by Page Turner
Penny failed this phase. It was a disaster. “That was one of the worst performances I think I’ve ever seen,” the examiner noted.
If that isn’t a bit of extra credit communication I could have lived forever without, Penny thought but kept to herself.
It’s at times like these when I’m glad I can’t send thoughts, Penny mused, as her examiner prepped for the second portion, which also was slated to take hours. It’s bad enough worrying about an errant email. A “reply all” by mistakes that goes to just the wrong person. Could you imagine if you could accidentally click send on a stray thought? No, thank you.
In the second phase, the examiner tested Penny with a deck of Zener cards. The deck had twenty cards, all told. Five symbols appearing four times. Penny already knew what they were: Yellow circle, red cross, blue wavy lines, black square, green star.
Not only were these symbols part of the standard abbreviated battery, they’d taken on a life of their own outside of psychometrics. In the early days, when everything was more underground, psychics had peppered them throughout their fashion choices. Putting one on a ring served as an easy way to alert others nearby that you were intuitive. Later, someone had arranged them into a kind of psychic flag, although few were bold enough to wave such a flag openly, let alone permanently hang it outside their home.
Penny’s favorite band growing up used the green star extensively in their imagery: On stage, on their albums, on their band-themed T-shirts.
Eventually, the State got on board, too, and these five symbols came to represent the all-important psychic “classification.”
On Governmental Classifications
Even though psychic taxonomy was (and still is) in its infancy, the State has roughly sorted psychics into discrete custodial statuses based on the nature of their respective powers.
That’s how it’s purported to be organized, although the available facts fail to bear this assertion out. Independent meta-analyses conducted on the State’s psychic classification of individual citizens have yielded some glaring statistical irregularities. It has been, to date, impossible to fit the data to a slope that doesn’t have something else wrapped into it. The most historically common cause in experimental designs such as these has been bias.
When statisticians have attempted to explain this poor correlational fit, they have come up with a few possibilities. While it’s impossible to say definitively a more apt undiscovered “third variable” doesn’t exist, the one that is currently the most mathematically sound relates to a cross-product of how potentially economically useful a State examiner would rate a psychic’s powers to be and how high that subject scores in personality scores of agreeableness.
Or, in other words, the best way to reliably achieve a green star regardless of psychic power, is to be nice to the person testing you and convince the State you can make it some money.
[Editorial note: The preceding paragraph is not present in the second edition or any subsequent original editions. It has been left in this reproduction for historical accuracy.]
Here are the current State Classifications:
Black Square: Detention/Imprisonment. Deemed too dangerous to have any traditional civil liberties. Property of the State.
Red Cross: Heavy Monitoring. Residents at an intensive outpatient center. If they are allowed to leave the facility, it is rare and never without the supervision of a State-qualified guardian.
Yellow Circle: Light Monitoring. Bound by an intricate reporting system whereby they must make regular visits to a State Sponsor, who will certify that they are obeying all relevant rules and regulations and that they pose no danger to themselves or others.
Blue River: Allowed to live on their own terms with monitoring only as needed with cause.
Green Star: Allowed to live on their own terms with monitoring only as needed with cause. Work in the employ of the State. Afforded additional privileges.
It’s worth noting that these additional Green Star privileges aren’t specified in the State Code and are subject to change at any time, based on officer discretion and the interpretation of the laws of the Psychic State.
However, some general patterns have been observed and maintained for over two decades. For example, while Blue Rivers need to check in with authorities any time they go on a long road trip, Green Stars are allowed to travel out of the immediate area without telling anyone – provided they aren’t missing a scheduled shift at work to do so.
While many abide by this system of classification and find it sufficient to describe the range of psychic experience, others are less convinced. The Psychic State’s decision to adopt the Zener symbols as such important differentiators was looked on with much disdain by psychic taxonomists in the early days of its adoption.
Formerly, taxonomists omitted all mentions of this classification in their handbooks, and it took several waves of reemployment before this material was grandfathered in as legacy theory and the body’s convention moved from exclusion to inclusion.
Early critics of the State Classification Method pointed out its overly simple categories and replicability/reliability problems. They also expressed concern about the difficulty posed to the State by using symbols formerly used for self-identification and counterculture liberation to adorn tools intended to catalog that same population in order to keep the peace but in doing so also depriving some people of the liberties those symbols had originally celebrated and hoped to preserve.
The response from the State to these voiced concerns was quite clear: That was the whole point.
It was theorized in the early years of the Psychic Phenomenon that State control would soon be in jeopardy. After all, how would it be possible for a State to maintain control over an entire class of citizens who possessed exceptional powers?
However, theory would turn out to be far off the mark. In reality, it would turn out to be quite easy to keep psychic citizens under State control. And the reason is simple: Psychic citizens are still human beings and as such possess all the normal failings and biases that most people struggle with.
