Trinity RPG: Back to the Stars - Prelude: Electric Dreams [George Kalnan]

[Krul]

Ogrotek, the electrokinetic order, centered in North American, in what used to be the USA, and now is the FSA, and is a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare, with 3 levels of citizenship, and a fascist agenda. In this mess, Ogrotek is a ray of hope for the folks who live in this part of the world. Organized to run and grow as a company, it is also the source of much of the biotechnology that exists in the 22nd century.

Seeking the best and the brightest, though any electrokinetic latent is tested and encouraged, the electrokinetic proxy, Alex Cassel and Orgotek is a bit at odds with the FSA, but nether of them are willing for the hostility to go too far.

The teks, as they are called, are, with their electrokinetic powers, great great technicians, mechanics and inventors, and remain on the cutting edge of biotechnology. It is this order, together with the IRSA and Norca, who have managed to build the Levathan ships. Into this situation, George Kalnan finds himself, after testing for latency, they come to tell him that he shows not simply latency, but strong latency, and offer him a chance to join the Ogrotek family.

[Rorx]

George brushes his hand over his recently cut hair as he looks up from his chair at the petite blonde psion in the Orgotek jumpsuit. "You mean I'm in? Just like that? No more exams or application forms or anything."

Her simple nod got a massive grin in return, "That's great! Where do I sign and when do I start?"

[Krul]

She gave him a smile, and a slight chuckle with regards to his enthusiasm. "Actually, not quite, we want you to come down to the testing facility in New York, we'll pay your way, and go though a week of various tests, then at the end, based on results, we'll offer you a contract."

[Rorx]

His grin never faded as he replied, "Cool, I'll go grab some gear then and you can sort out the travel arrangments while I'm gone."

She shook her head slghtly to his back as he headed out of the KIM wagon, but his happiness and enthusiasim for this change in his life couldn't be doubted. She had seen his file while they did the preliminary testing here and knew that it wasn't faked, the time and effort he made to improve himself every time the wagons came around and the background check that had been run on him proved that. So while she arranged tickets for the Maglev down to the New York Campus George was making his way through the familiar semi-run down middle levels of the city that had been his home.

He wasn't too worried about his folks, they had encouraged his atempts to learn what he could, and if his dad wasn't too happy that it was Orgotek that he was learning from he also acknowledged that there wasn't anywhere else available to a family like them. Turning the corner he spotted the graffiti had changed again, the gang turf had shifted. Luckily he knew the area and he moved it the backways and shadows hoping to ghost his way through, but in the meantime he checked the safety on the cheap taser in his jacket pocket.

[Krul]

The young man didn't have to much difficulty making his way back, the shifting turf had the gang's distracted with one another, and sense he didn't have any ties with them, they didn't get in his way, at least, not on the way home. Once he got back to his home, his parents looked at how excited he was, and his mother glanced at his father a moment, then both of them turned their attention to him. "Something the matter, son?"

[Rorx]

"Yeah, great news. A new staff member on the wagon this time was a Psion! And what's more she reckons I could be one too!"

George started pacing up and down the room, "I gotta get packed." he comments to himself.

His dad looked over at his anxious mother, "Now slow down George. What's all this about packing. And about being a Psion for chrissake!"

George stops and looks up at the outburst, "What? Oh, yeah ok."

His mum tries to clam things down, "George, John, just both of you stop and take a breath."

They both do so from long habit.

"Now then," she continues, "Slowly George tell us your news."

George took another breath and sat on the arm of one of the armchairs, "Ok. I went down to the KIM wagons like normal when they arrived, to try to carry on with that computer unit I started the last time they were here. Anyway three of the instructors were ones I've meet before, but the last one was a new one. Turns out she is a Psion who normally works for Orgosoft and only with the wagons for a month between assignments. Anyway she is chatting to me about jobs and giving me a funny look and then says 'have you ever been tested to see if you could be a psion'. I said no and she said well come n then we can do a preliminary test here. So after a couple of hours of tests and questions she says yep I could be a psion and I need to get down to their New York campus for confirmation and typing. But they will pay for all that and if it is confirmed then I'm pretty much guaranteed a job!"

