Terminal (Visceral Book 4)

by Adam Thielen

  “Ey, bro, you want to do some gaming with us?” asked Audra.

  “I uh—I have some things to do,” he lied, feeling guilty as he said it. He simply did not feel like being around anyone and just wanted to crawl into bed.

  “Sure you do,” she replied. “See ya, then.”

  “Later,” said Taq.

  “Later,” echoed Fenner.

  Annie did not come visit on Friday either, and on Saturdays, it was typical for a regional corporation to visit the campus to espouse the virtues of employment with their company. That Saturday, NEK Glass Inc. was scheduled to have a meet and greet with the senior student mages and hold an assembly late in the morning.

  As had become the ritual, the corporation treated the mages to a pizza lunch, and not the cheap kind either. For that reason alone, Taq attended, happily sitting through long-winded speeches. After eating, he wandered the indoor gymnasium where the corp and its subsidiaries had sign-up tables set up, and Jones found himself doing something he’d never done before. He pressed his thumb to the tablet held out by one of the recruiters. The sign above the man read ‘Automotive.’ Jones put his eye in front of the device’s camera. The man pulled the tablet away, examining the information on the mage, then swiped his fingers in front of the screen.

  “Thank you for your interest, Mr. Jones,” he said. “Confirmation and some great pamphlets on what we do have been sent to your network folder.”

  Taq nodded and turned around to see Fenner standing within arm’s reach. “Really, bug?” he said, shaking his head.

  Jones shrugged. “I can’t stay here forever.”

  “Come on,” replied Fenner. “We have years left.”

  “What’s it matter?” asked Taq, starting to walk toward the exit.

  “That’s what you want to do?” asked Fenner, pointing at the recruiter.

  The doors moved out of Taq’s way as he left his friend behind. I don’t want to do anything, he thought. He looked at his hands. I have no place in this world. I’m not powerful enough to matter and not mundane enough to live a normal life.

  He spent the rest of the day listening to music and gaming by himself in his room. When visitor time arrived, he stared at his wall com for fifteen minutes straight. He then unpaused his game, grabbed his controllers, and continued his virtual conquests.

  Two minutes later, he looked again, this time at a blinking light, and dropped the control sticks on the floor. He jumped up and rushed to the door, then stopped to compose himself before continuing down the hall and steps.

  As he descended, Annie’s body came into view. Leather sneakers first, then black denim, then flannel, then her face with her eyes and most of her freckles covered by large round sunglasses. Her light hair was tied into a tight ponytail. She smiled upon seeing him.

  “I can’t be expected to be here every day,” she said, taking his comfortable office chair.

  “I know,” said Taq. “It just felt… awful.”

  “I like that you missed me,” she said.

  Taq knelt in front of her, staring up at her shades. “What do you do when you aren’t here?”

  “Not much,” she said. “I found a client. Or I should say, a client found me. A small corp; they like what I can do for them, you might say.”

  “Haxoring,” said Taq.

  “Something like that.” She began to unbutton her shirt as Taq looked on excitedly. But under the flannel was another shirt, and his lips puckered to the side in disapproval.

  “Simmer down,” she commanded. “I have something for you.” She pulled out a wide headband with reflective circles on the inside and held it up.

  “I was hoping for new shoes.”

  “Eff shoes, this is better.”

  “Actually, sweat does get in my eyes fairly often,” noted Taq.

  “Dammit, this is a neural interface pad,” she said sternly.

  Taq stood with a confused expression. “Like from the convention?”

  “These have been around for a while,” she said. “Used to be only doctors used them, then they got cheaper and punks started attaching them to bikes. This one isn’t that old, but it’s not the newest version. Still, I think it will suit our purposes.”

  “Our… purposes?”

  “To make you the most raddest mage alive.”

  Taq coughed out a laugh. “I don’t think anything can make that happen.”

  “Fine,” she said, pulling open her shirt and stuffing the headband inside. “If you don’t want to try new things…”

  “Aw, I am just saying I think you overestimate me.”

  “And I’m just saying you need to stop making excuses. You were born with a gift I’d kill for.”

  “I’d gladly give it to you if I could,” said Taq. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I just know you’d do more with it than I can.”

  “Taq, there’s a big world outside this campus,” said Annie while pointing to the window. “You can be a part of it, an important part, please believe me.”

  “How’s that?”

  Annie folded her hands in her lap. “You could have the biggest corps begging for your help, willing to give you anything you want. Maybe they’d want to spy on the competition, maybe they’d just want other corps knowing their mage is better. Right now, they pay almost nothing because they think they have the leverage. You can change that. Not just for you, but for everyone.”

  “Wow,” said Taq. “You have a wild imagination.”

  “I’m out there,” she said. “I see it. Things are changing.”

  Taq squatted down, placing his hands on Annie’s knees. “A’ight, so how’s this neuro-thingy supposed to help?”

  “So glad you asked,” she started. “It’s going to read your brain while you cast. I have a database of neural activity triggers. I’m coding an app that will find patterns common to the different spells you use.”

  “What if there’s no pattern?”

