“Now I put the choice before you. Continue as you are, a mundane, or become the magus you were born to be.”
What a choice: to give up everything I was and understood so that I could become something new and hopefully greater, or to give up all the grand possibilities of magic so that I could stay a super-human. “What about Joan?”
“Joan is a mundane. We offered to remove her implants but she choose to keep them, though I understand she has had some of them modified to better suit her role as a nurse.”
That made sense. Her choice was much easier; she lost nothing by staying as she was. I, on the other hand, would lose my potential future if I didn’t change and lose myself if I did.
32
04-03-0065 — Lyshell
I asked Grandmaster Vydor for some time to think, and he told me to take as long as I needed. I was given free rein of the Academy and its massive library, which was even larger than the one Grandmaster Vydor had in his private tower. I spent most of the day in the library, pulling out books at random and skimming them. The selection was amazing; all forms of fiction that I knew of, and extensive nonfiction works covering most of the known history of the galaxy and science at every level.
Grandmaster Vydor assured me that the staff at the Academy would know me on sight and treat me as an honored guest, so I figured that meant it was safe to ask a stupid question.
I stopped a librarian and asked, “Why do you have all these books?”
He smiled. “Because we are a library.”
“I mean, why have them in print? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have them in digital format?”
“Every book you see we also have in digital format, even the ones from Korshalemia. We have patrons that prefer digital format, but almost all of the immigrants from Korshalemia and the majority of native magi prefer the physical form, so we supply both.”
I looked over the stacks. “That makes sense. So much of the arts they … we practice require organic natural materials to function correctly. I guess it becomes more comfortable to stay with that format.”
He nodded. “Can I help you with anything else?”
“Yes; can you point me to a book on magic?”
He smiled. “We have a very large number of books on that topic. What specifically are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure. I was told that my powers come from nature-craft, and I’d like some basic information about what that means.”
“Ah! Of course, right this way.”
I followed him through stacks of books. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, and it was an area of the library I had not yet visited. I was glad I had uploaded a map of the layout into my memory core; otherwise it would have been too easy to get completely lost in this maze of shelves.
“Here we go. This book is where you should start. It’s an introduction to the basic powers and contains a brief summary of the most common schools, including yours. Come this way.”
He gathered up two more books and handed them to me. “Those three books should cover everything that a first-year student would learn.”
They were thick, but I had time to kill while I made my decision. “Thanks.”
“Would you prefer them in digital form?” he asked.
“No, I think I need to experience this medium and get a feel for it.”
He nodded. “You’re not a student here yet, but should you become one, reading from print books will be a regular part of your life.”
“I’m not sure what I am, really. I’m hoping that reading these will help me understand.”
“They may not answer that question, but they’ll help you understand your gifts, at least,” he said.
“Thanks,” I replied. I got directions to a reading nook and sat down with the books. I decided I’d read all three before rendering any decision.
I allowed myself to lose track of time while I read. Well, that was not strictly true. My internal chronometers continued to track the passage of time, but I deliberately ignored them. I forced myself to read at the average reading speed of a human, allowing my faster brain to consider each sentence one by one.
“Ly?” said Joan.
“Huh?” I shook myself free of the book and looked up to see Joan standing there.
“They told me I’d find you here, studying,” she commented.
I smiled in greeting as I knew she would expect. I had built an entire personality profile around interacting with her. Informal language, smiles, keeping physical distance closer than normal, and indicating a desire to spend time with her were all part of the program. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’ll be shipping off in the morning. I’m being assigned to the Hospital Station and won’t be back this way for a long time, if ever.”
“I understand that station is at the cutting edge of medical technology. Sounds like a great place for you.” My program suggested a frown or other sign of disappointment should be used here, but I didn’t want to upset her so I kept my face neutral.
“Do you want to have dinner?” She inclined her head a little, smiled and winked. “I know you don’t really need to eat, but I do.”
I checked the time and saw it was indeed dinnertime, two days after I had arrived in the library. “Sure. I just need to find out what to do with these books first.”
Once the books were returned, we found our way to the cafeteria that served the staff and students of the Academy. There, as in the library, the workers knew who I was and happily served us. For a while we just talked about our experiences since being separated. There was something in the way she watched me that I knew I should be able to identify, but couldn’t. Something pulled at the edges of my awareness, but every time I tried to focus on it it faded away.
I knew our time together was coming to a close, but a question was nagging at me that I had to ask. “Joan, you might be the only one who can understand this question. If you had to give up all that you were in order to become a mage, would you do it?”
She slowly set down her fork and was quiet for a moment. “Ly, I know more about your implants than even you do. I know how hard it must be to consider giving up the speed, power and intelligence they give you.”
“It’s not just that, they’re my life; at least, all my life that I remember. It would be like giving up what it means to be me.”
