May, my "buddy" for the Volunteer Brigade project, is wound up again. She says that the new GROTTO INC class... something about Film Theory, or maybe it was Membrane Theory, I don't know. But she says it's a big Critical Choice. I don't see how. For whatever reason, of all the classes at Psyhigh the art classes are usually the most tame. I tried to ask her how or for who, but she's clammed up tighter than an enchanted treasure chest. I didn't know what to do, I told her to sign up for it -- so she can keep an eye on whoever/whatever she's seeing. She hasn't tried much intervening. Like most students from non-psychic bloodlines, her natural instinct is to hide her knowledge rather than embrace it. I figure this'll be a good opportunity for her to practice levels of Fate Interference, and since it's a corporation sponsored course it should be pretty well regulated anyways.

That reminds me, I should tell her to sign up for Destiny Debate class next year. It's really good for kids who deal with issues of Intervening, Manipulating, or Instigating tracks of Fate or specific timelines. Or so I'm told. I never took it myself. But I had that teacher for my AP Omen Interpretations class. She's pretty cool. She even let us bring in food for Cinco De Mayo.

Ugh... May feels so far away. The month, not my "buddy". As a senior, I get out of school a little earlier than everyone else (assuming that timeflow remains constant). 72 more days of school for me. I actually set up a special count-down calendar in my dorm, to keep track. I can decorate the room however I want now. My roommate hasn't shown up in days. At first I thought she was just always at Propane Passage, but some guys showed up today asking about her. One of them said they were there to collect what she owed for -- something. The other guy elbowed him before he finished. Should I report this to someone?

Eh, why bother. The campus security do those random mind frisks, they probably know about it already.

I've still got homework I need to finish before the Volunteer Brigade emergency meeting, but here I am procrastinating. At least if I'm journaling, I can tell myself I'm being semi-productive. And it means I can put off that future probability assignment for a few more minutes, which is a big bonus.

I mean, Mrs. Tanylor tries to make the topic interesting. One day she had us calculate the probability that our mothers would give birth to a child physically similar to us based on their details and projected futures at age 17. It was like a literal OCEAN of calculations and timeline comparisons. Yuck. My mother's was a 45.0911% chance -- it would actually bump up to 94.053% though if I was a brown-eyed male with unattached earlobes. ...That reminds me, I need to interrogate her about possible interference with "me" as a zygote. It sounds unlikely, but look! The math supports it. Mom may follow white witch doctrines, but she still gets into sketchy territories sometimes.

Tonight's assignment is that we're supposed to calculate the probability that ourselves in an assigned adjacent timeline ends up off-world at some point in their life. So far, other Klayra is looking pretty sturdily land-locked. I got stumped at her mid-life crisis though -- there's a lot of branching paths possible there. She's really having a tough time after the divorce. Which sucks for me, because it means I have a lot of extra math and option-splicing to do. Great.

But it looks like I won't be doing now: the meeting is starting in fifteen minutes. I better get going. The leader of the Volunteer Brigade sounded pretty upset earlier -- I hope whatever this is doesn't take too long. I promised May and Myuri that I'd help them with the pet pygmy Cherufe. We're all signed up for Furnace Duty. I can't believe Myuri dragged me into this again.

I really hate technology -- yikes, when I say it like that I sound like my father. No one wants that. There're enough grumpy old men in the world complaining about modern advances, I'm not really in the mood to join those ranks. Okay, how about this: I'm currently frustrated by technology. Mm, much better.

My roommate's been working with technology a lot lately. It's kind of annoying. She keeps spilling oil on stuff, and I've had to get earplugs to block out the sound of her typing or tinkering until like 2am. I guess she signed up for a Cybernetic Psychology/Physiology class this semester and got completely absorbed. It's weird; before winter break she was totally invested in her family's tradition of retrocognition. Then she went to one lecture on robotics and hasn't looked back since. Just spends all her time either hunched over her computers or in what everyone calls "Propane Passage". You know... that hallway that smells like gasoline, oil, and fried circuitry rolled into a ball and held together with hotglue. I don't go down there much -- I'm more into the traditional Scientia studies. Nature's flexible, growing. In contrast Propane Passage, with all its workshops and computer terminals and enchanted robotics, is just so rigid. Destructive. It has no natural flow, that safety net of life's tendency to bounce back on its own. If corruption attacks, it's all on you. I never could feel comfortable in those classes. Besides differing philosophies, the smell makes my eyes water.

