SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-09 09:57pm

This is the saga of Dr. Susan Islington Warren-Marshall, born in Shepistan. It begins roughly twenty-five years before the events of the main game (including those of Suicide Police, War on Crabs, and Murca: Land of the Free).

Thanks to Mayabird for extensive consultation, and to Shep for being deranged enough to think of Shepistan in the first place so I could follow the consequences of its existence to their logical conclusion.

Chapter One: Why I Decided To Leave Shepistan And Never Ever Come Back

Montgomery Agricultural Reserve Site Twelve
Edge of the Capital Wasteland
Shepistani Federation
3375

Susie rubbed her forehead, then slumped to her desk and groaned. The headaches always came back when she went to the arcos to visit her parents, and they took days to go away. They'd been a problem since she was nine. Her first doctor, a pediatrician, blamed it on allergies. She gave Susie dozens of shots that did nothing. Her second doctor, another pediatrician, blamed faulty climate control, and ordered her family to monkey with the temperature settings in her room. All that did was give her a nasty cold one summer and practically give her heat stroke the next. The third doctor, a specialist, said it was some exotic sinus condition and gave her a cutting-edge designer med to tackle the symptoms. All that did was make spots dance in front of her eyes. The spidery purple flashes of light across her vision faded after a month or two, lasting just long enough to ruin her twelfth birthday party. Right in the middle of it, she'd had an attack vicious enough to have her screaming "HAIRY PURPLE SPIDERS!" and trying to climb the walls.

That was fifteen years ago. Susie didn't go to the doctor very often after that.

She had her own theory about the cause of her headaches. It was The Stupid. She could feel The Stupid. Everywhere. It was strongest in cities, around the military parades and the government buildings. It was weakest in the countryside, miles from any place. But it never really went away. Even when she'd hopped on a shuttle and flown to Montgomery's moon on a senior field trip in high school, The Stupid was always with her. Whenever she went places where The Stupid was strong, she could feel it sucking away IQ points, distracting and confusing her. And then the headaches came back.

 Shepistanis didn't really have a word equivalent to "military-industrial complex," any more than fish had a word for water. But if she'd known the term, she'd have said that was it. That was the source of The Stupid. The troops, the endless obsession with bigger and better guns to make louder and louder bangs. The quest for tighter and tighter security and more and more secrecy. What was it even for? The Amplitur War ended hundreds of years ago! If there were even any of them left alive, they probably just a Stone Age tribe cowering on some random moon in the middle of the Badlands. They probably wouldn't even remember what their ancestors did- they'd spend all their time wondering when the sky gods were going to rain fire again. Were all the endless preparations supposed to fight that? It wasn't just stupid. It was Stupid. The distilled essence of stupidity, concentrated into the purest form she could imagine, soaking through everything, oozing from everything.

The only way to get away from The Stupid was to get away from civilization entirely. Go out into the country, where it was weak and she could ignore it and she could think. That was why she'd become a biologist. To flee from The Stupid. She shivered, then fought her way back to control of herself. It was okay, she was safe here. The Stupid was still there, naturally. She could still feel it. But it couldn't hurt her here. She could get back to work. She could contribute. Susie was helping!.

Hold onto that thought.

She sat back up, thinking. The project she had cooking in Experimental Field Four was good, it had gotten her thesis done (she felt a flash of humor: Ask Doctor Susie!). It might help, but... she murmured to herself.

"What we really need is a way to stop baby geese from growing up into adult geese. Baby geese are cute. Adult geese are just machines for turning plants into more geese. And goose poop." Well, that was a project for another time. Another tool in the struggle against branta canadensis horriblis, the dreaded Mutant Hell-Goose. The struggle to reclaim the planet from this bizarre new species. For now, her tool of choice was... Experimental Field Four.

The idea had been bouncing around her head from her second year in grad school. Finally, she got sick of waiting for it to come together for her, so she decided to take desperate measures: a two week vacation to Hollowstone National Park. The center of Hollowstone was over two hundred kilometers from the nearest town and almost a hundred and fifty from the nearest military base. No one had ever tried to develop it, because access overland was almost impossible and because of the constant low-level seismic activity. Because there was nothing there, it had ridden out the Amplitur War without a scratch. And it was mostly too high-altitude for the Mutant Hell-Geese to be comfortable, so they left it alone too.

This made Hollowstone's rugged forested mountains one of the few stretches of pristine wilderness on Montgomery. Camped out on a mountaintop near the exact center of the park with two weeks' food supply and her personal minicomp, she could really concentrate. The Stupid faded to a whispering echo at the back of her mind, and everything was clear. Problems she could never have solved in a city, that would have taken her months to tackle even in a lab where the arcologies were just smudges on the horizon, she solved in days. During those two weeks in the wilderness, Susie wrote most of her doctoral thesis. And that was how she came up with the design for a new line of gene-tailored plants. Specially modified for one purpose: tasting horrible to geese.

Once she got back to Site Twelve, she went to work. She'd started with algae; that was just good practice. Then grass, a few kinds of bushes, some scrubby little trees. She moved on to flowers, mostly because she liked flowers and you saw so few of them outside greenhouses on account of the all-consuming Hell-Geese. She'd seeded them in Experimental Field Four, on the edge of the Capital Wasteland, an area where the mutant geese flourished and devoured nearly all plant life except the hardiest, quickest-growing, most deeply rooted breeds.

Mutant Hell-Geese roamed Experimental Field Four freely, pecking at the ground. She'd had to deliberately feed them to keep them around, though, just so she could finish the tests. Because the geese would not touch so much as a leaf of the plants she'd seeded in Field Four.

It was a great show for visitors. All around for kilometers in any direction, there was nothing but rocks, bare dirt, lichen, and an occasional patch of moss. The geese scoured up any seeds or sprouts they could find. And then there was Field Four. A meadow, with flowers and grass and softly buzzing near-bees. And, just to make sure the test was thorough, it was also next to a duck pond. Or rather, a goose pond. Which made no difference- even when the field was literally swarming with Hell-Geese, they didn't attack the plants.

She smiled. She could see it now: crop strains that defended themselves from the plague of geese, grass spreading over the Capital Wasteland, finally repairing the last of the damage from the Amplitur War. She was so proud.

TO: CPT. TAYBACK
FROM: CINCMONTY

SUBJ: OPERATION QUACK MAMBA EVAC PLANS

1. QUACK MAMBA AREA OF OPERATIONS CURRENTLY OCCUPIED BY CIVILIAN RESEARCH FACILITY.

2. POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS OF FACILITY RESEARCH FOR BIOWAR AGAINST ENEMY CONSIDERED MARGINAL.

3. PLATOON OF STACKWATER PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS, DESIGNATED CHARLIE FOXTROT, EMPLOYED TO EVACUATE CIVILIAN RESEARCHERS FROM AREA OF OPERATIONS PRIOR TO SWEEPS SCHEDULED FOR 14 JULY.

4. CHARLIE FOXTROT WILL BE OPERATING OUT OF BASE STEEL BROTHER EAST FOR DURATION OF QUACK MAMBA OPERATIONS.

5. UNDER CURRENT STANDING ORDERS, STACKWATER CONTRACTORS HAVE CLEARANCE TO EMPLOY WEAPONS UP TO LEVEL THREE IN THE QUACK MAMBA AREA OF OPERATIONS, AND MAY REQUISITION ADDITIONAL WEAPONS UP TO LEVEL THREE FROM BASE ARMORY.

Susie stretched. Time to go back to the dormitory. Gotta feed Haiku. The researchers lived on-site. There wasn't much in the way of amenities, but they had private rooms and they were far away from The Stupid. That was all that mattered in Susie's book. She walked out of the lab into the afternoon sunlight.

Then she felt a sudden urge to blink. Hard. At first she thought it was just the sun, but... no. Something was wrong. She could feel it approaching. From the east. The Stupid... A column of dust rose over the road from the direction of the MoCo arcologies. The Stupid was swelling in her head, a distracting buzz that scattered her thoughts... she squinted, rubbing at the side of her head. Then she gritted her teeth. She could manage. She had managed for years in the heart of Stupid, and if The Stupid came to her here, well, she'd just have to deal with it.

Then they came round the bend. A convoy of military vehicles- several trucks and a swarm of general-purpose utility vehicles; the army called them "Doomvees" for some reason. They pulled up to a halt along the road that led through the main buildings. A bunch of men in paramilitary-looking fatigues got out. From the lead truck came a big man who had light body armor on over his fatigues. He looked like he was in charge. And he was grinning, like everything was a big joke. "You would be... Miss Susan Islington Warren-Marshall?" She did not like his tone. He wasn't any older than she was, and even so he was still being patronizing to her. And what had he done to be able to do that?

"Doctor Warren-Marshall. What do you want?"

"My platoon has orders to evacuate civilian researchers from this facility in preparation for military sweeps of the area, doctor. Get whoever's in charge here, tell them they have... Hm." he tapped his stubbled cheek with one finger. "Ninety minutes to get their shit together and move. Or be moved. Their choice."

This isn't my job to handle. This isn't my job to handle. "Doctor Nansen is in charge, Building Three..." as she raised her arm to point to the building, the senior researcher came storming out- looked like he'd been working on something sensitive, because he still had his coat and gloves on and his goggles up on his forehead. The old botanist strode up to the Chief Goon, barking out questions.

"Who are you? What is the meaning of this?"

The tough just grinned again. "Doctor Nansen, I am Lieutenant Kilgore, Stackwater Interworld Solutions. As I just told your friend here, I am here under orders from C-In-C-Montgomery to evacuate civilian researchers from this facility in preparation for military sweeps."  

"Military? Who authorized...?"

"Quack Mamba was authorized by President Sheppard himself."

Oh no. At first, she'd hoped the television announcements were just a rumor, that a man calling himself "General Sheppard," as in the Sheppard, had claimed the presidency. But she'd looked at the new images, and compared them to ancient historical footage online. It had to be a clone of the same man, the man who'd led the old country into a disastrous biowar back on Nova Terra. She didn't want to think about... But Dr. Nansen was still talking.

"Quack Mamba? What the hell kind of name is..."

This guy definitely seemed to get off on interrupting people. "Operation Quack Mamba is the preliminary stage of clearing operations against the mutant hell-goose infestation of the Capital Wasteland. We're pulling out all civvies in the area. You have ninety minutes to evacuate this facility, get your gear together, and get on board the transports my men brought with us. Anyone not ready to board in ninety minutes will be placed on board, by force if necessary. I do not have time to play games, Doctor Nansen. Get your people moving."

Dr. Nansen was good at these things. His eyes were very wide, but he didn't shout or bluster any more. He just turned, very calmly, to face Susie. "Susie, go get your things. Tell anyone in the dorms to pull together their personal belongings. I'll round up the assistants and make sure the seeds and data logs are safe."

She'd done it. She never would have thought she could, but she'd managed to scoop everything important into just two bags in under an hour. She'd put the bags in a pile that the Stackwater guys were throwing into the back of a heavy truck, and gone back to get Haiku. The cat looked nervous, but stayed still and quiet in her arms. She walked over to one of the Doomvees, where two of the Stackwater drivers were standing and chatting.

Just then, a massive flock of geese descended on the pond by Experimental Field Four, honking. That was at least half a kilometer away, so the noise wasn't too bad, but the sheer number of the things blocked out the sun for a moment as they passed to the west. One of the Stackwater troopers' jaws dropped. "Holy crap that's... damn, there must be thousands of them. Wish I could get the bounty on some of those..." He stopped and visibly thought about it. “Not opening up without orders from the Loot.” He turned to Susie. "...How come they aren't eatin' the stuff by the lake?"

She grinned, coldly. "That's what we've been doing here, that you're here to stop. We figured out how to breed plants so that..." Her explanation got technical quickly; this was what she'd been living for the past four years.

"So... the geese don't eat it because it tastes like crap to them?"

"More or less."

The trooper sucked in his breath and gave a wry, sympathetic chuckle. "Well, that sucks."

"What?"

"Well, way I figure it, new official policy is to kill the geese, not just make stuff taste crappy to them. I mean, not that I'm not impressed or anything, but... looks like you just wasted a lot of time here, miss."

The Stupid buzzed inside her brain, rising and falling, almost like it was taunting her. She closed her eyes, held Haiku a little closer, and stepped into the Doomvee.

Half an hour later, the column pulled out. Two of the assistants had to be dragged out of the main building clutching packets of seeds. Nansen didn't have to be dragged; he came out head held high, with what had to be almost fifty kilos of data storage racks held in his hands, carrying them like they didn't weigh more than so many bags of feathers. Wait. Did he... he didn't go back for any of his stuff, did he? Knowing the director, he probably hadn't.

Once all the scientists were on board, the convoy moved out. Then there were some squawks on the radio as they crested the hill overlooking the site. All the drivers pulled to a stop. She rolled down the window: outside, only five meters away, a group of men had hustled off one of the trucks and were fiddling with some kind of heavy weapon- a big tripod-mounted tube with a huge bomb loaded in the front. Some kind of portable cannon?

One of the troopers took a look at the tip of the bomb, then looked at Kilgore, who was overseeing the team and grinning wider than ever. "Sir, I don't think CINCMONTY cleared us to..."  Kilgore frowned. "Corporal, we're cleared to use weapons up to level three, no? And the Daniel Boone is a level three weapon, no?"

"Yes sir, but that's only with conventional rounds..."

"If the base quartermaster had not meant to issue us special munitions, he would not have left the keys to the special munition room lying out where I could see them, now would he?"

"Ah..."

"Corporal." The Stackwater officer's cigar bulged outwards at the pressure of his teeth. "Load. One." He turned to the man wearing what looked like sergeant stripes. "Jack, get the column moving out. Me and the boys will stay here to take imagery up until initiation. We'll need the gun camera footage to collect the bounty." The rest was said softly, but the wind carried it to her ears. "Bounty on that many of the fuckers in one go. We'll be rich men." He waved his arm. The sergeant said something into the radio bud by his ear, then hopped on one of the trucks as the column started moving.

A few minutes later, the driver of the Doomvee she was in listened to some more buzzing on the radio. "Everyone, eyes front! Look towards the front of the vehicle, and bend forward!" She didn't know what he was talking about, but she did as he said. Then there was a flash of light reflected off the road ahead of them. No. No. It can't be. They didn't just...

Susie didn't really want to look; she knew what she'd see. For the first twenty seconds or so she managed not to. Then a tremendous roar blasted by them on both sides, shaking the Doomvee like the gust front of a storm. Something rattled off the back window of the vehicle.

She couldn't help it any more. She looked out through the rear window. The hill behind them hid the blast site itself from view. But she could still see Lieutenant Kilgore. It had to be him, standing there, a tiny capering figure silhouetted against the rising mushroom of flame over Experimental Field Four.

