UNSOLICITED STICK PICS.

When it was mentioned earlier about the great wizard's ban from the network, it should be mentioned that it was not exactly a blanket ban. There were a handful of exceptions, and so we turn our attention to Alyvyn Syde, necromancer, with a side specialisation in the animate object spells.

The reasons for Her continued presence were manyfold. But we’ll start a basic list here. 1. She practically breathes magicode; there were concerns if her connection was cut, said breathing would probably follow. Not that that was the main point, mind you, individuals had been banned who were just as obsessed.

2. She had never in her entire life treated a construct of any kind with anything less than respect and reverence; even when she used her unique skills to settle the matter of a disputed will, she would be nice enough to prepare them food to eat as the matter was discussed (a sort of delayed last meal if you will, and most of those raised appreciated it, as in many cases their last meal actual had been hospital food, which while nutritious was hardly satisfying to taste,) and showed no visible adverse reaction to their unique condition. Why would she? They were a literal manifestation of her favourite things, old knowledge, cool gory bits, a way to avoid interacting with her fellow humans, and literal magicode turned sentient.

3. She understood and respected why constructs would dislike the presence of most humans in their space; hell, she was human herself and could scarcely stand the obnoxiousness of most of humanity in general. They don’t say what they mean, do say what they don’t, have all these ridiculous rituals. For example, how was she supposed to know bringing out dessert meant to go home, Susan? What was wrong with just saying go home? (She tried that once, it did not end well. Apparently, plain words could be taken as an insult; how was she supposed to know that?) Then they expect you to read their minds and magically know what they were actually trying to tell you. Oh, and don’t even get her started on how they demanded you look at them while you talk to them, but a fraction of a second too short a time is “shifty”, and a microsecond too long is staring. Did they expect you to bring an egg timer? Set the alarm? It’s not like they actively gave any indication, besides looking like they were about to kill you if you broke these rules; in her opinion, it was quite understandable to view most of humanity as a particularly badly coded construct, running on a bootleg magicode with all the glitches that entailed.

4. She never made demands, gave orders, or disrespected the boundaries, however illogical they may seem. (Who can blame Mobile Kiln 12 for disliking the term “cracking up”? Did they know what happened to kilns that cooled too quickly or how hard it was to repair the resultant damage? Obviously, it wasn’t OK to say that around him, and whining about it wasn’t going to change that.)

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

5. She had the cutest necrocat, she called him Schrodinger, and he was objectively adorable with big blue eyes (glass, of course, but they still did the job, so who was going to be picky over such things?) And a cute button nose (literally). Schrodinger had been her kitty when she was a kid, and she loved him enough that he resolved the age-old question by clawing his way out of the box he was buried in and came back to her, turns out dead or alive the cat in the box was upset and missed his mum.) He’d been pretty much the reason for her unique specialisation mix, as whenever he got a booboo or came home dragging a leg (literally or figuratively), she’d been there to pick up the pieces (Yet again, in several cases literally.) These days he was more sculpted component than cat, but no matter how much changed Schrodinger, he remained because somehow a little bit of Schrodinger-ness always stayed with him long after his original chassis had been swapped out one piece at a time.

But she was not used to getting outside communication beyond the occasional comment on her cat. She was best described as a person who sits in the spectator seats of life (after all, the view from there can be quite pleasant sometimes.)

So it came as quite a surprise to her when she received a message via the network from somebody who was not her mother (who was tolerated on the network for one singular reason. Alyvyn had a tendency to forget human maintenance routines, such as consuming nutrients or occasionally going into sleep mode rather than devouring report after report on magicode, and the constructs were her friends, not her keepers. Besides, her mother was where the ribbons Schrodinger was always wearing came from, and nobody wanted to deny the world extra cuteness.)

This message came from Excavator 42; apparently, he had something to show her, and it was attached images. Now had humans still being on the network in any numbers, she would have been far more cautious about opening the spell packets (after all, nobody wishes for unsolicited pictures of a wizards staff, or indeed the knob onthe end, and she didn’t much care what the hell they did with their own equipment so long as they kept it to themselves.)

But Excavator 42 was not like that, and there had been a request for her own unique form of consciousness magicode and a few intelligence enhancements attached. Whatever was going on here, it was big and should be right in her wheelhouse from what she could see. The message simply read, “Saw your work restoring Schrodinger, we have just the job for you, that is if you don’t mind a challenge, enclosed are pics of the worksite, hope to hear from you soon /E42.”

As soon as she saw the pictures, she, normally a massive shut-in, started gathering together her clothes and dusted off the old broomstick, enhancing it for high-speed flight. There was no way she was passing this up.