“Did anyone ever tell you that you have the naming sense of a Japanese video game developer?” Sam asked. “I mean, Thread-Weaver? Seriously? I don’t know what that is, but just the name alone makes me not want to be one.”
“Again,” Maurice said, “I didn’t come up with the name. And this time, none of us Terrans are to blame. Like almost all magic related terms, we got the name from the elves.”
“Fair point. Then did anyone ever tell the elves that?”
“No, I don’t believe they did. And besides, I doubt most of the elves are even aware of the pre-Integration difference between video games of different nationalities. We should get right on rectifying this ignorant point of view of theirs.”
Sam wagged his finger in agreement. “I’ll trust you to get on that, then.”
“I’ll add it to the list. But before that, may I explain to you what a Thread-Weaver is?”
“If you must.”
“I do. Let’s see… Ah, are you familiar with string theory?”
“Only in passing. I wouldn’t cross the street to shake its hand.”
“Passing is well enough. In essence, magical threads, or simply threads, are to magic what string theory is to matter.”
“Unproven?” Based on the stare Maurice returned him, either he wasn’t amused by Sam’s antics or physics made a giant leap forward and the joke simply didn’t work. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. What I turn out to be important and suddenly I’m not allowed to joke anymore? So let’s see… You’re saying that these threads are the theoretical smallest unit of magic? Is that about right?”
“That’s my understand of it at least. I’m not well versed in threads and the theory and practice surrounding them, being as far away from Ruler as a level 8 can be.”
“Then how were you able to tell that I am a Thread-Weaver?”
“I assumed. Based on the fact that you could easily see the magical working of this device, despite its patterns being hidden inside of it. While I barely could, even after saturating it with my magic. Also, if it was magic that you saw, then I have no other explanation for how you saw it, because it is literally impossible to sense magic before the Awakening. But remember, I said that I think you are a Thread-Weaver. I do not know for certain that you are one. As I recall, the protocol for confirming a person being a Thread-Weaver calls for a Ruler’s analysis. So we’ll have to invite one of the available two to check on you.”
“So I shouldn’t get my hopes up yet?”
“Your hopes shouldn’t enter the picture at all. Being a Thread-Weaver would just mean that your potential value as a combatant dramatically increases. But, you shouldn’t let this, or anything else, determine what it is that you want to do with your life and how to go about doing it.”
Sam was actually heartened to hear the doctor’s sincere tone. After all, it’s not like he was going to make a decision on what his new future would look like without getting the full picture of what world that future was going to play out in. “OK, so for now I’ll put the chance that I’m this something special in the back of my mind, and just focus on deciding what I want to do with my life. But to do that, I’ll need someone to finally sit down and explain some shit to me. So when’s that going to happen?”
Maurice turned his head towards the door. “I don’t know. I was hoping Ms. Khan would have gotten here by now. But in her absence, I’ll put myself forward to the task of answering any question that you might have.”
Sam waited a couple of seconds before pointing at the door. “You know, if this was a book, actually doesn’t have to be a book, any piece of narrative will do. So, if this was a comic printed on the back of a cereal box, she’d open that door right… about… now!” When the door’s hinges stayed unmoved, Sam threw up his hands in disappointment. “Guess she hadn’t heard of narrative expediency.”
“It seems not. So, would you like to keep waiting for her or shall I turn to answering some of the very many questions that I’m sure that you have?”
“Hm… both options sound so enticing…” Sam slowly drew his breath through pursed lips. “I just can’t choose, you know. It’s… I just love both of you guys so much. It’s like my parents are getting divorced and I gotta go live with one of them. But they both make the same amount of money so the material quality of life would the same no matter who I choose. Thus, the only difference would be the value and utility of the emotional connection that I have with them. But the difference is so minute that it makes choosing impossible.”
“Am I to assume your parents were divorced, then?”
“It doesn’t matter what they were. They’re dead now, right? Fuck… Oh god.” Sam reclined his head and started massaging his forehead. “I really shouldn’t have joked about that. Great, and now I feel like shit, because of course I should.” He sighed. “No… they’re not, weren’t, divorced. It was just the first stupid joke that came to my mind. It was either that or Sophie’s Choice, but I’ve never actually seen or read it, only the references to it, so I went with the material that felt more authentic to me. Ah… that’s why you always go with the holocaust joke.”
Maurice nodded his head in sympathy. “I understand how you feel. It’s all still raw, especially since it’s only your first day. I’m not going to tell you that it gets easier, nothing so trite. But you do learn to be happy despite of it. And, if one day, you’ll be capable of telling me that joke with a smile, then I promise you: I will laugh my heart out.”
