you desire this, then join us.
Otherwise, we shall go our separate ways."
"Can't I at least think about
it?"
"Think all you want," Sean
said, and now it was just the HR manager again. "Just answer by tomorrow,
all right?"
>>>
Golem assembly is seriously complicated
even with standardized parts, and I had no time to think between solving one
misfit part and the next cry for help on some other section of the blueprint. I
had relented and let one drop of "my" Ichor go into a golem assembly
daemon. It was fascinating to watch it reach with twisted golden hands,
daintily take up pieces from the tables or human workers and socket them
together it midair.
I forced myself to turn away. I only did
so because of the deadline, an ironically accurate term. We had little time.
And if anyone asked how to fit the fingers on again, I was going to go insane.
If I wasn't already.
>>>
I couldn't sleep that night, not just
because the emergency room bed was uncomfortable and they still wouldn't let me
go home. Nor could I explain why I had repeatedly punctured my arm with a
letter opener without sounding even more insane, and my feeble lies didn't
convince the doctor of anything. They said they weren't going to commit me,
thank god.
Which I had long deliberately spelled
lowercase, but considering what job offer I might be accepting in the morning,
I thought, I would potentially be spelling with a capital from now on. Michael
Arnold, programmer for the Gods. It had a nice ring to it.
I had searched online until my eyes
ached. Pantheon Solutions, Inc. had a shiny bland website and a mailing
address, and nothing else. Google Maps showed their complex looked even larger
from the air, including a warehouse I had not seen on the tour. The only
mention I saw of the company on IT forums was quiet wondering as to what they
were, since they had seemingly sprung out of nowhere about a year ago. The only
post that mentioned a job offer was the guy turning it down because "they
were crazy as hell." I tried to find any of the symbols I found on the
cube elsewhere, but beyond geometric patterns, nothing.
I did have the cube with me. I would
have swiped it with my ninja stage magician skills, but Sean let me take it
home without comment, except noting that it wouldn't do me much good.
He was right. Dribbling any amount of my
own blood into the cube did nothing. I think my last attempt opened an artery;
by the time the paramedics arrived I was near passing out.
I did have time to think in the
emergency room. There was nothing else to do, and even if not committing me,
they still weren't letting me out yet.
When I was little, I always wanted to be
a mage. True, mages did not exist any more than unicorns did, but that did not
stop me from pretending with my little wizard hat and robes and staff. To
pop-psychoanalyze myself, I'll say it's an obvious fantasy: smart kid now has
magical power and cannot be rejected or hurt by anyone. I don't think it was
harmful as some people think it is, but maybe I went too far. After enough high
school RPGs, I might have gotten the imaginary wizard-ness out and learned to
be a computer whiz instead. Maybe I was still grasping for any little straw,
and I had really gone insane.
Yet... yet if it could be the
case...
>>>
The security end of technothaumatugy was
beyond me, though I had tried many times. It was too much thinking in multiple
levels of abstraction and reality itself, and I suspected those who did it
didn't have completely pure blood. I had another small suspicion that they were
a little too close to what mundane IT called black hats, not helped by their
literal black-and-runed robes. But I was once told those served a functional
purpose. No one disturbs a bunch of dorks with fake beards doing weird things
in wizard get-ups.
It seemed more likely to me that they
just wanted to wear the wizard get-ups in the first place, but whatever helped
them float our boat. (Or
Otherwise, we shall go our separate ways."
"Can't I at least think about
it?"
"Think all you want," Sean
said, and now it was just the HR manager again. "Just answer by tomorrow,
all right?"
>>>
Golem assembly is seriously complicated
even with standardized parts, and I had no time to think between solving one
misfit part and the next cry for help on some other section of the blueprint. I
had relented and let one drop of "my" Ichor go into a golem assembly
daemon. It was fascinating to watch it reach with twisted golden hands,
daintily take up pieces from the tables or human workers and socket them
together it midair.
I forced myself to turn away. I only did
so because of the deadline, an ironically accurate term. We had little time.
And if anyone asked how to fit the fingers on again, I was going to go insane.
If I wasn't already.
>>>
I couldn't sleep that night, not just
because the emergency room bed was uncomfortable and they still wouldn't let me
go home. Nor could I explain why I had repeatedly punctured my arm with a
letter opener without sounding even more insane, and my feeble lies didn't
convince the doctor of anything. They said they weren't going to commit me,
thank god.
Which I had long deliberately spelled
lowercase, but considering what job offer I might be accepting in the morning,
I thought, I would potentially be spelling with a capital from now on. Michael
Arnold, programmer for the Gods. It had a nice ring to it.
I had searched online until my eyes
ached. Pantheon Solutions, Inc. had a shiny bland website and a mailing
address, and nothing else. Google Maps showed their complex looked even larger
from the air, including a warehouse I had not seen on the tour. The only
mention I saw of the company on IT forums was quiet wondering as to what they
were, since they had seemingly sprung out of nowhere about a year ago. The only
post that mentioned a job offer was the guy turning it down because "they
were crazy as hell." I tried to find any of the symbols I found on the
cube elsewhere, but beyond geometric patterns, nothing.
I did have the cube with me. I would
have swiped it with my ninja stage magician skills, but Sean let me take it
home without comment, except noting that it wouldn't do me much good.
He was right. Dribbling any amount of my
own blood into the cube did nothing. I think my last attempt opened an artery;
by the time the paramedics arrived I was near passing out.
I did have time to think in the
emergency room. There was nothing else to do, and even if not committing me,
they still weren't letting me out yet.
When I was little, I always wanted to be
a mage. True, mages did not exist any more than unicorns did, but that did not
stop me from pretending with my little wizard hat and robes and staff. To
pop-psychoanalyze myself, I'll say it's an obvious fantasy: smart kid now has
magical power and cannot be rejected or hurt by anyone. I don't think it was
harmful as some people think it is, but maybe I went too far. After enough high
school RPGs, I might have gotten the imaginary wizard-ness out and learned to
be a computer whiz instead. Maybe I was still grasping for any little straw,
and I had really gone insane.
Yet... yet if it could be the
case...
>>>
The security end of technothaumatugy was
beyond me, though I had tried many times. It was too much thinking in multiple
levels of abstraction and reality itself, and I suspected those who did it
didn't have completely pure blood. I had another small suspicion that they were
a little too close to what mundane IT called black hats, not helped by their
literal black-and-runed robes. But I was once told those served a functional
purpose. No one disturbs a bunch of dorks with fake beards doing weird things
in wizard get-ups.
It seemed more likely to me that they
just wanted to wear the wizard get-ups in the first place, but whatever helped
them float our boat. (Or
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