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<04/09/2013 - 13:50 | Cage High School (History), Austell, GA, USA>

"I'm here now. What did you want to talk about?" With Lumina's attention back on me following the phase in of the connection, she and I shared the quiet space of the history room, an environment which I blocked out for the sake of another juicy mix-up.

I knew already what I wanted to ask her, though my expectations were long out the window given the possibilities. I still couldn't be sure before speaking with Lumina, but I feel like this Yogi business is somehow partly involved in the role of the Altiri... They already interfered with our human race when they purged us twenty-four times, much more when they unknowingly transferred their English language onto us. I'm learning that there is actually an unseen kind of sociology, one that exist between the human and Altiri race through what little information has been shared. "Be honest with me. Have you ever heard of something called the Astral Plane?"

"The Astral Plane?" Lumina froze in her tracks, as she had been walking through her main room towards the cockpit. I didn't see it for myself, I merely felt the strange movement of her inertia. What I asked - must have been unexpected. "What the? Where did you hear that from?"

"So you do know it?" This is now a thousand times interesting! She wouldn't be this shocked if the term was foreign to her, yet in all these months of me asking her for interesting stories to fend off boredom, she's never once mentioned the concept! I should be the one making the face she's making right now. "Tell me your version of it Lumina. This astral stuff, it's all about the immediate spacial afterlife we go to because our souls are currently tethered between there and our physical bodies; is that right?"

"I mean... Yeah, that is right. But I have no idea how you could have known about it."

"I'll get to that in just a moment. On one hand, I'd like to know why you didn't mention it to me before."

"I did. I told you in part about the separate dimension in which psionic energy travels, and where our souls go to when we die, for ten days at least. I simply didn't use the term Astral Plane when I explained it to you."

"What an oversight."

"There's a lot of reasons why; some of the research on that place is still technically in progress, even though there isn't much progress to be had."

"Research?" How can the Altiri research the afterlife?

"Herios was originally the one who came up with it, including that phrase. She used it almost religiously. Discovering the properties of the Astral Plane was a big part of what split off into psionic purges, resurrection, transperation, biolution, and theory of the other Clair-senses."

"Herios again, huh?" I wonder if this means Herios was somehow the founder of the Yogi Philosophy, or at least its core principles. Still, I never had any idea the Altiri were still looking into it.

"Herios helped us invent a lot of things, but that doesn't mean we have a full understanding of the technology that relies on her research, or a full understanding of the properties either. For example, just on psionic frequencies alone, the concept of a psionic signature for each person makes sense to me, but the actual data values are harder to study. Lots of psionic transmissions through the astral plane involves positive and negative frequency values as coefficients to each other, more than one at a time."

"I'm sorry, negative frequencies? How can a frequency be negative?"

"It's a lot harder for me to explain that. I don't understand how the exact values come into play, but machines like the transperator run software designed to handle those predicted coefficients, despite the fact that no electronic equipment can read or interpret the same data. A computer doesn't have to understand or read data in order to transmit the same information, so it was still made possible."

"Yeah, yeah. Herios was a genius." Whatever she was going on about now made my head start to spin, so I tried to stay on topic instead. "Okay, so Herios came up with lots of this information, and the Altiri continued this research, even after she died..."

"While we did get some progress in what Herios left behind, our research has effectively hit a solid brick wall in total or partial understanding in what is supposed to be left. None of us ever understood or found out exactly where she got her information from. Herios sort of just, knew the Astral Plane was there; she knew random information about psionics before she could even bring it to a hypothesis. Some think she managed to visit the higher plane itself and recall what she knew, but at the same time, Herios mentioned that retaining memories of the Astral Plane at all was physically impossible."

"How so?"

"It depends on what is meant by retaining memories and in what state we are currently in. In her words, because the soul is separate from the physical body, even while tethered together, all memories are processed, stored, and handled by the brain while we are in this state. The soul sustains these memories too, more than what we make with our brains. However, there isn't overlap of these memories from the soul to the body, only control of the soul's current body or vessel."

"Okay – okay. I think you're saying, our souls remember everything, but so long as I'm in a human body, or you're in an Altiri body, we only remember what we can recall since our physical birth, relative to what our body can remember?"

