Tanya did not appear in the same place as before. Most entrants into Agent Mentalis’ mind were directed to the central database; as nothing the Psychonauts had access to was more capable of storing and retrieving massive amounts of information than a mind; once server storage increases in utility she’ll be sure to encourage them to switch before Agent Mentalis starts losing information to senility.
Instead, the area was dark and organic, the rounded terrain and struts reminding her more of a mineshaft than a hallway. Walls of brain matter were held back by surgical retractors, turning a simple walk into a neurosurgical spelunking trip.
After a relatively short but too long walk, a door that looked like the top of a complete brain blocked the path. In the center, a thinkerprint scanning device activated and verified her authorization, the two hemispheres of the brain-door splitting open with a wet ripping sound.
Tanya felt vaguely ill about the whole experience. Perhaps she had stored some of her more grisly memories a bit too deeply, if this bothered her so much. But then again, such things probably should provoke disgust, and being accustomed to gore and human viscera was not necessarily something desirable.
On the other side of the pink barrier was her destination: the dark archives. It was, as per the name, swallowed in darkness. Not only that, but it was cold, a bone-deep chill hanging in the air, lending it a thickness that made it difficult to breathe. It was simple to fix: she created a spark of fire and maintained it, a tiny bright star illuminating the room and providing warmth in equal measure.
The archives were a disorganized mess, hundreds of cages piled to create a maze,with dozens of memory vaults trapped within. Each vault had a rodent’s water bottle and a similar bottle of food pellets.
Well, in comparison to the database or Tanya’s own memories it was disorganized. In comparison to regular mental memory archives, it wasn’t exceptionally so.
As Tanya walked through the halls of cages, the skittering of albino lab mice was the primary sound, always in the corner of her eye or at the edge of her auditory perception. “Okay, where would…” It occurred to her that unless Agent Mentalis literally labeled everything, she was going to have to dig through the memories until she did or did not find something related to ‘Harry Heptadome’.
From Agent Mentalis’ instructions, there has to be some kind of sorting system she could discern. She’ll start by relying on her extra-sensory perception. Despite the appearance of her mental projection, she wasn’t really seeing or hearing things in the same way that she would in the physical world. These were the senses that her experiences were filtered through so she could make sense of them, but the underlying data was not light and sound, but telepathic formations.
It was why a Psychonaut that understood this could discern the shape of a mind to locate hidden alcoves, or discern how much of a mind they had reviewed. She closed her eyes and kept walking, the shape of the maze still filtering into her knowledge despite theoretically having no way of determining it.
Ah, that explained why there were so many. Not all of the memory vaults were real. Some of them were decoys, traps for intruders who seek Agent Mentalis’ designs. The nugget of wisdom that he allowed her to use as a graduation present provided everything she would need to know about those designs, the underlying principles that would be useful to her, so even if she found the secrets he was protecting she would ignore them.
Ignoring the vaults for now, not that she was sure how to open the doorless cages, whose design was secretly solid, she examined the rest of the area. Past the cage maze was an area with blackboards for walls, covered in data garbled into uselessness, only there for the aesthetic rather than containing any information. Within the area was a series of school desks. Peeking inside one of them, she found… several explosives, detonators, and a manifesto about the beauty of explosions. The book was supposedly authored by Adam, who was one of the other technicians, which made perfect sense. This must be where Agent Mentalis keeps his unflattering opinions of people. Adam was definitely going to blow up something he shouldn’t one day.
As much as Tanya was tempted to try and find which of these dozens of desks represented her, she moved on. This wasn’t what she was looking for. The next region was a crossroads, with three other areas to peruse. The first one, straight ahead, was some kind of machine with a hopper, the menace surrounding it seeming… sort of familiar? Tanya wasn’t quite sure what it reminded her of.
The second region, to the left, was a place that was even more foreboding. Blood-stained hallways were papered over and blocked with mental cobwebs, but something about them immediately struck Tanya as fake. Was it the color? The thread count? The pattern? No, it looked exactly correct. While it wasn’t entirely reliable, Tanya nevertheless trusted her psychic intuition on the matter.
