The Apprentice’s Path

Chapter 2-4

Why would a captain of the Army be in the administrative building of the old Alchemy Department building? The secretary who escorted me knocked before I could hesitate, and I went into the room. The Captain was sitting behind a desk full of folders and papers. He seemed like he had been here, in this office, for a while, and it wasn't a temporary thing. What was happening here?

"Ah, Miss Bedwen." He stood up and extended his hand for a handshake. It was firm, but not forceful. "I'm so glad to see you here. I've asked around, and you seem to be quite a talented student. We're so lucky to have you."

Why did it feel like he was buttering me up? Why would a low-level grunt job temp get interviewed by a Captain, no less? (I was quite fuzzy on the Kalmar Republic's army ranks, but my understanding is that a Captain is above a Lieutenant, so not the lowest rank).

"Thank you," I said, sitting down on the chair. "I must admit I'm quite surprised at being here. The job description wasn't very explicit. I thought it would be more of a repair job…"

Capt. Greggs smiled at me, leaning back in his leather chair.

"Oh, no. It would be a waste of such a talented mind to have you do such menial tasks! We have already hired a drop-out student for the intended job. You are here for another project. A side project of the Intelligence Corps."

The Intelligence Corps? What kind of job would an alchemist do there? I only had a vague idea of what they did, but the only job I could think of was in explosives making — and if there's anything that interests me less than the machine repair job, it's explosives making. Sure, at first explosives are cool things that go boom. But after living for years in a mining town (and assisting mining teams with calculations) I'd realized that exploding things in mines mostly meant lots of calculations based on estimates of the type of rock and density and air pockets and angles — all those estimates being no more than wild a*s guessing. The haphazard manner in which those calculations were followed — miners frequently did things because they "felt a hunch" or "well, ten pounds of gunpowder seemed too little for this hard rock" made all that even more pointless. The worst bit was that usually, the miners were right. My university education and skills would be completely wasted on that.

"I do not specialize in explosives." Starting to think of it, the job I could get at the coach station sounded better and better. Sure, it probably wouldn't look too good on my CV, but at least repairing machines would be real Alchemy. And it certainly paid better than waitressing (I never got any tips — can't bear smiling to a client).

"Yes, I've seen your student record. Specializing in machinery and industrial processes, aren't you? Don't worry, that's precisely what we'd like to hire you for."

That's a relief. But what would the Intelligence Corps be working on in machining? Trains, cars and chemical manufacturing are, in general, civilian industries. Save the reinforced cars and trucks the military occasionally uses, there is nothing the military does that civilians can't. And the weapons and ammunitions research is definitely not part of the Intelligence work.

"We wouldn't want you to enter this project blind, so I was authorized to show you a part of it. Just remember, everything we discussed in this interview falls under the confidentiality agreement you just signed. Here, look." The captain carefully took a tiny object out of the drawer and handed it to me.

When I took it, I was deeply disappointed. It was just a button in some glass casing. A button? What's so special about it? It sure looked different, but it's not like buttons are only used in the Kalmar Republic.

Capt. Greggs probably saw the skepticism in my face and decided to disperse some of it.

"The button may look ordinary. But you need to look more carefully," and he pointed at a microscope that was sitting in the corner of the office.

How did I not notice it before? Now that I saw it, it sure stood out. It was the only practical thing among all the reams of paper in this office. I examined it; it was a modern microscope, with underneath electrical lighting powered by a battery. It must have cost a fortune! Electricity was a completely new field, and lightbulbs were still very expensive — which is why we still use gas lighting in the city. It's a pity such a great tool lies to waste in a paper pusher's office.

I carefully placed the button with the case onto the stage, turned on the fiddly illuminator — and saw nothing due to the reflections. Playing with the diaphragm and the aperture did not help much — I needed to open the case.

"May I?" I asked, more as a token of politeness than as a real question, as I took the button out of the case, using some tweezers. The upper side of the button didn't seem to have anything interesting, even after I moved it around quite a bit, examining every millimeter of its surface.

"What? Oh, yes, do take it out. The interesting part is on the back."

I turned it over, and sure, I could see it: an inscription in tiny, tiny symbols, that looked a bit like ancient Yllamese, but I wasn't really sure. The symbols were tiny and barely visible even with the microscope's 400x magnification. That meant the symbols were less than a millimeter long. It was very fine work, very detailed. Only some of the best goldsmiths could do work this fine. But why do this much work, for a button that was made of simple plastic?

I continued examining the button. Symbols like that are usually used for magic — to guide the path for it. Despite specializing in Alchemy, I'd attended quite a few courses on Applied Magic. I never intended to become a mage, which required an Initiation, and intensive study of magic. And who'd hire an alchemist who's a magician?

I couldn't use magic — not before the Initiation. But I could sense it. All magicals can sense magic — both dark and light, although the precision decreases when it's the opposite magic.

So I stood up and breathed, closing my eyes, trying to feel the surrounding environment through the sixth sense. Meditation is necessary for all arall, whether we go through Initiation or not, to learn self-control. Otherwise, you could end up using magic before Initiation — and that could end up badly.

