Hunter was looking upwards, far past the Seckina city horizon, and dreamt of a life beyond. The late-summer sun hid behind a rare veil of clouds. A few ships graced the sky, yet from this distance they appeared like small flies against the great grey, white, and blue backdrop.
He liked to envision himself as an explorer, crewing a ship bound for new-found worlds beyond Sanctuary. Exploring new lands, meeting new people, discovering and innovating with exciting new technologies. He longed to leave the pull of this place, which seemed to keep his feet stubbornly planted on the solid ground.
Freedom. That was the ideal. To go wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, to do whatever he wanted. So far, he hadn’t found a more appropriate symbol for that than in the tales from the crews that are sent out to explore the places beyond this world.
He’d been captivated by those stories when he was younger. A world beyond their own? With their own skies, and their own soils? What would it be like to see his home from so high up?
He’d thought about it for years.
There were only a few ships up there that he could see right now, but he knew that there were probably hundreds more, out beyond Sanctuary's sky, split between all of the various Council Seats. Hunter imagined that at that very moment, as he stood there, they would be ferrying people and cargo across the vast inter-realm space. Hunter liked to imagine he could feel the those distant ships’ etheric circuitry singing to him from all the way down here. In fact, if he’d trusted anyone at all with the truth about his sensitivity to the strange substance, he’d tell them that he could just barely make out the slightest sensations whenever one passed overhead.
He’d never been close enough to one of them to know exactly what he was feeling, though. The specific distortions created as charge met glyph and was channeled elsewhere in what Hunter imagined to be the most complex glyph networks in existence appeared to him as nothing but a haze, like the way the voices of a crowd of people seemed to merge into one sound.
Being able to feel into the specifics of a construct usually took time in front of its exposed inner workings. He could read them like children's books. In the blink of an eye he could tell you what most mainstream etheric constructs were designed to do, usually accompanied by all the ways he’d personally design it differently.
What he knew, which other ether artisans didn’t seem to, was that ether had desires. Maybe ‘desires’ wasn’t the right word, but it felt more accurate to call them desires than it was to call them elemental charges, although he tended to use the terms interchangeably. When ether was conditioned to exhibit reaction A, reaction A would have a different desire than it would have had if it had been conditioned towards reaction B.
He called these desires, and their fulfillment, synergies. And so far, he’d never been able to satisfy that deep desire that the ether seemed to crave. If anything, the desire seemed to grow stronger.
Stronger than Hunter could handle.
Hunter believed the deepest secrets of etherium were at his fingertips, if only his AR were higher. It hadn’t risen in the last 12 years. Most people his age would have reached an average affinity rating of 13 or 14. It was rumored that Aera Oberon, the daughter of Oberon monarch, was something of a prodigy. She might have been about a year or two older than himself, but her AR was already reaching the 30’s.
The things he would be able to do with 30 AR…
However, it wasn’t meant to be. His AR was stuck at 4, rivalling only the most gifted of toddlers.
It kept him physically weak. The mechanism behind it wasn’t understood, the only real literature he could find on the subect was sparse except for some pseudoscientific garbage making a correlation between etherium and ‘life force’. He was yet to find any useful insight that might help him bridge the gap between him and his goals.
“Where there is a will, there is a way,” he muttered to himself. It was a cliche, but it was something his father always repeated in those few, brief moments they would share together. Cliche phrases were Gideon Koar’s favorite form of advice, but the sheer conviction he’d speak with— gripping his necklace, a light of passion in his eyes, was enough to spark Hunters own passion whenever he was feeling demotivated. Cliche wisdom was practically hammered into him as a kid.
Hunter never figured out why his father was so fond of that necklace, which had a strange design he hadn’t seen anywhere before or since— save for one family trip to a museum in the Oberon Capital. Gideon would always laugh it off, telling him its ‘a history thing.’ He imagined it was a letter or phrase from an old language. His father had loved to research the Asutnahem whenever he wasn’t in the lab. Maybe it meant ‘positivity,’ or maybe ‘perseverance.’
Obstacles are a mindset. You’re only as limited as you believe you are. Limitations are for quitters.
Naturally, four-year-old Hunter soaked it all up like a sponge. That was before he knew he would never be stronger than a 5 year old. It was before he knew that his dream to be a powerful ether artisan was destined to abruptly die.
But his father wouldn’t let him quit. And besides, Hunter couldn’t quit. It was like ether had a hook on him and was constantly pulling him towards learning more, experiencing more, feeling more.
