“When I am weaker than you, I ask for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.” - Frank Herbert, Children of Dune -
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The Lair welcomed James back in the way that was becoming traditional for the Order; with basically no fanfare. He appreciated that a *lot*, the lack of pressure from any special measures making the experience of parking Sarah’s car next to the suspiciously smooth parking space that had once housed his own car before it became exploded both welcoming and easy.
He waved to the camraconda on the roof, got buzzed in through the security door and stepped past the row of lockers into the Lair’s communal area.
“Jaaaaaaaaames!” Sarah greeted him by flinging herself from a chair and flopping against his unprepared flank like he was a forgotten lover. “We missssed yooooou!” She drawled.
“Okay ow.” James gently exfiltrated his arm from her grip, shifting his feet so his friend wasn’t threatening to topple him over. “Also hey. It’s good to be back.” He glanced up and gave a friendly smile to the other members of the support group that were watching him from the table Sarah had just abandoned. Looking around, James spotted a dozen other people rushing around. A few people wrestling a hand cart into the elevator, moving a truck’s worth of lumber. A camraconda and a human hanging out while their Authorities interacted. A response team on break. Just a lot of life and motion. “How were things while I was gone?”
“Oh, it was harrowing!” Sarah said, and James would have worried if she wasn’t obviously being overly dramatic on purpose. “I was so worried for you! So many things that could have gone wrong! *Weeks* of sleepless nights-!”
“Okay that one can’t possibly be true.”
“-all as I waited for your faithful return! Preying you would be unscathed!”
“You’ve been hanging out with the theater kids, haven’t you?” James accused her with a lopsided grin.
“I *was* a theater kid.” Sarah’s voice swung instantly back to her normal speaking tone, and not whatever performance she was putting on. “Anyway, did you get back safe? Nothing went wrong on the road? No…”
James rolled his eyes. “Oh my god your car is *fine*.” He said.
“James, your track record with cars is very bad.” Sarah told him bluntly. “Your last car got eaten by a whole city’s road network. And before that, your car got turned into modern art.”
“Neither of those were my fault!” James defended himself. “But also, thank you for your concern. The whole trip was a nice vacation, honestly. The cartomorph chose to stick around, so that’s cool. Saved some people from a collapsing building. Evaded police questions. Also fun.” James shrugged. “How was it up here?”
Sarah looked like she had a million different answers to that. Instead of giving any of them, she just asked “What’s the lil’ map’s name?”
James cleared his throat. “I haven’t asked. They’re sleeping.” He said. “I think they overtaxed themself helping me with the collapsing building thing. Also, are you in the middle of something? Am I interrupting?” He glanced over her shoulder at where the half dozen members of the support group were waiting patiently at their table. “I feel like I’m interrupting.”
“Yeeeeah, kinda.” Sarah admitted. “We can catch up later!” She told him.
“Are you doing that thing where you schedule a million different things to do, and realize at the end of the day that you had fun, but are fundamentally exhausted on a deep spiritual level, and shouldn’t have done that?” James asked flatly.
Sarah’s face lit up. “You remember! That’s great!”
“Sarah.”
“I’ll be fine.” She shooed him away. “Anyway, I have emotional bonding and acceptance of personal changes to do with some people. Go, go. I’m sure Anesh wants to talk to you.”
He shuffled back as Sarah lightly flailed her hands in his direction. “And where-“
James’ words were cut off by the soft rapid taps of footsteps across the floor, and the less soft yelling of his boyfriend. “Jaaaaaaaames!” Anesh’s english accent really came across a lot stronger when he was dragging words out. “I misssssed yooooou!” His partner slammed into his side, James wobbling and trying to return the sudden hug, while Sarah just broke into a cackling laugh.
“I texted him as soon as you came in.” Sarah said. “Alanna wasn’t available right now, so expect that again later!” She said. “Anyway, you two have fun, I got a thing.” She waved as she turned and cut back across the front lobby to the quiet side area where her support group were meeting, settling back into her role of guide to the people who had been unwillingly changed by the Office.
“Hey.” James said, smiling down at Anesh.
“Hey.” Anesh said, voice dropping back to his normal tone as he rose up and stole a kiss from James. “Ack! You need to shave.” He complained.
James rubbed at his face. “I’ve been busy!” He defended himself, wincing as he realized how long he’d let his facial hair get. “Anyway. I am actually very hungry, do you wanna get lunch? Are you busy? Is lunch still something we do here? Karen didn’t start austerity measures while I was gone, did she?”
“Yes, no, yes, and no.” Anesh answered, ticking off responses on his fingers in order. “Come on. We can get Nate to make you a consolation burger.” He glanced back at James as he led the way down the hall to the dining area, past a pair of teenagers doing homework on the couch that occupied space that didn’t exist, and into a room full of comfortable chatter and the smell of food.
