The first thing Tanya did while in Helmut’s brain was to request the opportunity to learn from his nugget of wisdom, which was eagerly accepted. While the parts about modulating one’s voice were ignored, as Tanya could already do that fine, the PSI King also knew a lot about composing music, and the various telepathic skills he developed off of clairvoyance were very interesting. Tanya expected that they would vastly improve her ability to program new games once she integrated this knowledge with her psitanium manipulation.
Also, he threw in a separate nugget that included some of his other psychic skills, time warp the most notable of them. This particular nugget also included more knowledge on how to evaluate and consume drugs than Tanya ever wanted to know.
This knowledge was quickly put to use, allowing them to go through one enjoyable hour of karaoke in ten minutes. Well, he called it a ‘jam session’, but Tanya couldn’t play any instruments so it was the same thing to her.
“Okay, the time warp’s gone.” Helmut said, “How are you feeling?”
“You were correct, it is less draining in these circumstances.” Tanya acknowledged, “But I’m still feeling a bit light headed.”
“Let’s take a snack break, and once you’re ready let's slot me into the monkey machine.” Helmut offered.
Tanya retreated from Helmut’s mind, going to Agent Mentalis’ desk and stealing one of his headache pills, opening up the minifridge he had hidden and washing down the pill with a bottle of what was, before being adjusted for human consumption, nutrient fluid. “Now, what else does he have…” Helmut approached her from behind, taking a glance at the various snacks Agent Mentalis has on hand.
“There’s not much.” Helmut commented.
“He hasn’t been here to restock.” Tanya explained, “I’ve been going through this all week.” Out of chocolate milk, out of pudding, out of peanuts, out of cookies, out of those tiny cakes, out of tiny donuts… It was mostly just Agent Mentalis’ supply of sandwich condiments, a nearly empty jar of pickles, and one remaining bottle of nutrient drink. “Ooh!” Tanya exclaimed. Not out of pudding after all. “Come to Tanya…”
It was just one pudding cup, but it was chocolate, so Tanya gleefully enjoyed it. Yet another advantage of being a psychic: talking with your mouth full. “So today, I was thinking we would stress test things. Do the breakfast simulation, putting a full load on Tasty and Sniffles. See if you can handle it.”
“Good start, looking forward to it.” Helmut replied, replying in kind with telepathy.
Tanya used telekinetic scoops to get the last dregs of pudding out of the cup. “Afterwards, you’ll do the hunting simulation. Properly, this time.”
Helmut was less enthusiastic about it this time. “Okay, yeah.”
“The fact that you don’t know anything about hunting is a bonus, here.” Tanya added, “The simulation is supposed to guide you to reflect the skills of an experienced hunter.” Tanya also didn’t know a whole lot about hunting, but they could program a skittish deer and there were plenty of forests in her memory from the war; it was one of the rarer environments but you could fit a lot of varied experiences in ten years. The rest of the scenario she just improvised.
“Well, let’s get this party started!” Helmut said, licking his lips as she loaded the breakfast simulation.
This time, the breakfast was a plate of waffles with eggs and hash browns, with a glass of orange juice. As he sat down and tucked in, using his own mental body rather than the imposed one, Tanya tested one of the secondary functions: “Bowl of cinnamon applesauce, please.”
In her first life, the idea that she could ask a machine with words and have them correctly interpret them was very advanced, cutting edge technology. But with psychic technology, language processing was one of the easiest forms of control, second only to direct mental instruction by a technician. A tiny bowl of applesauce with a bright blue plastic spoon appeared. Next to it, a bib was provided. Tanya scowled.
Swallowing his bite, Helmut pointed to the bowl. “Did you order baby food on purpose?”
“I was testing its sensitivity to context.” Tanya explained, “I chose that one because it had one of the largest ranges of portion sizes. It was supposed to give me a bowl that was properly sized for me. Instead it provided the smallest available size.” Now she’ll need to go over the coding with a fine tooth comb. She’d complain, but this possibility was exactly why she wanted to test it.
“...Then why does the bib fit?” Helmut asked.