Susie curled up into a ball on the seat, her arms around Haiku. That is it. I am LEAVING.

Leaving. To somewhere. Anywhere, really. Anywhere they didn't laugh and ignore scientists. Anywhere they didn't pop lunatic clones of equally lunatic ancient dictators out of tanks and put them in charge. Anywhere they didn't declare nuclear war on geese.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-09 09:59pm

Chapter Two: The Biggest Day Of My Life

Shola Okoro Immigration Center, Alpha-Four Arcology, New Athens,
Sector X-6 Capital,
Late 3375

The Stupid was gone!

Not hushed, like it was out at Agricultural Site Twelve. Not even the little whispers of Stupid she’d heard in Hollowstone, over a hundred kilometers from the nearest human habitation. It was gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be found. That was better than she’d dared to hope: leaving Shepistan, she’d been afraid that some residual contamination of The Stupid had soaked into her own body, that she could never be truly free of it.

For the first time in Susie’s life, she could walk around an urban area without feeling headaches and a flickering, stabbing sense of nausea. Reflexes honed by a quarter century of aversion therapy still left her with a feeling of cringing fear, waiting for the other shoe to drop and The Stupid to come back, gloating and showing her it all been a dream... but it didn’t.

She’d been here through days of medical checkups, psych evals, and assorted exams. It had been a pain, but she thought she understood. The Umerian government was throwing a lifetime’s worth of evaluations at her, as fast as possible. She wished it wasn’t so exhausting, that people would actually stop and talk to her instead of just rushing her from one assessment to the next. That she’d have time to do more than just go home, take a breath, and take care of Haiku. But it hardly mattered, because from the moment she walked out of the starport corridor on New Athens, The Stupid was gone!

Just as nothing could ever be truly right in the presence of The Stupid, nothing could ever be truly wrong in its absence.

They were handing her off to someone else... “Adjustment Counselor.” Named- she’d only glanced at the itinerary once this morning, but she remembered in moments, her mind was so much clearer now without The Stupid distracting her- Hendriksen. Maybe Mrs. Hendriksen would actually talk to her instead of running her down a checklist: “Did you remember to file this? How are you eating?” and on and on, it was beginning to get a bit insulting and she wished it would stop. Why can’t someone just stop and answer my questions? There’s things you can’t pick up from the Net about a place.

An announcement system chimed in the lobby where she was sitting and waiting. She’d pulled out her personal minicomp, absent-mindedly tracing little patterns on the armrest with her fingers while skimming through material on citizenship examinations. At the sound of the chime, she looked up, and saw one of the men at the desk come towards her. He stood at a respectful distance, not crowding her, and said in a hushed voice, “Dr. Warren-Marshall, Mrs. Hendriksen is ready to see you. If you could come this way please?”

Susie nodded and stood up, closing her minicomp. The man ushered her to the entrance to the office section, pointed her to a red line on the wall that would lead her to the 5460 block, and returned to his paperwork. She followed the line and found... yes, the nameplate by office 5463 was “Hendriksen.” She heard a light, cheerful soprano from inside the office.

“Please come in, Dr. Warren-Marshall.” Stepping through the door, Susie smiled.

“Call me Susie.”

“You can call me Rikke. Have a seat, okay?”

Susie sat down in one of the chairs on her side of Rikke’s desk, and tilted her head. “So, what does an Adjustment Counselor do?”

“Stop asking you our questions and start answering yours.”

That was a surprise. “How... how did you know?” Susie’s voice was small and quiet.

“Everyone wants someone to do that. Well, everyone needs someone to do that. It’s only a matter of time, really; a balance between their intelligence and their patience. Some people going through Immigration never realize they want someone to stop and really touch base with. They usually don’t do well. We’ve spent a long time learning to time it right, when people have been around just long enough to ask good questions but not long enough to be too annoyed...” she frowned. “Did we get it right this time?”

Susie rubbed her chin. “Uhm, close enough?”

“Good. So, what would you like to ask us?”

“Can I stay?”

Rikke blinked. “Of course. Why not?”

“Because...” Because I really don’t want to leave! “...I wasn’t sure. All the tests. And because I’m from... Shepistan.” She felt so embarrassed; she’d already had a few awkward moments making wrong assumptions. People just didn’t act the same in Umeria, they laughed at things that would have been perfectly serious back home, they were perfectly serious about things that no one back home would have taken seriously. Umeria was weird. Cool, but weird.

“Being from Shepistan isn’t anything to worry about, Susie, we get people from Shepistan all the time. And the tests are just groundwork, really. You’re going through an unusual number, because of the extra requirements for Type Four citizenship.”

Type Four? She blinked. They’re thinking about making me a Type Four fresh off the boat? The grades of citizenship in Umeria were something you could look up anywhere. Memorized descriptions flashed through her memory.

Type One: “Breathing while Umerian.” Awarded at birth, practically inalienable. Type Two: “Can feed herself without being coached.” Usually awarded in the teenage years; some people never got past it no matter how old they were. Type Three: “Everybody else...” Full legal adulthood; most people got it around twenty. And Type Four. Designated smart people. Respectable people.

“Type Four? Already?”

“I’d expect 4AB, actually, for high-educated specialists who have made material advances in a field of science, industry, or the arts.” Rikke smiled. “Pending review of your c.v. by qualified biologists, of course. That could take a while, but the basic typing work is almost done. So yes, Type Four.”

“...Thanks.”

“Oh, it’s not unusual, Doctor.” There was that little emphasis people always put on the title in the Technocracy; it was like “Milady” or something. “Again, people who come to us with a curriculum vitae in the sciences are usually fast-tracked into Type Four.”

That sounded nice of them, but she felt a sudden spike of performance anxiety. Won’t they expect me to do something difficult to deserve first-class citizenship? Will they hold going to school back in Shepistan- she didn’t think of it as “home” even now- against me? Can I even ask that without torpedoing myself?

Need a safe question, safe question... Aha!

“...So. What about... getting a job, and so forth?" She waved her hand a bit, trying to cover the awkward pause.

Rikke smiled again. “I don’t think you’ll need to worry, Susie, two of the reviewers have already contacted us looking to take you on at their labs. Would terraforming suit you?”

Susie’s eyes lit up. “Absolutely.”

“Well, once you’re through processing, you may want to contact them. Though... there are other options you may want to consider.”

That sounded a bit frightening. “Other options?”

Rikke suddenly looked very serious. “Doctor Warren-Marshall, in your early interviews you were quite voluble about an... overwhelming sense of oppression you felt in Shepistan, since early childhood. Frequent symptoms of nausea, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, distraction, and so on?”

Susie nodded. “The Stupid.”

“An... interesting term. Now, we’re fairly familiar with emigrés from Shepistan feeling oppressed and disoriented. It’s not at all uncommon; some in the psych department call it “Only Sane Man Syndrome...” and the counsellor had to stop talking. Susie was laughing hysterically.

She couldn’t stop. She just couldn’t. She flailed, pounded on the desk. Her eyes were watering... no, she was outright crying. It was such a good name for... her whole life, really. She pounded on the table a few more times, then managed to choke off the laughter and look up at the Umerian woman across the desk. “It’s... so true.”

Rikke looked very solemn, her eyes filled with something close to pity. “I know. I’ve seen it thousands of times. You aren’t the only one, and you never were, Susie.”

Wow. Susie felt very, very happy. Relieved. A little choked up, even. For so long she’d thought she was the only one, that it was something wrong with her, even when she could see the craziness all around her. “Well then, you understand why I don’t want to go back?”

“Yes. But there’s something else, you see. The feeling of oppression is common, we see it in almost eighty percent of all visa applicants from Shepistan. But the headaches and the other physical symptoms you describe... those aren’t symptoms of OSMS, Susie. You said the symptoms went away very suddenly, as soon as you left the Shepistani-flagged ship? And that they never went away before?”

“Yes.” What is she getting at? ... No, it can’t be...

“And that you haven’t had even one attack since your first minutes on Umerian soil, after never going more than a few hours without one for over twenty years in Shepistan?”

Her voice was trailing off. “...Yes. This is the least Stupid place I’ve ever been. Not Stupid at all, really.” Wait... no. Her eyes were wide.

Rikke smiled sadly. “Thank you. I know how you must feel hearing this, Susie, coming from MoCo Arco like you do.” NO! GOD NO! But... Susie, those aren’t symptoms of OSMS. Those are symptoms of early-onset exposure to high-intensity Blitzschlag fields.”

Susie was crying again.

“Doctor, we’re almost certain that you have esper potential.”

It... no. She couldn’t be a psyker. Psykers were mutants. Freaks. Less than human and a little alien. The Bugs were psykers. Her mind flashed back to the first time she’d- just for a moment- wondered. And looked “psychic abilities” up in the dictionary.

The pictures at the top of the Shepipedia page came from the Amplitur War. Soldiers walking in an eerie, marionette-like trance as they gunned down their comrades with wide, blank eyes. Video footage of men sitting in the space defense center under Vulture Rock, just sitting there looking at nothing, drool running from the corner of their mouth, while alarms screamed all around them and nuclear blasts shook their hardened bunker.

On and on, descriptions of just what a psyker could, would do if not carefully controlled, and at the end:

In spite of all attempts at screening, psykers still appear in any human population, even here in Shepistan. These psykers are not to be feared, for they are not a danger, thanks to the protective aura of Blitzschlag fields that covers every city, town, military base, and starship in our country. Instead, they are to be pitied- remember, they are not to blame for their own tragic mutations.

If you suspect that you, or someone you know, might be a psyker, you should report this to the authorities immediately. Once reported, a psyker can receive the proper treatment from military programs specializing in the care and use of these dangerous abilities. In this way, the hazard of an unsanctioned psyker is replaced by a powerful weapon in defense of FREEDOM.

Susie had never wondered if she might be a psyker again.

She hugged her knees to her chest and just sat there for minutes. Then Rikke stood up and came around the desk.

“Susie?”

“Susie?”

She took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I... you’ll still let me into the country?”

“Of course we will. Susie, that’s why your application’s been processed so fast. Shepistani espers are classed as refugees. We want you to stay here.”

“But psykers...”

Rikke clucked her tongue. “Espers are free to operate in the Technocracy, and we are glad to have them. You’ll need to go through a round of screening to measure for potential abilities; that might affect the career path you want to take.” WHAT? Be a professional psyker? Hell no! “Or it might not. It will be your choice what to do, Susie. And remember the bright side.” She winked. “You really will never feel The Stupid again. We don’t put megawatt-range... Stupid Fields in our cities here. So if you just want to be a terraforming engineer and nothing else, there won’t be anything in the way.”

“I can’t be... can’t... please, no...” She wanted to stay, desperately. To hope. To be free of The Stupid. But the idea of being a psyker...

“It’s all right, Susie. You’ve been lied to. There are espers almost everywhere. Millions of them. Nobody’s world ends because of them.”

You don’t understand! She couldn’t form the words, though; she just sat there, moaning softly. No...

“Remember, Susie, you’re still who you thought you were. You’re not a monster now any more than you were before. It doesn’t matter what happened in the Amplitur War, or what the generals and the Arco security say. I’ve seen hundreds of esper refugees, none of them were like the party line back in the Republic.”

The counselor took Susie’s hand. “You’re not some kind of alien, Susie. You’re just... a lady in dire need of deprogramming.”

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-09 10:03pm

Chapter Three: To The UmerNet!

Transient Housing Block 34-260-C
Alpha-Four Arcology, New Athens
Late 3375

Susie went back to her apartment in the arcology’s transient housing section in a daze. Fortunately, she had something warm and fuzzy there waiting for her: the housing block allowed pets. Almost the moment she made it in through the door, she scooped up Haiku and collapsed onto the sofa, her arms wrapped tightly around the cat.

The sobs she’d been holding back started.

She’d just wanted to move somewhere normal, somewhere they didn’t blow up your research project because there were geese sitting on it. Somewhere they didn’t laugh at any science you couldn’t use to make things explode. Somewhere that wasn’t Stupid.

But she couldn’t go somewhere normal, could she? She wasn’t normal, she was some kind of evil mutant. No wonder she hadn’t been able to fit in back home, she shouldn’t have been able to...

Wait a minute. I’m thinking what they wanted me to think, aren’t I?

She was, wasn’t she? “Psykers are evil mutants.” That was the line, from the official publications, from the school curriculum. That was the consensus, one almost no one would think to disagree with. Certainly no one would dare to.

And there it was. But if that was an official line, enforced that rigorously in the aftermath of the Amplitur War, you’d think the officials knew what they were talking about...

No. Whatever else I may be, may become, I’m still a scientist. I’m better than this. I will not let those... goons tell me who I am, just because they got to me first. I will not be that Stupid.

Maybe she’d better read those packets Rikke had given her. From what the counselor had said, the Umerians knew about psykers without hating them on sight; if there was a way out of the trap her nature had set for her, she’d at least stand of a chance of finding it here.

Some hours later

Are direct-perceptives Important? Heh! I’d say critical. Half my most valuable people are perceptives. We’d have plenty to do without them, just relying on normal instruments alone, but we’d be playing in the shallows, not mastering the deeps. I think our work speaks for itself; look at how many of our papers come from the perceptives. Not the stuff that goes in the Annuals, the ones that get published internationally, the groundbreaking ones, the real ones. Check to see how many of those papers reference their preliminary work, look me in the eye, and tell me they’re not important.

-Dr. Alexander Martin, director of the Laboratory for Exotic Condensed Matter Projects

She closed the video panel and blinked. That man has a very shiny head. Distractingly shiny... Irrelevant thoughts were probably a good sign. She didn’t feel miserable any more, not after watching dozens of clips of people who worked with Umerian psychics: not the psychics themselves, but the ones who relied on them for day to day jobs. Sometimes prominent jobs, like using extrasensory perception to sense the configuration of molecules in exotic-matter crystals. Sometimes trivial jobs, like telekinetic juggling. But always they were described as just... people. Doing people stuff.

She’d gone to the UmerNet, looking for more information, to make sure it wasn’t some kind of scheme- who knows, maybe they used militarized psykers too and wanted a way to lure them in? But... it wasn’t. Searches brought up huge numbers of psyker references, on every subject imaginable, from popular entertainment to advanced surgical techniques. There was no coordination, no official line at all.

She managed to find some political forums; it wasn’t easy, but they were there if you kept poking away long enough. She found long highly theoretical essays on the roles of psykers in society, and not the ones she expected along the lines of “they are a nasty sort and should be locked up.” She found shorter, less theoretical essays about the need for psyker training, or for changes in... scarily permissive laws regarding the use of their powers.

Finally, scrolling down the comments page of a politically oriented video storage site, she found something that looked familiar:

“Doesn’t anybody get it? They’re everywhere, running the government, reading our minds! It all has to stop, for the sake of the children!”

