“This is the dream of small minds: a gentle place ringed in spears. But I do not think those spears will hold against the queen of the country of armies. And that is all that will matter in the end. “ - Toland the Shattered -

The tower at the entrance to Officium Mundi had become something of a comfort zone for James. Which was kind of unsettling if he actually examined that feeling.

Having been placed by the invisible hand of the god of this place shortly after he’d led the rescue of several dozen prisoners of one of the life forms that the dungeon had spawned, it was hard to see the tower as anything other than a gift. Some people very clearly interpreted it as a threat; a sign that the dungeon was more than capable of reshaping itself to inconvenience them. And the fact that it was now the only ‘safe zone’ from the periodic resets of terrain and hazards that the dungeon now performed kind of lent some weight to that though. “Here,” it was as if the Office was saying, “is the one place I permit you to relax. Remember that I’m in charge.”

But despite that, James still saw it as a kind of thank you. The only kind the dungeon might have been able to offer; one full of hostile creatures and a game-breaking prize at the top. And so when he climbed its ramps and hallways to the top floor, far above what should have been possible with the ceiling height, he felt a sense of connection. Of belonging. And also of muscle soreness. Because it was still over ten floors to climb manually.

They really needed to build an elevator or something they could easily set up here…

James dismissed that thought. There were more logistical problems with that than he cared to address right now. And besides, the exercise was good for them.

Surmounting the top of the final ramp, James took a moment to catch his breath, hand idly pressing at the scar on his chest where he’d been shot some months ago. He hated to admit it, but he wasn’t back to full health yet. And if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t know if he ever would be. Oh, sure, they saw enough magic in their lives that it was probably inevitable that they’d happen upon healing bullshit at some point. But that didn’t mean they had it now, or that it would be… useful.

It was a strange thought, but so much of the magical stuff they had was circumstantial and personal, that there wasn’t really a promise that they’d be able to make use of anything they found.

Which was what led to them trying to abuse the *shit* out of the things they did find that could be applied en masse.

James stood at the top of the ramp, waiting patiently and taking the chance to enjoy the view out the ‘window’ up here, while Anesh drew runes on the floor in coffee grounds.

It was a ritual that they’d gotten a lot of practice with, especially Anesh. There had been talk of finding a way to repurpose a roomba to draw the lines, but then Virgil had died and no one had taken up the project. So it was by hand for now, because it wasn’t a big deal. The drawing, that is. The ritual itself was a huge deal; or at least, what it did.

Anesh finished the last line, smoothly stood up being careful not to smudge anything, and paced confidently over to the overhead projector that was set up on the end of the conference table that dominated the space. There was a box sitting on the projector, blocking basically all the light from it, and Anesh took a minute to nudge it slightly, verifying that it was in place properly.

Then he flicked the switch on the projector. The lines of coffee grounds on the floor, table, and chairs flared to a bright blue glow, some of them floating into the air like specks of gravity defying sand. There was a hum, and then a *snap*, and the coffee grounds vanished.

Anesh dusted off his hands, and with that same quiet confidence of a man running a machine for the hundredth time, walked over to the screen at the front of the room, where a copy of the ‘projected’ box had materialized and dropped to the floor with a thud.

“Nicely done.” James called to him, hands cupped around his mouth as he exaggerated how large the room was.

Anesh just smiled in response, walking back over and setting the cardboard box on the table, opening the top of it and starting to unpack the contents. Which was a bit tricky, because the contents were absolutely wedged in there as tight as possible.

“Alright.” He said, looking up after verifying everything. “Hey James.” Anesh idly greeted his boyfriend before turning to address one of his fellow tower mages. “No loss this time. Looks like we got it perfect. Which means we can now produce seventy two telepads per copying.”

The camraconda up here with them bobbed its head, already doing the math before Anesh could ask. “Seventy two, we average seven duplications each cycle, with five free warpings each object. That is twenty five hundred and twenty teleports, moving a maximum of fifteen thousand one hundred and twenty living persons. Each cycle.” The synthesized voice of the snake rattled off the numbers.

“Holy shit.” James muttered.

“To the number, or to the fact that Texture-Of-Barkdust can just do that in her head?” Anesh asked as he tried and failed to replace all the telepads in the duplicated box.

“Yes.” James said. “Okay, so, I feel like I should let you know, we don’t need that many telepads?”

“Oh, I know.” Anesh said. “We’ve got the numbers of average weekly operations from Response…”

“Forty one.” The camraconda chimed in.

“...And the average number of ‘ports needed per operation…”

Texture sounded about as smug as one could with a digital voice. “Two and one half.”

“...Which means…” Anesh stopped himself, then glanced over at the camraconda. “...did you want to…?”

“We require ninety three teleports be available.”

