Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective 2.19
🕑 Added 2023-09-11 21:01:04 +0000 UTCI was just a couple hundred words short this morning, so I delayed it until the afternoon, and I'm not really satisfied with how this chapter went, but I already missed an update trying to get this one right, so it's... acceptable.
Odds are low I'll make next update without dipping into Summon Perfect Warlady, but I will be trying.
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Fortunately, the amount of reading required to get started amounted to about a thirty page instruction booklet designed to refamiliarize trained professionals, much like a surgeon might read up on the specific procedure they were about to undertake. Not much at all. It referenced advanced concepts that would ordinarily be beyond non-psychonauts… but Tanya’s research into artificial mental world generation handled the heavy lifting there.
She was pretty sure she could handle this. Addiction recovery was a very invasive psychic therapy, but it wasn’t terribly complicated. The hard part would be identifying the traces of the addiction so it could be recognized, and the final hypnotic adjustment to help the patient’s mind stay away from the source of their addiction.
Tanya was… not great at hypnosis. At least, she was before learning from Helmut’s nugget of wisdom on his telepathic techniques. It included a little bit of hypnosis…
“Okay Tanya, are you ready to do some real Psychonauts work?” Mom said, eager as they all sat in one of the meditation rooms.
“I’m ready.” Tanya said, settling into the biggest bean bag in the room.
Agent Nein placed the psychoportal on his forehead, seated in the center of the room, smoking a cigarette. “Welcome.”
Both of them projected themselves into the psychoportal, hand in hand.
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Agent Nein’s mind had the usual cube presented, although Tanya knew that it was deceptive: it was, in fact, a hypercube, with eight ‘faces’ of the structure. This was merely the front-facing structure that Agent Nein used as an ablative defense, as well as a place to allow the campers of Camp Whispering Rock to run wild without damaging anything important.
The cube unfolded, presenting the abridged life story that he used to get campers used to the inherent intrusiveness of mindwalking. The tragedy of losing his mother, his childhood working with his shoemaker father, his time at the frozen meal factory, it was all here, including the parts he saves for advanced students, the one centered around how he joined the psychonauts and the one relating to his work with them.
The factory segment was likely the best place to start. It was covered in fire hazards and soot, little fiery vents that turned on and off on a regular timer. Was this representative of something?
“What are you thinking, Tanya?” Mom asked, in that tone she normally uses against Mary when helping her with her homework.
“The first step of attacking an addiction is identifying its influence.” Tanya quoted, “But while I doubt any of it is in this front-facing segment of Agent Nein’s mind, but if it’s anywhere, it’s here.”
“No.” A censor said, appearing from one of their normal doors. Tanya PSI blasted its head off with a glance.
Mom giggled. “Ah, these fire thingies might be some influence, true.” She tilted her head. “Do you think it is?”
Tanya frowned. “It’s pervasive, regular, and associated with fire.” Tanya said, enumerating the ‘yes’ column. “But on the other hand, there’s no smoke. It’s gas fires, all around.” The way he told it, was that his job at the factory was to load up trays of uncooked food and put them into industrial gas-powered ovens, which would then be frozen and packaged elsewhere in the building. Tedious, mind numbing work. Exactly the kind of thing to make participating in the available smoke breaks appealing. “On the balance… I think I need more information. If I need to double back, so be it.”
“That’s it, darling, you’re a natural at this.” Mom said, laying on the praise a bit thick… but Tanya blushed anyway.
Tanya looked up at the psychedelic sky. “Are you going to open the way, or am I going to need to get creative?” She shouted. It was unnecessary to do so, as Agent Nein could either hear them even at a whisper or not at all, but she had already taken a deep breath by the time she remembered that.
On cue, portals opened up above each face of the cube, ways to travel to the other layers. Tanya bent her knees and leapt up through it, not bothering to fully fly. There was just something fun about using her legs to move around at high speeds. Mom floated behind her.