[Krul]

His mother and father exchanged glances a moment, a touch uneasy, but he was right, this was a wonderful opportunity for their son, if a bit unexpected. "Well, far be it from us to stand in your way, right darling?" His mother glanced at his father, who appeared a touch shocked, and then pulled himself together.

"Well, son, your mother's right, this is a rare opportunity, you should definitely take advantage of it." He was concerned, as he went over to George and put an hand on his shoulder. "I imagine your going to be gone a while, do you need help packing?"

[Rorx]

George hadn't considereg that aspect of it particularly before his dad mentioned it, but yeah he could be away for months of training or what have you. It immediately sombered his mood somewhat, but it couldn't repress it entirely.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. I'll get back to see you all as soon as I can though, and we should be able to call regularly as well."

He turns more to his father, "Ok, you want to grab my bags and I'll find the stuff I want to pack?"

Between the two of them it didn't take more than half an hour to pack enough stuff for a week or two, and in the meantime his mum had prepared coffee and sandwiches for them.

[Krul]

His parents helping him pack, it didn't take long at all to pack, and soon enough he was ready to go. It took a bit longer, due to farwells, and best wishes, but eventually he was out the door and returning to the Ogrotek psion who had set everything up.

This time, however he was interfiered with, he was just about back when three gang members stepped out of the shadows. "Hello there, shrimp, there's a toll for passing though our territory." However, even as they moved menacingly toward him, someone moved out of the shadows behind them.

A lovely soprano, one he recongized as belonging to the blond Orgotek psion spoke up. "Move along, boys, he's with me."

[Rorx]

As soon as he spotted the figures George tensed, but this was something he had faced before and the other gangs generally left hi alone now. This lastest gang weren't going to get time to learn the way the others had. While the over confident leader of the three give his speil, George swung his bacpack off his shoulder, and used the movement to cover his drawing of his cheap taser from it's holster so that by the time the speil had finished he was pointing the gun at the them.

"I'd listen to the lady if I were you gents. You don't want Orgotek upset with you do you?"

[Krul]

The gang members looked at each other then back at George and the woman. "Dude, we arn't facing down some psion, for you, Ricky.. your on your own." With that, two of the gang members turned and walked away, leaving them two to one, and he shook his head. "Not worth it."

The girl, who wasn't really much other then 19, put a hand on George's shoulder. "I figured I should keep an eye out for your return, glad I did, they didn't look all that nice. You can call me Celina."

[Rorx]

George shrugged, "Well thanks Celina, but they aren't much different from normal for around here. Shall we make our move before Ricky sees if he can round up some more willing help?"

Together they continued on their way back to the KIM wagons.

"So, were you trained at New York? What can I expect there?" Geroge asked, slightly nervously as the idea has sunk in.

[Krul]

"You can expect that they will test your capabilities, see where your strengths and weaknesses lie." She responded, even as she lead him to the VTOL craft that was even now landing nearby to pick them up, as she had requested. "Oh, and you'll have a lot of opportunity to learn, all kinds of things."

[Rorx]

George shrugged then ducked as he approached the vehicle, "They are welcome to test all they want, and I always welcome a chance to learn."

He quickly moved to a window seat and set his cheap minicomp to record the flight, as well as any conversation in case he missed anything.

"So how long will we be in transit to the campus? And what's it like there, assumin that it is the same one you trained at?"

[Krul]

"It's a few hours flight, and everyone who becomes an electrokinetic, even those who end up in other orders, go though the same tests, and take a certain measure of training before they are triggered." She responded to his question, and then turned her gaze full upon him.

"After, you spend a week or two in training, study and even meditation." She held out her fingers, and electricity crackled between thumb and forfinger. "After all, in a way, after being triggered, your a walking electrical plant, dangerous to yourself and others, until you establish control."

