In which I finally go see the doctor (relatively speaking)
Ok, well, I ended up filling out the questionnaire. It was mostly a bunch of familial history and questions that seems straight out of Warehouse 13. “Have you ever encountered and/or summoned an extradimensional entity or one that you suspect might have been?” sort of thing.
Essentially trying to figure out what kind of ‘wizard’/mage I am. Being fair, I had to put down a lot of ‘I don’t know’s. It sucks on their side, but I suspect they’re at least reasonably pleased that I am cooperating. I can’t say that I am, but maybe it’s better to try to play by the rules until it’s time to break them.
I ended up having Lucy over while I was filling it out. I swear, I don’t know how she does it, but she goes through those fizzy canned cocktails faster than anything else. Even potato chips wouldn’t hold a candle to how fast she goes through these.
While she was lounging to some music (big band is her favorite) and I was filling out the questionnaire and asking her to define certain phases for me (much to my own dislike), I decided to ask her something.
“The other night, Jake seemed to give me the impression that he thinks you and Warren are trouble, but he wouldn’t say why or what,” I prompted.
“Oh… that’s a baseline thing,” Lucy said after a moment’s thought.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, did you ever get around someone who, for some reason or another, maybe no reason at all, they just felt wrong to be around?” Lucy tried.
I thought about it. I come into contact with a lot of people with my job, so it’s hard to know sometimes.
“I guess maybe once or twice, but I just figured it was nerves. Client meetings can be that way,” I explained.
“Well, for baselines, that’s how they feel around any of us non-baselines. I don’t think it’s a pheromone thing, well, in Warren’s case it might be, but it just seems to be something that makes baselines want to steer clear of us. Sometimes, it happens among non-baselines, but not as often and usually it’s more of a kind of negative variant of us,” Lucy gestured broadly with her hands, while lowering the volume with her big toe on the knob.
“So… like a water elemental might put you on edge?” I suggested.
“Something like that, except there’s more to it than that. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a kind of ‘greasy air’ kind of feeling when you’re near a negative variant, except that’s how almost all baselines feel around us non-baselines,” Lucy continued.
“Almost all?” I prompted.
“Well, we can hardly ask everyone how they feel about us, now can we?” Lucy smirked.
“Fair enough. Uh… this questionnaire is taking forever and so much of it feels useless,” I slouched back in my seat and glared at the monitor.
“Well, why don’t you just go get a scan done and maybe that’ll help you fill the rest of it out?” Lucy asked.
“What’s their wait time like and do they accept baseline currency?” I asked, figuring that if it's anything like a standard doctor, it’d be a few weeks at best (unless it’s an emergency), and currencies are not always universal, even with the prevalence of baseline currencies.
“It’s mostly just walk-in. There’s few enough of us that there’s never more than a few minute wait and even then it’d be an emergency. As far as cost, it’s about $50 in baseline currency, unless you’re registered, in which case, it’s just like taxes,” Lucy finished off the can she was currently holding and appeared to settle into the couch a bit further.
“Wait… so you guys have magical socialized medicine and the baselines don’t even manage socialized medicine?” I asked, not quite agog, but definitely finding it to be somewhat hilarious.
“Yup. Mostly just as a matter of convenience really. The clerics all belong to the same order and it doesn’t make sense to have regional differences or even more expensive spells on hand when even basic restorative spells are more than sufficient. And while the clerics are something of a monopoly, most of them are old enough to know that a drachma today at the expense of 30 drachmas later or even having to answer to the Council later because someone died publicly, well, they just ended up asking the Council to charge a set fee, make sure everyone registers, and if there’s side work to be had, they’ll take it, but they don’t have a need to be wealthy,” Lucy explained in a not-at-all-clear sort of way.
“So… huh… ok, let’s back up. How does one go about becoming a cleric? I’m guessing it’s similar to becoming a priest or a nun in having a ‘calling’,” my mind was racing.
“In a way, but it’s also familial ties and aptitude. One thing is guaranteed and that’s that no cleric is permitted to be wealthy,” Lucy said, cracking open another can, this one reading ‘Moscow Mule’.
“Why’s that? Some vow of poverty?”
“Nothing like that. It’s more of a traditional thing. Wealthy clerics tended to pick and choose who they wanted to help. This way, all clerics are required to treat anyone who comes to their door.”
“I’m guessing there’s some catch or bonus that compensates for that limit.”
“That house they’re staying in is Council property is and is as nice as the Council can make it. Comfortable and well stocked at all times, but never showy.”
“So they’re eternal tenants then?” I tried.
