Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective Book 2 Chapter 7
🕑 Added 2023-05-29 14:00:05 +0000 UTCIt was a point of pride for Tanya that despite all of these demands on her time, she kept up her job duties at reasonable efficiency. Well, reasonable by her, admittedly high, standards. By the standard set by the tradesmen who normally performed these maintenance tasks, she was putting them to shame.
There was a reason the maintenance department was weeks behind schedule, and it was largely because of mismatches between the actual efficiency of the workers and what the budget thinks that efficiency should be. Still, given the shortage of psychic engineers, it is understandable that the Motherlobe is stuck with substandard workers.
Perhaps they would let her organize a ‘boot camp’ to improve departmental efficiency… She should probably wait to ask until she has some more experience under her belt. Maybe in a few years.
There were four hundred and seven security checkpoints operated by thinkerprint scanners within the greater Motherlobe complex. When the device has no issues, after a learning curve, the disassembly process takes three minutes and change. It takes about two minutes to cordon off the checkpoint and to reverse the process. It averages about ninety seconds to move from one checkpoint to the next. Theoretically, she could clear eight doors in an hour, eight hours per day, putting the total time to completion to about seven business days.
Given how many doors have some sort of issue that would take additional time to resolve, this would take about ten, by Tanya’s estimate. Given that the security perimeter amounted to enough that she couldn’t get even that much done before the weekend, that was unacceptable.
Which is why she bullied Jerry into assigning her a pair of tradesmen to assist her. With them handling the cordoning off and disassembly, she doubled her efficiency, as they were also quite helpful when it came to dealing with the warehouse.
There was a bit of a ‘breaking in’ period that slowed down the afternoon, but Tanya asked Jerry for the ex-military types for a reason. “Clean up!” She barked out as she finished affixing the scanner into place.
“Yes sir!” Replied Technician Ngyuen. He was a 24 year old freshly certified electrician. Also a veteran Comm-PSI from the Vietnam war. Tanya spent a few weeks in a paranoid spiral when she learned that there was actually a draft for psychics, although they never went to the point of recruiting underage ones. Fortunately, she doesn’t need to worry about that until they change the rules, as with the current ones, Psychonauts are exempt from the draft.
Tanya left the man to do the last assembly steps followed by opening up the passage. He knows where he’s supposed to go next after he is done. “Ready?” Tanya asked her other assistant.
“Yes sir!” Replied Technician Dubois. His story was broadly similar to Ngyuen, Vietnam veteran, certified electrician. He was older, at 31, and he was a D-PSI, as in, someone who fought in combat using psychic powers. In his case, he specialized in pyrokinesis, which is far more precise of a weapon than napalm.
Needless to say, the Psychonauts’ excellent mental health care was a big draw to them in accepting their current positions.
With the door partially disassembled, Tanya immediately got to extracting and inspecting the scanner. Another sabotaged one. “Code Yellow this one.” She said, depositing it into the bin that was floating behind them. Tanya double-checked the map. This door didn’t lead anywhere particularly important, past this point was mostly meditation chambers for the usage of various esoteric psychic powers. That was something of a pattern, the doors that were compromised were distributed fairly randomly, which was promising: it meant that it was unlikely that the people behind this had compromised anything important.
Accepting the replacement that Dubois had passed her, she briefly scanned it to check that it was clean and slotted it back in, securing the connections before starting to float away. “Clean up!”
“Yes sir!”
And so it went. Tanya called it a day at the hundredth scanner, as it was close enough to the quitting time that it wasn’t worth squeezing in one or two more doors. “Pack up, we’ll take those commies by storm first thing in the morning.” Tanya said to her subordinates. She picked up the bin of compromised scanners. Twelve of them. “This is why we’re working to the best of our ability: without our vigilance, who knows what the commies could slip past security? You’ve done good work, soldiers, I expect to see one hundred percent tomorrow, with no hesitation!”
“Sir, yes sir!” Both of them said before packing up the various materials required for the job. Tanya took the Code Yellow bin with her as she walked to the maintenance department.
