by Adam Thielen
“You hacked into the servers!” Taq half-yelled over the din.
Annie’s head ducked slightly, and her finger shot toward Taq’s mouth, landing on his lips. “Oh em gosh, shh!” She gazed into his pale blue eyes, and he into her bright blue irises, admiring her cheekbones, peppered with freckles. After a pause, she removed her finger. “Please don’t rat me out, I just wanted to meet you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Cause… mages are so sharp,” she claimed. “And, well, you are considered the best student mage at your university.”
“What? According to whom?”
“It’s in your notes from a Rafir guy,” she revealed.
“The president said I was the best?” asked Taq, swelling with pride.
“Well, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Taq. “I am pretty good, though.” He allowed himself a smug grin. “Why’d—” He stopped himself, no longer caring. “So, are you from around here?”
“Sacramento,” she said.
“Isn’t that far away?”
Annie leaned close to him. “Want to go to the concession stand? I’m tired of yelling.”
“So what are you doing out here?” asked Taq, taking a break from sipping his fizz through a straw.
“I grew up in Sactown,” she said. “But my dad took a job in another country. I told them I wasn’t going, and I meant it. Maybe I’ll follow them someday, but I decided to just do my own thing for now.”
“Oh ya? What’s your thing?”
“You know.”
“How’d you learn to do… that?” Jones asked.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “I have a neural interface implant with an open-source firmware installed. The synaptic regulator is unlocked, which isn’t exactly legal.”
“You’re a neuro,” said Taq, recalling his limited knowledge on the subject.
“Psh,” she responded. “I am a data reclaimer.”
“So can anyone with the implants hack things?” quizzed Jones.
“No. My modified gear gives me a lot more flexibility,” she explained. “And finding weaknesses requires patience and the ability to get creative.”
“Sounds rad,” said the rapt mage.
“Not as rad as magic,” Annie countered. She looked away, then locked on to Jones’s eyes. “But anyways, I don’t really have a home here. I move from place to place. Maybe I can come visit you at the university.”
“Oh ya, you want to see it?” asked Taq coyly.
“You offering?”
Taq chortled, unable to stay serious. “Sure, but, uh, not here.”
“Your place, then,” said Annie, unwavering in her seductive demeanor.
“I suppose you already know where it is,” said Taq.
“Your specific dorm room? Yes.”
“Kind of creepy,” he sang.
Annie shrugged. “You got a girlfriend?”
Taq emptied his drink cup, punctuated with suction noise from the bottom of the straw. He gulped and set it down. “Not yet.” He looked at the empty drink. “I’ll have to get you approved for visitation. Even then, time is limited. Hope you have other things to keep you busy.”
“I’m sure I can find some work,” she said. “I’m serious. I want to come. I want to learn about magic. I want to know everything.”
“Well, I don’t know anything,” said Taq.
“I bet you do,” she replied. “I have ideas for things we can do. You’ll see.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll have to wait to find that out.” Annie pulled a paper card from the front pocket of her flannel shirt and slid it across the table. “This has all the deets you’ll need to give your wardens.”
Taq stared at the card. It had all of Annie’s contact information, except for one piece. “They’ll want an address.”
“I’ll have to sleep somewhere.”
“Curt-manch,” said Taq.
“Courtemanche,” corrected Annie.
Jones pocketed the card. “Going to stick around here for a while?”
“Sure,” she said. “I spotted some virtual sensation tech I wanted to try out.”
“Let’s go.”
* * *
‘Strongly encouraged’ can mean a few different things, depending on who is doing the encouraging. Mages of the KC university could decline all sorts of extra-curriculars without fear. After all, they were already limited in freedom. Corporate agreements prohibited punishments that would inflict pain or prevent social interaction, as long as the infraction was not a dangerous misuse of magic, or other destructive behaviors.
If MESS decided a mage was dangerous or uncontrollable, the likely result would be another prison, one without classrooms or teachers. A real prison, an old-world prison. And so the staff and wardens were limited in what they could do to maintain their ideas of order without giving up on the young adults they were trying to shepherd.
However, the one trump card they had was the ability to force, physically if necessary, the mage to attend counseling sessions where they would be questioned and lectured endlessly. Many mages tried to endure the droning of the counselor, Mr. Elvoy, but every one of them broke eventually.
One of the encouraged activities was a fitness program, of which there were a handful to pick from. And so Taq Jones, who had neither the inclination to participate nor the aptitude to perform well, found the large white ball arcing toward him. He understood the trajectory on an intuitive level, but couldn’t work out how to place himself to prepare to strike the object. He held his arms out straight with hands clasped together, shuffling his feet through the soft sand under them. The mage swung his arms up violently, cutting through the air next to the ball, which thudded against the sand, ending the game of volleyball in favor of the team not cursed with his presence.
Taq sighed, then turned to look apologetically at his teammates, Manny and Florie. The former shook his head while the latter stared into the distance with her hands at her waist. I need a less competitive team, Jones decided.
The warden-slash-coach blew his whistle enthusiastically while clapping his hands together. “Good game, guys!” he yelled.
