Fandom High School

"This will be your last class before the finals," Kerrigan said, radiating apathy. "I'm not going to ask you to write essays or come up with group projects or presentations. Study. Next week, there's a test."

And her last chance to get some useful ideas out of these kids before she took off for Koprulu once again.

"These past few months, we've been discussing the nature and the science of psionics. Multiversally, it is not a field that can be easily cordoned off. You have all seen things, done things that don't fall within the scope of what I've taught you in these classes. So the question I pose to you today to consider is 'what are psionics, and what can we do with them?'. That is, after all, the central question of this course."

Unless you asked Kerrigan honestly, in which case the central question was 'how can my students help me devour the galaxy and then possibly the multiverse', but hush.

"It's the mind in communication with the outside world," she said, "It is a terrifying weapon. It is who some of us are. It is a tool. It is a science. It is a magic. It is something in ourselves that allows us to reach out and alter the world around us, observe more closely, make fuller use of the potential input and output. It can burn worlds and heal minds. It is power, and if you don't comprehend that yet, it's about time that you do."

Her eyes flicked over the class. "Some of you will go on to do great things with this power," she said, "Some of you won't. Some of you don't have it. But the possibilities are endless - and they start with how you define the field, and what you plan to do. I suggest not standing by idly, children."

The smile on her face was not particularly nice.

"An old friend of mine used to be quite concerned with issues of morality and ethics," Kerrigan began. She had no more sentimental feelings towards Harriet Jones, but the woman was an easy memory to use convincingly. "Personally, I've never quite had the time to stop and think about it."

A lift of her eyebrows that invited taking that as a joke. It... wasn't. At least not nowadays.

"We've touched on this before, of course," she drawled, "But this friend died some time after I left the island, so for sentimentality's sake I'm throwing a stick into this henhouse."

Most likely, the topic wouldn't bring her any interesting intel on these kids, but it might leak something. No matter. Kerrigan was quickly losing her interest in this island as it stood. "Telekinesis, telepathy, all the other forms of this power of the mind we've been talking about, all of it comes with an opportunity for abuse. And yet, on the other side of it - telepaths from my universe had no choice. They couldn't stay out of your head if they wanted to. So was it abusive for them to use their powers?"

Her mouth was a thin line. Almost a smile, if you looked at it wrong.

"Do we - or they, if you're not one of us - have a responsibility to keep ourselves in check? I'm not talking about just my home now. Should we hole ourselves up and wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and come with warning labels?" She snorted. "Or do we exercise the power we've been given and well, pity the poor fools, but it's not our fault they didn't come equipped with the skills to keep us out...? Do our powers make us some special category of people that needs laws pasted all over them, or can we say fuck them, you've got ears and you use them, too, no matter how inconvenient it is to me?"

She glanced over the class. "And can anyone on the outside make demands of us one way or the other? They weren't born with these powers, after all. What do they know? Can they make any accurate judgement about what we're supposed to do? Hm?"

She might have had her opinions.

She waved a hand at the class. "Talk," she said. "Just this once, there are no wrong answers."

Ahahah. There were totally wrong answers.

"We're going for a more practical lesson today," Kerrigan spoke. She was standing in the Danger Shop again; this time, the world around them looked like a giant maze. The only thing that jumped out was the rack of suits standing by the side. "There are two applications of telekinesis that are interesting to explore live. Barriers and propulsion. The ability to create a barrier is rare among Terrans back home - it takes a great deal of power."

She, as recently displayed, had to make absolutely no effort at all to do it.

"The Protoss, however, have perfected it, especially when creating a mechanical force field isn't possible. Their barriers can protect their entire bodies. Otherwise, they do what it says on the tin: it's a concentrated effort of psionic power projected around them. It's sustaining the barrier that takes up most of the power, which is why they can only last for so long, especially when someone is shooting at you."

