The suspect is not in the main room, but we hear him scramble in his study, run there, and point weapons next to him. Daniel says, “Don’t move,” and proceeds to cuff him. He starts leading him out, while I locate the piece of paper he was trying to feed to a shredder in the five seconds between when we entered the apartment and when we entered the study. I take a few photos and confiscate the papers he was studying and his computer, and follow my partner out; the entire process takes thirty seconds.

He is silent as we lead him out from the building to the police station. It’s strictly speaking illegal, and he knows this. Chinese anti-shame laws forbid parading anyone who’s not convicted in restraints or any other way indicating guilt. It may be a five-minute walk, but we should be either putting a black bag on his head or taking him to the station in a car. But out here those laws are not enforced as long as nobody is looking and he knows this, and this time of night, the street is deserted.

At the station, Daniel walks to the front desk, smirks at the woman taking registries, and enters the suspect’s name and arrest data into the computer. He looks around, sees there are about ten people looking at us, and declares, “At eleven fifty-one p.m., apprehended and brought Anna Deshmukh to the precinct of East Mei-Nai-Yi.” God, he’s so ostentatious. I can’t help it: I walk to him and say, loudly, “Listen, Daniel, you’re half-white, half-Arab. You speak about five words of Chinese, like everyone else in this city. So how about you pronounce the name of the city like everyone else does, which is Meinaii?” Meinaii: two syllables, the first reduced like in huh, the second stressed and rhyming with eye.

After about half an hour of red tape, they let me enter the room where Deshmukh is being held and interrogate him. No, not interrogate—pretend to interrogate, for the neo-Luddites say nothing more than their name and ID number, and even those not always. “Anna,” I begin, “we have documents saying you’re plotting multiple attacks on city infrastructure.” Silence. “We have enough to convict—we had enough to convict and execute even before we arrested you, and now we have these.” I spill the papers I took in front of him. His facial expression remains frozen. “You know what? I’m not going to bother playing good cop. I’m not going to bother playing anything. Tell us who you’re corresponding with, and that by itself will be enough to knock your sentence down to a long jail time. You never know—if you give us enough to crack what you’re doing, you could even walk. Think about it.”

He’s not going to think about it. I gather the papers and leave the room, and in retrospect think that I should be grateful he didn’t try to jump me and destroy them somehow. My first thought is that it’s a huge conspiracy involving the neo-Luddites and the best we have is scant information from other police departments, plus confiscated papers from an operative who was so unimportant he was staying in Meinaii. Then my second thought is that since both terrorism and the neo-Luddites are of national importance, we’re going to have officials come in from the Capital expecting us to have proper paperwork in a language few of us at this department understand.

At one, my shift ends, and I go back home. It takes half an hour to walk, and by now even the major streets have very little activity on them. I know and feel safe on the streets, but it’s still better to look ahead and around rather than read the papers from Deshmukh’s apartment. Something could always happen. Going uphill on Zhaga Avenue, the streetscape becomes more suburban, and somewhat more barren.

Central Meinaii, built largely as a replica of the Capital, has streets sized for military parades and more driving than most people in the city can afford; the only people who live there are the homeless. The neighborhoods farther out, built by immigrants the government invited in once it realized too few Chinese people were willing to live in Tibet, are desirable, which means expensive. This leaves Zhaga as the best location in my district where I can still afford to pay rent and save money. It’s traditionally a Turkish area, but after a few generations of ethnic mixing, there are enough other Indians that I don’t look out of place.

My apartment is not large. It’s about a hundred square meters, the same as any middle-class apartment in the inner parts of the city. It has a living room and three bedrooms, of which one doubles as my husband’s study. My husband is already sleeping in the regular bedroom and has been sick and antsy about being woken up for the last week, so I collapse into the guestroom bed, and almost forget to set up my dream recorder. Almost.

I vaguely remember talking to Deshmukh when I wake up. I unstrap the dream recorder helmet, groggily stumble to our bedroom, see that my husband is still asleep, and then go back to the guestroom and check my dreams. I did much more than just talk to Deshmukh; I got him to talk back.

“What do you want?” He said.

“I want you to tell me what you’re doing.”

He smirked, and somehow got out of his restraints. “You know what we’re doing.”

“How the hell?” I asked. He shrugged and somehow got back in restraints. “It’s Meinaii. We don’t have anything you care about. We have a hospital and a university and that’s it. You should be in the Capital, in Shanghai, in the Star Circlet.”

“If we were in the Star Circlet, would you know about it?”