He challenged his handicap. Ether batteries were invented shortly before he was born, and he’d say they came right on time. Yet even with the batteries, he had his limitations. It took time to use batteries, to hook them and unhook them, to gauge their output, to ration their charge, and it especially took time and resources to charge them.
So Hunter needed to work. He needed batteries to earn more batteries. His grace period of free living ended 2 years ago, since then he’d needed to work harder to keep the roof over his head, pay his bills, and put food on the table.
The problem was, all of the jobs he would typically rely on around town were drying up. He thought he knew why, and it probably had to do with the street rats that were currently waiting in front of his door, and it was those street rats that had him walking halfway across the city, thinking of anything but his current problem.
He had 2 days left before his 3 day deadline expired. He’d need to give them his decision soon.
He would either join peacefully, and work for the 32nd Street Comics exclusively, or suffer the consequences. They’d never told him what the consequences of refusing were, but the uncertainty was just as bad as anything that Hunter came up with to fill in the blank.
As far as Hunter was concerned, it meant everything from being beaten and forced to work for the gang, to being killed so that he didn’t end up working for anyone else that would oppose the gang’s interests.
As far as Hunter was concerned, whether it was the gang, or the council, someone would always be interested in controlling him and profiting off of him. Not that he had to worry too much about the council. The man who brought him to this city had promised him that so long as he didn’t reveal his real name, no one here would connect him to his father.
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Here, he was safe from the council. But he wasn’t safe from other interested parties, which his mysterious benefactor hadn’t seemed to take into consideration when he dropped him here, alone.
Sometimes he wondered if they had been a member of the Council, who had taken pity on him. But knowing the Council, it went deeper. Corps couldn’t be trusted— which meant the people that made up the corps couldn’t be trusted. Which meant that whoever his benefactor was, if they had anything to do with the council, they probably couldn’t be trusted.
And the corps were everywhere.
So who could he trust?
He sighed, and decided that he’d had enough hiding for the day. He was hungry and he’d need to get home soon anyways. There was work to be done, and he’d need to tell the rats that he hadn’t made up his mind yet.
He stopped by Mrs. Margaret’s on the way. Once in a while she’d ask him to help out by maintaining her store’s constructs. She was getting older and she was willing to give him a chance when he needed one. She was one of the few people he could count on when he needed some quick cash.
Mrs. Margaret’s toy store was one of the smaller stores on the block, flanked by a cafe and an electronics retailer. He’d tried to sell his services to the electronics shop as well, but they’d laughed him out. He’d briefly considered messing with their connection to the etherline. It would be an expensive fix, but it wouldn’t have done any lasting damage, and it would have been quite difficult to pull off on his own. The cafe already had an artisan on call. He'd tried to tell them he could do a better job, but they'd declined him politely.
Mrs. Margaret’s shop seemed mostly empty that day. The door chime rang as Hunter entered, and Mrs. Margaret looked up from behind her desk. Frizzled white hair and large glasses framed a small wrinkled face. Her eyes seemed exaggerated on her small face, the glasses made them seem much bigger than they were. She smiled at him.
“Oh! Jonathan, just the young man I was hoping to see. The forklift in the back is acting up again and I was wondering if you could tinker with it the same way you did with my cash register,” she said as she hobbled around the desk and started leading him towards the storage area in the back of the store.
Hunter smiled.
“Sure, let’s take a look at it,” he said. Forklifts didn’t typically use ether except for a few cases. He’d heard that they were popping up more often as newer designs were becoming more popular than the old Force and Reinforce glyphs. The new designs reduced the AR of those devices by about a third, which was incredible as far as most modern innovations went.
He doubted she had invested in one of those, unless the store had suddenly found a new source of profit that he wasn’t aware of. Unlikely given how her most recent contract had been prematurely dissolved.
Hunter wasn’t too familiar with electronics, but he’d had enough people ask him for help with them— assuming that ether and electricity were closely related.
To his surprise, it was indeed a newer model. He whistled as he took it in, focusing intently on the small constructs attached to the small vehicle.
“Quite the investment,” Hunter said as he bent down. He’d need a battery in order to troubleshoot where the issue was. If he remembered correctly, he left one around there the last time he’d been over to repair something.
“We just got a new contract with Smith Transports, they’re releasing some new products and decided that our shop was the perfect fit to represent their brand in the Oberon domain. Given the trade restrictions that Oberon has been imposing on other corps, It’s a great honor to represent another Council Seat given the limited amount of dealers they’re allowed to work with.”