James snickered as Anesh shook his head. “Thanks. Anyway. This single box is enough of a buffer for *months*, even if we’re ramping up operations and holding a massive reserve. And we still have enough coffee for two more duplications today. We’re pretty bloody set.”

“Well damn. Nice.” James nodded in appreciation. “So, now what?”

“Now we reset it for the next run, which is the books you guys dug out of the Sewer, along with a few orbs we’re testing to see if they’re worth keeping in the rotation permanently.” Anesh shrugged. “You wanna hang out? I’ve already got an assistant for today, but I don’t mind an extra set of hands.”

“I mean, I’m gonna be here at least long enough to catch my breath.” James informed his boyfriend while rolling his shoulder dramatically. “Did you know that your wizard tower is *actually quite tall*?”

“People keep telling me that.” Anesh grinned. “Hey, toss me that coffee bag.” He pointed to a milk crate near the ramp where they stored the stuff, and waited for James to lean down and grab one of the bags to underhand lob over his direction. It landed almost perfectly in the palm of his hand, and Anesh almost snorted at how absurd James’ had gotten at putting things where he wanted them to go. Was it basketball practice, or the stat bonus from the magical basketball practice? It was hard to tell. “Hey, so, something I wanted to ask you.” Anesh said as he knelt down and started carefully pouring a line of coffee onto the floor.

“Is it going to be awkward?” James asked, hiding a wince as he walked over to see if he could help, carrying another bag of the magical ritual coffee grounds.

“Maybe.” Anesh admitted. “So, I heard about what happened in the Sewer. Partially from you, I guess, but also, you know. Just in general.”

“Yeah, that place is fucked up.” James accompanied the words by sticking out his tongue like he was trying to shed a bad taste. “Did I tell you about the arms?”

Anesh sighed. “Yes, I have heard about the arms. Thanks for that nightmare fuel. But no, I was thinking about the ratroach you fought at the gate.”

“Oh. That.”

Yeah, that. It was a question that had been bugging Anesh for days now. But even with three of him running around, he hadn’t actually found a good time to ask, until now. “I’ve gotta know, mate.” He said, pausing in his work and looking up with curious eyes at James’ ashamed face. “Why didn’t you just kill it?”

James sighed. A long, heavy sigh that made it sound like he had the same question and no good answer. Which was basically true. “I don’t fuckin’ know.” He admitted with a depressed tone to his voice. “Lots of reasons? No good reason? It was so pathetic.” James said.

“What, the ratroach?”

“Kinda, yeah. But also the whole situation. Like, it *wanted* to fight. I think it wanted to die, too. And I can backwards justify letting it… fuck, no, letting *her* live… but I don’t know what I was thinking at the time.”

“Alright, go ahead.” Anesh prompted, sitting back on his heels and waiting.

“Go ahead what?”

“Go ahead and justify. I wanna see how you think. You know that your thought process is interesting, right?”

James flushed bright red and tried to look at anything in the room that wouldn’t look back at him. “God dammit, stop that.” He cleared his throat. “But fine. Okay, so, like I said. It wanted to die. Right away, that’s a good reason not to do it, because the dungeon is *creepy and awful*. But also… I mean, it did something different. It talked. It also tried to stab me, but it didn’t bait us into murdering each other, and when we fought, it didn’t summon the other hundred roaches from the sidelines. I think it was fighting as close to fair as it knew how.”

“Weird.” Anesh frowned.

“Right?” James sat down next to him, arms spread behind himself to prop his body up while he talked. “So, there’s that. But also, and I’m not exaggerating here, it seriously felt like it was getting off on the violence. And I don’t wanna kink shame anyone, but I wasn’t prepared to murder someone who had a fetish for it.”

“Fair. Also ew. Am I allowed to think that’s kinda gross?” Anesh asked.

“As the queerest person in the room, I give you permission to think it’s gross to orgasm over your own death, yes.” James tapped Anesh on the shoulders like he was knighting him. “Anyway. The other thing… ah, this is silly.”

Anesh laid a hand on James’ shoulder “Sillier than murder sex?” He asked.

“Kinda? Okay, the Akashic Sewer - and we need to give Sarah a prize for that name - the Sewer steals a lot of metaphors from the school it’s under, right? Quizzes, lessons, even the fact that the geometry of it doesn’t seem to care which direction you go, only that you’re there long enough.”

“Sure, I get that. You could even look at the gross stuff as the darkest possible aspects of things like lunchroom food or puberty or whatever.” Anesh agreed. “Which is awful and thanks for making me think that!”

