Kevin Curry
patreon
Psychoprotective Epilogue 1
🕑 Added 2024-05-20 14:00:09 +0000 UTCThere's not going to be nearly as many epilogues as I thought there would be. As I had expected, taking that month off really damaged my ability to get inspired to write this. Ah well, no big deal. This story's had a good run.
------------------------------------
[1990, Age 26]
Tanya laughed as power surged through her body, her killing intent sharpened into foot-long blades at the ends of her fingers.
Razputin’s psychic fists swung and battered her shields, but while they were strong… it wasn’t strong enough. He lacked conviction. The psychic projections that he used as weapons separated from his body for extra leverage, hoping to finally shatter her defenses instead of just weathering them.
He was too slow. Tanya’s blades chopped at Razputin’s wrists, now vulnerable as his own shield became thinner to accommodate his heavy strike. They separated, and the fresh-faced psychonaut screamed in pain. “Die!” Tanya shouted, gathering enough intent to massacre a battalion in an instant and unleashing it on the young man’s shields. With his defenses worn away, her hand snaked underneath his ribcage and scooped out his heart, which Tanya presented to his horrified expression with a savage grin.
She laughed before the world shattered around her.
Tanya rubbed her temples as Razputin fell backwards, disoriented by his ejection from her mind. Calm down, the fight’s over, enemy neutralized… “Are you satisfied, Razputin?” Tanya asked, making her annoyance apparent.
“There there, Tanya.” Mom said, pulling Tanya’s head back and settling it in her lap. “Relax, I'm here, everything’s safe.” What tension remained in Tanya’s body melted away as Mom gently stroked her hair.
“I guess…” Razputin said, clearly disappointed in his performance. “I didn't think you'd be that much better when doing the Maligula thing.”
Razputin had grown up quite a bit in the years between his introduction to the Psychonauts and his formal induction a few weeks ago. Ironically, despite his acrobatic upbringing, he had grown to be significantly larger than his father, developing more of a strongman physique. He always liked dressing up like comic book superheroes during the true psychic tales conventions, for that reason.
“Power is something that is easy to emulate.” Tanya said slowly, taking deep calming breaths. Despite her relaxation, the adrenaline from invoking the Argent had yet to be fully purged from her system. “But when you fought Lucy, she didn't want to hurt you. That lack of intent made her attacks weaker, slower. Still powerful, but much easier to manage.” She gestured in the direction of the motor pool. “Even when I had the psitanium reserves from Ambition at my fingertips, I lacked the intent to hurt you. I could have faked it, certainly. Doing so provides excellent results in a hurry… but I didn't see the need. I'm trying to not be the kind of person who does that.” Razputin had plenty of time to learn the slow way. At least, that was what she told herself, when comparing the training she gave Razputin to her training of the 203rd.
“But when Tanya had unleashed herself at your request, she was attempting to kill you.” Dad said gravely. “I hope that you can understand the magnitude of that difference now.”
“Yeah, I sure do.” Razputin said, looking down at his hand while flexing it to assure himself that it was still attached. “When can I try again?”
“No more than once a year.” Tanya insisted, “We can do it for your birthday next year.” It wasn’t too far off from his seventeenth birthday as it was, even if this wasn’t designated as his gift for that.
“Got it.” Razputin said, his deep voice actually fitting the drama of his words.
Taking one last deep breath, Tanya judged that the Argent was fully quiescent once more. Standing up, she dusted off her casual cargo pants and looked back at the meathead psychic. “I believe the wager was a nice dinner?” She asked, smirking.
“Yeah, yeah.” Razputin replied, standing up himself. “You know what I could go for? Some salad.” He nodded to himself. “I don’t even want to think about meat right now. Worse than Coach Oleander’s mind…”
Tanya opened her mouth to correct him on the title, but then closed it. Actually, Marceau would probably prefer being referred to as ‘Coach’ from his former campers. “I didn’t think it was fair to Dad to give you a more sanitized environment for the battle than he had to deal with.” She said instead. “Ruins and carnage is to be expected, if you were to combat a similarly powerful being within the mind of a madman.”
Razputin just grumbled, clearly disagreeing with her statement but without wanting to get into it. “Right, I know a buffet that’s got a really good salad bar, so let’s go there.”
That wasn’t quite Tanya’s definition of a ‘nice’ dinner, but she just nodded and started following the psychic to his beat up pickup truck, as she knew that was just her non-American origins talking.
---------------------------------
[1992, Age 28]
Barcelona was a lovely city.
By now, Tanya was quite used to standing in front of a crowd of reporters, announcing some new development from her company or as a Psychonauts spokesperson.
