by Page Turner
Viv cocked her head sideways. “Like I just told you, I’m an eideticist, so I have a photographic memory. I saw that tapestry when I came in. And I can recall it whenever I want.”
“Ah,” Gretchen said. “But pears always taste better when you’re looking at art. The mind’s eye is different, you see, when it comes to matter of heightening one’s gustatory perception. Trust me.”
”Viv,” Penny said. “Just do what she says.”
“What?” Viv said.
“Just turn around and eat the fruit and look at the tapestry,” Penny snapped.
Penny’s tone was so intense that Viv found it strange. Viv gawked at Penny for a few seconds, and then it hit her. Oh, Viv realized. I’m a camera. My eyes are a camera. The witness wants to tell me something off the record. She wants to turn off the security camera. Or least to turn it towards the wall.
In her entire career at PsyOps, Viv had only had her eidetic memory banks subpoenaed twice. It wasn’t a common occurrence, being summoned to reproduce her memories for a court proceeding. The process was laborious and quite expensive, requiring not only the services of a skilled thoughtographer to record the images but also two telepaths, one receptive and one expressive to pull the images from Viv’s mind and transfer them into the mind of the thoughtographer. It was theoretically possible for one telepath to do both operations, although PsyOps had never retained the services of a telepath capable of both receptive and expressive telepathy, not that Viv could recall anyway.
Regardless of how many telepaths it took to transmit the images, once the thoughtographer received Viv’s thoughts, they would then imprint them upon a form of media that could be viewed by normals. Typically, this was either still or video photography.
Thoughtography sessions usually lasted for several hours, and many sessions were taken to completely transfer Viv’s memory engrams onto film, a process that physically and mentally exhausted both the eideticist and thoughtographer as well as any telepaths involved.
Given all of that, PsyOps usually left her memories well enough alone, allowing Viv to voluntarily report upon their contents when relevant to an investigation and heavily relying on external evidence to supplement them when going to trial, instead of basing the strength of a case primarily upon them.
But there was something different about this case, which not only involved the murder of one intuitive and the maiming of another but had also now apparently graduated into a serial murder, serial maiming. From the report given to them by crime scene investigators, the killer’s modus operandi was identical to that of the Snow White murder. One murdered. Another assaulted and driven temporarily mad. All of this was once again followed by a very earnest-sounding confession from one of the victims that just didn’t line up with the available physical evidence.
Just like in the first crime, the deceased’s body had an intricate pattern of blood spatter on her chests, obscuring most of her breasts and abdomen. Blood spatter that once again looked like a psychological inkblot projection test.
If Gretchen had something to say that she didn’t want to say on camera, it was probably important.
Penny was right. Time to go off the record.
“Well, my blood sugar does get a little wonky on the new migraine meds,” Viv said.
“That it does,” Penny replied.
Karen wasn’t sure what they her two partners were on about but decided it was prudent just to let whatever was going to happen, happen.
Viv turned around and stared at the tapestry. As she did, she took the tiniest, most imperceptible bites of the pear, taking great care to make sure that the pear entered her field of vision every so often. The bits of pear flesh were akin to sands in an hourglass, and she wanted to empty the timepiece as slowly as possible.
As Viv stared at the tapestry, she wondered if her own mother would have gone to such great lengths to find her as Demeter had when Perspehone ran away.
Probably not, Viv decided. Not unless there was a man involved. Or a big payday.
Typology of Memory
Properly speaking, a person’s eidetic memory is their short-term visual memory. Pretty much everyone, intuitive or normal, has some form of eidetic memory. It’s what allows you to briefly still see something in your mind’s eye soon after you look away from the object or close your eyes.
Research has revealed that eidetic memory stems primarily from the posterior parietal cortex in the brain’s parietal lobe. In most people, the actual eidetic image is present only for a few seconds, at which point it dissipates completely and any relevant information is encoded into short-term memory. Sometimes nothing is encoded, and once the image fades, to our minds it is though we never saw it.
In rare instances, even a normal might find that they have a particularly long-lasting eidetic memory effect. This is sometimes colloquially known as “having a photographic memory.” Instead of the image dissipating quickly, they can recall it for a much longer period of time.
Pure photographic memory is exceedingly rare in non-intuitive populations. Even those with arguably photographic memories are subjected to more decay than we would associate with photographs, with the most persistent photographic memory images lasting perhaps a few months at most.
However, there are intuitives called eideticists who possess the power of pure photographic memory, gifted with eidetic memories that are perfect and never seem to fade. Indeed, some eideticists complain miserably of not being able to forget unpleasant experiences; the best they can do is simply move quickly past them as they are recalling other memories close to that period in time. The psychic population is still quite young yet, with the psychic phenomenon emerging only in the past three decades. However, as the first eideticists are aging, a common complaint is the length of time it takes them to pull up specific memories as their overall eidetic archive increases.
To date, no eideticist has simultaneously possessed expressive telepathic powers, so for the most part their photographic memories stay locked within them. However, with the aid of expressive and receptive telepaths and a skilled thoughtographer, it has become possible in recent years to retrieve memories archived within an eideticist.
