First, Practical Exercise will be out this month, likely in the next week or two.

Returning to Eclipse

Mindscan started giving warnings.  What had it found?  There was a mind control scheme.  The scheme was no longer in my mind.  It had failed to cross over when my body was destroyed. I let mindscan trace out the spider-web of holes, gaps in my thoughts where the control had been implanted.  Of the mind control scheme itself, absolutely nothing remained, only the gaps where it had lurked. My body shuddered as mindscan deleted the gaps.

What had the mind control scheme been doing?  I couldn’t tell.  Nothing was left of it.  How had I missed it?  The control scheme had always been there, even looking back to memories of my first breath.  It had infiltrated my mindscan gift, so Icouldn’t see it.  Now that mind control process was gone, so I could see where the process was not.  How had Mum not detected and stopped it, back when I was a toddler?  That made no sense.

I thought I was brave, but now I was seriously frightened.  What-all might I have been compelled to do?  So far as I could tell, the control scheme hadn’t forced me to do something.  It just kept me from noticing something.  If I heard it or saw whatever it was, the mind control scheme deleted it and papered over the gap in my awareness.