She nodded. “I know you love to dedicate some of your subcores to running game theory scenarios, so tell me: what do they say?”
“Get rid of the implants.”
She smiled. “That seems a bit ironic; the implants are telling you to get rid of them.”
“They don’t have a choice; they’re just machines. They look at facts and come up with the solution.”
She met my gaze and asked quietly, “And you? Are you just a machine?”
I sighed deeply. “Maybe.”
“This question is too important to answer with a ‘maybe’.”
I shrugged. “I do as I’m ordered, so I guess I am.”
“So when you were ordered to return for reassignment, you went without question?”
“No,” I admitted.
“And your subcores - could they have said no?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then what does that make you?” she asked.
“I’m not sure anymore,” I replied.
She stood up and walked over to me. “I have to get going, but you’re the only one who can answer this. Return to wherever you’re staying, shut down all your cores and think with this.” She pointed to my chest, about where a primitive’s heart would be.
Smiling, she kissed my forehead and said, “Come and visit me from time to time.”
I nodded.
She slowly walked away.
I sat there for a while looking at the remains of our meal. I felt I had missed something and it was now gone. I couldn’t fathom what that was, but somewhere deep inside there was a space where there had previously been none.
I
had hoped that talking with her would bring clarity, but I was more confused than ever. I made my way to the quarters that had been assigned to me. I’d try what she suggested, even though I didn’t understand that any more than anything else.
I entered my quarters and sat down on the bed. In one corner was the regeneration station that used to stand in my apartment back on the capital planet. Out of habit I started to get up and walk towards it, but stopped myself. Sitting down again, I tried to process what Joan had said and what I had read.
Near the bed was a media screen, and on a whim I turned it to a random entertainment broadcast. A scene was being acted out between two humans, one male and the other female. They were eating dinner in what appeared to be a nice restaurant. The man was dressed in a fancy, expensive suit, and the woman wore a very tight dress that greatly hindered her movement and left much of her skin exposed and likely cold; not something I would recommend my former fellow agents to wear at any time, never mind in a public place where anything could happen.
As they talked they moved closer to each other and their faces showed emotions that I couldn’t name, but I was sure they were enjoying themselves. They had to be, otherwise why go through all this? Whoever had set the scene had chosen soft, dim lights with quiet music in the background. Bafflingly, at one point, the woman fed the man a few bites of food, using her fingers to place the food in his mouth, and giggled as he lightly bit down on her finger. After the dinner, the male escorted the woman back to what I assume was her home and went in with her.
I turned off the broadcast and thought back to the meal with Joan, comparing it to what I had just watched. I knew logically what had happened in that filmed scene. My training in surveillance told me that the man and woman in the broadcast had a close relationship, the kind that could be exploited by a blackmailer, kidnapper or other hostile person. Logically, if one of them were under my protection I would need to extend my umbrella of protection over the other. It was easy to fit the interaction into the correct box; if they had been a real couple whom I had to protect, I knew exactly how to record the encounter and its implications for their protection in their files. From that perspective, everything made sense.
The part about the scene that bothered me and had led me to turn off the broadcast was my realization that it was a picture of everything I’d missed in my dinner with Joan and many others before her. I knew at a logical level that they were finding joy in that meal and in their time together, though I did not understand how or why.
There was a whole subtext to life which my implants prevented me from reading. This was supposedly to prevent distractions and to avoid giving hostile forces a way to reach me, but as I pictured the look on the faces of the couple in the broadcast, I understood the space inside me. I had no heart.
I was a machine, and I no longer wanted to be one.
33
07-04-0065 — Greymere
After months of traveling back and forth to the shipyards, we were finally ready to bring the engines back online. The engineers at the shipyards found that a number of the upgrades that they had installed had prematurely worn out, and that was the cause of our problems. They cursed and commented that we were not using the ship in the way they’d expected.
I wanted to take them up on that, pointing out that for most of the time we had just been flying the spacecraft through space and asking them what else they had expected, but I knew better. Engineers are their own special breed and it was best not to alienate them, especially when your spacecraft is breaking down hundreds of light-years from any civilization.
Despite their complaints about the parts, the engineers had nothing but praise for the work Chrimson had done. Chrimson, for his part, blamed himself for all the issues, despite being told that the parts had only lasted as long as they had because of his hard work. He wanted badly to be seen as useful by Master Spectra and Master Dusty and thought this would make him seem incompetent.
While this was bad for his morale it was good for me, because it allowed me to move in as the friend who could be trusted, the proverbial shoulder to cry on, not that he would ever actually shed a tear. It was easy to do, as he was a very likable guy and an excellent engineer. I was down there several days a week, helping him to install the replacement parts and make the suggested modifications. I was even learning a little about engineering in the process, far more than I had during my brief stint as an apprentice.
