World 34: Psychonauts

CHRONICLE TWO: RISE OF THE BENEFACTOR

JUMP 36: WAR CRIMES

Previously: Eye of Gold

Themesong: Going Under by Evanescence

There was a circus tent dominating the central rise in the middle of the Warehouse when we finally piled back in, half drunk from the going away party. Sure, the last decade hadn’t been much of a challenge, and the years spent in the Caribbean had been anything but work, but a leave-taking is still a decent reason to party, even if the celebration was celebrating the end of vacation. One last fling before it was back to the grindstone, right?

On the flap of the tent was a note. It said, “A five-year long vacation? Hope you’ve rested your brain. What do you think this is? Summer Camp?”

I blinked at it, then groaned.

Zane mmmed? “What’s up?” He was wobbling unsteadily and half-dragging Kendra, who was barely coherent. AJ and Francine were tele-carrying most of the others, as they’d largely drunk so much that walking was out of the question. Rum is really wonderful. Having a Medbay that can replace livers is even better.

Palming my own face, I shuddered, then explained, “I just recognized this tent.”

“It’s a tent?” Zane asked. I was pretty certain that he didn’t doubt the tent’s tentiness… is that a word?… but rather questioning how a tent could be special.  Or he really could be that drunk. I decided against reading his mind to figure out which; even at the best of times, Zane’s mind is somewhat scary to gaze upon.

“It’s from the final level in Psychonauts…” I half-whimpered. “The Meat Circus… that’s why it looks like marbled meat.”

“Oh…” he made a face, peered closer at the fabric, looked like he was going to retch, then focused enough to grunt, “Gross.”

“Yeah… and a real fucking bitch. I hated that level,” I agreed, then stepped inside and was unsurprised… and a little terrified, to be honest, to see the Psychonauts logo hanging over the machine. It would not have been out of place in BioShock’s Rapture, it was that tacky. It was also not digital, but rather one of those screw dispenser machines with the big glass front… and a lot of freaktacular junk behind that plate. Part of me wondered if I could simply smash the glass and take what I wanted. I waved the thought away as that would, undoubtedly, be cheating… and I doubted there was enough stuff on offer to make the trouble I might get into worth it.

As I approached the machine, there was a thunk and a scroll dropping into the hopper. I hadn’t seen it fall and it hit with much greater gravitas than mere paper should have had. Parchment too seldom went ‘thunk!’ Still, I fished it out… there wasn’t even a double hinge security flap thing! I could pretty easily just snag anything I wanted using my arm… well, if I turned it into a tentacle… let alone TK… No! Clearly this was all temptation! No failing the obvious test!

Unrolling the scroll, I found that it contained a copy of Coach Oleander’s intro speech from the game “The Human Mind: Six Hundred miles of synaptic fiber, five and a half ounces of cranial fluid, one-thousand five-hundred grams of complex neural matter… a three pound pile of dreams. But I’ll tell you what it really is. It is the ultimate battlefield – and the ultimate weapon. The wars of this modern age – The Psychic Age – are fought somewhere between these damp, curvaceous undulations. From this day forward, you are all psychic soldiers, paranormal paratroopers, mental marines who are about to ship out on the adventure of their lives!” It also contained a roll of ‘Fifty Cranial Point’ chips, twenty of them. That explained the ‘thunk’.

In case you’ve never played the game, I’ll give you the basic rundown. Raz, short for Rasputin Aquato… and he really was short… was the youngest member of a family of circus acrobats… and a gifted psychic. Having read about Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp in the pages of ‘True Psychic Tales Magazine’, he’d run away from home to attend, unaware that the camp was secretly a secret government training facility for the titular Psychonauts, psychic spies. There, he discovers a plot to turn the campers into cybernetic brain-tanks… as in shooty-shooty boom-boom tanks, not floaty floaty non-explodey tanks. Behind that plot are Coach Morceau Oleander, the camp’s psychic-fitness instructor, and an insane dentist named Dr. Loboto. 

Assisting Raz in opposing them are the camp’s three other councilors / Psychonauts agents: Milla Vodello (mod generation and fabulous), Sasha Nein (psychic James Bond), and Ford Cruller (ancient and batty as a fruit-bat holding a Louisville Slugger)… plus Lili Zanotto, the love interest and daughter of the head of the Psychonauts organization, and Dogen Boole, the camp well meaning idiot… who thinks squirrels are plotting against him and who wears a tinfoil hat to keep from making other peoples’ heads explode by accident.

It should be noted that, since Whispering Rock gets its name from a massive psytanium meteor that fell in the area hundreds of years ago, forming the nearby Lake Oblongata, much of the local wildlife is actually psychic, and thus the squirrels very much could be plotting against him. There’s also an old ruined insane asylum on the island in the middle of the Lake, and a ruined town at the bottom of it.

The Meat Circus is, as I’ve mentioned, the final level of the game, and it is in that place that Oleander’s fear of his father (a butcher) and Raz’s fear of his own father (a psychic circus acrobat) fuse to create the final boss of the game. In the end, Raz fixes Oleander’s psychosis, and Raz’s father shows up to help Raz deal with his own personal demons. The game ends with Raz, Lili, and the Psychonauts flying off to save Truman Zanotto (Lili’s father) who has been kidnapped. And all that happens within about a week.