"Correct. After we die, everything we might have forgotten would be released back into our souls. However, if someone were to die only momentarily, theoretically experiencing the Astral Plane and being resuscitated shortly after, the memories that their astral forms or their soul absorbs would not transfer back into the physical brain. We think that might be the reason why nobody who has ever been transperated or resurrected in our world has ever mentioned any memories of what the afterlife might look like. They're simply locked out of what they already learned."

"Amazing!" I have no reason to doubt what Lumina is saying... It kind of sounds like she isn't too sure she believes it either. "Well Lumina, I have no idea why or how, but a fair amount of what I learned today came from something down here known as The Yogi Philosophy. Care to explain to me why?"

"You came across the Yogi Philosophy on your own?"

"Why is that something to be airtight about?" I don't get it. Am I not supposed to know or something?

"It's not that... I just didn't think you would accidently stumble across this material. I do have some reasons for not mentioning the Purge of 1903, but it's mainly because the Yogi Philosophy itself contains mixed information about our astral process, and many more human concepts, most of which are highly religious in nature, which I don't personally follow."

"The purge of 1903?" Why make it sound so ominous? "Wait, a purge? You're telling me that the Yogi Philosophy was also spawned from a purge? Okay, there's coincidence, and then there's intentional influence."

"What happened with this purge wasn't intentional to invent a new philosophy; that's just what happened. And we didn't invent the Yogi Philosophy ourselves. Yes, our purge heavily influenced information within the philosophy and which direction it went, mainly on data of the Astral Plane... Perhaps it's best I just start there, to tell you what happened to launch all of this."

"Yeah!" I wasn't about to play it off as no big deal. My heart was already beat boxing to learn something that sounds so crazy. A story this cool is irresistible! I was right to presume that the Altiri couldn't avoid cross influences with these purges. When one civilization communicates with another, ideas are bound to be traded around. "I cleared off my own work in this class just for this. Tell me everything!"

Lumina giggled before getting started, amused at my predicament. "I should have told you this after all, since you're so easy to entertain."

"Well sorry I find extraterrestrial social influencing to be so fascinating. I'm actually amazed you don't see it as a bigger deal, about how easy it was for me to find this stuff." I wasn't too confident about my last declaration; it took more time and search results than I let on.

"Well, I am a little miffed about you coming across the Astral in your own research. I had no idea you were looking up psionic information online in the first place, especially after I warned you how much false information was out there."

"I had to look more into my condition Lumina, just a little more, so that I might one day understand what is really happening inside me." This deal I've been working on, learning how to master personal simple clairvoyance has me becoming more curious about the properties of psionics every day that goes by. I've already netted some useful information already, like the fact that clairvoyance and clairsentience runs on very similar techniques, or that something like clairsentience also has skill-based timeframes and reference points, such as future-clairsentience versus past-clairsentience. "But we'll come back to that later. Start with the purge, or what you know about it. You said it started in 1903?"

"The aggressor group responsible technically started this purge in 1902, and the purge finished in the same year. Much like the initial purge experiments, the Royal Scryers went to work filtering as much information about this as possible, information that could never in any way be used to locate or identify the purge subject or her aggressor group. That is how we know about this special case to begin with, all for the interest in learning more about both our worlds."

"Okay, continue..." Lumina isn't bothering to pull up any report about it, so she must know this stuff off the top of her head. Still, all this time and she never told me? Maybe she thought I wouldn't understand.

"The woman chosen for the purge was done so for personal reasons, but at the time, she also hung out with a unique group of friends, most of which had spiritual views of the world."

"So they were spiritualists?"

"They were seen more as a phrase you call hippies, only at the time, the ideology was less popular in the west. The woman who was purged already spoke English, so the merging of information and learning was pretty fast. Also, from what I heard, she took kindly to the information about us, never living in fear of our presence for a moment."

Even I can understand why some people may think that way. Scary or not, learning about the existence of an alien race can be so cool and amazing, there just isn't room for any other emotion. "So then, as soon as she knew, she just caught on and they became good friends?"

"Pretty much. She tried to explain what was going on to her friends, and she took that approach one at a time. Despite how close they were as a group, the one she confide to didn't believe she was sane afterwards, but the two agreed to keep things silent. After that, she decided not to bother trying to convince the others about our existence."

