TWENTY-EIGHT: Perception

 

The professor only invited five students back for the afternoon session. Sophie said the pass rate was usually thirty percent, so Joe was even more of a terror than Alden had realized.

At first, he assumed he wouldn’t have anything to do in the lab with so few examinees. Especially since they were, presumably, talented enough not to cause a disaster. But it turned out he was as busy as he had been for the morning testing.

Instead of having him dispose of dangerous materials, Joe loaned Alden’s services to each of the students for a set period of time. Every ten or so minutes he swapped tables and held whatever the examinee asked him to while doing laps off to the side.

At least I was wearing sneakers when I was summoned. He was already making a mental list of the items he’d need to have with him everywhere he went so that he didn’t wind up on strange planets with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Carrying around projects for the students wasn’t too taxing, but it was forcing him to rapidly develop a tolerance for grabbing things that looked like they shouldn’t be touched with a ten-foot pole. He wondered if Joe had given the examinees bonus points for being weirdos; it seemed like he’d given passing scores only to the scariest projects.

One guy had made a chihuahua-sized spider machine that was supposed to come when it was called, but it kept trying to scuttle away from his lab table and up the walls.

It stabbed him and his assistants with sharp metal feet whenever they tried to hold it in place.

The examinee at the next table was carving sigils into the side of a simple wooden bowl that seemed innocent enough, but occasionally, out of the blue, it would scream. All by itself.

How the heck can all these things be for the same purpose? Alden wondered. Sophie had said the students were making “summoning assistive devices” for use in other exams they had coming up. You would think their projects would at least look similar.

And what were they summoning? If it was Avowed, they would just use the System, right? Gorgon had once implied that consorting with demons was a pastime for extremely powerful Artonans, so Alden didn’t think that was something that would be happening here.

Maybe the projects were for containing, controlling, or communicating with the things they summoned?

He was lulled into a false sense of security by the first three projects he carried. Creepy they might have been, but they were easy enough to hold. And it was particularly satisfying to watch the spider freeze in place with one of its feet halfway through a stabbing motion.

Once Alden had taken charge of it, the guy who’d made it spent the whole time frantically flipping the pages of textbooks while his assistants bandaged their fingers. Alden was pretty sure they didn’t even need his power for the preservation effect; they only wanted a break from trying to babysit the thing they’d made.

They looked very sad when his time was up. He dropped the spider into a deep lab sink and ran away from it before it could enact any sort of revenge plan.

Joe pointed him toward the screaming bowl girl, and he headed over feeling pretty at ease. He targeted her, and she smiled.

<<As soon as you hear the cries, please lift the vessel and hold it until I tell you to put it back down.>>

“Okay,” said Alden.

She pulled her blue-black hair up into a clip and placed a small cone-shaped device into a stand, spinning it so that the open end was toward Alden and the bowl.

Then she tucked a pair of buds made of the same glass-like substance as the cone into her ears.

The professor strolled over to watch the two of them.

“It’ll be heavy,” he said, the eye behind his smart lens darting around while the other fixed itself on Alden. “You should brace yourself.”

Alden stared at the bowl. It wasn’t huge, so he didn’t think the professor was warning him about physical weight.

All right, he thought. Solid slow steps as soon as I grab it. And hold on tight. Don’t fall over. How hard could it be?

A moment later, a fresh wail came from the depths of the bowl, and Alden reached for it. The second he touched it, it felt like someone had tied his soul to an anchor and dropped it.

He only managed to hold onto the bowl and take a step with it because he’d told himself that was what he was going to do. This feels bad.

He’d had just enough practice over the past day to keep moving. The horrible burden didn’t really affect his arms and legs, but he stumbled because his brain and body couldn’t figure out how they were supposed to react to weight that wasn’t weight.

This freaking hurts.

He shook his head and tried to keep going, arguing with his own senses. Hurt wasn’t the right word, he told himself. He wasn’t in physical or emotional pain. And if he wasn’t in pain, he should be able to carry one stupid bowl, right?

Just one step and then another. Right?

Wrong.

Alden’s skill deactivated and he took in a shuddering breath, blinking around in confusion. The bowl was wailing again in his hands. He was on his knees, almost nose to nose with the hinge of one of the lab cabinets.

