EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT
*
*but were afraid to ask
by
Al Schroeder

We strongly suggest you read the first Mindmistress story, "I Think Therefore I Am" before reading this, so as not to give any surprises away.

THE MIND:

After the locket triggers the Lyons-Burns effect, Lorelei goes from an I.Q. of 66 to an I.Q. of 794...if I.Q. tests meant anything that high, which they don't. In contrast, average I.Q. is 100, and a genius has an I.Q. of 140 or higher. Very few I.Q.'s have ever been recorded over 200. The Lyons-Burns effect increases intelligence roughly twelvefold.

She has total recall; she can literally remember, in perfect detail, everything that has happened to her. She has memorized the Atlanta phone book, and can tell you whose name a phone number is under---just from hearing any random number in the phone book.

She can read an entire page at a glance---and often reads twelve books a night, and will hold it, in perfect memory, forever. As a consequence, she never rereads a book.

Her linguistic gifts are marvelous; she can learn up to ten new languages a month.

Other side-effects are the darkening of her hair, the change in tint of her eyes from blue to gray, and the lessened need for sleep---only two hours a night. She cannot stay in this ultra-intelligent state beyond 2 weeks, or else her neurons will develop brain cancer.

THE SUIT

Her battlesuit is actually a close fitting exoskeleton/armour, which increases her strength twelvefold and her speed threefold. (That gives her strength more in Spider-Man's range rather than Iron Man or the Hulk or Superman, okay?)

On her breastplate is a blue light that flickers at ten cycles per second that can induce a hypnoticstate in seconds and affect the visual centers of the brain, causing lifelike illusions or mental "invisibility". Like the Shadow, she can "cloud men's minds" with a form of hypnotic invisibility.

The suit is surrounded by a velocity-sensitive kinetic redirection field that Mindmistress developed, which is generated by the suit. Simply put, anything that goes at a high rate of speed---over 300 mph--will be deflected away from the field. That renders her protection against bullets and missile fire, but she still has to contend with someone slugging her or using a slow weapon, like a switchblade. For more on the armor, go here.

THE STAFF:

The Psyche-Staff serves as an aid in battle, like a bo staff. It can also induce mental blocks, causing blindness, paralysis, and madness, at Mindmistress' discretion. (The beams that cause this emit from the glowing end of the staff. They can be blocked by lead, some metals, and strongly filtered glass.) It also serves as an interface to sommon Vicki. The staff reacts to Mindmistress' alpha waves, no buttons are needed to be pushed.

VICKI:

Vicki is Mindmistress' computer/A.I./hologram. She's an intelligent agent who surfs the net and can bypass almost any computer firewall and security. A self-aware A.I. who could easily pass the Turing test, it seems to have its own consciousness. It most often manifests itself as an glowing angelic woman, but that's a preference---she can assume any shape. VICKI stands for Virtual Information Computer Knowledge Interface.

TRANSPORTATION AND VEHICLESOTHER DEVICES

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