Usually I don't really care all that much what my roommate gets up too. We may be living together, but we really don't talk that much. I don't know why. She's polite and stuff. We may small talk, but I don't know her personally. This is just how things progressed I guess. But I'm starting to regret that, because if I'd gotten to know her better I'd know if it was normal for her to stare at computer screens until her eyes went bloodshot. Or spend so long working with servos and motors she forgets the word for "wrist". The thing that really unnerved me though was that she's been muttering in her sleep about "making back the money". As any psychic worth their salt knows, reoccurring dreams are not to be disregarded. I've looked around with my Other Eyes, but no malicious forms seem to be sulking around... unless you count the one that flickers briefly into existence whenever she sends an electrical current through the dented arm-like mechanism she has propped up on her desk. Is that normal? For Propane Passage, I mean. I know my toaster doesn't send off waves of belligerence when I plug it in.

What has she gotten into?

Jeez, when's the last time I updated my journal? ...Don't answer that. I can't hear you anyway. I'm just talking into this blank screen, with the dim awareness that someone else may be bored enough to stumble through and read these recorded musings. Not really the best way to communicate, is it?

Hey, that won't be a problem for very long though! My brother and I convinced my parents that I'm old enough to get a SnapChat, so I'm now more soundly inserted into the tangled web of direct messaging social media. It's a bit exciting I guess. I've always been a bit jealous of kids with SnapChat. Hard not to feel left out when everyone around you is exchanging selfies every other minute. Well... actually, I still can't send selfies. Too risky. Do you know how many accounts there are of souls being captured in a self-portrait photograph? Somewhere between A Handful and A Very Worrying Amount. Sure, today's mainstream photography tools can really only contain about 40 µm of soul substance, maximum. But how many selfies and portrait shots does the average Millennial or Generation Z-er take in their lifetime? I already lost minor amounts of my soul to school admissions processes and a dare in 5th grade. Don't want to hand out more than I can spare.

...So yeah, add me on your SnapChat if you want! And don't be offended if all my "snaps" are of objects around the room instead of my face. It's nothing personal, just being soul-conscious. I mean, have you guys seen that one picture of the third Psyhigh Dean, the one whose eyes follow you and changes its outfit slightly based on the season? Definitely a captured soul in there. I'll fight you on it.

My username is just my last name and dorm room number. Talk to you soon.

Well, the disturbance in the disrupted positive aura cleansing patterns has been cleared up. I think. I mean, there can be all sorts of reasons for these kinds of irregularities. In all honesty, it could just be an accumulation of Dread and Anxiety due to finals starting this Wednesday. Though, we just reviewed the variations of Dread in my Abstract Dissections class and there weren't nearly enough worry deposits at the site to indicate that kind of presence.

No, I'm fairly certain that it was a Spirit Attachment. Now, anyone who's at least a junior will know almost TOO well what a Spirit Attachment is, after what happened to Linda Graey. But for any lil underclassmen who are curious, I'll give you the run down. I think it's pretty interesting.
Spirit Attachments, they're kind of like... ghosts... incomplete ghosts. Really, the proper term for them is Chindi. They're, like, all the bad parts of a person's soul that's left behind after the body dies. I think of it like if you have a cup of tea, and you knock it over. All the good stuff -- the warm, tasty, golden tea water -- will pour out immediately. What's left inside your cup is only the of tea leaves that accumulated at the bottom -- the grimy, damp, mushy bits of dead plant. The tea is the "good" soul part, the tea leaf residue is the Chindi soul part.

