I woke up. My head felt fuzzy again. My thoughts were filled with static. I blanked out as I realized that I was lying on a strange mattress, staring up at a strange ceiling. Then my thoughts and memories caught up to each other and I realized that this was my mattress and that was the ceiling of my room. 

We’d moved. We made the decision to do so two weeks ago, shortly after the job in Pinedale. I was lying on the ground, my green-eyed gaze distant and unfocused as I watched one of the anime Margot was always going on about. I was streaming the show on my internal-os and watching it on an AR screen that was being projected over my head.

When we made the decision to move Margot was perched up on her bed. Surrounded by a nest of blankets. She was playing video games like usual. Shortly before lunch time she got up to switch out the game she’d been playing for another game. Then before she got back onto the bed she stopped and looked down at me.

“Do you think we should go now?” 

“Go? Go where?” I said. 

“I mean...I always sort of knew that it wasn’t really safe for me to stick around in this school now that I have powers and well...you. I just needed the money to pay for a fresh start. Well, we have the money now so...don’t you think we should go now?” 

I paused the show I was watching and sat up, propping myself up on an elbow. I looked up at the pale freckled face of my contractor and tried to decide what kind of answer to give her. 

“Nh...You might be right. You’re probably right. And that’s fine. Like I’ve said before, I’ll be on your side regardless of what you do, so you do you.” 

“O-, Okay then. I guess I’ll start looking for a new place for us.” said Margot. 

“You do that...and if it helps, know that my printers, fabricators, and drones are all at your disposal so don’t be afraid of the words ‘fixer-up’.” I said. Flopping back down and resuming my show. 

“Tha-, thanks.” said Margot. 

Then she paused, turned around and said, 

“What the difference between a printer and a fabricator?” 

I paused my show again but didn’t get up this time as I answered. 

“They’re basically the same shit. They use the same processes. They’re equally capable of converting energy to matter and vis-de-versa. They both manipulate matter at the quantum scale. It’s just that the printers are used for making small scale shit ie. printing a phone, or a sword, or a set of clothes. While the fabricators are for making big shit like bathtubs, or space stations.”

“Ah...Oh, Um, thanks.” said Margot. 

A little later during that week, Margot would come to me with a list of five potential new addresses. She handed me a laptop with a popular real estate website on its screen. The addresses were a mixture of apartment complexes, town houses, duplexes, and rooms for rent. All of them located in neighborhoods that were ‘alright’ neither rough or nice in quality. 

“Interesting, so you’ve got your eye on the midwest?” 

“Huh? No...I just wanted to get us out of the range of my family’s influence and that’s the shortest distance we needed to go to do so.” 

“Ah, I got you. But why did you stop at the midwest?” 

“I...I don’t know. It just sort of made sense in my head at the time.” 

“Hm, we’ll I’m fine living wherever but shouldn’t feel any need to pigeon-hole yourself. I’ve got the tech and magic to create identities for us wherever you want and even without using clandestine means, as players in the league it probably wouldn’t be all that hard for us to immigrate overseas. Heck, if you wanted we could even immigrate to other worlds.” 

“Oth-, Other worlds?”

“You know, all the Terras, Gaias, Midgards, and other alternate earths? Or were you talking about the other habitable planets in this particular universe because we could probably go to one of those too. My long-range teleportation doesn’t really have any hard limits beyond the power-use so we could literally go anywhere.” 

Margot’s brow furrowed and she looked at the website. Then she took her laptop back. 

She’d return a day later with an entirely different list. A longer list. The handful of mid-western addresses had been replaced with addresses from all over the country and all over the world. 

I read through them, researching the properties behind the addresses and all the surrounding locations using my connection to the akashic plane. 

“So what did you want me to do here, exactly?” I asked. 

“Huh?...I figured you could tell me what you thought. Maybe see if you could use your powers to check out whether any of the potentials I chose would be better or worse than the others.” said Margot. 

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Alright then. Give a minute.” 

I created my own list. It started off as a duplicate of the list that Margot showed me. Then I used the data I’d pooled on the addresses to sort the properties from most favorable to least favorable. The ten least favorable addresses were immediately deleted from the list.

Addresses that were struck off of the list, were struck for having something tangibly wrong with them. Each of those deleted addresses had something going on that’d be a pain to deal with. 

The reasons varied. One address was haunted after being built over a displaced graveyard. 

Another address was knocked off of the list because landlord was a creepers who had ties with underground slavery rings, and the police in the city was surrepitiously uncurious about having so many disappearences happen in one town. 

Other address were knocked out because the buildings had issues with vermin of various sizes and blood thirstiness. 

Eventually I was able to pare things down and give Margot a list of twenty addresses. Grouped according to their relative cost and the country in which they were located. Margot looked through the list and with a series of clicks she adjusted her own list so that she ended up with a new list of five made up of the top ten choices from the list of twenty addresses that I’d given her. 

“Any thoughts you want to share?” asked Margot. 

“Not really. Why?” I answered. 

“I...I don’t know. I mean this is a decision that will affect both of us. I figured you might want to give some input.” said Margot. 

“Mhm, I don’t know enough about this world to really have much of an opinion but if you want to get your thoughts out and just talk ‘at’ me while you mull things over I’m fine with that.” 

“Er,...Uh, that sounds good, I guess. Let’s see...I think we can probably take the addresses in Mexico, Columbia, and Argentina off of the list. Though they have a sizeable magical community, south of texas-mexico border things tend to lean towards supers more than anything else.” 

