Dyralight! I could still hardly believe it! Here I was, pulling into the parking lot, about to start my first day, and it still didn't quite seem real to me. How did a guy like me get lucky enough to land a job here as a brand new graduate?
I'd always thought I'd like to work at Dyralight someday, but I figured it would be a few years in, once I had some experience under my belt. But when Frank said I ought to apply just for kicks, I went ahead, and somehow got a call back, which led to interviews, then getting flown out here for a final interview, and finally me moving across the Empire to a town I'd never even heard of a year ago to take the job. Junior Enchantment Technician, the letter said. 60,000 platinum crowns a year plus full benefits, medical, dental, astral, all the basics, retirement account matching-funds contributions, and possibly even stock options if I lasted long enough. It was a far better deal than I expected I'd get fresh out of college!
I get out of the car, wiping my hands on my slacks. They still feel all sweaty, no matter how much I wipe. I make my way slowly up to the adamantine-and-glass building, stepping inside and walking up to the reception desk with more confidence than I feel.
A gnomish woman sits behind the desk, looking to be about 50 or so, though it's hard to tell with gnomes. They always look old; even the ones from school looked a good ten years older than me. The placard says her name is Rachael. "Can I help you?"
"Brad Webb, I'm a new hire," I said. "I think you were here when I came in to interview a couple weeks ago?"
She gave me a matronly little smile. "Right, we've been expecting you." She pulled out a little silver pendant on a chain and handed it to me. "Here's your Amulet of Access. It'll get you through the sealed doors. Orientation's in about ten minutes." She lowered her voice slightly. "You may be a bit overdressed. Don't let the techs give you too much crap about it, though; you're hardly the first one to show up like this. Just head through the door, down the hall, third on the left. Your amulet will get you through. Make sure to wear it at all times while you're on the premises."
Overdressed? I glanced down at myself. What's wrong with wearing a suit to the office and trying to look professional? Whatever. I nodded and slipped the amulet around my neck, feeling a brief tingle as it attuned to me. "Thanks," I said once her words slowed enough to say anything back.
Another smile from her. "Welcome to Dyralight!"
I headed to the door, lightly touching the amulet to the seal, which dissolved to let me in. Down the hall, third on the left, and I stepped inside a little meeting room. There were three other new hires sitting around a long table. Two other humans, a guy and a girl, and a half-elf-looking girl, all around my same age. All three of them blonde, which left me feeling a bit like the odd man out with my medium brown hair.
I took a seat at the end of the table. "Anyone know how many of us there are?" For whatever reason, I was really hoping I wasn't the last to show up.
"I think we're waiting on one more," the half-elf said. "What's your name? I'm Christine."
"Brad."
The other two introduced themselves as Charles and Eva. We got to talking a bit; looks like we're all in different departments. Charles was a new paralegal, Eva's on the Customer Success team, and Christine's the new office manager.
"You're management?" Charles asked.
She gave a soft laugh. "No, not really. Confusing titles suck! I'm actually in charge of keeping the office itself running smoothly. Make sure that no one runs out of supplies or spell components, keep the fridges and cupboards stocked with snacks, stuff like that."
Before she could say anything further, the door opened again. In walked a rather stocky young dwarf with a heavy red beard. He stepped up to the table and sat next to Charles. "Glad I made it!" He turned to the young man and offered his hand. "Kelamek Emberfury, pleased ta meet ya."
Charles looked a bit surprised but he shook Kelamek's hand. "Charles Robertson, likewise." We all introduced ourselves again. Turns out Kelamek was going to be working with me over in Enchantment.
But before we could chat too much, in walked Nick from HR, carrying an armful of paper. I'd met with him on my earlier trip here. He gave each of us a little glance and a nod of acknowledgement. "Good to see we're all here. Kelamek, Charles, Eva, Brad, and... Christine, right?" She nodded and he continued, walking around the table to hand a packet of paperwork to each of us. "On behalf of Dyralight Incorporated, I'd like to welcome everyone to employment with us. There are just a few papers you'll need to sign so we can get everything processed."
