Speaking of Lowell, formerly Liaison Lowell and recently promoted to the newly created director position, he’s my next conference call. I enjoy interacting with him, he’s been a mentor to me over the years. However, the project that accompanies him is my other headache. Several months ago, Liaison Lowell supervised all Psycept cases as well as the police unit that oversaw the consultations. The job simply became too much for one person, so Lowell chose to remain with PCSS and left the Psycept Police unit to Tamez, Sully, and Sheriff Helki. PCSS employs over two thousand people and works with over fifteen thousand SWACon Psycepts to handle the consultant requests that don’t require police assistance.
There are seven broad categories of Psycepts, or those that have enhanced psychic perception. Yes, psychics are real and twenty-five years ago, we were exposed to the world as an actual phenomenon. The first genetic tests were developed by scientists in the US and they secretly examined a sample of citizens. They publicly made the results known, prompting a decade of court battles and our mounting resistance to the assertions from the government and scientists wanting to take on ‘guardianship’ of all Psycepts in the US for their protection. I was a child when this began and my parents both protested our treatment and characterization by the government. The final ruling from the Supreme Court was that Psycepts are our own person and are to be self-governed like any citizen. However, the justices didn’t prohibit Psycepts from being deputized, subpoenaed, or having a Writ of Assistance or a Mandate to Render Aid issued to us, provided we were adequately compensated. It is almost as if the justices equated Psycepts to private property under our ownership, then allowed for eminent domain to extend to Psycepts.
Being a TouchVoyant, I was a high priority Psycept for the US government as they could try to use me for interrogation or spying and claim it was a matter of national security. The Greater Tribal Council of the Americas, or the GT, is a neighboring nation comprised of Indigenous Tribes, or Native American and First Nation tribes as we were taught in the US. The tribes collaborated to present a united front and created their own nation over 150 years. In present time, seeing the persecution and fear engendered by the US against their own Psycept citizens, the GT offered Psycepts asylum and permanent residency. It wasn’t completely altruistic, in exchange for the safe harbor, we agreed to work Psycept cases. The number of petitions per week was negotiated as was the number of years we are contracted to work. But the residency status is for life. Many US Psycepts, including me, jumped at the chance and I’ve been a Psycept resident of Albuquerque, in the Bosque region of SWACon, for over fifteen years.
The GT isn’t very interested in using us for secret government or military means. Instead, the GT created a huge Psycept database for people to submit petitions of aid. The people can be civilian, asking for aid for themselves, a friend, or a family member, or the request can come from a police agency. Most of our requests come from the US, with Canada and Mexico following close behind. The requests can range from a healing or assistance with failing crops all the way up to a murder or missing person investigation.
If the request involves any investigation of a crime, then the petition falls under the Psycept Police Division and those Psycepts whose abilities allow them to assist in such matters. All other requests are civilian in nature and handled by the appropriate party. As a TouchVoyant, I regularly handle criminal case consultations. The majority of Psycepts don’t have abilities that help with police investigations and so work with PCSS on civilian requests. PCSS delivers all Psycept packages so even if a Psycept works with police cases, we at least have some interaction with PCSS.
“Good morning, Gray. Are you ever going to put anything behind you? All I’ve seen the past few Saturdays dialing in from your home office is a blank white wall. Kinda boring, may I suggest a plant?”
“Oh, you hush. I think the first thing I’m gonna do is paint the walls, and I’ll pick out a pretty color for you look at. Or I can load you down with tasks which will force you to pay attention to me and not the décor, or lack thereof, behind me. If you keep complaining, then you know which way I’ll go, and you’ll deserve it.”
“Yes ma’am. So, what do you have for us?”
“Annabeth has the first month’s analysis of all Psycept packages now being delivered by PCSS. She also has the initial results of the study of how other conservatorships handle Psycept cases from start to finish. Annabeth?”
“Thanks, Gray. So far, the package delivery system has been working very well. PCSS already handled case packages for the 14,000 civilian Psycepts, so we just added the nine hundred plus police Psycepts. This increase created a need for new package deliverers, so we added twenty-five new positions. There was a bit of a hiccup in the beginning. There were some Psycept specific quirks that were not conveyed to the new delivery person by the detectives that delivered the packages prior to now. But that was corrected soon enough. The spreadsheet uploaded to our shared site has specific numbers like turnaround times and such. One thing to highlight is the number of hours freed up by the Psycept detectives no longer handling the package delivery. The Psycept Police Division collectively sponsored a thank you lunch buffet last week for the entire
