Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective Epilogue 2
🕑 Added 2024-06-03 14:00:09 +0000 UTCOkay, to be clear: I don't actually like how this chapter goes. But it does set up the series of future lives snippets I was planning on doing as the rest of the epilogues, even if I couldn't manage to muster up a satisfactory amount of stuff between the end of Book 3 and the end of that life.
But it wouldn't be the first time I've regretted doing something that sounded like a good idea at the time. Enjoy.
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[2015, Age 51]
“And… Stream on.” Tanya said to herself, pressing the mental button that communicated that command to her setup. Automatically, the announcement that the stream was starting was sent on all of her social medias.
Instantly, the viewer count started ramping up to the thousands, proof that she had adequately hyped up her debut as a streamer.
There was a one-minute ‘Stream starting soon’ screen between her hitting the button and the stream actually starting, which she had filled with a collage of her favorite True Psychic Tales panels, but she took a quick glance at the mirror as she waited for the timer to get to zero.
While Tanya had thought, before she got them, that she would wear her wrinkles with pride, it bothered her enough to see them that she finally used those long-ago makeup lessons to start concealing what remained after the strict regimen of expensive skin care methods removed the bulk of them. She still wore her hair short, having long since mastered how to make the curly locks look presentable instead of being a chaotic mess.
For the stream, she decided to wear what now passed as her everyday wear, a neat lightly-colored blouse, green today, along with a labcoat and some sensible navy slacks. Finishing off the look were her reading glasses currently worn around her neck on a chain, as she had started to become a bit farsighted with age and thought they made her look a bit more respectable.
Three… two… one… action. “Hello everyone!” Tanya said cheerily, using all of her ‘rich auntie' energy. “Welcome to my new live streaming website, charitystreams.com!” Simplicity was best. “All money donated to any streamer on this website will be donated to the designated cause in full, the overhead comes out of my own pocket, so don't worry about that.”
Tanya glanced at the chat display, a projected screen that was placed far enough away and with a big enough font to be easily read. “Okay, lots of questions here. All in good time. First, introductions! As I'm sure all of you know, I am Tanya Dosva, inventor. As the owner of the site, my charity is the default one for anyone who wishes to stream for a good cause without having strong feelings for any cause in particular. The Degurechaff Foundation supports many things, but the unifying ethos is that it is anti-violence. Mostly, this is anti-war, providing support for child soldier rehabilitation, war refugees, things of that nature. The Foundation’s website is in the link below, in the box designated for the current stream’s charity.”
The moderators for her chat, a helpful group, were already posting the questions deemed ‘on topic’ in a separate chat window for her to address. The quick and dirty AI she coded with language processing (simplicity itself with psitanium computing) controlled a counter by each question noting how many times it came up. “Now, I’m seeing the most common question is what I’m going to be streaming. The twitter poll over the last two weeks was surprisingly even, “ Of the eight options, five of them were within two percent of each other, although the actual winner was ‘show off my research’, “-so I’ve decided to do a little bit of everything today. When I feel like it, I’ll run a few more streams, each dedicated to one of those options. First, I’ll give you all a tour of my house.” Tanya paused. “...Well, this house. It’s the one I consider my primary residence: my Houston mansion. I do a lot of my research here, which requires a lot of space, and it’s logistically easier to get all of the highly specialized equipment I need when I’m in one of the thick arteries of international trade.” Also, she’s been doing a lot of space-oriented research lately, so being able to invite NASA eggheads over has been a large advantage. Not to mention the medical research, which was also a large strength of the city.
…Well, zero state-based income taxes and favorable aircar regulations were a bit of an advantage too. Some states had banned her mecha-car, forcing her to own multiple aircars. “Moving on,” Tanya said, walking out of the room and letting the streaming setup follow her, the filming AI she coded for the purpose shifting around obstacles like a professional. After a few turns, she presented the first tour destination. “This is my living room. As you can see, it looks pretty much like any other, just… more expensive. I have an entertainment setup, couches, and decorative displays.” She spent a few minutes going over the displays before moving on. “This is my kitchen. It’s very fancy and can handle large quantities, as you can see.” She could use telekinesis to short-cut all of the issues that could arise from using a restaurant-quality kitchen for personal meals, after all. She just ordered delivery when she didn’t feel like cooking, and had a catering company on contract to send over cooks and food whenever she had large parties. “Over here is my private dining table, when I’m eating with personal friends or family.” Tanya pointed to a door on the opposite side of the kitchen from the dining table, which was close enough that the person cooking could socialize with the people sitting at it. She was usually the one cooking when she had family over, after all. “Through that set of double doors is the big rich person dining room, for when I have business meetings over a meal. It seats one hundred and twenty and has a stage for any announcements that need to occur.”
