My Path to Magic

by Irina Syromyatnikova

  Naturally! All university instructors of dark magic were traditionally salaried NZAMIPS part-timers. An unconventional channel... And then Captain Baer thanked all the gods that the empath wasn't anywhere near the coordinator. He knew one magician whose power channel was guaranteed to be nonstandard, and he knew him very closely...

  "Clean up the tail, Mr. Satal? We will do that, sir!" Tail? What does that mean?

  Chapter 14

  For my next work day at BioKin I arrived ten minutes early just to watch the others coming. Bummer! All employees were already at their workstations (as far as I knew, because I wasn't officially introduced), but they weren't doing any work. They all were in a mourning mood, suffering in silence.

  I wondered if someone died there.

  Upon closer examination, I was the only one who dressed more or less decently, in the sense that I had neither trousers that were stretched at the knees with fringe around the lapels, nor pseudo-artistic patches on my shirt, nor a hairstyle as if I had run across a stray camel. Naturally, that put me in opposition to the team, and they immediately attempted to humiliate me: the red-haired secretary (Quarters' relative) brought me utterly cold coffee. When I tossed a warming spell into the cup almost without looking, nobody else showed a desire to joke.

  No one tried to make me a closer acquaintance, either. Well, I easily figured out who Johan was—the guy Quarters mentioned, because there was only one white mage among them. A guy in leather pants could pass for the alchemist Carl (with the last name of either Fartsing or Ferting) and a younger lad with bright red hair - for his assistant; a chubby little man, sitting closer to the coffeemaker, resembled an accountant. Boss Polak and his secretaries needed no introduction.

  I could easily picture a white mage in depression here, but it remained a mystery what or who could have driven seven people into a stupor. If all my future employers are like these, I'd rather go back to the garage business to fix motorcycles. I'm sure that will be a very profitable business! But since I took money (and twice for the same job), decorum demanded that I help them. The Tangor are proud, and reputation can be lost only once.

  Pretending to be an emotionally dull dark jerk, I went to the boss to find out if my previous day's work was done correctly. They paid me for something, right? Mr. Polak looked at me painfully, but I was deaf to his suffering. I myself had to invent the next assignment: "Maybe I'd better learn design of a particular node and focus on it? Or work on the gas generator system as a whole?"

  "I'm not sure if you will understand the scheme..."

  I smiled politely: "Coupling alchemy with magic is my strong point!" It was true, at least for dark magic.

  Once more he looked around the tables in confusion, and I finally grasped it: "Perhaps, your drawings are not systematized? I could do it. Orderliness helps a lot in work!"

  He perked up a bit, nodded, and asked me to organize the documents in chronological order. Unfortunately, most of them had no dates, and, armed with archaeological methods, I had to arrange the papers in layers. Periodically, I tried to obtain advice from Polak, then from Carl, and soon they got fed up with me. Polak deserted first, followed by the rest; by lunch time, I was left alone in the office (except for the secretaries). Finally, that got me.

  "Girls, what happened? Or have you been like this the whole time?"

  Ron's relative rolled her eyes, enjoying an opportunity to show her awareness: "They are in depression since yesterday!"

  "Do not keep me in suspense! What happened yesterday?"

  "A test at the sewage factory," the brunette stepped in and sniffed. "Another one!"

  It explained a bit of the situation.

  "And how did it end?"

  "As always!"

  That meant they failed it. I could have guessed that.

  By the end of the day I managed to go through almost a third of the documents and get acquainted with the subject of the work. Polak was wrong when he said that I wouldn't understand the scheme. Drawings are typically made according to the same set of standards; otherwise, manufacturers wouldn't be able to use them. And it doesn't matter what you put in the fermentation vat—beer or sewage; from the alchemical point of view, it is all the same, as soon as it is organic. As well as I understood it, they tried to design a complex nonlinear control mechanism as a set of perforated drums, to which the device was supposed to turn under a specific combination of input parameters (like through a set of locks). The idea was beautiful, but it did not work for some reason. I wasn't sure that I could figure out why the design was failing. Two variants of different complexity were presented in the piles of papers, and, judging by the contents of the documents, both schemes of perforation were developed by the local white mage, Johan. I don't mean that his schemes were wrong, but he was guided by the logic of the magical process, and the limitations of such an approach were seen very well in the design of my motorcycle. That gave me some hope that the problem could be solved...

