Science and Sorcery Box Set

by Ryan Tang

  Even in the long lines, the different groups of people still largely kept to themselves. It'd only been a few weeks since they united to defeat Stock, and most people still felt most comfortable with the friends they'd known from before the crisis. The adults who most often attended the Spire's readings led the way, doing their best to be friendly to everyone they recognized. The children didn't notice the distinctions at all. They all played together, none of them caring about where their parents had come from.

  Alex scanned through the crowd, but Jon and Alice were still missing.

  She sent them a quick message and frowned at their response.

  "Hey Ms. Alex! Sorry, but we're still running late. Nico says he'll let us know everything we missed."

  Where could they be?

  A chorus of worried voices drifted into her open cockpit.

  "Break down the tower! We should just break down the tower and stick it in the core!"

  "It's not possible! We've tried to do it already, and the tower Eternium just gets spit back out."

  "Wait really? What are we going to do then?"

  "We need to find the lost Eternium! We have no other choice."

  "Did you hear what some of the kids said about ghosts?"

  "What?"

  "Yeah! Ghosts! Didn't you see on the Forums?"

  "And then a Paragon emerged from the Earth! Ask Scott! He saw it! It would have destroyed his house if it wasn't for the blue machine."

  "Joe says that enough is missing for about 50 Paragons!"

  "Stock has a reserve somewhere! They're going to break him out of jail, and he'll come to kill us!"

  "We need our own Paragons! We can make them from the core, like Stock did! It's a risk, but it's better than being defenseless!"

  "What about the Spire! We can just dump the books off somewhere and make more machines!"

  "We should just kill Stock. We shouldn't have kept that piece of shit alive in the first place!"

  The rumors and arguments swirled around her, but Alex noticed something fundamentally different than before. The panic and fear were palpable, but it was only the surface layer. Underneath was pure steel.

  People were quick to comfort their neighbors. They'd been through this much. They fought together and won. They could do it again.

  Their resolve gave her courage. Now was as good of a time as any to make her announcement.

  She called out on her Paragon's speakers, and the crowd turned as one.

  The thousands of eyes staring back at her made her heart pound in her chest. She felt a chill at the back of her neck, and her voice fluttered in her throat, but Alex swallowed her trepidation.

  She was the colony's ace. And just like her friends, steel was beneath her panic and fear.

  "Alright. I'm sure we've all heard the rumors."

  She winced.

  What sort of opening is that?

  I'm sure we've all heard the rumors?

  It wasn't a rumor. She'd seen it with her own eyes, and several of them had too.

  But then she noticed nobody cared about her mistake, so she plowed on.

  "We're missing enough Eternium to forge several Paragons, and we don't know where it could be. We've already swept Stock's houses, the Governor's mansion, Southern Robotics headquarters, and the Spire itself. On top of that, there have been some disturbing occurrences. Some of us have seen ghosts in the Spire's courtyard. I saw one carrying a block of Eternium."

  The crowd murmured as one. Most of the voices were confused, but Alex noticed a few who said they'd seen the same thing. It hadn't just been her students.

  "I thought I was crazy!"

  "Those were real! There really are ghosts!"

  "What? Ghosts? What are we going to do?"

  "I saw a ghost holding Eternium! I thought I was dreaming!"

  Alex clapped her Paragon's hands together to regain the crowd's attention.

  "Earlier today, a rogue Paragon appeared in Block 1. Its movements were wild and erratic. It acted like an animal. And when I cut it open, there was no pilot."

  The panic grew larger.

  "Ghost pilots?"

  "What do you think it was?"

  "What about the quakes?"

  "What's going to happen if we don't find the Eternium?"

  Alex didn't know how to answer that question, so Jared stepped in.

  "We need to fix the core as soon as possible. Right now, it's just mild tremors, but that can add up pretty quickly - and even mild tremors can lead to accidents. But the main problems are the ghosts and the ghost Paragons. I suspect we'll find the Eternium once we find them."