The rest of the non-work areas of the mansion was more of the same, each room having its own designated purpose and reason for her to need it that way. “-although admittedly, I’ve yet to have the guest wing occupied at capacity. So I probably have too many guest rooms.” Tanya said, going to the final part of the tour. “Finally, this is my bedroom.” She announced, opening the door and showing it off. Immediately, her cat awoke from her nap. “This is Byakko-chan, my cat. She’s a Bengal tiger with the rare leucism mutation resulting in a white coloration while retaining the stripes that albino tigers lack.” The tiger rumbled as it wandered over and nuzzled Tanya, who gave her a big hug.
“Are you done with all the talking?” Byakko-chan asked, as the only reason Tanya had such an exotic beast as a pet was that zoolinguism made it a lot easier to domesticate individual examples of otherwise wild species.
“Not yet, Byakko-chan.” Tanya whispered back. “Do you want to play with your toys?”
“I want a meat fruit.” Byakko-chan replied, whining in a way that provokes sympathy and pity. Spoiled beast…
“I’ll get you one, go to the garden and wait for it.” Tanya promised, before turning back to the camera. “Now seems like a good time to take a break. All that talking has made me thirsty, so take five minutes to stretch your legs, replenish your own victuals, things of that nature. I have to fill a pumpkin with ground meat for Byakko-chan. She loves those things, and I have to limit her to one per day.” Most mammalian pets, personality-wise, could be compared unflatteringly to toddlers. In this case, Byakko-chan was one of those who insisted on watching the same movie hundreds of times, with the number of things she liked able to be counted on one hand, and being utterly disinterested in new experiences for the most part. But sleeping while laying against a seven hundred pound mountain of contentedness-radiating warm fur was exquisite, so she tolerated her pet’s eccentricities. “See you soon!”
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With her pet happily batting at her treat in the background, a refreshing glass of lemonade down her throat and a steaming cup of coffee in her hand, she started up the stream again. “I’m back!” She announced, walking down the back garden’s cobbled path to the separate buildings where she did her research. “So next we’ll do the actual winner of the poll, showing off my latest research!” She said cheerily, walking into the first building. “Anyone who’s been paying attention to my academic publications and my company’s press releases won’t find anything revelatory, but there’s a difference between the dry delivery of science and seeing the labs for yourselves.”
Tanya took a moment to check the chat and the various outputs of the moderators and AI. “Yes, Byakko-chan’s a little spoiled, she’s gotten a bit chunky.” She said, nodding in agreement. “Moving on, this is my robotics laboratory.” She said, showing off the various displays. “This is where I make all those little features of my company’s robots, both the psitanium AI cores and the various optimizations and features I incorporate into the chassis.”
Her laboratory was largely modular, with the walls and ceiling filled with frames that held boxes, machines, and tools that she used telekinesis to fetch. “The intent of my research is to improve the full-body replacement technology, improve the end-of-life care facets of the robotic chassis.” She opened up a specific case. “This is the model that’s intended to be my own replacement, in case something happens to my body without my brain getting injured.”
