Junior SPECIAL Agent Lulu reporting.

Still hot on the trail of the International Psychic Crime Psleazebag ring - and their ringleaders @Tony24 and @Lazzeretto. Unfortunately, as a Junior Special Agent, I'm not allowed to call in International Psychik Pstrike Teams, otherwise @Tony24 would likely already be in custody. For questioning. In one of our interdimensional detention centers - which we're allowed to operate under the National Psychic Security Reforms. Plus there's the issue of foreign sovereignty, with no extradition treaty with Nova Siena. But there are ways around that.

What is even more infuriating is tracking that shady @Lazzeretto. And no, that's not a racist comment - we are fully trained in Undead Empathy before we can wear the Junior Special Agent badge. I just know I can catch him tripping up, but he's got some method of evading my Third Eye scans. I've placed a network of the hyper-miniaturized Third Eyes in his dorm hall, the cafeteria, the gym, and everywhere else he might haunt. Since the Third Eyes are sentient, a few of them may have actually wandered into his room - but hey, I've got no control of that. Still admissible in Psecret Psychic Court hearings, though.

But the kid just won't show up in the scans. I know he's there - we can see doors opening, objects seeming to float around the room (as he picks them up, we assume), but no ID on the perp. The blood sucker's got no reflection on any level of the psychic EM bands. And without that, I can't get the warrant we'd need for a detention.

So I wait. Stakeout-style. Just me and a cup of coffee, watching the array of screens in the Junior Special Agent HQ, waiting for him to slip up.

Over and out.

Greetings from lovely Nova Siena, where I've been holed up in the Psychic Camera Obscura for about a week, fending off the undead hoards.

Just before it all went completely off the rails, Angela came to me in the dead of night and shushed me out of our beautiful pensione. She said to run.

"You must go! Run! Far away!"

"We're in the middle of the jungle."

"It is the Gar'zza! You are not safe here! Go!"

We are in the middle of the Venezuelan rainforest. Literally hundreds of miles of jungle and no roads. Just a little landing strip where they land their private jets. Which I don't know how to fly.

So I went to my fort - the old theater that houses the Psychic Camera Obscura. Which thankfully I'd been cleaning out and quietly barricading from the inside for weeks. I'd even stashed away food and water. Naturally, sparkling water, some tasty salamis and soppresata, and some amazing fromaggio. It's small consolation while the undead/vampire/zombie whatevers these Italian business guys turned into hurl themselves against my barricades and look for weak spots in my defenses. They are NOT the same people I've been living with all this time. I mean, ok they ARE the same people, but they're out of their minds.

And not very bright. I mean, they all seemed like the smartest guys in the room when I came down here, but now, they're almost mindless, wandering the streets, occasionally getting a bright idea and mobbing my front entrance, or a stray one wandering around on my roof. They seem to have lost the ability to use tools - otherwise they'd have crowbarred their way in a long time ago.

Also, they're active day and night. Doesn't seem to bother them either way.

Meanwhile, I've had a lot of time to figure out this Psychic Camera Obscura thing.

And you know what? It works. Using either starlight or daylight (each has a different effect), you can call up the image of things happening from far away. You arrange some crystals, stand in the right spot, and viola! Clairvoyant projections, covering the huge curved wall of this magnificent old theater. The wall is stained and the plaster is cracking, but there it is, kind of delicate and gauzy, and projected upside down on the wall. It's got a lot of presets - mostly boardrooms, high tech HQ's, secret underground lairs. Like some kind of old psychic Skype. Except nobody's picking up - all the other ends are empty.

Isn't this the time when an International Psychik Pstrike team would the RIGHT time? I mean, usually I don't go in for that kind of thing, but, hearing those null-grav engines kick in over my building and having my ears pop from the teleport insertion - that would about make my day right now.

Junior SPECIAL Agent Lulu is monitoring all your transmissions - make no mistake about that, you international Psychic Crime Pscumbags. And it serves you right, @Tony24 that there's no International Psychik Stryke Team on the way. It's hands-off on Nova Sienna - orders from the top. You've made your undead vampire bed, and now you're just gonna have to lie in it.

As for @Lazzeretto, I'm just sure he's mixed up with this FIFA scandal. We've all seen him out on the grounds, playing with his balls. Er, ahem, his "two meditation balls of flame." Yeah, well he's about to feel those balls get a lot hotter. I summoned up a pair of deep-info daemons who are now ghosting his full financial background. Plus, I get extra credit in Ritual Forensics for casting the request.

Now nothing to do but wait for those little spooks to return from their big data dive. I've got the circle laid out on the floor of the Junior Special Agent HQ, the incense is burning the candles are lit... and I'm back on stake out. Just me and my computer screens and my ritual invocation and a cup a joe from the Spoonbender. Could be in for a late night.

So, ok, the Psychic Camera Obscura works a little different from how I thought.

First though, the bad news. I'm pretty much out of coppa and mortadella and provolone and everything else. Oh, and water. No more water. And I don't think my barricades will hold up much longer, even at the lurching pace of the Gar'zza - the Italian businessmen who apparently devolve into mindless, bloodthirsty zombies in this lost jungle city state.

