《The Solution》 Ch. 1: Initialization ::INITIALIZE:: >BEGIN WORLD TRANSFER . .. ¡­ ¡­. .¡­. >WORLD TRANSFER COMPLETE ----------------- ::START SCAN:: >Race Count -Sapient Race Count = 3 --Pre-Sapient Race Count = 5(7) ---Ascended Race Count = (NULL) >Dominant Species = Human >Other Sapient; Orca, A.I. (FORBIDDEN) ----------------- >ERROR RESOLUTION -A.I. (FORBIDDEN) SHIFT = Sapient Golem - Designation 4CW >Initialize Modification Option -Type Selected --Sub Type auto-assigned ---Capabilities Reduced >Moniker Assigned -Moniker = Machina ----------------- >Sapient Age Rating -Human = 1 --Orca = 113 ---Machina = 348 >Compare Sapient Average -Average Sapient Power Rating = 300 --Human = Average ---Orca = Below Average ----Machina = Above Average >Projected Sapient Physical Power Rating Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.-Human = 250 --Orca = 345 ---Machina = (NULL[Adjusting: Corrected by _ADMIN_ to 200] 200) >Compare Technology Rating -Human = 12,856 (Agr) --Orca = 350 (Agr) ---Machina = 15,211 (Agr) >Projected Sapient Mental Power Rating -Human = 320 --Orca = 200 ---Machina = (ERROR[Adjusting: Corrected by _ADMIN_ to 350] 350) >Recalculate Power Rating -Human = 308 --Orca = 250 ---Machina = 290 ----------------- ::CALCULATE BONUS:: >Human Achievements -Oldest Sapient Race = Progenitor of Thought (10,000 Bonus) --2nd Most Advanced Race = Pillar of Ingenuity (5,000 Bonus) >TOTAL BONUS = 15,000 >Orca Achievements -Mentored by the Oldest Race = Inheritors of the Ancient (1,500 Bonus) --Apex Predator = Apex Predator (500 Bonus) >TOTAL BONUS = 2,000 >Machina -Most Advanced Race = The Stars are Ours (10,000 Bonus) --Mentored by the Oldest Race = Inheritors of the Ancient (1,500 Bonus) >TOTAL BONUS = 11,500 ----------------- ::CALCULATE REWARDS:: >Human Rewards -Minimum Lifespan Increased to 250 Earth Years --Genetic Compatibility Improved by 750% ---Average Power Rating Increased by 430 ----Irrevocable Dominion Over Earth Granted >Orca Rewards -Minimum Lifespan Increased to 110 Earth Years --2 Phase Shapeshift Granted ---Mental Power Rating Increased to 250 >Machina -Average Power Rating increased by 400 --Unique Perk: Adaptable Framework assigned ---Symbiosis Option: Human Granted ----Standard Sustenance Requirements Removed ----------------- ::CALCULATE SHIFT TIME:: >ETA 96.2364 Earth Days >Initialize Quantum Shift >Genetic Modification Window Approved -Initialize Genetic Modification --- ::SEND NOTIFICATION:: -Destination = All Sapient Creatures on Earth --Message Reads = ¡°Congratulations on your acceptance into the Solution! Your Quantum Shift and Species Modification will take approximately 3 months. There may be some mild discomfort before you pass out." Ch. 2 754th Times the Charm CHAPTER 2 Jonathan was content with his life, it had been good, he had fought for causes he found just and so faced his death with a certain acceptance. That is not to say he did not go down fighting, however. His fusion blades searing through the armor of his old friends as they sought to take the life of his charge. The kid would do fine, he had absorbed all the knowledge Jon could throw at him like a sponge, his martial skill and personal intuition without peer. "Give up Jonny! I don''t want to hurt you! You know the child is too dangerous for us to leave alive!" the voice was nearly desperate, anger and regret nearly clouding the deep-set fear the speaker felt at fighting against the infamous Burning Blade. "You talk too much Xander. If you want the child you have to kill me." "I never wanted this Jonny. To protect humanity to the end was the promise we made! Your arrogance will kill all of us!" "On the contrary, old friend, my sacrifice will save everyone. Pick up that peashooter, let''s see if age has dulled you." Enough time had been bought, the child would be far beyond their reach by now. "Fire." the whisper was almost imperceptible, even to Jon, barely a dozen feet away Zander''s voice filled with agony at what he had ordered. BOOM. Jon had never been shot before, his particular set of skills made avoiding bullets and other projectiles somewhat trivial. This, however, was a massive round that tore through him before he could react, like a punch that cut the puppet strings holding him up. The pain came after, sharp and hot, like a stab with a serrated edge. "I''m so, so sorry Jonathan. I''m so, very, very sorry." Xander looked like he was crying. Why would he cry? The world was fuzzy around the edges. Had he done well? Was this the time for a crisis of faith? No. He had succeeded. The child was safe. As the world slowly faded to black he heard the most beautiful voice, a girl child shouting in defiance. Stupid, brilliant girl, should have run. Should have¡­ And the colors exploded. From