VladJunior

June 19, 2015

I like your superpowers system and how you limit the powers to one ability. That is slightly different than a system I am working with. I am writing a story that uses a magic system that incorporates energy transfer from dark energy and virtual particles (which are present all around us). Some humans have the ability in the story to gather the dark energy and then manipulate it into producing physical or mental effects. In order to use more of the energy, they can transfer some into make-shift "batteries" and then use the energy all at once later on. Gathering and using the dark energy has a cost - it ages the users cells and, depending on how much and how powerful the magic, it can create an aging bubble around the user that impacts all other living things within that bubble (metal and rock is not effected, which is why some metals can store the dark energy and be used as "batteries").

One thought on your system would be to have each "battery" storage be different depending upon the super hero power. For instance, if you have the power to fly, but it takes loads of energy, maybe the hero walks around storing power into sugar crystals and then, when she needs it, chugs a large sugar water in order to gather the energy to fly. But knowing your power and knowing how and what to store the energy into could be a source of conflict or confusion or lack of knowledge that impacts the plot of the book. Just a thought.

June 17, 2015

I am not sure if it has been pointed out, but Vasher/Warbreaker, in explaining Awakening to Vivenna, makes several comments about innovations happening all the time, but Awakeners have certain prejudices in sharing (mainly because of the manywar that started as a result of the wonderful inventions of the Five Scholars) and in using Breath in a manner that risks its retrieval, (i.e. Lifeless

Or giving an opponent your Breath to shock them for a few seconds so you can slit their throat.

). In Type IV, if you mess up the Command, you cannot recover the Breaths and you are left with a defunct piece of metal/stone. And it takes 1000 breaths to make a Type IV. So that is a very heavy price to pay for experimenting. So I think Brandon did a pretty good job of explaining how the research is out there, but isn't being shared among Awakeners (who also don't have to be Returned, btw). Also, if Yersteel is still researching, Vasher is still researching (e.g. commands related to memory) then there are probably others doing it as well, just not sharing that knowledge.

April 30, 2015

While they may not illegally murder someone, the mother may still have come across the Skybreakers. Why else would Shallan's brother seek them out, unless that tidbit was a ruse? There are several questions left unanswered here: Why did the Ghostbloods provide Davar with the soulcaster in the first place (which appears to have occurred after Shallan killed her mother)? Why did Helaran leave to seek out the Skybreakers even though he was involved with the Ghostbloods and appeared to be on an assassination assignment to kill Amaram, a man Mraize tells Shallan has been reserved for assassination by another (presumbly Iyital from the scene with the blowgun)? At the time Shallan killed her mother, Gavilar still lived. We know that the Ghostbloods, Sons of Honor, Skybreakers, and Shin were all concerned with the coming Desolation and protoradiants. Only the Skybreakers were actively seeking to kill them, however. And we only see that happen when Nalan is present, never without. Maybe there is a law that allows mothers to kill their children in Jah Keved?

March 6, 2015

The spren idea seems consistant with the notion that the other gates (besides Stormseat) are "locked." How exactly do you lock a live spren from acting, unless you have killed that spren by abandoning oaths. Perhaps that is why Stormseat's oathgate still works? It was forgotten after the last desolation. Although the city was destroyed, the spren operating the gate lived through the destruction. I imagine there will be some re-discovery that helps the current Knights replace the old gate locks with new spren.

February 26, 2015

Here is the next three chapters of the story where it starts to get interesting.

Chapter 3

In order to calm myself, and to escape the boredom that I knew would come with waiting during the Exam, I entered the Reading Room and immediately perused the bookshelf in the east end. It contained the history books and story books relating to Alchemy. Many of them I had read already. There was the story of the first nobles who formed the Church to train those blessed with alchemical powers to keep them from destroying the world. Before that time, some five hundred years ago, Alchemists were rare and often very dangerous. There was no formal training on how to control the power and no understanding of how it worked. The wild Alchemists were without guide, moral or otherwise, and caused nearly as much destruction as they did constructive manipulation. In time, the Abbey’s and Monasteries became saviors to the common man by locking away the Alchemists so that they couldn’t ruin towns and villages.

I imagine you are wondering how that could be. How can someone who is so revered today have been such a threat so long ago? Well, it has to do with Alchemy. The very act of changing the world can cause the destruction of living things. You see, the material world is not simply what you see, smell, touch, taste, and feel. Those are material particles that engage your senses. There are also invisible particles; those that cannot be seen or felt or heard. They come and go in our universe in a flash; so fast that normal people do not even know that they are there. Only someone with the ability to sense their existence can detect invisible particles. This explanation is not known to the Nostrian public. Not even all nobles are privy to the secrets of Alchemy. It is the grand secret of the universe that is guarded by the Church in its infinite wisdom, granted that blessing by the almighty himself.

Not all nobles refrain from questioning the Church, however. Throughout history there have been several notable “free-thinkers” who have dared to challenge the Church’s monopoly on alchemical knowledge. There was a young teacher, Julius Branthos, who lived at the Academy a hundred years ago, right around the time we discovered electricity, who hypothesized that the invisible particles were made up of highly charged material particles and their polar opposite. When they would come into being, the particles would destroy each other almost instantaneously. After all, it is a proven theory of physics that energy can neither be created nor destroyed in the universe. So these opposites contained energy properties that cancelled each other out, so most people would never be able to tell that they were there at all. When one material particle appears out of the ether with a strong electrical charge, its polar opposite, or negative charge, would have to appear to cancel it out. Branthos claimed to have run successful experiments that showed that the existence of these particles seemed to last for mere fractions of a second. He also theorized that the greater the energy in the particles, the faster they annihilated each other. According to Branthos, it was the manipulation of these invisible energy particles that the Alchemists were being trained to perform by transferring the energy of these particles into everyday objects around them.

Naturally, the Academy expelled Branthos as a heretic and a loon, claiming in proper Nostrian propriety that everyone already knew that God’s blessed touch on the nobles was the reason that they could perform Alchemy and not some mysterious particles floating all around us. What a horrible thought, they said, that some invisible energy force was randomly being created and destroyed all the time. What I would have given to read Branthos’ complete works on the subject. The church burned them all, right before they hanged him.

As I strolled along the back wall of the Reading Room, my eyes fell on a volume titled “The History of the Fridgian War,” a terrible time in the early days of the Nostrian Empire. The Alchemists had saved the nation from invasion by the nomadic tribes of Fridgia only through great sacrifice. The Fridgians had discovered how to make gun powder, and in turn, guns. You see, there is a lot of saltpeter in the desert… never mind. Needless to say, the Nostrian’s lack of firearms proved to be a severe tactical disadvantage against the well-armed Fridgian infantry. According to the Academy’s history books, the early Empire would have been overrun had it not been for the Shattering.

The Shattering was the day that the Alchemists created the Four Isles of Nostria. Faced with certain defeat, the Nostrian King sent forth sixteen Alchemists to surround the four corners of the four great Nostrian cities. They prayed and summoned the blessing of God… and they, and the ground beneath them that encircled all four cities, fell away into the sea. Nostria no longer was connected to the mainland. The Alchemists had created four islands with four capital cities. As the Fridgians could not swim and knew nothing of boat-craft, the Shattering ended the war. Eventually, the Nostrians crossed the sea to the mainland and subjugated the Fridgians, eventually having stolen the secret of gunpowder from them and inventing their own firearms. The Nostrian King sought revenge for the Shattering and ravaged Fridgia, destroying their civilization and sending their people back into the stone-age.

I had a natural curiosity about things and something always bothered me about the Shattering story. I guess that it was that natural curiosity that caused my downfall that day. It was the reason that I bent down and tried to pull out the copy of the “The History of the Fridgian War.” It wasn’t an original, which were stored in the archives. This was just a printed copy. It was maybe a hundred years old or so. But it was stuck between two older novels featuring the heroes of the early church, including Margaret the Brave, and Allen the Hopeful. Both had performed various feats of magic that defeated the enemies of the realm, whether barbarian raiders on the coasts, or mysterious monsters of the sea.

The two novels made a solid wedge, the friction of which prevented me from gaining any ground on retrieving the history volume. I squatted in my dreadfully plain blue-jeans to get a closer look at how I might budge the book out of the vise, when I noticed that there was something snagging it in the back of the shelf. A small sliver of the iron bookshelf had come loose, clasping the top back of the leather-bound volume. It would not have been noticeable if I hadn’t squatted down to eye level with the shelf to see why the book was stuck.

I reached into the back of the shelf and ran my fingers over the iron sliver to see if I could move it without damaging the book. As soon as I touched it, I felt a tingle up my fingers and then my arm. I jerked my hand back and stifled a yelp. It felt almost like touching an open light socket… not that I have done that very often, but I did have an idea one time when I was younger to determine the physical effects of sustained electrical charges on humans…

By this time, there were other families and visitors who had started filling the Reading Room. Some had made note of my appearance, identifying me as a student who would be participating in the Exams. They stayed far away from me, for who knew whether I was an Alchemist or not, until after the Exam was through. So it was the social fear of my situation that saved me from being labelled a thief. You see, having only touched the metal sliver, it began to move of its own will, closing back into the top of the shelf above the volume. I heard a distinct click, and then “The History of the Fridgian War” pushed out from the shelf ever so slightly of its own volition.

Having never had anything remotely similar to this experience in my whole life, I can proudly say that I kept from peeing myself. You see, this was clearly the work of an Alchemist. And a powerful one, I might add, although at the time I did not know it. The ability to store the mechanical force in an object is not known to many,… well, let’s just say only a handful of Alchemists have managed to advance to the level where they could feel the latent energy in objects to store a command to move. So the sheer ingenuity and power within this simple mechanism scared me to death. I didn’t know if I was going to rot right there in front of the other families or not; definitely a terrifying experience.

You may be thinking at this point that I made the book move when I touched the sliver. And you are correct, although at the time, I had yet to put two and two together. For those of you unfamiliar with how alchemical manipulation works, let me say that only another Alchemist could have triggered the command to move the sliver, releasing the book. If a normal person had touched the iron sliver, nothing would have happened. But we will discuss those ramifications in a minute.

It was with some fear, I confess, that I pulled the volume all the way off the shelf and set it aside. I fully expected it to disintegrate in my hands from the ambient exposure. For that matter, I didn’t know if my own hand might rot right before my eyes. I wasn’t terribly educated in the specifics of Alchemy at that point, but my mind quickly supplied my frontal lobes with a cadre of stories about commoners melting, objects exploding, and meals rotting when exposed to the workings of an Alchemist. But none of that happened, which was some comfort. So I decided to continue to satisfy my now weakened curiosity.

Behind the book, a shallow groove had been carved into the bottom corner of the shelf. It had etched markings on it that I could not discern without the aid of a lamp, which I did not possess. So I did the next best thing. With a trembling hand I reached into the bookcase to feel the writing to see if I could read it with my fingers, instead of my eyes. The moment I touched the groove, however, another click sounded and the back of the shelf vanished, leaving another book in its place, as though perched on the back lip of the bookcase.

Why I decided to pick up that small, leather bound troublemaker, I will never know. I can think of a dozen school rules that would have required me to seek out the Head Librarian immediately and report the incident. But my mind had been on the Exam and I was searching for a distraction. I confess I have always enjoyed unraveling a good mystery. What better mystery than the discovery of a secret storage for a long forgotten Alchemist right in the heart of the Academy’s records on alchemy? Who had ever heard of such a thing?

I turned the small book over in my hands to examine it. It was maybe four inches long and two and a half inches wide, bound in a tough leather cover without writing or name on it. There was a metal clasp that locked the book tight. Despite my best efforts, there did not appear to be a way to open the book, as the clasp held no keyhole or latch mechanism. Needless to say, I had a challenge on my hands that needed to be solved: how to open this mysterious book and learn its secrets.

So I did what only a rational person in my situation would do: I stuffed the book down my pants when my back was turned to the room. The Librarians never would have allowed me to remove the book from the Reading Room. Besides, I was about to have six hours locked in the Exam chamber with nothing to do. I had lots of time to discover how to open the book. After the Exam, I could make some excuse to visit the Reading Room and then return the book to the shelf behind the volume of “The History of the Fridgian War.” After all, if I simply turned it into the Librarians at that point, I would have been in serious trouble. You don’t break school rules without sever consequences. I wasn’t exactly sure what the penalty for attempted theft of a library book might be, as it had never been done at the Academy before, but it would probably have been between 40 lashes and expulsion. Considering how my mother might react if I were expelled from the Academy, I am not sure which would have been worse.

As the First Bell rang out across the school grounds, I hustled out of the Reading Room and down the sidewalk that led to the sacred path to the testing grounds. True enough, it appeared that I would be last in line, right behind Paul Graftus, a skinny boy who didn’t talk much. He smiled at me as I scampered in behind him, just as the Schoolmaster started leading Maribel and the rest of the students down to the invocation ceremony. As I slowed to a quick step behind the line of sixteen students, I couldn’t help but smile back at Paul, not for his warmth and encouragement, but for the thought of knowing that this day wouldn’t be wasted after all.

Chapter 4

The invocation was boring. The only thing I remember about it was when Bishop Cornelius had us all kneel in a semi-circle and he proceeded to anoint each of us with oil by drawing a circle on our foreheads. The Bishop carried a gold sphere on a gold chain around his neck wherever he went. The sphere contained a small amount of holy oil; basically olive oil with some smelling spices mixed in so it could be distinguished. Rumor had it that the oil was produced by the Alchemists from the leaves of the olive trees in the monastery, rather than from squeezing the olives themselves. I still don’t know if that rumor is true or not.

Having been properly ‘blessed’ each student was led into the individual testing chambers and locked inside. As I was the last student to be tested, I was also the last one locked away for the day. The smirk on Lavinia’s face when she glanced back at all of us is a memory I will never forget. She clearly thought that she was destined to be a powerful Alchemist; one who could change the world.

As for the rest of my schoolmates, boys and girls alike looked more terrified than anything else. We all knew how dangerous the test was. Nobody had died in nearly a decade, but it happened often enough that all of us had been alive when the last student had been dragged out of his testing chamber. Matthew Galvinus was the son of a local wheat baron. He was friends with my sister, and some even thought that the two might have made a good match, given our family friendship. But it wasn’t meant to be. He died of brain cancer, officially. Of course, the autopsy revealed that the cancer had consumed most of his vital organs, including his skin, liver, and lungs. If it wasn’t the Exam that did it to him, then it was a miracle he was breathing at all when he walked to school that day. And don’t ask me how I get the autopsy report.

As soon as Bishop Cornelius closed the door behind me and turned the lock, I pulled out the secret book from inside the front of my jeans. It made me feel tingly all over just thinking about what it might say. Not to be rushed, however, I stepped into the middle of the room and used the secret book to shove the Exam book to the side of the table. Then, carefully, I set down my mystery book, as I had come to think of it, so that I could study it better.

Judging from the condition of its cover, it was used frequently before it was stored. The leather binding was cracked and worn in the middle, indicating that it was opened often, as you might expect from a book of everyday use. Due to the deterioration of the leather cover, I suspected that the book was well over a hundred years old.

Maybe it was a travel guide or journal. Those were popular over a hundred years ago, when travel by train made the world a smaller place. Many people paid for travelling salesmen to jot down their observations about different towns and harbors so that those coming behind them wouldn’t have to spend time familiarizing themselves with the basic necessities offered for the adventurous traveler. The popularity of those books died down about a dozen years ago after the proliferation of the steamers and horseless carriages.

The clasp was solid gold in the shape of a U-hook. It was not obvious how it connected to the front and back cover. I could only surmise that the leather had been sewn into a connecting loop underneath the flat ends of the clasp. If it had been glued, I would have been able to rip it off, as the leather was old and dry, leaving it brittle. Despite all of my effort, however, the clasp never moved.

Flipping the book over, I tried to see if the clasp was different on the bottom than the top of the book. It was not; both sides were identical. There were no hinges, and no pivot points that I could see. It didn’t seem to operate by swiveling or unlatching. My best guess at how it unlocked was that the clip slid off of the leather after the force binding it was released. How that worked, I had no idea.

After a good fifteen minutes of trying to open the book, I decided to set it aside for the time being, and give my mind a chance to work on the problem sub-consciously. In the meantime, I turned my attention to my surroundings to get comfortable with the Exam room. As I mentioned earlier, it was a round, stone room, with concrete floors, no windows, and a single electric light dangling from the lofted ceiling. The electric bulb illuminated the entire room with a steady, soft, white glow. In the old days, I am sure the room was much more frightening, as the shadows cast by torch light could feed the imaginations of the exam students. In my case, I needed no such stimulus to feed my natural curiosity.

With nothing else in the room to occupy my attention, I pulled out the lone metal chair and sat down in front of the Exam book. It looked strikingly like the journal; leather-bound, old, cracked, with yellow pages peaking underneath. It had no clasp, however. So I could open the book if I wanted to. All of the students were told to leave the book alone until the Exam began. We were warned that bad things happened to students who opened the book early, before the watchful eye of the Examiner was present to protect them. Had I any desire for the Exam, I might have been tempted to peak at the pages early, warning or not. But I had no expectation that I could perform any sort of magic or manipulation, so I figured the Exam was a waste of time.

So it was not my curiosity about the Exam that made me touch the Exam book, but rather my observation that it looked like it was over a hundred years old. One of the first things we learned at the beginning of the school year was about our Exam day. We learned the rituals and processes required of us, and what to expect in the event we were “blessed.” Because the school really had no idea what the church would do with us afterwards, these lessons always seemed to me to be speculation on the part of the teachers. But one piece of information that bubbled to the surface as I stared at the Exam book was how the church had to use brand new Exam books every four or five years. That didn’t seem to fit with the Exam book in front of me.

It was almost instinctual how I reached out to touch the Exam book as I thought about the incongruity in its appearance; I remember thinking that if the book was less than five years old, than my uncle sells nylons. My fingers brushed the tough leather cover and I felt a familiar tingle up my arm. Jerking my hand back, I quickly looked around to see if anything happened. Nothing obvious stuck out, but I noticed that the book’s edge had a new crack in it. My fingers had only touched the top of the book, not the edge. And I never had time to move the book or open it before reacting to the energy that I felt. So where did the new crack come from?

As if jarred into action by the tingle up my arm, I had an epiphany. Maybe the mystery book was much newer than I thought, because it was just like the Exam book. You see, the Exam book also looked older than it actually was. The reason for that was obvious: it was manipulated every year to carry out the Exam. The materials that make up the leather and paper “aged” each time the Exam book was used. This was the most commonly known side effect of manipulation: “aging.” The church taught that in order for life to be manipulated into providing god’s “blessings” it required the sacrifice of other life around it. While the church called this effect a sacrifice, most people referred to it as “aging.”

The mystery book looked aged as well, so it could have been manipulated. Maybe the clasp was held together by manipulation? Of course, that answer didn’t get me any closer to unlocking it. How would I know how to manipulate the clasp so that it slid off of the leather cover?

Determined to find a solution, I picked up the mystery book again to see if I could figure out how the manipulation worked. No sooner had I touched the clasp again, than it started to slide off of the leather binding. Startled by the sudden slipperiness of the once thoroughly locked clasp, I upended the book over the table and the clasp fell off the book and onto the tabletop with a resounding clang.