Sam choked up. “That’s really nice, man, thanks. But hopefully I’ll have new material by then, so I promise to only fall back on that joke if everything else doesn’t work.” Sam took a couple of moments to recollect himself, taking some deep breaths before speaking:
“Look, Maurice, I’ll be honest with you. At this point, I’m wiped. Mentally, if not physically because of the magic propping me up. It’s been a long day, and it’s not anywhere close to over as I still have a billion questions that I want to ask and a pool sized info-dump that I want to go diving in. But what I really don’t want to do is suffer through the same exposition twice in one day. So while I’m really thankful for the offer, since it’s decided that Sarah? Right? That Sarah’ll be the one to provide orientation for Earth’s latest Taken. I think that I’m just gonna wait for her to get here and hope to god that she hadn’t made a slideshow.”
“I can understand that. Not a fan of slideshows?”
“OH GOD, I HATE THEM! Blasted things are everywhere, stupid visual aids… and stupid fucking people that can’t focus for just five minutes without something pretty being reflected in their corneas.” Sam let out a long grunt of exasperation.
“I don’t think that Ms. Khan has any positive attitude towards slideshows that would drive her to make one for you. And even if she did, she certainly didn’t have the time for one today.”
“That’s good to hear. I already like her better.” At that point, the conversation went into a lull. And after a couple minutes of silence passed and awkward (on his part) glances exchanged, Sam thought that Maurice would bid him goodnight. But it seemed that the good doctor wasn’t willing to leave him alone without supervision.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
And speaking of bidding goodnight, Sam turned his head to look out of the window and saw that the sun had indeed started setting. Orange-colored rays of light painted the outside world. The last triumph of the day before might set in.
The sight made Sam melancholic. It was a stark reminder of the fact that his life had turned upside down in less than a day. In the last memories he could concretely recall from before being taken, it had been the middle of winter. Darkness would descend early in the day, a fact that only served to deepen his brooding tendencies. Now, while he was still in a hospital, it was with the best physical health of his life; it was no longer winter; and worst of all, he might no longer be capable of brooding.
However, realizing that what he was currently doing could be very well described as brooding led Sam to exhale a breath he didn’t know he held and relax a bit. Maybe it will turn out that the physical changes he underwent really won’t affect who is. Or at the very least, if change was inescapable, that it would be a conscious process, personally guided by him.
The continued silence egged on the introspective turn that his train of thought had settled on. Which in turn, lead Sam’s mind into the one avenue of questioning that he kept trying to suppress, since the day’s beginning, above all else: metaphysics and epistemology. Indeed, much like a Lovecraftian horror (except sufficiently described and hopefully not driven by racism) the dreaded question of whether reality as we know it exists, or even whether existence is in fact possible, could drive many a man (and women, once they were finally allowed admittance to philosophy departments) to insanity.
Fortunately, before Sam could dip his mind further into those dangerous waters, a sudden sound brought him back up into the surface of reality. It came from Maurice, or to be more accurate, Maurice’s pants, and unless Maurice picked Clair de Lune as his alarm sound, someone was calling the good doctor. His assumption proved correct when Maurice, excusing himself, got up and went to the front of the room to engage in an hushed conversation.
Less than a minute later, and the doctor turned back to Sam and said, “That was Ms. Khan. She got delayed, but she’s in the hospital now and will be here any second.” This turned out to be one of the few times where “any second” was an accurate description, because less than half a minute after the call ended came a series of loud knocks from the room’s door. Not waiting for any of the room’s occupants to open it for her, a tall and muscular woman stepped through, her rapid breathing a clear sign that she wasn’t strolling on her way here. She was wearing those proper looking exercise clothes and clutching a backpack in her hands.
“Sorry I was late,” she said, turning her head rapidly between Sam and Maurice. “Really sorry. It just took longer than I thought.”
“The important here is that you’re here now and that your imprinting was successful,” Maurice said. “Please let me introduce the two of you to each other. Mr. Sam Anders, this is Ms. Sarah Khan.” Sam got up to shake the woman’s hand and was surprised by the vigor with which she shook his with both her hands.
“It seems it’s time for us to say goodbye for the day, Sam,” Maurice said. “But only for a short while. I’ll come and get you early in the morning tomorrow. Ms. Khan, Sarah, if you’d please?” He gestured towards to door. Sarah, giving a sigh, turned to follow him after promising Sam that she’d be right back.
Sam wasn’t a socially keen man, but if he had to take a guess at what the two huddled outside the door were talking about, he would bet that they were talking about him. He wasn’t sure, of course. You can never be sure about these things. Maybe they were both big fans of the same show and yesterday was the mid-season finale. Or! Maybe she’s a drug addict, and he’s her dealer.