Admittedly, the crowd of reporters was much larger for the Olympics. But in concept, it wasn’t anything new. “To introduce myself to a wider audience, my name is Tanya, and I am employed by the Psychonauts organization.” As was standard for the Olympics, she was speaking in French for the announcement. “Now, there has been much debate over the legality of psychic powers used in the Olympics. In summary, it is currently banned, but there are plenty of allegations of people using them subtly to cheat, with a few being proven to have cheated and others being cleared, and an even smaller number being initially cleared, but later proven to have cheated, which casts doubt on the whole process.” She then repeated herself in both English and Spanish, which was more to show off her language skills than because of actual necessity. She didn’t really speak Spanish, but she picked up a nugget of wisdom from another Psychonaut on the language specifically for this. Her knowledge of Portuguese helped immensely in incorporating the knowledge, but the native speakers could probably tell from her accent that she learned it from a Cuban.
Tanya rolled up her T-shirt’s sleeve and flexed, showing off her own muscles. Her telekinetic resistance workouts, which nowadays was just an excuse to block off time for dancing, just weren’t intense enough to make her substantially muscular, but the shape of her biceps notably changed when she exerted them, so it was enough to take some pride in her appearance. “Personally, I don’t know which side to support. But a detachment of Psychonauts, ones skilled at the subtle exertion of psychic powers, have been deployed here to demonstrate how events will change if psychic powers were to be fully allowed.” She again repeated herself in English and Spanish. “Questions?” She asked in all three languages.
A beautiful woman started speaking in Spanish after Tanya pointed to her. “Maria Gomez, EFE.” Biggest news organization in Spain. “So you will be participating in the events, but cheating?”
“Correct.” Tanya said in Spanish. “Claims have been made by those on the side of unbanning psychic powers, as a natural capability of humanity, that the impact would not be that large. This statement, at least, is bluntly wrong. Today and over the rest of the Olympics, my cohort will be participating in many events to show what psychics can do if allowed to use their gifts freely.”
“Walter Beckett, BBC.” Said the next reporter in English, introducing himself. “What went into deciding who participates in which event?”
“It was agreed that I was the best, so I got first dibs.” Tanya said, “Then after my dance card was full, the others picked from what was left.”
A few more questions in various languages passed, until one that Tanya didn’t expect to hear came up. “Dick Ebersol, NBC. Why are you the one participating? What’s in this for you?”
Tanya blinked. “It’s not anything hard to understand.” Tanya said, confused but deciding to just be honest. “If we win, we were promised genuine Olympic Gold Medals, even if the non-psychic winner gets one too. This is the only time in history a psychic like myself would have a chance to win them, and winning a gold medal at the Olympics…” Tanya stared off into the distance, reminiscing. “Let’s just say it’s a dream I thought was long dead.”
Seventeen swimming golds. Ten weightlifting golds. One for tennis. Seven for shooting, three for firearms, four for archery. Four for jumping. Four for throwing. Plus fourteen more for various individual events that she fit in to fill her schedule. It was a bit regretful that there wasn’t a kendo event, but fencing served as an adequate substitute.
After the domination of the games by her and the other Psychonauts, it was agreed that Psychics simply could not be competed against fairly by non-psychics, even in a physical competition. This solidified the ban on Psychics in the Olympics, but did trigger the creation of the PSIlympics, which was certainly a compromise that Tanya could get behind.
She bought a very nice display case for all of her medals. Looking at it always puts a smile on her face, to see all that gold. Not a single speck of silver to be seen.
---------------------------------
[1998, Age 34]
Tanya stretched as she looked over her new desk. The Psychonauts had been good to her… but she was done with them. Had been for a while, really, but it was difficult to move on and give up on all of that fame and those laboratory resources.
In the end, it was a cluster of changes that provided her the push to move on. Visha’s passing at the ripe old age of 16 (that’s 112 in dog years, after all), the promotions of her parents to administrative positions instead of field work, Eric going into high school and starting to bring girls home, the casanova… Mary’s move-out and having kids of her own…
It was time to leave Mystery, focus more on her own company. Over a decade of developing human resources, recruiting more engineers, the refinement of the technology, and the pouring in of military-industrial complex money…
The company needed to diversify, move on to commercial applications. The science was ready. After years of work, she had finally cracked the barrier between the artificial thought of electronic minds and the signals of true thought, with the psitanium/gold microchip. With this technology, a psychic signal can be converted to an electronic one, and vice-versa.
The headquarters controlled the most important part of her new company: the software. When they were just serving the United States military and her allies, the number of simulation units outstanding at any one time was around five thousand, easily handled by a single artisanal workshop staffed to the appropriate scales.
Now, with the power of automation, they had actual factories coming online. Tanya expected to be operating at a loss for some time as the market demand caught up with what she was offering, but she had plenty of capital to sustain things for the time being, as their original business was still providing vital income to keep things running. The military was very interested in the more advanced models that can be controlled from a console instead of requiring a psychic operator, and once they managed to work out the bugs of networking the things into a shared psychic enviroment… That’s when they can use it for infantry, not just training on vehicles. Big potential contract there.