What in the world?! I tried to release the clasp a couple of times before and it hadn’t budged a millimeter. How did I manage to get it to slip off so easily? The answer was right before my eyes, but I didn’t know it at the time.

While I genuinely wanted to know how and whether I made the clasp release, my curiosity about the contents of the book won the battle for my immediate attention. With trembling fingers I breached the gap in the binding with the first yellow page of the mystery book. Drawing it away from the cover, I opened the book slowly, as if expecting a Jack-in-the-box to pop out at me. There on the title page was a signature and a handwritten note:

If you have found this journal, then I am dead, and the research with me. It is now up to you to expose the truth about the Alchemists. The church would have you believe they are god’s blessed ones. But that is a lie. We are cursed, for we hold the power to re-create the world… or to destroy it. The secrets of the world are closer than they appear, and brighter than the stars. Weak minds should be warned: failure to calculate the risk of error will lead to destruction. Use your power wisely, fellow magician. The fate of the world may rest in your fingertips. J.A. Branthos

My heart was racing faster than Lord Potterdam’s twelve cylinder speedster. Magician! Alchemists! Lies! What on earth was this book?!

Before I could collect my nerves or gather my thoughts, a knock sounded at the door, and I heard a muffled voice yelling, “Are you alright in there, Miss Vasquez?!”

The Bishop’s voice roused me from my momentary revelry, and I quickly closed the book and stuffed it back down my jeans. No sooner did I glance back up than I saw the stone wall opposite me open up in an almost perfect circle. The stone was no longer there and I could see outside as clearly as if the wall never existed.

Standing on the precipice was a tall man wearing a bright red shirt, black pants, and dark leather riding boots. He had long blond hair and moustaches that flowed over his chiseled cheeks. He was lean and fit; the very appearance of a trained soldier. On his left hand was a metal glove, but his right hand was empty and stretched forth as if touching the outside of the stone wall that vanished mere moments earlier.

If ever I had feared a man, this gentleman was it. But despite his awesome and sudden appearance, my mind kept reminding me that Branthos’ clip was still on the table… right next to the Exam book that I wasn’t supposed to touch.

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Chapter 5

“Step away from the table and put your hands where I can see them.”

The Alchemist, the Bishop had introduced him during the invocation ceremony as Lt. Colonel Pearce who was administrating today’s Exam, spoke with authority, but he didn’t raise his voice. He just expected me to comply with whatever he said. Of course, if I complied with his instructions, it would leave the clip exposed to discovery, and that would lead to questions I didn’t want to answer. So like all great magicians, theatrical ones at least, I had to stoop to a little sleight of hand. In other words, I pretended to feint.

As I fell forward, rolling my eyes up into my head, I fell onto the table and snatched the clip with my left hand. Then I rolled onto my back and stuffed the clip into my pocket as the table obscured the Alchemist’s view. It wasn’t a very good performance, but it appeared to work.

The Alchemist scrambled into the room and shouted for assistance from the Bishop, who rounded the Exam room and entered moments later through the new gaping hole in the wall. Col. Pearce had already entered the Exam room and bent down to cup my head in his right hand. He checked my breathing with his ear and then, setting my head in his lap, started to feel for my pulse using the fingers from his bare hand.

Up until that moment, I thought my plan had been well-conceived. As soon as he reached for my throat and my pulse, I knew that I was in trouble. My heart was beating a mile a minute. Col. Pearce would have no problem seeing through my trickery. So I improvised by coughing.

Using loud phlegm inviting hacks, I was able to roll off of Col. Pearce and onto the ground again. My sudden gyrations saved me from scrutiny, but only for a moment. The Bishop arrived just then and immediately demanded to know what was happening.

“Ms. Vasquez, are you alright?! Col. Pearce what happened?”

“It seems that the young lady feinted, your grace. She doesn’t appear to be in any danger.” Although his words appeared to be neutral, I could here in his voice a tone of doubt and distrust. He was still assessing me and the situation.

“Good, good. Well, what was it that got you hopping over here in the first place, Colonel? Did you sense something?”

The Bishop had started to walk around Col. Pearce in order to assist me to my feet. I had risen to my knees and was making a pretense to wipe my mouth with a kerchief. I needed to carry on the act that I had feinted. “What happened? I saw the wall disappear and then… nothing.”

Bending down to take my hands in his, the Bishop answered, “My dear, Col. Pearce rushed out of Exam room 2 and I followed him to your Exam room. When I knocked on your door there was no answer. We had to be sure you were safe.” He patted my hand in a condescending manner that let me know it was his own reputation that he cared for more than my health. If I had killed myself while unsupervised during the Exam, even if it was my own fault or stupidity, the Bishop would be held liable by the noble families. The last Bishop had been sacked right after Matthew’s death. Nobody knew where the old Bishop was serving out his life sentence for dereliction of duty, but rumor was that he was mining coal deep in the mountains of the Northern Isle. I’m sure Bishop Cornelius had no desire to join his priestly brother in that endeavor.

“I… I think I feinted.”

“Indeed. But we must assess why you feinted, young miss.” Col. Pearce stood over me like a hawk, his eyes matching the affinity of his name. I felt like if he stared at me any longer, his gaze would slice me in two. Thankfully, the Bishop helped me to my feet and then had me sit down in the chair to get my wits.

Despite the charade, it felt good to be sitting down. I didn’t realize that I had been standing for over three hours, given the delay from the lineup to the invocation to waiting in my Exam room. I didn’t need to fake the relief that I felt in my feet and legs. I rubbed my feet to ease the stiffness, but also to shift Branthos’ journal slightly. It was rubbing the wrong way now that I was sitting. Thankfully it was small enough, and the gaudy blue jeans were baggy enough, that the men hadn’t noticed it.

After a moment, I looked up to see Cornelius and Pearce staring at each other. They said nothing to one another, but there must have been an unspoken understanding that passed between them. Suddenly, they both turned their gaze on me.

“Ms. Vasquez, do you remember my instructions about the Exam?”

The Bishop’s tone had changed. If before he oozed concern, even if for his own reputation and prospects, now he spoke with authoritative diction. He was not happy about the situation; that much was obvious.

“Yes, of course, your grace.”

“And did those instructions say what to do while you waited patiently in your room?”

“Yes.”

The Bishop frowned, clearly getting frustrated. “And what were those instructions?!”

“You told us to sit patiently meditating on the significance of the day and the desire to do well.” To be honest, I wasn’t exactly sure what he had said during the invocation. I was still too caught up in my discovery of Branthos’ journal to listen.

“And what about the Exam book? What were you to do with that?”

My gut started to knot up. I knew where this conversation was going; nowhere good for me, that’s for sure. “Leave it alone, untouched.”

“Untouched! Yes! Why, then, is your Exam book pushed to the side of the table, away from where Col. Pearce left it?”

Bishop Cornelius’ voice and eyes hardened to a glare that I had never heard or seen before. There was ice in his eyes and venom on his tongue. He was the epitome of injured Nostrian pride. Even standing next to a Alchemist, the Bishop’s anger scared me more than anything else I had ever encountered. Here was a man who could ruin me with a word.

“I,… I…”

“Yes, Ms. Vasquez? Be honest or the consequences will be dire.”

I decided to do precisely that. After all, what other options did I have? Besides, I am a terrible liar.

“I touched it because I was intrigued by its appearance. It looks so worn, but I know that it can’t be more than four years old. I only moved it a little.”

Bishop Cornelius turned to stare at Col. Pearce, who smoothly picked up the line of questioning from the Bishop. “Tell me exactly what happened when you moved the Exam book.” His tone left no doubt that the warning about lying applied to him as well.

“Nothing happened.” Despite the look from the Bishop, it was the truth. The first time I moved the Exam book, nothing had happened. It was only after the second time when I touched the book with my hand… I was in a pickle. If I admitted to moving the book with the other book, I would be in bigger trouble, so I needed to avoid that fact. I quickly added the rest of the explanation, while omitting the details about Branthos’ book. “What I mean is,… nothing happened to the book.”

Pearce walked around the table and picked up the Exam book. He opened it to the first page, held it for a moment while reading it, and then set it down. When he looked back at me, his eyes were softer. “Go on. Continue your explanation.”

“What do you mean? That’s what happened.”

“Not entirely. What happened to you when you touched the Exam book?”

“I,… I felt a tingle in my hand,…”

Bishop Cornelius’ eyes grew wide and he looked at Pearce, who was starting to grin.

“… and then the tingle went up my arm, so I dropped the book quickly before the tingling spread. Once I put the Exam book back on the desk, my arm stopped tingling.”

Pearce was now openly smiling and the Bishop was openly gaping. What did I say? Well, let me tell you I had just confessed to being a very powerful Alchemist without knowing it. What I had done was instinctual. I drew the energy from the Exam book and used it for another purpose: manipulation. I was in serious trouble, but I just didn’t know it yet.

“You see, your grace? I told you this Exam day would yield a bountiful harvest. Not one, but two powerful new soldiers for his lordship’s holy army.” Col. Pearce spoke with distinct pride and enthusiasm. All manner of his previously threatening appearance dissolved due to his newfound jocularity. He was downright giddy, for sure.

Bishop Cornelius, on the other hand, looked white as a ghost. It almost made me look around for a pail, just in case he lost his breakfast right there in front of us. He certainly looked like he could vomit at any moment. “But,… But Colonel! Where did the energy go? If she absorbed it, then… then…” He was backing away from me with short stuttered steps as he glanced around the room as though the walls would collapse on him at any moment.

Col. Pearce eased his fears immediately, however, without me having to explain what I had done. “Why, it’s obvious, Cornelius. When she set the book back down she drained the energy into the table. There is no other conductor in the room.” His smile slipped a bit, as he returned his gaze from the Bishop back to me. I must have had a look of utter amazement on my face, because Col. Pearce took my expression to mean that I was overwhelmed with the discovery that I was, indeed, a Alchemist. “My sweet girl, don’t be afraid. What you did was dangerous, but somehow you avoided catastrophe and diluted all of the harmful energy. You are safe, now.”

I looked at him and then at the book and the table. I reach my hand over the table to re-enforce his version of events by seeming to ponder what I had done.

“You won’t be able to feel the energy in the table. It is probably best you not try, though.” Col. Pearce then turned back to the Bishop. “This table will need to be marked, Cornelius. Don’t move it until I send one of my men to diffuse it.”

Bishop Cornelius seemed to have recovered a bit. But he still looked uncomfortable. He probably had good reason to be. After all, he was in a room with not one, but two Alchemists.

Two Alchemists! I am an Alchemist… or will be. But that meant that I wouldn’t be going home today, or ever…

Understanding blossomed at that moment and I honestly can’t say what happened next. I must have feinted for real, because I went from sitting on the chair to lying on my side on the ground, Col. Pearce hovering over me again. “What…”

Col. Pearce tried to comfort me. “Don’t talk, young lady. I think you need to rest. I have asked the Bishop to send a servant with some provisions. You will stay here while I complete the rest of the Exams. Try to get some rest. I can see that this has been a shock to your system. Best to take it easy for now. More will be expected of you later, but for now, your orders are to rest.”

After Col. Pearce helped me back into my chair, a young boy, maybe eight or nine years old, arrived at the open door of the Exam room. When had the door been unlocked? The boy carried blankets, a glass of water, and a small basket of bread. He set the provisions on the table and then quickly left. It was evident by the look on his face that he had no desire at all to be anywhere near them.

Col. Pearce stood up, surveyed the provisions and nodded. His jovial attitude had faded to a businesslike expression. “It will be a few more hours of testing. If you need anything, just knock on the door. I will have a servant standing by to attend you.”

I nodded absentmindedly, glancing over the provisions and then staring at my hands, which I laid in my lap, touching Branthos’ journal. I had a brief moment of panic, before I realized if it had been discovered, I wouldn’t have still been sitting in the chair, and Col. Pearce wouldn’t still be trying to help me.

True enough, Pearce turned to leave, but paused at the door. He glanced back and caught my eye. He looked younger than before. His sudden appearance had made me think of him as an older man. But he was maybe in his early twenties. His youthful face came out as he smiled at me and said, “You wouldn’t know this, of course, but you will find out eventually. What you did today was amazing. Truly.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just stared back at him.

“I am sure we can expect great things from you.” With that, he left me alone again in my Exam room. I heard the lock click back into place. For the second time today, I was locked in the room. This time, however, I had more than one mystery to unravel.

I was an Alchemist. I was chosen. I was blessed. But what had I done beyond that which was so amazing? I would find out later that evening, and the discovery would not be a pleasant one.

February 26, 2015

Here is a rough version of a story I invented for my kids at bedtime. I am still building an outline for it. So more to come.

The Girl Who Dared Be King

Chapter 1

There is magic in this world. Not the kind of parlor tricks or guessing games played by actors who think they are clever with their sleight of hand. No, I mean real magic.

I don’t blame you for doubting. I didn't really believe it at first, either. But when it happened to me, well, I couldn't deny it.

I seem to have a knack for making magic work the way it should. In a way, you might say that I’m special. The ability to manipulate the world is not a common skill. In fact, it rarely manifests itself in even one in a hundred nobles, and never in the general population, at least officially. And of all of the Alchemists in the world, I seem to be the strongest: the most powerful, you might say. But I am not special. I'm just smarter than the rest of them.

-----------------

It all began at school. At least, the magic started there. All noble born children in the Nostrian Empire are required to take the Exam of Alchemy by the age of fourteen. The commoners don’t need to go through such rigorous trials. As preached religiously by the Ascendant Church, only the children of the lords and ladies of our fair islands can change the world through alchemy. At least, that is what they have taught for the past five hundred years. It is a divine blessing that is supposed to indicate that the Nostrian nobles have the right to lord it over the commoners, quite literally, of course.

I think that is a bunch of rubbish. My own research into the phenomena indicates a stark difference in the material makeup of the nobility versus the common man or woman. Nothing overt, just some chemical characteristics that seem to exist… But I am getting ahead of myself. I apologize. Let’s get to the meat of it, then.

Testing day at the Grand Imperial Academy of Nostria is supposed to be a celebration; a holy selection of the next defenders of the realm. Those few who pass the test are swept away in a grand ceremony that culminates in a ball and festivities for a whole week following the Exam. Of course, the students who pass do not have the opportunity to share in the festivities. You see, once the students pass the Exam, and their induction ceremony is complete, they are whisked away to parts unknown by the church, never to be seen again until public service at the age of eighteen. This isolation is primarily for safety reasons; their own safety, as well as the general population. They only return to public life after they have been trained to avoid killing themselves and others. And even then, the Alchemists are only seen sparingly until they die, usually by the age of twenty-five… it is rare indeed to see an Alchemist advance to middle age, let alone old age.

Their early deaths are their own fault. I will not be so deceived. I will not be taken in by the King’s promises or manipulations. My eyes have been opened to the world and the sin of my own blood upon it. Never again…

I digress. I should tell you about my own Exam Day… It was bound to be horrible. I just couldn’t anticipate how bad it would be…

-------------------

My parents are the Baroness and Baron of Feld’s Deep, a small two-thousand acre ranch on the East Isle of Nostria, close to the capital city of Silvia; don’t ask me how the city was named after the lady who once destroyed it, but there you have it.

Our humble house sat at the center of our fields, with a long winding dirt road that was lined with tall maple tree that turned bright red in the Autumn as though lighting the path with a temporary fire and the promise of a return to glory come Spring-time. Only two stories tall, and less than six thousand square feet, our plantation home served as the primary residence for the county seat. My family had held that position as Baron-lords for Feld’s County ever since the Ascension, some five hundred years ago. Not much had changed in the home, save for the recent addition of some electric lines to service the house lights and the woodshop beside the barn.

Shaped like a giant square, with a whole in the middle for a classical courtyard, our home was warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and full of little nooks and crannies where I could hide my favorite books when mother, or nanny, wasn’t watching. I often needed those hiding places. I am not the most attentive girl in the world and I do let my mind wander to whatever interests me in the moment. Mother says that I need to be more focused on school, but she doesn’t understand. It isn’t that I dislike school, but it is nothing if not the most boring kind of tripe. And I hate having un-interesting things to think about. I get bored if I am not mentally engaged all of the time. So I am constantly trying to sneak books into the house about life in the city, new technologies that are being discovered almost on a weekly basis it seems, and, of course, on the Alchemists. I mean they are the most interesting mystery out there.

Mother doesn’t approve, of course. But I can’t help that I was born on a ranch and not in the city. Honestly, there is nothing for me to do all day in the country but read and think. At some point studying the history of the Nostrian Empire, or the Articles of Formation, or the mathematical equations for measure the volume of my morning pastry just gets boring. I could recite whole volumes to you and spin off the formula for making gunpowder by rote memory. For some reason, it never seems to go well when I tell mother that. She always chastises me. “It is perfectly appropriate to read and to think, Amelia. It is your lack of discipline in the process that frustrates me. You need to focus on your studies, not this trash that you read.”

My room was on the second floor overlooking the inner courtyard. It was my favorite room in the barony, next to the courtyard itself, if that can be called a room. It contained my plush bed with down comforter, my writing desk, my changing station and wardrobe, and, of course, my own library. It’s near wall was filled floor to ceiling with various books, as well as my personal collection of mathematical and scientific journals. I own every issue ever printed of Ladies’ Engineering. Not many nobles can boast of such a complete collection as me.

Of course, most aren’t as interested in the sciences. Take my older sister, Larissa, for instance. My room used to be hers. Four years ago when she graduated from the Academy at sixteen, I had to clear out the book shelves of her scandalous collection of murder mystery novels. Needless to say, mother didn’t approve of those either. That’s why I never told mother that I had read all of them before I threw them into storage. They were as badly written as they were bad for the soul. I confess to a few nightmares soon after reading a few.

Larissa moved to the West Isle to attend university in Thaples. She is studying to be a lawyer. Most women in the Empire hold one or two professional degrees. Larissa plans to be the best prosecutor in the kingdom. From the way she used to terrorize me, you better believe she will be a veritable menace to the criminal population of Nostria.

[Add transition from her room to the breakfast table where the conversation picks up]

“Beautiful! You are stunningly radiant. You are sure to make your family proud.” Flattery was an art form to father. A stunningly plain man in many ways, including his looks, he always praised my appearance. It was one of those cultural differences between his birth country of Brothia and here.

“Father, I am sure you would say the same thing if I wore rags, which would be only slightly better than this pair of blue-jean pants that I am forced to wear. Why can’t the Exam be given in proper ladies’ attire,… like an evening gown with gloves and a corset?”

Father always thought I looked pretty, no matter what I wore. Honestly, I think the man was blinded by something, because I am not exactly the prettiest girl in school, with my ratty, brown, curly hair that tangles whenever it rains. It is more probable that I am in the bottom third in comparison to physical attractiveness, although I hope that I make up for my plainness through my intellectual contributions.

Mother, on the other hand,… she always told me exactly what was true:

“Amelia, your appearance is no better, and no worse than the long line of ladies of this house who have come before you. Stop filling her head with nonsense, Fredrico, she must be ready mentally for the rigors of the Exam. Her appearance is irrelevant.”