James grinned. “No problem.” He let the smile fall away, then. “But here’s the thing. You know what I wanted in high school?” He paused, but it was clear he wasn’t actually asking Anesh to answer. “Man, when I was in school, about half the time, all I wanted was to die.” James said it in a quiet voice, but that didn’t make it any less real, or painful. “I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was looking, constantly, for some excuse to die gloriously so I could be cool, but also so it could all be over.” He took a deep breath, feeling a flutter in his heart as Anesh didn’t say anything, just placed a hand on James’ back and ran it across his shoulders. “Anyway. In the moment, that was… that was what I was thinking. That it looked like a monster, that it acted like a monster, that it tried to stab me like a monster, but that she wanted the same thing I did when I was a student.”

“And so you let her live.”

“I did.” James admitted. Acknowledged. He sat forward, hands on his knees. “I did.” He said again with more conviction. “Because if there’s a chance that they’re people, that we can help them, then…”

Anesh grinned. “I mean, that is what we do.” He looked across the room to where Texture-Of-Barkdust, an inhuman snake thing that could stop momentum with a glance. Who also was eerily good at math, who merely tolerated pizza, but loved youtube videos of otters.

James followed his gaze with a smile. A smile that faltered and turned into a confused expression a second later. “Ah. Hang the fuck on.” He said, raising a finger into the air. “Wait. Wait!”

“Waiting…?” Anesh rolled to a crouch as James bolted to his feet. “What’s…?”

With a worried jab of his finger toward the now concerned looking camraconda, James put words to the panicked question on his mind. “How? How snake here dungeon green thing problem?” He rapid-fire rattled off keywords without regard for syntax or grammar before switching to something most humans would recognize as English. “Isn’t it super dangerous for green Life to come back in here? Aren’t we at all worried Officium Mundi is going to take control again?”

“Oh! Yes. That would be a problem.” Anesh’s shoulders slumped as he breathed a sigh of relief. “This is a test to see if the earring from Status Quo lets the camracondas operate in here. It’s working so far.” Anesh waved a hand, and Texture-Of-Barkdust tilted its head to show off a dangling metal charm hanging from the side of its head. “It’s the one that lets you go invisible. Among other powers.” Anesh answered James’ upcoming question. “Anyway. We’ve been here for a couple hours and it’s fine so far. You’re fine so far, right?” Anesh shot the question across the room.

“There is discomfort.” The camraconda admitted with its digital voice. “But I am myself. I will not do this again.”

“Yeah. We’re good.” Anesh nodded to James.

“I feel like I should have noticed this earlier.” He said, taking a deep breath and trying not to panic. “This is what I get for being literally one minute late to the delve.” James chided himself.

“A minute is a long time around here.” Anesh chuckled. “Anyway. Get off my coffee. I need to finish this.”

James stood around while Anesh worked. But after a few minutes of quiet, he had to ask the thing that was on his mind. “So, you’re not mad at me for not killing the ratroach?”

“What?” Anesh looked up from the ritual reference he was following, surprised. “No! Why would I be?”

“I dunno. People get mad at me when I’m not ruthless enough.” James felt his shoulders droop.

Anesh snorted. “That’s absolutely not true. Except for Randall, but… ugh. Poor Randall. He died as he lived; failing to properly understand us.”

“That’s kinda mean.”

“I guess. Okay, yes, it is. But really, no one is mad at you for… oh, is this about Status Quo?” Anesh’s face turned serious. “It is, isn’t it?”

“If I’d just shot all of them, a lot of people would still be alive.” James said quietly.

“If you’d just shot all of them, you wouldn’t be James.” Anesh replied, at the same volume, but much firmer. “You don’t need me or Alanna around to tell you that. And yeah, you could have, fuck, how do you even say it? You could have ‘solved a problem’ by just killing everyone who threatened us. But where does that stop? I’m gonna start listing people who threaten us, and you stop me when it gets to be too much.”

“I think…”

“Local organized crime. Local law enforcement.” Anesh ticked off on his fingers. “*Federal* law enforcement. The US government. The US military. Probably also the Canadian government, given that we fabricated a citizenship there…”

“I get…”

“Anyone who could blow our flimsy cover, including but not limited to, a bunch of high school students and several baristas in the local area. Your sis…” Anesh choked on the word ‘sister’, but then carried on. “Roughly half of our members, who now have inhuman powers. Lua is capable of snapping people's necks by looking at them funny; she's a massive threat." He pointed a finger across the room to the other person with them. "Fully half our Order isn't actually human, and could in theory be an enemy of humanity. Texture-Of-Barkdust could probably kill both of us right now if he caught us at the right angle and locked us up."

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“I get it.” James said. And then, again, a little harder. “I get it!”

“Also we've pissed off a cadre of uber-wealthy American oligarchs by screwing up their weird sex cult thing, so there's that too.”

“That one was just JP.” James protested.

