncle, with a shotglass in one hand and a cigar in the other. There was an ash tray on a scorched nightstand, soot stains ruining the expensive-looking furniture. There was a stuffed chair that looked half-broken, the wooden frame within visible and cracked.
Occasionally, censors or personal demons showed up, probably sent by Agent Nein to put a little pressure on their investigation. Bob's mind would not be so non-hostile, after all. They were annoying but easily dispatched.
The next face was sparse, demonstrating its point without much clutter. It painted a picture of an empty room, with a hanging bare lightbulb and a ratty bed. In the center was a single book, shining with inner light. It was eaten up by some kind of memory vault-derived creature, but one PSI blast destroyed it and brought the book back out.
The book was a small portal, and Tanya split off an Archetype to investigate. The Soldier was as it was before, a doll-like copy of her wearing her officer's clothing with a henohenomoheji for a face. She probably should try to refine her skills in using archetypes like this, but she's got so many other things to do…
She moved on to another face while letting her Archetype do its thing. This one represented the factory again, but a different perspective of it. It seemed to focus more on his coworkers, an office that held many filing cabinets. Tanya perused them, and noted that this segment was like her own library, a set of reminders on the various people Agent Nein knows. Several of the files were marked with soot stains, but she couldn't figure out if there was a common pattern.
Wait… Soot? Soot is fire… Was this… She examined one of the soot-stained files in detail. Robert Post, Psychonauts mailroom employee. His face looked vaguely familiar. He has a psychic specialty in basic telekinesis, but little interest in developing it. A family man, with two children, one nearly grown by now. It was on the third page of the file that she saw what she was looking for, with an additional soot stain marking it: 'Preferred Brand: Natural American Spirit'. That was a cigarette brand.
Some quick perusal of the other files, both with and without soot, confirmed that distinction. The soot was the representation of the addiction. "I think I found it." She said out loud. "The soot."
Tanya's guess was rewarded with a hand running itself through her hair, as Mom beamed at her. "Very good, Tanya. Now, the next step is…" She snapped her fingers, creating a washcloth and bottle of cleaner. "-to clean up everything we can find. I'll help."
"This is going to take a while…" Tanya acknowledge before conjuring her own cleaning kit.
---------------------
Tanya learned far more about Agent Nein than she ever wanted to as she cleaned up random soot stains everywhere. The book's realm was a representation of his love of Sherlock Holmes, the thing that had initially turned him towards the sciences. Each of the realms of his mind were well-organized, each aspect of himself filed away neatly.
None of the places in his mind were choked with soot, as his addiction really didn't dominate his behavior obsessively, mostly because he was able to indulge it easily most of the time. But it was everywhere. The earliest memories were clean, the ones he presented in the front-facing cube. But nothing else. If Agent Nein was outside, he was smoking. If he was working in the lab, he was smoking. If he was doing anything else, at least some small part of him wished he was smoking.
Of the eight cubes that composed Agent Nein's mind, the final one was… weird. It was the one that was inaccessible from the entrance cube, as each cube can only reach six others. This meant one of two things: that these were his most primal thoughts, where his own survival drive would be… or that it was his most precious thoughts, his most hidden feelings. Could go either way.
The cube, unlike the others, did not immediately unfold in their presence. The sky was a warm tapestry color, reminiscent of dawn or dusk without having a clear light source creating a gradient. The cube was wood, resembling a giant puzzle box rather than the more esoteric art styles of the others.
"Ah, this one." Mom said, smiling warmly. "Go on, find a way inside."
Hrm. Tanya floated upwards, orbiting the cube and examining each face to get an idea of its arrangement. She used to like puzzle boxes, back when she was… seven? Somewhere around there, in her first life. But did this cube work like a puzzle box? It didn't have to. She created giant telekinetic hands, gripping the cube and starting to push and tug at the parts that looked like they could move. After about a minute of attempts, she gave up. "That's not how it works…" The surface of the cube was unstained by soot, at the very least.
Next step, she condensed water from the air… or at least went through the motions of doing so, thus creating water, and started to investigate where the seams are, although she only noted the locations for now. Her sense of the mind's shape registered the cube as completely solid, which was, from Mom's hint, obviously a conscious defense of Agent Nein's.
After mapping things out, she took a moment to think. What was she missing? Ah. As a mental world, while the shape of things must at least make logical sense to the mind, it was much like a riddle: having a functional answer doesn't matter, it must be the correct answer. So… she walked to a roughly one square foot panel and pressed down on it with her foot. It sank down three inches from her weight.
This face of the cube unfolded, with the edges folding out for more space as well as making it impossible for more than one of the faces to be exposed at once. Another security feature, no doubt.
This cube had one of the things that Tanya was curious why she hadn't seen yet: a copy of his laboratory. Filing cabinets held presumably great knowledge he had used various means, both ethical and non, to acquire. The examination table held a golden set of goggles, a nugget of wisdom representing his scientific knowledge. Not the knowledge itself, per say, pure information doesn't tend to go in nuggets of wisdom, but instead his hard-earned practical experiences in setting up experiments and managing his projects and lab equipment.
There was quite a bit of soot here, so Tanya got to work cleaning it up. After the inevitable ambush by censors, she took up the nugget of wisdom. "Can I?" She asked the sky.
"This is supposed to be a semi-hostile mind, Tanya." Mom pointed out. "Get what you can."
Accepting her logic, under the reasoning that Agent Nein would agree, Tanya devoured the knowledge on lab procedure… and a lot of stuff she already knew. It was nice that she now knew exactly how the whole 'sneeze your brain out' thing worked (it was even weirder than it sounded), but it was mostly stuff that was not particularly useful to her. But in hindsight, she should have expected this result. After all, she reads all of Agent Nein's published works. There's very little that he does that doesn't make its way into those, after all.
"That appears to be everything in this segment." Tanya idly commented, going back to the tile and pressing her foot back down. As expected, the cube folded back in.
The next face, Tanya found the necessary panel quickly, and Mom immediately stopped her from pressing it. "Ah, you should skip this one, darling. I'll clean it myself in a bit." Ah. So this was where he kept his sexual escapades.
Following her mother's instruction, Tanya went to a third face, fending off a massive assault by censors, a particularly quick and durable judge, and even a few doubts and regrets. The panel was dead center, and when she pressed it, the segment was… about her.
Well, and Mary. But the environment was composed of various things related to them, from Tanya's bed that Agent Nein built, to the APES, even including her flying car. Pictures of Tanya, taken with Agent Nein and frequently including Mom and Mary, were prominent, framed and placed in plain view. She couldn't see a single speck of soot anywhere. There was even a statue of Tanya in an action pose, probably representing her when they were sparring, given how her wide grin seemed more adrenaline-fueled than anything else.
There was a memory vault here, and some emotional baggage. Faintly, Tanya brought out the last emotional baggage tag she picked up. It was stashed in the fourth cube, within a small diorama that represented when he met her. The others were expended elsewhere.
…She can handle that later. No soot here. She folded the face back into itself, and continued to ignore the emotional baggage that was now sitting on top of the switch to activate it.
As it turned out, of the six faces, only four actually had anything, but the other cubes had plenty of empty space too. So this last one held only a section about Science, Mom, her/Mary, and the last one. It was where Agent Nein had stored the skills she had given him, filled with blood-stained weapons, cabinets filled with casualty reports, and a vault on the ground that was sealed tight. There was what Tanya assumed was a still-forming nugget of wisdom, a tiny golden orb on a pedastal. There were a few soot stains, but not many. They were easily cleaned.
"Handle the last bit, I need to go check on something." Tanya said to her mother as she flew through one of the portals to a different cube.
"I'll tell you when it's safe for your innocent eyes!" Mom shouted back, somewhat teasingly.
It was a bit of a laugh, the idea that any part of her was innocent, but that didn't mean she wanted to watch the lewdest part of Agent Nein's mind when she had the option to avoid it.
She went towards the spot where she found the emotional baggage tag, using the trip over to double-check whether the soot was re-appearing. It was not. This cube was oriented about his psychonauts career, the faces representing the most memorable of his missions, although there were enough of those that the faces had to share space with similar ones. This particular chunk of history was small, one amongst many memories of saving distressed children. It was still there, the burned building, the shining egg-shaped pebble that was her curled up in her shield, and Mom's tear-stained face as she yelled and tried to get past the barrier.
Why… was this where the tag was? Usually there was some kind of logic to the placement of tags and baggage… Why was the tragic circumstances of their meeting the tag's location, while the gallery of pleasant "family" moments was where the baggage was? She'd think it would be the other way around… right?
No answers came to her as she thought on the matter, even after she started wandering around to once again confirm that the soot had stayed clean. Eventually, Mom telepathically notified her of her segment being clean, which meant that it was time to finish the job.
---------------------
They went straight towards the place that had the most soot to clean up: a spot in the third cube that still had an untouched memory vault. She didn't need to know what was in it.
"Okay, you've read up on this, but it bears repeating:" Mom said, starting her lecture. "Now that we've removed the psychologically compulsive parts of Sasha's nicotine addiction, we need to take steps to prevent him from relapsing." As a side-effect of the fact that a sizable chunk of what Tanya's original world considered 'part of the brain' isn't actually attached to it in this world, but instead part of the body, chemical dependencies couldn't be cured directly by psychic meddling. But without the psychological component, it was far easier to break the habit. "Now, I know hypnosis isn't exactly your best ability…" Mom said, a small sympathetic smile on her face.
"Actually…" Tanya corrected, "Part of my research for my machinery has required a fair amount of learning the ins and outs of hypnosis." She had been neglecting to tell Mom about that detail…
"This should be easy, then." Mom said brightly. "Now, Sasha will be feeling terrible from the nicotine withdrawal, and that will give him cravings to smoke. What we need to do is replace that mental association." She pointed upwards. "You know how to call it up."
Tanya nodded, before going to the shadowy representation of Sasha's old coworker. "Got a smoke?" She asked.
"You're a kid." The coworker said, "You shouldn't start on this shit."
Tanya rolled her eyes. "I need a smoke, man. Don't go judging me."
"...Yeah, I feel that." The memory said, and Tanya looked upwards. Yeah, the associative network was becoming visible. Tanya telepathically reached out at it, bringing the local segment to prominence.
The concept 'Smoking' was the centerpiece of the network segment, with connections to several other ones. 'Cool', 'Relaxing', 'Wealth', among other positive associations. It was no good to just trim them, so Tanya reached deeper into Agent Nein's associative network, finding something negative to attach smoking to. Ah, 'Unhealthy' is good… but it needs… ooh, 'Money-sink' 'Polluting' 'Amoral', all great, attached to… 'Corpo'? Well, it's not like that was an uncommon sentiment among the Psychonauts… She'll attach Smoking to Corpo directly. Smoking corporations do quite a bit of shady stuff, after all.
Whenever you trimmed a connection, you usually had a few minutes before the mind reacted to replace it. But when you connected a new one, it was a lot faster to add extra ones, although it didn't always happen. When she connected 'Smoking' to 'Corpo', suddenly a few other concepts linked themselves up, like 'Lobbyists' and 'Corruption'. She decided that these were acceptable connections.
Connecting 'Smoking' to 'Unhealthy' also brought up 'Cancer' and linked it up, but that was hardly worth mentioning. "I think it needs one more connection." Tanya idly commented.
"I think you're done with 'smoking', darling." Mom said, now that she was prompted to give advice. "But you also need to replace Smoking with something else." Ah, right.
For best results, displacing the addiction to something more innocuous was the best way to handle it. Tanya focused intently on the concept of bubblegum, and with a flex of her psychic power she created the concept of it, connecting it to some but not all of the previous associations with Smoking. 'Relaxing' and 'Craving' most importantly.
It was also something that could be used to fulfill an oral fixation, so whenever he felt like smoking, he would instead crave bubblegum. As he detoxed from the nicotine addiction, those cravings would subside until the placeholder addiction could be eliminated altogether.
To finish her work, Tanya infused those new connections with precisely attuned psychic power, which was how you created the really powerful hypnotic commands. They shouldn't break easily after that.
"That would make our work here complete." Tanya announced.
"Not quite, darling." Mom said, a bit amused. "I see that emotional baggage tag you have there."
Tanya winced. "Do I have to?" She had the distinct feeling that she'd regret doing so.
"It's a Psychonaut's duty to leave the minds they leave better off than before they entered." Mom quoted, "And today, you're an acting Psychonaut. Now go back there and resolve that baggage, Bob's mind is going to be a lot worse."
Ah, she didn't have an argument against that. Reluctantly, she flew into the portal back to the rear cube. The baggage was a purse, which she knew, from the nugget of wisdom she just absorbed, meant that it was related to a personal relationship, baggage centered around a single person or small group of people. By connecting the purse tag, she prepared to process the emotional surge.
Resolve. Confusion. Fear. Pity. Concern. Satisfaction. Concern. Curiosity. Concern. Worry. Concern. Surprise. Fear. Resolve. Horror. Resolve. Pity. Horror. Rage. Worry. Resolve. Success. Dread. Concern. Worry. Fear. Desperation. Relief. Concern. Calm. Curiosity. Wonder. Determination. Love. Rejection. Love. Satisfaction. Hurt. Contentment.
