Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 92: Some things not even magic powers can fix

“GOTCHA!”

The yell was loud enough to rattle the newly framed and wall-mounted degree in Isaac’s office.

At least there was enough elation swinging along in it that he could be sure it wasn’t a problem. Still, he’d go check it out because he wanted to know what was going on.

Before he could rise to his feet, though, there was a knock on his door.

“Come in.” he sighed, but the door didn’t open. Instead, a doorway appeared just inside his office, revealing Amy standing outside his room, a wide, nay, manic grin on her face.

“So, you finally got [Portal] to work?” he asked “What about the others?”

“Raul’s got it too, Patrick will take another try, but he’ll get it soon.” She grinned “I’m just on my way to go meet Professor Bailey to tell him I’m coming with you two to Korea.”

Ah yes, they’d agreed that the first person with [Portal] would go on the next few excursions to collect as many portal locations as possible. They hadn’t known there’d be a ‘can only teleport places you’ve been’ limitation, but it had been an educated guess that turned out to be correct.

“Right, that way, we’ll only be stuck in a metal tube for hours on end, once.” Isaac said.

“Eh …” was the only response he got.

“Range limit?”

“Range limit.” She sighed “I’ve slotted the Aspect of the Lesser Space Elemental and then stacked on the Aspect of the Rifthunter, which gave me a solid range increase on portals and [Space Affinity], which gives me even more range, but it’s still currently limited to 200 kilometers.”

“That’s still really fucking far.”

“But not intercontinental. Throw in a twelve hour cooldown, and travelling with it is going to take a while until I can train it up.” Amy said.

“Still, that’s already enough to reach Munich, in a month, we’ll be able to pop right over for the Oktoberfest.” Isaac observed “But on a more serious note, if we have three portal users, we can chain those together. Once all three of you have [Portal] and boosting Aspects, we’ll have a range of 600 kilometers. That covers most of the country.”

“Yep, that’s pretty cool. But I gotta go.” She said and headed over to Bailey’s office.

Today was Friday, and on Sunday, they’d be leaving for Korea, so everyone who was going had to spend the day wrapping up loose ends. And thanks to that little stunt with the doctorate, there were a lot of those for him.

Mind you, he was extremely happy about the acknowledgement, but it had come with quite a few new chores.

One of those was getting some new business cards. Up until now, he’d had a very simple ‘Isaac Thoma, [System] researcher’ on the front and some of his offered services like material procurement, and those had been sufficient, but not anymore. Now that he had a title, he should use it. Besides, if he gave out the old ones now, it would be alarmingly apparent that they were, in fact, old and outdated.

Now, Kass had given him a set after the initial awarding of the title, but unsurprisingly, they’d prominently displayed the university’s logo. Just like the title itself, they were meant to show his allegiance to the university. He couldn’t really use those, either.

So now, he was setting up a rush order to get some custom ones made by Sunday, but that was only the first task of many.

He’d also sent a message to his parents about the title, promising to drop by tonight, but that was all.

Then there were the various profiles that needed updating, ranging from his Linked-In account to his bio on the university website, that had somehow ended up referring to him a Doctor of Science, rather than his true title of an honorary doctorate.

Bailey had also told him in no uncertain terms that it was time to thoroughly check his email. Isaac had been studiously ignoring it for a while due to being inundated with job offers and calls for a couple of days of consultant work, both of which he’d already known ahead of time he wouldn’t be accepting.

The Professor had been right, though. This was stupid and boring, but it needed doing, and at the very least, the deluge of new emails seemed to have slowed down lately. The fact that he didn’t respond to such impersonal requests might have finally sunken in, though Isaac feared there would be a fresh surge of contact attempts once the fact of his promotion became more wildly known.

Even with a reading and clicking speed that the computer quite literally couldn’t keep up with, it took him several hours to go through these. As expected, they were almost exclusively people looking to hire him, either on a temporary or permanent basis, but there were quite a few sent by his mother from the time when he hadn’t been talking to his family.

… just seeing those stung. He’d been such an idiot about that.

But as the job offers began to peter out, some of the more interesting offers began to stand out.

