Frank Foxglove watched the Kid family being taken away by a taxi. They were only Level 1s and so alcohol still affected them. Sirian and his wife were already past the point where alcohol had any effect on their Level 5 bodies.
The anatomy of ascenders was a strange thing.
Their bodies were almost identical to pre-ascenders and yet there couldn’t be a greater chasm between. Everything was different.
Ascenders aged at varying paces, depending on their Levels, most pre-ascender diseases like asthma weren’t an issue while health regeneration was something pre-ascenders could only dream about. With each Level benefits only increased. Then there were even stranger concepts like mana, buffs and debuffs. These things weren’t even visible to Low-Level ascenders due to an insufficient spiritual energy.
“I couldn’t stand that woman,” Lorelai said from behind. She walked around Frank, making sure her slender legs were exposed. “She didn’t want our offer.”
“Perhaps she didn’t like the downside.”
A frown marred Lorelai’s perfect face.
“Are you saying you entertain the possibility of failure, Sirian?”
Frank Foxglove’s true name was Sirian Sael. He belonged to one of the wealthiest families in the solar system. He couldn’t have his name tied to this offer. His wife had already stretched things by keeping her real first name in the conversation with the Kid family. Same went for Vivena although their daughter wasn’t known to the World Government.
“The formations we possess are structured to affix the poison affinity. Designating a different affinity is a purely theoretical concept.”
Alarmed, Lorelai turned to her husband.
“Why have we offered this to that family then?”
“You know I can’t say a no to our daughter.”
“Sirian.” Lorelai’s voice became sharper and much more forceful. “What are the odds of success? And don’t give me crap. I’m asking you as a scientist now.”
Sirian mused the question, unbothered by his wife’s glare. She was right. He hadn’t done much consideration, but in his defence, there was not much of a downside in this situation. If they failed to adjust the formations to Intelligence or Mind affinity, nothing bad would happen. The boy would either receive a Talent with poison affinity or some other affinity. No downside.
Formations were difficult to modify. They were circular diagrams with precise geometry. The slightest change to any part turned them off. They’d tested the formations they possessed and were convinced of being close to isolating the variable responsible for an affinity. If only other families were eager to sell their secrets. But then the others could say the same about the Saels and.
“Once we set up the formation, the process will be a formality.”
“Once you set up the formation? Sirian, we’re risking exposure here. If the Kids talk—”
Sirian raised his hand, interrupting his wife.
“No one would listen to them. There are thousands of conspiracy theories about us on SolNet. What is one more?”
***
The next three months passed in a blur.
Keynes hoped to learn something about the process of shaping his Talent from the Foxgloves but was sorely disappointed after a few visits, which made him question the whole undertaking. There were no secret runes or formations or even glyphs.
The entire proposition was based on some highly doubtful laws of attraction.
This made Keynes’s mother doubly suspicious and she voiced her complaints daily, driving everyone to the point where they were leaving the house before Mrs Kid got out of bed.
Despite the disappointment, Keynes wondered what he was missing. There had to be something. The deal was too lucrative to be fake.
He used SolNet to look up the Foxgloves and when it returned no results, he searched for Talent-shaping. It turned out to be a mistake that sucked him in for days. SolNet was a chaotic amalgamation of information without any way to sort the wheat from the chaff.
The true knowledge was hidden behind an expensive paywall or exclusive access. The World Government rarely shared their scientific discoveries with the general public, which was a big source of criticism toward the institution, at least on SolNet discussion forums. The bureaucratic reasoning behind such a drastic decision was the standard public safety rhetoric slapped on everything they didn’t want to reveal.
But Keynes wasn’t fully without access to the knowledge. Webster Frog didn’t forget about him and pestered Keynes for three months about joining the Government-run programme. Because of the deal with the Foxgloves, Keynes couldn’t accept Webster Frog’s offer but from several conversations they had, he gleaned some details about the Talent-shaping. It wasn’t much but enough to confirm his suspicions, whatever the Foxgloves had been telling him were lies.
***
Late August finally came and with it, an official invitation to the Talent Unlocking Ceremony. Warned beforehand, the soon-to-be ascenders knew about the changes. Gone were public ceremonies conducted in the Talent centres in favour of the military compounds with strict access and tight safety measures.