"Once that's done, you'll be offered a contract, and should you accept they will try to fit you with the best possible fit for you and the company. You could end up anywhere."

[Rorx]

He looks at the spark she produces a little enviously, "Sounds good to me. Most of what I've heard about is the Orgosoft stuff, the bio stuff. Is the anything you could tell me about the other branches? I'm not really much good at biology, but I've been studying programming so maybe I'll get assigned to the hardware side? Or is there somewhere that my athletics and stuff could be useful?"

He shakes his head and smiles slightly, "Actually can I be a bit crass and ask you to show me what you can actually do with your abilities? After all you did say we had some hours of flight."

[Krul]

"There are a number of branches within ogrotek, I am certain that you'll find a nitch somewhere. And yes, everything can be useful, enginnering, and athletics, you could end up with Operations even." When he asked his other question she laughed.

"Most of my capabilities involves bio-electrial fields, though I can do a bit of work with light."

[Rorx]

"Operations? I haven't heard of them as a company. I know Orgosoft do the biotech for the psions, Lumen is the light and laser company and Tekne deals with the hardtech stuff. So what does Operations do?"

He's obviously interested to hear about something hetherto unknown to him.

[Krul]

"Operations covers security and protection, as well as often being given the missions to deal with various potential threats to humanity. You might call them the special forces aspect of Ogrotek."

[Rorx]

"Security? What like labs and offices and stuff. Oh, hang on. Is that the guys who have the rivalry with some unit of the Legion?"

George continued to question Celina about various aspects of Orgotech, it's subsidaries and the powers of Eectrokinesis for the rest of the trip until distracted by their coming in for a landing.

[Krul]

"Somewhat, yes, Operations covers that sort of thing." She was patient with him, answering his various questions, and even occasionally demonstrating some applications of electrokinesis for him now and again.

Finally, however, they set down at the New York facility, and she gave him a smile. "Here's your stop, there should be.. " She looked up, and then nodded, as a middle aged gentleman with grey hair approached the VTOL. "There's your guide and teacher, Professor Grey."

[Rorx]

George smiles and thanks Celine before grabbing his bag and getting out of the VTOL.

He approaches the man, "Professor Grey? Pleased to meet you. So where to now?"

[Krul]

"Well, my boy, it's time to run you though a number of tests, I'm afraid it may become a bit tiresome after a bit, but it's an important task." Taking the young man back to the testing facility, he watches him carefully, the testing process already beginning. "So, would you like time to rest first, and start your testing tomorrow, do you want to start now?"

[Rorx]

"Oh, I'll happily start now. Lead the way."

[Krul]

"So be it." He smiled, the kid had enthusiasm, which was good, and would serve him well in Orgotek. What followed was a battery of tests, testing just about everything that could be imagined. This included a full physical, a testing of reflexes, coordination and stamina, a test of mental capabilities, IQ and personality testing, psyche evaluations. If there was a test for it, it was applied, and the full testing process took about a week, and they even secretly tested for things like honesty, and the like. It was tireing series of tests, and at the end, it took about a week or so.

[Rorx]

George enjoyed the physical tests the most, finding, as expected, that although his strength was about average his coordination and stamina were definitely significantly average.

It was this high stamina that allowed George to spend some time after the days testing on learning other things. Some of this was more information about Orgotech and the various branches, but Celine's talk of the operations branch had intrigued him since the trio to New york. With this in mind he tried to find out more about them and also to start looking at the sort of skills he imagined might be usefu to them. Of course all of his data and literature requests were monitored and indeed formed part of the testing.

Eventually the week plus of physical, mental, social and psychic testing came to an end. Even the hours of lectures and seminars on what to expect from the dunking and the changes to perceptions, senses and capabilities were over. However, there was one last surprise for the testers, the results of the enhanced latency tests. These were used to fine tune some of the chambers setttings and included some measure of how high his potential ability in each Aptitude was. The surprise was that he was almost as highly attuned to another Aptitude as he was to Electrokinesis.