“Yeah, I never actually got my burger.” James said. “I mean, I had a burger on the way home. So I did. But like, it feels weird to have taken a trip to a restaurant that was supposedly a good enough secret burger place that knowledge of its presence was worth a dungeon loot reward, and *not* gotten a burger.”
Anesh nodded as he grabbed them a table, replacing one of the camraconda chairs with a human one from another table so he had a place to sit. “You could have stuck around? But I know why you didn’t. Police attention isn’t really what we need right now. Apparently, the statement the troopers made about the whole thing included that they were ‘concerned’ about ‘unreliable vigilantism’, so that’s a thing.” Anesh sighed as he slid into the seat across from James. “Not a huge mention, and the hospital didn’t say anything about us *teleporting into their lobby*, so that’s cool.”
“Are you sure about that? I feel like someone would have noticed.”
“It’s hard to get camera phone footage of someone teleporting in when we don’t announce it.” Anesh shrugged. “Also Harvey probably has a more comprehensive report on the whole thing. He’s weirdly well organized for… uh… us?”
“We can be organized!” James protested. “I’m not organized. But I’m also not in charge.” He pointed out. “Partially because I’m not organized. Also that police statement? I hate that.”
Anesh quirked his eyebrows up. “Why?” He asked. “I mean, aside from the obvious.”
“Oh, Arizona does this thing where they use terms like ‘unlicensed’ as dogwhistles to talk about immigrants.” James said. “Someone pointed it out to me a few months ago, and now I can’t stop seeing it, and now I’m passing this joy on to you.”
“Great.” Anesh grimaced. “Well, aside from that, how was the drive back?” He asked.
“Kinda cool. I found this old abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. And the sky in the whole southwest region looks kind of amazing when you’re driving on the highways there. So it was relaxing!”
“Even the part where you explored an abandoned farmhouse?” Anesh asked dryly.
“You don’t know I explored it.” James crossed his arms and kept a straight face. For about ten seconds. “Okay fine I explored it.” He leaned forward on the table. “I will not lie, I was hoping to find a dungeon, because I have been conditioned to be finding dungeons everywhere. But instead I just found opossums.” He shook his head forlornly. “If only I had found opossum dungeon, we could have saved the world. Anyway! What’s been going on here while I’ve been gone, that *isn’t* the big emergency things people report to me about?” A thought crossed his mind, and he held up a hand to forstall the answer. “Actually, hang on. Shouldn’t we order first? How are we doing food these days?” James looked around, and noticed there were a couple members of the Order acting as servers today, but no one coming to their table.
“I let Nate know when Sarah texted me, so I technically ordered for you.” Anesh said, awkwardly looking away as James made a small ‘aww’ noise with his hand over his heart. “Anyway!” He moved on. “Uh… where to even start. Have you kept up on Sarah’s podcast?”
“I have not, since I don’t listen to it on my phone and don’t understand technology.” James said. “I was gonna…” He looked around, eyes searching for someone in particular, and dropped his voice to a murmur as he leaned in close to Anesh. “I was gonna get one of the memory files from someone.” He admitted.
“I’ll hook you up with a supplier.” Anesh stage whispered back. “Anyway, I can give you the Cliff’s notes of what’s going on.”
“Cliff notes.”
“I promise you it’s Cliff’s.” Anesh said. “They are notes, from Cliff.”
“There is no way that’s… you know what, this isn’t important. Give me the rundown.” James said.
So Anesh started talking. And it turned out, there was kind of a lot to fill James in on.
The biggest news, from Anesh’s perspective at least, was they’d gotten a little more research done on the copier ritual. First through using storage items like the wallet of folding or the lunchbox of holding lunch. And, twice, a test with the smallest, safest, most stable orange totem that Reed’s team could build.
James was a bit annoyed they risked blowing up the device that could spawn cures for cancer, but then, he already kind of knew that it wasn’t ever going to be enough to execute a systemic, planet wide change in humanity. As it turned out, it still wasn’t.
The ritual copied what was put into the small, 10”x10”x8” block of space over the overhead projector. And it did so allllllmost perfectly. It even copied magic. But, as it turned out, it could only ever copy a single one of what Research was calling “layers” of magic. A lunchbox packed with eight hundred pounds of food would copy eight hundred pounds of food. An orange totem folded space that you put the lunchbox in would copy the lunchbox. And enough food to fill one lunchbox.
Trying to mass copy orbs didn’t work. The storage device would copy fine, but the orbs just wouldn’t appear. Neither would most dungeon rewards that they could find. Magic items would ally over but only with the ‘item’ part. Dungeon rewards copied, with *one* exception; the [Endurance II] book that they’d brought out of Winter’s Climb.
“So what’s up with the bracers?” James asked around a mouthful of the sandwich Nate had brought him. It was a chicken burger, which was delicious, but he wasn’t sure counted as a ‘burger’ exactly. Nate had told him it was healthier, and then said he had to go ‘do something more important’ and stalked off. “Or, actually, all the Status Quo gear?” James asked. “It all copies weird.”