Feeling magic is not like seeing it. It's more like feeling another person's presence behind you. You don't see him or hear him — but you know he's behind you. That's how feeling magic works. It's a vague, inexact feeling. Unlike the beauty and mathematical accuracy of alchemy, magic is vaguer. So, I tried to feel the room and its contents. I felt the Captain. He was large and covered in objects — some of them dangerous. Feeling dangerous magic is almost instinctive — our bodies feel it more keenly than other types of magic. I tried to feel what was directly in front of me, concentrating on the area around my arms, where the microscope and the button were. I felt the microscope — its lamp was partly regulated by magic, and fire-related magic always feels like danger. But there was nothing else that was magical there. I breathed again, making my last attempt to see anything else — and that's when I felt it. A really vague feeling, like a feather falling on a thick wool jacket — but there was something there.

Captain Greggs, who'd been observing me this whole time without uttering a single word, decided to say something.

"So, Miss Bedwen, did you feel any magic in the button?"

"Ah, no. I thought there might be something magical in them, but I felt nothing." The vague feeling I had was not enough.

"Oh, I see. Well, that's a pity, but I guess it's expected. Only one of our most experienced magicals could see the symbol. Mages that have very fine vision are rare."

"And what did they see? Did the magic follow the symbol?"

"I guess you can turn off the microscope now, Miss Bedwen. Now that you've seen it, I guess I can share the details with you."

After I turned off the illuminator, placed the button back into its casing, and covered the microscope with the protective cloth, I sat down on the chair again. Captain Greggs leaned in, interlacing his fingers, probably trying to tell me as little as he could while awakening my curiosity.

"How well do you know the history of Kalmar, Miss Bedwen?" he asked, and I blinked at the non sequitur.

"Well, as well as any graduate of a school does, I guess. It's not like we focus much on it in University — there are plenty of other, more important things."

He nodded as if saddened by the state of my education. It was pretty offensive — I was a good student, although I never showed interest in anything beyond coursework in anything but Alchemy and anything related to it. Applied Magic had only been tangentially interesting to me, as alchemists need to collaborate with magicians — I thought I could give it a go. I gave up once I realized how unsystematic and haphazard magic was.

He stood up and pointed at a big world map that was hanging on the wall.

"You see this?" he traced the borders of Kalmar with his fingers. "This is Kalmar. And this," he pointed at a tiny island on the south coast, quite close to Yllam. "This is Forg island. It belonged to Yllam until recently, when after a small border skirmish, it ended in our hands."

The so-called Forg island was so tiny it was but a speck on the map. I approached it and lowered my head to see better. It almost seemed like it had been added with a pen after printing. I looked more closely. Yes, it was definitely added at a later point; the ink was a bit darker than every other line on the map. Nobody but the military would care about that island; even they probably only cared about it for some geostrategic reasons.

"Well," Captain Greggs clearly saw my skepticism. "To secure the island, we stationed a platoon there."

An entire platoon for an island that small? The island must be quite important. But poor guys. They must have been bored to death. You can't even march very far (I was fuzzy on military entertainment, but in my understanding, marching was as entertaining as it got outside of fighting).

"The lieutenant commanding the unit decided to show some initiative," because he was bored out of his mind, most likely, "and started to dig around the island to prepare fortifications." Or rather, the lieutenant had to make his men do something, so they wouldn't mutiny out of boredom. "That's when they found the buttons — a huge stash of them, in fact. They all have those symbols in the back — different symbols."

"How many buttons did they find?" A modern skilled jeweler could produce one or two of these a day, so depending on how many there were…

"Thousands. Tens of thousands. And all of them had slightly different symbols. Now, I guess you know what that means."

I did. It could only mean one thing. The buttons were produced in a factory. In an assembly line superior to anything we could do today. It's not like we don't have factories in Kalmar. Kalmar is the most advanced country in the world, and our Alchemy is the best (if you ignore Yllam — which I do — but they focus on pharmaceuticals anyway). We have the factories that made the first steam trains, sewing machines, and we can mass produce most household goods. And the tolerances of parts are quite good — our factories can machine parts with tolerances as low as 0.1 microns (or a millionth of an inch, as some people still insist on saying). But to produce not just thousands of identical objects a day — but to individualize each of them to this level of precision, and with magic — that was something you did only if it was for something expensive. Magic that fine was costly; you wouldn't use it for something as insignificant as buttons.

"Are these buttons actually buttons?" Maybe they were used for something else. After all, all this effort just for buttons — seemed too much.

"You thought of this too, right? Well, as far as we can see, they are indeed just buttons."

If somebody had spent what seems like huge amounts of effort — something that we can do but is very costly — for something as cheap and insignificant as buttons… That would mean…

"These are the remains of an alchemically superior society." If it wasn't a hoax made by bored soldiers, but soldiers don't tend to have the patience to do something like this.

"It seems so. And other things found on the island…"

"What other things?"

"Well, if you want to find out, you must sign the contract. We won't share anything more until you sign with us."

He was tempting me, offering me the possibility of a lifetime — but I would have to sign a contract with the Intelligence Corps. And I never liked the idea of working for the government too much.

"Well, can I think about it? It's such a big decision."

"Sure, Miss Bedwen. You've got three weeks to think about it."