On the way, one of the only Psychonauts shorter than her synchronized his pace to hers. “That was some impressive leadership, soldier.” Agent Oleander said gruffly, before continuing in a much gentler, nervous tone. “But… How did you get them to listen to you like that? Give you respect? The ex-military types all laugh at me when I try to boss them around. Even if I actually am their boss at the time.” While Agent Oleander’s eccentricities were well known, he was actually one of the most senior Psychonauts, having joined up in the initial recruitment drive when the Psychonauts were forming into what they are today. In fact, he was handpicked by Bob Zanotto to lead teams, back during the time when he was competent at his job.
At least, that was what Agent Nein explained secondhand, as he joined the Psychonauts about six years ago, and learned all of that from Agent Mentalis.
“I understand how soldiers think.” Tanya explained. “Soldiers, and this goes double for veterans like those two, all have a finely honed sense for when someone is talking out of the wrong end.” Tanya liked to think that she gained a much more complete understanding of her soldiers, after reviewing all of her memories of them. It was still rather baffling, how they would rather die uselessly than see her play along with Loria’s farce, but short of that utter madness, she thought she understood them. “If you give them a reason to stand up and work hard, they will. If you waste time demanding respect, you lose it.”
“Really?” Agent Oleander said, a little incredulously. “It can’t be that simple.”
“It isn’t.” Tanya agreed. “It is important, when you are a direct report, to be seen as being in the same overall position as the workers. To be one of them. The military is no different. The squad leader is the squad leader because he’s the one the higher ups yell at. He is otherwise just another one of the team.” She gestured to the bin she was pushing. “I wasn’t commanding them to do everything, I was telling them to work together with me to accomplish a necessary task.”
“Doors can’t be that important.” Agent Oleander grumbled, frowning. He moved to Tanya’s other side to let another Agent, one that looked hurried, pass. “I mean, how often are they supposed to do that? Twice a year?” Try twelve. Psitanium erosion was a serious problem, thirty of the doors broke and needed complete replacements over the ten weeks since they were previously maintained, according to the records.
“Everything’s relative.” Tanya said flippantly. The security issue was on a need to know basis, and he didn’t need to know. “Keeping the security up to date saves lives, after all. My point is, they got to do the easy part, where they didn’t need to think much, while I got to do the hard part, where if something goes wrong it’s my fault. ” The most important lesson a soldier learns in basic training is the relative value of physical effort versus mental effort. Specifically, that physical effort where you held little to no responsibility was generally desirable over making decisions where lives could be on the line. “They get paid the same either way, after all.”
Agent Oleander seemed baffled at the explanation. Damn armchair generals. No understanding of the fundamentals of esprit de corps. “But how did you get them to listen to you? You’re a little girl, half their size.”
Tanya frowned. She wasn’t that small, she wasn’t even a full foot shorter than them! By weight, probably about right. She got their buy-in by telling them about the sabotage she found, so… “There’s nothing like a good speech to rile up the troops.” She eventually said. It was her favorite part of leading troops, honestly. It wasn’t dangerous unless you really screwed it up, it made you feel important, and she got to fit in some occasional blasphemy, as a treat to herself. “I could go over what makes a good speech for hours, it’s difficult to put into words, ironically.” They had gotten a lot more enthusiastic about the job once they actually found a compromised scanner and Tanya let them examine it. They may not be engineers, but they understood enough to notice the differences, even if they probably wouldn’t know what those differences did without Tanya telling them, or demonstrating that you could get a random bird to open the door. From there, it was just a matter of leading from the front, metaphorically, and acting the part of the commander. Their familiarity with following orders did the rest. “Tone helps. They can sense weakness.” It was absolutely vital, when commanding troops as a young girl, to completely reject the possibility that they won’t obey you. Show no weakness.
Oleander didn’t respond, deep in thought as Tanya entered the maintenance department’s normal entrance. Taking a bin full of delicate-ish psitanium parts through the rapid transit tunnels was a bad idea. As parts rather than full devices, they weren’t in any kind of protective casing, and while psitanium wasn’t exactly fragile, it wasn’t particularly durable, either.
