With the doors being back on the regular maintenance schedule, Tanya was moved on to the next item on the backlog: the levitation tubes. There weren’t nearly as many, but they were also much more powerful. Even Tanya’s mental energy reserves were taxed when restoring them. Between that and the fact that they were just fancy escalators, it was easy to see why they were given a lower priority.
“How’s it going, Tanya?” Nick Johnsmith asked, a little nervous as he looked up at her. “How was your trip to Grulovia?”
Tanya was hanging upside down on a floating board, carefully inspecting the base of the levitation tube where the psitanium was stored. She had left the pneumatic tubes on, the air flow through her jumpsuit and hair was quite pleasant. “Eventful.” Tanya replied, “I got kidnapped by Deluginists. The True Psychic Tales version of the story should be out next month.” The accuracy of which was deliberately tilted so as to further discourage the Deluginists from trying it again.
“Oh. That must have been scary, huh?” Nick asked, his nervousness increased. “What with all of their tremendous power and all.”
Tanya shrugged. “I was more occupied with trying to understand the so-called ‘magic’ they used to try and brainwash me.” There. That should do it. The panels of the device started to float back into place, and Tanya took out her automatic screwdriver so she could re-secure it.
“They have magic?” Nick asked. He seemed more impressed than was warranted. She supposed he was just a secret fantasy otaku.
“No.” Tanya replied as she finished the repair. “They had psychic technology and techniques that they simply called magic to make themselves more mysterious.” While the specific methodologies with the psitanium had many novel approaches that expanded her knowledge, they were simply not alien enough for them to be called something other than what it was. “The Psychonauts will dismantle whatever pieces of their network that they can, and the rest will be set back by having to burn contacts and agents to escape their notice.”
Nick seemed rather interested in the topic of the Deluginists. “Didn’t you destroy them, though?”
Tanya snorted as she walked to the next levitation tube. “Unless they luck into finding the leader, no. If they’re smart, they’ll give up on the whole resurrecting Maligula thing, now that they’ve lost their ‘head sorcerer’, but if they were smart, they wouldn’t have become Deluginists in the first place.” Tanya put the tube into maintenance mode and turned her levitating board back on, allowing her to hang over the base of the tube and start unscrewing the panels.
Nick frowned at the assertion. “Isn’t that religious discrimination?” He asked, “That’s not very American of you.”
“Deluginism is a cult, at best.” Tanya retorted as she set the panels aside, “‘Terrorist organization’ is closer to the mark. They believe that all of their problems would be solved by bringing back a literally insane hydrokinetic, as if Maligula was someone that could be controlled.” Lucrecia, on the other hand… The Deluginists didn’t seem to really comprehend that there was a difference between the two. “They’re all fools.”
“I mean… the Soviets needed to beg the Psychonauts to deal with General Maligula, when she was serving the Gzar.” Nick pointed out. He wasn’t wrong… but he was missing the point.
“That was seventeen years ago.” Tanya said flippantly as she inspected the psitanium structures. “The Soviets definitely have countermeasures prepared for any future Maligulas. That is the nature of the military arms race.” Granted, Tanya didn’t know what they had, but they certainly were trying to make a usable response force, from all of those unethical experiments that the Psychonauts stopped. “Human ingenuity will always surpass human strength.” Military wunderwaffen was one of the few things the Soviets could actually do halfway correctly, without the supplementary technology that Kevan was planning on using, there was no way that they couldn’t counter one raging psychic.
“Oh.” Nick said, a little spooked. “How would you do it, if Maligula returned?”
“Me?” Tanya asked, chuckling. She started channeling psychic energy to refill the stores of the tube. “I’d do everything in my power to avoid being asked to deal with her.” It was one thing to kick around things in mental worlds, but she will never kill again in this life if it can be avoided. “Agent Nein might be able to win.” She’s been sparring with him for fun every two or three weeks, now that he’s fully integrated those psychic skills from her and her therapy is complete. The real Maligula is powerful, but she knows from experience that you can’t make full use of your knowledge when riding high on madness. She likely can’t use anything but hydrokinesis when in the throes of madness, with the possible exception of cryokinesis. He could do it. “He is more skilled at combat than he looks.”