I was walking, wasn’t I?

He didn’t think he’d fallen. Had he just knelt down?

He realized he didn’t even know how long he’d been carrying the bowl, if anyone had spoken to him, or which direction he’d traveled in. He looked around and saw that he was at one of the empty tables, farther from where he’d started than he would have thought.

He must have been wandering around aimlessly.

The professor was right behind him.

“I was making sure you didn’t run into a wall!” he said brightly. “I suspected we might have been a bit greedy with this one. Hand that over, and take a rest.”

Alden was too exhausted to protest or apologize as the professor took the bowl away. He didn’t even want to. He felt apathetic about his own failure, even as he recognized that the lack of emotion was wrong. He should have been sorry for messing up whatever experiment the examinee had been doing or worried about consequences. But he just…didn’t care.

Huh, he thought. Strange.

It was a peaceful feeling, though. He knelt there, staring at the cabinet hinge without really seeing it.

His knees started to hurt, but he couldn’t be bothered to change positions.

After a few minutes, Sophie came and looked at him. He could see his face reflected in the surface of her helmet. He blinked slowly at himself.

A text message scrolled across his interface.

[I’ve never encountered a human in a state of full magical fatigue. Does your recovery process prevent you from moving your legs?]

“I don’t know,” Alden said. His voice was placid.

[You can answer questions. Can you feel your body?]

“Yes.”

[I thought so. You need to work on separating your physical senses from your magical ones. And your will from your UNTRANSLATABLE.]

“Okay.”

The grivek lifted a claw larger than Alden’s hand and held it in front of his eyes. [I am going to disembowel you now.]

“Okay.”

The claw hit the hard white floor with a clack.

[This is hilarious. But dangerous. For now, go to sleep. Maybe that will fix you.]

Sophie reached out with a foot and shoved him over.

Alden toppled, limp as a doll, onto his side. The floor was so clean in the lab it didn’t look real.

Sophie told me to go to sleep. That sounds easy.

Opening his eyes every time he blinked was a lot of trouble anyway.

 

###

 

A couple of hours later, Alden woke up to an insistent, piercing whistle that existed only in his own mind.

[QUEST REMINDER:

Assist Professor Worli Ro-den in Lab 7]

The timer at the bottom said he had half an hour. He could wait around to be teleported, or he could earn a small Argold bonus by getting there on his own.

Groaning, Alden rolled over on the hard floor and stared up at the ceiling. The lab lights were dimmed, and it was quiet. They must have just left him here to sleep off the…

That was skill fatigue, right? Sophie had called it magical fatigue, but they must have been the same thing. Alden had heard about it before; it was like the moment an endurance athlete hit the wall.

He’d assumed that it was what he was heading for when he felt the strange drain every time his skill activated. But he hadn’t been entirely positive, because from what he’d understood, skills were an all or nothing thing for most superhumans. They worked perfectly and easily until they didn’t work at all.

Why does Let Me Take Your Luggage start taxing me right away? And why did it knock me out so quickly?

Skill fatigue was supposed to be something that happened after you’d used your skill for hours and hours. Superheroes mostly suffered from it during long, drawn-out recovery missions or during hero-vs-hero competitions.

Obviously something was different about the screaming bowl than the other things Alden had carried, and he really needed to understand what that was. He couldn’t just get tired and take a nap wherever, whenever.

And being devoid of concern for himself was disturbing. He’d told Sophie she could disembowel him.

He climbed onto his feet and stretched, trying to work out the various sorenesses he’d collected from lying in a motionless, crumpled heap for hours.

The rest seemed to have been good for him, at least.

He didn’t feel tired anymore. Not in the regular human way or in the bad, new way.

And for the first time all day, he wasn’t sweaty. The floor had been nice and cool even through the coat.

The Artonans preferred an indoor temperature just shy of ninety degrees Fahrenheit. It was getting old fast.

He got directions from the System and set out for Lab 7. It was in its own building, halfway across campus. Not far from the place where Alden had teleported in this morning.

On the way, he spotted a few other Avowed. One of the boater members from lunch gave him a nod as they passed in the hall. And he saw Manon the Rabbit through the open door of a classroom. She was arranging small tables and cushions into a half circle.

