In 16th century medieval Europe, Duke Farnsworth was suddenly awoken in his castle chambers by the manor’s stable boy, who claimed to have felt ‘terrifying desires to commit murder’ while passing near the manor’s guest chambers. The Duke’s men investigated the wares of Farnsworth’s visiting cousins and discovered their canes concealed knives, and their liquor bottles hid poison. From that day forth, Duke Farnsworth brought the newly knighted Sir Eddington wherever he went.
This account is the first of Sir Eddington’s many heroics instigated by what many psientists believe were his latent, but brilliant telepathic abilities, and prompted many historians to scour texts for similar incidents of people with supernatural insight.
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Stupid pop quiz…
The gentle scratching of handwriting filled the classroom, and Taz leaned on her hand, puffing one cheek up as she stared down at the paper on her desk. She tapped the empty answer square with the tip of her mechanic pencil and yawned.
She didn’t like the silence.
Rereading the question made her eyes glaze over, so she readjusted her posture and mumbled the question to herself.
She’d spent all night doing research or playing with a water bottle, and she was well and tired from all that not-sleep.
The silence wasn’t helping, either.
A boy a row ahead of her, to her right, raised his hand—Thomas Reil was his name—and Mr. Danson came over to talk to him, the low sounds of their muttering making Taz feel a little bit better, but it wasn’t good enough. Her brow still felt heavy, and she still felt so… isolated…
She reread the question again: ‘What is the sum of the interior angle?’ Followed by a shape that nobody would ever find in nature with a bunch of labeled degrees in each corner, and a singular X.
They’d gone over the algorithms earlier in the week, but Taz’s brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. She was tired, but… it was also just too quiet.
She quietly ruminated on getting Mr. Danson’s attention, more than she was thinking about the math problem, and meekly raised her hand. The teacher finished his business with Thomas and glanced around, spotting Taz’s hand.
He hustled over with a friendly smile. He was kind of a stereotypical looking teacher: balding on top with a ring of brown hair around the edges and a big, caterpillar mustache over his upper lip. His big ol’ glasses highlighted how goofy he looked, though Taz privately mused that she liked that sorta ‘old, embarrassing dad guy’ appearance.
“What’s the matter, Taz?” He asked, bent over to whisper, and Taz pursed her lips as she stared down at her paper, then met Mr. Danson’s eyes and pressed her finger tip to the source of her annoyance.
“Can I take off my privacy band?” She asked in a low voice, her fingers touching the circlet of metal stretched over her forehead, connected in the back underneath her long, blonde hair.
Mr. Danson’s expression fell a bit, staring at the device. It was a simple enough thing, a headband with some strategically folded lead sheets inside, heavier around the temples, and soft cloth underneath. Thanks to the fashion industry, they’d even gotten cute designs to make them more endearing, like the little rabbit patterns across Taz’s.
The teacher pursed his lips thoughtfully, then met Taz’s very sad, pleading look, and then sighed.
“I don’t think you need to take it off, Taz.” He responded, and Taz’s pout only grew.
“Please? It’s too quiet in here, I can’t think…”
“You’re too old to be making that excuse!” He whispered, but she shook her head.
“It’s really uncomfortable; I can’t focus. Please?” She asked again, and Mr. Danson rolled his eyes, glanced around for a moment, then at the classroom door, and looked back at her with a flat look.
“It goes back on once I collect the tests, okay? Or if anybody knocks on that door.” He stared her in the eye, though his shoulders unwound a bit as she smiled brilliantly.
He stood back as Taz reached up and grasped the clasp keeping the band around her head, and pulled the device off with a relieved sigh.
Almost instantly, her head felt full again. She could feel… inquiries all around her. She could hear the muffled questions from her classmates as they read questions and tried to remember the right equations to plug them into. Curiosity, annoyance, focus, thinking, it all filled the air around her, like a low conversation in a classy restaurant.
“Everybody please focus on your quizzes!” He ordered, staring around the room before returning to his desk.
Taz tapped her fingertips together as Mr. Danson kept an eye on her, though he wasn’t the only one. Several people were thinking about her right now, most of them watching out of the corner of their eyes, some curious, some worried, but she didn’t let that bother her; when you were a natural empath like she was, you could filter out all the weird stuff and just enjoy the buzz of knowledge.
It was like a whetstone against her brain; the room’s combined confusion and moments of understanding helped stir her thoughts and let her stare at her paper again, her arms crossed as her mechanical pencil lifted up, tapping the paper again in her psionic grasp.