"As for propulsion, we have animals back home that have evolved the ability to use psionics to move." Well, force-evolved. Thank you, Zerg genetic engineering. "They can only produce a small amount of psionic power, but it's all telekinetic. That means they can use the power to push their relatively light bodies up into the air, and move them in whatever direction. However, they don't exactly achieve high speeds - if they did, they'd run out of power fairly quickly."

She glanced over the class. "Some of you might already have powers like this," she said, "Some of you don't. Those of you who don't-- I'd like you to take one of these suits. They can grant you a barrier for a brief period, but you'll find it a drain on your concentration. They also simulate the kind of psionic power you need to briefly propel yourself, be it forward or upward, with the same drain." She gave the entrances to the rest of the maze, which were all around them, an idle gesture. "Pick a partner, then pick an entrance. You'll find that some corners have turrets in them which will stun you if they hit you. Somewhere at the end of these paths is the exit. Find it, and you can leave. If you don't, you'll be able to leave at the end of the class.

"Get on with it."

"Telekinesis."

The group had been summoned to the Danger Shop this week, though it didn't appear to be much of anything - just a very large room with no visible exits beyond the way they'd gotten in.

"It's a field of psionics that covers many possible abilities and strategies," she continued. "With the use of telekinesis, you can lift objects--" she hovered a pen up into the air without even lifting a finger, "Move them--" With an idle gesture of her hand, the pen went soaring at the wall. It bounced off and back towards her. "Repel them--" An invisible shield came into being with another flick of her arm, and the pen bounced harmlessly off it.

In that moment, anyone sensitive to it might have picked up on the sheer waves of power coming off Kerrigan; a second later her shields had covered the worst of it again.

She halted the pen's movements, then peeled every individual part off it with a thought. "And, of course, use subtle manipulation. Essentially, telekinesis is the ability to manipulate the physical world through the mental. Where I'm from, it's a very rare talent among human beings. It takes... a great deal of power."

The pen popped back together, and she placed it down on the table. "There have been mechanical attempts to reproduce it, but we'll go into that later," she said. "Today is meant to send you all thinking about the possibilities, if you don't possess it yourself, and to experiment -- in a safe environment -- with your powers if you do. The Danger Shop has been programmed to simulate telekinetic abilities as soon as I say the word. If you don't have powers, you can then manipulate the world around you with physical cues. Reaching, moving your hands, that kind of thing. Crude, but for those of you who are ill-equipped, the only way you can have even an inkling of how this works, and the complex skills it takes to make it work."

She walked towards the wall panel and pressed her hand to it. The empty room filled up with random objects, though nothing with sharp edges. She leaned against the wall.

"You have thirty minutes. We'll talk about your findings at the end of the class."

"Psionics are a kind of energy," Kerrigan began. They were in an ordinary classroom again. She had some fabric sitting in front of her, as well as a round device that looked like a large light, and what appeared to be the hilt of a small dagger. "And like all types of energy, it can be harnessed. Last week, we saw some devices that managed to simulate the psionic abilities of your average teep. This week, we're dealing with a few things made to respond to psionic power, and enhance it."

She picked up the bit of fabric. "This comes from a Ghost's hostile environment suit," she said, "it's a polymer blend. The hostile environment suit 'gathers up' psionic energy from particular nerve clusters on your body, and routs it through this fabric. The fabric, which sticks close to your skin, enhances your strength, speed and durability with that energy. Many Ghosts also get this installed--" She patted the round device. "It's a Moebius Reactor. It stores up and increases psionic energy, meaning that with a Moebius Reactor in place, you will have more energy at the ready to use if you need it. As for this..."

She picked up the hilt. A second later, a blade suddenly portruded from it, made of solid psionic energy. "This is a psi-blade," she said. "Back home, they're made by this species called the Protoss. It responds to the user's psionic energy and sipons off a little bit of it to form this blade. Don't touch it - it'll slice you up worse than just about anything."

As soon as she cast the hilt down, the blade vanished.