But below that was, printed in bright red:

“NOTE: Poster is an adult Type Two citizen.”

Thinking about it, she’d seen that before, over the past few weeks’ browsing of the Umerian national networks. Usually on highly opinionated and fairly incoherent material. It was like the Umerians were making these people wear a sign around their neck saying: “Danger! I am an immature idiot!”

Remembering some of the comments she’d seen on ShepTube before she left, that might not be such a bad idea, come to think of it...

Would anyone back home... back there and then normally agree that this guy was an idiot, though? After all, that was pretty much official policy. Let psykers in and they’d be running the place, mind-controlling law enforcement into arresting government leaders, military personnel into revealing critical defense secrets. And it had happened to them, in the Amplitur War, with the powerful alien psykers-

Something is... something is weird. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she felt an intuitive flash guiding her fingers. She brought up two windows, did two searches of the planetary datanet. One for “esper,” one for “psyker.” Results for the first search outnumbered the second almost thirty to one.

She looked up the definitions on an official government-published dictionary site:

Esper.
n.
1. An individual possessing some form of psychic abilities, including but not limited to: extrasensory perception, telepathy, or the ability to manipulate physical objects by effort of will.
2. Esper rating: A quantitative measurement of the extent of an esper’s abilities, compared to some reference scale. Example: The Modified Aguero-Jabusov Classification Scheme
adj.
1. Of or pertaining to an esper, or to espers collectively. Examples: Esper rights, Esper employment
Psyker.
n.
1. Byzantine term for espers. Also used in Chamarran dialects of Galactic English, and occasionally in other regional dialects.
2. Shepistani slur for espers; same denotation as “esper,” but connotes malice and inhumanity

”Shepistani slur for espers?” That was the word for it, that was what you called someone with mental powers... wait. She thought back to that old Shepipedia entry, the one she’d looked up in the early Sixties before deciding that she couldn’t possibly be psychic. Think about how the article was written.

Lead off by talking about the Amplitur as “psykers.” Talk a lot about the Amplitur’s powers, what they’d done in the opening rounds of the War. It was something anyone would reasonably be scared of, that level of infiltration and control, especially coming from a genocidal enemy whose only goal had been to get rid of everything that wasn’t more Amplitur. Set the Amplitur up as the number one example of “psykers.”

Then the clever bit. The Amplitur were evil, OK. The Amplitur were psykers, strong ones. So then leave people to put those together and decide that psykers must be evil. “Psykers” were sneaky, malevolent things that crawled around trying to steal people’s secrets and bring civilization down in ruins. And if everyone with psychic powers was a “psyker” by definition, that meant everyone with psychic powers was a menace, someone to be reported to the authorities, detained, confined... used. For everyone’s sake.

Keep it up for a few hundred years. Now everyone in Shepistan was terrified of psykers. Always wondering when the psyker menace would come back, because “psyker” meant “Amplitur.” Meant “assassin,” meant the monster watching from behind your back and waiting for the chance to make you into its obedient little puppet. And so they were willing to pay any price to be safe from the monster. Willing to use machines that made their own people miserable for fear that the horrible, evil psykers would come crawling in through the windows, sneaking, spying, murdering. They’d even congratulate each other on it, proud to have “the only psyker-free society in the galaxy.”

Is this just wishful thinking? It hurt her, did that mean it wasn’t fair? That it was some sort of sinister craziness sinking into the country of her birth? Maybe it was just that the Umerians didn’t understand what it was like to have to deal with a really major psychic attack. What do the Umerians think about the Amplitur War, anyway? They’d been right next door to the belligerents, but that was five hundred years ago.

Back to the UmerNet! Searching “Amplitur” brought up... movies, some of them she recognized as Shepistani action movies that had apparently crossed the border. Some random things... ah-ha! The Umerian national collaborative encyclopedia, their answer to Shepipedia, had an article on the war...

While other conflicts involving the Amplitur race have occured, “The Amplitur War” invariably refers to the extremely destructive conflict between the Grand Dominion and Shepistani Republic on the one hand and the Amplitur race on the other. Fought in the late 30th century, this conflict was the most destructive war in regional history, dwarfing the Jaggan War in total damage and matching or exceeding it in relative damage even for the victors. It is often compared to the Dilgrud Wars, fought during the same era but to a different conclusion for reasons of great xenopsychological interest.

The Amplitur War began with a very destructive surprise offensive by the previously isolationist and xenophobic Amplitur against the core worlds of both Shepistan and the Dominion, and ended in the effective sterilization of the Amplitur homeworld via use of a petaton-range “nova bomb,” speculated to be a supercharged type of the devices of the same name used by the Byzantine Empire as area-effect antiship weapons. Dominion and Republic authors almost invariably assert that the use of the nova bomb was necessary. Opinion among foreign historians varies, but generally supports this conclusion...

OK. So far, so good. She kept going. Finally she hit the jackpot.

Cultural Effects of the War: Shepistan
While the Shepistanis suffered far less from the conflict than the Dominion economically and militarily, the social trauma of the initial surprise attack was particularly devastating. Lacking the ability to move large battlefleets into Shepistani space without alerting their border monitoring stations, and being more interested in paralyzing the Republic for than in destroying it outright in the opening round of the war, the Amplitur chose to rely heavily on infiltration using their exceptionally powerful esper abilities, as described earlier.

The sheer scale of the Amplitur sneak attack, and the extent to which it relied on esper abilities to succeed, left Shepistan with intense national paranoia about the prospects of military attack in general, and future esper infiltration. President Frederick, who rode out the attack at the deepest sublevels of Vulture Rock, was noted to exhibit pronounced Caesarist tendencies after the war, promoting a major expansion in the Shepistani postwar military (see Shepistani History: Remilitarization of the 31st Century).

This widespread expansion coincided with the active anti-psi devices known as “Blitzschlag Field Generators” developed during the war to counter the Amplitur’s abilities and prevent them from functioning in secured areas were refined after the war, and expanded into a nationwide network. Medical side-effects of this are considerable...

...and Susie shied away from going to those linked references; she was afraid to know.

But as she kept reading, she thought she saw the Umerian perspective. The Technocracy hadn’t gotten heavily involved, aside from a few minor details such as cheerfully selling nuclear missiles to the Shepistanis when the Republic, amazingly, managed to run short. All in all, they didn’t seem to have been too rattled by it, even at the time. The entry on “Cultural Effects of the War: Umeria” was short, and the historical papers she followed up on seemed to agree that there was nothing all that remarkable about massive psychic attacks in wartime. That it was somehow just... one of those things.

There was an analysis paper on the subject by some- military officer? Military historian?- by the name of Jack Holloway. Appended was a particularly striking personal comment by the author:

“Fight Shepistan, expect nukes. Fight psychic hive mind bugs, expect mind control attacks. There weren’t really any surprises in the Amplitur War.”

I’m not the only one who thinks there’s something wrong with the system. Maybe... maybe we really did go too far. She’d like to think so, better to be chased out of the country by a nation gone mad than to flee a country taking sane countermeasures in favor of one that didn’t. And perhaps what she wanted to believe really was right here.

Always the description of psychics as monsters in Shepistan. There weren’t even any civilian uses, not officially. No one would even consider arguing for them, either. The legal precedents were clear. If you wanted to go marching in the streets waving signs saying “President Sheppard is a dick,” you could, no question. Go around saying “Psykers are people too...” well, everyone knew what people who thought that deserved to have happen to them.

Looking at it from a hundred light years’ distance and the far side of a change of perspective, it was disgusting.

And even knowing how they’d done it, she couldn’t help but feel that little shiver of revulsion every time she thought of “psykers.” So no, she would not be a psyker. She’d wind up hating herself if she thought of herself that way. She needed a new name for what she was, just to survive the experience of being it. The Umerians, at least, had a word for someone with psychic powers that didn’t automatically mean “forces of darkness,” that was a good start.

So Susie decided, in self defense, that she would be an esper. Espers weren’t sneaky or malevolent. They weren’t spies or saboteurs by nature. They were entertainers, therapists, scientists. People. And somehow, they got by.

But how does that even work, without some kind of psi protection covering everyone? What stops psykers from using their powers to... NO. ESPERS. BAD SUSIE! BAD! And then, once she changed the way she asked the question, the answer was obvious. it came to her.

“What stopped espers from using their powers on the streets?” was a silly question. Naturally you needed to protect against “psykers.” Psykers were enemy agents, of course you needed a way to stop them in their tracks, rather than just protecting a few special points from them. They could do untold damage by being able to operate freely anywhere, just like people sneaking around planting bombs could.

But you didn’t need a civilization-wide defense against “espers” any more than you did against “really huge guys.” Nobody would seriously suggest that there had to be some kind of law against being strong because of the threat that you’d use your muscles to beat people up. Or against being good at fast-talking because you’d start conning people out of their money. Or against people people carrying, say, Gauss weapons, just because those could kill people.

Maybe you couldn’t trust a monster to be very smart, or very clever, or well armed, because that would make them too dangerous an enemy. But what if the ones with that kind of power weren’t enemies? What if they were just people? People could walk around with those things, without attacking each other all the time. Everybody carrying a pistol didn’t mean gunfights in the corridors every day. So why should unblocked telepaths mean people reading each other’s minds and stealing their secrets every day?

Somehow, the rest of the galaxy got by without covering everyone against that all the time. It had to be possible, or it wouldn’t happen. And however they did it, it had to be a lower price to pay than the all-pervasive oozing, gloating, diabolical Stupid of the Blitzschlag Field.

Whatever the alternative to Stupid was, she was going to find out tomorrow.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-09 10:05pm

Chapter Four: This Is My Brain Off Stupid

Waterville Clinic for Parapsychology
Alpha-Four Arcology, New Athens
Late 3375
The Next Morning

The Waterville Clinic looked like a fairly normal doctor's office. That felt wrong somehow. Part of her wanted it to be some kind of dark, dank, sinister cave, something more suitable for a den of psykers, the sort of place where heroes would go to confront their nemeses... no, that would be wrong; she was here for a checkup, not a battle. But even allowing for prejudice, she'd been hoping for some kind of place with huge buzzing pieces of electrical equipment, bedecked with blinking lights and bubbling test tubes. Something that shouted SCIENCE! This was Umeria, after all. Almost-but-not-quite pristine tile floors, a row of chairs by the front wall, and a receptionist sitting at a computer console were far too normal. At the very least the receptionist should be juggling stationery with mysterious telekinetic powers or something.

And there definitely shouldn't be a little speaker playing mood music in the lobby.

She walked up to the receptionist. "I'm Dr. Warren-Marshall, here for my ten o'clock with Dr. Mina O'Neil." She'd learned by now that she could get extra courtesy out of her academic title, and sometimes she couldn't resist.

"Welcome to the Waterville Clinic, Doctor. Dr. O'Neil will be with you in a few minutes; if you'd please make yourself comfortable?"

Susie had to ask. "One thing. Is her name really Mina, or is that short for something?"

The receptionist looked away for a moment. "Doctor, I've known her for five years and never once heard or seen her called anything but Mina. So far as I know, that's her real name."

"OK. Thanks." She sat down.

Dr. O'Neil was apparently prominent enough to be looked up on the planetary datanet. The woman wasn't just a clinic technician; she had a c.v. stretching back for decades. It had come as something of a shock that Umeria had scientific journals dedicated to psychic research, but Susie was beginning to realize that they had journals dedicated to almost everything, so it hadn't been as big a shock as it would have been a few weeks ago. She wasn't sure why the old researcher liked to stay in the front lines and run what had to be routine tests on an immigrant fresh off the boat, but whatever O'Neil's reasons, anyone with her kind of record probably deserved some respect. Or at least could be really annoying if she didn't get it...

"Dr. Susan Warren-Marshall?" She looked up and saw an woman in early old age, looking about sixty by premodern medical standards but that proved nothing, standing in the interior door leading into the clinic from the lobby.

Dr. O’Neil looked either not at all like a highly paid professional specializing in the diagnosis of psychic abilities, or exactly like one, depending on what you came in expecting. If 'highly paid professional' led one to expect the classic lab coat and clipboard look, O'Neil was a disappointment. If, on the other hand, one heard 'psychic abilities' and expected someone who looked like a refugee extra from the old '60s Shepistani comedies like Night of the Living Hippies... then she was quite obliging. The headband holding back her long gray hair was a particularly nice touch.

Susie blinked, not sure this was the doctor; the woman standing before her looked more like a patient than a physician.

"Ah... Dr. O'Neil, I presume?"

The woman nodded. "If you'd come this way, Doctor, we can begin in fairly short order."

"Call me Susie."

She got up and followed the parapsychologist out of the waiting room. They passed a short distance down a brightly lit corridor, and then O'Neil turned and led her into a large office- fairly well organized, but with some truly eye-searing decorations on the walls. The older woman turned to Susie.

"Before we begin, do you have any questions?"

Sure! About a hundred... "Too many. Why not just go straight to the tests?"

"If you like; I must admit I appreciate a practical approach. I'll try to explain anything critically important as we go along. So, if you don't mind, we can proceed straight to the first test, for telepathic reception; I'll be the transmitter."

Wait... she's a ps- ESPER. The first Susie had ever seen, or known she'd seen at any rate, in person... she had to cut that thought off before she made a fool of herself. Since she was honestly curious on top of needing a distraction from that damn “Eww, psyker” response, she decided it would be safe to ask about the 'test' Dr. O'Neil had planned. “So, what’s the setup?”

“Basically, the transmitter sends a signal, something very simple and obvious, with varying force. Starting in the, ah, I call them the low bands, the ones that interact with any normal mind. Then shifting up to the higher ones, that can only be reached by use of telepathy or, well. Or details. The subject sits and presses a button when she can detect the thought, which is being switched on and off at random.”

“The real trick to getting a good response curve is making sure the transmitter isn’t sure when the subject is receiving. It’s surprising how much that distorts the results.”

Susie thought through the implications of that. Then blinked. “Who came up with a double blind experiment for telepathy?”

A faint, enigmatic smile creased O’Neil’s face, and her lined face crinkled. “I did, actually.”

Susie sighed happily. Double-blind test for mind reading. “I’m not sure how I feel about being a psy... esper, but I love this country.”

“Thank you.”

“And I think you are a cool lady.”

Dr. O’Neil’s faint smile became much warmer. “I appreciate that. What’s your favorite color?”

“Hmm.” She tapped her cheek for a few seconds. “I know! That light green of newly opened leaves at the very beginning of spring. When the spring sunlight is shining through them. It's only available for about two weeks out of the year. And only on sunny days.”

“Nice. Now, just relax. Remember, push the button whenever you think I’m sending.” The parapsychologist left the side room and closed the door.

Nothing happened for a minute. Is something wrong? Her mind started to wander a bit spring green! She blinked. Spring green!

