Majgen Ch. 007

A studying mentarion's daily life was dominated by self-control, etiquette and restraint. 'Ranked-it-up'-parties were the only celebrations where etiquette was truly abandoned. The only celebration where students was allowed to ingest however much alcohol or however many of the legal drugs they liked; unsupervised by superiors.

"You didn't notice yet i assume," the student closest to Yang finally said.

"Notice what?" Yang asked.

"You won't believe the whore we got as a servant," one of the students who hadn't talked yet replied with a hissing voice.

Yang turned his eyes to the speaker.

'He is holding on to his cup with such force, his knuckles have whitened,' Yang noticed.

#

The Ottearon skimmed forward through Yang's memories, he wanted answers fast.

'If this incident needs to be hushed, I'll have to start acting soon,' Weissme reminded himself. He was also unhappy to keep the injured girl from the hospital.

Weissme began a close inspection of Yang's memories from the time the violence had begun.

'His memories at this point has are severely, emotionally distorted,' Weissme noticed. He did not try to remove the distortions to get a clearer image. The girl's memories had not been distorted, Weissme already knew what had happened. What he needed to know now was how it had come to that and why it had continued.

Weissme focused and scanned Yang's emotional state during the violence.

'After the violence began, the spirits of the students lifted,' Weissme realized. Yang knew this because at that point none of the students had mind shields up - also very common at 'ranked-it-up'-parties.

When the violence had begun all present had either participated or watched intently. Later many students had spent a lot of time simply enjoying the regular aspects of the party. From the moment violence began, till a supervisor arrived hours later, the girl had been constantly harassed and hurt by two to six students at a time. However, the two to six students had been regularly and randomly replaced, all through the party.

'Students walked to and from the girl, the same way students normally walk to and from a table with cakes, or hot beverages, or a cleverly designed decoration,' Weissme thought to himself, he was deeply disturbed by the images,'They simply enjoyed the regular aspects of the party, and added abuse of the girl to that.' After his quick scan of Majgen herself Weissme had not realized this earlier.

"Screamarooooooo," they had howled.

A regular chill ran through Weissme. He had not caught this detail from Majgen's mind either. Probably because she had not heard it clearly herself. From Yang's mind he learned they had only howled it when she screamed particularly loud and long.

'She could not have heard it clearly.'

Ottearon Weissme felt a strong desire to move his hands from Student Yang's ears, down to his throat, and squeeze his trachea shut. He was already keeping the student in a sedated state for easier scanning. Weissme was only sixty years old, his hands were more than strong enough for the job. He could even make Student Yang experience the girl's memories while doing it.

Ottearon Antwoine Weissme left Student Yang Kol's mind a moment, to regain composure.

'Exemplary student, apt pupil, never a mark in your record Yang, I remember teachers mentioning you. Commenting how sad it is, that one so intelligent and skilled does not have empathic potential to ever reach Femaron rank. How could you do this? How could you not realize what you were doing? How can you still not realize what you did?' Weissme wondered.

He needed to know. Not just for his own sake. Not just to get an understanding for himself of the horrors he seen in Majgen's and Yang's memories. He needed to know to decide how to handle the aftermath of the incident. Ottearon Antwoine Weissme was a highly skilled and experienced mentarion, he soon regained control of his own emotions. Once again his mind was sufficiently clear to perform further investigation.

Re-entering Student Yang's mind, Weissme began analyzing the nature of the visual distortion in Yang memories. In less than ten minutes, the Ottearon came to a conclusion.

'The distortions are as old as the memories themselves.'

Student Yang's visual perception had been distorted emotionally at the time of the violence. The distortions had not been added afterwards, as would have been typical for a first time violent offender.

'Simultaneous distortion of visual interpretation, in an individual not influenced by euphoriant drugs of any kind,' Weissme thought,'a very clear indicator of hypnosis. Not an indicator of released primal rage, caused by another mentarions uncontrolled emanations.'

