Book 2... begin!
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Tanya's eyes snapped open as her psychic alarm went off. Today was the day! A glance and flex of her telekinesis opened up her psychoisolation bed, and she rolled out of it, catching herself and standing instead of falling to the floor.
"It's time to wake up, Mary." Tanya called out. Mary mumbled and turned over in her bed on the other side of the room. Eh, she's still got some time. Tanya picked up the pile of blankets and stuffed animals, gave them a sniff, and deposited the lot into the laundry hamper. The psychoisolation bed was nice and quiet, and she liked the warmth of being enveloped so completely, but managing the smell was a necessity.
Which was why she wore full body pajamas, as it made it so she didn't have to wash the sweaty sheets every day, instead only needing cleaning about once a week. Them being rather childish onesies rather than something more mature was just a guilty pleasure; she liked the fabric's texture and didn't care what other people (read: Mary) thought of her for it. It was a simple matter to shed her pajamas (the tanuki one this morning) and deposit them with the other laundry.
After a shower and the rest of her morning routine, Tanya deposited her towel into the laundry and, deeming it full enough, picked the lot back up for deposit into the laundry machine. The family on-base apartments for the Motherlobe were fairly high-end, if space-efficient. Tanya found that she preferred the cozier accommodations anyway.
But now… Tanya sniffed the air. Pancakes… "Mary, it's time to get up." Tanya repeated with more urgency as she re-entered their room, settling down at the vanity.
Mary grumbled incoherently. "Five more minutes…" Tanya snorted and used a tiny shock of cryokinesis on the small of the ten year old reincarnate's back. Mary shrieked. "Damn you!" She shouted, getting up and pointing at Tanya dramatically. "School hasn't even started yet!"
Tanya scoffed as she tended to her hair. Her short, boyish hairstyle was very convenient to someone who was in cramped spaces or upside down as often as she was, but that didn't mean she didn't need to blow-dry and brush it in the morning to keep it looking presentable. "It starts in less than a month, you need a more reasonable sleep schedule. Plus, you'll be cranky all day if you miss breakfast." It was a tired old argument, but Tanya wasn't going to let the Bloody Valkyrie completely forget military discipline. It would bring shame on her as an older sister to accept such indolence from her little sister. "It's my first day of work, you'll have the place to yourself for most of today." After a moment, she added: "Don't let your friends inside without Mom or I here. You do not count as adult supervision. Go to their houses instead." Deeming her hair acceptable, she moved on to her skin-care routine. Acne was like communism, a scar on rational thinking that should not be allowed a foothold. Chapped lips were similarly hazardous to one's comfort and presentation, and the faintly red colored chapstick was the closest Tanya ever got to wearing makeup. But that's for after breakfast.
Mary grumbled as she undressed for her own morning ablutions, but didn't dispute the assertion. The last time she was allowed to count herself as adult supervision, one of her friends, the diabetic one, went into hyperglycemic shock and almost died. There was a vast difference between 'trusted to go without a babysitter' and 'trusted to be the babysitter', and she understood that she had yet to earn the latter.
Within a few minutes, they were at the dining table eating pancakes as a family. "So Tanya, are you excited for your first day as a Psychonaut?" Mom asked as she settled down with her own plate.
Tanya nodded. "It's nice to get back into the workforce." She said, even if it meant that those glorious college years were done, "While Agent Mentalis is nepotistic enough that I could do my experiments without him doing anything about it, I feel better with the legal protection of an employment contract guaranteeing me the rights to my inventions." Tanya got the impression that Truman didn't actually understand the money-making power of intellectual property. The human resources department of the Psychonauts was pretty barebones, in Tanya's opinion, and they were eager to get Tanya's image rights so they could include her in True Psychic Tales as a spunky young sidekick character. Getting an employment contract that was, to Tanya's sensibilities, obscenely generous was laughably easy. "Intellectual property disputes can get very ugly, and I'd rather not tempt the leadership."
"The money doesn't hurt either, huh?" Mom teased, to Tanya's wordless grin. "I didn't know the technicians made more than the agents, you know."
"You get hazard pay." Tanya replied. Not that such a provision wasn't in her contract, but she had no intention of earning any. "And image royalties, and extra pay for your nursing accreditations." She added. "But yes, the base pay is higher for fully qualified engineers with Masters degrees than it is for agents that require full training." In Tanya's opinion, Mom should ask for a raise to reflect her greater importance and experience, but those image royalties kept her bank account comfortable, so it was more of a matter of principle, and Mom didn't like taking stands on principle when no one was being hurt.
