In the practice of psychopunks, the main goal was to eliminate psychic blockage. By psychic, we don’t mean lifting plates with the mind, bending spoons, or telepathy (although modern communications technology would be considered a form of telepathy by our ancestors). By psychic, we mean in and of the mind, the flow of the subconscious into conscious action, like a tributary feeding a larger river. A blockage can perhaps better be described as a ‘hangup.’
A psychopunk’s job was to put on waders and go walking in the gummy sewers of the brain, utilizing the most powerful wetware and AI-assisted technology possible to create a live-rendered mindscape that allowed the psychopunk to synchronize with he innermost workings of a patient’s mind. Through the process of synchronization, understanding was created, but more importantly, any onboard spirits (AI) that had gone malignant from the patient’s poor mental state could be visualized, assessed, and potentially dispersed.
These AI-manifestations of a person’s hangups could usually be dispersed through a soft reset or some gentle coaxing. But in the case of thoroughly-integrated and deep-rooted hangups, a spirit might very well be contributing to the feedback loop of insanity, and worse, might have developed an ego of its own with a sense of investment in the psychological status quo. These situations were when a simple brain-scrub turned into a proper exorcism.
Malignancy didn’t imply malevolence, either; it merely described the propensity for an onboard AI embedded into someone’s systems to cause them harm. Sometimes, these spirits were entirely well-meaning. And sometimes, that distorted benevolence could be the urge to preserve someone in a state of roundabout anxiety, depression, and familiar agonies.
All of this was known by Vox and Noviko, who now sat at a blank, liminal space in endless black – a psychic limbo that was a kind of psychopunk dev room where they could regroup and recalibrate. In reality…
… Noviko sat in lotus posture before the slumped old man. Vox sat in a chair nearby, interacting via a screen that allowed her to see a rough rendering of what Noviko was experiencing. She wore a microphone that let her speak into Noviko’s mind. Noviko’s lips murmured the words:
“For people do not seek what is good for them, they seek what is familiar.”
“Just so,” said Vox into the mic. “It certainly explains the bucket of jellyfish.”
Back within liminal space, Noviko hovered in emptiness.
We need to proceed to the next step. I know what symbols to use.
“Great,” said Vox, in a clipped tone. “I’ll be here.”
How is everything in reality?
“Fine, just getting a little tired.”
Oh you’re tired? Well, if you want to switch spots so you can be the one experiencing the terror and pain of the patient, I’m more than happy to.
“It’s an unrelated exhaustion. Dealing with corporate command at the Trine Accord.”
I see. Should I be concerned that you are ‘dealing with’ the most dangerous political bloc in the entirety of the Pacific Syndicate? Especially after what I’ve witnessed, I mean… it’s all hitting me at once, now. They were experimenting on intelligent squids. What is the goal here? And how am I going to disentangle myself from the mess before PRISMA sends Ghosts after me, or – or worse, or it coerces me into Ghost service myself. I’m not a killer, Vox.
“Wow, that is a lot of catastrophizing. How about you let me worry about all that. The important thing is that I’ve got your back. You focus on this; we’ll unpack later.”
If my son and I are being dragged into danger, I’d prefer to not proceed.
“We can circle back around to that after this job is done. You’ve got a patient here who needs his sanity back, so let’s get the full diagnosis from the synchronization analysis.”
We will indeed ‘circle back around’ to it. You also owe me indulgences.
“The nature of which are yet to be determined, your holiness.”
I have a few imaginative ideas that could take advantage of a corporate expense account.
“I’m sure you do,” said Vox. “Now get to mapping.”
I do it manually. No interruptions, please.
“An entire neural net, manually? Hardcore, but we don’t have the time; you should delegate the process to your subsystems.”
“My subsystems are not reliable. The last time I trusted them with a neural map diagnosis, my patient went from garden-variety bipolar disorder to schizophrenia.”
“Sounds like you need to train your AI fairies better.”
Why don’t you let me do my job? Maybe go get a snack, you sound cranky.
“I’m not cranky,” said Vox, in a voice that some viewers of their cloutwalled livestream determined was actually cranky.
There are Churtles and Squirky in the pantry. And please make sure Trip is alright.
“Fine. Just… do your work. If we make time it’ll be by a cunt hair.”
Such a colorful woman.
“My mom was United States Navy, a Seabee. I think I learned the word ‘cocksucker’ from her when I was six years old.”
United States? How old are you?
“Not relevant. Proceed, please.”
Yes, put in a pin in that… while I dive into a broken brain!
BOOTING. . .
. . .
PACIFIC RIM INFOSPHERE MAPPING APPARATUS
SYNCBOX v3.02
MAPPING SYNCHRONIZATION. . .
MANUAL MAPPING ACTIVE.
