July 27, 2013
Mob Sister

It was an interesting week this week what with mobsters gunning for me. Once you're done doing your double-take (or triple maybe) let me tell you about it. You might remember back in February that the team and I took down an empathic home invader. We handed him off to the Protectorate and then that was last I spoke of it. I did check in on what they were doing with him and it was basically incarceration until he agreed to submit to conditioning to prevent him from misusing his gifts again. Basically he has to agree to let them make him not use his emotional transmitting portion of the power. They won't even ask him to block his sensing of emotions. If you can't use your gifts responsibly then you don't get to use them--if we catch you. It's that simple. It's like forcing a hacker to never use a computer again. Not life threatening, not really freedom stealing overall, but punishment all the same.

The home invader had a sister. She is, by her own admission, part of some mafia from one of the former Soviet Republics. She didn't take too kindly to the disappearance of her brother and since then she has been trying to track me down. I really shouldn't have done it, but I let her catch up to me, just her though. We separated her from the rest of her friends. If I were less trustworthy, or I thought that it was more dangerous of a situation I'd have taken measures to disguise my appearance. Even glasses and a hat. Any way. She demanded that I hand over her brother immediately. I told her I couldn't, that he was in custody. Almost like a cliche she chewed me out as some kind of American pig. I told her if I was the American law that her brother would be dead and his parts under someone's microscope. She didn't take that suggestion too well--as if it was next in my nefarious plans.

I told her he misused his gifts and now he needed to pay for it. She had only to wait and he would be released. She wouldn't have any of it. She spat out something about devil's eye or not, he was still her brother and she would kill me if I didn't return him immediately. I explained that psychic gifts were not the devil's eye, but if she really felt that way I would use mine in self-defense. That made her wary but not enough. She pulled a gun. I've said it before and I will again now, maybe I watch too much television. I figured my only option was a fairly serious show of force. I'd be loathe to do this without the danger presented, beyond just that moment even, but before she was likely even ready to fire I took control of the trigger and then I twisted the entire gun out of her hand breaking her trigger finger in the process. I flew the gun through the air over to me and hovered it in front of me pointing at her. The magazine slipped out of it to the ground and I ejected the bullet in the chamber. I hurtled it back to her stopping less than an inch from her face and slapped her somewhat lightly on the cheek with the butt of the gun.

She glared at me, the kind of look that in my world could potentially kill. I told her not to push her luck or I'd pistol whip her and leave her some nice scars to remember me. I ended by telling her to let it go and wait for his release. I didn't mention that some time soon they'll be forced to block his gift without his consent, wipe out the last few months of his memory and leave him somewhere a state or two away. I then hauled her into the air, gently by her whole body, and then left. When I was well away I let her down, gently again... after a short sharp drop just to make a point. Now either she'll wait or as I expect the mob will be after me.

Tags: Blaine (MN), empathy (psychic), home invasion, law, mafia, The Protectorate, punishment.

July 20, 2013
Headstone Takeover Trial

Last week you may have noticed that I introduced a new tag at the end of the post. That tag is listed as Domine. Domine is the codename I've given to the manipulator I have been trying to catch with my team. We set up surveillance on the graveyard that the man was visiting. We investigated the grave itself when the man was gone. Jenny believed that there was an entity in that vicinity. She read a deep connection between someone and the headstone. The read was also suggestive that the person was dead, but still frequently in contact with the headstone. It's an odd situation so Jenny couldn't just immediately declare it to be an entity.

We answered the question on Thursday when we successfully provoked the entity. With her permission, Myron controlled Sarah to flood the headstone with fear as if it were a person. The response was almost immediate. The sweltering 90 degree heat dropped to at least 60 around the grave. Over the radio Myron triggered a command he'd given to Sarah. She began reporting what she could feel in the area. Along with the temperature drop she could sense a deep frustration and a burning anger. The entity had to be trying to control of her and could not do so.