Weissme was relieved to suspect the incident had been will-fully caused - by someone with criminal intent. The implications of an abuse of this magnitude, if caused by an untrained mentarion's subconscious emanations reaching sober adult students, would be far harder for the mentarion society to handle than one or more mentarion criminals.

'But who hypnotized you Yang? and when?' Weissme thought to himself. He knew how to pinpoint the time when hypnosis kicked in fast and easily.'After that it will be easier to analyze how the hypnosis has been planted.'

For Ottearon Weissme a complex conspiracy theory was easier to believe than any other explanation he could imagine. In the years to come, as he learned more of Majgen's special abilities, Weissme would many times ponder on the irony: The conspiracy theory, he had that moment, was the one of his theories which was furthest from the truth, yet it was the one that finally pointed him towards the truth.

The easiest way to pinpoint at which time Student Yang entered hypnosis, was to find out when his perception became distorted. Weissme swiftly skipped back and forth in Yang's memories.

'Entering room, not distorted. First violence, distorted. Sat down for first dish, distorted. Greeted a group of students, not distorted.' Weissme counted his findings to himself, as he narrowed the possible time span down. It did not take long to find the exact moment.

#

Yang stayed with the first group of students a bit, trying to understand the bad spirit of the party.

'A servant can't possibly be the only cause for this,' he thought.

Yang knew the others weren't lying. However, they used very few words in their descriptions; when using so few words there was ample room to leave out information - without lying. As glum as they were, they wouldn't even have needed to think of withholding things, to give an inaccurate description.

Student Yang Kol noticed the servant offering cookies to students in the other end of the room. He couldn't avoid noticing her; the students around him sent long menacing glares in her direction.

'I Can't see anything unusual about her,' Yang thought,'Typical servant, this one female, typical female servant uniform.' Yang studied her a moment, trying to understand what bothered the others.'A bit short, even for a woman, but that's not really a problem. The ones she offers the tray, they are acting a bit strange though.'

The students completely ignored the servant, not waving her off, nor taking any treats. Servants were always told to exert the strictest form of traditional serving etiquette, at mentarion gatherings. This, amongst other things, meant that when she presented a tray, she was supposed to hold it in position until she was waved off, or a treat was taken, or thirty seconds had passed, whichever happened first. Since no student acknowledged her presence, that etiquette made her movement around the room very slow.

After a while Yang moved from the first group of students. They weren't really talking, he was hoping another group could give him an explanation, or maybe even present a slightly more cheerful mood. In the meantime the girl had just completed holding her tray for thirty seconds to each student in one group, and moved on to a single student who was staring at a decoration. Staring so intently it was obvious he was not looking at it.

Yang passed the two just as the servant raised the tray to the staring student. Yang took two more steps then stopped dead in his track. An emotion grew in him as if he had just smelled something vile and rotten. Inconspicuously, Yang changed direction - as if studying the decoration he had just passed. He circled the decoration till he reached a spot where he could look at the serving girl - while pretending to study the decoration.

#

'His visual perception was not distorted when he left the first group, but it was distorted when he stopped in his tracks,' Weissme noted to himself. The distortion was very evident, in Yang's memory of looking at the girl across the decoration.

#

What his eyes saw was a nervous and already at this time scared thirteen year old girl. What his mind perceived was a provocative whore, showing of her physical attributes as much as she could while still wearing clothes.

In reality the girl's skirt draped below her knees, even though it was designed to stop a distance above them on a woman. Majgen was too short for the design. She was not fully grown yet, and even for her age she was a short girl. In Yang's mind the servant uniform skirt had been altered to barely cover her ass.

A cold rage rose in Yang. He felt a strong indignation towards the whore who desecrated honoured mentarion traditions by appearing at a mentarion celebration in that outfit.

#

Over and over, Ottearon Weissme went through the short time-span, where Student Yang approached and passed Majgen till he stopped in his tracks with a rising volatile emotion. He analysed, again and again, the train of semiconscious and subconscious emotions leading to the conscious emotion. Weissme had the skill to conclude with certainty already after the second analysis, but he did not want to believe the result. In the end he had to. There was no doubt.