“Okay? So I’m guessing you’re looking for a place with a pretty active magical population how about the United Kingdoms?” 

“Hm, I’m not sure if the UK would be a good fit for me...It’s magical but maybe just a bit too magical. They’ve got like a whole magic society there with its own special rules and codes and I’m having enough trouble trying to figure things out socially over here in the US where things are more informal.” 

“And the Japanese address?” 

“Y-, You can ignore that one. That place is mostly supers, cyborgs, and yokai, with a very small population of onmyodo, taoists, and mages from the western orthodoxies. I just put it in there as an aspirational thing. I mean, what kind of otaku would I be if I didn’t at least put it in the holy origin of most of the media I enjoy as a possibility? E-, Even if the language barrier is easy enough to get around with translation spells, getting used a whole other culture is super hard, especially for someone like me who barely gets the culture she was born in...so yeah I don’t think I need to travel halfway across the world to fail at life and be super awkward. I already do that here just fine...Bu-, But maybe we can just go there for a visit time maybe, please?” said Margot. Her face growing more flush as she grew more flustered. 

I gave the girl a look and then chuckled making a mental note to maybe take her more places, she was far too content simply sitting in our tiny room in own small corner of the world. 

Then because I thought the expression she was making was adorable I took a mental picture. Highlighting the moment as one of those that were protected from erasure. 

“Sure, we can go visit Japan some time, if you’d like.” 

“R-, Really? Yay!” said Margot.

“How about New York?” I said. Trying to push things forward. 

“The mages in New York are a little too cool for me...Plus, my family might be able to find me, since we sometimes do business with the companies there.” 

I wondered what she meant by New York was too cool for her. As far as I knew, while the ENE had indeed had an effect on climate patterns, lengthening the winters and shrinking the spring, that was on a global level. 

I thought about it a little longer and it occured to me that she meant “cool” in the vernacular. Which annoyed me because it meant she still thought of herself as lacking. I snorted in annoyance, my nostrils flaring as hot air came out. My contractor was plenty cool...in her own way. I decided to endeavour to build up her confidence and make sure she knew this. 

“M-, Monty?” said Margot. 

“What?” 

“You kind of stopped talking and then weird smoke rings came out of your nostrils.” 

“Huh? Oh, don’t mind it. That’s just an allergic reaction.” I said. 

“Aeons have allergies?” 

“Sure we do, how else could some of us come down with the flux?” 

“....?!”

“.....” 

I think we both decided not to comment about my dated and inescapable cultural reference. Either that, or that particular show was never aired in this reality in which case Margot probably had no idea what I was talking about. 

“H-, How about the addresses in Canada?” I said. Forcibly changing the subject.

“What about Canada?” said Margot. 

“What do you think of the magical community there?” 

“I think they’re alright. As far as paranormal communities go, Canada’s kind of middle of the road. They’ve got a lot of everything, which makes some people think they’re one of the ‘weirdest’ countries but again it’s literally just that they’ve got a bit of everything. It’s actually really kind of mellow up there. ” 

“Mellow, huh? That sounds good, right? Less to worry about then.” 

“I guess so... They still have a lot of stuff going on, it’s just usually less catastrophic then the stuff that ends up on the news here.” said Margot. 

“Cool...So do we want to live there?” 

“Maybe? It's kind of a big move, but maybe it’s not too big a move since its only Canada and they’re not that different compared to the US.” 

I sighed. 

“You still want to just move to the midwest.” 

“...Yeah. Sorry. Is that bad?”

“Nah. Again, I literally don’t care where we live. Honestly, if you asked me to kill your family so we could just stay put, that’d be fine too. Alternatively, we could live on the moon and I’d still be happy.” I said. 

“R-, Really?..I thought you were just being nice.” said Margot. 

“Ah, M.  That just means you don’t know me well enough yet. The times I do things ‘just to be nice’ are far and few in between. I’m an eldritch entity with tons of inscrutable intentions. So yeah, feel free to take advantage here. I can guarantee it’s all part of some master plan made from long before you were born, or whatever.” I said. Waving airly. 

“Heh...Well, in that case. Yeah, I think I want to move out to the midwest.” said Margot. Giggling at my nonsense. Seeming a lot less unsure of her decision.

Thus we ended up moving to the city of Prospero. An industrious little city in the state of Arcadia. Arcadia was one of the handful of new states that arose after the US federal government had collapsed during the chaos of the ENE event. 

It was formed from the portion of Ohio that was cut off from the rest of the state and surrounded by water during the asteroid shower that followed the birth of Earth's second moon. 

You’d think that the Ohio state government would have had some complaints about the new state seceding from its government but for most of the US Arcadia was just an arid little rock who’s sole redeeming factors was its rich anomalous energy flow. Ohio had enough problems dealing with the fact that it was now the size of Texas and the large number of ornery super-intelligent rabbits that were hopping around the state. 

The skyline was filled with a mishmash of dire glittering spikes, brownstone old residences, and constructs that seemed like some alien beings approximation of a medieval castle. The people were polite but distant and the clouds were constantly gray due to the presence of the various factories that occupied the city’s industrial district. For now, this place would be our home. 

After meeting with the landlady a short three days ago for the apartment showing. We signed the lease a day after. Now we were already moved in and beginning the process of acclimating to our new environment. 

As I peered out the window of my bedroom and observed the night I found myself growing fond of the city. My anticipation of me and Margot’s adventures within the city rising to an all-time high.