What? How did that… Tanya picked up the bib, putting it on to test his claim. “It does...debugging this is going to take hours.” She moaned, picking up the tiny bowl and shoveling it into her mouth with the tiny spoon “At least the food is good.”
“True that.” Helmut said with his mouth full. “This is really good.”
“Okay, maybe it just…” Tanya muttered, “Strawberry oatmeal please, enough for me.” She said, emphasizing the second part. It created a small bowl, but as it wasn’t one that looked like it deserved to be served to someone in a high chair Tanya decided to call it a win. She was beginning to remember programming it to assume that all meals would be like PSI King’s and oatmeal wasn’t assumed to be the whole meal in one big bowl, like she tended to make when she was feeling lazy and Mom wasn’t around to make a full meal for her. “I’m guessing there’s a short-link in the associative database, if this worked.”
“Hey, there’s no spoon.” Helmut observed.
Tanya looked at the applesauce spoon. “That’s because I forgot to throw this away before asking. At least that part’s working.”
“I’m a little confused.” Helmut admitted, “Why did you even give it the option to make baby food?”
“The database of food was literally just collected from every meal me, Mom, and Mary could remember having, but the silverware and other miscellaneous dining accouterments also drew on data on any dining partner we’ve had.” Tanya explained as she ate her oatmeal with the tiny spoon, projecting her voice psychically, “I had to vet the list, but I focused on removing incomplete memories, corrupted data.” Also, the idea of removing functionality rubbed her the wrong way. It might be useful someday. Or at least entertaining.
“Ah, and because of the multi-life thing…” Helmut said, understanding dawning upon him.
“I meant that the tiny bowls and spoons and bibs were from Mom’s memories of feeding young children at the orpha-” Tanya paused, “-group home, and the simulation can put anything that fits in the bowl in them.” Tanya corrected. “But yes, now that you mention it, I do remember how terrible baby food and formula tastes. Do you want some?” She ate the stuff anyway, because it still beat k-brot, but she didn’t enjoy it.
“Nooo thank you.” Helmut said, finishing off his drink. “Ah…” He patted his stomach and relaxed, his meal complete.
“With your ego now being as strong as it’s going to be until your physical therapy is done, I think now’s a good time to test deactivating the simulation while inside of it.” Tanya said idly, taking off the bib and discarding it. “It should be safe.” The absolute worst that could happen to her is getting booted unceremoniously from Helmut’s mind, but for him? It’s still probably fine.
After a moment for Helmut to brace himself, Tanya sent the signal to end the simulation, causing the environment to dissolve. As was designed, absolutely nothing strange happened, and they found themselves at the ‘entrance’ to Helmut’s mind, the stage where his senses corralled all of his incoming sensations.
“Worked fine.” Helmut said, shrugging. “No problem.”
“Excellent. Now, loading the next simulation.” Tanya declared.
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“Ski-doosh.” Helmut said as he released the arrow. It flew straight and true, hitting the three point buck right in the lung. It dropped instantly, dead. “...Are they supposed to just drop like that?” Helmut asked, bow in hand as he looked at the dead deer.
“Yes.” Tanya replied, disabling her observer status so he could see her, “I don’t know enough about deer anatomy to know how much punishment they can actually take, so anything that penetrates the chest cavity is just a kill.”
“You know, this isn’t so bad.” Helmut acknowledged, “It was kind of cool, spotting the trail and listening to the wind like that.”
“One thing that will be a challenge is determining the optimal level of realism.” Tanya said, frowning. “On one hand, the potential for very high realism is there. But on the other hand, reality is terrible, and gaming is supposed to be an escape from it.” She pointed to the corpse. “For example, a shot like that would almost definitely kill any deer, that’s a lung penetrated at the very least… but in reality, it would take some time for the deer to drown in their own blood before they actually die.”
Helmut shuddered in disgust. The Link model, as it turned out, wasn’t very expressive, all facial expressions were more subdued for some reason. Was it because she designed it manually? “That sounds awful.”