These guys don't appear every single time someone dies -- there has to be enough leftover material for them to materialize out of. Envy, Anger, Grudges, Unpaid Debts, maybe several pounds of Regret... and with the proper catalyst (typically something related to the way they are/are not buried) the pseudo-spirit of a Chindi is formed! Restless and ready to wreck havoc!

That's the thing with Chindi -- they're not just a shadow of the bad essences of life. They're a shadow with intent. Ever hear of "Ghost Sickness"? Yeah, 1 out of 4 cases are due to contact with a Chindi (oh, I can use that statistic in the paper Mr. Øttenbœl assigned!). There's good reason that people call them "Spirit Attachments". The nasty little leeches stick onto a living person's soul and... well, some people say they try to live through you? Others say they just suck some of the life-force and such out of you. My cousin told me once that they try to steal pieces of people's good attributes, to try to balance out their own bad-ness and become "whole", but his information is always pretty sketchy.

Anyways, Positivity Club's investigation around southwest campus turned up a lot of evidence that a Chindi had been hanging around there. Those spirits are notorious for throwing off positive flows -- for obvious reasons. So we set up some traps and weakening wards and whatever though, so I think it'll be taken care of by the end of the week. The Navajo methods are pretty effective. The nurse said no one's been in lately complaining of Ghost Sickness Symptoms, so he's still out there somewhere. I haven't been back to check on the site though. Too much to study for. The end of a semester is such a frenzied wrap-up... but I'm sure that Myuri is keeping an eye on the project for us. And even if she isn't, leaving the Chindi in a trap for a few days isn't that bad. Not like it needs to eat or anything like that.

Aaaaaaand acceptance letter number two! Ha ha! Success! Wise Lee Ann University -- the one located in the Midwest -- just contacted me via the agreed omens! I've never been so happy to see-- er, oops, almost said too much. Then again, when don't I? One of these days I'll figure out how to make a short, concise post. Just for you. Promise. ...Probably.

Positivity Club has an early morning meeting tomorrow, not looking forward to that. But we've selected a pair of underclassmen to indoctrinate into the organization, and we need the first rays of sunlight to properly bind everything. Our Historian is really excited because one of them is an empath. To be honest, I've always felt kinda bad for empaths. They have to go through life not only dealing with their own emotions, but also absorbing the emotions of anyone around them. It's like your intended role in the universe is basically to sponge up all the crazy passions the rest of humanity stirs up and lets boil over. Yeah, yeah, I know there's a lot more to being empathetic than that. Especially those that follow the path of the healer. All I'm saying is that I wouldn't last a day in that position. I can barely handle my own emotions, how do these kids cope with an entire classroom's worth every school day???

Anyway, after the indoctrination Positivity Club wants to get down to business about some disrupted positive aura cleansing patterns around the south west part of campus. At first I thought it was the Spacer Club with their WiFi Tea again (it always seems to cause a point of discontinuity for aura patterns 15 and 3-subsetB), but based on the graphed behaviors Myuri showed me, well, it just doesn't match that. So I guess we have to investigate that. Shame that it's a positive aura cleansing pattern -- it means we can't really procrastinate action. If the aura cleansing patterns get backed up too long, it puts everyone off. We'd need every empath on campus to properly dispose of the build-up. And with the new population of @Bimpliboos, we really have to be wary of how high we let certain energies concentrate. Those tiny bodies pick up on the altering levels much faster than humans/humanoids.

I don't really feel like sleeping. Maybe I'll grab a soda and go on the roof, chart out some of the other patterns, document the flow of Alpha Hope-Winter Tide. It'll be receding now that the Super Moon is over, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of interest to me or my clubbies. Besides, when's the last time I just sat and Saw? Maybe I'll bring May up with me. She won't See, not without Other Eyes, but I think she'd be able to appreciate the Feel.

Nothing happened 9pm Thursday. I'm rather disappointed. My roommate pointed out that just because nothing happened near me doesn't mean nothing happened at ALL, but if I include the whole world in the prediction doesn't that just leave it open to coincidence? Oh well. Sometimes a dream is just a dream I suppose.

