Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion by Stephen W. Gee

only made him smile wider. Two flights of stairs and one hallway later, the three of them arrived at their destination.
    Imagine what would happen if a magician’s workshop had sex with a scientist’s laboratory. Now stop that, because it’s weird, and not helpful at all. The room was closer to 70 percent laboratory and 25 percent classroom, with the only concessions to magick being a pair of badly singed target dummies in one corner and a few dribbly candles along the back wall. Everything else was cold tile and colder pizza, white lab coats and coats of arms, and research papers piled on top of half-written dissertations draped over stacks of textbooks in various states of reading and/or writing. In the middle of it all, perched on top of a lopsided stool and with her face mere centimeters away from the page she was scribbling on, was a woman.
    Holding a finger up to his lips, Mazik stealthily tiptoed toward her, a humongous grin on his face. He enveloped her in a bear hug. “Hey, darling!”
    “Eep!” squeaked the woman, her shoulders seizing up as she jumped. Papers scattered across the floor as she nearly toppled from her seat.
    “Aww, don’t worry, beautiful. It’s just me,” said Mazik, his voice full of honey and chili peppers. The woman stopped flailing and really looked at him. Mazik smiled. “Hi.”
    “You!” she said, beating her fists against his chest. Mazik shook with laughter, until he could take it no more and drew her into a kiss.
    “I think I’m going to be sick,” said Gavi.
    “I know what you mean,” said Raedren, duplicating his earlier faux-vomiting expression. He cleared his throat, and the two separated.
    “It’s great to see you all again,” said Kalenia Jiun’Westyark, Graduate Researcher of Applied Geosocial Magicks at Ain & Narouff University, and Mazik’s girlfriend. A lithe woman with delicate cheekbones and lips that seemed designed to hold a graceful smile, she looked like a noble’s daughter dressing up as a nerdy graduate student. She was the real deal, though, complete with single-minded focus and a complete disregard for anything that didn’t interest her. Mazik liked to joke that sometimes she got so absorbed in her work that she would pass out from forgetting to eat, which, unlike most of what Mazik said, was actually true.
    Smoothing out her black and purple robes, which had become creased from hours of diligent studying and seconds of hysterical laughter, Kalenia bowed. “It’s been too long.”
    Gavi and Raedren bowed in return. “Yes, it has. It’s nice to see you as well,” said Gavi. “Sorry we didn’t tell you we were coming. We thought your boyfriend was going to tell you, but, well…”
    “Surprise!” said Mazik.
    “Oh, it’s no problem. I was just doing a little research,” said Kalenia, waving at the table. “I was actually about to take a…” she started, and then trailed off, because that’s when she noticed all of the papers scattered across the floor.
    “Oh shoot!” said Kalenia, scrambling to collect them.
    Cute , thought Raedren with a touch of jealousy.
    She’s cute, thought Gavi, with a touch of a more complex kind of jealousy.
    Mazik laughed. “Here, I’ll help you.”
    Once the four of them had collected the papers and put them back in order, they sat. “So,” said Kalenia, folding her hands demurely on her lap. “What brings you all here?”
    The three of them looked at each other. Then, by mutually unspoken agreement, Gavi and Raedren clammed up and turned to Mazik.
    “Ah, yes. Looking forward to this part,” Mazik said to himself. He took a deep breath. “Okay, well. We, uhm, need your help. With something.”
    Kalenia cocked her head to the side. “Oh?”
    “Well … right. So you know how I complain about my job a lot?”
    “Oh, yes. All the time,” said Kalenia, though her voice made it sound like this was the most natural thing in the world. Gavi and Raedren nodded emphatically even as they marveled at