The emotions flitted from one to the next with a rapidity that would have been dizzying if she had done this when she was still inexperienced. What did this mean? She suspected she knew.
"...It's done." Tanya said, before conjuring smelling salts to get out of there before Mom could ask her to talk about it.
This was a conversation best held face to face.
KillerFish
Grumpy Owl, Bird Lawyer
Well, Sasha sees Tanya as his daughter, and loves her, even when knowing of her reincarnation past.
- Location
- Argentina
Yeah, time to talk about that.
He also thinks quite highly of her, judging by the statue. Nick has one too, but it's of himself because of his massive ego.
- Location
- Ohio
I think the ocean in Bob's mind represents his addiction and the trauma of fighting Maligula, so it won't be as straightforward to clean as the soot in Nein's mind.
Chapter 2.20
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
I spent a lot of time trying to make Bob's mind interesting... couldn't do it. So Book 2's a chapter shorter than initially planned. Next chapter's the end of it, then it's time to go into canon with Book 3.
----------------------------
Tanya stood up, stretching out her joints and muscles from the inactivity. She checked the clock; the whole ordeal took about four hours. She telekinetically opened the meditation lounge's minifridge and fetched a bottle of water for each of them.
After taking a deep drink, Mom smiled. "How are you feeling, Sasha?"
"Like I really want some bubblegum." Agent Nein replied after his own drink, taking out the pack of gum he had brought with him for exactly this purpose. He put two of them into his mouth, chewing on it as it satisfied his nicotine craving via the placebo effect. Hypnosis was useful, at times.
Tanya threw the remnants of the bottle away, having downed it entirely. "Success." She declared. "This would normally be the point where I start rattling off aftercare instructions for the procedure, but I'm sure you know them better than I do."
"Indeed." Agent Nein said, easily talking around the gum. An awkward silence descended, only the sounds of chewing breaking it up.
Tanya started to move to the evit. "Well, I think that's everything. I've got some more preparing to do, so…" a pink telekinetic hand seized the back of her jumpsuit.
"I know what you're doing, Tanya." Mom said warningly. "We need to talk."
"Do we have to?" Tanya asked, deliberately putting a bit of a whine in her voice. She's avoided this conversation for literal years.
"Yes." Mom said, putting her foot down metaphorically. She was still seated, so she couldn't do it literally. "Sasha?"
It did help a bit that Agent Nein also didn't seem to want to have this conversation. "Tanya…" He started, before pausing. He bought some time by placing another stick of gum in his mouth.
"Sasha!" Mom scolded.
"...I would prefer it if you referred to me more familiarly." Agent Nein said quickly.
Oh, is that all? "No." Tanya replied.
Neither of the two adults expected that answer. They stared at Tanya, who crossed her arms in defiance. Sasha continued to chew his gum, brows furrowed as he processed the answer. He looked at Mom. "You were wrong." He said.
She palmed her face, sighing in frustration. "Why not, Tanya?" She asked, voice dripping with annoyance as she side-eyed Agent Nein.
"You have been dating for six years." Tanya deadpanned. Before they could object to the timeframe, she continued, barreling over their attempts to speak. "In that time, you have never once, in my presence, actually called your constant outings dates. You have never introduced yourselves as boyfriend and girlfriend to anyone." She really didn't want to bring this last bit up, but she had no choice. "Further, while I appreciate this last point, I don't even know with one hundred percent certainty that you two have had sex." She was only… ninety-five percent sure. She always made herself scarce when it looked like things were approaching that direction.
She took a calming breath. "I can understand how, at first, you may have attempted that circumspect treatment of your relationship in some misguided attempt to protect my mental state." You know, back when they didn't know that she wasn't really a child. "But that excuse became meaningless four years ago. I refer to you as Agent Nein because it is respectful. Even in America, addressing a paternal figure by their first name is not done."
"So you do see me as a father figure?" Agent Nein said, touched.
"I'm not entirely sure what it would feel like if I did." Tanya replied honestly. "I think I do, but it's not all that different from the bonds I've had with my men, and I certainly didn't think that of them." Her feelings for them were more maternal, to be honest. She went and sat in her mother's floating lap, falling into an affectionate embrace. "But that is our respective social positions. As a potential stepfather, you must be addressed respectfully. If you want me to change how I refer to you, either break up or propose." She shrugged. "I don't care which."
Mom seemed pensive at most of Tanya's short rant, but was absolutely aghast at the last sentence. "You don't care?" She asked incredulously.
Tanya shrugged again. "It doesn't really affect me." She replied, "While I do love you and appreciate your care of me," to an extent that would spark ridicule if fully known, "-and while the legalities have yet to catch up, I am an adult. If you wish to marry Agent Nein, it's not any of my business. If not, it's still not any of my business."
"It would affect you, though." Mom said.
"Not much. You wanted honesty, you're getting honesty." Tanya corrected, relaxing deeper into her arms. "If you break up amicably, I will be able to consider him a friend and peer, and refer to him more casually. If you get married, he would legally be my father and it would thus be appropriate to refer to him as such. Both outcomes are acceptable." Mom looked like she was about to clarify her meaning, Tanya held up a hand to stop her. "I know that if you two were to marry, it would complicate the living situation. That would certainly affect me, but I was planning on insisting on a change on that front anyway, as sharing a room with Mary will soon become problematic." it already has, but it's still something that willful ignorance can handle. For now. "In short, I'm a big girl now, I can handle change."
The silence this time was less awkward, and more contemplative. Agent Nein's gum chewing was still present, but ignorable. "...For psychics, we're not very good at communicating." Agent Nein concluded.
Tanya couldn't help it. She laughed at the irony,
---------------------
Something that Agent Nein and Tanya had in common was a general apathy towards ceremony. Mom liked parties, but apparently thought that weddings were 'financial deathtraps meant to entrap the imaginations of women into believing that their highest aspiration should be marriage', so contrary to Tanya's expectations, the two of them registered their marriage with paperwork within the day.
Tanya was somewhat less surprised at how quickly they secured a nice four bedroom four bathroom house. Both of her parents were rather wealthy from their True Psychic Tales income, and given that real estate was cheap in this decade, the hardest part was finding one for sale, and given that Mrs. Zanotto was a real estate agent…
Psychic powers, particularly when split among so many people, made the act of moving a breeze. Seventy two hours after their discussion, Tanya was already considering whether or not she should add a planter to the windowsill in her new room. There was plenty of space, after all, and the window was south facing, so sunlight wouldn't be an issue, and herbaphony meant that even normally delicate plants could thrive past any mistakes she makes in their care.
"This is a pretty nice room." Helmut said. He and Bob had volunteered (or rather, Helmut had volunteered Bob) to help them move, as unnecessary as it was. Helmut's body was restored enough by now that he was living in it again, although he had to use some special leg, back, and arm braces that Tanya had designed to reduce the stress moving around put on his body, and use a cane on top of that. If having real senses again gave him any trouble, Tanya didn't hear about it. She did, however, hear how much those braces made him hate stairs.
…Well, she actually designed them to be used in power armor after an argument about a comic book superhero with Razputin, but they're much more useful as medical braces. Unfortunately, like most psychic technology they could only be used by psychics, so the patent was not particularly profitable. One of many things she'll have to remake once she cracks that barrier.
"It's fairly large, yes." Tanya agreed, "Good insulation, " which wasn't asbestos, she checked, "-good natural light from this window, " which was also larger than the door in total area, she brought in all of her stuff through it. It was the whole reason she requested this particular room. "-and the walk-in closet is nice." Plus her own bathroom. The last time she had one of those was when she was living alone in Japan.
"Are you going to keep the paint?" Helmut asked. This room had been painted by the previous owners, a starry sky on the ceiling that was astronomically accurate, with the constellations drawn in.
"The paint isn't lead based, so yes." Tanya replied. It was fantastically done, it would be a waste to paint over it. "The lack of light fixtures is a touch annoying, but it's nothing an extra lamp or two can't fix." If she really needed to, she could create light with pyrokinesis. She looked down at the spacious suburban backyard, watching Bob section off the far side of it into a garden with Mary, who was quite excited at the idea of having a flower garden. The grass literally crawled away from or through the fence, leaving bare soil for planting. …It would probably be easier to just carve a section of the garden for herself than to install a planter. "It looks like Bob's having a good day." She observed.
Helmut immediately looked away, his guilt obvious. "Well, you know, there are good days and bad days."
"...He's drunk, isn't he?" Tanya asked.
"No, of course not." Helmut said immediately. "He only had one drink, he's just a little buzzed."
Tanya sighed. The sad thing was, it seemed to work: Bob had been smiling and, while he was still a rather withdrawn person, had been more or less pleasant company as he assisted the move. "Have you convinced him to allow me to assist?" She asked Helmut.
"...I'm wearing him down." Helmut replied, "He's convinced that you'll hate him if you saw his mind in full." After a moment, he added: "That anyone would. He barely lets me inside."
"I know that feeling." Tanya said softly. "I know it very well."
"...How'd you get past it?" Helmut asked.
Tanya had to think hard to remember that. What was she thinking? "I fooled myself into thinking that I could get help for something small, more concrete, without the truth getting out." She eventually said. It was not her finest moment, intellectually. "Things degenerated from there. Ended up with a brain that was held together by a thread" granted, 'a mother's love' was one of the better options for mental anchors, "-at the end of it, but Mom was able to take a month or two piecing me back together."
Helmut looked aghast at the news. "But I had way worse problems than an addiction." Tanya clarified. Although her actual alcohol addiction was so quiet that it was easily removed as part of the treatment. They didn't even need to swap out the cravings, although they did anyway, to milk. "This won't be that bad."
"You sure?" Helmut said, fearfully.
"Positive." Tanya assured him. "It was my fault it ended that badly, so unless he's going to try and stick his metaphorical hand in a blender while trying to get help, it will be fine."
"Good." Helmut said to himself. "That's great." After a pause, he asked: "What exactly is the blender in this metaphor?"
"Ford." Tanya deadpanned.
"Oh yeah, that'll do it."
---------------------
Tanya expected Bob's mind to give some sort of difficulty or drama, but Dad's mind gave her unrealistic expectations. It was just big. She did have to clean up a LOT of glass though. She ended up constructing greenhouses for the man, imposing her psychic will to use those to section off his mind instead of the giant bottles he was using. So instead of a barren wasteland of a planetoid covered with water, she left his mind as a grand garden, a much healthier place.
Well, she had to beat him up psychically to make those changes, destroy a few nightmares, but it seemed to work; he seemed much happier now.
"How do you get them so big?" Lili exclaimed as she marveled at Bob's pumpkins. "This one makes Dad's pumpkins look tiny!" It was a little bit of an exaggeration. Grand Head Zanotto's pumpkins were of a fine size for conversion into Jack-o-Lanterns.
"Good fertilizer, plenty of water, and lots of love." Bob replied with a smile, patting the oversized gourd proudly, "You can thank Helmut for that last part."
"Aw, thank you Uncle Helmut!" Lili shouted at the man as he scooped out one of the big pumpkins.
"You're welcome, Lili!" Helmut said immediately, not even paying attention as to why.
While it was improper to decorate the Motherlobe for Halloween, as it was a high security facility, the on base housing complex had no such limits. Every Psychonaut was invited to the party, which lasted all day.
There were costumes, of course. Lili was dressed up as a witch, with a black pointed hat and fake nose, and she carried a broom with a stuffed black cat strapped to the bristles. Bob was dressed as the ferryman of death, which was like dressing as the grim reaper, but he held an oar instead of a scythe. Helmut was dressed as a transvestite lumberjack, which made sense in context: there was a song, you see.
Tanya was dressed as a baseball player, specifically Babe Ruth. She also had a bag full of the chocolate bars named after him to give out to the children. It was also an excuse to show off her special baseball bat filled with psitanium, which she made on a bet to see who could create the better melee weapon out of the stuff. It completely destroyed Otto's psitanium katana.
"Now Lili, I'm not going to let you carve the pumpkin unless you help me empty it out." Mrs. Zanotto said to her daughter warningly. "Don't you go pouting at Uncle Bob to get out of it."
Lili groaned, but when she saw Bob look away from her and drink a bottle of cola, distancing himself from the matter, she huffed and rolled up her sleeves. "Coming, Mom…"
"I think that's the last of it, Tanya." Helmut said as he flung the last of the pulp to the ground, gasping from the exertion. He had taken to psychic reinforcement well enough, but he could still only exert himself for twenty minutes at a time before needing a break. He sat down on his wheelchair. "You go ahead with the precise stuff."
Tanya glanced at her reference design. It was a pencil drawing of Helmut and Bob, and while she would ordinarily be rather hesitant to make such a complex carve, correlating the thickness of the pumpkin with the shade of gray used in the picture was simple enough. She created telekinetic blades on her fingers and started carving.
"Hey Tanya!" Mary said joyously, dressed in her own costume of an angel. It was fortunate that she had learned the temperature regulation technique, because she sure needed it with that breezy dress. "Me and the girls are going to go bob for apples and then make caramel apples out of them, you wanna come?"
Tanya perked up. Halloween had the best seasonal treats. "Give me two minutes." She said, waving them off. "I'll catch up." She telepathically signaled Helmut, and with his help she enveloped herself and the pumpkin with Time Warp, allowing her to speed up without compromising precision. It was draining to do this, but if she limits how much she moves through space, it's not as bad as it could be, and Helmut's feed of power helped even more.
