The Unskillful Thaumaturge

XXIX

"What are you even supposed to do with this?" wondered a girl sitting in the front row.

"You're supposed to put a cuttlefish illusion on it," Amandi replied.

"What's that?" another student asked.

"It's an illusion that essentially takes the appearance of whatever is behind something and projects it straight onto the surface for any point of view. It isn't completely foolproof, but it does make things almost invisible," Brandon replied immediately.

Amandi nodded. "So essentially, that's what you're going to do for each thing. The piece of paper should be fairly easy, since there's only one surface to worry about. But when you get to the sphere, and then the stack of books, it should get harder."

Lillian stared blankly at the objects on the table in front of her and watched as Brandon concentrated hard, trying to create the illusion. "Is this harder than telekinesis?" she asked softly.

"Oh, yeah, lots. The difference is that you have to create differing perspectives for observers in various positions. So you can have a grainy illusion, with only a few different visuals, kind of like some holographic thing, or you can have a more convincing one, but the better it is, the harder it turns out to be. I'm guessing Amandi is just looking for a basic low-resolution illusion, so nothing too complicated."

Lillian nodded, realizing how little she really knew about thaumaturgy.

"Has it started working for you yet?" Brandon asked.

Lillian forlornly shook her head. "No. I have an appointment with Kern in a couple of weeks, but until then, I'll just have to deal with it. I- if you don't want to be my lab partner, that's all right. I don't want to make your grades any worse."

"You've said that already, Lillian, it's fine. Even if you can't do thaumaturgy, you can write, and you writing the group report is good enough for me."

"Thanks, Brandon," she said warmly. "It's really nice of you to put up with me as your partner and everything-"

"Yeah, no problem," he responded, and began staring hard at the piece of paper atop the desk.

❧☙

Dakota sat anxiously at his desk, alternating between staring at his computer and behind him at an empty corner of the room. He wondered whether Rory was doing anything interesting, and if he should go and ask.

If there's anything you need to do, they'll let you know.

"You're probably right."

In the meantime, why don't you see what the Nine are up to?

"What? No!" Dakota cried. "That's much too dangerous! Why would you even want to do that?"

It would be more interesting than just sitting here. I'm getting bored at this point.

"Bored with what?"

Rory did all our grading. We don't have anything important to do.

"We can at least start thinking about the lecture I'm giving tonight."

What are you planning to talk about?

"I think it's time to start talking about defining omniscience."

"What did you say about defining omniscience?" Rory spoke from the corner of the room, and Dakota nearly jumped out of his seat.

"Oh, hi, were you thinking about your lecture?"

"Yes! Will you at least let me know you're coming instead of scaring me like that? Make a noise or something?"

Rory shook his head. "Okay, whatever, I will. Anyway, do you need help with something?"

"Not really. I was just wondering if anything interesting is going on."

"Not unless you're willing to play things at 1/2400 speed."

Dakota scoffed. "Don't remind me. Besides, that was just for my sake. I needed to be secure before anyone started following me."

"It may be good for you, but it could cause problems for other people."

"What other people?"

"You tell me, you seem to be the expert."

"Whatever." Dakota turned back to his desk and took out a sheet of paper. "I have to start thinking about how I'm going to teach this."

❧☙

"So what would you say we gained overall from the interviews yesterday?" Galena asked, looking down the table.

"Let's see. Just a whole bunch of weird quirks about the dead kid, plus the fact that we would have to contact the Eugene police department to get the records of who originally found him hanging out in that park. Other than that, I don't think it was very helpful," Erica replied.

"So I'll start looking into talking to the Eugene police department and that funeral home. In the meantime, is there anything else we could be doing?" Derek wondered.

"You know what, I think it's probably a good idea to see if we can get interviews or reinterviews with more people who might be distantly connected, like some of the other cops who were at the Thaumatogenesis, or anyone who might have been connected to Lillian wherever she grew up," Diane responded. "It might not help the investigation, but we can at least try."

"I feel kind of like we're at a dead end here," Galena said. "I don't know if it's just that the case is getting hard, and that there haven't been any new leads, but I feel like maybe there just isn't anything else to find out."

"Don't say that," Evan scoffed. "Everything has an explanation. We're not at a dead end, it's just getting hard."

"Ever since you two started here, we've had more progress within two weeks, pretty much, than the DIAO has ever had during the fifteen years it's been investigating this. We may seem to be at a dead end, but it's not nearly as bad as the one that we had been stuck on for years," Diane reminded her. "And hey, at least we found someone from the footage that we can look into more."

"If only we could actually talk to him," Rolf sighed. "I wish he'd just let us ask him everything, and that he didn't have any reservations about telling us."

"He's incredibly powerful," Erica replied. "Asking him the questions would be dangerous in and of itself. And I couldn't possibly expect what the answers would be."