Joyce rang a small bell at the front of the gymnasium, the people who hadn’t completed the test sighed, their postures deflated. That latter reaction earned a frown from Joyce, who announced that those who didn’t complete their tests should still hand them in for marking, especially if they only had a few questions left. There was still a possibility that they could receive a passing grade.
Hunter admired the woman’s poise. He’d never admit it out loud, but the sheer stoic disregard that corpos seem trained to exude in so many situations was something that he envied. He wished he could face all of his problems with the focus and unwavering self interest that they could.
But he considered himself to be a good person— a better person than he would have been had he stayed in school, had his father never died, and had Council never taken away everything that was rightfully his.
Not that they’d taken away everything. His mind flashed to a small metal briefcase, sealed so strongly that in all of these years he’d never been able to open it. The briefcase had arrived at his doorstep, under mysterious circumstances. He recognized it immediately, he had seen it before, in his fathers lab. He recognized the faded logo of the company that made it, he recognized the bumps, scrapes, and nicks along its surface. He recognized the failed attempt to erase the permanent marker Hunter had applied to it when he was too young to understand what he was doing.
The locking mechanism required a passcode that he had yet to guess.
He had no idea what the briefcase contained. Maybe evidence of the Council’s plot against his father? The timing was a bit suspect, wasn’t it? Maybe it was from his mysterious benefactor, playing some mental game, or trying to see if Hunter would open it and reveal some secret that they hadn’t been able to pry out of it. The possibility of that seemed faint. It wouldn’t have been hard for someone with enough strength, or the right tools, to open it.
Hunter’s involvement wouldn’t even be necessary.
Thus, the mystery remained. So far, no one had come to claim it from him.
Joyce rang the bell again, breaking Hunter out of his thoughts.
“We estimate that it will take approximately two hours to mark all of the tests. You are all free to stay until then, but feel free to leave and come back later to receive your result, which will be posted on the wall behind me,” she said, turning and waving towards a corkboard behind her.
Hunter had nowhere to go. He was hungry, but he figured that he needed to save what money he had in order to get a ride to the Oberon capital. He’d need to bring some of his stuff with him, tools he’d designed to make his artisanry with ether batteries more efficient. He didn’t have a hope of winning without them.
He sat down in a corner and decided that that’s where he’d wait for the next two hours. With nothing else to do, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, diving deep into his mind where he kept all of his synergies memorized.
Over the years it had grown extensive. He had personally discovered certain glyphs, like his father had. Nothing as significant as the Link sub-glyph, of course. But certain alterations of well known glyphs that work more efficiently with other glyphs, that corresponded to different elements. He also had lists of different elemental circuits that could create a more efficient flow of ether in a construct.
Once Hunter understood that ether had ‘desires’, he found that it was easier to channel it in certain ends. If you forced it to interact with an element, or ‘charge’ that it didn’t desire to interact with, the output would be much less potent. It would take more input to achieve far less output than you could be getting if you followed the etherium’s desire.
So far, he’d started to gain some insight into the notion of defusing etherium’s desires. One problem with complex etherium networks was that inefficiencies tended to stack. The multiplier wasn’t incredibly significant, but if you could defuse certain elemental charges, or ‘return’ them to a previous state of desire, you could regain some efficiency in the etherium’s flow. At least, that was Hunter’s hypothesis.
He’d not been able to discover the mechanism behind how the desires and the elemental charge of etherium was linked. It could have been the same phenomena, the element was the desire, but that was just a guess. He would need a lot more time, and a lot more data in order to understand what he needed to in order to progress. But once he did, he intuited that it would open the door to even more possibilities.
And, he reminded himself, those possibilities hinged on whether or not he passed this test, today. Otherwise, in all probability, he would be dead or owned by the Comics. A fate worse than death, in his opinion. He doubted they’d let him continue his research in peace. He would lose all freedom to pursue his own interests.
He needed this win.
He owed it to himself, and his work.
The first hour passed very quickly, but the second hour felt like it stretched ever onwards. He decided that he would spend the rest of the time walking around the rec center. He wondered if he could find any snacks.
To his surprise, after exploring for a bit, he found a few pastries.
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“Boss, I've got a bit of a problem,” Vin said, waving Joyce over. Joyce raised an eyebrow.