The gynoid that she had created as her emergency body was reasonably utilitarian, dressed in a utility jumpsuit. She zipped it open to show off the chest, which was a gaping hole with lots of little connectors. “This would be where the biopod would be slotted in. In case you don’t keep up with the latest medical advances, a biopod is a bit like a brain ball, but smaller, meant to be slotted into a larger device like this one.” She waved the camera in closer, and the AI controlling it obliged. “This bit is where the nutrient fluid connects to the tanks in the hips, this is the pump that would keep the fluid cycling…” She zipped down further, showing the hips. “Nature’s own design is best for this part. This is the bit that functions as both the bladder and kidneys, filtering out any waste toxins from the biopod’s fluids and venting it along with excess water. This tube here with the gizmos along it analyzes the fluid input from the mouth, determining if it is suitable for introduction to the biopod’s systems, and if not, it ejects it back out with this pump here.” Much like a space habitat, a human body was mostly plumbing. Naturally, any life support system would follow suit. “It’s a continuous replenishment system instead of a normal brain ball undergoing periodic flushing, which should reduce dysphoria through the emulation of these biological systems.”
Tanya continued to show off the features of full body replacement technology, each of which was patented by someone, not necessarily her. “The sensory feedback from the synthetic skin is, of course, the largest obstacle to improvement, so we’re throwing a lot of money and man-hours trying to figure out a combination of psitanium, our new patented synthetic nerves, and various structural materials and assembly methods that can provide both sensitivity and durability at the lowest possible price point.”
She glanced at the chat again. The raw feed was, of course, basically impossible to parse due to how fast it was going, but her moderators and analytical AI indicated… that she should move on. “Well, that’s enough in the robotics lab.” Tanya announced, “While yes, my company does do a lot of actual robots instead of full-body replacements, I don’t personally do much for that part of the business anymore. My work in psitanium AI cores forms the foundation of that particular industry, and some parts of my work in this lab can equally benefit those…” Tanya shrugged. “Eh.”
She moved on to her second lab. “Now this is where I do my space research. I have fully isolated this lab from as many factors as I could, a fully closed system, in an attempt to work out long-term habitation. As not many people know, psitanium in space is… trickier than one might think. Outside of a biosphere, psitanium breaks down a lot faster than it does within one, so isolation, saturation, and ruggedization are the buzzwords of the industry.”
The window into the closed system… well, it was actually a screen outputting the data fed from the internal sensors, but it was made to look like an observation window. Anyway, through the window was a hydroponic farm, filled with specially engineered crops designed to both feed the crew and produce a much larger ratio of psychic energy than ordinary plants, which is used in the habitat’s psitanium-based technology.
She cycled the display to the various rooms of the habitat. “The current inhabitants are all chimpanzees, rabbits, and mealworms with a few robots handling anything the monkeys neglect. I occasionally check in with them but they have enough entertainment options and know what they’re getting into, so it’s a decent approximation of real conditions. Over there is the psitanium sand generator that’s extracting the amount of psychic energy that would be creating artificial gravity, so that’s taken into account. The current experimental run’s been going for only four days, and the record before needing to shut it down is two months. My goal is to keep it going for a full year.” She was considering adding chickens, too, but that should probably wait until it goes for a human trial. The chimps will eat the rabbit meat, but they preferred the mealworms and that did complicate the attempt to create an environment that can sustain a biosphere for an extended period. “Obviously, entropy alone makes creating a truly self-sustaining system a fool’s errand, but if I can set up a space habitat that can handle ten years before needing additional resources, that opens up literal worlds of possibilities.”
After a moment of basking in the science, cycling the display some more, she turned and left. “Those are my two current research projects; I don’t have that much time to do science or development anymore, but I make do.” This was some false modesty, she only needed maybe a half hour a day going over the various data points of her space habitat research to ensure she stays on top of things and produce a report for later. The robotics lab was more of a hobby, thrice a week she spent a half dozen hours or so tinkering for fun. It was productive tinkering, but she had an army of scientists and engineers working on those same problems, so more often than not she was just incorporating their latest advances into her emergency body or her robot maid or what have you instead of actually developing anything.
“Now, with that out of the way, let’s move on to the next part of the stream: video games!” Tanya cheered, “I’ve started a poll for which ones I’ll play, for varying stream experience. Whether you’d prefer to see me enjoy myself, struggle, or suffer, or if you’d rather see me in a mental world or still in the physical one, I put an option for all the possibilities I could think of. Until then, I’ll put us on another break so I can set myself up in the gaming room with some snacks.”