The button! She started pushing. Then it went away. She stopped. Spring green! So forth and so on, with the intervals changing seemingly at random; there was no way to guess when the next flash would come. After a few minutes, it spring green! started to get a little tiring, but it wasn’t as scary as spring green! she thought. It was just... color. Not spring green! mind control, not really.

Then the pulses started getting weaker. She concentrated harder, shut her eyes tightly... she thought she could still feel spring green! flashing once in a while, faintly, no more than flickers at the edge of the mind. So she kept pushing the button. Was that- maybe... yes! She pushed it again. After that, no more pulses came. Susie blinked. Is the test over? How could she tell? Nothing happened for long minutes. Finally, Dr. O’Neil opened the door. Her face was somber; Susie asked the obvious question.

“So... my reception isn’t very good?”

“Susie, why don’t you come out here and look at the printouts?”

She did, following Dr. O’Neil over to a large holographic display. O’Neil ushered her into the wheeled chair by the display.

“Here, we have a matchup between times you pressed the button, indicating that you were receiving, and the times I was sending in the first round. That was on a low band that virtually all intelligent minds in the galaxy can pick up.” She pointed to the plot. “Correlation is practically one to one except for a few pulses at the beginning.”

She brought up another plot. “This run was done slightly higher. Again, near perfect correlation. And again here. Then we get up into the bands normally used for telepathic communication among espers.” She brought up the fourth plot... and there was no correlation at all. “For all the higher telepathic bands, there was no correlation between your detection and my sending. You may have thought you felt something, Susie, but you weren’t getting my messages. You were picking up fine on the non-esper bands, like any ordinary person... but no reception at all past a sharp cutoff point.”

“You mean all the flashes I got later on were... psychosomatic?”

Dr. O’Neil nodded. “I suspected something like this. It’s very common in Shepistani refugees: Blitzschlag Field-induced brain damage to the reception structures in infancy.”

Brain damage? I didn’t know... “They fried my brain?”

“Pretty much. Early-onset Blitzschlag exposure does that to almost all esper children. When you’re exposed during the neuroplastic phase when the reception structures are developing... well, they don’t really develop at all. The brain shuts down development in those areas in self-defense.”

“They... those...” They fried my brain?

“I know. It’s my favorite reason to hate the Kadahuli.”

Susie was reeling, trying to find anything in that she could bear to rest her mind on. The unknown word was a straw to clutch at. “Kadahuli?”

The older woman took a deep breath. “It’s a popular name in the Umerian esper community for the Shepistani government. Given the effects of the Field on developing espers in the country... well, we needed a special word for that. It’s from the Phosako. To really translate it properly would take a twenty minute lecture on cultural mores, but short form, it translates as “childabusers.” I, for one, think it fits.”

Susie, for her part, was inclined to agree. She felt robbed, she felt violated, she felt angry. Suddenly she wanted to be able to receive high-band telepathy, out of spite against the warlords if nothing else.

“Is there any way to, you know... reverse the... damage?” They FRIED my BRAIN?

Dr. O’Neil was quiet for a long time. “There are... treatments. But it’s like any other kind of structural brain damage: the cure can have very far-reaching effects, and it doesn’t always work. Basically, they have to restore infant-level neuroplasticity to induce the structures to reform. And that can do strange things to the brain. It’s strongly associated with long term memory loss; I remember one young man who went in to take the treatments. Three months later, he was a fully operant telepath... but he’d lost practically all his muscle memory. He had to relearn how to walk and speak.”

“...Oh.”

“It usually doesn’t work out that badly, but the side effects can be a major problem, especially for technical specialists. Forgetting how to read could put a dent in your career for a while, I’d imagine.”

Susie’s face was drawn. Her right hand was starting to twitch. “Doctor... Doct-” her voice caught... I need some time.” They... they fried my BRAIN...

“OK, Susie. But we need to finish the tests. The Field damages the high-band telepathic reception structure more than anything else, because that’s the path it attacks the victim along. The rest of your metafaculties may be fine; don’t let this shake you too hard.”

“OK. Just g- give me a minute here. I don’t think most people learn they got something burned out of their brain every day.”

“All right. Take your time.”

She couldn’t snap out of it. It was just too much- the idea that all her life the Stupid hadn’t just been interfering with her; it had actually reached inside her head and started burning things out. That her old fear was, in a way, true: the Stupid had soaked into her body, that she couldn’t just be normal even now that she was away from it. How can they do things like that?

And at once, the air was filled with an overpowering sense of... momness. Not her mom specifically, just... generalized mom. Like, a close friend’s mom. Someone’s mom. That there was a capital-M Mom in the room. She could feel the knot of anguish in her guts untying- and Dr. O’Neil was asking her something.

“Whuh?”

“Susie, can you start again for me?”

She blinked back the moisture in her eyes. “...Yes.”

“Good. The normal tests for telepathic sending won’t work on you, because you can’t hear feedback. There’s another technique, but I’m going to have to go en rapport with you by way of the low bands, to work with you in detail, mind to mind. I need to be able to tell what it feels like when you’re sending. It may be uncomfortable at first. Please try to relax; I’ll be as careful as I can.”

“Do you have to?”

“I do, Susie. I promise it won’t hurt; if I can’t do it without hurting, I won’t do it at all. Trust me.”

Susie closed her eyes and clasped her hands. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then... Someone was thinking with her brain. The moment she spotted it, reflex kicked in. Alien thoughts! Mind control! Fight it! She panicked. Her eyes shot open.

“AAAH!” She slumped in the chair, gasping for breath.

“Susie? What’s wrong? Susie?”

“I... no, that was just surprise. Try again, OK?” I will not panic I will not panic I will NOT panic... The thought echoed back and forth, taking up every corner of her mind. This time, she barely noticed the intrusion at first, moving very slowly. Something was in her head that she wasn’t thinking. Slow thoughts; she got a sense of someone picking her way carefully through a room piled waist-high with books, trying not to upset the stacks. Trying... not to even look at them?

<Susie? Can you hear me?>

Susie nodded, her eyes still closed.

<Good.>

Was Mina looking at her? Was she just picking up the... yesness in her head? She wondered... she knew. She looked. Somehow that felt like cheating... why did she suddenly want to laugh? Wait. That wasn’t her. That was Mina! She was losing track of whose thoughts were really hers.

Uh-oh.

<This always happens en rapport. Don’t worry.>

This time she didn’t move at all, just to check to see if Mina could tell what she was thinking. What, me worry?

There was a pause, followed by the strange sensation of a psychic giggle.

<I like that echo. That’s an interesting echo... But the test.>

What do you want me to do?

<Think of... we’ll use spring green again.>

Susie wasn’t exactly sure what to do, but she concentrated on the green. Hollowstone in spring...

<Very good. Now, try again, but like this.> There was an indefinable picture in her head. She felt something... behind her, sort of, pushing. Hollowstone in spring!

<Good. One last time. Like so> The push... changed. Hollowstone in spring Hollowstone in spring...

<And we’re done> The sense of other-presence in Susie’s mind disappeared. She opened her eyes. Mina was smiling at her.

“Well, you send better than you receive, I’ll say that much. I’d like to complete the tests while you’re still warmed up, though, so if you don’t mind I’ll hold off on advice about a training regimen until after. It’s going to be... complicated for you.”

“Complicated? Does this have to do with that ‘echo?’”

“Mostly. You see,” and now the smile was a beaming grin,”you’re a metacognitive, Susie.”

“That wasn’t in the pamphlets...”

“It’s a very rare ability, a subtype of precognition, arguably, relying on closed timelike curves in the metacognitive’s own brainstate to enhance functional intelligence, particularly in the areas of what might be called “intuition” and “guesswork”...” Susie wasn’t unsympathetic to what happened next. Mina was obviously very excited to talk about this, and she knew what happened to her explanations when she was like that. But it rapidly got incomprehensible; Susie had never heard of any of the terms being used before in her life. “Achronal computing,” “closed timelike curve-” well, that one sounded familiar, but only in the "heard it once in my life" sense...

“Uh, Mina? Could you give me the version for people who don't already know what you're talking about?”

The parapsychologist blinked. “I’m sorry. I got carried away. I’ve only discovered two metacognitives before, and both of them were... well, they’d studied a wider range of subjects than you. You must have had such trouble using your abilities in Shepistan... did the headaches get worse when you tried to concentrate?”

Susie winced. “YES.”

“That would have been metacognition kicking in. I got a picture of... a nature preserve? And you doing some work- I didn’t mean to pry, but the association was so strong...”

“Hollowstone. A national park on Montgomery. I did most of my thesis on a two-week camping trip there.” Susie felt her eyes getting a little misty. “It was the least Stupid place I’d ever seen until I came here.”

“That explains it! You were running meta...”

“You still haven’t told me what that means.”

“Oh. Sorry, I’m in the middle of an epiphany.” The look on Mina’s face was priceless. Susie couldn’t help but laugh.

“All right, all right. The paper can wait.” She was laughing too. “Susie, have you ever wanted to go back in time and smack yourself for having a stupid idea?

“...Hasn’t everyone?”

“You may not realize it, but you already have. Metacognition lets you do that. It’s short ranged effect in time, but... hmm. It only works for someone who already has at least some ability to predict the future, but it isn’t necessarily associated with normal precognitive abilities because it’s very short-ranged. Being able to tell what happens a tenth of a second into the future isn’t very helpful unless you want to go bring knives to gunfights for a living or something.” She made a moue of distaste.

“Metacognition involves using information detected about the metacognitive’s own future brainstate to solve problems more quickly. From inside the head, what’s happening goes like this. I need to find the right answer to a problem. I go: “Is it A? Nope.” I go back in time and tell my past self it isn’t A. So instead, past-me tries B, and goes “Is it B? Nope,” then goes back in time and repeats the process, until either a solution is found or the metacognitive loses track of the loops and has to start over. In practice, gives the outside appearance of solving a problem very, very quickly... because they only see you guessing Z, not the repeated loop of trying A through Y.”

“Umm... that doesn’t sound like me. I can’t guess the answer to a question like that.”

“Well, no one does it perfectly. Most known cases can only handle the loop out to one or two iterations before it goes, ah, blurry. So they can ‘foresee’ trying A and having that not work, and maybe trying B and having that not work... but they have to try C the old-fashioned way in real time. Also, the range limit makes it difficult to brute-force a complex problem. Typically, metacognition expresses as uncannily rapid ‘guesses’: analysis being performed much more rapidly and with less trial and error than would be normal. It’s almost indistinguishable from increased general intelligence, really.”

Susie blinked. “So... intelligence-boosting ps- esper ability?”

“At the core, yes. And I would bet a month’s grant money that that’s why you see a Blitzschlag Field as some sort of “stupid rays:” it actively interferes with your ability to think rapidly using this technique.”

I was right I was right I was right there really ARE Stupid Rays bouncing around in Shepistan! She felt cheated again, though. You mean the way I worked in Hollowstone should be normal? How much time could she have saved with those lightning-quick connections flickering in her brain, solving problems almost before she formulated them...

Mina looked very serious. “Susie, I recommend in the strongest possible terms that you find someone to tutor you in this. Whatever career plans you have, it’s probably going to help. I’ll copy you some files on metacognition for when you get home.”

“Thanks.”

“Also, metacognition is very rare, and of scientific interest in its own right. If some of my colleagues find out about you, they’re going to want to ask you a lot of questions.”

Susie gulped. “Are we talking... strapped to a table with people poking around my brain here?” The disbelief on Mina’s face made it obvious that she hadn’t even imagined the possibility.

“God, no, Susie, what do you think... The ethics boards would... would... I’m not even sure, there’s no precedent unless you go back for centuries. They’d probably throw whoever did it to their subjects.”

“That sounds fair.”

“Esper subjects, too, remember. It’s not just unethical to run an experiment like that, it’s thrice-damned dangerous...” she shuddered. “I don’t want to think about it, Susie. I just can’t imagine it happening in this day and age, not in any civilized country.”

“Good.”

"In any case, I need to take some notes for a few minutes, then we should proceed to the next stage of the tests, the more... physically overt faculties."

But Mina's words still rang in her ears. "I just can't imagine it... not in any civilized country."

Susie had a dark suspicion; given that in Shepistan any "psykers" found by the government were handed off to the military, she thought she could imagine it happening back there. She decided not to ask if Mina considered Shepistan to be a civilized country, though. That would probably be awkward, because the answer would probably be, well...

Kadahuli.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-09 10:06pm

Chapter Five: Fire Is A Lady's Only Friend

Waterville Clinic for Parapsychology, Alpha-Four Arcology
Later The Next Morning

“All right. We'll do the physical-ability tests now; I’ve got the equipment set up over in the lab next door.”

Susie followed Mina through the open door into another room. This one had a more typical clean, antiseptic doctor’s-office look, but very little of the usual equipment. There were several bowl-like helmets hanging on the wall, and a long table stretching along the opposite wall with unidentifiable pieces of equipment and glass boxes along its length.

"Now, before we begin, I want to explain that not every esper can do all, or even a majority, of the things that we test for here. There are also a wide variety of abilities that we don't test for, simply because they're vanishingly rare and it would be a waste of your time. Many of them are correlated with others; I might need to refer you to more specialized parapsychologist depending on your test results. But the key thing to bear in mind is that being unable to do any one thing does not mean being unable to do any other thing. I, for example, am a, ah, fairly accomplished telepath... but I have the telekinetic abilities of a rutabaga."

“Telekinesis is the first thing I'd like to test you for, over here. Take a seat and look at the box.” She did. The box was made of clear plastic, about thirty centimeters on a side. Suspended in its center was a metal cube, attached to the center of each face of the box by tightly coiled springs. Wires hooked the springs up to a little black box on the counter, and another cable ran from there to a computer.

“Susie, what I want you to do is concentrate as hard as you can on making the cube move, in any direction. Will that it move, in whatever pattern pleases you- up and down, in circles, just yanked to one side, anything you want. But don’t be discouraged if you don’t see it moving; many espers either don’t have intense abilities along those lines, or never activate them without training.”

“What if it, ah, works too well?” That didn’t seem too likely to her, but then she’d never really sat down and commanded something to move with her mind. Before yesterday she’d never have imagined it possible, and last night she’d been in no state to attempt it.

“The spring balances are very sensitive to small forces, but also fairly durable; if you could reach inside there physically you’d find it very hard to pull them loose unless you had arms like a gorilla. Don’t hold back; even if you do manage to break the instrument, it’s insured for just such an emergency.”

“All right.” Here goes nothing. Mina was watching the display intently; six flat lines traced across the computer monitor.

Susie glowered at the little metal cube. Move. Nothing happened. Move! Still nothing. She gritted her teeth. Move move move move! Was that... nope, wasn’t moving. Finally, summoning every fiber of willpower and nerve, she directed a baleful, ferocious thought at the cube: MOVE!