“Ah.” Anesh said, holding up his index finger like James had just asked the million dollar question. “Well, if it holds to the same rule… it’s because the ones we looted from them are different. Modified. Which means… well, I don’t want to make assumptions…”
“I do!” James got an excited look in his eye. “I love making wild ass guesses! And this time, I can do it kind of smart. Okay, so, only one iteration of magic copies? And the SQ items were being spawned by those blood ritual things that we demolished and dropped a building on. So, yeah, Status Quo found magic items in one dungeon, then fed them into a copy ritual sort of like what ours is. Maybe the blood thing makes them ‘stronger’ or something? Doens’t matter. Either way, they get copies of magic items, with their own enchantment on top. Then *we* try to copy them, and just the initial magic item, no blood stuff.”
“Blood stuff sounds like the name of a punk band.” Anesh interjected.
“Yes.” James nodded. “And… actually, that’s it. That’s my dumb idea.”
“That’s actually kind of everyone’s dumb idea.” Anesh said. “As far as we can figure out, anyway. There aren’t many people left to ask. And their files are woefully incomplete.”
“Cool. Okay, well, that changes a few things. We can mass copy natural resources, right?”
“Sort of.” Anesh wobbled a hand. “Easier than before, anyway.”
“Awesome. Okay, what else?” James asked. And his boyfriend took a deep breath while he took another bite of his lunch.
There was a wasp-crow in their basement. Deb was pretty sure the girl was going to live, but she was damaged beyond what a human could take. Alanna apparently felt some kind of responsibility for the creature from the Akashic Sewer, and was checking up on her every day.
Speaking of Sewer creatures, Arrush was mostly healed. He and Keeka had headed back to Tennessee, mostly. They were dropping in twice a week for a social studies and ethics class, mostly with a bunch of camracondas, but also some of the high school students. They had a lot of Earth’s history to catch up on.
The Sewer news continued. Despite being scattered to completely different places in their professional and personal lives, the five people who had taken copies of the drama lesson had finally managed to rank it up together again, collectively adding Poise I to their abilities, but that would probably be as far as the larger group could get alone. Two of the camracondas with lessons had improved theirs as well, Frequency-Of-Sunlight diving into learning history with a kind of optimistic glee, and ending up with Solidity I and Malleability II, and Texture-Of-Barkdust apparently taking private lessons from Karen while she recovered from something flu-adjacent, ending up with Perspective I.
Into this kind of standard report on how everyone’s personal learning was going, Anesh tried to casually slip the fact that a few people in Research, one of himself included, were *pretty sure* they had figured out the math on building a space elevator with a handful of dungeontech objects.
James didn’t let that one go uninterrogated, and pretty quickly regretted his choice, as Anesh started going into exacting mathematical detail on how multiple iterations of the the paperweight that ignored all force from a single vector could be chained together to create a self-lifting scalable machine. It got worse when another Anesh joined them, doubling the speed of the explanation after giving James a familiar kiss and an equally familiar notice that he needed to shave.
“Okay! I surrender!” James admitted, throwing his hands in the air. “Is there anything at all else that can get me out of this?”
“The Authorities are doing well?” One Anesh suggested, the two of them sharing a perfect timed curious glance before the other continued. “Yeah, so far, all the ones on Response are thriving. We don’t really have a way to measure ‘abstract magical power’, but they’re growing up smoothly. All of them are medics, by the way.” He nodded and his double took over. “The camracondas mostly turned down getting their own at first. Only the ones working with the Order in other capacities took the offers. There was a small public debate about species over the whole thing. Very awkward! Ultimately, I think the nascent culture of the camracondas, as a people, kind of pushes them to not take tools they aren’t using? But also Spire-Cast-Behind had a really good point that those who aren’t engaged with the Order *have* no structure for the Authorities to work with. So we’re looking for other ways to make sure our non-human residents are treated equitably and welcome.”
“I really want to just say that species doesn’t matter.” James admitted. “But that’s a lie; it *does* matter. I have a thousand small perks from being human, and ignoring that just dismisses the fact that the camracondas need the scales balanced. And it’s *annoying* that a lot of them won’t admit it because they have some weird fixation on ‘not being literal puppet soliders’ somehow being good enough.”
“Yeah, it’s not great.” Anesh said. “On the upside, we’re learning that Authorities seem to like manifesting physical forms as articles of clothing. And the camraconda ones are kind of cute.”
“What are the human ones?”
“I mean, you’ve seen Nik’s glove. I suspect all the Status Quo ones were ties. Because they were aggressively mundane.”
“Cowards.” James scoffed.
“Anyway, that’s how that’s going.” Anesh said while one of him chuckled.
James gnawed at his lip, nodding but not exactly happy with the total outcome. The nature of the Authorities just made it messy. “I heard that Frequency tried to open a bank account?” He asked.