"It seems so reasonable when you put it that way…" Mom said, before smiling widely. "Well, I'm just happy you're doing well for yourself."
Mary seemed annoyed at the topic of discussion, so Tanya changed the subject before she could lash out and ruin the peaceful meal. "So I heard that the arcade is getting that new game, Lunar Lander, this week."
Mary looked keenly interested. "Really? I read about that one in Play Meter. That's the one that lets you be an astronaut!" it was closer to being a helicopter pilot, but she wasn't wrong. Mary was a lot more interested in being an astronaut than she was in being a psychonaut. Tanya didn't have the heart to tell her how the space programs get gutted once the Soviet Union collapses. She tells herself it's because psychic powers might change the calculus involved in that decision, but if it means Mary will be motivated to go to college, Tanya will gladly lie to her face about the future of space travel.
"When I spoke to Mr. Litwak a few days ago, he said it was due today or tomorrow." Tanya said idly. It was always smart to build rapport with the small business owners that make their living taking money out of your younger sibling's pockets. Plus she can nudge him towards the arcade games that were popular enough that Tanya actually heard of them before, to cultivate a positive business relationship when she eventually needs a test audience for her own games. "So if you're lucky, you'll be able to play it tomorrow."
Successfully distracted with the prospect of playing crappy 1979 arcade games, breakfast concluded without any jealous outbursts. Tanya can't wait for actually good ones to come out, but she'll need to wait for them. When did Gradius come out, anyway?
Still, soon enough it was time to go to work. The Motherlobe was equipped with an unusual pneumatic rail system that could be used to traverse the grounds quickly. Tanya thought it was an overcomplicated mess, personally, but it did have several advantages. Namely, it utilized a complex psychic password that was difficult to explain with language, by design. So only authorized users could make use of it, and you could only access areas that you had the proper codes for, and even then only if your thinkerprint, the term used for the saved brain scans the psychonauts used for authentication, was authorized to enter that area.
It was much less secure than that made it sound in practice, but that was primarily human error. For example, Lili could go wherever the hell she wanted, as she knows all the codes and Truman allowed her to have full access to everything. Anything you allowed a seven year old girl to see could never be considered secure.
The on-base housing had several outlets for the system, which was controlled by an actual switchboard operator. They were efficient, however: it took only ten minutes of waiting in line to get on her way to Otto's laboratory, as the man still preferred to take a personal hand in onboarding new employees. Given how rare psionic engineers were, Tanya knew that Agent Mentalis was one of the only technicians who wasn't swamped with work, and that was the privilege of rank more than anything else, so handling employee training was rather efficient of him.
Agent Mentalis appeared to be contemplating something related to the psychoportal, given the blackboard filled with design equations and the pile of doors on the man's desk. "Oh, Tanya." He said, somewhat befuddled. "Were you starting today? Where is my head this morning?" He stood up, pausing to get his bearings. He looked like he needed coffee. "You know where the lockers are, yours is…" He spent a moment referencing his mental database. "02, I think. Hopefully the jumpsuit fits, it's the smallest size we have. Take your time, I'll need a few minutes to get ready for you."
The technician's locker rooms weren't actually attached to Otto's laboratory, but were instead in the actual maintenance department, deep in the Motherlobe's second basement. Fortunately, there was a direct tunnel between those two spots, so Tanya didn't need to wait very long at all for the switchboard to send her to the appropriate area.
There wasn't anything particularly notable about the maintenance department, it was a parts/tools warehouse with an office attached. Massive doors were in the far end to receive shipments via the semi-trucks, and one of the technicians was already hard at work receiving a shipment of cathode ray tube monitors. With that many… were they finally going to retrofit the Motherlobe's nerve center?
Tanya filed that piece of information away as she ducked into the women's locker room. As promised, the locker with the number 02 had a key in the lock, and upon opening, held three protective utility jumpsuits.
The jumpsuit was at least one size too large for her petite frame, but it secured easily to her wrists, ankles, and collar, tiny psitanium locks holding things together like powerful magnets. She was sixteen, so she was likely not getting much taller than her current five foot four, which was actually a rather average height for a girl, so clearly the problem was in the jumpsuits being ordered. Come to think of it, did she ever see a female technician throughout her years working on her degrees here? There was Angela, that Swiss girl who was exceptionally tall and muscular… she looked again at her locker number, and the dumbbell stickers on 01 bragging about her lifting numbers, and the utter lack of personalization on literally every other locker. That explains that.