Zilch. She slumped forward, bonking her forehead gently against the clear plastic display. She felt like she’d just burned off an adrenaline high, but as far as she could tell, nothing had happened.

“Aaargh.”

“It’s okay, Susie, I can’t do it either.”

“Did you see anything?”

The older woman paused for a moment “...nothing I could tell from background noise.”

Susie cursed under her breath, but Mina interrupted her.

“Telekinetic ability might awaken later on; there’s still some possibility of deeply suppressed latency, among other things. I’m going to recommend that you be tested this way every few months, assuming you decide to undergo any training in any field at all- including metacognition. It’s always possible. So it might show up later, or, as with me, it might not be there. That proves nothing about anything else.”

“What next?”

“Direct-perception; “farsensing” on the magic scheme, or part of it.”

What? “Uh... did you just say “magic?””

“Modified Aguero-Jabusov Classification Scheme. You come up with a better way to pronounce it.” Mina grinned. “The basic concept is borrowed from a couple of researchers in the Sovereignty from back in the day. They did some good work, though a lot of their deeper-level theories are... junk, really. But on the basic material, classification and quantification, they’re not at all bad, really. Our standard scale is a variant of theirs, adjusted to take into account a few things they either wouldn’t consider or-” she rolled her eyes “-decided not to, for fear it would contradict some of their more... interesting notions. It’s not perfect, but it’s better for measurement than most of the systems I’ve seen of for classifying espers.”

“Like?”

“Apprentice, knight, master.”

Susie blinked. “...That’s supposed to classify something?”

“Well, on a rough and ready basis I suppose it works for its users. But just try doing science that way. It would like not knowing how to count beyond the level of 'one, two, many.'” She chuckled. “Anyway, the object of the game is to distinguish between different objects by means other than the five senses. Come here.”

She’d moved to the next station; Susie followed. In front of the chair were a grid of little glass domes, about fifteen centimeters across, each numbered, and each with a pair of objects suspended inside on thin wires. “Now, let me turn on the vacuum pump; some people find that it helps if there’s nothing surrounding the objects.” She flipped a switch. There was a loud mechanical gurgling that faded to a steady hum; Mina drummed her fingers as she watched a dial spiraling down. She waited for about thirty seconds.

“Mmm... good enough. Now, concentrate on the first pair of objects, the clear bottles.” She pointed to two vials of thick glass suspended in the vacuum chamber. “Think about the contents. There’s a colorless gas in each vial. Concentrate on the vials. Can you sense any difference between them? Even if you can’t explain it, or aren’t sure.”

She concentrated. They looked the same... there was a niggling sense of off-ness about one of them. She shut her eyes and... there wasn’t a word for what she felt; she wasn’t even sure it was there, and after those fake flashes of spring green she knew it might not be. But the one on the left seemed heavier, somehow. Susie reported that.

Mina nodded, her face neutral, and typed something on a screen Susie couldn’t see. “Now, the next pair, in dome two.” Susie concentrated again. She didn’t feel anything... wait... no.

“I got nothing.”

“All right.” Mina typed something more. “Now dome three...”

The direct-perception tests were very dull; there were a lot of domes. Some contained vials of gas. Others, little metal balls, or sealed boxes full of sand or gravel, or radioactive and nonradioactive isotopes of the same element. The only constant theme was the need to discern the difference between two objects identical to the naked eye. There was a series where one ball was hot and the other at room temperature; Susie had started out looking for heat shimmer. It was a headslap-worthy moment when she remembered: Oh. Right. Vacuum chamber.

One dome contained nothing but a wire coil; Mina manipulated a rheostat and asked Susie to tell her if she thought the magnetic fields inside it were getting stronger or weaker. Still another held a pair of metal plates: same drill, but with electric fields. Then a pair of tiny grav-plates with a low-power tractor beam between them. In each case, Susie was rarely sure what, if anything, she was observing, but she duly reported every impression she got, however mild.

Finally, it was over. “How’d I do?”

Mina sighed. “Randomly.”

Oh no, not again! “You mean...”

“Of the times you guessed, you guessed right eight times, wrong six times, and guessed a difference when there wasn’t any nine times. That’s... about what I get with subjects pulled off the street, allowing for random error. Again, it’s possible that ability will appear in the future now that you’re out from under the Shepistani, ah-” the corner of her mouth quirked- “Stupid. But for now, I’m afraid you won’t be getting banned from any poker tables soon.”

“Poker... oh!”

“Exactly. Direct-perceptives are banned from most gambling establishments; too many of them can’t resist the urge to read the other side of the cards- it’s right there for them, the way most people would find it if the things were deliberately marked and they had to walk around with their eyes tight shut to avoid reading the backs. There are a few exceptions equipped to beat the problem, especially in Altacar, but then Altacar is home of the null field, so it stands to reason.”

“I’d read about those... are they like...”

“Stupid emitters? No. Blitzschlag devices generate static on the telepathic bands- lots of it, which stands to reason since the kadahuli pour megawatts into the thrice-damned things. Null field generators don’t work that way. Honestly, calling it a “field” isn’t quite accurate; the best model we have is that they raise the telepathic permeability of free space by... well, several orders of magnitude, to the point where getting anything through is practically impossible. It’d be like trying to look through steel, at the high power limit. But it’s like the difference between someone putting a wall in your way and someone shining a strobe light in your face.”

“Are you... sure? I read that you people do use null fields, and I don’t ever want to feel the Stupid again. EVER.”

“I’ve been in both, Susie. If you want to see for yourself, there’s a personal null field generator in one of these cabinets. I use it for subjects who are powerful telepaths, so they can’t cheat on the tests by mind-reading the answers. You’d be surprised how often that can happen with recently awakened adolescents; a few don’t seem to understand that it’s wrong, and quite a lot more can’t help themselves.”

Susie was afraid, but she had to know... “Yes. Show me.” Mina walked across the room and pulled out another black box, this one hooked up to a waist belt. “Here. Put this around your waist and flip the switch.” Susie stood up, and buckled the belt. It didn’t feel stupid, but as her hand neared the switch, she froze. NO! Stupid is the mind-killer! Don’t touch! But she had to know, had to know if she could stand this mysterious foreign alternative to the Blitzschlag field.

She swallowed and flipped the switch.

There was a sudden disturbance in the Stupid-free bliss she’d enjoyed ever since entering Technocracy territory. Her eyes shot open and her skin paled. NO! STUPID! AAAAH! But it wasn’t the Stupid, not quite. It was something else, not pleasant, but not like someone was trying to drive spikes into her head or drizzle lye on her scalp or any of the other nasty feelings she’d gotten when the Stupid was strong before. It wasn’t Stupid, it was just... the absence of smartness? To be honest, she didn’t feel bad at all. She felt amazingly neutral, really.

“No hairy purple spiders or anything. I guess it’s not so bad...” she blinked and switched the generator off.

“...but you wouldn’t want to spend all your time in one? Well, who would? Still, you’ll run into them now and again. Some people are paranoid and wear neutralizers all the time; others wear it because they know classified information. You see them in a lot of government facilities, too. I’m glad it doesn’t cause you problems.”

“Hmm. OK. So, what else are you going to try to test for? Predicting the future?”

“No one’s come up with a satisfactory test, or a system of measurement for that, yet. It’s too difficult to set up a rigorous experiment, because an untrained precognitive usually can’t predict specific events reliably. There are exercises that improve precognitive ability... focus it, if you will, but it’s generally best to avoid spending energy on them unless there’s something there to work on. In your case that’s not all that unlikely; if you start finding yourself anticipating future events or having any kind of visions, please call me. I have... friends in strange places.” She winked.

“Next on the agenda is electrokinesis: the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields, as opposed to direct forces on matter. It’s more common than most people outside the parapsychological community think, really- hard to use properly without coaching, though.”

“Scoot over here and take a look at this coil of wire.”

This one was, again, sealed in a glass dome. Another vacuum chamber? Mina cleared her throat.

“All right, I’m going to run a weak electric current through this coil. I want you to try and boost the current- push it through the wire.”

“That’s all? I thought you’d be looking for arcing and sparking or something.”

“Hardly. That’s why most people think electrokinesis is rare. It takes... truly unreasonable voltages to generate electric arcs in open air, let alone vacuum. Weaker fields are much easier to do, and the ability is at least an order of magnitude more common, I’d guess. Most people who have it aren’t tested for it properly; a lot of esper organizations are... well, superstitious about electrokinesis. Unless their members wake up one morning and start shocking random doorknobs for no reason, they never find out what they can do. The only people who are detected are the ones who spontaneously learn to hold fields to the tune of kilovolts per millimeter; anyone whose abilities need training to bring out never learns. So let’s start with trying to impersonate a battery; we can move up to “Little Miss Tesla Coil" later on, OK?”

Susie smiled. “OK. Can I start now?”

“Sure.”

She glowered at the wire. She couldn’t really sense anything inside, but she concentrated as hard as she could. Fly, FLY, little electrons! Fly like the wind!” She had a mental picture of the current hurtling through the coil, running clockwise. Come to think of it, it was probably wrong to imagine electric current as a bunch of little glowy yellow balls with big minus signs painted on them, but it was the best she could do. Go go go! FLY!

She kept concentrating, pouring every drop of willpower into the coil. A strange feeling, one that was almost physically tangible, coursed through her veins. If there is any secret power in me, of any kind, please let it be revealed now!

Mina frowned. “Susie, the current is changing, but...”

“YES!”

“It’s actually decreasing.”

“...Oh.” She stopped. “Maybe I was doing it backwards?”

“Entirely possible. Try again.”

“Here goes.” Fly, FLY, little electrons! But the other way this time! Counterclockwise! GO! She gritted her teeth. She felt the strange feeling again, an indefinable surge.

“Susie? You’re doing it again. The current is dropping slightly.”

She gave up. Her head sank and she covered her face with her hands.

“What am I, antipsychic or something? Does the universe hate me and make the opposite of what I want to happen happen?”

“If so, you are the first person I know, or for that matter the first person anyone I know knows, who actually is a confirmed antipsychic. The possibility has been raised... mostly by people like Aguero and Jabusov, though. I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“Then WHY?”

“Susie, I really don’t know. Let me think.” The Umerian parapsychologist was quiet for a long minute, murmuring under her breath. Susie took this as a golden opportunity to take a quick breather. She decided she might as well sneak the minibagel out of her pocket; she could do with a snack...

“EUREKA!” Mina leapt out of her chair. The headband, already askew, flew clear, and gray hair swept into her face.

...Did she just actually say ‘eureka’? Nobody says that! She felt an impulse to interrupt, to ask if she was all right... but there was a mouthful of bagel in the way.

“The TK records! Fourier transform! Reminds me of a case I had back in ‘42...” she strode over to the computer she’d used earlier in a trance. It was almost spooky; she looked kind of like a mind-controlled Amplitur victim or something. I hope she’s going to be OK...

She brought up the records, then her hands flashed on the keypad, faster than the eye could follow. Then another interface came up... some kind of data analysis software; probably a Umerian domestic brand, because she didn’t recognize it. She typed out a few lines of code, then hammered a last key and waited.

Instantly, a graph appeared; she couldn’t make out any labels, but... it was flat on the left and spiky on the right?

“Come here!”

“Mina, are you OK?” She walked over to the older woman’s side. “What’s the matter?”

“Look at... oh.” She blinked. “I just had one of those moments. You know, the ‘suddenly it all makes sense’ one?”

“OK, Mina.” Susie took a deep breath. “Umm. I don’t want to be rude, but could you please explain before I go totally insane?”

“Look at this. Fourier transform of your telekinesis results. If I pulled someone off the street, there’d be nothing at all. If I used a typical telekineticist, there’d be at most something around five to ten Hertz, way over here.” She waved her hand at the left side of the screen. “That’s about as fast as most people can consciously make something change direction. But you... lots of low-amplitude, very high frequency activity.”

Susie glanced at the graph. Log plot. “So... I can make things shake at dog-whistle frequencies? I... guess that could be useful. Somehow.”

“Honestly, this is barely more intense than Brownian motion, which is exactly as I thought!”

The biologist took a deep breath. “Mina? Please explain.”

“Oh. Sorry. OK. I think we’re seeing something like what happened to your telereceptive faculty here.”

Susie’s knees went floppy; she leaned on the back of Mina’s chair to keep from slumping to the floor. No... “Not- not more brain frying?”

“Yes, but with... unintended consequences. Thinking back of the envelope, this is... broadly consistent with having fairly substantial levels of telekinetic power, but with no spatial coherence, no ability to push in the same direction across a broad area. Randomized telekinesis. Random molecular motion. And... Susie? Could you come with me? I want to do one more test. I’m pretty sure this one will be positive.”

For a moment, Susie wanted to ask her to swear to that, but that would be childish. “All right.”

They went over to the far end of the bench. This box was much larger, and definitely not a vacuum chamber. In the middle of it was another coil of wire. Thick wire. Mina turned to her. “Susie, remember what I said about random molecular motion? This time, don’t try to move the wire. Just heat it up. I’ll watch the thermocouple, and you try to heat that wire.”

“...OK.”

“Hang on a second; let me turn off the lights. I want the backup photometer to be getting something, just in case.”

She sat down and concentrated again. Heat! Again the picture of... well, this time she imagined cartoon atoms, little balls with ovals whirring around them. Bouncing back and forth, bumping into each other. Faster! More! GO! There was that weird shuddery surge again; this time she felt cold, like everything everywhere was cold all at once.

“I was right! Very good, Susie... fifty degrees... seventy... keep going...”

The surge was still there, and now she knew it really was something she focused on it, tried to make it come back, stronger.

“One hundred...”

The air shimmered around the wire. This was what the Stupid had been there to stop her from doing! Those... those damned goons! More! Hotter!

“...One sixty... keep going!”

Try to fry my brain, will they?

“...two fifty...”

She felt... hawkish, suddenly. Gleeful, in a predatory way. I wonder if I can melt the wire?

“...three twenty- Susie, are you all right?”

She knew her voice had to sound scary; she just didn’t care. “Oh, I’m just fine, Doctor.” MORE!

“...four hundred... four fifty...”

Throw my friends out of a job, will they?

“...cutting out the thermocouple; come on, stupid thing, calibrate!”

Blow up my work, will they? BURN!

“...seven thirty and rising...”

Pass out nuclear bazookas to hyperthyroid freaks, will they? HOTTER! She opened her eyes, not letting up the pressure, still reaching out and stirring the wire. Her vision swam into focus quickly; she felt the muscles around her eyes tensing in a glare.

The wire was glowing faintly, brick red. It was... hypnotic, really. There was something off at the edge of the world, maybe a voice, but she wasn’t interested now.