“Well, you’d probably know best.” Nick said deferentially, although something about what she said seemed to have angered him: while he was surprisingly good at keeping his emotions from broadcasting for a non-psychic, he wasn’t perfect. “My break’s nearly over, I should get back to the mail room.”
“It was nice talking to you, Nick.” Tanya said politely. “Remember the NDA you signed when you were hired, I’d hate to see such a good worker arrested for espionage.” In hindsight, what she just said was probably something Deluginist spies would want. But it’s not like any of them would be capable of the subtlety required to infiltrate the psychonauts. She didn’t know much about how counterintelligence did their jobs, but surely they would catch something that blatant.
Nick also did not like that goodbye, but that was intended. Maybe now he’ll stop bothering her when she’s working. Office chatting was fine when it didn’t impact productivity, and she could multitask with the best of them, but Nick was just kind of boring.
---------------------
Tanya muttered into her tape recorder as she tested her new device. “Initial segment B, leading to nature segment B, then direction segment D, then direction segment A, tuning segment B, directed to aperture B…” She rolled dice to decide which one she’d start with.
The second of the three psitanium platforms erupted in psychedelic cover as a field of slowed time made a whirling desk fan appear to stand still, barely moving. The other desk fans spread out among the test range remained spinning at full speed. “Test successful.” Once the slowed time field wore off, the power being quite expensive and thus short-lived. “Reciprocal test, direction segments B then D…” The exact same desk fan slowed down again. “Hypothesis disproven. The order of the direction segments did not matter. Adjusting variables, same sequence, deliberately unbalancing the formula by applying mental emphasis on direction B.” The time warp field erupted again, but in a slightly different spot. “Test… surprisingly stable. Emphasis determines distance from aperture. Switching order, identical emphasis.” The time warp field erupted in yet another spot, although this one coincidentally had another desk fan.
Tanya’s pen blurred as she wrote down her observations, her desk surrounded by the documents stolen from the Deluginists. Some of the wording was… obtuse. Either the authors kept some key lessons out of the written word to increase infosec, the translations and her understanding of Grulovian were insufficient to fully comprehend the contents… or the authors were just bad teachers.
The idea that she could modulate the power flow of individual segments without affecting previous ones, making the extra energy skip over the previous segments to be added at the exact proper part in the sequence… it wasn’t written clearly. Now that she knows of it, there were some segments that kind of hinted at it, but they seemed to just assume the reader knew that already. She may just be missing some kind of basic primer that just wasn’t in Kevan’s library, or was in the hands of an apprentice they missed or something.
But the documents meant that she was learning how the arcane style of psitanium engineering worked very quickly indeed. Otto was still focusing most of his effort on either his actual job or on Helmut’s body, so she’s had free reign over the materials, including Otto’s stash of psitanium earmarked for experimentation.
Still, her observations have disheartened her on the potential for automated psitanium manipulation. She figured out how they neutralized the attunement component of the mental energy, allowing it to be drawn from raw sources, but it wasn’t something they did on purpose: it was an accidental side effect of the way they constructed their devices. It still required the direct attention of a psychic, it just… could handle a less skilled one.
This system had a drawback: the precision was far inferior to modern psitanium engineering. Crude, powerful effects could be guided by a novice that was trained for… maybe two weeks to get it down? But the parameters of each effect needs to be hard coded, and it couldn’t be manipulated on the fly at all.
Well, except for this one facet she just discovered. Was this what she was looking for? Creating a mnenomic for the sequence of intensities would be easy: a sequence of music notes would do fine for that. But the throughput requirements would put a lower bound on the size of the tube-like structures this methodology required… She moved to the drafting table and spent a moment trying to conceptualize what kind of test device she should create to make use of her discovery.
Tanya’s thoughts were interrupted by an upswell of mental energy from the APES, as Bob’s mind was launched back into his own head. “Ah. How was your date?” Tanya asked politely, setting down the pencil back on the drafting table.