In liminal space, Noviko witnessed the entirety of old Dr. Humboldt’s brain simulated before her in the emptiness. It was not a simple brain rendered in darkness like a hologram, but an explosion of glowing dust. She sat hovering in the midst of long dendrites and zaps of lightning that streaked all around like shooting stars in the night. Her senses and her body rendered, and she could feel herself gliding through the electric thicket of his mind.
There were dark spots. There were misfires. As she moved along, she used her internal UI to work with her own onboard systems to make bookmarks in three-dimensional space, marking spots of concern that she could return to later or reference in a broader context once she zoomed out and took the entirety of her analysis in. Even being able to move at a kind of warp speed from end-to-end, it took what felt like hours to traverse the entirety of his mind-map,.
Meanwhile, back in reality, Vox had taken over the stewardship of an increasingly bored Trip Tanaka, who had crawled out of his simulation pod and demanded to know what his mother was doing. Noviko could not hear or see him in her trance, and Vox had to engage Trip with some old-school, controller-based gaming using some analog controller blueprints she fed into the hab’s fabricator bay. Vox was kind enough to pay the liq for the power draw.
Trip, who had only ever played games in full-immersion simulations, found the controller challenging to use. He broke several of them, forcing Vox to reprint them each time. Eventually, though, his little hands adapted to the analog interface of buttons, bumpers, and rotation sticks. Vox found herself quietly impressed at this 4 ½-year-old’s snappy hand-eye coordination.
“You might be a Ghost one day after all,” said Vox with a smirk, after letting him perform a fatality on her character; he’d been practicing the inputs for only five minutes.
Trip threw up his hands in triumph as his character ripped Envy’s character’s arm off and beat the avatar to death with the severed limb. “I WIN! YOU OWE ME CHURTLES!”
“I did make a promise,” Vox smiled, as she got up to pour the kid a bowl of churtles, which were ZON’s #1 brand of crispy chocolate-algae snacks pressed into turtle shapes. She stuck the giant bowl of nutrient-dense, sugar-coated cocoa turtles in front of Trip and turned on some passive cartoons on the wallscreen.
“I’m gonna check on your mom, you be good,” she said.
Trip grunted with a mouthful of churtles and an eyeful of sparkling colors. Vox had successfully pacified the child… for now. She discreetly loaded a child-sized dose of tranquilizer into the non-lethal barrel of her utility pistol (just in case) then sat down to check on Noviko.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Noviko heard Vox within liminal space: “I see you’re compiling the analysis now. Good.”
‘Good’ is the last word I’d use to describe what I’ve been seeing. We have problems.
“Talk to me.”
It might be easier to show you. Synchronizing a simulation of patient’s perspective…
Noviko subjected herself to the inside of the man’s head, then simulated a simple walk down a street on the Ryukyuan rigsteads. Passerby had distorted faces, devoid of eyes or noses, with smiling mouths and sometimes flickering, gold-tipped fingers. Larger people would be seen as shadows with enormous white-black squid eyes, and there was forever the distant burbling of auditory hallucinations; these had a distinctly unreal, panoptic quality that came from everywhere and nowhere at once, just out of reach yet forever with you, and the words were gibberish, but had a scathing tone that made one feel small. All of this carried with it a sense of dread, and sometimes when the shadows were too close or pedestrians too familiar, it soothed the soul to feel physical agony, hence, the dipping of the hands into the bucket of stinging jellies. Hence, gazing into the swirling waters filled with flickering friends. And when one tried to scream or beg for mercy from the shadows and the gold-tipped pedestrians, the words were clear, “help me, please don’t hurt me, help me, help me” but the figures all reacted with laughter and confusion, horror or disgust, and forever, forever, one was cursed to wander all the human drama as an alien, a freak, a fearsome intruder, a nothing, and a nuisance.
“Fuck me,” murmured Vox. “This is full-blown psychosis.”
Psychosis with global aphasia and a handful of other co-morbid conditions. His onboard spirits have assumed the form of jellyfish. He keeps inquiring internally over and over to his neural augments, begging for comfort, and the AI has come to believe the only thing that comforts him is jellyfish. His dreams are jellyfish, his goals are jellyfish, and how he has managed to survive this long is a mystery to me. Isn’t there any record of him?
“He’s a resident.”
Well who is his sponsor?
“I’m… not at liberty to say.”
Are you telling me this man has a cloutwalled sponsor? A powerful sponsor?
“That’s the implication, yes. I can’t say more.”
This man’s life is a living hell, and he has been living it for decades, perhaps centuries. Are you telling me he’s been sponsored clandestinely, and kept alive, that entire time, to just… wander around Syndicate rigs in a state of torment and confusion?
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
His sponsor is either negligent or a sadist.
“Those are both reasonable deductions,” said Vox, her tone increasingly distant.
