Earth, 2565 A.D.
Archos Institute, Seattle, U.S.A.
At precisely 6am, the lilt of birdsong filled Alessia's solitary dorm. She hadn't had time to appreciate it amidst her racing thoughts the day before, but everything in the small space had been designed to mesh the soothing elements of nature with high function and efficiency. Even the sheets were temperature-controlled - a nice touch that was out of the budget of the typical college student. She got up and dragged her feet over to the shower - a corner with plants all over the walls and a simple drain in the floor. Alessia tapped her wrist to the control panel, letting it know her favorite temperature settings and water pressure patterns.
"This might be the life," Alessia sighed, appreciating the few minutes to relax under the hot stream. Work didn't start until 8am, but she wanted an early start to review the materials on her pad over breakfast. Behind several non-disclosure reminders, there were hundreds of screens of supporting documents on the Magery program they'd given here access to. She assumed no one realistically expected them read that morning, but as a reference throughout the month. But she planned to at least memorize the basic Manipulation core spells, which she did over a bagel and lox she found in the provided mini-fridge:
Manipulation Journeyman Core Spells Target Range/Limitation Use Requirements Kinetic Dart Cast - Target Object 15cm³; 1min; up to 3; 0.5-6mps Moves a selected object or objects along a trajectory Hand gestures of approximate direction and speed Kinetic Binding Cast - Target Object 15cm³; 1min; up to 3; up to 14kgs force Holds a selected object down or against something Hand gestures or verbal command Minor Animation Cast - Target Object 10m; 20cm³; 5 minutes; 1 Temporarily animates an inanimate object to perform simple actions and tasks Verbal or gestural commands to the target for anything specific. Minor Control Cast - Target Animal 10m; 50cm³; 15min; 1 Temporarily tames a small animal and makes it susceptible to suggestions and simple commands Verbal or gestural commands to the target for anything specific; only tasks animal is capable of. Minor Molding Cast - Target Material Pliable; 1m; 15cm³; 15min; 1 Allows the molding of mud, clay, soap, soft wood, and other pliable materials into a desired shape Molding by hand manipulation or tool guidance; whether the shape is retained when duration ceases is material dependent.
Minor Manipulation
Cast - Target fluid or Target Gas 20m; 0.5m³; 5min; 1 Limited manipulation such as expansion, condensation, or motion Verbal or gestural commands. Phase Cast - Self 130 seconds Allows the caster to 'phase out' of concrete reality, covering them from the perception of others and allowing movement through floors or doors Gestural guidance with hands, body, or focus.
Roasting
Cast - Target Mineral
5cm³; Min 2m away from any organic humanoid; max 10m away; up to 350°C; 10min
Heat minerals Hand gestures or voice command. Use responsibly. Slick Cast - Area 2m²; 5min Lessens friction in the target area Pointing. It's a rough science. Voiced Whisper Cast - Target 30m Allows whispered speech to reach the ears of the target Whispering. Subject to the clarity of the speaker.
There were more named, but without detail - it seemed that more spells were in development, but these were the only ones available for current alpha-testing.
Some seemed pretty fun. Kinetic dart seemed like telekinesis, but without the "thought" part. None of them were thought controlled. Would higher level spells allow that, or was it something perpetually out of reach as what could *read* their thoughts? Alessia jotted it down mentally as a question to ask later.
Others seemed a bit left-field - why would anyone need to roast minerals except perhaps blacksmiths or jewelers? Was it a common enough need to include on a core spell list? 'I suppose I should go and find out,' Alessia thought, clearing away her food.
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At three minutes to eight, Alessia was seated with Barb and Farash at a pentagonal table in their assigned work-room. The other three tables were filled by adults of various ages in the general blue uniform of Archos' Science and Development department. Some were speaking quietly, others were surfing their phones, and a few were giving the interns critical glances.
"Our jumpsuits stick out like sore thumbs." Barb whispered to her as Enz joined them. "Finally," Barb gave him a look, "you're late."
"What? I still have three minutes." Enz shoved the last bit of a power-bar in his mouth.
"No food in the workroom." A tongue clicked above them and the four looked up at a male tech looming over them. "Interns. You may only be here for a summer but strive to act professionally."
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"Can we get an introduction, then?" Barb smiled professionally and held her hand out, which the man awkwardly shook.
"Peter Rost, I'll be your interim supervisor and liaison with the main group." He sat down and tapped the table, five monitor panels sliding upwards. "You each can take one of these computers as yours for the summer, for work purposes only."
"What will we be working on today?" Farash asked.
"It varies." Peter briefed them, as the room about them buzzed to life. "While the primary role of this team is quality assurance, that's not a static set of tasks. We expect you four to take initiative as well - it's why we selected you, in case you were curious."
Faresh and Alessia leaned in, as they definitely were.
"Every department and team has different needs. Some need intellectuals, others need workers with social aplomb, others need programming geniuses, still others creative storytellers. For our team, we look for comprehension, tenacity, creativity, and flexibility. We don't need the best and brightest, we need those who can think outside the box and aren't going to get bored testing something over and over."
"I think there was a compliment in there somewhere..." Barbara laughed.
"It will be if you live up to it. Some people think IQ scores or test scores are everything to measure greatness." Peter sniffed. "In our group, we want to see drive and a willingness to challenge conventions."
