An awkward minute or two passed as they drove down the east side of Geardump Hill. Then Danielle remembered she was supposed to be asking actual catalog questions. She sat up from her frustrated slump and asked, “So, just in case I need to tell anyone what we talked about, tell me about this mana-cheese. How long does it keep? Is there a limit to how much pool mana it’s safe to get from food that way?”

  “It keeps for a year in a cool space with the wax sealed, or a couple weeks in the cold with the seal broken, or a day or two in summer with the seal broken,” Ranger Flo said. “So not long if you don’t get a full wheel, but the cold box can help.”

  “As for the safe limit, it’s more than you should ever be getting from cheese, so don’t worry about that,” Agent Bea said.

  “Are you paid to find ways to make your answers to questions as useless as possible?!” Danielle said, pounding the frame of the Agent’s seat in frustration.

  “It’s an entirely useful answer, containing the information you actually need, which is: it’s a bad idea to try and buy that much cheese!” the agent snapped.

  “OK, what if it’s Magic Chef tomatoes, then?” Danielle asked.

  The agent scoffed. “Just because the spiel they give you on the field trip says they grow in the wild, that doesn’t mean you’ll find them in the wild.”

  “What field trip?” Danielle asked.

  “What?” the agent turned around to look at her. “The tenth grade field trip to – oh.” She face-palmed. “Never mind. How did you learn about them?”

  “We found them growing and tried roasting a few to see if we could make them last longer that way. Doesn’t work, but they’re still food, and the taste is distinctive,” Danielle said.

  “You found – already??” Agent Bea exclaimed.

  “This is layer 1; they originated around here,” Ranger Flo said. “The safe limit is three times your base mana generation, whatever that is. It’s best not to push that every single day, though. Also, for the record, any form of cooking will cook off the mana, but drying works if you’re careful to dry them whole. Dehydrate will do the job, there; a few pinholes and hot, dry weather also work most of the time. The seeds breed true, so your flowerpots can keep some going through the winter; just keep them watered.”

  “Glad to hear it; that’s one of the reasons I’m interested in figuring out grow lights,” Danielle said. “Base mana, now – that’s whatever our mana pools produce, but not what comes from Skills like Regen Burst, correct?”

  “That’s right. In fact, mana from Skills needs to be included in that safe limit total. Mana from Traits will usually tell you if it’s base mana or bonus mana; bonus mana from Traits is a different category from the Skill and Food mana, but doesn’t count towards the base mana calculation either.” Ranger Flo brought the truck to a stop at the massive gate outside the Dome, and rolled down the window.

  Another Ranger came out to talk to her. Ranger Flo showed a badge, gave a password, explained what Danielle was doing there. (“Official business in her role as a budding Skill Sharer. In other words, Karen Issue mitigation.”) The other ranger came around to see Agent Bea’s badge, too, and received another password.

  Then he made Danielle stick her hand out Agent Bea’s window (an awkward procedure that required the agent and her seat to lean forward while Danielle stretched her arm over them) whereupon he gave her a cheap plastic wristband, like a patient ID band from an emergency room, or a special event pass. Then he tried to use a Skill on her without warning. When it bounced off of her Mana Deflector trait, he pulled a tazer on her, requiring Ranger Flo and Agent Bea to do some shouting. In the end, though, they calmed him down and he let Danielle pull back her resistance while he used the Skill again – explaining, this time, that it was placing a temporary System tag on her, showing that she was authorized to pass the gate.

  The tag felt odd, sinking into her wrist under the plastic band; it was a lot like when Ranger Flo had bound the token pouch to her, but it stuck to the plastic as well, and didn’t fade away from perception like the connection to the pouch had. Her wrist tingled faintly, and she rubbed at it as Ranger Flo got the truck moving again and slid through the opening in the gate even as the two leaves were still sliding ponderously apart.

  They drove right up to the Dome itself, where Agent Bea and Danielle disembarked. Ranger Flo drove off with the truck, then, while Agent Bea stayed to escort Danielle. “All right, we begin with the oath,” Agent Bea said. “Repeat after me: I, state your name, honorably Sent Exile of Firmitatem,”

  “I, Danielle Falconer, honorably Sent Exile of Firmitatem,” Danielle said, effortfully keeping her voice even across the word ‘honorably’ even though it was extremely tempting to say it sarcastically.