Once the time warp ebbed, Mary and her friends, dressed as a variety of things without any unifying theme Tanya could spot, were still there, looking at Tanya in awe. Tanya used hydrokinesis to clean off the stray juices off from her hand and the pumpkin, and presented it to Helmut. "What do you think?"
"Now that's cool." Helmut replied, grinning. "I can handle the simpler stuff, thanks for the artisanal touch. "
"That's so cool!" Exclaimed one of Mary's friends. Tanya tried to remember her name. She wanted to say… Rachel? She was dressed like a vampire. "How did you do that?"
"Practice." Tanya replied, "Also, Telekinesis." She created psychic blades on her hand and willed them visible. "It's an advanced technique, but I learned to mold and carve by taking art classes in college." Well, she learned to telekinetically mold from the art classes. Those classes used tools to carve, so she learned with those. She may have taken more art classes than she needed, but the skills were quite useful when creating things with the APES.
"Yeah whatever." Mary said, grabbing Tanya's free hand. "Come on, let's go!"
Tanya let Mary drag her to the apple bob. Laughter and fun was had as Tanya took off her baseball cap and dunked her head into the water and utterly failed to retrieve an apple without cheating. She did cheat, though, so she had her apple, which was promptly stabbed with a stick and dipped in the hot caramel as she watched Mary and her friends repeat the feat.
"Don't think I didn't notice that, Tanya." Cassie said warningly as she offered Tanya a bowl of nuts to coat her caramel apple with.
Tanya shrugged, running the hot caramel coating through the nuts. "Mary didn't, and that's all that matters." If she didn't completely out-do Mary in everything that wasn't being feminine, she'd have to seriously rethink their whole sibling relationship. Mary finally got an apple, after six goes at it. She didn't cheat though, Tanya was watching for it.
"Do you feel famous yet?" Cassie asked curiously.
"I'm here instead of at the comic book store watching people get the new issue, so no." Tanya replied. "But new comic book day loses out to Halloween, that's just how the cookie crumbles." The local nerds knew about Helmut's return anyway, although he's lightened up on the flirting for Parson's sake. She'll sign autographs on Friday.
"It is rather funny that they were able to put Helmut's issue out on Halloween." Cassie said, smiling at the serendipity.
Idly, Tanya wondered whether or not Lucrecia would see the issue. She sent a signed one to Razputin… She took a bite out of her caramel apple and switched to telepathy. "Speaking of that debacle, how is progress on Ford?"
"Boolie thinks that we'll need to move him to another environment if we want to help him." Cassie explained, "But Hollis won't allow it. The personalities you helped are locked up tight, and the new one exploits the safeguard to stop us from using it."
"I imagine she's happy that Ford's new personality provides some level of value to the organization?" Tanya guessed, before taking another bite of her apple. Delicious.
"Right on the money." Cassie said, sighing. "She says it's because he's stable now and she doesn't want to risk it, but that's what she means."
"Hey Tanya." Mary said, her own caramel apple finished. "Otto's giving rides in his hovertank. You wanna come with? Dad asked me to come with him."
She's driven it, but Tanya smiled anyway. "Right behind you, Mary." Tanya waved goodbye to Cassie as she walked away, and the old woman waved back politely.
Otto's hovertank was about the size of a delivery van, with a turret on top with a separate seat. Wisely, the scientist had disabled the turret before letting children near the vehicle, in addition to removing some of the armor panels to act as windows as the tank flew around slowly. "Here we have the quarry that the Motherlobe is built next to. Normally, if we flew around here, we'd be shot down by those turrets down there, and there." Otto explained, pointing out the anti air guns. "But we have permission, so it's fine."
Dad, dressed as a different famous baseball player, Walter Johnson, added: "The shield on the Vanguard can take a few shots either way."
"Are we gonna get shot?" Asked little Dogen Boole, Compton's five year old grandson.
"Can you tell them to shoot us? That would be so cool!" Sam, his older sister, exclaimed.
"No, no." Otto said calmly. "Hollis said I wasn't allowed to field test around children after the last time." The collected children groaned in disappointment.
"We won't tell!" Said a child Tanya didn't know the name of.
"Sorry, the guy working the turret today is a real tattletale." Otto countered. He was really good with children, Tanya had noticed. Helmut said it was because the man never really grew up, although he phrased it differently. "But as soon as we get out of his line of sight, who wants to do some loop de loops?" The cheering was unanimous.
Mary, from her position in Dad's lap, looked around. "Uh… wait a second. Is this safe?"
Tanya said out loud: "Maybe." But followed it up with a telepathic "Yes. The internal kinetics are designed with such events in mind."
Otto laughed as he accelerated the hovertank, bringing it up and around, and overall impersonating a roller coaster with his flying. Much like magical flight, levitation lost effectiveness at higher elevations, so the hovertank could only go about a hundred meters into the air. This was plenty for the trip, as he brought the maneuvering of the vehicle to its limits.
After he steadied the flight, Otto let the groaning subside before asking: "Everyone okay back there?"
Tanya gathered the contents of the telekinetic buckets that were needed, and flung the ball of vomit out of the window after checking that it would only land in the quarry's water. "I think it might be wise to come in for a landing." She suggested.
"Yes, some of the crew seem a bit ill, tank captain." Dad said solemnly.
"Ah, casualties." Otto said faux-ruefully. "Tragic."
Once the tank was unloaded, Tanya pickpocketed some gum out of her father's pocket, popping half of it into her mouth and passing Mary the other half as she went to retrieve her bat.
"Here you are, darling." Mom said, handing over the weapon. She was dressed as a mermaid, using levitation to make the fact that she couldn't walk with that tail irrelevant. "Are you having fun?"
Tanya nodded, twirling her bat to refamiliarize herself with the weight. "Halloween is probably my favorite American holiday." Mostly because it wasn't associated with Christianity, but she liked it on its own merits as well. "Candy and cosplay, two things that go very well with each other." She took some of the gummy fishes that were within reach. "None of the teenagers have hit on me, either. I think they've learned their lesson from last year."
"Or they've noticed that you have a weapon." Mom retorted with a giggle. "It looks like Helmut's setting up a stage, do you want to join him?"
Tanya's head snapped towards Helmut's distinctive psychic presence. He had her karaoke machine, and was setting it up. "Yes. Yes I do." She started to fly over towards the stage. "Love you Mom!"
This was not how she expected her first few months of being a Psychonaut to go, but at least it all worked out. All she needs to do is avoid drama and get her ticket to the billionaire club finished.
But how hard could that be?
----------------------------
Tanya stood up, stretching out her joints and muscles from the inactivity. She checked the clock; the whole ordeal took about four hours. She telekinetically opened the meditation lounge's minifridge and fetched a bottle of water for each of them.
After taking a deep drink, Mom smiled. "How are you feeling, Sasha?"
"Like I really want some bubblegum." Agent Nein replied after his own drink, taking out the pack of gum he had brought with him for exactly this purpose. He put two of them into his mouth, chewing on it as it satisfied his nicotine craving via the placebo effect. Hypnosis was useful, at times.
Tanya threw the remnants of the bottle away, having downed it entirely. "Success." She declared. "This would normally be the point where I start rattling off aftercare instructions for the procedure, but I'm sure you know them better than I do."
"Indeed." Agent Nein said, easily talking around the gum. An awkward silence descended, only the sounds of chewing breaking it up.
Tanya started to move to the evit. "Well, I think that's everything. I've got some more preparing to do, so…" a pink telekinetic hand seized the back of her jumpsuit.
"I know what you're doing, Tanya." Mom said warningly. "We need to talk."
"Do we have to?" Tanya asked, deliberately putting a bit of a whine in her voice. She's avoided this conversation for literal years.
"Yes." Mom said, putting her foot down metaphorically. She was still seated, so she couldn't do it literally. "Sasha?"
It did help a bit that Agent Nein also didn't seem to want to have this conversation. "Tanya…" He started, before pausing. He bought some time by placing another stick of gum in his mouth.
"Sasha!" Mom scolded.
"...I would prefer it if you referred to me more familiarly." Agent Nein said quickly.
Oh, is that all? "No." Tanya replied.
Neither of the two adults expected that answer. They stared at Tanya, who crossed her arms in defiance. Sasha continued to chew his gum, brows furrowed as he processed the answer. He looked at Mom. "You were wrong." He said.
She palmed her face, sighing in frustration. "Why not, Tanya?" She asked, voice dripping with annoyance as she side-eyed Agent Nein.
"You have been dating for six years." Tanya deadpanned. Before they could object to the timeframe, she continued, barreling over their attempts to speak. "In that time, you have never once, in my presence, actually called your constant outings dates. You have never introduced yourselves as boyfriend and girlfriend to anyone." She really didn't want to bring this last bit up, but she had no choice. "Further, while I appreciate this last point, I don't even know with one hundred percent certainty that you two have had sex." She was only… ninety-five percent sure. She always made herself scarce when it looked like things were approaching that direction.
She took a calming breath. "I can understand how, at first, you may have attempted that circumspect treatment of your relationship in some misguided attempt to protect my mental state." You know, back when they didn't know that she wasn't really a child. "But that excuse became meaningless four years ago. I refer to you as Agent Nein because it is respectful. Even in America, addressing a paternal figure by their first name is not done."
"So you do see me as a father figure?" Agent Nein said, touched.
"I'm not entirely sure what it would feel like if I did." Tanya replied honestly. "I think I do, but it's not all that different from the bonds I've had with my men, and I certainly didn't think that of them." Her feelings for them were more maternal, to be honest. She went and sat in her mother's floating lap, falling into an affectionate embrace. "But that is our respective social positions. As a potential stepfather, you must be addressed respectfully. If you want me to change how I refer to you, either break up or propose." She shrugged. "I don't care which."
Mom seemed pensive at most of Tanya's short rant, but was absolutely aghast at the last sentence. "You don't care?" She asked incredulously.
Tanya shrugged again. "It doesn't really affect me." She replied, "While I do love you and appreciate your care of me," to an extent that would spark ridicule if fully known, "-and while the legalities have yet to catch up, I am an adult. If you wish to marry Agent Nein, it's not any of my business. If not, it's still not any of my business."
"It would affect you, though." Mom said.
"Not much. You wanted honesty, you're getting honesty." Tanya corrected, relaxing deeper into her arms. "If you break up amicably, I will be able to consider him a friend and peer, and refer to him more casually. If you get married, he would legally be my father and it would thus be appropriate to refer to him as such. Both outcomes are acceptable." Mom looked like she was about to clarify her meaning, Tanya held up a hand to stop her. "I know that if you two were to marry, it would complicate the living situation. That would certainly affect me, but I was planning on insisting on a change on that front anyway, as sharing a room with Mary will soon become problematic." it already has, but it's still something that willful ignorance can handle. For now. "In short, I'm a big girl now, I can handle change."
The silence this time was less awkward, and more contemplative. Agent Nein's gum chewing was still present, but ignorable. "...For psychics, we're not very good at communicating." Agent Nein concluded.
Tanya couldn't help it. She laughed at the irony,
---------------------
Something that Agent Nein and Tanya had in common was a general apathy towards ceremony. Mom liked parties, but apparently thought that weddings were 'financial deathtraps meant to entrap the imaginations of women into believing that their highest aspiration should be marriage', so contrary to Tanya's expectations, the two of them registered their marriage with paperwork within the day.
Tanya was somewhat less surprised at how quickly they secured a nice four bedroom four bathroom house. Both of her parents were rather wealthy from their True Psychic Tales income, and given that real estate was cheap in this decade, the hardest part was finding one for sale, and given that Mrs. Zanotto was a real estate agent…
Psychic powers, particularly when split among so many people, made the act of moving a breeze. Seventy two hours after their discussion, Tanya was already considering whether or not she should add a planter to the windowsill in her new room. There was plenty of space, after all, and the window was south facing, so sunlight wouldn't be an issue, and herbaphony meant that even normally delicate plants could thrive past any mistakes she makes in their care.
"This is a pretty nice room." Helmut said. He and Bob had volunteered (or rather, Helmut had volunteered Bob) to help them move, as unnecessary as it was. Helmut's body was restored enough by now that he was living in it again, although he had to use some special leg, back, and arm braces that Tanya had designed to reduce the stress moving around put on his body, and use a cane on top of that. If having real senses again gave him any trouble, Tanya didn't hear about it. She did, however, hear how much those braces made him hate stairs.
…Well, she actually designed them to be used in power armor after an argument about a comic book superhero with Razputin, but they're much more useful as medical braces. Unfortunately, like most psychic technology they could only be used by psychics, so the patent was not particularly profitable. One of many things she'll have to remake once she cracks that barrier.
"It's fairly large, yes." Tanya agreed, "Good insulation, " which wasn't asbestos, she checked, "-good natural light from this window, " which was also larger than the door in total area, she brought in all of her stuff through it. It was the whole reason she requested this particular room. "-and the walk-in closet is nice." Plus her own bathroom. The last time she had one of those was when she was living alone in Japan.