  “Then, I guess this won’t be as useful,” she replied. “But you said when you cast you think similar thoughts to prepare, so I’m betting this can detail the activity and find ways of mimicking that same activity more effectively.”

  Taq closed his eyes, trying to keep up. “Okay, so it will analyze my brain waves or something, and then what?”

  “It will find thoughts that fire the same synapses, simple thoughts; images, sound, movement, something like that. I can put a VR set on you and the program will guide you through the right thoughts until they become easier.”

  “There are a couple assumptions here,” said Taq. “This is magic, not science.”

  “Yet it has rules, costs, an internal logic,” she asserted. “That means we can control it.”

  Taq beamed up at her and spotted the color purple just under the left lens of her sunglasses. He squinted at the mark. “What’s up with your eye?”

  Annie looked away then back to him. She removed the glasses, revealing a shiner under her eye. “I fell yesterday. Had to hurry to a bus stop. One of the free ones, but I didn’t see the steps. Kicked right into one and wiped out.”

  Taq puzzled at her words. “I really hate that I’m stuck here while you are out there. Please stay out of trouble.”

  “I’m not lying,” she insisted. “It just happened. I’ll be more careful.”

  Taq stared into her eyes. “Okay,” he said. “How about we put this thing on and analyze my brain.”

  Annie clapped her hands together. “Yes!”

  “Right after we get a little quality time,” he added, pushing the chair next to the bed. Jones straddled her knees and leaned in. Annie turned away and Taq placed his lips around her earlobe, biting softly, then moving lower to her neck. The neuro hummed approvingly.

  “Right after,” she agreed.

  * * *

  For the better part of a week, the mage and the neuro focused on gathering data on Taq’s synaptic patterns during casting. Annie had warned him that some days she wouldn’t make it, and Thursday was one of t
hose days. Then Friday. Then Saturday and Sunday. She had let him keep the neural pad and com, despite the risk that a warden or dorm manager might find and confiscate it. And so, without her, he continued to cast whatever spells he had learned that wouldn’t destroy the building.

  On Monday, she arrived at the dorm at the tail end of visitation hours. Her plain black t-shirt hung loose on her body with a stretched-out collar, and her hair had been restyled, trimmed to just below her ears with a dark blue streak spiraling out from the top of her scalp. She sat on Taq’s bed instead of the chair.

  “Busy week?” asked Taq.

  Annie nodded, staring into the distance. “Yup.”

  “I’ve been using the recorder nonstop.”

  “Good. I should download the data.” She looked at Taq then forward again.

  The mage felt a dull sense of fear. “Ey, let’s go hang at the courtyard.”

  “Yeah,” she said, leading him out to the hall.

  The courtyard was still green as winter had not yet frozen the ground. The air held a dry chill, but the sun kept the cold at bay. The two strolled hand in hand to a half-rusted picnic table under the golden leaves of an elm tree and sat on its benches across from each other.

  “I never spend time outside,” said Taq after a few minutes of uneasy quiet. “Not on purpose. I think I might be allergic.”

  “Mhm,” responded Annie, smiling faintly.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Taq, no longer seeing a way to avoid asking her directly.

  “Nothing,” she said, meeting his gaze for the first time. “Do you love me?”

  “Um, I… I don’t know,” he stumbled. “I don’t really think about it. I like you… a lot.”

  “Yea…” she said. “I like you, too.”

  “And I miss you, like all of the time,” he added.

  “You’re just too sweet,” she said.

  “So are you.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re trying so hard to help me,” Jones maintained. “I think it’s pretty sweet.”

  Annie sighed. “Speaking of which, I better get that data. I want to show you what I can do with it.” At that, they started back to the dorms with their hands at their sides.

  “I know you are busy, but will I see you tomorrow?” asked Taq. “Maybe a little earlier?”

  “I’ll try.”

  To his relief, Annie returned to him the following day, and early enough to get a full hour of time with him, maybe longer if the wardens didn’t notice. She wasted no time after entering the room.

  “I don’t know how to get you a VR set, so I want to use your big screen,” she said.

  “Well,” said Taq. “I’ve taken a couple coding courses. What are we doing?”

  Next to the screen, a small panel was recessed into the wall. Annie popped it open and examined the available ports. “The app I made came up with some exercises. Mostly moving shapes. I think it’s a start, but we need to recreate the imagery and test it.”

  Taq opened a drawer on his nightstand and pulled out an offline data tablet. “I’ve got my books here. Doesn’t sound too difficult.” I have no idea what I’m doing, he thought. But to his surprise, much of what he had learned came back to him, and with Annie’s help, they managed to get three test spells programmed into the screen’s computer.

  “You’ve got to go,” said Taq, looking at the clock.

  “Not until you try it,” protested Annie.

  “There’s no time,” he argued.

  “Just one quick one.”

  Taq shook his head in frustration while at the same time relenting and selecting the most basic floating light spell. He knew already in his mind the motions it went through to prepare and then cast the spell, so when the screen showed a triangle moving around in a circle with its three sides slowly curving inward then back, he thought there must be a mistake.

  “This can’t be right,” he said to Annie.