What was I supposed to do for a decade when the story lasted a week? I read the rest of the note and winced… apparently I was to spend the entire time ‘involved’ with the camp. Ten years… TEN YEARS at a Summer Camp for psychic teenagers! It wasn’t that big a camp! Maybe there’d be field trips? The note did promise crazy psychic adventures.

There wasn’t an age die in sight, nor any way to randomize starting location… which I guess made sense, seeing as how, again, it wasn’t that big a camp. Walking from one end of it to the other would take maybe fifteen minutes… twenty if I walked to the island in the lake (yay for All Terrain Hiking!).

I checked the note again. Nothing else. So I checked out the machine. The top row had three double roller items; Camper, Instructor, Random Drop-In. Below each was what were clearly each origin’s perks, since the prices for them weren’t listed, but they were color-coded. Oddly, one item was halfway under both Camper and Instructor. I studied the various names, and found that each had description under it.

Reading through the various options, my choice was obvious. It wasn’t even a close run thing. I had to have two of the three capstones, which meant only Camper and Drop-In were even in the running, but since Campers got two companions free, each of them getting six-hundred Cranial Points… and if I bought a third, all three of them would have nine-hundred each. Sure, I could have bought eight slots for three-hundred, but each of them would only get that same three-hundred. Much better a few powerful allies / friends than a team of low powered muffin-macguffins.

I locked in my purchase of Camper, spending the hundred and wondering yet again why so many jumps charged me for not having any connection to the world I was jumping into. Who decided that Drop-In would be the default? Shouldn’t I get points back for that? Grumble grumble. 

As the machine vended my Camper pack (it was a Whispering Pines Uniform… kinda like a wilderness scout’s uni, plus an eight-sided die, an ID request form, and a bandana with my cabin’s badge on it. Crouching Ferret Cabin. Good Name.), it also vended a foam rubber brain, a cloth bundle, a Y-shaped metal rod with a crystal suspended in a bracket at the tip opposite the handles, two ‘Companion’ badges, and a blank merit badge.

The foam brain was for ‘Basic Braining’, and was free for everyone. Basic Braining was the merit badge Raz earned in the game for completing the first level, the tutorial mental obstacle course inside Coach Oleander’s mind. What that meant for me (and my imported companions) was that we’d been trained in navigating mental obstacle courses… basic acrobatic feats like swinging on trapezes, bouncing on trampolines, and (of course) performing psychically boosted double jumps that, yes, worked in the physical world as well. It also included training in psychically-assisted hand-to-hand combat, sorting another’s mental baggage, and accessing someone’s mental vaults.

Mental Baggage was, in fact, baggage inside the mind of another. Everyone had it (at least in the game) and was one of the five different kinds of collectables in the game (Mental Vaults, Mental Cobwebs, Figments, Baggage & Tags, and Psytanium Arrowheads). Of them, only the arrowheads existed in the physical world, a stand in for currency… and Figments were just figments of the individual’s imagination and were bloody everywhere! They also doubled as collectable experience points to upgrade Raz’s powers. I doubted they’d work that way for me… but we’d see.

Each of the ten minds / levels in the game contained five pieces of mental baggage (duffle bag, hatbox, purse, steamer trunk, and suitcase) and their matching tags, and matching each one earned the player a reel of Primal Memories (i.e. concept art). What sorting them in actuality would mean was anyone’s guess… but I was vaguely looking forward to finding out if it really could be used to clear up emotional issues. Incidentally, all the bags cry continuously in a modulated version of the voice of the… host i guess you’d call it… until they are matched up with their tag… so the likelihood is high that sorting the baggage might actually be helping.

In the spirit of helping, Mental Cobwebs formed from disuse and they block off access to parts of someone’s mind. Too many of them can literally drive someone insane, and cleaning one out with a psychic cobweb duster (which looks like a vacuum)  will restore the person’s access to the memories and skills hidden behind them… as well as potentially allow a Psychonaut deeper access to the mind of the ‘patient’.

Opening Mental Vaults wasn’t helping so much. Not really. At least as far as I could tell. The vaults were animal-like safes that one had to beat up to uncover repressed memories. Unfortunately, those memories could be false or entirely manufactured, which wasn’t ideal.

So yeah… Basic Braining was almost entirely about invading someone’s mind, not as a reader, but as an actual projection into the mind of the individual, able to interact with the mental environment as if it were a physical space. The level of access that would give me to the inner workings of the minds of others would be quite a lot higher than normal telepathy gave, although the level of personal effort and risk was greater, as the mind’s defenses (including weird little dudes called ‘Censors’) would actively and passively be trying to fight me.

Of course, the worst they could do would be to boot me out and make me a bit fatigued… or at least that was the worst shown in the game. It was possible that stronger minds would have stronger defenses. The perk might not protect me from those defenses, but it did include an added bonus in that it would decrease the level of disorientation I felt when astrally projecting, whether or not I was actually entering someone else’s mind… which was good, as I really didn’t like astral projecting specifically because it was fucking unnerving to be floating around without a body, unable to interact with the world around me! I cannot express just how creeptastic I found that.

The bundle of cloth turned out to be my ‘Merit Badge Belt’, a camp sash designed to will allow me to display my powers and skills as scouting merit badges. Sure, it was a purely cosmetic thing, useful only for bragging, but it might impress some people if I explain that each one was a superpower,  skill, or area of expertise in science/magic/martial arts that I possessed. Despite being properly fitted to me at all times and in all forms, the sash would always have space for each badge. So that was nice… if a bit silly. I had a loooot of skills, thanks in no small part to having lived for more than ten thousand years as scores of highly educated individuals. 

