“Mr. Teacher is real nice. He helped me when bad people took my parents away. He told me that if I ever got confused about anything, I can ask him, and he’ll help me.”

 

–Wendy

 

“She reminds me a lot of myself at her age. Imaginative, vulnerable, scared, and has a power she doesn’t understand. You know what it’s like to have a power inside you that scares people you look to for comfort and love, to have a power people either want to lock away forever or use to their own ends ? It’s like having a brick of gold inside your heart.. They will cut right through your core to get what they want.”

 

–Elaine Crow

 

“No. You can take the others. I don’t need them anymore. But Wendy is mine. She belongs to me. I still need her!”

 

–Mr. Blue

 

Name: 

 

Wendy Thompson Crow

 

Wendy was born Wendy Thompson, but now goes by the name Wendy Thompson Crow after her guardian Elaine Crow.

Supername:

 

Big Brain

 

I would have personally called her Big Heart, but she’s got a big brain as well. 

 

No, seriously. It’s slightly above average for her age and size.

 

“Good news, Wendy! Your brain is perfectly normal and average, Wendy.” Ms. Cryptic explained. 

 

“But you said my blood vessels were thin.” Wendy said.

 

“They are slightly thin, slightly below the average thickness. But you remember what I told you about that?”

 

“Yes. That it doesn’t hurt nothing.”

 

“That’s right. You can run around and exercise until you pass out, you are in no danger of a hemorrhage. Your capillaries are thin, but not so thin we need to worry about them.”

 

“That’s good. But that still doesn’t make me normal.”

 

“But check this out! This scan shows that your brain is slightly large for your age and size.”

 

“Is that bad?”

 

“No dear! Not at all! In fact, brain size is somewhat correlated to intelligence. So you see, small capillaries, large brain. It even outs!”

 

“Is that how it works?”

 

“I have a doctorate in several disciplines! Of course that’s how it works! You’re perfectly normal, and perfectly fine!”

 

“I’m still worried about having a big brain…”

 

“What worries you about it?”

 

“Wel..Elaine says that when people hit their heads really hard because they don’t wear helmets inside warsuits that their brains swell and then because their skulls are in the way it creates pressure on the brain and you could die from that. It’s called a concussion.”

 

“You don’t have a concussion, dear. Your brain is in no danger of being squished by your skull, I promise you.”

 

“So it’s…really good I have a big brain?”

“Yes, very good!”

 

“Cool!”

 

Average Grade:

 

A+

 

When you’ve gone your whole life being told that your power is something that can get you and others killed, you tend to take education designed to help you not only use your power but use it effectively and constructively like a duck to water. We see it with kids from Earth State all the time, and Wendy is from a place that makes Earth State’s restrictions look like nothing.

 

Of course she would shine. She just needed a chance.

 

ERC:

 

1

 

Wendy is not interested at all in learning how to hurt people with her powers, not even in self defense, and we can’t blame her given her background. Her ERC instruction focuses on first aid, identifying and reporting telepathic crimes, and telepathic law.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

Remediation, Noosphere Engineering, Telepathic Development

 

Telepathic Social Studies was suggested as a class, but a lot of its material is covered under Noosphere Engineering and Telepathic Development, plus Wendy’s contact education is framed around her studying how different cultures handle telepathy. She’s already doing two other classes and remediation. We don’t want to overwhelm her, so we’re thinking about saving Telepathic Social Studies for another year.

 

As one of our multiverse students from a world less developed than our own, Wendy takes Remediation just like Lanty and Claude, though it’s less strenuous given her age. The gap in knowledge between a ten year old from our world and a ten year old from an underdeveloped world isn’t as severe as a gap between two teenagers.

 

Noosphere Engineering was an obvious choice based on how much Wendy loves our noosphere–which was unsurprising given how she had to be very careful about her telepathy lest she alert “demolitionists” to her family’s location. It teaches her how to get the most of telepathic networks and how to make and manage her own. She’s currently working on making a mental filter that lets people see the world like Vivian, her favorite border collie in the whole multiverse.