“Anyone with a vested interest in the way things are is going to try to stop us. Some of them are going to use guns. Some of them are going to try worse.” Anesh whispered in the quiet of the tower’s top floor. “And we can’t just kill everyone until we’re the last ones left.”

“I know.” James said. “But, fuck. I don’t want to keep losing people because I didn’t make the hard choice. What if that ratroach comes out of the sewer and stabs a kid? What if she gets stronger and stabs *you*? What if I could have prevented a dozen deaths by just snapping her neck?”

“What if you went back in time and killed baby Hitler, eh?” Anesh snorted the question out.

James rolled his eyes. “Ugh. I hate that question. Babies aren’t responsible for anything. It’s a million times more ethical to just adopt baby Hitler and then encourage him when he starts getting into art.” He looked over to where Anesh was standing, arms spread, eyebrows raised. The look on his face so clearly screaming ‘yeah, *and*?’. James thought about it for a second. “Oh.” He said, finally. “Okay, fine.”

“She can’t be more than a few months old. And you know how to connect with her.” Anesh said, fidgeting with the mouth of the paper bag of coffee on the table. “So, you know… go adopt baby Hitler.”

James started laughing silently. “We need to call it something else aside from that.” He said, once he’d caught his breath. “I don’t actually want to keep saying ‘baby Hitler’ over and over.”

“I’ll workshop it.” Anesh offered. “But yeah, this is stuff we should be talking about with the whole Order. Because a lot of this is going to be the ethics and philosophy we take with us when we start building a justice system.”

“Oof. I am not qualified for that.” James shuddered. “I mean, I guess no one was when they first drew it up. But it’s hard to think of building a legal code from scratch.”

“Is it?” Anesh glanced up again from where he’d started trying to consult his ritual sheet again. He wasn’t making much progress during the conversation, and the camraconda had largely taken over drawing the floor lines. “I mean, okay, we’ve got that big list of things we need to plan out before we start construction of an arcology, but I seriously think ‘plumbing’ is harder than ‘peacekeeping’.”

“Based on…?” James prompted.

“Based on how expensive a working sewage system will be to maintain.” Anesh flatly said. “We need to hire city planners, by the way. We need more money for this whole endeavor. Orders of magnitude more money.”

“I’m working on it.” James cryptically said. “I mean, more, how do you figure peacekeeping is easy?”

“It’s not exactly easy, but remember what Alanna brought up a long time ago, that roughly nine tenths of crime is motivated by poverty? Well, she was lowballing it. And the entire point of building an arcology is to create a self-sufficient community free from scarcity. That chunks down the amount of actual law enforcement we need by a *lot*.”

“Fair. But there’s still stuff beyond just peacekeeping. Contract law, for example. Did you know that a two rank orb in contract law just generates more questions than it answers? I didn’t! But I do now!” James threw his arms into the air in frustration. “Also, you’re assuming entirely community-based legal situations, which doesn’t cover what we do when foreign powers start meddling with our society.” He pointed out. “And there’s still the big question to answer of ‘what is the ethical foundation of our law?’ Like, do we exist to protect the innocent? To protect the society? I sure as shit know we don’t want it to be punitive, because that hasn’t been working out for *anyone* in the real world. But being able to see bad examples operating in real time doesn’t actually answer the question of what the best answer is.”

Anesh blinked, looked up from the table where he’d scrawled a rune in the coffee grounds, then glanced back down and smoothed it out to start over, before saying, “That’s way more thought than I’ve put into it. I was kinda just assuming that Alanna had… an answer…” He trailed off.

“Fuck, I miss her.” James said, turning to stare out the window down at the other delvers assembled around the base of the tower, thumping a fist against the frame.

“Recovery has been looking.” Anesh commented. “They’re taking it as some kind of personal challenge. It’s a little inspiring.”

“I’m really not mad, you know.” James said suddenly.

“What?”

“About Alanna. I’m not mad. I dunno, I have a lot of random-ass anxieties, it’s something I’d be worried about, you know?”

Anesh kept his eyes fixed firmly on the table in front of him. “Because I lost her.” He said simply.

“Because one of you *died inconveniently*.” James corrected him. “Like, yeah, it’s inconvenient. And a little horrible. But it’s not your fault, and it’s not like I’m gonna be annoyed that you failed to, fuck, I dunno, take notes? Like, in the middle of a firefight, just stop to text the group chat with an address? Nah, we were busy, that’d be stupid. So, not mad.”

“I’m kinda mad.”

“At me?”

“At me.” Anesh clarified. “For all that stuff.”

James nodded, leaning back on the windowsill to face Anesh. “And that’s why I’m telling you I’m not mad. It’s fine, really. We’ll find her, somehow.”

“There’s always magical scrying rituals!” A girl’s voice called breathlessly from the top of the ramp.