  “It’s going to seem strange at first,” she said. “We are putting up the simplest thought patterns to use, not necessarily the most familiar.”

  “Can you look at the data for it?”

  “Jeez, Taq,” she groaned, reviewing the database information. She found the entry for the displayed pattern and nodded. “It checks out. Just do it.”

  “Pushy.”

  “Do it.”

  Taq sat in his chair in front of the wall and watched the shape orbit the center of the viewscreen. Its steady movement began to mesmerize him. He shook it off and focused, creating the shape in his mind. Then he felt it, a surge of Ether entering the world. Jones held his palm out, and Annie squealed with delight as a bright pinpoint of light appeared and then grew to the size of a marble, pulsing a bright and cool blue.

  “We did it!” Annie exclaimed.

  “I can’t believe—.”

  THUNK THUNK. The noise startled the mage, and the orb flickered out of existence.

  “Visiting time is over, Mr. Jones,” called the voice of the dorm manager.

  Taq held his hand to his chest and took a deep breath. He turned to Annie. “You’re amazing.”

  “Aren’t I?” she said, simpering. Annie placed her hand on his shoulder. “Come on, hurry.”

  The mage stood and rushed to the door as it slid open. “Sorry, sir,” he blurted out before Alan could begin his lecture. The manager sighed.

  “Let’s go,” Alan said, jerking his head down the hall. Taq and Anne followed him to the greeting area where they stared at each other, giddy with excitement.

  “See you tomorrow?” asked Taq.

  “Hope so,” answered Courtemanche.

  For their next two sessions, the duo feverishly programmed every spell Taq had collected data on into the training app. And while Annie was away, he tinkered with the settings, testing how fast he could play the patterns and have a spell successfully trigger. Sometimes it worked; other times it did not.

  Not all spells could be tried in his room, so he spent time memorizing the patterns, then tried them during his scheduled casting classes, impressing his teachers with his sudden improvement.

  Two days passed without a visit from Annie, and Taq sent her a message from his wall com to the new ID she had given him. She never answered, but she said she always read them.

  Loving the app, missing you, it read.

  On day three, she came to his room, and they skipped the training and instead spent their time making love on his bed.

  Taq’s hand traced the contours of her body as they lay side by side. He brushed lightly against her skin from her shoulder to her upper thigh. She shuddered in response. He lifted his hand and pointed a finger into the air, flicking a small glowing orb off the tip, creating a hard light that cast dark shadows, revealing every nuance of her form.

  Annie stared up at the light as it floated higher into the air. “You’re everything I knew you could be.” She scooted closer and kissed him on the lips.

  “You made it possible,” he said. “You made me realize how much I don’t know, how much no one knows yet.”

  “I wish I could just fall asleep here with you,” she said.

  “Someday. When I’m with a corp, we could even live together.”

  “Mmm,” she pondered. “That might be awhile.”

  “I might speed it up,” he said. “I’m not sure how much more this place has to offer. I just need to get the right kind of attention.”

  “Don’t rush it,” she cautioned.

  “Yea…” he replied. “I came up with a new idea while using the app.”

  “Oh?” she said with interest, propping herself onto an elbow.

  “I found that using the new visualization, I was able to hold one spell while casting another,” he revealed.

  “Casting two spells at once?”

  “Not exactly,” he dampened. “But sort of. I can get one spell near completion while starting another. So far one of the spells always seems to fail, but I think I just need practice.”

  �
��Sounds intriguing,” said Courtemanche. “But you might just need more time practicing with the new method. Try not to get distracted,” she chided. “Our method works.”

  “Yes, dear,” said Taq with mocking dejection.

  “Don’t get smart with me unless you want a spanking,” she warned.

  “Okay, hold on,” pleaded Taq a few visits later. He held a hand out and light began to glow; he then held his other hand out and squinted. Frost began to swirl above his palm before dissipating. The light faded out and the mage clenched his fists. “I’m so close,” he persisted.

  Annie rolled her eyes. She had patiently sat on the bed while he continually practiced, then attempted, then failed to demonstrate his new technique, and she was losing patience. “Come on, Taq. It’s not happening.”

  “Not very helpful,” he said, his face reddened from repeated attempts.

  “I just don’t want to see you chase this illusion,” she said. “It was an interesting idea, but you will have other interesting ideas.”

  “I think I can get it.”

  “Taq, you can’t,” she began. “I have my own theory. You have one brain. You have to use it to cast a spell, from start to finish. There’s just no way you are going to cast two unless you grow another brain. Not only that, but why bother when what really limits you is exhaustion and overheating?”

  For the past few days, they’d had this argument at least once per visitation. Each tried a different tactic, but neither could convince the other. Taq knew her logic was flawless, with one exception.

  “The heat factor increases dispro… dispro… faster than the increase in the spell’s power,” he tried to explain.

  “Disproportionately,” she suggested.

  “Right. So if you cast two spells at half efficacy it creates less heat than if you cast one at full power.”

  “So just cast a bunch of small spells in succession,” she reasoned.

  “Except sometimes small spells won’t get the job done, even in large numbers. But what if you could combine them?” he posed. “You could create something more powerful with less drain.”