"Are you going to keep the paint?" Helmut asked. This room had been painted by the previous owners, a starry sky on the ceiling that was astronomically accurate, with the constellations drawn in.
"The paint isn't lead based, so yes." Tanya replied. It was fantastically done, it would be a waste to paint over it. "The lack of light fixtures is a touch annoying, but it's nothing an extra lamp or two can't fix." If she really needed to, she could create light with pyrokinesis. She looked down at the spacious suburban backyard, watching Bob section off the far side of it into a garden with Mary, who was quite excited at the idea of having a flower garden. The grass literally crawled away from or through the fence, leaving bare soil for planting. …It would probably be easier to just carve a section of the garden for herself than to install a planter. "It looks like Bob's having a good day." She observed.
Helmut immediately looked away, his guilt obvious. "Well, you know, there are good days and bad days."
"...He's drunk, isn't he?" Tanya asked.
"No, of course not." Helmut said immediately. "He only had one drink, he's just a little buzzed."
Tanya sighed. The sad thing was, it seemed to work: Bob had been smiling and, while he was still a rather withdrawn person, had been more or less pleasant company as he assisted the move. "Have you convinced him to allow me to assist?" She asked Helmut.
"...I'm wearing him down." Helmut replied, "He's convinced that you'll hate him if you saw his mind in full." After a moment, he added: "That anyone would. He barely lets me inside."
"I know that feeling." Tanya said softly. "I know it very well."
"...How'd you get past it?" Helmut asked.
Tanya had to think hard to remember that. What was she thinking? "I fooled myself into thinking that I could get help for something small, more concrete, without the truth getting out." She eventually said. It was not her finest moment, intellectually. "Things degenerated from there. Ended up with a brain that was held together by a thread" granted, 'a mother's love' was one of the better options for mental anchors, "-at the end of it, but Mom was able to take a month or two piecing me back together."
Helmut looked aghast at the news. "But I had way worse problems than an addiction." Tanya clarified. Although her actual alcohol addiction was so quiet that it was easily removed as part of the treatment. They didn't even need to swap out the cravings, although they did anyway, to milk. "This won't be that bad."
"You sure?" Helmut said, fearfully.
"Positive." Tanya assured him. "It was my fault it ended that badly, so unless he's going to try and stick his metaphorical hand in a blender while trying to get help, it will be fine."
"Good." Helmut said to himself. "That's great." After a pause, he asked: "What exactly is the blender in this metaphor?"
"Ford." Tanya deadpanned.
"Oh yeah, that'll do it."
---------------------
Tanya expected Bob's mind to give some sort of difficulty or drama, but Dad's mind gave her unrealistic expectations. It was just big. She did have to clean up a LOT of glass though. She ended up constructing greenhouses for the man, imposing her psychic will to use those to section off his mind instead of the giant bottles he was using. So instead of a barren wasteland of a planetoid covered with water, she left his mind as a grand garden, a much healthier place.
Well, she had to beat him up psychically to make those changes, destroy a few nightmares, but it seemed to work; he seemed much happier now.
"How do you get them so big?" Lili exclaimed as she marveled at Bob's pumpkins. "This one makes Dad's pumpkins look tiny!" It was a little bit of an exaggeration. Grand Head Zanotto's pumpkins were of a fine size for conversion into Jack-o-Lanterns.
"Good fertilizer, plenty of water, and lots of love." Bob replied with a smile, patting the oversized gourd proudly, "You can thank Helmut for that last part."
"Aw, thank you Uncle Helmut!" Lili shouted at the man as he scooped out one of the big pumpkins.
"You're welcome, Lili!" Helmut said immediately, not even paying attention as to why.
While it was improper to decorate the Motherlobe for Halloween, as it was a high security facility, the on base housing complex had no such limits. Every Psychonaut was invited to the party, which lasted all day.
There were costumes, of course. Lili was dressed up as a witch, with a black pointed hat and fake nose, and she carried a broom with a stuffed black cat strapped to the bristles. Bob was dressed as the ferryman of death, which was like dressing as the grim reaper, but he held an oar instead of a scythe. Helmut was dressed as a transvestite lumberjack, which made sense in context: there was a song, you see.
Tanya was dressed as a baseball player, specifically Babe Ruth. She also had a bag full of the chocolate bars named after him to give out to the children. It was also an excuse to show off her special baseball bat filled with psitanium, which she made on a bet to see who could create the better melee weapon out of the stuff. It completely destroyed Otto's psitanium katana.
"Now Lili, I'm not going to let you carve the pumpkin unless you help me empty it out." Mrs. Zanotto said to her daughter warningly. "Don't you go pouting at Uncle Bob to get out of it."
Lili groaned, but when she saw Bob look away from her and drink a bottle of cola, distancing himself from the matter, she huffed and rolled up her sleeves. "Coming, Mom…"
"I think that's the last of it, Tanya." Helmut said as he flung the last of the pulp to the ground, gasping from the exertion. He had taken to psychic reinforcement well enough, but he could still only exert himself for twenty minutes at a time before needing a break. He sat down on his wheelchair. "You go ahead with the precise stuff."
Tanya glanced at her reference design. It was a pencil drawing of Helmut and Bob, and while she would ordinarily be rather hesitant to make such a complex carve, correlating the thickness of the pumpkin with the shade of gray used in the picture was simple enough. She created telekinetic blades on her fingers and started carving.
"Hey Tanya!" Mary said joyously, dressed in her own costume of an angel. It was fortunate that she had learned the temperature regulation technique, because she sure needed it with that breezy dress. "Me and the girls are going to go bob for apples and then make caramel apples out of them, you wanna come?"
Tanya perked up. Halloween had the best seasonal treats. "Give me two minutes." She said, waving them off. "I'll catch up." She telepathically signaled Helmut, and with his help she enveloped herself and the pumpkin with Time Warp, allowing her to speed up without compromising precision. It was draining to do this, but if she limits how much she moves through space, it's not as bad as it could be, and Helmut's feed of power helped even more.
Once the time warp ebbed, Mary and her friends, dressed as a variety of things without any unifying theme Tanya could spot, were still there, looking at Tanya in awe. Tanya used hydrokinesis to clean off the stray juices off from her hand and the pumpkin, and presented it to Helmut. "What do you think?"
"Now that's cool." Helmut replied, grinning. "I can handle the simpler stuff, thanks for the artisanal touch. "
"That's so cool!" Exclaimed one of Mary's friends. Tanya tried to remember her name. She wanted to say… Rachel? She was dressed like a vampire. "How did you do that?"
"Practice." Tanya replied, "Also, Telekinesis." She created psychic blades on her hand and willed them visible. "It's an advanced technique, but I learned to mold and carve by taking art classes in college." Well, she learned to telekinetically mold from the art classes. Those classes used tools to carve, so she learned with those. She may have taken more art classes than she needed, but the skills were quite useful when creating things with the APES.
"Yeah whatever." Mary said, grabbing Tanya's free hand. "Come on, let's go!"
Tanya let Mary drag her to the apple bob. Laughter and fun was had as Tanya took off her baseball cap and dunked her head into the water and utterly failed to retrieve an apple without cheating. She did cheat, though, so she had her apple, which was promptly stabbed with a stick and dipped in the hot caramel as she watched Mary and her friends repeat the feat.
"Don't think I didn't notice that, Tanya." Cassie said warningly as she offered Tanya a bowl of nuts to coat her caramel apple with.
Tanya shrugged, running the hot caramel coating through the nuts. "Mary didn't, and that's all that matters." If she didn't completely out-do Mary in everything that wasn't being feminine, she'd have to seriously rethink their whole sibling relationship. Mary finally got an apple, after six goes at it. She didn't cheat though, Tanya was watching for it.
"Do you feel famous yet?" Cassie asked curiously.
"I'm here instead of at the comic book store watching people get the new issue, so no." Tanya replied. "But new comic book day loses out to Halloween, that's just how the cookie crumbles." The local nerds knew about Helmut's return anyway, although he's lightened up on the flirting for Parson's sake. She'll sign autographs on Friday.
"It is rather funny that they were able to put Helmut's issue out on Halloween." Cassie said, smiling at the serendipity.
Idly, Tanya wondered whether or not Lucrecia would see the issue. She sent a signed one to Razputin… She took a bite out of her caramel apple and switched to telepathy. "Speaking of that debacle, how is progress on Ford?"
"Boolie thinks that we'll need to move him to another environment if we want to help him." Cassie explained, "But Hollis won't allow it. The personalities you helped are locked up tight, and the new one exploits the safeguard to stop us from using it."
"I imagine she's happy that Ford's new personality provides some level of value to the organization?" Tanya guessed, before taking another bite of her apple. Delicious.
"Right on the money." Cassie said, sighing. "She says it's because he's stable now and she doesn't want to risk it, but that's what she means."
"Hey Tanya." Mary said, her own caramel apple finished. "Otto's giving rides in his hovertank. You wanna come with? Dad asked me to come with him."
She's driven it, but Tanya smiled anyway. "Right behind you, Mary." Tanya waved goodbye to Cassie as she walked away, and the old woman waved back politely.
Otto's hovertank was about the size of a delivery van, with a turret on top with a separate seat. Wisely, the scientist had disabled the turret before letting children near the vehicle, in addition to removing some of the armor panels to act as windows as the tank flew around slowly. "Here we have the quarry that the Motherlobe is built next to. Normally, if we flew around here, we'd be shot down by those turrets down there, and there." Otto explained, pointing out the anti air guns. "But we have permission, so it's fine."
Dad, dressed as a different famous baseball player, Walter Johnson, added: "The shield on the Vanguard can take a few shots either way."
"Are we gonna get shot?" Asked little Dogen Boole, Compton's five year old grandson.
"Can you tell them to shoot us? That would be so cool!" Sam, his older sister, exclaimed.
"No, no." Otto said calmly. "Hollis said I wasn't allowed to field test around children after the last time." The collected children groaned in disappointment.
"We won't tell!" Said a child Tanya didn't know the name of.
"Sorry, the guy working the turret today is a real tattletale." Otto countered. He was really good with children, Tanya had noticed. Helmut said it was because the man never really grew up, although he phrased it differently. "But as soon as we get out of his line of sight, who wants to do some loop de loops?" The cheering was unanimous.
Mary, from her position in Dad's lap, looked around. "Uh… wait a second. Is this safe?"
Tanya said out loud: "Maybe." But followed it up with a telepathic "Yes. The internal kinetics are designed with such events in mind."
Otto laughed as he accelerated the hovertank, bringing it up and around, and overall impersonating a roller coaster with his flying. Much like magical flight, levitation lost effectiveness at higher elevations, so the hovertank could only go about a hundred meters into the air. This was plenty for the trip, as he brought the maneuvering of the vehicle to its limits.
After he steadied the flight, Otto let the groaning subside before asking: "Everyone okay back there?"
Tanya gathered the contents of the telekinetic buckets that were needed, and flung the ball of vomit out of the window after checking that it would only land in the quarry's water. "I think it might be wise to come in for a landing." She suggested.
"Yes, some of the crew seem a bit ill, tank captain." Dad said solemnly.
"Ah, casualties." Otto said faux-ruefully. "Tragic."
Once the tank was unloaded, Tanya pickpocketed some gum out of her father's pocket, popping half of it into her mouth and passing Mary the other half as she went to retrieve her bat.
"Here you are, darling." Mom said, handing over the weapon. She was dressed as a mermaid, using levitation to make the fact that she couldn't walk with that tail irrelevant. "Are you having fun?"
Tanya nodded, twirling her bat to refamiliarize herself with the weight. "Halloween is probably my favorite American holiday." Mostly because it wasn't associated with Christianity, but she liked it on its own merits as well. "Candy and cosplay, two things that go very well with each other." She took some of the gummy fishes that were within reach. "None of the teenagers have hit on me, either. I think they've learned their lesson from last year."
"Or they've noticed that you have a weapon." Mom retorted with a giggle. "It looks like Helmut's setting up a stage, do you want to join him?"
Tanya's head snapped towards Helmut's distinctive psychic presence. He had her karaoke machine, and was setting it up. "Yes. Yes I do." She started to fly over towards the stage. "Love you Mom!"
This was not how she expected her first few months of being a Psychonaut to go, but at least it all worked out. All she needs to do is avoid drama and get her ticket to the billionaire club finished.
But how hard could that be?
- Location
- Argentina
Oh Tanya you had to poke Murphy the bear didn't you?
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
- Location
- Askew to the British Isles
"I'm a Lumberjack and I'm ok, I sleep all night and I work all day."
Two guesses what song Helmut plans to sing.
It's still Halloween but I can't give out pumpkins instead of upvotes, I must riot! Down with the mods! Viva la revolution! Ok nap time night.
Chapter 2.21
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
End of Book 2. Book 3 starts in 2 weeks.
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"I love you, Tanya."
"I love you too, Visha." Tanya said, giving her a kiss on the forehead. She giggled as Visha returned the love enthusiastically. She reached out for the one thing that could save her from Visha's affection. "Get the ball!" She said as she threw the tennis ball.
"BALL!" Visha shouted with a bark, running after it with as much enthusiasm as her short legs could manage.
Zoolinguism was an amazing psychic power, in Tanya's opinion. One of the best around, really. Not many could claim to be able to know, without a doubt, that their pet understood how much they were loved.
