The Unskillful Thaumaturge

XX

Lillian creaked open the door of her quantum lab classroom and, striding quickly along the hall and down the stairs, began to contemplate what she would say to the man from her door. She first wanted to ask him who he was and what he had been doing there, but after that it wasn't so clear. What part of the entire mess should she ask him about next? The footage, the dead boy, the key, the mirror case, the break-in... there was so much that she felt she needed to know before she could understand any of what was going on. And yet where to start? The dead boy was the chronological beginning, but the footage was the strongest connection, and the key the most confusing.

As she left campus, walking along the edge of the park, she wondered whether there even was a sensible explanation to any of this, or one which fell within the limits of current collective knowledge. Thaumaturgy itself, after all, had still been fantasy only hours before Lillian's birth. Maybe something else entirely was involved with the mystery of its origin.

Right now, however, as she entered the DIAO building, that was none of Lillian's concern. Her goal involved conducting an interview and getting answers to her questions, as she informed Diane upon reaching the conference room.

"Now, hold on, Lillian, I just want to give you some information to start with, okay?" Diane replied.

"What kind of information?"

"Just some pointers and warnings about this guy while Erica puts barriers on your clothes. He's really powerful. And when I say that I mean that some of the stuff he's done so far is a bit disconcerting in terms of actual capability."

"He put up an illusion of words. Outside the cell. He also blew everyone's hair into their faces for a good five seconds. That may not sound like all that much, but Erica traced it and apparently he was using telekinesis on the air. Oh, and he kept moving around the forceps down the hall in the lab, while still in his cell," Derek explained.

Lillian inhaled sharply. "All this?"

"Oh, and I forgot to mention, he seems to be attempting a hunger strike."

"All this without food?"

"I don't exactly know what's going on, but Erica says-"

"His efficacy is ridiculously high," she finished. "And yes, I'm done with the clothes now, thanks. But my efficacy is maybe thirty or forty percent. The current world record is around sixty-two. From what I've been able to figure out, his is around eighty."

"And..." Lillian prompted.

"The point is that he can do much more thaumaturgy with much less energy. In fact, he uses approximately half the energy I do, three-quarters the record-setter's. Now, I'm not sure exactly how he's quite this good, but it does mean one thing. He's extremely dangerous."

"He's over the world record..."

"...by nearly twenty percentage points."

"Please don't provoke him," Diane explained.

"Point taken," Lillian replied. "Now can we please begin the interview?"

❧☙

Dakota started as he heard the door to the adjacent room creaking open. He bolted up from his spot beneath the camera and raced to the one-way mirror, squinting and attempting in vain to see through to the other side. But even without being able to see the people outside the room, he still heard a familiar voice.

"What is he doing?"

It was the girl's voice- the girl from the dorm room, the girl who had taken his key, the girl who seemed to operate in conjunction with the DIAO. Dakota cocked his head towards the glass, trying to hear what they were discussing.