Elucidation

[J Jack]

Means exposure, long word for simple concept. Title of my manuscript. More importantly, I'm stuck.

Techlepathy, it's a joking term used for technically advanced telepaths, makes sense I suppose. I've also worked them into my story, the bad guys, very nasty buggers. Each one is modified, machinery is added to enhance their psycological abilites, mostly control and reading of the brain waves and nervous discharges of people around them.

One character is captured, she is being...well I guess tortured, by a techlepath, but I want them to sound sinister and creepy. Sadly, the best I came up with was TechPsyker, but it's not sinster in the least, and not at all frightening.

The concept of these techlepaths is that they are children's story creatures, used by mothers to scare young boys and girls into behaving, if you don't go to bed the...insert sinister name here...will tear your mind apart.

I'm looking for something the character can say. I'll give you the scene and if you could, please helpeth me


“My brother is going to kill you when he gets here,” Stephanie Coleman spat through the blood welling in her mouth, a great gob of it landing on the dusty floor between a tall man's feet.
“He won't get the chance,” the man said, running a knife blade down her cheek, the cold steel and act itself causing her to shudder. Licking his lips in gratification of her disdain, he gently ran his fingers down her cheek and sneered. He brushed medium long stringy black hair back, clearing it from his forhead and revealing dark souless eyes. There was no emotion in his face, except perverse pleasure, he had a cold gaze, unflinching. His hands were like ice as they touched her softly, and small steely sockets lined his forearm and neck.
“You know what I am, don't you?” He whispered into her ear, the air seeming to cool with every word.
“I've heard stories, but I always thought your kind didn't exist,” she shuddered, tears welling, knowing suddenly her situation.
“Say it,” he hissed, the whirring mechanics of the sockets humming just under his voice.
“No,” tears slipped down her cheeks, her body shaking ever so slightly.
“Say it!” His voice was louder, menacing as he rose in pitch and volume, “Say it!”
"insert sinister name here," she cried, sobs shaking her body, knowing she would likely never survive.

[mongoose]

Some possibilities:

Psych Squad. Criminal Forensic Psychologists, For-psychs. Interrogators, Intero Psychologists, Psych Interrogators. Psycho-Interrogators. Inquisitors, PsyInqsitors. psytechs. psychs. sometimes called psychos, or techno-psychos, or psycho-techies

But what I'd find more important is the character of the person. What kind of person would you have to be to torture people by going directly for their minds. Convincing them that they were in pain, without doing them any harm. Still trying to find the answers you sought, or get them to confess whatever it was you needed them to confess. What kind of person would be good at this? No doubt they'd be screened for the position by others of their kind, so they'd have to have a certain kind of mentality and psychology themselves, that would be known by others to enable them to do the work effectively.

If you can read another's mind, someone with a disciplined mind can still tell you whatever they want. Which means the interrogator has to be disciplined him/her self. They can't allow themselves to be distracted or to enjoy their work too much, or they'll go overboard. The torture is a means to the end, not the end itself. The person has to be alive and coherent to give the answers, or at least the part of their mind where the answers are found has to be functioning. So you can't kill them, and you can't force them, with too much agony to either regress into some kind of mental coping mechanism that does you no good, or to just make something up to give you what they think you want.

That's why operatives in the U.S. military (perhaps as opposed to intelligence community) avoid using torture even when offered the opportunity to use it. The results are usually un-reliable. They'd much rather scare the prisoner with threats of whatever, into spilling, and wear them down over whatever period of time available to them. Hopefully they'll choose to give up the needed information, can be tricked into giving it up, or released and tracked back to someone who can give the operatives what they need.

I don't know how you'll have these technological psychics operate, but I suspect some of the same principles would come into play. A good interrogator today would probably be a good technological psychic, and the same psychological profile would probably apply.

I don't know, but I imagine the best interrogators can play a role very convincingly, while not caring very much themselves. Convince the guy they're fed up and about to kill them if they don't spill, when really they'd just as soon go take a coffee break. They can't enjoy blood, nor can they be freaked out by it. It's simply an indication of when they've gone too far, or of when they're approaching a threshhold, depending on the philosophy. So I'm thinking emotionally cold. Which means none of the snearing, grinning, delight in the work, unless that's just an act to scare the prisoner into spilling the truth.

