Psychoprotective (Youjo Senki/Psychonauts)
- Thread starter Requiem_Jeer
- Start date
- Location
- Spain
Really? It's somehow safe to let the Devil of the Rhine out of her cage?
It may not be safe, but it was inevitable. After all, is there a chuni teenager that has not dreamed of having a Superpowered Evil Side? Her japanese hot-bloodedness is showing. Still, a bit sad about her forgetting all those public announcements about how TVtropes will ruin your (3rd) life.
- Location
- Ohio
Heeheehee.
I thought he had been able to move himself for a few days ago. I guess it was Tanya's telekinesis then?
What is Tanya's favorite genre of music?
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
This is exactly why Tanya used it. Because she was feeling chuuni and had an excuse to use her superpowered evil side.
I'm glad you liked my jokes. It's always nice when someone points them out and laughs like that.Heeheehee.
I thought he had been able to move himself for a few days ago. I guess it was Tanya's telekinesis then?
What is Tanya's favorite genre of music?
But yeah, PSI King couldn't move himself until he had his tactile senses properly calibrated, Tanya had to carry him everywhere.
Tanya would not be able to point to a specific genre of music if pressed. Her favorite songs are the ones that, when she sings it herself, resonates with her own emotions and feelings. It's why she likes 'I will Survive', as she identifies with not wanting to never hear from Being X again, and relates that emotion with the song.
Later on, she'll learn from Helmut's musical skill and learn enough about songwriting that she'll develop a hobby of rewriting songs to be even more in line with her emotions, including some original pieces as some personal artistic expression.
Chapter 2.10
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Please google 'Cosmic I' if you want to hear the song actually sung.
Been kind of ill for the last two weeks, buffer's completely gone, so the patrons are getting live updates. I'll probably end up missing an update before the end of next month.
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"Lost, alone…" Sang Helmut when Tanya made it back to her own head. "Neither skin nor bone…" His projected voice reverberated with power and emotion, which drew the attention of the entire VIP afterparty. "Just a thought, is what I've got…"
Eddie dropped to his knees, staring at the brain in wonder. "No way…"
"But my cover's… blown!" Helmut shouted, and Tanya felt his mind link up not just with her, but everyone around. Her proprioception exploded, feeling each and every body here as if it was her own, seeing through all of their eyes, sensing… everything. It was a greater expression of Clairvoyance than she could ever manage on her own, which proved that Helmut Fullbear deserved to stand amongst the other psychic titans that were the Psychic Seven.
Tanya smirked. "Talk about some cosmic oneness…" She muttered, knowing that everyone could hear her.
"At the bottom of a lake," Helmut continued, "-of frozen feeling! When my friends pulled me back up!" Everyone glanced at Tanya in unison. "I started… HEALING!"
Everyone laughed in the sheer joy radiating from those words.
Helmut went into the chorus, and Tanya joined him without even needing to know the words in advance. "I can feel out the galaxy! And hear the flow of time! Been so tense, but now I sense, a reason to this rhyme!"
Everyone who could started to stand up, and start dancing, each one moving in perfect unison. "Oh, I can smell the universe," Helmut continued, "and I can taste the sky, and I can see each molecule…" Everyone spoke up in perfect harmony for the last line in the chorus. "Through my cosmic eye!"
Tanya lent Helmut some of her mastery of telekinetic constructs, and shaped his mobility capsule into a rough copy of his body. He picked her up by the hand and started to dance, leading her through something that she recognized as operatic, despite never having seen such things before. Similarly, she knew exactly where to step the moment she needed to.
The song continued, everyone losing themselves to the music as Helmut celebrated his return to himself.
"Unlocking all my memories…" Helmut sang, winding down the song. "Loving each… and every… one." He finished, letting the telepathic link dissolve.
After a moment of awkward silence as the party recovered from the ending of their cosmic oneness, they all erupted into applause as the telekinetic Helmut body dissipated, leaving just a floating mobility capsule.
Mr. Roth laughed. "Man, I'd invite you to front for us… but you'd show us all up, man! What was that?"
"That," Eddie said, excited. "Was the Master at work. I've been to Psycho-core concerts before, but this was on another level entirely!" He brought out a clipboard. "Can I get an autograph, Mr. Fullbear?"
Helmut laughed. "Sure!" The marker in Eddie's other hand lifted up and drew Helmut's signature on the board. Eddie blew on the ink to dry it faster, a wide grin emerging afterwards as he appreciated it.
"Hey, this tour's almost over, it ends in early October, so if you're thinking of doing a comeback tour and need a roadie, I'm your guy!" Eddie offered, "I know all the best places to get a crowd for psycho-core, could get you in touch with some other artists for your concerts, really hit the ground running!"
"That sounds great!" Helmut said, "Just get to the Motherlobe when you're done with this and we'll talk."
Tanya immediately wrote down her phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to the roadie. "He doesn't have a phone right now, but this is mine. I'm Tanya, ask for me at that time and I'll get you Helmut's new phone." After a moment, she added: "Just don't make my mother think anything weird's going on." Mary smirked, which told Tanya that she would definitely be telling Mom about this in the worst way for her own amusement.
"Well, loved the party, folks." Helmut said, changing the subject. "But these girls do need to get back home. They've got a pretty early bedtime."
Mary groaned. "Really? Come on!" Tanya yawned, which caused Mary to do the same. "I used to stay up so much later in the…" She trailed off, resisting the impulse to say 'military' in an uninitiated group.
"Yes, I should get you back to Green Needle Gulch." Tanya said, "I'm sure you've plenty to talk about with the current residents."
"Sure. Later, though."
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Helmut… was surprisingly hesitant to go back to his husband. While Tanya easily accepted his rationale vis a vis waiting for the next day…
"It's just… You've already done a lot for me." Helmut explained. His telepathic voice was hesitant, guilty. "If I go over to the Gulch, it's going to be a big production." Yeah, it would be.
"I know that, but why don't we just get it over with?" Tanya asked as she brushed her hair.
Mom opened up the door, wearing a bikini and floral shawl. "Tanya, why aren't you dressed for the water park? Did you forget?" There are more important things than water parks going on! …But she had been putting off telling Mom that it was canceled.
Before she could, Helmut spoke up: "Oh, sorry! I forgot and asked her to do something for me! I guess she figured she could fit it in before?" Without trying to get Tanya to confirm, he continued to rhetorically barrel over her: "Sorry Tanya, it's going to take hours. You go on ahead, I'll wait here, and we can go after!"
Confused, Mom's eyes turned calculating. "Tanya, I know you're a very responsible girl, but it's Sunday. Weekends are for having fun!"
"Exactly." Helmut said, projecting complete agreement. She really needs to ask him about that nugget of wisdom… "It's waited this long, it can wait another few hours. I'd like to spend some time in my own head beforehand anyway, steel myself. Go, enjoy the water park."
Tanya sighed. She did want to go… She telekinetically threw Helmut out of her room. She had to change clothes.
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Tanya enjoyed her popsicle as the group rested from their trip on the river rapids ride. "How about we go to the wave pool next?" Mom asked, a little ill. She didn't seem to like the rougher rides much.
"I want to make a water monster." Mary said, "Is there a pool that lets you use hydrokinesis?" Now that sounded like a terrible idea.
"Yes." Replied Agent Nein, looking over the map of the park. "It's just an ordinary pool otherwise. Milla, how about you go there with Mary and relax?"
Mom and Agent Nein weren't in disguise… but it didn't seem to matter. In this world, where social media wasn't even a dream yet, even if they were recognized, shrugging them off was not a big deal. The fact that they were drawn, rather than shown on television, probably helped. Still, Tanya finished her popsicle while Mom considered Agent Nein's offer. "Yes, that sounds nice." Mom admitted.
"Excellent. Now, I believe you mentioned wanting to go on that last ride again, Tanya?" Agent Nein said. She did. "Then let's go wait in line."
Once in line, with about six minutes left until they could get on the ride by Tanya's estimate, Agent Nein decided to start some smalltalk. "How was your first week of work?" He asked.
"Eventful." Tanya summarized, "Any scientific breakthroughs lately?"
Agent Nein hummed. "I've been running some experiments with emotional energy, fear specifically. I've managed to isolate three distinct varieties of fear energy, each with different properties, and I suspect there are more, waiting to be discovered."
"I think I read that comic book." Tanya said idly. "Are you consulting with Dr. Crane?"
Agent Nein looked confused. "No, I'm working with Dr.- Oh, the comic book supervillain." He chuckled as he gathered some fear energy in his hand and shaped a telekinetic claw. "You will know fear, Batman." He said, scowling at nothing.
"I am fear." Tanya replied, equally serious. "I am the night. I am BATMAN!" She could have pitched her voice low for that, but it was funnier not to. Both of them laughed.
After a moment of companionable silence, she transitioned to a vaguely useful topic.
"Whatever happened to that unfrozen Neanderthal?" Tanya asked.
"Oh, he's awake and learning Swedish." Agent Nein replied, "I didn't get to explore his mind myself, but I did review the data."
"So, hypothetically, if one was to find a body that was frozen over a decade ago, could it theoretically be thawed safely?" Tanya continued.
"Yes." Agent Nein said, before giving Tanya a strange look. "Did you find one?"
"Not yet." Tanya said, "You did hear about the John Doe brain that was alive that I was rehabilitating?" She asked.
"I did." Agent Nein confirmed, "Has any progress been made on that front?"
"He's Helmut Fullbear." Tanya said idly as she walked along with the line. Just a little longer… "According to his memories, his body got frozen shortly after he sneezed his brain out." Specifically, by an action from Agent Mentalis' hyperglaciator.
After a moment, Tanya glanced back at him. Agent Nein was stunned, holding up the rest of the line until the fat shirtless man behind him gave the psychonaut a shove. "Helmut Fullbear, alive?" Agent Nein asked, lifting up his swim goggles to look Tanya more directly in the eye.
"Indeed." Tanya replied, "He wanted some time to himself before fully revealing that he's alive."
Agent Nein visibly steeled himself. "Well, I suppose there's not much else to do about that." He said, "The implications, though…"
Tanya shrugged. "It's inadvisable to get tied up in what-ifs." She advised, "He's recovered from his trauma… mostly. Hopefully he won't put it off for too long, but it's for the best that he is ready to keep Bob from doing anything stupid. It's Agent Cruller's fault in the end, after all."
"You really shouldn't be assigning blame to the mentally incompetent." Agent Nein said, his expression turning disapproving, although his good mood spoiled any actual admonishment in the words.
Tanya waved it off as they finally made it to the front of the line, eagerly getting strapped in to enjoy the river rapids ride.
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Tanya had asked Helmut if he was ready with long-range telepathy when they were boarding her car, but he didn't seem to acknowledge her. So, they went to watch a movie at the drive-in theater.
Mary suggested they watch a family friendly road trip movie where most of the actors were puppets. This was universally agreed upon as a fun time. Unlike a lot of movie trends, she actually understood why those puppets were popular, even when acting on the same screen as human actors and being treated like they were normal: after all, she was Japanese at heart, and understood the value of gap moe. Ridiculousness played straight was hilarious.
"Moving right along…" Tanya, Mary, and Mom all sang in the car on the way home. "Moving right along… Moving right along."
"So…" Mary asked now that the song was over. "Why don't you have a flying car, Sasha?" Mary asked.
Agent Nein stiffened as he scrambled to try and explain in a way that didn't make him look bad. Before he could, Tanya chuckled and replied: "Agent Mentalis won't let him have one. He goes too fast with them."
"Aren't we going at, like, two hundred miles an hour?" Mary asked, confused. "Is that slow enough?"
"Yes."
"Wow." Mary said, impressed.
"It was a normal speed for a private aircraft." Agent Nein insisted. He wasn't technically wrong… if one only looked at the highest end models of small personal aircraft. "I was perfectly safe."
"Anyway, that's why Agent Nein doesn't have a flying car." Tanya summarized. The quarry that the Motherlobe is built into should be visible any minute now…
"The jet can go much faster, anyway." Agent Nein grumbled.
"It has five hundred times as much psitanium driving it." Tanya retorted. "Of course it's faster." The largest known chunks of refined psitanium drive the telekinetically propelled aircraft (which do not have jet engines and are thus not real jets), and is the standard size for the largest usable psychic machines. Such as the one they affixed to Air Force One to run a barrier in the event of incoming missiles. Last she heard, the one they were going to put on Air Force Two was still being built by the military's top psychic engineers and wasn't due for completion until the end of the year.
Mary did the mental math in her head. "Wait. how big is the psitanium engine on this thing?"
"This vehicle is equipped with a class 5 psitanium ellipsoid telekinetic engine." Tanya recited from memory. "Its diameter is one meter, and is, with minor adjustments, a one-eighth scale match to the class 9 engine that propels the Pelican." Also the seventeen other bird-named telekinetically propelled aircraft the Psychonauts possess.
"...you could totally fit a bigger engine in this." Mary pointed out. She wasn't wrong.
"One sixty percent bigger, yes." Agent Nein said in agreement. That's not a standard size... "It would double the maximum speed of the vehicle, and extend its operational range by one hundred fifty percent." Those numbers, while not incorrect, were optimistic. If she was going twice as fast, she was going to reinforce the barrier that stops her from getting guts splattered on the windshield when she hits a bird, at a bare minimum.
"This is not your project car, Sasha." Mom said warningly. She was in the front seat, unlike Mary and Agent Nein who were in the back. "This car is plenty fast as it is."
"I'd rather implement some… alternate features rather than just making the engine bigger." Tanya said conversationally. "The operational range is already plenty, merely doubling it won't get me anywhere I'd want to go that I couldn't already get to." After all, a larger mental energy capacity doesn't impact how much she can refuel the thing while on the go, so increasing the nominal operational range doesn't help as much as it seems.
"You could cross the Atlantic." Agent Nein pointed out.
Hrm, that was actually a good point. "...I'd have to look into the legalities of things before I can comment." Tanya deflected.
"Oh look, we're nearly home." Mom said, pointing at the now-visible broadcast tower that was atop the Motherlobe.
Now, playtime was over, now it was time to be responsible, and get Helmut to Green Needle Gulch.
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Helmut was not in the apartment. Not entirely surprising, given that he was perfectly capable of opening doors now that he was fully functional. A paranoid check indicated that he didn't steal any money or anything, which was good: he didn't even touch Mary's ceramic pig with the cent sign on it, which was a particularly strange place to put one's spare change, but it was cute so Tanya didn't say anything about it.
"Going to find Helmut, love you." Tanya announced before leaving Mom and Agent Nein in the apartment. "You might want to clear out too, Mary." She sent telepathically. "Go visit Crystal or something."
Mary sent back, in her typically barely coherent manner, a feeling of agreement, along with a flash of perception, that of Agent Nein using breath spray. Tanya quickly translated that as "I just saw Sasha use breath spray, good call."
"Notify me if you see Helmut." Tanya sent, finishing the conversation.
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Tanya did manage to locate the stray brain relatively quickly: he was in a field of flowers, with Lili. "Hi Tanya!" She said excitedly. "We're picking a bouquet!"
"I see that." Tanya replied, "What will we be saying with this bouquet?" She had… some amount of familiarity with ikebana, although she'd probably just embarrass herself if she tried to show something she made to a real expert.
Helmut coughed, which was naturally intentional given that he was without a throat. "Uh, you know, I missed you, I'm glad to see you again, I love you… nothing weird."
Tanya hummed. "Well, a good flower arrangement should have no more than thirteen stems and have an odd number of them." She recited from her foggy memory. "First, you should consider a plant that most encapsulates the message, with the remaining parts providing further context and beauty to the arrangement."
"Oh, that's good stuff!" Helmut said.
"You know flower language, Tanya?" Lili asked, eyes wide. "Dad gave me a book about it, but it was lame, just 'red means love or passion, yellow means joy'. Bleh!"
Tanya winced at the summary. Yeah, that sounded like American publishing companies. Boil down centuries of tradition into a few simple rules. Of course, Tanya also knew that there was a completely separate flower language in her second life, among the European nobility… but Visha only taught her enough to recognize when she was being subtly insulted. "Well, given that this is a proclamation of love, you should center the arrangement around something that represents the intended recipient. A plant that you would say encapsulates them, their favorite flower, something like that."
Helmut thought hard on this. "So many choices… did he have a favorite? Oh man, I'm such a bad husband to not know that."
Tanya hummed. "Perhaps, as an alternative, we could center the piece around a plant that represents your relationship: a plant that featured heavily in your proposal, or wedding, or some such."
"I've never met Uncle Bob." Lili said, "Maybe Dad knows what he likes?"
"Nono, I've got it." Helmut declared, "We'll center it around an orange cala lily."
Tanya tilted her head. "...why?"
"That's the flower he put in our wedding bouquet." Helmut said proudly.
What Tanya would give for wikipedia right now. "Alright. Lili, do you know where we can get one of those?"
"Yes!" She announced proudly. "Mom has a bunch of flower seeds, it's gotta be there if it's a wedding flower."
With a quick trip to the penthouse apartment that the Grand Head gets as one of his job perks, they collected the necessary seed, planted it, and let Helmut practice his herbaphony to grow it into a lovely flower. "Looks good." Tanya said, cutting the stem with her telekinesis. Now, to consider the messaging… "Next, we should get a base for the arrangement. I have an excellent vase that would be perfect for this."
Helmut radiated confusion. "You have a vase? The only thing I saw that looked like one was that tiny broken one with the gold colored glue."
Lili gasped. "You're giving him your gold vase?"
It was definitely warranted for such an important occasion. "Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken ceramic with gold, is meant to represent the beauty of imperfection, that something broken but fixed is more beautiful than untested perfection." She got it as a thirteenth birthday gift from Agent Nein. "Also, I expect a replacement or return eventually." If nothing else, Bob was actually quite wealthy from residual income derived from his research all those years ago, although Tanya never bothered learning the details. He sends rather large amounts of money on Lili's birthday, and frequently gets various deliveries that the Motherlobe has to send on to Green Needle Gulch.