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[2030, age 66]
One thing that Tanya had never expected to actually happen was the alien invasion. They had crippled what few military assets remained in space and orbit as their opening move, and if there was any human still off earth and alive… Well, none were answering the calls.
Over the decades, the proliferation of psychic technology had successfully transitioned the Psychonauts from an espionage agency to a regulatory one. They still did the research and health care they did before, but the mandate to counter international psychic malfeasance had more or less been replaced wholesale with ‘ensure no one’s making mind control devices or anything with the now-abundant psitanium’.
As such… they ended up as humanity’s last hope after the Aliens attained complete orbital supremacy and destroyed most of the actual militaries. The only issue was… the Motherlobe was considered a sufficiently military installation that it was not spared.
“Grand Head Aquato.” Tanya greeted from her desk, fine-tuning an experimental coilgun. “Congratulations on your promotion.”
Razputin Aquato snorted. “Yeah, yeah, it’s good to see you too, Tanya. How’s the billionaire's life treating you in this occupation?”
Tanya scowled. “The X-rays decided that because I was one of the pioneers in space travel, that they should hit all of my assets with ortillery.” Honestly, she wouldn’t be so stupid as to keep all of her military hardware on public databases. They only succeeded at pissing her off. “Killed all my pets.” She sighed angrily. “Well, with Otto’s mechanical keister finally giving up the ghost, and with the total loss of the Brainframe, your little resistance movement needs a Chief Engineer. That would be myself.” She waved to the large empty space that was her new facility. “I have a few workers and assistants, but no fully accredited engineers. You’ll need to recruit some for me if you want this place to produce the equipment the science department will reverse engineer for you.” She also had plans to dip over there when she wasn’t busy to help out herself, but while Lili Aquato was a brilliant scientist, she couldn’t possibly fill the Chief Engineer role. “In the meantime, I will be doing my best to provide and maintain the finest military hardware humanity has at its disposal.” She smirked, “Well, and maybe fit in a few of my own advancements.”
“...Are you trying to sound like a videogame tutorial?” Razputin asked.
Tanya burst out laughing. “Caught that? First thing I noticed when I saw this secret underground base was ‘this is just like XCOM’.” She took a deep breath to calm down from the humor. “More seriously, I do actually think we can get some key insights to the X-ray’s technology if your commando squads capture some samples.” She rolled her chair over to a cabinet and took out a single alien pistol. “This one’s too damaged for me to get a lot of info from, the only reason it looks as good as it does is that I fixed up the casing. But look at this.” She withdrew the ‘ammo’, which was more of a battery. “This is psilirium, but…” She waved it around with absolutely no safety containment.
“...It’s stable.” Razputin whispered. He took it from her hand and inspected it closely. Razputin had not aged terribly well, to be honest. He was large and muscular, but that frame was weighed down further by the fat of a big eater that never stopped when their metabolism slowed down in his thirties. He was still far more agile and dexterous than anyone who looked like that should be, but he was downright clumsy compared to the feats he could manage in his youth. The man was a wonderful father to his children, though. “This… this changes everything.”
“Exactly.” Tanya replied, “But it’s also currently inert, and I can’t even figure out how to get it to explode, much less do something productive. Whatever they do to make it stable, they have to undo it in order to get any work out of it. So we need to learn how they manage it.” She had long since figured out how to turn psitanium into the far more energy-dense psilirium, but the interference it emitted made it not particularly useful in all but a few very limited situations. “Razputin, it was with psilirium that I proved that faster than light travel was possible, albeit not practical.” Until now, it was one of her biggest mistakes, given just how many scientists since then have lost their lives or gotten severe brain damage from the stuff. “If we can crack what these aliens have… We’ll be able to take the fight to them.”
In the end, what truly mattered was not the guns, nor the technologies, but instead the telepathic counter-invasion Razputin spearheaded, turning the invasion force of slave battalions against their masters and incorporating them into a new United Earth Federation.
But they still got the psilirium tech.
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[2102, Age 138)
In the end, immortality was a pipe dream. While a psychic’s brain was certainly far more resilient than it should be, even using every iota of medical technology to keep it going, there were limits.