“Are you nervous?” Keynes’s father asked. “I can ask your mother to use her Talent on you.”
“I don’t think she has any mana left.”
His mother received hundreds of calls from parents whose sons and daughters were having the Talent Unlocking Ceremonies this week. She did as much as she could but her Soothing Talent needed mana to work and with mana regeneration, even enhanced by the mana regeneration glyph, she could do only ten to twenty people a day. Still, she pushed herself beyond that, scraping the bottom of her mana pool. She was barely functioning. Keynes couldn’t ask her for more.
“Ah, yes. You’re correct. I’ve forgotten she cannot take mana regeneration pills anymore.”
This was an unfortunate consequence of unique Talents as it was difficult to recreate things done only by people with specific Talents after they died. Jorge Herban was a prime example of this.
He had been an exceptional herbalist—and by some also called an alchemist—who had created—among many—the mana regen pills by enhancing ingredients to such a degree that they gained magical properties. Unfortunately, his creations weren’t without side effects, which he had been fixing until his sudden death. Without Jorge, the research on the pills was handed over to the institute and forgotten, naturally, giving birth to a plethora of conspiracy theories.
“Yeah.”
After the short exchange, their conversation died out. Keynes’s father wasn’t very good at comforting others, or talking in general. His area of focus was glyphs—objects that manifested magical powers given the right shape. Keynes’s father had a passive Talent allowed him to finetune and polish completed glyphs, making them more effective.
When it came to his work, he was a different man. But none of that was now important. Keynes decided to check on his mother.
She had a mana-deficiency headache. She’d emptied her mana pool as soon as she could afford to soothe a person or two, bringing her mana to zero once again. This—apparently—wasn’t dangerous but always induced a painful headache.
“How do you feel, mom?”
She weakly smiled and her warm hand beckoned him closer. He sat down next to her. Interesting how different she behaved when she was out of mana.
“As usual, what about you?”
“Can’t say the same.”
“And why would you? This is the biggest day of your life, Key. This is the beginning of your own path.
“Was it the same for you?”
“It was,” his mother replied but Keynes had a hard time picturing his mother standing on a precipice of a new exciting life. He loved her but her soothing Talent belonged to one of the least thrilling Talents. In fact, soothing was the very opposite of exciting.
“It’s time.” Harter came to inform them with a sly smile. “To become a man, my little brother.”
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“You may be bigger in size but I have brains,” Keynes replied then added with emphasis. “And I am older.”
Harter only snorted.
***
Webster Frog sat behind his desk, preparing paperwork for the afternoon’s ceremony. He was still getting used to the idea of holding the Talent Ceremonies inside military bases. The facts spoke in favour of holding them here though. The military possessed unmatched analytical tools powered by mana instead of electricity, which greatly enhanced their capabilities. Nonetheless, despite their great promise, they were still in a prototype phase.
Speaking of great promise, the results from the Talent experiment were unfortunately disappointing so far. He wasn’t surprised by this. They lacked basics like a control group. Webster’s boss didn’t want to hear about such measures, saying that it was civilian bullshit. Why conduct an experiment in the first place then?
This not only irked Webster but the Institute of Science and Research, the science arm of the World Government, seemed to have very little interest in the experiment. But at the end of a day, it wasn’t Webster’s decision to make. He left strategizing to the higher-ups while he focused his attention on what truly mattered -- groundwork.
A file with a familiar name spiked his interest.
Keynes Kid, a boy with a perfect recall. It was a shame he hadn’t agreed to take Webster’s offer. Even his boss would see the value in working with someone like Keynes Kid. The amount of data about how skills transferred from humans to ascenders was substantial but incomplete and contradictory. There were many instances where people didn’t inherit their extraordinary qualities like ambidexterity, mental calculation, abnormal strength or senses. Even cases where the transfer of an ability actually happened but was unrelated to with the ascender’s Talent were numerous in comparison to situations when the extraordinary trait and a Talent complemented each other upon ascension to Level 1.
