An old desk phone stands on a marble pedestal, lost in the middle of a dark room. A perfectly circular, dark room, dug deeply into the bedrock of a city far, far away from anywhere important to our story. Silence reigns in this room… until the phone starts ringing. It rings for such a long time, uninterrupted, insistent, inconsiderate even! It rings for longer than any person should be willing to wait, longer than anyone would stomach. A sane person would simply give up and call later… But this caller? No. This caller refuses to be ignored.

So it rings, even while a set of long, skeletal fingers stretch from the shadows. Knuckles and joints crack as the hand does a few stretches, taking the time to caress the nasty, annoying phone for a moment without picking it up.

“Oh bother… I wonder who that could be…?”

The voice was raspy, nasal and grumbly. It loved to complain, and it had done so for so long that even when it wasn’t complaining, it sounded annoyed and legitimately upset. The hand stopped uncomfortably caressing the vibrating phone for a moment to grab the caller ID. Its dim green light was perfectly reflected on the hand’s glossy white skin.

“Ah… G again, huh…?”

Understanding that it couldn’t simply ignore this annoying sound forever, and that the call may actually mean something important (and lucrative), the hand returned to the phone and finally picked it up.

“You interrupted my nap.” The raspy voice said.

“You shouldn’t sleep for so long. It’s bad for you.” The young boy’s voice answered, legitimately concerned.

“Oh yeah? You suggest I should go out instead? Take a shower, get dolled up, and then bask under the full concentrated power of the Sun?”

“Come on now, don’t be like that. You know what I mean.”

“You better mean something important, to interrupt my nap like that, you old bastard.”

The white, skeletal hand made a few sassy snaps, loud enough to be heard over the phone.

“Alright alright, I am done beating around the bush. Sorry.” The calm, youthful voice sighed over the phone, these conversations were enough to exhaust him.

“Yeah that’s right, bitch.”

“It’s just… we have a new visitor in The Forum, and I’d like you to give us a little check on who or what.”

“What, are you afraid of a few gremlins and jinxes finally finding their way over your precious forum? Or is this a troll hunt?” The raspy voice finally got up from the sea of cushions and empty bags, and with another snapping of his fingers, he activated the widescreens that covered every single spot of his walls with the exception of a single metal door. The lights were warm and orangey, designed to avoid straining the eyes.

The room had returned to life! It was an absolute disaster, pillows and empty bloodbags laid scattered around without a care, and the whole place had a disgusting aura of filth to it.

Blanco was fully illuminated now. His figure was enough to cause nightmares to a few children: a tall, lanky and wide-shouldered man, skin white as marble and cracked as an old dry cookie, full of darker spots and nasty scars. His arms were long enough for the knuckles of his free hand to feel the floor.

But what was worst of all was his face: a perfectly round, perfectly smooth face, lacking hair, eyes and ears, only showing a few dark veins underneath the glossy skin. His mouth was another crack in this otherwise flawless surface, showing myriads of sharp, black teeth.

“Now let’s see…”

The screens all showed the same picture of Blanco’s face, a toothy smile covering his visage. With a mere gesture of his hand, a wireless keyboard came floating to the creature, big and wide enough for his disproportionate hands. The keys were shining in beautiful purple, producing a hypnotic wave effect across its length.

After cracking his knuckles, the creature began typing and accessing one of the many screens, the one permanently connected to Dejima 08. Blanco stretched again, sitting in the air and crossing his lanky legs as he checked the analytics.

“Yep. You have a new visitor, and they immediately registered. ‘Tav’, huh? Too generic.”

“Can you give me a bit more info on them?” The young man asked.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Are you officially commissioning me now? Because this is as far as our friendship will get me without pay.” Blanco smirked, a purple tongue licking his nonexistent lips.

“...I’ll have the payment sent immediately. I want an hour of your time.” There was hesitation on the old voice. He clearly didn’t feel good about this, but one could never be too careful.

“Oh boy!” The creature clapped rapidly, and before he knew it, there was a notification on another screen. Ka-ching! The sound of money going straight into his PayBud. “Ohhh Giovanni, you gotta be my best client, really. Most people whine about my prices.”

“You probably tell that to every client you get.” G chuckled, taking it like a good sport.

“I do!” Blanco admitted with a bright, big smile, and then slid over to face a cluster of 9 screens on a wall. “This will take just a moment…”

The screens would go to black at the same time, before glyphs of many sizes, shapes and forms began flooding them, spiraling to the center of each display. The lines that draw them were a pale, regular blue at first, before suddenly taking a bright octarine hue. Blanco’s fingers tapped wildly on his keyboard, while his mind focused on the seeking runes that took him straight into the second layer of reality.