Hand the country over to some lunatic new clone of a lunatic old warlord, will they!? The whisper was getting stronger? Whatever. HOTTER! How long had it been? Seconds? Minutes? Did it really matter? It could have been an hour, she could sit like this forever. She felt the surge; it was back now, building and reverberating like a rushing in the ears, drowning out the whispers that were starting to get insistent.

Stinking kadahulis! BURN!

The wire was cherry red now- and wrapped around it was a halo of flickering witchfire, the faint blue flame of gaslight and blowtorches. The purest, cleanest flame possible, glowing by the light from excited molecular radicals in the air itself, instead of particles of heated soot. It was beautiful, ethereal, perfect...

<STOP!>

That rang Susie’s mind like a bell. Refusing was not merely unthinkable; it was literally unthought. It didn’t even occur to her not to, the hypnotic trance of the flame entirely broken. The nimbus of flame vanished instantly; the wire took a little longer to cool. She blinked, then blinked again, harder, as the lights came back on.

Mina. There was a hawkish cast to that again; how dare she-

<Wake up! Think!>

Unsteady on her feet, Susie rose out of the chair, her lips forming words but no voice behind them.

This time Mina spoke, rather than simply driving the idea straight into her mind by brute force. “Susie, it’s all right, self-hypnosis is a common symptom at the first sign of operancy, but you have to think.”

“I... I’m...”

“You’re a six-sigma pyrokinetic, Susie, and you will go in for training for that, if nothing else to learn, ah... fire control.”

Maybe it was just a stress reaction, but Susie sagged against the chair, laughing wildly.

Susie wandered back out into the corridor. The Waterville Clinic let out on the arcology’s outer ring hallway; she could look out through panorama windows of armorglass and see rain splashing off the windows in thick sheets, cascading down to the ground. The landscape hundreds of meters below was obscured.

Thinking about the last minutes at the clinic, Susie felt... a little ambiguous. She could understand now why Mina had been questioning her so firmly, making sure she could restrain that urge to start more little blue-green flames just to watch them dance. She could even understand why the older woman had insisted on doing it en rapport with her, to make sure not only that she wasn’t lying, but that she wasn’t simply wrong about her own intentions.

But it hadn’t been an entirely happy way to end her visit. Even after hearing her as an questioner in her head, she still thought Mina was a nice lady... just a determined one.

She needed something normal to do... and she had a three o’clock appointment with Rikke; maybe she’d better go take a long lunch. And find somewhere to, well, decompress. She turned; there’d been a food court and a rec commons back to clockwise. Picking her way back through the lunch hour crowds, she felt another burst of hawkishness.

Change of plans. The day she left Shepistan she’d sworn never to go back. Ever, no matter what. She decided she’d have to tweak that a little. Maybe she would go back after all, if things fell out the right way... NO. Wrong way! She bit down that raptor-fierce impulse. To be honest with herself, she didn’t want to be the kind of person who hoped she’d be going back to Shepistan.

Because if she ever went back to the Republic, it would be to burn the place down around the kadahulis’ ears.

Author's note:

I wanted to add this: a song by Julia Ecklar titled Daddy's Little Girl, based on the Stephen King novel Firestarter.

It isn't really analogous to Susie's situation except for the themes of pyrokinesis and persecution of espers- and even there, The Shop has a very different M.O. than the Shepistani Republic, and the characters are in so utterly different situations that there's no parallel.

That said, the song is, in my opinion, quite evocative, so I thought it was worth referencing.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-09 10:07pm

Chapter Six: Learning to Love My Country

Susie wandered back out into the corridor. The Waterville Clinic let out on the arcology’s outer ring hallway; she could look out through panorama windows of armorglass and see rain splashing off the windows in thick sheets, cascading down to the ground. The landscape hundreds of meters below was obscured.

Thinking about the last minutes at the clinic, Susie felt... a little ambiguous. She could understand now why Mina had been questioning her so firmly, making sure she could restrain that urge to start more little blue-green flames just to watch them dance. She could even understand why the older woman had insisted on doing it en rapport with her, to make sure not only that she wasn’t lying, but that she wasn’t simply wrong about her own intentions.

But it hadn’t been an entirely happy way to end her visit. Even after hearing her as an questioner in her head, she still thought Mina was a nice lady... just a determined one.

She needed something normal to do, and she had a three o’clock appointment with Rikke; maybe she’d better go take a long lunch. And find somewhere to, well, decompress. She turned; there’d been a food court and a rec commons back to clockwise...

Kirk McMillan Memorial Rec Commons
Alpha-Four Arcology, New Athens
Late 3375
Significantly Later In The Morning, So Much So That It's Actually Afternoon.

The park was named after some kind of Umerian war hero from about six hundred years back; there was a statue by the rimward entrance- looked old. Stiff posture, heroic expression on the face that looked kind of constipated if you had a sense of humor, ray gun in hand and... Hmm. what's the slidy-multiple-ruler-thing?

Meh. Never mind. She went off in search of a suitable park bench to settle down and eat her bowl of peelifruit and braised brontosaurus stew from the food court. It had been expensive, but when she saw "brontosaurus" advertised on the menu, she'd had to try it.

It was a pretty good arcology park, sort of enclosed and gardeny. As always, floor space was limited, no more than about five thousand square meters. But it was high enough for modest trees, the lighting was good, they had a creek running down the middle. They'd remembered the songbirds and insects, and to sculpt natural-looking features covering walls that almost had to be soundproofed- it was that was quiet. You didn't get proper quiet in arcologies, not with urban sounds flowing around above and below and on all sides.

Not perfect; it wasn't really the Great Outdoors, but it was a wonderful relief... Susie wondered how much her dislike of arcos came from wandering around in a haze of Stupid, but you couldn't live and endlessly second-guess yourself like that, so she just sat back and chilled. The soup was pretty good too.

She wasn't the only one there, of course. A couple of boys who looked about ten to twelve plunked down on the next bench over. After inhaling the sandwiches they were holding, the shorter boy, wearing a truly funny-looking striped jacket, leaned over and asked the other a question.

"What's that you were working on in line?"

"Lab class."

"Well yeah, but what's the algebra?"

"This is how you find a sigma. Without guessing."

"That's just silly."

"I'm not kidding. Look. You want to pass the One-Epsilons some time this year, right?"

"This is on the One-Epsilons?"

"Uh-huh. Fast-track flag, too."

"So if I'm good at this, they'll maybe ignore that I can never remember the names of all the planets?"

"...Maaybe."

"I always forget some. Or spell them wrong. I mean come on, New Mississipipi?"

"Mississippi."

"Well yeah, easy for you to say."

The older boy sighed. "...Okay. Yes, it's worth a try."

"OK then. So, now will you explain what you're doing?"

"OK. You start with a bunch of numbers, like... heights. Of people. Then you plug them in, like... so." There was much tapping of minicomps, followed by:

"Ohh. So that's why they call it a sigma!"

"Yeah. It's a, um... summation!"

The kid with the jacket squeezed his eyes shut and started chanting to himself. "Hmm... square root of one over N times sigma open X-i minus x-average close squared. Square root of one over N times sigma open X-i minus x-average close squared. Square root of one over N times sigma open X-i minus x-average close squared..."

"You can just look it up on the Qwiki."

"Yeah, but I wanna remember it when I'm not on. Are there exercises on Qwiki?"

"Yeah. They pop right up on private-access if you're logged in. They don't show up on the public-access terminals unless you go to the bottom for some reason, though."

"OK. Anything if I don't have to remember who invented the disintegrator."

"That was... hold on. Ack. Gotta go, late for Mimi's birthday party." The boy with the hat jumped up and ran away. The other kid scooped up the wrappers and walked out.

...Did I just see a twelve year old who knows what a standard deviation is? I think I just did...

Arguably, that was not the strangest thing she saw that day.

There was a dinosaur walking down the path, looking curiously at the ferns. A dinosaur. With feathers.

SQUEEE!

She'd seen and heard of the kipakt and moxli, the saurian aliens of the Union State of Four Stars, of course. They were one of the neighboring countries; you couldn't miss them. But she'd never seen one in person. They didn't come to Shepistan very often; for some reason they found the place disturbing.

Well, she did too, so they couldn't be all bad, right?

She wasn't entirely sure what impulse drove her to get up and go over to the moxli and try to strike up a conversation. She wasn't even sure the saurian spoke English. But she couldn't just ignore a dinosaur walking through the park. That would have been wrong. And she'd probably regret it later.

"Hi."

She got what seemed to be a quizzical look in return- a tilt of the head and a curve of the neck that suggested an unexpected event.

"Waark? Ah, greetings, human. I am Grxotegong." The saurian's voice was hollow and chirpy. Dinosaur! Chirpy dinosaur! With feathers! SQUEE!

"My name's Susie. Pleased to meet you!"

"By the way. These are interesting ferns. Do you know who is responsible for the management of greenspaces? If I could identify the species..."

"Sorry. I'm new here actually."

"I represent a consortium of... how you say... Texotan brontosaur ranchers, kipakt businessmen. They wish to purchase land on some of your fringe worlds, for sales to Umeria- to save money on shipping."

Dinosaur ranchers who are themselves dinosaurs, looking to... wooow.

"Good luck, Mr. Grk... Gr..."

"Grxotegong. Few humans get it right. I fear I must be going, though." The moxli gave what appeared to be an attempt at a polite dip of the head, and clumped off.

Susie returned to finish the last of her meal, set down earlier. The soup was cold.

Darn... wait a minute, I can fix that!

This was shaping up to be a better day than she'd thought after all.

Shola Okoro Immigration Center, Alpha-Four Arcology
Way Way WAY Later That Morning, So Much So That It's 3:00 PM.

"So, Susie, what do you think of your day so far?"

"There are dinosaurs! With feathers! And I just met a twelve year old who knows what standard deviations are! And I'll never need a lighter again! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!"

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2011-03-09 10:10pm

A Multiparadigmic Crypto-Analytico Assessment of the Traditional Values and Child-Rearing Stratagems of the Nuclear Family and their Relationship Pertaining to the Prevalence of Plural Pseudo-Psyker/Psionic Parapsychic Perfidiousities in the Republic of Shepistan (and the Grand Dominion to a Lesser Degree)

A BLAND Corporation Defense Analysis
By Bart Blade

Overview

The Republic of Shepistan is the only psyker-free society in the universe. It prides itself in this status, and it is because of this that Shepistan has become the envy of nations all over the galaxy, most especially its neighbor nations in the Loin Stars and the Spin Zone. Not even the Grand Dominion, the very inventors of the Blitzschlag Field Generator, has come close Shepistan's ideal state.

This enlightened status of affairs is, in part, the legacy of the Amplitur Wars of old. The sheer devastation wrought by the hive-mind psyker race galvanized both the Grand Dominion and Shepistan to make their societies proof against the blandishments of the crustaceanoid craboids, and the invention of the BFG was the saving grace, the decisive advantage, that led to victory. Unlike the warships and new weapons systems used in the war, the BFGs did not secure borders, did not hold territories, they did not defend whole worlds. What they did was protect the mind, the single most important thing to any living, breathing and thinking human being, and in doing so thus did they make the defense of all those other vital priorities - borders, territories, and whole worlds - possible against the perfidious perpetrations of the psionic psyker menace. Only with this was ultimate victory against the antagonisms of the alien Amplitur arch-aggressors assuredly achievable.

The Republic of Shepistan and the Grand Dominion owe their survival to the Blitzschlag Field Generator. It is no wonder that the Republic of Shepistan has taken the protective capabilities of the BFG to its logical extremes, proofing not just secure facilities and very important personnel, but covering their whole society too under an all-encompassing protective umbrella that shields them from the psychokinetic precipitations of the psionic perpetrators.

The Grand Dominion would have followed this ideal outcome as well, but most unfortunately their nation - wracked as it was post-war by debt and poverty - was unable to follow suit, and there were considerable religulo-sociocultural factors as well preventing them from becoming the second totally psyker-free society in the universe. In the end, their use of their own BFGs has not even come close to the ubiquitousness of the Shepistani system, and today psykers still exist in their society, to the point of serving in certain religulo-sociocultural institutions. But this is most assuredly not the case in Shepistan, where the ideal outcome was achieved thanks in no small part to its healthy and robust post-war economy and the vibrancy of its military-industrial complex. Perhaps one day, the Grand Dominion can achieve the gold standard reached by the Shepistani, and the rest of the galaxy may do so as well, following the country's great example.

One must remain hopeful, for this outcome is dependent on the continued maintenance of Shepistan's status as a psyker-free society, a status that was hard-earned and has made Shepistan one of the most secure states in the universe. The Blitzschlag field is Shepistani society's only protection. However, there are those who would strip away this protection, this security, this safety, this liberty Shepistan has won for itself. Even within the nation there are those who call for the degradation of the BFGs' all-encompassing protective coverage, an unacceptable compromise that would mentally-endanger the whole nation. These treasonous thoughts come from the rightfully suppressed liberals, a movement once led by thankfully-now-deceased Senator James Crater, but standing Shepistani policy has successfully discouraged this movement within Shepistan. But from without this liberal psykersexual agenda continues to grow strong and assails Shepistan from all corners, from nations like Anglia and Umeria and even the UN - all of whom call for the respect of psyker rights, as if they have any.

The international psykerist conspiracy would have these 'espers', as liberal parlance calls them, sap and impurify our precious mentallic fluids - the so-called psychoplasm that oozes through the natural noosphere normally, without contamination by tainted individuals. The impurification of this, should these 'espers' be allowed to live and practice their craft, is said to be a natural right of theirs according to the liberal elite and intellectuals. Thankfully the Shepistani Republic remains steadfast against the petty liberal affectations of these degenerates, and the integrity of the nation's mental defense grid remains uncompromised. The words 'Never compromise' have never rang truer. We can thank the Shepistani government's continued flaunting of the UN, the Anglians and the Umerians, for this continued state of pleasant affairs.

But even as the meddlings of outsiders are rudely rebuffed, Shepistan faces an even more insidious threat from within, this time not from any liberals or the ghost of James Crater, but from the psykers themselves. Recent research suggests that these psionic mutants have somehow adapted to the omnipresent protection of the Blitzschlag Field, like resilient a strain of bacteria overcoming dosages of antibiotics as seen when Shepistan devastated Astaria of old, or like a Karlack organoid rallying to the cry of 'evolution complete'. For psykers are no different from bacterium or arachnids, and the Shepistani government must not become complacent in light of its successes - in fact, its success so far should be taken as an encouragement to not only push the Blitzschlag Field Generators and the anti-psyker policies to the logical extremes, for they have already reached these extremes, instead it should be taken as an encouragement to go beyond this and go over the edge.