"Oh that is just loaded with meaning!" Helmut said, sending a wave of gratitude. "This is going to be the best apology bouquet ever."
Tanya coughed. "As for the rest, ikebana, at least the kind I learned, is more of a freeform style of flower arrangement that is supposed to convey meaning and appreciation through free association and the beauty of the natural world." Lili stared uncomprehendingly at Tanya. "In other words, from here we just wing it."
"That's what I'm talking about!" Helmut proclaimed, "Come on, let's go!"
"Yeah!" Lili shouted, punching the air for no discernable reason.
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Surprisingly, Lili wasn't actually authorized to go to Green Needle Gulch. This was surprising because Tanya was; Agent Mentalis had tasked her with delivering some of Bob's packages a few times during her schooling when he couldn't be bothered to do it himself.
Still, the slow and poorly maintained tram to the Heptadome trundled along the underground tunnel at a brisk walking pace, occasionally stopping to prompt an additional password to proceed.
"This is going to be so cool." Lili stage whispered. "So romantic, a reunion after seventeen years…"
"Drowning in grief, only to learn that they were alive after all!" Mary whispered back.
"I will turn this tram around." Tanya said threateningly. "This is going to be emotional enough without you two obsessing over it like a soap opera."
"No, it's helping." Helmut said, nervously worrying at the flower arrangement they created with a telekinetic hand. "This is pretty dramatic, isn't it?"
"Yes, very fairy tale." Tanya said in agreement as she once again input a password to get the tram moving again. Just two left…"There's even a beanstalk."
"There is!?" All three of them exclaimed.
Tanya just laughed.
Been kind of ill for the last two weeks, buffer's completely gone, so the patrons are getting live updates. I'll probably end up missing an update before the end of next month.
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"Lost, alone…" Sang Helmut when Tanya made it back to her own head. "Neither skin nor bone…" His projected voice reverberated with power and emotion, which drew the attention of the entire VIP afterparty. "Just a thought, is what I've got…"
Eddie dropped to his knees, staring at the brain in wonder. "No way…"
"But my cover's… blown!" Helmut shouted, and Tanya felt his mind link up not just with her, but everyone around. Her proprioception exploded, feeling each and every body here as if it was her own, seeing through all of their eyes, sensing… everything. It was a greater expression of Clairvoyance than she could ever manage on her own, which proved that Helmut Fullbear deserved to stand amongst the other psychic titans that were the Psychic Seven.
Tanya smirked. "Talk about some cosmic oneness…" She muttered, knowing that everyone could hear her.
"At the bottom of a lake," Helmut continued, "-of frozen feeling! When my friends pulled me back up!" Everyone glanced at Tanya in unison. "I started… HEALING!"
Everyone laughed in the sheer joy radiating from those words.
Helmut went into the chorus, and Tanya joined him without even needing to know the words in advance. "I can feel out the galaxy! And hear the flow of time! Been so tense, but now I sense, a reason to this rhyme!"
Everyone who could started to stand up, and start dancing, each one moving in perfect unison. "Oh, I can smell the universe," Helmut continued, "and I can taste the sky, and I can see each molecule…" Everyone spoke up in perfect harmony for the last line in the chorus. "Through my cosmic eye!"
Tanya lent Helmut some of her mastery of telekinetic constructs, and shaped his mobility capsule into a rough copy of his body. He picked her up by the hand and started to dance, leading her through something that she recognized as operatic, despite never having seen such things before. Similarly, she knew exactly where to step the moment she needed to.
The song continued, everyone losing themselves to the music as Helmut celebrated his return to himself.
"Unlocking all my memories…" Helmut sang, winding down the song. "Loving each… and every… one." He finished, letting the telepathic link dissolve.
After a moment of awkward silence as the party recovered from the ending of their cosmic oneness, they all erupted into applause as the telekinetic Helmut body dissipated, leaving just a floating mobility capsule.
Mr. Roth laughed. "Man, I'd invite you to front for us… but you'd show us all up, man! What was that?"
"That," Eddie said, excited. "Was the Master at work. I've been to Psycho-core concerts before, but this was on another level entirely!" He brought out a clipboard. "Can I get an autograph, Mr. Fullbear?"
Helmut laughed. "Sure!" The marker in Eddie's other hand lifted up and drew Helmut's signature on the board. Eddie blew on the ink to dry it faster, a wide grin emerging afterwards as he appreciated it.
"Hey, this tour's almost over, it ends in early October, so if you're thinking of doing a comeback tour and need a roadie, I'm your guy!" Eddie offered, "I know all the best places to get a crowd for psycho-core, could get you in touch with some other artists for your concerts, really hit the ground running!"
"That sounds great!" Helmut said, "Just get to the Motherlobe when you're done with this and we'll talk."
Tanya immediately wrote down her phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to the roadie. "He doesn't have a phone right now, but this is mine. I'm Tanya, ask for me at that time and I'll get you Helmut's new phone." After a moment, she added: "Just don't make my mother think anything weird's going on." Mary smirked, which told Tanya that she would definitely be telling Mom about this in the worst way for her own amusement.
"Well, loved the party, folks." Helmut said, changing the subject. "But these girls do need to get back home. They've got a pretty early bedtime."
Mary groaned. "Really? Come on!" Tanya yawned, which caused Mary to do the same. "I used to stay up so much later in the…" She trailed off, resisting the impulse to say 'military' in an uninitiated group.
"Yes, I should get you back to Green Needle Gulch." Tanya said, "I'm sure you've plenty to talk about with the current residents."
"Sure. Later, though."
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Helmut… was surprisingly hesitant to go back to his husband. While Tanya easily accepted his rationale vis a vis waiting for the next day…
"It's just… You've already done a lot for me." Helmut explained. His telepathic voice was hesitant, guilty. "If I go over to the Gulch, it's going to be a big production." Yeah, it would be.
"I know that, but why don't we just get it over with?" Tanya asked as she brushed her hair.
Mom opened up the door, wearing a bikini and floral shawl. "Tanya, why aren't you dressed for the water park? Did you forget?" There are more important things than water parks going on! …But she had been putting off telling Mom that it was canceled.
Before she could, Helmut spoke up: "Oh, sorry! I forgot and asked her to do something for me! I guess she figured she could fit it in before?" Without trying to get Tanya to confirm, he continued to rhetorically barrel over her: "Sorry Tanya, it's going to take hours. You go on ahead, I'll wait here, and we can go after!"
Confused, Mom's eyes turned calculating. "Tanya, I know you're a very responsible girl, but it's Sunday. Weekends are for having fun!"
"Exactly." Helmut said, projecting complete agreement. She really needs to ask him about that nugget of wisdom… "It's waited this long, it can wait another few hours. I'd like to spend some time in my own head beforehand anyway, steel myself. Go, enjoy the water park."
Tanya sighed. She did want to go… She telekinetically threw Helmut out of her room. She had to change clothes.
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Tanya enjoyed her popsicle as the group rested from their trip on the river rapids ride. "How about we go to the wave pool next?" Mom asked, a little ill. She didn't seem to like the rougher rides much.
"I want to make a water monster." Mary said, "Is there a pool that lets you use hydrokinesis?" Now that sounded like a terrible idea.
"Yes." Replied Agent Nein, looking over the map of the park. "It's just an ordinary pool otherwise. Milla, how about you go there with Mary and relax?"
Mom and Agent Nein weren't in disguise… but it didn't seem to matter. In this world, where social media wasn't even a dream yet, even if they were recognized, shrugging them off was not a big deal. The fact that they were drawn, rather than shown on television, probably helped. Still, Tanya finished her popsicle while Mom considered Agent Nein's offer. "Yes, that sounds nice." Mom admitted.
"Excellent. Now, I believe you mentioned wanting to go on that last ride again, Tanya?" Agent Nein said. She did. "Then let's go wait in line."
Once in line, with about six minutes left until they could get on the ride by Tanya's estimate, Agent Nein decided to start some smalltalk. "How was your first week of work?" He asked.
"Eventful." Tanya summarized, "Any scientific breakthroughs lately?"
Agent Nein hummed. "I've been running some experiments with emotional energy, fear specifically. I've managed to isolate three distinct varieties of fear energy, each with different properties, and I suspect there are more, waiting to be discovered."
"I think I read that comic book." Tanya said idly. "Are you consulting with Dr. Crane?"
Agent Nein looked confused. "No, I'm working with Dr.- Oh, the comic book supervillain." He chuckled as he gathered some fear energy in his hand and shaped a telekinetic claw. "You will know fear, Batman." He said, scowling at nothing.
"I am fear." Tanya replied, equally serious. "I am the night. I am BATMAN!" She could have pitched her voice low for that, but it was funnier not to. Both of them laughed.
After a moment of companionable silence, she transitioned to a vaguely useful topic.
"Whatever happened to that unfrozen Neanderthal?" Tanya asked.
"Oh, he's awake and learning Swedish." Agent Nein replied, "I didn't get to explore his mind myself, but I did review the data."
"So, hypothetically, if one was to find a body that was frozen over a decade ago, could it theoretically be thawed safely?" Tanya continued.
"Yes." Agent Nein said, before giving Tanya a strange look. "Did you find one?"
"Not yet." Tanya said, "You did hear about the John Doe brain that was alive that I was rehabilitating?" She asked.
"I did." Agent Nein confirmed, "Has any progress been made on that front?"
"He's Helmut Fullbear." Tanya said idly as she walked along with the line. Just a little longer… "According to his memories, his body got frozen shortly after he sneezed his brain out." Specifically, by an action from Agent Mentalis' hyperglaciator.
After a moment, Tanya glanced back at him. Agent Nein was stunned, holding up the rest of the line until the fat shirtless man behind him gave the psychonaut a shove. "Helmut Fullbear, alive?" Agent Nein asked, lifting up his swim goggles to look Tanya more directly in the eye.
"Indeed." Tanya replied, "He wanted some time to himself before fully revealing that he's alive."
Agent Nein visibly steeled himself. "Well, I suppose there's not much else to do about that." He said, "The implications, though…"
Tanya shrugged. "It's inadvisable to get tied up in what-ifs." She advised, "He's recovered from his trauma… mostly. Hopefully he won't put it off for too long, but it's for the best that he is ready to keep Bob from doing anything stupid. It's Agent Cruller's fault in the end, after all."
"You really shouldn't be assigning blame to the mentally incompetent." Agent Nein said, his expression turning disapproving, although his good mood spoiled any actual admonishment in the words.
Tanya waved it off as they finally made it to the front of the line, eagerly getting strapped in to enjoy the river rapids ride.
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Tanya had asked Helmut if he was ready with long-range telepathy when they were boarding her car, but he didn't seem to acknowledge her. So, they went to watch a movie at the drive-in theater.
Mary suggested they watch a family friendly road trip movie where most of the actors were puppets. This was universally agreed upon as a fun time. Unlike a lot of movie trends, she actually understood why those puppets were popular, even when acting on the same screen as human actors and being treated like they were normal: after all, she was Japanese at heart, and understood the value of gap moe. Ridiculousness played straight was hilarious.
"Moving right along…" Tanya, Mary, and Mom all sang in the car on the way home. "Moving right along… Moving right along."
"So…" Mary asked now that the song was over. "Why don't you have a flying car, Sasha?" Mary asked.
Agent Nein stiffened as he scrambled to try and explain in a way that didn't make him look bad. Before he could, Tanya chuckled and replied: "Agent Mentalis won't let him have one. He goes too fast with them."
"Aren't we going at, like, two hundred miles an hour?" Mary asked, confused. "Is that slow enough?"
"Yes."
"Wow." Mary said, impressed.
"It was a normal speed for a private aircraft." Agent Nein insisted. He wasn't technically wrong… if one only looked at the highest end models of small personal aircraft. "I was perfectly safe."
"Anyway, that's why Agent Nein doesn't have a flying car." Tanya summarized. The quarry that the Motherlobe is built into should be visible any minute now…
"The jet can go much faster, anyway." Agent Nein grumbled.
"It has five hundred times as much psitanium driving it." Tanya retorted. "Of course it's faster." The largest known chunks of refined psitanium drive the telekinetically propelled aircraft (which do not have jet engines and are thus not real jets), and is the standard size for the largest usable psychic machines. Such as the one they affixed to Air Force One to run a barrier in the event of incoming missiles. Last she heard, the one they were going to put on Air Force Two was still being built by the military's top psychic engineers and wasn't due for completion until the end of the year.
Mary did the mental math in her head. "Wait. how big is the psitanium engine on this thing?"
"This vehicle is equipped with a class 5 psitanium ellipsoid telekinetic engine." Tanya recited from memory. "Its diameter is one meter, and is, with minor adjustments, a one-eighth scale match to the class 9 engine that propels the Pelican." Also the seventeen other bird-named telekinetically propelled aircraft the Psychonauts possess.
"...you could totally fit a bigger engine in this." Mary pointed out. She wasn't wrong.
"One sixty percent bigger, yes." Agent Nein said in agreement. That's not a standard size... "It would double the maximum speed of the vehicle, and extend its operational range by one hundred fifty percent." Those numbers, while not incorrect, were optimistic. If she was going twice as fast, she was going to reinforce the barrier that stops her from getting guts splattered on the windshield when she hits a bird, at a bare minimum.
"This is not your project car, Sasha." Mom said warningly. She was in the front seat, unlike Mary and Agent Nein who were in the back. "This car is plenty fast as it is."
"I'd rather implement some… alternate features rather than just making the engine bigger." Tanya said conversationally. "The operational range is already plenty, merely doubling it won't get me anywhere I'd want to go that I couldn't already get to." After all, a larger mental energy capacity doesn't impact how much she can refuel the thing while on the go, so increasing the nominal operational range doesn't help as much as it seems.
"You could cross the Atlantic." Agent Nein pointed out.
Hrm, that was actually a good point. "...I'd have to look into the legalities of things before I can comment." Tanya deflected.
"Oh look, we're nearly home." Mom said, pointing at the now-visible broadcast tower that was atop the Motherlobe.
Now, playtime was over, now it was time to be responsible, and get Helmut to Green Needle Gulch.
---------------------
Helmut was not in the apartment. Not entirely surprising, given that he was perfectly capable of opening doors now that he was fully functional. A paranoid check indicated that he didn't steal any money or anything, which was good: he didn't even touch Mary's ceramic pig with the cent sign on it, which was a particularly strange place to put one's spare change, but it was cute so Tanya didn't say anything about it.
"Going to find Helmut, love you." Tanya announced before leaving Mom and Agent Nein in the apartment. "You might want to clear out too, Mary." She sent telepathically. "Go visit Crystal or something."
Mary sent back, in her typically barely coherent manner, a feeling of agreement, along with a flash of perception, that of Agent Nein using breath spray. Tanya quickly translated that as "I just saw Sasha use breath spray, good call."
"Notify me if you see Helmut." Tanya sent, finishing the conversation.
---------------------
Tanya did manage to locate the stray brain relatively quickly: he was in a field of flowers, with Lili. "Hi Tanya!" She said excitedly. "We're picking a bouquet!"
"I see that." Tanya replied, "What will we be saying with this bouquet?" She had… some amount of familiarity with ikebana, although she'd probably just embarrass herself if she tried to show something she made to a real expert.
Helmut coughed, which was naturally intentional given that he was without a throat. "Uh, you know, I missed you, I'm glad to see you again, I love you… nothing weird."
Tanya hummed. "Well, a good flower arrangement should have no more than thirteen stems and have an odd number of them." She recited from her foggy memory. "First, you should consider a plant that most encapsulates the message, with the remaining parts providing further context and beauty to the arrangement."
"Oh, that's good stuff!" Helmut said.
"You know flower language, Tanya?" Lili asked, eyes wide. "Dad gave me a book about it, but it was lame, just 'red means love or passion, yellow means joy'. Bleh!"
Tanya winced at the summary. Yeah, that sounded like American publishing companies. Boil down centuries of tradition into a few simple rules. Of course, Tanya also knew that there was a completely separate flower language in her second life, among the European nobility… but Visha only taught her enough to recognize when she was being subtly insulted. "Well, given that this is a proclamation of love, you should center the arrangement around something that represents the intended recipient. A plant that you would say encapsulates them, their favorite flower, something like that."
Helmut thought hard on this. "So many choices… did he have a favorite? Oh man, I'm such a bad husband to not know that."
Tanya hummed. "Perhaps, as an alternative, we could center the piece around a plant that represents your relationship: a plant that featured heavily in your proposal, or wedding, or some such."
"I've never met Uncle Bob." Lili said, "Maybe Dad knows what he likes?"
"Nono, I've got it." Helmut declared, "We'll center it around an orange cala lily."
Tanya tilted her head. "...why?"
"That's the flower he put in our wedding bouquet." Helmut said proudly.
What Tanya would give for wikipedia right now. "Alright. Lili, do you know where we can get one of those?"
"Yes!" She announced proudly. "Mom has a bunch of flower seeds, it's gotta be there if it's a wedding flower."
With a quick trip to the penthouse apartment that the Grand Head gets as one of his job perks, they collected the necessary seed, planted it, and let Helmut practice his herbaphony to grow it into a lovely flower. "Looks good." Tanya said, cutting the stem with her telekinesis. Now, to consider the messaging… "Next, we should get a base for the arrangement. I have an excellent vase that would be perfect for this."
Helmut radiated confusion. "You have a vase? The only thing I saw that looked like one was that tiny broken one with the gold colored glue."
Lili gasped. "You're giving him your gold vase?"
It was definitely warranted for such an important occasion. "Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken ceramic with gold, is meant to represent the beauty of imperfection, that something broken but fixed is more beautiful than untested perfection." She got it as a thirteenth birthday gift from Agent Nein. "Also, I expect a replacement or return eventually." If nothing else, Bob was actually quite wealthy from residual income derived from his research all those years ago, although Tanya never bothered learning the details. He sends rather large amounts of money on Lili's birthday, and frequently gets various deliveries that the Motherlobe has to send on to Green Needle Gulch.