And that's something that bothers me. Either you've got the soldier who is a crack shot and expert martial artist, or whatever, but hates to think or talk, and has no emotion at all, until they fall for some helpless little girl, or the love interest or whatever, and then they go berserk the moment something happens to the person they care about. It doesn't happen, it's stereotypical, it doesn't give soldiers any credit, and it's lame. And then you get the bi-polar/multiple personality character, not because the character has a psychological problem, but because the author couldn't decide whether they're the cold hearted soldier, or the gleeful villian, or something.

Someone told me that if they're going to read a book, even the bad guys have to have some kind of redeeming factor about them. Maybe they love classical music. Or they like to examin flowers for their beauty, or something. Maybe we can do a better job if we assume that the bad guys are just like us, only on the other side of the law, or the other side of the battle, or whatever. They're not trying to rule the world with an iron fist, subjugating all lesser beings to their will. They're just trying to do what they believe is right for their nation, and everyone else can either get on board, get out of the way, or die. Something like that, which I, as a reader, can understand even if I can't justify it.

So the lead interrogator goes robotic and shuts down his emotions when he's on the job, but he has a family life, and his wife doesn't really like his work, or what she knows of it. She chooses to support him, anyway, for the sake of their society, in which she believes passionately.

This becomes a problem when she comes under suspicion for violation of the key chrime, and he, being the highest level psychic interrogator, is expected to put her through the ringer. Or is it really a test of his loyalty, and she was a convenient target of opportunity?

Is he under investigation? Is he really the good guy? Is she? Is someone else who's also tied into the larger investigation? And why are they doing this to him and his wife, anyway? They must have a reason that seems good to them. There's only a few psychopaths and sociopaths who actually commit violent crimes, and even fewer of them gain or keep any real power or authority. So the vast majority of bad guys really believe they're doing the right thing, or the least of all evils, or the best thing that could be done in their situation.

How about yours? Why is he doing it? How does he feel about it? He's getting very intimate with his victim, mentally. How does that affect him? What's he afraid of, and what will he do about that fear? What's most important to him, and what will he do for it?

Sorry for rambling, but I like the idea, and want you to do well with it.

[scintor]

This is where i would give them a nickname that people use instead of their official name. I'd just call them mindrippers.

Scincerely,

[e-mail]

[J Jack]

I was debating making these techlepaths completely evil, sociopaths and psychopaths who delight in the pain and suffering of others. There might be two sides, but as far as I'm looking at it these techlepaths delight in pain and hurting others, and they are selected because not only are they intelligent but they are very good at what they do in inflicting pain.

I think you brought up the reason her brother is going to kill the techlepath (at least that's how I interpreted it) and mentioned soldiers don't generally run off willy nilly letting emotions take over. Problem is her brother is mentally unstable, PTSD affected and has witnessed his fair share of loss (mainly wife and little girl, who are murdered and seen in flashbacks). This guy doesn't act normally, he's not a super raging soldier or something, but he doesn't follow normal thought patterns, and his sister being taken has cracked that last little bit, although he is still thinking clearly as a soldier, he is refusing to lose the last he has.

Also mentioned was a cold hearted soldier, but her brother is far from that and takes the loss of his soldiers personally, very personally. He thinks the continuing war is useless, and doesn't like seeing good kids die just because they can.

I'm not yet sure if this will be interrogation or not, I was thinking more of bait, they want her brother, and he knows something he shouldn't. The guys who have her are not normal in the least and I would prefer it not to be interrogation, and more or less this techlepath passing time.

There is a lot of great info here, thanks.

[torainfor]

That's kinda funny. I came up with the name "techipath," too, as someone who could interact with a computer's electrical and magnetic fields with their mind, enough to control it. Also, a "mechipath" who can "feel" how machinery is doing--think Kaylee in Firefly.

I think this relates huge to that thing Jeff just brought up about people feeling like their minds have moved into a mannequin. If you could enter into someone else's mind, I think you would eventually start to think you were that person. So, you could torture them by forcing them to act as you would, make them a passive viewer to what their body is doing--acting in a way you'd have no problem with, but they would. (Have you seen Being John Malkovich? If you have, you know what I mean. If you haven't--don't see it. It's an interesting concept, but a horrible movie.)

But, if the interrogator is going to inflict physical or psychic "pain," I would think they'd have to be the biggest freaking masochists on the planet. This guy is entering another's thoughts and feelings, and then messing with their nervous system. Especially during the earlier trials, wouldn't it be nearly impossible to keep the sensory input feedback into the interrogator's mind filtered? Even if you did manage to filter out the physical pain receptors, you can't filter the psychic pain, because that's part of the thought and emotion you're in there to analyze.