“You mark it either right or wrong, Vin,” Joyce said as she made her way over to him.
Vin snorted.
“No, the problem is that the name registered to desk 47 doesn’t match the name on the test that was handed in,” he said, handing her the test and pointing to the printout of registered names and the desks they were assigned to.
“See?” he said, pointing to the printout, “desk 47. Jonathan Esper. And if you look at the name of the test…”
Joyce read the name, and then read it again. Her heart skipped a beat. She handed the test back and pursed her lips.
She did her best not to take a deep breath, and wipe her hands on her blazer.
“Did they pass?” she asked Vin. His job wasn’t to mark the tests, it was to verify that the marks were accurate and that the participants were who they said they were.
Vin shook his head.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Some of these answers are sheer nonsense, never mind the abysmal multiple choice score,” he said, flipping through the pages. He found an answer to one of the written questions and handed it to her.
“It looks like he just made up whatever came to mind and thought we wouldn’t notice. I don’t know, feels like he’s some troll who took the test to waste somebody’s time. Not like it isn’t the first time it’s happened, just some kid with nothing better to do,” Vin said.
Joyce looked over the question.
You have a pallet with 80 pounds of product stacked on top of it. The pallet needs to be lifted and moved to another location 10 meters away. Design a stationary etherium construct to lift the cargo and move it.
Joyce recognized the question. It seemed simple on the surface but many would find that pulling is much more difficult than pushing, when constructs were concerned. The glyphs used by Hunter Koar, a name she never thought she’d see again— and to be honest she wasn’t sure if she should report it immediately— were almost correct, but they all seemed different than how they were standardly depicted. And the network syntax, the underlying architecture that directed the flow of etherium, was unique.
She’d never seen it before, at least not in this context. One of the glyphs appeared normal, but it was out of place, it was right at the end of the networked glyphs, instead of near the beginning where it ought to be.
If it was anyone else, she’d dismiss it out of hand completely. And she needed to be certain that this was indeed the Hunter Koar. The name “Koar” wasn’t unique to Gideon’s lineage. There were a few seperate Koar family’s in the world. Some had changed their name legally— in admiration and envy— after Gideon Koar rose to fame,
Some of those might have named their child after Gideon’s kid, following the spirit of obsession.
But if it was Gideon’s kid, then these answers couldn’t be dismissed out of hand. She needed to verify them— and then figure out what it meant. Both for her, the competition, and for Oberon.
Etherium constructs weren’t like any other system. Sure, there were many hypothetical ways to achieve a similar end result, but so far, the known formulas for glyph networks were extremely rigid. Artisans would have to experiment for years to find a new glyph pair that worked, let alone an entirely novel network syntax. The very nature of etherium was mystery. Its substance and depths were hidden to mankind.
They were groping in the dark for any sense of progress, and when progress was made, no one could tell exactly what it meant, and exactly what it reveald about etherium itself. It was simultaneously the most mystical, fantastic, and frustrating field of study in the world.
And along comes Gideon Koar to make great strides that dwarfed the efforts of previous generations. The name Hunter Koar could mean many things— fraud, a bad joke, or a potential infusion of vitality into her career. Not that she needed it.
But who would say not to such a juicy opportunity, practically walking itself into their lap?
It was probably nothing. Like Vin had said, just another troll. A Koar namesake with delusions of granduer and an inability to humble themselves.
In that case, Joyce would do them the good grace of humbling them herself, and then she would report them to the authorities, who would probably charge them a hefty fine.
She would wait to hand out the result herself.
But before that, she would indulge her curiosity regarding the construct design which ‘Hunter’ had submitted in this answer, and if it worked she would entertain the notion of taking him seriously. She couldn’t do it herself, but she did know someone who could.
She walked down to the reception desk with Hunters’ test in hand. She faxed the pages in question to someone she knew in the Oberon Artisanal Research Division. He was an eccentric sort, but was always willing to indulge his and others curiosity about new etheric possibilities. After she faxed the pages over, she gave him a call.
The mobile phone sported such an awkward design, one which she was glad her company was attempting to remedy. Oberon Enterprises was working on a more advanced product, something a bit smaller, its design a bit more aesthetically pleasing and easier to hold in the hand. She’d seen the prototype, and it was already a vast improvement over this giant grey brick.