He debated sticking his head in and saying hello to try to get a read on her, but he decided against it. He’d probably have to see her tonight or in the morning anyway.

When he stepped outside, he found that one of the strange golf carts had been called for him automatically. It had a halo similar to the one he saw when he targeted people.

“Hey, thanks,” he said, in case the System cared.

He climbed aboard, and the vehicle chimed before setting out down the hill. The trip took about fifteen minutes, and Alden used the time to decide what he would do if Joe did offer him a private contract, as Sophie had suggested he might.

“Know your mind before you make your choices,” the grivek had said. And that seemed like good advice.

What’s with contracts popping up around me left and right, anyway? He knew they were an important part of Avowed life, but still…in the past couple of days he’d agreed to the Contract and he’d made the agreement with the Velras. And now here he was worrying about yet another one.

He hoped it wasn’t ungrateful, but he didn’t really want another assignment right now, even if Joe was paying well.

He was aware that most people looked for opportunities to get their foot in the door with Artonans however they could, but it was just too much at once. He was less afraid of missing out on what some would see as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and more afraid of making a foolish choice because he was in a strange place filled with strange pressures and he was having a hard time keeping his head on straight.

He’d heard classes on safe contracting were standard at Anesidoran high schools. He’d really like to take one before he signed any more of his life away.

So I’ll say no. Probably. Is there anything he could offer that would make me interested?

He’d pass on money, he decided. Any amount of it. Even if whatever Joe wanted was easy. Even if the number was so incredibly large that Alden was sure it was a good deal.

He had a few million dollars worth of Argold in his account, and he was about to add two hundred thousand more. That’s so hard to fathom. I think I should talk to Jeremy’s parents at some point…figure out how to transfer some of it to Aunt Connie. Maybe buy her a house?

That was what rich people did for their family, wasn’t it?

Anyway, right now money wasn’t worth the risk of making a contract with the professor. Even if Alden thought he was being smart, he could screw it up. Private deals didn’t have the benefit of full System oversight. If he remembered correctly, the Interdimensional Warriors Contract took precedence over all other contracts he could make as far as it came to summonings, specifically. So he could still be yanked away from non-System jobs by System-approved summonings.

But at the same time, the Contract would let him make deals with Artonans that didn’t include the protections usually in place for humans. What if Alden missed some loophole and ended up as a lab rat for the professor? Or what if Joe enjoyed watching his servants fight in gladiator-style arenas and Alden forgot to nix that from the agreement?

So, money alone isn’t worth it. The only reason to say yes to anything would be if he offered something that would be unequivocally good for my power development and difficult to obtain through other means.

Not even foundation points. Maybe a spell impression? A good one. C-rank or above and tooled to fit his skill.

The list of available Rabbit spells was so depressing that he wasn’t even excited about choosing his post-affixation one. And one perfect spell would really increase his likelihood of getting into a hero program.

But spell impressions were for long-term assignments and extraordinary service to begin with, and Rabbits weren’t supposed to get C-rank ones normally.

So that’s not going to happen, he decided as he hopped off the cart in front of a round, domed building. It was windowless and made of shiny black stone. No new, dangerous jobs today.

He put his coat back on and headed for the door.

It was made of the same black stone as the rest of the building, and it was so seamless it would almost have disappeared if not for the large, Artonan symbol for 7 carved into it. It opened for him automatically, and to his surprise, blessedly cool air rushed out.

Air conditioning. Finally.

He stepped through and found himself in a curved hallway. Directly in front of him was a transparent door that led to a decontamination area. Beyond that, a metal staircase led down to the laboratory that seemed to make up the entire center of the building. To Alden’s right and left, locked supply cases lined the walls, and as he made his way around the perimeter circle, he found that the back third of it was a large office area

The professor was there, sitting at a desk surrounded by rolling smart boards. Most of the furniture in the office faced a giant interior window that looked down on the lab. Joe was examining a holographic projection of something that looked like a bird’s nest made out of stars, but he swiped it away and leaped up as Alden entered the space.

“Alden, dear!” he said. “You are delightfully prompt. How are you feeling after that overexertion earlier?”

“Fine. Normal. I’m sorry I conked out like that. I didn’t ruin the students’ projects, did I?”