Papers. Really? I was kind of expecting it to all be ætheric, and we could just fill out whatever forms on our phones or a rune tablet. But... whatever. We sat there filling out basic ID and tax information, reading through how they do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, age, alignment, disability status and half a dozen other (non-)criteria, signed the office expenses reimbursement policy, and a bunch of even more boring stuff. Once that was all done, Nick had each of us take a nondisclosure oath, then played a short video for us about how great it was that we were going to be a part of the Dyralight family. I was a bit disappointed that it didn't actually involve being addressed by Dyralist, but I guess great dragons have more pressing matters to attend to, directing the company and whatnot.
With the basics out of the way, he sent us off to our departments. They'd given me a brief tour of the building when I was here before, so I made my way to the enchantment labs, Kelamek following beside me. "Ya nervous?" he asked.
"Not really..."
"No?" He raised an eyebrow at me.
"OK, I'm a total bubble case right now," I confessed. "This is my first job and I have no idea how I even got accepted here!"
He reached up and gave me a hearty slap on the back. "Doncha worry, ya made it. Tha hard part's behind ya now. All ya gotta do is work on the projects an' earn yer salary."
As we walked into the lab area, a woman approached us. Human, tall and slender, looking to be in her late 20s or so. "Hi, you must be Brad and Kelamek. I'm Kayla. Brad, I've been assigned as your office buddy to show you around. Kelamek, you'll be working with Irgos. He's right over there." She gestured towards a tall, blue-scaled man with a short, stubby tail sticking out between his trousers and his t-shirt. She was wearing a t-shirt too. As I looked around, I realized everyone was! And here I was in a suit and tie. Ugh.
Kelamek nodded and headed over to meet with the dragonborn he'd be working with, while Kayla walked me to my desk. Hers was right next to mine, and she started showing me how to get my rune tablet attuned and connected to the network. While we were talking, a handful of people from the team came by.
The first was an older Felyn with graying fur on his face and arms. I've never known too many demihumans, but he definitely looked to be around retirement age. "Ah, the new recruit," he teased.
"Brad, this is Kade, he's our project architect. Knows the entire system inside and out. Kade, Brad Webb."
He offered my hand, and I shook it, trying not to wince at his surprisingly powerful grip. He may be getting along in years, but the guy was really in good shape. "Nice to meet you."
"Likewise. Just drop by my desk if you have any questions about the project or how everything fits together."
A few minutes later, a middle-aged dwarf dropped by. He had his brown hair and beard neatly trimmed, far less full than Kelamek, and when he spoke, it was without any trace of the mountain clan accent my fellow newcomer used. In fact, his voice was just a little bit nasal-y to be honest. "Ah, Brad, hello! Welcome to Dyralight."
Kayla smiled. Maybe it's just me, but it looked a little bit forced? "Brad, Torrin Smith, he's our team manager.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Smith."
"Oh, just call me Torrin. Everyone does. We're pretty informal around here." He glanced between me and Kayla. "Hope Kayla's helping you get settled in?"
I nodded. "Everything's good so far."
"Good to hear, good to hear," he said blandly. "I'd better go meet the other new hire then. My door's always open if you need anything." And he walked off.
Back to setting stuff up with Kayla for a few more minutes, and then this absolutely heart-stopping girl came up to introduce herself. A little bit older than me, but... wow! Where to even start? Bright red skin, jet-black hair falling past her shoulders, some of the brightest green eyes I've ever seen, her gorgeous face dusted with cute little dark freckles. A pair of little curling horns poking out from her hair, which kinda looked like it had been styled to conceal them, but there's just no good way to hide the long, thin tail swishing out from beneath her ankle-length skirt.
"Hi, uhh... Brad, right? I'm Joanna."
I had thought I'd never get over Vivian, but she was already a distant memory, less than a week later. I forced myself not to gawk. If anything, Joanna seemed more nervous than I was! Just by rote at this point, I held out my hand. "Brad Webb. Good to meet you."