"Psionics is energy," she repeated. "As strange and ungraspable as it might seem, this power is still quantifiable. You can use it, not just mentally, but physically. Of course, the advantages are greater and easier for teeks, but with the right technology, telepaths can use their own energy to affect the world around them as well. Just a little more like a blunt instrument than a power tool."

She picked up the psi-blade's hilt again. "I'm keeping this, for obvious reasons," she said, "But the rest of you should feel free to study the reactor and the fabric. If you have powers, you're even free to see if they work for you."

"'I am like an onion'," Kerrigan said, ( 'Layers.' )

[[ wait for the ocd up! ]]

"Today, we're getting the less flashy topic out of the way first," Kerrigan began, as soon as everyone was seated. "Back on the first rungs of the psi scale, though we're obviously not adhering to that slavishly. Last week, a lot of you brought up powers that didn't classify easily on the scale: you all have a dash of this, a dash of that, a variation of this..."

She almost smiled. But not quite. "We're going to be talking about the up-to-fives. Wranglers, clairvoyants, precogs. People who have enough power to get a little bit of a feel for something, but who usually aren't powerful enough to start rooting around in brains, or throwing stuff around." Beat. "Those are technical terms. You can quote me on that."

(She was joking around, this time. This wasn't Tactics class.) "Or, as we call them back home, 'sense psionics'. Now, for most of you, like it is for me, having psionics is a case of genetic inclination. You all have a gene or two that has been 'toggled' - barring those of you who have no powers - to let you use your senses in a different way. Sense psionics are kind of the halfway point in that. Everyone's best guess back home is that using psionics produces what we call 'alpha waves'. Anyone with a psionic ability can pick up on those, as long as they're sensitive enough. The best Ghosts can identify a fellow telepath with a glance."

"At the very lowest rungs, at least back home, they manifest as simple headaches. The part of their brain that has a sensitivity to power notes its kin, but doesn't manage to do more than agitate some pain receptors higher up in your skull. This is a by-effect that sometimes even carries on to more powerful psionics, who can get massive headaches if they use their power."

She glanced around the room. "Which gets us to clairvoyance," she said, "Sensing things that are contemporary to us, but not available to the human senses, so to speak. It's another type of sensitivity to the psionics around us, to the alpha waves. A clairvoyant can briefly sense 'imprints' on the world. Ghosts, for example. Most people who exhibit clairvoyant behaviour tend to have powers so limited they can't access them until they go into trance - their mind can't handle the info when they are awake."

"Finally, precogs are a little trickier, and if you ask me, at the most powerful end of the spectrum. Maybe even spiking above our under-five designation. To see the future, you have to be pretty damn receptive to it, if it is even really possible. Many events of the future are still unwritten, after all. It's probably something to do with space-time, the idea that space and time are wrapped up into each other: powerful psionic imprints from further over in the timeline get 'folded' across ours, leaving those capable of catching the vision with both a headache and a brief feel for the way things are. I can't say a lot of research has gone into this, though, because visions are unpredictable, and easily mixed-up in dreams."

A beat. Then she added, wryly, "Plus, they have limited military application."

Which kind of explained everything, back home, though Kerrigan was... interested in it, herself. She had been bothered by omens and visions herself for quite a while, now; her zerg devouring the galaxy, then standing idle, screaming in their own minds as the Dark Voice's whisper became over-powering and the zerg-protoss hybrids destroyed them all, and then darkness, vacuum-- thinking maybe even uncomfortably of Zeratul's words, 'Yours is not the hand, but your very existence provides necessary instruction.'

But that was her own cross to bear - although she hoped this class might stumble upon something she could use. "That's what I know," she said. "Since this class is not about the flashy stuff, I suggest we go for a non-flashy, boring activity. You guys all pull up a chair in a circle, and inform the group of what experience you might have had with sense psionics, or what you might have read about it. Talk to each other. See if you can't figure out what scientists haven't just yet."