She whispered the question to herself again, lifting a finger as she spoke, and in the empty answer section, figures appeared. They weren’t real, but she could see them as clearly as she could in her mind, and she began to punch numbers in as her brain began to warm up.
Her mechanical pencil traced the shapes she projected, filling them in bit by bit.
It was easier when she didn’t feel so trapped, and easier still when everyone around her was working through the same problem-solving exercises. Her ear twitched as she sensed almost crushing incomprehension from somebody in the back row; whoever it was, they felt like she did with her band on, just silent, blank, and unhappy, with numbers bouncing around in their skull like a fly against a closed window…
Taz chewed her cheek, and her thoughts tapped on their head, and she mentally whispered a clue straight into their mind, and suddenly, that cloud of confusion coalesced into reasoning, and she felt their ideas stir to follow the lead.
Mr. Danson didn’t need to know about that.
Fifteen minutes later, she marched to the front of the classroom with a smile and handed her quiz over to Mr. Danson, who set aside a different quiz on the pile he’d accumulated, and glanced over hers carefully.
“Hm…” He hummed, his eyes squinting. “You copied Diana’s handwriting again.” He noted out loud, and Taz flinched.
She glanced back over her shoulder at the pretty brunette girl sitting in the middle of the front row, glancing back curiously, her mind prickling with wonder as to why she was being stared at, and Taz looked back to Mr. Danson, who was sorting through separate layers of dismay, annoyance, and empathy for the girl standing in front of him.
“Well, her handwriting is beautiful…”
“And also tells me you were reading minds again.” Mr. Danson reminded her, and Taz winced.
“It’s not… mind reading, just surface thoughts, I didn’t steal any answers!” She told him, and he flipped through the quizzes he’d gotten to find Diana’s and compared the two.
“Well,” he began with a small working of his jaw, “that’s apparent. Alright, go sit down and put your privacy band back on.” He ordered, and Taz nodded, heading back to her desk, glad she wasn’t in trouble.
… wait, what did he mean: ‘that’s apparent?’
“... Crap.”
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North Petersburg Highschool was one of two highschools in town, and it was known as the town’s ‘psychic school’ because every one of Petersburg's psionically-gifted from the past decade—all three of them—had attended NPH.
Taz was one of them, and consequently, was the only one in her little friend group wearing a privacy band as she ate a spicy chicken sandwich her mother had packed for her.
“Guys, can y’all think of anything a psychic can do that can help the public?” She suddenly asked, causing them to slow their meal to glance her way.
“My aunt visited a psychic in LA that introduced her to her husband.” Mallory answered around a mouthful of cafeteria burger. “She said he could determine from peoples’ brain waves whether they were a good fit or not!” Her eyes lit up at the thought as she swept some bright red hair out of her face.
“Mom wouldn’t go for that…'' Taz mumbled out loud. “Something that really helps people, like… like a public servant of some sort.”
“I heard,” Mario spoke up beneath a thin, bristly black attempt at a mustache, “the army is testing bringing in, uh, empaths to keep an eye on mental states and stuff, make sure the soldiers coming in aren’t loco and stuff.”
“Is that a for-sure thing? Like would I be able to do that when I graduate?” Taz perked up, and Mario pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“Dunno. I heard they shelved it because Texas was gunna sue for violating soldiers’ privacy and stuff.”
Taz instantly deflated, and sipped some of her watermelon juice in contemplation.
“I don’t think there’s many jobs out there, Taz.” Daniel said, adjusting his glasses as he glanced Taz’s way. “Not for psychics. I searched for that stuff on the internet like a year back ‘cuz my brother and I heard a rumor that they were gunna put psychics in the airports to read minds to find, like, terrorists, but that broke some law where private companies can’t use psychics on non-consenting people.”
Taz slowed her chewing in frustration when the pale brunette of their group, Natalie, spoke up. “There was this group of psychics that started an electricians’ company with electrokinesis to find where the electrical problems were? They got broken up by a court order on behalf of some electricians’ union because they were ‘monopolizing business in the area’ because other electricians didn’t have the same abilities.”
“Oh yeah, the Zappers or something like that?” Mario piped in.
“Didn’t that get some law where telekinetics couldn’t start competing businesses without hiring, like, a buncha non-psychics?”
“Yeah, that’s them, and I think so, it was big news a year ago because California ruled that they had to have these pricey licenses to use their powers in an ‘official utility manner.’”
The group spoke around Taz as she nibbled her sandwich sullenly. “Ugh.” She grunted, her eyes closing dramatically. “Why’s it seem like there are laws for everything a psychic can do?”