While some psychic citizens do rebel against the State, to date they have done so as lone actors. Anti-State resistance has yet to be launched in an organized and coordinated manner. Therefore, those efforts have little effect.
Instead, it’s much more common to see psychic citizens fighting amongst themselves and blaming one another for their problems, displacing their frustration upon their peers instead of working to dismantle the systems that are actually oppressing them.
In plainer terms: The hold that the State has over its psychic citizens is only possible because intuitives don’t cooperate with one another. If intuitives across the State threw down their zero sum mentality and collaborated, they could easily overthrow the government.
Unfortunately, like many other oppressed peoples, they look to each other first as primary obstacles, and enmity towards the government (their true oppressors) has always been more of an afterthought.
from Insecta Psychica: Towards an Intuitive Taxonomy by Cloche Macomber
Penny found the second phase of the comprehensive perceptive battery just as confounding.
Try as she might, she couldn’t guess the cards the examiner held in his hand.
At the conclusion of the battery, she was informed of her score: 20%.
Precisely what one would expect due chance, if a subject with no psychic powers were simply guessing.
Penny knew it was a bad sign when the examiner moved her to the third phase exam room and didn’t sit down right away, retiring instead to an undisclosed location.
She was showing no promise. Of course. It would be a waste of a day. What would she tell Viv?
“Hello,” she greeted the person sitting in the room’s other chair, a preppy boy with neatly combed hair wearing a blue V-necked sweater with a designer logo on it and a pair of newly p
ressed khaki pants. “Are you being tested today, too?”
“Aren’t we all being tested? Isn’t that how it works?”
Penny cocked her head. “Are you majoring in philosophy?”
The boy laughed, throwing back his head with wild abandon.
Penny spoke to the boy for several minutes. He was irritating, she decided. Full of himself. Withholding. What was his deal?
Hopefully, the next task wasn’t a cooperative one. She couldn’t fathom how she’d make it through it without murdering him.
The examiner returned, attended by a colleague.
When they got to the door, they stopped and stared.
“Who in the world is she talking to?”
“Herself?”
“If that’s the case, it’s the most animated case of ‘private speech’ I’ve ever seen.”
The examiner and his colleague walked back around the corner into a private office. From there, they could access the audio from Exam Room 3.
“…so how many times have you taken this test?”
A pause.
Then Penny spoke the examiner’s address and wife’s name aloud, tentatively and slowly, as though she were repeating it without really absorbing it. “Why should I say that to him?” she seemingly asked the air. “You think that’ll get his attention? Make him think I’m psychic? I don’t know about that. I don’t think it’s fair to cheat on a test like that.”
The two examiners walked back to Exam Room 3 and opened the door.
“Ms. Penelope Dreadful.”
“Yes?” Penny said.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Why, him of course,” she said, gesturing to what to them looked like an empty chair.
The examiner and colleague exchanged confused looks.
“Oh no, not again,” Penny said.
“You see someone sitting there?” the examiner said gently.
Penny hesitated and nodded.
“I regret to inform you, young lady, there is no one there,” the examiner said.
“Oh.” Penny frowned and looked away.
“Is this the first time you’ve seen someone that others couldn’t?” the examiner said, trying to keep his voice as calm and level as possible.
Penny sighed. She nodded.
“Have you been worked up by mental health professionals?”
“Plenty of times,” Penny said. “I’m not crazy.”
“I didn’t say you were,” the examiner said.
“There’s another possibility,” his colleague said.
The examiner and Penny both looked at him expectantly. “These… people… you see… do they have anything in common?”
“Not a lot,” Penny said. “Well, except for one thing.”
“And that is?”
“They all tell me that they’re dead,” Penny replied. “Well eventually. When they get around to it. It’s not always the first thing that comes up in conversation.”
The colleague smiled broadly. “If you’ll excuse us,” he told Penny.
“Sure,” she said.
The examiner and colleague stepped into the hallway. “We’ve been trying to keep the matter quiet, but another subject died in that exam room just a few days ago.”
“Died? What exactly were you doing to them?” his colleague asked.
The examiner rolled his eyes. “It was a freak death. Natural causes. A ruptured aneurysm.”
“Of course,” the colleague said. “I’m sure that’s what was on the record.”
“Yes,” the examiner said.
They exchanged a knowing gaze during a rather pregnant pause.
“Anyway,” the examiner continued, “I’m not sure she’s actually talking with that… expired subject. But it’s possible.”
“Get the Medium Module,” the colleague instructed the examiner.
“Yes, sir,” the examiner replied.
As his colleague walked away, and the examiner reentered the examination room, he grumbled, “A medium. Just my luck. That’s gonna drag my average down.”