“Huh, don’t come by here much.” Agent Oleander commented as he realized where he had followed her to. “Last time was when I was filling out paperwork for the camp.” Requisitions, presumably.
“How is that going, by the way?” Tanya asked, to be polite. “Mom likes helping with it, but she’s not really involved with the nuts and bolts.” Tanya specifically was banned, after being the one to cause the test session to be canceled. She didn’t particularly want to go, so beyond getting a little lonely at home by herself when Mary and Mom were there it was no big deal.
“Oh, it’s going great!” Agent Oleander said happily. “I’ve got some ideas that I’m going to run by Hollis in a few weeks. Really whip the little troopers into shape.” The season was over, so he had plenty of time.
“I’m sure Lili would like that news.” Tanya said neutrally as she started on her exit paperwork. She has complained about how boring the camp gets for someone who’s already done it all.
“Yeah, the program’s not really set up for repeat campers.” Agent Oleander admitted as he rubbed his chin. “But I’m not going to tell Truman not to do it.” Wise. If Lili can’t get him to stop sending her to camp, no one will. “But I’m sure we’ll have the budget for my robot army. The kids will love it.”
Tanya paused. “The engineering corps is too overworked right now. There’s no way you could get robots. It’s not happening next year even if Hollis liked the idea.” Training robots does sound kind of cool, though… “If I have time in a few months, I could help you design robots that you could make mental copies of for your course. Making them real will have to wait.”
Agent Oleander doesn’t seem to like the idea. “Can’t take over the world with mental robots…” He grumbled as Tanya finished filling out the necessary paperwork she needed to end her shift. “I guess it’s a good plan C.” He eventually admitted. “Talk to you later, soldier. Keep up the good work.”
Tanya rolled her eyes at the dismissal. Sure, Agent Oleander was experienced and one of the most senior Psychonauts, but he was also the kind of higher up that thought they were funny when they definitely were not.
Still, spending the day commanding a pair of soldiers was nostalgic. It was time to attend to her personal projects.
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Tanya growled as she destroyed yet another panic attack. “PSI King, how could you be so overstimulated? It’s just water!” Needing something visually interesting for PSI King to use for his visual calibration, Tanya had instructed Mary to show off while Tanya handled the internal parts. She had decided to do a little water show, taking a kiddie pool and using hydrokinesis to make it move around. At least, that was what her archetype reported as she sat in a lawn chair. There was a tiny “park” between two of the on-base housing apartment where they had set up, mostly because Mary was already here when Tanya found her and PSI King. Two dozen feet away, a few other children played with jump rope, including Lili.
“It was scary!” PSI KIng shouted defensively. “All the swirling and the screaming and the snakes!”
Hrm. That sounded more like a flashback than overstimulation. Given that he was definitely brought to the Heptadome by Ford, who had just dealt with Lucrecia… it’s entirely possible that PSI King was traumatized by the Deluge of Grulovia. She wonders…
Time for a test. While by default, anything said inside a mind was automatically translated unless absolutely no common language existed, and languages with common roots could get at least a little across, it was possible to speak in a specific language if you tried. “What is the purpose of your visit?” Tanya asked in Grulovian. “Do you have your visa?”
PSI King paused. “I think I understood that.” He said. “You’re asking me what I’m doing, right? And if I have… something. What’s a visa? I don’t think I have one.”
So he does know Grulovian, but not fluently. More evidence for the pilot theory. “I was just testing your fluency.” Tanya said. “That was Grulovian, which is clearly not your native language, but one you know a few words in.” Well, it was also possible that she just used an incredibly archaic term, but Augustus didn’t say she sounded strange when she asked him to rate her fluency, so probably not. “I said something that didn’t make sense in context, so you could only understand it if you knew the language.”
“Oh.” PSI King said. “Well, okay then.”
“Still, I expected that more visual stimulation would summon some sort of entity similar to Audie O.” Tanya said, thinking out loud.
“Yeah, where is Vision Quest?” Audie said from his position, seated at his drumset. “I thought he’d come running when…” He paused, suddenly shuddering in fear. “Well, I thought he’d show up by now too.”
“Maybe he’s looking for his violin?” PSI King offered.