Firstly, though, the enemy must be understood. According to the sayings of the Oriental warrior-philosopher Shan Yu, 'to kill the enemy is to know the enemy' and as the Shepistani government has already does this all the time to psykers and their supporters, we thus already possess ample knowledge on our enemy even though we lack volcanos. We know, for example, that psyker mutations allow some strains to survive even in the presence of the BFG - and though it attenuates their development, the mutites can still manifest their psychokinetic abilities after escaping from the BFG's radius of coverage. In knowing this, we have thus concluded that the mutites have already resisted the BFGs and managed to go under the radar, so to speak, to avoid detection, and have been extradited from Shepistani territory and have developed their abilities once outside Shepistan and the BFG envelope. The implications of this are horrific and outlines a grave dynamic deficiency in Shepistan's reliance on the Blitzschlag Field - namely that it is merely a curative 'treatment' to the psyker problem, in that despite their prevalence and their ability at neutering psyker powers and hampering psyker development, psykers are still being born in Shepistan. A final solution to the psyker problem must not be curative in nature, but preventive.

This, in itself, presents a very significant lapse in the integrity of Shepistani mentallic defenses that must be corrected immediately. Thus, the following recommendations are made, not lightly and rather heavily, in fact:

Recommendations

At the risk of sounding heretical, Shepistan's reliance on the Blitzschlag Field can be seen as an over-reliance and perhaps alternative, supplemental and supportive means can be considered, not to supplant the BFGs - for the BFGs are themselves a very comprehensive, reliable and indispensably integral component of the Shepistani defense strategy - but to enhance the efficacy of the BFGs by attacking areas that are not within the coverage or purview of the BFG.

This whitepaper's title is 'A Multiparadigmic Crypto-Analytico Assessment of the Traditional Values and Child-Rearing Stratagems of the Nuclear Family and their Relationship Pertaining to the Prevalence of Plural Pseudo-Psyker/Psionic Parapsychic Perfidiousities in the Republic of Shepistan (and the Grand Dominion to a Lesser Degree)' and thus the recommendations are based on exactly that, the traditional values and child-rearing stratagems of the nuclear family and their relationship pertaining to the prevalence of plural pseudo-psyker/psionic parapsychic perfidiousities in the Republic of Shepistan (and the Grand Dominion to a lesser degree).

Research suggests that psykerism is not only genetic, but that its development is also affected by environmental factors - as in the aforementioned mutite strains of psykers that have developed means to go around the coverage of the BFGs - and thus these alternative contingencies must be aimed at hampering the developmental stages of the psyker pupae and larvae. It may be even possible that once the psykers' in development's developing psykerism is stunted to a sufficient degree as to be worth as good as nothing, that they may be rehabilitated into human beings - but it is only a slim chance that exists only in hypotheticals.

We must think of the children, for the most insidious iniquity of the curse of psykerism lies in the fact that wholly innocent children can be blighted with this mark without their own knowing, and we owe it to them to prevent this from happening. To save the young Shepistani citizens, we must make the development of psykerism impossible in the first place - if not by outright preventing it, then by instituting measures that discourage and decrease the occurrence and incidence of psykerism in the Shepistani youth. It is for their own good.

The various suggested methods are aimed at reshaping Traditional Values and Child-Rearing Stratagems of the Nuclear Family to complement the overall tactico-strategico-militaro Shepistani defense plan. They are listed as follows:

As the development of psykerist traits likely begins even before birth, during the fetal development in the womb, all gestating mothers in the Shepistan should be encouraged to take nutritional supplements to disencourage and unpromote psykerism. Psyko-embryonic development must be halted at all cost. Cartons of cigarettes and proscribed amounts of alcohol should be provided to pregnant men and women as needed to induce a certain desirable level of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to ensure that the future Shepistani citizen will attain optimum pediatric physiological development vital for a mentally healthy childhood. Therapeutic teratogens may also be prescribed by licensed obstetricians and pharmacologicians.

In a similar vein, all ultrasound, megasound, hypersound and other screening techniques should be supplemented with gynecologic Blitzschlag Fields, perhaps in severe cases the introduction of BFIs (Blitzschlag Field Implants) can be permitted to prevent dire psyko-embryonic development [see attached image].

Postpartum, the childrearing stratagems must similarly be modified in accordance to renewed guidelines emphasizing proactive defense measures and psykerism disencouragements. As research suggests that strong maternal/paternal-child bonds promote the development of empathy, that is in turn of importance to the development of certain empathic psychocognitive attributes, then prolonged parent-child interactions shall be discouraged and the use of daycare centers with sterilized interaction modules (STIMs) shall be likewise encouraged to promote desensitization of any extra-sense perceptions (ESP).

Likewise, it is imperative that breastfeeding in public or private must be discouraged and, if possible, heavy social stigma must be engineered for those men or women who choose to breastfeed or be breastfed. Instead, Formulas Ready to Eat (FREs) will be provided for children. An added social benefit is that parents will be freed from the wasteful time constraints of feeding their children and can divert their attentions to more wholesome and productive activities (such as working in the bomb factories, surveying de-classified military archives, submitting requisite 3360s graphs, and working in Shepistani government efforts to close the mineshaft gap with Umeria).

The reinstallation of corporal punishment shall be a priority, not because of the educational or social benefits of paddling and other such methods, but because of their benefits in emotional development. Research suggests that psykerist abilities manifest themselves in the youth often during periods of emotional duress, and randomized corporal punishments (not for the punishment of actual wrong deeds, but as a means to itself) can induce such an emotional duress. Should a latent psyker turn operant during the paddling, in the presence of a sufficiently powerful Blitzschlag Field the psychokinetic-electrospectronomic interactions may be enough to induce an Exploding Baby Syndrome and such incidents may become the rule, rather than the rarity as it is today.

As psykerism is a genetically inherited trait, the parents of children who are found to exhibit psykerist traits (perhaps weeded out through the randomized corporal punishments) must be given genetic counseling after the dehabilitation of their spawn. To prevent further contamination of the gene-pool, all members of their extended family must undergo screening and the parents must be sterilized. This is to diminish the potential gene pool of psykerists.

Secondary to this, as modern medical technology can reverse the effects of sterilization, the sanctioned parents must be required to sleep in separate beds to discourage any further pregnancies.

And, again, it must be further emphasized that to promote whole and healthy childhood in psyker-free children for a wholesome and safe psyker-free society such as Shepistan, parent-child interactions must be kept to a minimum, and must be maintained at an impersonal level, with distant father figures for males and constraining social stigmas and norms for the females, to prevent the undesirable levels of empathy-development commonly associated with psykerists. Their ability to infiltrate human minds has been correlated to the openness of society, and the relative levels of empathy and warmth expressed to and by the pre-psyker populace, thus it is imperative to provide a hostile environment for developing pre-psykers by replacing this empathy and warmth with unsympathetic and cold aloof impersonal environments. The earlier this begins, preferably during conception and/or after birth, the better.

Closing Remarks

The model of these reforms is based on the family values inherent in the aptly-named golden era of the 3350s and 3360s, where similar attitudes in bed spacing and corporal punishment existed, not as a conscious decision at antipsykerist measures, but perhaps as an unconscious attempt at such by the prevailing Shepistani cultural gestalt - a subconscious instinctive group reaction against the psyker threat. Indeed, as the relevant graphs show below, in the golden age of the 3350s and 3360s where the Blitzschlag Fields were at their most highest operational levels and optimum coverages and when the defense industry was in its prime, the incidence of psyker outbreaks were also at their all-time lowest.

This is a correlation, not a coincidence, and also sheds further understanding as to why late liberal Senator James Crater - known for his pedantic peacenik pro-psyker psionist proclivities - likewise wished to decrease the defense budget of the War Department and proposed to cancel several prominent military projects and programs. It is also no coincidence that his accomplice, one Robert Space (Satan, according to some literature) McNamara, has likewise fled the country and has spread his genes to the liberal degenerate psyker-pandering philandering Pharisees of the United Solarian Sovereignty - thankfully on the other side of known space.

This analysis also recommends the investigation of the passive-aggressive anti-psyker measures of the Bragulan Star Empire. Despite the lack of Blitzschlag Field Generators everywhere, the Bragulans have nonetheless maintained a relatively nonexistent psyker populace - possibly due to their own biological makeup being decisively anti-psyker in constitution - through a variety of means worth investigating. BLAND Corporation analysts speculate that their passive-aggressive methods work in conjunction with their Bragskirovka and their omnipresent omniscient surveillance networks to quietly detect psykers (who are lulled to a false sense of security due to the lack of BFGs, making themselves ripe for detection by Bragulan passive-systems), who are then monitored and quietly liquidated by their secret police mechanism.

It may be no coincidence that in ridding our societies of psykers, Shepistan has become the envy of the universe for the ubiquitous usage of the Blitzschlag Field Generator, just as the Bragulan secret police and persecution mechanisms have become envied by many as well. As this research emphasizes the utilization of multiple instruments of psyker-persecution to complement the Blitzschlag Field Generator, one cannot help but study the various persecution mechanisms in place in other areas of the universe and compare and contrast their levels of efficacy.

In the end, just as this paper began, once again it is necessary to state that it is through the combined efforts of the men and women of the armed forces, the government, the various experimental laboratories, and patriotic contractors such as the BLAND Corporation, that the Republic of Shepistan has become the only psyker-free society in the universe. It prides itself in this status, and it is because of this that Shepistan has become the envy of nations all over the galaxy, most especially its neighbor nations in the Loin Stars and the Spin Zone.

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-09 10:11pm

Chapter Seven: Shouldn't We Fix This?

Terraforming Diagnostic Facility Alpha-Six
Brennan's World, Sector X-8
Early 3378

Susie frowned. "I still think we should be worrying more about the Gluupo Rot cases around Leadville."

Director Nguyen shook his head. "Worst case, that affects unmodified plants. It's not a problem for the hybridized terraforming plants, and agriculture on this planet is low-margin in any event. Hell, we've only had decent areas of topsoil on this planet for the past two hundred years. What I'm really worried about is stabilizing the plankton balance in the oceans between the native photosynthetics and the introduced ones, or we're never going to get the atmosphere into self-sustaining equilibrium on anything over fifty year timescales."

"I'm not sure... we're going to be looking at a lot of angry farmers if it spreads as much in the next ten years as it did in the last."

The director looked sympathetic. "I understand. Look, fire off a memo to MiniProd. If we can get some funding from them, maybe we'll bring in a few more people to look at the Gluupo Rot problem. For now though, we need a way to keep the local crimsonbugs from skimming off the main nutrient taps and poisoning everything. Can we come up with some kind of filter feeder immune to the toxin, do you think?"

"...Hmm. Probably. Ooh, we could..."

TDF Alpha-Six, Brennan's World
Early 3379

"You want to know what I think, you should take that offer from New Mississippi."

Susie blinked. "What? Why?" I kind of like this planet.

"They're having problems a lot like our crimsonbug troubles; your team cracked our problem six months after you made project lead."

"Dr. Sakura did most of the groundwork..."

"I know, too bad about her having to take leave, but it's still a gold sticker for you. They want to make you lead for this project from the ground up; trust me, it's good for your career to have that on your record."

"Hmm. Well, I have time to make SITAC and still move over there before the start date. Worth a shot. But I'll miss you, Fred."

"Aww. Thanks."

Excerpt from Brown Coats and Red Shirts: A People's History of the Independent Spinward Republic

"In the wake of major crop failures caused on Brennan's World by Gluupo Rot outbreaks in the late 3380s, the planetary population grew increasingly frustrated with the Ministry of Ecology's failure to send assistance to ailing farm communities, many of whom were forced onto welfare in prefab public housing facilities after their crops became untenable.

"While the Ministry of Welfare supplied enough food to prevent any possibility of famine, Brennan's World was still plagued by social dislocations as nearly thirty million small-tract farmers moved to the city, including many who had few or no useful skills aside from agriculture."

"Building exasperation with MiniWell and MiniEcho was brought to a head by the Charleston Conference on Shadow. Both the Brennanite Agricultural Grange and the Brennanite Civic League sent delegations to Shadow, and while the two groups had many disagreements among themselves, both were sympathetic to the First Munroe Declaration."

"In the wake of Munroe's rebuff by First Technarch Li and the more belligerent Second Munroe Declaration, Brennan's World was the fifth planet to assemble an ad hoc planetary government, take over planetary facilities, and join the Independent Spinward Republic..."

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-09 10:12pm

Chapter Eight: Revenge is a Warm Feeling

Recommended Listening

Shroom Man 777 wrote:By Bart Blade:
...
The Republic of Shepistan is the only psyker-free society in the universe. It prides itself in this status, and it is because of this that Shepistan has become the envy of nations all over the galaxy... The Republic of Shepistan and the Grand Dominion owe their survival to the Blitzschlag Field Generator. It is no wonder that the Republic of Shepistan has taken the protective capabilities of the BFG to its logical extremes, proofing not just secure facilities and very important personnel, but covering their whole society too under an all-encompassing protective umbrella that shields them from the psychokinetic precipitations of the psionic perpetrators.

...The Blitzschlag field is Shepistani society's only protection. However, there are those who would strip away this protection, this security, this safety, this liberty Shepistan has won for itself. Even within the nation there are those who call for the degradation of the BFGs' all-encompassing protective coverage, an unacceptable compromise that would mentally-endanger the whole nation. These treasonous thoughts come from the rightfully suppressed liberals, a movement once led by thankfully-now-deceased Senator James Crater, but standing Shepistani policy has successfully discouraged this movement within Shepistan. But from without this liberal psykersexual agenda continues to grow strong and assails Shepistan from all corners, from nations like Anglia and Umeria and even the UN - all of whom call for the respect of psyker rights, as if they have any...

...a grave dynamic deficiency in Shepistan's reliance on the Blitzschlag Field - namely that it is merely a curative 'treatment' to the psyker problem, in that despite their prevalence and their ability at neutering psyker powers and hampering psyker development, psykers are still being born in Shepistan. A final solution to the psyker problem must not be curative in nature, but preventive.

This, in itself, presents a very significant lapse in the integrity of Shepistani mentallic defenses that must be corrected immediately. Thus, the following recommendations are made...