Mother never looked nervous or flustered or angry. She was the quintessential Nostrain noblewoman, filled with posture, eloquence, and formality. She also was an expert at Nostrian court etiquette and tradition. “What were traditions for if not to keep people in line,” she would say. My upbringing included several months of lessons on dining etiquette. Even our simple breakfast add two dozen rituals, including who could eat first (my mother as the lady of the house, of course), which fork was used for the eggs and which for the meat, and of course, what topics of discussion were appropriate and which were not. Mother often had to correct father on this point.

“Rose, my dear. I was simply expressing my encouragement.” Father sounded appropriately chastised. It was something he was used to.

Our noble blood doesn’t offer me the advantages you might think it does. Our multi-island empire is a constitutional monarchy. I think it is quite progressive that the common man has a voice in their government. Of course, it is a small voice, as the nobles can veto whatever laws the commoner parliament approves. My father, Frederico Vasquez, sits on the lower chamber of the Noble Parliament, as we rank well below the throne. There are many earls, lords, and ladies who far surpass our humble position. If that weren’t enough, being a native Brothian often illicits certain prejudices that my father was forced to deal with. Ever since their wedding, which was a political nightmare, my mother’s extended family has been forced to move three times, to three different counties. Our home and barony are never touched, but that doesn’t mean we don’t suffer economically from being social outcasts of the Nostrian elite. We only have about a dozen servants after all. I hear the Earl of Potterdam has a thousand farmers and two dozen footmen. Honestly, where does he keep all of his horseless carriages that he collects,… Sorry, I’ll try to stick to the story.

Mother just frowned at father and then turned towards me. “Amelia, you should finish your breakfast early. You don’t want to get stuck behind the farmers’ carts this morning. It is market day, after all.”

“Quite right, mother. Shall we go then? I want to be first in line. I prefer to get this over with as soon as possible.”

“’Melia, you must take care to do your very best. This isn’t a test in algebra that you can simply rush through. Today you are taking THE EXAM, for heaven’s sake!”

I could tell that father was nervous for me, and perhaps a bit anxious for my success. He always did carry his love for me on the tip of his tongue, so to speak. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that or the Exam I was about to face. I wasn’t nervous. I was more annoyed than anything. “Yes, father. You’ve reminded me at least a dozen times this week that Exam day is important.”

“Not just important, ‘Melia! It is the opportunity you need to move up in this world. They will never fully accept me here. You must be chosen so that you may have a chance at a better life.” He lifted his coffee cup to his lips and took a satisfying slurp, then set it back down. When his eyes touched mine, I looked down. I knew he wanted this for me. I just didn’t know if I could face him if I failed. And there had been no evidence that I would pass, that was for sure.

“I know father. You want this day to turn out a certain way. Just don’t be disappointed when it doesn’t.”

“’Melia…”

Father was going to start again about the curse of the second daughter and the few prospects I had in life outside of the Church. Thankfully, mother was the grounding force in the relationship. “Hush, Fredrico! She knows the stakes. Now don’t dally and make sure you don’t forget your manners in front of the Bishop. Garrett will drive you to the Academy today.”

That last remark made me raise my eyebrows and get somewhat excited. Garrett was father’s personal valet and chauffer. He only drove the Hudson steamer, as he couldn’t be bothered with the smell of the horse-drawn carriage if he was also going to serve as father’s valet. It was a rare treat to ride in the horseless.

[Describe the trip from Feld’s Deep, through the village and into Silvia, pointing out the vast differences between noble life and common life, including conveniences, privileges, and order of rank being important, including foreign blood counting less. Include transition to next chapter by describing the Academy as they drive up.]

Chapter 2

I would like to say that I enjoyed the drive from our estate home into the city. I recall that it took 19 minutes, as we live nearly ten miles from the Academy. But instead of enjoying the view, or the lack of pungent odors from the horses, all I could think about the entire time was the Exam.

What would it be like? Nobody knew. Each exam was different for each person. No two were ever alike. All I knew was that I was to enter into one of the ceremonial Exam rooms and wait for the signal to begin. There would be a book on a table in the middle of the room, and I was to follow the instructions precisely. Apparently, the instructions changed each time, although how that happened to pages written in permanent ink I wouldn’t have been able to tell you until later in life. Thankfully, I know now that the pages were manipulated by a Lt. Colonel, a senior-level Alchemist, who ran the Examination and published the results. Immediately following the announcement of the selected few who passed, the Lt. Colonel would ‘escort’ the poor souls into their life of service.

All of the students had to wait in separate rooms for their Exam. Once you entered your room, you didn’t leave until all of the Exams were performed. Then, only those who failed were allowed to leave. They’ve done it this way for hundreds of years. The history books say that in the early days of the republic, the church would hold the Exams in public, in a bowl shaped arena where each student would step forward and either perform magic or not. They stopped doing it that way and removed the Exams to this safer location after they had too many… accidents. After all, the test was really to see if you could ‘manipulate’ the particles… Let me skip that explanation for now as I don’t want to confuse you by getting ahead of myself.

Garrett was faithful to get me to the Academy before anyone else had arrived. First bell was still a half hour away. This gave me plenty of time to get into line for the first Exam room. Each room was a stone circle about fifteen feet in diameter. The dozens of rooms, more like stone prisons really, stood several hundred feet apart from the rest of the Academy for good reason. Any accidents during the exams would have little impact on the Academy buildings and, of course, the students, faculty and families who came to witness the Exams. The rooms had no windows, and no decorations of any kind, except for the metal table in the center of each room with the book on it. The doors were made of fine steel, and the exterior locks were double checked after each student entered to make sure that they could not leave before the end of the Exams.

I stood on the threshold of the path that led from the school library’s Great Reading Room all the way down the hill to the Examination Rooms. I wasn’t too nervous, as I had a slight suspicion that it was going to be a dull day for me. After all, up until that point in my life, I had never performed any sort of Alchemy, so why would I expect today to be any different. This was just a momentary dull day in the middle of the term. The greatest pain I anticipated was the shear boredom from being locked in a cell-like room for six hours while the rest of the students attempted to manipulate their books, or whatever it was they would be asked to do.

“Why, if it isn’t Amelia Vasquez! I should have known you would be the first to arrive. It must be nice getting to wear the Exam uniform today so that nobody has to look at the awful rags you normally wear.”

Lady Maribel Lavinia was the daughter of the Earl of Westhyme, and the absolute run in my hose. Tall, dark hair, beautiful, Maribel held all of the qualities one would hope for in a noble lady, except perhaps any ounce of grace. She never had a nice thing to say to me, always teasing and pushing my buttons. I didn’t mind so much, except that she kept me from having any friends at the Academy. She was the heiress of a vast estate and sixth in line to the throne. Her family’s dairy farm in the South Isle was worth more than my parent’s entire estate twice over. Her mother also held the patent on several intriguing inventions, like an electrical device that could brew tea without having to boil a kettle of water on the stove. I had never seen such a thing before, as most new electrical devices were still too expensive for my family. Even though we were wealthy compared to the commoners, we were dirt poor compared to most other nobles. And compared to Maribel Lavinia’s family, my family lived in a dirt hut like those natives of Fridgia who have no running water or electrical lights.

Needless to say, having Maribel arrive right behind me in line was going to make for a nasty day. So I ignored her as best as I could, which is to say I made all of the polite responses to her comments.

“Good morning, my lady. Thank you for your kind words.”

“I was kind wasn’t I? You look just as horrible in those blue-jeans as my father’s farm hands. Are you sure you’re even a noble? Pathetic!”

“Thank you, your ladyship. I will strive to make a better appearance.”

“For all the good it will do. Now listen up. I want to go first, so step aside.”

That threw me for a slight loop. Technically, the order of Examination was decided by the order of appearance. First come, first served, you might say. At the Academy, noble rank wasn’t supposed to play into the educational process. All were equal here in the eyes of the schoolmasters. Of course, that rule never applied to someone like Maribel.

So her demand that I let her go first was just another way for her to push that rule to the side. The problem was, I didn’t want to go second, or third, or fourth. I was trying to get the examination over with so that I could somewhat enjoy the rest of the day without having to pace back and forth in worry about when my turn would come up.

But you see there was also another reason for Maribel to demand the first spot. There is some superstitious nonsense that surrounds the Exams, as you can quite guess after five hundred years of stories and rumors about the process. One such superstition is that the first person, more likely than not, will be ‘blessed’ to be an Alchemist. Most of the history books I had read adamantly denied that there was a causative relationship between the order of Examination and the result, but myth is more powerful than fact in the real world. And on such a weak mind as Maribel’s, I figured myth was the best she could ever hope to process.

“As you will, my lady. Shall I go second, then?”

“Absolutely not. I won’t have your stink hovering near me during the invocation. You can go last. Wait over in the Reading Room until the last chime of the bell, and then run into line. After all, it’s what you should have done in the first place. You need to learn to mind your betters, ‘Melia.”

She said the last in a mocking tone. She knew my father was foreign born and had an accent. Just another way to push my buttons.

I sighed, nodded, and replied, “Yes, your ladyship.”

I stepped away from the ceremonial path that had been decorated by the groundskeeper with lovely violets and lilacs to line the way to the forbidding Exam rooms. At the end of the path, directly in front of the row of cold, stone rooms, there was a circular dirt courtyard where the invocation would be given and broadcast over the wireless to the rest of the school. Remember, it was only the thirteen year olds who were participating in the Exam. All of the other noble children, including those who failed their Exams, were still in classes today, as on any other day. Most families would gather in the Reading Room of the Great Library to pass the day away listening to the wireless, playing card games, or reading a book. In that way the parents waited for the conclusion of the Exams to discover whether their child would be stripped forever from their family and be sent to the Abbey or Monastery, depending on whether they were a girl or boy. There, the student would no longer be a noble, but an Alchemist; adopted into the King’s family and given a separate status altogether powerful and frightening. They were killers, after all, and would eventually end themselves with their magic.

I left Maribel and walked towards the Reading Room, trying to contain my anger. Lately, I had been having a hard time controlling my emotions. I would get mad all of a sudden for no reason. Then, just as quickly, the feeling would pass leaving me bewildered as to the cause. I often cried about nothing at all. I wasn’t sad, necessarily, so I couldn’t honestly tell you for what purpose my tears fell. On this day, however, I imagine you can guess precisely why I was crying angry, wet tears as I tried to calm down.

“Oh, Maribel! One day I will tell you what I really think about you!” I thought.

Of course, that was just to make myself feel better. Freedom of speech may be a characteristic of the LaGrange people, but here in Nostria, there is no such thing as a free tongue. You’re liable to be hanged promptly and with much ado if you speak your mind outside of the social order of things. Everything is done properly and in elaborate order in Nostria, if it is done at all. If this day was to go well, I needed to contain my emotions and do things the Nostrian way, as my mother would say. So I set my mind to finding a distraction from the like of Maribel Lavinia, as I left her standing in my place at the beginning of the path to the Exam. Unfortunately, I never saw the disaster that lurked around the corner, literally. If only I had known then what I know now, I never would have gone into the Reading Room that day.

February 25, 2015

Could the link between Honor, Cultivation and Odium be temporal, like the building of their shard pools? They can only leave their individual planets when the shard pool on Roshar fills up and that only happens once every thousands of years or so, unless there is a break in the oath pact (like the last desolation) and then a break in the use of surges, like with the recreance, that slows down the filling of the shard pools and the attraction of the spren for each Shard holder (Honor, Cultivation and Odium). So Odium is bound until the spren return and they only return when the pool is filled, which fills more quickly with the use of the surges.

Just a thought.