“What a shmuck,” the spirit said to Penny.
“Totally,” she agreed with her dead companion.
“Totally what?” the examiner asked.
“Totally radical, dude,” Penny replied. It didn’t make much sense, but it was the first thing that popped into her mind.
The examiner rolled his eyes but proceeded with the next phase.
Penny blitzed through the Medium Module, which basically consisted of her traveling with the examiner to several different locations until she found spirits and interviewing them about things she couldn’t possibly know.
It was after dark by the time she met his criteria. Therefore, it was well after dark by the time she returned home to Viv.
“How’d it go?” Viv asked.
Penny plunked down her newly minted State-issued intuitive identification. A temporary issue designed to be good enough until the permanent one arrived in the mail.
“A Green Star!” Viv exclaimed. “Just like me. Good job.”
Penny beamed.
“I knew you’d make it happen,” Viv said, which made Penny beam even more.
“Oh yeah?” Penny said. “See it in one of your visions?”
Viv winced a little at the word ‘vision.’ It was a bit woo-woo for her tastes, something Penny typically knew and steered clear of. But Viv she didn’t push back this time and gathered herself quickly, ignoring it.
“Mmhmm,” Viv said instead. “Something like that.”
When people asked how they had met Karen… well, that was a little more difficult to explain.
Viv and Penny had been together for four years when they encountered their first major bump in the road. It’s telling that this inaugural bump had really nothing to do with them or their core relationship but a relative.
Because it was in their fourth year together that Viv’s mother, Tender Lee, was admitted to Nirvana Heights.
As far as mental health hospitalization, Tenny could have done a lot worse. Nirvana Heights was a 54-bed psychiatric facility, the best in the Skinner-Watson area. True, only about half of those were open to the public – the other half already spoken for and at any given time inhabited by the area’s most important people. Members of the Four Families down on their luck. Celebrities who needed to dry out for the weekend. Famous researchers who were going through hard times. Generally speaking, the facility often housed people with connections.
For the most part, the patients at Nirvana Heights were there for a very short time. Very few residents of Nirvana Heights stayed for more than a week or two, with the vast majority gracing the hospital staff with their presence via a 72-hour hold.
Still, Viv knew her mother had truly taken a turn for the worse when Love had called her up in the wee hours of the morning to let her know about the hospitalization.
“I regret to inform you that Mother will be indisposed for a while,” Love had said.
Viv had no idea what the hell that meant. “Could you speak in English please?”
“Look, it’s not my fault you’re a barbarian,” Love had countered.
“Just tell me what’s going on,” Viv had replied.
“Certain things need to be handled delicately,” Love had said.
“Love,” Viv had said, drawing the one syllable out so long and lacing it with such annoyance that she might as well be saying hate.
“Mom’s been committed to Nirvana Heights,” Love had said.
In that moment, Viv felt her knees go weak. The world could have slipped out from underneath her, and she hardly would have noticed.
As Love began to explain the logistics of Tender Lee’s psychiatric admission, visiting hours, regulations, and Love’s own plans for dropping in, bright spots cr
opped up in Viv’s vision and her view of the room she was in blurred.
She suddenly saw another room before her. A common area. Her mother was sitting there, surrounded by a motley band of characters. The carpet was dinghy, the furniture basic, battered, and dated. Think a jury duty holding room if everyone was not quite in their right mind.
Actually, still think jury duty in many cases.
A man sat in a rocking chair and popped his tongue in and out of his mouth rhythmically, as though he were a toad catching flies.
Several young adults gathered around a table with a partially finished puzzle on it.
Viv’s mother Tender was there, too, sitting on the couch next to a sullen figure with a hoodie drawn tightly over her head.
“You know what I like about you?” Tenny said to the figure next to her.
The hooded figure said nothing.
“It’s that you don’t talk my ear off. You don’t say anything at all, so you never say anything annoying.”
No response.
“That’s the thing, you know,” Tender continued. “Most people are really shit at dealing with others. Even when they try to relate to what you’re going through, when they try to be supportive, they turn it around and recenter themselves as the focus of the conversation. They make it all about them. I can’t stand that.”
Still no response.
“So thank you for that,” Tenny said. “You’re the best roommate I’ve ever had.”
Viv blinked and the common room vanished. She was once again standing in her own kitchen, listening to her sister Love rant about the conditions at Nirvana Heights that their mother had reported. There were no paleo meal plans. And don’t get her started on the thread count on the sheets, wasn’t that just a travesty? How could they subject her mother to such threadbare accoutrements?
Since things had been so smooth between them for years, Viv wasn’t at all sure how Penny would take the news. After all, Penny didn’t have any relationship with her own parents. She’d never even known them, had grown up as a ward of the state, moving from foster home to foster home.