  A thin lady in the front raised her hand and asked the question everyone surely must have been thinking.

  "What about Stock? What if he's using the metal to try and plan a comeback?"

  The concern spread like wildfire.

  "We need to check if he's still imprisoned! What if someone breaks him out?"

  "We should have just killed him to begin with! Why are we even keeping him alive? I don't get it!"

  "What if he's trying to escape now!"

  A loose chant began. The vote to keep Stock alive last time had been a very narrow thing.

  "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"

  To someone from another colony, it might have seemed like they were part of some death cult. But Alex understood her friends and neighbors completely. Stock had planned to sacrifice them all and destroy the colony.

  Shouldn't they have killed him for his crimes?

  Wouldn't it be safest to kill him now?

  But it wasn't Stock. She knew that for a fact. And they'd seen enough death for now.

  "I've already talked to him. It's not him. I know that for sure."

  "How do you know?"

  "Maybe he tricked you!"

  He was nothing now. Anyone who saw him could see that. But Alex didn't want to invite people to look. She didn't want to encourage people to mock him. He would have done far worse to any of them, but she couldn't just let people treat him like a zoo animal.

  Leanne called out, and the crowd turned to listen.

  Alex hadn't even noticed her arrival.

  The tall woman bounced a little with every step, and there was a confident smile on her face despite the frightening truths they were discussing. Nico grinned eagerly by her side. She must have gone home and rested.

  "If Alex says it isn't him, it's not him. I trust her."

  "We can't rely on that. We need to create a defense force!"

  Alex couldn't see who said it, but that idea caught on as well.

  "We should just build Paragons like the Hands Paragon, only for battle!"

  "Yeah! We need to protect ourselves!"

  "War Paragons! We need War Paragons!"

  Even Emile got in on it.

  "As strong as Alex is, she can't defend the whole colony. It was just luck that she was nearby when that happened."

  Her friend had a really good point, but Alex was still worried.

  Who could be in a defense force?

  Other than herself, Jared, Matthew, and Duncan, there weren't any well-trained pilots. Stock had sacrificed most of the early Blocks, which had included most people wealthy enough to play on Paragon simulators. The Paragons had the strength of a thousand people. Giving them to an untrained pilot was incredibly dangerous. As Alex tried choosing her words, similar arguments broke out all around her.

  "We don't have any training!"

  "Who cares?"

  "Look, if a machine runs at you, you have a better chance inside a Paragon than out."

  "But what if you step on someone?"

  "The Hands Paragons don't have any defense! They'll just break!"

  "Well, that's why I said we should upgrade them for wartime!"

  "Do you think I'm an idiot? I won't just charge in!"

  The arguments turned increasingly incoherent. It was only then that Alex realized they were just as tired as she was. It wasn't just herself or Leanne
or Jared. There'd been a lot of late nights for everyone.

  Somehow, Leanne restored order before the meeting devolved into a shouting match.

  "Look. We won't be able to decide everything tonight. Everyone is tired, and everyone is on edge. We're all scared. But we got through this before, and we can get through this again."

  She raised a fist high in the air and cheered.

  "Even if it is Stock, we beat him before, and we'll beat him again!"

  She turned to Alex's machine and smiled.

  "All of us have been working incredibly hard to restore the damage, and none of us can think straight. We need to take a step back! We need to rest!"

  With her own words mirrored back at her, Alex realized again how tired she was right now. After Matthew's intervention, she'd had a good night's sleep, but then she'd stayed up all night after.

  "Should we have a defense force? Of course! But we can't rush into it without training. Imagine what would happen if we tried to pilot a Paragon untrained and tired? It would be a disaster! We can't figure out what to do right now - and we definitely can't figure out what's going on with the ghosts and missing Paragons. Let's sleep and revisit it tomorrow."

  "Sleep?"

  "What?"