“Exactly.” Tanya said, pointing directly towards him. “It was less realistic to have the deer die immediately. However, it was more enjoyable to have that instant gratification of a dropped target.” She could make plenty of realistic injury and gore simulation for killing humans, but deer? She’s never hunted deer. The men took care of that. Not even her men, most of the time. Any fresh venison was hunted by the regular infantry, not the mages. Sighing, she snapped her fingers and triggered the scenario to dissolve, Helmut’s avatar flaking away to reveal his normal appearance underneath.
“I have an idea:” Helmut said, stroking his now extant mustache. “What if you use an asshole animal instead? Like a white tiger or something? You know, give it a fighting chance?”
Tanya thinks back to the zoo visit Mom took her on two months ago. “...I don’t see how that helps.” She admits. Those tigers were a lot nicer than a lot of the other animals. “What about zebras? Zebras are jerks.” At least, those zebras were jerks.
“...I’ve never met a zebra.” Helmut admitted.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“I suppose it would be unfair to judge a whole species by the actions of a few.” Tanya admitted. “Although it occurs to me that being able to hunt endangered animals might have some marketing appeal…” Now that was an idea… “I’m picturing a game where you get to wrestle various large animals now. Like, a whole progression just for bears, start with pandas, end with polar bears.”
“Hey, pandas can kick ass.” Helmut insisted, “They know kung fu.”
“You met a panda that knew kung fu?” Tanya asked, incredulous.
“Yes.” Helmut insisted, “There was this circus in Grulovia that had a panda and they taught it how to do fancy kung fu moves on command.”
Really? “Was it Lucrecia’s family’s circus?” Tanya asked, curious.
“Yep. We all visited them about four months before that war broke out.” He said, nodding to himself. “It was 1959, and Otto had just finished his experimental psitanium jet engine.”
“They aren’t jet engines.” Tanya corrected, “They’re telekinetic engines.”
“Right, whatever.” Helmut agreed, disinterested in minutiae. “Anyway, so he asked if anyone had anywhere across the Atlantic they wanted to go so they could test the flight range, and Lulu invited everyone to come visit her family.” That sounded incredibly unsafe to fly over an ocean when they could have just traveled to California and back, but that sounded like something Agent Mentalis would do.
“It was pretty cool, seeing another kind of show business and the backstage stuff.” Helmut said, “They asked Lulu to bring Wet Wanda back for just a show or two, and she was all for it when she saw the look on Ford’s face after he heard what kind of show it was.”
“Fascinating.” Tanya deadpanned, “The panda?”
“Oh, right. So they had this Chinese guy, named Li. For some reason, he didn’t like Cassie, and it was mutual. They spoke different kinds of Chinese, I think?” Tanya was guessing that it was some regional tension. Agent O’Peia was from Hong Kong, she knew that… Even if she didn’t know the woman’s birth name. Helmut continued: “Not really sure what it was about. Po, the panda, belonged to him. He wasn’t psychic, but he joined the circus because they could translate between him and Po. In return, he had this routine that he did, where he pretended to kung fu fight with the panda.”
Tanya’s lips tugged up into a smile as she pictured it. She distinctly recalled a martial arts using panda in a rather popular manga from when she was a kid… She wondered if Li had a pigtail? She mimed checking a list. “Well, time for the boring part of testing: replicating bugs in as many ways as possible.” With a dramatic gesture, the mealtime scenario loaded around them.
Helmut frowned. “Aw jeez.”
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Being a nepotism hire, even if it was more of an apprenticeship program graduation, had many advantages. For example, Tanya didn’t need to get extra authorization to work on the highest levels of security, as she could go pretty much anywhere.
“You know Tanya, I did check my office’s scanners the instant Jerry told me about this.” Grand Head Zanotto said. A test print was distributed to all the heads of the departments and they all checked the high security doors to see if the fake unauthorized user was granted access. She assumed that he got one too.
Tanya shrugged as she channeled more mental energy into the device, causing it to slightly expand in size. “You’ll be happy to know that these are the last ones then, after this we’ll be in compliance with our maintenance schedule. On the scanners, anyway.” She affixed the scanner back into its mooring, re-assembling the door. “This one would have broken from depletion in another dozen-ish uses, it was down to nubs.” She glanced at the bathrobe-wearing director. “Did Lili go back and forth through the door a few hundred times or something?” As a low-traffic area, his office door shouldn’t be nearly this exhausted even with the large delay in maintenance.