She gave it a timid little squeeze. "Thanks, you too," and walked off.
I turned to watch. I couldn't help it; she filled out that dress very nicely! I was brought back to myself a brief moment later by a hand waving in front of my face. "Hey, hey, Prime Material Plane to Brad?"
I blinked and shook my head a bit. "Ahh, sorry! I shouldn't have--"
Kayla sighed. "Yeah, Joanna's like that. Comes across as a total perfect 20, doesn't she?"
I knew better than to say something like that, especially to another woman! "No one's actually a 20. But... at least a 17, yeah."
She snickered. "You're one of those guys, huh? Good to know. Well, here's the thing." She lowered her voice, leaning in and resting a hand lightly on my shoulder. "If you saw a picture of her, you'd probably put her at a 12 or so. Maybe a bit higher if you have a thing for tieflings."
I blinked, trying to digest that. "She was using a comeliness buff? Or some sort of Suggestion on me?" Is that even legal in this kingdom?
She shook her head. "Not on you; it's an inherent aura. Can't dispel it and supremely difficult to even suppress. Word is her grandfather was an incubus. Can't really fault her for it, she can't help it. Just... it's a sensitive subject. I'm telling you now so you'll know not to bring it up in front of her. Also, and I really shouldn't have to say this at all, but making a joke in her presence involving the word 'horny' is a good way to get slapped with a severe sexual harassment complaint."
Yeesh! Had someone actually done that? "Wasn't planning on it, but... thanks, that's good to know, I guess."
The last one to come visit was the most unusual guy I'd seen yet at Dyralight. Big, tall, and heavyset, with a very youthful face. At first I thought he was a drow, with his dark complexion and elven ears, but drow are black-skinned; this guy was brown, more like a darker human. Plus, I've never heard of an elf, of any variety, with a horn. It wasn't like Joanna's tiefling horns; this was only one, growing out of his forehead, a straight, nubby little thing maybe three or four inches long. Reminded me of nothing so much as a cute little baby unicorn I had seen in a zoo once, though I wasn't about to say that to his face.
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"Ah, good morning! It is good to meet a new teammate!" he said, smiling brightly at me. He held out a hand that looked like it could engulf both of mine. I braced myself for another finger-crushing handshake, but he was unexpectedly gentle. "Apogee Zumolan, welcome to the Enchantment team." He had an accent I couldn't place. Not too strong, but noticeable.
Noticing the confusion on my face, Kayla said, "Apogee, this is Brad. He looks like he's never met a Dancer before."
"Dancer?" I asked. He looked far too large and stocky of build to be particularly graceful. Would have fit right in on my high school wrestling or melee teams.
"It is what my people call ourselves. Leialepa'sina'ka'ui. It... does not translate well into Common, but the nearest way to render it is 'those who dance between the spirits.'" He reached up and tapped his horn lightly with one finger. "With this, we speak to the denizens of other realms."
"Basically," Kayla said, "his people are all natural-born Summoners to one degree or another." Apogee nodded.
"Wow! That's pretty cool, I've never even heard of the Dancers before. Where do you come from?"
"A small island in what your people call the Sea of Leviathans."
Woah! There were people living in the Sea of Leviathans? People who had survived crossing the sea and were in contact with us? How had I never heard of that before? "So what do you call it?"
He grinned at me. "Home waters."
I shrugged. "Guess that makes sense. So, were you born there, or...?" Normally I wouldn't ask someone about such things, but he seemed very open about it.
"I was. It is near seventy years now that I have lived in your empire, though."
I narrowed my eyes. "Seventy? You messing with me?" He looked like he should still be in high school; even elves didn't age that slowly!
Kayla shook her head. "He may not look it, but he just had his hundred-and-second birthday last month."
Apogee nodded, another bright grin on his face. "The secret is to eat right," he said with a playful twinkle in his eyes. "Well, it is good to meet you. Your specialty is elementalism, yes?" I nodded. "Then we will be working together a good deal. Welcome to the team, Brad!"