“Uh… yeah.” Anesh both looked sheepish. “And was asked for things like a birth certificate, and social security number.” Both of him rubbed at his nose in unison. “And it turns out, Sunny is… uh… a motivated problem solver? So she started trying to get those. Long story short, the US government’s official bureaucratic hellscape stance so far is that you can’t have them if you weren’t born here, and aren’t human.”
“I’m not surprised, I’m just disappointed.” James said.
“Well, the issue might be revisited soon, if things keep going the way they are.” Both Anesh shrugged together. “One county clerk rejecting something is bad. But it won’t hold up as we get more attention, and people in elected offices have to come up with real answers. In the meantime… I mean, they found a dumb workaround.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you can use another bank account, and state ID, to get a bank account. And you can use a bank account to get state ID. So they just added Frequency to Deb’s account, and are trying to use it to get her her own account. Which I’m pretty sure was super illegal. Oh, and the bank has problems with her name.”
“Of course.” James sighed. “Is there anything else that’s less depressing?”
“The orange totem study is coming along. I think they have four or five different *useful* models that they can replicate consistently. Oh! Bill has made several polite requests for you and Arrush to, and I’m quoting here; ‘get off your asses and help him absolutely fuck the HVAC industry’.” Anesh made air quotes around the words. “There was more to the request, but it was very rude to the HVAC industry. Would you like to hear it?”
James nodded. “Absolutely not.” He said with a smile.
Anesh continued his recap while James ate and the room around them moved. A Response team made a sudden exit, a group of students stole their table to study, there was a brief moment of knowing the total lifespan of every cephalopod in the building which James assumed was Momo’s fault somehow, and a few people stopped by to welcome him back or ask him or Anesh questions. It was kind of hectic and also kind of peaceful; stuff happening at its own speed, with nothing really *needed* of him.
Momo’s growing Ritual department had taken over study of the shaper substance from an overworked Deb. There was a plan to hire more people, including medical staff, but it had been put on hold until the Lair could be expanded, or they could get another building somewhere, and also Karen had apparently glared at someone who had asked for an expanded budget so hard that the unfortunate delver had melted. That last part might have been a wild rumor though.
The delve team for Officium Mundi had recovered a magical *espresso machine*, which was truly powerful, and apparently made coffee that made you faster but didn’t improve reflexes at all. Blended drinks were being tested. Also, they’d finally gotten the ritual from another tower to work; it sent objects as attachments. To an email, a phone number, whatever. The recipient had to consciously accept the incoming object, but once they did, it just...was there.
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James felt like that would have been world-shatteringly huge if they weren’t already using all the magic coffee to copy teleporters and cancer cures.
“I can’t even think of anything else. Uh… I got a skill rank in katanas?” Anesh shrugged. “I probably won’t ever use it. I don’t know why *I* keep getting all the sword skills.”
“I am so envious of your sword skills.” James grumbled good naturedly. “You know what weapon art I got from Officium Mundi? Backpacks.” He leaned back, folding his arms as he glowered across the remains of his sandwich at Anesh. “Ask me about backpack combat. Go on.”
“I…” Anesh paused. “I *want to*, but mostly I’m just kind of curious how that hasn’t come up yet. You wear a backpack on practically every dungeon delve we do. Out here on Earth you wear a backpack all the time! You use it to hump stuff to the coffee shop whenever we go out for late night caffeination! How has this not come up? I would have expected, you know, narratively, that you would have at least had someone try to mug you by now.”
James gave a muffled snort. “You are vastly misjudging how little crime this city has. Also, yeah, basically. You’d think this would have saved my life at least once by now. I’ve practically been setting it up for months. But nothing! Not even on the mountain!” He tossed a hand into the air, fingers making a bursting motion. “Nothing! At least if I had a sword skill I could blame not using it on not owning a katana.”
The two of them shared a laugh, before James sighed and moved to stand up. “Anyway. I’ve got a meeting to get to. Is there anything else on the level of ‘going to space’ or ‘camraconda civil rights’?”
“JP’s been spending a week and a half staking out the potion replacement people.” Anesh said.
“I know. That’s one thing I get security updates on.” James sighed. “He’s in… Utah? Or Ohio? I can never remember. I know it’s one of the four letter states. There’s a finite number of those. And it’s probably not Iowa. Is there a fourth one?”
“Guam.”
“Guam isn’t a state.”
“Isn’t a…? What? No, of course it is.” Anesh said, giving James an annoyed look. “It’s a part of the US.” James made a guilty wince, and Anesh just sighed. “Oh, this is gonna be one of those things, isn’t it?”
“Okay. I’ll see you later! Thanks for lunch.” James leaned down and planted a peck on Anesh’s nose, trying to divert from this line of questioning. “Love you.”