The final region, to the right, instead depicted the hallways of a home, the walls littered with crayon drawings and paintings. Those must be childhood memories. Agent Mentalis was always very… artistic with his attitude towards the creation of new technologies, so seeing a focus on his artistic endeavors as a child made sense. That’s not what she’s looking for, though.
The best choice is likely past the fake cobwebs. Some lazy pyrokinesis burned them away as easily as paper, when real cobwebs would require a substantially more complex execution in order to clear.
Through the hallways was not the scent of blood, but instead the sterile smell of hospitals or laboratories. It seemed pretty normal, but then it occurred to Tanya that Agent Mentalis insisted on scented cleaning agents for his workstations. He didn’t even care what kind, just that it smelled like anything but the smell she was experiencing right now. As someone who’s overheard him arguing with procurement over that point, he felt quite strongly about that.
Voices echo out, barely within Tanya’s perception. “Well I think it’s an interesting experiment.” Agent Mentalis said defensively. Tanya paused in her journey, paying close attention.
“It’s cruel.” Agent Boole retorted. “The same reason he’s using rhesus monkeys specifically is exactly why he shouldn’t do it. Social interaction is critical!”
“But how critical is it? What parts are important and which aren’t?” Agent Mentalis said, imploring his audience to see what he sees.
“There’s enough cruelty in the world we can learn from, we don’t need to be adding to it.” Insisted Agent Boole.
“Compton’s right.” Came the irascible voice of Agent Cruller. “This ain’t the kind of thing you mess with.”
“I’ve half a mind to pay them a visit and personally show them the error of their ways.” Lucrecia’s voice added.
“The knowledge that could be gained, though!” Agent Mentalis said, not backing down. “They’re just monkeys, and this could be useful in treating feral children!”
“It’s not worth it.” Agent O’Peia retorted. “I see where you’re coming from, Otto. I’ll admit I’m a little split on the matter myself, but if Boolie thinks it’s a step too far, I agree with him.”
“Bob? Helmut?” Otto asked. “Are you on their side too?” Silence passed as, presumably, the two answered nonverbally. “...Fine. I won’t say any more about it.”
After a moment of silence, Tanya figured the memory was over and resumed walking. The mention of rhesus monkeys made Tanya think of the famous psychological experiment she read about when studying Mom’s books on the subject. It was an experiment in social isolation, and it was very informative on matters of child development. Tanya didn’t dispute that it was cruel to the monkeys in question, but… she wasn’t entirely sure whether it was fair to call it worth it. On one hand, she has the benefit of hindsight, and the experiments were very informative. But without that context… Unlike some other famous psychological experiments, the scientific methodology was sound, the cruelty was literally the only complaint against it. Some parts could be argued to have been unnecessarily cruel, but that too benefits from hindsight.
Given the timelines… they matched up to when the Psychic Seven would have been at the Green Needle Gulch, performing their own unrelated experiments. Well, Helmut Fullbear’s research into sensory requirements for mental health did intersect a fair bit with that work, but that was a tangent that Tanya didn’t need right now.
Tanya turned the corner in the hallway and found a medical-themed torture chamber, with a man howling in pain as Agent Mentalis examined his removed brain, which was attached to his body via some kind of psychic tether. “This is really quite insightful.” Agent Mentalis said in lightly accented Russian with a sadistic grin on his face. “So many tiny lines of energy exchange…
“Monster!” The man shouted back in the same language, much more comfortable with the tongue.
“Sacrifices must be made for science to advance.” Agent Mentalis said, lightly changing his cadence to make it clear he was quoting someone. “That’s what your Director said, when my friends confronted him about Project Hydrophobia.” Agent Mentalis telekinetically brought a cattle prod to shock the man’s foot. The pain signals visibly crackled through the psychic tether to the disembodied brain. “You agreed with that. You, personally, executed the project’s tortures. It’s not so fun when you’re the one who has to make the sacrifices, isn’t it?” After a pause, Agent Mentalis angrily repeated: “ISN’T IT?”