"Oh that is just loaded with meaning!" Helmut said, sending a wave of gratitude. "This is going to be the best apology bouquet ever."
Tanya coughed. "As for the rest, ikebana, at least the kind I learned, is more of a freeform style of flower arrangement that is supposed to convey meaning and appreciation through free association and the beauty of the natural world." Lili stared uncomprehendingly at Tanya. "In other words, from here we just wing it."
"That's what I'm talking about!" Helmut proclaimed, "Come on, let's go!"
"Yeah!" Lili shouted, punching the air for no discernable reason.
---------------------
Surprisingly, Lili wasn't actually authorized to go to Green Needle Gulch. This was surprising because Tanya was; Agent Mentalis had tasked her with delivering some of Bob's packages a few times during her schooling when he couldn't be bothered to do it himself.
Still, the slow and poorly maintained tram to the Heptadome trundled along the underground tunnel at a brisk walking pace, occasionally stopping to prompt an additional password to proceed.
"This is going to be so cool." Lili stage whispered. "So romantic, a reunion after seventeen years…"
"Drowning in grief, only to learn that they were alive after all!" Mary whispered back.
"I will turn this tram around." Tanya said threateningly. "This is going to be emotional enough without you two obsessing over it like a soap opera."
"No, it's helping." Helmut said, nervously worrying at the flower arrangement they created with a telekinetic hand. "This is pretty dramatic, isn't it?"
"Yes, very fairy tale." Tanya said in agreement as she once again input a password to get the tram moving again. Just two left…"There's even a beanstalk."
"There is!?" All three of them exclaimed.
Tanya just laughed.
- Location
- Argentina
And hopefully he will get his body back.
- Location
- new york
She will make one from scratch then. She needs that project car.
well thought out and as moving at the song he sung.
Chapter 2.11
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Yeah, I ended up missing a patreon chapter of this. You guy's won't be affected by it for a while though, it's not until the 21st that you guys will miss the chapter, instead getting chapter 6 of Summon Perfect Warlady (with Chatper 5 being on the 8th, as normal)
------------------------
[Bob Zanotto]
It's been seventeen years since the love of his life died, lost in a battle that should never have happened.
It's been five years since he lost his job, fired by his own nephew.
In those five years, the days have bled into each other, a blur of brewing, farming, and drinking.
As much as he hates to admit it, he's not actually living a life of a complete hermit. He gets plenty of stuff delivered from mail order catalogs, mostly supplies to keep him in his lifestyle; brewing and gardening supplies, glass panels to fix up his greenhouse, meat, new clothes occasionally… seeds.
He even gets letters and the occasional visitor. That last thing is what's been different about this week: Otto decided to come by. Sure, Cassie and Compton occasionally stopped by out of some sense of obligation a few times per month, shared some of their mead, talked about old times awkwardly… but Otto came by a lot less often.
Otto was… a little difficult to tolerate, at times. He didn't really like Bob much, but he mentions how Cassie tells him to make sure all of Bob's stuff was in working order, so he was there out of obligation too.
But this week Otto just… Bob would say 'moved in', but the man did slip off to his apartment a few times to sleep off the alcohol and come back with more. Top shelf stuff, too. Took the time to fix up every single device in the greenhouse, his icebox, his firebox, his distillery… even the irrigation pumps that Bob had long replaced with siphoning water from the giant plant that holds up his land got improved to full functionality.
The man was running from his problems. Bob should know, he's been doing that for over a decade. It was one of the many reasons why he was a loveless hermit. He'd go over the other reasons he deserves to be so miserable, but Otto was turning it into a competition, and Bob doesn't do well with those.
"Otto…" Bob started before coughing. Ugh, he was thirsty. He took another swig of his swill. The acrid taste of mushrooms filled his senses. "What are you doing?"
"I'm making sure the improvements to the still are working properly." Otto said, obsessively observing the device as it slowly dripped the booze into the output. He really did make the still ten times better at the job, but that wasn't what he was talking about.
"Not that." Bob said, his voice still rough. He looked at his flask, and decided to hold off on another swig. "I mean-" he paused with an 'urp' noise as some gas escaped his mouth. "Why are you up here? It's been almost a week, and you haven't gone back to work."
"I'm… taking a vacation. Spending some time with an old friend. Is that so wrong?" Otto asked.
"Pull the other one. It's ripe." Bob said bluntly. "Something's eating at you. No one comes up here unless they want to be miserable. Punish themselves." Bob chuckled darkly. Back when he still had his job, being his support was seen as a punishment duty then, too. He overheard Hollis threaten to assign someone to him once. "But most people leave unhappy by now. What's going on?"
Otto spent several minutes ignoring Bob; the awkward silence stretched long, only interrupted by more swigs of their respective drinks. Eventually, he spoke up: "I'm a terrible person. I've done something horrible."
"What else is new?" Bob said, before immediately regretting it. That's the kind of thing you don't let out of your mouth, stupid!
"I suppose that's fair." Otto said despondently. "I haven't exactly been a pillar of scientific ethics." Bob said nothing, waiting for Otto to clarify. "But this is different!" He insisted. "This isn't me pushing the boundaries in the name of advancement, this isn't any kind of test or sacrifice!" Otto took out a handkerchief, dabbing at his eyes. "This is just… suffering. Unimaginable suffering, all because of my mistake."
Oh damn. This is serious. Otto's sense of ethics, despite how much Cassie, Compton, and Bob talked badly about it, was very rigid. His lines were in a different place than some, but they were etched in solid stone.
But… "Well, it was an accident, right?"
"It's worse." Otto said, "I compounded the mistake every time, over seventeen years."
Wait, that long? That was when… "What was it?"
Otto sighed dramatically. "I… had a brain." He said, pausing.
Well… he's gotta. "Where'd you last see it?"
Otto chuckled darkly, taking a deep pull of his bottle before tossing it away negligently. One of his plants swept the glass into the pile in the corner. "Do you remember the day that Ford popped up? Right after Grulovia?"
Oh, it's this kind of story. "I wish I could forget." Bob grumbled, spotting a bottle that still had a mouthful inside and chugging it. It was more like five mouthfuls.
"On that day, I also found a brain in a jar, just sitting there in the Heptadome. It was one of the jars that was in the plane." The one that Ford stole so the group had to buy plane tickets to get back to the states? Yeah, he remembers that plane. "The only possible person who could tell us about it would be Ford… but you know why we can't do that."
"Hm. Whose brain was it?" Bob asked, conversationally.
"I don't know." Otto admitted. What? "I never checked."
"...How could you not check?" Bob asked.
"As I said, I found it on the same day Ford came back. We were very busy that week." Otto explained. Ah, that did make sense, didn't it? "I put it in some fresh fluid and ran to the funeral, and when we started trying to help Ford, I forgot all about it."
"So you forgot." Bob said, "That's not so bad."
"It's worse than that." Otto said as he opened up what appeared to be the last bottle of the whiskey he brought on Friday. "I found it again, discovered a lack of paperwork… and still didn't check. I was busy."
"Okay…" Bob said, a little confused.
"Then I just. Kept. DOING IT!" Otto shouted, almost throwing the full bottle of liquor but instead taking a deep pull of it, drinking… about three shots of it, by Bob's estimate. "Seventeen years of isolation, of torture as time itself would lose meaning! It's all my fault!" Otto's tears were flowing freely, as his speech slurred from an amount of alcohol that… might actually be dangerous. That was strong whiskey he was drinking.
"Have some watermelon, Otto." Bob said, willing one of the ones he had in the back to finish maturing and letting a vine bring it inside. "I'll try out that new blender you got me." He nearly drew up more water from the foundation plant, but then remembered the hydrokinetic pump that Otto installed and let it moisten his garden's soil instead.
Cutting things with telekinesis was difficult, in Bob's experience. It required a certain level of… they could never quite agree on a good name to call it, although they ended up using Otto's pick, 'aggression', for the academic paper. Cassie liked calling it 'killing intent', Compton preferred 'will to hurt'. Bob preferred Helmut's choice, 'Mettle'. It was something Bob lacked, for the most part. Lucy and Ford both had it in spades, of course.
He could still do it, of course, assuming he didn't need to cut anything you couldn't manage with an axe of questionable sharpness. He just focused on the one person he knew that deserved pain and injury, and then turned that resolve outwards to chop whatever he needed chopped.
After he cut the watermelon into quarters, Otto passed Bob his utility knife, which was a wooden handle surrounding a psitanium core, and with the blade projected from it cutting the rinds off suddenly became much easier.
Within a few minutes, the blender managed to turn the entire watermelon into eight watermelon smoothies, the six after the first two were mixed with various other fruits as an experiment. Bob thought the banana watermelon mixture turned out the best, honestly. It just needed some gin. He'll have to order some…
After making sure that Otto had diluted all of that whiskey with the smoothies, Bob figured he should probably restart the conversation. He took a gulp from his flask instead.
Fortunately, Otto restarted the conversation without Bob needing to say anything. "The worst part of all of it… Is that instead of fixing my mistake… I'm here. I left the brain in the hands of a teenager with only incidental therapy training and every incentive to stay quiet about it if she does find a thought inside the thing."
Ouch. "Do you think she could fix it? If there was?" Bob asked.
"Well, she managed to make Ford half as crazy as he was before, somehow." Otto said, reaching for the abandoned whiskey bottle. "Got herself in some hot water in the attempt, but if you talk to Ford's new mission control persona it's almost like he's back." After a moment, he hedged: "At least, when I'm talking to him. Maybe eighty percent of the way back? He doesn't remember Lucy at all."
That girl? Hrm. Truman mentioned her in his letters, and Compton said her name… Tanya? "I heard about that." Bob said in acknowledgement. "Does he remember the brain?"
Otto paused. "You know, I never asked." He admitted, "I should have. Finally had a half-way sane Ford to ask about the one thing he would know that I don't, and I didn't." His head twitched, like he was about to hit his head on the wall behind him, but remembered it was glass at the last second. "Who could it even be? He had days to have found it, with questionable sanity, it could be anyone."
Bob didn't think so. "You know… I think it might be Lucy's brain." It made sense. They left Ford with her body, and while Ford was more disgusted at Otto's brain collecting habit than anyone else, if it meant he didn't need to kill Lucy...
Otto thought about Bob's guess. "It could be." He acknowledged, "Yes, that would make sense. She was heavily sedated by the battle… if he was sane, bringing the brain to the Astralathe to permanently subdue her would allow him to ensure that no one could ever bring Maligula back from imprisonment… Particularly if he made sure that the brain was kept on hand… It's also not killing her…" Otto trailed off.
"But he wasn't sane." Bob finished for him. "And we never saw Lucy's body after we left Ford with it."
Sighing, Otto nodded. "No. He wasn't. Lucy's brain is definitely the most likely candidate… But if it was…" He looked out toward the Motherlobe. "Wouldn't there have been sirens at least?"
"I dunno." Bob replied. They did have emergency sirens that would… probably be used in case of a full blown Maligula attack… but Bob wasn't entirely clear if they could hear them from here. "Our defenses would have blocked the sound, I think."
"Well, that would…" Otto paused, his eyes widened in shock. "Oh no." What was it now? "If Tanya met Maligula… that would be catastrophic."
Huh? "I'm not saying you're wrong," Bob hedged, "-but I'm clearly missing something here."
Otto grimaced. "Youv'e read my paper on Lucy's condition, of course." Nothing good could come of him leading with that. "Lucy's condition… It is not unique. Tanya is afflicted with something similar, although after her last episode I'm given to understand that Agent Nein successfully sealed it away." That's pretty bad, yeah. "Now, I must emphasize that Tanya is a very intelligent and compassionate young woman, committed to building a better world through constructive means…" This is going to be one big 'But'. "But… if she genuinely feared for her life, that seal would break. With how weakened Lucy would be from being insensate for so long… Tanya would win that fight, and we'd have an even worse problem on the loose."
"Worse than Maligula?" Bob asked, spooked. "How?"
"Maligula was, at her core, a domineering tyrant. She could be bargained with, placated, flattered. On top of that, she grandstanded, corralling massive quantities of water as a show of force" Otto pointed out. "Tanya's split personality just attacks any perceived threat with lethal force, carving them up with PSI blades that can open up tank armor like tin cans. Agent Nein managing to subdue her without casualties was, bluntly, a miracle given her demonstrated capabilities. I suspect that it wasn't fully awake."
"Jesus." Bob swore, "What happened to her?"
"I don't have all of the details," Otto admitted, "-and what I do know I'm not at liberty to say. The point is, while property damage would likely be lower, the death toll…"
Bob just existed for a moment. If anyone asked, he was contemplating the horrors that Otto just said, or was thinking of a bright side, but he just needed to think of nothing for a little while. Sweet oblivion…
It was times like these, where the world decided to pile more on his plate, refused to let him suffer in peace, that he could sometimes hear him. Helmut… he could almost hear him sing.
"...can you hear that?" Otto asked.
Bob jolted out from his pleasant reverie, glaring at Otto for interrupting him: "Hear what?" He groused, before listening to his surroundings. Wait… he could still hear Helmut. Bob would know that singing voice anywhere.
But… that song was new. That didn't make any sense.
Bob's legs were always pretty lanky; even when his gut ballooned with the mother of all beer bellies, his thighs refused to thicken with fat like some other people's might. It only proved that his weight was one hundred percent his own fault. He grunted as he stood up, his bones aching with the ravages of age and his poor health. Not poor enough, if you asked him. He's still kicking, after all.
The door opened, and the two of them peered down to the bottom of the giant beanstalk that he used to hold up his greenhouse's patch of dirt. It was a set of two little girls (was that Lili, his niece?), a teenage one, and a brain inside a mobility capsule, holding up a flower arrangement in a vase while singing.
"You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal, you can do whatever you feel!" Sang Helmut, the joy of performing as nakedly obvious as it ever was. "Young man! Are you listening to me? I said, Young man! What do you want to be? I said, young man, you can make real your dreams, but you got to know this one thing…"
Bob's glasses fell off of his nose, his sight long ruined by tears. Otto, the genius, immediately conveyed his own vision to Bob so he wouldn't miss a second.
Helmut didn't miss a beat, even as Bob's glasses tucked themselves into his pocket without Bob doing a thing about it. "No man, does it all by himself, I said, young man, put your pride on a shelf, and just go there, to the Y.M.C.A, I'm sure they can help you today!"
The girls joined in for the chorus, all moving their hands to make the shape of the letters as they got to them. "It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.!" They sang with Helmut, "It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.!"
Otto laughed the laugh of the damned, someone who just learned that he just received a stay of execution.
Bob could relate.
After the song, Helmut floated up, his brain ball glowing with psychic power as happiness assaulted Bob's psychic senses, the unfamiliar emotion burning in his chest as he sniffled wetly. Someone passed him a handkerchief and he blew into it. "Helmut?" He asked, "Is it really you?"
"It's me, Bobby." Helmut affirmed, "Your PSI King. I've missed you so much." Telekinetic hands hugged Bob as the brain ball pushed itself into Bob's voluminous beard.
This couldn't be real. He was just dreaming. He thought that those hidden nightmares had ended, the alcohol removing all thought while he slept.
"Calm down, Bobby." Helmut sent telepathically. "I'm real, I'm here."
"So here's where you've been." Said the teenage girl while Bob was busy trying to let himself believe Helmut's words. "I assumed you had actually visited here, but have you even left? You smell like a distillery." He lives in a distillery.
Oh, wait. She was talking to Otto. "I know." He said despondently. "I'm horrible." Otto turned to Helmut and him. "Helmut, could you ever forgive me for my neglect?"
Helmut laughed joyously. "I think you've punished yourself enough, man. You still kept my brain alive all this time, didn't you? Just help me get my body back and we'll call it square, okay?"
Otto smiled widely, looking as happy as Bob wanted to feel. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."
It's been a long time since Bob's entertained guests that weren't one of the other members of the Psychic Six, but he still had… glasses, right? He used them for… Oh!
"Does anyone want some watermelon smoothies?" He asked, and the girls all smiled. When was the last time he's seen a stranger smile at him?
Bob smiled back.
------------------------
[Bob Zanotto]
It's been seventeen years since the love of his life died, lost in a battle that should never have happened.
It's been five years since he lost his job, fired by his own nephew.
In those five years, the days have bled into each other, a blur of brewing, farming, and drinking.
As much as he hates to admit it, he's not actually living a life of a complete hermit. He gets plenty of stuff delivered from mail order catalogs, mostly supplies to keep him in his lifestyle; brewing and gardening supplies, glass panels to fix up his greenhouse, meat, new clothes occasionally… seeds.
He even gets letters and the occasional visitor. That last thing is what's been different about this week: Otto decided to come by. Sure, Cassie and Compton occasionally stopped by out of some sense of obligation a few times per month, shared some of their mead, talked about old times awkwardly… but Otto came by a lot less often.
Otto was… a little difficult to tolerate, at times. He didn't really like Bob much, but he mentions how Cassie tells him to make sure all of Bob's stuff was in working order, so he was there out of obligation too.
But this week Otto just… Bob would say 'moved in', but the man did slip off to his apartment a few times to sleep off the alcohol and come back with more. Top shelf stuff, too. Took the time to fix up every single device in the greenhouse, his icebox, his firebox, his distillery… even the irrigation pumps that Bob had long replaced with siphoning water from the giant plant that holds up his land got improved to full functionality.
The man was running from his problems. Bob should know, he's been doing that for over a decade. It was one of the many reasons why he was a loveless hermit. He'd go over the other reasons he deserves to be so miserable, but Otto was turning it into a competition, and Bob doesn't do well with those.
"Otto…" Bob started before coughing. Ugh, he was thirsty. He took another swig of his swill. The acrid taste of mushrooms filled his senses. "What are you doing?"