"Sounds very familiar to me." Sarcasm aside, I'm in the same situation. Nobody will believe our story, nobody at all; not my classmates, not my family, not even those who may one day read my story, (yes, I'm talking to you when I say that)... Us, the purged ones; we're all looked at as insane, the ones who hallucinate about other worlds. The situation doesn't provide a single one of us with concrete evidence which we can present to others, unless we can create better circumstances. I've proven Lumina and the Altiri to myself, but now my evidence is just personal anecdote in the eyes of others, since they were not present to witness the birth of such non-physical evidence.

"Despite an initial back-step from her group of human friends, the woman still kept a strong connection between them, especially in 1903, when she learned enough about the Astral Plane and other psionic information to become confident in mastering the science herself. She had no access to research tools though, so she gave up that pipedream to talk about it instead. As you can guess, she started sharing her information with the others, not information about the Altiri, but rather information isolated only into the field of psionics. Doing that, she wasn't so quickly dismissed like before."

"So, she kept the alien business to herself knowing nobody would believe her, but then told them everything about psionics?"

"Correct. We don't know why she did that despite warning from her aggressor group not to give out free information too carelessly, but she spoke about what she knew so confidently, that the others believed her in that respect."

My mind wandered to a small tangent given the story. It made me wonder about the difference in likelihood other humans were to believe me about psionics rather than the existence of the Altiri. If I focus on explaining one and not the other, maybe I could somehow use that as a stepping stone to elevate the plausibility of my total experience... Maybe.

"Her friends already had ideas about the world, religious ideas mostly taken from Hinduism, Buddhism, and the ideas of cosmic karma. So, when they heard what she was saying about an afterlife plane along with invisible energies, it appealed to them. Her friends later grew more into their own ideas, and wanted to make a book or scripture about the material, working together. The purged woman agreed to join them, incorporating her ideas in with the rest. Spiritual mediation became a prime focus on the lessons despite some resistance from the others. By 1904, the text was mostly complete, and it would later become what would be known as The Yogi Philosophy. It didn't gain too much popularity at the time, since again, being a hippy wasn't attractive in that era."

"Were they really hippies though?"

"I don't mean anything by it. I don't think I understand what the term means anyway, even to this day."

"Well I wouldn't go calling them hippies... But I can see why others might. The Yogi Philosophy kept going on and on about all this magical healing and karma business. I didn't believe it for a second, but, looking at it from a scientific objective, I don't think anyone has proven their ideas to be false either. It's mostly religious though, so I don't personally buy it."

"Well, The Yogi Philosophy was a very important piece of material later on, because it further inspired other human ideas about factors of psychic abilities and even themes of the astral world. The Astral Plane is actually known by lots of humans because of this spread, and information pertaining to it is at the very least neutral, in that most information hasn't been claimed to be false - on our side. Many ideas however are not currently capable of testing, while others need a lot more time for study."

"These scryers you keep mentioning, how do they factor into this?"

"There are different levels of Altiri Scryers. The Royal Scryers are the only few who actually know most of what the queen knows, regarding classified details on specific reports or any personal information relating to purges and aggressor group activities. They sometimes release data in special reports after removing any personal identifiable information, so that other scientific scryers can study more about the psionic field in a preliminary manner. Altiri scryers on this nature typically work in groups, developing objective hypotheses about anything related, and search the truth using targeted long-range clairvoyance throughout the Earth."

"Hypotheses like what?"

"Like I said before, the scryers wanted data, the more the better. A while ago, we hit a brick wall in what new data we could uncover. So, the next best source of new information would have to come from the human race, assuming they would have certain abilities that we Altiri would not have."

"Oh." I let her go on, but I understood now where she was going with this... All this time, their scryers wanted to know more about psionics, so what better way to learn than to purge humans to see how they react to psionic signal infusions? There are probably Royal Scryers watching me at this very moment, curious about every little thing that happens to me.

"Self-proclaimed psychic powers in humans isn't something that might sound new to you, but especially back then, it was less common. Often, the few who dared declare their abilities turned out to be conmen, using deception tactics to fool a small audience. The scryers would look for humans who might for example have the ability of clairvoyance or clairsentience. If someone claimed to, they were targeted and studied closely by means of constant clairvoyant surveillance. Data was collected regardless of whether they could be proven to have these powers or not, while another team determined the validity per person later."

"That makes sense. Collect data first, decide if the human is crazy later."