Joe waved a hand. “No, no. I told Jel-nor and Weya that their intended uses for your skill would likely overtax you before we began, so they were forewarned. The nature of their projects was different from the others. I actually might not mind having them as students.”

“That’s good…” Alden would rather have been warned a little more thoroughly himself before he got turned into an apathetic lump.

“Come see the lab!” Joe bounded toward the window.

He spent the next fifteen minutes pointing at various pieces of equipment and describing what they did in loving detail. Alden only understood about a third of what he said, even though Joe was speaking mostly English, but he nodded and smiled politely.

I seriously hope he doesn’t want me to do anything with that aquarium full of venomous eels.

According to the professor, Hot Lab 7 was currently dedicated to researching ways to “reduce the overshred effects caused by magical ammunition.”

“Interesting?” Alden wasn’t sure what overshred was, but it was probably a bad thing, right?

“Boring,” Joe sighed. “So boring. In my old lab, I was doing cutting edge work on containing demonic energies for certain wealthy benefactors. But now I’m stuck here with a university budget again. You know I haven’t taught in three decades?”

He gave Alden a pitiful look. “You take one grand senator’s wife as your lover, and the next thing you know, the authorities are suddenly offended by all the creative little things you’ve done. Even though the week before they were shaking your hand under the table for it!”

The author’s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Uh…” said Alden.

“I still think it was an overreaction. But here we are. More importantly, here you are!” Joe beamed at Alden and rubbed his hands together. “How do you feel about running a few personal errands for me?”

Yep. Sophie was right. “Personal? You mean doing things for a private contract instead of through System quests?”

Completely unconcerned by the suspicion in Alden’s voice, Joe wandered over to the office’s small kitchen area and poured himself a cup of wevvi from a dispenser.

“Yes. Not only a private contract, but a secret private contract. Doesn’t that sound exciting? There would be official quests, too, to make sure I was the only one who could monopolize your time in the evenings.”

“Why does it need to be secret?”

“Because I want you to do something illegal,” Joe said lightly.

Well, that’s not going to happen. “Unless it’s the Artonan equivalent of a minor traffic violation, then I think I’m going to have to pass.”

“Traffic violation…ah, I see. Your vehicles on Earth are still mostly non-autonomous. Why haven’t you all gotten on top of that, by the way? I know we gave you the technology for it years ago. To answer your question, it is a fairly minor crime; if we’re caught, I expect it to add around a decade to my sentence at this charming institution. At most.”

The professor pulled something that looked like a brownie out of a pocket and dipped it into the wevvi. “As for you, you can’t be punished for anything you do if it’s to satisfy the terms of a magical contract with me. Whether it’s a private one or not.”

“Even if I know in advance that what you’re asking me to do will be against the law?” Alden didn’t try to hide his skepticism.

Joe shrugged. “You can look it up. And I don’t mind explaining it, though I hope you won’t waste our limited time by taking offense. You see, we Artonans generally consider Avowed to be either children in need of instruction, beasts of burden, gifts from the holy universe, or existential threats to our species.”

Alden blinked.

“I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how that combination of philosophies led to the creation of our culture and relationships with other planets. But I’m sure you understand that children, heavenly blessings, and Ryeh-b’ts can’t be blamed for the actions of nasty wizards who trick them into committing crimes.”

Alden was too surprised to be offended. He felt like he’d just learned more about the Triplanets in a few sentences than he had in weeks of study at the consulate.

“Um…which are you?” he asked hesitantly. He wasn’t sure which answer he was hoping for.

“Definitely the fourth,” said Joe, polishing off his soggy brownie and licking crumbs from his fingers. “But don’t worry. I’m of the opinion that existential threats are how a species evolves into something greater. And I think anything cataclysmic will happen long after we’re both dead, so there’s no reason to let it interfere with our business. Take a seat.”

The professor pointed at a pair of poofy, legless chairs that had a clear view of the lab below them. Alden sat in one, and Joe took the other.

The Artonan steepled his fingers over his chest and sighed. “First, I should warn you that I’m poor. In wizard terms, that is. The conditions of my punishment limit the types of assignment I can issue through the spell you call the System, and since nobody can actually interfere with my individual agreements, they have instead made it difficult for me to summon and pay my old friends.”