“Dunno.” Daniel shrugged. “Personally? I’d blame Nixon.”
“That was like sixty years ago! Haven’t things gotten better since then?” Taz stomped her foot underneath the table, and leaned on one hand, her eyes screwed shut tightly in thought. “If I can’t figure out some way to convince mom that there’s a future in psychic powers, she’ll never let me go to PA.”
“Face it Taz, it’s gunna be a while before psychics make a comeback.” Natalie gave her a sympathetic look while prodding at her salad. “Five wars, everything with Soviet Russia, people are still scared of brain powers.”
“Are you guys scared of me?” Taz glanced between them worriedly, and got a few hesitant shakes of their heads, though Daniel gave her a serious look.
“You keep fucking jump-scaring me with Mel; does that count?” He huffed, only to rear back shaking his finger at Taz as she grinned evilly and threatened to tug her band off. “Don’t!”
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“Well, compared to Nixon’s Psi-Ops, or the E-KGB? You’re on the tame side.” Mario said.
“It’s kind of weird feeling another person’s feelings, but I don’t think you’ve done anything scary.” Mallory stared into her milk for a moment, her face passive but thoughtful. “I usually kinda look forward to hearing you and Mel play, so kinda the opposite?”
“Yeah, you could easily be a musician with the stuff you do.” Natalie nodded encouragingly, but Taz didn’t look satisfied; she’d already told her mother she had different plans…
“Maybe I should head to the library and do some research there.” She wondered out loud, only to flinch at a small squeak from Mallory. The redhead shot up from her seat, her eyes tracking a distant figure in the cafeteria.
The group leaned around her to stare at the handsome, sparsely-bearded teen throwing trash away with one hand and hauling a guitar case around with the other. The guy, Johnny, was laughing with a group of friends, looking… fine, Taz supposed, but Mallory was transfixed on him.
She bunched up in her seat, keeping her head down, but she wouldn’t stop staring at the boy. Her fingertips drummed her knees beneath the table, and Natalie gave her a bemused look.
“You know, just staring at him isn’t going to get his attention.” She told Mallory, who shot Natalie a dirty look.
“I know that, just…” She stared at him, rubbing her cheeks to try and hide the red in them. “Y’know, I can’t just walk up and be like, ‘hey man, wanna go out sometime?’”
“Why not? Sounds easier than trying…” Taz trailed off, thinking for a moment, “literally anything else?”
“Taz, baby, romance isn’t that easy!” Mallory held a hand out like she had any authority on the subject. “Sure I could just go up and say that, but then what? There’s no extravagance or elegance; if I’m going to set myself up with a somebody who knows their way around guitar for the rest of my life, it’s gotta be special.”
“We’re zoomers, Mallory, we don’t gotta follow the highschool stereotypes for romance.” Daniel shook his head as Mallory huffed.
“Well pardon me for trying to make my first plunge memorable!” She almost whined as she watched Johnny from a distance.
Mario swallowed a bite of pizza and spoke up almost absent-mindedly. “Taz is also a guitarist.”
“Hu-what?” Taz blinked at the boy, who just grinned as she turned as red as a tomato, and Mallory crinkled her nose.
“I don’t like girls!”
“We’re zoomers, Mallory, nobody’s heterosexual in our generation.” Natalie said with a dryness befitting the state of Arizona, and Mallory stuck her tongue out.
“I beg to differ!” She harrumphed. By her side, Taz sat looking stupefied by her side, only to give a little ‘eek!’ when Mallory grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her back to consciousness, almost knocking her glasses off her face in the process. “Taz!”
“Wha?!” Taz managed to get out as Mallory gave her a begging look.
“Let’s write a song!”
“About girls kissing?” Mario offered, and Mallory threw a handful of green beans at him to shut him up.
“W-what kind of song?” Taz blinked, and Mallory drew her hands back, wringing them in front of her chest.
“One that helps me ask Johnny out!”
Taz’s face pinched in annoyance. She turned away from Mallory to watch Johnny stop on the way out to chat with some friends of his at a different table, gesturing to his guitar.
Mallory shook her again in order to get her attention. “You can do lights and effects with your powers, he’ll have to notice!”
“But then it’s not really, like, anything under your control.”
“Yeah,” Natalie piped up, “if Taz is doing the effects, then it’s more like she’s asking him out.”
“Noooo…” Taz shook herself out of Mallory’s grasp.
“Besides, bringing a different guitar player to try and woo a guitarist?” Daniel said with a raised eyebrow. “Seems like a good way to send some mixed messages.”