Thankfully, the way In-Jump Personas worked meant that I was not constantly being overwhelmed with the separate thoughts and memories of the two-hundred different people. In case you’re wondering what I’m on about, there were a hundred-and-seventy-eight King-Priests of the Maegi, and this was about to be my thirty-sixth jump. I’d been a drop-in (which meant no personality overlay) twelve-times, and one of those jumps had been Civilization. Thirty-five minus thirteen is twenty-two, and twenty-two plus a hundred-and-seventy-eight is a fucking huge number of personalities… which would make one of my new purchases very interesting indeed… but I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Back to the other stuff that the machine had dumped into the hopper when I’d paid for my background… after putting on my new uniform and adjusting my bandana until it was as cute and kicky as could be, I tossed the d8 into the hopper, where it came up a nine (the numbers on it ran from seven to fourteen). I promptly shrank to the size of a fairly small nine-year old. Oh goody. Puberty again! Weeeee!

The next item was the ID request form, which I filled out in the name of ‘Sio Jang’, a Laotian-American girl with albinism and violet eyes (because psytanium is purple) who liked to collect beetles and wanted to be fireman when she grew up… having totally misunderstood exactly what a fireman did for a living. I slid the form back into the machine (there was a slot for it) and the machine obligingly vended my shiny new camp ID, birth certificate (San Francisco, California), social security card, american passport, and home address statement.

AN: San Francisco is home to Psychonauts developer ‘Double Fine’ and also one the US’s largest Laotian-American Community. Educational, huh?

And speaking of psytanium, the Y-shaped thing was my free Dowsing Rod which would help me find buried deposits of the rare (and dangerous) psychoactive metal. Of course, since there was no psytanium outside of the PsychoVerse, it would (in other worlds) point to large concentrations of psychic energy, which could certainly be useful if I ever found myself in, say the Warhammer Universe, famed far and wide for its lunatic psychic metaphysics.

Which left only the blank badge, which was the one free ‘Psychic Specialization’ I got for being a Camper (Instructors didn’t get one free, but got a discount on all purchases of them, so it balanced out). A psychic specialization meant that user was particularly good in a specific subset of psychic powers, such as telepathy, empathy, lumokinesis, psychometry, or the like. As for how good? Well, a single purchase would give the taker the ability to remain invisible for a full day before having to recharge, telekinetically wrestle the bears at camp, telepathically talk to plants (a rare ability), or treat a canoe as a speedboat with psychomotor impulses! It wouldn’t, however, make the taker the best in their area of expertise.

The text stated that the cast of the game were a decent metric for how broad a specialization could be or how powerful, which was (to my way of thinking) a duh statement. Still, while you couldn’t get to the number one slot simply with Psychic Specialization, buying a second specialization for a specific subset would put one in the top three… with a bit of practice. Two was also the maximum that could be applied to a single subset… but these specializations were little more than a baseline. Given the amount of time me and mine had to practice (plus learning and training amplification perks), we’d have much further to go before we reached our limit than any local would have. 

Bearing all that in mind, I considered the options for a long minute before pressing the badge to my forehead as the included instructions directed, and formed a mental image of what I wanted. One of the characters in the game, Elka Doom, was a Precog. One of the powers that Raz learned over the course of the game was Invisibility, though the best at it was Milka Phage. Raz’s version was good enough to be able to fool everyone but the infrared equipped G-Men in the Milkman’s mind.

I wanted neither of those, but rather a hybrid. What I wanted to specialize in was something right out of the pages of my favorite novel… or rather, its third sequel, ‘God Emperor of Dune’. What I wanted had taken the titular character thirty-five hundred years to breed into existence in a genetically viable human being. It was called ‘Precognitive Invisibility’; that is, a resistance to being anticipated with precognitive abilities. Considering the kind of enemies I was going to run into, sooner or later? It was best I sourced that ability as soon as possible. Now was as good a time as any.

As I drew my hand back from my forehead, the badge fell away, fluttering down to land on the sash, where it promptly sewed itself in place, a brain, half of it visible, the other half outlined, embroidered on its face. Success! Of course, Ziggy decided that my squeak of delight meant that it was time to steal something, so I spent the next twenty minutes chasing the sash-thief around the warehouse. Who needs an exercise regime when you have a Ziggy, I ask you?

Once my sash was safely back around my torso, and Ziggy was safely asleep on my head, I spent the lion’s share of my Cranial Points on those two ‘Must Have’ capstones… in fact, counting the hundred I’d paid to be a Camper, the nine-hundred the pair cost me bankrupted me. I’d have to go into Drawbacks to get the last hundred I needed for my companion import plans.

The first capstone, the Camper’s ‘Three Pounds of Dreams’ would be a game changer. Remember how I said that Psychic Specialization was merely a baseline and that, given enough time and training I’d be able to reach the peak / limits of my psychic potential? Yeah… Not with Three Pounds of Dreams I wouldn’t. My three-hundred meant that my mind would never lose its ability to change and evolve, meaning that I’d always be able to make noticeable improvements as long as I kept putting in the effort to push my limits.