Both of them looked over to where Momo had ascended the ramp, looking like she’d tried rushing up the first few floors and then staggeringly flopped up the rest after she ran out of breath. Despite being younger than both James and Anesh, Momo was one of those people who felt like they were more mature than they reasonably had to be for their age. JP had once commented that it was because Momo had chosen an easy style to be consistent with, and then just dressed goth every day, which made her come across as someone who had her shit together more than most teenagers. James had, in turn, pointed out that Momo was in her early twenties, and also had undergone a traumatic kidnapping by an entire magical office complex, before starting her career as a literal wizard, so maybe give her some credit. Even if it was credit to someone who put silvered studs on her body armor.

She was also, despite looking flushed and sweating, not actually panting that hard from her race up the tower. James eyed her suspiciously, and noted that even the camraconda’s eye lens narrowed in suspicion. “Were you just hanging out on the ramp waiting for a good dramatic entrance moment?”

“I learned it from watching you!” Momo exclaimed. “Also I didn’t want to interrupt. You guys sounded like you were having a moment.”

“First of all, don’t eavesdrop.” Anesh scolded her. “Second of all, I’ve played tabletop RPGs with James. He has all the dramatic timing of a plate of chips.”

“I arrive a little too late and cool off while you eat other food?” James mocked.

Anesh continued like he hadn’t been interrupted at all. “No, you’re looking at *Sarah* and learning these horrible things. I’m given to understand that she was the theater kid here anyway.”

“Anyway, Anesh’s disdain for my comedic genius aside,” James ignored the several rolled eyes in the room. “You actually got something that’s remotely close to what we need?” He asked Momo.

She grinned widely, and shook her head in a frenetic back and forth. “Not even a little bit!” Momo said it with all the energy of a positive answer, perhaps hoping that if she didn’t show any disappointment, it wouldn’t register with anyone else. “But!” She held up a finger before James could cut in, “I’ve got… something?”

“But not a way to find specific individuals.”

“No. Not yet.” Momo admitted.

James sighed, but tried to not look too put out. “Alright, I’m still curious. What’re you working on?”

“So, you know how I can make totems out of the red orbs now?”

Anesh let out a questioning hum. “Ehhh, I know that you can make totems, but you can’t really target what information they give, can you?”

“Not really!” Momo agreed. “But we’ve kinda been collecting the things; no one wants to stockpile too many ranks of prudence or something stupid. So I’ve been tinkering with a *lot* of them.”

“Worrying. They cause brain damage in large numbers, don’t they?”

“Probably! Let me finish you jerk.” Momo glared at Anesh while James snickered slightly. “Anyway. *No*, a person can’t really process too many of them. *But*, it turns out, we’ve got a lot of these little things that can grow programs to our specifications. *So*, what I’ve been doing, is rigging up a system of computers that can process the totem data from, like, a lot of them. And then have one controller program that can sift through it all, and find things that don’t fit, or match specific search patterns. A very ramshackle panopticon, but eventually it shoooould work?”

James raised a single eyebrow. “The way you made that a question does not inspire confidence.”

“Well, I mean, we need a lot more of the emerald chips. And I’m not sure if it’ll be able to get too specific. Honestly I think the whole thing will be better for finding dungeons than finding… well, Alanna.”

In an effort to not get too sad about things again, James diverted. “So why call it a ritual if it’s just a bunch of computers running the world’s second most personally invasive form of Google?”

“Because it sounds cool. Duh.”

“Was there a reason you were *here*?” Anesh rubbed at his forehead, dusting himself with loose coffee grounds. “Not that this isn’t interesting, but you’re both slowing down my actual project here tonight.”

“Oh, yeah!” Momo pulled a pouch off her armor’s plate and tossed it to Anesh who fumbled the catch and had to pick it up off the floor. “Brought you a green, if you needed anything to test out duplicates of.” She waved at James. “Anyway, that’s actually all. We’re headed back out, Daniel’s taking us to a cave and we’re gonna haul out so much processed silver. And also magical computer programs. Guys, our lives are *weird* as heck.” She called the last part over her shoulder as she half-jogged half-slid down the ramp again.

Anesh grumbled to himself as he shook the green orb out of the pouch. “That girl is a spaz.”

“I think that’s a rude word these days.” James pointed out.

“American rude, or everywhere rude?” Anesh asked back. “Because your country…”

“You live here too. And we’re *both* trying to build something new.”

“Fair.”

“Anyway. American rude.” James answered the original question.

Anesh snorted a breath of laughter. “Knew it. Ah well. That does remind me that we need to get a chip or ten working on hunting down digital dungeons. I keep forgetting, to the point that I’m worried it’s an antimeme.”