"I'm making sure the improvements to the still are working properly." Otto said, obsessively observing the device as it slowly dripped the booze into the output. He really did make the still ten times better at the job, but that wasn't what he was talking about.
"Not that." Bob said, his voice still rough. He looked at his flask, and decided to hold off on another swig. "I mean-" he paused with an 'urp' noise as some gas escaped his mouth. "Why are you up here? It's been almost a week, and you haven't gone back to work."
"I'm… taking a vacation. Spending some time with an old friend. Is that so wrong?" Otto asked.
"Pull the other one. It's ripe." Bob said bluntly. "Something's eating at you. No one comes up here unless they want to be miserable. Punish themselves." Bob chuckled darkly. Back when he still had his job, being his support was seen as a punishment duty then, too. He overheard Hollis threaten to assign someone to him once. "But most people leave unhappy by now. What's going on?"
Otto spent several minutes ignoring Bob; the awkward silence stretched long, only interrupted by more swigs of their respective drinks. Eventually, he spoke up: "I'm a terrible person. I've done something horrible."
"What else is new?" Bob said, before immediately regretting it. That's the kind of thing you don't let out of your mouth, stupid!
"I suppose that's fair." Otto said despondently. "I haven't exactly been a pillar of scientific ethics." Bob said nothing, waiting for Otto to clarify. "But this is different!" He insisted. "This isn't me pushing the boundaries in the name of advancement, this isn't any kind of test or sacrifice!" Otto took out a handkerchief, dabbing at his eyes. "This is just… suffering. Unimaginable suffering, all because of my mistake."
Oh damn. This is serious. Otto's sense of ethics, despite how much Cassie, Compton, and Bob talked badly about it, was very rigid. His lines were in a different place than some, but they were etched in solid stone.
But… "Well, it was an accident, right?"
"It's worse." Otto said, "I compounded the mistake every time, over seventeen years."
Wait, that long? That was when… "What was it?"
Otto sighed dramatically. "I… had a brain." He said, pausing.
Well… he's gotta. "Where'd you last see it?"
Otto chuckled darkly, taking a deep pull of his bottle before tossing it away negligently. One of his plants swept the glass into the pile in the corner. "Do you remember the day that Ford popped up? Right after Grulovia?"
Oh, it's this kind of story. "I wish I could forget." Bob grumbled, spotting a bottle that still had a mouthful inside and chugging it. It was more like five mouthfuls.
"On that day, I also found a brain in a jar, just sitting there in the Heptadome. It was one of the jars that was in the plane." The one that Ford stole so the group had to buy plane tickets to get back to the states? Yeah, he remembers that plane. "The only possible person who could tell us about it would be Ford… but you know why we can't do that."
"Hm. Whose brain was it?" Bob asked, conversationally.
"I don't know." Otto admitted. What? "I never checked."
"...How could you not check?" Bob asked.
"As I said, I found it on the same day Ford came back. We were very busy that week." Otto explained. Ah, that did make sense, didn't it? "I put it in some fresh fluid and ran to the funeral, and when we started trying to help Ford, I forgot all about it."
"So you forgot." Bob said, "That's not so bad."
"It's worse than that." Otto said as he opened up what appeared to be the last bottle of the whiskey he brought on Friday. "I found it again, discovered a lack of paperwork… and still didn't check. I was busy."
"Okay…" Bob said, a little confused.
"Then I just. Kept. DOING IT!" Otto shouted, almost throwing the full bottle of liquor but instead taking a deep pull of it, drinking… about three shots of it, by Bob's estimate. "Seventeen years of isolation, of torture as time itself would lose meaning! It's all my fault!" Otto's tears were flowing freely, as his speech slurred from an amount of alcohol that… might actually be dangerous. That was strong whiskey he was drinking.
"Have some watermelon, Otto." Bob said, willing one of the ones he had in the back to finish maturing and letting a vine bring it inside. "I'll try out that new blender you got me." He nearly drew up more water from the foundation plant, but then remembered the hydrokinetic pump that Otto installed and let it moisten his garden's soil instead.
Cutting things with telekinesis was difficult, in Bob's experience. It required a certain level of… they could never quite agree on a good name to call it, although they ended up using Otto's pick, 'aggression', for the academic paper. Cassie liked calling it 'killing intent', Compton preferred 'will to hurt'. Bob preferred Helmut's choice, 'Mettle'. It was something Bob lacked, for the most part. Lucy and Ford both had it in spades, of course.
He could still do it, of course, assuming he didn't need to cut anything you couldn't manage with an axe of questionable sharpness. He just focused on the one person he knew that deserved pain and injury, and then turned that resolve outwards to chop whatever he needed chopped.
After he cut the watermelon into quarters, Otto passed Bob his utility knife, which was a wooden handle surrounding a psitanium core, and with the blade projected from it cutting the rinds off suddenly became much easier.
Within a few minutes, the blender managed to turn the entire watermelon into eight watermelon smoothies, the six after the first two were mixed with various other fruits as an experiment. Bob thought the banana watermelon mixture turned out the best, honestly. It just needed some gin. He'll have to order some…
After making sure that Otto had diluted all of that whiskey with the smoothies, Bob figured he should probably restart the conversation. He took a gulp from his flask instead.
Fortunately, Otto restarted the conversation without Bob needing to say anything. "The worst part of all of it… Is that instead of fixing my mistake… I'm here. I left the brain in the hands of a teenager with only incidental therapy training and every incentive to stay quiet about it if she does find a thought inside the thing."
Ouch. "Do you think she could fix it? If there was?" Bob asked.
"Well, she managed to make Ford half as crazy as he was before, somehow." Otto said, reaching for the abandoned whiskey bottle. "Got herself in some hot water in the attempt, but if you talk to Ford's new mission control persona it's almost like he's back." After a moment, he hedged: "At least, when I'm talking to him. Maybe eighty percent of the way back? He doesn't remember Lucy at all."
That girl? Hrm. Truman mentioned her in his letters, and Compton said her name… Tanya? "I heard about that." Bob said in acknowledgement. "Does he remember the brain?"
Otto paused. "You know, I never asked." He admitted, "I should have. Finally had a half-way sane Ford to ask about the one thing he would know that I don't, and I didn't." His head twitched, like he was about to hit his head on the wall behind him, but remembered it was glass at the last second. "Who could it even be? He had days to have found it, with questionable sanity, it could be anyone."
Bob didn't think so. "You know… I think it might be Lucy's brain." It made sense. They left Ford with her body, and while Ford was more disgusted at Otto's brain collecting habit than anyone else, if it meant he didn't need to kill Lucy...
Otto thought about Bob's guess. "It could be." He acknowledged, "Yes, that would make sense. She was heavily sedated by the battle… if he was sane, bringing the brain to the Astralathe to permanently subdue her would allow him to ensure that no one could ever bring Maligula back from imprisonment… Particularly if he made sure that the brain was kept on hand… It's also not killing her…" Otto trailed off.
"But he wasn't sane." Bob finished for him. "And we never saw Lucy's body after we left Ford with it."
Sighing, Otto nodded. "No. He wasn't. Lucy's brain is definitely the most likely candidate… But if it was…" He looked out toward the Motherlobe. "Wouldn't there have been sirens at least?"
"I dunno." Bob replied. They did have emergency sirens that would… probably be used in case of a full blown Maligula attack… but Bob wasn't entirely clear if they could hear them from here. "Our defenses would have blocked the sound, I think."
"Well, that would…" Otto paused, his eyes widened in shock. "Oh no." What was it now? "If Tanya met Maligula… that would be catastrophic."
Huh? "I'm not saying you're wrong," Bob hedged, "-but I'm clearly missing something here."
Otto grimaced. "Youv'e read my paper on Lucy's condition, of course." Nothing good could come of him leading with that. "Lucy's condition… It is not unique. Tanya is afflicted with something similar, although after her last episode I'm given to understand that Agent Nein successfully sealed it away." That's pretty bad, yeah. "Now, I must emphasize that Tanya is a very intelligent and compassionate young woman, committed to building a better world through constructive means…" This is going to be one big 'But'. "But… if she genuinely feared for her life, that seal would break. With how weakened Lucy would be from being insensate for so long… Tanya would win that fight, and we'd have an even worse problem on the loose."
"Worse than Maligula?" Bob asked, spooked. "How?"
"Maligula was, at her core, a domineering tyrant. She could be bargained with, placated, flattered. On top of that, she grandstanded, corralling massive quantities of water as a show of force" Otto pointed out. "Tanya's split personality just attacks any perceived threat with lethal force, carving them up with PSI blades that can open up tank armor like tin cans. Agent Nein managing to subdue her without casualties was, bluntly, a miracle given her demonstrated capabilities. I suspect that it wasn't fully awake."
"Jesus." Bob swore, "What happened to her?"
"I don't have all of the details," Otto admitted, "-and what I do know I'm not at liberty to say. The point is, while property damage would likely be lower, the death toll…"
Bob just existed for a moment. If anyone asked, he was contemplating the horrors that Otto just said, or was thinking of a bright side, but he just needed to think of nothing for a little while. Sweet oblivion…
It was times like these, where the world decided to pile more on his plate, refused to let him suffer in peace, that he could sometimes hear him. Helmut… he could almost hear him sing.
"...can you hear that?" Otto asked.
Bob jolted out from his pleasant reverie, glaring at Otto for interrupting him: "Hear what?" He groused, before listening to his surroundings. Wait… he could still hear Helmut. Bob would know that singing voice anywhere.
But… that song was new. That didn't make any sense.
Bob's legs were always pretty lanky; even when his gut ballooned with the mother of all beer bellies, his thighs refused to thicken with fat like some other people's might. It only proved that his weight was one hundred percent his own fault. He grunted as he stood up, his bones aching with the ravages of age and his poor health. Not poor enough, if you asked him. He's still kicking, after all.
The door opened, and the two of them peered down to the bottom of the giant beanstalk that he used to hold up his greenhouse's patch of dirt. It was a set of two little girls (was that Lili, his niece?), a teenage one, and a brain inside a mobility capsule, holding up a flower arrangement in a vase while singing.
"You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal, you can do whatever you feel!" Sang Helmut, the joy of performing as nakedly obvious as it ever was. "Young man! Are you listening to me? I said, Young man! What do you want to be? I said, young man, you can make real your dreams, but you got to know this one thing…"
Bob's glasses fell off of his nose, his sight long ruined by tears. Otto, the genius, immediately conveyed his own vision to Bob so he wouldn't miss a second.
Helmut didn't miss a beat, even as Bob's glasses tucked themselves into his pocket without Bob doing a thing about it. "No man, does it all by himself, I said, young man, put your pride on a shelf, and just go there, to the Y.M.C.A, I'm sure they can help you today!"
The girls joined in for the chorus, all moving their hands to make the shape of the letters as they got to them. "It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.!" They sang with Helmut, "It's fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A.!"
Otto laughed the laugh of the damned, someone who just learned that he just received a stay of execution.
Bob could relate.
After the song, Helmut floated up, his brain ball glowing with psychic power as happiness assaulted Bob's psychic senses, the unfamiliar emotion burning in his chest as he sniffled wetly. Someone passed him a handkerchief and he blew into it. "Helmut?" He asked, "Is it really you?"
"It's me, Bobby." Helmut affirmed, "Your PSI King. I've missed you so much." Telekinetic hands hugged Bob as the brain ball pushed itself into Bob's voluminous beard.
This couldn't be real. He was just dreaming. He thought that those hidden nightmares had ended, the alcohol removing all thought while he slept.
"Calm down, Bobby." Helmut sent telepathically. "I'm real, I'm here."
"So here's where you've been." Said the teenage girl while Bob was busy trying to let himself believe Helmut's words. "I assumed you had actually visited here, but have you even left? You smell like a distillery." He lives in a distillery.
Oh, wait. She was talking to Otto. "I know." He said despondently. "I'm horrible." Otto turned to Helmut and him. "Helmut, could you ever forgive me for my neglect?"
Helmut laughed joyously. "I think you've punished yourself enough, man. You still kept my brain alive all this time, didn't you? Just help me get my body back and we'll call it square, okay?"
Otto smiled widely, looking as happy as Bob wanted to feel. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."
It's been a long time since Bob's entertained guests that weren't one of the other members of the Psychic Six, but he still had… glasses, right? He used them for… Oh!
"Does anyone want some watermelon smoothies?" He asked, and the girls all smiled. When was the last time he's seen a stranger smile at him?
Bob smiled back.
- Location
- Argentina
This was beautiful.
Now time to see if they can revive a half dead man.
Now time to see if they can revive a half dead man.
- Location
- new york
that is a fun song and fit PSI King's taste in music well
Chapter 2.12
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Bob was… pretty much as Tanya expected. Old, fat, with very poor personal hygiene. His beard went down to his belt, he was perpetually hunched over, and his glasses were broken, barely functional and probably with an out of date prescription. One time, in her first life, she went three years without updating her glasses: after she did replace them, she swore to never let it get that bad again, the difference was so massive.
His greenhouse, on the other hand, was surprisingly well-maintained. Closer inspection indicated that this was more accurately referred to as 'recently renovated', as the majority of the modern conveniences were all new, and more importantly, were all psitanium inventions that were likely brought here by Agent Mentalis.
Clearly, Agent Mentalis decided to spend his procrastination week modernizing his friend's abode. Well, as modern as it can get without any electricity but with ample amounts of psitanium. So… futuristically convenient. Agent Mentalis had laundry lists of electricity free appliances under his patent catalog, there just wasn't any method to mass produce them, so they remained luxury goods for the wealthy… or for anyone who could just make the things themselves from Otto's very expensive book filled with schematics for the devices, which was sold by a single mail-order company that he owned that was nominally for selling psitanium supplies to hobbyists. To her understanding, there were a few small businesses who also paid him royalties for the privilege of selling the consumer products in question to the aforementioned wealthy people.
The watermelon smoothie was delicious. It was mixed with some green apples, as apparently they had started drunkenly experimenting with Bob's new blender. "So, introductions." Tanya said, breaking the awkward silence. Bob and Helmut had been telepathically whispering to each other, the presence of the psychic messages, if not their contents, were perceptible to other telepaths. "Mary, Lili, this is Bob Zanotto. Bob, this is your niece Lili, my sister Mary, and I am Tanya. I assume Helmut has explained my role in his restoration by now."
"Yes, he did." Bob confirmed, his voice rough and only barely recognizable as the voice of Audie O. "Thank you for all of your hard work." Bob's mind sent a tidal wave of gratitude along with his words. Helmut joined in with that.
Wait, why was she blushing? It was just a simple thank you! "Well, it… I didn't… How could I not…"
Lili looked on in wonder. Mary cackled. "She's actually speechless." she said between laughs.
Changing her focus away from trying to reply to Bob's sincere gratitude, Tanya sent some of Mary's smoothie up her nose.
In another stunning example of Mary's poor critical thinking skills, Tanya countered Mary's attempt to seize Tanya's own shake, drinking it with zero fear.
"Mmmm!" Lili said after doing the same. "Uncle Bob, this is so good! What's your secret?"
"There is no secret ingredient, kiddo." Helmut said.
"That one has the peaches mixed in, I think." Bob added, "But it's just watermelon and peaches put in the fancy new blender Otto built for me."
"Four to one ratio." Otto pointed out. "Watermelon has a lot more water in it than other fruits, thus the name. You need at least that much to keep the flavor."
Tanya brought out a psychoportal. "If you wish to have a private discussion, you should use this." She said, floating it into the mobility capsule's slot. "We can entertain ourselves for an hour or so."
Smiling with gratitude, Bob focused and astrally projected himself into Helmut's mind, Lili jumped up. "Let's style Uncle Bob's beard!" She took some brushes and ribbons out of her backpack telekinetically.
Tanya's face twisted in disgust. "It needs a serious wash first." She pointed out. Lili took some shampoo and conditioner out of her backpack. Tanya sighed. "All right, where's his water…"
After thirty minutes of extracting all of the various gardening tools that Bob had stashed in his beard's knots, a thorough hydrokinetic washing, and an even more thorough brushing to untangle it, including some required cuts, Lili and Mary started the involved process of determining exactly how to style it.
With the difficult part done, Tanya sat down next to Agent Mentalis, who had watched the proceedings without stopping or encouraging it. "I hope you enjoyed your vacation." She said to the man.
Agent Mentalis sighed. "Yes, I suppose it was nice to spend time with Bob, even given the circumstances. I should have brought some cannabis, though. Would have been a more relaxed experience than alcohol."
Tanya hummed. "You don't need to return to the office until Wednesday, so get your head back on straight, get yourself cleaned up, and show up ready to take on your duties with enthusiasm." This was not the first time Tanya had to give that speech to an alcoholic coworker, and she did not expect it to be the last.
"...Thank you." Agent Mentalis said, "Is there anything that I missed that I should know about?"
Should she? …yeah, he does kind of need to know. "Nothing that can't wait until you return, but someone's been seeding sabotaged thinkerprint scanners into the warehouse. They look like they work, but they allow anyone through."
"Oh dear." Agent Mentalis commented, paling. "How can that wait?"
Tanya shrugged. "Evidence suggests that it was a long term plot meant to weaken our security, not something targeted. I'll finish sweeping the facility this week. As for the warehouse… that's for counterintelligence to worry about."
"Ah, too true." Agent Mentalis said, nodding in approval. "Any problem that you can foist on someone else isn't really a problem at all."
Tanya frowned. While she didn't disagree… she didn't like how he said it. "So how long do you think it's going to take to find Helmut's body?" She asked, "Also, do you think it's salvageable?"
Agent Mentalis waved off her concerns. "It's still frozen, I'm sure of that much. The Hyperglaciator created a permafrost bottom in the lake, the local psitanium below the lake continually reinforces the ice." He paused for a moment. "You know, I wonder how they're handling it? Fish can't live there anymore…"
What? Psitanium? "Grulovia has psitanium?" She asked.