“Miss Dovsa, your eleven o’clock is here.” came the pleasant mental voice of her secretary. Mrs. Fairwell was her secretary back when she got that promotion to technical administrator at the Motherlobe, and she had followed Tanya to her new company, properly incentivized with a generous pay package.
“Send him in.” Tanya sent back, sipping her coffee. It had taken years, but she finally had found someone who could match her old adjutant’s coffee making skills. Or her memory of the coffee had decayed enough that she couldn’t tell the difference.
A brain ball rolled into her office. “Hello, Tanya! It’s nice to see you again.” Otto's cheery voice came from the speakers. His ‘meat body’ as he liked to put it, had expired the year before, accumulated enough health problems that the man had taken the plunge and transitioned to a brain ball full time. He was the oldest of the Psychic Seven, after all.
“Likewise.” Tanya said, smiling back. “Now, you mentioned a business proposal in your email?”
“Well, I mostly just wanted to see you in person again.” Otto admitted, “I haven’t seen you since I retired the old meatsuit.”
“Have you undergone maintenance today, by the way?” Tanya asked, reaching down into her minifridge. “I have some nutrient fluid here.” There were two people with brain balls in her workforce, so because they had an in-office cafeteria (a nice one, in her opinion) they needed to have some on hand to remain ADA compliant. It wasn’t a large burden.
‘I’m fine, thank you.” Otto said pleasantly. “Now, I know you’ve been working on psitanium-integrated robots offhandedly. I want to work with your company and design a full android body for myself.”
Tanya huffed in amusement. “Life as a brain ball is more inconvenient than you thought?” She asked.
“Much more.” Otto replied, “I tried to make my own, but… it was harder than I thought it would be. All those fiddly joints, and balance is a nightmare. I could only manage to make a glorified set of extra arms for my brain ball, they use up too much psychic energy.” A sighing noise came from his speakers. “I need your help.”
Ah, he kept failing at the mechanical side of things. Making a floating shell is easy enough, that’s what the brain ball is after all, but it’s wasteful, inefficient. Something that can support its own weight and can stay in place without consuming large amounts of energy would be much better.
Fortunately, she had been working on this problem for a while. “I’d be happy to help.” Tanya said, “We’ll need a contract, of course. But your insight into the nature of psitanium and the practical engineering behind the brain ball will be invaluable to our work.” Specifically, the parts of the brain ball that assisted in suppressing dysphoria, one of the more recent developments to come out of Otto’s work. Better integration with the proprioception of the user would vastly accelerate the acclimation timetables.
“I mean, the reason I kept the brain ball so small was because your brain alone produces so much less psychic energy than it does when it has a body supporting it, so I had to keep it light.” Otto admitted, “But I’m ready to work at a deficit, supplement with psitanium sand, if it means I don’t have to sleep for fourteen hours a day.”
Tanya frowned. “Is it really that bad?” She asked, “I know you’re pioneering the life extension applications of the technology, but according to the models…”
“I know what the models said, I made them.” Otto said, the lights on his brain ball flashing red. “But the amount of energy my brain’s producing over time is dropping faster than the models predicted. If supplementing it with psitanium support to reduce the psychic strain doesn’t slow it down, I’m going to end up worn down to nothing in less than twenty years.”
Tanya hummed, nodding to herself. “Well, I plan on following your footsteps, so ensuring that every avenue is investigated is in my best interests.”
While she was in good enough shape that she hasn’t truly felt the ravages of age, much like in her first life (which she finally outlived!), that will eventually change.
Still, she took out her personal Psychoportal. “Shall we move this meeting to a face to face to start drafting the terms?” She asked.
“Excellent.”
---------------------------------
[February 22, 2013. Age 48]
Tanya walked into the train station wearing a funeral kimono. She had debated, off and on, how to celebrate this day, but decided that a Japanese vacation would be the best way to do it.
There were plenty of people giving her odd looks, with the majority of them probably thinking that the random foreigner didn’t know they were wearing funeral garb. Still, she was far too rich to care about those people, so she slowly walked to her destination, incense stick in hand.
Slightly out of her way was a man wearing a suit, looking devastated as he walked numbly with no clear destination. It took a moment for her to figure out why this man drew her attention, but then she realized why: he was thinking about how he just lost his job. Picking up surface thoughts without getting inundated with the input was a bit like moving through a routine: most thoughts were perfectly mundane, things picked up a thousand times before, and thus were as easily discarded as the sounds of people walking. But if someone was to suddenly say your name, the mind seized on that input and brought it to conscious attention, even if there was otherwise nothing noteworthy about the sound. There were thousands of people in the building, so finding one that had lost their job today wasn’t that odd.