  “do swear to use the communication Skill given to me in a responsible manner for the organization that has raised me to leadership,” Agent Bea continued.

  “do swear to use the Skill – the communication Skill granted to me in a responsible manner for the organizations that have raised me to leadership,” Danielle said, blushing as she stumbled over the words.

  “and not for petty harassment or any illegal activity,” the agent finished.

  “and not for petty harassment or any illegal activity,” Danielle agreed – at least she’d gotten that part right!

  “All right. Here’s your token,” Agent Bea said, pulling a flat box out of the ubiquitous leather Sending Authority satchel she was carrying. The box was obviously designed to hold tokens, with rows of round holes in a shaped insert. Only one hole actually contained a token, with the Skill name facing up: Now Hear This. The agent pulled it out with a soft shshshp! sound, and handed it to Danielle. “I want to see you put that straight into the Access Point,” she said. “After that, I’ll turn away and let you do whatever else you’re doing.”

  “Taking Career: Food Processing, apparently,” Danielle joked. “What’s with that, anyway?”

  “Oh, it’ll give you Skills related to cleaning and preserving food,” the agent said dismissively. “It’s mostly used by factory and restaurant workers, Inside. Who knows, some of the Skills people get out here might even be usable in those jobs someday – no guarantees, given the radically different context you’ll be using that Career in, but there’s no denying that Sent do a lot of cleaning and preserving food. Extra Careers don’t hurt anything, and occasionally help a lot, so we let them include it.”

  Danielle chuckled and took the Skill: Now Hear This token to the pillar in the nearest quadrant of the Dome of Decision. The System greeted her, “Welcome to this Firmitatem organization-controlled System Access Point. Location Name: Dome of Decision, North Chamber. Place your hands on the access point to activate System Access features. If you want to use a token, place it in the top of the access point.”

  Danielle slotted in the Skill Token. The system prompted, “You have provided Skill Token: Now Hear This (tier 1). Do you want to add Skill: Now Hear This to your advanced skills?”

  “Yes,” Danielle said, and got back, “Skill applied. Skill: Now Hear This (T1) added at level 1.”

  She added Shield Apprentice next, with almost identical messages. The Career: Food Processing token gave almost the same messages, too, lacking only the tier and level indicators. Then it was time to start adding mana tokens.

  Danielle put in two of the 300-mana tokens to begin with, and started working through her wish list. Trait: Sensory Tuning (T2) went first, because it had already been pushed back from Thursday’s list. Then she took Skill: See System Info – Persons, because it was another tier 2 choice from her shortlist. Amplify Voice, because she had been needing it; Mana Shaping and Create Light Source to unlock the Class – oh, maybe she should have taken Create Light Source first? Well, she had it now, that was all that mattered.

  What else did she need to take right now? The room management Skills, she thought, and added two more 300-mana tokens. Read System Tag, Tag Object, and Deputize scrolled out their “Skill applied” messages. That left her available mana in the Access Point at 250 mana, so she took Infrasight and Dehydrate to zero it out again. Was she done? Oh, no she was not – she hadn’t taken Regen Burst yet. She put in another 300-mana token and took Regen Burst, then Disinfect Wound – Healers all had it unlocked, but that didn’t mean a little help wouldn’t be good for them. That reminded her that she also hadn’t taken Guided Suture yet, but that needed another mana token, so she added it.

  Now her mana was uneven again, though. She was feeling oddly lightheaded, too, but it felt important to even out the mana, so she told the Access Point to show her advanceable Skills and Traits, which triggered the search for new ones. That wasn’t quite what she intended, but to her surprise there were a few unlocks. Her brain slid greasily over the list, retaining little, but she did notice that Class: General Enhancer was now available (she’d done that on purpose, she reminded herself) so she put in another 300-mana token, then recalled that she’d promised someone to take Class: Light Shaper next. She did that, but her mana wasn’t even, it was showing 150. A tier 2 Trait would solve that! She ignored the Class Skill messages and muttered to the System that she wanted a tier 2 Trait, and it showed her a list of her “Qualifying unlocked traits” – much better. Mana Sight was there! Wasn’t Mana Sight tier 1? Something wasn’t quite adding up, but she flicked her eyes at the option anyway, and the Access Point mana zeroed out. Satisfying!