'Oh no, not this,' Weissme thought, even though he wasn't sure why his conclusion scared him,'Self-hypnosis.'

Everything fit, he had used every technique possible to see any indicators for something else, yet all he had found was more evidence for self-hypnosis. In Yang's case the causality was irrevocable. Majgen's subconscious emanations had awoken a primal rage response in Yang's mind, but instead of being released fully the primal rage had forced the male student into an auto-hypnotic state.

'Is this what happened to all of them?' the Ottearon asked himself as he let go of Student Yang's body and mind.

----=(Ottearon Weissme the politician and the thinker)=----

From the book: Residues of instinct in the modern human: "The sub-conscious emotional logical processes of a sentient mind is able to process information from the surroundings much swifter and come to conclusions much faster than fully conscious logical processes. The actual conclusions of the sub-conscious processes are delivered to the semi-conscious mind, where they mostly remain a while, awaiting time for the conscious to analyse information. However, sometimes when conclusions embedded in the semi-conscious mind gives rise to a sub- or semi-consciously founded course of action, that course of action will rise to the conscious mind embedded in a feeling that this course of action will be the right. These processes are the basis for intelligent instinct."

Now that Weissme knew what to look for, it would not take long to check every student for signs of self-hypnosis. However he was short on time, he felt the incident had to be hushed quite a bit; dampened.

Ottearon Weissme moved back to Majgen, he needed to know when she would be missed, and by who. He needed to buy more time, before someone came searching for her. During his last quick scan of her, he had only looked into recent memories, he had not looked for details of her background.

'Poor child,' Ottearon thought to himself after his second scan of her. He allowed himself just a few seconds pity for the girl,'Missed would be too strong a word. You know of no one, who loves you. No loved ones would come to comfort you at the hospital. And now I will make sure that not even your employer will come to see you - to pretend to care.' Weissme allowed himself less than a full seconds guilt for that. He was an Ottearon, and he was leader of The Mentariata. To him, duty came first. He walked to the kitchen to make some sensitive phone-calls in private, to buy time.

The girls employer was the first to be smeared, he was not in governmental employ there were plenty of legal ways to bribe him off. What Weissme had learned of the man, from the girl's memories of him, gave him good reason to believe it would not be hard to persuade him to not think of where his youth-worker was - in the near future. Of course since the girl did not know she was a mentarion, she had never looked into her employers mind. So nothing was certain, only very likely.

Weissme was experienced in politics, traversed in the world of public opinion and power. He knew just about every dirty trick in the book, although he hardly ever used them. Apart from buying time he arranged for a few distractions, to keep possible future media-attention from this specific 'ranked-it-up'-celebration.

It was unpleasant that the distractions would have to be of the sort to have negative impact on his schools prestige, but those were the only kinds of distractions that could have a sufficiently strong effect. Ottearon Weissme was an efficient man, also a foreseeing man, he didn't need much time to contact people he could trust to perform the tasks he had in mind.

After the last call, Weissme put his communicator away, and went back to the party room. It was time to find out exactly what it was - he was covering up. He walked to the herd of male students and pointed at a random one, not bothering to notice which one.

When the student stood in front of him, Weissme lifted his own hands to hold them against the young mans ears, in the traditional manner for a scan. Now, he couldn't avoid noticing which one it was, the Ottearon knew his name from both Majgen's and Yang's minds:

'I am first ranked Student Korbin Letter, repeat it after me, whore! First ranked Student Korbin Letter!'

The identifying sentence spoke itself in Weissme's mind, with Korbin's voice, as remembered by both Majgen and Yang.

'Yes indeed, that is who you are, Student,' Ottearon Weissme thought to himself,'and I don't think the girl will ever forget it again. If I find in your mind, that you were not as helplessly caught as Student Yang, then I will make sure you become very sorry that you are first ranked Student Korbin Letter.' The Ottearon had a strong mind shield up. Nobody could sense Weissme's thoughts and contemplations other than himself, yet uttering the unspoken threat in his own mind made it easier for him get past his own emotions - and focus.