I don’t like this. Where is my son?
“He’s fine, we played games for a bit, now he’s occupied with cartoons and a snack.”
I want no part of this sick game any longer.
“I was really hoping you’d just help the old man,” said Vox with a sigh. “But we’re running out of time, and you’re the reason why. Stop asking questions and help him.”
I want to help him, but I’m concerned this is just another facet of a long, cruel game.
“It is and it isn’t, that’s all I can say.”
If you don’t tell me more, I’m done here.
Vox clenched her jaw. Noviko could sense her tension. It could have been fear, or possibly anger, but it was difficult to say without the benefit of being able to observe Vox’s body language.
“Fine,” said Vox. “Here’s what I can tell you: PRISMA wants him healed. GYOTA does not. ZON is indifferent.”
… I’m in the middle of a corporate conflict.
“We both are. So if nothing else, help him, and for fuck’s sake you’d better help me, because I can help you.”
Help me what, exactly…?
“Help you avoid…” Vox paused and looked at young Trip, who was well within earshot. She lowered her voice to a whisper disguised by the audio of cartoon explosions. “… avoid GYOTA retaliation. PRISMA can protect your family, but you need to help us first.”
I thought you were an agent of the Accord in its entirety.
“We all have our deeper loyalties and that shouldn’t surprise anyone listening. PRISMA is my home, and the partner of the Psychopunk’s Union. I suggest you consider where your family’s daily bread comes from.”
Noviko could feel her world getting smaller. She was draining down toward the tip of an inverted, clandestine pyramid. In this space, walled by clout, viewers were fewer and far more intense. It all made her skin crawl and her tummy ache.
Okay.
“Good. Smart choice,” said Vox, in that cutting voice of hers that sounded like a blade rasping along thick silk. “Proceed with the exorcism.”
Please turn on the fans and manage the hydration apparatus. Put trip in his pod, he cannot see this. It will traumatize him.
“I know what to do. Focus.”
Okay.
RE-SYNCHRONIZING
Back in reality, in that cozy corner of the hab by the old gong, Noviko stood up, while the old man stood up along with her. Their movements were simultaneous, mirrored perfectly. Vox reached up to the many ribbon-like tubes hanging from the ceiling and detached two; she also brought down support tubes to loop under their armpits for when the exorcism reached is zenith and they lost motor control. She set the hydration tubes to their inner elbows, just over the artery. The tubes spat a net of white tendrils on contact, which wormed their way down through the skin and found their way into the arteries. Saline solution trickled down through them, along with trace amounts of psychotropics; these mind-altering cocktails were proprietary and unique to a psychopunk’s practice, though largely cribbed from a foundational chemistry template provided by PRISMA R&D. Noviko’s personal mix was a little heavier on the dimethyltryptamine.
To her credit, Vox did try to put Trip in his pod, but Trip wasn’t having it, and started foot-stomping and crying and demanding to be able to watch the exorcism. Vox knew this meant Trip was about ready for nap time, given it was mid-afternoon, and when she suggested nap time, there was more foot-stomping and crying. So, Vox did the only thing she could while pressed for time. She said:
“Auntie Vox is in charge; therefore, nap time is compulsory.” Then she shot Trip in the thigh with the child-sized tranq round and (gently) stuffed his limp body into his sleeping pod. She even fluffed his stuffed lions up next to him and tucked the blanket over his shoulders.
Liquid-coolant gurgled beneath the hab floor. Vox could see sweat soaking through Noviko and the old man’s clothes, so she set up the fans on either side and set them to high. She watched as the two figures went through the movements of tai chi, evoked sacred mudras, and chanted in Ryukyuan that translated to:
All that harms us is a dream, all that haunts us felt or seen
All that chases us in dark, all that cuts and leaves a mark
Can be lost in glowing waves, can recede into the haze
We are naught but crests and foam, though spirits grow they need our loam.
I am all that shall remain, and I am greater than my pains!
I am knowing in my bones that ghosts will never take my throne!
I am one who must be me and never two or six or three!
You are not the dreamer’s seeming you are what the dreamer’s dreaming!
Wake me up from life itself, wake me up from circled Hell!
Let me die and be reborn! May malignant bonds be torn!
Noviko’s moving fingers flicked sweat onto the floor. The old man’s skin glistened. Together, they flopped and danced, rolled their necks and arms like eels stuffed into human clothes trying to pantomime natural movement. At last, their eyes flew open, and were revealed to be glossy black from tinting membranes meant to filter out reality. They screamed, they wailed, they wept, they beat their flopping hands against their thighs, called out like hyenas, yurgle-gurgled like they were drawing on the genes of some forgotten ancestral proto-mammal, and then gasped like fish begging for water. And then, both of them steepled their palms toward the heavens and screamed in Ryukyuan:
“死んで生まれ変わらせてください！悪性の絆が引き裂かれますように！
Shinde umarekawara sete kudasai! Akusei no kizuna ga hikisaka remasu yō ni!”