She looked at herself in the mirror, bending and stretching to test the range of movement. She kind of liked it. She could wear ordinary, even bulky clothing underneath it and you wouldn't be able to tell. If it were tighter, it would probably remind her too much of her old flight suit. Not the kind of thing she'd want to wear every day if she had another option.
"Oh, Tanya!" The aforementioned woman said as she entered the locker room, her long blonde hair already tied up. "It's good to see another girl on the team. Officially, I mean." She then shamelessly removed her army-style pants without another word and opened up her locker to get her much larger jumpsuit on. "That jumpsuit is still too big, huh? It looks cute."
Tanya nodded. "I think I'll keep using this one." She said conversationally.
"Good call." Angela agreed, securing the psychic locks of her own jumpsuit. "By the way, Jerry wanted me to tell you that you're going to be starting on working through the regular maintenance backlog instead of handling support tickets. We're three weeks behind."
"Sensible." Tanya said, wincing at the length of the task before her.
"Make sure Otto trains you on the thinkerprint scanners, because that's your entire first week right there." Angela said as she walked out of the locker room, Tanya following close behind. "Don't let him talk you into overtime. Hollis is a tightass about overtime, so don't do it, or the whole department's in trouble." Tanya was beginning to understand why they were three weeks behind. "Just do your eight hours and pack up."
"Understood." Tanya said, approaching the tube system access. "Have a productive day, Angela."
"Have fun with Otto, Tanya." Angela said. "Don't expect to get started on actual work today. See you at quitting time." She veered off to the admin desk to receive her own assignment from the maintenance supervisor, Jerry.
After a few more minutes of waiting in line, Tanya made her way back to Agent Mentalis. "Reporting for duty, sir." Tanya said, adjusting her tone to a more informal one as Agent Mentalis preferred.
"Ah, Tanya, yes. First thing's first: I need to show you around the filing system." He placed one of the psychoportals on his own forehead. "Hop on in."
With only a second's concentration, Tanya ejected her consciousness into the Psychonaut's mind.
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"Welcome back to the database." Agent Mentalis said as they arrived in a massive… well, Tanya's immediate thought was 'server farm', but it was more a room with four massive computers, surrounded by bookshelves filled with punch cards. "I've given you the appropriate access level for your position, and you get to keep the access to the academic materials just like you did as a student." Two massive portions of the punch card archives lit up, denoting which sections she now had access to. He chuckled. "I'm sure you remember how to use this place?"
Tanya nodded. "I was told I'd be starting on maintaining the thinkerprint scanners."
"You are?" Agent Mentalis asked. One of the punch cards shot out and inserted itself in the computer next to his mental representation. A sheet of paper shot out of the device, far faster than any printer should be. "...Yes, we're rather behind on that, aren't we?" He said after reading the printout.
"Does your budget allow for additional hires?" Tanya asked, curious. "I'm a little surprised to be the only new person, given that it's right after graduation." In corporate Japan, the onboarding season coincided with college graduation for a reason, and only hiring one new person seems… inefficient.
"Oh, it does, but only about four more spots. Hollis doesn't let me interview them until after she's narrowed it down a bit, so that'll be next week. You skipped the line." Agent Mentalis explained. "She likes handling it herself so she can catch infiltrators." He sighed. "She needs to find someone else to do that kind of thing, ever since Agent Mikhailov got killed by that Soviet sabotage; she refused to replace him."
Well, that seemed like they were just being slow, not having already done all of the necessary interviewing before graduation day, but Tanya already knew that the Psychonauts' HR department wasn't up to her standards, so she kept her peace on the matter.
"Well, I'll show you where everything is, and then we can chat. There's this legislation being talked about by Congress, and if it passes, and it might, we'll need to put in a safeguard in our Psychoportals to stop them from being used to invade the minds of minors." Agent Mentalis said, creating constructs that labeled each of the shelves with the category. The punch cards were not literally punch cards, but instead representations of data that Agent Mentalis altered his mind in order to store without decay. By reaching out, you weren't literally plucking the data from the storage, but instead communicating with the subsystem that operated the database to retrieve the necessary data. Picking the right spot on the wall to focus on was partially to increase fidelity of the request but also as a pseudo-security measure. Attempting to access something incorrectly alerted Agent Mentalis, who would investigate.