“No,” I said. I’m pretty sure I thought more. What I’m thinking right now is that if they were in any Chinese city outside Tibet, still nobody would bother to inform us.

“Think what you do have that’s important,” he said. I’ve had suspects talk to me like this, but never neo-Luddites—they are smart enough to know it’d tell me everything I need to know, while also making them feel complacent and smug.

I remember what I said next—I remember I was thinking about the road tunnel to Zhaga, which is dark and scary and has always stricken me as a terrorist target. And I remember why it was wrong: it’s very uninteresting infrastructure, by any national or global standards. I watch myself say, “The levees along the river.”

Deshmukh smiled and said, “Yes, Detective Reddy.” In dreams, everyone knows my name. “Do you think anything will stay in your city once we’re done with it? The river? The freight tracks?”

The remainder of my dreams are not interesting right now, so I switch off the recorder. I ask myself whether my hunch is right, or whether I’m confusing the neo-Luddites with eco-terrorists who think Meinaii is too close to the wilderness. But… no. Eco-terrorists wouldn’t care about Meinaii, either—too remote, too unimportant an ecosystem. They have enough to worry about in the Star Circlet, which is nominally tropical rainforest and realistically urban sprawl. Or am I rationalizing?

I don’t think I am. This is when I pick up the phone and call Daniel, who should still be at the precinct. “Daniel?”

“Laxmi, you woke me up.” I’m pretty sure he’s lying.

“I’m coming in in an hour. I know where you’re going to hit us.”

From September 2007-

http://arcane666.deviantart.com/art/Minor-Demon-64234536

http://arcane666.deviantart.com/art/Queen-of-the-Shadows-61148694

Not sure this counts as fanworks, but people on DeviantArt have been enjoying my Psyche Corp. images and using them as stock for fun stuff like this:

http://neylouchka.deviantart.com/art/Elixir-167712011

http://aegils.deviantart.com/art/Winter-Night-148005896

Fan videos below.

End of Creation

Medicine Man

Morpheus

And there’s also an AMV out there that I made, once upon a time, but shan’t acknowledge, because I did it under an assumed name, and I’m shy.

Now, let me describe to the rest of you folks what will be in the newsletter. I do not intend to have this newsletter contain any content that you couldn’t have found just by checking the Psyche Corporation Facebook page regularly for updates, or from following us on Twitter.

Not everyone is on Facebook though, and some people prefer to get their Psyche Corp. news in their email. So for you guys, Harlequinn and I are putting together a Newsletter to be sent out around the beginning of every month (starting next month), summarizing the news of the previous month as gleaned from the FB and twitter updates. The newsletter will also contain other things. What things!?!?  Here’s an outline:

• General news from the FB/twitter of the past month, summarized
• Upcoming shows (whatever information is available of them, Gen tends to post vague stuff on FB sometimes)
• Links to new photos that may have been posted, or new merch, with brief text descriptions
• Fan contributions section: fan fiction, drabbles, fan art, anime music videos, upcoming LARP announcements etc. set in the Psyche Corporation universe or utilizing Psyche Corp. songs.

That’s pretty much it for now.. Any content such as the fan contributions that didn’t make it to FB/twitter will be re-posted on the Psyche Corp. wordpress, so there is no pressure to join our mailing list unless you Really, Truly want to get an email from us once a month.

That said, please send fan contributions to psychecorporation@gmail.com with subject line “Fanfic submission” or “Fan art submission” or “Fan contribution: [insert *brief* description]“. Get ‘em in by Wednesday (Aug 31st) and it’s highly likely your work will show up in the 1st edition of the newsletter!

And

Go here to join the mailing list.

http://psychecorporation.com/misc.html

In any case, our CEO has been swamped with an increasing workload due to the replacement body parts research as well as the steady growth of Psyche Corporation the PR-front-masquerading-as-a-band (wait.. did I really write that? Clearly, it is a quaint little joke! Mmhmm.).

Therefore, we have created some new openings in Psyche Corp. headquarters. These are all internships (read: unpaid slave labor) for now, but we do have special benefits packages available (read: gratitude, occasional swag and/or free show tickets, potential back massages).

DRIVING FORCE of the Psyche Corp. newsletter [edit 8-29-2011: Found! A big welcome to Harlequinn!]- Not everyone checks the band Facebook page, sadly. So your job is to gather all the news from the band FB wall, new photos, upcoming events, etc. and put it out in readable/summarized form once a month (if applicable) to the people who’ve signed up for the newsletter. If you want to develop additional content such as a fanfic section for short stories set in the Psyche Corp. universe, or fanart section, that’s entirely up to you. But if you’re doing that, then please put a copy of it up on the Psyche Corp. wordpress.