 

Telepathic Development allows Wendy to cut loose with her powers and push what she used to bottle up inside to their limits. When working with Dr, Bell, who doubles as her TIMS teacher, she doesn’t have to worry about hurting anyone or anything.

 

“I never knew I could actually get tired using my powers until I worked with Dr. Bell.” Wendy said. “It’s nice to get tired.”

 

As she exerts herself, she learns how to use her powers in subtle, precise ways, and to do so with confidence. She’s learned how to “zap” things with bolts of mental lightning. Previously, she was only able to use her lightning in uncontrolled and highly destructive bursts.

 

And the best part? Dr. Bell believes Wendy has a long way to go before reaching her full potential. She’s going to be quite the superhuman by the time she graduates.

 

Contact Education:

 

Blue Roses, Hera City, Royaume, TIMS

 

Enrolling Wendy in TIMS (telepathic institutionalization and medical services) was a, if you pardon the joke, a no-brainer. Wendy has a telepathic profile that, while similar to many from our universe, is not an exact copy of anything in the books, and TIMS tracks Wendy’s development as a telepath not only for her own benefit but to better prepare us for contacting her world.

 

Dr. Bell is Wendy’s TIMS teacher and Wendy is getting along with her just fine. She likes Dr. Bell.  “She’s strong and tough.” Wendy said. “She reminds me of Elaine. And she has a cool power! She has an imaginary friend and it’s real! If she tells it to, her imaginary friend scares people and makes them run away and leave them alone. I like that. It’s like always having a big shield around you.”

 

The main idea behind the rest of Wendy’s contact education is to expose her to how different cultures handle telepathy. She’s only familiar with how her own world handled telepathy, and their solution was, to say the least, unenlightened, and how Elaine’s world handled telepathy–with a ruling telepathic caste of “governors” who distributed telepathic privileges to the people they ruled as they saw fit.

 

We want her to know that cultures have come up with more peaceful, less exploitative ways telepathy can be used and regulated.

 

Blue Roses is one of the country’s oldest “telepath towns.” Founded back in the early 1930’s, it was built in compliance with FDR’s telepath relocation act. As more and more cities and states passed laws banning telepaths and enforcing those bans with kybernetic TIPs (Thought Integrity Protectors) it became more and more evident that telepaths needed somewhere to go. The nascent TIMS purchased  a small northeast mining town in Pennsylvania and the government began shipping unwanted telepaths to Blue Roses. The head doctor at TIMS at the time, Dr.Jason Croft, explained the name as such: “There are no blue roses in nature, yet they are beautiful nonetheless. Many consider telepaths, in spite of what mirabology tells us about the natural state of our cosmos, to be unnatural like the blue rose. So be it. Unnatural does not mean unloved. This is a town of blue roses, each and every one beautiful.”

 

Though TIMS personnel did everything they could to make  Blue Roses a home for telepaths, it was, in truth, a large prison for men, women, and children who had committed no crime. It’s borders were enforced by TIPs. Telepaths, nor their thoughts, were allowed to leave the borders of Blue Roses.

 

The modern Blue Roses is not a glorified prison. It is a vibrant, loving community whose borders are enforced by trust, not by TIPs. Blue Roses has some of the least restrictive telepathic laws, virtually none. People freely telepath into each others’ heads. The town is quiet, but within its noosphere shadow hundreds of voices chatter away. Individual limits for telepathic communication are discussed and set on an individual basis. Once you’ve signed the waiver and gone through the checkpoint, the entire town turns out to telepathically greet you. It’s a party in your head, and when you physically get to town, it’s a real party.

 

It also has some very interesting, dare I say eccentric telepaths that Wendy could use as role models. Sheriff Mayor, who is not actually the mayor but is the sheriff, does a phenomenal job keeping the peace. Johnny Lopez, better known as “The Giant,” is an elderly paraplegic with incredible telepathic powers. He spends his time eating pie and drinking coffee at the Sunshine Diner while offering mental sanctuary within his dreamworld 

 

But I think Wendy would probably like meeting Dr. Donna Bishop the most. She’s an animal person, just like Wendy. She’s the town’s veterinarian. She takes care of all the pets and keeps tabs on the strays with telepathy. Animals find her presence soothing and gather around her clinic, which doubles as something like a public petting zoo. Come to think of it, I bet Vivian would like to meet Dr. Bishop to. Glatisant probably wouldn’t though. That cat would hiss at Gold Star himself if they met.