I was on my way to one such appointment when a call came from Master Dusty, “Greymere, please come up to the main conference room. Grandmaster Vydor will be here soon and has requested that you attend this meeting.”
“On my way, Master,” I sent. Thankfully, Chrimson wasn’t expecting me at any particular time. I would have to stop in later instead.
When I arrived at the conference room Shea, Master Dusty and Master Spectra were already there. There were refreshments on the table, no doubt courtesy of Nanny, including what was unmistakably a pot of steaming coffee. I had to smile, guessing it would be Cronain espresso roast even though I didn’t know what that was.
Before I’d had a chance to greet everyone, Grandmaster Vydor appeared; he just stepped out of nothing into the room. I should have been able to sense the energy build-up ahead of his arrival, but even after he’d joined us there was no perceptible concentration of energy. He must have a remarkable level of control to contain it so well. Master Raquel appeared after him, coming via a more conventional gate.
Greetings were exchanged and we all took a seat.
Grandmaster Vydor opened the meeting by saying, “Lyshell is almost ready to begin training, so it is time to decide how to go about this.”
“Almost ready? Were there problems?” asked Shea.
Grandmaster Vydor nodded. “When Lyshell came to us he was more machine than man. He was part of an experimental group of cyborgs trained and built specifically to hunt rogue magi. His memories and emotions were routinely suppressed, and for the most part he did exactly as ordered. He represented the best the program had to offer. The implants made him very powerful, almost immune to most of the attacks he usually faced. Undoubtedly an army of Lyshells would be a powerful force.”
“But you said he is a magus, Grandmaster,” said Dusty.
“Yes, and as you know those implants would have prevented him from using his power. We explained this to him, offering to remove them all and train him in magic. Three months ago he accepted our offer, and we started immediately. This would not have been possible without Kellyn’s life-weaving, as the vast majority of his organic system had been removed. Even with her skill, it did not go as well as we had hoped.”
Shea looked concerned. “What happened?”
He sighed. “You may find this disturbing, but I think you need to see it.” He gestured and an image appeared in the air before us, that of a man lying in bed, writhing in pain. He screamed and thrashed against his restraints. The image was gone in a moment, but it was seared into my mind.
“By the powers,” I said under my breath before I caught myself. It had been a long time since I’d used such language.
Grandmaster Vydor stood up, drawing everyone’s attention. “I wanted you to see that so that you will know how broken he is. When we removed all the implants and memory blocks, his mind almost shattered. Pain, guilt and other repressed emotions all descended on him at once. We can treat his physical wounds, but his state of mind is more difficult to heal.”
“How long?” asked Master Spectra.
“We believe he is beyond the worst of it. That image is a week old. He remembers nothing about the episode nor most of his physical recovery, which I would describe as a blessing. He is stable now, but as well as everything else he is trying to come to terms with losing his superhuman powers.”
“Do you expect Greymere to fix all that?” asked Master Dusty.
“Not alone. I am hoping that Shea will help,” he replied.
“He needs purpose,” I said.
All ey
es turned toward me and I continued. “You took away everything that he was, at least in his own mind. I think that he is spiraling into depression. He needs a new purpose, a reason to get up in the morning.”
Shea nodded. “I suspect that is correct.”
Grandmaster Vydor nodded. “That is what Kellyn thought also. Therefore I propose we transfer him to this ship, so that Greymere and Shea can help him.”
I shook my head. “No, he needs to see active duty. We’ll just be flying home for months on end.”
“What do you propose, then?” he asked.
“You said he was a mage hunter? Well, let him hunt sorcerers, then,” I said.
Grandmaster Vydor gestured to Raquel. “That was Raquel’s suggestion also. She is tasked with finding any other magi from her era and dealing with them. She suggested that he accompany her, and that you also transfer to work with her.”
I nodded. “That makes sense.”
“No,” interjected Spectra. “I need Greymere here to train Saraphym.”
Raquel looked at her and asked, “What if I build a team with Lyshell, Greymere and Saraphym?” Spectra started to interrupt but Raquel raised her hand. “Wait, hear me out. Greymere must teach Saraphym because he is the only one who can inform her about her race, therefore they must not be separated. I know that you need to supervise Saraphym, but does that have to be on a daily basis? I know a realm where there is a nice planet with beautiful forests and no intelligent life. I often use it as a relay point for gating. We could meet there regularly, perhaps once a month. In that way you can oversee her training, and Shea can check on Lyshell’s progress.”
Spectra slowly nodded. “Yes, that could work. Really, Saraphym has a good grasp of her spiritual powers; it is her butterfly form that complicates things. She is nowhere near ready to visit the Spirit Realm, and that’s the next step in her training.”
Mage Hunter (Lost Tales of Power Book 8) Page 16