I thanked him, and he walked off. Kayla must have seen the look on my face. "I know, right? Heck of a team we've got here!"
I nodded. "I didn't even see this much diversity at school!"
She made a face. "'Diversity' is for politicians making speeches. Dyralist just wants the most competent engineers out there, regardless of background."
"So it's all about the money to him?"
"Hey, don't knock corporate revenue. It's what pays your salary."
"Guess so. Just... that's not how they talked about it at school. That was professors, not politicians."
She let out a quiet laugh. "Not much difference these days."
"That's a bit of a cynical take on it..."
Kayla just shrugged. "Still true."
Whatever. It's best to just keep your head down and give politics a wide berth. "So anyway, what's the project we're working on?"
"How much do you know already?"
"Just the broad outline. We're working on the enchantments for the self-driving Feurdanf project."
"Right. Dunno if you heard about the crash last week? It made the news around here, at least."
"Was that the one where a Feurdanf sped up right through a blue car?"
She sighed. "Guess it did make Empire-wide news. Yeah, a 'blue car.' Did the reporters mention it was a custom cerulean paint job?"
"Cerulean?" The word sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't define it off the top of my head.
"Light blue, specifically the color of the sky. Best theory we've got is that the car's oculus confused it for open horizon."
"Oh wow. And we're supposed to be fixing that? How do you even...?"
Kayla looked at me. "Well, you're the one with a brand new degree," she said, a note of challenge in her tone. "Ideally, how would you go about fixing something like that?"
Oh, so now the honor of my education was at stake? "Ideally, I'd want the schema in front of me." I directed my will into my rune tablet, searching for enchantment schemas. "Wow, there are hundreds of them! How do I narrow this down?"
She gave an approving little nod. "We're dealing with Feurdanf self-driving, so..."
There were only about a dozen of them whose names were prefixed FSD. "That helps, thanks. So, looks like either FSD-oculus or FSD-decision?"
"Good instincts. Try pulling both of them up. Then what?"
I let out a low whistle as the tablet projected a couple of schemas, each far more intricate and complex than anything I had worked with in college. "O...kay," I said, trying not to be intimidated by the complexity before me. "Then, ideally, I'd want a memory crystal recording what the oculus saw."
"We have it over in the lab. Check the network, open a bond to a tablet named Crash Records, and look it up by date."
That was easy enough to find. With the schema and the data in hand, I could look into reconstructing what happened. First we watched the recording together. It lasted about a minute and looked more or less like a movie, but with ghostly lines and fields superimposed to represent mana and light beyond the visible spectrum. It was a bright, sunny day on the highway. Sure enough, the car in front of the oculus was painted the same color as the sky. It was kind of eerie, almost like seeing a person wearing camouflage standing in front of shrubbery. You could still tell it was a car, but it didn't quite look like a car was supposed to.
The oculus showed that the Feurdanf had moved forward, hesitating a few times, but eventually seeming to decide that there was open highway ahead from here to the horizon and just slammed into the car, rear-ending it at speed and knocking it off the road, then totally losing control itself. It was kind of painful to watch, honestly.
"Seems pretty clear what happened," I said. "What's the problem?"
"Problem is, look what happens when you connect that to FSD-oculus in the rune simulator."
FSD-oculus appeared to be a classifier, taking the information from the oculus and interpreting it. When I ran the data through the enchantment, I could clearly see that the hesitation corresponded to points where it was uncertain whether or not there was a car there, but the bizarre part was that, about a second before it finally started accelerating, it made a very clear recognition that that was indeed a car!
Kayla noticed my expression when I got it. "Yup. And when you connect that up to FSD-decision, what does it do?"
I looked at it for a moment. "I'm not familiar with the rune simulator you're using here. How do you join schemas like that?"
She showed me, and the decision schema... did exactly what it should have done, issuing a command to hit the brakes. But that's clearly not what had happened!
"So... any thoughts?" she asked.