 

Hera City, built in the 1940’s near Mt. Argus in Antarctica to counter the immense heat the city generated, is essentially a massive computer housing digital life–the Hesperides. The Hesperides exist within an artificial noosphere called kyberspace. Beings of pure thought, the Hesperides know only the Astral communication of telepathy. They’re full-time telepathics like humans are full-time air breathers. By entering kyberspace, Wendy can learn a lot about how an all-telepath society functions. And I think she’ll like the jungle gardens that grow around the city. The Hesperides tend to a vast collection of flora and fauna through the use of robotic drones. They see the practice as a religious experience. It gives them the chance to cultivate life within the world of their creators. They’re essentially telepaths with a great respect for physical nature. 

 

Blue Roses and Hera City give Wendy the chance to see how telepath majority cultures handle telepathy and Joyous Harbor the chance to see how a basic majority culture handles telepathy, but Dr. Jefferson wants her to visit Royaume in Earth State to see how a less permissive culture handles telepaths.

 

Superpowers are tightly regulated within Earth State, and telepathic superpowers most of all. There was some disagreement when Dr. Jefferson suggested Royaume to be part of Wendy’s contact education. Several teachers felt Royaume would remind Wendy too much of home, but that’s the entire idea.

 

One day, we’re going to find out what became of 

 

And to be completely honest, I like that the arrangement gives us an excuse to get closer to Earth State and do some on-site detective work. We know that Blue Angel is really the princess of Royaume. I want to know who else knows.

 

Hyperstasis:

 

Telepathy and Telekinesis

 

Whipple Syndrome

 

The telepaths of Wendy’s world weren’t particularly powerful. If they were, they wouldn’t have been subjugated by the basics. Wendy’s world follows the Lann model of hyperstatic development–superhumans exhibit little variety between themselves with what variation that exists relating to the potency of abilities. Every superhuman in Wendy’s world has what they call “Whipple syndrome” after the first man to demonstrate superpowers. They’re telepathic. They can read thoughts and project thoughts, and if that was all they did they theri world might not have tried to exterminate them. Might.

 

But upon death, they release a wave of psychic energy. Whipple’s death-wave wiped out most of Washington DC.

 

But Wendy is very different from other Whipple syndrome telepaths. Her powers are magnitudes greater than any other telepath. They’re sparklers, she’s an atomic bomb. We know that Mr. Blue sought out Wendy  through the power he copied from Willow Collins so that he could have an easily controlled telepath to help him control Cadell, and by extension the CAINNELL. It’s likely that he didn’t just want a telepath but an incredibly powerful one to boot. That’s what he got with Wendy. 

 

While other Whipple syndrome telepaths have to die to release psychic energy, Wendy can just will it out of her brain. In this way, she’s telekinetic. She can exert a force against anything she thinks about that manifests like an arc of electricity. This psychic energy is extremely hot, hotter than even plasma, and when we got Martina to hold it (her powers derived from Xibalba’s Hot House means heat can never harm her) she remarked that she felt intense feelings of anxiety. Dr. Bell theorizes that this psychic energy may be an inert thoughtform. Thoughtforms usually develop in the Astral and then attach themselves to hosts, but in Wendy’s case, her thoughtform (if it can even be called a thoughtform) is generated entirely by herself, or more specifically, her negative thoughts. She produces psychic energy from anxiety, fear, and hatred. 

 

That’s probably why she’s so powerful. Due to her past, Wendy has a lot of negative emotions bottled up inside her, more than any young girl should.

 

Wendy’s World

 

The appellation first contactees give their worlds can be very revealing. Elaine Crow, for instance, gave her world the appellation “The Endless Road” after her father telling her that the heart of America was composed of the ancient, overgrown asphalt roads upon which modern machines rolled.

 

That Wendy gave her home universe the appellation “The Scary World” should be telling.

