As the day dawned and I woke up in my new abode, I missed plumbing. We had garderobe-style rooms with gravity-fed connections for waste into the sewers, but this building had not been retrofitted for running water. If only that water summoning trick had worked better. Well, at least the air filter method could be used to help with the dust and I could do a rudimentary dry scrub with a cloth for now. I'd need to get a basin and some ewers for holding water for personal use as well as any cooking I might do. Bother. I could find a bathhouse if I really wanted more cleaning. Laundry would need to be done downstairs, hauling wet clothes up would be bad enough, but all the water for cleaning and bathing would be prohibitive. Four floors up, perhaps implementing plumbing fed by a pulley system carrying buckets that could fill into large cistern on the roof it might be something doable, but not likely to be something I could convince the landlord to invest in, plus a large water tank on the roof is a tremendous amount of weight. Would be possible to collapse the building with that, and I'm not a structural engineer to figure out this kind of stuff. So I had to let my daydream fantasy of plumbing go, and focus on what I was here to do… research and teach psionics… or magic in the local parlance.
To that end, I headed off to my first new day working at the Omni again. I was going to check in with the Department Chair and get an idea of how my research assignment would function within (and around) their strictures.
As I was escorted into his office, I smiled at the lead researcher who had graciously sent me the letter of recommendation and had seemed to be reluctant to let me go. I received a curt nod and what I could only call a harsh stare in response. That didn't bode well for the future, but that wasn't uncommon in the halls of academia. Everyone wanted the research grants, nobody was super happy when someone else got the money. Oh well, this time nepotism and cronyism was working in my favor. I wasn't thrilled with that, but I couldn't prove that it was merit based yet. At least not to this crowd. I'd need about 5 to 6 months. I had the research protocols written out and ready for my first two major projects, the first on use of regenerative imaging to hasten the limbic response systems and accelate basal hemostasis rates on micropunctures and controlled cutaneous incisions. Which was the obtuse academic paper speak for "use your imagination to heal pinpricks and minor cuts to reduce blood leakage." The second on the use of sustained representative imagery as extensible paradigms for matter manipulation beyond tactile ranges, which would match up to the moving stuff with your mind technique. Ok, so technically they would be done in the other order. But that's the order I wrote them up. Anyway, back to the meeting.
"Welcome to the Omni, Grintel."
"Thank you, Director Hanbrigs. Please, call me Grint. It's good to be back."
"Andresse tells me you are an adequate mathematician and did acceptable work in the analysis division last year. I'm looking forward to seeing what you get done as the first Endowed Researcher for Magic." His voice conveyed absolute boredom and his manner was, at best, pro forma, clearly just spewing the meaningless words out of some feeling that he must say them. I may not have been fantastically good with reading people, but I was not completely oblivious. Neither of these folks wanted me here, but the money was paid in, and they couldn't say no without losing all the cash. They might try to undercut my work or claim credit for assisting if it worked out after the fact, but for now, I could see that at best they would be neutral, if not slightly antagonistic. I pulled the "sustained representative imagery as a methodology for remote matter manipulation" proposal from my folio.
"Yes. I've got my first project outline here. I'd like to get started on these as soon as we can get the research subjects lined up."
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"Oh? Well, we were under the impression you would be handling the whole deal. So, you'll need to recruit your own subjects and find any analysts you need for the job."
"I see. Do you have a list of the analysts you've let go in the past season? Or any that are surplus to requirements now that I could interview? I'd like to help keep experienced staff around if I can." Wilhena had warned me this kind of turf protection might happen, but I had hoped that it wouldn't. I guess the Omni thought I needed to get even more used to disappointment. Subjects would be fairly simple to acquire, and should worse come to worst, I could do my own analysis, but at a minimum I needed a short term staff for proctoring the initial tests and recording the data. It was a skill that was in low demand and short supply in the modern world I'd left, thanks to automated recording systems. Here, there was both larger supply and higher demand, so I wasn't wanting to be the one to train up entirely new staff for operations. I had doubled as proctor and analyst (and janitor, basic maintenance, and general gofer), but that was entirely because I was living in the campus housing and being treated and paid as a trainee, even though I was doing full analyst work much of the time. But enough about that, I needed to focus on THIS meeting.
"Unfortunately, we cannot share what we have. Since you are not part of the official department, we can only provide basic support for your office."
Wow. Really petty. And definitely a bluff. Well, I was coached on this by a better player than the Director, so I can play brinksman, too.
"Oh. So, I'm officially outside the Omni's Magical Research Division? Does that mean I won't be reporting to them or coordinating my research with the Department or Omni either? I was led to believe this was a partnership, where the Omni had rights to share any results of my projects along with the endowment's sponsor. If that's not the case, I might as well pack up here and go find my own spaces in a cheaper location. I know the endowment is paying a premium for space within the Omni, but if I have to provide an entire staff on my own as well as subsidize facilities, I'd be better off elsewhere."
OK, that may have been a bit far, but I'm on my first day, and they are playing politics already. I've never liked the petty tyrants that seem to abound in bureaucracies, so I really hope they don't call my bluff. I need them to be the publisher on the obfuscated and academicized secondary paper.
"OH! No, that's not what we mean. Sorry for the confusion." Andresse looked a bit panicked at the thought of me finding an alternative place, because the endowment would stop paying if the chair was not held by an approved researcher. Current count of approved researchers? One. Me. I fortunately contained the more hostile words that ran through my head instead of blurting them out, but I'm pretty sure the gist of my internal diatribe was all over my face.
"We mean we can only provide basic support without a compensation agreement in place."
I forced my face into a more neutral configuration. As a walkback, it wasn't awful, so I needed to let it go. I was going to be dealing with these folks for some time.
"Oh, that makes sense. I had assumed that was already coordinated in the endowment process, but if that remains to be handled, I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement." Yeah, math IS my thing, and budgets are just math about money, so I knew it was in the annual funding and had already been prepared to pay reasonable support, but was not about to get hornswoggled into overpaying. Wilhena may have given me an intro to politics, but Heinrig had given me a 2 season master class on not getting shafted on purchases. I won't bore you with the details of the negotiation, but when I left the office I was holding a list of names, including one in particular. A "promising research assistant" that didn't have a sponsor or a particularly wealthy family, so they thought to move her off to me, since I was a place to put students that would not reward their teachers with some level of connections. Ah, well. I suppose I might survive the employment of this Ms. Lunette Vedlimdt, if I had to. Oh please, oh please, don't throw me into that there briar patch.