"Oh yes." Agent Mentalis said, taking another sip from his whiskey bottle. "The largest deposits in Europe, actually. It was why the Soviets wanted to control it, although they had plenty within their borders. There's a lot more psitanium around than can be used so there's not a huge rush in denying it to Russia. By the time they could possibly need that extra source of psitanium, the puppet dictator will be deeply entrenched."
…Well, once she creates mass production techniques, that will change very quickly. "So how long are you scheduling for this trip?"
"Well, Helmut should be able to sense his own body from a fair distance." Agent Mentalis said, "The psychic tether between the brain and the brainstem has a lot of interesting properties."
Wait… she remembers seeing that. "Was that the experiment where you tortured that communist with his brain outside of his skull?"
Agent Mentalis winced. "Ah, you saw that. Yes, that was the one. While creating a tether of that strength requires sawing open the head, Helmut's telepathic senses are quite good." He took another sip of whiskey. "While I'm unsure how the freezing process will impact matters, there's a subtle tugging sensation that he should be able to detect if he gets within a thousand feet of his body. Once found, extracting it will be a simple matter with the equipment I intend to bring."
"Will the unfreezing process be a challenge?" Tanya asked.
"It shouldn't be." Agent Mentalis replied, "I consulted on the neurological aspects of Homer's revival; I'm familiar with the techniques and I can borrow their machinery. They'll likely send a doctor along to operate it, too." 'Homer' was the name that the frozen Neanderthal was given.
"Tanya!" Lili shouted excitedly, "What do you think? Pretty, right?"
She turned to look at Bob, who was still sitting down, insensate with Helmut's mobility capsule in his lap. Mary and Lili had decided to go for a style that reminded Tanya of a picture of the famous pirate Blackbeard that she had seen before: a dozen different tendrils, each with a candle wick burning to create a hellishly intimidating look. Except instead of candle wicks, there were instead pink ribbons, completely ruining the effect.
"I don't think pink is his color." Tanya observed.
"I told you!" Mary said to the younger girl.
"Perhaps…" Tanya looked through the greenhouse, examining the plants. Yes, this one. She telepathically linked herself to the lavender plant and carefully let it grow and thread itself underneath the ribbons, taking off each one as the structure was replaced, blooming the gentle purple flowers once the ribbon had been removed. "Then…" She paired it with some rosemary, binding pairs of tendrils together while providing a subtle color variation with their own bluish-purple flowers. "Finally…" She trimmed the ends of the beard, evening things out, and placed some sage blooms between the ends and the ties, the nearly white purple flowers creating further contrast. "There." Tanya said, nodding to herself.
"Yeah, that looks really good!" Lili complimented. "But it's missing something…"
"Maybe something in the center?" Offered Mary. "Right below his chin."
Tanya took a small cutting of the orange lily they used for the ikebana arrangement, using herbaphony to grow it into a full flower using one of the available flower pots. Placing the bloom right where Mary instructed, Tanya stood back and examined her work.
"Perfect." Lili announced. Right on time, as it turned out: a surge of mental energy heralded Bob returning to his body, and the man stood up, leaning backward with his hands on his back, attempting to correct his posture.
After a moment of grunting and stretching, Bob stood taller than he did an hour ago, no longer bent with age and misery but filled with the vim and vigor of youth. He touched his beard, noting the new design. "Huh."
"Do you like it, Uncle Bob?" Lili asked excitedly.
"It looks good, Bobby." Helmut offered.
"The composition is nice." Bob said, borrowing Tanya's sight with clairvoyance for a moment. She allowed it. "It's been a long time since this beard's been washed…"
"I know." Tanya retorted, "We had to cut off half of your chest hair to separate the two." Fortunately, she was very precise with her telekinetic blades. She'd add something about her experience shaving as a man, but honestly her experience shaving her own legs was more useful. His beard was just too long for it to have anything in common with her first life's experience. At least in the other case she was still using telekinesis.
Bob looked around his greenhouse. "...I should clean up." He said, and three large vines descended from the ceiling and started to tidy up the place. Everyone helped.
"What are you doing with all that broken glass, anyway?" Mary asked after twenty minutes of cleaning. Tanya had collected every single broken shard, and impressively large amount of them, into one pile she had floating in the air.
"Did I get it all?" Tanya asked, and after one more glance over, nodded to herself. She emptied the glass recycling bin, brought all of it together, and used pyrokinesis. It all melted into a giant mass of cherry-red silicate, the various imperfections exploding harmlessly in Tanya's psychic grip.
"Wow!" Lili said, gleeful at the radiant heat.
"Woah." Helmut said, "It's like the 4th of July."
Agent Mentalis hummed. "The panels are 24" by 24", Tanya. Three millimeters thick."
"Thank you, Agent Mentlalis." Tanya said, telekinetically cutting the glob of glass to create the desired size, gathering the remainder, and cryokinetically cooling the panels to room temperature. The useful thing about cryokinesis is that unlike literally any other means of cooling, it does so across the entire target at once, if done correctly. This meant that most drawbacks related to rapidly cooling objects flat out didn't occur, as those flaws were caused by drastically different temperatures along the structure.
After two more passes, there was a sizable stack of greenhouse glass panels and also a single sphere of glass with the remainder, not enough to make another panel. The sphere was deposited in Lili's hands "Hm, how important is it that the glass be clear?" Tanya asked, inspecting the lightly tinted window panes. Perhaps she should have separated them by color…
"For a normal greenhouse?" Bob said, inspecting one of the panes himself. "Pretty important. For me? Not very. The sunlight's the least important part. These are clear enough." He turned to Otto. "That something new? Three psychic powers, all that precise? What kind of training program are you running?"
"Wish I could take credit." Agent Mentalis replied, "But that's all Tanya. I've some devices that could replicate the feat, but she learned how to control most of her psychic powers by using math, numbers. It makes her very precise." Ironically, normal telekinesis is one of Tanya's clumsiest psychic powers. She's been practicing, though. "It makes her work a bit boring, but there's something to be said about industrial efficiency."
"Still, why'd you learn to do that?" Helmut asked.
Tanya blushed, nervously picking at the hem of her shirt. "Well… one of the classes for my degree, an art credit, was about using telekinesis to mold non-psitanium materials." She explained, "we worked with clay and plastic, mostly, but Mother's day was coming up…"
Agent Mentalis snorted. "She asked me about molding molten materials, so I showed her the machines I use for fabricating lenses, and she decided to learn how to manually accomplish the same tasks, and showed off a glass sculpture of a camilla flower as one of her projects for that class." She also learned how to make lenses, which will be incredibly useful knowledge if she ends up needing glasses in a future life.
"It's actually pronounced Camellia." Bob interjected.
Mary scowled. "Yeah, I remember that. Show-off." She had given Mom a painting she made in art class that year, one of the whole family. Including Agent Nein. Tanya would say that she was surprisingly talented at painting, but it wasn't a surprise at all; She usually won the informal competition for best Mother's day gift, but that year was an exception. So Tanya pinched her nose with telekinesis. "Hey!" Mary complained, breaking the hold with her own telekinesis.
"We're in a glass house, Mary. Don't throw stones." Tanya said, scolding her little sister. The adults chuckled at her joke. Mary glared but did nothing else. Did she not know that expression? It's old, and she learned it in her second life, so it was there too.
"Now," Tanya began, stepping into the role of 'host' because Bob certainly wasn't going to. "-it's five in the afternoon, there's alcohol, fruity drinks, and a celebratory mood." After a beat, Tanya took out one of her personal amusement inventions. "Who's up for karaoke?"
---------------------
Agents Boole, O'Peia, and Mentalis, as well as Helmut and Bob all gathered around in the Heptadome the next evening. Tanya was there too, having been invited by Helmut for… something. He was vague.
"Okay, now we've got a pretty good plan for getting my body back," Helmut said, "-but I have an announcement to make."
"Are you renewing your vows?" Agent O'Peia asked.
"No." Helmut said, before pausing. "Actually, yes, that sounds like a good idea." The iridescent telekinetic hand he was using to gesture pointed at his husband. "Bobby? After I get my body back, we should renew our vows."
"I'd like that." Bob replied, smiling softly despite the fact that he was suffering from alcohol withdrawal. "We still can't get the government to recognize it, by the way." He added.
"Really? Damn." Helmut said, disappointed.
"You should expect about four months of physical therapy from being unfrozen." Agent Mentalis pointed out. "So don't schedule it for this year if you want to fit in a suit."
"It will also give Bob time to get back into shape." Tanya added, "I don't think he can fit in his old tuxedo."
Bob coughed. "I don't have it anymore anyway…" He admitted, "I don't remember exactly when, but I destroyed most of my possessions… a few times over the years. I don't own anything from our marriage anymore beyond the greenhouse itself and the Feelmobile, and that thing's a derelict."
"I don't get hung up on weight, Bobby. You know that." Helmut said consolingly.
"That's a project for later." Agent Mentalis said, "Now Helmut, what was your announcement?"
"RIght." Helmut said, "I reviewed some of my memories, and I found something that none of you know: Lulu survived!" Tanya winced as the other members of the Psychic Six gasped. "Ford snuck her back to the Astralathe and shut her down!"
"Oh. So that's what happened." Agent Mentalis said, a little dazed.
"He was coherent enough to do that?" Agent Boole asked, his brow furrowed in thought.
"Ah, right. The second thing." Helmut said, "Whatever Ford's like… he did it. He brought Lulu and some kid, put 'em through the Astralathe, then came back a day later and turned it on himself."
"I suppose he'd have wanted to cover his trail, remove the memory of where he put Lucy…" Agent O'Peia said, thinking hard. "...but it went wrong."
Agent Mentalis, as the one who knew the most about the capabilities of the Astralathe, spoke up next: "If that's all he was doing, he wouldn't have screwed it up. Think bigger."
Bob gasped. "He wanted to forget Lucy altogether!"
Agent Boole nodded grimly. "That would do it, I think."
"So after we get my body, we need to find her!" Helmut said, resolved.
"And then what?" Tanya said. The adults turned toward her, confused. "Lucrecia's not going to remember any of you. Further, if you make her remember, you'll just unleash the Maligula personality." Probably. She didn't really know how it worked, precisely.
Agent O'Peia stared intently at Tanya. "You know something." She accused, pointing at her. Tanya kept a straight face. "You saw what Ford did when you were in his head."
Ah, she thought she had been vague enough. "I did." Tanya admitted, "The so-called 'psychic defense' that caused those troubles when I tried was him attacking me after I learned it. He defends that secret with everything he has."
"Then… if we want to fix Ford, we need to get Lulu to do it!" Helmut concluded, "Where is she?" Hm, that might actually work. However…
Tanya rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I know how to find her, and I did a few years ago. Don't bother the poor woman, she's safe and happy with what she thinks is her son and his family." They are also her actual family, but Tanya wanted to imply otherwise. "That boy was a fresh orphan, who lost his mother recently enough that Ford could slot Lucrecia right in her place." That boy just happened to be her nephew, which was what she didn't say.
"We'd really like to know, if you please." Agent Boole asked softly.
"You know, Mom's always willing to talk about things that pop up in True Psychic Tales." Tanya said, changing the subject. "I'm well aware that the Deluginists are still active. If they catch wind of Lurcecia's location, they'll stop at nothing to resurrect Maligula."
That seemed to convince them. "We need a foolproof way to prevent Lucy from going back to that." Bob declared, "Then we can get her back."
"We'd need Ford for that." Agent Mentalis pointed out. "We'd need more detail on what he did to keep her quiet before we could even think about adjusting it." After a moment, he added: "Well, if we wanted a plan before diving inside her head, anyway."
"So we need Ford to help Lulu, and Lulu to help Ford." Helmut said, "Isn't that just a mood-killer."
"A lie told for long enough becomes emotionally indistinguishable from truth." Tanya said, "I'm not going to assist you in uprooting Lucrecia's life." She stood up and started to leave. "I've got testing to do."
"Oh!" Helmut exclaimed, "Yeah, I'll come help you. I promised, didn't I?"
Tanya smiled as the mobility capsule floated behind her. "Yes, you did." It was always nice when people actually did what they said they'd do.
They left the others to plan out Ford's recovery.
His greenhouse, on the other hand, was surprisingly well-maintained. Closer inspection indicated that this was more accurately referred to as 'recently renovated', as the majority of the modern conveniences were all new, and more importantly, were all psitanium inventions that were likely brought here by Agent Mentalis.
Clearly, Agent Mentalis decided to spend his procrastination week modernizing his friend's abode. Well, as modern as it can get without any electricity but with ample amounts of psitanium. So… futuristically convenient. Agent Mentalis had laundry lists of electricity free appliances under his patent catalog, there just wasn't any method to mass produce them, so they remained luxury goods for the wealthy… or for anyone who could just make the things themselves from Otto's very expensive book filled with schematics for the devices, which was sold by a single mail-order company that he owned that was nominally for selling psitanium supplies to hobbyists. To her understanding, there were a few small businesses who also paid him royalties for the privilege of selling the consumer products in question to the aforementioned wealthy people.
The watermelon smoothie was delicious. It was mixed with some green apples, as apparently they had started drunkenly experimenting with Bob's new blender. "So, introductions." Tanya said, breaking the awkward silence. Bob and Helmut had been telepathically whispering to each other, the presence of the psychic messages, if not their contents, were perceptible to other telepaths. "Mary, Lili, this is Bob Zanotto. Bob, this is your niece Lili, my sister Mary, and I am Tanya. I assume Helmut has explained my role in his restoration by now."
"Yes, he did." Bob confirmed, his voice rough and only barely recognizable as the voice of Audie O. "Thank you for all of your hard work." Bob's mind sent a tidal wave of gratitude along with his words. Helmut joined in with that.
Wait, why was she blushing? It was just a simple thank you! "Well, it… I didn't… How could I not…"
Lili looked on in wonder. Mary cackled. "She's actually speechless." she said between laughs.
Changing her focus away from trying to reply to Bob's sincere gratitude, Tanya sent some of Mary's smoothie up her nose.
In another stunning example of Mary's poor critical thinking skills, Tanya countered Mary's attempt to seize Tanya's own shake, drinking it with zero fear.
"Mmmm!" Lili said after doing the same. "Uncle Bob, this is so good! What's your secret?"
"There is no secret ingredient, kiddo." Helmut said.
"That one has the peaches mixed in, I think." Bob added, "But it's just watermelon and peaches put in the fancy new blender Otto built for me."
"Four to one ratio." Otto pointed out. "Watermelon has a lot more water in it than other fruits, thus the name. You need at least that much to keep the flavor."
Tanya brought out a psychoportal. "If you wish to have a private discussion, you should use this." She said, floating it into the mobility capsule's slot. "We can entertain ourselves for an hour or so."
Smiling with gratitude, Bob focused and astrally projected himself into Helmut's mind, Lili jumped up. "Let's style Uncle Bob's beard!" She took some brushes and ribbons out of her backpack telekinetically.
Tanya's face twisted in disgust. "It needs a serious wash first." She pointed out. Lili took some shampoo and conditioner out of her backpack. Tanya sighed. "All right, where's his water…"
After thirty minutes of extracting all of the various gardening tools that Bob had stashed in his beard's knots, a thorough hydrokinetic washing, and an even more thorough brushing to untangle it, including some required cuts, Lili and Mary started the involved process of determining exactly how to style it.
With the difficult part done, Tanya sat down next to Agent Mentalis, who had watched the proceedings without stopping or encouraging it. "I hope you enjoyed your vacation." She said to the man.
Agent Mentalis sighed. "Yes, I suppose it was nice to spend time with Bob, even given the circumstances. I should have brought some cannabis, though. Would have been a more relaxed experience than alcohol."
Tanya hummed. "You don't need to return to the office until Wednesday, so get your head back on straight, get yourself cleaned up, and show up ready to take on your duties with enthusiasm." This was not the first time Tanya had to give that speech to an alcoholic coworker, and she did not expect it to be the last.
"...Thank you." Agent Mentalis said, "Is there anything that I missed that I should know about?"
Should she? …yeah, he does kind of need to know. "Nothing that can't wait until you return, but someone's been seeding sabotaged thinkerprint scanners into the warehouse. They look like they work, but they allow anyone through."
"Oh dear." Agent Mentalis commented, paling. "How can that wait?"
Tanya shrugged. "Evidence suggests that it was a long term plot meant to weaken our security, not something targeted. I'll finish sweeping the facility this week. As for the warehouse… that's for counterintelligence to worry about."
"Ah, too true." Agent Mentalis said, nodding in approval. "Any problem that you can foist on someone else isn't really a problem at all."
Tanya frowned. While she didn't disagree… she didn't like how he said it. "So how long do you think it's going to take to find Helmut's body?" She asked, "Also, do you think it's salvageable?"
Agent Mentalis waved off her concerns. "It's still frozen, I'm sure of that much. The Hyperglaciator created a permafrost bottom in the lake, the local psitanium below the lake continually reinforces the ice." He paused for a moment. "You know, I wonder how they're handling it? Fish can't live there anymore…"
What? Psitanium? "Grulovia has psitanium?" She asked.
"Oh yes." Agent Mentalis said, taking another sip from his whiskey bottle. "The largest deposits in Europe, actually. It was why the Soviets wanted to control it, although they had plenty within their borders. There's a lot more psitanium around than can be used so there's not a huge rush in denying it to Russia. By the time they could possibly need that extra source of psitanium, the puppet dictator will be deeply entrenched."
…Well, once she creates mass production techniques, that will change very quickly. "So how long are you scheduling for this trip?"
"Well, Helmut should be able to sense his own body from a fair distance." Agent Mentalis said, "The psychic tether between the brain and the brainstem has a lot of interesting properties."
Wait… she remembers seeing that. "Was that the experiment where you tortured that communist with his brain outside of his skull?"