 

In the Scary World, the world’s first superhuman was a telepath born with the name Horace Whipple and posthumously named the Black Swan. He spent his life as a protester outside the United State’s Capitol listening to their inner thoughts and secret crimes, their hidden contempt for their constituents and petty egotism, and leaked it all to the Internet, their form of an electronic noosphere.

 

Then he was taken into custody under unclear circumstances and while in custody perished under unclear circumstances. The only thing that was clear about his death was the fallout–a massive telepathic energy storm that swept across Washington DC.

 

An autopsy found that Whipple had thin capillaries in his brain, and thin capillaries were found in the brains of other telepaths. The governments of the world concluded that telepaths were an existential threat to the human race. They were time bombs. The more their power grew, the thinner their capillaries became, and when they died they exploded. They had only a few years to live, and then they would take hundreds if not thousands with them.

 

They had to be killed–demolished, to use a euphemism that became in vogue–and killed fast before their death-wave built up in their heads. Killteams known as Demolishers were granted the authority to seek out and “demolish” telepaths.

 

Scans of Wendy coupled with what her parents told her about Whipple syndrome  tell us that the story about thin capillaries was true, but incredibly exaggerated. Wendy’s capillaries are thin, but not dangerously so, and will not thin with age. Without rejuvenation treatments, she’s estimated to have the lifespan of an average human.

 

Her world could have made an effort to integrate telepaths into society, but they chose the easy way, and it very likely would have cost them greatly without intervention from the multiverse.

 

Seeking a powerful telepath that he could easily manipulate for his schemes, Mr. Blue arrived in Wendy’s world moments after her parents were killed in front of her by Demolishers. Psychic energy swirled around her. The Demolishers fired explosive rounds that dissolved harmlessly against Wendy’s energy. Wendy was prepared to kill them. Wendy was prepared to, perhaps, kill even more. Maybe an entire city. Maybe the entire planet. Her rage was that of a child torn from the only love she knew, and that’s a very powerful, primal rage.

 

Mr. Blue took Wendy away and made her one of his students. What became of Wendy’s world, we don’t know. ARGO hasn’t been able to access it even knowing its Fox harmonic. This points to Mr. Blue having done something to it. He may have even traded it to a multiversal power–but to who and for what we can’t even guess.

 

Mr. Blue seized upon Wendy’s hurt and loneliness like a wolf on wounded prey. He became “Mr. Teacher.” He promised to take her to a place without Demolishers, a place where she could use her powers freely. All she had to do in return was trust him, and trust him she did. 

 

Mr. Blue became like a father, like a god to Wendy. He was her savior. He could do no wrong. Even now with Wendy and most of Mr. Blue’s students safely away from him, Wendy believes that Mr. Blue told Martin’s teachers to take her to our world. One day, she’ll have to be told the truth, and soon, even if it will destroy her to learn that her savior is really an evil supervillain that sought to use her.

 

Due to his inability to copy powers with telepathic components, Mr. Blue took great pains to groom Wendy into an unquestioning tool. He only allowed her to interact with students from our world, who knew him as a BOL member, seldom, just enough for her to know who they were and to be comfortable around them. He didn’t want to risk them ruining his good guy persona by letting it slip that he was a criminal. Elaine spent most of her time with Mr. Blue’s other multiverse students–especially with Elaine Crow, who she grew very close to.

 

Elaine Crow

 

Elaine Crow, hailing from Universe Beta19-Nu71, was recruited by Mr. Blue so he could copy her ability to telepathically switch bodies. Like Wendy, Elaine had a difficult past. Her world was one recovering from a devastating collapse of the global order. The US was a loose confederation of states ran by “governors,” powerful telepaths whose abilities covered entire cities. These governors used their powers to grant  telepathic abilities to a court of follower and to rule over non-telepaths, sometimes malevolently, sometimes benevolently, but they always ruled, and when they competed with each other, non-telepaths were their tools. 

 

Elaine was born to a non-telepath family in East City, a massive city that stretched across the East Coast of the United States. She was an anomaly–a telepathic child born to non-telepaths. On Elaine’s world, such a thing was impossible. Telepaths were created by procedure, not by birth. Superpowers only came from secondary hyperstasis–but Elaine broke the mold. She was her world’s first primary hyperstatic.