So yeah, it meant I was now that special one in a million psyche destined for mental greatness, that my mental defenses would compare favorably to a tank’s armor, while my mental strength would be like unto a battering ram. And yet all that was as nothing in the face of my newfound potential, a potential that meant that learning and mastering new psychic abilities and skills would take me less than a few days. Hell, given sufficient motivation, challenges, and training to push my development I would be able to replicate Raz’s feat of mastering eight different psychic abilities in a single day. Three-hundred Cranial Points never spent themselves so fast. 

However, as much as Three Pounds was a gamechange in the psychic power field, it was as nothing compared to the Drop-In Capstone, ‘Astral Layers’. Three Pounds would make me more powerful… but Astral Layers would make me… more me. Two-hundred times more me, to be specific. Possibly more. Does that number look familiar? Yeah, it should.

See, what Astral Layers did was make every version of me, at least one from every jump, a seperate / independent layer of who and what I was. Within my mind (and remember that my mind was already a palace) they’d be able to act as independent Psychonauts, defending said palace from all intruders and dealing with any disturbances that might arise (say confusion or fear effects). Sure, outside of my own personal mindscape the only effects of Astral Layers would be the increased mental fortitude from the bolstering of my sense of self. Within my mindscape, however, my mind would be transformed into a fortress garrisoned by the many aspects of myself, each providing their own unique perspectives that could prove to be a valuable source of advice and insight, although not without their own biases. Speaking with my id could prove impossibly useful in resolving any repressed issues I might have, but less so when dealing with the nuances of high society.

A psychic learning boost, a psychic defenses boost, and a psychic strength boost, all for only nine-hundred? I wasn’t passing them up… but I had to wonder… if I jumped to Babylon 5 next… just how close to transcendence would I be? Could I fight a Vorlon head to head? That was for later, but still I had to wonder.

As I locked in Astral Layers, I could feel my mindscape coming alive as more than twenty Jumpselves and a hundred-seventy-eight Magi Manifested, as well as a double handful of beings I recognized as aspects of my original psyche… my sense of justice, my rage, my lust, my competitiveness, and others… coalesced out of the various clouds and populated the once empty halls of my Mental Palaces. Librarian of Memories, Cataloguer of Dreams, Conservator of the Mental Gallery, Custodian of the Forgotten… they formed slowly but deliberately, establishing a hierarchy before the Throne of Me… a throne awaiting a future self who was not yet come. It was a throne for she I was becoming, and the hierarchy had room to grow, since it would clearly be doing so for the foreseeable future. Still, I, EssJay, remained the queen of my own mind, my other selves kneeling all around me and pledging their existences to mine.

And speaking of planning for later, some of the gear was incredibly spiffy… a regenerating cache of Psitanium, a mental cobweb duster and psychic loom two pack, and my very own psycho-portal (a door used to make entry into the mind of another easy peasy)? Collectively they’d cost me four-hundred which I didn’t have… and I still really wanted to buy a third companion import. At two, Zane and Velma would get a nice chunk of Cranial apiece… but with three, Zane, Velma, and Francy would each get an even larger boost. But all that would cost me five benny-benjamins. I could aim for six-hundred Cranial of Drawbacks and take the Instructor Capstone… but while that would improve my brain-diving to the point where I wouldn’t need the Psycho-Portal, I’d have to pass on importing Francy and the Psitanium… So that seemed unlikely. I mean, I also kinda wanted the awesome sounding Molotov Milk (Builds healthy bones… then blasts them to smithereens when it detonates)… but I already had a regenerating supply of grenades.

So, I certainly wasn’t willing to go too crazy on this jump, but I was going to have to dip into the well of suck just a little to afford anything else. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of options… not even the normal nine choices. In fact, there were only six total drawbacks (two each at three different price points) to pick from, though in theory I could have taken all of them for a total of thirteen-hundred extra (there was a bonus for combining two of them). But like I said, not too crazy. This world would be bonkers enough without my going hogwild. 

That meant ignoring the two three-hundred pointers, ‘Hand of Galochio’  and ‘Loboto-mized’. The first was a gypsy curse that turned water into my kryptonite even worse than it already was Rasputin’s. For him it didn’t mean game-over. For me? It would be a chain-ender. The second was the very definition of ‘Too Crazy’… as in ‘All-out, absolutely, lock-her-away’ crazy. The kind of crazy it would take an elite team of Psychonauts to put my head in order… if it were even possible, given just how powerful and strange my mind was becoming.

Still, that left a potential pool of six hundred and I found five-hundred I could deal with pretty easily, in the form of ‘Let’s hear it for Jumper! Yay!’, ‘One-Jumper Camp Staff’, and ‘And Now I Have to Wear this Special Hat’. None of them sounded like fun, to be certain, but each of them should be manageable.

The first, and the cheapest at one-hundred Cranial Points, was the annoyingly named ‘Let’s hear it for Jumper!’, which would saddle me with the two most obnoxious and eternally upbeat psychic cheerbrats in the entire camp who would continue to cheer me on no matter what happened… and since they were psychics, that would include following me into the minds of others. Still, it was merely annoying. I’d been a middle school; I could cope with annoying

Of course, the other two were two-hundred pointers, and they were doable, if much more than merely annoying. ‘Special Hat’ referenced Dogan… remember him? The kid who wore a tinfoil hat to keep from making others asplode with his mind? Yeah. That. Essentially, ‘Special Hat’ gave me problems controlling my psi powers… but gave me the means to control those problems… i.e. wearing a special (tinfoil) hat. Look. I know I’m a bit silly, but any drawback that requires a hat, tinfoil or otherwise, was a taker in my book. Hats are cool. I could totally do this, especially with a little bit of enchantment (ala Harry Potter Magic) to keep said hat from coming off my head. 