  Danielle stood swaying slightly, steadying herself with both hands on the pillar. What was wrong with her? She got her canteen out of her bag – almost empty. She’d forgotten to fill it when she stopped by her room. Stupid, stupid! Always fill canteens! Wait, she had juice boxes. She pulled one out and drank it. The Access Point noticed her hands had both left the pillar and prompted her to end the session. “Yes, fine, end session,” she said, and went back to the juice box, and taking deep steadying breaths.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Are you all right?” Agent Bea asked from the entrance.

  “Little light-headed,” Danielle said. “That one Ranger this morning was thinking you could get light-headed from using too much mana, and I didn’t think she was serious, but maybe I should’ve taken her more serious. Ly. More seriously.”

  “How much mana did you just spend?” the agent asked, taking an uncertain step towards her. “You ended your session, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m good. I’m just dehydrated a little, maybe, so I’m having a drink,” Danielle told her. “Forgot to refill my canteen. I did a lot of standing around and talking this morning, I should’ve had more than one by now.”

  Agent Bea took that as permission to come in and put an arm around her – presumptuous; they weren’t friends now just because – because something – this was the rude lady that kept telling her she didn’t need to know what she did need to know. Had she even asked all her questions? “What’s a ruana?” Danielle asked.

  Agent Bea gave her a bemused look. “What? It’s like a shawl crossed with a cape. Why do you ask?”

  “It was in the catalog, and we didn’t know,” Danielle said. “I’m supposed to be asking catalog questions. How do you cross a shawl and a cape?”

  “Imagine a poncho, but you open a line from the head hole to the middle of one side, and wear it square instead of diagonally,” Agent Bea said. “It hangs down front and back, and has a front opening like a cape; but you can stick your hands out the sides, because they’re technically open, it’s the way they drape that keeps the heat in. How much mana did you just use?”

  “I put in, uh, two, then two more, then one before Regen Burst, and one before Guided Suture, and one before the Class. Uh, how many is that?” Danielle asked.

  “Seven, but seven of what?” the agent asked.

  “Seven of those 300-mana tokens I got paid earlier,” Danielle explained. That was enough to answer the original question, wasn’t it? “Three times seven and add two zeroes, so 21 hundreds. That’s how much mana.”

  “Ah. That explains – ” Agent Bea paused, then continued a bit more heatedly, “that is a lot of Skills young lady!”

  Danielle finished her juice box; she was starting to feel a bit better. “I might’ve gone overboard a little. 400 was for a Class, though, and several of them were tier 2, so it’s not like it was 21 Skills.” She crushed the empty juice box. “I’m feeling better now. Let’s go find a trash can.”

  Agent Bea hovered over her like a mother hen as they walked along an obscure path (road?) just inside the giant fence. It crackled and hummed, and Danielle absently hummed along in harmony. The lightheadedness passed off, though, and she walked steadily as they passed a grove of trees, and came into sight of a trio of surprisingly large buildings. Two of them looked remarkably like warehouses, and the truck was parked by one of these, with brown-uniformed Rangers unloading tables and grills and teakettles, and taking them in through an open loading bay door.

  The one in front had architecture though; for example, a dramatically peaked roof accentuated by a pointed overhang and an arched window. Under that was a rectangular window a whole story tall, and under that were glass doors between faceted panels of what might have been stained glass or unusually large lab crystals of some kind. “Sapphire glass” could be that large, and take nearly any color, Danielle thought; maybe it was that. The design seemed abstract, but it was pretty, and did an impressive job of evoking swirls while technically using only pieces with perfectly straight edges.

  Inside the dramatic central windows was a dramatic foyer. To the left of the entrance, a mural of tall trees surrounded a brown door. A large wooden sign hung above it – no. A large sign was painted into the mural above it, reading “Ranger Command.” On the right wall, the mural was a craggy cliff backed by ranked mountain peaks, with very little sky showing between them. Bright green vines and small flowers grew up the cliff, though, and the door here was flag-green, though the fancy molding around it was stone-gray, pretending to be carvings. The sign was painted as if chiseled into the cliff face, and read, “Sending Authority: Outside Contact Office.” The murals ended at a stairway on each side, rising up a straight path to a second-floor mezzanine, where more ordinary pale-blue walls housed normal office doors, and a single stair against the distant back wall went up to a third floor balcony, of which all Danielle could really see was a fancy wooden railing and the fact that it had a skylight.