“It was great!” Helmut said, his nutrient fluid lighting up as his brain was sheathed in emotional energy. “Thanks for letting us use the monkey machine.”
“Thank you for testing it without me needing to watch it.” Tanya replied, “Did you notice any errors? I didn’t have much time to fix some of the issues we noticed, but I did attempt a fix for that chair texture issue.” When sampling the memories of sitting on chairs, there was an error that conflated the sensations of clothing with the sensation of the chair, which could lead to some really strange sensations if you were using a chair that had a very specific type of clothing associated with it, for example, a specific chair that Mary recalled from her first life felt strange if you weren’t wearing a full dress with four layers of cloth, and sitting on a toilet without dropping one’s drawers felt very strange indeed.
“Didn’t work.” Helmut said immediately. “Chairs still feel weird if you sit on ‘em bare-assed.” Or the reverse… Tanya pinched the bridge of her nose as she distinctly avoided thinking about that.
“The food was good, though.” Bob said softly, giving Tanya a sympathetic look. “Do you want me to contribute to the… archive?” He asked, clearly unused to computer terminology. “I’ve eaten more kinds of edible plants than a caveman.”
“That would be appreciated, yes.” Tanya answered, “Your contributions to the database will expand the menu significantly. Perhaps it could even allow for a usable salad generator.” Mom wasn’t particularly adventurous when it came to her food, so previous attempts to make an a la carte salad mode for the dining simulation failed miserably.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Database…” Bob said, committing the new word to memory. He was rather substantially out of date when it came to the science side of things, his most recent research paper was from 1964. “What are you working on, anyway? You were kind of vague earlier.”
“I’m still working on the “magic” architecture that the Deluginists were using.” Tanya replied, “I think I’ve reached the limits of understanding that I can get from reading these books. I could still do some more experiments to help pin down some things…” But as Otto would say, ‘where’s the fun in that?’ It was a sentiment that could only function with his functionally unlimited psitanium budget. Which she currently controls. “-but Otto’s going to be done with Helmut’s body soon so I’m going to make something that uses both modern and arcane methods and see if I can make them play nice with each other while I still have free reign.” She just needs to figure out what exactly she’s going to make.
Helmut burst out laughing, and even Bob chuckled. “You sound like Otto and Ford did, back in the day.” Helmut said, before modulating his artificial voice to perfectly match Otto. “Do I know what I’m doing? Of course not. That’s what discovery is all about. Now, what happens if I do this?” His voice switched to match Ford’s. “Just don’t forget to write it down, this time. That’s the difference between science and just fucking around!”
“Did Otto frequently forget to record his observations?” Tanya asked.
Bob waved his hand vaguely. “Mostly when he was high. Which was a lot of the time. When he used the Astralathe to boost his memory it became less of a problem, though.”
“At least he didn’t get a cocaine habit.” Tanya said, inspecting the APES for any wear and tear.
“Otto always said that stimulants relaxed him.” Helmut said, “Helped him focus, but he didn’t like how less creative he felt when on them.” That did explain why he only broke out the coffee when he needed to do something boring.
Bob had hunched over, and stumbled shakily into the restroom, where sounds of dry heaving began. “Is he still having problems keeping food down?” Tanya asked.
“Yeah.” Helmut replied, “I’m reading up on addiction and withdrawal, and it’s some nasty stuff. I wish I could help him more.” The brain turned to more directly face Tanya. “The monkey machine helped, I think. He couldn’t feel sick when he was in my head instead of his own.”
“Have you looked up psychic therapy options?” Tanya asked, “I’m sure some research has been done on the subject.”
“Bobby doesn’t want anyone poking around his head.” Helmut said, sadly. “He’s just afraid of what we’ll find.” Well, she can really sympathize with his position…
…but that just means she knows that he really needs the help. “He needs some kind of treatment.” Tanya said insistently. “Psychic therapies are likely the most effective ones available, so you need to push him on this.” Given how scattershot addiction treatments were in her first life, she doubted that mundane methods in this one exceeded that.
“I am.” Helmut said solumnly. “But-” Bob came back into the room, stumbling and clutching his head. “-Bobby, you feeling better?”
