“Seriously? Quarantine?” I found myself asking as I glared at her. “Wasn’t that the whole point of the scan? To confirm I was fine?”
“Uh… scan?” the pink-haired young woman asked. “Also… uh… you’re not nearly as tentacly and purple as I pictured you a few seconds ago.” At that, her eyes slid towards her tablet. My gaze followed, but all I saw was blank stone. “Maybe we can start over?”
“Sure. Let’s do that,” I agreed, stepping down from the platform before gesturing to the steel blast doors. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Ah… well, not if you’re not a monster? And you’re a citizen. You are a citizen, right?”
“Citizen Percival, Head of Maintenance,” I replied, unable to help myself.
Her face twisted up in confusion, which I felt was a fairly appropriate response to the ridiculous string of words I'd thrown at her. “Maintenance? What are you doing in exterior transport?” she asked, though the way she said the word "transport" was wrong, almost as if I was hearing a… different… language.
The thought led me to trail off as I realized my System had been translating her words. I hadn't had that with the robot; its words had been in Elinder. Apparently the pink-haired woman didn't speak that language. Huh? A translation function was probably the most immediately useful thing the System had provided since I got it.
While I was lost in thought, she came to a conclusion of her own. “Wait, did you say Head of Maintenance, not Chief?” She trailed off, looking me over. “I think this is above my pay grade.”
Now that I was listening closely, I could tell those weren't the words she used but the System's best translation of an idiom. Assuming it was close enough, I said, “At least you’re getting paid.”
She rolled her eyes at that as she returned to her seat, retrieving her tablet from the floor. “Let’s see if I can’t fix this.”
Assuming this was her calling down quarantine, I stepped over, watching her work. The ‘monitor’ she was tapping on was just as blank as the tablet had been, though there was a small icon in the bottom corner that would let me activate my own System on it.
“No pass, huh?” she said after glancing at me. “And those robes have to be a hundred years out of fashion. What are you, one of those kooks that think you have to ascend through mindfulness? Cultivators or whatever they’re calling themselves these days?”
“I like these robes,” I grumbled, hand going to the flap. “Well, mostly.”
“Ah, it’s a statement. Respect,” she said, holding a pair of fingers up in my direction.
When she didn’t lower her hand, I raised my fingers to match her. After I did so, she made a buzzing noise before giggling to herself and returning to her blank monitor.
“Give me a few. It’ll take a bit to print out your badge, what with you being head of maintenance and all.”
“And… I need a badge? To leave?”
“Uh… you do now,” she said, giving me a weak smile while tugging at the edge of her jumper.
“Right. Guess I’m waiting then,” I said. I could’ve just teleported through the wall, but that felt like a short-sighted solution. Much as it irked me, if I was going to be part of this city in the future, it was probably best to set up the bare minimum of a presence before I rushed off.
My attention moved back to her jumper. I could see the design similarities between it and the one that’d been issued to me after I’d finished Bahama's test. There were divergences, such as hers having more of a flare around the cuffs. Was her outfit older than the one I’d been issued?
Considering how long Lyrid City had been frozen, I realized the young woman might’ve been born before those people entered their long sleep. I wondered if that had been part of the purpose, if those folks were supposed to wake these ones up at some point.
The thought had me considering my immediate course further. While my first impulse had been to race off and find the Iron Curtain, I still had my mirror with me.
Pulling it out, I was surprised when it connected to Ari immediately.
“Perry. Oh thank the Abyss. Are you okay? I just got word you were snatched up.”
“Yeah. I’m… fine,” I said, glancing at the woman. “How about you and Bevel?”
“We’re… well, not fine. But we’re alive and healthy.”
“Anything you want to talk about? I’ve got a few minutes,” I said, before explaining what I could of my situation.
By the end, Ari was chuckling. I caught the faintest glitch in the mirror as she shook her head. “No. If anything, I should be out there dealing with Starbreaker. He chased off his friend, but he’s not happy about what happened with his apprentice. Not that I am either.”
I nodded, and we talked for another minute before I noticed the pink-haired woman had picked up her tablet, pretending very hard like she wasn’t listening to our conversation. Bidding Ari goodbye, I put the mirror away.
“Was that a communication device that doesn’t piggyback on the Network?” she asked immediately.
There was a weird emphasis she put on the word network that had me double checking the translation. Which revealed the System was technically called the Network. “Point to point. Is that my badge?”
She nodded, picking up a thin clip. On her shoulder was a similar one, though I noted hers had less writing on it. A lot less.
When I focused, my System flared to life.
Mandy Esperza - class 4 - stage 5 pre-ascension- Lesser Transportation Clerk.
“Didn’t expect you to be at a lower stage,” she mumbled under her breath. “Stupid nepotism.”
“Is that what we’re calling hard work these days?” I asked as I turned over the clip she'd handed me. “Don’t think I have a single friend in the city, nevermind family.”
Not to say I hadn’t benefited from nepotism. That’s pretty much how my journey started. Definitely gave me a few extra steps at the start.
“Sure,” she said, glaring at my clip like it’d offended her.
Mine had a similar set of information.
Magus Protectus Percival of Aeternia - class 1 - stage 4 pre-ascension - Head of Maintenance.
“Out of curiosity, what department does transport fall under?” Might be useful to know just how many departments the city had.