Visha returned with the tennis ball in her mouth, the Shiba Inu puppy panting with the exertion. "Ball!" She exclaimed, her mouth being full no obstacle to the telepathic method of communication. Well, she was still technically a puppy, but in another month or two she'd grow that last two or three inches, so she was almost grown.
Tanya took the ball from Visha's mouth and threw it again. "Go get it!" She ordered. The dog zoomed off happily, barking in joy.
"Hi Tanya!" Lili said as she approached, her own dog Mephisto attached to a leash she was holding. He was a German Shepherd that flunked out of K9 training for being too friendly.
"Hi Tanya." Mephisto said as he sniffed Tanya's hair, updating himself on her scent. "No drugs, this is good. Drugs are bad." Mephisto started licking Tanya's face.
"Hello, Lili." Tanya said, but sputtered as Mephisto's tongue slipped into her mouth for an instant. "Pft, ptuie. Hello Mephisto."
"Hey!" Visha said indignantly. She dropped her tennis ball into Tanya's lap and shoved Mephisto aside, who genially oversold the impact and flopped on his side, and started licking off Mephisto's slobber from Tanya's face. "I love you, Tanya."
Tanya giggled at the repetition, but kept her lips shut as she projected her reply: "I love you too, Visha."
Lili unhooked Mephisto's leash and gestured to the surrounding park ground. "We're here! Go nuts!" On cue, both dogs got on their feet and bolted, barking at each other as they played. Looking at Tanya with determination on her face, she sat on the other side of the chess board that Tanya had set up, making a move.
Tanya negligently moved one of her pieces telekinetically, paying more attention to the dogs than her opponent. She split off an archetype to engage Lili, as the eight year old had improved enough to require actual effort to beat. The girl was learning, but Tanya played a lot of chess at Officer's school and War College both.
Visha and Mephisto started running towards them, so Tanya brought up the tennis ball and gave it a telekinetic flick. Mephisto fell over in his attempts to turn around, while the lighter and smaller Visha retrieved the ball before he could get back up to speed.
After a few iterations of ball throwing, Visha slumped at Tanya's feet, panting. "Too hot…" Visha whined. Mephisto wasn't quite as exhausted, but he was panting heavily after the exertion. Tanya applied some light cryokinesis to help the overheated dogs, which caused Visha to spring up with even more energy. "Ball! Throw the ball!" Visha declared. One more telekinetic flick and Visha shot off like a bullet.
Mephisto, on the other hand, laid his hand down in Lili's lap for ear scratches. Lili looked over the board as she tended to the dog in her lap, contemplative. "Wait… ah ha!" She declared before making her move. "Check."
"Check." Tanya said, capturing the offending piece.
Panicked, Lili made one of the only two moves she could make. "Check." Tanya said, immediately replying to the move. Lili moved again, the only move she could make. "Check." Tanya repeated, driving her King into a corner. Lili made her only move one last time. "Checkmate." Tanya said, finally having shut the trap. She could have said 'Mate in three' earlier, but Lili always wanted to play it out.
"Damn it." Lili said. Tanya had no idea where she picked up her swearing habit from. "Again?"
"You have to think further ahead, Lili." Tanya said as she set the board back up, this time with her as white. "Putting someone in check is no good if you overextend." Despite Mrs. Zanotto's hopes, Lili was rather untalented in the kind of thinking chess required, although she did have the stubbornness required to improve, so while she would never become a notable chess player, perhaps in time she could learn enough to impress someone down the line who thought that chess was a good way to determine someone's intelligence.
Eventually, Visha was too exhausted to do anything but lay down, even after being cooled off and rehydrated. Tanya put Visha in her backpack, the small dog easily fitting inside with only her head sticking out, which she used to look around at anything and everything. "That's enough chess for today, Lili." Tanya said, standing up with the doggie backpack.
"Yeah, okay." Lili said, disappointed in her performance. She looked at Mephisto. "Did you have fun?"
"Yes." Mephisto said, his tail wagging. "I'm hungry. Had fun. Food time."
"Yes, food time." Visha said, agreeing with a soft bark. "I love food."
Lili attached Mephisto's leash to his collar. "Okay, let's go get some grub then."
"I love you, Tanya." Visha said as Tanya strapped her into the flying car's passenger seat.
"I love you too." Tanya replied.
---------------------
"Well Tanya, this is the moment of truth." Otto said, safety goggles on behind the blast shield. "It's taken a year, but let's see if your design pans out."
Tanya nodded, her own barrier shimmering on her skin. "Beginning test." Tanya said, activating the psitanium device.
The hopper filled with psitanium ground up into fine sand (the fine grain psitanium grinder was a worthy achievement all its own, really) trembled as it fed the device, and after two minutes of operation, a single psitanium crystal was ejected from the device. Two minutes later, a second one came out. After two more minutes, a third.
"Well I'll be…" Otto said in wonder. "Psitanium shaping psitanium, I was beginning to think it impossible."
After six total crystals were ejected, Tanya stopped the device. She picked the crystals off of the small conveyor belt that led to nothing. She waved the crystal in front of the scanner, and after a second, the device lit up with a green light. "The false thinkerprint is recognized." Tanya said with a grin. She chose to make the ID card equivalent for her first automated device because of how simple they were, it was only as complicated as a seventy-three digit number in a base 28 numbering system, after all, and it was only that complicated because Otto lacked restraint. For thoroughness, she tested all six crystals, and they all worked. She then tested them on the second scanner, and smiled as they failed.
"Okay, now to test the modularity." Otto said, ejecting part of the ID manufacturing machine and inserting an identical-looking alternate part. After another run of six, Tanya tested those. They failed, as expected, but Tanya then brought them to the second scanner and they were approved.
"Complete success." Tanya declared.
"You've finally done it, Tanya." Otto said approvingly. "This will save us so much time on labor costs."
"And every single machine that shapes psitanium will use my patent." Tanya said, rubbing her hands together as she imagined the money she'll be making.
"Unless they figure out another way to do it, but I don't think that will be an issue." Otto pointed out. "Now, let's keep it running overnight, see if anything goes wrong." He put his hand to his temple, and after a moment a young man entered the testing chamber.
"Yes, Dr. Mentalis?" Asked the college student. He had a backpack full of textbooks.
"Roy, I believe you expressed interest in doing a little unpleasant side job for me for money?" Otto asked him. "Overnight, but with time for you to study?"
"Yes sir, Dr. Mentalis." Roy said.
"The job's actually for me." Tanya said, "It's quite simple: You stay in here while this machine does its thing. Every half hour, you put more sand in the hopper. If it breaks, record when it breaks. After each refill, you test the crystals the machine made by waving it in front of both of these scanners. You will do this all night, until I come back at nine in the morning." This was in fourteen hours.
Roy seemed iffy. "I don't know…" He said.
"I will pay you three hundred dollars to do this." Tanya said, before adding: " You will have full access to Otto's personal coffee machine, and I'll order you a large pizza before I go." She reached into her pocket and flashed the cash, three one hundred dollar bills.
"Deal." Roy said immediately, reaching out for the money.
Tanya pulled it out of his reach. "Tomorrow." She said, "You can have one now, but I will be taking it back if you do not follow instructions, and there are cameras watching the machine, so I will know." She put one of the hundred dollar bills behind his pocket protector. "Now, I'll run you through what you need to do once more, now that you're paying attention."
"Right, right." Roy said, energized from the thought of that money.
After thoroughly instructing the temp worker, Tanya set the machine to go and turned the egg timer to thirty minutes. "Remember, every thirty minutes, more sand from the bin, scan the outputs, write down the results, and don't forget to reset the timer." She placed the set of forms she had printed out to make this as simple as possible down on his desk.
"Yeah, yeah." Roy said, already setting out his textbooks for the studying he will be doing.
"Right. Otto? As I mentioned before, you're invited to dinner. Are you coming?" Tanya asked.
"Oh, definitely. I don't get much home cooking, as you know." Otto replied, patting his stomach. "Your mother's pasta casserole is simply to die for."
"No one knows that better than me, Otto." Tanya joked as they left the testing chamber.
Otto laughed.
---------------------
"As you can see, General, the simulation is as realistic as it can be." Tanya said from the passenger seat of the car as the old military man went around the racetrack, an uncharacteristic grin on his face. "While the current state of the technology has issues, most notably the fact that I can only program a simulation of a vehicle I understand thoroughly, my work with the Psychonauts has surely proven my trustworthiness vis a vis classified information."
General Ross laughed as they crossed the finish line, the pre-programmed cheers, applause, and fireworks exploding as he slowed down to a stop. "Yeah, if Zanotto vouches for you, I'm sure it's fine." He said, "Never thought I'd get to be inside a mind like this."
"The simulation aspect of the technology has been ready for over a year." Tanya replied, "But it is only recently that it has been refined enough to allow non-psychics use of the technology. It is ready for military use, as while the systems are expensive, they are cheap in comparison to your advanced hardware, so you won't need to tie up your planes to train pilots, and you could emulate hostile weather, or anti-aircraft fire, all kinds of possible scenarios." She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car, where the General was awarded a trophy, confetti scattering in celebration.
"Laying on it a little thick, don't you think?" He said, chuckling at the announcer declaring his victory at the Daytona 500.
Tanya shrugged. "It's all to demonstrate the versatility of the simulation." She snapped her fingers, and it all faded away, leaving the default grid-covered cube environment. With another snap of her fingers, the jumpsuit that the General was wearing was replaced with his usual uniform. "I have also programmed a flight simulator with an outdated model of aircraft. Are you a fan of the Sturmvogel? It's the first operational jet-powered fighter." It was also, oddly enough, the latest model of aircraft the Empire used before she died. Shugel designed it, and she had the pleasure of getting to pilot the prototype during her very last two-week leave, just a few months before her death. It was a fond memory, the last time she got to see General Rudersdorf in the flesh.
Of course, few Generals weren't gigantic military otaku, so he nodded. "That's the Messerschmitt Me 262, isn't it? The fighter-bomber configuration?"
"So you do know it." Tanya replied with a smile. "I was given access to a museum piece that I used to base the simulation on. If you want accuracy in the physics engine, I need to know every piece and their function. I can black box stuff if I must, but that will introduce inaccuracies that will compromise the simulation's quality."
"Let's have a fly, then!" General Ross said, smiling like a kid.
"Of course." Tanya replied, snapping her fingers while mentally commanding the simulation to retrieve and execute the relevant files. Immediately, the world around her grew to an immense size, as the one-seat nature of the simulation relegated her to a tiny avatar seated on the dashboard, which she had decided to use to turn herself into a golden-furred cat instead of the default 'her, but cat-sized'.
"Okay-"
"Woah, talking cat." The General said in surprise.
Tanya mewed in amusement. "This is a one-seat plane, General. Of course I wouldn't be nyat full size."
"But why a cat?" General Ross asked.
"Why nyot?" Tanya replied. After a moment, the General couldn't find a response, so he just started looking at the controls. "Nyow I need to walk you through the controls. First, the gauges. This is the altimeter…"
---------------------
"Food?" Visha asked, perking up from her position cuddled up with Tanya. "Tanya, food time. I'm hungry." Why did she teach Visha to read the clock?
Tanya yawned as she rose up from her bed. Now that the number of psychics within range of her sleep dropped from 'about five hundred' to 'seven', she had gotten a proper queen-size bed, although her psychoisolation bed was still in her room, it was just a display case for her small stuffed animal collection now, easily made usable if she needed it. This way, she could cuddle her dog during the night. Visha didn't like the psychoisolation bed.
It was Saturday, so after checking her flower's moisture levels, Tanya walked downstairs in her pajamas. She didn't have anything scheduled for today, a rarity, so today was for being lazy… unless something Mr. Rodriguez couldn't handle came up with the military's APES devices, they were using them today. Then she'd need to fly over… although she supposed she could project to her subordinate's mind instead and perform any fix remotely… she'll try it if it comes up.
Visha jumped around Tanya's legs, excited for breakfast. Tanya telekinetically opened up the dog food bin and scooped out a proper serving, and the dog cheered and started eating enthusiastically. Her water bowl was fine, as it was fed by a two gallon tank which she refilled yesterday.
"Good morning, Tanya!" Dad said, reading the newspaper while sipping at his coffee. He was reading the news section, and passed Tanya the financials. Her infant little brother, named Eric, was in his highchair, suckling on a bottle that was supported telekinetically by Dad.
"Morning Dad, Mom." Tanya replied as she sat at her seat and waited for breakfast. While she didn't really consider the stock market as something she could win at, despite being a time traveler, she paid close attention to commodities, as she needed to stay on top of anything that could impact psitanium prices. To a lesser extent, she needed to pay attention to a few other things that were relevant to her business, but psitanium was the big thing. Nothing today, but no news is good news in this case.
Mom was really excited this morning, but it wasn't until she turned around with a heaping pile of pancakes decorated with cream cheese frosting and cinnamon that Tanya realized what day it was. "Happy Birthday, Tanya!"
Oh right, she is eighteen now. Legally an adult, although it was easy to forget that she wasn't until now. It also meant she's officially lasted longer in this life than the last one, although that isn't exactly much of an accomplishment. Still, Tanya smiled widely and started digging into the delicious cinnamon pancakes. She mentally erased the question marks she had in her mental day planner and replaced them with 'whatever Mom has planned'.