“Like I’m drunk and hungover at the same time.” Bob muttered, “I need a drink.”
Tanya opened up Otto’s minifridge and took out a pair of bottles of nutrient drink. Tossing one to him, she opened them both up telekinetically. “This will help. It’s great for headaches.” She held her bottle out to him.
After a moment, Bob seemed to understand what she was waiting for. “Cheers.” He grumbled as Tanya said the Japanese equivalent. Both downed the sweet and slightly sticky beverage. “Ugh, too sweet.” He said, scowling at the half-full bottle. He smacked his lips, displeased at the consistency.
“Try diluting it.” Tanya offered, snatching up a bag of tiny powdered donuts. Yum. “With water.” She elaborated through telepathy, as her mouth was full. She washed it down with more nutrient drink. “A splash of brine couldn’t hurt, too.” She added, taking out the jar of pickles and offering it to the drunkard.
Surprisingly, Bob seemed to really like the nutrient drink/pickle brine/water combination. “That hit the spot.” He said, in a way that didn’t sound like it came out of a stuffed cartoon donkey. He plucked a pickle out of the jar and passed it back so Tanya could put it away. She also took a pickle.
“Feeling better, Bobby?” Helmut asked, which Bob nonverbally agreed with. “You want to try that hunting thing? It’s funner than it sounds.”
“Are there any other options?” Bob asked, turning to Tanya.
“Not really.” Tanya replied. “The two simulations cover a lot of ground, testing-wise, between them. I did have some time to write up that tickle-hunt variation, but it’s not complete. I don’t have adequate programming for the opposition, much less the complex difficulty curve and customized appearance generation that I’d like to use.”
“What do you have?” Helmut asked, confused.
“I have the environment and the user interface complete.” Tanya said, using telepathy again because she had put another donut in her mouth. “You could chase each other, but that’s it.”
“I’m not so good with chasing.” Bob said nervously.
“That’s the fun part!” Helmut said, “You get changed into this young, capable body when you’re playing the hunting game.”
“Depends on the difficulty, for the tickle hunt game.” Tanya corrected. “ Basic idea is that you’re a child that’s attempting to escape one of your parents, who is doing their best to tickle you. I’ve got it set to five different ages, from two to eighteen, gaps of four years. The eighteen and fourteen year old bodies are quite athletic, but beyond that…” Tanya trailed off. “It doesn’t matter as much if you’re facing each other, though. The parent becoming increasingly older is an aspect of that difficulty curve.” She may decide to make that part controllable too, but as of now she’s just got it set to plus twenty years. She shrugged. “Or I could just run you through the slapped-together dog hunt game. Your choice.”
“What’s that one?” Bob asked, intrigued.
“There’s a dog. His name is Kurt Jr.” Tanya deadpanned. “You catch him. Your reward is that he lays down for belly rubs.” She spread her hands. “That’s it.”
“That sounds like more my speed.” Bob said, completely ignoring Tanya’s subtle hint to not pick the game she made in five minutes.
“Dog hunt it is…” Tanya said, sighing as she fiddled with the APES machine’s settings.
---------------------
Tanya had read, in her first life, that one of the biggest indicators of success in school was where your birthday was in relation to the cutoff date for school starting. You had to have one, and as always when there was an arbitrary cutoff, there were those who benefitting from being on one side of the line and those who suffered by being on the other.
Mary’s birthday would, for an ordinary girl, put her on the suffering end, just a week before the September 1 cutoff for the school year. But instead, she has just enough mental maturity to instead be rather successful, by non-reincarnate standards.
But it also meant that her birthday party doubled as an end of summer party, and the girl was sociable enough that she somehow manages to get thirty to forty children to attend it every year.
This year, it was held at the roller rink. Tanya’s gift was, as usual, organizing the party: setting up the venue, ordering the pizzas, bandaging the inevitable injuries, confirming each attendee... Mom couldn’t always manage to make it every year, although she did this time. She was having a fun time leading the children on the rink, as Mom loved skating.
