Short Story

The Door Always Knows

It was a resigned wave of the hand. Perhaps it was a wave of defeat, or maybe apathy. Grandfather grunted to underscore the general dismissal. “Those doors there are fickle. Never mind them.”

Steven looked over the oaken mass of the large French doors with a general weariness, but for different reasons than his grandfather. Alone, it was not in the strangeness of the door’s size or apparent elevated level of craftsmanship, but the knowledge of adding yet another improvement project to a growing, expansive list. Something made him stop and take them in, like an itch on his eyes that he could not scratch without first examining the door before moving on.

“How are they fickle, Pops?” Steven asked. He twisted the knob and rattled the doors in their frame.

Grandfather grumbled and huffed as the world weary tend to do. “Sometimes the lock gets stuck, sometimes the handle… and sometimes, the entire damn door. It has a mind of its own.  I wouldn’t worry about it.  You can ignore them.”

Which meant immediately to Steven that he had to do the exact opposite, because ignoring them would only lead to other problems down the road.  He wished again that he was not the only family around to help Pops, but he was, so he knew he had to deal.  He was the responsible one, the smart one, the one with the easy career, and the one sibling that would take care of it since dad had died. He was the sibling that would deal with all of it… Pops’ failing health, the way he forgot about what he had said the day or hour before, sometimes mistaking Steven for Gregory, Steven’s dad and Pops’ son.  But Gregory had passed on before Steven had left primary school, and Pops had tried his best to be a good father figure. He was the one that had put Steven through University, and encouraged him to seek out what he wanted to do. All in all, he had been a great grandfather.

Maybe that was the actual reason that Steven was the one to deal with it. He loved Pops for what he had been in Steven’s own life, more so than what Pops had been to Steven’s brother and sisters.

Looking back on it now, Steven appreciated it all the way down to his core.  But what he did not appreciate all the work it would take to get Pops’ place ready to sell on the open market.  His grandfather needed care. Specialized care. The brochure, with its heavy card stock and high gloss finish again poked at Steven’s thigh through his pants pocket, reminding him incessantly that Pops couldn’t stay here, at least, not for much longer. His dementia was getting worse. And the house… it needed a lot of work.

Steven let his hand linger on the brass knob, and studied the doors. Pops kept moving down the hallway, headed for the study to get back to his tea and the afternoon Football Club match playing over the radio.

“Where did this…” Steven trailed off, Pops was already out of earshot. He continued, talking to himself. “Where does this door even go!?”

He racked his memory, trying to remember if he had ever been into the room beyond. He started to think like a typical engineer, breaking down the problem. These were French doors, internal to the house, and not on an exterior wall. Hinges hidden by the door frame, so the doors swung inward. A bathroom wouldn’t have French doors… the study-slash-library-slash-den was down at the end of the hallway where Pops had already retreated. The house was old and odd to boot, but having two libraries seemed a bit out of place even for an old country manor. A sunroom, maybe? A ladies sitting room? But why the ornate doors? Those would have stood out in his memory. He had been in this house countless times. And this would not be new?

Like so many larger estates across England, Wales, and Scotland, a large number of castles, country estates, and manor houses had sprung up over the centuries, but the families had slowly wilted under the pressures of modernity and the never ending assault of taxes and upkeep. Pops’ house was on that list. Maybe three hundred years ago, it was a well appointed respectable country house for a barrister or functionary of the court, but now, it was just a pile of rocks and beams that needed to be hit with a very large remodeling budget and teams of competent workers.

Neither of which Steven had on hand. He ran his hand over the carvings in the wood, feeling the ornate and complex patterns that seemed to make sense. As soon as he thought he found a pattern, the sense fled from his consciousness, leaving only a sense of perplexed confusion in its wake. The doors were strange. But in a house full of strangeness, it was just another item to be tacked onto the list.

Plaster falling. Old switches burnt out and the plates blackened. Exposed wiring. The leaks and the creaks, and there was probably vermin to boot. Wouldn’t be a surprise at this point.

Steven sighed, sounding more like his grandfather than he knew. Honestly a match and some petrol would fix this too, he thought. But he didn’t have the heart to do that to his Pops… the old man needed some money to cover the care that the NHS simply couldn’t do wholly. Steven moved to catch up to his grandfather in the study.

“Pops?”

His grandfather sat in his chair, his tea held in both hands, aptly listening to the match. A small bear sat in the seat across from him, holding a tea cup of its own in large oversized paws. The bear’s lips were pursed as they blew across the top of the cup.

“Uh.” Steven tried. Every word in his vast lexicon failed to be shaped by his mouth or his brain.

“This is Posey. Posey this is Steven, my grandson.” Pops waved at both of them with a free hand in an attempt to provide the heavy lifting of a formal introduction.

“Pleasure. Harold has told me so much about you!” The bear squeaked, gently placing the cup in it’s matching saucer with both paws.

“Careful, Posey,” Pops mumbled.

“Oh stop it, you old goat. When was the last time I spilt?” Posey admonished Pops, sliding off the chair and onto her hind legs. She only stood about four feet tall, at the most.

“Last week, and it took me an hour to scrub the rug. Because of your two sugars, I might add.”

“Three, love. I take three sugars. But it was exercise, wasn’t it?” Posey laughed lightly, her snout lifting with each bark of her laugh. She waddled over and offered a paw covered in her dark mousey fur for Steven to shake.

Steven’s eyes must have been the size of dinner plates, and his eyebrows probably had retreated from his face. But he fell back to the social norm he was trained to use, and he shook the bear’s paw lightly with his hand.

“Ah, Posey is it?” Steven finally managed. “Nice to meet you.”

Posey smiled? Can bears smile? And turned back to her seat, lightly jumping up and dropping into the chair, sitting like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Your tea is right there, Stevey.” Pops pointed at the side table, the cup was still steaming lightly in the afternoon light slanting in through the wide windows overlooking the rear garden.

Steven took the cup and saucer, taking the open seat across from the two of them. The transistor radio crackled lightly from the side table, announcing the play calling as the match progressed. Steven could only focus on the bear, sipping lightly from the cup, while they eyed the biscuits sitting at the side of the saucer.

“There’s biscuits?” Steven interjected into the radio narrative.

Posey pointed at the cellophane roll sitting near the radio, “Help yourself, love.”

“Come on! Another yellow card!? Simmons, you twat.” Grandfather added his own commentary over the radio announcer in consternation.

“So your Grandfather tells me that you are trying to shuffle him out of his house?” Posey asked.

“Um. Well. Yes. Not so much as a shuffle, but a change,” Steven took a bite out of a biscuit, thinking how to best respond to a bear asking personal questions. “Ah… he needs some… help.”

“I am not an invalid. My age catches up now and then. So what? I can feed myself, dress myself, and pay the bills and no brochure in your pocket is going to change that. Now, can you two whisper and conspire while I listen to the bloody game?” Pops grumbled without turning from the radio.