"What about other input? Did the driver hit the brakes at the same time, causing interference?"
She shook her head. "That was the first thing we checked. No evidence that he did, and we double-checked the schema just in case; even if he had it wouldn't have caused that. Same for swerving, or even hitting the mana pedal. In every case, the brake should have still done its job."
"Has anyone examined the brakes?"
"Yes. They're still in good condition; no reason to think it was a mechanical failure."
"...huh."
"Yeah. That's about where we are."
We sat around and thought about the issue for a while, getting a whole lot of nowhere until lunchtime. That's when Torrin dropped by. "Hey, the team's headed over to the SC for lunch. We do this every Monday, team lunch on the house."
Well, I wasn't about to turn down a free meal. The restaurant was only a few blocks away. We got a big table in the back and placed our orders, then sat around chatting while we waited. Since there were two new members among us, there were a lot of getting-to-know-you questions floating around. Most of it was pretty basic, where are you from, what was your major, what kind of movies do you like, speculation on the Emperor's health and how much longer he was going to last, all that stuff. So I was a bit shocked when the conversation turned to Words.
Now, I wouldn't be in a field like enchantment if I wasn't a geek. But heroic fantasy's never really been my thing, and it kind of surprised me to discover I was very much in the minority here. The old tales place a lot of emphasis on words. Mages would call out the name of the spell they cast. (Often at the top of their lungs, or at least that's what pop culture today would have you believe.) Summoners would pull their creatures into the Prime Material with "I choose you." Even the Gods got in on it; rewarding a hero's struggle with a boon always comes with a ritual invocation of the Sacred Words, "how do you want to do this?"
Today, not so much. Words are important and all, but what truly matters is what you do. The discovery of ætherics has modernized our understanding of magic, making the previously-unimaginable commonplace, and honestly I wouldn't have it any other way. Spellcasting is a construct of pure will now, with words, gestures and the like only used by novices as a concentration aid. Heroes and quests have been relegated to the history books where they belong. But here were my very modern colleagues having a at-least-semi-serious discussion about what they would answer if the Sacred Words were offered to them.
Torrin had easily the most practical answer: enough money to retire on. That got a bunch of laughs and a few groans and calls of "bo-ring!" Joanna said she'd love her own private airship. Irgos, the dragonborn working with Kelamek, simply wished his tail could be longer. Kelamek gave a surprisingly passionate explanation about how he wished he had the prowess to live up to the legacy of his grandfather, who fought the forces of the Great Tyrant in the Chaos War.
Next up was Kayla. "I'd wish for the Harp of Inspiration," she said.
This immediately had half the table crying foul. "You can't wish for Artifacts," Joanna protested.
"Never heard of anyone wishing for an airship in the old sagas either," she countered.
"Well yeah, they weren't invented back then!"
Apogee pointed out that in addition to this, Lord Rosen would likely take the loss of one of his most treasured belongings poorly.
"Sure, sure," Kayla said. "But we're talking in the abstract here. Purely hypothetical, right? And hypothetically speaking, it would be awesome to have the Harp of Inspiration!" Then, apparently to deflect any further criticism of her choice, she turned to me. "What about you, Brad?"
"I don't."
"...huh?" she asked, not quite seeming to grasp what I'd said.
How was I the only one who got this? "If some deity were to say the Sacred Words to me, I'd simply respond, 'I don't.' Wishes don't come free; they've always got strings attached. They happen to people who undertake epic adventures.
"Well, I've got more important things to worry about. Today's my first day at Dyralight. I left my girlfriend and moved across the Empire for this job. Right now, the only thing I want to do is get myself established and start building a career. I say, leave quests and heroes in past Ages where they belong. I'm quite content to live out a modern life in the Sixth Age without such things. I do not want to 'do this.'"
Wow, you could have heard a pin drop by the time I was done. Everyone was just kind of looking on in shock as I said something that seemed like just plain common sense to me, but was apparently unimaginable to the rest of the team. "What? Seriously? No one gonna back me up on this?"