What the data failed to capture was the deeper understanding of these processes. Ascender anatomy was vastly different from a human’s but there was very little information about the transition itself, which was commonly known as the Talent Unlocking Ceremony.
Maybe there was more information, simply, gated behind the Global Secrecy Act and Webster was too low in the chain of command to access it. For all its flaws, he hoped so because otherwise, it’d mean that the current state of knowledge was astonishingly superficial.
The last document had Vivena Foxglove’s name on it. A transfer girl, he remembered, then he lost his interest in her and put the sheet away.
A knock on the door made his head jerk. It was too early for the start of the ceremony and no one usually bothered him. His staff knew he didn’t like being interrupted. His boss, Commander Winters, would call him directly. Then who?
A red-haired woman entered his office. The weight of her spiritual aura made it clear that she wasn’t an ordinary ascender. The spiritual strength of Level 1 was so weak that most people couldn’t even project it. This changed substantially at Level 2 and further progressed with each subsequent Level. Webster knew it because he had many dealings with high-levelled individuals. Because of that, the weight of her Spirit didn’t awe him, merely irked.
“Are you Webster Frog?”
“Specialist Frog, yes, it’s me. How can I help you?”
She didn’t seem to register his tone but Webster didn’t want to press the issue. Common civilians weren’t high levelled. Plus, this was a staff-only area. She wouldn’t be able to simply walk in without authorization.
“My name is Lorelai Foxglove. My daughter has a ceremony today.”
“Indeed.” Webster nodded, expecting an explanation.
“I’d like to withdraw my daughter from today’s ceremony. We have a private ceremony prepared for her.”
A private ceremony. Well, then, Webster wasn’t wrong about stepping with care around Lorelai Foxglove. Such ceremonies were a mark of the wealthy. Webster got a better look at the woman. She was beautiful, though her Level made it harder to tell her age. Not that it was important.
The loss of a single student wasn’t a big deal when there were millions of students going through their ascensions over the next couple of days. But still, Webster felt a pang of regret. Hopefully, one day, every ceremony would be recorded and lodged in the military system.
She knocked on his desk pulling him out of his dream. He looked up into her cold blue eyes.
“I have her file here.” Webster placed his hand on the pile of documents. “But I have to ask you for proof of identity.”
“I don’t have one on me. You can take this up with your commander.”
“With Commander Winters?”
“I thought Burygold Finn’s in charge here.”
Webster blinked several times. Burygold Finn was a bigshot colonel. Who was this woman? Webster picked up a phone and called his commander. This smelled of politics and he didn’t want to get involved.
Not even two minutes later, Commander Winters barged into Webster’s office.
“Give us a moment,” Commander Winters barked.
Webster stepped out of his office only to be called back a moment later.
“Hand Mrs Foxglove whatever she asks for.”
“Yes, sir.”
The commander hastily left, leaving Webster with the woman.
“The documents please.”
He handed her the file, she grabbed it jealousy, which made Webster wonder why she’d applied for her daughter to take the ceremony here in the first place.
“Thank you, Mr Frog.” She turned to go then stopped. “And one more thing, I’d like to withdraw Keynes Kid.”
Webster’s eyebrows climbed up. Keynes Kid had a perfect memory and his Talent could be extremely valuable to the future research of Talent-shaping. Webster couldn’t give him away. He was too important.
“I’m afraid his name has already been added to the system and cannot be removed once added.” It was a dangerous and career-ending lie. Webster’s heart was hammering in his chest and he prayed that the High-Level visitor didn’t sense it.
High-Level ascenders possessed sharper senses and it was believed, though without scientific evidence, that some of them could detect a lie. Webster didn’t think she was one of them but she could still have such a Talent. Unlikely but possible.
“Who authorised the system like this?”
“The Institute of Science and Research.”
She tsked.
“And nothing can be done about it?”
Webster could argue with her on the basis that only Keynes’s parents had the right to withdraw their child from the ceremony but after what Commander Winters had told him Webster wasn’t going to cross his betters.
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
“I will have a word with Burygold Finn about this.”
Webster paled. Was he finished?
How little he knew.