Agent Mentalis winced. "Ah, you saw that. Yes, that was the one. While creating a tether of that strength requires sawing open the head, Helmut's telepathic senses are quite good." He took another sip of whiskey. "While I'm unsure how the freezing process will impact matters, there's a subtle tugging sensation that he should be able to detect if he gets within a thousand feet of his body. Once found, extracting it will be a simple matter with the equipment I intend to bring."
"Will the unfreezing process be a challenge?" Tanya asked.
"It shouldn't be." Agent Mentalis replied, "I consulted on the neurological aspects of Homer's revival; I'm familiar with the techniques and I can borrow their machinery. They'll likely send a doctor along to operate it, too." 'Homer' was the name that the frozen Neanderthal was given.
"Tanya!" Lili shouted excitedly, "What do you think? Pretty, right?"
She turned to look at Bob, who was still sitting down, insensate with Helmut's mobility capsule in his lap. Mary and Lili had decided to go for a style that reminded Tanya of a picture of the famous pirate Blackbeard that she had seen before: a dozen different tendrils, each with a candle wick burning to create a hellishly intimidating look. Except instead of candle wicks, there were instead pink ribbons, completely ruining the effect.
"I don't think pink is his color." Tanya observed.
"I told you!" Mary said to the younger girl.
"Perhaps…" Tanya looked through the greenhouse, examining the plants. Yes, this one. She telepathically linked herself to the lavender plant and carefully let it grow and thread itself underneath the ribbons, taking off each one as the structure was replaced, blooming the gentle purple flowers once the ribbon had been removed. "Then…" She paired it with some rosemary, binding pairs of tendrils together while providing a subtle color variation with their own bluish-purple flowers. "Finally…" She trimmed the ends of the beard, evening things out, and placed some sage blooms between the ends and the ties, the nearly white purple flowers creating further contrast. "There." Tanya said, nodding to herself.
"Yeah, that looks really good!" Lili complimented. "But it's missing something…"
"Maybe something in the center?" Offered Mary. "Right below his chin."
Tanya took a small cutting of the orange lily they used for the ikebana arrangement, using herbaphony to grow it into a full flower using one of the available flower pots. Placing the bloom right where Mary instructed, Tanya stood back and examined her work.
"Perfect." Lili announced. Right on time, as it turned out: a surge of mental energy heralded Bob returning to his body, and the man stood up, leaning backward with his hands on his back, attempting to correct his posture.
After a moment of grunting and stretching, Bob stood taller than he did an hour ago, no longer bent with age and misery but filled with the vim and vigor of youth. He touched his beard, noting the new design. "Huh."
"Do you like it, Uncle Bob?" Lili asked excitedly.
"It looks good, Bobby." Helmut offered.
"The composition is nice." Bob said, borrowing Tanya's sight with clairvoyance for a moment. She allowed it. "It's been a long time since this beard's been washed…"
"I know." Tanya retorted, "We had to cut off half of your chest hair to separate the two." Fortunately, she was very precise with her telekinetic blades. She'd add something about her experience shaving as a man, but honestly her experience shaving her own legs was more useful. His beard was just too long for it to have anything in common with her first life's experience. At least in the other case she was still using telekinesis.
Bob looked around his greenhouse. "...I should clean up." He said, and three large vines descended from the ceiling and started to tidy up the place. Everyone helped.
"What are you doing with all that broken glass, anyway?" Mary asked after twenty minutes of cleaning. Tanya had collected every single broken shard, and impressively large amount of them, into one pile she had floating in the air.
"Did I get it all?" Tanya asked, and after one more glance over, nodded to herself. She emptied the glass recycling bin, brought all of it together, and used pyrokinesis. It all melted into a giant mass of cherry-red silicate, the various imperfections exploding harmlessly in Tanya's psychic grip.
"Wow!" Lili said, gleeful at the radiant heat.
"Woah." Helmut said, "It's like the 4th of July."
Agent Mentalis hummed. "The panels are 24" by 24", Tanya. Three millimeters thick."
"Thank you, Agent Mentlalis." Tanya said, telekinetically cutting the glob of glass to create the desired size, gathering the remainder, and cryokinetically cooling the panels to room temperature. The useful thing about cryokinesis is that unlike literally any other means of cooling, it does so across the entire target at once, if done correctly. This meant that most drawbacks related to rapidly cooling objects flat out didn't occur, as those flaws were caused by drastically different temperatures along the structure.
After two more passes, there was a sizable stack of greenhouse glass panels and also a single sphere of glass with the remainder, not enough to make another panel. The sphere was deposited in Lili's hands "Hm, how important is it that the glass be clear?" Tanya asked, inspecting the lightly tinted window panes. Perhaps she should have separated them by color…
"For a normal greenhouse?" Bob said, inspecting one of the panes himself. "Pretty important. For me? Not very. The sunlight's the least important part. These are clear enough." He turned to Otto. "That something new? Three psychic powers, all that precise? What kind of training program are you running?"
"Wish I could take credit." Agent Mentalis replied, "But that's all Tanya. I've some devices that could replicate the feat, but she learned how to control most of her psychic powers by using math, numbers. It makes her very precise." Ironically, normal telekinesis is one of Tanya's clumsiest psychic powers. She's been practicing, though. "It makes her work a bit boring, but there's something to be said about industrial efficiency."
"Still, why'd you learn to do that?" Helmut asked.
Tanya blushed, nervously picking at the hem of her shirt. "Well… one of the classes for my degree, an art credit, was about using telekinesis to mold non-psitanium materials." She explained, "we worked with clay and plastic, mostly, but Mother's day was coming up…"
Agent Mentalis snorted. "She asked me about molding molten materials, so I showed her the machines I use for fabricating lenses, and she decided to learn how to manually accomplish the same tasks, and showed off a glass sculpture of a camilla flower as one of her projects for that class." She also learned how to make lenses, which will be incredibly useful knowledge if she ends up needing glasses in a future life.
"It's actually pronounced Camellia." Bob interjected.
Mary scowled. "Yeah, I remember that. Show-off." She had given Mom a painting she made in art class that year, one of the whole family. Including Agent Nein. Tanya would say that she was surprisingly talented at painting, but it wasn't a surprise at all; She usually won the informal competition for best Mother's day gift, but that year was an exception. So Tanya pinched her nose with telekinesis. "Hey!" Mary complained, breaking the hold with her own telekinesis.
"We're in a glass house, Mary. Don't throw stones." Tanya said, scolding her little sister. The adults chuckled at her joke. Mary glared but did nothing else. Did she not know that expression? It's old, and she learned it in her second life, so it was there too.
"Now," Tanya began, stepping into the role of 'host' because Bob certainly wasn't going to. "-it's five in the afternoon, there's alcohol, fruity drinks, and a celebratory mood." After a beat, Tanya took out one of her personal amusement inventions. "Who's up for karaoke?"
---------------------
Agents Boole, O'Peia, and Mentalis, as well as Helmut and Bob all gathered around in the Heptadome the next evening. Tanya was there too, having been invited by Helmut for… something. He was vague.
"Okay, now we've got a pretty good plan for getting my body back," Helmut said, "-but I have an announcement to make."
"Are you renewing your vows?" Agent O'Peia asked.
"No." Helmut said, before pausing. "Actually, yes, that sounds like a good idea." The iridescent telekinetic hand he was using to gesture pointed at his husband. "Bobby? After I get my body back, we should renew our vows."
"I'd like that." Bob replied, smiling softly despite the fact that he was suffering from alcohol withdrawal. "We still can't get the government to recognize it, by the way." He added.
"Really? Damn." Helmut said, disappointed.
"You should expect about four months of physical therapy from being unfrozen." Agent Mentalis pointed out. "So don't schedule it for this year if you want to fit in a suit."
"It will also give Bob time to get back into shape." Tanya added, "I don't think he can fit in his old tuxedo."
Bob coughed. "I don't have it anymore anyway…" He admitted, "I don't remember exactly when, but I destroyed most of my possessions… a few times over the years. I don't own anything from our marriage anymore beyond the greenhouse itself and the Feelmobile, and that thing's a derelict."
"I don't get hung up on weight, Bobby. You know that." Helmut said consolingly.
"That's a project for later." Agent Mentalis said, "Now Helmut, what was your announcement?"
"RIght." Helmut said, "I reviewed some of my memories, and I found something that none of you know: Lulu survived!" Tanya winced as the other members of the Psychic Six gasped. "Ford snuck her back to the Astralathe and shut her down!"
"Oh. So that's what happened." Agent Mentalis said, a little dazed.
"He was coherent enough to do that?" Agent Boole asked, his brow furrowed in thought.
"Ah, right. The second thing." Helmut said, "Whatever Ford's like… he did it. He brought Lulu and some kid, put 'em through the Astralathe, then came back a day later and turned it on himself."
"I suppose he'd have wanted to cover his trail, remove the memory of where he put Lucy…" Agent O'Peia said, thinking hard. "...but it went wrong."
Agent Mentalis, as the one who knew the most about the capabilities of the Astralathe, spoke up next: "If that's all he was doing, he wouldn't have screwed it up. Think bigger."
Bob gasped. "He wanted to forget Lucy altogether!"
Agent Boole nodded grimly. "That would do it, I think."
"So after we get my body, we need to find her!" Helmut said, resolved.
"And then what?" Tanya said. The adults turned toward her, confused. "Lucrecia's not going to remember any of you. Further, if you make her remember, you'll just unleash the Maligula personality." Probably. She didn't really know how it worked, precisely.
Agent O'Peia stared intently at Tanya. "You know something." She accused, pointing at her. Tanya kept a straight face. "You saw what Ford did when you were in his head."
Ah, she thought she had been vague enough. "I did." Tanya admitted, "The so-called 'psychic defense' that caused those troubles when I tried was him attacking me after I learned it. He defends that secret with everything he has."
"Then… if we want to fix Ford, we need to get Lulu to do it!" Helmut concluded, "Where is she?" Hm, that might actually work. However…
Tanya rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I know how to find her, and I did a few years ago. Don't bother the poor woman, she's safe and happy with what she thinks is her son and his family." They are also her actual family, but Tanya wanted to imply otherwise. "That boy was a fresh orphan, who lost his mother recently enough that Ford could slot Lucrecia right in her place." That boy just happened to be her nephew, which was what she didn't say.
"We'd really like to know, if you please." Agent Boole asked softly.
"You know, Mom's always willing to talk about things that pop up in True Psychic Tales." Tanya said, changing the subject. "I'm well aware that the Deluginists are still active. If they catch wind of Lurcecia's location, they'll stop at nothing to resurrect Maligula."
That seemed to convince them. "We need a foolproof way to prevent Lucy from going back to that." Bob declared, "Then we can get her back."
"We'd need Ford for that." Agent Mentalis pointed out. "We'd need more detail on what he did to keep her quiet before we could even think about adjusting it." After a moment, he added: "Well, if we wanted a plan before diving inside her head, anyway."
"So we need Ford to help Lulu, and Lulu to help Ford." Helmut said, "Isn't that just a mood-killer."
"A lie told for long enough becomes emotionally indistinguishable from truth." Tanya said, "I'm not going to assist you in uprooting Lucrecia's life." She stood up and started to leave. "I've got testing to do."
"Oh!" Helmut exclaimed, "Yeah, I'll come help you. I promised, didn't I?"
Tanya smiled as the mobility capsule floated behind her. "Yes, you did." It was always nice when people actually did what they said they'd do.
They left the others to plan out Ford's recovery.
- Location
- Argentina
Well, will they have to fight soviets to get the body back?
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
...does he canonically have one of those?
A goiter is a lump on the throat, although I don't really recall which piece of anatomy swells or why. Is it an alcohol-related illness?
It's reading between the lines, but just barely. You know how Bulb Bob has that weird lump sticking out of the right side of where his neck would be? You can overhear him and Helmut talking about shaving his beard later, and he says no one wants to see what's under his beard and that he's not sure what it is.
Goiters are usually caused by iodine deficiency, which is very rare in the US because we use iodized salt. But a hermit like Bob growing all his own food could run into trouble.
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Ah. That actually makes a lot of sense.
I'm gonna say that he doesn't, because he got even more reclusive over time, and is currently getting enough salt in his diet because he doesn't grow ALL of his food, just about 80% of it. This number increases as the visits from Cassie and Compton diminish over time.
I'm gonna say that he doesn't, because he got even more reclusive over time, and is currently getting enough salt in his diet because he doesn't grow ALL of his food, just about 80% of it. This number increases as the visits from Cassie and Compton diminish over time.
- Location
- new york
Who cares what the governments say! in the eyes of the psychonaut community they are legally married in all sense of the word.
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
I mean... Legally is the one way that they aren't married. Because by definition, the government's the arbiter of who can be legally married. Because they're the arbiter of what's legal or not.
They consider themselves married, as do all of their friends and (some of) their families. Bob was just warning him that that part of things hasn't changed. Even Helmut's low-key reaction was to indicate that while he thought it would be nice to have the government recognize it, it isn't going to stop him from considering the future ceremony to be 'renewing their vows' and not 'getting married for real'.
They consider themselves married, as do all of their friends and (some of) their families. Bob was just warning him that that part of things hasn't changed. Even Helmut's low-key reaction was to indicate that while he thought it would be nice to have the government recognize it, it isn't going to stop him from considering the future ceremony to be 'renewing their vows' and not 'getting married for real'.
Chapter 2.13
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
The first thing Tanya did while in Helmut's brain was to request the opportunity to learn from his nugget of wisdom, which was eagerly accepted. While the parts about modulating one's voice were ignored, as Tanya could already do that fine, the PSI King also knew a lot about composing music, and the various telepathic skills he developed off of clairvoyance were very interesting. Tanya expected that they would vastly improve her ability to program new games once she integrated this knowledge with her psitanium manipulation.
Also, he threw in a separate nugget that included some of his other psychic skills, time warp the most notable of them. This particular nugget also included more knowledge on how to evaluate and consume drugs than Tanya ever wanted to know.
This knowledge was quickly put to use, allowing them to go through one enjoyable hour of karaoke in ten minutes. Well, he called it a 'jam session', but Tanya couldn't play any instruments so it was the same thing to her.
"Okay, the time warp's gone." Helmut said, "How are you feeling?"
"You were correct, it is less draining in these circumstances." Tanya acknowledged, "But I'm still feeling a bit light headed."
"Let's take a snack break, and once you're ready let's slot me into the monkey machine." Helmut offered.
Tanya retreated from Helmut's mind, going to Agent Mentalis' desk and stealing one of his headache pills, opening up the minifridge he had hidden and washing down the pill with a bottle of what was, before being adjusted for human consumption, nutrient fluid. "Now, what else does he have…" Helmut approached her from behind, taking a glance at the various snacks Agent Mentalis has on hand.
"There's not much." Helmut commented.
"He hasn't been here to restock." Tanya explained, "I've been going through this all week." Out of chocolate milk, out of pudding, out of peanuts, out of cookies, out of those tiny cakes, out of tiny donuts… It was mostly just Agent Mentalis' supply of sandwich condiments, a nearly empty jar of pickles, and one remaining bottle of nutrient drink. "Ooh!" Tanya exclaimed. Not out of pudding after all. "Come to Tanya…"
It was just one pudding cup, but it was chocolate, so Tanya gleefully enjoyed it. Yet another advantage of being a psychic: talking with your mouth full. "So today, I was thinking we would stress test things. Do the breakfast simulation, putting a full load on Tasty and Sniffles. See if you can handle it."
"Good start, looking forward to it." Helmut replied, replying in kind with telepathy.
Tanya used telekinetic scoops to get the last dregs of pudding out of the cup. "Afterwards, you'll do the hunting simulation. Properly, this time."
Helmut was less enthusiastic about it this time. "Okay, yeah."
"The fact that you don't know anything about hunting is a bonus, here." Tanya added, "The simulation is supposed to guide you to reflect the skills of an experienced hunter." Tanya also didn't know a whole lot about hunting, but they could program a skittish deer and there were plenty of forests in her memory from the war; it was one of the rarer environments but you could fit a lot of varied experiences in ten years. The rest of the scenario she just improvised.
"Well, let's get this party started!" Helmut said, licking his lips as she loaded the breakfast simulation.
This time, the breakfast was a plate of waffles with eggs and hash browns, with a glass of orange juice. As he sat down and tucked in, using his own mental body rather than the imposed one, Tanya tested one of the secondary functions: "Bowl of cinnamon applesauce, please."
In her first life, the idea that she could ask a machine with words and have them correctly interpret them was very advanced, cutting edge technology. But with psychic technology, language processing was one of the easiest forms of control, second only to direct mental instruction by a technician. A tiny bowl of applesauce with a bright blue plastic spoon appeared. Next to it, a bib was provided. Tanya scowled.
Swallowing his bite, Helmut pointed to the bowl. "Did you order baby food on purpose?"
"I was testing its sensitivity to context." Tanya explained, "I chose that one because it had one of the largest ranges of portion sizes. It was supposed to give me a bowl that was properly sized for me. Instead it provided the smallest available size." Now she'll need to go over the coding with a fine tooth comb. She'd complain, but this possibility was exactly why she wanted to test it.
"...Then why does the bib fit?" Helmut asked.
What? How did that… Tanya picked up the bib, putting it on to test his claim. "It does...debugging this is going to take hours." She moaned, picking up the tiny bowl and shoveling it into her mouth with the tiny spoon "At least the food is good."
"True that." Helmut said with his mouth full. "This is really good."
"Okay, maybe it just…" Tanya muttered, "Strawberry oatmeal please, enough for me." She said, emphasizing the second part. It created a small bowl, but as it wasn't one that looked like it deserved to be served to someone in a high chair Tanya decided to call it a win. She was beginning to remember programming it to assume that all meals would be like PSI King's and oatmeal wasn't assumed to be the whole meal in one big bowl, like she tended to make when she was feeling lazy and Mom wasn't around to make a full meal for her. "I'm guessing there's a short-link in the associative database, if this worked."