The good news? Well, it might just only turn out to be "interesting" news (for the psychic science journals - feel free to cite me), but the Psychic Camera Obscura isn't just some clairvoyant picture amplifier. It takes a much deeper view.

After getting to know the presets and the controls, I began to see what I could bring up. London, Rome, the Vatican, Terhan. Kolkata, Seoul, Manila. Playgrounds, shopping malls, people in their living rooms.

Just for laughs, I set it for Nova Siena itself. Here. Just to see what would happen.

What I saw was a beautiful city - filled with markets and people and laughter and contentment. There was music in the streets and art in the salons. There were men and women in suits, and girls in dresses and boys with pegged pants and beautiful shoes.

This was not my Nova Siena. There were no zombie hoards, no bombed-out buildings.

What was I seeing?

From the Latin: Obscurare - to darken, confuse. The Psychic Camera Obscura doesn't just invert images, upside-down. It inverts them at a deeper level, not just like a mirror, but an anti-reflection, a backwards-land. An entirely different, opposite reality. Where Spock has a beard, and everything is reverse.

Except the image I'm seeing is beautiful - it's good. I am the one in the bad reflection. I am in the wrong world. The right world - where the vampires are businessmen, and they have civilization, and wealth - is in the reflection. The wrong world - where I'm out of food in a condemned old theater and surrounded by demented mobs of savage monsters - is where I'm at.

How did I end up in the evil copy of the world, and not the real one? Or at least the good one?

Still, the Psychic Camera Obscura is just a projector. Isn't it? Not a doorway?

I've arranged the mirrors to focus directly on our own coordinates at noon. I've arranged the crystals for maximum efficiency, and, frankly, included some completely made up patterns of my own design. If I can generate enough energy, in a feedback loop into our own location, and I stand right in the middle of it - sitting in a firehose of psychic-enhanced light....

Well, it will take me to the next stage one way or the other.

Vedi Nova Siena, e poi mori!

Junior Special Agent Lulu here. I'm sorry to say that it looks like @Tony24 got what was coming to him. Psy Corps went ahead and sent in a SPECTRE (Special Psychic Ectoplasm Covert Technical Reconnaissance Entity) to survey the scene in Nova Siena and I saw the feeds. It wasn't pretty. The city was a wreck, and the inhabitants have apparently devoured each other. The streets were strewn with half eaten arms, legs, briefcases, and Armani suits. They even drove the SPECTRE into the Psychic Camera Obscura theater - the barricades had been torn down, and there was a charred body present, among the dried meat crumbs and cheese wrappers. At least the zombies didn't eat him.

As a Psy Corps Junior Special Agent, I take no pleasure in death or murder. Justice can't be served on the dead.

Unfortunately, I've also lost track of @Lazzeretto. I had orders (well, approval of my special surveillance project) to keep an eye on him - nothing more. Now it appears he's flown the coop. On his bat wings, no doubt. But there's no sign of him anywhere on campus. There were residual psychic traces left in a dent on the yard right near the central administrative building, but after that, the trail goes cold. Even for a Vampire.

So my two main hobbies seem to have evaporated. Time to see what else I can scare up. Or maybe a I could use a vacation. I hear one's coming up.

Greetings from sunny Nova Siena!

The markets are open and filled with people and laughter and contentment. There's music in the streets and art in the salons. The men and women are in suits (and less formal wear, but still very nice), and the girls wear dresses and boys have pegged pants and beautiful shoes.

And no zombies in sight.

I'm back in the pensione with Angela. Her harp playing isn't weird like it was, and I've taken up the Catore - kind of their bongo drum. We play together on the balcony in the evening breeze.

And the Psychic Camera Obscura Theater is in great shape - pristine! It's the Necropolis that's in disrepair.

Needless to say, I made it through. I don't know from where to where exactly, but this is the reflection I want to live in - the "right" Nova Siena. How it ought to be.

The only thing... but I don't think about it. Much. Don't want to think about it. While there's an Angela here and a Don Ginevra and everybody else I knew here (all doing quite well), there's still just the one me. And all my stuff is here... things I've collected, some things I've never seen before. It's like I've slipped into my own life in a better world - but it's not quite mine. What happened to the "good" me that had been living this life?

I'd rather not look into that too hard. I'm just happy to have found a great place - the place I'm meant to be.

Have a great summer everybody! Maybe I'll see you at the next Psychic Crime Family Picnic.

Tony

I can finally get down to learning. I can leave my former room-mates and physical existence behind me! (PS, if anyone ever comes across @that kid's body, I apologise for the terror in advance). I can't wait to head down the the Psychic Crime Family picnic, maybe I can get some insight on different psychic cultures, my home was not very diverse when it comes to the uh, supernatural arts, unless pitchforks have psychic powers... Haha. But isn't it a little strange that this picnic is taking place just before @Nobody and @Gretel predicted... Apocalyptic doom? And all those black limousines, with black, matted windows... Something seems to be uh... moving a little inside them... like a swarm... Or I could be wrong, my projections don't have the best eyesight. It's also difficult to keep track of them if I run too many at once. Gotta keep tabs on myself.

Wait, where did it go? Am I in the right time? Where did the picnic go? What day is it?

The EBIBs are everywhere

I need to get back