Mind Honey: Health & Funding
What many people are unaware of is how, before and during the history of the psychonauts as an agency, honey has played a crucial role in keeping it functional. For the purposes of academic rigor (and the associated benefits of extolling a source of income for the agency) I wish to discuss this role. Agent Maloof Canola
Honey has long been known for its healing properties, thanks to its antiseptic nature. As a form of long term energy storage, this strongly benefits the bees that produce it, and many creatures, humans included have learned to harness this for their benefit.
What is less well known is the natural consequences of bees creating the honey from their environment. Different pollens produce markedly different honeys, from simply different tastes to some honeys being outright poisonous.
Even less well known is the influence psycho-reactive substances have on swarm animals like bees, and the unique survival strategies used by these swarms.
As first posited by Cassie O’Pia in the opening to her famous book Mind Swarm, swarm intelligence is readily observed in insects and other colonies of creatures that live in environments rich in psycho-reactive minerals. This swarm intelligence is usually extremely volatile, resulting in rapid decline in populations and the death of colonies due to intense infighting within the swarm intelligence whenever it gets disrupted.
Becoming an apiarist herself after she emigrated to the states, O’Pia discovered that bees were uniquely capable of cushioning this psychic feedback and on further investigation discovered that due to the filtering of psycho-active minerals through plants, the resulting pollen made into honey would produce an actively soothing and strengthening effect for its consumers. This meant that bee colonies were naturally buffered by their consumption and circulation of this psychic soother.
It was thanks to O’Pia’s discovery of this mind honey, as well as her excellent acumen for financial matters, that led to the Psychic 7 being able to fund their lifestyle and research before the Psychonauts officially became an international agency. With the assistance of Compton Boole, a potent zoo-ophonist and fellow member of the Psychic 7, she was able to harvest this honey for use in cooking. Entering into a deal with a nearby entrepreneur, Bucky Fierros, O’Pia and Boole made a lot of money providing food for sale through the entrepreneur’s roadside attraction. Actively soothing to the mind, even non-psychics would feel sated and comforted by foodstuffs made with the mind honey made by psychic bees.
This source of income was surprisingly successful. Even with only local and tourist customers, the Psychic 7 were able to fund all of their research off this source of funding. Were it not for the precipitating incident of the foundation of the Psychonauts, it is likely that the ‘Lumberstack’ brand would have made it into country-wide circulation. It is interesting to speculate as to what might have happened from there.
After the Deluge of Grulovia, things quickly changed. With the disappearance of Cassie O’Pia, and the new direction of the Psychonauts as an international agency dedicated to the protection of free thought, Otto Mentalis chose to use his own research as a source of funding. Fierros, bereft of Cassie O’Pia’s products and Compton Boole’s cooking, was swiftly overwhelmed with financial troubles and disappeared with most of the remaining profits of his enterprise.
Mind honey wasn’t completely removed from the Psychonauts, however. In a nod to his colleagues, Otto Mentalis did create two brand of sweets sweetened with trace amounts of mind honey, known to many as Psi-Pops and Dream Fluffs. Although production was limited by the lack of a dedicated farm for producing mind honey, these sweets are actively used by many agents as essential pick-me-ups even to this day.
One other trace of Cassie O’Pia’s early work still exists: Wildfree Honey Pepper Boar Bacon. Wildfree Ranch was a co-operative venture between Cassie O’Pia and Deborah and Sion Sweetwater in Canada. Founded in a region with limited psitanium deposits, the ranch uses free range boar, greenhouse grown peppercorn and weakly active mind honey to produce the popular product. Despite its popularity with psychics, due to the difficulties of expanding production, Wildfree Honey Pepper Boar Bacon is still a rare and expensive commodity.
Fortunately for the Psychonauts, this was not the last time mind honey would be relevant to its bottom line. Around the time of the Whispering Rock incident, the Psychonauts were facing financial difficulties, due to a decline of international funding at the lobbying of several interested parties. Fortunately, the reemergence of Cassie O’Pia came with the added benefit of a vast influx of cultivated mind honey. With a massive increase in production, and the publication of several articles promoting its health benefits, mind honey returned to being a staple breadwinner for the organisation.
Today the diversification of the Psychonauts financial portfolio has massively reduced the risks associated with losing funding from the international community, which in turn allows us more freedom in actively opposing government sponsored oppression. All thanks to mind honey.