‘One-Jumper Camp Staff’ was more in that vein; a problem that came with its own solution. Sure, it was almost certainly a bad idea (as it would fragment my mind into a set of alternative, job specific, personalities), but the text specifical said that as long as I had a large chunk of Psitanium on my person, I’d be able to remain stable and cohesive. Since I’d be using the points that drawback provided to, you know, buy a giant lump of Psitanium… one which instantly respawned in my warehouse if lost or destroyed?

Part of me suspected that it couldn’t possibly be that easy to cheese the drawback… but it was right there in green and yellow! I’d have to experiment with how much Psitanium was enough… then use more. Like… three such chunks. Even at its worst, however, those various personalities wouldn’t be counter to my goals, they’d just be unable to help my allies unless they wanted, you know, a burger from the camp commissary or to rent a canoe from the boat dock. It wasn’t as if I really had any goals in this weird setting. 

And that was five-hundred! Now back to my regularly scheduled shopping. First, I bought the Psitanium, which was fifty pounds (a little less than twenty-three kilos) of pure extraterrestrial psycho-reactive metal that made psychics more psychics (and unstable people more unstable) over prolonged exposure. It could be worked into items (such as arrowheads… or, you know… psitanium foil, psitanium bracelets, psitanium diadems, psitanium earrings). Sure, one way of looking at it was as if I’d spent a hundred CP to counter a two-hundred point drawback, but the other way to look at it was that the two-hundred point drawback was subsidizing my future psitanium research and leaving me extra CP to spend on something else…

Like the Cobweb Duster, which would allow me to collect mental cobwebs while inside the minds of others, not only clearing up their minds, by refreshing old skills and uncovering old memories, but also allowing me to use the included Psychic Loom Warehouse attachment to create my own PSI Cards. The only problem with that was that I didn’t know what actual good said cards were.

In the game, Raz leveled his psychic powers by increasing his ‘PSI Cadet Rank’. He did so by completing various challenges (a scavenger hunt, sorting mental baggage, beating the PSI-Punch in Coach Oleander’s Basic Braining level) or by finding PSI Challenge Markers scattered around the camp and island, usually in hard to reach places. However, it was also possible to create a PSI Challenge Marker, and that’s where the loom came into it.

Nine PSI Cards could be combined with an item called a PSI Core (purchasable from the camp store using psitanium arrowheads) to create a Challenge Marker. Simple so far, right? Well, there was one minor and one major problem associated with the entire process, as far as I was concerned.

With the Duster, and given enough time and patients, I could have a theoretically trans-finite number of cobwebs, which translated into a trans-finite number of PSI Cards. What I didn’t have a source for was Cores. Presumably, they could be manufactured, since they were sold at the camp store and the challenge markers were just left random places where any camper could (in theory) collect them… but I had no way of verifying that, as neither the lore I had from playing the game several times nor the information the machine was providing spoke to the possibility.

The other problem was more pressing, however, and potentially a deal-breaker. What, exactly, did Challenge Markers do? Was PSI Cadet Rank a real, measurable thing? Or just a metric the camp used to award participation? In other words, were Challenge Markers actual psychic boosts… or merely weird trophies? Since all Challenge Markers and Cards were found in the real world, that suggested the second was possible… but since rank could be earned by non-physical acts (sorting baggage)? That spoke to the first being maybe true? Shit. I hit the help button.

“Problem, Cadet?” said Ford Cruller’s face in hologram form on the glass of the machine. That was a first. An actual voice!

“Mmm… yes,” I said. “Cores, Cards, Challenge Markers, Cadet Ranks… Actual boosts, or just participation trophies?”

“That’s a good question!” he agreed… but didn’t answer.

“Thank you for the praise,” I snarked. “But how about an answer?”

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Honestly?” I responded, “I think they’re useless, like the badges, merely praise for children. But that said, I think that if I’m paying CP for an item that can craft PSI Cards, there had better be a use for PSI Cards that may not, in fact, match the unstated elements of canon. Raz is powerful enough to actually be a full Psychonaut. That much is clear. So let’s assume they are actually imparting some psychic ability… but not particularly a lot, considering that Raz can hit a Cadet Rank of a hundred-and-one in the game.”

“Okay!” Cruller-Face said, “1% increase to your overall psychic power for every Marker you collect or craft.”

“Speaking of Crafting, can I make PSI Cores? And assuming I can…” I paused, thinking hard, “Does someone have to have been imported into the PsychoVerse to use a Marker to increase their psychic power?”

“Also good questions,” he agreed, nodding his head on his noodle-neck. Again he didn’t answer.

Finally, I sighed and suggested. “How about this. Yes, Cores can be created. It takes a small amount of psitanium and some technical knowhow and focused thought, but it is doable. I assume that the Cores aren’t consumed in the process of boosting the Cadet, but rather act as a catalyst to focus the psychic energy of the Cards, which are made by reweaving dense clots of mental energy… i.e. cobwebs… into a structured jolt to the Cadet’s system. Does that sound reasonable?”

“Does it seem reasonable to you?” he asked, being either highly agreeable or deliberately vague.

