proof enough of her untapped potential, potential she'd deliberately been taught to suppress.
It made her wonder what else had been stifled. Who might she have been had she not been created in Silence, genetically selected to generate a steady stream of income? What would it have been like to have been born normal, born without fear of certain madness, born woman enough to take Vaughn on?
"Shall we start the session?" the M-Psy asked. "Or would you like to review the new brain scans?"
"I want to do some work first. Initiate random sequence, full list."
A clear panel rose up from behind the chair to curve over her eyes. It stopped half a centimeter from her lashes and clouded to opaque. A split second later, a steady flow of words began to scroll across it at high speed. It was her list of current dormant requests. Foresight could be steered, but not completely controlled, much to many a business's frustration. Faith, however, was a near-certain bet, which was why she had such a high price tag.
Once she'd entered the relevant triggers into her mind, she usually had a vision within a week or two and they could happen anywhere - in the garden as she walked, during sleep, while in a meeting with the M-Psy. However, over the years, it had become apparent that if she put her mind into a receptive frame, the visions could be guided out in a more controlled environment. That particular skill gave her some freedom from being watched twenty-four/seven, but so long as even one vision came outside of this chair, she'd never be accorded total privacy.
Her eye fell on the Tricep symbol among the mass of scrolling data. She kept picking it up again and again in spite of the speed and amount of other information. Her mind had chosen. Closing her eyes, she allowed her breathing to alter. It was the first step in putting herself into the half sleep she personally called suspended animation. While suspended, she existed neither in this world nor on the Net, but somewhere F-Psy alone could go, becoming part of the timestreams of the world.
Then she opened her psychic channels. In truth, she couldn't ever close them, but she could, with concentration, expand them to the nth degree. Part of her brain itself, the channels were inaccessible from the PsyNet - the only things that could come through them were visions. And if there was a part of her that wasn't sure which visions would choose to crawl in, she didn't let those uncertainties filter through to her conscious mind.
The Tricep prediction was child's play. She came out of it with the now-familiar feeling of barely having stretched her mental muscles. As she dictated the details of what she'd seen, it struck her that if she continued down this path, she'd most certainly go insane - from boredom. Having the M-Psy restart the screen scroll, she gave him two more perfect readings before he called a halt.
"We don't want to strain your mind."
Since the session had utilized a minuscule portion of her considerable powers, Faith could've overruled him, but she didn't. She had other things to do with her time and energy. "I'll be in my private quarters."
"Faith, your monitoring levels have dropped off considerably recently."
Meaning she was no longer spied on every minute of every day. "I've cleared it with my father." A stopgap measure at best. Anthony would soon realize that she wasn't reaching for induction into the Council ranks - then what excuse would she use to escape the stranglehold of surveillance?
Having made it to her bedroom, she peeled off the dress at the same time as ingesting a nutrition bar, then had a quick shower before pulling on cotton pajama bottoms and a singlet top. Ready, she took a classic cross-legged yoga position on the bed and began to calm the rivers of her mind in preparation for entry into the Net.
It wasn't necessary to be in such a state - Psy entered and left the Net at will. The difference was that Faith wasn't used to opening herself up to the massive information archive. Even in her last foray, she'd remained out of the most data-rich, and therefore most chaotic, areas. But she was through with being a perfect conditioned machine; she would not let programmed stress responses imprison her.
So, what other physiological factors did you experience?
Vaughn's amused voice drifted into her mind and threatened to negate the fruits of her meditation. She