She dialed her friend’s number as she walked back to the small office space the recreation center had given them in order to mark the tests. After a minute of waiting she was about to hang up before he answered.
“I’m very busy, today. Whatever it is, it better be important,” Paulov said. His accent making his words seem sharp and aggressive, but Joyce knew the man well. They joined the company around the same time and had collaborated many times.
“Have you checked your fax?” Joyce asked.
“Why would I do that?” Paulov asked.
“I need you to verify something for me. An exciting possibility if it pans out, but there’s also the chance that it could be nothing. A waste of time,” she said. Bait, and hook.
“What kind of exciting possibility?” Paulov asked. Joyce smiled.
“The kind that could mean a totally new construct architecture with a strange networking syntax,” she said.
Paulov made a noise that could have been humming, but could have also been murmuring.
“What was that?” she asked.
“You’re right, probably a waste of time,” he said. When he didn’t hang up, she knew he’d give it a look.
“Probably. I need to know within the the next half hour.”
Paulov said something in his native language.
“I did say I was busy, didn’t I? Fine. You owe me,” then he hung up. She reached the office just in time to see the team finishing the last few tests. She told Vin to wait another 30 minutes or so before they announced the results. He shrugged and glanced at the test in her hand, which he had handed to her a few minutes earlier.
“It’s nothing,” she said, hoping to change the subject before he decided he was curious enough to ask any questions, “just verifying something. How’d everyone do?”
He shrugged.
“Just over 15 percent made it through, i’d say. More passing results than I’d expected this far from the capital. Looks like its going to be a very competitive year,” Vin said.
Joyce whistled.
“How many of those were full teams?” she asked.
“Hard to say,” Vin said, “it’s not like they need to inform us who who they’re teaming up with in order to take the preliminary test.”
Joyce nodded.
“I’ll let you know when you can post the results. It shouldn’t be too long now,” she said. Vin shrugged again.
“You’re the boss.”
She smiled. Vin was ambitious, but he knew when to push and when to listen. He’d want her job one day— which extended far beyond supervising preliminary tests. But this wasn’t the right time to challenge her authority or competence, not that it would matter. She had a stellar track record, and that earned her some leeway in her decision making process. For instance, deciding to extend the marking period by half an hour for no apparent reason.
Her superiors wouldn’t care.
Especially if she managed to make a connection with the son of Gideon Koar.
They all had orders to make sure the kid wasn’t bothered by other corporations. They were explicitly told not to make Hunters’ life difficult, or bring much attention to him, if they were to ever cross paths with him.
But this was different. If this was him, then he was all but announcing himself to the world, and that gave her an opportunity to fulfill the spirit of the orders, if not the explicit word. If he wanted to be seen, then Joyce might as well take the opportunity he handed to her. She could help him along his journey, and increase her esteem among her colleagues.
And if it wasn’t Gideon’s son, then all she’s done is her due dilligence, rooting out trouble and enforcing the integrity of a Seated Council Corporation.
Either way, she wins.
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The two hours was up. After getting something to eat, it was almost like he blinked the final half our away. He approached the gymnasium and found a small crowd had gathered before the closed doors, those who were waiting for the test results to be announced.
Hunter found a spot in the hallway and waited for the gymnasium doors to open. When 20 minutes passed, he was wondering what was taking them so long.
Another few minutes passed. The others started to complain. Some even knocked on the gym doors, and their friends— or Hunter assumed they were all friends, laughed.
He started feeling nervous. He managed to push it away while he waited, but now it was obvious, the tension growing in his chest, in his gut, in his jaw.
He hadnt felt nervous about a test in years. He was confident that he did alright, not that he could back that feeling up with anything concrete, but the doubts still managed to surface. His whole life was devoted to etherium, to constructs.
If he wasn’t confident about the results, who would be?
And there weren’t just doubts about the results, but also about how much he might have revealed. He treasured his research, he treasured how it set him apart. One day, he would be exploring the worlds beyond Sanctuary, using his unique knowledge to solve unique problems. He would do it his way and make a name for himself like his father had.
He’d be a visionary.