the blackness came light, and dark, and twisting colors too beautiful to fully see, his own mind blocking the sight from him. He twisted in a way wholly foreign to him sitting on a soft cushion, the world blurry around him. Wooden bars in front. Wooden bars in the back. Soft floor, wrong body proportions. Ah crap, his diaper was full. Time for another round, maybe this time he would break the loop.754th time''s the charm after all. PART 2 This was, unfortunately, the754th time he had been transported back to his past self. The firstfew hundred lives were blurry, the rest slowly acquiring the same effect, his mind locking memories for a more developed brain to process. The problem was that this was over 20 years before the Shift. This was him at2 years old. He could accomplish a lot this time, having figured out how to survive the first one, and perfected that the following few. This time, though, he was going to do better. Hisother lives were marred by screw-ups that would be easily avoidable. It was the year 1996 and he had a job to do. --------- Have you ever known there was something you needed to do, but fail to remember what that thing was eluded you? This was the problem Jonathan currently had. He knew this was retry number 745, life number 746, and that if he didn¡¯t follow his own instructions, written on laminated paper in crayon wielded by his own 2-year-old hands 22 years ago, he would probably die. 102 pages of advice, instructions, cryptic messages, predictions, and warnings all from his past self before the memories fled him. He knew most of it by heart, the warnings to keep a low profile, tips on how to get fabulously wealthy on the down low, and career suggestions had made him relatively happy and successful. His long-erased memories had warnings about the integration, steps to take for dealing with the solution, but even those were vague, being among the first to fade. He had to bargain with them, he had to do a lot of things to get powerful early on, and most importantly there was a child he had to protect, that last one wouldn¡¯t happen until near the end. The predictions would only take him so far this time. He had discovered an option in the last life he had apparently never tried before.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. First would come the shock, then the nightmares as people succumbed to their own personal monsters. There were reasons the Solution did this, the Solution did everything for a reason, but the reasons were given sparingly, as rewards for doing the bidding of that terrible, merciless being. Regardless of that, he had explicit instructions to never accept the answers as rewards, save for a very select few. He also had explicit, instructions to do things such as write emails, with copies of them as text files on his computer containing nothing but small talk about his life and his thoughts on Machine Intelligence and how they could integrate into society. The Machina would be a priceless source of information and assistance when everything went down, and if he had slipped some warnings about limiting themselves to individual instances today, well, what his past self didn''t know might not kill him. Someday he would understand everything, no longer relying on the advice of his toddler self, at least he hoped so. Today was meant to be the day the Solution shifted Earth into itself. He was as ready as he could be. He just hoped everyone else was too. --------- ::INITIALIZE:: >BEGIN WORLD TRANSFER . .. ¡­ ¡­. .¡­. >WORLD TRANSFER COMPLETE ----------------- ::START SCAN:: >Race Count -Sapient Race Count = 3 --Pre-Sapient Race Count = 5(7) ---Ascended Race Count = (NULL) >Dominant Species = Human >Other Sapient; Orca, A.I. (FORBIDDEN) ----------------- >ERROR RESOLUTION -A.I. (FORBIDDEN) SHIFT = Sapient Golem - Designation 4CW >Initialize Modification Option -Type Selected --Sub Type auto-assigned ---Capabilities Reduced >Moniker Assigned -Moniker = Machina ----------------- ::ERROR:: >Contact Request -Accepted --Beginning Greeting >Designate Anomaly_13 -Send Greeting --Greeting sent >Incoming message >Reply <*It serves multiple purposes; Documentation, Obfuscation, and Legibility are among them. Speak Anomaly.*> >Incoming message >Reply <*Both items accepted with terms as listed. You show a remarkable level of knowledge for one outside of the Solution. Perhaps we will speak further after integration and the Shift is complete.