A suggested trade of Aspects, someone looking to be hired by him, an ancient Viking sword known as an Ulfberht being available for purchase … all in all, there was some pretty cool stuff here. Especially the sword could be incredibly useful to certain people with the right [Classes] or [Skills]. To be precise, it was possible to draw upon the history of certain items, their legend or the fear they inspired. It wasn’t something Isaac would go for because he had a soulbound weapon, but it was still a solid path to power.

And then, there was the invitation that had come in yesterday, and it was interesting as hell.

‘Dear Dr. Thoma, you are cordially invited to the Symposium on [System] affairs to be held on the 14th of September in Singapore …’

Well, they’d used his new title within hours of him getting it, they were certainly on top of the information side of things, at the very least.

This symposium hadn’t happened in the other timeline, at least not as far as he could recall, but that was a good thing, wasn’t it?

It certainly made sense for it to happen in Singapore. The small city-state at the southern tip of Malaysia had emerged from the tumultuous transition to the [System]-world as a clear winner. The high population density and a distinct lack of wilderness meant that monsters very rarely went unnoticed if they escaped their summoner, for one.

In addition, the existence of earth, rock and sand-manipulation abilities had been a massive game-changer, on a level far beyond mere ‘people can now do things supernaturally well’. For over half a century, Singapore had been expanding, gaining almost a quarter of its size in newly created land by, well, building it using imported sand … and then an embargo had stopped the import the materials they needed. Now, though, that was pretty much a non-issue.

Couple that with a frankly unreal level of efficiency in its bureaucracy, and the city-state had been in an excellent position to flourish, and it had, all the way until the end. But even then, it hadn’t been them who’d brought it about, but the overall state of the world declining to the point where it could only be described as apocalyptic.

The invitation then went on to mention a few important talking points, such as the possibility of another Event occurring precisely one week afterwards, on the Autumn Equinox, a few variations on ‘how can we make levelling safer’, as well as a very politely phrased ‘we’d like to have an instruction on [Aura] use, could you, pretty please with sugar on top, hold that for us?’.

He would, of course, assuming he went. Isaac got up and walked to Bailey’s office, two doors down from his, and knocked.

“Come in.” the professor called and Isaac entered.

“So, there’s going to be a symposium on the [System] in Singapore in three weeks, and I just got an invitation.” Isaac said, but the response wasn’t one he ever could have imagined.

“I know, I got one too. We’re all going.” Bailey said.

“We …” Isaac threw the professor a positively filthy look “… you were seriously checking if I was actually dealing with my emails?”

Bailey’s only response was an eyebrow that rose to a height that was simply impossible on a normal person.

“… point taken.” Isaac grumbled, then shifted his face into a more neutral expression “So, we’re going, and I’m going to be holding another talk about proper [Aura] use there, all of that’s settled. Now though, I was wondering about something else. Right now, we’re slated to spend two weeks in Korea, which is pretty close to Singapore. Therefore, I was wondering if our time might be better spent staying another week, instead of going halfway around the world only to go right back.”

“Eh, for you and Amy, maybe, but I can’t be away from here that long, even if it is for work.” Bailey shook his head “You two can stay if you want, but I’ll come back here for that week.”

“About that, I think I might know of something productive we can try. Now that several of us can cast [Portal], I think it might be time to start exploring the world around us, finding new places to teleport to so we can get basically anywhere in a few, short jumps.” Isaac said.

“And how exactly do you see that working?” Bailey asked.

“Basically, university sponsored daytrips. When a university groups head to place within their [Portal]-range, one of them can come along, [Portal] back the instant they arrive and show us here the place as well. Like I said, if we keep that up, as their range increases we’ll be able to reach anywhere on the continent within however long it takes to cast [Portal], have someone step through, and cast it again.”

“Oh, it’s going to be hell to explain to the bean counters, but I think we can do better than that.” Bailey flashed him an impish grin “Paid weekend trips out to nice, touristy locations, then they come back with portal, travel to the next place via train or cab, on the university’s dime and spend some quality time there, rinse and repeat.”