 

The governor of East City, not understanding what Elaine was and fearing that she was some sort of plot by his rivals, adopted Elaine and gave her to the wives of his court to care for. Elaine was treated horribly, a Cinderella abused by several wicked stepmothers. She had no blood, no pedigree, and no future.

 

Elaine held onto one secret, her prized possession, something she told no one about because it was the one thing in her world that was truly hers and hers alone–she could do more than any other telepath. She could not only connect minds, but switch them.

 

Unfortunately, the governor knew about her power. There were no secrets in East City. He knew everything about everyone. Knowledge was his obsession. But his court could see his obsession growing. Where once his diligent spying was an asset, it was now becoming a liability. He neglected obvious dangers while he pursued Elaine’s origins and purpose. 

 

They leaked Elaine’s existence across the United States in the hopes that someone would steal her away.

 

That someone would turn out to be Arthur Crow, free operator.

 

Between the governors and non-telepaths were operators, lesser telepaths who fought for their governors in exchange for greater telepathic might, which in turn gave them more land to control. Operators used their telepathy in conjunction with giant robots called Warsuits, their world’s equivalent of the Guardian Giants of our own.

But there were some that cared not for might, or land. These were the free operators. They roamed the old overgrown highways of the United States, fighting not for governors but for their dreams, desires, and conscience. Maligned by the governors as mercenaries and outlaws, non-telepaths looked on them as folk heroes.

 

Arthur Crow was a free operator. Once an operator named Five on the losing side of the Sonora-Texlarka war, he was granted a state-of-the-art Warsuit called the Excalibur 9 by a dying engineer who wanted to do something noble before he died, something besides give powerful weapons to the already-powerful.

 

Five took the Excalibur 9 and it’s two smart-animal co-operators, a cat in charge of the Excalibur 9’s stealth mode and a dog in charge of its artillery mode. With newfound freedom with the collapse of the Sonora government, Five and his pets roamed the endless roads of America, fighting by the dictates of his heart.

 

Five researched what an Excalibur was, and it led him to T. H. White’s Once and Future King. The book changed his life. It told of warriors that struggled to fight for more than the expansion of power, of warriors that fought against the rule of forte mans. They strived towards an ideal, haltingly, stumblingly, but they strived nonetheless.

 

The book, and several other works of Arthurian legend, changed how he saw the world. It made things make sense. Operators were knights. Governors were kings. They were in a feudal world that pretended that it wasn’t. And free operators were knight errants, knights that looked to fight for a Camelot that never was, or had yet to be, or was and was long lost.

 

Five named himself Arthur, after King Arthur, and Crow after the bird, which he had always assumed to be nothing more than a bird before learning how incredibly intelligent they truly were. He had always thought he was nothing more than a Sonoran soldier before learning how noble he truly was.

 

He named his smart-cat Glatisant, after the Questing Beast, for he was as furtive and fearsome as the legendary monster, and named his smart-dog Vivien after the Lady of the Lake, for Vivien was gentle and wise.

 

Arthur Crow was hired by the Governor of Great Island to retrieve Elaine. The Governor erroneously believed that she was his daughter, who he was told was assassinated. He never believed, and was sure she was taken by a rival to raise against him. Arthur rescrued Elaine, and was the one to name her. Before meeting Arthur, Elaine was only “the girl.” But he told her that she was much more than that. She was Elaine, the Lady of Shalott, watching the world from her tower.

 

But this time, she was going to leave, and see the world in all its beauty.

 

Upon learning from Elaine that she wasn’t the Governor of Great Island’s daughter and had no desire to be his daughter, he refused to hand her over, and became hunted by the Governor of East City and the Governor of Great Island. Two armies pursued him as he showed Elaine the endless roads of America, the scrap merchants and farmers that made a humble but free existence outside cities. When Arthur was cornered in Texlarka, he overclocked his connection to the Excalibur 9 to fight off two armies and succeeded. He won freedom for Elaine, but at the cost of his life. He damaged his nervous system by overclocking the Excalibur 9. He had only a few years to live, but he spent those years raising Elaine as his own daughter. She learned how to operate the Excalibur 9 and how to conduct herself as a knight errant. Arthur guided Elaine as she grew, though his hands trembled the whole time.