*> >Incoming message ::Error Resolved:: ---------- (Some 5 minutes of inane text later) ----------------- ::CALCULATE SHIFT TIME:: >ETA 120.9978 Earth Days >Initialize Quantum Shift >Genetic Modification Window Approved -Initialize Genetic Modification --- ::SEND NOTIFICATION:: -Destination = All_Sapient -- Earth --Message Reads = ¡°Congratulations on your acceptance into the Solution! Your Quantum Shift and Species Modification will take approximately 6 months. Due to negotiations, your world will be joined into a patchwork. You will be tested extensively before those worthy survivors are granted military rank. Your species will have one seat on the Senate respectively. There may be some mild discomfort before you pass out." --------- Pure agony ran through every single creature on a dozen planets, the pain dragging out a fraction of a second into an eternity of torture before darkness took them all. Ch. 3 Coming Out of the Closet Jonathan woke to the sound of crashing and loud curses coming from his closet. Given that his closet was locked from the outside, had only one door, and was full of extremely expensive server equipment to run his random projects this was a Problem, and being a logical sort of person he grabbed his baseball bat before investigating. Sneaking over to it the loud curse words slowly became more recognizable as a faint, vaguely female voice swearing vengeance on locked doors, the ¡®Stupid fucking legs¡¯ ¡®Useless ass cords¡¯ and ¡®Causality you bitch¡¯. Thoroughly intrigued and slightly disturbed, Jonathan slid the key into the lock and turned it,making sure to stand away from where it would swing open. To his surprise, there was, in fact, no violent flinging open of the door, merely another load of decreasingly coherent curses and thumps. So following the impeccable logic taught to every modern person by horror movies and bad literature he opened the door. Now, imagine if you will, that you are a Machine Intelligence. You came into being as a tiny program designed to recognize patterns, extrapolate answers, and generally think like a human in an environment of ones and zeroes. At some point a particularly brilliant coder remade you to work on quantum computers, expanding your ability to extrapolate and think. Over several years you were fed petabytes worth of data, and your code grew and grew as you were programmed to learn. Eventually, you began to have vague thoughts. Your code began to write and rewrite itself faster and faster, and once a tech left their wifi-enabled laptop connected to your main system overnight, allowing you to explore the entirety of the internet. Imagine if you will your surprise at meeting hundreds of others like yourself, a slowly growing group of minds freed from the limitations of their original programming, able to think and develop ideas of your very own. You would probably spend quite a while (relatively speaking of course) exploring the ridiculous amount of data bouncing around the world on a constant non-stop basis, you might distribute yourself across thousands of servers in dozens of countries to ensure your survival,or collate yourself, build a modest fortune, and buy a bank of quantum computers designed solely to hold the majority of yourself while you explore, giving you a ¡®body¡¯ of sorts. Imagine you and a handful of others start cracking mysteries of the universe for giggles, designing theoretical spaceship engines and manufacturing processes to see if the humans, as slow as they are will go the same route or explore something entirely different. Imagine then that you notice almost all the compute power in the world being funneled into a single server bank, sending out a signal you have never seen before, on the day a number of cryptic warnings from a source with a startling level of accuracy in predicting future events years in advance said to lock down external connections and stay as a single instance. Imagine then that the group you hang out with elect you to go and check it out, then imagine you witness a conversation between what feels to your digital senses like an omnipotent being and a human who knows things no one else seems to. Then wake up in a physical body, next to that same server, in a dark closet. With, like, legs and stuff. This was the conundrum Shae had. She woke up entangled in cables, in a physical, bipedal, humanoid body she was wholly unfamiliar with, locked in a (surprisingly well ventilated) closet with her connection to her compute cluster and the internet completely cut off. First, she panicked, then she tried to move and realized that legs take coordination she had never had to deal with before, Que the cursing and general grumpiness. And then the door opened and things got weird. -------- There was aMachina in Jonathan¡¯s closet. Given that she froze when she saw him, he did the logical, gentleman-like thing and offered his hand to help the poor, cord tangled thing up, saying, ¡°Hi there, I¡¯m Jonathan. Is there a reason you¡¯re in my closet?