  On the ground floor, there was room for more doors to open behind the stairs, and the end wall was closer than on the second floor, actually level with the edge of the mezzanine. It had its own mural, this one depicting market stalls piled with bags and boxes, a variety of goods peeking out. Two stalls were painted as narrow booths with no space for anything but a door, one on the left with a painted sign reading “Ranger Supply” and one on the right with a sign declaring “Book Shop.” Agent Bea led Danielle towards that door. The central stall was the only other stall not depicted full of goods that hadn’t been unpacked yet, and as they got closer, Danielle realized that was because it actually was a stall of sorts; the counter was real, and the panels above it could open, presumably into a room behind. No sign was painted into the mural for that one, though.

  Agent Bea opened the door of the “Book Shop” with a mechanical key, and led Danielle inside. A young man in Sending Authority greens was working on a pile of empty boxes tossed haphazardly among the bookshelves, cutting tape with a box knife and collapsing them back to flat cardboard. He looked up in startlement at their entrance. “Back so soon?” he asked. “I’m not nearly done yet – who’s this?”

  “This is our state’s newest Skill Sharer,” Agent Bea said. “Can you pull a chair out of the chaos for her?”

  “Oh, uh, sure,” the man said, and looked around. He moved to a less encumbered aisle and simply tossed an entire pile of boxes over the chest-high shelves into the next aisle leftward, clearing the path to a back wall with windows looking out on a stretch of gravel and the warehouses. He fetched a padded waiting-room style chair from between the windows and brought it back through the one clear aisle, placing it next to the check-out counter. “Here you go, Skill Sharer,” he said. “Sorry about the wall of boxes. The, um, Ranger Bookbinders are kind of mad at us, so they didn’t exactly go out of their way to be helpful.”

  “They’re mad at the Government, really,” Agent Bea explained to Danielle. “We’re just trying to keep up with the madness as best we can, the same as they are. These are the boxes in which they delivered the books for the care packages; they weren’t broken down yesterday because we were making up the sets with too few people and not nearly enough time.” Turning to the young man, she said, “Listen, Mike, she is still a first-year Sent, so she has to be escorted at all times. Can you keep an eye on her while I get her a bottle of water, and let the Rangers know we’re back from the Dome?”

  “Um, sure, probably – she’s pretty armed,” the man said nervously.

  “It’s fine. She’s just demonstrating the culture of distrust that develops when the government messes with our rules after two centuries of tuning the regulations to prevent this kind of mess!” Agent Bea said, unconsciously balling up her fists. Then she took a deep breath and relaxed. “In other words, she’s no more armed than any other Sent at her camp, and it shouldn’t be taken as a sign of hostility. I’m going to go get that water.”

  “Uh, wait ma’am, Sent aren’t allowed to have plastic bottles, remember?” the boy called after her as she stepped out the door.

  “Then I’ll bring a canteen!” the agent said exasperatedly and closed the door.

  The man glanced nervously at Danielle, and she gave him a slightly strained smile. “It really is kind of scary how fast I’ve gotten used to always having sword and staff,” she said. “I forget I have them half the time; it’s like how I always had my book satchel with me at school. Everyone did, so nobody thought about it.”

  “Aheh, yeah, just – just part of the uniform, huh?” he said awkwardly.

  “Do you want help with the boxes?” Danielle asked.

  “What? Oh! No, um, no thanks, I’m on it,” he said, and went back to flattening boxes in the row where he’d just doubled the clutter. He kept shooting her nervous looks, but Danielle just leaned back in the chair. Her head really was starting to hurt again. She wished she’d grabbed another dose of Fever-Ace while she was at her room. It really might just be dehydration, though, she thought. She pulled out the other juicebox and started drinking it. The man did an actual double-take when he noticed it, which made Danielle smile, but she managed not to laugh.