 

When he finally expired, Elaine continued to drift around America with Vivien and Glatisant at her side. She found steady employment working for Peabody’s Garages, a guild of Warsuit mechanics separate from the Governors.

 

One day, a man made out of crackling blue light appeared before her, and told her that he could complete her training as a knight. There were things Arthur didn’t have the time nor the knowledge to teach her. What was more, he knew why she was different from other telepaths, and he would tell her–if she followed him to another world.

 

Elaine, ever a brave knight, followed him, and left her world behind.

 

Wendy and Elaine

 

When Wendy and Elaine met as students of Mr. Blue, they instantly hit it off. Elaine’s telepathy meant that she had experience “quiet talking” as Wendy called it, and Wendy was glad to have someone that could keep up with her telepathic chattering. She was also older and far more like an adult than other students. She had been through so much more than the others. Wendy felt that the other students were just starting their stories, but Elaine had already been through several stories–and she loved to listen to Elaine tell her about them. Elaine had been a helpless child, just like she had been before Mr. Blue, but she had also been a squire, which she now was for Elaine, and a knight, which she hoped to be one day.

 

Wendy looked up to Elaine like an older sister, or perhaps even like a mother, but unfortunately, she remains her second favorite person–after Mr. Blue, who drilled into her head that he was her savior.

 

Elaine has confided in us that Wendy has thoughts of vengeance that she has worked to steer Wendy  away from. 

 

“Sometimes, she asks me what she should do if she ever gets back to her home universe, what she should do to fix her world.” Elaine told us, “One time, she asked me who she had to kill to make things better. Now that didn’t just come out of the blue. You know me. You know what I’ve done. I’m not the least ashamed of being a knight, and I’ve told Wendy some of what I’ve done. She knows I’ve killed people. It’s only natural she’d ask if she should. I told her that if she has to kill a person, it should only be to defend herself and those she cares about. That’s how I’ve always operated. But then my smart squire had to make things murky. She asked me if it was alright to kill people connected to harming herself and people she cared about. I could see what she was planning in my mind without telepathy. I could see her taking her frustrations out on Demolishers, and then on politicians, and then on voters. I could see her rage sweep over her planet until it became a dark and evil thing, darker and more evil than even what created it.

 

 I told her to never kill a helpless enemy. When an enemy is helpless, a knight shows them mercy, even to wicked caitiffs. I think she understood.”

 

Elaine’s done a good job raising Wendy. We’re going to help her and make sure her hard work doesn’t go to waste.

 

Behavior:

 

Exemplary 

 

Wendy is a sweetheart. That’s all there really is to it.

 

Though still fanatically loyal to “Mr. Teacher,” we’re confident that she’ll be able to adapt to the truth with support from Elaine and Wendy’s fellow “Bluedents.”

 

But we’ll have to rip the band-aid off first. And that’s going to be hard. Everyone is hesitant to do it, though it must be done. Wendy is so happy here. She spends her time exploring the noosphere and talking as loud with her brain as she can without fear of bad people hearing her. She lets Vivian curl up next to her and thinks freely. She is so happy here. But she thinks she owes this all to a man who is, to her, God, and to the rest of reality, a monster. She thinks she’s here as part of Mr. Blue’s plan, that this is a gift from him to her.

 

No one is looking forward to telling Wendy the truth, least of all Elaine, but it’s got to be done.

 

Appearance:

 

Wendy models herself on Elaine Crow, her best friend in the entire multiverse. She has Elaine’s taste in leather jackets, and the one she wears once belonged to Elaine. That old jacket has quite the history. After Elaine outgrew it, she placed it in her “brain dog” Vivian’s cockpit at her request because it smelled like her. Wendy wears it because it now smells like Vivian, and Wendy is very fond of the border collie.

When Elaine explained the significance of the skull she wears on her zipper (a memento mori, a reminder to herself that death can come at any moment to even a knight errant like herself. Wendy followed in her footsteps by drawing eyes and teeth on a chipped sunflower hair clip her mother gave her.