"Not long after 1904, claims of psychic or even astral abilities became more common, and the popularity has been on an uphill tick ever since. In summary, not one human being on Earth has been able to clearly demonstrate any psionic ability to another human scientist, and as for the scryers, confirmed natural ability users are incredibly rare. We believe this has much to do with current human physiology and the lower psionic aptitude among humans when compared to our race. Humans aren't walking around using psychic powers, not exactly because psychic powers don't exist, but because the use of those abilities requires a much stronger body and mind with ample amounts of energy."

"Bodies like yours you mean."

"Correct," she went on. "Humans are in the low grey area for aptitudes, meaning, they can't naturally invoke psionic powers mainly because of low energy thresholds and a combination of mental and chemical brain preparation. The part of the brain responsible for psionic transmission, as we called it, the Cora sector, is still capable of interpreting psionic signals and subconsciously projecting them at very low power ratings. Increasing this rate does not exactly require any large physiological change, which means, humans can be trained to learn these powers, at least in a limited state. Those who believe in the Theory of Prodaption, expect the human race to become slightly stronger in naturally occurring psionic aptitude, given a few thousand years."

"Other people can learn psychic powers?"

"In essence, yes. However, training a brain how to do this without having a full understanding to begin with is most difficult, and the scryers estimated that with all of the best possible conditions and training methods present, the actual process would take about nineteen years."

"Good god!"

"So, they wanted to speed this process up. The idea of the purge was already brought into existence by what Herios studied. The queen wanted to consider invoking the first purge as a general experiment. The aggressor groups only wanted to use purges as a personal means of communicating with those they felt personally attached to. But the Royal Scryers had their own motivation too. They wanted to invoke purging as an experiment, only for the purpose of collecting any new data that would come of a human brain suddenly surged with psionic energy. Much like in your personal situation, ever since I purged you Reed, you've become more sensitive to the abilities of psionics, and at this point, you've learned simple future-sight clairvoyance with some of my help. Even among the purged, that's not something just anybody can learn. It's rare, even for a purged human, yet possible. The scryers predicted this much could happen as a result."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"What are you saying? Are you saying that the scryers pressured you into purging me?"

"Not at all. My decisions was only my decision. You already know the reasons why I chose you. I'm just giving you an example of what went through the minds of the Royal Scryers. They presented their plans to the queen, who outright rejected the ideas and morals of such experiments. Purging is a very rare and sacred art, and isn't supposed to be used as a means to slightly advance our science. It would have been wrong to purge humans only in the interest to see what would happen to their psionic aptitudes."

"A sensible decision then."

"Even so, the Royal Scryers are the ones who know personally which humans are purged and which ones are not. Even though I would be unaware of it, some of them might even be watching you right now, as we speak."

"There's a scary thought." Told you so. It's not really ideal anymore to pretend like everything we do is not being monitored. I'm being watched, even when I don't know it... Whatever. I'll care about it later.

"I know. Any Altiri can technically do this if they have clairvoyance. Of course, clairvoyance can't be used to interpret your personal thoughts. If you talk to me like you've been so far, through your mind, your words and emotions will never reach them."

"Good. I guess thought projection is better after all... Is that where the story ends?"

"Pretty much. There isn't much else known about the subject through rumor; even her name is kept out of ear. The purge happened in 1902, but the text of the Yogi Philosophy was given rise in 1904. Since the two are inherently related, we simply refer to the event as the purge of 1903."

"I see..." As interesting as it was, my mind was too focused on the other aspect Lumina mentioned, so much that I couldn't think about the Yogis anymore. "You know, being watched without knowing it bothers me."

"I'm not fond of it either, but it's not exactly easy to prove. Any Altiri could in theory watch any human being, but to know who they are watching or what information they learned isn't something anyone would know unless telepathically transmitted. We watch people of the world all the time with our powers; it's just something you have to get used to."

"Yeah, that's not what I meant Lumina... What about when I'm doing other things?"

"Other things?" She phrased my own question as if she had no idea.

"You know what I'm talking about." The possibility of it was already embarrassing enough. I've already learned that the Altiri are curious about such aspects, as they don't fully experience human embarrassment for the same reasons we do.

"If it bothers you that much, just don't do it anymore."