  "But what if Stock attacks!"

  "What about the ghosts!"

  "We'll have people keep watch. Me and my son for one."

  Alex raised her hand to volunteer, but Leanne shook her head.

  "Only people who are well-rested."

  Matthew stood up and waved.

  "I'll do it."

  It was the first time he'd ever spoken in a meeting. He'd always kept to himself. But his words had power. Everyone had known about his flight across the colony on the night of the quakes. If Matthew were standing guard in a Hands Paragon, everyone would be safe.

  His son Luke jumped up and down.

  "Me too! Me too!"

  A few other well-rested people quickly volunteered, and that was that.

  Alex took a long breath.

  She needed to sleep too. It'd been almost impossible to think straight just two days ago, and she was starting to feel the same way again.

  Leanne smiled confidently.

  "We'll keep an eye out and get all the information we can on the ghosts. Then we'll figure it out together."

  Alex left her machine, and the shards returned to the pocket of her dress.

  And so it was that the encampments, which had been necessary during the quakes, appeared once again. Almost everyone wanted to stay near the Spire in case something happened. The librarian carefully created expanded roofs to protect them from falling books. Their loose camp stretched from the 5th floor to the 20th. It was much easier now that everyone was together. It'd been very difficult to track down the spread-out camps across the two hundred floors.

  They chattered together as they all drifted off to sleep.

  The next day, Alex woke up feeling happy and well-rested.

  Excited cries echoed around her.

  Paragons stared at her from the windows outside. The red and gold Bull was among them. There were three other Paragons as well as enough blocks of raw metal to build ten more.

  The first machine was tiny, almost a full two heads shorter than the others. It was a default design from the simulator come to life. The speedy little Hummingbird was perfect for scouting. But while the wings of a Hummingbird were usually sharp metal, the ones on this Paragon resembled those of an insect. The gossamer-thin Eternium was one of the most wonderful things Alex had ever seen. The semi-transparent wings imbued everything seen through them with unearthly beauty.

  The next design was similar to the model the boy brought to the book-corridors, but he'd changed the colors. Instead of purple on gold, it was purple on silver. But the machine had the same distorted paint and the same strange glyph that slashed down the leg. The kraken shield had been replaced by a mace with a very similar design. The mace's head resembled a monstrous squid. The ornate tentacles acted as flanges.

  The last machine was a tall mint green Paragon with a proud plumed helmet. A single mono-eye, perfect for sniping, peered from the center of the visor. An enormous rifle, larger than even the machine itself, was strapped behind the right shoulder. The left side was graced with an elegant spinning disk embroidered with black feathers. The disk held a wide variety of ranged weapons; there was a machine pistol, a revolver, a rifle with a bayonet, and a flamethrower. All the machines were beautiful, but the green Paragon been built with even more care than the others.

  The boy Falo had forged them for his friends. She could hear a tall and gangly boy excitedly chattering with his brother. Alex remembered them from her classes. Simon, Paul, and Elaine. They were friends with Jon.

  "I heard him. He called to me. 'Hey Elaine, check out this Paragon I made!' And he really did it!"

  She wiped away her tears as a tall boy jumped up and down, completely awe-struck.

  "Look! Look! Fred! Fred! Look! Fred made these for us! Look! It's the machine I dreamed about!"

  He pointed at the one with wings.

  "Look, Simon! He made you a scout because you always wanted to stay on the ship! It was probably just in case you needed to run."

  "And this one! It's just like yours, Elaine!"

  Alex gaped in surprise.

  She had a message from Leanne on her tablet.

  "It was elementary once we were all together. I explained it all on the Forums for everyone to see."

  Alex laughed when she saw the truth.

  She'd thought Plenty could solve the problem once everyone came together, but it'd been the other way around. The problem was solved once everyone came together and rested. When it was only a handful of people sleeping in the Spire, spread out on all its two hundred floors, she never could have seen it. It'd taken her days just to track down all the camps. But it was easy to see when they were all together.