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think it was reasonable,” I half-snapped, then grumbled. “Cores should be reusable. It makes sense that the camp can recycle the challenge markers, just recharging them with Cards whenever a camper exhausts one. Also, that explains why there’s only ever one on the shelf in the store. It’s the same one each time. Or one of only a few. I assume that they have to be recharged somehow before they can be fused with the Cards, since if they could be used without that, Raz would be able to recycle the ones he already had.”

“You put too much thought into these things,” Cruller said. “Wouldn’t you rather have fun at camp?”

“Yes, I’m certain I would. But I like knowing how things work and what good things I pay for are!” I did snap this time. “And just for that, I’m going to assert that anyone with any level of psychic potential can benefit from a Challenge Marker, though obviously, it’s still going to boost their power by 1% of their base… not 1% of my base.”

He sighed, nodding his ancient head. “Sure sure. Whatever kid. You gonna make a purchase or waste my time some more?” 

I flicked him off and he vanished. Soo helpful. Turning back to the machine, I paid two-hundred for my very own personalized Psycho-Portal! That was a miniature doorway one could throw at another person to allow you to project yourself into their mental world. It could also be used to allow multiple users to enter a single target at the same time, or to allow the user to draw one or more willing subjects into her own mindscape… typically for training purposes.

It wasn’t foolproof, clearly, as powerful mental blocks could be established to block Psycho-Portal access, and there were built-in blocks preventing use of it on the minds of minors (due to laws protecting underage minds)… but those were technical elements. It was possible I… someone… could tamper with it to remove said locks… for some reason. Iff that seems unethical, remember that children have just as many psychiatric problems and traumas as adults do. Sure, it could be used for brainwashing… but honestly, brainwashing children is already bone simple… why else do you think certain religions want to control public school education so much?

And like that, I was left with only a hundred CP, exactly enough to buy the third import slot. Originally, I’d briefly considered importing Ziggy instead of Francine, since Francy was already a psychic, as were AJ, Petra, and Dyna. There were two reasons to go with Francy rather than the Zig. First, a psychic ferretoid would be… is bad news too mild a descriptive? Second, sure, four of my Mons were psychic types, but AJ, Petra, and Dyna all had physical skills too. Francine was the purest Psyker on the team. With their nine-hundred Cranial Points each, Zane, Velma, and Francine would, essentially, get the same amount of points I had gotten before drawbacks, at least once you tossed in the free origin (unless one of them was silly enough to go Drop-In). Hell, when we tossed in Ahab and Joy, I could practically restaff the camp if I wanted to.

Of course, speaking of Drop-In and silly people, Zane (naturally) went that way, which, in addition to Basic Braining & Merit Badge Belt, got him ‘Ran Away From The Circus’. That gave him the skills of an exceptional circus acrobat, one having mastery of both trapeze and tightrope, with juggling thrown in for good measure. Beyond the agility, balance, reflexes, and strength he’d gain from that experience, he also gained a superior sense of showmanship.

He also got a complete collection of ‘True Psychic Tales Magazine’, which (as it said) included every issue ever printed, with a subscription for any new ones as they come out. Once we left the PsychoVerse, he’d continue to get new issues with articles based on our current universe’s psychic events and community. That could (potentially) include articles involving our adventures. Somehow the mail-in order offers in the back of each issue would still work as long as we followed the mailing and payment instructions. If any issue ever got damaged, all he had to do was burn it and a replacement would appear in the Warehouse within four business days.

All that was free, but with his points he picked up psychic specialities  in both Mental Shielding and Precognitive Invisibility, figuring he might as well go with a decent plan or, as he put it, “If they can see your partner coming, Invisibility ain’t much good, right?” Which was nice of him to notice, but faintly worrying. Having never actually fought a precog, I had very little idea of how such things worked in practice.

He also bought ‘Astral Layers’, figuring that, as he said “More Zane is Always a Good Thing!” He offered to design a tattoo for me so I wouldn’t forget. I thanked him politely… i.e. hit him with a pillow. He claimed it wasn’t very effective. So I nailed him with the People’s Elbow. What can I say, we have a somewhat combative relationship… blame it on the Pokemon.

For, quote, party favors, he picked up the ‘Molotov Milk Crate’, since it was fortified with what the world wanted… as long as what the world wanted as a tasty calcium rich beverage that burned like a combination of vodka and dish soap. It came in an old fashioned milkman’s basket-thing, and in those nice heavy glass bottles with the seals on top instead of normal caps. Unfortunately, while the basket never ran out of milk, and Zane was free to share the milk… only he could ignite it. Still, nutritious and destructive. What more could we want? Well, chocolate might be nice, if I were being honest.

Velma, ever the pedant, went the Instructor route, snagging the freebie tetrafecta of Basic Braining, Merit Badge Belt, ‘Department of Paranormal Education’ , and her own Cobweb Duster. DoPE (haha) gave her a full course in the art of educating young psychics, which included premium methods of developing the present psychic abilities within her (potential) students (no matter how small), the ability to set up psychic training grounds within her own mind, improved control over her own mental censors (wouldn’t do to have her mind’s immune system trying to evict her students… well, not until it was time for combat practice), and the willpower to deal with a summer camp full of hormonal tweens.

“You know, Ess…” she commented, looking up from her gifts with background purchase. “You should cash your Duster out and take something else.”

“Huh?” I asked, “After all the trouble I just went through to detail what it did? Why?”

“Dusters can be bought with arrowheads, right?” she asked.