Jones walked off the sand and toward the dorms. The warden turned to him and blew his whistle again.
“Jones, where are you going?”
“The dorm,” he said, not looking back.
“Hold on,” commanded the warden. He was a muscular man, wearing a tank top, shorts, and a utility belt that looked sorely out of place. His gun remained holstered at his side.
Despite the order, Taq continued walking. The warden shook his head, knowing he’d have to write Jones up.
It had been two weeks since the E-fun convention. Two weeks since he had met a girl that seemed interested in him. He had called the ID using the limited call times he was allotted, but there was never an answer.
That evening, Taq was notified via the wall com mounted next to his door that he had an appointment with the counselor scheduled for him. Oh, good, thought Taq. He climbed into bed, then stared at the anklet above his foot with a burning hatred. Had he not been jailed, he could have led a normal life, found a girlfriend, lived in a house. Or at least that was how he imagined it would go. This prison had taken something from him, and he wanted it back.
Jones had had short relations with some of the female students of the university, but between his awkwardness, the fact that everyone knew everyone else, and the rules forbidding undisclosed courtships, none had outlasted a week’s time. He had never felt the yearning he did after meeting Annie. She was outside the system, outside of their control. A girl had approached him, been friendly, expressed interest in him. And then she was gone as if it had never happened.
When Taq woke in the morning, the red light on his wall com blinked on and off every few seconds. They are going to have to come get me, he decided, pulling his blanket over his body and going back to sleep. A few hours later, his consciousness drifted up out
of the depths as someone banged on his door. Jones reluctantly rose, threw on a pair of shorts, and answered. Before him stood the dorm manager.
“Taq Jones,” greeted Alan. He looked the mage over. “Should we tell her you won’t be coming down?”
“Uh, is there a new counselor?”
“What?” Alan said dismissively. “No, your visitor, Anna Curtomatch.”
“What?” said Taq. “Right! Just hold on.”
“You’ve got five minutes,” said the manager, closing the door.
Taq put on a shirt and pants, grabbed his hairbrush, and ran across the hall to the bathroom. He threw water on his hair and brushed it straight, letting wet bangs poke into his forehead. He made use of the urinal, rinsed his hands, then put them under the dryer. After three seconds, he decided it was taking too long, wiped his hands on his shirtand stepped into the hallway, turning left. Realizing he faced the wrong way, he spun around and headed for the stairwell.
When he reached the first-floor lobby, he was nearly out of breath. Then he saw her sitting on a bench in the greeting area. She looked up at him as he approached, and they both smiled.
“Hello,” said Taq. “This way.” He guided her back to his room with no more words between them. The door to his room slid shut.
“Are you really here?” he asked.
Annie giggled. “Do you normally have dreams about me?”
“But how? They never approved it. If you get caught…”
Annie turned around and looked at Taq’s mess of a bed. She opted for the office chair sitting in front of his wall-screen. “The deed is done,” she said, slouching back. “I took care of everything. If they catch it, oh well. If not, then even better.”
“I’m pretty sure we could both end up in jail if you tampered with records,” said Taq.
Annie sighed. “Sorry, Taq. I couldn’t use that ID I gave you and wasn’t sure what to do. Thought I’d try to surprise you.”
“Mission accomplished,” he replied. “I thought you were just having a laugh at the convo.”
“Never,” she insisted. “I just got held up, then I lost access to that ID. So… you going to show me?”
“We aren’t actually supposed to cast outside of designated areas,” he replied, moving to the bed. He started to straighten the sheets, then threw a blanket over it.
“Oh, come on!” she wailed, spinning around in the chair.
“Okay, watch this.” Taq sat on the bed and placed his hands in front of his chest with the palms facing each other. Annie opened her mouth and scooted the chair close. For a few seconds, nothing happened, then Annie felt goosebumps form on her arms and a tingle at the back of her neck.
A single thin, pale blue bolt arced between the mage’s palms. It steadily grew in brightness, then was joined by a second, and then a third bolt. They emitted a sharp buzz as they danced between his hands.
Taq looked at Annie, who stared in awe at the sight. He didn’t notice her hand move forward until it was too late. She placed her fingers in between his hands. Her body froze and Taq released the spell, pulling his hands apart. Annie’s body flopped back, falling off the chair as she cried out in pain and surprise.
Jones leapt from the bed and knelt over her. Annie stared at the ceiling, breathing through her mouth.
“Annie!” said Taq. “Are you okay?” He placed his hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently.
The neuro put her hand up to her face. The tips of her index and middle fingers were plum red. “Ow,” she moaned.
“I can’t believe you did that,” he scolded. “Let me get some ice.” Taq opened his minifridge and pulled out a small ice bucket. “Can you sit up?”
Annie reached out her good hand, and Taq pulled her forward. She rested her fingers on the ice. “I thought it was just lights,” she said after regaining her senses. “You have so much power.”
Jones wiped the moisture from his brow. “You might be a little obsessed.”
“I am so jelled.”
