The Power Curriculum
For a little over 20 years, students at Mirai City schools have been learning and developing superhuman abilities through the city's Power Curriculum. These classes (along with courses of secret proprietary pharmaceutical formulations) have helped thousands of students develop their own unique ability, from telekinesis to telepathy, teleportation to elemental manipulation. Each power has some degree of uniqueness to the student themselves, manifesting in their own way.
Unfortunately, even with refinement of the curriculum, the process isn't guaranteed. Not every student develops a power during their studies. Of those that do (roughly 40%), many never develop one strong enough to be useful -- though a rare few rise to levels of extreme power quickly, most have to practice to improve.
Education
Not every school teaches the Power Curriculum, but most do, since it’s a major enrolment draw for the city. Classes can begin as early as kindergarten, and most students who develop powers have at least a hint of what theirs is by middle school. Although rates of development vary wildly, it’s most common to begin with very little control over a very weak power, but also to gain control over it quickly. No one over the age of 20 has successfully developed powers, but theory-only classes are taught at universities, and some experimental programs open to those that still want to try.Practical exercises for students at Level zero, with as-yet unknown powers include using Zener cards, trying to stand a coin on its edge or an egg on its end, Indian Poker and other types of guessing, probabilistic, or focus-building games.
Exercises for Level 1+ students are much more widely varied, since once a power manifests, it’s usually clear what direction to start working on. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to advancement; some students train hard and achieve high Level ratings with time, while others manifest high Level ability within a year. Others train hard and never get anywhere further at all -- much to everyone’s frustration, since school funding is based in part on how many students of high level they can produce.
For those students who have difficulty with controlling their abilities, a small change to drug regimen is recommended, along with technological methods that might help or exercises that help with mental and emotional focus, even therapy in some cases. Some are unable to be helped even by this though, It should also be noted that although powers might become uncontrolled in moments of great stress or emotion, students with generally uncontrolled powers cannot achieve a Level ranking of 4 or above.
Some middle and high schools have Level as one of the admission criteria, and higher Level students are more likely to be offered scholarships and free tuition at various schools.
System Scan
Every student in the city is ranked according to the relative strength of their abilities through an opaque process called System Scan twice a year. A full day is taken to measure relevant aspects of each student at every school, final Level rating recorded and reported back the same day. Although never explicitly stated as such, the general Level breakdown is as follows:
Level 0: No ability (or an unmeasurable one)
Level 1: Limited manifestation of ability
Level 2: Manifestation of ability, but not too generally useful.
Level 3: Ability strong enough to be useful in everyday life
Level 4: Ability strong enough to have military application
Level 5: Potential for mass destruction/reality warping
Most students fall between Level 0 and 3.
Personal Reality Field (PRF)
Each psi user is surrounded by a field that, essentially, allows them to warp reality in alignment with their personal reconceptualization of reality.
This field can resonate with similar fields, allowing students with very similar psi powers to locate each other at fairly short range, and even create a positive feedback loop (a “gestalt”) that allows them to strengthen each others’ abilities, though the process is a bit tricky. Gestalts must generally be initiated by physically touching and concentrating on the effect, and users’ concentration must not be disturbed while maintaining the gestalt.
Dual Skill
No student has ever developed more than one ability – and although certain unethical experiments have been able to ‘steal’ powers more than one via controversial brain-fusion techniques or sonic alignment of brainwaves, neither is truly ‘dual-skill’ and does not get research any closer to the real goal of students developing multiple powers.
Powers in Everyday Life
Students are generally encouraged to use their abilities in everyday life, however they would like, within the confines of the law. It should go without saying that mind controlling another person isn’t legal, but in more grey areas, anyone paying attention would see pretty clearly that city authorities are inclined to look the other way or let someone off with just a warning about questionable power usage. There’s a lot of leniency there, even if you take allowances for uncontrolled powers out of consideration.
Fundamentally, matters of whether it’s okay to use them for personal gain are left up to each individual to make their own choices.
Metapsi
Not an official category within the System Scan scoring, powers considered to be “metapsi” can fall within any or all of the six main types of psi powers. This unofficial category is used to describe powers that interfere with or make use of other psi users’ powers.