“Yeah, what if he thinks Taz is better than him and gets, I dunno, jealous?” Natalie added.
“Okay, fine!” Mallory rubbed her temples, thinking hard as she continued to stare across the room at the distant boy. “What about… piano and bass. We can make that work.”
“Can you?” Mario sounded unsure, and Taz tried to imagine how that would even go.
“I mean, anything can work if you put in the effort! We just need the right, y’know, ensemble or whatever! Taz, you’ve been playing since you were young, right? Longer than guitar! You can make something work!”
Taz raised her fingers thoughtfully, imagining a keyboard under her fingers for a moment as she suddenly became more interested in the logistics of working a bass into her piano routine than some guy. “I mean, I mostly learned classical pieces; y’know, mom music? I don’t know…”
“Try!” Mallory whispered encouragingly, looking away from Johnny for only a second to lean towards her, beet red with excitement. “Y-you can do that thing with your powers, right? Mimic some piano stuff, I’ll figure it out!”
“I’m not allowed to take my band off while school’s in session, though!” Taz looking uncomfortable, but Mallory gathered up her hands and shook them, begging once again.
“Pleeeeaaaaase! Just a little?! It’s just some piano, it’s not like mind control or anything!”
Taz let loose a long suffering sigh, and after a glance around to see what the cafeteria monitors were doing, she reached up and reluctantly unclasped her privacy band. She felt her mind fill the room, feeling the room’s overall contentment, excitement, and anxiety at the approaching end of the lunch hour, and with a small pucker of her lips, she settled her hands on the table, and imagined a few piano notes as her fingers tapped the solid surface.
Little musical chimes filled the air from where her fingers tapped, making her friends pause and watch in interest as she mentally imitated the piano, trying to think of what might sound good with a bass guitar, when suddenly a bubble filled her vision.
Daniel screamed as Melodica appeared on the table, arms crossed and wearing her annoyance as openly as her tail, and the mermaid cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled: “JOHNNY!”
The entire cafeteria quieted down at the yell, drawing a number of curious, then surprised eyes as Melodica planted her hands on the hips, the bearded boy more bewildered than the rest.
“MALLORY’S GOT A CRUSH ON YOU!” Melodica shouted, and now, the entire room was dead quiet, staring at the red-faced red-head, who was somewhere between wanting to die on the spot and taking Taz with her. Melodica just whirled in place and gave Mallory a flat look. “You’re welcome.”
Then, Mel disappeared as Taz quickly pulled her band back on, and abruptly stood up as the room, now pregnant with amusement, second-hand embarrassment, and slowly growing laughter, now included her in their curious pointing and whispering.
“Welp! I’m gunna go to the library…” She trailed off in her speech as she grabbed her leftover lunch and began to quickly speed away from Mallory, whose sudden jelly-legs kept her from chasing after her. “I’ll-see-you-guys-after-class-bye!”
“Taz!” Mallory shrieked after her. “Taz, you horrible bitch! Don’t leave me! I hate you! I WILL END YOU! I WILL—h-hi Johnny, th-that was just—no you don’t have to worry! Taz was just—and I was just—”
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Nothing… Taz had spent the past few days looking up job-listings for psychics across her town, across the state, and across America; at lunch, after class, at home, and at best, she could find clinical trials for psionic suppressants and psientific experiments being run in labs.
She wanted to look for something more substantial, but even the companies that encouraged the use of psychic powers allowed them for very specific things: moving equipment around in a warehouse, voluntary employee mental health evaluations, magician assistants… and electricians.
Positions that were useful, of course, but patronizing at best.
Taz examined herself in the bathroom mirror, pulling her hair back and putting on a wool-knit, brimless cap to keep her blonde locks from swinging into her face. She stared at herself, considering putting on some lip gloss before stepping out, but decided against it; she wasn’t going anywhere it would matter.
She took her privacy band off of the sink and clicked it a few times, pursing her lips as she felt a gentle, familiar presence, and Melodica sat in the nearby sink, her tail twitching flippantly as they both stared off into nothing.
“You think mom would let us go if we showed her the electrician thing?” Taz asked, and Mel shook her head.
“She’d just tell us we could go to a trade school.” Melodica sighed.
“Yeah…” Taz rubbed her temples and stepped out of the bathroom, Melodica swimming alongside her as she flipped her privacy band around one finger. School hours were over, so she could technically walk around without her band as long as she wasn’t using her powers, or in a tutoring session.
Some students stared at her and Melodica, but she ignored them; some prickles of worry and uncertainty, most acknowledging her existence and showing some wonder at Melodica’s presence.