Absorbing the impact of her landing by using a levitation bubble, Tanya looked over this later. Like the others, it was a cube, but instead of a sterile black-and-white art piece of a cube, it was instead soot-stained steel. It unfolded, the cacophonous noises of pulleys, gears, and chains providing atmosphere to the transition.
Tanya had never been to this segment before. She had seen a few of Agent Nein’s other mental partitions, but not this one. From the appearance, it likely represented a larger portion of that time at the factory. Possibly blended with other experiences.
Once the cube was fully unfolded, Tanya inspected the figments. Trays, flames, and… a smoking coworker! Perfect. She gathered up the figment, and looked around it. Nothing jumped out at her, except for an emotional baggage tag. She picked it up. This was likely relatively new. As a field agent, Agent Nein was regularly cleared of his emotional baggage.
“Well, what do you see?” Mom said, still in teacher mode.
“This location represents his work.” Tanya said confidently. “The job at the factory he had between his running away from home and joining the Psychonauts.” Tanya frowned. Come to think of it… “Did he really run away from home?” She asked.
“Excellent question, darling.” Mom replied, smiling widely. “The answer is… sort of. He did run away dramatically, but returned before dark and tried to make things work with his father, but the trauma of what he saw in his father’s mind… It burned a pathway to him, so that any thought his father had about his mother went straight through the mental defenses Sasha had, making being in his father’s presence utterly intolerable.” She waved her hands to the surroundings. “This factory belonged to his uncle, on his mother’s side. Sasha moved in with him after living at home became too much.” She waved her hand breezily. “He got that fixed later on, of course, but it was after he joined the Psychonauts. He still exchanges letters with his father, last I heard.”
Tanya stated walking to the other faces. This one was clearly some kind of living room… Must be his uncle’s residence. She took in the subtle details. The figments included someone Tanya assumed was his uncle, with a shotglass in one hand and a cigar in the other. There was an ash tray on a scorched nightstand, soot stains ruining the expensive-looking furniture. There was a stuffed chair that looked half-broken, the wooden frame within visible and cracked.
Occasionally, censors or personal demons showed up, probably sent by Agent Nein to put a little pressure on their investigation. Bob’s mind would not be so non-hostile, after all. They were annoying but easily dispatched.
The next face was sparse, demonstrating its point without much clutter. It painted a picture of an empty room, with a hanging bare lightbulb and a ratty bed. In the center was a single book, shining with inner light. It was eaten up by some kind of memory vault-derived creature, but one PSI blast destroyed it and brought the book back out.
The book was a small portal, and Tanya split off an Archetype to investigate. The Soldier was as it was before, a doll-like copy of her wearing her officer’s clothing with a henohenomoheji for a face. She probably should try to refine her skills in using archetypes like this, but she’s got so many other things to do…
She moved on to another face while letting her Archetype do its thing. This one represented the factory again, but a different perspective of it. It seemed to focus more on his coworkers, an office that held many filing cabinets. Tanya perused them, and noted that this segment was like her own library, a set of reminders on the various people Agent Nein knows. Several of the files were marked with soot stains, but she couldn’t figure out if there was a common pattern.
Wait… Soot? Soot is fire… Was this… She examined one of the soot-stained files in detail. Robert Post, Psychonauts mailroom employee. His face looked vaguely familiar. He has a psychic specialty in basic telekinesis, but little interest in developing it. A family man, with two children, one nearly grown by now. It was on the third page of the file that she saw what she was looking for, with an additional soot stain marking it: ‘Preferred Brand: Natural American Spirit’. That was a cigarette brand.
Some quick perusal of the other files, both with and without soot, confirmed that distinction. The soot was the representation of the addiction. “I think I found it.” She said out loud. “The soot.”
Tanya’s guess was rewarded with a hand running itself through her hair, as Mom beamed at her. “Very good, Tanya. Now, the next step is…” She snapped her fingers, creating a washcloth and bottle of cleaner. “-to clean up everything we can find. I’ll help.”
“This is going to take a while…” Tanya acknowledge before conjuring her own cleaning kit.
