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Natalie had been a strange one. In her last six months of interviewing humans, Cara had seen a lot of different reactions from candidates. She had witnessed fear, doubt, and sarcasm. Sarcasm was always a favorite defense mechanism used by humans to keep strange thoughts about the world at bay. But she had never seen anger during an interview before. Natalie asked some good questions, but not many of them had to do with the concept of magic, which is all that most candidates could ever talk about. The biggest surprise of the day—that magic existed—didn’t seem to faze Natalie one bit. Instead, it was almost as if she was mad or irritated at something that Cara herself had done. At one point, Cara had even gone so far as to ask Natalie if she was angry with her personally.
Natalie had denied any ill feelings towards Cara, although she did admit finally to being offended by Cara’s statement that magic existed. Natalie was convinced that there was clearly some very advanced science going on at Rune Corp, but being a deeply religious person, she didn’t believe that magic could exist in the world that God had made for His believers. As far as Natalie was concerned, the only thing that even resembled a dragon in the Bible was the snake in the Garden of Eden, and that didn’t say much for dragons at all. With that as her basis, she was not about to buy into one, let alone four, dragons existing in the real world. Cara had assured Natalie that she respected Natalie’s personal beliefs, but she also told Natalie that to work here, she would have to accept that dragons and magic did exist. Natalie murmured a slightly incoherent reply about how she used to believe this sort of thing when she was a child, before she had been saved. Then she reluctantly settled in to listen to what Cara had to say. The rest of the spoken interview had been textbook perfect, but uninspired.
When it came time for testing with the cube, Cara had to work a bit to convince Natalie to give it a try as a scientific experiment if nothing else. Natalie agreed but had seemed a bit uncomfortable when Cara placed the enunciator collar around her neck. The collar was made from a special plastic fabric woven from thousands of nano-sized microphones that formed an incredibly sensitive microphone array. The result was a contoured fit around the throat that induced feelings of panic in some users at first. Once someone got used to it, the collar could detect even the subtlest of sounds and vibrations made by the user’s vocal chords—augmenting them and then using the person’s own mouth to instantaneously emit a full range of sounds unattainable by normal human physiology. Thankfully, the hearing booster looked and felt like a standard, minimalist set of earphones that even Natalie had no problem wearing, even though the booster was made from very advanced technologies that picked up and processed sounds normally undetectable by human ears.
When Cara had finally hooked Natalie up to the training cube, she had performed surprisingly well. Natalie had approached the whole thing like a scientist and had quickly grasped the concept of the block of divinium acting as a living memory and repository for the language of the Fire Dragon. She successfully completed the tests quicker than most past candidates, and she did well using both the enunciator collar and the hearing booster. All in all, she was a good candidate, but her moods had swung from anger to an almost smugness as she worked her way through Cara’s tutorial on the cube.
Because of her potential volatility, Cara was especially glad that when Natalie and the other two candidates left the building later in the day, none of them would remember a thing about what they had learned today during their interviews. Thankfully, the first thing Ohman had installed when they started the company just a year ago was a set of security wards wired into the Rune Corp doors. Unknown to Rune Corp’s human employees and guests, Ohman had designed it so that, upon entering the building, each visitor was exposed to a set of carefully crafted phrases pieced together from the original tongue of Terrada at frequencies much lower than those discernible to human ears. On the way into the building, people were given the strong subconscious suggestion that they didn’t want to steal anything at all from Rune Corp. On the way out of the building, the wards induced a form of lasting amnesia, not allowing the person to remember any details of their visit to Rune Corp. For employees, these memories were restored each time they came to work by the same security wards. It was a complex system that Ohman had designed, but the end result was the ultimate corporate security program. No one could leak company secrets because no one could even remember what they were working on when they weren’t in the building.
After Natalie, Chris had been next. There was something about Chris that Cara genuinely liked. He was an interesting mix of cocky and shy. Cara wasn’t blind and didn’t need magic to tell her that he was attracted to her, but Cara didn’t think that would be a problem. At some point in the future, when and if Cara wasn’t effectively married to her job anymore, she could see herself being attracted to someone like Chris. Cara’s father had married a human woman, so there was proof that mixed relationships could work. Thinking more about it, Cara shook her head. She was being foolish to even contemplate that level of happiness. If she ever mated with a human, their children would only be a quarter Drayoom, and that just wouldn’t do. It was bad enough growing up with only half the blood rite that her father so proudly embodied. A child who was only a quarter Drayoom would have a hard time in either world in which he or she ended up living. Then again, every full-blooded Drayoom she had met, other than her father, had come across as too lofty and arrogant for her liking. In the end, Cara would probably just remain single, focus on her work, and try her best to make her father proud.