“N-no!” The man cried, the activity on the psychic tether spiking and warbling chaotically.
“You took my work, my friend’s condition, my warning to the world, and used it as an INSTRUCTION MANUAL!” Agent Mentalis shouted. It was deeply disturbing to see such a calm and rational, if whimsical at times, individual lost in the throes of rage. “But, then again… one of the cornerstones of science is independent corroboration…” He chuckled darkly as the memory faded away.
Before Tanya’s eyes, a piece of emotional baggage, a suitcase, formed. Censors came out of nowhere, the mental entities looking more like janitors than auditors. They picked the bag up and rushed past Tanya, who followed them.
Back at the crossroads, the censors were joined by their fellows, and the half dozen or so mental guards busied themselves tossing the baggage into the hopper of the mysterious machine. It promptly started spewing fire and making sounds like a wood chipper, clearly tearing the emotional baggage apart.
If Tanya was more than a talented amateur, she might have been able to guess what this represented. As it stood, she had no idea what in the world was happening. The censors ignored her, not even holding stamps as they patted each other on the back for a job well done. Bewildered, Tanya went back past the two other memories.
There weren’t any other active memories that played without prompting, but the back rooms of this area included another massive computer, a match in model to the ones in the artificial memory storage that was the Psychonauts database. When she removed the punch card from the machine, the memory that had produced the emotional baggage faded away.
Focusing on the library of cards, Tanya queried the group with the concept of ‘Harry Heptadome’. Five punch cards came out. Unable to discern accurately what each one did, Tanya had no choice but to review them one by one.
As expected, the first card brought out a memory of the Heptadome. Specifically, outside of it. “Ford?” Came Agent Mentalis’ voice.
Agent Cruller appeared, and his image… glitched. He mumbled and stumbled out of the Heptadome. Agent Mentalis appeared beside him, eating a wrapped fast food hamburger. “We’ve been wondering where you’ve been. The funeral’s today, you know. For Helmut?” Agent Mentalis asked. “I’m just here to pick up one of Helmut’s hats, it’s in less than an hour.”
“Funeral?” Agent Cruller said, confused. “Right, yes, bodies to bury, eulogies to say.” He nodded to himself, standing taller as his madness found something to fixate on. He teleported away, light warping strangely as he did.
“Ford? We never recovered… Oh forget it.” Agent Mentalis said, huffing and taking another bite out of his hamburger. Tanya remembered that she probably should have gotten some food before entering Agent Mentalis’ mind. “Hrm?” Agent Mentalis said after walking into the Heptadome, his mouth was too full for words.
Inside the dome was a glass jar, not one of the preservation capsules that they used today, but just a glass jar filled with what was presumably nutrient fluid, or whatever they used in place of that seventeen years ago. Agent Mentalis picked up the jar, checked his watch, and jogged away from the Heptadome, picking up the pace of his breakfast as he brought the jar to what was presumably the precursor of his current brain storage machine: a simple table with glass jars, instruments attached to each one giving readings on the status. Agent Mentalis opened one of the empty jars and placed Harry’s brain inside, finishing his task by pouring some fresh fluid inside. “...I don’t have time for this.” He said before dashing outside of his office, checking his watch again.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The memory faded, with one more line from Agent Mentalis: “How could I have been so blind?”
Just like the last one, some emotional baggage spontaneously formed in the space the memory used to occupy, which was taken away by censors. What in the world? In the distance, the machine loudly started to tear the new baggage apart.
Still, she had four more cards. Hopefully she won’t have to go through all five. This one was helpful in that it pinpointed the exact day that the brain was found, but it still didn’t show the results of the tests.
The next memory was in the same lab that Harry was stored. Agent Mentalis had an extra-large batch of nutrient fluid in a pot that he was using to fill the familiar-looking spherical preservation capsules, before putting one of the two dozen or so brains he had into one, pouring the old fluid into what appeared to be a recycling machine. Agent O’Peia was there, handling the movement of the various capsules and jars. “Thanks for the assistance, Cassie.” Agent Mentalis said. “These new capsules are much better than the primitive jars. Lighter, stronger, with integrated instruments and filters. Pretty soon, with enough data and with some of the other things I’m working on, I think I can set one up to work as a long-term body replacement.”