Smirking, Dad asked: "So when would you be moving out, then?" He projected humor, making it clear that it was just a joke.
Not bothering to use her voice, Tanya replied seriously anyway. "If I thought for a second I'd have to, I could get another Motherlobe on-base apartment within the week. Instead, I'll leave somewhere around the time I stop working for the Psychonauts and move out of town to handle my company full time." Mystery was nice and all, but she likes the idea of owning a nice penthouse in a big city… Although more realistically, she'd need to live somewhere near her factories, when she expands operations beyond the one she has set up nearby to supply the Motherlobe and the Psychonauts as a whole with bulk psitanium gadgets, as well as the military contract fulfillment. Competing with the Motherlobe for the supply of psychic technicians and engineers was not exactly a logistically efficient move.
"You'll always have a home here, even then." Mom insisted.
"That's years down the line, though." Tanya added, "Access to the Motherlobe's laboratories is still a job perk that I simply cannot do without, even with the military contract providing funding." Theoretically, she could afford to recreate most of the facilities, particularly if that DoD research grant she applied for was granted to develop usable multiplayer for squad based simulations, but Otto as a collaborator was just as valuable of a resource, and she helped him with enough of his own inventions without credit that he was willing to leave her inventions alone, patent-wise, even if that trade was uneven in her favor.
Mary finally shuffled into the picture, the twelve year old also dressed only in her sleeping clothes, which was a frilly pink gown, in contrast to Tanya's animal themed footed sleeper with a hood (the tabby cat one this time). Mom placed a more ordinary stack of pancakes in front of her. "Morning…" she mumbled as she blearily started eating. She did not quietly enjoy the food, humming in pleasure at the first bite.
"Good Morning, Mary." All three of them said, although not at once and with varying levels of informality.
After serving Dad his own plate and settling down with her own food, Mom beamed. "Now Tanya, your party will be held in Green Needle Gulch, Bob and Helmut have agreed to host. It starts at two. We can do whatever you want until then."
Mary had woken up fully, scoffing. "You know she just wants to do nothing and get pampered." She said, before chuckling. "Kind of like a cat." She teased, referencing Tanya's pajamas.
Tanya flushed at the accusation, but could not bring herself to deny it. There was so rarely a day that she felt she could freely waste instead of spending to keep up her development of her business or technology, her habit of filling her schedule to the brim doing her no favors, she usually only took a day off every three weeks. It was rarer still she could synchronize that idleness with Mom, so those days tended to end up the same way: with them cuddled up on the couch watching movies on tape. Good times.
"Tanya works very hard for her goals, Mary. Fourteen hour days are not an easy pace." She could handle it, though. She only worked that hard four days a week, she only worked eight hours on Fridays and on most weekends that she didn't have anything family oriented planned. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to take it easy on her days off." Mom said, offended on Tanya's behalf. "If she wants to get extra special treatment on her birthday, I'm happy to do it."
With that, Mary rolled her eyes and, her breakfast eaten, moved to her room so she could watch her cartoons on her own television.
When the actual party came around, Tanya was relaxed and ready to sincerely greet everyone who showed up with a smile on her face, wearing her normal casual outfit of cargo shorts and a T-shirt with a thin jacket.
"Parson, it's nice that you could make it. Did the tunnels give you trouble?" Tanya asked. She had streamlined the previously ponderous tram, but it was still the most distant destination in the network.
The overweight boy, now employed as a professional GM in Boston, still ran a weekly game that Tanya participated in (she insisted on paying his normal rates) on Fridays, but most of the other players had moved on, replaced by people over there. The commute wasn't that bad via flying car. "Nah, the traffic on the way here was worse." He scratched Visha's ears, the fluffy dog happily accepting it while wiggling in Tanya's arms. "So this is Visha?"
"You give good scratches, soft man." Visha replied, although Parson couldn't understand her.
"Yes, she is the best girl." Tanya replied, giving the dog a kiss when Parson moved his hand away.
The guest list wasn't that large; the Psychic Six sans Ford, Lili and her family, Parson and the other three members of their RPG group that he brought with him, college students at Tanya's nominal alma mater. She had some coworkers and subordinates at both her jobs she would have invited, but they threw her a small celebration yesterday in the first case and it would be inappropriate in the second.
The party was also relatively modest, there was food, karaoke, and some board games, but it was mostly just hanging out in the newly redecorated Heptadome while enjoying the games and singing, both good and bad.
"Don't pull your love out on, honey," Bob and Helmut sang. Bob had truly improved. "Take my heart, my soul, my money, but don't leave me drowning in my tears!" Bob Zanotto was supposed to be fifty-seven years old, but when she had met him in person for the first time, two years ago, he had looked more like seventy, bald with a thick white beard, hunched over so much he had lost a whole foot of height.
Bob sang alone this time, his part of the duet. "You say you're going to leave, gonna take that big white bird, gonna fly right out of here, without a single word… " With proper medical care, clean clothes, and the vigor of a man in love, Bob now looked ten years younger than he was rather than fifteen years older. He was still bald, but he wore a toupee. "But you know you'll break my heart, When I watch you close that door, 'Cause I know I won't see you anymore!"
Helmut joined back in as the chorus started. "Don't pull your love out on me, baby, If you do then I think that maybe, I'll just lay me down and cry for a hundred years!" Helmut looked even younger than Bob, due to the preservative effects of the ice. There were some degenerative side-effects that made it imperfect, most notably the fact that Helmut's hair now grows completely white, but he dyes it so the man still looked no older than forty. "Don't pull your love out on me, honey, take my heart, my soul, my money, but don't leave me drownin' in my tears!"
Eventually, it came time for the presents. Mary went first. "Here you are. I think you need it." She said seriously. "Badly."
Tanya already knew what it was, so she pinched the bridge of her nose as the pun sunk in. "Another animal for my zodiac collection, thank you Mary." She said drolly without opening the gift. Mary had, every year, given her a stuffed animal denoting the current zodiac year. 1981 was the year of the rooster. When did her little sister get such a filthy mind? At least she'll be prepared for high school.
Each of the Psychic Six gave some thoughtful gifts: Cassie gave a large satchel of her homemade honey candies, Compton had baked the cake (it was a very nice cake) as his gift, Otto had given her his latest invention, a table with telekinesis projectors that you could program to do… anything. Fold clothes, cut vegetables, give massages… pretty much anything that could be done with telekinesis within one meter of the table's surface. It was a bit of a niche product, but she definitely fell into that niche. The real gift was the paperwork signing over the patent to her, though, which Otto telepathically informed her was concealed in the user manual. It wasn't going to be an in demand product until she cracks the electric/psychic gap so it could be programmed with computer software, but what little income that did come from it was now hers.
As she did for the other members of the Psychic Six, Tanya hugged Otto in thanks. "This is probably the best gift." She sent to him secretly, "I'll probably integrate it into the APES to help tend to the body during use. And nothing else."
"That's the idea." Otto replied, "Before you say more, Cassie's already explained to me why calling it a 'personal massager' was a bad idea. I'm sorry."
Tanya flushed. She didn't want it to be pointed out… "Moving on." She said out loud, causing some of the adults to chuckle. The next gift was a large jar of pickled daikon from Bob, and a small collection of audio cassettes along with a recently invented portable music player to play them.
"I put only the best music on those tapes." Helmut boasted. "Half the tapes are stuff I know you like, but the other half are stuff I think you'll like."
"That's very thoughtful Helmut, thank you." Tanya said, giving the big man a telekinesis-assisted hug.
Parson and the group each chipped in and got her a set of fancy ivory dice as well as a custom miniature of her character, Lucina the Witch, on her signature flying broom. Mom's gift was a letter from Hollis approving a vacation, along with permission to use the jet to fly to Japan to take it, along with a few brochures on things to do there.
But the true winner of 'best gift' award was definitely Dad. "What is it?" Tanya asked as she looked through the thick stack of paperwork.
"It is every single document required to transition all of those legal responsibilities that we had to sign as your legal guardians into your own name alone." Dad replied, "Merely sign them and I'll file it all with the appropriate parties. Your financial accounts, your company, even your employment in the Psychonauts."
Tanya grinned widely, giving him a rib-straining hug as the other guests goodnaturedly complained about the 'boring' gift. She liked boring. "This saves me so much time, thank you!"
After the party, as they went home, Dad asked a question: "How did you celebrate your eighteenth birthday before?"
Tanya chuckled. "I didn't make it that far in the Empire, but in Japan… My father took me to a massage parlor. There's a loophole in the laws banning prostitution, you see…" She paused. "That's not important. What is important is that this party was better than that celebration by a mile." That was a very shameful memory, at the time, for multiple reasons. Now it was just somewhat amusing, now that she understands herself better.
There was a peaceful, companiable silence, which was eventually broken by Mary's startled realization: "Wait, you were a boy!?"
---------------------
Razputin's writing had naturally improved in the years since they started exchanging letters.
Tanya,
True Psychic Tales 491 was so cool! The Groomer hypnotizing people into thinking they're dogs was so evil! I know you don't do most of the stuff in the comics, but was that one really you? They put Visha in the recovery scene…
About Nona: She's still fine, nothing new. She says hello, and thank you for asking about her. Mom and Dad and everyone are also fine.
About TPT 489: Yeah, that makes sense. It's a really cool table though, even if it's so complicated. We spent a whole dinner talking about what we'd use it for if we had one, it was fun coming up with ideas.
Oh, some weird guy gave me this brochure for the Psychonauts Whispering Rock Summer Camp. Do you know anything about it? We're actually coming up pretty close to the Canadian border in two weeks, and the brochure says it's in three, it'd be pretty close. Dad said it was too expensive, though. Can you get me a discount?
Your Friend,
Razputin
Tanya smiled as she penned her reply, idly petting Visha in her lap as she wrote. Razputin was always so precocious, and here he is, using his connections to advance his future in his chosen career field. She's so proud of him.
Razputin,
About TPT 491: I was involved in rehabilitating the victims, as zoolinguism is rare enough that there was a need for all available hands to deal with it. Visha was, as always, the best dog one can ask for.
About Nona: It is good to hear that she is well. New England has a large incidence of psitanium deposits, and it can exacerbate senility in the psychically sensitive, even if one isn't a full psychic. I noticed the symptoms of psychic sensitivity during our time together. Spend some extra time with her, if you can. If she seems confused, be gentle with her.
About TPT 489: I'm glad my little toy was able to provoke so many positive thoughts. I have quite a few programs on my Teletable, but the one I use most often is probably the clothes folding one.
Tanya paused as she wrote that blatant lie. Well, it was the one she was most willing to admit to using frequently. Really, even more common than the seven different massage settings was her setting it to Visha grooming mode and leaving it on like that, allowing Visha to jump onto it and get petted and scratched when she was left home alone.
About Whispering Rock: I can easily get you a spot. There's always room for a last minute addition, and I'd have heard by now if that had happened, my parents are involved in the administration of the camp. As for the discount… Well, if I can't get a free spot for you when I check tomorrow, I'll just pay for it myself. Enclosed is a note for your father explaining this along with some sundry details, and if you can't arrange for your own transportation, I'm already taking my little sister there, I can swing by and pick you up on the way.
It was more accurate to say that she was driving Mary and Mom there, with Dad taking his own non-flying car ahead of time, but Tanya had adjusted the backseat to fit three harnesses when Eric was born, so he'll fit.
Visha spoke up out of the blue. "I love you, Tanya." She moved out of Tanya's lap and trotted off to the bathroom. Zoolinguism also made teaching dogs complicated tricks like using a toilet quite easy.
"I love you too, Visha." Tanya absentmindedly replied.
Your Friend,
Tanya.
P.S. Remember, the key to successfully using the psychic arts in any way involves intent, imagination, and most importantly: Will. While each psychic power has its own eccentricities on how to make it manifest, the common thread is that you know what you want to do, you know that you can do it, and then you must do it. Not want to do it, you do it. You are the one making it happen, not anything else.
Yeah, that's enough. She sealed the letter and floated out of the window for a moment to place it in the mailbox. She could theoretically do it without looking, but it was simply easier to poke her head over the roof to get line of sight.
Still, she wondered: How much trouble could Razputin get up to at Camp Whispering Rock? She felt safe in assuming that at least he probably won't get the camp canceled like she did.
How bad could it be?
--------------------
"I love you, Tanya."
"I love you too, Visha." Tanya said, giving her a kiss on the forehead. She giggled as Visha returned the love enthusiastically. She reached out for the one thing that could save her from Visha's affection. "Get the ball!" She said as she threw the tennis ball.
"BALL!" Visha shouted with a bark, running after it with as much enthusiasm as her short legs could manage.
Zoolinguism was an amazing psychic power, in Tanya's opinion. One of the best around, really. Not many could claim to be able to know, without a doubt, that their pet understood how much they were loved.
Visha returned with the tennis ball in her mouth, the Shiba Inu puppy panting with the exertion. "Ball!" She exclaimed, her mouth being full no obstacle to the telepathic method of communication. Well, she was still technically a puppy, but in another month or two she'd grow that last two or three inches, so she was almost grown.