3
Chris walked into the interview room and closed the door behind him. The chamber reminded Chris more of an interrogation room than anything else and was in stark contrast to the Rune Corp lobby. The space was small and sparse, with only a single plant in a large plastic pot sitting on the floor and a table and two chairs made of heavy plastic in the middle of the room. On top of the table sat a cube made of dark stone similar to the ones Chris had seen locked away on the wall racks in the hallway outside. The cube was about the size of Chris’s fist, and it pulsed with blues and reds right beneath its shiny black surface. Next to the cube there was some sort of a black plastic collar and a set of earphones.
“Have a seat, Chris,” Cara said. “How are you taking everything I’ve told you so far today?”
Chris’s brain moved fast enough that he had formulated his answer before his butt hit the chair, but he paused for a moment after he sat down to give the illusion to Cara that we was thinking through his answer.
“It’s certainly not what I expected to hear this morning, that’s for sure. I feel like I should be in shock, and maybe I’ve just watched too many sci fi and fantasy movies and television, but I’m not really all that surprised. I am not sure that I one hundred percent believe you yet, but I’m definitely open to learn more about what your company is working with. From what I can tell, what you call magic is really just a type of very advanced bio-programming technology. Or am I missing something?”
“That’s not too far off,” Cara said. “And I understand your doubt. But, I assure you that magic does indeed exist, and it follows at least some of the rules of known physics—only it does so in ways that no one has dreamed of before. I prefer the term energy instead of magic, by the way. Specifically, dragon energy obeys the first law of thermodynamics. It can be converted from one form to another, but it can’t be created or destroyed. The total amount of magical energy that was present at the creation of our world and even at the beginning of our universe is the same amount of energy that exists today. You and I both—our molecules and our magical energy—were there when the Manred was formed. The specific combinations of energy that define who each of us are didn’t exist back then, but all of our bits and pieces did.”
Chris shifted in his seat and raised an eyebrow slightly at Cara.
“What about me, then? Do we, I mean humans, possess any of this magic? We must be able to use words from the dragon language or you wouldn’
t be hiring us. You are hiring one of us, right?”
“Assuming one of you passes the tests and seems like a good fit for the company, yes.”
“What about the other two who don’t get the job?” Chris said. “Aren’t you a little concerned about them leaking your secrets? If everything you’re saying is true, this is pretty huge, after all—on the level of discovering signs of alien life.”
“For whatever reason, we never have a problem with people breaking our confidence,” Cara said with a grin and a slight downward shift of her eyes.
Even though Chris believed Cara was telling him the truth, he was also sure there was something she was hiding.
“As far as humans having the ability to do what I just did? This is divinium,” Cara said as she gently touched the cube on the table. “It is a piece of living stone that is actually self-aware. It acts as an intelligent memory source that stores and provides access to all the entries we have collected from Terrada’s creation language.”
“The collar is called the enunciator,” Cara continued. “Since you do not have multiple vocal folds, the enunciator gives you the ability to replicate the words of the dragon tongue. And finally, the hearing booster lets you hear frequencies outside the range of normal human hearing. With your current auditory capability, much of Terrada’s language only registers as vibrations inside your body. So, on your own, no, you can’t use dragon words, but with these tools, some of you are able to. And that…is why we are here today. Go ahead and put these on, and let’s see what you got.”
Chris loosened his tie and, with Cara’s help, positioned the enunciator collar around his neck. Cara had to step around the table to help him with the collar, and despite the fact that he soon would be playing literally with magic, the only thing Chris could think about was how fresh Cara’s hair smelled and how soft her skin looked. He wanted to say something, but instead he just kept his eyes focused straight ahead into nothingness. After the enunciator was on and adjusted, Chris slipped on the miniature headphones and looked down at the cube.
“I feel like a DJ at an S&M club,” Chris said.
Cara cocked her head and looked at Chris intensely before starting to laugh.
Chris let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.
“Sorry. I joke when I get nervous,” he said.
“It’s OK, Chris. I have a sense of humor, too. Now that you’re all geared up, I just want you to clear your mind, and when you’re ready, reach out and touch the cube. Then tell me what you see.”
Chris closed his eyes, took another deep breath, and exhaled gradually, trying to slow his heart rate and lower his blood pressure. After about thirty seconds, he opened his eyes gently and reached out with his right hand to touch the glowing stone.
The instant he touched the cube, images raced across the inside of his eyeballs, and alien tones echoed in his head. He instinctively pulled his hand back, as if from a hot stove, but the images and sounds persisted. It felt like a high definition feed was bypassing his eyes and his ears and piping information directly into his brain. Chris felt like he was existing simultaneously in two distinct worlds—the real world of the room and Cara and the world that only existed inside the cube itself. The dual sensory experience made him slightly dizzy and off balance, but Chris quickly adjusted, and within the minute, he was more amazed than anything else at what was being fed into his brain.