“I’ll make a note to remind you, if I don’t forget.” James joked, but actually did take the time to pull out his phone and type in a line to his to-do list. So!” James segued again. “What’s left on the copier tonight? More guns that shoot fireballs? More guns that shoot *spiders*?”

“No one enjoyed that weaponry.” Texture-Of-Barkdust chimed in from where it had finished the last floor-line of coffee. “Including all accounted spiders.”

“Also weapons are bulky and inefficient uses of our copy space.” Anesh said. “We’ve actually got a priority chart on…” he scanned the space they were in, before pointing, “*that* whiteboard. Basically, if we aren’t resupplying consumables like telepads, we make upgrade kits for people, and if we’ve got enough of those, we test new greens and purples. With a couple copies each night set aside for goodwill.”

“Like the hearts?” James asked.

“Yeah.” Anesh confirmed with an unseen nod, as he walked to the low row of bankers boxes against the wall and shuffled them around to pick one out. “Although right now, I’ve been thinking we can do better.”

“I hear there’s a vaccine in the works. You wanna copy that?”

“Oh, god no. Manufacturing should be way beyond what we can add. And besides, we don’t have the refrigeration. Remember that we’re super cheating with the hearts thanks to whatever blue Sarah had at the time. We can’t really handle most medical things. No, I was thinking that we should be making runs of the purple orb that boosts immune systems.” Anesh said.

“Doesn’t that run into the same problem, that we can’t really make enough to… make enough?” James asked. “Like, it seems like it would be more effective to do copy-testing of greens at hospitals, and hope for upgrades that can effect people en masse, right?”

Anesh considered that for a minute. “Hm. Good point. But the purples could save lives directly. Even if it’s only a few. It doesn’t fix the whole problem, but…”

“You start with one.”

“What?”

“Something Alanna liked to say. Likes to say. It’s the only answer that feels acceptable to the Nirvana Fallacy. If you can’t save every single person all at once, then instead of giving up, you start by saving who you can.” James touched a few fingers to his chest, wondering if the gnawing sensation was from the surgery scar, or a much deeper hurt. “I think she’d be disappointed with me.” He muttered. “I spent three fucking months doing nothing. We could have been helping. I should have been helping.”

“We never stopped creating human parts.” Texture-Of-Barkdust added as the camraconda slithered between the two of them to toss an empty bag of coffee into the trash bin.

“And now we have something else we can duplicate.” Anesh said simply. “We’re learning. It’s okay.” He shrugged. “So, how many immunity boosters do you think the doc can use?”

“Uh…” James rumbled out incredulously. “Seven billion? Give or take?”

Anesh nodded, keeping his face blank. “Mm hm. Mm hm. Okay.” He opened up a carton with foam inserts for orbs, perfectly sized to fit on the projector. “Let’s start with a hundred and twenty, and go from there.”

“You can duplicate a hundred and twenty orbs at once?” James was impressed. “That’s actually awesome.”

“Well, they have to be the small ones, which these thankfully are. And also we’ll need to get up to the point that we have a hundred and twenty extras. So, a lot of testing with other things while we do it. We’re still perfecting the procedure so we maximize gain.” He sighed. “I don’t think we’re using this right. It still feels like we’re missing something obvious.” Anesh stared at the projector screen on the wall, still sporting a few finger sized bullet holes from where he and James had claimed this place from its previous occupants.

“You know what this whole thing makes me think of?” James asked suddenly.

“That we don’t appreciate our magical adventure space nearly enough?”

“No… yes. Okay, that too. But also, just how fucking annoying poverty is.” James spit the words out with a sudden venom that Anesh wasn’t expecting.

Anesh looked up from where he was adding labeled orbs to the copy crate. “Annoying?”

“Maybe the wrong word, but… okay, look. We can literally make matter out of nowhere, duplicate *anything* that isn’t too big, and yet… we can’t even make a dent in the nature of poverty, even in just our city. There’s too many people, it’s too fucking big. But *also*, every time we try to think of things to copy, we end up with this circular conversation where whatever we come up with, it’s just more effective to *do it manually*! Like with the vaccine thing! You said the manufacturers could make more than us, probably in five minutes and they’ve outdone our wizard bullshit! That’s kinda great.” He trailed off.

“But?” Anesh asked as he replaced part of the foam in the crate with the two books from the school, wedging them in at an awkward angle.

“But if it’s so easy, why in the *fuck* do we pretend that we need some kind of future tech to get to a post scarcity society?” James didn’t realize how angry he sounded, even though he felt it. “In just this country, something like thirty-ish percent of food doesn’t get eaten. Thirty. Percent. Starvation should be a goddamn illusion. There are literally more empty houses and apartments than there are people without homes, and every time I drive past the new apartment block being constructed near our place, my blood boils. If building more homes actually helped, then you should be able to pay rent with loose change and a Taco Bell gift card.” He chopped a hand down in a furious motion. “Poverty is *fake*. Every single problem we have is one of logistics. And yet, we’re sitting here trying to figure out how to fix problems that *shouldn’t even fucking exist*,” he almost yelled the words, “with goddamn *magic*, that would be better used making everyone immortal instead of trying to prop up a health care industry that focused more on the industry part than the care bit.”