Tanya took the ball from Visha's mouth and threw it again. "Go get it!" She ordered. The dog zoomed off happily, barking in joy.
"Hi Tanya!" Lili said as she approached, her own dog Mephisto attached to a leash she was holding. He was a German Shepherd that flunked out of K9 training for being too friendly.
"Hi Tanya." Mephisto said as he sniffed Tanya's hair, updating himself on her scent. "No drugs, this is good. Drugs are bad." Mephisto started licking Tanya's face.
"Hello, Lili." Tanya said, but sputtered as Mephisto's tongue slipped into her mouth for an instant. "Pft, ptuie. Hello Mephisto."
"Hey!" Visha said indignantly. She dropped her tennis ball into Tanya's lap and shoved Mephisto aside, who genially oversold the impact and flopped on his side, and started licking off Mephisto's slobber from Tanya's face. "I love you, Tanya."
Tanya giggled at the repetition, but kept her lips shut as she projected her reply: "I love you too, Visha."
Lili unhooked Mephisto's leash and gestured to the surrounding park ground. "We're here! Go nuts!" On cue, both dogs got on their feet and bolted, barking at each other as they played. Looking at Tanya with determination on her face, she sat on the other side of the chess board that Tanya had set up, making a move.
Tanya negligently moved one of her pieces telekinetically, paying more attention to the dogs than her opponent. She split off an archetype to engage Lili, as the eight year old had improved enough to require actual effort to beat. The girl was learning, but Tanya played a lot of chess at Officer's school and War College both.
Visha and Mephisto started running towards them, so Tanya brought up the tennis ball and gave it a telekinetic flick. Mephisto fell over in his attempts to turn around, while the lighter and smaller Visha retrieved the ball before he could get back up to speed.
After a few iterations of ball throwing, Visha slumped at Tanya's feet, panting. "Too hot…" Visha whined. Mephisto wasn't quite as exhausted, but he was panting heavily after the exertion. Tanya applied some light cryokinesis to help the overheated dogs, which caused Visha to spring up with even more energy. "Ball! Throw the ball!" Visha declared. One more telekinetic flick and Visha shot off like a bullet.
Mephisto, on the other hand, laid his hand down in Lili's lap for ear scratches. Lili looked over the board as she tended to the dog in her lap, contemplative. "Wait… ah ha!" She declared before making her move. "Check."
"Check." Tanya said, capturing the offending piece.
Panicked, Lili made one of the only two moves she could make. "Check." Tanya said, immediately replying to the move. Lili moved again, the only move she could make. "Check." Tanya repeated, driving her King into a corner. Lili made her only move one last time. "Checkmate." Tanya said, finally having shut the trap. She could have said 'Mate in three' earlier, but Lili always wanted to play it out.
"Damn it." Lili said. Tanya had no idea where she picked up her swearing habit from. "Again?"
"You have to think further ahead, Lili." Tanya said as she set the board back up, this time with her as white. "Putting someone in check is no good if you overextend." Despite Mrs. Zanotto's hopes, Lili was rather untalented in the kind of thinking chess required, although she did have the stubbornness required to improve, so while she would never become a notable chess player, perhaps in time she could learn enough to impress someone down the line who thought that chess was a good way to determine someone's intelligence.
Eventually, Visha was too exhausted to do anything but lay down, even after being cooled off and rehydrated. Tanya put Visha in her backpack, the small dog easily fitting inside with only her head sticking out, which she used to look around at anything and everything. "That's enough chess for today, Lili." Tanya said, standing up with the doggie backpack.
"Yeah, okay." Lili said, disappointed in her performance. She looked at Mephisto. "Did you have fun?"
"Yes." Mephisto said, his tail wagging. "I'm hungry. Had fun. Food time."
"Yes, food time." Visha said, agreeing with a soft bark. "I love food."
Lili attached Mephisto's leash to his collar. "Okay, let's go get some grub then."
"I love you, Tanya." Visha said as Tanya strapped her into the flying car's passenger seat.
"I love you too." Tanya replied.
---------------------
"Well Tanya, this is the moment of truth." Otto said, safety goggles on behind the blast shield. "It's taken a year, but let's see if your design pans out."
Tanya nodded, her own barrier shimmering on her skin. "Beginning test." Tanya said, activating the psitanium device.
The hopper filled with psitanium ground up into fine sand (the fine grain psitanium grinder was a worthy achievement all its own, really) trembled as it fed the device, and after two minutes of operation, a single psitanium crystal was ejected from the device. Two minutes later, a second one came out. After two more minutes, a third.
"Well I'll be…" Otto said in wonder. "Psitanium shaping psitanium, I was beginning to think it impossible."
After six total crystals were ejected, Tanya stopped the device. She picked the crystals off of the small conveyor belt that led to nothing. She waved the crystal in front of the scanner, and after a second, the device lit up with a green light. "The false thinkerprint is recognized." Tanya said with a grin. She chose to make the ID card equivalent for her first automated device because of how simple they were, it was only as complicated as a seventy-three digit number in a base 28 numbering system, after all, and it was only that complicated because Otto lacked restraint. For thoroughness, she tested all six crystals, and they all worked. She then tested them on the second scanner, and smiled as they failed.
"Okay, now to test the modularity." Otto said, ejecting part of the ID manufacturing machine and inserting an identical-looking alternate part. After another run of six, Tanya tested those. They failed, as expected, but Tanya then brought them to the second scanner and they were approved.
"Complete success." Tanya declared.
"You've finally done it, Tanya." Otto said approvingly. "This will save us so much time on labor costs."
"And every single machine that shapes psitanium will use my patent." Tanya said, rubbing her hands together as she imagined the money she'll be making.
"Unless they figure out another way to do it, but I don't think that will be an issue." Otto pointed out. "Now, let's keep it running overnight, see if anything goes wrong." He put his hand to his temple, and after a moment a young man entered the testing chamber.
"Yes, Dr. Mentalis?" Asked the college student. He had a backpack full of textbooks.
"Roy, I believe you expressed interest in doing a little unpleasant side job for me for money?" Otto asked him. "Overnight, but with time for you to study?"
"Yes sir, Dr. Mentalis." Roy said.
"The job's actually for me." Tanya said, "It's quite simple: You stay in here while this machine does its thing. Every half hour, you put more sand in the hopper. If it breaks, record when it breaks. After each refill, you test the crystals the machine made by waving it in front of both of these scanners. You will do this all night, until I come back at nine in the morning." This was in fourteen hours.
Roy seemed iffy. "I don't know…" He said.
"I will pay you three hundred dollars to do this." Tanya said, before adding: " You will have full access to Otto's personal coffee machine, and I'll order you a large pizza before I go." She reached into her pocket and flashed the cash, three one hundred dollar bills.
"Deal." Roy said immediately, reaching out for the money.
Tanya pulled it out of his reach. "Tomorrow." She said, "You can have one now, but I will be taking it back if you do not follow instructions, and there are cameras watching the machine, so I will know." She put one of the hundred dollar bills behind his pocket protector. "Now, I'll run you through what you need to do once more, now that you're paying attention."
"Right, right." Roy said, energized from the thought of that money.
After thoroughly instructing the temp worker, Tanya set the machine to go and turned the egg timer to thirty minutes. "Remember, every thirty minutes, more sand from the bin, scan the outputs, write down the results, and don't forget to reset the timer." She placed the set of forms she had printed out to make this as simple as possible down on his desk.
"Yeah, yeah." Roy said, already setting out his textbooks for the studying he will be doing.
"Right. Otto? As I mentioned before, you're invited to dinner. Are you coming?" Tanya asked.
"Oh, definitely. I don't get much home cooking, as you know." Otto replied, patting his stomach. "Your mother's pasta casserole is simply to die for."
"No one knows that better than me, Otto." Tanya joked as they left the testing chamber.
Otto laughed.
---------------------
"As you can see, General, the simulation is as realistic as it can be." Tanya said from the passenger seat of the car as the old military man went around the racetrack, an uncharacteristic grin on his face. "While the current state of the technology has issues, most notably the fact that I can only program a simulation of a vehicle I understand thoroughly, my work with the Psychonauts has surely proven my trustworthiness vis a vis classified information."
General Ross laughed as they crossed the finish line, the pre-programmed cheers, applause, and fireworks exploding as he slowed down to a stop. "Yeah, if Zanotto vouches for you, I'm sure it's fine." He said, "Never thought I'd get to be inside a mind like this."
"The simulation aspect of the technology has been ready for over a year." Tanya replied, "But it is only recently that it has been refined enough to allow non-psychics use of the technology. It is ready for military use, as while the systems are expensive, they are cheap in comparison to your advanced hardware, so you won't need to tie up your planes to train pilots, and you could emulate hostile weather, or anti-aircraft fire, all kinds of possible scenarios." She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car, where the General was awarded a trophy, confetti scattering in celebration.
"Laying on it a little thick, don't you think?" He said, chuckling at the announcer declaring his victory at the Daytona 500.
Tanya shrugged. "It's all to demonstrate the versatility of the simulation." She snapped her fingers, and it all faded away, leaving the default grid-covered cube environment. With another snap of her fingers, the jumpsuit that the General was wearing was replaced with his usual uniform. "I have also programmed a flight simulator with an outdated model of aircraft. Are you a fan of the Sturmvogel? It's the first operational jet-powered fighter." It was also, oddly enough, the latest model of aircraft the Empire used before she died. Shugel designed it, and she had the pleasure of getting to pilot the prototype during her very last two-week leave, just a few months before her death. It was a fond memory, the last time she got to see General Rudersdorf in the flesh.
Of course, few Generals weren't gigantic military otaku, so he nodded. "That's the Messerschmitt Me 262, isn't it? The fighter-bomber configuration?"
"So you do know it." Tanya replied with a smile. "I was given access to a museum piece that I used to base the simulation on. If you want accuracy in the physics engine, I need to know every piece and their function. I can black box stuff if I must, but that will introduce inaccuracies that will compromise the simulation's quality."
"Let's have a fly, then!" General Ross said, smiling like a kid.
"Of course." Tanya replied, snapping her fingers while mentally commanding the simulation to retrieve and execute the relevant files. Immediately, the world around her grew to an immense size, as the one-seat nature of the simulation relegated her to a tiny avatar seated on the dashboard, which she had decided to use to turn herself into a golden-furred cat instead of the default 'her, but cat-sized'.
"Okay-"
"Woah, talking cat." The General said in surprise.
Tanya mewed in amusement. "This is a one-seat plane, General. Of course I wouldn't be nyat full size."
"But why a cat?" General Ross asked.
"Why nyot?" Tanya replied. After a moment, the General couldn't find a response, so he just started looking at the controls. "Nyow I need to walk you through the controls. First, the gauges. This is the altimeter…"
---------------------
"Food?" Visha asked, perking up from her position cuddled up with Tanya. "Tanya, food time. I'm hungry." Why did she teach Visha to read the clock?
Tanya yawned as she rose up from her bed. Now that the number of psychics within range of her sleep dropped from 'about five hundred' to 'seven', she had gotten a proper queen-size bed, although her psychoisolation bed was still in her room, it was just a display case for her small stuffed animal collection now, easily made usable if she needed it. This way, she could cuddle her dog during the night. Visha didn't like the psychoisolation bed.
It was Saturday, so after checking her flower's moisture levels, Tanya walked downstairs in her pajamas. She didn't have anything scheduled for today, a rarity, so today was for being lazy… unless something Mr. Rodriguez couldn't handle came up with the military's APES devices, they were using them today. Then she'd need to fly over… although she supposed she could project to her subordinate's mind instead and perform any fix remotely… she'll try it if it comes up.
Visha jumped around Tanya's legs, excited for breakfast. Tanya telekinetically opened up the dog food bin and scooped out a proper serving, and the dog cheered and started eating enthusiastically. Her water bowl was fine, as it was fed by a two gallon tank which she refilled yesterday.
"Good morning, Tanya!" Dad said, reading the newspaper while sipping at his coffee. He was reading the news section, and passed Tanya the financials. Her infant little brother, named Eric, was in his highchair, suckling on a bottle that was supported telekinetically by Dad.
"Morning Dad, Mom." Tanya replied as she sat at her seat and waited for breakfast. While she didn't really consider the stock market as something she could win at, despite being a time traveler, she paid close attention to commodities, as she needed to stay on top of anything that could impact psitanium prices. To a lesser extent, she needed to pay attention to a few other things that were relevant to her business, but psitanium was the big thing. Nothing today, but no news is good news in this case.
Mom was really excited this morning, but it wasn't until she turned around with a heaping pile of pancakes decorated with cream cheese frosting and cinnamon that Tanya realized what day it was. "Happy Birthday, Tanya!"
Oh right, she is eighteen now. Legally an adult, although it was easy to forget that she wasn't until now. It also meant she's officially lasted longer in this life than the last one, although that isn't exactly much of an accomplishment. Still, Tanya smiled widely and started digging into the delicious cinnamon pancakes. She mentally erased the question marks she had in her mental day planner and replaced them with 'whatever Mom has planned'.
Smirking, Dad asked: "So when would you be moving out, then?" He projected humor, making it clear that it was just a joke.