"Yeah, easy for you to say."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing!" I corrected myself too quick, hoping not to say something stupid enough to put me in the dog house.

"Look, there's nothing you can do about it. It carries the same concept and idea of people within the afterlife watching others at random moments. Souls beyond this world can watch what we do, and we'd have no idea it was happening. So, I wouldn't worry about it."

"I guess privacy is a thing of the past. More like, it never existed in the first place."

"You're sure one to talk Reed."

"Me?" I pointed to myself making a goofy face, failing to remember I was still in class.

"Yes you! You've been using clairvoyance on quite a few people so far now. Worse, you have future-sight clairvoyance, which gives you eighteen hours more data per invocation than any normal Altiri would have. Each time you invoke that ability, you accept the risk that you might see something that you shouldn't."

I adamantly wanted to argue in return, especially to the idea that I would ever do such a thing on purpose, but she's right. I never even gave it thought before, but it would technically be possible for me to catch a flashing glimpse of someone while they are taking a shower or doing something else. I've been lucky enough so far that it hasn't happened yet, but it could, and that would be a severe invasion of privacy I want no part of... Maybe it hasn't happened because of the factor of Thought Dynamics; I only see flashes of people when they are concentrating on anything more emotional, and as far as being horny goes, Lumina told me already that those hormones don't count as traceable emotions. Still, I don't like the risk.

How would I like it if some girl I didn't know randomly walked up to me and apologized for seeing me naked in my own home, all by using the powers of clairvoyance? After a few seconds of thought, I could simulate the situation far enough to be totally defeated and speechless. "It hasn't happened yet, but I see your point. I have to be careful."

"Just don't freak out if it does happen. The last thing I need right now is for you to get all strange over it and say something suspicious in school that you shouldn't, especially after what happened last time."

"Yeah, you don't have to remind me..." God, that moment was stupid! I always said the councilors of this high school were full of it, but they recently tried going after me for the stupidest reasons. The other day, the guidance counselor wanted to confiscate my school flash drive on suspicion of hacking their firewall, based entirely on the fact that I'm slightly more competent with computers than the rest of them. Translation; bullshit! I'm still too angry to think about it again, so I'll fuss about it later.

"I get the feeling somebody in this school has a bone to pick with you, so it's best to keep quiet and be more on alert. Watch what you say, and all that."

"If some stupid school admin has anything to say to me, they can come and say it to my face. Fuck those dickless assholes! I'm forced by law to come to this stupid school and I can't even be myself? Fuck that!"

"Anyway..."

"... What? I can tell you want to ask me something."

"I just don't want you to get the wrong idea when I ask this. I'm only personally curious myself. Have you learned anything unusual or crazy about psionics which we have not?"

"Planning to tell some scryers about it later?"

"No! I'm genuinely curious myself. I never personally read the entire Yogi Philosophy, and I've only ever heard of it in passing. What I meant was, is there any other weird power that you've noticed, besides clairvoyance?"

"No, there isn't."

"Okay."

"Why do you want to know anyway? It's not like I would keep something that big from you if it did happen."

"The scryers aren't the only ones interested you know. I would never do anything unethical to learn more about psionics, but I figured I should ask you, since you might know more than us, being human and all."

"I thought you said humans have a lower aptitude for psionics. Why study us in the first place when Altiri clearly have the advantage?"

"You really don't understand how rare your ability is, do you?"

"Huh?" How rare? I thought all Altiri had clairvoyance, and a more advanced version than mine. I don't understand what she's so impressed with.

"You forgot this already, but I'll remind you anyway. Altiri have the shared ability of long-range clairvoyance, when we use it on humans or other Altiri, putting telepathy aside. In every single instance, our clairvoyant visions are always in real time. In other words, we see events in the present moment. Not one of us have ever demonstrated future-sight clairvoyance."

"Wait, you haven't?"

"Seeing into the future appears to be your specialty. Even though you can't invoke clairvoyance and clairaudience at the same time like we can, you can still do something none of us can, all because the purge increased your psionic aptitude before you hit your peaking period."

"I had no idea..."

"See now why the scryers were curious? Even I didn't agree with their initial idea to gather data by purging others, but I couldn't blame them for being impatient. Looking throughout humanity, that brick wall psionics crashed into got pushed back a little, since it appeared that a variance of psionic aptitude in other people or other species led to a variance of related abilities, even some we thought never existed to begin with."