  The ghosts vanished if anyone tried to photograph them, but Leanne and Nico had simply taken pictures of the floors they were sleeping on. Thin wisps traveled through the floor and walls, dancing as they made their way to the colony core.

  They were all so tired. They were all thinking about the burden they still carried and everyone they'd lost. It was a milder version of Jon and his shield. It wasn't enough to truly command Eternium, but their hazy dreams could summon the strange pale walking imitations.

  Alex chuckled and shook her head.

  That night, there must have been an army of ghosts outside. The machines were apparently quite similar. The Paragon had moved incoherently because they were being controlled by dreaming children from The Wastes. After Leanne heard one of them murmuring, she used the Eternium Veins to backtrack them through the ground before they could be summoned.

  Jared clapped his hands together.

  "Alright, let's get these back in the core!"

  But not everyone agreed.

  "We should keep the machines here!"

  "Give one to Matthew! Then we'll be safe!"

  The wiry man shook his head.

  "We need to return them to the core. We can't just let the ground shake forever. It'll just get worse if we don't fix it. Besides, even if we did keep these machines, it'd only be temporary. We don't know how to repair them! What would we do, dig up more Eternium?"

  Then he smirked.

  "Besides, she didn't tell you guys how she backtracked the Veins."

  Leanne gestured, and everyone gasped.

  Glowing white Eternium dust flowed through the air, dancing and spinning as the tall woman stared at the Spire as if it were the only thing in the world. A massive hand formed on the ground, but then Leanne shook her head and exhaled deeply.

  "Can't go further than that. It wasn't enough to summon a Paragon, but I was able to send dust through the used Veins where it appeared. But soon. Soon."

  The crowd cheered and cheered.

  Alex's smile felt like it was plastered to her face.

  Yes.
>
  They'd return the machines for now, but that wouldn't last forever. One day, she'd train the people of Plenty to summon Paragons at will. Not just Leanne, but everyone. They could do it. The Eternium ghosts proved it.

  Alex was just about to summon her Paragon so she could work alongside everyone else when Jared stopped her. He grinned as he brought her around the Spire.

  "Check this out!"

  The Hands Paragon was custom colored just for her. The machine was blue of every shade, just like her Paragon from the Spire, but the pattern was different. Her Spire Paragon had crashing waves like the sea. This Paragon was striped like a zebra.

  "The stripes were easier to paint."

  Alex smiled and stepped inside the cockpit.

  Alex took a look at all the people around them and remembered Mrs. T's claim that the Spire's Paragon was a sign of its love for Alex. The librarian thought of Jon again. It wouldn't do for him to forge a Paragon through grief. Love was the best way to reach the holy metal. Alex knew it in her heart. Alex vowed that everyone on Plenty would build a happy and loving world together.

  The Hands Paragons hauled the Eternium machines back to the core, but when they returned all the metal to the colony, there was still a prominent chunk missing.

  Jared sighed.

  "Peter probably took it himself. He wanted to go to Old Earth, right? He would have needed a Paragon."

  He shrugged.

  "We have enough to stabilize the core for a long time now. We'll figure out how to create the remaining Eternium by the time we need it."

  But Alex didn't think Peter had taken the machine for himself.

  She turned to Jared.

  "Do you mind taking care of things here?"

  ____

  The Wastes were nearly as dark as raw Eternium.

  The once-prosperous Block had no sources of light other than the open Gate. In The Wastes, the deactivated screens of the false sky hadn't shattered when Alex's Paragon slammed into the screens above the Spire. As soon as Southern Robotics closed off the Block with their deep walls, they'd disconnected all the panels, a cost-saving measure that cruelly took the sun away from the people they'd planned on imprisoning for life.

  Jon and his friends - young children who'd been born after Stock closed off the area - hadn't seen the sun until they'd finally left their prison the night of the simulator tournament.