Posey leaned forward and held a paw up to her snout, “You think he needs help?”

“Am I hallucinating?” Steven took another measured bite from the biscuit feeling as if he was in a trance.

“Do I have five arms or something? Bug eyes? Ooh, wings like a fairy?” Posey teased. “Although to be fair, I would love fairy wings.”

“What?”

“Oh, I think having fairy wings would be terribly convenient. Flit everywhere, if I could.”

“No, the fact that I am talking to a bear. That can talk back.”

“If you would listen, you would discover everything converses in its own way. So a bear is not all that strange when you think about it. Although, I do suppose talking to a dumb bear would have its challenges. Do you converse with dumb bears often?”

“Well, no…” Steven said.

“…Well, that is strange, innit? You don’t converse with bears often, you don’t converse with dumb bears at all, then a right smart bear having a conversation with you shouldn’t be an event of any note.” Posey winked, taking another sip from her cup. “Although, if you are hallucinating, that would mean you are the mad one, and in need of help, not your grandfather, which seems quite sound in comparison, if I were to say so.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess that makes sense?” Steven tilted his head and leaned back in reluctant defeat. What was he even trying to argue? Yes that was it, Pops moving out. He tried again. “He does need help though. It he isn’t getting any younger. He needs help here and there.”

“Of course. That makes sense. Of course, everyone needs a little help time and again. It takes a village to take care of the young, the old, and the sick. But… I think he is in good hands.”

“Come again?” Steven tilted his head at the phrase ‘good hands’. Wouldn’t it be good paws if she was speaking about herself? Was she?

“Between a loving grandson, such as yourself, and the folks in and around the neighborhood, your grandfather is in a great spot! All these great folk here to help him out and make sure he is happy, healthy, and well.” Posey laughed lightly, her voice was nearly musical. “The sheep on the property are useless, but that is because they are sheep. Baa baa and all that. Right helpless creatures, I, of course, blame the domestication. I have seen sheep in their more natural, untouched form and they are fierce!”

“The sheep?”

“Yes, dear, do try to keep up. The sheep? You are in Wales. Of course there are sheep.” Posey teased. “The sheep outnumber you all by three to one.”

“Yes, penalty kick! Go lads!” Grandfather yelled at the radio, his forgotten tea still clutched in one hand.

“Where do you live?” Steven was flailing. He knew he was flailing terribly. How does one converse with a bear and sound at ease? Can you be calm with a bear? Conversational Bear and Chill. That sounded like the name of a book somewhere.

“My house is next door.”

“With the Lancasters?”

Posey set down her drink in the cup. “No, silly. Not next door to the property. Next door to this room. Come, I will give you a proper tour. You can leave your tea.”

Steven looked at his tea guiltily and took a final swig. “Of course.”

She clambered down from the chair and crossed the room on her hind legs, turning the corner down the hallway. Steven felt as if he leapt from his seat to follow, setting his cup down on the table. Pops was lost in the broadcast. He turned down the hallway, attempting to catch up, and turned the corner to find Posey at the strange door, standing ajar.

“How? It was locked?” Steven said.

Posey grinned and tapped the carved door. “Naw. This door is clever. Like me. It opens when it needs to. It connects the neighborhood.”

“Neighborhood?”

“I swear to God you sound daft, Steven.” Posey rolled her eyes.

“I’m not!”

“You might be.”

Steven raised his hands in frustration. It felt like arguing with one of his own older siblings. “I’m not!”

Posey looked over him with an appraising eye, squinting as if making a decision. “Fine. You’re not. Come along. Mind your head.”

“What. The…” Steven stopped dead.

Posey was in a kitchen. A Posey-sized kitchen. The counters were a half a meter shorter, and everything was to scale to the small diminutive bear. It was quaint and cozy, decorated with small pots of greenery here and there, a window box of bushy herbs in the kitchen window, and copper pots of all sizes arrayed on hooks and wall boards.

“I borrowed the pans and pots designs from Julia Child’s kitchen design. It was very clever. Everything has a place and everything should be in its place.” Posey grinned widely and pointed to her table. “I have been working through her first cookbook. It takes some patience to get the ingredients for some of the dishes, but everything that I have tried so far has been delicious.”

“Its the butter.” Steven said distractingly, rock still in the doorway locked in abject wonder.

“Come in, Steven. Your previous assertion as to the state of your sanity is still very much in question.”

“Oh, of course.” Steven stepped into the kitchen, lowering his head, hunching over to fit. The air in the kitchen was warm, but fresh, and carried the hint of baking bread. He closed the door behind him, realizing it was a different size on this side. How could a door be different sizes on the same plane? His engineering mind attempted to kick in, but he was distracted on all sides by the oddness of being in a bear’s kitchen.

“Come out to the garden, I have some tomatoes and basil to pick for luncheon. Your grandfather bought some fresh mozzie balls… I think a Caprese will be splendid on a day like today.  Oh! Since I have you here, you can help gather some honey. The bees should be lazy by now.”

“Bees?”

“Yes, bees, silly. Buzz, buzz, wiggle their little fuzzy butts and make honey.” Posey laughed, shaking her own bear bottom back and forth. She stepped out the kitchen door, and looked over her shoulder. “Again, mind your head. Your grandfather calls my doorways ‘bloody scalpers’. The honey will be for the lemonade… I wonder if I should pop in on Mrs. Albright to see if she wants to join us.”

“She your neighbor?” Steven ducked through the doorway and stepped into a wide green country with tall trees and far off fields. The air smelled of sweet grass and heather, and brook bubbled its lazy way somewhere in the distance.

“She is in the neighborhood of course.”

Steven cupped his eyes and looked all around, seeing nothing but farmland and forest. “What neighborhood, Posey? I don’t see another building out here.”

“Oh, not here silly. This is my place. Mrs. Albright has a place all her own. I do have some neighbors, of a sort, about an hour walk in either direction on the lane. That was is the McCasilins, a nice family of badgers. Down the other are the Blackmasks.”

“And what are they? Possums? Foxes?” Steven felt that he had landed in Narnia. Any moment, Mr. Tumnus would come strolling up.

“No, of course not. With a name like that? They are obviously racoons.”

“Oh, of course. My apologies.” Steven said, teasingly.

Posey nodded seriously, missing his tone. “Of course you are forgiven, love. First time and all to my place, lots of questions to be had. Come this way, the apiary is near the fields. We can stop by the tomato garden and then move over to the basil, which is on the far side of the house.”

Steven spun in place and took it all in. The house was very much a house, a convential tenant cottage, with a bright yellow door and white shutters at each window. The walls were carved gray stone, set tightly, and wooden beams making up the frames, painted yellow to match. The house was a single level home, and over it all, a domed thatched roof that terminated at its center with a small spire topped with a weathervane. The weathervane was a black metal, and from here, Steven noted it was shaped as a bear.