  Coming to work the next day, I caught Johan stiff drunk.

  My coworkers pretended that it was nothing out of the ordinary. I tried not to pay attention to Johan, blend with the team, but it was beyond me. I decided they didn't understand what was happening. Okay, as to the dark mages, there are few of us in Redstone, and the dark from the university do not talk much to the townsfolk. So the latter do not know what is normal for a dark. But the white ones are a different story. There ought to be as many of them as dirt here! Was I the only one who knew how Johan's drinking would end?!

  A white magician who goes on a drinking bout will usually not come out of it alive. Well, maybe he will, if you resort to involuntary hospitalization. Their psyche is considered to be fragile and not adapted to the ills of life. Once unable to cope with the nervous shock and falling into a chemical relaxant, a white will drown his mental anguish in wine again and again, and he will have less and less willpower to get out of it. But the physical condition of a white is directly related to the mental one...

  Perhaps, the firm just wanted one of its developers to die? No, that was a bad joke on my part...

  But I needed to save the man, no kidding!

  Driving off the secretaries, I made killingly strong coffee and went to bring the guy, with a runny nose, to his senses; I took his hand and put the cup in. Regretfully, I had no egg yolks and pepper handy, but I threw so much lemon in the coffee that my eyes started watering.

  "Have a sip, please! You have to drink it out."

  White mages respond to physical contact differently—a touch sets them on an intimate footing and makes willing to trust. Given that alcohol intoxication increases suggestibility, I hoped that he would do as I said.

  "In one sip, opa!"

  He gulped and painfully winced. A very good effect! I continued to hold his hand and looked him in the eye (it usually helps to be more persuasive): "Hey, buddy, you must go home! Rest well today, gather yourself up for tomorrow. Everything will be fine, I promise! We need your help. You will be okay! Do you want me to take you home?"

  He shook his head drunkenly, stood up, and firmly went to the door; drunken whites first lose their brains before the rest of the body gets poisoned. I hoped that he would be able to pull himself together.

  After Johan's departure, the average mood in the office improved by two degrees. Probably, no one dared to start discussion of failure in the presence of that poor guy. After waiting for five minutes to make sure that Johan was gone, Polak loudly clapped his hands: "What do you think, guys, about a five-minute coffee break?"

  Employees perked up, and their chairs began creaking. I nipped in the bud their attempts to sit on the drawings, so we all gathered around the secretaries' table, ousting the unhappy girls. The table was quickly serviced with coffee, biscuits, and salted nuts, and even with a bottle of homemade liquor—which I generously poured into the coffee without delay.

  "I cannot hide, my friends," Polak began, "that the test results have been a big blow for us. But it's not the end of the wor
ld. Who has ideas about the causes of the latest failure?"

  Depressed silence reigned at the table.

  "Come on, my friends, go ahead!"

  "Magic cannot be coupled with alchemy," Carl said gravely.

  "Why is that?" A sip of liquor made me long for communion.

  The alchemist glanced viciously at me: "Because those fields are unconnected!"

  I pointedly raised my finger: "They interact through the material world! The main problem is to find the common ground, the points of contact."

  "Points? In the vat of shit?"

  "What is wrong with the vat of shit from the alchemical point of view?"

  "It does not work!"

  I patted myself on the chest: "I have a patent for a device, in which a magical unit is built into an alchemical one, and it f*cking works! Although in the beginning, the conjunction was monstrous." Should I actually show them my motorcycle?