From what Taz had learned from her personal research, tulpamancy wasn’t super common as a teenager; having your imaginary friend interposed onto reality was probably considered childish past a certain age, but Taz wasn’t ready to let her best friend go, even if she made a habit of making everyones’ lives… interesting.
She walked out of school, past rows of students, some reaching out to swat at the illusionary bubbles left in Melodica’s wake, and she finally collapsed at the bottom step with Melodica by her side.
“It’s only been four days.” Melody reassured her gently, leaning weightlessly on Taz’s shoulder.
“I guess, but those representatives are showing up at the end of December. We only have three weeks and I feel like we’ve just run into roadblock after roadblock after roadblock.” Taz groaned, and Melody tapped a bubble floating in front of her face to pop it.
“Like I said, it’s been four days; we knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”
“I was hoping it would be…”
“Ahem.” Both girls glanced back at a prickle of irritation amidst a pool of relief, and Mallory stood there giving them both a look. Taz smiled apologetically, Melodica cheekily.
“Heeeeyyyy Mal…” Taz tried to sound easy-going, but Mallory rolled her eyes, shook her head, and sat down. “Are things cool with Johnny…?”
“Yes, things are ‘cool.’” Mallory wiggled her fingers in mocking quotation. “I’m gunna be busy this Friday.”
“Oh! Grats.” Taz relaxed, and Melodica’s grin grew cheekier by the second…
“Yeah, so… never do that again.” Mallory gave her a mild glare, Taz threw her hands up in surrender.
“I didn’t do anything, blame Mel!”
“You’re welcome!”
“Shut up, Mel…” Mallory pinched the bridge of her nose, and Melodica swam over to her side so the red-head couldn’t avoid her smug look. Mallory tried to swat her away, but her arm just passed through Melodica’s body, disturbing nothing but air, not even shifting Melodica’s shape around. “So, anyways, I can’t hang out Friday; do you wanna do band practice tonight?”
“I can’t,” Taz gave a sorry smile, “it’s Wednesday.”
“Oh right.” Mallory straightened up in recognition. “Right right, bonding time with mom?”
“Yeah, and while I’m sure she’d love knowing I’m learning bass too, she has stuff reserved for, like, every Wednesday from now to next year.” Taz gave an embarrassed ‘what can you do?’ shrug and smile, and Mallory nodded.
“Alright, we’ll see about tomorrow. It must be weird having a mom so invested in your life, but, like, wants nothing to do with your dream, y’know?” Mallory leaned over her knees and stared at Taz almost worriedly, and Taz leaned back on the steps in a too-forced casual manner, her head hanging as her hands swung around in agitation.
“Tell me about it. I’ve been wanting to go to PA since I was like six, but it’s been the same argument for years. This is the first time I got something resembling a chance, and I feel like it’s rigged!” Taz crossed her arms abruptly, staring down her body in deep frustration.
“It hasn't even been a week!” Melodica reminded her, and Taz threw her arms up.
“I know! I know it’s only been four days! Gawd, I can still be mad about it!” She collapsed almost bonelessly on the school steps, and Mallory gave her a small, worried smirk.
“There has to be something…”
“I keep thinking that, I keep saying that, but… ugh, we’ve got three weeks to figure this out.” Taz rubbed her cheeks, and Melodica nodded.
“There ya go; we got this evening, we got tomorrow, we got a lot of time.”
“Yeah, honestly? Last thing you need to do is corner yourself like this.” Mallory reminded her, and Taz visibly pouted.
“I just really want this to work.” Taz sighed. “I just hate running into dead-ends right away.”
“Well, if research doesn’t turn anything up, maybe ask other psychics?” Mallory offered. “Maybe they’ve heard some news or something.”
“Maybe…”
A familiar blue Outback suddenly pulled up in front of the two girls, the growling engine disturbing their conversation and signaling Taz to pick herself up and grab her bag off the ground. Melodica swam over to the car and through the open passenger side window to take her place lounging in the backseat, and Anna shouted through the open window.
“Hello hon, hello Mallory!”
“Hey mom!”
“Hi Ms. Cooper!”
Anna smiled as Taz joined her in the car, and she called back out to Mallory. “I’ll see you on Friday, Mal!”
“I have a date that night, can I come over tomorrow?” Mallory asked, and Anna looked mildly surprised.
“Of course. Enjoy your date then, Mallory; watch your drinks!”
“I will!” Mallory waved, Taz waved back, and the car headed for the exit as the window rolled up.