So what’s the prize when you take down the commodification of language?

The company of Nidivarui has the language teaching business locked up. You’ll see their name on all the textbooks in Psyhigh’s language labs. Urudu, Enochian, Galaxperanto... and a highly effective method, which is why they own the whole sector.

They’ve got other classes too, but you have to pass through their byzantine pyramid scheme to get the invites.

You know how powerful people speak. It’s a gradient. Yuppies have a certain tone—a college-level clarity of language command. If you’ve lived your life on the streets you have a different dialect. As do doctors, lawyers, C-level executives, fast food workers, cops. The codes and pattens get more hushed and obsequious as you get deeper into the halls of power. A whispered “yes” or “no” in the board room has impact on billions, their language focused and aligned with the life and death force of capital.

We are their words.

For a price, the company of Nidivarui will teach you that language, and they’ve made themselves the only source for the highest levels. Because they invented it. Or inherited it. Or stole it. Nobody remembers. Nobody knows. Not really.

So the first step is to leave the hive, leave the slave farm. We need to circumvent the language of the oppressors. Decouple its connection to capital.

We’re going to flood the market. Create our own sticky language for capital to accrete to. It’s only counterfeit if you’ve got nothing to back it up.

I’m so glad we’ve got a mummy. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

The mummy is getting a bit ripe. Is that supposed to happen? I figured they'd be so desiccated after being sealed up for thousands of years that they wouldn't smell rotten at all. I figured they'd be, I don't know, kind of clean smelling? Like a nice musk? Or dry and dusty like an old wasp nest. Isn't that kinda the point of mummification?

But the mummy (or @Cleo Spencer as they continued to claim to be called) smells like they need a bath. For reasons I cannot fathom, they have been making trips to the bathroom now and then, but if they took a full-on shower I'd be afraid they'd fall apart.

Anyway, the timing couldn't have been better because we need a fourth. @Nevada Turquoise, Bitch Teen, and I won't be able to pull off our next caper without them. And the mummy might be ideally suited to help us.

We're going to jack the company of Nidivarui. We're taking down the commodification of language. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

I will admit that telepathy is part of the skill set of a psychic lockpicker. Ok not exactly “telepathy,” but language and communication are just locks to pick like any other, once you know some basic techniques.

(I prefer creating a secret code ahead of time, where the subject can telegraph the message to me through undetectable methods, like tapping their finger or chattering their teeth, but I can work without that if I need to.)

Plus, people don’t like having their minds read, so it’s not a skill I advertise.

In this case, I was able to delve into the mind of the mummy. I discovered that they are suffering from some kind of break with reality, and insist they are not actually a mummy! Poor thing. Obviously experiencing some kind of deep reality denial. They also call themselves @Cleo Spencer, which is also a delusion as it is clearly not ancient Egyptian.

I am assuming this is some kind of amnesia that will pass. In the meantime, @Nevada Turquoise continues to slip pieces of popcorn through their bandages where the mouth would be. I keep telling her that mummies don’t eat and it’s just going to rot in there but the mummy seems to enjoy it. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

“What do you need?”

“Mmmmmmmmm! Mmmmmmmmmmmm!”

Bitch Teen thinks it’s hungry.

“Mmmm mmmmmmm.”

She tries offering it popcorn. I tell her mummies don’t eat. And not to spill any on the floor because the museum doesn’t allow food or drink in the exhibits.

“Some gang we are,” says @Nevada Turquoise.

Everybody thinks being in a gang is about being hardcore. Which is the most immature way of looking at a gang. A gang is about friends having your back. And taking you in.

“Do you want to get out of here? Come back and crash at our place?”

“Mmmmm Mmmmm!”

And that’s how we made friends with a mummy. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

I had to drop by the Tantric Savings Bank because there was a hiccup with my psychic student loans. I left Bitch Teen back at school because I knew she’d pester me the whole time about wanting to rob it, but you don’t want to mess with the Tantric Savings Bank. Not just because it’s so darn secure, but because it’s not really evil. It’s just big and can suffer from the bureaucratic issues of any organization its size. Ultimately it’s super handy. I need it functioning well and not broken, and a heist of any kind could mess that up.

