The Lesser One Arc 2 Version 2 Chapter 19: Lessons

 

Lessons

“I attack with Withering Balliard and cast Regression targeting it. This causes my Black Guardian in my graveyard to return to the foray.” Mandrake turns his creatures sideways.

“Well damn.” I scoop, gathering up my cards. “Game three?”

“For a budget deck, you really put together something special.” Mandrake leans back and puffs his cigar.

The door opens and two lab techs walk into the room. I stand up to greet them.

Mandrake stays where he is. I look at him. “Sorry, no game three. Are you going to be here the whole time?”

“I want to get a handle on this Rearden Metal stuff.” Mandrake rolls his eyes. “Man, your naming convention is tacky.”

“Don’t judge. I just really like literature.”

“Ayn Rand is …” Mandrake sighs. “Never mind. You don’t want to hear that from me.” He leans back in the chair. “Go on.” He waves his cigar.

We get to work. Mandrake stays the entire time, chain smoking cigars. He doesn’t say anything, just watches what’s going on with hawk-like eyes.

We finish the day’s work. Three of the conjurers have completed their training. Just a couple remain, all of whom are about to break through. At this rate I’ll finish the job before my deadline. Then Crayton can sell Rearden Metal at a large scale and maybe make some money.

The conjurers leave until it’s just me and Mandrake again. He raises an eyebrow. “Why did you sell the formula for your metal to someone else?”

“Because I’m not interested in money or fame. I want as many people as possible to benefit from my invention. Well, it’s not really my invention.” I take Sage’s console out from my pocket. “It’s hers. I just gave her the specifications and she did the dirty work.”

“Ah, I see.” Mandrake stands up, brushing off his pants. “How about some dinner at a nice restaurant. Maybe this time we won’t get shot at by a Dark.”

“You know a lot of people died that day.” I follow Mandrake out of the room.

Sebastian is standing outside the door with another devil by his side. He nods when we leave. We meet up with Tia in the Esmex building lobby. I call up Esla. Ten minutes later she’s with us. We then head to the restaurant. It’s a small hole in the wall, but according to Mandrake, it has a Michelin star. Just one, but even one is a huge deal.

We enter. The waiter seats us.

Esla speaks first. “Have you talked to your parents much?”

“No, actually. They haven’t called, so I assumed that they were okay.”

“Your father doesn’t want to bother you with your work. He knows that you’re doing something amazing and doesn’t want to distract you.”

“That’s just like him.”

We order our food. Esla turns to Mandrake. “Hey. My name’s Esla. I worked with Markus back at Ixtham.”

Mandrake nods. “Nice to meet you. My name is Mandrake. I would call myself something like Markus’s mentor.”

Esla laughs. “Yeah. I get that feeling from you.” She turns to me. “You really are surrounding yourself with some funny characters. By the way, Alexia says hello. He really thinks your Rearden Metal is going to change the world. He says that he wants your autograph when you get back.”

“I, uh, I’m flattered.” I rub my neck. “How is the CCC club doing?”

“They’re gearing up for the Summer’s End Entry Contest.” Esla shrugs. “Brandon says that they really need you, but he also understand why you’re not there.”

“Yeah, I’ll probably be staying here in London for a week past what was originally forecasted.”

Esla raises an eyebrow. “What, is your work going poorly?”

“It’s going great, actually.” I shake my head. “No, I need to figure out everything with the, uh, the secret organization before I head home.”

“Right. I have to be back a week from today.” Esla held her hand up. She squeezes it. “By the way, where’s my bionic hand?”

“We’re working on it.” I look at Mandrake. “Yeah. Come to the lab at the Esmex building after we eat.”

Esla sighs. “I haven’t gotten used to eating with one hand yet. I hope you don’t mind some sad displays of single-handedness.” She flexes her hand again.

We get our food. It’s actually really good. We shoot the breeze for a while after finishing and then take the limo back to the Esmex building.

We ride the elevator to the lab floor. The lights are off. I flick them on and the white tiled environment becomes visible. Esla looks around the room. “Wow. This place is state of the art.”

“Right.” I walk over to the computer and boot it up. “Sage.” I place the console on a table. “We’re going to make that arm.” I turn to Esla. “This is going to be the most complicated piece of technology I’ve ever conjured. Plus, Tia’s going to have to regrow your neurons, and I’m going to have to fuse the hand’s electronics with those neurons. Don’t blame us if something goes horribly wrong. Also, it will probably hurt. Do you want anesthetic?”

“No.” Esla shakes her hand. “I need to feel this. I need to be there, totally conscious, when I connect with it.”

“Your choice.” I turn to Tia. “Can you sing her nerves to this orientation?” I swivel the computer monitor and show Tia.

“Yes.” Tia holds her hands over Esla’s stump.

Esla squirms. “It feels like there’s a rabbit in my arm.”

“Keep at it.”

While Tia regrows Esla’s nerves, I need to start creating the hand. I look at Mandrake. He nods.

I hold my hand over the lab table. Anima fluid pours out of it and pools on the tile. The anima fluid seethes with energy. It forms the shape of a hand, and then the details make themselves apparent. Wires stretch through metal arches. Steel clicks against carbon fiber. Somehow, a custom chipset is lasered into place, with twice the capacity of a high-end GPU on the market. Every atom in that chip arranges itself according to Sage’s specifications. I’m really not doing anything other than sending my intent through the anima.