Student Korbin had been as helpless as Student Yang, the time it had taken from Korbin's first direct exposure to Majgen's emanations till he entered a self-hypnotic state was shorter than the time Ottearon Weissme thought it would have taken Korbin to pronounce verbally the full causality he had found in Korbin's and Yang's minds.

'Not even I could pronounce it faster than it happened to Korbin,' Ottearon Weissme thought,'Not even if I only spoke the chain of each cause and effect in it's theoretic simplified form - as stated different places in basic teaching books for younger mentarions.'

He sent Student Korbin back to the herd.

The Ottearon's emotions were trying to leave his control again. It had been many years since he had last needed to act as cynically as today, he realized the calm years had made him softer, had made it harder for him to push his humanity away. It had become harder for him to ignore the guilt over the actions he felt he had to do.

In his life, Weissme had seen many horrible things in the minds of humans. His professional ability to distance himself from what he saw in other people's memories - had not had time to rust. However, years had passed since he had last seen something as unexpected and so hard for him to comprehend as this incident.

Trying to figure out what had caused the abuse of Majgen, while also trying to figure out how to partially conceal the incident had been hard for him in itself. Having to deal with the extra weight of unaccustomed feelings of guilt, on top of the other two worries, made him feel old.

He had not yet figured out how he knew that it was important to conceal the incident. His decision had been based on semiconscious emotional processes, he was aware of that. To figure out why he felt it was the right thing to do, he would have to pause to access and analyze his own semiconscious thoughts. If he did that then time might run out and his opportunity to cover up could be gone.

After many years of experience with advanced politics, Weissme knew that his political 'intelligent instinct' was more often right than wrong, and he had a very strong feeling that this incident had to be hushed.

Ottearon Weissme felt strained, he had to take a moment to calm his thoughts and feelings. To calm himself, Weissme chose to focus on the scientific aspects of the days incident. Thinking scientifically would often give his logical processes so dominant a position in his mind, that emotional processes were pushed aside.

He truly needed a break from his own emotions.

With the aid of his photographic memory, Weissme could have recited full advanced texts to himself.

'I won't need to dwell that intensely on the science of the matter, to calm myself.'

The irony of his comparison between the time it would take to pronounce the causality of what had happened to Student Korbin's mind, and the actual time it had taken for the causality to run its course, struck Weissme again.

'I'll recite a simplified version of the causality, quotes from basic teaching books should have an extra calming effect.'

In his thoughts, Weissme recited an excerpt from an old teaching book, still used on his school - Importance of Awareness.

'A strong empath's subconscious emanations can in extreme cases affect another empath's subconscious emotions in a manner that can evoke a primal rage response, if the affected empath does not take active measures against it.'

He continued with an excerpt from another book - Residues of instinct in the modern human.

'An uncontrolled primal rage response usually results in an outburst of senseless rage, but under special circumstances primal rage can instead result in entry to a self-hypnotic state.'

Finally he quoted the book: Trauma Induced Effects, And How To Avoid Them.

'While in a self-hypnotic state the emotional and logical processes of the inflicted person inverts. Pseudo-logical emotional interpretation of the surroundings becomes fully conscious, and the normal logical processes becomes semi-conscious....A further effect of the inverted processes in a self-hypnotic state is that the emotionally unwanted logical conclusions will be pushed into full sub-consciousness by the afflicted person.' Weissme frowned.

'There is something missing. Something essential,' he thought to himself. These quotes didn't explain the unrest he felt within himself. However, the process of reciting had worked as intended; Weissme felt calm - not strongly emotional.

While Ottearon Antwoine Weissme had been thinking. All others had been still. He had only taken a five minute time-out from his duties. But even if he had taken hours all would have remained still. He outranked them all by far, none would have dared ask him why they were waiting. If Majgen had been conscious she would not have known enough of mentarion ways to remain quiet, but she was still being mentally sedated by Mentariata personnel.