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Tanya learned far more about Agent Nein than she ever wanted to as she cleaned up random soot stains everywhere. The book’s realm was a representation of his love of Sherlock Holmes, the thing that had initially turned him towards the sciences. Each of the realms of his mind were well-organized, each aspect of himself filed away neatly.
None of the places in his mind were choked with soot, as his addiction really didn’t dominate his behavior obsessively, mostly because he was able to indulge it easily most of the time. But it was everywhere. The earliest memories were clean, the ones he presented in the front-facing cube. But nothing else. If Agent Nein was outside, he was smoking. If he was working in the lab, he was smoking. If he was doing anything else, at least some small part of him wished he was smoking.
Of the eight cubes that composed Agent Nein’s mind, the final one was… weird. It was the one that was inaccessible from the entrance cube, as each cube can only reach six others. This meant one of two things: that these were his most primal thoughts, where his own survival drive would be… or that it was his most precious thoughts, his most hidden feelings. Could go either way.
The cube, unlike the others, did not immediately unfold in their presence. The sky was a warm tapestry color, reminiscent of dawn or dusk without having a clear light source creating a gradient. The cube was wood, resembling a giant puzzle box rather than the more esoteric art styles of the others.
“Ah, this one.” Mom said, smiling warmly. “Go on, find a way inside.”
Hrm. Tanya floated upwards, orbiting the cube and examining each face to get an idea of its arrangement. She used to like puzzle boxes, back when she was… seven? Somewhere around there, in her first life. But did this cube work like a puzzle box? It didn’t have to. She created giant telekinetic hands, gripping the cube and starting to push and tug at the parts that looked like they could move. After about a minute of attempts, she gave up. “That’s not how it works…” The surface of the cube was unstained by soot, at the very least.
Next step, she condensed water from the air… or at least went through the motions of doing so, thus creating water, and started to investigate where the seams are, although she only noted the locations for now. Her sense of the mind’s shape registered the cube as completely solid, which was, from Mom’s hint, obviously a conscious defense of Agent Nein’s.
After mapping things out, she took a moment to think. What was she missing? Ah. As a mental world, while the shape of things must at least make logical sense to the mind, it was much like a riddle: having a functional answer doesn’t matter, it must be the correct answer. So… she walked to a roughly one square foot panel and pressed down on it with her foot. It sank down three inches from her weight.
This face of the cube unfolded, with the edges folding out for more space as well as making it impossible for more than one of the faces to be exposed at once. Another security feature, no doubt.
This cube had one of the things that Tanya was curious why she hadn’t seen yet: a copy of his laboratory. Filing cabinets held presumably great knowledge he had used various means, both ethical and non, to acquire. The examination table held a golden set of goggles, a nugget of wisdom representing his scientific knowledge. Not the knowledge itself, per say, pure information doesn’t tend to go in nuggets of wisdom, but instead his hard-earned practical experiences in setting up experiments and managing his projects and lab equipment.
There was quite a bit of soot here, so Tanya got to work cleaning it up. After the inevitable ambush by censors, she took up the nugget of wisdom. “Can I?” She asked the sky.
“This is supposed to be a semi-hostile mind, Tanya.” Mom pointed out. “Get what you can.”
Accepting her logic, under the reasoning that Agent Nein would agree, Tanya devoured the knowledge on lab procedure… and a lot of stuff she already knew. It was nice that she now knew exactly how the whole ‘sneeze your brain out’ thing worked (it was even weirder than it sounded), but it was mostly stuff that was not particularly useful to her. But in hindsight, she should have expected this result. After all, she reads all of Agent Nein’s published works. There’s very little that he does that doesn’t make its way into those, after all.
“That appears to be everything in this segment.” Tanya idly commented, going back to the tile and pressing her foot back down. As expected, the cube folded back in.
The next face, Tanya found the necessary panel quickly, and Mom immediately stopped her from pressing it. “Ah, you should skip this one, darling. I’ll clean it myself in a bit.” Ah. So this was where he kept his sexual escapades.
