TWO HUNDRED FORTY: Hopping I

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The house always woke before its master, readying itself in the manner most helpful for his predicted day. Saturdays were special because sacrifices were made throughout the week to increase the likelihood that he would have one perfect morning out of seven.

On this Saturday, the burring of the coffee grinder was the first sound allowed to reach his bedroom. Then came the soft whoosh of air through vents so that the smell of the beverage would arrive before the drink itself. In the closet under the staircase, a robot managed several drudgery chests, and the remote it placed in one of them controlled the levitator disc that carried the filled mug up the stairs.

The dog would reach the master’s room before the coffee did. This was the nature of golden retrievers and right.

The master’s Saturday slippers were already waiting by the side of the bed, and the robe he would wear to take the dog out for a walk was draped over the foot, placed there only a couple of minutes ago so that it was still warm from the dryer.

Half an hour before that, the stair sweeper for the outdoor steps had been activated, and it had now moved along to do the neighbors’ stoops. The street cleaner had already been past.

The master of this house was also the master of the neighborhood, so when he took his dog on its morning walk, his Saturday slippers wouldn’t get dirty. Unless, perhaps, he chose to cross the grass of the square. It was freshly dewed by sprinklers, trimmed yesterday so that the smell of a cut lawn lingered.

“Good morning to you, too, MBF,” said Elias. He tied the sash on his robe, then rubbed his dog’s ears with one hand while he took his coffee with the other. “Tell me what my family has been up to. And I hope you’ve found something worth watching over breakfast?”

“There are thirty-seven candidates for this week’s Saturday Morning Show,” a voice whispered in his ear. “Shall I add more?”

“Thirty-seven! What an interesting country we live in these days. Narrow the list down to the fifteen people you think I’ll most enjoy hearing about, and I’ll choose one of those.”

The second cup of coffee wasn’t poured until just before he and the dog returned from their walk. The house made sure it was waiting for Elias on a tray in the living room, beside a plate full of olives, bread, and jam.

Screens hovered in front of the sofa that he settled on. He propped his feet up on an ottoman.

“I picked a name, MBF. Alden Thorn. Tell me some stories I don’t know. Make it fun.”

He popped an olive into his mouth as music began to play and a title screen faded in.

 

Elias’s Saturday Morning Show

Episode #473

“Alden Thorn”

 

The title swept away, and two teenagers appeared. The scene had been captured earlier this morning, just after sunrise. The boys had exited one of the dormitories on the Celena North campus, and they were crossing a garden on their way to another building.

The springy one—Agility Brute, thought Elias, probably A-rank—was carrying bags. The other—Familiar face, must have seen him in an old report. Oh yes. That one—was examining a cup made of unglazed clay with symbols carved around it.

“No, you can’t hold it,” the boy with the cup said. “You can touch everyone else’s souvenirs if you want, but a wizard gave this to me, and I haven’t even tried it out yet. Carbonation seems like too much of a challenge. Maybe I’ll put orange juice in it?”

“Kon, I can’t believe you got to see two amazing places on Artona I!” said the Agility Brute. “Was the second one amazing, though? You haven’t said much about the second one.”

Elias peered at the cup. “Translate those symbols if you can, MBF.”

“One possible translation is Cup of a Thousand Gulps,” the voice said in his ear.

“Never heard of it,” said Elias. “And you know how much I like things I’ve never heard of. This is a good place to start the show.”

“It was just a house in the woods, Mehdi,” said Kon. “Just a normal house in normal woods with a few normal wizards in it. The people Alden knows…they’re kind of boring.”

“Body language and tonal analysis indicate he is lying,” said MBF.

The Informant grinned. “I noticed.”

 

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On Saturday evening, the Garden Hall laundry room was a lawless place. There were villains living here who would take a man’s soggy clothes out of the dryer and leave them in a pile on top for him to find when he came back downstairs a minute before the cycle was supposed to end.

If the culprit’s own laundry had still been present, Alden might have cooked up some mild revenge, but they’d made a clean getaway.

It was probably Shoe Pisser, he thought.

His legs were stretched out in front of him while he sat with his back to the dryer. His messenger bag was in his lap, emptied of its contents so that he could look at it inside and out and appreciate it more now that he knew what it was.

It was hard not to feel extra affection for an accessory that would try to make its way back to him if he ever lost it.

“Good bag,” he said, giving it a pat. “You and me. We’re going to do things together.”

When he’d finished examining it, he switched to looking over his class options for next quarter. He’d been assuming he’d add a math or science course, or maybe try to get into one of Instructor Plim’s classes, but now he was eyeballing one called The Contract: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow and wondering if there was a chance that the teacher would touch on the topic he’d fumbled in the taxi with Stuart.

How do I think a knight should call and command an Avowed?

What do I think is right?

When he tried to imagine anything beyond the most obvious scenarios from the point of view of a person who had the power to make major decisions about the lives of others, his brain gave him static.

This is probably more of a class that combines history lessons with theories about the future effects of the System on Earth, anyway. Not an ethics one that answers questions like this.

For some reason, there were no courses named, Summoning Other Avowed into Battle and What That Would Be Like.

“It’s Mountain Dew!” someone shouted suddenly. “You have to know about Mountain Dew!”

That was definitely the sound of Jeffy, just down the hall in the common room, advocating for his favorite drink.

Kon’s gift from the art’h family was a cup about the size and shape of a standard coffee mug, minus the handle. It had occupied half of their class all day long as far as Alden could tell. When Kon poured a beverage into it and then drank most of it down to a line on the interior, the walls of the cup would begin to sweat beads of the drink until it was full again.