February 18, 2015

Chapter 3 New Class, Same Lessons

Chapter 3
New Class, Same Lessons
“In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God” Psalm 10:4
Professor Jack Layton sat at his desk sipping a cup of Earl Grey and reading his notes for his first class of Introduction to Ancient History. He was a tall man, with dark wavy hair, a strong square chin, bright blue eyes and the build of someone who knew the gym on a regular basis. English by birth and upbringing, with a ruddy East London accent, Layton was 45 years old, looked 35, and felt like 25. Most of his students, and some of the faculty, thought of him as the ‘Indiana Jones’ of the OU history department. He wasn’t going to argue with them. He always appreciated the sense of flare and popularity his accomplishments had brought him. Professor Layton’s experience in the fields of archaeology and ancient history stood up to some of the top researchers in the world. And his propensity for making big finds and landing top flight exhibits for OU's History Museum had secured him tenure and a corner office as chair of the department. But none of those accomplishments meant much to him. Professor Layton had greater ambitions.
Layton set his cup down for a moment, grabbed a yellow highlighter and marked a particularly interesting story that he wanted to tell his young undergrads that would be sure to lose their attention and waste class time. Not that he cared what the students learned. This class was just a necessary evil as far as he was concerned.
Layton picked up his tea cup, took a sip and perused his class notes. Underneath his squall of papers and books, he briefly noticed his most recent research journal, tucked away as if calling to him to return to what was important. Layton really needed to be working on his research. His advance money was running low and he would need to produce results soon or his ‘friends’ overseas would start to make trouble for him. He didn’t want to think about what trouble might feel like.
Besides, this class was just an absolute waste of his talents and energy. In fact, lecture time was always a drag and none greater than the first one of the semester. There was never any way to guarantee that the students in the class on day one would even be there the rest of the semester. Several would drop out before the second lecture, while some would simply show up for exams or when they needed to hand in papers. The rest of the seats, if they were filled at all, would usually be occupied by over eager ideologues wanting him to tell vast tales of exotic adventures. Professor Layton could do that, and was known to wax poetic about his travels and accomplishments in the fields of history and archaeology. But usually the only benefit he received from teaching courses to the undergraduates was the view of the sorority girls who filled the first row; and sometimes a little more than that. But those meetings were more clandestine and best kept secret, especially from the university.
Layton flipped through the course syllabus and double checked the outline for exam content. This course dealt with the material on a very shallow level, designed as a survey course of world history from around 2500 BCE to the early Roman period, around 75 BCE. None of the topics were dealt with in depth, and he could probably recall the information in his sleep. As the foremost archaeologist at the university and the Whitmore Chair of Ancient History, Professor Layton, or “Prof” as his students liked to call him, held enormous sway over his own research and schedule, with one exception - OU required that he teach at least one introduction to ancient history course, lower level and geared towards freshmen and sophomores to get them interested in the department of Classics.
It was a waste of his time, if anyone ever cared to ask his opinion. But the administration did not care and so here he was again at the beginning of the Fall semester preparing for his first lecture to a bunch of students who wouldn't remember the class by the end of the day, let alone be inspired by it. In fact, he thought, most will be too stupid to even know what I am talking about.
Which reminded him that he still needed to find a good research assistant. His last one had not worked out at all. Layton had to let him go at the end of last semester and had spent the whole summer trying to re-organize his assistant's files, re-translate his work, and find out what was missing. “At least he never found out what I am really looking for,” Layton thought. “Otherwise he and I would have had a similar fate. Best to stay positive and act with more caution from now on. I need someone I can trust, but where am going to find an Arabic linguist in Norman, Oklahoma who isn't tied to some outside fringe group or other?”
He glanced at his iPhone as it started to quack at him. His timer was going off, bringing him back to reality and the more immediate need to get through this lecture. “One step at a time, Jack! You can't dig too fast that you spoil the treasure.” He took a last drag on his tea, grabbed his notes and set off for the lecture hall on the first floor of the building.
--------------------------------
Standing at the front of the large classroom, Layton could tell that this class might be different. Most of the chairs were taken, leaving only the last row empty. That in itself was unusual as the last row in any class was usually the first to be filled. The class was arranged in five rows of ten self-contained metal desk-chairs. The students all sat conversing loudly or typing away on their smartphones. Usually, he wouldn’t have minded the large group, but his mood lately toward teaching had shifted from mild annoyance to outright frustration. Of course, most of that frustration dealt with his own failure to meet the deadlines of his superiors. And he wasn’t thinking of the administration at the university.
Layton set down his notes on the lectern that sat on the elevated space in front of the class. Glancing up briefly to take note of the time, he grabbed a stack of blank pieces of paper off of the top of the stack of notes and began in a confident, booming voice:
“I am Professor Jack Layton and I see that we have a nearly full class this semester.” Layton surveyed the room and noted that most of the students still were not paying attention, despite his having obviously started the class. This just annoyed him further, so he put on his best smile and said a little louder:
“Glad to see such an interest in ancient history among today's young people. I want to start the course off with a bang, so take out a pen or pencil because we are going to have a pop quiz.”
All of the students stopped talking and most had a look of shock on their faces. Some of the students in the front of the class started to whisper and grumble, and one student in the middle of the class said rather loudly to his buddy, “Is he serious?”
Prof started pacing the front of the lecture hall, which was slightly elevated in the front of the five rows of seats where the students sat. A white board was to his back and on the side of the elevated lecture platform sat an overhead projector - digital of course. Prof slowly approached one of the students he suspected to be a grumbler and paused, slapping down the stack of blank sheets of paper to be passed down the row. Looking right down his nose at him and with a broad grin said, “I am always serious... Except when I am joking. Now write your name at the top of the page and get ready for question number one.” Professor Layton walked back towards the projector and sat down to begin writing his questions as he called them out. “I want to see what kind of hand I have been dealt and whether you are as ignorant of the world as I think you are.”
He watched as each student took a sheet of paper and passed back the rest of the stack, until all of them appeared to be ready for the quiz. Several girls in the back started to giggle and Prof thought he could hear one mention how much cuter he was in person. Putting on his most charming smile, so as not to disappoint his obvious fans, he started the quiz by asking, and writing, “Number one: from what country, in modern day boundaries, did Hammurabi rule?” Some students in the front started to write down answers but most of the other students just looked around to see if anyone else knew the answer. Prof's low expectations were off to a fabulous start if he wanted them confirmed with this group.
Layton paused briefly, and a little more determined he asked “Number two: what is Hammurabi most well-known for and when did he perform this feat of greatness?”
More students started to write but he could tell by the amount of time that they were taking that the second half of the question was proving to be a stumper.
“Number three: what king from the same country was mentioned as a psychotic lunatic in the Hebrew Bible. I want his correct name and also his date of rule. And for kicks tell me what the name of his kingdom was called and who conquered it following his rule.”
Layton listed out the four parts to question three and looked up at his class. He could see a whole bunch of blank stares and several students who were on their smart phones trying to find the answers. He was just about to remind the students of the honor code and the consequences of using a smartphone on a test when he noticed one student in the middle of the class who was writing down an answer.
Layton got up from the projector and stepped down from the platform to walk over to the student. As he did he called “Time! Pass your papers forward to the front of the class. Do it now, please!" Most of the students started passing papers, mostly blank, forward to the front of the class, while a few still scribbled away after briefly glancing at other papers being handed to them. As he reached the student's desk in the middle of the class, Prof caught the paper being passed forward and stopped right beside the student.
He noticed that the student looked older than most of the kids in his class; maybe early to mid-twenties or so. He was wearing a white t-shirt with an Indy 500 car on the front and a pair of faded blue-jeans. His sandy-brown hair was cropped short around the ears and trimmed low on top. He didn't seem to be very big, probably a few inches shorter than Prof, if he stood up, but Prof could tell he was strong and well-conditioned. Layton thought, “This has to be the low of the low. Now they send me Army dummies who can't even cut it in the military. Well, this ought to be a fun humiliation exercise.”
Smiling at the student as he raised the paper up high for the class, sure to have all eyes on him, as he said, “Let's just see how we did, shall we? Let's start with you, Mister..?”
The student amazingly met his gaze directly with slate grey eyes that clearly were not intimidated by Prof in the least and said with a strong voice, “Henry, sir. My name is Thomas Henry.”
Layton met Thomas’ gaze and asked, “Judging solely from looks I would peg you for a military man, is that right Mr. Henry?”
“Yes sir. Not active anymore. My enlistment expired in May.”
Prof almost let the smile fade from his face but continued with the show, nonetheless. “Well, Mr. Henry, let us see how you did! Number one, Hammurabi ruled in modern day… Iraq... Correct!” Prof looked around the room as several students started to discuss the answer among them. He noticed that most appeared to have missed this. Prof was only slightly shocked at this. “Hammurabi was a Mesopotamian king who helped consolidate the land in and around the ancient kingdom of Ur, and what we know as modern day Iraq. Well done. The military man gets full marks. Probably did a tour in that country I bet, which may account for the correct answer. Number two... What did Hammurabi accomplish and when… Writing the Code of Hammurabi and 18th century BC....”
Prof looked down at Thomas and this time actually frowned. Or maybe it was a pout. Without a mirror he could never tell if he was putting on a precise show or not. It would have to do. “So sorry, Mr. Henry. This answer is only partially correct. Hammurabi did indeed write something known as the ‘Hammurabi Code,’ but I was looking for a more accurate description, such as a set of written laws that put into practice the principle of ‘an eye for an eye.’ And the date is rather sloppy as well. It was 1750s BCE to be precise. We don’t say BC anymore, Mr. Henry. This is the 21st Century after all. No need to refer to Jesus of Nazareth for dating. We simply call it Common Era and Before Common Era, now.”
Layton glanced around to gauge the reaction of his classroom audience and was pleased to note the smirks on many students’ faces, including a few who outright chuckled. As he looked back down at Thomas, Layton was surprised to see that none of this criticism seemed to impress the student. Mr. Henry continued to give him the same impassive stare from before. “Most ‘efficient’ of him.” Layton thought. “Probably that military drilling that saps the life out of a person. Well, let’s see how he did on the whopper question.”
Layton started walking back to the front of the classroom to collect the quizzes from the front row and said loudly, “And for the piece de resistance, Number three… who was the biblical king from this same area in Iraq, when did he rule, what was the name of his kingdom and who conquered it? Let’s see how you did Mr. Henry… Nebuchadnezzar… wrong, Mr. Henry. While that is how he is called in the Hebrew Bible, I asked for his correct name. The fact is that he is the second Nebuchadnezzar from the Chaldean kingdoms, and thus the one you mention in your answer lived some 600 years before Nebuchadnezzar II. And the rest of your answer,… around 600 BC… again, such a Sunday school response. We don’t follow Sunday school in this class, but actual, historical fact. I was looking for 605 to 562 BCE. But again, I will grant you partial credit for your answer. And for the last part, what was the name of his kingdom,… Babylonian Empire… well, well,… you are correct Mr. Henry. I assumed that if you got this far you might say Achaemenid Empire. But well done. And as for who conquered the Babylonians,… Cyrus the Great… again, right on the money, and I note that you state he was Persian… extra points to you. That should make up for your partial answers from before.”
Layton addressed the class from the front of the lecture hall as he collected the last papers from the front row occupants. He had never had a student answer so well on all three questions, especially someone who appeared to know the distinction between a Babylonian and a Persian. Most students, and Sunday school teachers for that matter, didn’t seem to know or care about the difference. But different they were, vastly, and it was an important distinction. Prof remained quiet a moment longer before beginning the lecture part of his class. He wondered if he should test this army jock to see how deep his understanding of the cultural differences went. Worth a try, what else is exciting about lecture one except to scare off the riff raff so he didn’t have to grade as many papers at the end of the semester.
He looked at Thomas and asked, “Mr. Henry, please tell the class one difference between a Babylonian and a Persian in the ancient world,… if you can.”
Thomas looked directly at Prof and in a clear voice, with no hesitation, stated, “The Babylonians kept the Hebrews in exile while the Persians let them return to their homeland.”
Prof had to pause a moment to think whether that was a legitimate answer or not. On the one hand, it sounded incredibly Sunday Schoolish. On the other, it contained smatterings of cultural fact. He decided it was worth further interrogation to determine the statements’, and ultimately the student’s, value.
“And tell us, Mr. Henry, why that distinction is important in evaluating the differences between the two cultures.”
Thomas paused a moment to look around the classroom and then he locked eyes again with Prof before delivering his answer, “Because the Babylonians sought to conquer and convert their territories to their culture and religion, whereas the Persians allowed their conquered lands to have a form of local-governance that did not require cultural or religious conversion, only fealty to the Persian crown. That is why the Persian Empire was so successful in keeping city-states from revolting. Even Alexander the Great employed this technique when he captured the Persian crown.”
At this, Prof threw out the rest of the lesson plan and focused laser beams onto this student who was sitting in an introductory course on ancient history, and yet seemed to know the textbook already. For a moment, Prof had a nagging feeling that this kid was either a savior or his executioner. Perhaps his friends in Egypt were growing less-patient than he thought. Was this a message from them? Was he in danger? Only one way to find out.
“Mr. Henry, it fascinates me that at the beginning of this class you already are able to discern, quite articulately for us, the differences between two ancient kingdoms who will be a part of the focus of the syllabus. Tell me how you came by this distinct knowledge.” Prof’s smile had faded and he was starting to lose his cool. He had a Glock 9mm in his satchel if he needed it, but something told him that if this kid was armed already, it wouldn’t matter whether Prof could get to his gun or not. He would be dead before he got to the podium. The thought made him start to perspire and his heart started beating a mile a minute.
Thomas, however, didn’t seem fazed or concerned at the question. The kid just shrugged and said, “While I was in Iraq I served under a Colonel who was also a professor in the Army’s war college. He was a big history buff and would go on and on about Iraq, Iran, and ancient Mesopotamia. He was especially a fan of telling us how the kings would defeat insurgents, something we dealt with on a daily basis. He once told me that the Persians took the pragmatic approach while the Babylonians tried to be too Machiavellian. At the time, I didn’t really care, I just wanted to survive and help my friends survive. But I am starting to understand what he meant.”
That answer calmed Layton’s nerves. He turned around on the podium and walked over to the lectern. As he set down the quizzes and took up the syllabus Layton also took a deep breath. What he wouldn’t give for a shot of whiskey right then. He was getting too paranoid. Whatever issues had arisen last semester surely wouldn’t plague him into this one. He did, after all, get his third installment payment.
Layton picked up his notes and saw the class list lying at the bottom of the stack of papers. He briefly glanced down the list of names until he saw “Thomas Henry*.” The asterisk indicated that the student was not only an honors student, but a National Merit Scholar; one of a favored few that the administration worked hard to recruit and promote at the University. No wonder the kid was so sharp. But a Merit Scholar wouldn’t necessarily know the ins and outs of the ancient world. Otherwise this course would be a waste of time. Layton needed a way to figure out what the deal was with Mr. Henry. He couldn’t afford to have a trouble maker in class; especially one that looked like he could be a hit man.
“Class, one of the first things you will discover about history in the ancient world is that what we think we know is not often correlated to what we should know.” Layton plastered his best smile on his face and tried to be as confusing as possible. The more esoteric his lecture, the more students would drop. And coincidentally, perhaps this Mr. Henry would stand out by contrast. If he was undercover, then that would certainly make the student’s job harder, and Layton’s easier.
Judging by the dull looks on the faces of the students in the front row, Layton had succeeded in his first attempt to lose the class.
“What you must understand by the end of the course is that history is not just a series of events strung in a line of pre-determined destiny. Like some grandiose play where the movers and shakers of the world merely recite their parts to the best of their ability. No, if life truly were a stage, then we are not players, but ad-libbers. As the ancient Romans used to say, “Acta est fabula, plaudite. Which means…”
Layton stopped mid-sentence as he saw Mr. Henry’s hand shoot into the air. The action caught him off guard. Before he could say anything his eyes met the students and that seemed to communicate some permission to speak.
“The drama has been acted out. Applaud.” Mr. Henry spoke up, completing his interpretation and surprising both Layton and the rest of the class, who had all but fallen asleep after the first ten seconds of his speech. Layton stepped down from the podium to pace the front row. That woke the class up and broke his rhythm. He was really starting to dislike this kid.
“Another one of your colonel’s tidbits of knowledge that he gifted to you, Mr. Henry?”
“Not that one. I know Latin, among other languages.” Thomas spoke while shrugging his shoulders.
“Interesting! And what other languages do you know besides English and Latin? Speak a bit of Spanish do you? Most everyone in this classroom knows some Spanish. It is almost impossible to avoid growing up in the Tex-Mex culture that we live in here in Oklahoma and not know how to read a menu. How would my students survive without their chimichangas and tostadas?” That elicited a chuckle from the group on the front row and an outright squeal from one of the girls in the back. So the students were at least paying attention to his banter with this “know it all.” In his experience, most Merit Scholars were long on brains but short on social skills. This one appeared to be unaware of how to act in a classroom. Or at least he appeared not to care that he was quickly earning the “gunner” title for this particular group. Although, come to think of it, Layton wasn’t sure he wanted a former Army grunt to be the “gunner.” That could have very negative connotations for him in the future.
Mr. Henry brought his attention back to the present when he replied, “I had to learn lots of languages in the Army as part of my job. I’m fluent in German, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew and Pashto. I also know some Latin, although I can’t speak it very well. Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you were asking us to translate your statement and I just responded out of habit more than anything. It’s pretty much all I did for the last four years.”
Layton thought it must be Christmas. This was the break he was looking for. If the kid wasn’t lying, which it appeared that he was the sincere type, then this could solve his schedule problems and fast track his research. Without further discussion, Layton turned his back on Thomas and walked back up to the projector and stated, “Mr. Henry you will see me after class to discuss your response. In the meantime, everyone pull out your syllabus and turn to the calendar on the back. I will walk you through my expectations for this course and then we will get to the first assignment that will be due next class period.” Several of the students moaned, seeing that the time for banter with Mr. Henry had concluded abruptly without any further abuse from Prof.
As soon as the class ended, Mr. Henry popped up from his desk and walked up to the podium. Layton waited for the classroom to clear and even gave a smile and nod to several of the girls who were lingering to the end. But fun time was for later. Down to business.
“You seem to have an interesting background, Mr. Henry...”
“Please, call me Thomas. Mr. Henry was my dad.”
Prof paused to consider, and then said, “Mr. Henry I see that you have a knack for doing what you want, when you want. But in my classroom you will refrain from interrupting me without permission. Am I clear?”
Thomas replied immediately, “Yes, sir. Clear, sir.”
Prof continued in a softer tone, “I am intrigued by your background, Mr. Henry. You can speak seven languages and know an eighth to such degree that you can interpret on the fly. I wonder what kind of work you performed for the army.” Layton had carefully positioned himself by his satchel, having placed the quizzes and lecture notes into the bag and left his hand on the gun he kept there. One could never be too careful and he was taking no chances in the event that his instincts were off and this kid really was sent to harm him.
Thomas remained quiet. Apparently, he took direction well. Prof had yet to ask him a question, and this kid kept his mouth shut. Excellent.
“What was your job in the military?”
“I served in Army Intelligence, but beyond that I’m not at liberty to disclose.” Thomas answered in a straight forward manner.
“And this job required you to learn six new languages in four years? How is it even possible to pick up languages that quickly?”
“I’ve always had a knack for languages, sir. I knew German and Spanish before joining the military and picked up one new language each year of service.”
Layton paused to consider the answer, and removed his hand from his satchel. This kid was what he seemed: a student that didn’t pose a threat. He could use him. A linguistic expert with no ties to his friends in the middle east. A free thinker, and a smart one as evidenced by the National Merit Scholarship. Yes, Mr. Henry was a gift from heaven… not that Layton believed in that sort of thing.
“Well, Mr. Henry, I might encourage you to be less eager to demonstrate your outstanding abilities without first verifying that the professor was seeking your opinion. But I won’t encourage you to stop using them. This university needs brilliant minds like your own. We could use more of you, Mr. Henry, and that is a fact. Good day to you and I will be sure to pay close attention to your work in this course. It can’t hurt to have friends in the faculty, you know. Do well, and you may earn a valuable friend indeed.”
Layton gave a polite smile and held out his hand. Thomas shook it firmly, and smiled back, saying, “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.” With that, Layton picked up his satchel and walked out of the classroom, leaving Thomas to gather his things. Thomas couldn’t see that Layton was grinning ear to ear. Time to let his financiers know that he had found a solution to their linguistics problem.