“Yes.” Grand Head Zanotto deadpanned. “She finds the strangest things to do when she gets bored.”
“It’s better than setting things on fire.” Tanya replied as she moved to the second scanner in his office.
“Isn’t that the truth.” Grand Head Zanotto agreed as he turned his attention back to his paperwork. “Do you think that three days is enough time for Otto to get those college kids up to speed? He’s taking a trip to Grulovia this weekend and took all of next week off because he wasn’t sure how long he’ll be gone.”
“I suggest pairing them with senior technicians as assistants while they get their feet wet.” Tanya replied. It was the best she could get from the still-employed members of the Psychic Six, to work while things get arranged. “I’ll encourage Agent Mentalis to match them with mentors before he leaves.”
“Thanks.” Grand Head Zanotto said, putting the paper into his ‘out’ box and taking another from his ‘in’ box. “Otto’s a bit contrary sometimes when I give him instructions rather than assignments. He’ll take it better from you.”
“Hi Tanya!” Lili shouted as she walked into her father’s office like she owned the place. “Whatcha doin?”
“Working.” Tanya replied, channeling more mental energy into the scanner. “All these fancy machines break if they run out of power, so I need to keep them topped up.”
“Oooh…” Lili said, “Can I help?”
“No.” Tanya said.
“Why not?” Lili whined.
“Because if the Psychonauts find out that my job’s easy enough for a seven year old to do, they’ll cut my pay.” Tanya lied glibly as she put the scanner back together, which caused Grand Head Zanotto to chuckle softly. She checked the time. “Now I need to spend two hours putting together more scanners to refill the warehouse shelves.” Spending the day working with her hands, mostly metaphorically but occasionally literally, was much better than office work in her opinion, more satisfying, but that didn’t make the spending hours handcrafting a dozen identical fancy locks any less tedious. “Did you want to watch?” Tanya said with a wry grin.
Lili was immediately suspicious, knowing from experience that Tanya wouldn’t invite her if the event in question was actually exciting (read: dangerous). “...where will you be doing it?”
“The clean room.” Tanya replied as she finished putting her tools back in their proper places and started walking to the rapid transit tunnel.
Lili’s frowned. “..No, I’ll stay here.” Not every psychic liked being in psychoisolated areas, finding the lack of telepathic noise existentially terrifying rather than soothing, like Tanya did. Lili wasn’t quite that bad, but she definitely didn’t like the experience. Actually, most psychics found it “spooky” at best; the only other one Tanya has ever met that liked being inside psychoisolation was Agent Boole.
…Not that she’s gone around polling people. If she was a proper researcher she’d make a note to start a study on the matter, but she’s an engineer so she put that stray thought out of her mind. “Goodbye, Lili. Goodbye, Grand Head Zanotto.”
Tanya pointedly escaped before Grand Head Zanotto could think about asking her to refer to him more informally. She will not encourage his excessively informal behavior. This is an office!
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The rest of the week passed by in a pleasant blur of work, family time, and programming. Tanya heard from Agent Mentalis that the Psychic six attempted to fix Agent Cruller so they could finally see Lucrecia again… but they made the mistake of telling him that. No matter what they tried, Agent Cruller repelled their attacks with directed chaos, parts of his mind shattering themselves further to stymie their efforts.
So morale was low when the expedition to Grulovia started packing on Friday evening. The Pelican was claimed for the task, and Tanya strapped herself into the co-pilot’s chair while Agent Mentalis communicated with air traffic control.
“So we’re making a stop in Sweden?” Tanya asked, “To pick up the cryonics scientists?”
“Norway, actually.” Agent Mentalis corrected, “The cryonics lab is in Norway, but Homer was found in Swedish territory, so he has Swedish citizenship and is being taught Swedish as his first modern language.”
Cassie huffed disapprovingly. “Politics.”