Farash poked at his computer screen. "That doesn't really tell us what we actually need to do, though."
"For now, pull up the Magery simulation program and log in as a new user." Peter sighed, "from there, you make your own tasks - so long as you are working, and working smart, no one is going to babysit what you particularly want to help with. You are unpaid interns, after all."
"Don't remind us." Barb frowned.
"Your basic tasks will all be available from this program. Treat it like a video game if you like. You can choose a spell and test it in different scenarios and conditions. Imagine you are the end user and what you want out of it - something to make life easier on a vacation, something to destroy goblins in a video game, an employee in a virtual business speeding up production - anything you can imagine as a current or potential use of magery. You can come up with your own scenarios by prompting the generative ai, or use one of the many presets. Once you are familiar with the casting mechanics, you can even duel each other."
"Fun!" Enz grinned.
"Work." Peter cautioned. "Fun work." He amended. "For now, we will have you focus in one spell school on the journeyman spells, though we are hoping to move to the next tier in a couple of weeks. We will each take one to make things balanced."
"We already claimed ours, if that's ok." Barb explained. "I'm Healing, Enz is Destruction, Farrash wants Illusion, and Alessia's got Manipulation."
"I suppose that's fine." Peter nodded. "I'm familiar with most of them by now, so I will stick with Ice for the time being to keep the balance. I encourage you to each go through the tutorial and begin your own tests. And repeat your tests multiple times. I can't stress this enough, but we want you to *try* and break things. Keep track of it. That lets us know what to work on. If you get bored of that, there is a ticket list of things that need tested, as well as an internal suggestion box you can peruse. But we want you to bring your own creativity to the table, here, so don't rely on those too much."
"Permission to start learning magic, sir?" Barb winked.
Peter almost laughed, "permission granted."
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The tutorial was surprisingly straightforward. Alessia could give her avatar a role, such as virtual tourist, and have it perform a spell in a chosen environment, such as moving a room key over to a door. It was almost a point and swipe - but that was more of a problem than an aid! How did the person learn the spell? How did they know what hand motions to use or what to say? After a few iterations of the Kinetic Dart spell, Alessia gathered that voice commands such as "Move" and "Go there" were accepted, as the character would generally accompany its arm gestures with speech. Shouldn't the casting of the spell also be part of testing its functionality? Or had they already tested the mechanics, and were only concerned now with application?
Frustrated and a bit disappointed at how limited it seemed, Alessia tried having her avatar move soap in a small bathroom, but deliberately swiped towards the mirror before to the avatar next to it. The soap bounced off the mirror. It wasn't an immediate drop, but neither did the soap make it much further. It was if the physical mirror had interrupted the spell, and the soap wasn't sure what laws of physics should be governing it.
"Interesting," she muttered. She tried moving the soap again, but this time moving her avatar to the sink first, so the soap would deliberately bounce off the mirror as if thrown. This time, the soap followed the correct course and bounced off the mirror - at double speed! It hit the avatar in the forehead instead of the hand. Alessia flagged those tests for review before trying out some other things:
- Setting up a game between one avatar throwing darts and another avatar using Kinetic Dart to magically toss them, the magical darts got more bullseyes but also had more complete misses. It seemed the spell was very sensitive to aim and might miss entirely, but if it did correctly gauge the target position would assist with accuracy.
- It was possible to double cast the spell on the same object to change the trajectory once started, or even triple cast, so long as only one object was in flight.
- An initial trajectory could be set that was itself circular, so three objects could be juggled at once.
- While three objects could be controlled at once, precision suffered when trying to hit an exact target.
- It wasn't possible to remove and throw an attached object, but if the original attachment was weak, Kinetic Dart would function to knock the object off at which point it then could be targeted by the spell.
- The smaller the targets, the harder it was to be precise. Alessia could get the avatar to magically juggle a few shells in a beach scene, but could only get it to pick up the blue shells and ignore the green if she specifically turned on the voice command and said, "blue shells." Even there, she couldn't think of a way to isolate any exact three blue shells.
- The speed wasn't high, but it did seem surprisingly easy to aid or injure people with Kinetic Dart and Kinetic Binding. One could trip someone with a rolling stone or move a trip hazard out of the way. You could lodge a piece of hotdog in someone's throat, or unstick a choke hazard to save them. You could shove pebbles up someone's nose or use a bandage to magically apply pressure to a wound. You could press a superglued rock onto the controls of someone's car or habitation thermostat -
"Are you quite done with killing people, Alessia?" Peter tapped her shoulder.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" She flushed, not realizing Peter had been monitoring their tests directly.
"Don't be," he shrugged. "Two-thirds of our job boils down to how to keep people from killing themselves while on vacation."
"I got forty-eight kills with acid burn alone." Enz gave her a thumbs up.
"Fortunately, Destruction magery is only going to be activated on our virtual game system, Iconia," Peter admonished. "We'd never see the end of lawsuits if it was activated on a planet. But I stopped you because it's break-time, not because of your testing. You're all doing fine for your first day."
"Better than fine," Barb's eyes sparkled. "Can Archos really make this all, in reality? Set up a healing center on another planet? We could cure cancer, all sorts of diseases - people could even live forever!"
"Not forever, I hope." Peter shuddered. "But I'm glad you recognize that it isn't all just tourism and games here - the Archos Project is the future of humanity."