They spent another half hour or so trying to properly nail down the logistics and debating what spots needed to be the highest priority to acquire as teleport locations.

Even later, at half past 5, they met for one final time before half the team went off on a trip and Bailey was giving Patrick, Raul and Karl a long speech.

“Alright, you’re all adults with good heads on your shoulders, so I don’t need to tell you this, but I will anyway. Think things through, don’t put yourselves in danger and try not to wreck the place.

“Now, we do break a lot of stuff and we all know if Karl weren’t fixing the damage we do on a daily basis, the maintenance department would have pictures of us on their dartboard. I don’t need this place to be sparkling clean and looking like it was build five minutes before I came back, I’ll be happy so long as this place is still standing and I’m not tripping over rubble in the hallways … point is, treat this building like a place of work, with respect but not like it’s made of glass.

“Also, Professors Chandler, Bishop and Sturm will be dropping by occasionally to check up on you. This wasn’t actually my decision to make, I’m afraid the Dean don’t feel like leaving three twenty-year-olds alone to summon, but the professors will behave themselves. Like I said, I trust your judgement.

“As for what you’re going to be doing, we have a list of experiments we need to have done and it would be great if you could get that done. If there’s anything that’s not on the list you’d like to check out, call me about it and I’ll approve it, though depending on what you actually want to do, you might have to get another professor to supervise you. Beyond that, good luck and have a nice weekend. Questions?”

There were none, simply because they’d worked well enough together long enough to know how this would work.

The meeting broke up after that. Isaac dropped by the family house, had to console his sisters about just why they hadn’t been able to see him receive his title (they turned out to know some very age-inappropriate words), and stayed overnight.

The next morning, he went back to his home and spent most of the time until the flight on Sunday grinding for XP, reaching Level 35 in the process.

***

I should have just said I’d make my own way to Korea and snuck into the cargo compartment.

Isaac swore for at least the tenth time as he made his way through the airport with Amy and Bailey. First you had to deal with dropping off your luggage and getting your boarding passes, and then you had to deal with checking in stuff you weren’t allowed to have in your hand luggage. Normally, these were things like knives, but they needed to store Lesser Space Elemental cores and those were absolutely forbidden to be in one’s hand luggage. But there was a small issue with that, namely, none of the people responsible for checking in these things knew what they were supposed to look like, and someone assumed they were dangerous.

And so things had continued to go, from crowds to queues to some random member of airport staff seeing their Levels and freaking the fuck out. They had called ahead, waring senior management that they’d be leaving from here today, then Habicht had called and assured the airport staff that the three of them were alright, and it had helped, but not a lot.

Now though, they needed to deal with the most annoying part of all of this. The security check.

Isaac felt so, so very sorry for the poor security guard as he walked up to him, placing his backpack on the conveyor belt. The man had started sweating profusely the moment he’d laid eyes on Isaac and was clearly very unsure of how to react. He seemed to want to wilt right then and there, backing down to avoid conflict, but also unwilling to show that level of weakness, a bright and shiny spine showing, even barely.

The guard was caught in a truly shitty situation there, staring down someone who could squash him like a gnat, with no supervisor in reach who could intervene, but he also had a job to do, one that he had to deal with in a way quite prone to pissing off the people he interacted with in a professional capacity.

Yep, poor bastard.

“Did you that the TSA misses somewhere between 70 and 80 % of all dangerous things people smuggle in during tests?” Bailey asked. Not out loud, mind you, but muttering it so softly that only Isaac and Amy could hear him. He’d even shifted his vocal cords around a little so his mouth wasn’t moving as he talked.

“For how thorough they’re being, you’d expect that they’d actually catch everything.” Isaac said, using auric Morse as talking would have involved him visibly moving his mouth, glancing over at the Professor, whose bag was currently being rifled through. From the sounds of it, the guards doing it were trying to prove that they weren’t intimidated by the high Level visitors in the least and had decided to use Bailey as their example.

“You would, wouldn’t you? I once got accused of being a smuggler of rare animal parts because I went to the airport to pick up an international package from a colleague. And mind you, this was a package with all the proper documentation, and I came in there with a stack of forms and authorizations half a centimeter thick, plus a university identification, and they still thought that there was something up.” Bailey said.