February 18, 2015

Chapter 2 New Friends

Chapter 2
New Friends
“The righteous choose their friends carefully,…” Proverbs 12:26
If the morning heat was sweltering, the mid-day sun had to be oven-roasting. Thomas experienced air-conditioning shock when he stepped out the doors of Boren Hall facing the quad of residence halls adjacent to the commons. The temperature had to be near a hundred degrees, and Thomas already started to sweat just standing on the side-walk waiting for the group of guys to form up before embarking on their search for food. He was the only member of the group wearing jeans. Everyone else had on loose shorts, either athletic shorts or khaki’s, along with loose fitting tee shirts.
Terrence introduced Thomas to the other members of the group. Stan, the skinny guy who had barged into their room, stood about six feet tall with dark brown hair and a couple of day’s stubble on his chin. With his Oakley shades on his face, he looked like a wannabe beach volleyball player, only without any discernable muscle or athletic ability. Next to Stan were two roommates, Josh from Tulsa and James from Dallas. These two guys looked like they were cut out of an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. Tall, dark and handsome summed them up, and it appeared that they were more concerned with their own looks than that of their companions. Both of them had smiles on their faces and were taking in the sight of a group of sorority girls walking toward one of the quad dorms. But all they did was look, as neither Josh nor James made any move to say hello or introduce himself. They were all sophomores, except for Stan who was a junior, and they all seemed to know each other from last year. Thomas definitely felt like the newcomer.
Without a word, or any other discernable signal, Stan started off towards the commons and the group followed. According to Terrence, the OU student union sponsored a free, welcome lunch buffet for students and parents on moving day. The emphasis, according to Stan, who seemed to glare at everything around him, was on the word free. As they rounded Cate dorms Thomas saw the common area between Walker, Couch and Adams Towers. It was a rolling patch of grass about the size of a football field and it was full from one side to the other with students and parents squatting on the ground with paper plates overflowing with burgers and chips. Thomas could smell the delicious goodness as the wind was gently blowing from the south end of the commons right into his face. Having skipped breakfast, and dinner last night, his stomach started complaining angrily that it was being neglected.
Stan led the way to the back of the line for burgers. A couple of students decked out in volunteer tee shirts and wearing plastic gloves were dishing out the grub as two others worked the grills right behind the table. The spread wasn’t exactly the finest of food, and the burgers appeared to be the frozen kind you could get in the freezer section at Walmart. But none of the students complained. After all, it was free, which meant that it was a feast.
Having procured two burgers, a bag of barbeque chips and a can of Dr. Pepper, in honor of Terrence, Thomas followed the guys to a clear patch of grass where another group of students had set out a couple of blankets in the shade of some live oak trees. He sat down next to Terrence and, rather than wait for introductions, decided to greet the new students. He reached across the blanket towards one of the girls sipping a Diet Coke and said, “Hello, I’m Thomas. What’s your name?”
The girl looked at his hand and then at his face and smiled, saying, “I’m Wendy. Glad to meet you Thomas.” After shaking hands, she turned to look at a newcomer who was just sitting down next to her and said, “This is my roommate, Abigail. Abby, it looks like Thomas is the new guy.”
Abigail had long, curly blond hair and dimpled cheeks that somehow made her face glow when Thomas first saw her. She had pale blue eyes and a smile that would raise global warming alarm bells for melting ice. “Hello, Thomas. Glad to meet you, although I hear from Tracy that you are rooming with Terrence. Good luck with that.”
Terrence didn’t take the comment lying down, “Hey, I heard that, Abby. For your information, I decided to take Thomas in as a rescue case. You know how I like to support lost causes.”
Abby’s smile got even bigger, if that was possible, as she replied, “You should know about lost causes Terrence. You know the saying, takes one to know one!”
Terrence started to mumble, “Walked right into that,” as Wendy said to Abby, “Abby! Be nice. Terrence didn’t do anything to deserve that.”
Abby just ignored Wendy and looked over at Thomas and then Terrence and said, “No, Terrence didn’t do anything to deserve that… but you were going to, right Terrence?”
Terrence just blushed and shrugged and dug his face into his burger. Josh and James started up a conversation with Wendy and a couple of other girls who had just joined the group. So Thomas leaned over and said, “Pleasure to meet you Abby. You seem to know Terrence pretty well. What advice can you give me for rooming with him?”
Abby paused and her face took on a quizzical look for a few seconds before her grin returned and she said, “Knowing Terrence, I would think that there is nothing I can say that will save you from the holy terror that you will experience being his roommate. He already drove two off last year, after all. One even had to leave school over the trauma. Right, Terrence?”
Terrence didn’t look up but mumbled something in between bites that Thomas couldn’t hear. Thomas leaned over closer to Abby so only she could hear and asked, “Why are you picking on Terrence? Did he do something to you?”
Abby’s smile finally faded. “No, he didn’t. Not particularly. He has a reputation for a quick tongue and somewhat of a jerk, but he didn’t do anything to warrant this.” Then Thomas was taken off guard when Abby reached across the blanket, grabbed Terrence by the wrist as he was picking up a potato chip and said softly, “Terrence, it was wrong of me to tease you, especially in front of your new roommate. Please forgive me.”
Terrence seemed almost as caught off guard as Thomas, so he stammered out “Yeah, well, you know, no hard feelings.”
Abby nodded and her smile returned just as quickly as it had faded. She turned to Thomas and asked, “So what school did you transfer from?”
Thomas, who had just decided that he should eat his burger while it was still lukewarm, paused to say, “I didn’t transfer. I’m a freshman.”
That caught the attention of some of the other students whose conversation had waned to a period of silence. Stan picked up on his statement and asked, “How old are you? Cause you don’t look eighteen to me.”
Wendy quickly jumped in and said, “Stan, it’s rude to ask someone’s age.”
Stan replied, “Only for girls, Wendy. Only for girls. Besides, Thomas looks like he can handle himself.” Stan gave Thomas one of his laser beam glares, as his Oakley’s dropped down the length of his nose.
Thomas just smiled and held up his hands as if to say, no problem, I’ll talk. “I’m twenty-two years old and I just came from four years of service to Uncle Sam. So I’m not a typical freshman, I guess.”
Josh and James both looked up from their burgers and said at the same time, “Twenty-Two! Beerman!”
Thomas laughed as Josh and James started high fiving other students and making comments about Thomas as the designated beer purchaser for the Honors dorm. Most of the girls did not join in the fun, he noticed. In particular, this part of the conversation made Abby frown and return her attention to her meal.
So Thomas decided to return the conversation back to where it had gotten derailed. “I came to OU by way of Army Intelligence. I did two tours overseas, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. But when it came time to re-up, I just couldn’t do it… So I enrolled here at OU.”
Abby and Wendy were nodding as though his explanation was all they needed. Stan was devouring his burger and it was questionable whether he even heard Thomas. And Josh and James had already moved on to flirting with some of the other girls nearby. But Thomas noticed that Terrence had been paying attention and taking in his every word.
Abby took a sip of her Dr. Pepper and then asked, “Where you from, Thomas?”
Thomas swallowed a bite of his burger, and was about to answer when Terrence said, “Speedway, Indiana. Home of the Indy 500. He’s a long way from home out here in Okie land.”
Thomas gave a nod and said, “Not exactly where I thought I would end up, but it was the ideal choice for me. All things considering.”
Abby leaned over and said, “And what things were you considering?”
Thomas was caught off guard. He didn’t want to get into why he fled Indiana for a school half way across the country, or at least a day’s drive from home. Abby seemed to sense his discomfort with the question and quickly added, “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. I’m just glad that you decided to come to OU.”
Thomas looked up from his plate and right into Abby’s blue eyes and asked, “You are? You just met me.”
Abby smiled and said, “Yes, but you already tamed the wild man over there. So you’ve done us all a service.” She and Wendy started giggling at Terrence, who was blushing three shades of red.
Thomas got the hint and said, “Well, he may be a wild man, but he is my roommate for the next nine months. So I’m glad I could help you out, but please treat him with respect.”
“Oh, that’s okay Thomas. I deserve the nickname. After all, the ladies do know that I am THE WILDMAN.” Terrence starting doing a somewhat awkward dance as he was sitting. It looked a lot like the twist only with some ‘robot’ thrown in. It wasn’t very coordinated or funky. But it did make the girls laugh. And that made Thomas laugh as well.
He was excited to meet a bunch of students that seemed to be friends and who seemed to include him right away in their group. The rest of the lunch descended into light banter as the students finished their over-cooked burgers and chips. Sometime between finishing his chips and drinking the last of his Dr. Pepper, Thomas noticed that the band was setting up on a stage at the south end of the green. It looked like a local group, judging by the many students who seemed to greet the band members as they were setting up their amps, keyboards, and guitars. Before Thomas could wonder who the band was, Terrence let out a deep sigh and boisterously whined, “Ah crap! These guys again?”
Abby and Wendy giggled and Stan just punched Terrence in the arm as he voiced his own opinion, “Don’t dis the greatest band in Norman! Just because you had a bad run in with them doesn’t mean that The Stink aren’t the best.”
The other guys started laughing out loud, and Terrence looked like he was ready to bolt. Feeling like he was missing an inside joke, Thomas decided to take a break from the conversation. He stood up to throw away his trash and reached for Terrence’s stuff while saying in a quiet voice, “What happened between you and the band?”
Terrence just gave him a glance that said ‘don’t ask’ and turned to start giving Stan a piece of his mind. So Thomas started walking towards a garbage bin that was located across the sidewalk on the other side of the green.
After a few seconds, Abby fell into step alongside him. Thomas glanced over and smiled, wondering if she was always this upbeat and welcoming. Even while she had been eating, she seemed to radiate a joy and peace. Of course, Terrence probably didn’t appreciate her verbal jabs. But after the initial altercation, Abby and Terrence had settled into a familiarity that made it seem like Abby only teased Terrence because Terrence expected it, not out of cruelty. Her smile was quick and genuine. Her eyes were bright and clear. And she had a soft southern lilt to her voice that oozed visions of porch swings and sweet tea. To Thomas, she just seemed full of life; something that he hadn’t ever expected to see again in another person. His immediate past was too devoid of any signs of life that finding it on day one of college was a shock to his already over-sensitive emotional system.
Abby tossed her trash away first and then paused as Thomas dumped his and Terrence’s. Thomas tried to break the ice with her a bit more and asked, “So what are you majoring in?”
Abby looked over at the group of students and then back at Thomas and said, “That’s a great question. I was a biochemistry major last year.” She started walking back across the green as the band started testing their mics.
“Was? That implies that you’re studying something different this year.”
“You don’t miss much do you?” Abby paused to let Thomas catch up and then said, “I’m still deciding what I really want to do. How about you? You must’ve picked OU for a reason to move so far from home.”
Thomas didn’t want to answer that question directly. There were several reasons he came to OU. Many had to do with running from his past. But he still couldn’t admit that was the main reason. Not to himself and especially not to a girl he just met. So he lied.
“I’m not sure what I want to major in yet either. I’m going to take it one step at a time. But I’m looking forward to starting classes again though, especially the course in ancient history. I lucked into that class. The registrar told me it was full, but apparently someone dropped at the last minute and I got in.”
As they drew nearer to the group, Abby slowed just before getting close enough for her friends to hear their conversation. Thomas had to stop and turn around to face her. Abby had a surprised look on her face. “You don’t mean the intro course with Professor Layton do you?”
Thomas wasn’t certain how to take that question. “Yeah, why?”
She replied a little too quickly. “No reason. I just have some friends who are in that class this year.” Abby frowned and stepped closer to Thomas and whispered, “Be careful in that class. The professor gives me the creeps.” Then she quickly went to sit back down next to Wendy, who got her instantly involved in a discussion about which sorority Wendy should pledge this year. Apparently Wendy was excited that it was pledge week starting on Monday. From the sound of the conversation, Thomas noticed that Abby didn’t seem to have an opinion about which sorority Wendy should join. She also didn’t seem interested in joining a sorority with Wendy. After a minute, Thomas slowly walked over to Terrence and sat down next to his roommate. Abby glanced over at him from her discussion with Wendy and Thomas could tell that she wanted to say more, but that this wasn’t the time for it. So Thomas didn’t jump into their conversation.
Instead, almost as if on a spring, Terrence jumped up and declared that it was time to go before his ears exploded from the filth coming out of the speakers. Thomas glanced up and noticed that Terrence seemed to expect him to follow, so he got up and said goodbye to the group. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to their departure, except Thomas thought he caught Abby glancing up from her talk with Wendy. She had put a smile back on her face and whatever worried her before seemed to have vanished.
He hurried to catch up to Terrence who was already striding purposely back towards the dorm. Once he caught up, Terrence turned to him and asked, “You have anything else you need to move in? Might as well get it moved now.”
Thomas replied, “Yeah, I have some bedding and odds and ends to move. Thanks for offering to help carry stuff up from my truck”
Terrence exclaimed, “Like hell I was. I just wanted to make sure you were done moving in before tonight’s festivities begin. I agreed to host the poker game tonight and I don’t want you moving your crap around and disturbing everybody.”
Thomas just smiled and put his arm over Terrence’s shoulder. He couldn’t help thinking that he could twist Terrence into a pretzel; the kid was so paper thin. Terrence drew back instantly from first touch, but Thomas held firm. “Just remember who you’re talking to roomy. Don’t want you to have any illusions about what can happen if you piss me off, okay?”
Thomas let go of Terrence and headed off towards his Explorer. As he did so, he turned to smile back at Terrence, who had stopped mid-stride, and was staring at Thomas and rubbing his finger. Yep, Terrence definitely knew what could happen if he got on Thomas’ bad side. But for now, Thomas liked Terrence too much to hurt him again. But he didn’t want the kid to get a big head. And Thomas wasn’t going to let Terrence run their room like he owned the place, either.
He hurried to gather his stuff and finish unpacking. If there was going to be money to win, Thomas wanted to be in on the action. After all, how good could these college kids be at poker compared to his old squad of intelligence grunts? It smelled like a golden opportunity for Thomas to make some extra bucks while getting to know the guys on the floor.
As he reached the back of his truck the speakers around the quad started blaring a version of punk-rock that Thomas was sure he had never heard. It gave him a distinct feeling of being dragged across the concrete and kicked in the gut. “No wonder Terrence hates this band… they sound like they wouldn’t know middle C if the keyboard was labelled,” he thought. As he grabbed his bedding and prepared to haul it into the dorm, his thoughts came back to Abby’s warning… What exactly was this Professor Layton like that would make a girl like Abby think he was creepy?

February 18, 2015

Chapter 1 First Impressions

Chapter 1
“First Impressions”
“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’” – 1 Samuel 16:9
A bright sun and sweltering heat greeted Thomas to his first day of college. Norman, Oklahoma, wasn't exactly where he thought he would end up going to school but the last few months had been a whirlwind that landed him out of the Army and into a classroom. He took it all in as he opened the lift-gate to his late-model Ford Explorer and started to unload his stuff.
Life seemed never to stop pouring over him in large waves. Like an unceasing storm brewing on the horizon that threatened to turn his life upside down and spill him into the chaos of an ocean of grief. This particular storm had landed him at the University of Oklahoma; a place so far from home that he knew nobody who had ever gone to school there, let alone resided in the state. Three months ago, all he knew about OU was that its fans were crazy about their football team, and considering its success, maybe they had a right to be. But he wasn't here to play football.
"Heads up!"
Thomas ducked under his lift-gate as a Frisbee flew over his SUV. Hardened instincts caused him to look around and take cover for longer than a typical college freshman would have. Except Thomas wasn't a typical college freshman. Four years of service in Army Intelligence had turned him into a trained killer, one with special skills designed to infiltrate and eliminate the most dangerous enemies of the United States. But that life, that job, and that purpose had ended abruptly. It was time to move on to a ‘normal’ life.
Thomas pressed his shades up the bridge of his nose as he watched a couple of teenagers saunter across the sidewalk to collect the errant Frisbee. He was used to being around teenagers. Most of the men in his first combat unit had been 18-20 year olds. They always seemed to exude the same self-confidence and air of invincibility, as if they couldn’t be bothered with the harsh realities of the world. Had he ever been that young? He knew that he was only a few years older than the Frisbee players but it felt like decades, an eternity.
He grabbed his duffel over one shoulder and his backpack over the other. Closing the back of his truck he walked towards the four story building right in front of his parking space. He had already checked in at registration and obtained his room assignment and key. Because he had registered so late, the Honors dorm, formally David L. Boren Hall, didn't have any single rooms, so he had been assigned a roommate. The Resident Advisor had laughed out loud when she handed over the paperwork to him, as though there was some kind of hidden joke. Thomas wondered what the guy would be like. He didn't have a chance to contact his assigned roomy before moving from Indiana. In fact, he could barely remember the guy's name. Hopefully, Thomas’ experiences in bunking with guys in the military would smooth his transition to college life.
As he opened the door to the dorm, he stepped into chaos. Moms and dads fretted over freshmen moving their trunks, suitcases, odds and ends into the building. The upperclassmen did their best to avoid the long lines of slowly plodding groups of freshmen and families going up and down the winding stairs that dominated the middle of the building. A twisting square that seemed like a giant cork screw, the stairwell led the excited and anxious teenagers to their community-style dorm rooms. Some older students mixed in with the crowd and attempted to direct traffic.
"Hi! Can I help you find your sibling!?"
Thomas turned to his left and found himself standing next to a short girl with dark hair, wearing a pair of those retro glasses that always reminded him of the hippie 60s.
"Excuse me? My sibling?" Thomas asked, while hiding a smile.
"Yes. I figured that you were helping your younger brother move in from the looks of the bags on your shoulder. If you tell me his name I can maybe help you find him. I mean, you look like you could use some help!" The girl talked so fast, Thomas had to pause a moment to make sure he understood what she had said. Judging by her nasal accent, she wasn’t from around here either; Minnesota, maybe? She looked like an event coordinator with a clipboard tucked in her left elbow with a list of names and room numbers. She even had an official looking t-shirt on; Crimson with a white OU Weekend emblem on the front.
"I don't have any siblings," said Thomas. "But if you could tell me which wing has room 324, I would appreciate it."
The official helper pointed to the west side of the building and said, "third floor on that side." She frowned and eyed Thomas a little more carefully. "What do you want with 324? Is he in trouble? Wouldn't surprise me, the little prick."
Thomas didn't know how to take her remark so he just smiled and said "thanks!" He started up the stairs doing his best to blend into the slow moving line of people trying to get their things settled for the semester.
At the third floor he stepped up to the landing and turned left to walk down the west wing. The corridor didn't look anything like the house in DC bearing a similar description. The hall was tight, maybe six feet across, with a bathroom on the right side and four dorms on each side farther down. Painted a muted grey, the walls seemed to fit better in a sterile office building; “Or maybe a prison,” thought Thomas. It looked like 324 was all the way down the hall, near the emergency stairs.
Thomas walked to the door and thought about knocking. Instead, he set his bag down and unslung his backpack. Digging into the front pocket he found his key. Without any further ado he unlocked and opened the door to his home for the next nine months.
Thomas’ first impression of his new abode was “Holy crap! I just signed up for jail time!” The room, described in his application materials as “cozy” did not exactly live up to that standard. It looked more like a small closet than a dorm room. From the entrance, he peered into an 8 x 16 foot tiled-floor ‘cell’ with only two small rectangular windows on the far corners of the opposite wall. On either side of him was a metal-framed twin bed that ran from the doorway to the end walls. Next to each bed was a small wooden desk and chair. Above the desks, extending from just in front of the window to the wall over the beds, were similarly stained, wooden bookshelves with little cubbies about one foot square. Directly in front of him was a small end table with a 1980s style telephone plugged into the wall. On either side of the telephone were sliding closet doors made of cheap laminated wood.
Thomas stepped into the room and threw his duffel and backpack on the bed to his right. The left one already had sheets on it; Star Wars designs with a large Darth Maul glaring up at him from the middle of the comforter. His roommate was not present, but there were several indications that he had been living in the room for longer than the orientation weekend. There was a pile of fast food take-out bags and cups brimming over the trash can under the end table. In the left-hand corner of the room, under the window, was a mini-fridge humming away with the front side covered in magnets for what appeared to be every pizza place in town that delivered to the dorms. On the desk sat several volumes of engineering books, mostly piled up, but one that was cracked open to a page in the middle of the text. There were a couple of cans of Dr. Pepper strewn about the room, including a few on his own desk that appeared to be only half-empty. The left closet door was partially open, revealing a pile of dirty laundry, some of which carried a not-so pleasant odor into the room that was only countered slightly by the air freshener that sat atop the built in dresser inside the closet.
Thomas moved the Dr. Pepper cans to the trash can, and then moved his backpack to the top of his desk. Unzipping the main compartment, he took out his laptop and plugged it into the Cat 5 cable coming from the Ethernet connection on the wall behind the desk. He booted up the laptop and set it down on the desk, while he turned to unpack his clothes from the duffel.
As he pulled out a bunch of athletic socks, a wiry kid with glasses and shaggy brown hair stepped into the room. He was yelling to someone down the hall as he entered, “You still owe me from last semester! Why do I have to keep reminding…” He stopped mid-sentence as he took in the fact that Thomas was in the room and unpacking his things. After a brief glance of him up and down, as well as at his duffel bag, the newcomer said, “Ah crap! She really wasn’t kidding, was she!? They gave me universal soldier for a roommate!”
Thomas reached out to offer his hand for an introductory handshake and said, “I’m Thomas. You must be Terrence.”
The wiry kid just frowned at him, ignoring Thomas’ hand altogether.
“Who else would I be? Darth Vader?”
Stepping right up to Thomas, he said, “Look man, I know this may come as a shock to you, seeing as how you just barged in here and dumped your stuff, but I’ve had this pad to myself for all of last semester and through summer school. I don’t want or need a roommate. So don’t get comfortable unpacking, because once I get things straight with that witch of an RA, you’ll be moving along to annoy someone else. Got it!”
He was pointing his index finger right in Thomas’ face. Not a good idea.
Thomas lowered his right hand and with his left hand he quickly grabbed the kid’s finger and twisted it backwards. His new roommate let out a yelp. But Thomas let go of him before he broke the finger and smiled; a smile that conveyed something less than happiness. His roommate took a step back towards his desk and wrapped his finger, clearly in pain. Thomas just grinned at the kid, who had a look of astonishment on his face. Thomas wanted to convey a message and his’ ‘smile’ could be just as intimidating and disarming as his glare. The trick was employing it at opportune times. In this case, he needed to make a ‘good’ first impression on his new roommate, which apparently had achieved the desired effect of scaring the crap out of him. In Thomas’ opinion, frightening the living daylights out of his roommate with a carefully controlled grin could work wonders in setting their relationship off on the right foot. Almost breaking his finger couldn’t hurt either. Well, at least it wouldn’t hurt for Thomas. His new roommate obviously thought otherwise.
Speaking in a slow, hushed tone, Thomas said, “You must think that I’m rude. I never even called to ask for your permission to enroll in the university before applying. But the application and enrollment forms never mentioned that you had such control over room assignments. If I had known that I needed your approval first, then I would have asked. Please forgive me.”
Thomas said all of this while maintaining a wide smile and a hushed but intense voice. The grin never touched his eyes, however, so the look that this kid received was that of a hardened predator, licking its chops to devour its prey. It had the desired effect.
His roommate backed all the way up to his desk chair, looking and sounding very defensive.
“No need to get pissy! I just don’t like sharing space is all. It’s not personal.”
Thomas decided to switch gears and strategies, dropping the maniacal grin and offering a more pleasant laugh. He did have to live with this guy for nine months. He wouldn’t be able to threaten him all the time hoping for the same result. Flies and honey and all that. Thomas paused a second before saying, “No worries. I wasn’t taking it personal. If I had, your finger would be broken, not sore. But from where I come from, refusing to shake someone’s hand when offered IS a personal insult. Maybe we can start over?” Thomas again extended his hand for the kid to shake.
His roommate paused for a second, looked at Thomas and his meager belongings, hesitated another moment and then said, “Well, I guess we can. I wasn’t trying to offend you or anything. It’s just that jerk of an RA . She has it out for me.” He stepped over and shook Thomas’ hand.
“I’m Terrence Bruder. What did you say your name was? G.I. Joe?”
Thomas shook Terrence’s hand firmly, noting the lack of any callouses or signs of hardship, and replied with a softer smile, “Thomas. Thomas Patrick Henry. Pleasure to meet you Terrence Bruder.”
Terrence moved to sit down on his bed, flexing his hand and setting aside a newspaper that was folded and resting on his pillow.
“What kind of name is that? Your parents love revolutionary war history or something?”
“Or something. I’m related to the original Patrick Henry. It’s kind of a tradition in my family to give the first-born son the middle name Patrick. Kind of keeps the family connection alive.”
Thomas swung the wooden desk chair around so he could sit down and talk more casually.
“So how is the engineering program here at OU?”
Terrence glanced over at his desk, eyeing his textbooks, and then turned to look back at Thomas.
“It’s alright. Tough to find a good study group that speaks English properly, though.”
He pointed at Thomas’ duffel bag and changed the subject, “That all you brought with you?”
Thomas glanced at his bag, and said, “I brought all that I own, if that’s what you mean. I have a few more things in my truck, but nothing that won’t fit on the bed or walls in here.”
Terrence shook his head and, starting to return to his earlier tone of voice and mood, stated, “looks like you just stepped out of boot camp and forgot to turn in your stuff before leaving.”
Thomas chuckled and nodded his head, looking down at his faded jeans, old running shoes and ‘ARMY’ t-shirt. “I haven’t had much chance to get some new clothes since I got out of the service a few months ago. Life’s been moving pretty fast for me lately.”
“Oh yeah? Where you from Tom?”
“It’s Thomas. And I come from Speedway, Indiana.”
“You’re from where in Indiana?”
“Speedway. It’s just west of Indianapolis. It’s where the Indy 500 is run each year at the IMS.”
Thomas turned and reached into his backpack. He pulled out his keys and tossed them to Terrence. Terrence tried to catch them but they just dropped onto his bed. He picked them up and pulled out the key ring that had an Indy 500 logo; checkered flags waving behind an Indy car that looked like it could go a million miles an hour.
“If you’ve never been to see the race, you should go. It’s one of the coolest experiences you’ll ever have. The racing is fun too.”
Terrence tossed the keys back to Thomas, and said, “Yeah, well, I don’t like cars.”
“You don’t like cars? You’re in the engineering program and you don’t like cars? How is that?” Thomas asked while stashing his keys away again and then sat down on the chair next to his desk.
Terrence just shrugged, and asked, “So what brought you all the way out here to OU?”
Thomas was starting to catch on that Terrence didn’t like to talk about himself. That’s fine, he thought, I don’t mind breaking the ice a bit. He did say he was without a roommate last year. Thomas still wondered why that was.
“I got a national merit scholarship and OU allowed me to defer it until after my service.”
That was only partially true. He had turned down the scholarship initially, which offered a full ride on tuition, fees, books, room and board. He had opted to enlist in the military instead, just one week after graduating high school. It had made sense at the time. He would later regret that decision. But he couldn’t dwell on that now. Too many bad memories.
Terrence broke his train of thought, not seeming to notice Thomas’ smile slip off of his face, by saying, “Ah! A fellow merit scholar! Didn’t see you at the annual reception yesterday with El Presidente. You missed out on a good spread; barbeque sandwiches, chips, an endless supply of Dr. Pepper.”
Thomas shook his head and replied, “I got into town late last night and had to sleep in my truck. But it sounds like I should’ve paid more attention to the information packet they sent me. I’ve been wanting to try some of the barbeque down here. And what’s with the Dr. Pepper infatuation?” Thomas pointed to all of the DP cans on Terrence’s side of the room.
Terrence waved off the question. “It’s the fine wine of the South. Everyone knows that. So what is your major, clearly not engineering? You gonna be one of those Kinesiology guys? Always pumping iron and working out at all hours of the day, because I want to warn you right now that I like my sleep, especially at 9:30 in the morning. No early morning alarms or 5 am reveilles, got it.”
Thomas paused for a moment to look at Terrence and then said,
“It sounds like you decided to let me stay as your roommate, then.”
Thomas’ smile was as genuine as could be as Terrence did a double take, and finally said,
“Ah crap, you seem nice enough. Besides, it’ll be good having someone around who can beat up the riff raff around here who owe me money.”
Just then, another student poked his head into the room and said, “Hey, Terrence, we’re heading down to the quad for lunch. You comin’ or what?” Before Terrence could answer, the student was back into the hall shouting at somebody three rooms away about how long the line would be if they didn’t get their butts out the door before all of the freshmen streamed out of the building.
Terrence looked at Thomas, and said,
“That was Stan. He can be a little crusty, but he’s a practical SOB. And don’t let his slender appearance fool you. That guy could eat you and all of your platoon under the table.”
He hopped up from his bed and started to walk out the door. He paused at the entrance and said, “You coming roomy?”
Thomas grabbed his wallet out of his backpack, stood up and said,
“You bet. I think this is going to work out, Terrence.”
“Yeah, well don’t tell anybody. I have a reputation and all that.”
They closed the door to room 324 behind them and hurried to catch up to Stan and a group of guys hanging out by the stairwell. Thomas thought to himself, “move into my room, check; meet my new roommate, check; almost kick the crap out of him because he’s a jerk, check; makeup and bond, check. This day was going almost according to plan.” He couldn’t help but wonder what else awaited him as he headed down the stairs to grab some food with his new roommate and the other guys from the third floor of Boren Hall.