Additional musicians for the live performing group- We currently have a guitarist and a cellist. We are looking for a drummer and possibly a keyboardist, but we are definitely open to people who play other instruments. If you can manage to stick around with us, there will almost certainly be opportunities to contribute creatively to new Psyche Corp. music.

Additional non-musician performers- If you want to do a mime skit set to a Psyche Corp. song, or dance, or spin fire, or contort, or do some other interesting choreographed or improvisational piece on stage with us, we are interested to hear from you! If you want to do a puppet show to our music, that rocks! If you want to do some kind of short animated film synced with our music and project it behind us during shows, that rocks! If you just want to do the short film and send it to me, I’ll spread it and/or re-upload it on one or more of the Psyche Corp. youtube accounts!

Director of Promotions Research- You will look up media outlets that you think would appreciate a little Psyche Corp. Then you send the links/info for these outlets to the CEO, or confer with the CEO if you would like to be groomed toward taking over not just research but execution of promotion.
Media outlets would include: music/fashion/alternative magazines (both print and online), radio shows (both traditional and internet radio), music blogs, alt fashion blogs, relevant Facebook groups/pages, relevant online communities (livejournal, possibly, or tumblr blogs).

Don’t worry if you’ve never done this before. Our CEO has been doing it for quite a while and can easily train you in how to research effectively!

Event Re-Lister- It’s difficult to keep track of all the online communities people use to track their social lives. These days, I mostly post information on upcoming gigs on the Psyche Corp. FB page and hope for the best. I KNOW I should be re-posting the info on other communities and events calendars. Ideally things like TimeOUT NY, but more targeted to the Psyche Corp. audience (which seems to be a lot of people into dark and/or bizarre–love you guys!). Anywhere that you re-list an event is helpful, even if it’s just your own site/Wall/whatever. If you’re lazy, you can just email the event/calendar website to us, and we’ll try to get to it and thank you for it.

Director of Bookings Research- In the past two years, we’ve done 28 days of performing per year (year measured between August 24ths, for mysterious reasons). This has definitely included more than 28 SHOWS, as we’ve often done multiple shows per day. By comparison, a ‘regular’ successful non-touring band in our genre might do 12-15 shows per year. We’re not planning to cut down all the way to 15 per year, but we ARE going to aim for less than 2.33 days per month of performing when not touring, because we want to spend more time on music composition in the studio for the next year or so. Since we’re doing fewer shows, we want them to count more. The Director of Bookings Research will look into conventions and festivals we can/should play that we haven’t played before, with special focus on the East Coast (mostly because that’s more accessible to us). This includes rumors of new cons and festivals that are just starting out their first iteration. This includes looking for promoters in key cities who are known to work with bands similar to Psyche Corp. This includes underground music venues in cities we’re especially interested in at the moment due to their accessibility via megabus: Boston and Philly. We’d love to play in the DC-Baltimore area as well, and perhaps in the Chapel Hill area of NC, but we’d probably need a convention to cover travel for us. As Director of Bookings Research, you don’t actually have to CONTACT any of these conventions/festivals/venues/promoters/etc. You just email info about them to the CEO, who will take care of it. If you would like to be groomed for taking on more power, that is also an option!

Don’t worry if you’ve never done this before. Our CEO has been doing it for quite a while and can easily train you in how to research effectively!

Please send all questions/applications/information to psychecorporation@gmail.com with the relevant job title in the subject line.

Thank you and best regards from our HR department.

Cissodell Meinaii
Auxiliary Administrative Assistant to the CEO

(2) Friday Sept. 16, 2011
Psyche Corp. is playing with The Lobster Quadrille, Sanjuro Fields, and Zadoc & the Nightmare
9pm-2am
Band order not yet set..

The Haunt
702 Willow Ave.
Ithaca, New York

18+
$5 cover if you arrive before the first band starts playing, $7 after

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=237367546301960

(3) Saturday Sept. 17th, 2011
3pm-4pm
Record Archive (record store)
33 1/3 Rockwood St, Rochester NY 14610

Since it’s an in-store show, it will be free and all ages..

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=262072237139268

(4) Sept. 17th, Saturday evening (unconfirmed) Gen of Psyche Corp. may make an appearance at Vertex in Rochester (http://rocwiki.org/Vertex_Night_Club) and do a ‘spot number’.. Alternatively, still looking to see if we can find a Saturday evening show in the area so we can (with any luck) play with some of the excellent local Rochester bands.