When the Prexy was informed he just smiled, they already had him so it wasn't like the other Order was going to be able to complain even if they could. You never know, it could be useful to have someone like him around. And with a thought the order for George's dunking was approved.

[Krul]

Once all of the various testing was complete, and Ogrotek was finished with all of their various assessments, it didn't take more then a moment for full approval for the final step to go through. Of course, a complete file, with all of the results of his testing, was put together for his personal file.

Next began a three week training process, where he was taught the fundamentals of noetic theory, and the particulars of electrokinesis. There were about 5 other applicants there with him, so the total for his class, as they called it, numbered six.

[Rorx]

George eagerly absorbed all that they tried to teach him and continued later than most of the others on most nights, picking up other bits and pieces as he had done during the testing week.

Due to nature of the classes and the skill of Orgotek in choosing the groups the class members all eventually became friends and stood together waiting as each was eventually called to the Chamber

[Krul]

Together with George, the other applicants were Elizabeth, Tanya, Julian, Shiro, and Katrina, three young women and three young men. There had been a few jokes about that during the last few weeks, and there was a class a week in front of them, with another class a week behind.

This was the final step, so to speak, a few hours from now, they would all be psions, and life would never be the same. A technician in a robe stepped into the room. "George Kalnan, if you would follow me?"

They took him to a shower, where he was told to scrub himself completely, then he was given a bath robe and lead to the chamber itself. Once there, he was told to disrobe, then they attached a breather mask, and the a few monitoring devices to him, and into the Prometheus chamber he went.

*************

Electricity, light, energy, control over the electromagnetic spectrum. This was what the electrokinetic discipline was all about, and this was what George was awakened too.. for him, it was a strange sensation, like walking up from a dream.. but all of his life before had been a dream, which wasn't true. For a moment he could sense it, the energy that flows in and around everything, then the tank opened, and he was removed, no longer as he was.

[Rorx]

George stumbled from the tank, to be caught by the waiting pair of technicians. At the time he was dazzled by the slowly fading impressions of light, energy and space. As he stumbled out all he could say was "the lights..." as he gazed at the technicians, not seeing them as themselves but as a collection of lines of energy surging along their major nerveways.

They put a robe around him and helped him regain his balance as he stared around the room, his vision of the nerve lines fading, but not before he had seen the clusters at the control nexii of the biotech Prometheus chamber itself. As he stared around the room his vision shifted, seemingly at random through the spectrum so that he saw the heat currents in the air as they swirled near the air conditioners and from the surface of the people in the room. A solid bar seemed to cross the room as his vision swept through the radio range, and he perceived an odd occassional sparkle as a passing neutrino created some secondary emissions.

The technicians smiled at each other, they had similar responces to the chamber before, "How are you feeling?" asked one of them.

"Fine... I guess" was George's hesistant reply, "It's just the lights and heat and things I'm seeing."

"Don't worry about that. We're taking you to a room to lie down for a while, it will soon fade and eventually you'll learn how to control it."

Still absorbed in his enhanced, if only temporarily, perceptions George could only nod as the lead him through a door and down a corridor to a recovery room.

Behind a shielded two way mirror looking into the recovery room Professor Grey and an WEI doctor observed George's entrance to the room. One of the techs soon opened the door and handed a datapad to the doctor then left the room again after a brief "Thank you."

There was a pause as the doctor looked over the data and Prof Grey watched George lying on the bed in the adjacent room gazing around the room. Along one wall of the observation room a computer and bank of sensor recorded what happend in the recovery room across the entire spectrum of EM and in the separate Electrical and Magnetic fields as well. The Professor glanced at the instruments, then turned back to examining his young trainee the other side of the shielded glass.

"Hum, these all appear to within the usual parameters given the strength of his latency", remarked the doctor as he passed the datapad to the Professor.

Grey had worked with Doctor Lawson for a number of years and so just briefly glanced at the pad before placing it on the desk. However, it was long enough for him to be surprised to find George standing next to the two way mirror apparently looking back at him.