Fortunately, Tanya was well aware of the memory techniques that were used to encrypt and preserve data exchanges between Psychonauts. She memorized the display without trouble. Making a mistake in the future was unlikely.
After about three hours of going over how to navigate the database to get at any maintenance instructions for the various devices, as well as walking her through the thinkerprint scanner's maintenance (which included the maintenance on the actual doors), Tanya left Agent Mentalis' mind and looked over the tentative sketches of alterations to the psychoportal.
"An age limit? On the psychoportal?" Tanya asked to confirm.
"Yes, I'm baffled on how to make something consistent like that as well." Agent Mentalis said.
Hrm. "Theoretically, the thinkerprint scanner device is capable of an authentication routine." Tanya said. "As in, authentication processes other than database matching." Was the reason she brought this up because she just spent over an hour learning about that device in painstaking detail? Yes. Was it still relevant? Also yes.
Agent Mentalis nodded. "True, true. But how do you isolate age? Memory storage isn't consistent enough for some kind of size-based scan. It wouldn't be able to distinguish compressed or traumatic memories from ordinary ones. Fifty-fifty success rate, and we'd need to do a massive brain scan study of both minors and adults to even manage that much."
"Unusable, I agree." Tanya replied. "It seems to me that our priority is not ensuring the efficacy of the precaution, but instead minimizing the false positives. Something that works, but is easy to fool, would be more palatable to the Psychonauts top brass than something that works well, but also locks out many adults from using the psychoportal."
Agent Mentalis frowned. "I don't like the idea of making a security or safety precaution that's ineffective." He said.
"I don't like the idea of the government imposing such a ridiculous limit on the construction of the Psychoportal." Tanya retorted. "It won't fix anything, as psychoportals aren't actually necessary to enter someone's mind. It's like banning birth control to encourage people to not have sex." Which was unfortunately topical.
Nodding along, Agent Mentalis smiled as he looked at the board again. "Yes, you're right. We just need to make it look effective."
Tanya hummed in agreement. "It's just security theater." She added, which was probably coining the term, come to think of it. "It doesn't matter how many issues it does or does not fix, it lets the government and the Psychonauts win points by looking like they're doing something about the so-called problem." Just banning entering the minds of children outside of medical treatments was all they needed to do.
"Did you have something in mind?" Agent Mentalis asked as he telekinetically brought a second clean blackboard to him.
She didn't, but a moment of thinking how the thinkerprint scanners work... "Just have it ask someone how old they are, and if it's a number less than eighteen, stop it." Just like internet porn sites.
"Yes… yes! If you do it right, it's pretty difficult to lie to a thinkerprint scanner, but not impossible. Especially if it's at touch range, most methods rely on the distance between the scanner and the head in question." Agent Mentalis said, rambling as he drew out the design change.
"But a little bit of hypnosis, self-directed or otherwise, would completely fool it." Tanya added. "The bypass would require you to know how the safeguard works, and concealing that information for security reasons shouldn't be difficult. They won't even need to know how flimsy the protection is, as long as they can tell themselves that it exists."
"It sounds like we have a plan, or at least enough of one to start prototyping." Agent Mentalis said. "Fitting the authenticator into the psychoportal without compromising the other functions is going to be difficult." One of the psychoportals floated to her. "Disassemble that, will you?"
Remembering what Angela said about getting things done today, Tanya followed the wisdom of her first life: suck up to the boss when possible. "Yes sir." She said, telekinetically fetching one of the several toolsets in the room.
"After you're done with that, start running numbers on how much extra space we have to fit the new module in." Agent Mentalis instructed. "It'll have to be attached to the throttle I made to stop that other issue… can we make it thinner?"
"We may need to make the psychoportal thicker." Tanya said warningly. "It would take months to replace or retrofit our inventory, but it could be done." It was currently about as large as a smartphone, but not one with a case. It could still be a convenient size with a little extra volume. The department already had to essentially hand-craft all examples of psychic technology, with outside contractors only fabricating the metal, rubber, and plastic parts.
"They haven't passed the bill yet." Agent Mentalis replied. "If they do, and we do need to modify every one like that, we can demand a budget increase. We just need a prototype and a quote on how much money it's going to cost us to Hollis."
