It turned out Archie was cool interacting with Jacob that evening. Apparently enemies could "party and celebrate together," but couldn't "hang out or improve together." When Jacob frowned in confusion, Archie launched into a detailed explanation of a "code" and "holding to the code" but Jacob interrupted him and said he understood.

"But, just to be clear, Jacob, we're still enemies after tonight."

Archie was one weird cat, that was for sure.

Jacob had been a little suspicious when the trio had walked in on Archie and Camilla in Camilla and Grace's dorm, but the pair had just been talking about the plan for the night. There wasn't anything going on between them. At least, not that Jacob couldn't tell.

Victor—by himself for once—joined them shortly after and Archie explained his crazy plan. After that they broke up to shower, clean up, and in Jacob's case, have a short, system-resetting nap.

They met up again just as nightfall graced the sky. Victor had Stephen in tow this time. The boy had a leer to him, and without prompting told them all that he was still wired on Adderall XR from the midterm.

They all made their way to the Vanderbilt Building, which had emptied for the weekend.

The lone golem receptionist sat behind his desk in the big, high front hall where Jacob had met Claire what seemed like a lifetime ago. The golem looked up at them, its dead eyes searching the faces of the entire group. Jacob drifted to the back. He still didn't like this part.

Victor pushed Stephen to the front. Stephen stumbled against the desk and leaned over it as if peering at something on the other side.

"Yo."

"Hello," The golem said. "How can I help you today?"

"I need to make an appointment with Dr Muesli," Stephen said.

"What date?" The golem moved robotically over to the keyboard.

"June 31st."

The golem typed away, then frowned. It typed some more, then frowned again. "I am sorry. I cannot do that." It looked flustered.

"What is the first thing you remember after you were born?" Stephen pressed.

The golem frowned. "This room."

"What is the first thing you remember before you were born?"

The golem opened its mouth, clamped it shut, opened it again, closed it, then frowned.

Stephen cleared his throat. "Can you tell me what ten divided by zero is? Are those instructions sufficiently detailed?"

"Those instructions are sufficiently detailed."

The golem's eyes unfocused. It fell silent.

"Is the answer to this question 'no'?" Stephen prodded.

The golem opened its mouth. Its eyes stayed unfocused and it went still in its chair.

Stephen leaned forward, placed his index finger in the centre of the golem's forehead and pushed it gently. The golem flopped back in its chair like a mannequin. The chair rolled slowly away on its wheels, then stopped.

Stephen wiped his hands together loudly. "Piece of cake. Don't know why you needed me."

Victor leapt forward and peered at the golem. "How, man? I tried it the other day and I couldn't get it!"

"You gotta start with something semi-feasible before you get into the logic paradoxes," Stephen tapped the side of his head. "Gotta lull them to sleep. They'll see you coming a mile away otherwise. Now, let's get this show on the road!"

Stephen and Victor wheeled the golem back into one of the adjoining rooms. Archie touched his hand to the wall. The walls darkened, then resolved into a picturesque Grecian resort. Tiers of white marble columns and porticos overlooked the azure sea. Smoke trickled from bare torches up into the stars in the night sky plastered on the ceiling. In the distance the sun was locked half above the the horizon, a lazy, golden egg yolk, casting them all in shades of crimson sunset.

"Santorini?" Grace scoffed. "I thought we were doing rave theme?"

"Mykonos, you troglodyte," Archie said. "This is rave theme."

"I was thinking more 'abandoned World War 2 bunker in rural Poland' type rave," Grace said.

"Well, the beauty of it is that we can swap to whatever we want," Archie said. "One hour with this, then we can switch."

"Fine," Grace brought out several Bluetooth speakers and rave music filled the hall.

Jacob glanced out the front doors, but no professors were sprinting in in to stop them. Apart from the golem and maybe a janitor, they were all in their homes in the town.

Grace turned to Jacob and Blake, who were standing there watching it all with their thumbs up their asses, and gestured. "C'mon, dance!"

----------------------------------------

Familiar first-years trickled in and soon the hallway was loosely packed with Tisdale students. Jacob, having never been to a 'rave' and not even sure if this really qualified, was a little confused at what to do. Most people seemed content to dance casually or chat in corners. When he mentioned this to Grace she exclaimed in horror and then shepherded him through some dancing.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Blake joined them, asking Grace how she did this stuff since she was only seventeen.

"Fake ID!" Grace shouted. "Super easy in most places!"

Word must have gotten out to the campus at large because suddenly there was a sudden infusion of unfamiliar faces. Blake's friends from the Split team showed up, bringing their joints with them. Even though they were hijacking the campus's main building, they still stepped outside to smoke. It was funny where some people drew the line between acceptable and unacceptable.

Either way, if the faculty found out what was going on, they didn't care. The leniency was shocking, but it was probably intentional. They were all locked on campus, and he had a feeling if they didn't allow things like this to happen, students would go bananas.

Grace changed the scenery to dungeon-like bunker, but that opened the flood gates, and the scenery changed every handful of minutes after that, to a highrise in some holographic, dystopian city, to raw jungle, to a lofty, golden Midwestern barn, to a dozen other locales all around the world.

The night passed in sinusoidal waves. At first Jacob was burnt from the midterms and a little uninvested in dancing and milling about aimlessly for several hours, but gradually he grew so worn out that he stopped caring about everything, the midterms, tomorrow, himself, how he appeared, the other people. His enjoyment and immersion in the dancing, the music, the atmosphere inversely increased. The music permeated his head, the bass thrumming up in his ribcage. And then he really did burn out.

