Overview:
Visionsharing, also known as noo-communion or simply mindlinking, refers to the act of persons telepathically interacting in a shared mental environment. In practical terms, it also encompasses the necessary capital for such an act, in terms of abilities, hardware, and pharmaceuticals.
Components:
Persons:
Architect: A telepathically-capable and imaginative individual, who designs the environment to be explored mentally, telepathically projects it, and generally guides the experience. Generally the strongest telepath of the group.
Visitors: The individuals who telepathically link with the architect to join in the designed landscape. Some requisite telepathic ability needed, but less so than that of the architect.
Minder: An "extra hand" who will not participate in the visionsharing, or participates in it last. The Minder's duty is primarily to assist the Architect in their disassociated state, though they may also overlap with medical personnel in terms of the handling of hardware or the administration of chemicals. If nestpods are used, it is almost guaranteed that a non-participating Minder will be present, for safety concerns in the event of an inner latch malfunction.
Pharmaceuticals:
Vividrugs: A specially designed chemical compound, typically ingested orally or injected. This synthesis promotes both an intensely disassociated state where sensory perceptions of the outside world are greatly reduced as well as a specific mental state that is conducive to the imagination.
Psi-drugs: Concentrated strains of psi-drugs are used by all participants in order to temporarily boost their psychic strength to a degree that will allow sustained sharing of vivid perceptions. Typically injected, though some high-end ones are inhaled as a spray. The exact concentration of the dose determines the extent of a participant's activity within the shared vision. In the Architect, the dosage determines the length of the vision itself.
Hardware:
Nestpods: Sealed antigrav chambers akin to float tanks. Not required, but generally utilized by most professional noo-comm centres, as they further reduce distraction from the outside world and eliminate the soreness of muscle that can result from sitting or lying down for the vision's duration.
Outline:
Initially, a group seeking to visionshare meets and plans out their trip. Relevant data for the planned landscape is given to the designated Architect, and any disagreements over the nature of the event are sorted out here. After the final draft of the realm is made, the group meets at a prepared area known as a Nest. The Architect is administered vividrugs initially, and spends time in relative seclusion using the prepared data to imagine a given environment or scenario. Once ready, the Architect notifies the group, usually using a simple, pre-agreed upon method given their disassociation from the physical world. At this point, they are administered psi-drugs, and assisted into a relaxed position by a Minder, or helped into a nestpod if available. At this same time, the Visitors are adminstered psi-drugs or administer the drugs themselves, though they do not typically require the assistance that an Architect does, even if they are using nestpods. Once all of the group is prepared and in a comfortable position, each individual telepathically "connects" with the architect, and soon after with the others in the group. Individual telepathic connections and sent perceptions are interpreted as a discrete mental landscape wherein individuals can conduct activities. Individuals can interact with one another to their satisfaction, or until their psi-drug doses wear off. Typically the Architect is the last to come out of trance, and many Nests have a small "break" area where those who have gotten out of the conjoinment first can relax and converse with one another.
Structure of Visionsharing:
As an event, visionsharing involves the rapid telepathic contact of a group of minds, each drawing an environment as a "template" from the Architect's mind and projecting it back into others in the group, potentially with modifications. While often described as a "world," or, "environment," this is the overall perception of a series of extremely fast and fine telepathic communications with the rest of the group; there are point-to-point extrasensory connections made between each brain and mind.
The Architect, apart from being a designer and general host, is also an anchor for the group. The Architect constantly projects the main environment, reinforcing a baseline for the perceptions of each participant. Without a designated Architect of good skill, the projections of each member would be no different from fleeting telepathic messages or images; there would be a chaotic mess of perceptions without the seeming of a coherent world.
The Architect can change the landscape of the environment or induce events with a certain amount of concentration, similar in a way to lucid dreaming. In most cases this will be in accordance with the sort of guidelines established prior to the session's beginning. Visitors can also affect the environment similarly, albeit with less proficiency. Generally, it is easiest and most psychologically natural to move one's imagined body around the world, as well as use any abilities one has in life. Changes to one's body and skills in the vision are generally harder to manifest than environmental changes due to psychological blocks and the general conditioning to one's normal sense of self in daily life. Nevertheless, such alterations are still relatively common in visionsharing and indeed an important feature of certain visionsharing scenarios, though practice and patience is required.
Culture:
The industries and cultures that have grown around the practice of visionsharing are rather multifarious, though there are certain key points of note. While visionsharing is enabled by around the same level of societal development as cyberjaunting, the fact that the former does require a level of native psychic talent inherently restricts the audience available to it, while the latter is in theory easier to access. Trained psychics or those otherwise heavily invested in psi naturally form a large part of this available population, but there is still sufficient genetic diversity in the wider population for the untrained to form a sizable part of visionsharing culture. As a rule of thumb, about half of the population has the necessary talent for visionsharing. Generally, those who have psi training or who have received advanced genetic augmentations serve as Architects, with the less developed being Visitors, though exceptions to this norm are not uncommon. The visionsharing industry makes a fair amount of money, but the fact that its market is inherently limited means that most commercial facilities are small, as well as the companies that specialize in it. A sizeable part of the visionsharing subculture does not even use professional facilities at all, instead buying (or synthesizing) their own pharmaceuticals and setting up their own Nests. Depending on their means, some of these institutions can resemble gentlemen's clubs and retreat sites, while others simply stand as the backroom of a gaming center or the basements of adolescents. The culture of professional facilities tends to resemble that of the upscale cyberjaunting community, while smaller ones are colored by the structure of the group that spawned them, whether that be a gang or a circle of friends. The more dreamlike fidelity of visionsharing has given it a reputation among those involved in tech circles as a poor man's cyberjaunt. That same quality and the fact that it utilizes paranormal communication has also given it something of soulful image in the public mind. There is some overlap between visionsharing and the broader psi community, though not as much as one might think. Visionsharing is especially popular among various pro-psi youth subcultures, who see in it an exemplification of the philosophical and often spiritual worldviews they associate with psi. Visionsharing is also notoriously utilized by many psi-cults, particularly oneiromantic ones. The subculture does carry with it a certain amount of suspicion given visionsharing's reliance on pharmaceuticals and the possibility that street groups manufacturing them may also manufacture illegal substances.