Agent O’Peia hummed. “Your brain collection is creepy, but at least they’re not awake in here. I’d be able to sense it.”
“Definitely not.” Agreed Agent Mentalis as he detached a small psitanium token from one jar and placed it in a slot the capsule had. “I made sure that each of these was ethically sourced, and had no higher brain functions. These tokens make sure I keep them straight, too. Honestly, I’m not sure the current setup could sustain them without some kind of sensory linkup. Which I’m still working on.”
“I knew that working in medicine rather than writing would include some gross parts.” Agent O’Peia admitted. “But… that one doesn’t have a token.” She said, pointing to one of the jars. “The one that has a little more mental energy than the others.”
“Oh?” Agent Mentalis said, before inspecting the jar himself. “Oh no.” He muttered, realizing the error. “Well, I suppose we should… look for one?” he said as he took out a flashlight and searched the area. “Maybe it just fell off. Wouldn’t be the first time.” In a slightly different cadence, quieter and softer, he added: “Although it’s never happened without me noticing before.”
After a quick search where they found nothing, Agent O’Paira huffed. “We don’t have time to be turning things inside out. Check the rest of them to narrow it down and make a new one from your records.”
“Right.” Agent Mentalis replied. After checking all of the ones in the capsules, he continued transferring the brains, checking each tag as he moved them. When Harry was the only one left, he realized which one this was ”Oh, this must be the John Doe I found.” He said, having a realization.
“You found it?” Agent O’Peia asked, disgusted.
“It was in a jar in the Heptadome. If we didn’t already check that Ford’s brain was still in his body I’d have guessed it was his.” Agent Mentalis said jokingly. “I don’t quite remember the results of the testing, so I’ll just name him… Harry. Harry Heptadome.”
“You don’t remember?” Agent O’Peia asked incredulously. “Or did you forget to do it in the first place? He could have been alive when you found him.”
The memory shuddered at that accusation. “Cassie? But…” Agent Mentalis was speechless. “I’m sure I checked. Why wouldn’t I have checked?”
“You could check right now.” She asked. “Now that I’m paying attention, I think I might hear something from it.”
“We don’t have time for that.” Agent Mentalis deflected. “You’re imagining things, I’m sure. Even if he was alive when I found him… It’s untested. The research would indicate that the mind would shut down under such extreme sensory deprivation. It’s been months.”
“Hrm. Do it as soon as you can, then.” Agent O’Peia said, accepting his logic. “Now let’s get out of here and move these to your new lab. We can send the grunts to pick up the rest of the brain juice.”
The memory faded, with one more comment from Agent Mentalis. “I did check Harry, right? I must have. But… there was no tag. I would have made a tag if I checked. It just got lost. I definitely checked.”
Tanya frowned. Was that enough information? She watched as yet again, censors came and carted the nascent emotional baggage into the machine that… processed it somehow. How did Agent Mentalis make his censors like that? She’ll have to ask.
…She should watch the other ones.
---------------------
Tanya stretched as she returned to her mind. Her stomach grumbled at her blatant mistreatment of it.
“Did you find it?” Agent Mentalis asked as he put the finishing touches on some strange dog-like machine.
“Yes and no.” Tanya replied. “...what is that?”
“Ah, I got distracted.” He said sheepishly. He turned it on, and the dog robot started snarling and running around, biting invisible enemies. “Inventing calms me down, and I think you stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest in there.”
“...So what is it?” Tanya asked.
“Ah, it’s an aggression processor.” Agent Mentalis replied. “I got pretty frustrated with the Communists out of nowhere, which made sense, they’re the ones who did the things that made the government want this failsafe.” Ah, that was Tanya’s fault then. “So I channeled that anger productively. In a few hours, it’ll finish processing that mental energy and it’ll have a nice chunk of psitanium for me. It’s very therapeutic.”
“So whenever you feel an inconvenient emotion you just… stick it in a machine so you don’t need to deal with it?” Tanya asked. It sounded so convenient.