February 18, 2015

I am about 180 pages into this work, which is about a third of the way through my outline. I would like to get some feedback on pacing, character development and plot so far. I hope you enjoy it. It has been fun to write so far.

Prologue
East of Modern Day Mosul, Iraq, October 1, 331 BCE
Winning is all he ever knew. Yet here was physical proof that he would fail. At the height of his power and influence it would all come crashing down. Would he die violently? Betrayed by his faithful? Defeated on the field of battle? It didn’t say. But he knew that whatever the means, the outcome was already pre-determined. In fact, if the priest’s declarations concerning the tablet were to be believed, his fate was sealed over a century before his father was born.
“You are certain this was what the priest described? This was the proof he said we would find?”
“Yes, my lord. He identified it by description and location. The king left all of his valuables behind when he fled the battlefield. His entire treasure is within this tent. The tablet is the only one of its kind among the items we found.”
He knew his personal scribe, Callisthenes, would be efficient and thorough. That much was expected and he had never been let down before. It was the one he had been looking for, ever since Egypt. Callisthenes’ statement was enough to settle the authenticity of the tablet. But what to do about it?
He was a master of exploiting men. Some said he was a god; a genius at finding a man’s weakness and turning it against him. He didn’t have such a high opinion of his own abilities, having known true genius in his teacher, Callisthenes’ uncle. Yes, the gods protected him and rewarded the risks he took on the battlefield. Divinely inspired greatness owes its allegiance to the gods who grant success, and not the man who wields the power of divinity. His successes were obvious to the whole world, but his means were less known.
The light from Callisthenes’ torch bounced off the dull, green metal, casting shadows on the chests of gold and silver that contained the king’s wealth. He looked at the tablet and bent to examine it more closely. It did not appear to be as intimidating as what it portended. It was only a single square of copper after all. Not much smaller than his shield. Covering its face were etched lines in strange patterns, like tallies on one of his accountant’s records itemizing the number of horses he owned.
“Such a strange language. Can it even be deciphered accurately?”
“Its translation is in little doubt, my lord. I confirmed it personally with the king’s chief priest, as well as the priest from the Hebrew temple.” Callisthenes turned to hand him a parchment scroll with the translation on it, the ink having only recently been dried. His scribe had spent the last few days verifying the existence of this supposed treasure. Callisthenes only returned to the army a few hours before the final battle began. Yet, upon return, Callisthenes knew where to search for the sign foretold by that witch in Egypt; the one woman in the world whose words he feared as much, if not more, than those from Delphi.
He glanced around the room before settling his eyes on the tablet again. Who would have thought that a king would want to keep such a visible reminder of his own demise so close to his person? Would the omens portended in the tablet derail his own empire, even before he had a chance to see it cemented in the annals of time?
He preferred to think that the gods who protected him would see him finish the conquest of the world. But here was an unknown god who proclaimed his death centuries before it would happen. Long before he even thought of setting foot in this cursed, arid land. He had just defeated the most powerful man in the world. But how did one defeat a god?
Rising and taking the scroll with an outstretched hand, he addressed Callisthenes, “Secure the tablet. Transport it to my city on the coast. Make sure it remains concealed and that no one discovers its existence. If it becomes known to the men what this tablet says, I fear for the army’s morale.”
“I understand, my lord. It will be delivered to the city as you require. What shall I do with it once there?”
“Hide it. Someplace it will rot until the end of time.”
“Forgive me, your grace, but why not simply melt it down?”
“It was written by a god who can see the future. Do you think he couldn’t see that we would try to destroy it? What might happen to us if we attempt such profanity? No. Hide it for now. When we return, I will decide how to deal with the tablet itself. Once you have secured it, return to me. Speak to no one of this.”
“It will be done as you require.”
Alexander of Macedonia, king of the Greeks, and soon the whole world, stepped from the tent and walked back towards the battlefield of Gaugamela. The last vestiges of his victory over the Persian king, Darius, were clear before his eyes. His banners flew over the field of sand, dirt and rock as signs of his domination. Only a few hours had been needed to reduce the once mighty Persian army to dust. A sea of thousands of fighting men reduced to the dead or dying. Wounded soldiers groaned in pain, Greek and Persian alike, wallowing in their own blood and that of their enemies. His men continued to scan the field, aiding his wounded and ending any Persians who still drew breath.
“Such a glorious scene,” he thought. “A day of victory.”
It should have been his greatest moment. Alexander turned aside from his survey of the field to address his three field generals and to take reports. He should have felt victorious, the revelation of his victory so fresh. Instead, he felt the weight of the world bearing down on him as though the hand of this unknown god had stretched forth to snatch his glory and life from him.
“My glory will never dim. Let this unknown god do his best. My gods are more powerful.” He thought. “I will not be defeated by scratches on a copper plate.” And dropping the scroll with the translation into one of the many fire pits dotting the battlefield, he set his path towards the task at hand; securing the rest of the Persian Empire and taking his place as the “King of Kings.”
-------------

Jerusalem, Israel, August 21, 2014 CE
Greybeard took another pull on his cigarette as the midday traffic slowly ebbed by the Jaffa gate. The late summer sun made it a pleasant day in Jerusalem. And it was about to get a whole lot better for Greybeard. He had been casually waiting for over an hour for the man to appear, but so far,… nothing. He was starting to lose his edge, so he had lit a cigarette. Waiting for a mark to appear could be dull, boring work, right up to the moment when you spot your man; which is precisely what happened a minute ago when his target had made an appearance by getting out of a taxi in front of the pedestrian entrance. Praise be to Allah, his plans were now in motion.
Smashing out the remaining embers of his cigarette underneath the sole of his Italian leather loafers, Greybeard started walking up the gentle slope of The Greek Patriarchate Street into the heart of the old city. Thirty feet in front of Greybeard was an American. He was short, with brown hair and brown eyes,… indistinguishable from most of the other foreigners meandering up the sidewalk.
Although the man looked like just another tourist with his floppy hat, Ikon camera dangling from his neck, and “I heart Israel” shirt, Greybeard had solid information from his employer that this gentleman was a CIA operative working in tandem with the Mossad. That in itself was a rarity these days, given the behind the scenes tensions between the two nations and their respective intelligence communities. Apparently this agent was carrying some sensitive data on the digital storage of the camera he was carrying. Greybeard’s employer had let slip in their briefing that the information had to do with a top secret archaeological expedition somewhere near Alexandria, Egypt. Both the CIA and Mossad had an archaeological division that dealt with the theft and smuggling of antiquities. They worked in tandem with Interpol sometimes, except when the situation involved national security, as this one surely did, otherwise Greybeard never would have been called to intervene.
His job was to trail the man and then corral him into a specific location. His employer would deal with procuring the device and whatever it had on it. The information on the camera could be photos, documents, or other electronic data relating to the specific location of the dig site. Or it could just be a progress report on their findings. Greybeard didn’t care. He just did what he was hired to do.
His mark turned north towards the Christian quadrant and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Greybeard knew where he was going. That information had been supplied. All Greybeard needed to do was to “redirect” the “tourist” down a certain side street to a specific bottleneck between two narrow walls. Whatever happened when the man reached that point was none of Greybeard’s business. In fact, better that he not know about it, just in case.
Greybeard closed to twenty feet, stopped, and turned into a shop owned by a friend, Raul. He immediately started to speak as though he intended to stop in for a chat. The “tourist” had paused for a split second to see if he was being followed. This man was really good, because Greybeard almost missed it. The slight hesitation, the shifting of his camera back towards Greybeard,… it could have all gone wrong in a single moment. Instead, he prayed the man kept walking as he discussed the finer points of last night’s football match involving Raul’s favorite team, Real Madrid.
Greybeard’s smooth transition seemed to work, as the mark resumed his course without any indication of anxiety. Mentally, Greybeard breathed a sigh of relief. Losing the mark or causing him to panic would be a disaster that would not end well for Greybeard.
Raul was pleasant and knew the drill. They spoke about the amazing goal Messi had scored on a set piece. It was an incredible shot, to be sure, but Greybeard really hated football. The only thing that got his juices going was the real game,… the one in the shadows.
Greybeard kept the conversation going just long enough to let the man gain a comfortable lead without losing him.
“_____, Raul, see you tomorrow night for dinner.”
“_____, Abdullah, ______.”
None of his friends knew him as Greybeard. That was his professional name; for obvious reasons he couldn’t use his real name, or any of his other aliases. Besides, Greybeard was descriptive enough, if not entirely accurate. It was wishful thinking that he would live long enough in this world and profession to see grey in his beard. One could pray, though, and Greybeard did, five times a day.
The American turned right up a side street lined with spice vendors and trinkets of all kinds. The sort of curios that were cheaply made and cheaply sold by a people whose lives were valued as cheaply by the Israeli’s as their wares. Greybeard had higher hopes for such as these, but his wasn’t a philanthropic organization. He wasn’t about to let his personal feelings interfere with his real mission.
Greybeard pulled over behind a cart with jewelry boxes on it and checked his watch. He took out a disposable cell phone and sent a text to a pre-determined number. “30 secs, floppy hat.”
Soon, his cousin would execute the diversion that they needed to hustle the American into the next alley that led to the choke point. Then his employer…
Crash! A large cart full of candles toppled over fifty feet in front of Greybeard and ten feet in front of the American, causing him to pause in the middle of the street, as the candles filled the path from wall to wall, broken glass strewn across the street.
Greybeard observed the man over the top of a jewelry box he had picked up to look over. He thought for a second that the American might push his way through the congestion and debris, until he saw his cousin pour out of a side shop and start arguing with the cart owner. That made the American look around for other options, as the argument attracted opinions from several other store owners and onlookers. It became a full on shouting match. With the mass of bodies and glass blocking the street, the American had to go back, or… he could take the convenient alley that led west from the street to the parallel alley behind the shop on the left. Greybeard’s cousin had prepared the alley to be congested on the south end so that the man would have to take a right after slipping through. The next street over would lead him straight to Greybeard’s employer. Of course, the American was oblivious to any of this and did exactly what Greybeard expected, he improvised and turned to enter the side alley.
Greybeard waited two minutes to make sure that the man didn’t double back. Chime! He glanced at his phone, read the text, and then lit a cigarette. Suddenly, the commotion in the street died down, and the shop owners started picking up the debris. Greybeard’s cousin was nowhere to be seen. It was time to leave.
He turned around and headed back toward the Jaffa gate where his car was parked. He dropped the cell phone into a trash bin along the way, and finished his cigarette. In a matter of minutes he was driving away, thinking about the American, the camera that now belonged to his employer, and the fact that he was one day closer to earning that grey beard. And his employer was one step closer to whatever it was he was seeking in the City of Alexander.
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Rome, Italy, August 22, 2014 CE
Two flights of fifty steps took Father Federico Barone to the precipice of the most famous cathedral in the world. Saint Peter’s Basilica was enormous in its appearance, prestige, and power to overwhelm any visitor. Father Barone had been inside the Basilica on many occasions during the past fifteen years of his service to the church, and every time he entered it was like walking into the courts of God Himself. It was easy to be awed by the grandeur of the five story ceiling and arches; the powerful art displays contained in each side vestibule; and of course the central bronze altar with its four posts twisting to heaven itself as though every prayer laid at the feet of the altar were transmitted directly to the feet of Christ. Most times he entered St. Peter’s he had to pause to keep from being overwhelmed by the sheer spiritual power of the place. Today, however, he felt none of this; only a sense of fear for what was coming his way.
Father Barone hurried past the lines of tourists and tour guides looking at Michelangelo's Pieta and moved around a roped off area to the left of the altar. He scooted into a pew set within the left chamber of the cross shaped Basilica, where he promptly fell to his knees and bowed his head. Today was a day for fasting and prayer, not for being awed by the physical manifestation of the Lord’s glory and wealth, but for seeking His wisdom and, if by grace, His mercy and intervention.
Clutched in his hand, Father Barone held the most disturbing news he had ever received: an assignment given to him by the Pontiff himself. That very morning, handed down to him through the chain of command within the office of the Secretary of State, he had received a summons to attend to the Pope during the Pontiff’s personal prayers and breakfast. An unusual request, as Father Barone’s position within the clergy was so far beneath the Pope in terms of rank that it was like the President summoning the janitor to a meeting in the Oval office. But Barone had special skills that he had acquired before joining the clergy, when he had been a budding convert to Christianity. Apparently, the Pontiff was aware of those skills.
Upon receiving Father Barone in his chambers, however, his holiness had quickly dispensed with formality and taken measures to ensure that only he, Father Barone, and the Secretary of State were present in the chambers before entrusting Father Barone with the letter he now held folded and crumpled in his prayerful hands. After handing him the letter, the Holy See had told him a story that was very hard to believe and, in fact he would not have believed it had it come from another source but the Holy Father. At the end of this story telling, Father Barone had been given an assignment directly from the Secretary of State and blessed by the Pope: to do whatever it takes to stop what was written in the letter from happening.
“You must use your skills, and whatever other resources Christ sends you, to keep the tablet from being retrieved or destroyed. Our friends inside the American government tell us that we have until Christmas. They are planning something big; a display to rival 9/11.” The Secretary of State wouldn’t elaborate more on the timeline, or what the ‘display’ was thought to be, but Father Barone didn’t need the information to know that it was vital that he retrieve the item for the church before it fell into the wrong hands.
It was a daunting task; an impossible task. It would take a miracle to accomplish and many lives were at stake, perhaps entire nations. He had asked for a team of specialists; a veritable army of the church to aid in this assignment. His holiness had said that the assignment was his and his alone.
And so he knelt before the only hope of achieving success and for preventing evil from triumphing in this most dangerous affair: the throne of the only living god, Christ the Lord. With shaking hands and trembling lips, he prayed quietly to himself, “Lord Christ above, who watches over the earth and everything in it, hear now your servant who humbly seeks your wisdom and grace. I confess my fear and sin to you. I am not strong enough or brave enough to face the enemy. I am a man of weak heart and little skill. Yet I have been given a task that requires much courage and guile to accomplish. You know the consequences if the enemy prevails. Many will die, and nations may go to war. There will be poverty, death and hopelessness spread to the four corners of the world. I beseech you to stop it before it happens. Use me for good and give me grace and mercy to accomplish your will in this matter. Keep my eyes focused on you and not on the wind and waves. But let me walk on water and calm the storms to accomplish this task. Give me power to overcome those who seek to destroy and discourage and through me bring love, joy and peace to those whom you wish to bless. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.”
Having finished his brief verbal supplication, Barone looked up at the letter now crushed in his hands. Once again he unfolded it and glanced briefly at its small hand written contents. It was a letter written in Latin from one of the church’s priests in Cairo, Egypt. Barone had no trouble translating its message into Italian. Only one line of text was necessary to contain the message… “They seek to reveal the truth behind the prophecy of Alexander and they are close to discovering where it lies.”
Father Barone, an agent of the Vatican who specialized in tracking down and securing church relics, documents, and artwork was a priest whose flock consisted of tangible things and not people. He had a dual PhD in history and art history from the University of Florence. He was no James Bond. All he possessed was a passion for the church and a love for history,… and maybe a few skills outside of the profane and on a more spiritual dimension. But even he could tell that this assignment was more suitable for the clandestine arm of the Vatican than for one of its chief curators.
And yet, Father Barone was a man of faith. If his holiness gave him the task, it was for a reason. And so it was that the church looked to him to prevent the discovery and possible retrieval of one of the most significant items in the history of Christianity. In fact, it was significant to Judaism and Islam as well, although in different ways; the former seeking its validation and the latter its destruction.
Until now Father Barone had believed the item to be a legend; a story invented to counter skeptics who sought to discredit the church. Now he knew that it was real and should it fall into the wrong hands, war would most certainly be the result. The Middle East, and especially Israel, would burn. He could not stop it alone. So he continued to pray silently seeking the aid of the creator of all living things, and the power to intervene in the circumstances for the glory of the one who had saved him. He felt so small compared to the task. But he had been told he was chosen for a purpose, and that the Lord would send him helpers to handle the task on the ground. After all, the Holy Father had said to him, “if the Lord be for us, then who can stand against us? And did Elijah need a team of priests or Gideon an army of soldiers to defeat the enemy? They stood up alone or outnumbered and answered the call of the Lord. So with you. You will find those whom the Lord raises up through faith to assist you in stopping this evil from occurring. And in so doing the weak shall be made strong.”
Father Barone had much to do to prepare for his task and little time to do it. And so he sat and prayed for the rest of the day. And the crowds continued to pour into the Basilica and mill about with their families and friends, taking in the splendor of the Lord’s church. They were all long gone when he rose from his pew and left to begin the most important, and most difficult, assignment of his life.