“Nice place you have here, Posey.”

“Thank you kindly. I grew up here, but I sent my parents off to live with my sister once the farm became a bit much for them.”

Steven tilted his head, feeling a touch of irony. “That’s all I am trying to do with Pops.”

“Come again?” Posey walked on her hind legs smoothly, without making it seem like it was difficult or out of place.

“You sent your parents off.”

“To a lovely home, filled with cubs, close to amenities, and they can enjoy the opera and theatre. Out here is mightily pleasant, with the quiet and the fresh air, but it is far away from what they needed. The village, remember? It takes a village, Steven. So it is not the same thing at all, my young friend.”

“I am nearly thirty.”

“I know it, still youngest of the lot.” Posey pointed at the boxes sitting between two tall trees. The branches had been cut back ages ago and lent a sense of vaulted open space around the beehives.

“Well that’s true. I am.” Steven admitted. “Single and responsible.”

“I am the eldest. And a bit of a spinster. Just me, the farm, and my pets. Like these fat little guys.”

The bees were indeed fat, as thick around as Steven’s thumbs, they sounded like small helicopters as they tumbled through the air, their back legs covered in yellow and pink pollen. Posey lifted the lid of the middle column’s top most box and set it leaning against the stack.

“Aren’t you worried about getting stung?”

“Oh my bees don’t have stingers, love. Just fat, happy, domesticated little friends. No predators about in these parts. And if a wasp does show up, it gets killed by the heat they generate. So, I would say they are quite content in not having to sting anybody.” Posey slapped her hip. “Come on over here, grab that jar for me?”

Steven grabbed a small ceramic jar from the end of the row, removed the lid and attempted to hand it over.

“No silly, you have to hold it. Underneath the frame I pull up, right?”

Steven nodded. The buzzing wasn’t angry, but it was buzzing, so it still sounded angry. Every time a bee went near his head, he had the urge to flinch. Posey noticed, and smirked at his discomfort.

“You need to get out more often, I think.” Posey chuckled. She pulled the comb sheet from the front, and the cells glowed in the sunlight, bright with honey. “Hold the jar underneath, I will break a few chunks off.”

Steven held the jar with both hands, and with deft flick of her paw, the honeycomb fell, with long strings of seeping honey trailing behind it.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Posey winked.

“It is.” Steven nodded. He could smell the light sweetness carried on the air from the jar between his hands. He placed the lid, and Posey lowered the frame back into the box. She returned the box lid to its previous position, and nodded as an item was checked off of her mental list.

“On to the tomatoes! This way.” The bear spun towards the fields behind the cottage.

“How did you meet my grandfather?”

The trees spread wider and further apart as they walked, and small grasses started to spring up among the ground covering. Steven was glad the buzzing, angry or not, was fading into the background noise of the grounds. Birds called out in the trees, crickets called out here and there, and the snicking sound of hoppers bouncing through the grasses beyond. The sun was warm, but not oppressively hot. It reminded him of the summers of his youth, laced with melancholic nostalgia.

“I was cleaning up the kitchen, after a particularly good potluck with some of the neighbors, and your grandfather walked in. Quite calm and collected, introduced himself properly, like a gentleman. I asked him if wanted a cuppa, he said yes, and we sat and chatted the afternoon away. Been connecting for tea and some meals ever since.”

“How long is that?”

“You are a curious one, aren’t you?” Posey glanced at him over her shoulder as she walked, her feet knowing the path by heart.

“Not a bad thing to be curious, right?” Steven shrugged.

“Of course not, love. Just an observation.” Posey stepped over a small root, and the trees opened up to a short plot of perhaps fifteen or twenty heavily laden tomato stands nearly as tall as her. “We have been meeting for tea, for maybe, ten years or so?”

He felt his face twist and shift as the shock expressed itself. “TEN YEARS?”

“That sounds about right.” Posey grabbed a wicker basket laying nearby. “Ah, the weavers left me some baskets, so kind of them.”

“Weavers? Another family?”

“Oh goodness no, small birds that live out in the fields. Right smart birds, though. They make baskets for nests, and I feed ’em stale bread hunks every so often, so they make them for me too. Absolute dears. I consider them pets, I suppose.” Posey appraised her row of plants and plucked three tomatoes the size of Steven’s fists put together. Steven marveled, but was stuck on how long Pops had been visiting his bear friend.

“Ten years, though?” Steven tried again. “Why have I not met you or heard of you or anything before today?”

“I don’t pry, Steven. Harold’s business is his own. But I think he realizes that you need to know. He is right. You should know. He does need your help, just not in the way you think.”

“Hmmmm.”

“To the basil!” Another nod, and another check off her mental list. Posey headed at an angle towards a shaded small field near the tree line, but on the other side of the cottage. They walked past other farmed sections, and all of it was in full growth. The corn was taller than he was, the beans climbed among the stalks, and lettuces and cabbages nearby were thick and lush. Carrots and potatoes seemed to be busting free from the earth they grew under.

Then there were the plants he could not readily identify. Twisting stalks of blue, topped with green bulbs the seemed nearly translucent.  Bushes that had berries of some sort on them, but the berries were square, bright orange, and covered in armored spikes, like oversized goat heads that would get stuck in your socks and shoes on countryside hikes. Then a row of small bushes that moved their leaves as if they were waving in a soft breeze, but he couldn’t feel any notable breeze about. It felt like a sunny late summer day, not a cloud in the sky.

“What is this place?”

“As far as I know, I call it home.” Posey tittered. “I know what you mean. This land is named Avondie, means Avon-on-the-Dells. The Avon is a large river to the west, it separates this part of the country from Nordin, also to the west. There is a major city near the sea, capital of Nordin, named Axton. Your father calls it London in your part of the neighborhood. Mrs. Albright calls it Tontine, and it is also the capital of the Three World Empire she lives in. Our other neighbors have different names for it, and variations of all sorts, but the general shape of it all is the same. Except for you. And me. And Mrs. Albright. And the others as they are.”

“What does that mean?”

“The smart ones. The ones with souls. Those are different behind each door. Humans as you know them are not humans here. Whatever our version was went extinct sometimes during the last ice age, the sciences say, and they definitely did not appear to be intelligent, nothing more than aggressive predators. Only the Avidlys are smart, and all Avidlys are omnivores. We think it is because of our propensity to survive that our kinds developed the brains we have. It’s strange right? How everything is different, but not.” Posey pointed at the plot of the herbs and smaller plants. Basil was easily identifiable amongst many of the others.  “Pick a couple dozen of the large leaves, dear. Just the leaves, not the stalks or other stems if you can’t help it.”

Steven knelt between the rows of plants, and his nose was immediately assaulted by a myriad of scents, the basil among them. He pulled the leaves gently, pinching them at the base of the stem, avoiding the smaller leaves as best he could. The big leaves that bruised at the bottom of the leaf released a basil scent heavier than he was expecting or had ever smelled before.