“Not as such. They have to keep the place up, doing yard work and the like, but that’s their only real expense aside from their own living expenses. The house can never really be owned by the cleric, but is on a sort of permanent loan to them. Saves the paperwork of selling it to the Order and then having the Council sort out individualized payments to the order as a result,” Lucy continued to gesticulate.
“Standard bureaucracy then,” I smiled a bit, glancing back at the monitor with the questionnaire.
“You got it. Between baseline and non-baseline societies, that’s one thing that we most definitely have in common,” Lucy grinned again.
“Well, no time like the present then,” I volunteered, standing up and grabbing my various items to fill my pockets.
“I just opened this can though,” Lucy put on a mock sad face.
“You better finish it then or it’ll go flat before we get back,” I replied, sticking my tongue out at her.
“Fine, but it’s a waste of perfectly good alcohol,” she stuck her tongue out back at me and proceeded to noisily slurp down the rest of the can.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, does alcohol affect you, like it would a baseline? I’ve noticed you drink a lot,” I tried to tactfully ask and utterly failed.
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“Not really. Or at least I don’t think so. Like, I don’t get drunk. It’s more like… a baseline having a piece of chocolate cake. Lots of sugar, lots of energy, and that sort of thing,” Lucy stood up to her impressive height.
Admittedly, she still slightly intimidated me with her ‘muscle woman’ form, but at the same time, there was something undeniably adorable about her, potentially as sexist as that may sound. What was it? I have no idea, but it made her fun. And I suspect that she mostly enjoyed my company because, comparatively, Warren was a sort of stick in the mud, tending to focus on practicing quiet meditation.
Which I suppose was a nice contrast to screaming his lungs out during the transformation. The acoustic dampener that I’d built him had worked a charm and now, Lucy and I were hardly aware of his transformations except when he came to either of our doors in full form. From what I gathered, he was quite surprised it worked as well as it did, and true to my promise, I had talked with some technician friends of mine and done up something good and custom (and especially unobtrusive). Now it looked like a grandfather clock that only tracked the cycle of the moon and had some unobtrusive microphones throughout the paneling.
Warren had of course paid for it, but, while he may be a stick in the mud normally, he certainly wasn’t tight with his money. I think the technician friends of mine who did the work nearly had strokes just looking at the commission value. I’m at least used to seeing numbers like that, but usually they’re on big major company contracts for things like production equipment and CNC machines, not on ‘hey I need to you build this small one-off thing that will go in my apartment’.
Apparently, Warren was so taken with it, he’d even written to his family that they should look into their own versions.
Lucy and I talked more about the clerics and their order on the way down to get my scan done.
Unlike the delineation between priests and nuns, the Reformation Order (or just Order) took all kinds, but was tougher to get into than a mercenary company’s private bank vault. If you were a mage, you had to be registered and have a certain minimum skill set (akin to being a vet, but with an entirely different sort of schooling). If you were a cryptid/magical ‘beast’, you had to demonstrate certain magical talents in addition to the skill set. There were a whole set of magical contracts that one would get bound to in order to become a cleric, and, like my lease, the penalties for breaking them are severe and applied in so exacting a way that no one who doesn’t wish to be virtually exiled even thinks about breaking them.
According to Lucy, albeit via Wiznet rumors, the penalties for breaking a clerical contract means you’re marked so that even baselines can see your crime and while it may look like a tattoo, if you’re part of Council society, it’s apparently a) instantly recognisable and b) a crime to provide any more than the most basic of services to them. It’s a form of shunning (as primitive as that may seem), but since the contracts are a kind of intelligent spell that shows no bias and relies on both the Council’s awareness of the contracts and the person’s inner awareness of the contents of the contracts, the contracts will self-execute and report their breakage if it happens.
This means that there’s no opportunity for corrupt officials or feelings to get in the way. The contracts know only the contract and the awareness of what is within the spirit of the contract and what is clearly not. This means that looking for loopholes is considerably ill-advised since the contract will decide for itself if the loophole is valid or not.
And while this is not a perfect system, it is generally considered a necessary byproduct and to be more efficient and less apt to corruption than involving people in the mix. That having being said, the contracts understand the concept of morals and so do not adjudicate everything in black and white, but rather that they focus only on those items which they expressly cover.
While it is technically possible for a contract breaker to appear before the Council for relief, as far as Lucy knows, only one person has ever successfully appealed their case and it resulted in the related contract being rewritten.
The cleric was not a cleric in the sense that I was expecting. Notionally, with a title like that, I was expecting robes, possibly armor, or something equally anachronistic. No, this gentleman, while clearly older (probably in his 80s at a guess) was dressed more as a farm hand, wearing firehose jeans (that had a few stains to them), worn red leather lace-up boots, and an almost ridiculous bright orange tshirt that proclaimed ‘I Like Ike’. His beard was white, but close cropped to his face and while balding, still retained a substantial amount of white hair, combed in a sort of tuft that seemed at odds with the rest of him. He wasn’t especially heavy, but he didn’t look especially fragile either. Simply well-worn might be the best turn of phrase to describe him.