Our only option at that point was to try and take over the entity itself. I helped Myron do that through Sarah. It was incredibly taxing. Myron tried to command it. He's not sure if he had any success. Sarah reported, among the many bits of information she unconsciously provided in a constant litany, that the entity retreated, it's emotional presence swiftly moving away from her. Myron tried to stop the entity, but it was able to get away. Now we know that it isn't tied to the location, it just spent a lot of time there and felt some kind of ownership over the headstone. We have kept watch over the graveyard since then, but it has not returned. Now it's out there somewhere, likely finding new proxies to work through.

We're going to see what we can find out about the man buried there. I don't want to speak ill of the dead offhandedly so I won't mention the man's name. Consider it a lesson learned by proxy.

Tags: Domine, empathy (psychic), graveyard, Jenny Brumal, mental domination, Myron Nath, psychometry, Sarah Jayne, surveillance, sympathy (psychic).

July 13, 2013
Watching for Emptiness

Our surveillance of the man and woman linked to the manipulator that we've been trying to catch has continued since I last mentioned it. I have witnessed the man going to the same cemetery and visiting the same gravestone on several occasions. I took Sarah with me and she definitely picks up on two emotional responses at once while the man appears to be alone. This could mean a number of things given the array of gifts known to us through reports and first hand knowledge. The creepiest and by far the most dangerous is that of a psychic entity.

We mentioned before that we do not believe in human ghosts. You might not remember though that there are things created by psychics, and not always intentionally, that outlive the person responsible for making them. These entities can have any gift that the psychic did, and occasionally those of people around the creator.

Myron says these things run the gamut from difficult to control like Klavier to entirely uncontrollable and necessary to destroy on sight, if you even have the right gifts to do so. The first advantage they have is not being tied to a brain in any physical sense. Certainly they can have intelligence and of course they are aware of their surroundings, otherwise they couldn't react to them or people. Brains make for an easy control point and also provide other options for subduing a dangerous individual, such as temporally cutting them off from a sense like sight.

Our options are limited if the manipulator is an entity. You know my luck.

Tags: Domine, empathy (psychic), entities, graveyard, Klavier, mental domination, Sarah Jayne.

July 6, 2013
You Are Online, Big Time

You know better than anyone else that our government spies on us, and it can get ahold of tonnes of video of you that you might not even know exists. This is all done because of the way people are; pretty much all of it is out in the open for anyone who wants to look. There is always talk about deeper surveillance of us. If you're like me, or a reader of this blog, then you know that this is all par for the course from the government. Have you thought though about how much information is out there that you don't know about with the social networks? Well it turns out to be a lot, and you (and I previous to going on the run) have permitted it to happen.

You know how this first part goes, you sign up to a social network like Socialmabob or Gabbl and you let it search your email contacts and your phone contacts to find your friends so that you can start talking to them and sharing with them right away. We all do it. We expect when it is done that the service forgets about it. I mean come on, with over a billion Socialmabob users they can't keep scads of useless information. Well... they can... and they do... Not only that but they grab all of the information from your phone and email address book, and then they merge it all together until they know everyone who knows everyone. If you've given your email address or Socialmabob name to friends then the services know it and soon after that the government knows it. Things you thought only friends knew, well they're out there, and there are these massive shadow profiles of you all over the place and mega-mergers of them other places. They have every picture you've lost and posts and updates you haven't had access to for ages.

Things get even worse once you consider what Lookered knows. All of the pictures you keep in your cloud drive, all your music and books online, everything that is on your phone and came to you by email. Don't think that your Z-Phone is any safer either. They sadly may be the worst of the bunch because you know how they are in the public eye, and how they'd like nothing more than censoring and controlling your life to make it how they feel is better. The first thing I had to give up was my Z-Phone when I left my home. I smashed the poor thing and it really hurt until I found out just how much safer I was without it. I got a new one after meeting Melvin and having him make it safe, but soon he abandoned the idea they could be safe. After that we all switched to a couple product lines of disposable phones that Melvin jailbreaks and we conveniently lose at random minus their sim cards, which get burned. We keep numbers and addresses on stripped down, guaranteed offline, devices or memorize them.

Tags: Gabbl, government, Lookered, Melvin Klein, news, Socialmabob, surveillance.