"Come on Grey, you know they can't sense us in there. You were the one who explained it to me about the glass being silver tinted on both sides to form a mini-Faraday cage to block EK's enhanced senses."

"Yes, I know. They can detect that difference though and it sometimes draws them. I just have the feeling that it's more than that this time."

The Professor's hunch was bourne out when George, still apparently looking at him through the glass, says, "Professor? I know you are watching me. Could you, or your colleague", he turns to look directly at the doctor, "come and talk to me about this?"

[Rorx]

The two observers turned to look at one another, then the doctor addressed the Professor as he turned back to examine the the glass, "I suppose the shielding has failed so that your trainee can see us through it?"

After a brief pause Professor Grey turns back to the doctor, "Not that I can detect, but perhaps. I'll go see him."

George had been standing and apparently watching the two of them as they spoke, but when the Professor headed to the door he turned and made his way back to the bed.

[Krul]

It took several moments, before the door opened the Professor stepped inside. The professor looked over the young man a moment, then he raise one eyebrow slightly. "So, my boy, you suprise me, how did you know we were there?"

[Rorx]

George sat up on the bed, "I don't really know Prof. I could just sort of feel you there. Indeed I can feel the spaces of where the other rooms around us are as well, but it's not something that was mentioned in the briefings. I recognise some of the visual stuff from when I've been able to tap into what you called Electrocosm even before I was dunked on occassions, but this feels rather odd, and yet right in some way."

[Krul]

"Hmm.." The Professor pulled up a holigraphic display a moment, then he pulled up George's charts.. then he paused. "You sense everything around you?" He blinked. "That sounds like the most basic of teleportation capabilities.." He checked the file again, then he nodded.

"Well now, how interesting..." He pulled out a scanning device, and checked it over again, then he read the file, isolating, then stopping.

"I suspect you've developed your first alternate mode, my boy, which is very unusual, but not quite, completely unheard of."

[Rorx]

George looked as lost as he then sounded, "Teleportation?...Alternate mode?...What's going on? I don't remember anything like that being mentioned during the briefings?"

[Krul]

"We didn't go into it, because we didn't believe we needed to, it almost never happens. Congradulations, your about 1 of a 1000, my boy, most folks never develop alternate modes until further in thier growth and development.. some never do."

He sat down in a nearby chair. "You developed it, almost without planning to, you see, any psion can develop the basic ablities of any other aptitude, though it takes considerable more effort on our parts.. unusally. Some are very useful as well. For example, a telepath who develops just a bit of Electrokinesis has a bit of extra defense from attack. Teleportation is very rare however, even as an alternate, especially these days."

[Rorx]

George leans back against the pillows, "You mean I may be able to do some minor teleporting stuff. Or even learn other things as well?"

He sat back up and grinned at his instructor, "However, perhaps I should wait until I've recovered from this and finished what inevitable test you will have for me now!"

[Krul]

"Yes, for now, I think you should get some rest, the rest of your classmates will be joining you tomorrow." He winked at George. "But we're past the testing stage, now it's on to training."

[Rorx]

George recovered quickly and threw himself into his training, particularly the psionic aspects. Not knowing what he might face he had attempted to lern what he could from each of the EK modes and indeed had spent some time researching what the basic abilities of the other Aptitudes were in case he could find a way to learn some of those as well.

He had already decided that he wanted to go into Operations during the pre-dunking orientation and had spent some time working on what he hoped would be suitable areas of study to get into that branch. Fortunately his instructors agreed that he was most suitable for Operations, although some had debated whether he should go into Tekne. In the end it was thought that his computer skills could be of use during Operations assignments and so compliment his other skills for that branch rather than lead to a different assignment.

George was so eager to do well that he even saved his first months wages in order to buy an IAR bioaugmentation device to give his EK abilities a boost. Then he was ready for his first assignment.

[Krul]

After a few weeks of training, he was assigned to operations, and then to the Xiao Dao, due in part to his teleporation alternate mode. They shipped him aboard around the same time several others were also sent in from the various orders.

<continued in the Xiao Dao thread>