Silence greeted him. His boyfriend and the camraconda assistant stared at James with concern and confusion respectively.

“I don’t… know how to fix it.” Anesh admitted into the still air.

“What is poverty?” Texture-Of-Barkdust asked.

“It’s when you don’t have enough to sustain yourself effectively, so you have to go to excessive lengths to stay alive, and you’re punished in various ways that make it very hard to build a better way to sustain yourself.” James answered.

“Ah. Like us.” The camraconda bobbed in a nod. “Sense. You rescue people from things.”

“We rescued you from a dungeon, not from…” James stopped, thought about it. “Okay, yeah.”

“Now your ‘dungeon’ causes more poverty.” The camraconda stated, matter of factly. “So. You rescue people.”

“We call them a ‘government’.” Anesh intersected. “Not a dungeon.”

“I learn.” Texture-Of-Barkdust made a mental note.

“Thirty percent? Really?” Anesh refocused on what James had said. “Why? Where does it go?”

“Thrown out, mostly. It happens at either the highest or lowest level, which is why it’s a problem. Either a farm doesn’t sell its product, so it just gets shipped to a landfill, or the individual person doesn’t use what they buy, so the same thing.” James’ shoulders slumped. “And it’s really hard to get people to buy exactly as many tomatoes as they need. Which is part of why this is a problem at all; a lot of the solutions are… specific, and finicky? Like, making grocery stores more accessible, which incentivizes smaller shopping trips. Stuff like centralizing food supplies, improving preservation techniques…”

“Isn’t that what cans are for?”

“I more meant finding magical bullshit answers, like how we can keep lettuce in our apartment for, like, a month now.”

“What?” Anesh jolted upright. “What did you do to our apartment.” He flatly demanded.

James tilted his head back. “Nothing? Remember, oh god, like, a year ago? We got a green orb that just gave us a debuff to entropy. Apparently it does that.” He shook off the question and continued his original thought. “Anyway. The point is, there are obviously ways to make less food get wasted. But they all require people to change their lifestyles, or they’re bigger things like shipping, which are logistically expensive. None of them are *impossible*, though, and most of them aren’t actually hard at all. That’s what makes me so fucking angry, is that we *could* have solved all of this. Humanity, that is, not us individually.”

“I remember Alanna saying something about the cost of ending world hunger a while back?” Anesh half asked. “Like, it would take ten billion dollars a year, for a decade?”

“Most recent estimates put it at about thirty-ish billion a year for ten years, but yeah.” James agreed, and then saw the weird look Anesh gave him. “What? I’ve been doing a lot of research on this.”

Anesh shook his head. “Nothing.” He said. “Anyway. That’s not… actually that much money. Is that because of this whole thing? Where the food’s already there and we just need to get it where it needs to be?”

“More or less, I think.” James said. “I am, honestly, not an expert on this. But it does seem that way. And yeah, it *isn’t* that much money. Do you think it would be worth it to just become rich and then throw money at global problems? Would that be a better long term solution than the arcology thing?”

“Do both.” The camraconda suggested. “No appreciation for poverty.” It was strange how much venom it could put on a word with a digital voice.

“What they said.” Anesh agreed. “Leveraging wealth is nice, but prototyping a better way of building societies and living as people is a long term benefit for all of humanity. And if it doesn’t work… then we tried. We can keep trying. As long as it takes to get it right.”

“Could be a while.” James told him.

“Eh. If I get bored, I’ll just make another duplicate and send them off to have adventures for me.” Anesh admitted.

“Oh yeah, how’s working at NASA?” James asked after he got his laugh under control.

Anesh shrugged. “I dunno! The me that went off to have adventures isn’t available to plug into that often.”

“I feel like you’re a one-man example of the parable of the choir.” James said, still smiling. He felt a little better, having expressed his frustrations. And even though the problems were still there, at least now they knew what they needed to fix.

“Is that the thing where choirs can hold notes forever because there’s enough people?” Anesh asked.

“What is a choir?” Texture-Of-Barkdust asked.

James jumped a little at the voice that came from right next to him. “Okay, that obfuscation power of yours is working a little too well.” He said as he let the adrenaline shot bleed out of his chest. “A choir is a group of singers that… I don’t know how to explain this. We’ll find some Youtube videos when we’re out.”

“Thank you.” The camraconda bobbed in appreciation.