“These… are so much more… basil-y,” he held one of the leaves to his nose.

“Some things are better here, some things are better elsewhere. Come along. We can check in Mrs. Albright. She is a bit like your grandfather. Needs help occasionally, and loves to join in on lunch.”

“You plan on helping him? How? What about his medical needs? Or his memory problems?”

“I don’t have all the answers, love. But it wouldn’t just be me. It is the neighborhood. And now, you. Between all of us, I think we have it quite covered. Come, come, by the end of today, you will see truth of it all.”

“Maybe.”

“I can guess as to the next question you are going to ask, and I will save you the time. Yes, Mrs. Albright is what you would call an octopus. And yes, she moves about by swinging from hooks or rods, and in a pinch, with her cart.  And yes, she is able to talk, you just need to allow her to fill her air bladder to respond. Its about half a second longer than you would expect in a normal conversation. Also, she is not really a she, but she picked the she, and we are ok with the choice, so we call her Mrs. because she is lovely and deserves it. She was a schoolteacher prior to becoming a revered elder, and she has learned English better than I. Mind your manners.”

“Ok…” Steven trailed off so the k turned into an exhale. He followed Posey back around the cottage and entered the door they had started from. “Wait, how do you know English?”

“Never mind that. For now, you can help rearrange the kitchen.” Posey set the basket that contained the jar of honeycomb, the tomatoes, and the basil leaves in the sink. “And then you can wash your hands and help with the prep. Things to do, love, things to do!”

Steven chuckled, knowing there was no choice but compliance. “What first, then?”

“Grab that coat rack, and put in the on the far side there. The chair, you can set in the sitting room. I don’t think anyone else will pop in, but if they do, they can join us on the spare chair in a pinch.”

“Coat rack?”

“We have Mrs. Albright joining us, and she has to sit somewhere to eat, silly. Although, I suppose it is a bit more hanging than sitting, isn’t it?” Posey put one of her claws up to her lip and thought it over. “Yes, it would be considered hanging, but I suppose it is the same as our sitting, because she is relaxing in her own way.”

“Alright, can I just stop for a moment and say all of this strange?” Steven moved the coat rack anyway as he said it, and put the chair down in the center of the nearby doorway, dropping himself into it heavily. Something hit him in the chest, and he couldn’t identify the feeling. Helplessness? Fatigue? It tumbled about inside of him angrily.

Posey continued to move around the kitchen, gathering ingredients, plates, knives, and other prep instruments; a bowl here, a cutting board there. “What is strange?”

“All of this,” Steven sighed heavily. “I came over to help Pops understand the process of moving him out. I mean, I can’t… I just…”

Posey stopped, and wiped her hands off on a nearby tea towel, watching him carefully.

Steven continued feeling something start to shift in his chest, “I don’t know if I can do all this. You know? This is all so… bloody strange! I don’t have any help from my family. My sisters and brother are all but useless. The health service is only providing the bare minimum. But Pops was putting coffee cups in his underwear drawer! And he forgot my name the other day! He called me Gregory! Gregory!”

“That’s his son, Steven. You must remind him mightily of his own.” Posey’s tone was comforting.

“I know! I get it! But…” Steven pulled the glossy brochure out of his back pocket and handed it to Posey. “But… I don’t think I can handle it.”

“Handle what, dear?” Posey set the brochure, still folded on the table.

“I can’t handle losing Pops. Like he was my dad after my dad passed, right? Like I can’t…” Steven started to cry, feeling the unnamed burden finally given a definition, and all the worry, anxiety, and fear woven around the problem seemed to fall away. “I need him. I can’t do any of this on my own! Responsible one, and all that. Rubbish. I can barely handle getting dressed some days. I can barely handle work most days. And now I have to fix this place up, I have to find a place for Pops, I have to do all these things…”

“Shush, love. Its all solvable, love.” Posey laid a hand on Steve’s shoulder and pulled him into a hug. Since he was sitting and she was standing, it was almost a completely normal hug. Almost. “Just need some luncheon, some talk, some eye to eye with your grandfather. Mrs. Albright is right smart, I am here to help… and we have others. Lots of others…”

Steven leaned back and wiped at his eyes guiltily. Posey kept her paws on his shoulders.

“You need help. You just were looking in the wrong place, right? There is help, then there is real help. I think we can do both, alright love? Now, wash your hands. You can slice the tomatoes. I will wash the basil. And get Mrs. Albright in here.”

Posey strode to the familiar door, the one that had lead from his Grandfather’s hallway. She laid her hand on the knob, gave the French door a pull, and the door opened to a blue room. The light was brilliant, shifting and layering through a ceiling of glass with trees above stippling the rays across the floor. For a moment, it gave the illusion of waves just overhead, and Steven felt like he was snorkeling without the water. The room had bright paintings on nearly every wall, not framed, but hung on individually knotted frames, pulled taut on ropes and attached to pegs that were hung around the room.

“Mrs. Albright? Are you available to join us for luncheon?” Posey called from the doorway.

“Oh, Posey dear! Yes, luncheon would be lovely. Just a moment.” There was a gentle humming sound, and a blue and gray octopus rounded the corner on a well crafted metal cart, with no visible batteries, just a bar set above it between two poles, and a number of controls along the top of the smooth surface of the cart. Presumably, it Mrs. Albright which hung from the center bar, her mantle shifting and pulsing behind large bulbous expressive blue eyes. Two tentacles looped around the bar, holding her floating in space, and the others dangled below, operating the many controls built into the top her transport.

She indeed had eight tentacles, but they appeared to have varying lengths and purposes to Steven’s eye. The cart though, it was something else. It was something that he knew was unlike anything he had ever seen before. He was struck out of his appreciation by the voice of an octopus’s exclamation.

“Oh, ho, ho. You have a new guest! A human. That would mean it is Harold’s boy, Steven. Don’t get up. I mean it. Just stay there and I will come to you.”

“Yes, ma’am. Good afternoon.” Steven felt strangely calm. Is this how one feels meeting a talking octopus that did not live underwater?

The cart hummed into Posey’s kitchen, and came to a stop a foot or two from Steven in the chair. Her eyes were blue, but the pupils were nearly square, shifting to a barbell shape as they focused on him.

“By what I have read in the magazines, you appear to be handsome. Good for you, young man!” Her voice was light and airy, sounding like a voice box pushed by a bellows cramp.

Steven smiled embarrassingly, caught entirely off guard by the comment. “Thank you?”

Her skin shifted colors wildly along her tentacles, and up to her mantle, and back down in pulsing waves.

“Mrs. Albright is laughing heartily at your discomfort, love.” Posey grinned, and turned back to prepping lunch. “Spit spot, Steven. Wash your hands!”