Following her mother’s instruction, Tanya went to a third face, fending off a massive assault by censors, a particularly quick and durable judge, and even a few doubts and regrets. The panel was dead center, and when she pressed it, the segment was… about her.
Well, and Mary. But the environment was composed of various things related to them, from Tanya’s bed that Agent Nein built, to the APES, even including her flying car. Pictures of Tanya, taken with Agent Nein and frequently including Mom and Mary, were prominent, framed and placed in plain view. She couldn’t see a single speck of soot anywhere. There was even a statue of Tanya in an action pose, probably representing her when they were sparring, given how her wide grin seemed more adrenaline-fueled than anything else.
There was a memory vault here, and some emotional baggage. Faintly, Tanya brought out the last emotional baggage tag she picked up. It was stashed in the fourth cube, within a small diorama that represented when he met her. The others were expended elsewhere.
…She can handle that later. No soot here. She folded the face back into itself, and continued to ignore the emotional baggage that was now sitting on top of the switch to activate it.
As it turned out, of the six faces, only four actually had anything, but the other cubes had plenty of empty space too. So this last one held only a section about Science, Mom, her/Mary, and the last one. It was where Agent Nein had stored the skills she had given him, filled with blood-stained weapons, cabinets filled with casualty reports, and a vault on the ground that was sealed tight. There was what Tanya assumed was a still-forming nugget of wisdom, a tiny golden orb on a pedastal. There were a few soot stains, but not many. They were easily cleaned.
“Handle the last bit, I need to go check on something.” Tanya said to her mother as she flew through one of the portals to a different cube.
“I’ll tell you when it’s safe for your innocent eyes!” Mom shouted back, somewhat teasingly.
It was a bit of a laugh, the idea that any part of her was innocent, but that didn’t mean she wanted to watch the lewdest part of Agent Nein’s mind when she had the option to avoid it.
She went towards the spot where she found the emotional baggage tag, using the trip over to double-check whether the soot was re-appearing. It was not. This cube was oriented about his psychonauts career, the faces representing the most memorable of his missions, although there were enough of those that the faces had to share space with similar ones. This particular chunk of history was small, one amongst many memories of saving distressed children. It was still there, the burned building, the shining egg-shaped pebble that was her curled up in her shield, and Mom’s tear-stained face as she yelled and tried to get past the barrier.
Why… was this where the tag was? Usually there was some kind of logic to the placement of tags and baggage… Why was the tragic circumstances of their meeting the tag’s location, while the gallery of pleasant “family” moments was where the baggage was? She’d think it would be the other way around… right?
No answers came to her as she thought on the matter, even after she started wandering around to once again confirm that the soot had stayed clean. Eventually, Mom telepathically notified her of her segment being clean, which meant that it was time to finish the job.
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They went straight towards the place that had the most soot to clean up: a spot in the third cube that still had an untouched memory vault. She didn’t need to know what was in it.
“Okay, you’ve read up on this, but it bears repeating:” Mom said, starting her lecture. “Now that we’ve removed the psychologically compulsive parts of Sasha’s nicotine addiction, we need to take steps to prevent him from relapsing.” As a side-effect of the fact that a sizable chunk of what Tanya’s original world considered ‘part of the brain’ isn’t actually attached to it in this world, but instead part of the body, chemical dependencies couldn’t be cured directly by psychic meddling. But without the psychological component, it was far easier to break the habit. “Now, I know hypnosis isn’t exactly your best ability…” Mom said, a small sympathetic smile on her face.
“Actually…” Tanya corrected, “Part of my research for my machinery has required a fair amount of learning the ins and outs of hypnosis.” She had been neglecting to tell Mom about that detail…
“This should be easy, then.” Mom said brightly. “Now, Sasha will be feeling terrible from the nicotine withdrawal, and that will give him cravings to smoke. What we need to do is replace that mental association.” She pointed upwards. “You know how to call it up.”