February 13, 2015

Assuming Taln's blade is stolen between when he shows up at Kholinar and when he appears locked in the camps (before Amarem goes to see him), he wouldv'e lost his powers, as has been suggested on this thread. I don't recall any evidence that Taln is a feruchemist. What other inherent traits of investiture would grant the speed and precision needed to catch multiple darts in mid-air?

February 12, 2015

I haven't seen this theory (may have missed it) but isn't anyone concerned that Hoid was present when Taln dropped his honorblade at Kholinar (blade never vanished evidencing that it was an honorblade). Hoid takes Taln's blade and switches it with another shardblade. This causes Taln to lose his powers. Hoid worries that leaving Taln with his power would be a bad idea, given his 4500 years of torture and broken mind. Hoid may be able to do things like steal an honorblade and de-bond Taln due to his invested nature.

February 10, 2015

What class would Nalan's stormlight sapping stuff fall under?

January 29, 2015

So I wrote the beginning of a story using this magic system, but it doesn't quite get to the really awesome stuff that I had imagined would happen in this world, mainly because it is the beginning and I needed to develop the character and the world a bit. So if you like it, I can post more later on. Hope you enjoy reading and would appreciate any thoughts on awesome scenarios Amelia may get into using manipulation of invisible particles.

Chapter 1
There is magic in this world. Not the kind of parlor tricks or guessing games played by actors who think they are clever with their sleight of hand. No, I mean real magic.

I don’t blame you for doubting. I didn't really believe it at first, either. But when it happened to me, well, I couldn't deny it.

I seem to have a knack for making magic work the way it should. In a way, you might say that I’m special. The ability to manipulate the world is not a common skill. In fact, it rarely manifests itself in even one in a hundred nobles, and never in the general population, at least officially. And of all of the Manipulators in the world, I seem to be the strongest: the most powerful, you might say. But I am not special. I'm just smarter than the rest of them. Here is my story.

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It all began at school. At least, the magic started there. All noble born children in the Nostrian Empire are required to take the Exam of Manipulation by the age of fourteen. The commoners don’t need to go through such rigorous trials, and I do mean trials, as I will describe in a moment. As preached religiously by the church, only the children of the lords and ladies of our fair islands can manipulate the world. At least, that is what they have taught for the past five hundred years. It is sort of a divine blessing that is supposed to indicate that the Nostrian nobles have the right to lord it over the commoners, quite literally, of course.

I think that is a bunch of rubbish. My own research into the phenomena indicates a stark difference in the material makeup of the nobility versus the common man or woman. Nothing overt, just some outstanding characteristics that seem to persist… But I am getting ahead of myself. I apologize. Let’s get to the meat of it, then.

Testing day at the Grand Imperial Academy of Nostria is supposed to be a celebration; a holy selection of the next defenders of the realm. Those few who pass the test are swept away in a grand ceremony that culminates in a ball and festivities for a whole week following the Exam. Of course, the students who pass do not have the opportunity to share in the festivities. You see, once the students pass the Exam, they are whisked away to parts unknown by the church, never to be seen again until public service at the age of 18. This isolation is primarily for safety reasons; their own safety, as well as the general population. They only return to public life after they have been trained to avoid killing themselves and others. And even then, the Manipulators are only seen sparingly until they die, usually by the age of 25… But again, all of that will be explained. I was about to tell you about my own Exam Day… It was bound to be horrible. I just couldn’t anticipate how bad it would be…

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“Beautiful! You are stunningly radiant. You are sure to make your family proud.”

“Father, I am sure you would say the same thing if I wore rags, which would be only slightly better than this pair of blue-jean pants that I am forced to wear. Why can’t the Exam be given in proper ladies’ attire,… like an evening gown with gloves and a corset?”

Father always thought I looked pretty, no matter what I wore. Honestly, I think the man was blinded by something, because I am not exactly the prettiest girl in school, with my ratty, brown, curly hair that tangles whenever it rains. It is more probable that I am in the bottom third in comparison to physical attractiveness, although I hope that I make up for my plainness through my intellectual contributions.

Mother, on the other hand,… she always told me exactly what was true:
“Amelia, your appearance is no better, and no worse than the thousands who have come before you. Stop filling her head with nonsense, Fredrico, she must be ready mentally for the rigors of the Exam. Her appearance is irrelevant.”

My parents are the Baron and Baroness of Feld’s Deep, a small two-thousand acre ranch on the East Isle of Nostria, close to the capital city of Silvia; don’t ask me how the city was named after the lady who once destroyed it, but there you have it.

Our noble blood doesn’t offer me the advantages you might think it does. Our multi-island empire is a constitutional monarchy. I think it is quite progressive that the common man has a voice in their government. Of course, it is a small voice, as the nobles can veto whatever laws the parliament approves. My father, Frederico Vasquez, sits on the lower chamber of the House of Lords, as we rank well below the throne. There are many earls, lords, and ladies who far surpass our humble position. We only have a few dozen servants after all. I hear the Earl of Potterdam has a thousand farmers and three dozen footmen. Honestly, where does he keep all of his horseless carriages that he collects,… Sorry, I’ll try to stick to the story.

“Quite right, mother. Shall we go then? I want to be first in line. I prefer to get this over with as soon as possible.”

“’Melia, you must take care to do your very best. This isn’t a test in algebra. Today you are taking THE EXAM, for heaven’s sake!”

Father always overreacted. Thankfully, mother was the grounding force in the relationship. “Hush, Fredrico! She knows the stakes. Now don’t dally and make sure you don’t forget your manners in front of the Bishop. Garrett will drive you to the Academy today.”

That last remark made me raise my eyebrows and get somewhat excited. Garrett was father’s personal valet and chauffer. He only drove the Hudson steamer, as he couldn’t be bothered with the smell of the horse-drawn carriage if he was also going to serve as father’s valet. It was a rare treat to ride in the horseless.

I would like to say that I enjoyed the drive from our estate home into the city. I recall that it took 19 minutes, as we live nearly ten miles from the Academy. But instead of enjoying the view, or the lack of pungent odors from the horses, all I could think about the entire time was the Exam.

What would it be like? Nobody knew. Each exam was different for each person. No two were ever alike. All I knew was that I was to enter into one of the ceremonial Exam rooms and wait for the signal to begin. There would be a book on a table in the middle of the room, and I was to follow the instructions precisely. Apparently, the instructions changed each time, although how that happened to pages written in permanent ink I wouldn’t have been able to tell you until later in life. Thankfully, I know now that the pages were manipulated by a Lt. Colonel, a mid-level Manipulator, who ran the Examination and published the results. Immediately following the announcement of the selected few who passed, the Lt. Colonel would ‘escort’ the poor souls into their life of service.

All of the students had to wait in separate rooms for their Exam. Once you entered your room, you didn’t leave until all of the Exams were performed. Then, only those who failed were allowed to leave. They’ve done it this way for hundreds of years. The history books say that in the early days of the republic, the church would hold the Exams in public, in a bowl shaped arena where each student would step forward and either perform magic or not. They stopped doing it that way and removed the Exams to this safer location after they had too many… accidents. After all, the test was really to see if you could ‘manipulate’ the particles… Let me skip that explanation for now as I don’t want to confuse you by getting ahead of myself.

Garrett was faithful to get me to the Academy before anyone else had arrived. First bell was still a half hour away. This gave me plenty of time to get into line for the first Exam room. Each room was a stone circle about ten feet in diameter. The dozens of rooms, more like stone outhouses really, stood several hundred feet apart from the rest of the Academy for good reason. Any accidents during the exams would have little impact on the Academy buildings and, of course, the students, faculty and families who came to witness the Exams. The rooms had no windows, and no decorations of any kind, except for the metal table in the center of each room with the book on it. The doors were made of fine steel, and the exterior locks were double checked after each student entered to make sure that they could not leave before the end of the Exams.

I stood on the threshold of the path that led from the Great Reading Room all the way down the hill to the Examination Rooms. I wasn’t too nervous, as I had a slight suspicion that it was going to be a dull day for me. After all, I couldn’t manipulate anything up until that point in my life, so why would I expect today to be any different. This was just a momentary dull day in the middle of the term. The greatest pain I anticipated was the shear boredom from being locked in a cell-like room for six hours while the rest of the students attempted to manipulate their books, or whatever it was they would be asked to do.

“Why, if it isn’t Amelia Vasquez! I should have known you would be the first to arrive. It must be nice getting to wear the Exam uniform today so that nobody has to look at the awful rags you normally wear.”

Lady Maribel Lavinia was the daughter of the Earl of Westhyme, and the absolute run in my hose. Tall, dark hair, beautiful, Maribel held all of the qualities one would hope for in a noble lady, except perhaps any ounce of grace. She never had a nice thing to say to or about me, always teasing and pushing my buttons. I didn’t mind so much, except that she kept me from having any friends at the Academy. She was the heiress of a vast estate and sixth in line to the throne. Her family’s dairy farm in the West Isle was worth more than my father’s entire estate twice over. Her mother also held the patent on several intriguing inventions, like an electrical device that could brew tea without having to boil a kettle of water on the stove. I had never seen such a thing before, as electrical devices were still too expensive for my family. Even though we were wealthy compared to the commoners, we were dirt poor compared to most other nobles. And compared to Maribel Lavinia’s family, my family lived in a dirt hut like those natives of Fridgia who have no running water or electrical lights, or...

Needless to say, having Maribel arrive right behind me in line was going to make for a nasty day. So I ignored her as best as I could, which is to say I made all of the polite responses to her comments.

“Good morning, my lady. Thank you for your kind words.”

“I was kind wasn’t I? You look just as horrible in those blue-jeans as my father’s farm hands. Are you sure you’re even a noble? Pathetic!”

“Thank you, your ladyship. I will strive to make a better appearance.”

“For all the good it will do. Now listen up. I want to go first, so step aside.”

That threw me for a slight loop. Technically, the order of Examination was decided by the order of appearance. First come, first served, you might say. At the Academy, noble rank wasn’t supposed to play into the educational process. All were equal here in the eyes of the schoolmasters. Of course, that rule never applied to someone like Maribel.

So her demand that I let her go first was just another way for her to push that rule to the side. The problem was, I didn’t want to go second, or third, or fourth. I was trying to get the examination over with so that I could somewhat enjoy the rest of the day without having to pace back and forth in worry about when my turn would come up.

But you see there was also another reason for Maribel to demand the first spot. There is some superstitious nonsense that surrounds the Exams, as you can quite guess after five hundred years of stories and rumors about the process. One such superstition is that the first person, more likely than not, will be ‘blessed’ to be a Manipulator. Most of the history books I had read adamantly denied that there was a causative relationship between the order of Examination and the result, but myth is more powerful than fact in the real world. And on such a weak mind as Maribel’s, I figured myth was the best she could ever hope to process.

“As you will, my lady. Shall I go second, then?”

“Absolutely not. I won’t have your stink hovering near me during the invocation. You can go last. Wait over in the Reading Room until the last chime of the bell, and then run into line. After all, it’s what you should have done in the first place. You need to learn to mind your betters, ‘Melia.”

She said the last in a mocking tone. She knew my father was foreign born and had an accent. Just another way to push my buttons.

I sighed, nodded, and replied, “Yes, your ladyship.”

I stepped away from the ceremonial path that had been decorated by the groundskeeper with lovely violets and lilacs to line the way to the forbidding Exam rooms. At the end of the path, directly in front of the row of cold, stone rooms, there was a circular dirt courtyard where the invocation would be given and broadcast over the wireless to the rest of the school. Remember, it was only the thirteen year olds who were participating in the Exam. All of the other noble children, including those who failed their Exams, were still in classes today, as on any other day. Most families would gather in the Reading Room of the Great Library to pass the day away listening to the wireless, playing card games, or reading a book. In that way the parents waited for the conclusion of the Exams to discover whether their child would be stripped forever from their family and be sent to the Abbey or Monastery, depending on whether they were a girl or boy. There, the student would no longer be a noble, but a Manipulator; adopted into the King’s family and given a separate status altogether powerful and frightening. They were killers, after all, and would eventually end themselves with their magic.

I left Maribel and walked towards the Reading Room, trying to contain my anger. Lately, I had been having a hard time controlling my emotions. I would get mad all of a sudden for no reason. Then, just as quickly, the feeling would pass leaving me bewildered as to the cause. I often cried about nothing at all. I wasn’t sad, necessarily, so I couldn’t honestly tell you for what purpose my tears fell. On this day, however, I imagine you can guess precisely why I was crying angry, wet tears as I tried to calm down.

“Oh, Maribel! One day I will tell you what I really think about you!” I thought.

Of course, that was just to make myself feel better. Freedom of speech may be a characteristic of the LaGrange people, but here in Nostria, there is no such thing as a free tongue. You’re liable to be hanged promptly and with much ado if you speak your mind outside of the social order of things. Everything is done properly and in elaborate order in Nostria, if it is done at all. If this day was to go well, I needed to contain my emotions and do things the Nostrian way, as my mother would say. So I set my mind to finding a distraction from the like of Maribel Lavinia, as I left her standing in my place at the beginning of the path to the Exam. Unfortunately, I never saw the disaster that lurked around the corner, literally. If only I had known then what I know now, I never would have gone into the Reading Room that day.

Chapter 2

In order to calm myself, and to escape the boredom that I knew would come with waiting during the Exam, I entered the Reading Room and immediately perused the bookshelf in the east end. It contained the history books and story books relating to manipulation. Many of them I had read already. There was the story of the first nobles who formed the Church to train those blessed with manipulation powers to keep them from destroying the world. Before that time, some five hundred years ago, manipulators were rare and often very dangerous. There was no formal training on how to control the power and no understanding of how it worked. In time, the Abbey’s and Monasteries became saviors to the common man by locking away the Manipulators so that they couldn’t destroy towns and villages,…

I imagine you are wondering how that could be. How can someone who is so revered today have been such a threat so long ago? Well, it has to do with manipulation. The very act of manipulating the world can cause the destruction of living things. You see, the material world is not simply what you see, smell, touch, taste, and feel. Those are material particles that engage your senses. There are also invisible particles; those that cannot be seen or felt or heard. They come and go in our universe in a flash; so fast that normal people do not even know that they are there. Only someone with the ability to sense their existence can detect invisible particles.

There was a young teacher, Julius Branthos, who lived at the Academy a hundred years ago, right around the time we discovered electricity, who hypothesized that the invisible particles were made up of material particles and their polar opposite. When they would come into being, the particles would destroy each other almost instantaneously. These opposites contained energy properties that cancelled each other out, so most people would never be able to tell that they were there. After all, it is a proven theory of physics that energy can neither be created nor destroyed in the universe. So when one material particle appears out of the ether with a strong electrical charge, its polar opposite, or negative charge, would have to appear to cancel it out. Branthos claimed to have run successful experiments that showed the existence of these particles seemed to last for mere fractions of a second. He also theorized that the greater the energy in the particles, the faster they annihilated each other. According to Branthos, it was the manipulation of these invisible energy particles that the Manipulators were being trained to perform by transferring the energy of these particles into everyday objects around them.

Of course, the Academy expelled Branthos as a heretic and a loon, claiming in proper Nostrian propriety that everyone already knew that invisible particles were God’s blessed touch on the nobles and not something mysterious floating all around us. What a horrible thought, they said, that some invisible energy force was randomly being created and destroyed all the time. What I would have given to read Branthos’ complete works. The church burned them all, right before they hanged him.

As I strolled along the back wall of the Reading Room, my eyes fell on a volume titled “The History of the Fridgian War,” a terrible time in the early days of the Nostrian Empire. The Manipulators had saved the nation from invasion by the nomadic tribes of Fridgia only through great sacrifice. The Fridgians had discovered how to make gun powder, and in turn, guns. You see, there is a lot of saltpeter in the desert,… Nevermind. Needless to say, the Nostrian’s lack of firearms proved to be a severe tactical disadvantage against the well-armed Fridgian infantry. In fact, the early Empire would have been overrun had it not been for the Shattering.

The Shattering was the day that the Manipulators created the Seven Isles of Nostria. Faced with certain defeat, the Nostrian King sent forth twenty-eight Manipulators to surround the four corners of the seven great cities. They prayed and summoned the blessing of God… and they, and the ground beneath them that encircled all seven cities, fell away into the sea. Nostria no longer was connected to the mainland. The Manipulators had created seven islands with seven cities. As the Fridgians could not swim and knew nothing of boat-craft, the Shattering ended the war. Eventually, the Nostrians crossed the sea to the mainland and subjugated the Fridgians, having eventually stolen the secret of gunpowder from them and inventing their own firearms. The Nostrian King sought revenge for the Shattering and ravaged Fridgia, destroying their civilization and sending their people back into the stone-age.

I had a natural curiosity about things and something always bothered me about the Shattering story. I guess that it was that natural curiosity that caused my downfall that day. It was the reason that I bent down and tried to pull out the copy of the “The History of the Fridgian War.” It wasn’t an original, which were stored in the archives. This was just a printed copy. It was maybe a hundred years old or so. But it was stuck between two older novels featuring the heroes of the early church, including Margaret the Brave, and Allen the Hopeful. Both had performed various feats of magic that defeated the enemies of the realm, whether barbarian raiders on the coasts, or mysterious monsters of the sea.