While waiting for the two of them to finish their conversation, Sam went to refill his glass of water. Afterwards, he also went ahead and filled Sarah with a glass of her own. Just because she’s a druggie, there’s no reason to be discourteous to her. Finishing his first selfless deed in a hundred years (although you could argue, as Sam immediately did, that it was done for selfish reasons), Sam sat back down and waited for the substance-abuser to return.
A few of minutes later and his wait was at an end, and Sam gestured Sarah to join him at the table. “Hi,” she said after sitting down, with a smile so beaming it made Sam a little uncomfortable. People shouldn’t be this happy to see him, let alone meet him for the first time. “Again, I’m really sorry that I’m late. It’s just that I had… this thing. And I couldn’t get out of without making a waste of the last couple of weeks. Honestly, I don’t know why it took me so long. I should’ve been done hours ago…”
“It’s fine, really. After all, you don’t owe me anything, so any help you’ll give me is out of the kindness of your heart. So it’s not like there’s any ground for me to criticize you. Honestly, I wouldn’t care even if it wasn’t something important that you had to do.” Sarah nodded in relief, but before she had a chance to speak, Sam cut her off. “Although… I guess that wouldn’t necessarily be true. Like if you were doing something immoral, then I obviously would care about that.”
“Something immoral…” she said as though pondering. “That’s a tough call. What would you consider immoral?”
“I don’t know… Maybe if you were cheating on your partner. Maybe stealing stuff. Or, murdering, that’s always a big one.”
“No… I don’t think I’ve done any of those, at least not today.”
“Well the day’s not over,” said Sam, pointing at himself with his thumb.
“Are you suggesting that I cheat on my fictive partner with you?”
“Oh god no! Sorry if it came out suggestive in that way. I was just trying to joke that maybe you’ll find me so annoying that you’ll want to kill me.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t find you so annoying that I’ll want to sleep with you?”
“Because, while I have no personal experience in the romance department, certain snippets of knowledge I acquired through the years taught me that real life doesn’t, and shouldn’t, work this way.”
Sarah laughed. “That’s true. So, what do you want to talk about first? Or talk about at all? I thought that we should introduce ourselves first and then I could begin with this sort of… rudimentary explanation, trying to go over the major differences between this world and Earth that you should know about. But if you want to skip over the introduction, or just ask my whatever comes to your head, or just keep talking about whatever. It’s all fine with me. I want to help make this day as less awful as I could. So it’s all up to you.”
“Gee… I assure you, you won’t like giving me the conversational reins like this once you get to know me. But for now, it’s time for me to step out of the dark as much as possible and try to take this shit seriously, as much as possible. So I’m going to leave you in charge. Go ahead and talk about whatever you think that we should talk about.”
“OK, so like I said, I think we should start by introducing ourselves. I actually don’t know anything about you aside from your name.”
“Sure, but I’m not making any promises as to the authenticity of what I’m going to say. And I keep the right to not divulge any information that would paint me in a bad picture, or put me in a box.”
Sarah laughed. “Fine, then I’ll start: My name is Sarah Khan. I was born and lived in London for all of my life before I was taken at twelve-years-old. I am now twenty, in my second year at the academy here, and as of three weeks ago, I’m level three.”
“That’s all very good, but obviously there’s some stuff that you said that is meaningless to me…”
“I know, and I’m going to explain anything you don’t understand to the best of my abilities. So, just stop me whenever you have any question.”
“OK, question one. What is Lo Nd On?”
Sarah gave him back a blank stare. “Do you want me to start at Roman times or maybe just with Henry the 8th?”
“That’s interesting, forgoing the pre-Roman period. The Welsh aren’t gonna like that.”
“Anything concrete that you want to ask about me?”
“Yes. But not right now. Still need to make sure of your political leanings.”
“Seriously?” Sarah gestured towards herself. “Look at me. What do you think my political leanings are?”
“I wouldn’t know. You see, I like to avoid making assumptions about people based on their skin color. Plus, I think at this point we all know that just because you’re of south-Asian descent doesn’t mean you can’t be on both sides of the aisle.”
Sarah smiled in response. “Fair enough. Although, based on your accent, you aren’t British, right?”
“Not necessarily. Could be, I’ve just consumed a ton of American media and that caused my accent to devolve.”
“So go on then, introduce yourself.”
“Alright, hi.” Sam waved his hand to the imaginary circle. “I’m Sam, twenty-two years old, biologically. I was actually born in a hurricane, and as it happened, with nothing to lose and everything to gain. I remember as a little babe actually being able to run before—”
“I don’t recognize the source, but I’m guessing that you’re quoting something?” Sarah interrupted him.
“Butchering a song lyrics, yes. What gave me away?”
“Your self-satisfied smirk. Anyway, if you don’t feel like sharing anything with me just yet, that’s all right. Maurice already told me everything you told him and for our purposes today, that’s plenty,” she said with a self-satisfied smirk of her own.