Unless you used some kind of converter in your filter. Elizabeth Moon's Ky Vatta series uses a brain implant that lets a user access data or controls to their ship. A very few have what amounts to an internal modem--they can talk to other implants from great distances. The one quirk they haven't been able to fix is that each time you use it, you experience a random smell--anything from toothpaste to rotten meat. So, the converter reinterprets the victim's physical and psychic pain into something more benign for the interrogator. He's able to sense what tactics are working most effectively and when the victim is about to crack because the noise he hears changed from rain to a mooing cow, or something. If you want to get really creepy, have a child's voice say, "You're getting warmer! Nope! Now you're colder..."

With the interrogator so removed from what's really going on in the victim's mind, he doesn't have to be a psychopath. Just incredibly delusional. He's convinced himself this method is harmless compared to real torture because the victim's pain isn't "real." Instead of crazy, you get condescending.

And, if the brother's wounded, that's awesome. The filter can't handle all the input and quickly fries. The techipath can't handle the raw data. For years, he's been sterily separated from the actual damage he's inflicted. Now, he's not only completely exposed, the mind he's entered is so full of chaos he goes mad.

[J Jack]

Maybe, crazy thought, these techlepaths were normal, but they were overloaded and their minds fried from interrogations. Now they are rogue psykers of sorts, probing and destroying minds for fun because they enjoy the feeling of being in control, imagine a rouge mind prober, just feeling around and snapping nerves and mental connections. The could possibly prevent feedback with technical implants that filter, but perhaps they created it themselves after losing control.

(SIDENOTE: Firefly, best show ever! I like that idea actually, mind if I steal it? Mechipaths and techipaths?)

[torainfor]

Like, it becomes an addiction--more potent than MPGs because you actually get input from your "character." I was (mildly) flamed yesterday and had a thought--why do we like to get all hopped up about blog comments? Are our lives so sterile that we over-react to some imagined on-line offense just so we can feel the high of anger? (Check out the chickie who gave one of Jeff's books a "1" on Amazon. Then read her only other review. Eesh.) Of course, tragedy happens all the time in this world, but in a society where emotion is even less acceptable, the ability to go into someone else's mind and make them lose control--to feel them lose control--that would be heady, indeed.

Yes! Use the word. Use the concept. I came up with it and then was sad when I realized it wouldn't fit into my universe.

[myrthman]

I can't help but think of "psyborg" as a name for these monsters: a play on words borrowed and modified from in-world sci-fi stories of human-machine hybrids. Let us know what you decide to use.

[J Jack]

I went with Inquisitor as their official name, Techpsyker or psyker as their common used name.

I'm looking for someone with a fair amount of time and an urge to edit on their hands now. I have 35 thousand words and just over 104 pages, and I'm looking for someone to critique if anyone is interested of course. It's not a time limit thing of course, if you are interested just send me a pm and we'll connect via email, and feel free to crack away whenever you feel like it. I'm just looking for some feedback, I would love to hear what y'all think of it.

[Jeff Gerke]

I'm with Scintor: use something that would be more descriptive and common--and terrifying. Like rippers. Or takers.

Jeff

[seraphim]

Perhaps you need to move an ordinary...even safe word in to scary territory. Given your premise that you want them to be a kind of boogieman story to scare children then why not a play on the name techlepath. Listen to it, what does it suggest if not a game of "tickle". I child might well hear the name as "ticklepath" and assume something far different than the reality. A game of tickle could become a deadly game indeed.

[Divides the Waters]

Unpleasant connotation, but "mindrapers" might be more descriptive than "mindrippers."

[Therin]

Oh sorry, at first I thought you said "mindrappers."

[J Jack]

Colourful, but I dunno, I'm not looking to "childize" it (I made that up just now) even though maybe it is a terror from kid's stories. Maybe it's a rumour among the soldiers, they talk about these guys like they don't exist and a friend of a friend was attacked and came back different kind of thing.

[iconoclast]

Forgive the off-the-cuff reply, but when I posted my story (involving a different form of brainwashing torture), I knew I had to comment here. But I've got a lot to do in other walks of life, so a more informed post will have to wait.

I give no particular coined title to the persecutors in my story, and the names they go by are made-up. The business of naming I find is a psychological crutch that for some people seems to be an all-or-nothing affair: if a name isn't properly given, they can't live with it. I know - I used to get so worked up how my name was presented.

But where I live, celebrities and sumo wrestlers seldom ever perform under their real names. It gives them a manufactured identity that provides them complete freedom under such pseudonyms.