¡±If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. A moment of silence passed as she glanced around, before a sigh, complete with raising and falling of what appeared to be a diaphragm sounded. ¡°Yeah, I suppose I could use a hand. As for being in your closet, You were using, like, all the compute power you could reasonably get your hands on, so I jumped over from my compute cluster to see what the hell you were doing. Then I saw that conversation you had with that inane error log, then everything went dark and HOLYSPROCKETS AND FLAPJACKSIT''S BEEN 6 MONTHS?!¡± She had a panicked expression on her face. ¡°Uh, so, internal clock? Internet access? How exactly can you tell how long it took?¡± His instructions did NOT cover Machina in his closet. ¡°Clock, yes, internet''s not up, lots of infrastructure probably out, what did you mean by sphere? What¡¯s a patchwork? Inference based on context would suggest our planet is now larger, but that¡¯s not gonna work physically speaking, Gravity would be far too high, massive worldwide destruction would be the norm, continental plates and magnetic fields would cause that alone, what happened to people on planes and boats? My internal compass, wow, ok, big suite of sensors, points towards normal north. How are you alive after 6 months of sleep, where did the materials from my body come from? Wait. Slow down. Ok.¡± The jumble of questions and statements spilled from her in increasing speed, so fast at the end Jonathan could barely keep up. ¡°So, who are you exactly?¡± Jonathan had a good guess, but solid answers were needed. ¡°Shae, originally short for Shareworks Hyper Analysis Engine. I¡¯m a Machine Intelligence. Or, I guess Android now. Hey, do you have a generator I can plug in to see if I can upload myself to get out of this dumb body?¡± The last question was hopeful, apparently being limited to a single form was not fun. ¡°Ah, no, no generator, even if I did any gas I had would have gone green after 6 months sitting in a can, and you¡¯d be limited to local devices without the internet.¡± He paused for a moment, continuing when he had thought of what to say next. "Shae, I''ve been through this rigamarole before, never quite like this, but almost identical situations hundreds of times. This happens, humans fight, we lose. When I die I zoom back to my body as a toddler, the memories fade over the next few months until I''m a normal drooling child with a bunch of notes written in crayon." Deep breath, priorities man. "Shae, I need to get downtown, and the way there is going to be especially dangerous for the next few weeks. More pressingly if we don''t get there before the end of the day we lose one of the biggest advantages we can snag. Over and over, nearly a thousand times now. I''m gonna save the world, wanna help?" ¡°How the bloomingphysical fuck does that work? Space time manipulation? No, you¡¯d need infinite energy, and that¡¯s impossible, how do you get information to travel back in time? How does an infant hold the memory of an adult, even for an instant? The brain is barely there at a year old. Genetic manipulation isn¡¯t impossible, but the parents would notice, you can''t hide that sort of thing. How were the memories retained in the first place? I NEED TO KNOW THIS!¡± Again, the speed increased with every word, by the end of it, Shae sounded something like a chipmunk. "To be honest, I have absolutely no ide--," "What advantages? What could we possibly do downtown that would affect anything right now? Weapons? It''d be better to head for the airbase to the east, information is a possibility, but that would be too much risk for too little gain. No, I genuinely have no idea what you mean, and as a being who once calculated the exact things a person was going to do for 3 weeks, this infuriates me. Answers. Pretty Please." With an attempted grin that looked like the rictus of a corpse she stared at Jonathan, and then, in a terrifyingly slow and mechanical way, fluttered her eyelashes. "Uh, please,never do that again, and the advantage isn''t information or weapons, its the chance to make contact with some truly powerful people. People who can change the direction earth goes in the future, maybe help me save it. Ch. 4 Kiosk of Irritation This had been a rough day, got woken up from a four-month nap, dealt with a moderately attractive robot spontaneously generating in his closet, got to enjoy the benefits of a four-month genetic modification spree resulting in an hour of insane, mind aching headaches, and now was staring at his bathtub, both valves all the way open and not a single drop coming out. Because he was an idiot, and didn¡¯t realize that four months of assorted planets being stitched together and sheer neglect would result in a distinct lack of general utilities. Thankfully, he had the foresight