"What kind of abilities?"

"All kinds. For the last two centuries, the general scryers have been focusing non-stop all over the Earth for more data, more recently since psychic powers have become more of a popular topic."

"What did they say about those pathetic psychic booths?"

"After being disgusted, they were promptly ignored. Lots of factors were discovered. I can't put an exact number on it, but I know it was never more than nine humans, who from what I hear, developed some form of simple clairvoyance, some with a purge, and some without a purge."

"I thought you said no human could learn a psionic ability without a purge, or that it would take nineteen years."

"For a vast majority of humans, yes. There appeared to be extremely rare exceptions through our time though, where people learned psionic powers without even being purged, though never telepathy, since a purge is a minimum requirement for such communication."

"Still, that's quite amazing Lumina."

"Still wonder why we care?"

"... No, I see your point." I don't know why I kept trying to convince myself I wasn't interested before. I figured I simply got tired of hearing so much on the internet about psychic powers, only to find enough wrong with a person's explanation or demonstration.

"The investigation didn't speed up simply because we became more focused on psionics though. As you can imagine, the more we focused on the people with these powers, the more often we ran into phonies who didn't possess an ounce of talent within them. Some of them were genuinely self-deluded. You think finding a fake makes you angry? Imagine how the investigators felt when they kept wasting their time on people who were expert liars, slowing down the data acquisition. Many scryers actually quit their roles over it. I think even humans have learned to distrust what they hear on the matter."

"Yeah, no kidding. It makes sense to me why no scientific research continues into psychic abilities down here. All of the fakes ruined everything. Hell, they've even tarnished the very psychic name. I can't use it seriously anymore."

"Still, there were also self-proclaimed ability users who we've never been sure about, and thus, certain abilities fall under a category of, 'possible yet unproven'."

"Like what?"

"Abilities such as Astral Projection."

"I heard about this one. Did Astral Projection come from the Altiri, or from the girl who was purged?"

"Neither. It was incorporated from that girl's group of friends who helped her write the material. However, it was more amazing to us how many humans claimed they could pull it off. Based on the theories of Herios when she separated the process of physical brain memory to astral memory, it shouldn't be possible to claim one can astral project, since they wouldn't be able to remember it... But then, if the physical and astral body and mind are both simultaneously connected and conscious, it might be possible after all. Since humans seem to only try this while falling asleep, we can't use clairvoyance on those projectors to be sure; we would see nothing in our case."

"But I thought you said we can't project psionic waves in our sleep, since it requires so much focus."

"That's only for certain abilities. There's another theory about the difference in psionic cost for each different ability, much like how you were getting premonitions in your dreams, or even way back then when you had lucid dreams from the purge. I think humans can project in their sleep, just in much lower energy amounts. It would still make most powers including telepathy impossible, but perhaps not with something like Astral Projection, if it really exists. To date, we can't be sure if it's a real power or not."

This is cool! Lumina has an all access pass to determine for me which psychic powers are real, and which ones are not. "What about telekinesis?"

"Moving physical objects with psionic energy? Not possible."

"You sure?"

"Unless you want to prove the magic trick right in front of me... It wouldn't be possible anyway. Psionic energy waves rely on non-physical energy traveling through an astral medium. The Astral Plane is an exact auto-updating real time copy of this world, but it has different dimensional and physics properties. Many call it the ghost world of this world. Psionic energy waves would phase right through objects and energy as if it never existed, so it cannot interact with the physical matter or kinetic inertia of this world. For these reasons, the scryers have already proven this ability to be impossible."

"Mind control?" I'll just keep running down an impressive list. I want to know what she knows on all this.

"The scryers have given up on the possibility, but technically, it cannot be ruled out. We certainly don't have anything close to that kind of power. We cannot change or influence anyone's thoughts."

"What about the purge and the personality changes? Wouldn't that be an influence of thought?" I could never forget it myself. Soon after I was purged, I felt many different ways that went against my actual personality.

"I guess you could say it causes temporary mental influence, but it's still not mind control. Everyone who was ever purged has proven they have the capacity to resist this one side-effect of the purge."

"I didn't have much ease resisting personal feminism when I was purged."

"That's because to some degree, some part of the real you must have wanted that, or instead, some part of you didn't care one way or the other."