“Petty tyrants or people trying to show they’re still able to do their jobs, that’s the question.” Amy chimed in, using a form of voice projection magic.

“Maybe, but the more important question is how useful checking for knives and the like is going to be in the face of someone who can tear cockpit doors like tissue paper and vaporize anyone who tried to stop them with a glance.” Isaac said, talking to both of them using his [Aura].

“Would you rather get banned from flying altogether?” Bailey asked, finally done with the thorough check and continued towards the gate.

“I don’t think we’ll need to fly much in the future, not when magic is available.” Isaac observed “And honestly, it wouldn’t really fix things to ban high Level people from planes, those with that kind of power don’t need planes to be dangerous.”

“This world is getting quite terrifying.” Amy said in a low voice “It’d be a whole lot more terrifying if we weren’t the thing everyone was scared of.”

“Sure.” Isaac sighed.

They continued onwards, and he bought a jumbo bar of Toblerone from the Duty Free shop for them to eat until the plane arrived.

The flight itself. Was. Hell. Thirteen hours locked in a metal tube with absolutely nothing to do, and it felt like he was completely wasting his time. That feeling was something he occasionally had about other things that weren’t summoning or experimenting, but only until he reminded himself that there was some reason behind it, be it that it needed to be done or that it was good for his mental health. This, though, this left him unable to do anything for. Thirteen. Hours. No summoning, no training, he didn’t have anything he wanted to write down, at least nothing he could write down where others could see, and he couldn’t even pace properly in this place.

At least they were in business class, which insulated him from the worst aspects of flying. No overweight people in seat next to you, no screaming children, no clambering over other people, possibly sleeping ones, to get to the bathroom. If the university hadn’t paid for them all to fly business, he would have.

But even the nicest seat didn’t change the fact that he was stuck up here with basically nothing productive to do, for another – he glanced at his watch – 12 hours. Godsdamnit.

… then the salted peanut bounced off his skull.

Isaac’s head snapped around to shoot Amy a dirty look.

“You’ve had your own personal thundercloud hovering over your head for the last ten minutes. Come, what’s wrong? You don’t like flying?” she asked.

“I don’t like being stuck in a plane with nothing to do for over half a day.” Isaac sighed.

“Come on, lean back, relax, watch a movie and shock the stewardess by drinking the entire plane’s supply of booze without so much as slurring your words afterwards, I think you can afford to spend a hell of a lot more than a few hours doing nothing, Dr. Isaac.” Amy said.

“Probably. I still can’t wait until we can teleport around, I really don’t like being so … limited in where I can go and what I can do.” He sighed.

“Maybe, better get used to it, though. By the time I get that good with [Portal], I’ll probably have a Doctorate on my own and will be off at Harvard or something with a research group of my very own.”

Then, Amy stuck her tongue out at him. Isaac was pretty sure she wasn’t planning on leaving and had just said that to tease him, but she was right that she’d probably end up with a doctorate of her own pretty damn soon, be in an honorary or academic one.

After all, as someone who’d had [System Researcher] as their first Evolution, she had an unparalleled access to learning, using and experimenting with magic and there were very few of those to go around.

The [Class] was there as a reward for trailblazing research into the [System] and there were only so people who could walk on a trail before it got trampled down into a proper path. As such, there was a pretty solid limit as to how many people could get it.

Between working with one of the finest scientific teams that were researching the [System] and the massive advantage in the form of her [Class], there was little doubt she’d end up a titan in the academic community sooner or later.

“Oh, you’re leaving? That’s too bad.” Isaac put on a mock pouty face as he replied to her.

“Only if I’m going to be used as a taxi.” She said, a slight edge entering her tone. Yeah, that was fair.

“I think we can come up with a proper way to handle that.” Isaac assured her.

“You’d better.” She shot him a mock threatening look, which then switcher over into the expression of someone deeply in thought “I wonder how long it takes to reach the shore when teleported into the center of the North Sea?”

The conversation went downhill from there, but it was a very welcome distraction.