“What I can do,” said Taq, “Is… disappointing.”
“What?” she asked, gripping cubes of ice, then letting them drop.
Taq fell onto his rump next to her. “Look at my face. That took a lot out of me. I know what a mage can be, and I’m not it.”
“But Rafir—”
“These people don’t get it.”
“But you get it?” asked Annie.
“I feel it,” said Taq. “Thoughts and images come to me of grand spells, flung at will.”
“Like visions?” she asked. “Maybe it’s your future self.”
“More like fantasies,” he said.
Annie placed her unburned hand on Taq’s knee. “I will help you.”
Jones scoffed. “Oh ya?”
“Ey! I will,” she insisted. “I will be your coach.”
Taq put his hand on hers. “You don’t know anything about casting, though.”
“So what? You will teach me, and I will come up with routines, goals. We’ll treat it like training for a sport.”
For a few minutes, they sat together, each basking in the company of the other, a solace for the shortcomings in other aspects of their lives.
“How’s the hand?”
Courtemanche pulled it out of the ice. Still red, she touched her fingertips to her thumb one at a time. “I think it will be okay. Show me another.”
“No way,” he protested.
“I won’t touch it, just do one more. Just one little spell,” she pleaded.
Taq closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He scooted back to give himself space, then ordered the lights off.
“Oooh,” said Annie with a giggle.
Jones put his fists together in front of him, knuckles pointed upward. His fingers curled around an invisible object. A dim glow escaped from between his hands that grew into a brilliant white light. The mage moved his hands up and away from each other. They left behind a tube of light as they traveled. He rotated his grip, curving the tube downward then together at a point, reuniting his hands and completing the shape of a heart.
The manifested energy began to break down, starting at the top, as Taq moved his hands away to admire his work. Small glowing droplets escaped the confines of the heart and fell away from it like rain blowing along a car’s windshield, taking with them bits of the heart’s luminescence, then they themselves dissipated into the air with a quiet sizzle. After a minute, streaks had floated away a half meter in every direction, thinning the tube of light but illuminating the room.
“Jesus Christ,” Annie whispered.
By the light of the spell, Taq gazed at Annie and saw the gleam of teardrops slowly rolling down her face. She locked eyes with the mage and crawled past the display. Annie cupped his head in her hands and pulled his mouth to hers. Her sore fingers stroked his chin as she pushed against him, guiding him onto his back as the final lights of the Ethereal energy faded and left them in darkness.
* * *
“One more,” the young woman commanded, and Taq complied. Sweat dripped from his hair and ran down his bare chest. He was not a sculpted figure, but he was in better shape than he deserved to be for his efforts. He reached forward, and unseen Ethereal energies swirled around him, creating a connection between his hands and Annie’s body. He turned his palms up and slowly began to raise his arms, and with them, his lover and trainer.
He began to lower her, but could not hold on, dropping her a foot to the floor. His body straightened as he breathed in, then slumped as he exhaled.
“Oof,” she uttered as she landed, rolling to her back.
“Sorry,” breathed Taq, shaking his head.
“I’m okay,” she replied. “You did well. That was number six. You only could do five Monday. You are getting better.”
Taq grimaced. “I think I’m just getting better at hurting myself.”
Annie stood and straightened her sweater vest. “That’s still something. But are you saying you really aren’t getting better at casting?�
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“Maybe a little,” he said. “Learning technique can take years, though.”
Annie leaned down and kissed Taq, then sat beside him, quietly thinking.
“Our time is almost up,” said Jones, frowning. “And no sexy time today.”
Courtemanche started to put an arm around Taq, but then pulled back after she realized how wet he was. “We’ll do a date day tomorrow.” She stood and patted him on the head and he reached forward, slapping her on the bottom.
“I also have a new idea,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see tomorrow.”
But Annie did not show the next day. Concerned, Taq tried to contact her without success. An hour after visiting time ended, he went to the cafeteria to eat, where he spotted Fenner and Audra at a table together. He filled a tray with tater tots and joined them.
“Oh hey, Fenner, remember that guy we used to know?” said Audra.
“The one we lost at the convention?”
“I don’t know if we lost him. I think some woman abducted him.”
Taq shoved a tot in his mouth. “Har har,” he said while in mid-chew.
“It’s okay. He’s too good for us now,” said Fenner.
“I always was,” said Taq.
“Oh, he’s a big boy now,” taunted Audra.
“Real big,” amended Fenner.
“I got a girlfriend,” said Taq. “Maybe you two should hook up.”
Fenner set his soy burger down. “Who says we haven’t?”
Audra mimicked a gag reflex. “Ugh. You ruined it. We had him on the ropes.”
“This is the girl you met at E-fun?” asked Fenner.
“Annie,” said Taq, nodding. “She’s fanto.”
“Awwwww,” teased Audra.
“Nice of you to come visit us, tonight,” said Fenner.
Taq grinned. “I see you guys every day.”
“Aye, but it’s not the same,” he argued.
“Suppose not,” admitted Taq. He continued eating his processed ‘tato product. After he finished, he started to stand.