Tanya nodded, before going to the shadowy representation of Sasha’s old coworker. “Got a smoke?” She asked.
“You’re a kid.” The coworker said, “You shouldn’t start on this shit.”
Tanya rolled her eyes. “I need a smoke, man. Don’t go judging me.”
“...Yeah, I feel that.” The memory said, and Tanya looked upwards. Yeah, the associative network was becoming visible. Tanya telepathically reached out at it, bringing the local segment to prominence.
The concept ‘Smoking’ was the centerpiece of the network segment, with connections to several other ones. ‘Cool’, ‘Relaxing’, ‘Wealth’, among other positive associations. It was no good to just trim them, so Tanya reached deeper into Agent Nein’s associative network, finding something negative to attach smoking to. Ah, ‘Unhealthy’ is good… but it needs… ooh, ‘Money-sink’ ‘Polluting’ ‘Amoral’, all great, attached to… ‘Corpo’? Well, it’s not like that was an uncommon sentiment among the Psychonauts… She’ll attach Smoking to Corpo directly. Smoking corporations do quite a bit of shady stuff, after all.
Whenever you trimmed a connection, you usually had a few minutes before the mind reacted to replace it. But when you connected a new one, it was a lot faster to add extra ones, although it didn’t always happen. When she connected ‘Smoking’ to ‘Corpo’, suddenly a few other concepts linked themselves up, like ‘Lobbyists’ and ‘Corruption’. She decided that these were acceptable connections.
Connecting ‘Smoking’ to ‘Unhealthy’ also brought up ‘Cancer’ and linked it up, but that was hardly worth mentioning. “I think it needs one more connection.” Tanya idly commented.
“I think you’re done with ‘smoking’, darling.” Mom said, now that she was prompted to give advice. “But you also need to replace Smoking with something else.” Ah, right.
For best results, displacing the addiction to something more innocuous was the best way to handle it. Tanya focused intently on the concept of bubblegum, and with a flex of her psychic power she created the concept of it, connecting it to some but not all of the previous associations with Smoking. ‘Relaxing’ and ‘Craving’ most importantly.
It was also something that could be used to fulfill an oral fixation, so whenever he felt like smoking, he would instead crave bubblegum. As he detoxed from the nicotine addiction, those cravings would subside until the placeholder addiction could be eliminated altogether.
To finish her work, Tanya infused those new connections with precisely attuned psychic power, which was how you created the really powerful hypnotic commands. They shouldn’t break easily after that.
“That would make our work here complete.” Tanya announced.
“Not quite, darling.” Mom said, a bit amused. “I see that emotional baggage tag you have there.”
Tanya winced. “Do I have to?” She had the distinct feeling that she’d regret doing so.
“It’s a Psychonaut’s duty to leave the minds they leave better off than before they entered.” Mom quoted, “And today, you’re an acting Psychonaut. Now go back there and resolve that baggage, Bob’s mind is going to be a lot worse.”
Ah, she didn't have an argument against that. Reluctantly, she flew into the portal back to the rear cube. The baggage was a purse, which she knew, from the nugget of wisdom she just absorbed, meant that it was related to a personal relationship, baggage centered around a single person or small group of people. By connecting the purse tag, she prepared to process the emotional surge.
Resolve. Confusion. Fear. Pity. Concern. Satisfaction. Concern. Curiosity. Concern. Worry. Concern. Surprise. Fear. Resolve. Horror. Resolve. Pity. Horror. Rage. Worry. Resolve. Success. Dread. Concern. Worry. Fear. Desperation. Relief. Concern. Calm. Curiosity. Wonder. Determination. Love. Rejection. Love. Satisfaction. Hurt. Contentment.
The emotions flitted from one to the next with a rapidity that would have been dizzying if she had done this when she was still inexperienced. What did this mean? She suspected she knew.
“...It’s done.” Tanya said, before conjuring smelling salts to get out of there before Mom could ask her to talk about it.
This was a conversation best held face to face.