I nodded slowly, not certain where she was going with this. “Yeah…”

She ticked off points on her fingers. “You’ve got a rod to find them, a block of Psitanium, and can theoretically borrow one of ours… and we don’t need two looms.”

“Three,” interjected Francine.

“You’re going Instructor too, Francy?” Velma asked.

“Of course!,” the firey (in a purely metaphoric sense… you have to specify with poketypes) little psychic said, “They get a discount on Psy Specialities!”

“True,” Velma agreed. “Anyway, that’s my point. We don’t need three Psychic Looms, which is the major point of buying this item. The duster itself is merely…” she paused, “A means to an end?”

I considered that for a few seconds, then nodded. “Okay. You’ve sold me.” I rewarded Velma with a kiss… and Francy with a head ruffle. She blew her moustache at me in a grumpy sort of way, but I could tell she was pleased. We’ve been together a loooooong long while now.

Since I couldn’t afford a second Psychic Specialty to boost me to the top tier, I decided to trade in my duster for DoPE as well if nothing else, it would give me better mental health and willpower. And if our Looms really could help activate otherwise dormant psychics… the training skills might be useful.

As for purchasing power, Velma picked up ‘Psycho-Science’, which meant she was now familiar with everything from the earliest metaphysical research to the cutting edge and state of the art in Psychic Technology. She knew how the Brain Tumbler worked, how to construct a Geodesic Isolation Chamber, how to make her own Psycho-Portal (Remember how most  of the pre-existing ones included that built-in block to protect underage minds from being entered? Yeah, she could make ones that didn’t have that), how to make PSI Cores (that hadn’t been there when I’d read the description), and even how to build Psychic Death Tanks. That last included a how-to guide to properly extract and store living brains in jars… you know, for reasons! It also came with the knowledge of how to put those brains back inside a person’s head. Mad Science for the win!

She also snagged ‘Psychonautics’, an unparalleled level of skill in psyche diving (unparalleled you know, unless Francy also bought it.), with the matching insight to truly understand the mind at its core levels. It made her a fully trained Psychonaut and expert in the field of Psychonautics in general, one who knew how to truly explore the human condition. It included knowledge of the various methods of achieving the altered states of consciousness to do so, though in her case, she could do it through will alone. It even came with the ability to explore the Collective Unconscious (think of it as a hub level, if you’re still thinking in game terms), which would allow her to visit the minds of those she had a connection to… over any distance… as well as to tap into crowd psychologies! As an added bonus, she would also gain an increased ability at understanding truly alien, inhuman minds.

And with the last of her points, she bought not one but four Psychic Specializations. Well, two specializations (Psychic Transparency and Psy-Suppression) and one extra-specialization in Levitation. Transparency would allow mental attacks and scans to pass through her while she was using it. It was essentially phasing for psychic stuff. Suppression was a general dampener, great for controlling unruly psychic campers or mutant lungfish… yes, that was a thing in the game.

“Uh… Levitation?” I asked. “You can fly.” It was true. Although she hadn’t bought ‘Soar’ in Touhou, she was a Vampiric Magicienne and could thus use magic to, you know, fly… or she could turn into a bat.

“That takes magical energy. This is psychic energy,” she said. “Plus, I hate turning into a bat… it makes my head throb. Also, this will work inside people’s minds… I don’t know if magical flight will.”

I paused, then grunted. “Good point, criticism rescinded… also, this has slow fall mode, which can be good in emergencies.” I summoned an umbrella and did my impression of Mary Poppins… though I don’t remember that worthy having to dodge oranges thrown by her friends. Of course, I didn’t dodge either. I let them bounce off my telekinetic shielding. Simpletons. I fear no fruit!

Francy, as promised, also went Instructor, Basic Braining & Merit Badge Belt, Department of Paranormal Education, Cobweb Duster… yada yada yada… but instead of being reasonable and getting a spread of perks with her points… she grabbed nine (yes, with an n!) Psychic Specializations: Psychoportation twice, Psychic Void (the ability to absorb psychic attacks and probes), Instance Heightening twice (the ability to make people do what they’re already doing, only more so… focus on watching sports, sleep, look for the source of a noise, etc.), Domination twice, Telekinesis, and Psy-Stun. Ouch.

“Are you sure you don’t want Three Pounds of Dreams?” I asked, “It’ll cost you six of your picks, but might be worth it in the long run. It guarantees you’ll never stop growing.”

“You doubt my ability?” she humphed.

“Not doubting you, Spoongirl,” I teased a bit. “I’m saying that biology hits a limit of diminishing returns. Three Pounds removes that limitation.”

“I…” she began, then faltered, face showing how torn she was.

I held up my hand and began ticking off fingers. “You’re thinking that quantity is better than quality, and I get that. I do. But you’ve got three doubles, you’re already a TK and Stun master, and can Dominate with the best of them. That’s six. Toss those and all your psychic powers, not just the ones you get here, will be able to improve as long as you make the effort.”

“I…” she continued, frowning as she tried to work through the logic. She’s very (very) smart, but she sometimes gets stuck in obsessive loops where desire wars with logic.

“Don’t trust your old trainer?” I finally asked, not unkindly.

That earned me a hard stare, then she sighed and nodded. “Very well. You are probably right. I shall put my trust in your judgement.”

“I’m sure the camp has some lovely spoons. And maybe we can make you some out of psytanium.” That cheered her up.