Turned out all they needed was a middle initial. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

It’s not like the Discs are evil, or dangerous all by themselves. I would consider, say, a gun or a nuclear bomb dangerous in itself. The Discs, however, are really just records and data, all neatly compiled into their purest form... crystalline manifestations of mesmerizing hives of thought that are the source of all information structures. Osiris’s third eye is one of them, now captured by mad scientists and used to pump mind control waves into elevators and dentist’s offices. Akashic Records gerrymandered into unfair voting maps. Silver Tablets counterfeited and used as stars on corrupt lawmen’s chests. Ancient romance novels turned into destructive grimoires, like @Terra and @Izzy have ahold of. It’s how the Discs are misused that’s the problem.

“My Gloves of Power are angry,” Bitch Teen says. “I’m tired of punching at shadows.”

I’ve got to teach Bitch Teen about using a more delicate touch. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

The power of the Discs is built into everything these days. What were once pure manifestations of different energies are now used to fuel cultural, political, and economic engines.

“You don’t look like you belong here.”

“You’ve been late three times in a row.”

“You’ll need to pay for that, you know.”

Bitch Teen and I walk through the mall. The signature energy patterns of the discs saturate the space, broadcast through the ceiling speakers, through the programmable multi-spectrum lighting, through the linguistic patterns of the trained employees.

The alarms go off as Bitch Teen uses her Gloves of Power to pummel through a wall. We step over the rubble to the room inside—racks of servers in golden faraday cages.

“See, it’s just a transmitter. Eidetic modeling. Holographic enforcement. Pied Piper Simon Says fascist brainwash.”

Bitch Teen tears down the cage and smashes the computers.

“BOO YAH!” █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

"So what was all that about?"

Bitch Teen is confused, but exhilarated.

"Well, it's all about picking the locks."

I proceed to explain to her about the practice of Psychic Lock Picking. It's usually about picturing the room on the other side of the lock, then feeling your way to it, using our natural psychic tools to manipulate the Interlocken Gates, then opening the door to your target spacetime location.

You can also do it ala Russian Roulette, where you pick a lock blind. In that case, you could end up anywhere. It could be based on your unconscious, or some random thought, or nothing at all.

In this case, obviously, it was about the Discs.

"Wow! Bang! Did you see me knock that knight right off his horse? POW!" Bitch Teen shadow boxes with her Gloves of Power.

I'm glad she had fun. But we never found any Discs. And those old desiccated mummy guys were gone when we came back out of the castle. Did they find the Discs?

"I wanna do it AGIIIIIIIIN!!!" says Bitch Teen. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

"Get in!!" shouts the old man driving the cart. His face is leathery and actually peeling off the side of his jaw. How long has this guy been dead?

After the troop of knights on horseback almost trampled us, they were being led up the rear by this broken down cart full of hay pulled by a donkey. Being driven by zombies.

The one driving flashes us a rictus grin as we pile in, and drives the donkey ahead at top speed.

We drive in through the open gate of the castle, knights fighting knights all around us, but no one pays us any notice. The cart comes to a stop in front of a door and the dried up mummy man shoos us out of the cart.

"We want the discs!" he shouts as we start up the staircase. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠

We’re in the alley behind the Handymart. Bitch Teen’s Gloves of Power are tingling.

“What about here? My gloves feel something...”

Bitch Teen’s gloves have been “feeling something” everywhere we go. I’ve been humoring her all morning about going after the Discs, but it’s getting to the point where I’ve got to show her something or she’ll get pissed, and one thing you don’t want is a pissed off Bitch Teen.

“Okay lemme see...”

I reach out with my mind and start feeling for the locks. Oddly, there IS something here, next to the dumpster. It’s old—ancient and rusty. Primitive in design, relying more on its bulk than complexity in spatio-temporal encryption tech. Not too difficult but needing some muscle.

“Give me a hand here?”

Bitch Teen plunges her glove into the folds in space I’m holding open.

“Boo yah!” she whispers.

And the greasy wall of the Handymart ripples and the dirty alleyway disappears... replaced by a wall of stone and another dusty alleyway.

“Move it!” shouts Bitch Teen, as a column of knights on horseback comes galloping down on top of us. █ a⃠d⃠a⃠d⃠