So, an esper from a rival organization has just broken into your facility, but you don’t have any psychic powers. What do you do?
The key is preparing yourself for known unknowns: esper abilities, while varied, fall into certain common categories with accordingly standard countermeasures. Unique powers exist, but belong only to a handful of the strongest espers, and are unlikely to be encountered by a normal employee. Instead, focus on these core defensive strategies.
Psychological Countermeasures
Learn to recognize what a psychic probe feels like! Even non-espers can detect the tell-tale characteristics of unmasked mental intrusion, which you can learn through one of the listed seminars. If you feel you are being scanned, or know that an enemy is nearby, it is imperative that you have already trained in basic meditative techniques to reject psychic contact. The core of this is one-pointed focus: the natural mind is scattered by numerous thoughts, but with discipline you can tame it down to a single thought of your choosing. Your own breath is the most reliable method, but visualizing a stone wall is a traditional choice as well. Either one will provide a measure of defense against scanning of your thoughts, as you will deny the attacker the numerous potential attack vectors an untrained mind presents, as well as suppress the reading of potentially sensitive surface thoughts.
Chemical Countermeasures
As soon as you spot a hostile esper or an alarm warns you of intrusion, take one or more inhaled doses from your company-issued handheld vaporizer. This device contains two active ingredients: a fast-acting stimulant and an anti-hallucinogenic serotonin antagonist. The former provides a boost of energy and focus that will aid you in any moves you make during the ensuing crisis situation, but most importantly protects you against the sleep-inducing influence of delta waves. If you begin to feel unusually tired, it is imperative that you do not succumb to the desire to close your eyes or lay down! The second ingredient provides broad-spectrum protection against hallucinations caused by psychic influence. Do not use your vaporizer outside of emergencies, or both effects may dull from repeated exposure. Those with the highest security clearance may also be issued tablets providing a final fallback in case of capture.
Mnemonic Countermeasures
Regularly perform “am I dreaming” checks: the standard method is attempting to push your finger through your palm, but you may also squeeze your nose shut and try to breathe. Learn to do this not only in response to suspicion of enemy esper presence but occasionally throughout each day, as you will not know when you are trapped in a psi-induced dream state: this is what makes them so dangerous! Also be on the lookout for unusual numbers of fingers on your hands, or clocks that shift displayed time upon a double-take. If you realize you are hallucinating, you can take control enough to navigate them lucidly, and potentially break out of the illusion.
In addition to dreaming checks, you must also periodically verify that your memories have not been tampered with. To do so, review the documentation on multi-modal autobiographical hash tables. In summary: by encoding the basic facts of your own personal history into one or more non-autobiographical formats (such as a series of colors or letters keyed to life events by a referenceable system) you can effectively store those memories in more than one way, and check them against one another. A hostile esper who has modified your memories may not have the time or skill necessary to manually alter every alternative memory encoding, leaving traces of your true past.
Physical Countermeasures
An esper’s greatest weapon is their mind, but their bodies remain only human. Therefore, use your own body in response: your first instinct should be, in all cases, to escape. Immediately try to break sight lines and put distance between yourself and them so that they don’t get a chance to use psychic techniques on you. If you can’t escape, then disrupt their concentration to make psi usage difficult. Always carry one or more of the following: a flashlight (for blinding), an air horn (for deafening), and a laser pointer (for distracting), and if you don’t have any of those on hand, simply yell, taunt, or throw nearby objects at them. If you truly are trapped at close range, then you may resort to physical violence: carry some form of close-range personal defense such as a tear gas spray canister, or a proper weapon if trained and licensed with one. Unarmed hand-to-hand combat lessons are available for all employees.
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