Street Cultivation 2

by Sarah Lin

  The next day he needed to go to the gym and he spent the entire shift wondering about his options. In the end, he decided that it was time to call Emily. He'd be asking her for something, yes, but hopefully it would interest her enough that it wouldn't come off as an imposition.

  After getting out his phone, he stared at the number for a while, then decided he was being stupid and just hit her name. It rang three times before Emily picked up. "Yeah?"

  "I've got something you might want to see: a new aura technique developed by the Central States Lucrim Authority." Given how terse Emily could be, he always felt like he needed to offer her something right away or he'd annoy her. "I'm not sure if it's the type of lucrim engineering you do, but I thought you might find it interesting."

  "And you need some help with it?"

  "Uh, yeah."

  "You're involved with something again, aren't you?"

  Rick sighed. "Yeah, sorry. I jus-"

  To his surprise, Emily let out a brief laugh. "Don't apologize. It makes you interesting. I'm up for it, and I assume you're in a hurry, so can you meet me after work? I'll text a location."

  "Sure. Uh, yeah, that will work fine." He hadn't expected it to be that easy, but then again, Emily could be a reliable ally for all her sharp edges. They'd fought together against a hitman and supported each other in the multi-tier tournament, after all.

  Soon after, Emily sent him a location that he realized must be near her work. At least he thought so. Rick had done some basic curiosity research on EthCom back when he was meeting Emily but didn't know too much about it beyond that. She hadn't given a time, but he had to assume that she worked normal business hours, which meant he needed to get moving.

  He grabbed his wallet and bike on the way out the door, then leapt straight over the side of the railing. For an instant he considered manifesting his bike in midair and landing on it, but there was a good chance the thing would break under the force. No, better to stay simple and practical.

  The EthCom building was on the other side of Branton, so it was no quick ride. Still, he was starting to understand how to bike in the city and could make it. Right now his standard speed wasn't quite fast enough to go in the lane devoted to those traveling via lucrim-based speed, but he could maintain that speed briefly. Switching between those lanes, sidewalks, and the street, he could get wherever he needed to go.

  Traveling through the city by bike changed things. Since it was faster than running, he didn't get lost in his thoughts, but he also had time to look around. He was surprised to see how many street corners in the bad parts of town had Advanced Lucrim stations. There weren't so many as he neared his destination, of course.

  At first it had struck him as odd that a big corporation like EthCom kept its local headquarters outside the central part of Branton, but on the way Rick realized that might actually make sense. They might have a public facing office in one of the bigger buildings, but their private work would be done off-site. Though lucrim engineering wasn't usually explosive, they might have good reasons to avoid populated areas.

  When he finally got close, he was a bit early. That was good, since it gave him enough time to cool down - he'd just have to hope that he didn't stink too much. Rick glanced around the semi-suburban area, then looked to the EthCom building itself.

  Though he'd expected it to be more dramatic, it was really just an ordinary blocky office building. Other than the stone pillar with the company sign, it could have been any other office. Or perhaps not. Frowning, Rick moved closer and observed more carefully. There was something about the sky...

  He walked part way around the building, looking more carefully, and confirmed his suspicion: there was a wall of shadow surrounding the property. It was barely discernible, but the sky and everything else on the other side was just a slightly darker shade. Whatever the technique was, it was something more advanced than Rick had even heard about.

  Before he could wonder about it too long, several people began to emerge from the front doors. They seemed like ordinary enough office workers, though everyone had a generation rate higher than 60,000 lucrim. More importantly, they all felt like they'd put serious work into their Lucores - Rick found himself wishing he had the skill to estimate invested cores more accurately.

  Eventually he spotted Emily, but she didn't come out the main gate with the others. Instead, when she saw him, she jerked her head to a side entrance, then went around the other way. Though puzzled, Rick went in the direction she'd indicated. Did she not want her coworkers to see him?

  In any case, when he went around to the other side of the block, Emily soon appeared. She wore her usual hoodie and slightly sour expression, which softened only a little when she saw him.

  "This isn't the location I said."

  "Uh... it was so close to your work, I figured you were just guiding me here."

  "If I'd meant that, I'd have said that." Yet after a moment, Emily smiled instead. "But it's not important. Do you want something to eat? I forgot to eat today."

  It was early for him, but... "Sure, that'd be fine."

  "There's a good place a couple blocks this way. Let's go."

  Emily led the way and he went along beside her, the silence threatening to get awkward. Since Emily wasn't good at filling silence - or interested in doing so - Rick figured that was up to him. "So, have you had any trouble with Granny Whitney since the tournament?"

  "Thankfully not. We both fulfilled the terms of our agreement and that was the end of it, for now." Emily glanced over at him. "You?"

  "She seems to have kept to her promise of leaving me alone. Hopefully she doesn't want anything to do with me anymore."

  "Yeah. You want to avoid anyone in her circle."

  "Anyone?" Rick thought about it for a moment. "The American Basilisk is a ganglord, so that's obvious. I know Granny Whitney's maliciousness firsthand, but what does she actually want?"