“They agreed to wait for pickup at a military base on the coast.” Agent Mentalis continued, “So we’ll not spend much time in the country.”
“Don’t expect a welcoming party.” Bob joked, although one could easily mistake it for grumbling, that was just his naturally rough, whiny voice.
Tanya shrugged. “The last time I went to Norway, I was invading it. It’s hard to do worse than anti-aircraft fire.”
“Now that sounds like a story.” Agent O’peia said, smiling at the prospect. “We’ve got time to hear it.”
Tanya supposed they did. They weren’t going nearly as fast as they could, so as to not alarm any of the various sensors that detect IBCMs. Striking a dignified pose, or a parody of one, Tanya began. “It was November 1924. The Great War had started 18 months prior, when a sabre-rattling invasion of previously lost territory by the Legadonia Entente Alliance, consisting of both Sweden and Norway, in the Imperial Norden territory, which is currently Denmark, exploded into a full retaliatory invasion by the Empire, the premier military power in Europa. Since that beginning, both the Republic of Francois, France, and the Principality of Dacia, Grulovia, declared war, leaving the Empire with a two-front war.”
“Don’t you mean three front?” Agent Mentalis asked, frowning.
Tanya snickered. Okay, maybe she should go back a bit to explain that. “The date was September 24, 1924. I had just been promoted to Major, to lead the 203rd Aerial Mage Rapid Response Battalion. Myself and forty-eight of the Empire’s best aerial mages would be the first ones to respond to trouble, the tip of the Kaiser’s spear to kill his enemies. My adjutant had discovered that according to my records, I was supposed to be celebrating my tenth birthday.”
“Oh dear.” Agent Boole said, looking a little ill at the reminder that Tanya was a child soldier.
“My battalion was new, untested.” Tanya continued, “I had spent months giving them hellish training, all to whittle down my volunteers down to the budgeted forty-eight mages. That was all the logistics division could provide when it came to the revolutionary new technology: the Type 97 dual core computation orb.” She smiled. “Imagine my joy when Dacia declared war that very day, a technologically inferior foe with pathetic anti-air capabilities. This would not be a battle. This would be a live-fire exercise, the perfect birthday gift. Supported only by the 17th Army Group and the 7th air fleet, the 203rd introduced themselves to the international scene by routing the entirety of the Dacian army and forcing a surrender in merely six weeks, seventy thousand men defeating a force of over six hundred thousand.”
Despite being hippies, the collected psychics seemed entranced by Tanya’s war story as she continued. Really, Osfjord was one of Tanya’s finest moments in the war. There was nothing questionable about her actions, there was no ambiguity, it was a clear victory that achieved a clear strategic gain in the northern front. Her men performed marvelously, the Dacian invasion the perfect whetstone to ensure that they got all of their stupid of of their systems before the real test began. It was good that they did, because there was plenty of that during those six weeks.
Of course, it was also what had sealed her fate, to fight near constantly in the worst fronts for the next seven years.
“After the battle, the 203rd was given a well-earned vacation, a prize that, soon enough, would be scarce as the war went on. At least, until we were called in for an emergency mission, but that’s a different story.” Tanya said, finishing her tale. The collected psychics applauded politely.
“Great story, Tanya!” Helmut complimented. “I’d never have expected flying troops to jump out of a plane. It’s crazy, in a good way.”
“Right on time, too.” Agent Mentalis said, as the Norwegian military came on the radio, starting the landing process.
After the military base came into view, Tanya burst out laughing. They were halfway to it when Helmut asked: “What’s so funny?”
Tanya let her laughter wind down, wiping a tear from her eye. “I recognize those fjords.” After all, she was just talking about them.
“I hope this landing is nicer than your last one.” Agent Mentalis joked as he directed the Pelican to land.
“It’s not the same without anti-aircraft fire.” Tanya replied, grinning. “But I suppose It’s not the time of year for those kinds of fireworks.”
One stop here, another stop at the Psychonauts base in Denmark to get some cold weather gear and recharge the engine, and it was off to Grulovia.
Hopefully this will be easy.
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