“You’re not a wizard Dan,” Doctor Weathers’ voice settled over him like a wet blanket. “If I’ve learned anything from role-playing games, you’re a sorcerer, and a pretty shitty one at that.”
“Come on Samantha,” he pleaded into his cellphone. “I finally made some headway, and all you have for me is to nitpick whether I’m enough of a real nerd or not?”
“Fine Dan.” She sighed through the line. “I didn’t mean to make light of what you’ve done. It sounds incredibly reckless, and more than a little stupid, but now we at least have some idea as to how the invaders’ artifacts work. I’d long suspected that there was some sort of biomarker needed to activate their equipment, but the Army wouldn’t let us give anything to the survivors to experiment. We might not have a guide as to how things work, but at least now we can finally start taking the first steps towards figuring things out.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Dan replied, unsure if he should just accept her praise or take issue with her calling his actions stupid. “Now that we have something to work with, are you going to come back? I know that you got that new job as the director of research at the Thoth Foundation, but this is your chance to make history.”
“As soon as I let my superiors know that we’ve made progress,” he continued excitedly, “they’re going to pour funding back into the department, and we’ll be able to do whatever you need to reverse engineer this stuff. Heck, once we get the ball rolling, we might even be able to get the spaceship from the Air Force impound hanger and take a crack at it, too. From everything I’ve heard, they’re just as stuck as the department was.”
“Now Dan,” Samantha spoke slowly into the phone, “I’m obviously not advising you to commit treason or withhold information from your superiors, but I want you to think very hard about what you’re saying. Right now, you’re the only person who can interact with alien technology. You work for a department that doesn’t officially exist, and the Army has been hungry for advances on alien tech for over a year now. If you were to disappear, only your mother and I would notice, and even then, it would probably take months. You don’t have a girlfriend, friends, nearby family, or even any casual connection that would miss you and raise a fuss, unless you’re counting a delivery driver.”
Doctor Weathers paused for a moment before continuing. “I’m sure you’ve heard some of the rumors and innuendo about the Army and human testing. They haven’t really shied away from it. The army tested radiation exposure on soldiers in the early days of the atomic era, and these days you hear stories about the lax safety standards surrounding experimental combat drugs. If a senior officer thinks that the cost-benefit for you ‘dying in a car accident’ is in America’s favor, they’re likely to authorize something drastic.”
“Oh shit.” He didn’t even need to say anything more. He knew all about the Men In Black. In fact, he was pretty sure that he was one.
Well, at least an intern in black.
If he started blabbing about how he had unlocked the secrets of magic and the universe itself, he would disappear into a secure facility, if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, well… he had been present when they vivisected the aliens’ corpses, looking for a biomarker that would activate the artifacts. Dan preferred his blood on the inside.
“Yeah Dan, shit,” she replied, voice heavy. “Now, it’s not all bad news. I can’t really tell you what the Thoth Foundation is up to without talking to the chair and making you sign an NDA, but I can say that they are interested in both the invaders and their artifacts.”
“I can’t confirm that they ‘acquired’ a couple trinkets on the black market.” Dan could almost hear the air quotes as Sam emphasized the word “But I’ve been able to continue my research from the department without any of the intrusive oversight. We haven’t really gotten anywhere with the alien tech, but I have some things in my lab that would make your hair curl, and most of the fun stuff that actually works was made on Earth.”
“What does any of this have to do with me?” Dan asked, more than a little confused and worried. Now that he thought about it, the Thoth Foundation probably counted as a direct competitor to the United States Army, making this phone call somewhere between treason and a fairly explicit violation of his non-disclosure agreement. Either way, he was probably looking at jail time if anyone found out.
“Well, you’re a contractor, right?” She asked.
“Yeah.” Dan shifted the cellphone to his other ear. The government didn’t want to pay him benefits, so he had been stuck as a limited-term contractor with a one-year renewing contract for the last four years. In fact, his current contract was due to run out at the end of the month.
His accelerated research timetable and the motive for his hasty decision to perform the experiment could largely be attributed to his upcoming contract expiration. He wasn’t going to get renewed for another year without results, and if the contract didn’t get renewed, he was probably going to have to move back in with his mom while he looked for a job. It was truly a future worth risking death via alien plague to avoid.
“Look, Dan, I know you called to try and recruit me,” she continued, “but maybe you should just let me return the favor. Even if you didn’t have the right degree or any experience in the right fields, you were probably one of the best minds in the department before everyone left.”
“The rest of the scientists were stuck on what they thought they knew.” Frustration dripped from Doctor Weathers’ voice. “But you could think outside the box. Almost everything we know about science needs to be thrown out the window now that we’ve seen what the invaders could do. They simply weren’t willing to turn their backs on decades of possibly incorrect training. Plus, you just cracked open one of the biggest scientific mysteries known to mankind, and whatever energy you have coursing through your blood is the key. I’m going to be honest about that; I mostly just want you for your body.”