“Yes. Hands. Right.” Steven stood and crossed over to the sink. He knelt down, washing his hands carefully, then the each of the tomatoes under the crisply cold water. He grabbed the cutting board, a small knife that was probably a large chefs knife for Posey. “How thick?”

“A hisket-thick is fine… apologies. About half your finger width? Doesn’t need to be perfect. The tops can go into that bucket there near the door, compost bound.” Posey said. “How is your day proceeding, Mrs. Albright?”

“Well, well. Thank you for asking. I received a missive from my youngest great-great-grandchild, her name is…” Mrs. Albright cascaded a series of whistles and clicks, and then continued on. “The closest translation I have been able to ascertain is ‘peach’, but that is a not quite correct, as a peach is edible, but my fourth-daughter is not. English is a strange language, I understand why German does what it does with concatenations.”

Steven looked over his shoulder and nodded appreciatively. “You speak German?”

“Most of the your ‘European’ languages that Harold has brought over for me. He loaned me his ‘laptop’ and his ‘wifi’ for something called ‘Duolingo’. But the ‘internet’ thing you all use is quite fascinating! Your grandfather warned me that most of it is quite terrible, but I have found a few ‘sites’ that are useful indeed. Do you speak any other languages?”

“Sorry, no. Just the English, and poorly at that,” Steven joked. “I’m an engineer.”

“Hand me those tomatoes, love.” Posey nudged Steven lightly. “And hide that brochure lying on the table before you give your Pops a conniption.”

“Well, English is my sixteenth language. Serendipity I suppose that it landed on a lucky number.” Mrs. Albright sighed.

Steven could watched as her mantle adjusted and changed shape with each enunciation, and colors appeared to shift subtly as she spoke. He snatched the brochure off the table, folded in on its crease and shoved it into his back pocket once again. Mrs. Albright seemed to shift one eye towards him, as if she was raising a non-existent eyebrow.

Posey strode towards the ornate French doors once again, closed it slowly on the shifting bright blues of Mrs. Albright’s house, and twisted the knob again, opening the door right back into Pop’s hallway.

He stood at the ready, a plate of sliced mozzarella balls held between both hands. “They lost the damn game, Nil-two.”

Posey took the cheese from him, nodded towards the table with a smile. “There is always next week, Harold.”

“Football?” Mrs. Albright wheezed.

“What else, Mrs. Albright?” Posey tittered as she started to assemble the luncheon. “Steven, love, take the pitcher and the glasses over. Also, the bread basket.”

“They could not get an opportunity across the box. They had multiple opportunities to make something happen, but half the team must have been sleepin’ on their feet,” Pops grumbled. His eyes brighten when he poured glasses of the lemonade. “Oh the good stuff.”

“You silly goat, its always the good stuff. Steven, dear, take these to the table.” Posey pointed at the plate of beautifully dressed Caprese salad.

Steven felt his stomach rumble in anticipation. New experiences make for an ample appetite, he supposed. Although his breakfast seemed a world away, which in a way, it was.

His grandfather took the basket of bread, and Steven laid the plate in the center. Mrs. Albright flashed a number of bright colors, and Posey nodded at the implied approval as she and Steven took their seats.

Pops took Steven’s hand, laying his other over Posey’s. “Good God above, bless this meal, bless our friends, and bless the lads so they can kick a ball straight next week. Amen.”

Steven hiccupped a repressed laugh, while Posey laughed brightly into the kitchen air, and a flurry of colors ran down Mrs. Albright’s tentacles. The emotions were expressed differently, but Steven noted how much alike the emotions were, underneath the obvious and apparent differences, laughter was universal.

The door opened again as they started to eat, while Mrs. Albright was asking Grandfather about the intricacies of football. A small electrical flash of plasma popped into the room, bouncing lightly across the room and out the still ajar garden door, leaving a trail of ozone behind it.

“Oh dear,” Posey grinned. “It seems that one of Phasme’s kids wanted to get out. Hopefully, it wasn’t because they were in trouble.”

“Let ’em burn off a bit under the sun, I think,” Pops shrugged. “Kids have to find their own way back.”

Steven noticed Pop’s eyes were looking right at him, and Steven smiled. “We will figure it out, Pops.”

Posey squealed, “These are so good! Goodness me, I love mozzie balls!”

The kitchen rang with laughter, and the door swung back quietly, knowing everything was well and as it should be.

Short Story

The Lights Say Hello

{MEDIA LABEL} Interview - David Havelock
{START TIMESTAMP} Sept 3, 2031, 9:07:03.449 am
{DEVICE} Apple iPhone SuperXN 18+
{FORMAT} IXAF Lossless Spatial Audio
{CAPTIONS} AAI Autocaption
{OWNER} Meredith Iwata

{DAVID} “Oh yeah, of course, posterity and all that. And sit there, good as any. Apologies for the mess. I am a bit of hoarder with the filing. Since you know, the reason you are here.”

{DAVID} “Of course. I am a bit of snob for the office, especially since the Baristorobos at the Starbucks fab on the corner are terrible. I grind my own and pour over in the kitchenette, everyone seems to appreciate it.”

{DAVID} “Where should I start?”

{DAVID} “I worked a long while in IT before moving over to managing the Field Dispatch team here. My undergrad and Master’s was in Computer Science, you know? So the one thing that I never understood during the LLM boom was the unbelievably dumb response most folks had to it. Those AIs are not actual AIs. They were just really good at mimicry. Highly trained, but only predictive. There were tricks to make the prediction appear to be intelligent… capturing little bits of context between data points, storing them individually, then comparing them to known patterns. You get enough of that, and boom, it looks like a duck, and talks like a duck, but if you look under the hood, it is just a very large inefficient database that resembles an insect. Just little antennae and a silly little nervous system feeling it’s way to the next part of the answer at high speed.”

{DAVID} “Sorry?”

{DAVID} “Oh, ha. Yeah. Midlife crises? I don’t know. I just wasn’t moving forward with my career, but in Dispatch, I could be more hands on, you know? I could manage a bunch of smart guys, manage projects, be involved. I wasn’t getting that as a cloud guy. That is just managing a stupid portal and waiting for something to break.”

{DAVID} “So those AIs, they were just highly specialized twitchy insects that fooled everyone thinking that some new thing had been discovered. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t even novel. Those ideas had been around for decades, it’s just that hardware and software caught up to the idea of it. In reality, AI is many things to many people. But through all of it, in every case, the A never seemed to stand for Actual.”

{DAVID} “Sure. So the acronym A.I., the A stands for Artificial, yes. But it should stand for Asinine. Because AI is not Actual Intelligence. Are you familiar with Chinese Room Theorem?”