Eideticists are relatively rare among the psychic population. However, thoughtographers are far less common. As of this writing, there is only a handful of known thoughtographers. They are largely in the employ of the Psychic State, used for mnemonic subpoenas on high-profile cases.
There’s some dispute among taxonomists about the classification of thoughtographers. Some prominent subject matter experts advocate that thoughtography belongs in its own category, however small their population might be. Others contend that thoughtography is essentially a specialized form of expressive telepathy, one that manifests the thoughts of others not in transmissible cognitive form but in more concrete, tangible forms, most commonly on either still or moving film. At the present time, the State is working with the most skilled thoughtographer to attempt digital transmission, but efforts up until now have proven futile.
Naysayers of the digital thoughtography program state that it might be a bit too ambitious to move from abstraction to abstraction and that it would be best for society if thoughtographers just stick with what they’re good at, etching visual memory upon physical forms. They argue that the greater good would be better served by utilizing every thoughtographer actively in the public interest rather than sacrificing any of them for experimental programs that are unnecessary and may never pan out.
Time will tell whether the State’s gamble on digital will pay off.
What is for sure is that the number of eideticists and their ratio to the relative number of thoughtographers is quite reminiscent of the number of photo developing centers to the number of shutterbugs. Or, rather, the ratio as it was in the predigital age, when you had to bring in your film to have it developed commercially, unless you were a whiz with a function
ing dark room (something that was out of the reach of most amateur photographers).
This seeming dependency is quite an apt comparison, as eideticists are very much like the film negatives and camera and the thoughtographer very much like the developing process that turns them into photographs.This balance has led some taxonomists to wonder if there’s order among the chaos of emerging and/or newly discovered typology.
from Insecta Psychica: Towards an Intuitive Taxonomy by Cloche Macomber
Once Viv was facing squarely away from her, basically turning the camera for State’s evidence to the wall, Gretchen opened up considerably.
“As you know, this is a legal operation,” Gretchen said. “As legal as any of them are anyway.”
“Oh?” Penny said.
“Look, you didn’t hear it from me, but there’s not a single Fortune-Telling House in Skinner – or the Psychic State, even – that doesn’t have a handful of tueys kicking around in it.”
Karen flinched reflexively at “tuey.”
“I’m sorry,” Gretchen said, noting Karen’s flinch. “Intuitive. It’s a bad habit, I admit. Sometimes it feels like the rules are changing every day. What you can say, what you can’t.”
“It’s fine,” Penny said. It mostly was, and beyond that, she wanted it to be fine, which was just as important.
“Heather was an intuitive,” Gretchen said. “The real deal. A precog. As her boss I wasn’t exactly supposed to know, but…”
“You did,” Penny said.
Gretchen nodded. “We were close. And it was obvious.”
“Obvious?” Karen said. “How so?”
“Heather wasn’t good at throwing the predictions. She had a hard time screwing up her readings. And at baseline, she was pretty damn accurate for a precog. She’d focused a lot on mitigating her personal bias, mindfulness work apparently. Meditation,” Gretchen explained. “To be fair, we do a lot of that in the Warrens of Persephone. We like to take care of the people who work for us. More than a lot of places do. Sure, we’re technically an employer. Registered properly with the State by the way.”
“Not going to check, don’t care, wrong department,” Viv called back over her shoulder through a mouthful of chewed up pear.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Gretchen said, not quite sure what Viv was saying.
You’re not my mother, Viv thought, rolling her eyes, but no one could see it.
“In a way, we’re also home for the women who work here. Some of them are really girls, you see. Don’t have anywhere else to go. We try to look after their welfare. Physical, emotional, spiritual. We provide classes. Guidance,” Gretchen said.
“Are you a cult?” Karen asked.
“Karen!” Penny said, shocked.
“No, I don’t mean that as an insult. My dad runs a cult. I don’t judge,” Karen said.
“Your father runs a cult?” Gretchen asked, clearly amused.
“The Grounded Temple,” Karen said.
“Ohhhh,” Gretchen said. “Your father’s Augustus Cross?”
Karen nodded. “Yup. Unfortunately.”
Gretchen laughed. “They’d hate to hear you call it a cult, you know.”
“That’s how cults are. They don’t like for people to think of them as cults. One person’s cult is another’s religion and vice versa. It’s all a matter of perception. Me, I cut to the chase and call them all cults,” Karen replied.
“I suppose that’s efficient… if insulting. There are an awful lot of religious people out there. More if you count the spiritual ones, the ones who believe in something or a lot of somethings but would blanch if you called them ‘religious.’” Gretchen said.
“Sure,” Karen said. “But being popular doesn’t make something right.”
“You know,” Gretchen said. “I get it. It’s tough to believe in the supernatural.”
Karen nodded.
“Although to be fair, before the Psychic Phenomenon exploded, I never would have believed that people existed that could read other people’s minds. Feel their emotions. Have perfect photographic memories. And…?” She pointed at Penny.