(Let me die and be reborn! May malignant bonds be torn!)
Vox watched Noviko’s lank, sweaty hair billow around her face; this, combined with the black eye membrane, made her resemble a vengeful onryo more than a human being. Vox saw their onscreen vitals spike, then drop. Both of them screamed as if they were being murdered, a long and winding scream that went on until the lungs were squeezed into empty sacs.
They then literally died.
Their corpses were caught in the hanging tubes of the ceiling. They hung there like hooked tuna for precisely twenty-seven seconds, down to the nanosecond. The cables connecting their brains to the SyncBox in the floor then sent a neurological burst into their brains and commanded their hearts to restart.
Noviko gasped back to life. The old man did so moments after. Their synchronization was broken. Both of them, trembling and soaked, hung for a little while to regain consciousness and collect their bearings. Vox gave them space and air but couldn’t help bouncing her leg a little in her seat as she waited to see the results.
“Dr. Humboldt?” Asked Vox, of the old man.
“… that’s me, isn’t it?” The old man replied, in intelligible (if outdated) Angrish.
Vox puffed a sigh of relief. “Welcome back to baseline.”
“I had…” he struggled to gain his breath. “… I had the most awful dream…”
“Yes, it was all a dream. None of it was real,” Vox reinforced the exorcism’s work with a kind lie. “We’ve been trying to reach you for years, but you were lost.”
“I couldn’t bear to come back… couldn’t stand what we’ve become.”
“It was a dream, like I said. It’ll all be okay now. Rest.”
Noviko disentangled herself from the hanging tubes and pulled the hydration tendrils from her arm. She staggered over to her kitchen and squatted down by the freezer to open it, pick up a tray of ice, dump it into the sink, and stick her face into the freezing pile.
“You owe me indulgences,” muttered Noviko from the ice pile.
Vox reloaded her utility pistol with an adult-sized dose of tranquilizer. She casually shot Dr. Humboldt in the thigh and conveyed thoughts to PRISMA central command that Noviko was now authorized to see in her feeds: Ready for collection. Hurry up and pull the strings.
“Did you hear me?” Asked Noviko.
“I heard you. You’d better secure everything in the hab,” Vox got to tossing things into drawers and fastening them shut. “We’re going to be moving in about thirty seconds.”
“Excuse me?!” Noviko shot up fast from the sink, then staggered from nausea and flopped over the counter. She glared through sweaty locks of black hair at Vox. “No thank you!”
Vox threw beads and crystals into a storage drawer, checked the adhesive on a lamp, and dragged the limp body of Dr. Humboldt to the couch to buckle him in and lay him out to prevent injury.
“You should sit and strap in,” said Vox. “Oh, and strap Trip in, too. He’s asleep.”
“I’m sure our home being moved might wake him up!”
“Um…” Vox rubbed the back of her head, then went into the mud room. “No. He’s extremely asleep.”
“… did you sedate my son?”
Vox vanished behind the curtains of the mud room and got to securing the cubbies.
Noviko ran to Trip’s side and checked his breathing and pulse. He was stable, and even had a peaceful little smile on his face as he snoozed. Her teeth clenched, and she felt a wash of anger as her life was literally uprooted around her. All she could do was strap Trip in.
The whole hab lurched forward. A hive crane sank its claws into their home and slid it from the scaffolding. Noviko went to strap into her favorite chair by the window and stared outside as the rig she was born and raised on receded from view. They were being passed off by the crane to some kind of heavy-duty VTOL aircraft. As they flew over the open ocean, which sparkled blue and white in the afternoon sun, she admired a pod of dolphins playing with a crowd of schoolchildren out on a scuba trip.
Ahead of her, she saw their destination set against the vast blue sky.
A ZON fleet sprawled out before her as a grand expanse of ships of all shapes and sizes. But foremost among them was an agri-carrier; a converted nuclear aircraft carrier of the old world covered in gardens and hanging greenery. Its conning tower had flowers draping over the windows, and on the side, she could read its name: S.S. Gitarja.
She remembered the name. Gitarja Actual. The flagship of the fleet in Dr. Humboldt’s terrible ‘dream.' Why PRISMA was delivering her into the arms of ZON was a mystery.
As they passed out of the cloutwall’s time window, her inbox lit up with thousands more hits of activity as her life gained the highest degree of virality she’d ever experienced. Like it or not, she was now a person-of-interest not just to the Trine Accord, but the content-hungry masses of her entire civilization of 2.5 billion people spread out across the Pacific.
It was like being stuck between a jaguar in the jungle and piranhas in the water.