Space Cat and I had almost made our way back out of the access tube when the screaming started. It was coming up from the dark Generation Chamber we'd just escaped from. The one filled with cultists and nightmares... I couldn't believe that the Psychic Space Station was beaming that kind of energy down to earth too.

"Meowrrr?"

"There's no way I'm going back down there," I told the cat. "Are you kidding? It was turning my mind to sludge!"

"Meowrrr."

Space Cat headed back down the tube, gracefully flipping over as the artifical gravity turned upside down.

The horrible screams had subsided. And I couldn't get shown up by a cat, could I?

What we discovered was something even more terrifying than the twisted dark energy engineer who had been beaming his disturbing thought energy through the apparatus. He was still strapped in, but being consumed by what appeared to be a large fleshy blob. The rest of the techs had fled the chamber, leaving this amorphous hump of skin colored goo undulating over the star. He had stopped screaming, but the creature was obviously eating him, gnawing and slurping and oozing as it did.

"STARS!!! NOM NOM NOM NOM" it said.

"Hail Lark'nez! Font of Despair!"

We're in a Generation Chamber on the underside of the space station. The artificial gravity flipped on the way here. Space Cat and I are hidden in the shadows of the access tube.

"Hail Lark'nez! Eater of Hope!"

It's one of the "stars" stepping up into the apparatus. But it's not like we've seen before. This star looks like a serial killer, and the tech crew stands at attention.

"Hail Lark'nez! Destroyer of Dreams!"

The star locks himself into the chair and places the trancap on his head, and suddenly I can't think. Everything in my mind is sludge.

"MEOwwwwerrrrr!"

Space Cat has attacked my leg. Which is enough to break me out of my torpor and turn around and run.

Finally made it to the beaming chambers. My brother and I used to do this with a big antenna we hung off the bluffs over our hometown. We took turns being the one in the apparatus. Neither of us were very good at that part, which is why we got sent off to Psyhigh. Drove our whole town nuts. Literally.

But we were real good at the beaming part. I'm sorry he's not here with me today.

The deflector arrays they use on the Psychic Space Station are incredibly high powered, but the underlying principles are the same. It's possible my brother and I had even better underlying principles, but that's what I'm here to find out.

One thing I noticed is they've got feeds coming from two different sources. I can see the inputs from the generation bays we've visited, but there's a whole other bunch of conduits coming up from below. I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for Space Cat checking them out. The cat that won the space lottery. It headed off down an access tube and I decided to follow.

Work on the Psychic Space Station has been about what I imagined. We've visited the Compassion Bay, the Feel Good Room, and the Satisfaction Generator. The "stars" are the engineers who specialize in emanating different kinds of positive energy. They come into the room with their flowing hair and fancy scarves and everybody goes crazy with fandom (in a low key scientific way). Then they usually take a bow or acknowledge the crowd in some way and take their seat in the apparatus and strap in and start beaming.

Well, the actual "beaming" is a whole other department--where they make the rays and beam them down over the earth. That's the part I'm waiting for.

In the brochure when I enrolled it said something about living in space and eating spacefood and monitoring the psychic health of the world and using rays and stuff.

When is that happening and where can I sign up?