“Love you too. And it’s Utah.” Anesh said, standing up and following behind James as the two of them left the dining area. James moved steadily down the hallway, around the corner, and to the elevator bank, hitting the button and rolling back onto his heels to wait. He *could* have taken the stairs up to LA, but that was thirty floors of climbing he didn’t feel like doing today, good exercise or no. It took him a couple bounces to realize that Anesh was still with him, just to his side and behind his field of view. “We’re going to the same meeting you knob.” He said by way of explanation.
“I… knew that.” James lied.
Anesh sighed as the elevator opened and they stepped on. “You have magically enhanced memory explicitly to solve this problem.”
“Yes.” James agreed with a nod as he hit the button for their upstairs, letting the polished silver doors of the elevator close with a crisp mechanical clunk. “And I waste most of that thinking about trivia and jokes from podcasts.” He leaned into Anesh conspiratorially. “Did you know that pangolin scales are materially the same thing as fingernails?”
“At *least* set a note on your phone or something for meetings.” Anesh begged his boyfriend. “Share your calendar with me. I’ll do it for you.”
“I already know when the meeting is, I just didn’t know the guest list.” James rebutted cheerfully. “Anyway.” He gave a small bow as the elevator dinged open, waving Anesh forward like he was some kind of courtly steward before following.
The upstairs office was currently experiencing a much warmer afternoon than the building they’d come from. The temperature wasn’t that much different in the end, but the shift from a naturally slightly chilly commercial space to an air conditioned floor with a muggy heat holding the outside in its grip was kind of amusing to James.
He walked in confidently, giving a high five to Ferndinan, the one potted plant they’d managed to befriend from the Office. “Looking green, friend!” James greeted the unspeaking life form. It had grown an extra foot of vine, most of it starting to wrap around the vending machine placed nearby.
James also gave the vending machine a polite nod, and bought something with a spare dollar in his wallet to drink during the meeting. He purposefully did not look at the label, choosing to embrace the element of surprise.
The conference room was already half full, and James suppressed the impulse to run at the sight of the meeting space. Partially because he’d once nearly died fighting a misshapen giant secretary in one, and partially because meetings were often stressful.
Priestess-Under-Stone was sitting at the end of the table near Karen, the two of them talking softly as Karen pointed out some stuff on a laptop screen. Watcher-Of-Motion was off in its own little space, and James had never actually seen a camraconda look like it *didn’t* want to be somewhere, so it took him a minute to realize the serpent probably disliked meetings as much as he did himself. And Myles was pacing by the window, watching the city and looking like he also didn’t really want to be here; or rather, that he had somewhere he was itching to get back to. There was one other person close to where James and Anesh walked in, who turned and stood as they entered.
“Oh hey. Jake, right?” James shook hands with the lawyer. “Good to see you again.”
“Mr. Lyle.” Jake Redding said, giving a charismatic smile and nodding as he returned the handshake.
James was glad he didn’t do the thing some people did where he tried to crush his opponent’s hand, but he did have one objection. “Just James. Not a fan of honorifics.”
“Ooooof course.” Jake said. “Are we ready to begin?” He looked over to Karen, who was closing her laptop and looking around.
“Not quite.” She said. “Harvey is going to join-“ There was a snap of air and Harvey appeared at the end of the room, drawing startled jumps from a few people and a high yelp from Jake. “Harvey is here. We can begin, yes.” It *looked* like Karen hadn’t even blinked, but James hadn’t missed that she’d twitched her hand toward her side. He took a minute to reevaluate Karen.
“Sorry I’m late.” Harvey said, brushing off imaginary dust from his sleeves as he took a seat and set a folder on the end of the long oblong table. “Something came up.” It was impressive how someone saying that could be so ominous. James opened his mouth to ask, but Harvey covered the questions rapidly. “There was a burst of activity for Response, and I was handling three field teams at once while we smoothed things out. Everything is fine, but we need more staff.”
“We don’t have the budget.” Karen said automatically.
“Okay, well then we need more budget.” Harvey said, voice touched with exhausted anger. “Why *don’t* we have more budget?” He asked. “What’s actually bottlenecking us here?”
James looked around as what was a familiar back and forth started. Then he cut it off before it got too far. “Hey, do we not have anyone from Research or Ritual for this meeting?” He asked.
“Momo was busy and Reed said they weren’t needed for this one.” Anesh answered. “Technically, I’m our Researcher.”
“Okay. So, before you two keep going, can I cover the budget thing?” James asked, and both Karen and Harvey looked over to him with expectant eyes. “Uh… we can duplicate much larger chunks of matter now. Why not just make a huge quantity of something valuable, like platinum, or tungsten, and sell it?”
“Diamond, maybe?” Myles suggested from the other side of the table where he was still standing.
“I mean actual value, not artificially inflated fictional diamond value.” James said. “Regardless, is there a downside to that at all?” He glanced at Jake. “Actually, real question for the lawyer in the room. Is there a reason we shouldn’t do that? Like, is it fraud to not be able to source your materials when you sell them?”