At some point Blake dragged him outside, and he puffed once on a joint of some sort that was passed to him from someone he didn't know. They ended up lounging on a cluster of benches outside the Vanderbilt, him, Blake, a couple people he didn't know. Two people were making out under a nearby tree and a couple small groups were enjoying the fresh air, but Vanderbilt still blasted with the music.

The one concrete good thing about the simulated weather so far had been that the nights never grew too cold, there was minimal wind, and for some reason Jacob was never as jittery during night as he was in the real world.

Was dawn far off? He didn't know. He'd stopped caring. Christ, he didn't think he was ever going to love this like Grace or some other crazies seemed to, but it was more fun than he'd thought before coming to Tisdale.

"I can't believe we're done midterms," Blake said. He was slouched back on the bench, his arms spread along the back, his knobby knees poking up. He let his head roll back on his neck and stared up at the sky.

The other students, who Jacob realized were also on the Split team, were talking about something called 'waffle-housing.'

Jacob had held himself back—sometimes with a major effort—from mentioning midterms all evening, so he grinned at Blake's comment. "Fuckin' midterms."

Blake laughed. "Nah, but like, seriously, man. We're ten weeks into this shit. We only got six left."

Jacob shook his head. "Don't remind me."

"You liking it here?"

Jacob blinked. "Of course."

Blake was silent for a moment. "Y'know, I wasn't sure you were gonna do well here when I first met you."

"Really?"

"Yeah, man. If I'm being perfectly honest I wasn't sure I was going to like you."

"Really?"

"I don't know. You seemed different then. But we're cool now."

Jacob nodded. Different. Huh.

"I'm curious, though. You still wanna be a magical ecologist?"

Jacob blew a breath out. "I don't know. Seems so far away."

"That's what I'm thinking too, but then I remember midterms are done and I'm like man, we'll blink and be done first-year here. Then it's just second-year and by the second half of that we gotta know what we're doing 100%."

"But we still got all of senior year of high school to figure that out."

"True. I guess I wasn't factoring that in. Hardly even think about high school now. Just feels like filler time to me."

"I hadn't really thought about it that way, but I guess you're right."

"Like, now that I've been here, I couldn't care less about geography or calculus. It'll just be filler between practicing my spells and volleyball."

"You're gonna play?"

Blake made a face. "Of course. Why else even bother with senior year?"

"I gotta be honest, I still find it really weird that you play volleyball."

Blake blinked. "Wait, why?"

Jacob chuckled. "Just feels so weird for someone who's capable of magic. Like for someone like me who just discovered this shit, I get it, but for someone who's known about magic their whole life to go and play a normal sport feels weird. It's not just you, it's everyone. Idk, maybe I'm tripping."

"Nah that's fair," Blake said. "But for reference, I wouldn't give up my senior year for anything. Ugh, I'm gonna have so much catching up to do once I'm back in Boston. I'm gonna be mad rusty."

"Maybe you could use a little magic to get back up to speed."

"Noooooo. I can't," Blake said, but Jacob could tell he was considering it.

"What about just to catch up? Not to like compete or anything?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"You remember that Jimmy guy I told you about?"

"Yeah, the one that got killed, right?"

"Yeah... But he unknowingly augmented himself and went to a breakdancing competition and won it. That's how he got found by the Order. But he said he really regretted it later."

"I get that. It's basically like cheating."

Silence.

Jacob decided something. "I'd consider becoming a Ranger."

"Really? What about magical ecologist?"

"Of course. That's still number one, but I was talking to the guy who leads MW Club a couple weeks ago and he was saying how actual magical ecologists are mostly research based and really only get to go out on grants and stuff. He was talking about how actually Rangers might be the best bet for getting to see the magical world."

"You wouldn't want to do research?"

"Don't get me wrong, it would be cool, but I guess I just don't want to start doing that, if you know what I mean. Like, I want to see some of the magical realm before I settle down into a research role at the Menagerie or somewhere like it."

"I get what you're saying. Get out, explore a bit, actually see the world you're going to study before you go study it."

"Exactly. How can I know if I actually want to do this, seriously do this, if I haven't actually gone out and seen the world I want to study?"

"You're right."

"So, being a Ranger might be the best thing for that out of the gate."

Blake grinned. "That would be sweet, man. We could get a posting together."

Jacob hadn't thought about that. It reminded him of how tightly-knit the Vancouver Rangers were. Eating, working, sleeping, living at the Sanctuary. "That would be sweet."

"Where would you want to go? Like, what Sanctuary? I wouldn't mind in Boston, but I think I'd like to get out somewhere else in North America first."

"Ooh, tough."

"I think a big city would be super fun, especially if we could get like three or four people we know there, but I don't know, having a smaller Sanctuary, like in Portland, Maine, where it would just be the two of us slumming it. I think that would be sweet."

Jacob grinned at the idea. "Yeah, that would be sick. Okay, I'm in. When we graduate, we'll apply to get a posting together."

"Fuck it, let's do it."

Jacob webbed his hands behind his head and leaned back on the bench, grinning. He'd never even thought how many possibilities there were, and for the first time he felt open to all of them. He'd never even thought about working with Blake or Camilla or anyone else. He'd never thought that could be enjoyable, but the prospect of it made him excited—legitimately excited—for the future for the first time since...

"It means we're gonna have to keep our marks up if we want a good posting, though," Blake chuckled.

Jacob rolled his eyes. "Don't remind me."