Remember how I signed up for the Student Volunteer Brigade, back in like May? We've been doing other projects throughout the year, if you hadn't noticed. Refereeing the JV Speed Dream Interpretation matches, doing mural restorations around campus, escorting visiting alumni around... it's actually kind of fun. I met one alumnus who was a Romani. Among the other passive psychic skills of his clan, he was really strong in the evocation of curses or blessings. He had quite a few entertaining stories of when he was at school here, let me tell ya.

Oh, anyway, so the Student Volunteer Brigade picked up a new project through the Guidance Office(s). They match each volunteer with a younger student having trouble adjusting, and we meet up with them to like provide support or advice and stuff. It's not a perfect process yet -- my friend Hurggor's "buddy" tried to possess him and was removed from the program -- but we're working on it! Gotta stay positive, right?

My "buddy" is a nervous little sophomore from Kansas. Apparently she's been having anxiety issues, which have been compounded by her strengthening ability and the switch to a boarding school. Poor thing, May can see what she calls "Critical Choices". It's kind of like when you're playing a video game, and there's a specific event or choice of options that will change the game's storyline based on how you react. Only, in video games it's easy to reload your last save and choose differently. In real life, there's (usually) not a quick-save option.

So May's been hiding in her dorm room a lot, overwhelmed by all the Critical Choices that are present. May says that at home, she could get her parents or friends to pause and consider the options when a Critical Choice occurred. But here, she's too shy to assert herself and bring attention to the gravity of the situations happening, and when people choose in a way that she can see/feel ends badly it makes her feel super guilty. This is where I come in. I'm supposed to help her cope with the high frequency of Critical Choices here (high school has a LOT of decision making after all) and come to terms with the fact that sometimes people choose wrong, and that's their own path. ...Not too sure HOW I'm going to help her reach those ideals, but I've got some ideas. For now, I just visit with her, make sure she's been going to most of her classes, be a friendly face she can count on.

Usually this is the point where I make some silly comment like "this'll look GREAT on a college application!" And I will admit, I did join this project with that in mind. But I don't hang out with May to check off a community service requirement -- I honestly think this is an important project that's going to help kids like her adjust better and "enjoy their education experience" (or at least as much as anyone enjoys high school). There's something really nice about finding a cause that you can wholeheartedly get behind and contribute to. I want to be a good "buddy" to May. Here's hoping I'm a good influence.

So, if y'all underclassmen take AP Literature senior year, you'll probably end up reading the tragic play Macbeth. It's alright I suppose. I preferred Hamlet to be honest -- it had more unexpectedness and gray areas. And the Macbeths are just kind of awful people in general. It was hard (for me at least) to be invested in their story.

But who reads Macbeth for Macbeth? Obviously, our class's focus was on the Weïrd Sisters! Now those were interesting characters! Famous witches in the time of Witch-Hunter King James VI and I, proud and unafraid of persecution. Masters of apparition, sooth saying, and communal with Spiritual Plane 8 beings... and that's just what we "see" them do. Who knows what else they were capable of off-screen!

Ms. Lybis is using the Weïrd Sisters as part of our unit on "Psychic-Nonpsychic Relations". Exploring how our abilities and etc. can affect relationships, realities, and futures of others. I suppose it's a good thing to learn about. You can really ruin someone's life by telling them about their life. Just look at the Macbeths! But if we take the path of the recluse, that's no good either. Psychics are here for a reason after all. Remember the story of Gerndæ? Bet you haven't, because she chose to quit being a mankind-nature intermediate and be a hermit. You know what happened because she wasn't around to communicate the shifts in nature's disposition? The-- er, wait, I don't want to spoil that for any sophomores reading this. You learn about that second semester. It's more suspenseful if you don't know what's coming. Just trust me on this.