“It’s not usually illegal, though a lot of places wouldn’t buy from you.” Jake answered, having started researching this the instant anyone in the Order had said ‘duplication’ out loud near him. “I’m also not an economist, but depending on how much you’re producing, you risk crashing the market, which also isn’t a crime usually, but would be counterproductive.”
“We wouldn’t be making that much.” Karen shook her head. “Platinum especially would take multiple months to build up to a point where we were copying an appreciable amount, and there’s enough demand for it that we wouldn’t risk devaluing it below what’s useful for us. Especially relative to gold, which is worth more, but has less of a sustained demand.”
“Great! Do that!” James clapped his hands. “And then expand Response. Harvey, how many people actually work for you?”
“They work for *us*, for one thing. You are in charge here.” Harvey said. “And also currently we have a hundred people working with Response in some capacity, forty full time knights. Eighteen of our responders are camracondas.” He shot a nod to Priestess-Under-Stone, who nodded back with a bobbing motion. “A lot of those people are part time volunteers, which helps keep our costs manageable, but I am aware that we’re going to run out of money.” He added. “Also, we have sixteen Authorities on the roster now, though again, they’re not actually being paid. Uh… wow, I just said that out loud. We should be paying them.”
Karen nodded. “We are going to run out of money rapidly.” She said. “Currently, we have just north of five hundred thousand dollars in the bank.” James’ heart hammered in his ears at the mention of the absurd number, and his stomach dropped as Karen kept talking and reminded him how much that *wasn’t*. “That means three months of operation, at our current income. Though our income is sporadic.”
“Oh, I can help there.” Myles chimed in. “I actually wanted to ask about this. Do we have a way to move cargo? I know we can teleport people, but how about pallets of heavy stuff? Do we have, like… a teleporting forklift?”
James turned to Anesh, a rictus of a smile cracking across his face.
“Oh no.” Anesh muttered.
“See?” James poked his boyfriend’s arm. “You *see*?! I knew it!”
Jake looked around the room at the faces of the others, confusion on his own features. “Sorry, what?” He asked.
Folding her hands on the table, Karen translated. “James means that he has a teleporting forklift, yes. Probably something insufferable and magic. Why do you bring it up, Myles?”
“Uh… there were seven banks in Townton.” He said. “And we’ve gone through three of them so far. No one has actually figured out why, but all of them were over the reserve limit, so there’s about two hundred fifty thousand in physical cash sitting down there. I didn’t realize budget was an issue, JP never mentioned it.”
“He wouldn’t.” Karen and James muttered at the same time, sharing a glance where James grinned and Karen just gave him a worried look.
“So you are aware,” Jake spoke up, “that money only becomes legitimate salvage after one year of inaction on the part of the owners.” He sighed. “Unless the banks have claimed act of god insurance on it already, in which case the insurance company would offer you a reward for recovery. *That said*... well, there isn’t a legal precedent for inforvoric incidents…”
“*Good* term.” James chimed in.
“...so it’s hard to say what is to be done here. If no one remembers the money exists, there will be no legal claim made on it. While the bank might be able to bring a civil suit against you, odds are good the money doesn’t exist in their records anymore, and so, they simply wouldn’t know to do it.” He sighed again, deeply. “My legal advice is that you’re in the clear. My *personal* advice… well, I don’t like dodging the law on technicalities.”
Anesh nodded to him. “We appreciate that. And if it were anyone else, we’d work to return it. But no one here has much sympathy for the banks. That said, Myles, what are you doing with the safety deposit boxes?”
“Marking contents, trying to find living owners or next of kin.” Myles said. “Or at least, we’re referring it to Recovery.”
“Progress is being made.” Priestess-Under-Stone spoke up. “We study, and seek, and find. Three in ten, perhaps, return to whom they belong.”
James smiled quietly at the soft poetry of the camraconda’s comment. “Okay. Between that, and platinum sales - someone get some platinum? Karen? Yes, good - between those things, we should be able to start expanding safely.” James nodded. “Harvey, what do you want for Response?”
Harvey had prepared a report.
Response hadn’t been idle. In fact, they were starting to get really, really busy.
Every day, they had between four and twelve teams on call at any given time. Teams ranged from two to four people, with a standby pool of individuals for simple medical transport or shoring up teams that sustained injuries. Some teams were specialized; there was, for example, always one team and at least one backup knight specialized in mental health crises in the rotation.
Each team replied to between ten to fifty incidents. A day.
“Hang on.” James stood up, crossing his arms in an X in front of him. “Wait, woah, wait, stop. What?” He looked around the table. “I’ve *done* Response shifts! When did it get that… uh… fast paced?”
“Recently.” Harvey said gruffly.
The actual incidents responded to were only about a fifth of the calls received. They’d hired more operators, and their phone network was arcanely enhanced enough to handle the throughput, but it was still a constant and stressful job.
Currently, Response was known to and working with sixteen different fire departments, forty one hospitals, and several well placed members of the Coast Guard and Park’s Service.