“So, the food thing.” Anesh circled back. “Is that part of the benefit of arcology construction? I’ve read some of the stuff you wrote about it, but most of it was about the practicality of construction, and the broader social element.”

“Yeah, it’s one of the things.” James nodded. “You can have food production be scaled to population, and be local. Of course, usually, that would mean having hydroponics or artificial meat production facilities, with maybe a few natural farms surrounding the place. But if we can actually make the orange orbs work the way we want, we can just compress whole actual outdoor farms and ranches into the interior.”

Anesh held up his hands in front of his face, eyes wrinkled as he tried to process a thought. He clapped his fingers together a couple times, and then figured out the words he wanted. “I want this to not seem awful.” He started. “But isn’t it insanely dangerous to have orange totems as a foundation? What if they break? What if someone *breaks them*.” He met James’ eye. “We are not going to have a shortage of enemies. And having a single point of failure seems massively problematic.”

“I’ve already got Reed and his people working on redundancies as part of the development.” James said. He wasn’t offended; he agreed a hundred percent. “They’ve already made some actual progress, by the way; and no one has died!” James said that in a saccharine cheerful voice. “Also, I figure we draw up all our maps with obvious spaces that have the totems in them, then put fake totems there, and bury the real ones two miles underground. I dunno, I’ll talk to the architects when we’re ready to hire them.”

“When is that gonna be, anyway?” Anesh asked. “Not that I’m complaining that we’re dragging our feet or anything. But what are we waiting for?”

“Well, more money, for one thing. Which we are working on, in a lot of ways. But mostly, it’s for the orange orb research to get to a usable point. And then to find the right combination of greens to make things… not perfect, but good enough. Better. And it’s also not just architects, we’re going to need to hire a whole brigade of experts. City planners, craftspersons like plumbers and electricians, psychologists, lawyers, hell if we can get some of the people who worked on the Shimizu pyramid or Arcosanti, I want them.”

“Worked on...what?” Anesh looked confused.

“Arcologies. One early attempt at a prototype and one modern one that isn’t done and is, I’m pretty sure, used as a plot device in the Deus Ex games? The new ones.”

“The new arcologies?”

“The new games. Did you ever play Deus Ex?”

“No… wait, what?!” Anesh leaned forward on the now-sealed duplication crate on the table in front of him. “Sorry, *what*? There are real arcologies? I thought this was a sci-fi thing you wanted to bring to life!”

James looked offended, slightly tilting his nose up as he answered. “Of course they’re real! You didn’t read my report at all, did you?” He accused his boyfriend.

“I read some!” Anesh protested. “Also you never read my dissertation either!” He tried to counter James’ indignation.

“Anesh I love you, but your dissertation was on math that counts as a cognitohazard for most humans.” James chuckled. “Ah, it’s fine. I’m mostly just stuff that’ll be passed off to people smarter than us anyway. Certainly smarter than me.”

“You underestimate yourself.” Anesh told him.

“Eh.” James waved it off. He knew he shouldn’t. He was letting his innate depressive instinct for self depreciation in again. “Anyway. You know the important part, which is the whole *point*. Build a community that’s sustainable, and compassionate. A community where weaknesses and flaws don’t get people excluded, a place where people take care of each other because life is valuable. That’s what matters. Everything else is fiddly details.”

“I love you.” Anesh told him with a wavering smile. Then he laughed a little, still kind of embarrassed at his own words. “Alright. Well. Wanna watch me violate the laws of conservation of matter again? I’m ready to go here. And if you *help* instead of *distracting me*, we can get the last two runs done quick and maybe go hunt down a tumblefeed or something for fun.”

“Absolutely.” James agreed with a grin. “Let’s see if copied school books work! I’m actually excited about this. And also a little concerned, but whatever.”

Anesh grinned, and flicked the switch, and a box full of power popped into existence with a flare of light.

_____

As it turned out, after they shared the duplicated books with volunteers to test them, they *did* work. The only downside was, as James put it, it was the *same lesson*. Nate and Deb both had [Writing 0/100]. But that number didn’t go up unless both of them learned the same fact or piece of information.

They were taking the same class.

It was, all things considered, probably the least bad downside that was possible. Everyone took a collective breath; even the infomorphic form of Pathfinder who had been standing by to purge the magic out of their minds in case it was needed. Path hated being called on for that kind of duty, according to Daniel. But she was the only one available who had even the ability to try, even if it wasn’t her skillset like it was with…

James bit his lip. Hm. He could have sworn… But Pathfinder and Planner were the only infomorphs that the Order counted among their number. There would have been another, but Curiosity had unwound herself within hours of her own creation, because they’d screwed it up. And no one wanted to repeat that horrible mistake.

Ah well.

Anesh was waiting for him. Maybe the two of them could find another friend out in the Office before the night was done.