  But Carl did not want to listen to my success: "What do you think we ought to do?"

  "Usually the problem can be solved by splitting the system into parts," I shrugged.

  At least, that worked for me once.

  "Which parts?" Carl muttered angrily.

  I shrugged again: "I'll say when I have studied the process!"

  "Carl," Polak stood up for me, "let the boy learn the process in more detail!"

  For the "boy" I would have beaten him in the face, but Mr. Polak was my boss. I had to smile.

  The alchemist proudly turned his back on me. I couldn't care less! Quarters' relative poured liquor into my cup as a reward (the girls definitely did not like the alchemist). The conversation turned to non-serious topics: attending the spring festival and the company's barbeque in the countryside. I watched, listened, and attempted to figure why Ron tried so hard to put me in this company. Kindergarten! I felt like I was among children!

  "Why don't you have a job as a magician?" the brunette cautiously got closer, thinking that two cups of liquor would have made me soft.

  I feigned a warm, fatherly, and smug smile: "One does not interfere with the other, darling!"

  She cutely pouted her lips and tried to take a seat on my lap.

  The next day Mr. Polak sent me on a "business trip" to the client's factory. Well, you could guess where to. I admit, only then did I realize what exactly caused such severe depression in the firm's employees.

  It is hard to give an adequate description of a sewage disposal factory. Not that I did not know before how sewage is treated, but little smelly tubes in the lab did not provide me with insight into the scale of the system that was capable of processing the wastes of the whole city. Dark magicians do not like such things, but I was personally impressed by the magnitude of it: rows of giant pumps, pipes of my height in diameter entangled in staircases, vats with spikes of thermometers, and a constantly dancing flame of emergency exhaust above the pipes (can you guess what gas was burning?).

  I was not welcome there. I have to admit, I did not immediately realize why.

  "What, BioKin again?" the manager grimaced.

  "Yes," I shyly confessed.

  "In relation to what occurred three days ago?"

  "Right."

  He did not want to deal with me and passed into the hands of the shift master.

  "What are you there?" the worker squinted suspiciously.

  It seemed to be unwise to introduce myself as a new employee in that situation.

  "An independent auditor!" I arched my chest. "Investors want to know feasibility of the project."

  "This is long overdue... Office rats!" the master expressively presented his point of view.

  "Let's do it like this: you'll help me understand what's going on, and those smarty pants will no longer disturb you."

  'Because they are about to be swept out with a dust broom,' I added to myself.

  We shook each other's hands, and the staff became much kinder to me.

  It quickly became clear that our office wanted to design a prototype of the control block for a fermentation vat, the main production unit of the factory. Every vat was fed with filtered and stirred sewage, and illuminating gas and a tarry substance—used as a raw material for all sorts of chemical products—were received as output. Oh, plus lots and lots of water. The essence of the problem was that the super proliferative bacteria, modified through white magic methods, were extremely sensitive to the composition of... hmm... culture medium. Much, much more sensitive than the unpretentious wild strains! As soon as the microscopic workers, invisible to the naked eye, got overheated or overcooled, they lost their activity, and the vat had to be stopped. And cleaned. My visit to the factory coincided precisely with the cleaning event, and I could tell you: a ghoul one hundred years old compared to that would be like a walking scented candle. The half-treated sewage had to be stored somewhere else for the cleaning of the fermentation vats, and that added flavor to the situation.

  I could kill people guilty of triggering even one such event, but if BioKin was the cause of that at least twice... then the workers' sincere hatred was understandable. I did not want any more visits to the sewage facility, but intuition told me that the solution of the design problem could only be found at the factory. There was something in the enhanced bacteria that turned their inoculation into quiet sabotage. If I wanted to work off Quarters' money, I had to find that intangible factor.

  Nothing distracts one better from evil thoughts than hard, creative work! The object of work in this case is irrelevant. In a few days, I totally forgot the events of the past few months, as though the whole saga about the Dark Knight had nothing to do with me.