Ahab and Joy decided to join me and Zane in the ranks of the Camper Elite, thus netting themselves Basic Braining, a Merit Badge Belt, and a Dowsing Rod… with Ahab picking Psychic Specialty (Sensory Invisibility) and Joy picking Psychic Specialty (Technopathy). That all squared away nicely, we dropped in. Ziggy complained about not being imported, but was mollified with Ziggy Treats, which are like Scooby-Snacks, but lamb flavored.

INSERTION

What can I say about Whispering Rock Summer Camp? It’s Summer Camp… deranged teens and tweens doing hokey things like wrestling bears, assassinating squirrels, and performing psychic surgery on mental patients… what do you mean that’s not normal for Summer Camps? What the hell kind of summer camp did you go to?

I’d like to claim it was all fun and games. I’d like to say it was fun in the sun and hijinks all the way… but… I… I made a mistake. I… shit. I killed them all. Well, not all. Not Clem and Crystal, little psychopaths cheering as I obliterated the camp and its staff.

My companions had a place to go, a place to hide until the storm passed… Curse that Loboto… can’t hold a Psitanium Chunk when you’re a brain in a tank. Can’t wear a tinfoil hat when you’re a brain in a tank… Brain in a Tank Me had only one mission, one task… destroy… obliterate… no controls. Nothing… all my powers unleashed by a single sneeze. Yes, in that world, you can sneeze your brains out… literally. Fucking Loboto, stole my Psitanium / tinfoil helmet, then hit me with a pepper bomb. Probably just wanted to see what would happen. Fuck him so much. 

And fuck me. All this power… and all it took to take me down was a pepper grinder. The worst part about it? Part of my mind is trying to tell me that they were little psychopaths, too dangerous to be allowed out into the wider world, that the camp was a production facility for psychic weapons… maybe the voice is right. Maybe I did the… necessary thing… but I didn’t do it for the right reasons. They may have been weapons, but they were also kids… and even if I didn’t willingly kill them… I failed to save them.

My friends tried to come for me, to put me back in my body, but I was too out of control. All they could do was try and keep me from doing too much damage. If there is one kindness out of all this, it’s that there was no way anyone else could control me. The government just sealed the area around Whispering Pines after all attempts to wrangle me had failed. I don’t think they wanted to risk the possibility of someday controlling me, so they quarantined me, isolated me, contained me as they kept trying to regain control… or maybe not. Maybe it was all in my head. Who can say?

I have hundreds of conflicting memories of that period, each persona doing its own thing… or at least thinking they were, and the primary persona trapped in a mechanical mindscape of pain and induced paranoia, gunning down abominations and computerized targets, no way to differentiate reality from unreality. But even if those memories are false… are merely  the delusions of a fractured psyche? How would I tell? 

After the jump ended and I found myself whole, collected, me… and in my own body, I spent the next week or so doing my impression of someone having an emotional breakdown, curling up into a ball and sobbing uncontrollably. Too many years, too many layers, too much shielding for me to break down completely, but there was a guilt I could not shake, could not without discarding the memories… I so wanted too, but guilt kept me from doing so, kept me reliving them again and again and again, trying to figure out if they were reality or fantasy. I didn’t even dare ask the others; how would I deal with it if they confirmed the worst?

And if I really had killed all those dangerous little brats… there was a terrible, burning question in my mind. Would I have been as deadly without the drawbacks? Did the lack of control and the fragmented mind-scape make me more dangerous? Less? Did they make no difference ultimately.

I suspect that my pure power level meant that once my brain was installed  in that Psycho-Tank, the programming that came with installation would have made me a monster regardless. Maybe I’d have been even worse whole. They might have been able to control me then… but I can’t be sure.

But regardless if the drawbacks were a net positive or a net negative, I was still to blame. I… I never thought to protect myself against the cartoon logic of the world, never really thought that I could fall victim to something as stupid as pepper induced de-cranialization. I’d been aware of the risk… but it had seemed too wacky to actually happen.

I guess this was a part of me I’d have to either come to terms with, or not. At least I hadn’t killed them knowingly or willingly. That was something… A thin branch to hang one’s sanity on, but when that’s all there is, that’s all there is.

Next: World 35 – War & Remembrance

Resources: Build, Document

If you like what I do, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

AN (10th June, 2019): Well, I’ve finished Redux of this Chapter and begun breaking the Chain into Chronicles. Psychonauts was not an easy rewrite, but it had to be done. Almost triple the original length, it does deeper into the source material (for those unfamiliar with that) and delves more into the uses of certain items, since the document doesn’t really explain very well. I even extended the explanation of what happened, since I wanted to make that clearer… or less clear… or both. There is a tendency among jumpers, I think, to have blind spots, prejudices, unseen weaknesses, and this was my way of sobering my counterpart up. She likes to be logical, likes to be sensible, to take goofy but calculated risks. She thinks in terms of real world problems and real world solutions… and Psychonauts has almost none of that. It’s a looneytoon world with Cthulhu Mythos underpinnings. It seems like cotton candy, but is really poison underneath… and she didn’t give it its proper due. Plus, to be quite honest, there was editorial interference. That’s WoG. Maybe it was the Banker throwing a curveball, maybe it was Mensarius being a dick, maybe it was the hand of a certain rogue jumper. Regardless, it had to happen because I (the author) really felt that such a slip up was inevitable. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.