Dan sputtered, unable to respond as Doctor Weather delivered the last line with a completely deadpan voice. His mind whirled. Leave the Army? They weren’t paying him much, but they had been his first real job after he got his masters degree. He mostly just didn’t want to get arrested for leaking state secrets or wasting government funds.
Still, Dan remembered his last job search. Months of watching his bank account dwindle while hurling resumes and cover letters into the void. Week after week without responses only to jump at e-mails that would invariably thank him for his time while letting him know that he was overqualified for the position.
“Relax, kid,” she chuckled. “You’re going to have to work out more and be a whole lot more female before I get around to sexually harassing you. I’ll talk to the boss, but I’m almost certain he’ll approve a job offer for you. I’ve had standing authority to offer any of my former researchers a job ever since I left, and I suspect that you counted even before your little breakthrough. Plus, I think the boss is going to like you. Just wait out your contract and don’t make any waves. The Army will ‘go in another direction,’ and you’ll be free to sign on with Thoth without triggering any of the non-disclosures and non-competes in your contract.”
The rest of the month went quickly. Dan learned that the wrist guards of the tall and skinny aliens all contained mechanisms for focusing his new energy, but actually doing anything productive with that energy was another story. He had learned how to use a wrist guard to transform the energy into a new format, but he couldn’t control the energy once it left his body. After he gave himself some third degree burns experimenting with a fire focus, Dan decided enough was enough. As curious as he was, he would wait for his new job before experimenting any further. The last thing he needed was to accidentally annihilate himself right when his life was about to turn around.
Then the month ended and things went almost exactly as Doctor Weathers predicted. The Army, through a disinterested captain, assured Dan that “although his work had been exemplary, his services would no longer be needed.”
Just like that, four years of Dan’s life ended without pomp or fanfare. The Captain assured Dan that the department and all of its artifacts would be turned over to ‘top men’ for further research and testing, but Dan had seen Indiana Jones. He knew what that meant.
On the first of the next month, the job offer came in the mail. What Doctor Weathers hadn’t told him was exactly how much money he would be making.
Apparently the Thoth Foundation was loaded, and they were happy to share a fairly significant chunk of their money with Daniel in exchange for a five-year exclusive contract. He didn’t even blink as he signed it.
Even if they were exploiting him, what could he do about it? Try to find a competitor and sell them government secrets or his services? No, that sounded like a good way to end up in the loony bin, prison, or dead. Plus, Samantha had never steered him wrong. If she was willing to vouch for the Thoth Foundation, they at least had to be decent people.
Still, that didn’t stop Dan from looking into his new employers. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do with his time. Unfortunately, all he could find were dark rumors and speculation. All he could make out for sure was that its founder was a billionaire dozens of times over from an empire of video game and entertainment franchises.
Apparently, he devoted a good portion of that money to technological research and philanthropy. Dan didn’t know much about the philanthropy, a lot of it looked like the usual rubbing of shoulders between the rich and politicians, but he was hardly in any position to know. On the other hand, the Thoth Foundation’s research was second to none. Almost a tenth of the equipment he used at the lab had a Thoth Foundation patent somewhere in its development.
In the end, he ended up back where he started: unsure as to what he was getting into, weighing the potential salary and Sam’s endorsement against a leap into the unknown. Eventually, the promised salary won out. He might be working for an enigmatic billionaire, but there was no denying he was generous with those billions. The number of zeros at the end of Dan’s salary went a long way toward silencing his uncertainty.
Five days later, he was leaving his new apartment, having moved from Washington DC to Albany, New York to live closer to the Foundation. After getting lost twice due to his GPS fritzing out, he finally arrived at the Foundation’s headquarters.
Rather than a lush, multi-acre campus with golf carts and ‘innovation incubation centers,’ it was a military compound. Dan had no idea what to expect, but a twelve-foot concrete wall covered in razor wire and studded with cameras wasn’t it. He had to give a blood sample to get in, which they compared to the one they had on file. That was mildly distressing. He had never given them a baseline for their file.
Finally, he found himself waiting in a conference room while a well-built man in his early twenties stood in the corner watching him. The young man was wearing a well-tailored and expensive suit that clearly showed the bulge on his hip where he carried a handgun. Dan shifted in his seat slightly, wondering what the hell he had gotten himself into. Even when he had been working for the Army, security had been nowhere near this tight.
After an interminable wait, the door to the conference room opened and Samantha strode in. She was wearing slacks and a button down shirt, all business casual without betraying a hint of their paramilitary surroundings.