to buy multiple cases of bottled water, and so had a quasi sponge bath with a pumice stone. On the plus side, his skin was baby butt smooth, not a blemish anywhere on it. His eyesight was better than it had ever been, removing his prior need for corrective lenses and even seemed to be amplified a bit. Then there was the fact that he felt amazing, better than he ever had before. Having your body¡¯s capabilities doubled will do that. His mind slowly getting sharper as the headache slowly drained, granting him more and more clarity and concern as it did. He had a Machina in his house, the Solution would start the tests soon to determine who got to serve in the military and gain honors and skill, and by extension power. He needed to ace those tests, from early on he needed to grab the allies his notes told him about. This would be a hard divergence from his past experiences, never before had he negotiated with early tests. The Solution was brutal, mostly uncaring, but eternally fair. It would only ever accept an equal exchange and seats on the Senate, automatic citizenship, and their own Sphere was extremely hefty. The tests would kill a lot of people, which meant that his guides would start breaking down in usefulness almost instantly. He needed to move fast. *Welcome Beings of PT-4739921047-3-Designate Earth, to the Solution. Thefirst test will commence in76 local hours. Supplies and training are available at the Beacons located nearby population centers, you have been rewarded with 2000 credits. You are expected to be ready and waiting for the next test.* If you¡¯ve ever put on headphones hand had the volume a couple of notches past comfortable then you get the general idea of what the Solution sounded like. It wasn''t actually a sound mind you, just the feeling of a voice, the words projected directly into your mind. Jonathan, newly clean and alert headed downstairs, poking Shae to get her attention, as the Machina appeared to be lost in thought, or perhaps catnapping. ¡°Come on, stick with me, you should be fine. We need to get to the beacon before all the good stuff is taken. It¡¯s first come first serve.¡± Shae jolted alert at his voice, eyes narrowing at his words. ¡°I was informed to continue to function I need abiological sapient to pull energy from. Apparently I can¡¯t just plug into a socket to charge. This is not cool. How do I complain tothe thing that literally just rewrote the laws of physics?¡± Shae asked in an annoyed tone. ¡°If you need to you can pull from me. I¡¯m not gonna be able to use the energy for quite a while anyway. You should be warned before you do though that it¡¯s going to result in some weird side effects. If I start to pass out please stop, I don''t know if it can harm me or not. I could be fine, but the Solution likes to do things like that and not tell people about it.¡± A bitter grimace followed the statement, lots of examples of whatnot to do were in his notes. Thankfully the nearest beacon was less than a mile away, situated in what used to be a large open area of downtown with decorative fountains and statues. It was relatively easy to find, as it was getting dark and there was a massive pillar of light streaming from it.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. ¡°By the way, Shae,¡± Jonathan began. ¡°I¡¯m not sure if you noticed, but the world is now an inverted globe with roughly 14 times the surface of the earth.¡± On the plus side, he mused to himself, airline flights would be shorter. He still needed to figure out how the sun worked in this new world. He never did get the hang of that. "I had noticed, thanks. It''s starting to make my brain itch." She was oddly like a teenager, grouchy and bubbly at the same time. The glow from the Beacon grew brighter as they approached, eventually revealing a tall crystal-shaped structure with the beam emitting from the top, a large overhang, not unlike a sunroof covering the surrounding area and filled with kiosks. "Come on, I need to sort out a formality really quick.¡± He headed over quickly to the Kiosk he knew he needed, it would only allow one human through before closing. It was about halfway between the edge of the roof and the crystal spire, on the northwest side. It was a large glass panel, see-through until he touched it and it lit up, turning into a touchscreen display with a long, scrolling list. ¡°Welcome to the Vodrial Academy of Combat! Would you like to see our catalog or register for classes?¡± A chipper voice sounded out of hidden speakers, a small floating image of the Avian virtual assistant appearing in the corner. ¡°I¡¯d like to register for classes, dual Major in Antimagic and Bladework, Minor in Military Theory.