  That got a little shrug. "I'm afraid that's beyond my pay grade. They play games of honor against one another, and those are dangerous enough. Anything they're actually serious about is something I'd like to keep at arm's distance."

  "Yeah, I don't blame you. What about Alger? He just seemed to want to run his fight arena."

  "Especially Alger." Emily frowned for a moment, then shook her head. "I'm not sure exactly what he's doing, but it's good you lost his interest early on."

  Rick swallowed and considered telling her about their brief encounter, but wasn't sure how to bring it up. Besides, he'd convinced Alger that he didn't have what it took on two occasions now. Hopefully the man would actually leave him alone and he could get on with his life.

  Meanwhile, Emily gestured for them to turn and led him into what appeared to be an old mom and pop restaurant. There were tables of many different varieties set around the room, some looking reasonably modern, some as if they could have come out of the 1950s, and some that were so decrepit he had no idea. Far from being a fast food restaurant, there was no screen of options, just some printed menus by the counter.

  "Some of the tables are bad," Emily said, "but the food is all good. They're not very fast, though, so let's order right away."

  "Seems reasonable." Rick picked up one of the menus and looked through it while Emily just ordered from the friendly middle-aged woman behind the counter without looking. The menu seemed to be mostly burgers, sandwiches, and a few items like salads on a leaflet that had been paperclipped in later.

  Deciding to start simple, Rick just ordered a burger. Even that was a bit more expensive than he'd prefer, but one meal wouldn't really hurt him. He turned and found that Emily had already gone to sit by a table in the corner with her back to the wall. When he went to sit down across from her, she sat back and examined him.

  "So, what's this technique you have for me?"

  "It's relatively simple, but I have some questions." Rick managed to demonstrate it, but the aura didn't vibrate much here in the center of town. "Okay, this is a bad place for it, but the aur
a vibrates along with free lucrim in the surrounding area. I guess not the lucrim you or I have, or it-"

  "Yeah, I got it. Why'd you get this from the CSLA?"

  He blinked in surprise. "I kind of figured you'd just know about their job offer somehow."

  "Nope. What's going on?"

  Rick quickly explained everything that had happened to him. He found himself beginning to skim over the lucrim and fight details, yet realized that Emily was just as interested as he was. She didn't ask many questions, but her eyes kept flickering over the restaurant thoughtfully. It was surprisingly comfortable talking with her, though it got awkward as he finished the main story and wound down.

  "So, uh... that basically catches you up. Was the technique actually interesting, or is it a really common thing I don't know about?"

  "Definitely interesting." Emily stared out the window and began tapping her fingers on the table in a rapid pattern. "What I think they taught you is a modern recreation of an ancient skill."

  "An ancient skill? You don't mean like a lost secret art or anything."

  "No, of course not. Once, warriors who fought with lucrim would do something like this with their aura automatically, sensing all the lucrim around them. But the thing is, in the modern era where most lucrim is harvested, the skill is next to useless, especially since modern sensory skills can mostly cover for it."

  Nodding in understanding, Rick was about to move on when he had a random thought. "In school everybody learns lucrim sensing in Lucrim Education class - now that I think about it, that skill is very focused on sensing gathered lucrim or Lucores in a person. Is that different from the ancient version?"

  "Exactly right." Emily gave him a quick smile and he felt strangely proud of himself. "They had cores in the past, of course, but their lucrima souls were much less clearly defined since they were constantly swimming in an environment of lucrim. An ancient warrior transported to the modern day would need some serious time to adjust."

  "So they're doing the opposite to us: teaching us how to sense lucrim in the old way."

  "Well, a modern version. It's less about sensing the lucrim around you than tracking down distant sources. Anyway, you did a solid job recreating what they showed you, but I have a few ideas about improving it. Not just the pieces they had, but maybe some other improvements."

  Rick raised his eyebrows. "Really? You sound pretty confident."

  "I obviously can't go up against all the GLA's engineers personally, but I've done a little work on this. There are some projects where people try to digitize old martial texts or recreate incomplete ones, then put them all in the public domain. Some of them deal with exactly this kind of thing."

  "That sounds great. When can we start?"

  Right that moment, as it turned out. Though Emily needed time to check her sources and do some work, she was immediately able to suggest changes and help him improve the technique. He felt a bit bad about how easily she put it together, but then again, this was her job. More importantly, she was obviously enjoying herself and he didn't feel guilty about asking her for help.

  They'd mostly finished a stable new version of the technique when their food was brought to the table in red plastic baskets. Rick noted with surprise that both of them had gotten basically the same thing: a burger, fries, and a drink. After cutting off their work when the food was brought to the table, it didn't feel right to dive back in, so Rick focused on his food instead.

  He took a bite and was surprised how good it tasted - definitely a cut above fast food. The fries were perfectly crisp and salty as well. Emily was tucking straight into hers, though after a while she spoke in between bites. "You like it?"

  "Yeah, this is really tasty."

  "Good. We should have done this earlier. I don't have enough people to talk to about this stuff."

  That made him eye her strangely. "Really? Aren't all your coworkers lucrim engineers too?" He figured that they'd be far more interesting conversation partners than him, yet Emily shook her head sharply, straight bangs shaking back and forth.