(5) Saturday night sometime after midnight and up til 6am..The gang (Gen, Mike, Paul, Kristin, Arydaea, possibly Akiri) will hang out at Last Exit for the Lost Radio show on WVBR FM

(6) Sunday, heading back, Gen will likely follow Kristin to Maker Faire in NYC where Kristin has a booth for amazing designs by, well, Kristin Costa.

(7) Sunday evening – Still looking for a gig in NYC Sunday evening! Give me some tips! Ask some steampunk-friendly bars for us! Please?

Now on to the schedule!

The Studio (downstairs):
3pm – Japanese painting demo by Comiku Girls
4pm – Kimono panel by Marina Gurland
4:45pm – The Absinthe Drinkers
5:45pm – The Wandering Cellist
6:30pm – Tea Ceremony Demo by Comiku Girls
7:30pm – Royal Baritarian Players
8pm – Cosplay Burlesque
9pm – Painless Parker
10pm – TEN

Marlin Room (main floor):
3pm – Mons
4pm – Psyche Corp.
4:45pm – Faebotica
5:45pm – Royal Baritarian Players
6pm – Cosplay Contest (contestants wait in Sports Bar beforehand)
6:45pm – Fashion show featuring designs by Kristin Costa
7:30pm – Butoh dance by members of the Butoh Rockettes
8pm – Platform One
9pm – Psyche Corp. with members of the Butoh Rockettes
10pm – White Elephant Burlesque

In addition, Tristan the Mime will be roaming about!

So I wrote this incredibly convoluted and parenthesis-filled explanation back. And I am including it here for you in case you wanted to know. Because I can totally dispense definitions of things in which I am not an expert! ..No I can’t. But I can sure as heck write a bunch of words with parentheses scattered amidst them!

Steampunk is a genre that has evolved over time to mean a lot of different things. In the past, I believe it was most strongly represented in literature, such as the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells: science fiction as envisioned by people of the Victorian and Edwardian era, populated by characters who spoke like people from the authors’ time period, but who had more impressive technology. Technology which often would have been impractical or infeasible as examined in the hindsight we can enjoy in the 21st century.

Modern steampunk has diversified quite a bit, particularly by making strong appearances in fashion (or subculture fashion), anime (Read Or Die, Black Butler..), and movies (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Wild Wild West..). Generally, it’s in the form of clothing/architecture/styling/piece of tech with features/amenities (such as laptop computers or unusual synthetic fabric blends) far too advanced to have belonged to the Victorian era, yet decked out in a style conducive to Victorian sensibilities (brass tones, mahogany, steel-boning, none of this comparatively cheap/flimsy-looking white plastic Apple-stamped or clunky matte black IBM computers with garish Windows logo stickers business. I say this not because I actually think these computers are cheap, but they definitely have a mass-produced look that was unheard of in the Victorian era.)

Some in the steampunk community have seized particularly upon the steampunk style as a rebellion again the Mass-Production era of today, and as a mode through which to embrace the DIY movement.

So no, let’s try to be careful about What Exactly is Steampunk because the moment you try to give an exact definition beyond Scifi with NeoVictorian sensibilities, or just Geekery with NeoVictorian sensibilities, you’re liable to have a ridiculous number of people jumping down your throat because you excluded them from the community with your overly narrow-minded definition.

That said, there are other people who say steampunk is like finding a super advanced ray gun, only it’s like 50 years old and dusty. It’s not just super-advanced technology, it’s super-advanced technology you find in an antique shop, or at Grandma’s garage sale. Futuristic history.

In other news, I’m planning my first mini tour for Sept 16-18 this fall.
Tentative itinerary, mostly unconfirmed-
Sept 16 – show at the Haunt in Ithaca, NY
Sept 17 – 3-4pm show at Record Archive in Rochester, NY
Sept 17 – evening show with Zadoc and the Nightmare in Syracuse somewhere..
Sept 17 – all night, hangin’ with Last Exit for the Lost Radio Show..
Sept 18 – hang out at Maker Faire in Queens, NYC
Sept 18 – evening, a show in NYC?

With me on the stage will be Paul Hoppe on guitar and Mike Lunapiena on cello. Also, Kristin Costa is designing our outfits! And we’ll likely perform at her fashion show earlier the same week in NYC! And when we’re upstate we’ll have our veteran dancers Akiri and Arydaea joining us!

W00t ^_^

Please spread the word about our kickstarter!! FABULOUS PRIZES ARE AVAILABLE!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1097332101/music-video-for-psyche-corporations-oh