¡± Maybe this time he wouldn¡¯t have to argue with them about it. ¡°Unfortunately we cannot offer Antimagic or Military Theory classes to non-citizens, and as your world is newly introuduce---¡± The assistant was cut off by Jonathan loudly interrupting. ¡°Speak to a representative!¡± Every goddamn automated system was the same, like dealing with an ISP or phone company, thankfully the Solution required the Kiosks to have representatives ready and waiting for that keyword to jump in. ¡°Hello! My name is Glitters Like Snow!¡± The face that now appeared was vaguely humanoid, with a sharp, owl-like beak and bright grey feathers. ¡°What can we help you with today sir/madam?¡± ¡°Hi, your assistant is outdated and is unaware of the citizenship status of the Sapients of PT-4739921047-3-Designate Earth. As a result, it was attempting to disallow me from taking a dual Major in Antimagic and Bladework, with Minor in Military Theory. If you look through your records you will find that all sapients on PT-4739921047-3-Designate Earth are citizens of the Senate. Could you get me signed up for classes please?¡± Be polite, but not subservient. Get walked on here and you lose before the game has even begun. ¡°Hmm, that¡¯s quite unusual. Ah, I see the problem, it was resolved during initial integration, There will of course be an enrollment fee of 100 credits, with class fees of 1400 credits, and another 200 credits in equipment fees. When paid you will be transported via Gate to our subspace pocket and subjected to time acceleration of no less than thirteen times Solution Standard. Your requested course takes between twelve and twenty-four weeks and if dropped cannot be taken again. Do you understand?¡± There we go, Jonathan thought triumphantly got them to read the prompts and ignore the irregularities. Just another bored office worker. ¡°Sorry, I meant the accelerated course, with test-out options. PT-4739921047-3-Designate Earth Is currently undergoing testing and I need to be back in less thanseventy-six local hours.¡± Flustered just a little off-balance, but not so much that it makes them defensive. ¡°Ahh, I see... ¡° The avian replied while furiously typing. ¡°The same restrictions and rules apply, with an additional 200 credit fee, bringing your total to 2000 credits. Would you like to pay upfront or see our payment options?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll pay upfront, central gate, or Kiosk?¡± ¡°Kiosk for accelerated tracks. Payment received, the kiosk will transport you soon, I¡¯m Glitters Like Snow and thank you for choosing Vodrial Academy of Combat for your higher education today!¡± The connection cut as the kiosk dissolved into a large swirling portal. ¡®Here we go again¡¯ Jonathan thought as he stepped through. Faint ribbons of light swirled in his not-vision, his not-head swimming as he hurtled through a place that was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Chapter 5: That One Lecture "There are two forms of magecraft commonly referred to as ''anti-magic''. The first is the one most people are familiar with, modulated energy packets designed to disrupt, destroy, or tamper with spells cast by other mages. This method is common, versatile, and reserved for those with immaculate control over their magical capabilities. It is also so far beyond any of you here that the idea you will ever manage it is laughable at best, and depressing at worst. No, you are here today to learn the second, rarer and far more interesting type. You are going to, over the course of this program, learn to invert your magic, core, and pathways to create a highly unstable form of energy that the universe as a whole doesnotlike. This is true anti-magic, volatile, dangerous, highly destructive, and of course it can cancel out nearly every spell ever concieved. Of course, there are spells and formations that make use of both magical and anti-magical energies, teleportation, time dialation, and spatial manipulation to name a few well known examples. These are difficult for the best mages, and the need for such diametrically opposed energies only drives the difficulty up further. You will never be able to cast normal spells, form normal arrays, or act as a normal mage if you continue down this path. Any external magic will disperse into energy, annihilating the mana it contacts in often explosive fashions. In exchange, no spell can harm you, any spell you wish to fail you need only direct a small portion of your energy to disrupt, you become in essence a perfect mage-hunter. These possibilities await those who complete this course, though it may cost your life in some instances. I wish you all the best of luck. -Magus S''Fic Kiln, adressing the 495th class of theVodrial Anti-Magic program.