According to what Olorn-art’h had told Kon anyway. Alden didn’t think Kon had had the patience to let it completely refill. As soon as he saw the droplets forming, he always drank it, rinsed the cup and dried it, then poured in whatever the next beverage his curious audience had brought him was.

Kon seemed to be telling everyone most of the truth about what Alden had called him for. Alden had asked him not to mention art’hs or knights, but it would have been way too ungrateful to request that he keep the whole thing secret or pretend the trip had been dull.

No souvenirs, no pictures, say I asked you to help out some wizard in F-city who cracked their wand doing construction work…

That might have made Alden’s life easier, but he couldn’t bear to be such a buzzkill. Especially not with Kon, who was even more thrilled than the average person would be to have gone on an adventure to Artona I, saved the day with his skill, and come home with a magical thing that nobody else on Earth owned.

When Alden had made it back to the dorm a few hours ago, he’d found Haoyu sitting in their living room…at the kitchen table, which Lute had relocated to a spot in front of the television because he’d decided to play Angela Aubergine in the middle of the kitchen. Haoyu was reading the website of some rich person whose hobby was collecting enchanted dishes. He said there were drinking vessels that held more liquid than they should, ones that prevented the contents from mixing or separating, and a glass known to poison anyone but its owner. Along with several more types.

“But none that increase the quantity of the drink! There are some Avowed who can do that, but no cups.” Haoyu held up his tablet to show Alden a picture of the poison glass. “Kon’s lucky his cup only works for him, or this collector would be out to get him.”

“It only works for him?”

“He said the wizard made him bleed into it to make it his.”

“Oh. She did that with something she gave me, too. I have an earring she made that helps me study.”

“Collectors don’t actually need to be able to use something to want to acquire it,” Lute pointed out. “A lot of them just want to have the rarest things in their possession regardless. Where’s the dish collector at?”

“Belgium,” said Haoyu.

“Kon never goes to Belgium. Danger averted. And as for the danger posed by Lexi…Alden can just have his wizards summon him away to safety until Lexi gets over it all.”

“I don’t have wizards. I was just with wizards when something broke, and that’s Kon’s area of expertise. Of course I thought of him. I called him and got his permission before I even said his name to anyone there. It was quick, safe, and good practice. He exhausted his skill so fast! This was a rare opportunity for him to read a unique object. I think he learned from it. I took him to a train station and bought him things and didn’t let him eat any of the food there until we’d asked the System if it was safe.”

“By my unexpected and unleveled powers,” said Lute, smirking at him. “You’re scared of Lexi.”

“I’m not!”

“You’ve got a whole spiel planned for fending him off!”

“I’m not scared of him. I just…feel bad because he let you paint his face to help me out, and then I…”

“Kidnapped his brother.”

“Kon came of his own free will. I just know Lexi doesn’t like out-of-the-ordinary events to come at him unexpectedly. And he’s a little overprotective for someone who seems annoyed by Kon so often. Haoyu, you remember him asking me why I gave Kon’s own teeth back to Kon, don’t you? Like he thought he should hold onto them instead…where is Lexi, by the way?”

“Right behind you,” Haoyu said.

Then he and Lute had had a great laugh at Alden’s expense when he turned around, trying to appease the anger of the empty air at his back with an apology.

It turned out Lexi was in F-city, babysitting his little sister while his parents took care of some things. Haoyu and Lute didn’t think he should be mad, for what that was worth.

Might be a guilty conscience making me more anxious than I have to be.

Kon had asked Alden not to tell anyone about the block on people summoning him. And Alden would honor that request because it was way more Kon’s business than anyone else’s, no matter how much Lexi would want to know and worry over it.

Stuart was going to ask his parents what they knew about it and report back. Alden couldn’t think of a better way to help.

Maybe Kon already asked and found out himself, if he had the chance.

Behind him, the dryer stopped tumbling, and he got up to collect his clothes, feeling a little disappointed that he hadn’t heard from Boe this afternoon. While he was hanging out guarding a dryer would have been a good time for them to text back and forth.

Alden had sent a message the minute he’d made it back to Earth, but Boe had said he was busy.

Scoping out another person to help?

That would make for an interesting call soon. Alden had enjoyed witnessing Boe’s good deeds so far. It would be nice if he found another one at the right difficulty level.

<<You are in here. That guy was right. He’s in here!>>

Alden turned at the sound of the voice, his stuffed laundry bag in one hand. The first thing he saw was a boy he didn’t know shoving a load into the washer so fast that a person unfamiliar with Earth might have thought being found with dirty underwear in your possession was illegal. He wasn’t the one who’d spoken, though. Standing just inside the doorway wearing a very short skirt and a pair of silver bunny ears that matched her oversized sweater, was a familiar face.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“Emilija!” said Alden. “What are you doing in my laundry room?”

<<Getting you,>> she said. “Birdnapper. Mr. Bad-to-Birds. Turkey Taker.”

“Your English language learning seems to be biased in an unusual direction.”

“Burderer.” Emilija sliced her throat with a finger.

“Oooo! That’s a good one. There’s this guy with ‘feather’ in his name, and I did kill him in gym class once. I even have intentions of doing it again. Are you here to see Lute? He’s upstairs. I can show you to our room if you want.”

<<We’re here for you. If you’re surprised, it’s your own fault for not checking your texts. I hope there’s something in that bag other that t-shirts.>>

“We?”

 

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