The Unskillful Thaumaturge

XVI

Lillian slumped down behind her desk and pulled her planner out from her backpack. She had been delaying making a schedule for the last week and had almost missed several classes, and now she was finally pressuring herself to keep track of her calendar. She opened the planner to one of the front pages- a schedule for the month of January- and began fishing in her desk for a pencil, eventually drawing out one of Daria's erasable pens. Wondering how it had ended up across the room in her desk, she began to write in Intro Thaum at nine o'clock on every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, followed by Differential Equations and Intro Electronics. She scribbled down her quantum mechanics class on Tuesday and Thursday nights and her quantum and electronics labs on Thursday, followed by her Tuesday thaum lab.

She considered marking down her DIAO Monday appointments but decided that it was too risky to write down DIAO and instead put down the letters APPT to keep her roommates from figuring out where she went on Mondays. Finally, she added lunch with Angela the next week, some Electronics office hours she was planning to go to, and her appointment with Professor Kern in several weeks.

Just as she was finishing writing the last word of the schedule, she heard the door click open and the pen was inexorably drawn out of her hand.

"Lillian," Daria scolded playfully, smiling in the doorway. "That's my pen."

☙❧

"So I really don't seem to understand why we're covering this right now- I mean, does it have anything to do with thaumaturgy or omniscience at all? It seems to be just math..." The girl had a dissatisfied expression on her face, causing Dakota to recall her as sending him that same look at the end of class a week ago.

"It's thaumaturgical theory. I know it has math in it. You wouldn't get an engineering major or something along those lines if you didn't want to use math- it's the same thing here." Dakota automatically put a hand up to adjust his beanie.

"But that's essentially what you said to that girl Jennifer last week. You said it's theory. That's not my question. I'm asking what the point of all this math is and what we actually learn from it, not just what the math is part of. I don't see the point of computing convenience unless I know what I'm going to do with it and how it's going to help me with omniscience or whatever." She began to look slightly frustrated at this point. "I'm taking thaumaturgy because I want to figure out how better to use it and how to explain it, not to learn how to use a calculator!"

"Calm down already! I get it!" Dakota was irritated enough that he pulled a small key out of his pocket and began fiddling with it. "Look, I promise you that by March we'll be covering the Tenants of Omniscience and some new topics in thaumaturgy that also don't seem to have anything to do with it, but I think you'll like it- enough that you'll stop complaining about doing math. But first we need to establish some important concepts and starting with convenience is essential." He rounded the desk, the saltshaker around his neck swinging, and sat down on a random pile of books near the couch. "This works like a physics class. You might hate having to start with kinematics, but when you get to energy and momentum, things start getting interesting. Now, honestly, office hours are meant so that people who are struggling can get better at the topic, not so people who have random questions can get them answered. Do you have anything related to the actual subject matter to ask about?" As he was talking, Dakota realized that he could have been a bit nicer, even with his tone of voice conveying complete seriousness, then dismissed the thought- the girl, after all, had been the first one to give him that nasty look.

She shook her head and flounced out the door. Dakota sighed and went back to his grading.

☙❧

Diane walked into Galena's office and placed a large, heavy-looking box on the table. "There, look through those," she suggested.

"What is that?" Galena asked, looking up from her computer.

"Yearbooks from just about every Eugene high school from several different years. It took me a while to locate them but hopefully they'll have some pictures of the dead kid- remember, he was that age."

"Could there be someone else doing this?" Galena said pointedly.

"No," Diane shortly replied. "I'm looking into a new security system. And, besides, what were you just doing anyway?"

"Looking up different ways for people to fake fingerprints. None look viable here."

"Well, you could do this instead."

"Are you kidding? I'm taking this to the conference room and getting everyone to help me out with it. No way am I doing this by myself." To emphasize her point, Galena stood up and hoisted the box off of the table, then quickly put it back down, surprised at the weight. "How many yearbooks are in there?"

"A lot," Diane responded immediately as Galena pressed a button on the phone and then picked it up. "Hey everyone, this is Galena. If you aren't working on anything, please come over to the conference room and help me look through these old yearbooks for the dead kid. I want to find some more information about him and we could very well find out if he was a student at one of these high schools. You all know what he looks like so shouldn't be too hard. See you in the conference room!" She put the phone down and stumbled out of her office, hefting the heavy box.

☙❧

Rolf took a second yearbook from the box and began slowly looking through the pictures so as not to miss a clue, then sighed again, looking around the table. After Galena's announcement, he had stood up from his office chair and headed into the hall, followed by Derek and Evan. When they had arrived in the conference room, Galena had looked rather disappointed. "Just you guys? Where's Erica and Janelle?" After a few seconds of asking pointed questions, Derek had revealed that Erica was in her office supposedly doing something important and, according to Evan, Janelle was working on the DNA test. "She'll barely even let me look at what she's doing," he had complained. "I have to learn how to do it at some point, you know?"

Rolf knew. But what he did not know was whether or not they were going to find the dead kid in any of the yearbook pictures. Because of his strange attire, a T-shirt and flip flops in November, and his mysterious accent, Rolf was fairly sure that there wouldn't be a single picture of the dead kid in any of the yearbooks.

"Hey," Evan said suddenly, and Galena jerked her head up from the page she was studying. "Look at this." Derek bent his head over the page as Evan pointed proudly to a picture of a young woman. "That's my mom."

Derek laughed and patted him on the back. "For a second there, I thought you'd found the kid."

Evan just shook his head, his eyes lingering on the picture for a little while before he flipped to the next page of the yearbook. When Rolf looked back down to his own page, he noticed that whoever Diane had obtained this yearbook from had drawn a heart around a boy's face in the top right corner of the page. He chuckled and began examining the next line of pictures.