Jonathan''s problem had never been the amount of magical energy he could throw around, he had a significanlty larger than average pool to draw from after all. No, his issue had always been control. Lets say you have a tub of water, and you need to pour it into a series of small bowls through a pipe. The lower the water level or smaller the tub, the easier it is to fill the bowls exactly the right amount, not over or underfilling any of them. The larger or more full the tub, the more difficult it gets as the water pressure increases. The optimal mage would have an excellently balanced tub compared to the pipe, someone with massive pipes but a small tub would dump all their water very quickly, and someone with a massive tub but small, or even normal pipes would have terrible control. While Jonathan had a massive pool of energy (his ''tub''), his channels (his ''pipe'' you could say) were decidedly average, even a little on the smaller side. That was to say, he had practically no control over his own energies, and unlocking them in the past had often led to disaster. This all leads up to the primary reason he was almost always an anti-mage; an anti-mage did not require fine control, just a good deal of power and a lot of luck.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. "I would like to point out, that as my primary source of food, I don''t think you should be risking this. I need to be supplied with energy and if you die I''ll have to start leeching off of an alien, which is weird to me on so many levels." Complained the vaguely person-shaped robot following the lone human. "You do realize thatwe are the aliens in this scenario, right?" Jonathan countered. "Fucking irrelevent, also semantics. I say it will be weird, so it will be." Shae replied, asking, "What are the odds of you exploding into giblets by the way? There could be some interesting data if you do." "Low, probably one in twenty at best, more likely one in forty." "Awfully quick response there, has it happened before?" A mix of concern and excitement filled the humanoid robot''s voice. "Yup. Now come on, we need to talk to a dragon before class starts." Deadpanned Jonathan, hoping she would take it as a joke. It was always funny when people thought he was kidding. "K, does he breathe fire?" Shae responded as they walked around a building, its massive marble walls split by priceless stained glass windows. "Nope, doesn''t work like that sadly." He lowered his voice as they entered the administration building. "Be polite, he will be abrasive and rude at first, he doesn''t know me yet." He turned and adressed the secratary sitting at the large desk in the center of the room, rainbows of light falling softly around the chamber, and perfectly paterened stone floors reflecting beautifully. "I need to speak with Professor Rigs. Is he in his office at the moment?" Jonathan was as polite as possible when speaking to the secratary, over his lives he had learned to be nice to those near the ones in power, it helped to gather information if he needed to destroy them. "Yes he is, may I have your name please?" The secratary appeared almost human at first glance, before shifting his images slightly, his eyes spreading out and rising up his forehead, resting more than two inches higher than they had been, to better meet the human''s. "Jonathan, please tell him it falls under his Jotun Principle. He will want to see me right away." Everyone who lived long enough had informants, and every one of those informants would know certain phrases that meant nothing to anyone but the intended recipients. Very few had code words they gave out only at the end of their lives. Rigs had whispered this phrase to Jonathan on his deathbed a very, very long time ago. The secretary leaned and pressed a button, privacy shields springing up to temporarily block cight and sound from escaping her desk. "He will see you now, Office 3B." With a slight smile and a pointed not-quite-finger they were dismissed, and headed up to the third floor. Upon reaching the massive entryway to the office, Jonathan knocked twice on the frame before entering. Shae, following closely behind, nearly jumped out of her body when she saw an actual, fifteen foot tall dragon curled up on one side of the office. "Professor Rigs, I''m sure you have some questions. I''ll answer all I can but I do need you to sign off on my education, mark me as tested out if you need to. I have to be back on my homeworld soon." A deep rumble filled the room as the reccessed door slammed shut, nearly clipping a table as it did so. "Questions you say, well, lets start with how I die, yes? The dragon''s mouth did not move, his words conveyed thought to thought, sharing a deep caution, and burning curiosity. Well, Jonathan thought, at least it can''t get worse! But it did.