“It’s amazing,” Chris whispered. “It’s beautiful. Poetic and huge.”
“The interface is very basic right now, but you should be able to see some images and hear some sounds. Try to find a representation of that plant over there on the floor and focus on it.”
“OK, I’ve got it,” Chris said after a few minutes of searching through the cube.
“Do you hear the sound that keeps repeating when you look at the image? That’s the name for that type of plant, and that’s the name I want you to attempt. Click that button on the front of the collar and listen to how your voice sounds.”
Chris did as he was told, and when he opened his mouth to speak, strange noises emitted from him that sounded like a combination of dry leaves rustling along the ground and the swishing of feet walking through tall, wet grass. The tones were both familiar and alien simultaneously, as if he had been surrounded by them all his life, but had never actually heard them.
Chris had to try only a few times to emulate the sounds before getting pretty close to replicating the right noises with his enhanced voice.
“That’s the name for that species of plant. That particular plant has its own name as well, but it will also respond to the general name you’re using, just like you would respond to ‘man’ or ‘person.’
“Now clear your mind again and think of the verb ‘to grow.’ Look for a moving image of the plant getting bigger. Once you find it, focus on the image, and listen again. Then try to repeat it.”
Quickly getting the hang of the cube, Chris sorted faster and faster through the matrix of images from the cube until he found one of the plant growing. It only took him two tries to pronounce this new word correctly. Chris thought that he must have looked like someone in a trance, as he caught himself staring blankly ahead, his eyes moving and searching through images that were not visible to anyone but himself. After he managed to pronounce the verb correctly, he defocused a bit and could see Cara smiling. Instantly, the image of the plant disappeared from his sight.
“Keep your focus, Chris,” Cara said.
Angry with himself, Chris closed his eyes again and forced a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, the virtual display in his mind was back. He quickly found the growing plant again and enunciated the word correctly on the first try.
“OK, now put them together,” Cara said. “First the name of the plant and then the verb, to grow. Then watch the real plant in the room.”
Chris found the image of the plant and set it to one side in his brain, then placed the verb to grow on the other side of his mind. He could hear the sounds representing both words, and did his best to replicate what he was hearing. The layered sounds coming from his mouth were astounding. He was pronouncing at least four separate tones simultaneously, bringing the layers together like a discordant chord usually heard only in nature. On the third try, Chris emitted everything correctly, and to his disbelief, the plant began to grow to almost twice its original height.
Chris clicked off the button on his enunciator.
“Holy crap,” Chris said. “That plant. It just grew. I made it do that…”
“Well, to be fair to the plant, it had a hand in it as well, but you’re basically correct. You certainly brought about that reaction from the plant, Chris. And that’s your next lesson about magic. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The divinium allowed you to channel your own internal energy toward the plant. You gave up your energy, and some of it was lost in the expenditure, but most of it enabled a reaction from the plant. Nicely done.”
“Cara, I’m not sure if I’m the most qualified for this job or not, but I can tell you one thing—I really want to work here. This is amazing, and I want more. This is what I need…”
Cara laughed a little.
“Well, top score for a positive attitude, that’s for sure,” Cara said. “I still have one more person to interview, so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Go ahead and remove the apparatus, and please send in David, if you don’t mind. Unless you have more questions?”
“I do have one,” Chris said. “What is the actual job?”
Cara’s cheeks turned pink, and her posture became more rigid.
“Of course! My apologies. Yes, the job would be to work with me and the rest of our development team to create a new interface for the cubes. To do that, my father believes we need human input into the interface. We are looking for someone who is intimate with coding approaches and techniques, who can also intuitively get the dragon language and the cubes. That person isn’t easy to find, as you ca
n guess. We have lots of linguist experts on board to help decipher and test when we discover a new word to add to the lexicon, but we don’t have any human developers. Up to this point, I’ve done all the developing myself.”
“I thought the interface was great,” Chris said. “Pretty intuitive, and obviously I found it easy to use…”
“But?” Cara said.
“But, it was fairly basic as well. That’s true. Works great for piecing together a single phrase or two from a limited vocabulary of magical words, but I wonder about how well it would scale with a whole lexicon loaded into it.”
“That’s exactly the problem we’re encountering with our production cubes. They just don’t scale up to the thousands and thousands of words that exist in Terrada’s tongue. What we have is good, but we have to make it better. And if my father says I need help, then I guess I need help,” Cara said with a grin.
“Any other questions?” Cara asked.
“Just one,” Chris said. “When can I start?”
Chris kept his face as serious as he could make it, but more than anything so far in his life, he wanted this job and to be a part of whatever this place was going to become. If only Cara would choose him.
The Applicant Page 3