***
Keynes didn’t share Harter’s excitement. Did his younger brother understand what the ceremony entailed? What weight did it carry? Unlikely. Even Keynes hadn’t comprehended the true severity of the ceremony until it crawled close. Its oppressiveness threatened to grind him into nothing but a bundle of nerves.
In less than an hour Keynes would learn his Talent and his future would be determined. The previous night he binged Talents Unleashed by Incantus. One of a few books from the pre-technological world when everything revolved around Talents and powers they bestowed upon ascenders. Incantus argued that every Talent had its uses. While Talents Unleashed was strongly optimistic, Keynes couldn’t ignore a much recent work, Trapped Potential that stood in a direct opposition to Incantus’s book.
“Do you need soothing, darling?”
“It’s fine, mom,” Keynes lied and focused on his surroundings instead.
The military base was dull.
Everything was made of bare concrete. Some people enjoyed the industrial design, although nothing here was designed with that kind of preference in mind. It was functionality that the army focused on as their goal was to increase conformity of their personnel, keeping their stimuli to the very minimum.
They walked into the newly opened reception. Many other families had already gathered in the room. Keynes saw propaganda posters on the wall, explaining why the ceremonies had been moved from the public spaces to the military locations.
Security.
It was a universal excuse, easy to digest and hard to refute. No mention of research or experimentation. Typical. Keynes peeled his eyes from the poster.
Everyone in the room looked anxious and many eyed Keynes’s mother with longing eyes, hoping she’d offer them soothing. She didn’t. She was exhausted, and in truth, she required soothing as much as everyone else in here.
“Nina,” an ash-haired Mrs Brown walked over, smiling sadly at them. “How are you? I’ve heard you had a few busy days.”
“You wouldn’t believe, Maria. I don’t remember a year like this.” And there wasn’t one. Keynes remembered every year and this one was unprecedented. It wasn’t clear why so many people sought his mother’s soothing though. There could be many factors: word of mouth, demographics or the decision to move the ceremonies.
Both women hugged each other. They were of the same age and had been friends since school. Maria was unfortunate to receive in inactive Talent that destroyed her chances to pursue any professional career. She worked as a low-paid admin in a warehouse. Keynes’s mother often cursed the Talent-based System for being cruel and unfair. Talents could make or break people in a blink of an eye.
“Why didn’t you answer my call?”
Mrs Brown waved her hand. Keynes knew the truth as his parents had discussed it several times. Mrs Brown couldn’t afford his mother’s soothing even with all the family and friends discounts she was giving. This time, his mother was going to give her soothing for free.
“Work,” she lied but they didn’t hold it against her, no one liked charity.
“Tell me about it,” Nina said, nodding at her husband. “I barely see the man.”
Ewan Kid was about to explain himself when Mark, Maria’s husband, approached. Their son Joe, a bully from Keynes’s class, trailed him silently. Joe’s face was pure fear. A part of Keynes understood him. He was scared of receiving an inactive Talent like his mother.
“Hi,” Mark muttered. He was Level 2; courtesy of being in the police force. He shook Ewan Kid’s hand but other than that he stayed out of the conversation. Keynes didn’t blame the man. Ewan Kid wasn’t the most interesting man under the sun. He often stayed silent, locked in his mind and musing about glyphs. Small talk didn’t interest Keynes’s father. Because Mark Brown wasn’t any different, both men happily stood at the periphery of their group in silence.
Only once had Keynes heard his father talk with Mr Brown. Boy, it was a cringe-worthy experience. It was like a tug-of-war, crime this, glyphs that, cases this, optimization that.
Joe kept away from the Kid family. Each time he tried to bolt away, most likely to his cronies, his father grabbed by the collar of his shirt and pulled him back.
Harter left them as he spotted his own friends. Keynes searched for Vivena but she didn’t arrive yet.
The receptionist eventually called for everyone’s attention. Keynes and Harter returned to their parents, while the Browns left.
“Specialist Webster Frog will conduct the ceremony now. Please follow me and do not stray away from the path. This part of the base is repurposed for the public but there are still restricted areas within it and it is a crime to trespass in such areas.”
The middle-aged receptionist walked around the desk, weaved between the gathered and entered one of three corridors. Like a liquid from an uncorked bottle, people flowed after her.