Behind her, a spry sixty-year-old man positively bounded into the room. Despite his age, the man still had a full head of mostly grey hair. His brown eyes burned with manic energy, and he couldn’t stop smiling as he focused them on Dan. A second later, he was across the room, slapping Dan on the back and engulfing his hand in a firm handshake.
“Thrush, my boy,” he said excitedly, a slight southern burr in his voice. “It’s good to have you on board. Sam told me about what you’ve done, and I have to say that it’s absolutely top-notch. Everyone but her has been so stodgy about researching the alien tech that we’ve gotten absolutely nowhere, but with you here, I hope to change that. We’re going to do great things together, my boy, great things!”
“Sir…” Dan glanced over at Doctor Weather, who rolled her eyes before taking a seat, “I, uh, don’t know who you are. I don’t really know what’s going on, to be honest. Doctor Weathers just told me that I should accept the offer from the Thoth Foundation when it got sent my way, and that was good enough for me.”
“Sorry!” The man was still grinning and shaking Dan’s hand excitedly. “Wherever are my manners? The name is Henry Ibis, and I run the Thoth foundation! The goal has always been to take humanity to the next level, find a way to throw off the chains of the mundane.
“The aliens are just the newest avenue!” Henry finally released Dan’s hand as he kept rambling excitedly. “We’re researching a whole lot of things at the same time. Improved spaceflight, practical consumer cybernetics, robotics, improved virtual reality, and as of right now, alien magic.”
“I’m confused,” Dan glanced back over at Samantha who ignored his eyes, leaving him to Ibis’ mercy. “I could find barely anything on the web about the Thoth Foundation, and everything I could find was from a bunch of crackpots. I don’t even know how an operation this expansive is funded. According to the message boards, the rumor is that you’re part of the illuminati or something?”
“Those sticks in the mud?” Ibis answered. “No, they’re too busy setting trade policy and trying to control the media. No, I made my money off of the human imagination. Immersive virtual reality games, artificially intelligent virtual secretaries, that sort of thing. After a while, though, ripping off Tolkein or making a science fiction video game just isn’t enough. I wanted to be there on the bleeding edge. Once humanity took the next step, I wanted to be the one responsible for that step, whatever it may be.”
“Wait.” Dan tried to slow down the exuberant man. “You’re saying that the Illuminati is real? I said that as a joke!”
“Oh they’re real all right.” Ibis nodded. “We have a couple technology-sharing agreements with them. I might have them beat in software, but there’s no way I would be able to match their research in nanites. Plus, they’re the ones with all the connections to the government. How would I be able to buy all the artifacts from the alien incursion without their help?”
“What!” Dan and Doctor Weathers interjected simultaneously.
“Now Daniel,” Ibis continued with a dramatic wink. “May I call you Dan?”
Dan nodded mutely, his mind traveling a mile a minute. He didn’t have the faintest clue who Henry Ibis was, but whatever was going on was completely above his pay grade. All he knew was that the man was powerful, likely owning more senators than Dan had pairs of socks. Ibis was happy to see him, and that was about all that mattered. Having someone like Ibis mad at you didn’t seem conducive to a long life or career.
“So, Dan,” Ibis wrapped an arm around Dan’s shoulder. “Samantha says that you can use the aliens’ magic, but your problems right now are a matter of power and control.”
“Yes sir,” he replied. “It seems like the magic has to be channeled through a focus of some sort. I think the aliens used their wrist guards. I can channel the energy, and once I do so, it changes from its raw form into something more usable. I’ve been able to activate wrist guards corresponding to electricity, fire, ice, raw telekinetic force, and gravity so far.
“Unfortunately, I can’t really do anything more than convert the energy. When I create electricity, I shock myself and short out electronics around me. When I create fire, I burn myself. That sort of thing. I’ve tried popping the covers on the wrist guards off, but their insides are covered with incredibly fine carvings that glow whenever I try to channel energy through them. They almost look like microchips, but I don’t know the first thing about their architecture, so I was afraid to fiddle with one.”
“Good, this is even better than I hoped!” Ibis nodded excitedly. “Now, Dan my boy, I think I know just the thing for your predicament. Tell me, have you played any of my complete immersion VR games?”
“Sorry sir,” Dan shook his head. “My mom wouldn’t shut up about how they would ‘rot my mind,’ and the Army barely gave me enough to pay my student loans and make rent. I just didn’t have the spare money.”
“It’s all right,” Dan’s new boss replied, a flash of disappointment on his face. “One of the major commonalities in all of those games is that the player starts off weak and helpless, but over time they learn skills and abilities that let them triumph over obstacles. A warrior might learn special sword strikes, and a wizard might learn a specific spell, but what all of them need is something to track their status and aid them in learning new abilities.”
“Tell me, Dan…” The excitement was back in Ibis’ eyes. “What have you heard about using a System?”