The two novels made a solid wedge, the friction of which prevented me from gaining any ground on retrieving the history volume. I squatted in my dreadfully plain blue-jeans to get a closer look at how I might budge the book out of the vise, when I noticed that there was something snagging it in the back of the shelf. A small sliver of the iron bookshelf had come loose, clasping the top back of the leather-bound volume. It would not have been noticeable if I hadn’t squatted down to eye level with the shelf to see why the book was stuck.

I reached into the back of the shelf and ran my fingers over the iron sliver to see if I could move it without damaging the book. As soon as I touched it, I felt a tingle up my fingers and then my arm. I jerked my hand back and stifled a yelp. It felt almost like touching an open light socket… not that I have done that very often, but I did have an idea one time when I was younger to determine the physical effects of sustained electrical charges on humans…

By this time, there were other families and visitors who had started filling the Reading Room. Some had made note of my appearance, identifying me as a student who would be participating in the Exams. They stayed far away from me, for who knew whether I was a Manipulator or not, until after the Exam was through. So it was the social fear of my situation that saved me from being labelled a thief. You see, having only touched the metal sliver, it began to move of its own will, closing back into the top of the shelf above the volume. I heard a distinct click, and then “The History of the Fridgian War” pushed out from the shelf ever so slightly of its own volition.

Having never had anything remotely similar to this experience in my whole life, I can proudly say that I kept from peeing myself. You see, this was clearly the work of a Manipulator. And a powerful one, I might add, although at the time I did not know it. The ability to store the mechanical force in an object is not known to many,… well, let’s just say only a handful of Manipulators have managed to advance to the level where they could feel the latent energy in objects to store a command to move. So the sheer ingenuity and power within this simple mechanism scared me to death. I didn’t know if I was going to rot right there in front of the other families or not; definitely a terrifying experience.

You may be thinking at this point that I made the book move when I touched the sliver. And you are correct, although at the time, I had yet to put two and two together. For those of you unfamiliar with how manipulation works, let me say that only another Manipulator could have triggered the command to move the sliver, releasing the book. If a normal person had touched the iron sliver, nothing would have happened. But we will discuss those ramifications in a minute.

It was with some fear, I can confess, that I pulled the volume all the way off the shelf and set it aside. I fully expected it to disintegrate in my hands from the ambient exposure. For that matter, I didn’t know if my own hand might rot right before my eyes. I wasn’t terribly educated in the specifics of manipulation at that point, but my mind quickly supplied my frontal lobes with a cadre of stories about commoners melting, objects exploding, and meals rotting when exposed to the workings of a Manipulator. But none of that happened, which was some comfort. So I decided to continue to satisfy my now weakened curiosity.

Behind the book, a shallow groove had been carved into the bottom corner of the shelf. It had etched markings on it that I could not discern without the aid of a lamp, which I did not possess. So I did the next best thing. With a trembling hand I reached into the bookcase to feel the writing to see if I could read it with my fingers, instead of my eyes. The moment I touched the groove, however, another click sounded and the back of the shelf vanished, leaving another book in its place, as though perched on the back lip of the bookcase.

Why I decided to pick up that book, I will never know. I can think of a dozen school rules that would have required me to seek out the Head Librarian immediately and report the incident. But my mind had been on the Exam and I was searching for a distraction. I confess I have always enjoyed unraveling a good mystery. What better mystery than the discovery of a secret storage for a long forgotten Manipulator right in the heart of the Academy’s records on manipulation? Who had ever heard of such a thing?

I turned the small book over in my hands to examine it. It was maybe four inches long and two and a half inches wide, bound in a tough leather cover without writing or name on it. There was a metal clasp that locked the book tight. Despite my best efforts, there did not appear to be a way to open the book, as the clasp held no keyhole or latch mechanism. Needless to say, I had a challenge on my hands that needed to be solved: how to open this mysterious book and learn its secrets.

So I did what only a rational person in my situation would do: I stuffed the book down my pants when my back was turned to the room. The Librarians never would have allowed me to remove the book from the Reading Room. Besides, I was about to have six hours locked in the Exam chamber with nothing to do. I had lots of time to discover how to open the book. After the Exam, I could make some excuse to visit the Reading Room and then return the book to the shelf behind the volume of “The History of the Fridgian War.” After all, if I simply turned it into the Librarians at that point, I would have been in serious trouble. You don’t break school rules without sever consequences. I wasn’t exactly sure what the penalty for attempted theft of a library book might be, as it had never been done at the Academy before, but it would probably have been between 40 lashes and expulsion. Considering how my mother might react if I were expelled from the Academy, I am not sure which would have been worse.

As the First Bell rang out across the school grounds, I hustled out of the Reading Room and down the sidewalk that led to the sacred path to the testing grounds. True enough, it appeared that I would be last in line, right behind Paul Graftus, a skinny boy who didn’t talk much. He smiled at me as I scampered in behind him, just as the Schoolmaster started leading Maribel and the rest of the students down to the invocation ceremony. As I slowed to a quick step behind the line of sixteen students, I couldn’t help but smile back at Paul, not for his warmth and encouragement, but for the thought of knowing that this day wouldn’t be wasted after all.

Chapter 3

The invocation was boring. The only thing I remember about it was when Bishop Cornelius had us all kneel in a semi-circle and he proceeded to anoint each of us with oil by drawing a circle on our foreheads. The Bishop carried a gold sphere on a gold chain around his neck wherever he went. The sphere contained a small amount of holy oil; basically olive oil with some smelling spices mixed in so it could be distinguished. Rumor had it that the oil was produced by the Manipulators from the leaves of the olive trees in the monastery, rather than from squeezing the olives themselves. I still don’t know if that rumor is true or not.

Having been properly ‘blessed’ each student was led into the individual testing chambers and locked inside. As I was the last student to be tested, I was also the last one locked away for the day. The smirk on Lavinia’s face when she glanced back at all of us is a memory I will never forget. She clearly thought that she was destined to be a powerful Manipulator; one who could change the world.

As for the rest of my schoolmates, boys and girls alike looked more terrified than anything else. We all knew how dangerous the test was. Nobody had died in nearly a decade, but it happened often enough that all of us had been alive when the last student had been dragged out of his testing chamber. Matthew Galvinus was the son of a local wheat baron. He was friends with my sister, and some even thought that the two might have made a good match, given our family friendship. But it wasn’t meant to be. He died of brain cancer, officially. Of course, the autopsy revealed that the cancer had consumed most of his vital organs, including his skin, liver, and lungs. If it wasn’t the Exam that did it to him, then it was a miracle he was breathing at all when he walked to school that day. And don’t ask me how I get the autopsy report.

As soon as Bishop Cornelius closed the door behind me and turned the lock, I pulled out the secret book from inside the front of my jeans. It made me feel tingly all over just thinking about what it might say. Not to be rushed, however, I stepped into the middle of the room and used the secret book to shove the Exam book to the side of the table. Then, carefully, I set down my mystery book, as I had come to think of it, so that I could study it better.

Judging from the condition of its cover, it was used frequently before it was stored. The leather binding was cracked and worn in the middle, indicating that it was opened often, as you might expect from a book of everyday use. Due to the deterioration of the leather cover, I suspected that the book was well over a hundred years old.

Maybe it was a travel guide or journal. Those were popular over a hundred years ago, when travel by train made the world a smaller place. Many people paid for travelling salesmen to jot down their observations about different towns and harbors so that those coming behind them wouldn’t have to spend time familiarizing themselves with the basic necessities offered for the adventurous traveler. The popularity of those books died down about a dozen years ago after the proliferation of the steamers and horseless carriages.

The clasp was solid gold in the shape of a U-hook. It was not obvious how it connected to the front and back cover. I could only surmise that the leather had been sewn into a connecting loop underneath the flat ends of the clasp. If it had been glued, I would have been able to rip it off, as the leather was old and dry, leaving it brittle. Despite all of my effort, however, the clasp never moved.

Flipping the book over, I tried to see if the clasp was different on the bottom than the top of the book. It was not; both sides were identical. There were no hinges, and no pivot points that I could see. It didn’t seem to operate by swiveling or unlatching. My best guess at how it unlocked was that the clip slid off of the leather after the force binding it was released. How that worked, I had no idea.

After a good fifteen minutes of trying to open the book, I decided to set it aside for the time being, and give my mind a chance to work on the problem sub-consciously. In the meantime, I turned my attention to my surroundings to get comfortable with the Exam room. As I mentioned earlier, it was a round, stone room, with concrete floors, no windows, and a single electric light dangling from the lofted ceiling. The electric bulb illuminated the entire room with a steady, soft, white glow. In the old days, I am sure the room was much more frightening, as the shadows cast by torch light could feed the imaginations of the exam students. In my case, I needed no such stimulus to feed my natural curiosity.

With nothing else in the room to occupy my attention, I pulled out the lone metal chair and sat down in front of the Exam book. It looked strikingly like the journal; leather-bound, old, cracked, with yellow pages peaking underneath. It had no clasp, however. So I could open the book if I wanted to. All of the students were told to leave the book alone until the Exam began. We were warned that bad things happened to students who opened the book early, before the watchful eye of the Examiner was present to protect them. Had I any desire for the Exam, I might have been tempted to peak at the pages early, warning or not. But I had no expectation that I could perform any sort of magic or manipulation, so I figured the Exam was a waste of time.

So it was not my curiosity about the Exam that made me touch the Exam book, but rather my observation that it looked like it was over a hundred years old. One of the first things we learned at the beginning of the school year was about our Exam day. We learned the rituals and processes required of us, and what to expect in the event we were “blessed.” Because the school really had no idea what the church would do with us afterwards, these lessons always seemed to me to be speculation on the part of the teachers. But one piece of information that bubbled to the surface as I stared at the Exam book was how the church had to use brand new Exam books every four or five years. That didn’t seem to fit with the Exam book in front of me.

It was almost instinctual how I reached out to touch the Exam book as I thought about the incongruity in its appearance; I remember thinking that if the book was less than five years old, than my uncle sells nylons. My fingers brushed the tough leather cover and I felt a familiar tingle up my arm. Jerking my hand back, I quickly looked around to see if anything happened. Nothing obvious stuck out, but I noticed that the book’s edge had a new crack in it. My fingers had only touched the top of the book, not the edge. And I never had time to move the book or open it before reacting to the energy that I felt. So where did the new crack come from?

As if jarred into action by the tingle up my arm, I had an epiphany. Maybe the mystery book was much newer than I thought, because it was just like the Exam book. You see, the Exam book also looked older than it actually was. The reason for that was obvious: it was manipulated every year to carry out the Exam. The materials that make up the leather and paper “aged” each time the Exam book was used. This was the most commonly known side effect of manipulation: “aging.” The church taught that in order for life to be manipulated into providing god’s “blessings” it required the sacrifice of other life around it. While the church called this effect a sacrifice, most people referred to it as “aging.”

The mystery book looked aged as well, so it could have been manipulated. Maybe the clasp was held together by manipulation? Of course, that answer didn’t get me any closer to unlocking it. How would I know how to manipulate the clasp so that it slid off of the leather cover?

Determined to find a solution, I picked up the mystery book again to see if I could figure out how the manipulation worked. No sooner had I touched the clasp again, than it started to slide off of the leather binding. Startled by the sudden slipperiness of the once thoroughly locked clasp, I upended the book over the table and the clasp fell off the book and onto the tabletop with a resounding clang.

What in the world?! I tried to release the clasp a couple of times before and it hadn’t budged a millimeter. How did I manage to get it to slip off so easily? The answer was right before my eyes, but I didn’t know it at the time.

While I genuinely wanted to know how and whether I made the clasp release, my curiosity about the contents of the book won the battle for my immediate attention. With trembling fingers I breached the gap in the binding with the first yellow page of the mystery book. Drawing it away from the cover, I opened the book slowly, as if expecting a Jack-in-the-box to pop out at me. There on the title page was a signature and a handwritten note:

If you have found this journal, then I am dead, and the research with me. It is now up to you to expose the truth about the Manipulators. The church would have you believe they are god’s blessed ones. But that is a lie. We are cursed, for we hold the power to destroy the world,… or to recreate it. The secrets of the world are closer than they appear, and brighter than the stars. Weak minds should be warned: failure to calculate the risk of error will lead to destruction. Use your power wisely, fellow magician. The fate of the world may rest in your fingertips. J.A. Branthos

My heart was racing faster than Lord Potterdam’s twelve cylinder speedster. Magician! Manipulators! Lies! What on earth was this book?!

Before I could collect my nerves or gather my thoughts, a knock sounded at the door, and I heard a muffled voice yelling, “Are you alright in there, Miss Vasquez?!”

The Bishop’s voice roused me from my momentary revelry, and I quickly closed the book and stuffed it back down my jeans. No sooner did I glance back up than I saw the stone wall opposite me open up in an almost perfect circle. The stone was no longer there and I could see outside as clearly as if the wall never existed.

Standing on the precipice was a tall man wearing a bright red shirt, black pants, and dark leather riding boots. He had long blond hair and moustaches that flowed over his chiseled cheeks. He was lean and fit; the very appearance of a trained soldier. On his left hand was a metal glove, but his right hand was empty and stretched forth as if touching the outside of the stone wall that vanished mere moments earlier.

If ever I had feared a man, this gentleman was it. But despite his awesome and sudden appearance, my mind kept reminding me that the Branthos’ clip was still on the table… right next to the Exam book that I wasn’t supposed to touch…

January 26, 2015

Delightful,

Thanks for heads up! I will be discrete then.

January 16, 2015

Does anyone else think that David will need to trick prof into following him and Tia into space on the rocket ship that Tia builds (she is a rocket scientist after all) and his way to fly into space is that he is surrounded by a force field. Killing calamity will kill prof. Or maybe prof will have to save Tia or something. Either way, prof flying in a bubble in space to destroy Calamity smacks of pure Awesomeness. Just the kind of visual that I could see Brandon writing.

January 15, 2015

I haven't written anything yet using this idea. It's just one of my ideas from my "brainstorming" folder. I am an attorney who writes creatively for myself. I have another book I am writing about a faith based "magic" system that deals with Christianity, miracles and applies them to a specific issue: prejudice of Muslims. Like Brandon, I like to pick a topic that is squirmy and sometimes hard to discuss and then find a way to plot that conflict into the story. Not sure what topic I would use the virtual particle system in, or what world. My current book is a real world, real time novel.

January 15, 2015

I had an idea about a magic system that I need feedback on. It seems to have lots of possibility, but I am new to this writing thing (mainly as a creative outlet, as I write analytically all day long for work). Here it is and please be kind but honest in your opinions. Thanks!

Magic system based upon virtual particle manipulation:

Space is not empty. There are “virtual particles” everywhere that spontaneously come into the manifest world. But they usually annihilate each other when they appear, because energy cannot be created or destroyed. In fact, the more energy in the process of appearance the shorter the amount of time that the particles manifest in this world. The cancelling out of each element is called the zero effect. The zero effect on the virtual particles keeps the universe from exploding. Just like in Star Gate, these virtual particles (electrons and positrons) can be stored and used to cut through matter, space, and time. They are energy particles after all, and because half of them are matter and half are anti-matter, they can be used to change aspects of the material world. Scientists hypothesize that there is an infinite amount of energy contained in virtual particles (at least, it is beyond the ability to calculate).

This magic system uses virtual particles. Energy contained within virtual particles (electrons and positrons that spontaneously appear out of the ether) can be manipulated by magic users into transferred energy, whether mechanical (motion) or potential or electrical, etc. The same laws of physics apply to preserve the energy in the state of matter, but the law of virtual particles applies such that the amount of energy captured is exponentially related to the degree of effect on the physical world and also the magical cost on the person manipulating the particles and the surroundings. The person “ages” due to the use of the manipulation of the virtual particles. People call the effects of the magic “aging” because the people who use it “age” faster than others. In reality, the person is simply a conduit for energy transference. The virtual particles become a different substance, energy, or motion. The result on the person/conduit is decay. At the cellular level, the mitochondria are used up more rapidly as the positrons and electrons wear down the molecular structure of the energy producing mechanisms in cells, so that all living things that are near to the magic user (and the range is directly proportionate to the amount of manipulation) are effected. Wood rots. Leaves die quickly. Animals with short life spans could die. Other people can age. Metals and rocks, and other non-living things are able to handle the manipulation of energy forces better and do not appear to “age,” although in reality the energy that tears down cells in living things is simply being stored in the inanimate objects, and over time that potential energy (what’s left over after the magic makes the thing do what it was supposed to do) can be quite dangerous, though people, including magic users, are completely un-aware of this fact.

The “aging” does not appear on the outside, but at a molecular, cellular level, so that the magic users appear like teenagers or twenty-something’s when they die of heart failure, organ failure, old age, aggressive cancer, etc. The more of the magic one uses, the faster the process of “aging.” The greater amount of energy one draws, the greater the effects of “aging,” including the larger the bubble effect around the magic user and the impact on third-party characters and scenery. Magic users are shunned because of the negative implications. Feats of great magic have proportional consequences of rotting in the immediate area. For example, it would be unwise to use the magic to lift large timber beams into place in the construction of a town hall. The beams would rot faster and lose their ability to carry weight. But the magic could lift rock or metal with less effect because the cellular breakdown impacts those objects in a much lesser way and the left over energy is simply stored in the inanimate object (which can later be used to great effect, detrimental or otherwise). The age effect on the magic users prevents the elimination of prejudices against such users, because there is little time to study the magic to learn about all of its ramifications. No organized group of magicians can form because they are usually very young and inexperienced. There is also little time for the user to become a master of the manipulation of the virtual particles. Many of the rules of the system are unknown or un-discovered. There is little opportunity for a guru type figure to teach the magic users to avoid pitfalls. Hence, why the world shuns magic users and when they are discovered, they are driven out of society and into hiding. While they may have once been valuable in ancient society, modern technology eliminates much of the use for such people.

Examples of aspects of magic that could manifest:

Lifting/moving objects
Destroying living things in a slow way
Energy fields that protect from physical or electrical harm
Time bubbles (very costly)
Electricity manipulation (power goes out, no problem, just touch the toaster or coffee maker and watch the electricity spontaneously appear within the circuit of the machine.
Fire creation by pouring heat into an object (although it would need to be fresh living material, old wood would fall apart from rot before it caught fire)

Examples of limitations of magic:

Cannot manipulate light because photons do not bind or impact one another. There are some special photons that can do this, but that could be saved for more advanced magic later.
Use around living things causes unpredictable results because it is harder to control the energy, and hence the impact on the “aging” process.
The potential energy issue where excess energy must be stored if it is not used, otherwise there would be energy surplus or energy annihilation, which cannot occur in nature. Perhaps a calculation of the amount of particles drawn and the amount needed is a useful skill to have perfected, otherwise the latent heat energy or potential energy stored in the object may come back to hurt the magic user (perhaps stories of rocks exploding or some such event to scare the magic user into doing the appropriate calculations in their head before simply drawing on the particles to do willy nilly).
The more energy drawn the greater the “aging” effect and the harder it is to control because the particles want to annihilate each other. Remember that the more energy the faster they destroy each other. So the greater draw on power, the faster one has to manipulate it and the harder it is to be precise.

January 15, 2015

What are the rules for sharing ideas on this forum? I want feedback without fear of plagarism. I am new to the Creator's Corner, so maybe my trust factor is a little low. Thanks!

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