“How’s it going Lucy? Who’s your friend?” the cleric bellowed from the expected rocking chair on the porch of the otherwise unobtrusive house.
“It’s going ok, Mitch. This is Sam, my next door neighbor. He needs a scan,” Lucy grinned up at him.
“Oh, is that all? Well, welcome, young man, er… uh, Sam, was it?” Mitch asked, looking me up and down.
“That’s right. And I’m not registered yet so I’ll have to pay,” I managed a customer facing smile and reached out a hand to shake his.
He gripped my hand and shook it twice with a firm handshake.
“You don’t look like one of the standards. Wild mage?” Mitch mused.
“We think so, but that’s part of what I’m hoping the scan will sort out,” I continued my customer facing smile, feeling nervous, if only because this was the sort of make or break point as whether I am a mage or a baseline.
“Well, come on in and we’ll get you scanned. Lucy, I think there’s a few cookies if you want them while you wait,” Mitch said, gesturing to the small table next to the rocking chair. There was indeed a small plate of cookies and a sweating glass of iced tea next to it.
Mitch led me inside and gestured into a room that appeared to be filled with symbols and rings and looked like something out of a magical anime.
“You don’t have to strip down, but it is certainly advised, just so we don’t accidentally get a false reading,” he said.
“So… how does this work?” I asked.
He looked at me a moment before answering.
“Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve had a newbie come through here. Well, the room is a kind of full spectrum scanner. Essentially, we can look at every part of you, from your atoms to your aura to your essentia. It’s a painless process, but some people are still nervous about it,” he explained.
“Essentia?” I tried.
“Um… well, the best way I can think to describe it for an uninitiated would be something akin to mana except it’s the more generic term for it whether I’m looking at mages, summons, or creations,” Mitch shrugged a bit.
‘Just like being at a regular doctor,’ I thought as I stripped down and piled my clothing on a nearby table.
“Impressive looking scars. Lightning by the looks of it,” Mitch said, gesturing to the lichtenberg figure running across my back.
“That’s right. I’m a bit of an accidental lightning rod,” I admitted.
“Well, nothing we can do about that, but we’ll have to see what the scan says,” Mitch replied jovially.
I stepped into the scanning room.
--
Thirty minutes later (although I didn’t realize it until Mitch prompted me to leave the scanning room), I walked out.
“I think that’s the most relaxed I’ve ever seen someone get scanned,” he said.
“How could I not? It was like being suspended in a jacuzzi, except no water,” I replied, starting to dress. “So what’s the result?”
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?” Mitch asked, his face crinkling a bit.
“Well, let’s go with the good news first,” I decided, slipping on my underwear and pants.
“You’re in pretty decent health. Blood pressure is a bit high and you could probably stand to have some minor treatments for your cholesterol, but you’re in no danger of dying naturally anytime soon,” he said, looking over a wall hung scroll that looked like it had a mix of greek, norse runes, and what looked like Chinese moving across it.
“So what’s the bad news?” I asked, ready to hear the worst.
“You’re not magic. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not magic. Which means that while you aren’t a wild mage or one of the standard creatures, I don’t know how you can even be neighbors with Lucy, let alone standing here in front of me,” Mitch said, his face almost somber.
“One of the Mage police mentioned that it might be due to having been hit by lightning,” I offered up.
“That’d be on a baseline and only for a few hours at most. Unless you were struck by lighting outside the safe house, you shouldn’t have even been able to see it,” he explained, still looking somber.
“So… what now?” I asked, unsure of what else to ask.
“Now… I’m not sure. At the very least, you don’t need to worry about registering as a mage. But you may end up becoming the first registered baseline in our history. Either that or become the first official user of the ‘Other’ designation,” he admitted, cracking the tiniest of smiles.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything. Even in magic,” I tried to smile like I was giving a client expensive news that wasn’t pleasant, but was better than the alternative.
“Indeed on that. But for right now, I think we should have a chat on the porch, assuming you don’t mind Lucy knowing,” he nodded through the window where I could see that the iced tea and the cookies had vanished.
“She’ll find out sooner or later. Might as well do it now,” I shrugged, pulling my shirt on.
“Good. Let me get us some more tea and cookies. This may take a while,” Mitch said, before disappearing into what appeared to be his kitchen.
So there I was left wondering, once again, how it was that I’d managed to find the building that didn’t exist, filled with beings who weren't baseline. I was certain I wouldn’t be finding out the answer today, but hoped the cookies would at least be tasty.