While I won't spoil that, I will share a premonition I had during my dreams last night. My sleep has been very lively lately, it's kind of unnerving. I'm usually more about Seeing the Now, not the Soon or Later. But this dream was adamant; it was a disembodied chant of "18 hours, 2 days". When I woke up I checked my GROTTO bed settings to make sure I hadn't turned on the Subliminal Reminder settings on accident, but far as I can see or See that dream wasn't artificial, just supernatural. It was about 3am when I went to sleep (don't ask) so... let's see... Thursday, around 9 o'clock. Something may happen. Or fail to happen. Or miss the chance to be. Who's to say, besides a dream?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Yes! Yes yes yes yesyesyesyesyes! Guess who just got a college acceptance letter? ...besides Eddgarion. Ugh, can you believe he's already gotten three acceptances? Lucky stiff. He's pretty smart though, so I'm not surprised. I just hope whichever he attends understands exactly who they accepted.

OH! Heh, did I get sidetracked already? Yikes. SO, yes, I got the letter from Augustine School of Mathemathici saying I was accepted, AND I got two merit-based scholarships -- no essay writing required THANK GOODNESS. At first I was worried it was a scam, but I checked and the school emblem did indeed absorb black light, so it's the real deal. Ah! I'm so pumped!

When I first got it I of course called up my mother in the Whispering Ponds, and you know what, my Other Eyes had snapped wide open or something because I could see her aura clearer than I've ever been able to before. I forgot that I could even See that category of energy. She's got a subtle, pretty one... kind of like a fuchsia-red lava lamp, but one that's still pretty cold and sluggish. My brother's home for the weekend so he stopped by to chat as well, and his was really cool. It's... hm... it'd be easier to draw it. But, like, lime(?) green rays of light with orange bubbles trailing out from him... like... like the little ones that zip up the sides of a glass of soda. You know? It was so cool. Darn, I should've looked in my mirror while I was still seeing that. Can you believe I'm 18 and I still haven't seen my own aura? But hey, I was so excited! How was I supposed to focus?! I got a letter!!!

Okay, okay, moment of sobriety. As my mother always says, "You don't have to go to the dance with the first boy who asks." I still have four other applications floating out there, so there's no need to be hasty and perform the undergraduate soul-binding ritual JUST this second. There's no harm in waiting to see what my options are. The cyclamen I bought for the ritual should stay fresh until May after all.

But do you know what this means?? Barring any life-altering events I'm almost absolutely going to be in college next fall! I'm going to be in college! It isn't just an idea, just a dream-- this letter makes it an anchored possible course of this timeline! I know that it's been in the tea leaves for me for MONTHS, but having the actual acceptance makes it feel more... true? I don't know.

Are you guys proud of me?

Whoo, the student journalism team put out another paper today! I love reading these things, reminds me that there's more happening in the school than just the things I'm part of. Like, did you know we have a Rainbow Generation team? Or that the kitchen spirit in the cafeteria had its 240th anniversary of dwelling on the premises? Oh, or look at this, apparently the Prophecy, Omens, and Time-Travel (POTT) building has sunk a total of 13 inches into the ground since 1st semester began... I swear, it's like I'm walking around this place without seeing anything around me.

...which is actually usually true, seeing as I've gotten into the habit of reading while walking between buildings/classes... but even if my face is buried in a book, my Other Eyes pick up on any obstacles. Most of the time. So it's okay, it's all cool.

Uh, anyways, if you look at page 6 of the paper, a project my Positivity Club did is mentioned! So that's cool. It's right under the little advertisement for the new "Immortal Youth Anonymous" group. I guess teens with indefinite lifespans is a new, fast growing part of the student body or something. Huh. Now that I think about it, that's an odd development. If you were immortal, why would you bother going to school? I don't know. Maybe that lifestyle gets lonely.

Oh dang, I just realized the time! I'm going to be late.... Hey, if anyone from the Abstract Dissection classes is bored tonight, a bunch of us are meeting up in an hour to go collect some live specimen for the project. Feel free to tag along, the more of us that are there the less likely we are to succumb to delusion! It's BYOB (bring your own bait), just so you're warned. If you're interested, tell Runi so he can add you to the group dream chat -- he's kinda in charge of organizing right now, since he's the only Dream Bridger in the class.