...all gestating mothers in the Shepistan should be encouraged to take nutritional supplements to disencourage and unpromote psykerism. Psyko-embryonic development must be halted at all cost...
...induce a certain desirable level of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to ensure that the future Shepistani citizen will attain optimum pediatric physiological development vital for a mentally healthy childhood. Therapeutic teratogens may also be prescribed by licensed obstetricians and pharmacologicians...
...As research suggests that strong maternal/paternal-child bonds promote the development of empathy, that is in turn of importance to the development of certain empathic psychocognitive attributes, then prolonged parent-child interactions shall be discouraged and the use of daycare centers with sterilized interaction modules (STIMs) shall be likewise encouraged to promote desensitization...
...The reinstallation of corporal punishment shall be a priority, not because of the educational or social benefits of paddling and other such methods, but because of their benefits in emotional development...
...randomized corporal punishments (not for the punishment of actual wrong deeds, but as a means to itself) can induce such an emotional duress...
...induce an Exploding Baby Syndrome...
...To prevent further contamination of the gene-pool, all members of their extended family must undergo screening and the parents must be sterilized...
...This is to diminish the potential gene pool of psykerists...
...parent-child interactions must be kept to a minimum, and must be maintained at an impersonal level...
...Their ability to infiltrate human minds has been correlated to the openness of society, and the relative levels of empathy and warmth expressed to and by the pre-psyker populace, thus it is imperative to provide a hostile environment for developing pre-psykers by replacing this empathy and warmth with unsympathetic and cold aloof impersonal environments. The earlier this begins, preferably during conception and/or after birth, the better.

TDF Alpha-Six, Brennan's World
Late 3378

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

The article had bounced across a fair chunk of the Umerian esper community after the Sheppileaks Incident. She'd gotten it passed on to her from the Waterville people; Mina still kept an eye on her now and then. The participants had all been rounded up and executed for treason in short order, of course, but they'd gotten a fair number of things out before the end. This was one of them.

Kadahuli...

The Phosako word only loosely translated as "childabusers." There were so many little side implications; you had to read several books worth of background on the culture to really understand why it was the foulest insult in their language.

It fit.

Spinward International Terraforming Association Conference '79 (SITAC)
Persephone, Sector Y-6, Near Umerian Border
August 3379

Susie had come to the conference to give a talk on her recent work on Brennan's World: "Modification Of Filter Feeders To Suppress Toxic Microbes: A Case Study."

There were people from all over the Spinward Expanse. Terraforming was one thing virtually every nation took an interest in. There were the numerous neo-Britannian and neo-French, a few individuals from the Prussian League. Quite a few from Tianguo... and of course a large number from Shepistan, which was right next door.

It looked like Dr. Nansen must have found something worth doing after the Capital Wasteland reclamation projects collapsed under a wave of bounty-hunting mercenaries with atomic weapons; he was giving a talk. She'd have to make sure to go to that, and maybe see if she could talk him into emigrating too. She felt like she owed it to him. Dr. Nansen was a pretty cool guy. He deserved better than Nukegeeseland.

GET THIS PERSON INTO YOUR COUNTRY!

She kept going down the list. Her eye stopped, and twitched slightly, when she saw a presentation listed tomorrow: "Uranium Plowshares: Nukoforming Applications for Planetary Engineering." By... oh God. Bart Blade.

Her eye twitched again. GRRR!

Spinward International Terraforming Association Conference '79 (SITAC)
The Next Day

She couldn't help herself; she went to the lecture hall and filed in quietly at the back. The talk hadn't started; Blade was still down there talking to a few people. With the room set up amphitheater style, she could see him very clearly.

She felt a tangle of different emotions, spread across almost the entire spectrum of hostility.

There was the personal resentment- how dare he say such things? The rage at knowing the hell this man wanted to plunge fifty billion children into. The sickening awareness that it was all in pursuit of a stupid and pointless quest for security that was both unnecessary and, more damning still, already obtained. The cold, rational calculation that the universe would be just as well off, if not better, without this man in it. That there was, could be, nothing to him but darkness. Not when he'd write up something like that.

It was so tempting to reach out and... let there be light.

No. That wasn't who she was, couldn't be. She had a decent country to live in, a career; she'd even managed to convince her parents to move out, though Immigration was still taking a longer time to vet them before signing off on their citizenship papers.

Above all, the career. The job offers as project lead on a major problem-solving team in a terraforming program. She was helping! She wouldn't throw that away. Not even on something like this, this... would-be Himmler in the making... NO.

Hmm. Then again, nothing said she couldn't have a little entertainment. Not too much, mild enough to allow... plausible deniability. She peered down towards the podium, identified her target, and concentrated. This would be difficult, but fun.

A Few Minutes Later The Next Day

Bart Blade glanced at the clock. Two more minutes till the meeting started; time to finish his coffee.

"Thbbpht!" What the hell? He checked to make sure it was his mug. He'd expected that coffee to be warm, yes, but it felt like it'd just dripped straight through the filter, burning hot. Maybe he'd drunk from someone else's... no. Weird. Also, now he had coffee all over the front of his shirt. Great. Stranger things had happened to him, though. Bart grunted to himself and launched into the presentation, his style only slightly cramped by the minor burns on his tongue.

He started to sweat five minutes in. At first it wasn't so bad, but soon he could feel the first hints of moisture in his shirt. Only hints though. Thank god for Shroom and Hammer antiperspirant, it's boiling in here. He didn't know how everybody else in the room could stand it. Embarrassing. To make matters worse, the room just kept getting hotter. Soon, Bart's face was covered with a sheen of sweat, and he started rushing through his talk. If he could just get through this fast and get back to his room, maybe take a nice cold shower. Or something...

Skipping a number of slides and an animation showing plans to link up subsurface oil deposits through a series of cheap, clean, cost-effective nuclear initiations (he hated it so much when people talked about a nuclear device "exploding" or "detonating...") cut his talk down to just over thirty minutes. By the time he reached his conclusion slide, the Shroom and Hammer had been overwhelmed after putting up a valiant fight against impossible odds, and he was quite visibly perspiring. He'd better get some water, too.

He'd been hoping for a quick, clean exit after wrapping up his talk. But... curses! The audience was full of every speaker's nightmare: Umerians with permission to ask questions! They kept asking questions, about shock wave and blast front propagation, about inflection points on his numerous graphs, about cost-effectiveness and a dozen other things! Even as some in the audience were filing out of the room, he couldn't get away, not without an awkward confession of not being able to answer more questions. Which would make him, and by extension the BLAND Corporation, and by extension the Shepistani military-scientific-industrial complex as a whole, look bad. It was his patriotic duty to keep talking!

Of course, his shirt being soaked with sweat was also making him look bad, but at least that made only him look bad. Finally, just before he started to drip, the allocated hour was up, and he could go back to his room.

The intense heat started to fade in the elevator. He had to wonder what had been wrong; was he standing right under a heater exhaust or something? No... there must be more than that. But what? Why had he felt so grossly overheated when everyone else in the room seemed to be fine?

Maybe it was something medical.

After he returned to his room and poured a few buckets of ice water over himself to soak up residual heat, he went online. Persephone's main digital reference sites were copied from the UmerNet; that wouldn't be any good. Damn libruls... He kept hunting... ah-HA! There were some old residual caches from Shepipedia! He scrolled down a page until he found something related to his situation.

"Hot flashes in men... Hot flashes in men are linked to low testosterone... NOOOO!" What to do? What to do? There was no time to go back to his doctor in Shepistan, but he had to do something! He couldn't very well go home with his precious bodily fluids sapped and impurified, all squeaky-voiced and... NO! There had to be a solution, a stopgap measure, to deal with this problem. Every problem had a drastic but efficient solution, and you could always find it if you dug deep enough. That was the Shepistani way.

His frenzied searching took him back and forth across the Persephone nets. Finally, on the UmerNet, he found the advertisement for what he was looking for.

"UMERTHIRST! Made with SCIENCE! MAD SCIENCE! It makes you MAD with ENERGY!"

There was a picture of some massive posthuman bodybuilder yelling "AAAAAH!"

"Science, energy, science, energy, electrolyes, turbolytes, powerlytes, more lights than your body has room for. You’ll be so fast, Mother Nature will be like, “Sloooooowwww dooowwwwnn.” And you’ll be like, “Bwa-ha-ha-HA! Mad science SNEERS at you, Nature!""

The guy yelled "AAAAAH!" again.

"Now with synthetic Vinaran hormone duplicates! PREPOSTERONE!"

The bodybuilder started yelling "AAA-" but a huge, muscular green humanoid grabbed him in one hand, then hurled him towards the horizon, bellowing "RAAAAGGH!"

"Side effects include delusional behavior, nausea, death, glowing sweat, unusual power behavior, death, prominent eyebrow growth, death, broken dilithium crystals, pants spontaneously turning purple, and death."

"RAAAAGH!"

Yes... this was what he needed.

SITAC '79
The Day After The Next Day

Doctor Nansen's presentation had been interesting, and they'd met up afterwards. As she'd suspected, though, he didn't want to emigrate; that stiff, unbending sense of loyalty made it out of the question, and it had been obvious from his polite lack of comment on the idea that he wasn't interested.

Still, though, it had been nice to see him again, and he was doing all right. Beyond that, of course, Susie had more plans of her own. Today, Bart Blade had a panel discussion scheduled. She wanted to get there early. Not for a front-row seat, of course; something a bit more subtle. Two rows back, center stage.

Hehehehe.

Panel Discussion #723: "Postwar Cleanup: Radioactive Hot Spots And Terraforming"

As he took his seat at the table on the raised platform, Bart Blade looked kind of odd. His skin had a sickly greenish cast to it. His clothes fit oddly, as though muscles were tensed and standing out under the skin. His eyebrows twitched spasmodically, and he seemed to be grinding his teeth. This time, he didn't have a cup of coffee handy, but he did have a glass of water. That would do. She concentrated again. Absent-mindedly, she pulled out a pad of paper from her purse and started sketching with one hand, while her attention was elsewhere.

Concentrate... focus... enhance your calm... just a little bit, wide spread, gently... easy does it...

Once again, the Shepistani started sweating profusely a few minutes into the discussion. He hadn't been called on to say anything yet. The green cast to his skin couldn't be normal pallor, because it didn't go away as his face started to flush red. He looked like he was wearing Christmas tree camo facepaint or something. It was no surprise when he reached for the glass of water. As his hand neared it, he hesitated, then drew his hand back. gingerly, he touched the water with one finger, but pulled it back quickly and frowned.

There were thin trails of steam rising from the glass.

As one of the speakers finished, the discussion leader looked to his right. "All right. Mr. Blade, if you would care to make your opening remarks?"

"Whuh- ah, yes, Mister Chairman." He blinked twice, then seemed to remember something. "In my experience, hot spots are a problem, but one that can be worked around given enough determination and the right equipment..."

Having already gotten the hang of maintaining the low-level, steady output of energy needed for this, Susie decided to experiment a little, moving the main locus of heat back and forth, testing to see just how he'd squirm under a hotfoot. She never let herself go beyond a few degrees over background- that was the real challenge, far more difficult than simply warming up a bowl of soup without boiling it- but that was more than enough to make the Shepistani defense planner deeply uncomfortable as he stumbled through answers to questions about cleanup of radiation, still twitching and grinding his teeth.

He gave a very poor showing, all in all...

Hehehe.

Finally, the leader declared the discussion to be over, after the scheduled seventy-five minutes. Blade let out a very visible gasp of relief and practically sprinted for the door.

The man who'd been sitting beside her looked down at her sketch pad.

"...What's that?"

"Oh. Uh. A few weeks ago I heard about something called 'galactic cannibalism'. So I was thinking about that, and, well, I thought of this."

On the page, in rough outline with a bit of shading in places, there were a pair of spiral galaxies with inexplicable little arms sticking out, holding between them a pole. Trussed to the pole was a smaller, more bloblike galaxy, with a very nervous expression on its core as it was hauled towards a bubbling pot.

One of the spiral galaxies had what appeared to be a bone sticking through its nose, right at the center.

"...Hmm. I knew a few astrophysicists in back in grad school, actually; they'd been doing some long-term studies on the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. They used the term a lot."

"Long term?"

"Longitudinal, as far back as they could find records. They even had some figures from right around the Diaspora; don't know where they found them."

"Wow."

The conversation lasted a few minutes; when it ended, Susie glanced at the stage, and the table, recalling the Shepistani's flight from the room.

Hehehehe.

NOOOOO! Even after chugging a can of UMERTHIRST that morning... still having a hot flash, at the worst possible moment! Inconceivable, and enraging!

He had to have MORE!

Main Shuttleport, MoCoArco Bravo-Five, Shepistani Republic
Two Weeks Later

"Hi, Bart!" Charlie Smith, one of his coworkers, had come to pick him up at the airport.

"Rrragh."

"Jesus, what the hell happened to you? You look like a wreck- and try to calm down, those eyebrows are scaring people. Maybe we need to get you some trimmers or something. And... did you spill something on yourself? You look... green."

"Just don't, Charlie. Just. Don't. And don't tell anyone either, the Reptons are tailing me. They're making me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry."

"Umm... OK. Look, why don't we just get your baggage, get you back home. Like we planned."

"We have to stop at a grocery store. I need tinfoil."

"OK, whatever you say, Bart. Whatever you say."

Mang. I think maybe I'd better call psych evals on him, for his own sake...

Post by **Steve** » 2011-03-10 08:50pm

Dr. Susie rocks.

Now to return to my plan to nuke Shepistan for the pure irony.

Eleventh Century Remnant · Post by **Eleventh Century Remnant** » 2011-03-13 05:30pm

I enjoyed this one.

SDNW4 looks like a great plot generator; I'm regretting not getting into it now. Any more?

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-03-14 02:37am

We'd have loved to have you, ECR. Late joining is an option. Granted, it has its own special awkward problems: either "yeah, we were always here and no one mentioned us," or the now frowned-upon "hi, we just appeared from Beyond the Spiral Arm!." But in terms of contribution to ongoing storylines... two of our current top-tier players, we've got two late joiners out of a pool of, I'd say, no more than about ten. So it's still viable.

There's possibly a little more Dr. Susie, definitely more storylines that can be told by myself and others. Speaking for myself, unfortunately my best available contribution- a moderately protracted space-naval campagin- is at the moment both unfinished and ridiculously long.

Also commits a great deal of shameless character theft, though that's not particularly uncommon in the setting... but I think you'd like it.

I'd have already posted it if I could figure out how to adequately set the backstory- for example, much of the plot hinges on the strategic incompetence and tactical hamhandedness of a particular nation, which I based off the strategic ineptitude and tactical hamhandedness they showed in the hands of their player. I'd feel a bit odd trying to post that without first establishing just what they're normally like, because much of what I have them doing is almost unbelievable until you know what passes for "business as usual" in the Prussian Star League.

That's a common problem with our posting SDNW4 storylines, I think, figuring out how to disentangle a single coherent plotline from all the events, impressions, and ideas that went into the plotline. I'd need to put a bit of skull-sweat into making it work.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie

SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie

Re: SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie, Chapter Two

SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie: Chapter Three

SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie: Chapter Four

SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie: Chapter Five

SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie: Chapter Six

Re: SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie

SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie: Chapter Seven

SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie: Chapter Eight.

Re: SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie

Re: SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie

Re: SDNW4: The Life and Times of Doctor Susie