Relevance of Psychic Ability:
The innate psychic functioning of an individual primarily determines the extent to which they can participate in visionsharing. Not all of the population can be Visitors, and not all Visitors can achieve the skill required to be an Architect. In general, around 50% of the population uninvolved with psychic development will have the talent to be a Visitor, and virtually all augmented and trained psychics will have the talent to be a Visitor. Around 10% of the general population will have the talent required to be an Architect, and around 75% of trained psychics have the ability to be an Architect. The best Architects are those with active telepathic ability, which itself requires genetic modification.
Those whose genetics preclude the ability to be a Visitor can seek recourse through augmentation and advanced psi training, though most who would be so dedicated are also psi-enthusiasts in general. A sizable minority of visionsharing culture actually consists of such people, though few of their number can become Architects.
Not all individuals who have the requisite psychic ability to be an Architect actually serve as them, whether due to a lack of focusing ability required in sculpting a mental realm, low imagination, or a simple disinterest in serving as one.
Relationship to Cyberjaunting:
In many ways, visionsharing is defined by its relationship to its most obvious competitor. Cyberjaunting, a broad term used to refer to the use of brain-computer interfaces to explore digital worlds, stands as a more immediately widespread and accessible form of imaginative exploration. The differences between the two mediums in many ways defines their audiences, as well as their relation to society at large.
Cyberjaunting utilizes a direct brain connection and involves the physical tranduction of signals via the interface of machinery and nerve endings. Visionsharing utilizes the telepathic functioning of the the participants to enable communication, and is based on paranormal means of influence. In general, cyberjaunting is more efficient and "sleek," and draws an audience for just those qualities. The haziness of visionsharing is itself a draw for some, and the medium is also attractive to those squeamish about neurologically invasive procedures. Many also find the paranormal cognition of visionsharing to be more aesthetically appealing than the mechanical means of cyberjaunting.
Cyberjaunting is usually hosted at large, dedicated centres. The technology and medical expertise required to enable cyberjaunting is several orders of magnitude higher than that of visionsharing, and most facilities are large for cost-efficiency purposes. Smaller groups do exist, as in visionsharing, but given the exacting standards in equipment and medical treatment required, these tend to be rare, or even dangerous. Visionsharing can support an underculture more effectively and cheaply.
The worlds of cyberjaunting are designed ahead of time via electronic means. The roles of programmer and world host take the place of visionsharing's Architect, and while these two roles can overlap, they most certainly need not. These worlds are themselves formatted on an easy to access substrate and can be distributed with ease, while the worlds of visionsharing are by nature a product of the mind and can only be related to others via speech or telepathy.
Cyberjaunts can in theory be intercepted more easily by hackers or others joined into the system. Unless one also hosts their own installation, any content used could be examined by the proprietors of the establishment, or interactions potentially inspected. In visionsharing, one's interactions can only be discerned of through the normal medium of memory, which is vulnerable primarily to telepathic deep probes or (in extreme cases) neural content inspection via a mind-machine interface.
Cyberjaunting generally requires a degree of neurosurgery and cybernetic augmentation to engage in, with the requisite implants usually being relatively cheap. Depending on natural talent, visionsharing may not necessarily require significant augmentation, but the greatest clarity of vision is usually achieved with it, and the psychically-dull will ultimately require it regardless. The augmentations involved are genetic in nature and far more expensive than those required of cyberjaunting.
Glossary of Visionsharing Slang:
Arch: A strong Architect, usually one who has received genetic modifications for active telepathy.
Basement: A shoddy, usually privately-owned Nest.
Bedbite: Soreness experienced from long sessions of visionsharing in a reclined position.
Doper: A visionsharer who is either suspected of being generally involved with drugs, or known to be involved with them. Usually carries the connotation that they see visionsharing as another thing in a round of delights.
Dropping out: Exiting a visionsharing session.
Foyer: The initial zone or entrance area of a visionsharing session.
Funtime: A visionsharing session that caters to a niche crowd. Usually but not exclusively erotic in nature.
Ghosted: A reference to the death of an individual in the midst of visionsharing. Exceptionally rare due to both the infrequency of such events and the morbidity of the humor. As a term, considered a sort of dark pearl in terms of appropriateness and allure.
Good Time: A visionsharing experience that cannot be put into words, and one to ideally be referenced as little as possible, to prevent spoiling its wonder.
Hot Drop: Being snapped back to attention out of a visionsharing session, usually by some physical sensation.
Mindlord: An augmented, professional psychic, especially one who is not involved in visionsharing culture. Often derogatory, but can also be self-effacing or ironic.
Morphic: One who is especially good at altering their body and abilities in a visionsharing session. Less commonly used to refer to those who prefer to spend visionsharing sessions in a form dramatically different from their physical body.
Prophet: An individual who engages in visionsharing for religious or mystical reasons.
Psi High: An adolescent involved in a youth subculture centering around psi. Usually derogatory.
Witchkid: A child with occult leanings who participates in visionsharing. Usually used in reference to adolescents involved with esoteric youth subcultures, but occasionally used in reference to prepubescent ones. In the latter case, can contain an air of respect, as young children are rarely able to receive augmentations that would boost psychic ability.