"Hey, there's no spoon." Helmut observed.
Tanya looked at the applesauce spoon. "That's because I forgot to throw this away before asking. At least that part's working."
"I'm a little confused." Helmut admitted, "Why did you even give it the option to make baby food?"
"The database of food was literally just collected from every meal me, Mom, and Mary could remember having, but the silverware and other miscellaneous dining accouterments also drew on data on any dining partner we've had." Tanya explained as she ate her oatmeal with the tiny spoon, projecting her voice psychically, "I had to vet the list, but I focused on removing incomplete memories, corrupted data." Also, the idea of removing functionality rubbed her the wrong way. It might be useful someday. Or at least entertaining.
"Ah, and because of the multi-life thing…" Helmut said, understanding dawning upon him.
"I meant that the tiny bowls and spoons and bibs were from Mom's memories of feeding young children at the orpha-" Tanya paused, "-group home, and the simulation can put anything that fits in the bowl in them." Tanya corrected. "But yes, now that you mention it, I do remember how terrible baby food and formula tastes. Do you want some?" She ate the stuff anyway, because it still beat k-brot, but she didn't enjoy it.
"Nooo thank you." Helmut said, finishing off his drink. "Ah…" He patted his stomach and relaxed, his meal complete.
"With your ego now being as strong as it's going to be until your physical therapy is done, I think now's a good time to test deactivating the simulation while inside of it." Tanya said idly, taking off the bib and discarding it. "It should be safe." The absolute worst that could happen to her is getting booted unceremoniously from Helmut's mind, but for him? It's still probably fine.
After a moment for Helmut to brace himself, Tanya sent the signal to end the simulation, causing the environment to dissolve. As was designed, absolutely nothing strange happened, and they found themselves at the 'entrance' to Helmut's mind, the stage where his senses corralled all of his incoming sensations.
"Worked fine." Helmut said, shrugging. "No problem."
"Excellent. Now, loading the next simulation." Tanya declared.
---------------------
"Ski-doosh." Helmut said as he released the arrow. It flew straight and true, hitting the three point buck right in the lung. It dropped instantly, dead. "...Are they supposed to just drop like that?" Helmut asked, bow in hand as he looked at the dead deer.
"Yes." Tanya replied, disabling her observer status so he could see her, "I don't know enough about deer anatomy to know how much punishment they can actually take, so anything that penetrates the chest cavity is just a kill."
"You know, this isn't so bad." Helmut acknowledged, "It was kind of cool, spotting the trail and listening to the wind like that."
"One thing that will be a challenge is determining the optimal level of realism." Tanya said, frowning. "On one hand, the potential for very high realism is there. But on the other hand, reality is terrible, and gaming is supposed to be an escape from it." She pointed to the corpse. "For example, a shot like that would almost definitely kill any deer, that's a lung penetrated at the very least… but in reality, it would take some time for the deer to drown in their own blood before they actually die."
Helmut shuddered in disgust. The Link model, as it turned out, wasn't very expressive, all facial expressions were more subdued for some reason. Was it because she designed it manually? "That sounds awful."
"Exactly." Tanya said, pointing directly towards him. "It was less realistic to have the deer die immediately. However, it was more enjoyable to have that instant gratification of a dropped target." She could make plenty of realistic injury and gore simulation for killing humans, but deer? She's never hunted deer. The men took care of that. Not even her men, most of the time. Any fresh venison was hunted by the regular infantry, not the mages. Sighing, she snapped her fingers and triggered the scenario to dissolve, Helmut's avatar flaking away to reveal his normal appearance underneath.
"I have an idea:" Helmut said, stroking his now extant mustache. "What if you use an asshole animal instead? Like a white tiger or something? You know, give it a fighting chance?"
Tanya thinks back to the zoo visit Mom took her on two months ago. "...I don't see how that helps." She admits. Those tigers were a lot nicer than a lot of the other animals. "What about zebras? Zebras are jerks." At least, those zebras were jerks.
"...I've never met a zebra." Helmut admitted.
"I suppose it would be unfair to judge a whole species by the actions of a few." Tanya admitted. "Although it occurs to me that being able to hunt endangered animals might have some marketing appeal…" Now that was an idea… "I'm picturing a game where you get to wrestle various large animals now. Like, a whole progression just for bears, start with pandas, end with polar bears."
"Hey, pandas can kick ass." Helmut insisted, "They know kung fu."
"You met a panda that knew kung fu?" Tanya asked, incredulous.
"Yes." Helmut insisted, "There was this circus in Grulovia that had a panda and they taught it how to do fancy kung fu moves on command."
Really? "Was it Lucrecia's family's circus?" Tanya asked, curious.
"Yep. We all visited them about four months before that war broke out." He said, nodding to himself. "It was 1959, and Otto had just finished his experimental psitanium jet engine."
"They aren't jet engines." Tanya corrected, "They're telekinetic engines."
"Right, whatever." Helmut agreed, disinterested in minutiae. "Anyway, so he asked if anyone had anywhere across the Atlantic they wanted to go so they could test the flight range, and Lulu invited everyone to come visit her family." That sounded incredibly unsafe to fly over an ocean when they could have just traveled to California and back, but that sounded like something Agent Mentalis would do.
"It was pretty cool, seeing another kind of show business and the backstage stuff." Helmut said, "They asked Lulu to bring Wet Wanda back for just a show or two, and she was all for it when she saw the look on Ford's face after he heard what kind of show it was."
"Fascinating." Tanya deadpanned, "The panda?"
"Oh, right. So they had this Chinese guy, named Li. For some reason, he didn't like Cassie, and it was mutual. They spoke different kinds of Chinese, I think?" Tanya was guessing that it was some regional tension. Agent O'Peia was from Hong Kong, she knew that… Even if she didn't know the woman's birth name. Helmut continued: "Not really sure what it was about. Po, the panda, belonged to him. He wasn't psychic, but he joined the circus because they could translate between him and Po. In return, he had this routine that he did, where he pretended to kung fu fight with the panda."
Tanya's lips tugged up into a smile as she pictured it. She distinctly recalled a martial arts using panda in a rather popular manga from when she was a kid… She wondered if Li had a pigtail? She mimed checking a list. "Well, time for the boring part of testing: replicating bugs in as many ways as possible." With a dramatic gesture, the mealtime scenario loaded around them.
Helmut frowned. "Aw jeez."
---------------------
Being a nepotism hire, even if it was more of an apprenticeship program graduation, had many advantages. For example, Tanya didn't need to get extra authorization to work on the highest levels of security, as she could go pretty much anywhere.
"You know Tanya, I did check my office's scanners the instant Jerry told me about this." Grand Head Zanotto said. A test print was distributed to all the heads of the departments and they all checked the high security doors to see if the fake unauthorized user was granted access. She assumed that he got one too.
Tanya shrugged as she channeled more mental energy into the device, causing it to slightly expand in size. "You'll be happy to know that these are the last ones then, after this we'll be in compliance with our maintenance schedule. On the scanners, anyway." She affixed the scanner back into its mooring, re-assembling the door. "This one would have broken from depletion in another dozen-ish uses, it was down to nubs." She glanced at the bathrobe-wearing director. "Did Lili go back and forth through the door a few hundred times or something?" As a low-traffic area, his office door shouldn't be nearly this exhausted even with the large delay in maintenance.
"Yes." Grand Head Zanotto deadpanned. "She finds the strangest things to do when she gets bored."
"It's better than setting things on fire." Tanya replied as she moved to the second scanner in his office.
"Isn't that the truth." Grand Head Zanotto agreed as he turned his attention back to his paperwork. "Do you think that three days is enough time for Otto to get those college kids up to speed? He's taking a trip to Grulovia this weekend and took all of next week off because he wasn't sure how long he'll be gone."
"I suggest pairing them with senior technicians as assistants while they get their feet wet." Tanya replied. It was the best she could get from the still-employed members of the Psychic Six, to work while things get arranged. "I'll encourage Agent Mentalis to match them with mentors before he leaves."
"Thanks." Grand Head Zanotto said, putting the paper into his 'out' box and taking another from his 'in' box. "Otto's a bit contrary sometimes when I give him instructions rather than assignments. He'll take it better from you."
"Hi Tanya!" Lili shouted as she walked into her father's office like she owned the place. "Whatcha doin?"
"Working." Tanya replied, channeling more mental energy into the scanner. "All these fancy machines break if they run out of power, so I need to keep them topped up."
"Oooh…" Lili said, "Can I help?"
"No." Tanya said.
"Why not?" Lili whined.
"Because if the Psychonauts find out that my job's easy enough for a seven year old to do, they'll cut my pay." Tanya lied glibly as she put the scanner back together, which caused Grand Head Zanotto to chuckle softly. She checked the time. "Now I need to spend two hours putting together more scanners to refill the warehouse shelves." Spending the day working with her hands, mostly metaphorically but occasionally literally, was much better than office work in her opinion, more satisfying, but that didn't make the spending hours handcrafting a dozen identical fancy locks any less tedious. "Did you want to watch?" Tanya said with a wry grin.
Lili was immediately suspicious, knowing from experience that Tanya wouldn't invite her if the event in question was actually exciting (read: dangerous). "...where will you be doing it?"
"The clean room." Tanya replied as she finished putting her tools back in their proper places and started walking to the rapid transit tunnel.
Lili's frowned. "..No, I'll stay here." Not every psychic liked being in psychoisolated areas, finding the lack of telepathic noise existentially terrifying rather than soothing, like Tanya did. Lili wasn't quite that bad, but she definitely didn't like the experience. Actually, most psychics found it "spooky" at best; the only other one Tanya has ever met that liked being inside psychoisolation was Agent Boole.
…Not that she's gone around polling people. If she was a proper researcher she'd make a note to start a study on the matter, but she's an engineer so she put that stray thought out of her mind. "Goodbye, Lili. Goodbye, Grand Head Zanotto."
Tanya pointedly escaped before Grand Head Zanotto could think about asking her to refer to him more informally. She will not encourage his excessively informal behavior. This is an office!
---------------------
The rest of the week passed by in a pleasant blur of work, family time, and programming. Tanya heard from Agent Mentalis that the Psychic six attempted to fix Agent Cruller so they could finally see Lucrecia again… but they made the mistake of telling him that. No matter what they tried, Agent Cruller repelled their attacks with directed chaos, parts of his mind shattering themselves further to stymie their efforts.
So morale was low when the expedition to Grulovia started packing on Friday evening. The Pelican was claimed for the task, and Tanya strapped herself into the co-pilot's chair while Agent Mentalis communicated with air traffic control.
"So we're making a stop in Sweden?" Tanya asked, "To pick up the cryonics scientists?"
"Norway, actually." Agent Mentalis corrected, "The cryonics lab is in Norway, but Homer was found in Swedish territory, so he has Swedish citizenship and is being taught Swedish as his first modern language."
Cassie huffed disapprovingly. "Politics."
"They agreed to wait for pickup at a military base on the coast." Agent Mentalis continued, "So we'll not spend much time in the country."
"Don't expect a welcoming party." Bob joked, although one could easily mistake it for grumbling, that was just his naturally rough, whiny voice.
Tanya shrugged. "The last time I went to Norway, I was invading it. It's hard to do worse than anti-aircraft fire."
"Now that sounds like a story." Agent O'peia said, smiling at the prospect. "We've got time to hear it."
Tanya supposed they did. They weren't going nearly as fast as they could, so as to not alarm any of the various sensors that detect IBCMs. Striking a dignified pose, or a parody of one, Tanya began. "It was November 1924. The Great War had started 18 months prior, when a sabre-rattling invasion of previously lost territory by the Legadonia Entente Alliance, consisting of both Sweden and Norway, in the Imperial Norden territory, which is currently Denmark, exploded into a full retaliatory invasion by the Empire, the premier military power in Europa. Since that beginning, both the Republic of Francois, France, and the Principality of Dacia, Grulovia, declared war, leaving the Empire with a two-front war."
"Don't you mean three front?" Agent Mentalis asked, frowning.
Tanya snickered. Okay, maybe she should go back a bit to explain that. "The date was September 24, 1924. I had just been promoted to Major, to lead the 203rd Aerial Mage Rapid Response Battalion. Myself and forty-eight of the Empire's best aerial mages would be the first ones to respond to trouble, the tip of the Kaiser's spear to kill his enemies. My adjutant had discovered that according to my records, I was supposed to be celebrating my tenth birthday."
"Oh dear." Agent Boole said, looking a little ill at the reminder that Tanya was a child soldier.
"My battalion was new, untested." Tanya continued, "I had spent months giving them hellish training, all to whittle down my volunteers down to the budgeted forty-eight mages. That was all the logistics division could provide when it came to the revolutionary new technology: the Type 97 dual core computation orb." She smiled. "Imagine my joy when Dacia declared war that very day, a technologically inferior foe with pathetic anti-air capabilities. This would not be a battle. This would be a live-fire exercise, the perfect birthday gift. Supported only by the 17th Army Group and the 7th air fleet, the 203rd introduced themselves to the international scene by routing the entirety of the Dacian army and forcing a surrender in merely six weeks, seventy thousand men defeating a force of over six hundred thousand."
Despite being hippies, the collected psychics seemed entranced by Tanya's war story as she continued. Really, Osfjord was one of Tanya's finest moments in the war. There was nothing questionable about her actions, there was no ambiguity, it was a clear victory that achieved a clear strategic gain in the northern front. Her men performed marvelously, the Dacian invasion the perfect whetstone to ensure that they got all of their stupid of of their systems before the real test began. It was good that they did, because there was plenty of that during those six weeks.
Of course, it was also what had sealed her fate, to fight near constantly in the worst fronts for the next seven years.
"After the battle, the 203rd was given a well-earned vacation, a prize that, soon enough, would be scarce as the war went on. At least, until we were called in for an emergency mission, but that's a different story." Tanya said, finishing her tale. The collected psychics applauded politely.
"Great story, Tanya!" Helmut complimented. "I'd never have expected flying troops to jump out of a plane. It's crazy, in a good way."
"Right on time, too." Agent Mentalis said, as the Norwegian military came on the radio, starting the landing process.
After the military base came into view, Tanya burst out laughing. They were halfway to it when Helmut asked: "What's so funny?"
Tanya let her laughter wind down, wiping a tear from her eye. "I recognize those fjords." After all, she was just talking about them.
"I hope this landing is nicer than your last one." Agent Mentalis joked as he directed the Pelican to land.
"It's not the same without anti-aircraft fire." Tanya replied, grinning. "But I suppose It's not the time of year for those kinds of fireworks."
One stop here, another stop at the Psychonauts base in Denmark to get some cold weather gear and recharge the engine, and it was off to Grulovia.
Hopefully this will be easy.
---------------------
Also, he threw in a separate nugget that included some of his other psychic skills, time warp the most notable of them. This particular nugget also included more knowledge on how to evaluate and consume drugs than Tanya ever wanted to know.
This knowledge was quickly put to use, allowing them to go through one enjoyable hour of karaoke in ten minutes. Well, he called it a 'jam session', but Tanya couldn't play any instruments so it was the same thing to her.
"Okay, the time warp's gone." Helmut said, "How are you feeling?"
"You were correct, it is less draining in these circumstances." Tanya acknowledged, "But I'm still feeling a bit light headed."
"Let's take a snack break, and once you're ready let's slot me into the monkey machine." Helmut offered.
Tanya retreated from Helmut's mind, going to Agent Mentalis' desk and stealing one of his headache pills, opening up the minifridge he had hidden and washing down the pill with a bottle of what was, before being adjusted for human consumption, nutrient fluid. "Now, what else does he have…" Helmut approached her from behind, taking a glance at the various snacks Agent Mentalis has on hand.
"There's not much." Helmut commented.
"He hasn't been here to restock." Tanya explained, "I've been going through this all week." Out of chocolate milk, out of pudding, out of peanuts, out of cookies, out of those tiny cakes, out of tiny donuts… It was mostly just Agent Mentalis' supply of sandwich condiments, a nearly empty jar of pickles, and one remaining bottle of nutrient drink. "Ooh!" Tanya exclaimed. Not out of pudding after all. "Come to Tanya…"
It was just one pudding cup, but it was chocolate, so Tanya gleefully enjoyed it. Yet another advantage of being a psychic: talking with your mouth full. "So today, I was thinking we would stress test things. Do the breakfast simulation, putting a full load on Tasty and Sniffles. See if you can handle it."
"Good start, looking forward to it." Helmut replied, replying in kind with telepathy.
Tanya used telekinetic scoops to get the last dregs of pudding out of the cup. "Afterwards, you'll do the hunting simulation. Properly, this time."
Helmut was less enthusiastic about it this time. "Okay, yeah."
"The fact that you don't know anything about hunting is a bonus, here." Tanya added, "The simulation is supposed to guide you to reflect the skills of an experienced hunter." Tanya also didn't know a whole lot about hunting, but they could program a skittish deer and there were plenty of forests in her memory from the war; it was one of the rarer environments but you could fit a lot of varied experiences in ten years. The rest of the scenario she just improvised.
"Well, let's get this party started!" Helmut said, licking his lips as she loaded the breakfast simulation.
This time, the breakfast was a plate of waffles with eggs and hash browns, with a glass of orange juice. As he sat down and tucked in, using his own mental body rather than the imposed one, Tanya tested one of the secondary functions: "Bowl of cinnamon applesauce, please."
In her first life, the idea that she could ask a machine with words and have them correctly interpret them was very advanced, cutting edge technology. But with psychic technology, language processing was one of the easiest forms of control, second only to direct mental instruction by a technician. A tiny bowl of applesauce with a bright blue plastic spoon appeared. Next to it, a bib was provided. Tanya scowled.
Swallowing his bite, Helmut pointed to the bowl. "Did you order baby food on purpose?"