Not bothering to use her voice, Tanya replied seriously anyway. "If I thought for a second I'd have to, I could get another Motherlobe on-base apartment within the week. Instead, I'll leave somewhere around the time I stop working for the Psychonauts and move out of town to handle my company full time." Mystery was nice and all, but she likes the idea of owning a nice penthouse in a big city… Although more realistically, she'd need to live somewhere near her factories, when she expands operations beyond the one she has set up nearby to supply the Motherlobe and the Psychonauts as a whole with bulk psitanium gadgets, as well as the military contract fulfillment. Competing with the Motherlobe for the supply of psychic technicians and engineers was not exactly a logistically efficient move.
"You'll always have a home here, even then." Mom insisted.
"That's years down the line, though." Tanya added, "Access to the Motherlobe's laboratories is still a job perk that I simply cannot do without, even with the military contract providing funding." Theoretically, she could afford to recreate most of the facilities, particularly if that DoD research grant she applied for was granted to develop usable multiplayer for squad based simulations, but Otto as a collaborator was just as valuable of a resource, and she helped him with enough of his own inventions without credit that he was willing to leave her inventions alone, patent-wise, even if that trade was uneven in her favor.
Mary finally shuffled into the picture, the twelve year old also dressed only in her sleeping clothes, which was a frilly pink gown, in contrast to Tanya's animal themed footed sleeper with a hood (the tabby cat one this time). Mom placed a more ordinary stack of pancakes in front of her. "Morning…" she mumbled as she blearily started eating. She did not quietly enjoy the food, humming in pleasure at the first bite.
"Good Morning, Mary." All three of them said, although not at once and with varying levels of informality.
After serving Dad his own plate and settling down with her own food, Mom beamed. "Now Tanya, your party will be held in Green Needle Gulch, Bob and Helmut have agreed to host. It starts at two. We can do whatever you want until then."
Mary had woken up fully, scoffing. "You know she just wants to do nothing and get pampered." She said, before chuckling. "Kind of like a cat." She teased, referencing Tanya's pajamas.
Tanya flushed at the accusation, but could not bring herself to deny it. There was so rarely a day that she felt she could freely waste instead of spending to keep up her development of her business or technology, her habit of filling her schedule to the brim doing her no favors, she usually only took a day off every three weeks. It was rarer still she could synchronize that idleness with Mom, so those days tended to end up the same way: with them cuddled up on the couch watching movies on tape. Good times.
"Tanya works very hard for her goals, Mary. Fourteen hour days are not an easy pace." She could handle it, though. She only worked that hard four days a week, she only worked eight hours on Fridays and on most weekends that she didn't have anything family oriented planned. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to take it easy on her days off." Mom said, offended on Tanya's behalf. "If she wants to get extra special treatment on her birthday, I'm happy to do it."
With that, Mary rolled her eyes and, her breakfast eaten, moved to her room so she could watch her cartoons on her own television.
When the actual party came around, Tanya was relaxed and ready to sincerely greet everyone who showed up with a smile on her face, wearing her normal casual outfit of cargo shorts and a T-shirt with a thin jacket.
"Parson, it's nice that you could make it. Did the tunnels give you trouble?" Tanya asked. She had streamlined the previously ponderous tram, but it was still the most distant destination in the network.
The overweight boy, now employed as a professional GM in Boston, still ran a weekly game that Tanya participated in (she insisted on paying his normal rates) on Fridays, but most of the other players had moved on, replaced by people over there. The commute wasn't that bad via flying car. "Nah, the traffic on the way here was worse." He scratched Visha's ears, the fluffy dog happily accepting it while wiggling in Tanya's arms. "So this is Visha?"
"You give good scratches, soft man." Visha replied, although Parson couldn't understand her.
"Yes, she is the best girl." Tanya replied, giving the dog a kiss when Parson moved his hand away.
The guest list wasn't that large; the Psychic Six sans Ford, Lili and her family, Parson and the other three members of their RPG group that he brought with him, college students at Tanya's nominal alma mater. She had some coworkers and subordinates at both her jobs she would have invited, but they threw her a small celebration yesterday in the first case and it would be inappropriate in the second.
The party was also relatively modest, there was food, karaoke, and some board games, but it was mostly just hanging out in the newly redecorated Heptadome while enjoying the games and singing, both good and bad.
"Don't pull your love out on, honey," Bob and Helmut sang. Bob had truly improved. "Take my heart, my soul, my money, but don't leave me drowning in my tears!" Bob Zanotto was supposed to be fifty-seven years old, but when she had met him in person for the first time, two years ago, he had looked more like seventy, bald with a thick white beard, hunched over so much he had lost a whole foot of height.
Bob sang alone this time, his part of the duet. "You say you're going to leave, gonna take that big white bird, gonna fly right out of here, without a single word… " With proper medical care, clean clothes, and the vigor of a man in love, Bob now looked ten years younger than he was rather than fifteen years older. He was still bald, but he wore a toupee. "But you know you'll break my heart, When I watch you close that door, 'Cause I know I won't see you anymore!"
Helmut joined back in as the chorus started. "Don't pull your love out on me, baby, If you do then I think that maybe, I'll just lay me down and cry for a hundred years!" Helmut looked even younger than Bob, due to the preservative effects of the ice. There were some degenerative side-effects that made it imperfect, most notably the fact that Helmut's hair now grows completely white, but he dyes it so the man still looked no older than forty. "Don't pull your love out on me, honey, take my heart, my soul, my money, but don't leave me drownin' in my tears!"
Eventually, it came time for the presents. Mary went first. "Here you are. I think you need it." She said seriously. "Badly."
Tanya already knew what it was, so she pinched the bridge of her nose as the pun sunk in. "Another animal for my zodiac collection, thank you Mary." She said drolly without opening the gift. Mary had, every year, given her a stuffed animal denoting the current zodiac year. 1981 was the year of the rooster. When did her little sister get such a filthy mind? At least she'll be prepared for high school.
Each of the Psychic Six gave some thoughtful gifts: Cassie gave a large satchel of her homemade honey candies, Compton had baked the cake (it was a very nice cake) as his gift, Otto had given her his latest invention, a table with telekinesis projectors that you could program to do… anything. Fold clothes, cut vegetables, give massages… pretty much anything that could be done with telekinesis within one meter of the table's surface. It was a bit of a niche product, but she definitely fell into that niche. The real gift was the paperwork signing over the patent to her, though, which Otto telepathically informed her was concealed in the user manual. It wasn't going to be an in demand product until she cracks the electric/psychic gap so it could be programmed with computer software, but what little income that did come from it was now hers.
As she did for the other members of the Psychic Six, Tanya hugged Otto in thanks. "This is probably the best gift." She sent to him secretly, "I'll probably integrate it into the APES to help tend to the body during use. And nothing else."
"That's the idea." Otto replied, "Before you say more, Cassie's already explained to me why calling it a 'personal massager' was a bad idea. I'm sorry."
Tanya flushed. She didn't want it to be pointed out… "Moving on." She said out loud, causing some of the adults to chuckle. The next gift was a large jar of pickled daikon from Bob, and a small collection of audio cassettes along with a recently invented portable music player to play them.
"I put only the best music on those tapes." Helmut boasted. "Half the tapes are stuff I know you like, but the other half are stuff I think you'll like."
"That's very thoughtful Helmut, thank you." Tanya said, giving the big man a telekinesis-assisted hug.
Parson and the group each chipped in and got her a set of fancy ivory dice as well as a custom miniature of her character, Lucina the Witch, on her signature flying broom. Mom's gift was a letter from Hollis approving a vacation, along with permission to use the jet to fly to Japan to take it, along with a few brochures on things to do there.
But the true winner of 'best gift' award was definitely Dad. "What is it?" Tanya asked as she looked through the thick stack of paperwork.
"It is every single document required to transition all of those legal responsibilities that we had to sign as your legal guardians into your own name alone." Dad replied, "Merely sign them and I'll file it all with the appropriate parties. Your financial accounts, your company, even your employment in the Psychonauts."
Tanya grinned widely, giving him a rib-straining hug as the other guests goodnaturedly complained about the 'boring' gift. She liked boring. "This saves me so much time, thank you!"
After the party, as they went home, Dad asked a question: "How did you celebrate your eighteenth birthday before?"
Tanya chuckled. "I didn't make it that far in the Empire, but in Japan… My father took me to a massage parlor. There's a loophole in the laws banning prostitution, you see…" She paused. "That's not important. What is important is that this party was better than that celebration by a mile." That was a very shameful memory, at the time, for multiple reasons. Now it was just somewhat amusing, now that she understands herself better.
There was a peaceful, companiable silence, which was eventually broken by Mary's startled realization: "Wait, you were a boy!?"
---------------------
Razputin's writing had naturally improved in the years since they started exchanging letters.
Tanya,
True Psychic Tales 491 was so cool! The Groomer hypnotizing people into thinking they're dogs was so evil! I know you don't do most of the stuff in the comics, but was that one really you? They put Visha in the recovery scene…
About Nona: She's still fine, nothing new. She says hello, and thank you for asking about her. Mom and Dad and everyone are also fine.
About TPT 489: Yeah, that makes sense. It's a really cool table though, even if it's so complicated. We spent a whole dinner talking about what we'd use it for if we had one, it was fun coming up with ideas.
Oh, some weird guy gave me this brochure for the Psychonauts Whispering Rock Summer Camp. Do you know anything about it? We're actually coming up pretty close to the Canadian border in two weeks, and the brochure says it's in three, it'd be pretty close. Dad said it was too expensive, though. Can you get me a discount?
Your Friend,
Razputin
Tanya smiled as she penned her reply, idly petting Visha in her lap as she wrote. Razputin was always so precocious, and here he is, using his connections to advance his future in his chosen career field. She's so proud of him.
Razputin,
About TPT 491: I was involved in rehabilitating the victims, as zoolinguism is rare enough that there was a need for all available hands to deal with it. Visha was, as always, the best dog one can ask for.
About Nona: It is good to hear that she is well. New England has a large incidence of psitanium deposits, and it can exacerbate senility in the psychically sensitive, even if one isn't a full psychic. I noticed the symptoms of psychic sensitivity during our time together. Spend some extra time with her, if you can. If she seems confused, be gentle with her.
About TPT 489: I'm glad my little toy was able to provoke so many positive thoughts. I have quite a few programs on my Teletable, but the one I use most often is probably the clothes folding one.
Tanya paused as she wrote that blatant lie. Well, it was the one she was most willing to admit to using frequently. Really, even more common than the seven different massage settings was her setting it to Visha grooming mode and leaving it on like that, allowing Visha to jump onto it and get petted and scratched when she was left home alone.
About Whispering Rock: I can easily get you a spot. There's always room for a last minute addition, and I'd have heard by now if that had happened, my parents are involved in the administration of the camp. As for the discount… Well, if I can't get a free spot for you when I check tomorrow, I'll just pay for it myself. Enclosed is a note for your father explaining this along with some sundry details, and if you can't arrange for your own transportation, I'm already taking my little sister there, I can swing by and pick you up on the way.
It was more accurate to say that she was driving Mary and Mom there, with Dad taking his own non-flying car ahead of time, but Tanya had adjusted the backseat to fit three harnesses when Eric was born, so he'll fit.
Visha spoke up out of the blue. "I love you, Tanya." She moved out of Tanya's lap and trotted off to the bathroom. Zoolinguism also made teaching dogs complicated tricks like using a toilet quite easy.
"I love you too, Visha." Tanya absentmindedly replied.
Your Friend,
Tanya.
P.S. Remember, the key to successfully using the psychic arts in any way involves intent, imagination, and most importantly: Will. While each psychic power has its own eccentricities on how to make it manifest, the common thread is that you know what you want to do, you know that you can do it, and then you must do it. Not want to do it, you do it. You are the one making it happen, not anything else.
Yeah, that's enough. She sealed the letter and floated out of the window for a moment to place it in the mailbox. She could theoretically do it without looking, but it was simply easier to poke her head over the roof to get line of sight.
Still, she wondered: How much trouble could Razputin get up to at Camp Whispering Rock? She felt safe in assuming that at least he probably won't get the camp canceled like she did.
How bad could it be?
- Location
- Argentina
At least he won't get banned like Tanya was.
RogueInquisitor
Unexpected!
Tanya got a doge. That's hilarious. Will Visha be coming to camp?
Nictis
Best Sidekick
- Location
- Ninja Dave's Cookies
- Pronouns
- Any
I'm sure you did Tanya. You and every other construct in your head. Nicely subtle though.
Visha is still best girl.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Let's find out!
- Location
- Ohio
I guess one of the two scanners is meant to be the control in the experiment?
It seems like an excuse to be childish, which I say is good thing.
So that means it's been four, six years?
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
One of the modular 'blueprint' sections was made by Tanya, the other by Otto.
They were calibrated to only accept the specific one fake thinkerprint that was programmed to be created, and the thinkerprint of the creator of the other one. This covered an anticipated failure state.
Tanya was 12 in book 1 and 16 in book 2. She will be 19 in book 3.
- Location
- United States
Can't wait to see what the butterflies have caused to change for the Psyochonaut timeline. Obviously Helmut never gets his brain slapped into Nick's head, but I'm more interested if Whispering Rock will go as it did before, or will Tanya's messing around in Ford's mind cause some… unforeseen consequences.