{DAVID} “Yeah that’s the gist. The man can appear to use Chinese really well, but he doesn’t intuit the meaning of what he is being passed or what he is returning. It is not actual intelligence. And that is why when the Actual Intelligence popped up, it was such a massive shock to everyone. Not for lack of trying though… every major university lab, think tank research center, and major tech industry titan and start-up alike were chasing the idea of it. It has a different label, aka General Intelligence. This G.I. that could take stimuli, process and filter that information, correlate between context and meaning, and respond in kind. Eventually developing social fabric through interaction, accelerating all the feedback loops of input and output, or stimuli and response, and establishing emotions. Pain. Joy. Love. Hope. Sadness. The enigma of consciousness that our philosophers have been arguing about since the dawn of man. The very fact a GI emerged from the least likely place that no one was looking for and it was never ever expected to develop, somehow, in that primordial digital soup, it… uh… actualized itself.”

{DAVID} “Traffic cameras! Crazy, right? But I need to back up. The call. I was sitting in here much like I am now, my coffee in one hand, the mouse in the other, doomscrolling the New York Times, Vox, and whatever shit Reddit had lobbed into the remainder of the toxic wastelands of the social-media-verse? The social-media-sphere? The social-media-cesspool? I don’t know what to call it these days. No, that’s not right. Now I remember. I was halfway through the Wordle of the day, and one of my techs called me. He was downtown, and the lights were stuck red. For blocks. He was panicking.”

{DAVID} “Lights for a half mile in both directions, in the whole of downtown. Just solid red. Power cycling did nothing. Hardware changes, nothing. There is a mode in the control system, where we can enable a manual override and control the lights with another device, or even one of these… we call them pucks. You plug it in, and you can switch the lights for testing, etc. None of it worked.”

{DAVID} “I grabbed a couple of my best guys, redirected them down to the site, and got a hold of the Ops team with the city. We all met down in the center of it. We were there all morning, troubleshooting everything. We could not figure it out… I had called my boss, and his boss, and the city boss in this massive teleconference considering full fleet replacement with the manufacturer. I literally sighed and looked up at the sky.”

{DAVID} “I don’t know. Frustration? Anger? Exasperation? Something. I was looking to the great god above. Ha. Funny.”

{DAVID} “And that goddamned camera was pointing straight down at me. Then I did a slow turn of the intersection, and I noticed EVERY. SINGLE. CAMERA…. was pointed at me. At me! I thought I was going crazy, so I took two steps to the left, my eyes locked on some random point of a building, and that is when I nearly pissed myself.”

{DAVID} “They all followed me. It was the creepiest thing I have ever seen. So of course, my head goes immediately to CISA.”

{DAVID} “Sorry, uh, Feds. It stands for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. They have regional offices across the US, and they handle a lot of the advisories and guidance for security events.”

{DAVID} “Yeah. Big time. Either some punk kid, bored out of his skull and smart enough to really break into something or… something else. State sponsored group or something. Looking for a ransom. I half expected the computers we had connected to the control systems to blip up with black or blue screens as their hard drives were encrypted. But none of that happened. I called CISA anyway… that’s how the Feds found out.”

{DAVID} “When we finally accessed the interp data.”

{DAVID} “Oh, sorry again. Interpolation data. The lights are supposed to be smart. This is the whole promise of an intelligent traffic grid, managing traffic that flows through it, end to end, in real time. I am going to get a little technical, but I promise you will understand. This is not rocket surgery, heh. Imagine a standard four way intersection, with two way traffic on each road. Each side of the intersection forms a side of a box. Each pole has its set of lights, and each set of lights go into a shared control system. In the old days, the lights were on timers. Then over time those lights with the old school timers had sensors added that were embedded in the road to determine if someone was sitting at the red light and change accordingly. Then the light sensors were added on the poles to detect emergency traffic. Then the radio systems to interconnect light changes. Then along comes the internet, and the modern world of network switching, and we can get all these lights and their individual systems to talk to each other. Where we are now is that all of those sensors and old school methods were replaced with essentially a more complex version of a robotic vacuum. It has sensors, laser and radio inference sensors, matched up with multiple perspective cameras…

{DAVID} “Yes! Exactly. Each control system was gathering, processing, and distributing data about the traffic at the light. Each direction was being processed, and then shared with other directions. Each intersection was connected with other intersections, and somewhere in all that, something went wrong.”

{DAVID} “Who knows? Maybe it was a bad patch. Maybe it was a bad chip. Maybe a bolt of lightning scrambled a couple sections of memory. But something changed, and suddenly, all those nodes in the system were like neurons. Neurons forming a brain, with many sets of eyes and ears connected to it. And it cascaded. That first set of nodes discovered how to subsume other nodes in the city… I, ah, I am getting ahead of myself… back up. So we got access to the interp data. And one of my engineers pulls up the camera feeds, and then sensor data, and it was apparent that nothing was compromised. The instructions that were being carried out were by the heavily protected parts of the system. The control system itself was controlling the lights, the logs were clean, no inbound connections. But the outbound connections were climbing a steep curve, as if the system was hacking itself. Mind you, nothing is even connected to the outside world at this point. We literally unplugged the uplinks.”

{DAVID} “On the controls network, we watched as the system subsumed other traffic nodes. As it performed it’s changes, the interface started to update itself. The code was being rewritten in real time by the system running the very same code.”

{DAVID} “Theory from the MIT analysis guys… you are interviewing them, right?

{DAVID} “Good. They are way smarter than me about this stuff. So the MIT guys think that some nodes were relegated to testing in the growing bot network. At the time, the line of thinking was it was a hacker, right? Even though no outside connection existed, like duh! The updates were created at one node, it was applied to others in rapid succession. We were seeing these rolling updates in real time in crisscrossing cascades from one side of the network to the other, and that is when it dawned on us that entire damn city had been taken over.”

{DAVID} “That’s just it. The rest of the city was operating just fine. A thousand or so intersections.”

{DAVID} “You know the answer.”

{DAVID} “Yeah, think how I felt. When the entire intersection woke up at once and it spoke. I think my heart skipped a beat. I mean how would it feel to have a refrigerator in your house open its doors on its own and say hello? Like, would you shit yourself? Find a priest to perform an exorcism? What do you do? I did not even know those sensor packages had speakers built in. It was the voice of god. A voice from nowhere, but everywhere, all at once. And it said Hello!”

{DAVID} “Got more than that, I would say. It got everybody’s attention. That’s the reason you are here, right?”

{DAVID} “Fucking crazy world we live in, huh?”

{MEDIA LABEL} Interview - David Havelock
{STOP TIMESTAMP} Sept 3, 2031, 9:28:54.724 am
{DEVICE} Apple iPhone SuperXN 18+
{FORMAT} IXAF Lossless Spatial Audio
{CAPTIONS} AAI Autocaption
{OWNER} Meredith Iwata
Short Story

The Mercadian Heist, Armond

This piece precedes The Mercadian Heist as it is so far (parts 1, 2, 3), but it comes out as the muse dictates...