"Yeah, but what if the purge made me want to feel that way to begin with, or made me not care one way or the other?"

"... We'll come back to this later. There is no such thing as mind control though. I was never present for the moment of the purge; never did I control a single aspect of your thoughts. It simply isn't in my power to do so."

"Let's see... Claircognizance?"

"That's a hard one to crack. Even now, the scryers are investigating the ability, and have not concluded one way or the other if it actually exists, though it leans on being more likely to."

"What about pure clairaudience?"

"You're just going to pick every single possible power and ask me, aren't you?"

"Is it a problem if I do? I'd like to know what not to waste my time looking into."

"You're not going to find anything else out online. If a real Scion actually does out themself to the public, it would cause a huge stir to become global news. Haven't you noticed by now that the only people gloating over their powers online are also the ones full of lies? All they want is attention, and when people challenge them on it, guess who makes excuses and backs down?"

"I'd still like to know about the abilities though."

"Well, since you asked, clairaudience is a tough one. We already know that the ability exists, because we invoke it with our advanced clairvoyance. However, we're not able to take our advanced clairvoyance and split between sight and sound, making it simple clairvoyance or simple clairaudience. I can't say why. As for the very few humans who were spotted investigating themselves for that ability, even they struggled to prove whether or not they were using psionics. With clairaudience, one relying only on sound instead of sight for distant location data gathering doesn't give one an easy setup to work with, especially with the possibility that they may be invoking future-sight clairaudience. These same people instead concluded that they were schizophrenic or hearing delusions. The scryers had no way to prove it either way, since our clairvoyance only locks in physical noise in the sensory vicinity of the target, being of the physical sensory organs of course."

"Physical sensory organs?"

"Yes. I was mystified about this earlier, until I remembered this aspect of clairvoyance. Apparently it applies to telepathy as well. Did you know that I would be unable to visually see or hear any clairvoyant or clairaudient detail which you invoke even while telepathically linked to you? Heck, even if you were crazy enough to hear voices or hallucinate at the same time we're linked, only you would experience it."

"That's weird, but why is it that way?"

"Unknown. It's another one of those unsolvable mysteries. It doesn't make the job any easier for the scryers focusing on a human who might possibly be an active Scion."

There she goes, using terms I came up with in the first place. Still, this is starting to make some sense. The scryers want the facts about psionic data, and nothing but the facts, so they study people using their advanced clairvoyance, which while advanced - is still limited in a number of ways. "That must mean they investigate any person who announces to themself that they have psychic powers."

"Of course. Some cases are easier to prove than others, all by mere circumstance alone. We obviously know that real psychics—"

"Scions," I swiftly corrected.

"... We know that real Scions never take part in any activity which earns them money while depriving it from another. Even if they did, using such abilities in real scenarios is thought to be unreliable. The best clairvoyant would never learn everything about everyone, and there are many different reasons for that. The easiest and most common mistake they make, at least for us, is the process in which fake Scions use their powers either in highly heated areas, or do so without any change in the consumption of hydration fluids. We normally couldn't watch them try if their area temperature were elevated, but some have made public announcements before claiming which days and times they previously used their abilities for. Others who claimed to have special knowledge about a cold-case murder investigation would use deceptive tactics, such as telling detectives that their target body must be somewhere near or in water. This only makes for common sense, as body dumping in lakes is something serial killers commonly do."

"I should have remembered that." Fake psychics who claim they can use abilities, and then attempt to do so regardless of how warm their environment is will automatically out themself without realizing it. Because the whole heat issue is mostly known only by Altiri and not by humanity, they wouldn't even be aware of such a mistake, only we would. Though, the world would adapt shortly after if they did become aware of this debunking technique, allowing false psychics to add this factor into their routine. "Still, you would think these people would learn a lesson or two."

"Reed, for fame or fortune, humans will do anything. Best you remember that."

"Let me ask you this then. You keep going on about future-tense abilities, but why not past-tense?"

"No one has ever demonstrated the ability to invoke a Clair-sense while looking backwards in reference time. Ironically, we don't think it would actually be possible anyway, and the theory of thought dynamics explains it."

"How?"

"Remember before, when you invoked clairvoyance on the same person for the same location, but got nothing at all? Then you learned later that they were absent from school?"

"Yeah?"