Mages didn’t usually deal with the technology of the Sleepers. Not because they felt it was below them (even though many of them would certainly take that posture to protect their fragile egos), but for protection: Technology born out of the mundane rules of the natural world did not meddle well with magic, and even in a world that had lost 95% of its magical population, infusing magic on mechanisms and electrical circuits was a great way to attract pesky fairies.

Blanco, however, was not just any mage. After several lifetimes of work and study, he had mastered the art of using magic in conjunction with the power of the Internet itself, turning him into one of the most prolific hackers and trackers in the whole world of Jericho. Perhaps even the single most requested man in the business!

He, of course, didn’t accept just any job. He only took the work that interested him, that made him think outside of the box, or that paid particularly well. But Giovanni here? The old man was an exception. Giovanni had been good to Blanco in a time where no one else would even look at the creature, and as much as he hated showing gratitude for things, Blanco was a man of honor… to a certain extent.

He at least appreciated a friend when he had one.

The screens began changing one by one as the creature found information. A national registry page, a Vapor gaming profile, a VirtualZone profile…

“This one’s not dumb. They keep good opsec, rarely sharing personal information. That’s good.” Blanco smirked. “Sadly, that’s not enough to stop me.”

Soon a picture appeared on one of the screens, the face of a smiling, bright child. An honor student with many dreams and possibilities in the future.

Then, on a fifth screen, a grainy image stolen from an unsecured webcam. A burnout stares at the screen with dead eyes and no spirit in their posture.

“Oof. Growth has been rough on this one.” The creature commented sarcastically, taking a moment to stop and crack their knuckles. “This is your guy, G. Real name: Santino Belnades. A random kid from Wohl.”

“Wohl?” Giovanni was beyond surprised.

“Yeah, you know. The country in the north. The one that looks like a pen–”

“Yes yes, I know Wohl. I just… didn’t expect to hear from the mages of the north. It’s been a while.”

“Ah, no this is not a born mage. This is a sleeper.”

“Impossible. They passed the Le Guin test and made an account in the Forum.”

“Alright then, a Bastard Mage for sure.”

There was a moment of silence as Giovanni meditated on the implications of this… only broken by the camera feed’s catching Tav screaming.

“Spy Medic, Spy Medic! Kill that motherfucker!”

“Ahhh… TS2. I really should get back into it one of these days.” Blanco commented with a bit of nostalgia. “So? What do we do? You still have some minutes of my time, G! I could scare them real good if you want them out of the forum.”

“No, that won’t be necessary. It’s just another mage in the world…they’ll probably benefit from learning a few things.”

“Eighty Two will get really, really mad if she finds out you allowed a Bastard Mage in her precious project.”

“Mustafá will get angry no matter what, but she rarely shows up in the Forum anyways.”

“Hah. Old bastard.”

There was another moment of silence, interrupted by the heavy clicking and intense gaming from the webcam feed.

“... So.” Blanco finally spoke up. “What now?”

“I’ll just say hi to them and let them be.” Giovanni said, probably smiling. “They are probably scared and insecure, after all.”

“Are you serious? I mean, this is a Bastard Mage. They shouldn’t have had the means to find your forum and yet, here they are. Don’t you find that suspicious in the slightest?”

“Hmmmn…”

“And this is happening just as we had that Temporal Displacement alarm, remember? I really doubt that’s a coincidence.”

“Keep an eye on them, please. Just to make sure they don’t get in trouble.”

“That will cost you extra.”

“Fiiiine.”

“Yes, excellent.” Blanco rubbed his hands together, before stretching lazily and tapping a few keys. He would start a file on this ‘Tav’ person now.

“Whatever the case may be… I really hope this doesn’t get them in trouble. I mean, more trouble than they already are in.” With a heavy sigh, Giovanni finally decided that enough was enough. “I’ll leave you to it. I trust that you’ll inform me if anything happens.”

“If I can trust you to keep paying me, of course!”

Giovanni sighed again before finally hanging up. Blanco, now with something to do with his day, stretched in his invisible chair and looked at the webcam feed for another moment before turning it off. If he kept it on for too long, he risked Tav realizing that the webcam was suddenly on, and he really didn’t want to scare them.

For now, at least.

He wanted to pretend he wasn’t interested, and that this would just be another boring, fruitless job with nothing to show for it but a few factoids about a random mage’s life… but he had a strange feeling about this one. There was an odd trinkle in the dead, depressed eyes of that bastard.

“Let’s hope you know what you’re doing, kid…”