“Speak with the dead,” Penny replied.
“Of course, that makes so much sense,” Gretchen replied.
Penny cocked her head. Why did that make so much sense? Literally no one had ever had that reaction to the revelation that she was a medium, a relatively rare psychic power and one whose existence many people still doubted. It didn’t help, Penny supposed, that there were so many cold readers around pretending they could contact people’s loved ones in the beyond. It didn’t help at all.
“How did you know I’m an empath?” Karen asked.
“Is that going to help you solve your crime?” Gretchen replied.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to answer a question with another question?” Karen said.
“Then why did you just do it?” Gretchen shot back, smirking.
Karen, Penny, and Viv groaned in unison.
“To answer your original question on my own terms, yes, the Warrens of Persephone engages in spiritual practice. We believe in the duality of all people, all things. Just as Persephone could simultaneously be springtime incarnate and the queen of the underworld, typically we all have two, or more, opposing facets. We believe that what makes an individual happier and healthier, what allows them to flourish, is not eliminating contradictions but balancing them appropriately,” Gretchen said.
“Huh,” Viv said.
“I would expect you three to understand that better than most,” Gretchen said. “Most people limit themselves to a single lover, after all. Or at least that’s what they try to do.”
Viv laughed. She was surprised Gretchen had picked up their dynamic. That, too, was unusual. “You’d make a good detective,” Viv said.
Gretchen smiled.
“Your belief system honestly sounds like a much better religion than the Grounded Temple,” Karen said.
“Thank you,” Gretchen replied. “If your detective job ever doesn’t work out, you’d be welcome to apply here.”
“Um… thanks,” Karen said. “I think.”
“Anyway,” Gretchen said. “I’m very sorry Heather isn’t here with us anymore. Unfortunately, she was very sought after, so the list of suspects is rather long, even when just looking at clients. But here’s her book.” She handed it to Penny.
“If you need help sorting out aliases, don’t hesitate to call,” Gretchen said.
“The multiple name problem again,” Karen said.
Gretchen nodded. “There’s a lot of it going around.”
Viv turned around, holding the completely stripped pear core in her hand. “Do you have a place to throw this?”
Gretchen gestured toward a bin that looked like a small pillar sometimes used to display art. She showed Viv the hidden pedal that would flip the top up.
Why do fancy places always feel a need to hide the trash? Viv mused as she chucked the core in the bin. The fancier the place, the more impossible to throw something away. It was a wonder that palatial mansions didn’t turn into landfills. They probably would, Viv decided, if they were open to the public. Maybe that’s why they’re all in gated communities. She got a brief flash in her mind of a mess of seagulls sitting atop a mound of 17th century furniture.
“Thanks,” Viv said aloud. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”
“Of course,” Gretchen said. “Happy to be of help.”
Gretchen followed the three detectives, escorting them from the building, guiding them out a different way than how they’d entered. Company headquarters were quite labyrinthine and complicated. Viv noted that even with her normally keen sense of direction, she could easily get lost in this building.
There were living quarters, a shared kitchen, small classrooms, even a space that
looked like a chapel. Art decorated virtually every surface, even hallways. Typically, these depictions were of tales from Greek mythology.
Viv noted that a great many of the faces of the gods and goddesses looked strangely familiar, although she couldn’t quite place from where. Perhaps they used local models? she wondered.
They exited through a large stone door that spilled them out onto Whisper Street. Viv stepped out first followed by Karen. As Penny was about to leave the building, Gretchen said her name.
Not Penny Dreadful. The other name. The one no one knew. Or the one that no one was supposed to know.
Penny’s blood went cold. She spun around.
“Say hello to Kip for me,” Gretchen replied. She reached into the pocket where Penny had stashed the pomegranate and fished it out, before shutting the door in Penny’s face.
“Are you coming, Penny?” Viv called from the sidewalk. “This car isn’t going to drive itself.”
Penny turned to the street. “Of course,” she said. “Be right there.”
Ghosts Don’t Haunt Places
There’s a little something most people don’t know about ghosts. Something you wouldn’t know unless you’re either a medium or have one in your life who is comfortable enough to open up to you about how it all works.
Ghosts don’t haunt places. The whole haunted house thing? A spirit hopelessly imprisoned in the place where they met their demise? Doomed to lurk a singular location until whatever unresolved issues they have are somehow addressed and they can achieve earthly closure with a clutch of tormented living human beings who just want to use the structure and an exorcist-cum-therapist tasked with throwing some peculiar spiritual intervention like an arcane 12-step program, just with more Latin?
None of that is true. That’s the stuff of fiction. A little bit of Victorian fan-waving. A campfire story.
Ghosts aren’t stuck anywhere. Ghosts ramble. They’re usually quite transient.
In fact – and she wasn’t sure exactly why – but if Detective Penny Dreadful had to guess, she’d say that as a medium she wasn’t going to see ghosts at all but that they were coming to her, as though she were some kind of ghost magnet. A beacon for spirits.