Mandy grumbled something under her breath, the words broken up enough I couldn’t understand them. Or my System couldn’t. She let out a sigh a second later. “Transport falls under Maintenance. At least our division does.”
“Huh. Guess that makes me your boss’s boss.”
“So it would seem, sir,” Mandy said, snapping off a surprisingly familiar salute. “Will that be all?”
“Yeah, that’ll do,” I said, turning away, only to be stopped by the door, which didn’t want to open.
“You need to either be in uniform or wearing the badge, sir,” Mandy said, tapping her own.
Since I didn't especially feel like changing into the jumpsuit. I stayed in my robes, slipping the clip on over the top of the flap. It held the flap exactly where it was supposed to.
The door slid open but I was distracted by the flap staying in place. There was a way I could control the flap!
“Infinite cosmic floppiness defeated by a badge clip,” I said to myself, chuckling.
“What was that, sir?” Mandy asked, sitting up straighter.
“Nothing. Just… don’t suppose there’s a way to hide the information?” I asked,
Mandy let out a sigh, but she soon explained how to adjust the clip to only display the information I wanted.
“Won’t work on anyone who outranks you, though I guess you’ll hardly have to worry about that.”
“Thank you, Mandy. Keep up the good work.”
“Whatever,” she grumbled, going back to her tablet.
Shaking my head, I pushed through the doors. Another set sat at the far end of a triangular hallway. The distant door turned out to be a pair of triangles set atop each other.
Since the inner door had been automatic, I’d expected this one to be so as well. I almost turned back to complain to Mandy when the System helpfully flashed the word ‘pull’ over a yellow bar along the middle. When I did so, the door pulled slightly towards me before triangles folded to the side.
Clever design.
Brushing off my interest, I moved outside. Made it all of three steps before my jaw-dropped. It was one thing to see the city from the outside, frozen in time. Or the shape of the towers from the field.
It was a whole other to experience it living and breathing above me. When I'd first arrived at the chain-link fence and its little bunker, some part of me had kept the rest of the city frozen in amber. Clearly that wasn't the case as thousands of people flew through the sky.
As soon as I was outside, my system lit up, several routes laid out with glowing arrows. Each was neatly labelled.
In red was a line that would take me to the Head of Maintenance’s main office.
Blue led to the Prime Maintenance Library, yellow to ‘my’ apartment and green to the Central Governance Citadel.
The library seemed like the most reasonable start. Lowest chance I’d have people demanding I take up my duties while still giving me a chance to get my feet under me more quickly.
At the very least I wanted to make sure that they couldn't capture me again.
It occurred to me I could turn around and simply ask Mandy some questions. That might’ve worked better before she clammed up. Besides, if I could get my hands on a few books, it would be far faster than a back-and-forth.
So it was up and into the sky I went, following the dotted blue line. As I flew, I saw the line pass through people, making it obvious it was provided by my System. Something I probably should’ve guessed earlier. Figured I could give myself a pass, given everything else going on.
As I flew, I took in the city. There were a lot more people like Mandy than I expected. In fact, it seemed the vast majority of the population had a cybernetic augment of one kind or another. Despite Mandy’s earlier words, there were several people in robes. Or was it a trenchcoat when it was all leather.
Either way, the people with the leather robes seemed more heavily augmented than most, with purple and gold cog patterns on their shoulders. Pretty sure that meant they were in the maintenance department.
Avoiding my future subordinates, it didn't take long for me to pass through the city.
My destination turned out to be a tower a couple rings out from the obvious center of the city. The citadel that lay within was often visible, even when I was forced to fly through half a dozen skyscrappers. Almost as if one of the design principles of the city was to ensure line of sight was maintained as often as possible.
In comparison, the library was much humbler. Merely a dozen stories or so, with great gargoyles perched over the entrance.
An entrance that was itself, completely disconnected from the ground.
It was not, as I'd initially assumed, a public library. Nobody else was landing nearby. As I inspected the invisible barrier I’d passed through, I realized most couldn’t have even if they wanted to. There was so much I could learn about the barrier protecting Aeternia just from studying it, but I was already getting several looks.
Plus the library probably had more useful knowledge anyway.
From outside the barrier, where people were gathering for some reason, I could hear them mumbling. Some of the murmurs were even translated by my System.
It seemed it’d picked out a library reserved for the Select Upper Council and their personal attendants.
Most of the murmurs were guessing which of the two surviving Council members I worked for, though a couple were advocating that I’d been placed into one of the two empty seats. From the laughter they got in response, no one took such a proposal seriously.
I counted it a blessing.
Considering Bahama was one of them, it made me wonder who the other was. Luckily I was at a place where I could discover the answer to that very question.
Hopefully.
The library was tended by another of the robots. This one's field was almost as good as the one that greeted me at the quarantine zone. It flickered roughly every thirty seconds as it showed me to the archive terminal.
While I’d been expecting books, the library I’d chosen didn’t use them. Instead it was all stored in jade crystals, much like the ones Keeper preferred.
While convenient in some ways, it was slower than using Memory Palace. I ended up playing through a number of them and sorting them by relevance.
Then the robot returned with a collection held in a smooth black case.
Atop the box, written in several languages, one of which was English, were the words: For the new Head of Maintenance.
George.
Opening the box, I found a series of white jade crystals inside, glistening.
Starting with the first, I held it up. A moment later, I was George.