"I was testing its sensitivity to context." Tanya explained, "I chose that one because it had one of the largest ranges of portion sizes. It was supposed to give me a bowl that was properly sized for me. Instead it provided the smallest available size." Now she'll need to go over the coding with a fine tooth comb. She'd complain, but this possibility was exactly why she wanted to test it.
"...Then why does the bib fit?" Helmut asked.
What? How did that… Tanya picked up the bib, putting it on to test his claim. "It does...debugging this is going to take hours." She moaned, picking up the tiny bowl and shoveling it into her mouth with the tiny spoon "At least the food is good."
"True that." Helmut said with his mouth full. "This is really good."
"Okay, maybe it just…" Tanya muttered, "Strawberry oatmeal please, enough for me." She said, emphasizing the second part. It created a small bowl, but as it wasn't one that looked like it deserved to be served to someone in a high chair Tanya decided to call it a win. She was beginning to remember programming it to assume that all meals would be like PSI King's and oatmeal wasn't assumed to be the whole meal in one big bowl, like she tended to make when she was feeling lazy and Mom wasn't around to make a full meal for her. "I'm guessing there's a short-link in the associative database, if this worked."
"Hey, there's no spoon." Helmut observed.
Tanya looked at the applesauce spoon. "That's because I forgot to throw this away before asking. At least that part's working."
"I'm a little confused." Helmut admitted, "Why did you even give it the option to make baby food?"
"The database of food was literally just collected from every meal me, Mom, and Mary could remember having, but the silverware and other miscellaneous dining accouterments also drew on data on any dining partner we've had." Tanya explained as she ate her oatmeal with the tiny spoon, projecting her voice psychically, "I had to vet the list, but I focused on removing incomplete memories, corrupted data." Also, the idea of removing functionality rubbed her the wrong way. It might be useful someday. Or at least entertaining.
"Ah, and because of the multi-life thing…" Helmut said, understanding dawning upon him.
"I meant that the tiny bowls and spoons and bibs were from Mom's memories of feeding young children at the orpha-" Tanya paused, "-group home, and the simulation can put anything that fits in the bowl in them." Tanya corrected. "But yes, now that you mention it, I do remember how terrible baby food and formula tastes. Do you want some?" She ate the stuff anyway, because it still beat k-brot, but she didn't enjoy it.
"Nooo thank you." Helmut said, finishing off his drink. "Ah…" He patted his stomach and relaxed, his meal complete.
"With your ego now being as strong as it's going to be until your physical therapy is done, I think now's a good time to test deactivating the simulation while inside of it." Tanya said idly, taking off the bib and discarding it. "It should be safe." The absolute worst that could happen to her is getting booted unceremoniously from Helmut's mind, but for him? It's still probably fine.
After a moment for Helmut to brace himself, Tanya sent the signal to end the simulation, causing the environment to dissolve. As was designed, absolutely nothing strange happened, and they found themselves at the 'entrance' to Helmut's mind, the stage where his senses corralled all of his incoming sensations.
"Worked fine." Helmut said, shrugging. "No problem."
"Excellent. Now, loading the next simulation." Tanya declared.
---------------------
"Ski-doosh." Helmut said as he released the arrow. It flew straight and true, hitting the three point buck right in the lung. It dropped instantly, dead. "...Are they supposed to just drop like that?" Helmut asked, bow in hand as he looked at the dead deer.
"Yes." Tanya replied, disabling her observer status so he could see her, "I don't know enough about deer anatomy to know how much punishment they can actually take, so anything that penetrates the chest cavity is just a kill."
"You know, this isn't so bad." Helmut acknowledged, "It was kind of cool, spotting the trail and listening to the wind like that."
"One thing that will be a challenge is determining the optimal level of realism." Tanya said, frowning. "On one hand, the potential for very high realism is there. But on the other hand, reality is terrible, and gaming is supposed to be an escape from it." She pointed to the corpse. "For example, a shot like that would almost definitely kill any deer, that's a lung penetrated at the very least… but in reality, it would take some time for the deer to drown in their own blood before they actually die."
Helmut shuddered in disgust. The Link model, as it turned out, wasn't very expressive, all facial expressions were more subdued for some reason. Was it because she designed it manually? "That sounds awful."
"Exactly." Tanya said, pointing directly towards him. "It was less realistic to have the deer die immediately. However, it was more enjoyable to have that instant gratification of a dropped target." She could make plenty of realistic injury and gore simulation for killing humans, but deer? She's never hunted deer. The men took care of that. Not even her men, most of the time. Any fresh venison was hunted by the regular infantry, not the mages. Sighing, she snapped her fingers and triggered the scenario to dissolve, Helmut's avatar flaking away to reveal his normal appearance underneath.
"I have an idea:" Helmut said, stroking his now extant mustache. "What if you use an asshole animal instead? Like a white tiger or something? You know, give it a fighting chance?"
Tanya thinks back to the zoo visit Mom took her on two months ago. "...I don't see how that helps." She admits. Those tigers were a lot nicer than a lot of the other animals. "What about zebras? Zebras are jerks." At least, those zebras were jerks.
"...I've never met a zebra." Helmut admitted.
"I suppose it would be unfair to judge a whole species by the actions of a few." Tanya admitted. "Although it occurs to me that being able to hunt endangered animals might have some marketing appeal…" Now that was an idea… "I'm picturing a game where you get to wrestle various large animals now. Like, a whole progression just for bears, start with pandas, end with polar bears."
"Hey, pandas can kick ass." Helmut insisted, "They know kung fu."
"You met a panda that knew kung fu?" Tanya asked, incredulous.
"Yes." Helmut insisted, "There was this circus in Grulovia that had a panda and they taught it how to do fancy kung fu moves on command."
Really? "Was it Lucrecia's family's circus?" Tanya asked, curious.
"Yep. We all visited them about four months before that war broke out." He said, nodding to himself. "It was 1959, and Otto had just finished his experimental psitanium jet engine."
"They aren't jet engines." Tanya corrected, "They're telekinetic engines."
"Right, whatever." Helmut agreed, disinterested in minutiae. "Anyway, so he asked if anyone had anywhere across the Atlantic they wanted to go so they could test the flight range, and Lulu invited everyone to come visit her family." That sounded incredibly unsafe to fly over an ocean when they could have just traveled to California and back, but that sounded like something Agent Mentalis would do.
"It was pretty cool, seeing another kind of show business and the backstage stuff." Helmut said, "They asked Lulu to bring Wet Wanda back for just a show or two, and she was all for it when she saw the look on Ford's face after he heard what kind of show it was."
"Fascinating." Tanya deadpanned, "The panda?"
"Oh, right. So they had this Chinese guy, named Li. For some reason, he didn't like Cassie, and it was mutual. They spoke different kinds of Chinese, I think?" Tanya was guessing that it was some regional tension. Agent O'Peia was from Hong Kong, she knew that… Even if she didn't know the woman's birth name. Helmut continued: "Not really sure what it was about. Po, the panda, belonged to him. He wasn't psychic, but he joined the circus because they could translate between him and Po. In return, he had this routine that he did, where he pretended to kung fu fight with the panda."
Tanya's lips tugged up into a smile as she pictured it. She distinctly recalled a martial arts using panda in a rather popular manga from when she was a kid… She wondered if Li had a pigtail? She mimed checking a list. "Well, time for the boring part of testing: replicating bugs in as many ways as possible." With a dramatic gesture, the mealtime scenario loaded around them.
Helmut frowned. "Aw jeez."
---------------------
Being a nepotism hire, even if it was more of an apprenticeship program graduation, had many advantages. For example, Tanya didn't need to get extra authorization to work on the highest levels of security, as she could go pretty much anywhere.
"You know Tanya, I did check my office's scanners the instant Jerry told me about this." Grand Head Zanotto said. A test print was distributed to all the heads of the departments and they all checked the high security doors to see if the fake unauthorized user was granted access. She assumed that he got one too.
Tanya shrugged as she channeled more mental energy into the device, causing it to slightly expand in size. "You'll be happy to know that these are the last ones then, after this we'll be in compliance with our maintenance schedule. On the scanners, anyway." She affixed the scanner back into its mooring, re-assembling the door. "This one would have broken from depletion in another dozen-ish uses, it was down to nubs." She glanced at the bathrobe-wearing director. "Did Lili go back and forth through the door a few hundred times or something?" As a low-traffic area, his office door shouldn't be nearly this exhausted even with the large delay in maintenance.
"Yes." Grand Head Zanotto deadpanned. "She finds the strangest things to do when she gets bored."
"It's better than setting things on fire." Tanya replied as she moved to the second scanner in his office.
"Isn't that the truth." Grand Head Zanotto agreed as he turned his attention back to his paperwork. "Do you think that three days is enough time for Otto to get those college kids up to speed? He's taking a trip to Grulovia this weekend and took all of next week off because he wasn't sure how long he'll be gone."
"I suggest pairing them with senior technicians as assistants while they get their feet wet." Tanya replied. It was the best she could get from the still-employed members of the Psychic Six, to work while things get arranged. "I'll encourage Agent Mentalis to match them with mentors before he leaves."
"Thanks." Grand Head Zanotto said, putting the paper into his 'out' box and taking another from his 'in' box. "Otto's a bit contrary sometimes when I give him instructions rather than assignments. He'll take it better from you."
"Hi Tanya!" Lili shouted as she walked into her father's office like she owned the place. "Whatcha doin?"
"Working." Tanya replied, channeling more mental energy into the scanner. "All these fancy machines break if they run out of power, so I need to keep them topped up."
"Oooh…" Lili said, "Can I help?"
"No." Tanya said.
"Why not?" Lili whined.
"Because if the Psychonauts find out that my job's easy enough for a seven year old to do, they'll cut my pay." Tanya lied glibly as she put the scanner back together, which caused Grand Head Zanotto to chuckle softly. She checked the time. "Now I need to spend two hours putting together more scanners to refill the warehouse shelves." Spending the day working with her hands, mostly metaphorically but occasionally literally, was much better than office work in her opinion, more satisfying, but that didn't make the spending hours handcrafting a dozen identical fancy locks any less tedious. "Did you want to watch?" Tanya said with a wry grin.
Lili was immediately suspicious, knowing from experience that Tanya wouldn't invite her if the event in question was actually exciting (read: dangerous). "...where will you be doing it?"
"The clean room." Tanya replied as she finished putting her tools back in their proper places and started walking to the rapid transit tunnel.
Lili's frowned. "..No, I'll stay here." Not every psychic liked being in psychoisolated areas, finding the lack of telepathic noise existentially terrifying rather than soothing, like Tanya did. Lili wasn't quite that bad, but she definitely didn't like the experience. Actually, most psychics found it "spooky" at best; the only other one Tanya has ever met that liked being inside psychoisolation was Agent Boole.
…Not that she's gone around polling people. If she was a proper researcher she'd make a note to start a study on the matter, but she's an engineer so she put that stray thought out of her mind. "Goodbye, Lili. Goodbye, Grand Head Zanotto."
Tanya pointedly escaped before Grand Head Zanotto could think about asking her to refer to him more informally. She will not encourage his excessively informal behavior. This is an office!
---------------------
The rest of the week passed by in a pleasant blur of work, family time, and programming. Tanya heard from Agent Mentalis that the Psychic six attempted to fix Agent Cruller so they could finally see Lucrecia again… but they made the mistake of telling him that. No matter what they tried, Agent Cruller repelled their attacks with directed chaos, parts of his mind shattering themselves further to stymie their efforts.
So morale was low when the expedition to Grulovia started packing on Friday evening. The Pelican was claimed for the task, and Tanya strapped herself into the co-pilot's chair while Agent Mentalis communicated with air traffic control.
"So we're making a stop in Sweden?" Tanya asked, "To pick up the cryonics scientists?"
"Norway, actually." Agent Mentalis corrected, "The cryonics lab is in Norway, but Homer was found in Swedish territory, so he has Swedish citizenship and is being taught Swedish as his first modern language."
Cassie huffed disapprovingly. "Politics."
"They agreed to wait for pickup at a military base on the coast." Agent Mentalis continued, "So we'll not spend much time in the country."
"Don't expect a welcoming party." Bob joked, although one could easily mistake it for grumbling, that was just his naturally rough, whiny voice.
Tanya shrugged. "The last time I went to Norway, I was invading it. It's hard to do worse than anti-aircraft fire."
"Now that sounds like a story." Agent O'peia said, smiling at the prospect. "We've got time to hear it."
Tanya supposed they did. They weren't going nearly as fast as they could, so as to not alarm any of the various sensors that detect IBCMs. Striking a dignified pose, or a parody of one, Tanya began. "It was November 1924. The Great War had started 18 months prior, when a sabre-rattling invasion of previously lost territory by the Legadonia Entente Alliance, consisting of both Sweden and Norway, in the Imperial Norden territory, which is currently Denmark, exploded into a full retaliatory invasion by the Empire, the premier military power in Europa. Since that beginning, both the Republic of Francois, France, and the Principality of Dacia, Grulovia, declared war, leaving the Empire with a two-front war."
"Don't you mean three front?" Agent Mentalis asked, frowning.
Tanya snickered. Okay, maybe she should go back a bit to explain that. "The date was September 24, 1924. I had just been promoted to Major, to lead the 203rd Aerial Mage Rapid Response Battalion. Myself and forty-eight of the Empire's best aerial mages would be the first ones to respond to trouble, the tip of the Kaiser's spear to kill his enemies. My adjutant had discovered that according to my records, I was supposed to be celebrating my tenth birthday."
"Oh dear." Agent Boole said, looking a little ill at the reminder that Tanya was a child soldier.
"My battalion was new, untested." Tanya continued, "I had spent months giving them hellish training, all to whittle down my volunteers down to the budgeted forty-eight mages. That was all the logistics division could provide when it came to the revolutionary new technology: the Type 97 dual core computation orb." She smiled. "Imagine my joy when Dacia declared war that very day, a technologically inferior foe with pathetic anti-air capabilities. This would not be a battle. This would be a live-fire exercise, the perfect birthday gift. Supported only by the 17th Army Group and the 7th air fleet, the 203rd introduced themselves to the international scene by routing the entirety of the Dacian army and forcing a surrender in merely six weeks, seventy thousand men defeating a force of over six hundred thousand."
Despite being hippies, the collected psychics seemed entranced by Tanya's war story as she continued. Really, Osfjord was one of Tanya's finest moments in the war. There was nothing questionable about her actions, there was no ambiguity, it was a clear victory that achieved a clear strategic gain in the northern front. Her men performed marvelously, the Dacian invasion the perfect whetstone to ensure that they got all of their stupid of of their systems before the real test began. It was good that they did, because there was plenty of that during those six weeks.
Of course, it was also what had sealed her fate, to fight near constantly in the worst fronts for the next seven years.
"After the battle, the 203rd was given a well-earned vacation, a prize that, soon enough, would be scarce as the war went on. At least, until we were called in for an emergency mission, but that's a different story." Tanya said, finishing her tale. The collected psychics applauded politely.
"Great story, Tanya!" Helmut complimented. "I'd never have expected flying troops to jump out of a plane. It's crazy, in a good way."
"Right on time, too." Agent Mentalis said, as the Norwegian military came on the radio, starting the landing process.
After the military base came into view, Tanya burst out laughing. They were halfway to it when Helmut asked: "What's so funny?"
Tanya let her laughter wind down, wiping a tear from her eye. "I recognize those fjords." After all, she was just talking about them.
"I hope this landing is nicer than your last one." Agent Mentalis joked as he directed the Pelican to land.
"It's not the same without anti-aircraft fire." Tanya replied, grinning. "But I suppose It's not the time of year for those kinds of fireworks."
One stop here, another stop at the Psychonauts base in Denmark to get some cold weather gear and recharge the engine, and it was off to Grulovia.
Hopefully this will be easy.
---------------------
- Location
- Askew to the British Isles
Nice shout out for Helmut to reference another role his voice actor, Jack Black, stared in.
Oh dear.
Oh dear.
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- Location
- Argentina
I wonder what psychic monster they will have to fight?
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
Things never got that bad. The worst it got was more 'we had to kill Communist civilians because the madmen gave them guns and terrified them into not surrendering'.
The point was, the line between enemy soldier and civilian blurred when facing the communists. Tanya had hundreds of thousands of men put in front of her army that she really would have preferred not to kill, but they were enemy combatants, so she couldn't just not kill them unless they surrendered. Which they never did. It left a bad taste in her mouth, killing so many because communists are just such terrible, irrational people.
Jiopaba
Eat Lightning; Crap Success.
I'm partly joking there, but if you think they didn't light women and children on fire, I think I might need to redirect your attention to the Arene Massacre. Canonically half the population of the city was killed, and the majority of those casualties were probably not enemy combatants. They may not have poured gasoline directly on cowering civilians and thrown matches on them, but it was clearly meant to be quite horrific.
If Tanya were going to feel sketchy about anything she did, I'd say bombing a civilian-occupied city back into the stone age by blowing the stone roofs off buildings and dropping incendiaries on it until the whole city was ablaze is probably pretty up there.
Requiem_Jeer
The Most High
The 'to make a point' part of your description makes things much, much worse. As in, making it an unambiguous evil that was far worse than anything the Empire ever did.
Arenne was complicated. Describing it as "burning women and children to make a point" is inaccurate to the point where you are describing a completely different series of events.
Edit: More importantly, while that is indeed what happened, as was emphasized in book one, Tanya is not culpable for Arenne. She was not in charge. She did not issue any orders to the artillery, she followed her own orders, which were to attack the Francois mages.
The reason Tanya feels guilt about it is because she is the one who penned the legal treatise that was used to justify the attack as an assignment back when she was studying the laws of war, and because she is the one who conceptualized the artillery bombardment technique that you just described. But she was not the one who ordered those things to be done, and even at the time she was quite distressed that things went that far. Her speech to Grantz was also trying to convince herself of the truth of her words.
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