People were starting to know the number to call for real help, right away.
“We haven’t made national or global news.” Harvey told them. “Yet. *Yet*. It’s coming, and soon, I think. Things are accelerating and I think they’re faster than we can manage unless we do something serious.”
There was a massive logistical bottleneck that was going to be a problem soon, and it was telepad production. A while back, one of the camracondas had thrown math at James that had almost stuck with him, about how they could produce something like ten thousand teleports per copier run. At the time, that had seemed like basically an infinite number. But now, faced with Harvey’s data on per capita ambulance needs for just the US, it was becoming clear that they’d need more than they could ever reasonably make just to serve *California*.
California had 2.7 million ambulance transports a year. That was 6.4 million teleports, though less if Response members were blipping out from the hospitals to their next pickups. That was still…
James ran some quick numbers in his head.
“We would need to do six hundred full telepad block copies a year.” He muttered. “For California. *Just* for California. Just for California’s *medical*. Holy shit.” One state would overtax their theoretical upper potential, and James had wanted to do this for the whole *world*.
“It gets worse.” Harvey said. “But also better.”
The better was that they fundamentally needed less personnel to manage emergency response duties. They weren’t traffic enforcers or patrol officers, they showed up when there was trouble, and diffused or fixed the situation. That meant that they could do more with fewer people. Teleportation was logistical magic as well as actual magic, and it smoothed out a lot of their issues.
The worse was that they were going to need either more teleportation, or an alternate way to run Response.
“The problem is scaling up. That was always where we were going to run into an issue.” Harvey told them. “My hope had been that we’d have new magic by now. But we don’t, so we need options.”
“I have a suggestion?” Anesh said. “Why not use the telepads for emergencies, and just have local Response teams that… are local?”
Jake answered that one, with the tone of someone who had dealt with this before. “The police.” He said in a voice he probably meant to be neutral, but had some low anger to it. “Community protection groups aren’t a legal entity, and even when they are, the police do not respect them as a functional authority. Police will interfere, often violently, often arresting community safety members in the process, with any incidents in progress. Also they have no larger legal right to detain or arrest people, even with just cause, and so get no support from local or federal governments. Citizens arrests are a thing in some states, but require contact with local PDs, which can declare them void for any reason. And they don’t like other people making arrests. So they find reasons.”
“I mean…” James didn’t want to sound like a dick, but didn’t see a way to avoid it here. “The authority of government is just the persistent threat of violence. I don’t think we should rely on that.”
“Don’t you want to form a new government?” Harvey asked.
“Yeah, one that does things better.” James bit out. “Okay, so, let’s put community defense on the list, but low down. Other options?”
“More bullshit magic.” Harvey said, ticking off a list on his fingers. “Limiting our operating area. Or, alternately, pulling back to operate as the community peacekeeping organization just for our own territory as you build your arcology thing.” He shrugged. “Which feels like giving up. But not that much, since we can just bring people who want to sign that social contract to live with us. Telepads fix the problem of borders, too.”
“That last one sounds… ugh. Too slow?” James complained. “I don’t want us to get overwhelmed, and lose *all* credibility because of it, because that would cause more damage than it would solve, but I also don’t like the idea of scaling down.”
“Well, it’s your call.” Harvey said.
“Oh, absolutely not.” James said. Everyone stopped, and looked at him. “No,” he restated, “it is not my call. You all need to stop looking to me like I’m in charge here. I really am not.”
“You are actually the de facto leader.” Jake slowly said into the quiet room.
“Yeah, even I think you’re in charge, and I know how much that annoys you.” Anesh said from next to James.
Even Watcher-Of-Motion, quiet up until now, spoke. “You are our guide.” They said. “You give direction.”
James sighed. A week and a half away had given him some perspective, and it was about time he actually applied it. “Okay, look.” He said. “While I was gone, what did you all do?”
The people in the room looked at each other. Except Anesh, who knew roughly what James was getting at already. He and Alanna had talked, while their partner was away. To each other, and to James, and together. And they had a pretty good idea of what James was going for.
“If we’re getting personal,” Jake said, “I filed articles of incorporation for a township in Tennessee on behalf of this organization. Also gave general legal advice in terms of insurance law.”
“Accounting, mostly.” Karen said. “Some teaching.” James knew for a fact she was underselling that.
Watcher-Of-Motion peered at James curiously. “Learning of security protocols, application of safe practices.”
“Anesh? Myles? Myles, don’t answer, you were robbing banks, we already went over this. Harvey, I know what you were doing too. Okay, here’s what I’m getting at. *You didn’t need me for any of that.*” James leaned forward on the table. “You actually do not need me in charge, to make decisions! You are already doing it!”
“It’s important to have a person who *can* make executive decisions when there’s a crisis.” Karen pointed out. “Also, you are literally the founder of this company.”
“Order.” James corrected her. “Alright, look. You like long term planning, right?” She nodded, suspicious of where he was going with this. “Alright. Okay. So, what’s our long term plan? Anyone?”