  Not surprisingly, when I noticed the chief of Redstone's NZAMIPS waiting at the university gates, I did not linger my eyes on him for a second. All the more so because Captain Baer was in civilian clothes. Maybe he was waiting for a girl there?

  No, the captain (Quarters told me that his nickname was "Locomotive"—he was like a steam engine: slow-witted, narrow-minded, and impossible to stop) had other plans. When I caught up with him, he hissed: "Hey! Slow down."

  I slowed down and exhaled a disgruntled huff: "Any questions for me, sir?"

  "We need to talk."

  He took me to a dark cafe and offered a seat at the far table. I did not mind—I preferred that other people did not see me with him. Otherwise, it would be the talk of the town.

  "I want to re-record your crystal."

  My eyes may have popped out: "Why is that?"

  "Because I can replace it without any problem, but they'll have my head if I lose it."

  "I don't get it!" I was being honest.

  The policeman frowned crossly.

  "Look here! I have gotten a new supervisor recently. I worked with my previous boss for fifteen years; naturally, I helped him a few times, did some favors—I couldn't stay that long on his team without that. But God forbid I should trust any of the dark mages; I know your brothers’ nature very well. My boss had personally covered up the case of your "breakdown", saying that the channel was stable and there was no reason to panic. I did not mind; there was no point in arguing with the boss. Had I gathered an expert commission to investigate, both you and we would have endured a lot, but the conclusion would have been the same. It's a different story now: he is no longer my boss, and I can't pin his words to the file. I've been thinking and realized that I was a fool—I shouldn't have believed a dark magician. It's not about you personally, it's just that you guys have differently rotated brains; you cannot take other people's interests into account."

  "Why, we can!" I replied touchily.

  "Not in this case," the captain dismissed my comment. "In short, the entire division is looking for one smart ass, browsing crystal records, fussing around everywhere. The new boss will see your crystal sooner or later, and it will be better if he doesn't find the "breakdown" in it. Do I have your interest?"

  I clearly understood that the chief of Redstone's NZAMIPS was offering me to collude. And it was more important to him
than to me!

  "I do not agree if it's for free."

  "What do you want?" Locomotive growled in an unfriendly manner.

  "I want to know everything!" I joked.

  "Then you'll die early," he promised.

  I shrugged: "Maybe. You won't pay me anyway; after money, information is the second most valuable thing. Let's agree as follows: you will fully answer one of the questions that interests me, we'll record a new crystal, and you'll give me back the old one."

  "Ha!"

  "Come on! You don't really believe that I'll blackmail you, knowing what is at stake for me, do you?"

  "Then why do you want it back?"

  "Are you kidding? That was my real Empowerment!"

  He paused for a moment, staring at me with blank eyes. I never thought that a man with such a dull appearance could have a bright mind. Now I knew.

  "Agreed," the captain decided. "The crystal hasn't been numbered; after it has left the storage, nobody will be able to discover where it was recorded. You can't present it as an imprint of another mage's aura; your name was engraved on it before the recording."

  "I have never even thought about giving to a stranger!" I reassured him.

  "You will come to my office tomorrow—here's your notice."

  The timing was perfectly appropriate: he was obviously aware of my class schedule.

  "I will," I hid the notice in my pocket and suddenly asked him, "How do you feel about zombies?"

  He gave me a hard look.

  "In theory, I mean!"

  "Don't be a smartass!" he threatened. "I'll watch you closely, you theorizer, son of a bitch!"

  Why did he mention my mother? Ugh. I just had to find a place for my dog.

  Chapter 15

  Only in a week I managed to leave the sewage factory and come back to the office. I expected to ask Johan a couple of questions, but the white mage's desk was empty.

  "He took a vacation," Polak tried not to look at me, "to recover from sickness. During his time off, we'd better put things in order..."