She still had a few minutes before the train arrived… “Excuse me.” Tanya said to the man politely. “Forgive me if I’m being rude,” Just to emphasize her ‘foreigner’ credentials, she added a bit of an American lisp to her words, dropping her words at the consonant. “-but are you feeling alright?” Subtly, she sent telepathic waves to him, encouraging him to mirror her level of propriety instead of his first instinct.
At first, the man tensed in the usual panic when dealing with a social situation that was outside the rules society had laid down. But he calmed down when the hypnotic suggestion provided an alternative framework for him to use, and slumped. “No.” He said simply. “I got fired today.” He groaned. “What am I going to tell my wife? I have children!”
“You did? How awful.” Tanya said sympathetically. “I thought that it took a lot to get fired in this country.”
“That depends on why they’re firing you.” He clarified, “Fabricating warnings and excuses isn’t that hard if your boss is anal enough.” Even as he said that, guilt radiated from the man’s thoughts. They weren’t fabricated. “They’re very harsh on mistakes.”
“I know a bit about how to run a business.” Tanya said, adding a bit of a haughty affectation, just an arrogant American here. “People who make mistakes just need extra training. Do they do Personal Improvement Plans here?”
The man flinched. Tanya shifted her subtle telepathic encouragement to keep him honest. She was basically giving him some free therapy, he shouldn’t mind. “They do…” He said, trailing off as he tried to figure out how to make himself sound good. “But that arrogant trash that fired me should have given me another chance!”
This was getting a little spooky, actually. Nevertheless, Tanya gasped dramatically after checking her phone’s clock. Still have some time. “How many chances did he give you?” She asked curiously.
He didn’t say it, but his mind clearly said the number ‘five’. “Not enough.” he said, deflecting the question.
“Well, when my employees get on a PIP, I usually give them five chances. Some of the other CEOs I’m sort of friends with think that’s too much, I should give them three at most, but the only people who can’t be helped are those who refuse to be helped.” Tanya said, rattling off the words airily despite their honesty. Really, very few of her employees need even two chances before turning whatever issues they had around or leaving the company voluntarily, but she also tended to pay a bit more attention to HR matters than other CEOs. The human resources of a company are the most important and valuable ones, after all. Human productivity has no limit.
His guilt spiked, and he looked over her for what may have been the first time. “...Why are you here, anyway?” He asked, changing the subject.
“I’m holding a funeral.” Tanya replied, gesturing with the incense stick. “Ah, here’s the train now.”
She walked up to where the train was soon to be and lit the tip of the incense stick with a thought. She withdrew a piece of paper, on which was drawn her best artistic rendition of her first life’s appearance. It was a bit anime, she admitted, made her cut a more impressive figure than she did in reality, particularly given the dramatic pose, but it’s not like she could have a photograph. After the doors opened, she stepped aside and continued to look at the picture, trying to figure out what she should think about. Was this a good idea? Mom said it was, but…
After the train left, the jobless man stared at her dumbfounded. “Who was he?” He asked.
“He was…” She trailed off. “-in another life. He was murdered on this day, by being pushed in front of a train. I’m still not sure how I should feel about him.” She took a deep breath. The incense was a nice one, the same scent she used oh so long ago to mourn her grandfather. Dredging up those faint memories to figure out how to properly conduct this ceremony was probably the hardest part. “He was a flawed man, as are we all. He didn’t deserve to die, but few do. Some days I reject his influence entirely, other days I cling to his memory with all my might.” She does with her second life too, even if she was less than two years from having lived more years in this one than the other two combined. “It’s… complicated.”
“I think it speaks well of you, to honor those who came before.” The man offered sympathetically.
“Thank you.” Tanya said, letting the tears flow. Before she could restrain the impulse, she asked him: “What was your job, by the way?”
“Ah, I am an artist.” He said, doodling on air. “I did concept art.”
…Was she seriously considering this? Damn her bleeding heart. With a flourish, a business card was in her hand. One of the Japanese ones she had made to make nice with the locals for the Japanese market. “Sober up, call this office tomorrow to set up an interview. I’m not going to guarantee anything, but…” She looked him over once more, clearly looking at his trembling hands and the nostrils he was occasionally rubbing. “...we do provide care for addictions. They are solvable problems.”
He looked surprised, but politely took the business card from her. “...Thank you very much.” he said respectfully, then left.
It wasn’t until the evening, when she was back in her hotel room, that she knew how to cap off this day.
DosvaTanya you communist scum! ✔
@therealtanyadosva
Happy Time Travel day everyone! I’m so excited to finally have absolutely no idea what’s coming next!
As was incredibly predictable, the rest of her night was spent laughing at the internet exploding at her announcement, only occasionally tweeting more fuel for the fire.
Well, she also fit in some exercise, but that was just keeping the old meatsuit in working order; old age was kind of a bitch, but it was nice to actually feel old when she feels old, so it was a pleasant change of pace.