“That’s right. It’s very convenient.” Agent Mentalis said, echoing her thoughts. “Some people paint, some people shape clay to destress, but my way is more efficient. I’ve been thinking about making stress balls that can literally absorb your stress,” Tanya immediately pictured how catastrophic it would be to have someone literally put their negative emotions in a rock that tended to broadcast those emotions and strengthen them in others. “but I’d need to figure out a way to make it not cascade into a feedback loop.” Ah, he does see the problem.
“Right.” Tanya said. “Well, you never did the initial scan on him.” Tanya explained. “I found four separate memories of you realizing you forgot to do it.” It was horrifically tragic, what happened to Harry… but it was also entirely in line with the Psychonaut’s general incompetence, even if Agent Mentalis was usually an exception.
Agent Mentalis paused. “Oh no.” He said, echoing his memories. “Are you sure?”
“You initially forgot because you had other business to get to.” Tanya said. “You found it on the day of Helmut Fullbear’s funeral.”
Agent Mentlais was silent as he processed that information. “Yes, I remember that day now.” Or manually retrieving the memory. “We spent that entire week figuring out what was wrong with Ford.” Agent Mentalis leaned back as he told the story, the psychic focus he wore as an amulet flashing as he brought the data to mind. “We left him alone with Lucy to let him mourn while we searched for Helmut’s body, and I didn’t see him again until the day of the funeral. We knew he took a plane back home while we were still looking, but after three days we went back too and held the funeral.” He winced at the next memory he retrieved. “He ran the funeral like he was a priest, then started tending to Cassie and Compton’s bees and Bob’s plants like a hired gardener.” He said. “Eventually we worked up the courage to dive into his mind, but…” He shook his head. ‘It was too dangerous. We gave up after… several attempts.”
Tanya didn’t blame them. The only reason she was able to make the man halfway stable was because of her experience with hazardous environments. If you didn’t have the ability to dodge shrapnel, create barriers, or block intense heat all the while fighting his fully functional mental defenses… Even that assumes that his mind didn’t settle down after thirteen years; chances were it was even harder to delve back then. Of course now he created a persona that was self-aware enough to acknowledge the other personalities, making it closer to sane than anything else, convinced that he was an administrator for the Psychonauts as a spy organization as long as he kept to his spy cave, despite the fact that he never held such a position.
Admittedly, according to Mom he actually does a good job from his office/spy cave. Insanity aside, the man was still the intelligent man that brought the other Psychonauts together and kept them more or less on one track for years.
“I’m not surprised that the stray brain got lost in the shuffle after a week like that.” Agent Mentalis admitted. “I couldn’t even remember my own name for an hour after my third attempt.” He sighed ruefully. “It’s been seventeen years, so if ol’ Harry was alive, he’d have to be an incredibly willful and powerful telepath to still have higher brain function after that much sensory deprivation.” He waved Tanya away. “Go ahead and use him, just do the assessment first. It’s filed under ‘Brain Donation Onboarding’ in the database.” He telekinetically fetched a more elaborate brain capsule from his storage room. “He’s in a storage capsule now, this is a fully functional mobility capsule. Use the high-energy formulation of the nutrient fluid before you do the assessment. You’ll need the sensory inputs to be linked up properly for your device, if you want to make your test as close to real conditions as possible. Check out the files on the mobility capsule before you begin.”
His instructions finished, Agent Mentalis stood up and stretched his back, grunting and moaning as old men tended to do. “I’m going to call it early tonight, I think. Maybe visit Bob.” Tanya knew that as a euphemism the Psychonauts used around children for ‘go get drunk’, although with one of the members of the Psychic Six, it might include an actual visit to Bob Zanotto. Either way, alcohol will be involved.
Well, time to get to work.
---------------------
According to the instructions, the assessment test, when the brain didn’t wake up just from the stimulating nutrient formula the mobility capsule used, was best done in an environment that, in the event of cognition, would not panic the disembodied brain. Not knowing where any such place would be within the Motherlobe or attached facilities, Tanya decided to bring Harry home with her. It was time for dinner, after all. ‘
“Hey Tanya.” Mary said, waving from the dinner table. Three of her friends were also at the table, enjoying slices of the lasagna that Mom prepared before she left and chorusing with their own greetings. “What’s with the brain?”