The arm solidifies. Then it becomes solid. I pick it up with care and turn to Esla. “This is going to hurt.” I place the socket on Esla’s stump. Esla screams in pain, jerking her body backwards. Sparks fly. Tia shoves a leather bit into Esla’s mouth. She bites down on it. Twenty seconds later the process is complete.

Esla flexes her new bionic hand. Her lips curl up, and then she grins. “Go go gadget, laser beam!” She shoots a bolt of laser energy at the wall and burns straight through the drywall.

“Careful.” I am grinning ear to ear. “I’m probably going to have to pay for that.”

“You can afford it.” Esla flicks her bionic hand. “I’m Wolverine!” Claws spike out from her knuckles. “Can I have a pencil?”

Sage turns on. “Second pocket, ring finger.”

Esla tilts her head, then touches her bionic hand with her real hand. A pen pops out, right in writing position.

Sage’s emoji face is pensive. “You’re going to have to refill it with ink, though.”

Esla looks at the pen in her hand. “Whoa.” She looks at me. “Whoa!” She waves her bionic hand through the air. “Whoa!”

Mandrake looks at me. “You did it. You fulfilled your promise. That was some serious conjuration work you pulled off right there.”

“It wasn’t me. It was Sage.”

“Still, Sage is technically a part of you. She listens to your commands.”

I sit down in a chair. “I mean, yeah.” I look at Esla. “You happy about that? Can you conjure your spirit through it?”

Esla point her bionic finger and a blast of wind shoots out from it. The drywall on the other side of the room tears apart. Beakers smash to the ground.

I sigh. “Yeah. It works.”

Esla holds out her hand. “Okay!”

The printer in the corner of the room starts printing. Sage speaks. “The user manual for your artificial hand is printing. Be sure to read the entire document before attempting to modify it.”

“Whoa, I can modify this?” Esla looks at her bionic hand with wonder.

“You risk causing it to fail, but yes.”

“How long is the manual?”

“Two hundred thousand words.” Sage’s voice is calm, if a little smug.

“Yikes.” Esla holds up her hand. “But that means that this thing has enough features for that to happen. What else can it do?”

“Read the manual.” Sage’s face winks.

Esla laughs.

The manual is still printing. I look at the printer. “Um, yeah, we’re probably going to have to refill that thing, aren’t we?”

Sage: “Yes.”

Esla turns to Mandrake. “I heard you’re a pretty good Jenma player. You got a good deck?”

“It’s a Firstborn deck, but yes.” Mandrake sits down. Esla sits across from him. They take out decks.

“Where were you hiding that?” I look at Esla’s deck. She doesn’t have any pockets on her pants.

Esla winks. “Secret.” Her bionic hand grips the deck and then the fingers move in a totally counterintuitive way to shuffle the deck. Esla sticks her tongue out. “Nice.”

Mandrake plays first. “Gemstone caves. Thoughtcast.”

“Aw man.” Esla shows Mandrake her hand. Mandrake selects Born to Die from her hand and causes her to discard it.

The game plays out one-sidedly. Mandrake wins three times in a row. Upon losing for the third time, Esla packs up her deck and leans back in her chair. “You really have met some nice people here in London.”

I nod. “Yeah. It’s been a bit of a storm while I was here, but in the end it all was for the best.”

Mandrake stands up. “It’s about time for me to run some errands. Markus, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow. We’ll be meeting some of my comrades and discussing, well, you know what.” He tips his hat and leaves the lab.

Esla gets up. “It’s about time for me to check out.”

Sebastian shakes his head. “I will send a guard detail with you. The terrorists haven’t all been caught yet.”

“Wow.” Esla looks at me. “You have bodyguards?”

“Yes.”

Esla shrugs. “Well, I’ll drill you about his tomorrow.” She leaves the lab. Several devils join her outside the door.

Sebastian and Tia look at each other. Then they look at me.

“Sir, I would like for us to spend some time training. We haven’t been able to recently and I think you need to really know your moves if you want to survive another encounter with a Dark. I’ve been talking to this elf here and we think that she can teach you much more than I can alone.”

I nod. “Good. Yeah, I got the feeling that I was being curb stomped during the arena battles. I barely survived those.”

Sebastian lowers his chin. “We’re also going to teach you how to conjure the right tool for the right situation. We’ve seen what you can do, what you can create, and we want you to be able to react with whatever weapon will suit you during a specific encounter.”

I stand up. “Okay.” We leave the lab and take the elevator to the training room on the basement floor. I step inside and stretch my shoulders.

Sebastian pulls over a whiteboard. Tia sets up some chairs. Sebastian unfurls a teaching pointer. “Okay. You are being faced with a heavily armored opponent. They are not very mobile but they have a dangerous mele weapon. You are being bound by your official conjuration limitations. What do you conjure? Create it now.”

I create a Rearden Metal pike like before, when I fought the alligator.

Sebastian shakes his head. “Wrong. It is bad practice to fight a heavily armored opponent on their own turf. You would have done better to create a ranged weapon.”

And we continue our lessons.

 

20

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