“It’s nowhere!” Shouted a new voice. Tanya jumped in surprise. Was that… Agent Cruller’s voice?
Much like Audie O, the entity that showed up was dressed for marching band. Also like Audie O, the entity had a giant sensory organ for a head and a fancy hat. The differences were that he had a giant green eye for a head, that color extended to his overall appearance, and he had swept back eyelashes as hair. “I’ve looked everywhere in the concert grounds. Can’t find it! How am I supposed to sweep the crowd if I don’t have my violin?”
Well, this essentially confirmed Tanya’s deduction that the one that put PSI King’s brain there was Agent Cruller. “It’s rather dark, maybe you missed it?” Tanya offered. She focused on the entity, trying to feel out if there was another spatial tunnel like Audie O had. “What does it look like?” She assumed green, but it was so much easier to work within a mind if you manipulated it rather than forcing things.
“Funny, I can’t quite remember.” Vision said. “I’d know it when I saw it, though.” He hurriedly added.
Tanya sent a message to her archetype to turn the vision on. All the way on. The audio system was already on full blast.
In the crowd, the ear-people who were patiently waiting for the show were joined by eye-people, and both started demanding some music from the band. Tanya felt that tiny connection inside Vision’s eye. “How about now?” Tanya asked.
“I think…” He said, nervous at the increasingly energetic crowd. “That I can’t look now.” He turned towards Tanya, making direct eye contact. “If you think you’re so great, how about an encore of your earlier performance?” With that, Tanya felt the tug from that connection, and projected herself through as she felt herself get sucked into Vision’s pupil.
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There wasn’t actually a whole lot to talk about, when it came to the interior of Vision’s section of PSI King’s mind. It was a place of massive visual noise, with energetic but futile attempts to stop Tanya from accomplishing her goal.
Light beam puzzles opened the way, the reconstruction of the rainbow allowed her to play a small tune on a giant xylophone, and it was capped off with an extra-powerful panic attack that was capable of hydrokinesis, forming clones of water instead of illusion to distract Tanya from destroying it. It required some usage of Time Warp to defeat, but most Psychonauts needed either that or Confusion to defeat panic attacks so that was nothing shameful.
Once the violin was retrieved, the floating microphone that PSI King manifested as changed to a floating eyeball with ears. Both of them sang a song on PSI King’s stage along with his two functional senses, and Tanya stepped outside of the mind at the song’s conclusion.
“How are you feeling?” Tanya asked PSI King when she was back in her own body.
“Groovy.” PSI King said, his brain spinning inside of his capsule. “I can finally see you clearly… I thought you said you were an adult?” Tanya had wondered just how PSI King could see inside his mind fine when his visual processing was screwed up, but as someone who had plenty of experience sensing things mentally, she should have known that the answer was ‘he wasn’t actually seeing things in reasonable resolutions’.
Tanya scoffed. “I said I had a Master’s degree. Which I do.”
Mary giggled. “She’s sixteen.” She added helpfully, idly splashing while relaxing in the kiddie pool. “Are you a bit disappointed that she’s too young for you? Were you getting a bit of a crush?”
“Nah.” PSI King said easily. “Just didn’t expect a kid to be so strong.” His brain started turning around slowly, and the integrated camera followed along, maneuvering around the ball to stay in front of his optical lobe. “What is this place?”
“This is one of the public areas of the on-base housing for Psychonauts headquarters.” Tanya explained. “You’ll find off-duty Psychonauts and their families here. Like Technician Dubois over there, playing catch with his son.”
“Woah, Dad bod alert!” PSI King said, keenly interested as the aforementioned ex-soldier lifted up his shirt to wipe away his sweat. Technician Dubois was fairly muscular, but he was also hairy with a prominent gut. “I wonder if he’s a trade…”
Mary and Tanya stared at the brain floating in the mobility capsule. Okay, PSI King was apparently gay. And into hairy fat guys. Mary looked at Technician Dubois. “Ew!” She shuddered in disgust. “He’s fat and old!”