“Replacing the outdated and flawed police institution with something better.” Harvey said.
“Long term sustainable operations.” Karen answered at the same time.
“The survival of my people.” Priestess-Under-Stone said.
“The survival of all people.” Watcher-Of-Motion added.
“Saving the world in general?” Anesh asked.
James pivoted to Myles, who looked like a deer in the headlights. “Uh… uh… attack and dethrone god?” He took a shot in the dark.
“Correct, all of you. The long term goal of the order is to build a collaborative system of government that maximizes value to the people.” James started pacing as he spoke. “Well, here’s the question. What kind of government do you want? Because I’m going to tell you right now, I don’t want one with someone in charge. Not like this.”
“You have a better suggestion?” Harvey asked. “Because I know you’re optimistic, but just asking people to play nice and make collaborative choices isn’t actually stable, even if it is hopeful and backed up by voodoo.”
“Yeah. Well, a starting point anyway.” James said. “I want us to start moving toward a system of operations decision making based off expertise. I want us to have safeguards, yes; things like tolerance and compassion are ideals but they’re also *contracts*. We agree to do good for each other and everyone else, but there needs to be actually checks in place to make sure no one is abusing a position or corrupting the system. But fundamentally, when there’s decisions to be made, I want us to listen to the people best suited to make those decisions.”
“And what about decisions that don’t have a ‘best answer’?” Their new semi-permanent lawyer asked. “You’re going to run into a lot of questions, especially when it comes to budgeting, about what’s *better*, instead of what’s *correct*, and sometimes there isn’t a good way to tell.”
“Votes?” James asked with a rapid shrug. “Democracy isn’t useless. If it’s just a matter of opinion on what we try before we have hard data, what’s wrong with votes? If we run into stuff so nebulous that we can’t make a correct call one way or the other, then it doesn’t really make a huge difference which answer we try first. But also, look, I haven’t thought this out all the way. I don’t have a plan, I have an *idea*.”
“Dangerous.” Myles and Priestess-Under-Stone muttered at the same time, shooting worried looks at each other while Anesh leaned forward and tried to hide the laugh he was smothering behind his hand.
“I’m not… a leader.” James said, ignoring the quip. “I’m bad at, or just not excited to do, most of the stuff a good leader does. I’m not equipped, mentally or emotionally, to make these decisions that other members of the Order are *far* better at answering. If you want to know about dungeons? If you need a weird out of context problem solved? I will make decisions. But I’m… this isn’t my *place*. I love this place, and how it’s growing, but it’s growing into something that doesn’t need and shouldn’t want me at the top, you know? I’m practicing what I preach; no one in charge that can’t justify being there.” James straightens his back, folding his arms, and giving a single nod to the room.
Harvey frowned, and looked down at his folder, flipping to a new page. “So, were you planning to help with the recruitment interviews?” He asked. “Or is that not your thing either?”
“I also need to ask you questions about Winter’s Climb, and expected resource values.” Karen said. “Is that also something you’ll be abandoning?”
“Oh my god, relax.” James threw his hands up, what felt like a perfectly good summation of his ethos crumbling around him. “I’m still helping with both those things! I just want to do what I’m *good at*, which is interesting problem solving, and not what *you’re* good at, which is organization and leadership!”
Priestess-Under-Stone hummed with a mechanical whir. “It is true, we do organize very well.” She said. “And we learn more, every day.”
“I’m absolutely unqualified to make most decisions.” Myles said. “Unless they’re about municipal salvage. Or evading vehicle pursuit.”
“I don’t think I’m qualified to make calls for anyone here yet.” Jake added, before briefly pausing to cock a finger at Myles and say “I am absolutely not able to answer questions about ditching a tail. But I like how ya’ll do things, and I’m more than happy to offer advice.”
“Should we not have representatives from the other departments here for this?” Karen asked. “If we are forming some kind of… committee?”
“Reed and Momo already said yes. I asked them earlier.” James said. “And with that, I am officially resigning as unwilling leader.” He dusted his hands off. “Consider me a delver, knight, and problem solver at your disposal.”
Jake started a polite clap, then trailed off when no one else joined in.
“Hey, message from JP.” Anesh said, looking up from his phone and cutting off the continuation of the meeting. “He’d like you to answer your calls, and also get your ass down to wherever he is.”
“Why?” James asked.
“He said he needs someone to make a call.”
“He’s been making calls this whole time!” Myles exclaimed. “That’s his job!”
“Yeah, he said James might say that, actually.” Anesh said, scrolling on his phone. “He adds ‘someone to make the *right* call, and right now, I know thats not me’.” He looked up at James, eyebrows raised.
“Well.” Karen said, tapping her fingers on the table. “You said you wanted to be a problem solver.” She gave James a slight tilt of her head. “Go solve a problem. We’ll let you know what we need help with next.”
And James grinned.