Tanya hummed in acknowledgement as they continued to pry the psitanium out of the psychoportal's stainless steel frame. There was a certain satisfaction to creating something with one's own hands… even if a lot of the time the hands were telekinetic or even metaphorical, when one was reshaping the psitanium.
It was a fantastic first day of… the next ten years, at a guess.
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Tanya never did end up doing any of the maintenance tasks she was nominally supposed to do that day, instead playing minion for Agent Mentalis the entire day. As it turned out, to fit the scanner module, they would have to remove pretty much all of the redundancies in the psychoportal, vastly reducing its operational lifespan and durability. As a piece of field equipment that is frequently exposed to rough handling, this is unacceptable.
The solution was simple, if labor-intensive: they estimated how much it would cost to replace every single psychoportal with a superior, even more robust design that included the scanner, doubled it, and sent the figure to Agent Hollis to bludgeon Congress with. Either they reconsider their stupid bill or the tech budget gets a nice infusion for the trouble, both of which were considered a win as far as Agent Mentalis was concerned.
"I'm officially off the clock." Tanya announced.
"I moved your prototype over there." Agent Mentalis said, gesturing to a different desk than the one she used as a student. "Do you need any more psitanium or anything?"
Actually… "I could use one of your spare brains, actually." Tanya said.
Agent Mentalis frowned. "Why?"
"The prototype's sequestration function needs testing." Tanya explained. She had been quite busy in the last few months of her Masters program. "Specifically, it uses the principles behind the psychoportal to section off a portion of the mind's periphery to create a segment of mind that's isolated from the rest."
"...I wouldn't want to test that on anyone I liked, either." Agent Mentalis admits. "But I don't have any spare brains. They're all spoken for."
"Not even any John Does?" Tanya asked. She was never allowed access to Agent Mentalis' collection of 'dead' brains. They still generated significant amounts of mental energy and could be directed to various purposes, mostly the synthesis of psitanium, but they had no higher thoughts. "It's for science, after all."
"I don't think so." Agent Mentalis replies, unsure. "Go ahead and check if you want. It's been a while since I've looked through the list. I've cut the maintenance down enough that I don't need to do it myself anymore." He paused. "Actually, it's due for maintenance tomorrow, take care of that in the morning after you clock in, it'll be important to know when you do get a test brain. I'll earmark the next one that comes in for you. Most months I get one or two."
"Thank you." Tanya said as she approached the brainframe, the massive device Agent Mentalis used to manage his brain collection. It was rather intimidating, actually. It most heavily resembled a factory machine you'd find at a beverage plant, ferrying the orbs filled with fluid and brains to and fro for… processing. It was controlled by the latest of computational technology: a personal computer with a database for each brain that needed command prompts to accomplish anything.
Fortunately, one advantage to needing to actually learn her profession rather than already knowing most of how to do it from her previous lives included training on soon-to-be-obsolete hardware like this. Tanya wrote queries without hesitation, performing in dozens of commands what in her first life could be accomplished with a few hotkeys. In the end… "Harry Heptadome?" Tanya asked. "There's not even a file on here, it's just a name and a note that the brain was found in the Heptadome." It was all but literally a John Doe, the exact thing that Agent Mentalis asserted did not exist in his stores.
Agent Mentalis stared into space for a moment, presumably accessing the artificial memory storage he installed in his head for everyone to use. "...Oh, I remember that one now!" He exclaimed. "I did find it in the Heptadome." He spent another moment staring into space. "I don't seem to have filed any additional data about it. When I found it, what tests I ran, the results of those tests… Nothing." He frowned, wringing his hands as he realized that he may be facing something anyone in positions of responsibility fears: legal liability. "It must be in the dark archives, if it's anywhere." He sounded resigned at that. "I'm far too busy to go digging in there, but I'll allow you access. You need local access to reach them, so…" One of the portals floated up and attached itself to the back of his head. He looked back towards Tanya despondently "The dark archives are where I keep a lot of private memories, the ones that I'm happier not remembering." Ah. Tanya knows a lot about those. Those are kept in the deepest recesses of her memory tomb. "So be careful, and try not to indulge your curiosity. Find what you need, and get out."
"Very well." Tanya replied. "I can promise the utmost of discretion." Seating herself at one of the desks nearby, she projected her consciousness into the Psychportal.
"Again, be careful. Some things… are best left forgotten."