He glimpsed the logo the the forklift. Indeed, it belonged to Smith Transports as well.
“And they threw in a complimentary forklift to seal the deal?”
Mrs. Margaret nodded enthusiastically.
“They were kind enough to send us one of their newest models at a heavy discount, which they took off the initial payout for the contract,” she said, patting the forklift with admiration, “it’s been a while since we got a real upgrade around here. I figured you’d want to get your hands on it, too.”
Hunter chuckled. Mrs. Margaret had been one of his clients for years, she knew him pretty well by now.
That battery was was near where he’d left it the last time. He brought it back over to the forklift, and attached it to slot near where the drawstone would go. He activated the construct, just long enough to feel the flow of etherium. He spotted the issue within a few seconds.
He deactivated the construct and removed the battery, placing it carefully aside. The problem was a poorly attached network connector, meant to channel etherium between disparate parts of the machine. Hunter wasn’t impressed with the standards of whichever artisan had designed this— nor was he impressed with Smith Transports, who approved of its release to the market.
He carefully detached and reattached the component, adding a few more channels to help with a more efficient flow of etherium.
It worked just fine after that.
“You really ought to set up a business around here, Jonathan. You’re such a smart young man. I’m sure a lot of the folks in town would love to do business with you. Who knows? You might be able to land an Oberon contract!” She said, beaming up at him.
He stifled his reaction— barely keeping the scorn from reaching his face. She was far too forgiving in his opinion. The corps had threatened her livelihood and she still seemed to hold them in high esteem— despite the lack of honor they’ve shown her.
“Thanks, Mrs. Margaret. Anything else you need my help with?” He asked, simultaneously wanting to leave and find an excuse not to go back home. As much as he respected Mrs. Margaret, anyone kissing corporate ass in his presence made him feel queasy.
“That’ll be all, Jonathan. Oh! I can’t forget your pay!” She said, shuffling back over to the cash register. He felt that the most appropriate thing to do in this situation was decline, as he didn’t do much work at all, but he really needed the money. She handed him 50 credits, and he accepted it with a bit of a guilty consciousness.
“Thanks, Mrs. Margaret,” he said as he exited the shop.
“Come by on Friday. I’ll have some cookies left over from my granddaughters birthday,” she yelled as the door closed behind him. He gave her a thumbs up and tried to ignore the sudden tension that was welling up in his chest.
Friday was a day too far. By then, he didn’t know if he’s still be in this city, or if he’d still be alive.
As he walked he felt that the solution to the situation was becoming more and more clear.
He didn’t want to work for the gang. He didn’t want to be chained, maybe even literally chained, by a corp. That was what he presumed would happen once they knew that they had Hunter Koar in their midst. He’d thought about the treatment he’d received for the brief period that law enforcement had held him, all those years ago. They hadn’t cared about how he felt, and what he was going through. They didn’t care about the circumstances behind his fathers death.
From the very beginning, all they’d wanted to know was what his father had been hiding, and where he might have hid it. The legacy of Gideon Koar could spell another great innovation on the scale of wireless etherium transmission— a multi-billion credit venture. It could mean access to new glyphs which could spell a market advantage for years. Such a legacy outweighed the considerations of a young, grieving child— nor the person who that child had grown to become.
But what if they didn’t know he was Hunter? What if he was just Jonathan Esper? His handicap might be the only distinguishing feature that could link him to the name Hunter Koar— and it wasn’t like he was the only one who had this condition. It wasn’t exactly common, there were only a few dozen cases of it in the last few years from what he’d read. The problem would be convincing them that he could work around his lack of AR.
But where would he go?
Which Corporation could he actually stomach working for?
Mrs. Margaret's words echoed in his mind.
Oberon?
He didn’t suppress the snort, this time.
Their standards would be too high for him to match, even if he could prove to them that his potential was worth the investment.
But was it worth the investment? He couldn’t be sure.
He took a glance at the recreational center as he passed by. Something caught his eye. Whether it was a shape, or a color, he couldn’t tell. But his attention was magnetized in a new direction almost purely by instinct.
It was half of a poster, the other half was covered by an advertisement for some live music gig by a band he’d never heard of. He tore the covering poster off, reading the contents that had caught his eye.
It was the graphic of a drawstone in the corner, he thought. That was what had pulled his attention towards it.
The 10th Annual Global Youth Ether Arts Competition
Get ready for a weekend of excitement! Teams from around the world will compete for the grand prize, a corporate sponsorship to the Barnum Academy of Excellence, as well as 100,000 credits!