Otto had symptoms matching this before he died to the invasion. One of the first things a psychic engineer did when they got really serious nowadays was to optimize their dreams, reducing the amount of time required to sleep to about two to three hours a day. Even with that optimized sleep, Otto had to sleep six at the end.
The more information stuck in the brain, the more work was required to keep it going. Tanya had learned how to trim out unneeded memories more efficiently, but after over one hundred years of life, she still spent seven hours a day just keeping up with it, letting her mechanical body rest in unneeded sleep.
Was this inevitable? Was it just impossible to retain as much life experience as she had? How would this impact her reincarnation? She didn’t know.
Pretty much all of her friends were dead by now, anyway. Over the last few decades, she had grown more withdrawn, with her only socialization being random online friends on game servers and forums that she frequented anonymously. Exactly the same situation she was in when she died the first time.
Tanya looked out her window display. She had her own space station mansion, so had a beautiful view of Venus. Interstellar travel didn’t really agree with her. She had thought if they found a peaceful alien civilization, or a new colony world that could sustain human life without terraforming, she’d leave the solar system, but until then… no. It was too dangerous. Not in an exciting way, either. In a boring way. She’ll stay home, thank you.
…She was tired. Did she really want to keep going for the thirty to forty more years she could theoretically eke out of this life? To get any more than that would require basically making her a continual amnesiac, forgetting large swathes of her post-retirement life in order to leave space for more. Did she want to do that?
…No. Not really. She had long relinquished all but the tiniest scrap of control over her companies and assets, and they’ve already gone and basically corrupted themselves in the name of higher profits and greater growth instead of her preferred style of honest dealings and steady growth. Her disappointment was immeasurable when she discovered what her company’s management thought were adequate work benefits nowadays. Ruined that whole day.
Well, she should at least set all of her affairs in order. As part of her retirement, she had divested herself of a lot of responsibility and influence, but she still needed to, at least, make up a new will. That alone is going to take weeks to fully handle. Better get started.
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“I still think this is medically inadvisable.” The soft tones of her medical AI said as she prepared her own execution.
“Noted.” Tanya replied drily. “Still doing it. If I can’t reincarnate normally, I’ll be doing it manually.”
This was actually an overstatement. Due to being a psychic, the amount of control she had over her mind was incredible, but there was large swathes of it that were set in metaphorical stone, unable to be deleted like less important memories were. She had improved the thoroughness of that deletion, yes, but even if she could completely wipe her old memories… she was too hesitant to take that step.
After all, whatever she did here is probably going to be carried over to her next life, so she had to be careful. While there wasn’t really anyone left in this life close enough to feel the tragedy of her passing, that didn’t mean she should sentence some unknown parents to the results of whatever brain damage she inflicted upon herself by attempting to delete her most precious memories.
So instead, she buried them. Her entire mind sunk deep into itself, laying a sturdy foundation. She won’t remember a thing consciously, and hopefully, she’ll be able to grow attached to whatever life she goes off to.
She left conditions. Leaving the hypothetical innocent child she was turning herself into completely on her own could end poorly, if the conditions in her new life were bad enough. Being convinced that her death was imminent, the grief of losing a loved one tragically mixed with the anger of vengeance, realizing the monstrosity of her own actions… these conditions and more would unseal a portion of her memories in an attempt to preserve the life of the child.
It was likely that what individuality that child had would be overwhelmed by her own experiences if that happened… but it was not a guarantee.
Who knows? Maybe this new her would even do things that Tanya never could, like fall in love. How exciting! And… there.
With the last of her thoughts locked away, the nameless child experienced the total sensory isolation of a biopod disconnected to any outside stimulus for a second before the disintegrator completely obliterated Tanya’s brain.
On to the next great adventure…
Comments
Hex
wow, I wasn't expecting that at all (still trying to decide how much I liked it), but I'm a fan of future lives snippets for sure! Sealing her memories makes a lot of sense for this Tanya, things seemed pretty melancholic for her at the end. Even without memory capacity issues, starting a brand new life with all that baggage going in sounds rough. A bit of a sad ending, but an understandable one. This story was a fun ride, one of my favorite Tanya fics! Can't wait to see what's next.
Eldar ortell
Huh you really went ful xcom