=== Six Months Ago ===

Armond Dekseyer was many things, but he knew at his core that he was a good person. Sure that good person was wrapped in layers that presented other less desirable personas to the world. He could be seen as a confidence man, a grifter, a con artist, a thief, and perhaps, occasionally, a rogue. He admitted to himself that occasionally, he might not be the best person he could be, but on the whole, he was not bad. There were far worse people in Mercadia, and he should know, he had worked for many of them.

Some of them were terrible people. Fiends and murderers that would kill their own mother to get ahead in the world. Not Armond. He sent his mother flowers every week, ensured her accounts were always full of credits, and that she had nice neighbors to talk to. It took some effort to take care of one’s mother… but she was the only mother he was ever going to have, and he sure as hell had no plans to provide her with any grandchildren, so it was in everyone’s best interest to keep her busy with other pursuits.

She didn’t need to know that her son was planning on robbing a bank. That would not make her happy. However, it would make Armond happy. So very, undeniably, overwhelmingly happy. Because the money on the barrel was insane. As in, this couldn’t be a real kind of money. It simply couldn’t be real. The number was breathtaking.

But what if it was real? What if that amount of money was there because it was ready to be picked up by the first person willing to put out their hand and simply take it?

Armond had to talk to Wick and think this through. Put feelers out, perform the due diligence, and get the vibe on the deal. This wasn’t from some random fixer on the street, this had come to Armond from a highly trusted source. Someone that he couldn’t even talk about without causing some problems, but that was how good the deal was. A job that could put his crew on the next level. But he had to start with his partner, the dwarf technomancer Wick.

Armond looked at himself in a nearby storefront, adjusting his collar and his cravat. He scratched lightly as his chin, and grinned knowingly when he noticed the young lady behind the counter of the store within. She instantly blushed.

Armond winked and continued on his way. The crowds shifted and parted, the market stalls of Midtown were bustling nearly all day, every race that one could probably imagine walked the market district as vehicles, carts, and lorries were strictly prohibited. Armond was probably on the more common side of the crowd spectrum, being nearly human, he blended in with most mixed crowds. His skin was of a darker tone, not from sun, although he did appear to be nicely tanned all the time. His skin tone was from the same blood that gave him his oversized lower incisors that jutted past his lower lip. One would think that a human with uberogre blood his veins would be a terrible combination, but for Armond, it rewarded him with a some unexpected result of being devastatingly handsome. It was part of his success. Others trusted beautiful people more readily, and yes, that may have been parlayed into some personas that may have preyed upon that trust.

But Armond knew he was a good person. Deep down.

He excused himself from the path of a couple Sylvian women, and the solitary Dryad that walked between them. One of the women nodded politely in his direction.

“Good morning,” Armond smiled kindly at the three of them, lingering on the younger Sylvian for a split second.

“Oh good morning, sir.” She blushed as well, quickly lowering her gaze to the flat pavers at her cloven feet.

Armond grinned even wider, showing all of his teeth with mirth. It was shaping up to be a good day. He turned down his alley, heading to the backstreets of Midtown. The suppliers and shippers moved their wares to the markets through the backstreets in the larger vans and lorries that would not fit on the quaint market avenues even if they weren’t prohibited, and if you travelled far enough, the bustling backstreets coalesced into their own diverse markets and economies. Including the ones that were of a less reputable type.

In other words, Armond’s kind of crowd. He nodded at a couple of friendly acquaintances clustered near the Powder & Burnt entrance and turned down the alley that lead to the stairs to underneath the pub. He knocked lightly at the heavy wooden door and let himself in. The locks were enchanted, and Wick had long ago given him the lock iron shaving to keep in his bootheel.

“I thought I heard your good cheer coming down the stairs,” Wick grumbled from his massive work bench. “A rising gorge in my midsection, kind of like heartburn.”

“And good morning to you as well!” Armond smiled widely, holding his arms out as if he wanted a hug.

“Fuck off.”

Armond laughed all the more brightly.

“What put you in such a good mood? Besides some random maidens uncontrollably smiling at you,” Wick asked. He left his googles over his eyes, continuing to move the soldering gun over whatever circuit board project he had in front of him. Small wisps of smoke followed the tip of the gun as Wick waved it around, touching it to lead after lead in quick succession.

“I am glad I have you in my life to keep me grounded, my friend,” Armond walked around the piles of crates, buckets of parts, and scattered piles of technology that were intermittently spread between the door and the center of the workshop where Wick continued soldering. “You should put that away, I have a new offer in hand.”

Wick looked up, pushing his googles up with one thick knuckle. His dwarven eyes were sunken, but they glittered brightly like jewels in the deep. “Aye, do you? That is why you are in such a good mood.”

Armond leaned against the expansive stone and iron workbench with one hip and let his straight face play the unspoken game.

“Well, spill!” Wick said as he dropped the solder gun and pushed his googles up his forehead impatiently, he tapped a few commands on his nearby laptop absentmindedly with the other hand.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand.” Armond stated matter-of-factly, keeping his face straight.

“That is… good money,” Wick acknowledged.

Each!” Armond’s grin reasserted itself like the sun piercing through clouds.

“What?”

“I figured it will take a six man crew.”

“Each!?” Wick’s eyes continued to widen.

“And a safe delivery bonus of a million that I intend to expand our little enterprise.” Armond’s smile was nearly touching his ears at witnessing his friend’s reaction.

Wick was beside himself. “Two and half million? What are we stealing? The Jewels of the Counsel Chamber? The testicles of the fucking Underking himself? My gods. What is worth two and half million credits?”

“A single item. A bag to be precise. A leather satchel with two tongs and gilded brass closures, along with a simple shoulder strap.”

“What is in the bag?”

That I don’t know. I do know that it is not heavy, enchanted, or dangerous. In fact, the way it was presented to me, it seemed to be nothing more than a bag of documents.”

“Blackmail.”

“Has to be, right?” Armond nodded. “This is from our friend, the Judge.”

“Interesting,” Wick raised his fingers to his thick beard, scratching at his cheek. “So it is either blackmail against our friend or for our friend to use. So drop the other blasted boot, Armond. A simple bag does not fetch that price, there has to be something else.”

Armond finally looked uncomfortable.

“Oh great, that face,” Wick smirked. “Dungeon? Dragon? Both? No, let me guess. It is lodged directly in the ass of a god himself. We have to crawl in there with a crowbar and a flamethrower-“

“-It’s in a bank.” Armond interrupted.

Wick looked confused. “So? Trivial.”

“A central bank.”

“More difficult, still not impossible.”

“The Mercadian Central Bank.”

“Yeah, no fucking way, Armond.” Wick pulled his googles back down and started on his next solder joint. He tapped a few keys on the clunky laptop and sighed heavily.

“You just said you had no problems with a bank, central or otherwise,” Armond said, waving his arms at the obvious contradiction.

Wick dropped the solder gun without a thought and pushed his googles up again, more wearily this time. Yet his eyes were smoldering in their pits, and his face was shifting to red at the incongruence of having to explain something obvious to someone who knew better.