“...is Mom home?” Tanya asked, sending out psychic feelers in the direction of Mom’s room.
“No. She called though, and said she’d be back tomorrow. I totally thought you’d be home before now.” Mary said. “We’re having a sleepover!”
Tanya checked the clock. Yeah, it was far too late to send the girls home. Only one of them lived on base, after all. Sighing, Tanya looked at the dish on the stove. “You didn’t leave any for me.” She groused, glaring at the collected ten year old girls.
“Vicky wanted seconds!” Protested Mary. The aforementioned girl glared at Mary for throwing her under the bus. She was sensitive about her appetite, but Tanya saw her parents; She was admirably thin in comparison.
Tanya sighed, debating whether or not she felt like cooking something properly. Deciding against it, she put some water on for low-effort salt ramen, or as the Americans called it, ramen. Instead of using the stove, she used pyrokinesis to bring it to a boil extremely quickly. She repeated the feat on a pair of hard-boiled eggs that were in the fridge, warming them evenly to room temperature to enjoy. Finally, she poured herself a glass of milk, lacing it with a squirt of chocolate syrup for flavor. Hydrokinesis handled the stirring.
Within two minutes, she was sitting at the table with Mary’s friends eating the unhealthy meal. “So, how was your day?” She asked.
“It was fine.” Mary said. “What’s with the brain?” She asked, pointing at Harry, who was currently in the sixth and final chair around the dinner table.
“That’s Harry.” Tanya explained unhelpfully, biting one of the eggs in half, chewing and swallowing before continuing. “He’s going to be helping me test my Artificial Psychic Environment Simulation.” The APES was kind of a silly acronym, but she’ll think of something better when it comes time to market it.
“...is he alive?” Crystal asked. She was dressed fashionably and was the only one currently wearing makeup, which Tanya knew was a temporary state; she noticed the makeup kit on the way to the kitchen.
“Probably not.” Tanya replied, taking a moment to slurp up more noodles. “Agent Mentalis lost his paperwork.”
Amy, the third and final one of Mary’s friends, blinked behind her thick glasses. “...How do you know his name is Harry then?” She asked.
“I don’t.” Tanya said simply, eating the other half of the hard boiled egg. “Agent Mentalis thought ‘John Doe’ was too impersonal.”
“Okay… now why did you bring him home?” Mary asked.
“I was hungry.” Tanya said. “Also, I needed a non-threatening environment to do the pre-testing assessment. Agent Mentalis’ laboratory is… not that.” There were a few meditation rooms in the Motherlobe that would be better, now that she thinks about it, but there wasn’t food there.
Finishing off her meal, Tanya telekinetically took all the dishes and started to wash them over the sink. The Citizen was an excellent archetype to delegate menial tasks to, even if doing so made the rest of her a little lazier as a side-effect of isolating her own sense of responsibility into a separate partition of her mind. “Right, all of you, go change into your pajamas. Lights out at ten.” Mary scrambled to her room, her friends going for the backpacks they had filled with supplies for the sleepover, along with the sleeping bags. Mary came out with Tanya’s futon, which only existed because Mom thought it wise to have an alternative to Tanya’s psychoisolation bed, if the air cycler broke or if Tanya just felt like not using it.
Once the dishes were put away and the girls were occupied playing around with Crystal’s makeup kit, Tanya sat on her recliner and put Harry’s capsule in her lap. “I’ll be psychically occupied, Mary.” She informed them. “I’ll leave an archetype behind to pay attention if there’s an emergency, you know the drill.” Specifically, she knows how displeased Tanya would be if she got interrupted for anything short of an emergency. Tanya split the Soldier out to stay alert and placed a psychoportal in the mobility capsule’s slot for one.
Projecting herself inside, Tanya had a feeling that this was not going to be as simple as Agent Mentalis implied.