“All the more to love, girl!” PSI King retorted. “I’m in no condition to cruise for tricks, though.” Tanya wondered if Mom was up to date on gay slang… Wait, being up to date would likely be counterproductive. The only old gay guy she sort of knows is Bob… No, going through the trouble of getting introduced to him would be too much of a bother. It’s times like this that she misses the internet. Back in her first life, she’d be able to find random information like that easily.
“At least you’ll be able to fully enjoy the concert, now that your primary senses are restored.” Tanya pointed out.
“Aw yeah, gonna bring the thunder!” He declared. Tanya checked her watch. Still an hour until dinner…
“The next step would be to get you mobile.” Tanya said. “Now that you can sense the world around you, you should be able to use telekinesis in order to move your mobility capsule.” It was called a mobility capsule for a reason, after all. The outer gyroscope was specifically designed to be easily caught by telekinesis, and to minimize the jostling of the brain inside when moving.
“Great. How do I do that?” PSI King said.
“Just imagine picking up your head and moving it forward.” Mary offered.
“With what?” PSI King asked.
Mary held out her hands. “You know, with your hands.” To demonstrate, Mary placed her hands at the sides of her head and tugged at her neck.
“RIght, hands.” PSI King said. “I totally remember having those.” He sat quietly, unmoving. “Tanya, can we use your machine? I had hands then.”
“We have some time.” Tanya said, nodding in agreement. “Mary, clean up the kiddie pool and go see if Mom wants help with dinner.” To help her out, Tanya used hydrokinesis to lift all of the water out of the pool and spread it all over the grass.
Off to the transit tunnels.
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“Okay, hands.” PSI King said, looking closely at the fake ones the APES imposed on him. He flexed them, but they glitched as he did so, clipping into themselves. “AH!” He said as he fell backwards, hitting his head on the tree that was behind him in the forest scenario. “Ow.”
“How’s the pain, by the way?” Tanya asked as she fiddled with her dev tools. Link looked pretty strange when she gave him more of a sumo build, but she was touching up the edited copy of the file she made before using it as PSI King’s avatar. In this case, her tools manifested as a pottery wheel in which she was adjusting a clay model. “Realistic? It’s meant to be toned down, but I’m not sure if I left it too sensitive.”
PSI King huffed as he rubbed the back of his avatar’s head. “I don’t really remember pain like this.” He said. “It doesn’t seem too bad though.”
“Good to hear.” Tanya said as she sliced a little off of the clay model’s stomach. What next…
“You should make the biceps bigger.” Agent Mentalis suggested with a soft tone. “Maybe add some handsome facial hair.”
Tanya followed the suggestion, the mental toolkit making such changes much faster than it would be if they were real clay. That did look better, yes. Now, how much of a mustache would be appropriate? She put on one that seemed balanced with the short hairstyle.
“That looks silly.” Critiqued Agent Mentalis. “It needs longer hair. Here, let me.” Wait a minute. What was… Tanya leapt away from the unexpected intruder on the APES environment.
The pottery wheel was now being shaped by a new mental entity, wearing a red coat with pink flourishes, brown pants, and an orange turtleneck sweater, humming exactly as Agent Mentalis would as he gently shaped the burlier Link model with two of his three hands. The last one was his head, where a face was drawn on the palm.
“Dr. Touch?” PSI King asked. “Oh man, it’s good to see you again. I could sure use a hand or two here with this.”
“Well, I’m without my organ, so I’ve not much better to do than help with this.” He said as he put the finishing touches. Surprisingly, it still looked distinctly like a burlier Link instead of like someone else, the hair grown to mid-back, flowing freely and widely with the green hat changed to look more like a knit cap rather than a leather one. Tanya assumed that he couldn’t get the facial hair to look right with such a delicate elfin jaw, so skipped over it.
“It looks good.” Tanya said approvingly. She dismissed the dev tools, saving the changes as a new asset. Then she checked her watch. “But I’m late for dinner.” She herded everyone out of the simulated mental environment, shut down the APES, and brought out her smelling salts. “I’ll leave you to…” Did he say organ? “Explore yourself.”
PSI King giggled.
Comments
Chris Larson
Ah yes because surely Oliander must be joking.