  "You might be surprised just how many people do it as only a job. They're smart, yes, but they really don't have much passion for the work. Or maybe the years wore out their passion, I'm not sure." That seemed to sober Emily and she took an aggressively large bite of her burger, then glared at it as she chewed. Wanting to cheer her up, Rick searched for something that might interest her.

  "What do you think the actual problem is? Why is more lucrim getting through the harvesting techniques than usual?"

  "Hard to say. The GLA doesn't give out much info." Emily's curt answer was just a precursor, however, and he could see her mind working on it. When she finished her bite, she set down her burger and glanced at him. "I don't want to lecture you about something you already know, but it gets into technical lucrim harvesting stuff. You know where lucrim comes from, right?"

  It was too simple of a question, making him look for some kind of trick. "It floats down from the sky, right? Is that wrong?"

  "Not wrong, just incomplete. Lucrim actually hangs in space, then Earth plows into it as it moves around the sun and the Milky Way moves in our galactic cluster. When it hits the atmosphere it tends to get caught in local currents and slowed down enough that it drifts roughly evenly. But not perfectly evenly."

  "Ah. So even if they harvest it in the upper atmosphere, they can't 100% predict it. Same as how they can't perfectly predict the weather."

  "Exactly. It's more complicated than weather, because there are other effects, but same idea." Emily grabbed a set of fries and jammed them all into her mouth. "Lucrim doesn't obey the laws of gravity, but anything with a major gravitational field impacts it. So the moon, Jupiter, solar events... they all have an effect. A lot of ancient astrology was bullshit, but our ancestors weren't entirely wrong when it came to lucrim flow."

  Rick sat back, just thinking about what she'd told him. He felt as though someone should have explained this to him, yet it was honestly much more than most people needed to know. Hell, most people were happy to think that lucrim came from the bank or their job.

  "Plus, there are currents in space itself. Scientists can try to predict them to some degree by looking at other galaxies, but it's believed that even with perfect information the system will never be 100% predictable. At some point, there's an uncertainty principle, so the flow of lucrim around the planet is always subject to surprises."

  "Do they have any idea why there are currents of lucrim? What causes them?"

  "Good question." Emily gestured at him with a fry. "The dominant theory is that it's like background radiation from the Big Bang, just random chance in the end. Of course, the end result is extremely even, which is why ancient warriors weren't weakened because they didn't know about all this. But when you're dealing with trying to harvest the entire planet..."

  "I think I get it now." Rick took a while to eat his nearly forgotten food, contemplating everything that she'd said. Beyond getting her explanation, he thought that it gave him new perspective on what the GLA wanted. "So there's a current of lucrim or some other factor that's making their estimates be off by more than normal, and they need to hire people to find it."

  "Right. If this was a normal fluctuation, they'd have systems to take care of it, but apparently now they need to gather information manually."

  "Can human behavior really have a major impact on all this? I mean... it's such mind-bogglingly huge cosmic stuff..."

  "People have an impact at the very end of the process." Emily sucked on her straw and seemed surprised that it made an empty rattle - they'd been talking longer than either of them had realized. "Lucrima souls still tend to draw it, which is why there will be more anomalies around cities than, say, the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But that last part is just theory."

  "It's better than anything I had. Does that mean that in the old days, cities would have been richer environments for lucrim?"

  "It's the exact opposite. With so many people grasping
for it, the flow was reduced. That's why masters in the stories would go out into the wilderness, or up mountains where they could draw the lucrim first..."

  They kept talking, even after they'd finished their food. Rick realized that they basically never spoke about anything but lucrim techniques and theory, but honestly, he didn't care. He enjoyed learning more and Emily always seemed much less severe when talking about a subject she enjoyed, her expression transforming from a glare to intense focus.

  Eventually he'd have to go back to work and figure things out. But for now, this was enough.

  Chapter 15: Finding Lucrim Anomalies

  Kneeling in the dirt, Rick did his best to focus on the technique and not let his mind wander. Unfortunately, this was the third time he'd taken an aura sampling and gotten no good information. Part of him had been hoping that it would naturally lead him toward an anomaly - like a compass in a video game, he supposed. But instead every location just gave him an ambiguous reading of local activity.

  He'd tried to take multiple readings at regular intervals to see if there was a trend, but what looked like a growing amount of resonance turned out to be just local variation. After getting frustrated he'd called Emily again to check, but he wasn't doing anything wrong. There simply was no easy way to find the pockets of excess lucrim. Again, he understood why the corporation needed more people to solve the problem.

  Rick stood up and brushed off his pants irritably. Clearly he needed a different approach, but he was out of time. If he wanted to get back to the gym in time for his shift, he needed to get moving now. After walking back to the nearest highway, Rick manifested his bike and began heading back.

  As he made the long trek, he found himself considering, yet again, whether or not it was a mistake to try to do both jobs at once. Almost all the other candidates he was aware of were focusing entirely on finding anomalies. If he didn't need to head back in so often, he might have made more progress, but quitting his previous job with no guarantee of an income just wasn't something he could make himself do.