"It goes back to the same two core requirements needed for any of these abilities to work. Relative to its time frame reference, you need the person in mind during focus, but also their location. In real time clairvoyance, it means, if I check on the school while you are at home, I don't have any echo return data, so I see nothing. If instead, I were to have future-clairvoyance like you do, and I target the timeframe of when you would be at school while invoking the ability no earlier than eighteen hours, I would see you at school, at home too if I concentrated on that time frame and that location simultaneously during my focus of invocation."

"Okay... I'm with you so far."

"Our Clair-senses are sensitive to the emotional energy broadcasted through the minds of people, the theory of thought dynamics. We believe that the time window of relative synchronization between this world and the Astral Plane is somewhere between zero and eighteen hours. Some have alternate theories to explain this, assuming there is no time difference. The point however is this: as long as the target is alive or consciously awake, and you have the relative location and relative time-frame correct, you should receive echo return data from their thought dynamics. I think thought dynamics can appear in the present time frame within the Astral Plane from the future, up to a point."

"This is getting close to breaking my brain."

"A certainty exists within this parabola. Any person who is either unconscious or dead, will be entirely immune to all Clair-sensing scans. We've never once obtained any sensory data from a target who was asleep or unalive. If you were to use your clairvoyance on someone alive, who would hypothetically die in only a few more hours, then the time after that point would reveal to you nothingness. You wouldn't know they would die, you would simply see nothing, unless you somehow caught the glimpse of their final moments and put everything together. My point is, the same rule applies to the idea of past-Clair-senses."

"I get it now."

"See? If you're looking backwards in time, the target person you would chose would likely not be in the same location as the present moment, or they would be unconscious, or dead. It's unknown what would happen if an ability user did this with the living target standing in the same place at the same time, past and present, but we've never seen it happen anyway. So, all of these self-proclaimed psychic investigators who see weird visions of already deceased victims are certainly faking their powers too."

"What about if they find a victim still alive?"

"It would warrant investigation from our scryers for sure, but nothing would be certain as easily as that."

Lots of uncertainties are what I hear. I didn't realize how big the field of psionics was as a science. Down here on Earth, all the fake psychics have ruined the motivations of human matters into the subject, but not the Altiri. Makes sense; if you've personally seen and proven, or even demonstrated a psionic ability, then there is no reason to think those powers are not real. Even so, it's important to take a highly skeptical approach to it all. It is possible to run tests and gather empirical information. That's what the scryers do... All Lumina can do is ask me, since her clairvoyant abilities were wiped out by the purge she sent me. "It's all still very interesting though. I wonder what more I could learn about the Astral Plane, and about the Yogis. Still blows my mind that the Altiri had something to do with that too."

"It makes me wonder," she pondered slowly. "I wonder what will be the point where our purges and involvement become just high enough for important members of human society to believe we exist, or even take notice of us."

"Probably never. I gotta tell you, as much as the FBI and CIA care about super interesting or very rare intelligence, these days, they couldn't catch a cold if it hit them in the face."

"Do you want those agencies to know? Cause I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Are you kidding? They don't deserve to know. If my secret ever got out, it would also have to be believable for it to matter anyway. And if it somehow did, nothing I do would be provable anyway, except for maybe the clairvoyance."

"I can't tell if you want the world to know or not."

"I just want friends Lumina. I want a certain amount of people to know, and to trust that what I'm telling them is real, or at least for anyone to figure out how important this all is to me and to not shun me over it. I'm not going to show some stupid agency what I know just to make my life more interesting. If they do buy it, my life would probably be hell on Earth. Remember project Stargate, and MK-Ultra?"

"In that case, you just have to be patient. The right person will come along one day, and you'll feel comfortable telling them everything, I'm sure of it."

"Yeah, we'll see, cause that's worked out real well in the past."

"If anyone can do it, I know you can Reed. I should say this more often, but I believe in you. I know you have what it takes to make happen what you want, whether that's making close friends or moving up north."

"Thanks." It was hard for me not to sound sarcastic about the excitement. Moving up north wasn't too concerning to me, but as for making any friends, I still doubt I will find anybody who cares. I guess I can find a way to try again, but in the meantime, I shall polish this clairvoyance first. Maybe, if I can get a solid grip on this ability, I can use it to my advantage when I try to convince somebody else that the Altiri are real.