  She actually had time to finish it before Agent Bea came back with Ranger Flo, opening the door mid-conversation. “ – but the juice box actually seemed to help, so it could just be dehydration like she thought, or low blood sugar maybe. It’d still feel better if you had a look, though,” Agent Bea said.

  “Of course, that’s my main job, after all,” Ranger Flo said, as they came up to check-out desk. “I hear you gave Bea a bit of a scare,” she said to Danielle. “Are you feeling better, now?”

  Danielle nodded. “Yeah, my head’s a bit less floaty. It’s been a pretty intense day already; I think I just overdid it a little.”

  Ranger Flo nodded. “Are you OK with me using my diagnostic Skills, and maybe having a look at your System since it came on in the Dome? Just to be sure?” she asked.

  “That’s fine,” Danielle said, putting her empty juice box back in her bag. “Oh, right, I have to pull down Mana Deflector,” she said, belatedly remembering that there was a practical reason she had to give permission, as well as a polite reason.

  Ranger Flo took a knee beside her and activated a Skill; it felt odd against Danielle’s skin. Another Skill activated but hovered around the Ranger herself, like some sort of off-brand halo. Ranger Flo physically checked her eyes and her pulse, then activated a third Skill, her mana rifling through Danielle’s own like a clerk seeking a file in drawer – oh! That was See System Info! The sensation was similar to when Ranger Dolina had done it, but Danielle felt she was experiencing it in higher fidelity. “That feels so weird,” she said.

  “Oh? It’s still weird that you can feel it at – Oh! Well there’s half your problem right there,” Ranger Flo said. “It’s a sensorium expansion issue.”

  “What? She took a sensorium Trait?” Agent Bea looked somewhere between delighted and aghast, which made an odd combination. “How is that possible?”

  “That’s everyone’s favorite question with me, lately,” Danielle said tiredly. “What’s a sensorium Trait, anyway?”

  “It’s a Trait that takes a sensory Skill and makes it a permanent part of you,” Ranger Flo said. “Whereas the Skills take data your own senses can’t process and convert it into data they can process – usually visual – some of their Trait counterparts actually give you new senses. It looks like you took Trait: Sense Mana, which is a comparatively rare variation of See Mana. You probably unlocked it because you already had some sense of mana; so it’s heightening and sharpening that sense, and possibly creating new neural pathways for it.”

  “Whoa. I misread the Trait name, but that’s really cool,” Danielle said. “Better, even! I’m glad I didn’t accidentally get the visual-only version without realizing this was an option!”

  “Heh, well I hope you still feel that way in a month,” Ranger Flo said. “It should help that you already had a base ability to work with, but new sensorium Traits can be hard to adjust to; it’s not uncommon to have dizziness in the first couple of days, and they can also cause phantom sounds or tactile sensations or even smells. For some people, they settle out as being pretty close to one of the original senses; for others, they really do become their own thing, which makes them hard to describe. However it works out for you, it should settle down in a few weeks at most, but it might be a little weird for a while.”

  “I’ll get used to it,” Danielle said. “Will the Infrasight Trait do the same thing, when I’ve used the Skill enough to get there?”

  “Infrasight and Ultrasight are usually less disorienting, because they’re already intrinsically linked with sight, but everyone who has experienced it says things look very strange when you first make the switch from the Skills to the Traits. Also, it famously makes your eyes sore,” Ranger Flo said.

  Danielle chuckled. “Good thing I’ve got Local Anesthetic then, huh?” she said.

  “Why did you ever take that?” Agent Bea asked, finally handing Danielle one of the bottle-shaped ‘canteens’ the Sending Authority distributed on Decision Day.

  “Because I’m a Medic?” Danielle replied, wondering why that wasn’t obvious. She took a sip from the canteen and discovered that it was orange juice, rather than water. She almost choked in surprise at the first taste, but it was actually cold and really hit the spot, so she immediately took another, much longer drink.

  Ranger Flo stood up. “She needed it and didn’t have it, Bea. Don’t pry.”

  “I thought it was a Healer Skill, though,” Agent Bea said, frowning in confusion. “She has an actual Healer in her group, doesn’t she?”

  “Heather doesn’t do stitches,” Danielle said shortly, capping the canteen again. “Am I making tokens here, or what?”

  They are, admittedly, rather busy days.

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