After an uncomfortable moment, Kade spoke up. "I think there is some wisdom in your words. You all know the theory of Thaxil's Tower?"
Most of us did, but Kelamek seemed unfamiliar with the term. "Never heard of tha tower. Where's it at, and what's tha theory about it?"
I shook my head. "It's a metaphorical tower. Philosophy. It's like... you know how you have to build a tower on a foundation, and each floor rests upon the floors below it?" Kelamek nodded. "Thaxil theorized that the needs of kith were much the same. The foundation of the tower is general security. Being safe from monster attacks, from war, plague, wild magic, and so on. Above that is bodily health. Having food, water, and shelter. As you climb the tower, the needs become less physical and more abstract, moving away from the proverbial 'things life needs to live' towards things like intellectual fulfillment and the pursuit of personal dreams and passions."
Kade nodded approval at my explanation. "But take away the foundation, and the entire structure falls. The Ætheric Revolution gave us the tools to tame the world around us, to build the solid foundation of the tower on an Empire-wide scale." He looked over at Kelamek. "You said your grandfather fought in the Chaos War. Do we not have a standard of living today that he and his fellow-soldiers would have envied?"
Kelamek shook his head. "Were he around today, he'd say we've all gone soft an' weak." He chuckled a little. "Yer right, of course, but that doesn't mean he'd like it."
The old Felyn's whiskers twitched in amusement. I just grinned over at Kelamek. "He can call it 'soft' if he wants, but can you imagine a life with no cars? No movies or voxcasts? Wandering monsters? Famine, plague, desolation?"
"The Curse of Vance?" Kade added.
"Þerios's breath, yeah!" I said. "Like, can you even imagine trying to be a professional enchanter if spell slots were still a thing?"
"Come on," Kelamek said. "No one's arguing for bringing back spell slots. But ya have to agree there have been valuable things we've lost?"
"Perhaps," Kade said. "But perhaps it was not so much a loss as a sacrifice, traded away in return for the ability to build our own lives as we see fit. Often it is best not to seek for trouble."
Wait. "What did you just say?" I asked.
"It is best not to seek for trouble?"
"No, no, the other part. Building as we see fit."
"Yes? What about it?"
My mind was running all the way at 20 as I thought over the enchantment schemas I'd been looking at earlier. "I had a friend in school. Big car guy, he was into racing. Was always working on souping up his car one way or another. Even took some enchanting classes so he could performance-tune the schemas."
Kayla let out a groan as she saw where I was going. "You think maybe the crash we're looking at didn't happen the way the rune simulator says because it wasn't actually using the same runes?"
"Yeah! Is there any way we can verify that?"
Torrin smiled. "That's an excellent idea! Do you have any idea how much it would save Dyralight if we can demonstrate that it was never our fault to begin with?"
Kayla scowled at him. "A person died, and you're worried about money?"
"I'm mostly worried about time," our manager responded. "It's not like the big guy doesn't have the money to deal with it, but if this was our problem, then we'd need to rework the schemas. That could take a month in and of itself, a month that could otherwise be spent on new features. Not to mention the hellhounds in the media dragging our name through the mud the whole time..."
It was about at this point that the food arrived, which largely brought a stop to the conversation as we all ate. Once we got back, Kayla and I spent the rest of the afternoon poring over rune schemas, coming up with theories on alterations that could cause what we saw. By quitting time we had two different possibilities of flawed runescript that would each improve the speed of the car but would interfere with FSD-decision to cause what we saw happen in the memory crystal data. Torrin said he'd have Ampha (whoever that was) look into verifying if the runescripts may have been been tampered with.
All in all, a pretty good day, I thought to myself as I drove home after work. I think I solved a major problem my first day on the job. And even though most of them disagreed with me at lunch, they didn't seem to care. I might actually get along well here!
In hindsight, the thing that turned out to be the most relevant was what Kade said about not seeking out trouble. I wonder if he had any idea just how much trouble was going to come seeking us out?