Tanya, on the other hand… stayed by the tower of pizza boxes, serving any of the party guests who wanted a slice. Or any of the rink employees who wanted one. The skating rink did have a snack bar, soda fountain, and a hot dog warmer, but they didn’t have a full kitchen so bringing in food was allowed.
“There you go, future Psychonaut.” Agent Nein said to a little boy who Tanya was pretty sure was named Horace, handing him his autograph. “Enjoy the party.” At least a few people probably thought that the two famous psychonauts were hired to attend the birthday party, instead of being the ones throwing it, but the fans weren’t too bad. It was difficult to get excited about the Psychonauts when the Motherlobe was right outside town. It became somewhat mundane.
“...Are there official impersonators?” Tanya asked out of the blue.
“Hm?” Agent Nein asked, requesting and receiving further context to the question telepathically. “Oh. Yes, there is. Not many, but one of the duties of the True Psychic Tales department is to find other ways to supplement the Psychonaut’s funding. Officially recognized impersonators to act as birthday clowns are one of their better ideas.”
Tanya frowned. “...That could end poorly.” She concluded.
“It hasn’t caused any issues yet.” Agent Nein said, waving off her concern. “Once they think it warranted to start hiring, they’ll have you write down guidelines for the impersonators, lines they shouldn’t cross to stay in character, etcetera.” His hands automatically went to his coat pocket for a cigarette, before he realized where he was and instead adjusted his coat.
Actually… “Have you ever considered quitting smoking?” Tanya asked.
“I’ve considered it, certainly.” Agent Nein replied, “But it’s harmless.”
Tanya’s eye twitched. “It really, really isn’t.” She telekinetically fetched his pack, and turned it to the Surgeon General’s warning. “This has been on the package since ‘66. It’s not nothing.”
“I don’t smoke nearly enough to be concerned about that.” Agent Nein insisted.
“How much do you smoke?” Tanya asked. Back when she first met him, she had asked him to stop smoking near her, and he did. In hindsight, the only reason he probably listened was because he thought she was traumatized from the fire. Well, in fairness, she was.
“A pack a day at most.” He said. “Frequently less. Maybe five a week.”
Tanya stared at Agent Nein, unable to find appropriate words on how to convey just how ridiculous that statement was. Fortunately, as a telepath, she didn’t need to.
“I’m too busy to go through withdrawal.” Agent Nein said, moving on to the standard addict’s phrasebook. The shift in her wordless contempt for the excuse reply enough, he continued: “I frequently need to smoke for disguises.” Tanya raised an eyebrow, but continued staring. “...I don’t want to.” He eventually settled on.
“What is the effectiveness of hypnotic addiction treatment?” Tanya asked, before holding up a finger as Mary came back, out of breath from skating. “Did you want pizza or is this something else?”
“Pizza.” Mary immediately said. Tanya took out another big slice of Mary’s special pizza, with anchovies and the fancy Swedish cheese. “Thanks!” Mary said as she ran to the table with her friends.
There were a few other children who wanted pizza, but Tanya was able to serve them while bringing the majority of her attention back to Agent Nein. “It’s fairly effective, with a few caveats.” Agent Nein admitted. “It requires a rather deep exploration of the patient’s mind, usually. Depends on how much of a problem the addiction is.” So Bob’s mind would pretty much need to be deep cleaned into the foundations. Lovely.
Bob might know this, which is why he’s so resistant to get treatment… “Bob needs the help, and he’s refusing to get it.” Tanya said.
“Ah.” Agent Nein said, understanding. “You’re considering taking matters into your own hands? I should have guessed.” Was she really that predictable? “While it’s less than ideal, if you could convince Bob to let you in, it would certainly be a step up over not accepting treatment at all.” He gave a conspiratorial wink. “And after all, you could have some extra expertise on call, if necessary.”
“Having treated it before would be an excellent bargaining chip.” Tanya said, staring at his packet of cigarettes.
Agent Nein looked at them. He looked at her. “...Very well.” He stood up and started to walk towards the skate rentals. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” Tanya agreed, taking a slice of pizza for herself. It tasted like victory.