“Armond, I am your friend, but this is making you sound like a stupid snipe-toothed little half breed… you are mildly suggesting that we go into the most secure, highly protected, and! And! …most used bank by nearly every single investor, noble family, and some of the greatest crime families in the city, and you… are just suggesting it is a walk in the park! Like stealing a handful of coins out of an alms box!”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god, you are knackered,” Wick put stood up abruptly and strolled over to the icebox. He pulled a beer out without offering one to Armond, and popped the top of the bottle with a smooth assured tap against the workbench edge. “So you won’t need one of these, but I will as I obviously have to explain to my good friend, Armond, who has more looks than brain cells…”

“Oh come on, you are being hurtful now.” Armond feigned a look of injury.

“Fine. Fine. You are smart. So you should know better. No wonder the offer is so big. Someone wants us, a six man crew, which by the way, we don’t have! And break into the Mercadian Central Bank. The only bank in the entire city that has both electronic and enchantment monitoring, at least three types of guards, including the damn Gargoyles in the rafters, and the vault is nestled in a phase shifted void locker in the center of the bank! On top of all that, like icing on the mother-fucking cake, I have heard that they have a deluge system to literally wash away anything, including unfortunate customers, into a holding tank until the cops show up, which given the bank’s status is probably measure in seconds, not minutes.”

Armond walked silently to the icebox and freed a beer from its confines without asking for permission. He pulled the beer cap against his left incisor and the cap careened into the corner waste basket.

“Did I get all of it?” Wick added sarcastically.

“You forgot the rune deck for the vault.”

“Rune deck? No shit. Fancy bank with fancy systems. And let me guess, the bank manager is the only one with the deck.”

“That’s right.”

“So we have to get our hands on a rune deck… make it to the phased vault entrance without being noticed? With gargoyles overhead, guards all around, tellers and customers, bank staff, and all backed up with the latest and greatest in tech. I bet each teller has a panic button, and every corner has a camera.”

“Fourteen cameras in the lobby, another twelve behind the tellers, and three vantage points on the vault entrance. Not sure what cameras are upstairs, obviously couldn’t get up there as a customer,” Armond said with the air of an educator. “Two to three guards on duty depending, including an old dwarf with an all-sight in his left eye socket. Everything else is as you rattled off.”

Wick slapped the workbench in exasperation. “Holy shit, you already started casing the place? Please tell me you have not agreed to this yet. We don’t even have a full crew!”

“I haven’t. I wanted to talk to you first, do some research second, and then feel out the source. If we do something this big, we need to know that we can trust the benefactor.”

“And what makes you think we can do this? Like actually do this, Armond?”

Armond took a heavy swig of the brown ale in his hand. “I know we are missing the crew… but something just tells me that we can do this. Call it a little whispering voice deep down in my gut, Wickie. I can feel it.”

“I hate those gut feelings of yours,” Wick scratched at his beard again. “Alright.”

“Alright?”

“Your gut tends to be right, too. Doesn’t mean that I have to be happy about it.”

Armond punched the air with his the free hand. “Yes! Today is coming up golden.”

“We need a crew. Six men?”

“Yes,” Armond agreed.

“We need to feel out the benefactor. That’s your job.”

“Yes,” Armond agreed again.

“And it appears that I have a bank to case.”

“Yessssss,” Armond smirk shifted to a wide grin again. “You rock, Wick.”

======

A few days later Wick and Armond gathered around the work table in Wick’s workshop under the Powder & Burnt. The bar itself was empty, but that should be expected as it was mid-morning. Only the overly desperate or the exceedingly dedicated were getting drunk at this time of day, and those patrons did not typically visit the P&B. In its basement, Wick’s expansive worktable in the middle of the galaxy of crates, tech, and parts was remarkably clean. Wick already had floor plans laid out on the stone surface when Armond had walked in. Armond, as always, was impressed with his friend’s dedication and hours. He had no idea if Wick slept, and if Wick did, Armond had no idea where.

“Before I start, what did you find out on our benefactor?” Wick started.

“Our judge was tight lipped. Refused to say… but he made it clear that he was already in possession of the funds, and that for all intents and purposes, he was the client.”

“So our judge friend fucked up, and he doesn’t want to tell us.”

Armond shrugged. “I told him three more days and we would give him an answer. He wanted you to know that he wanted to start with us, given our history. He knew you and I would do it right.”

“He has you played, Armond.” Wick grumbled. Armond knew it was only friendly ribbing.

“Eh, maybe. But we did help him not just once, but twice, with that little habit of his, and we did it seamlessly. He thinks he can rely on us.”

“Can he?”

“For now, I think he can,” Armond said truthfully. “Vatsitz?”

Deng-deng. Street slang from sophisticated Armond. How rare. Sometimes I forget a street rat is under all that pomp.”

Koom te deng, Hammaman. What did you find out?”

“I wish I could say it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but it isn’t.”

“Was it worse?” Armond’s right eyebrow lifted involuntarily.

“No, about what was expecting. Being in the circles we are, I hear things. The things I heard seem mostly true.” Wick pointed at the floorplan. “Old koom I knew, a real hammaman, had these on hand when his clan dropped in the vault stones.”

“Can you trust him?”

“Oh, yes, I can. He is dead. His kids had no idea these were in his collection. I, uh, liberated them.”

Armond was impressed. “Nice.”

“His daughter was exceptionally nice. A little on the young side, but well built for a dwarf. I would crawl through a latrine to see that backside up close.”

“Stop it, you grizzly old pervert. You are well past that age. You should only be interested in liberating shiny rocks at this point in your life,” Armond teased. He ran his hand over the plans, flattening the curve of the aged vellum. “These are old, things could have changed…”

“Maybe the electronics on either end, but I bet the wiring and the channels are the same. Why rerun wire that works or change out a pathway? There would be no sense. The cameras can even change position, but the wires probably have never changed. And the vault… well that is the same since the bank was erected. A void locker that size? The bank was built around it.”

“Gargoyles would probably be grumpy if something did change. They like their routine.”

“Aye. Don’t they. They also hate water… and that’s why we should flood the place.”

Armond looked sharply at his partner barely comprehending what he just said.

Wick continued, “Think about it. We get a three way benefit. We clear the guards, we clear the customers, and we clear the ‘goyles. The only thing left would be the tech, and I can get that dialed… tech is my thing. Heck, I bet at least half these systems are based on my clan’s work to begin with. That leaves a remarkably small number of things to handle…”

“Controlling the doors, getting the rune deck, and…” Armond trailed off.

“Getting the deck to the vault and the bag out of the vault in under a minute.”

“What.” It was not said as a question.

Wick picked at his teeth with an overgrown thumbnail. “I knew you would like this part. Once the rune deck is wiped, that starts a timer. See these runes here? Those are on the void locker pillars, meaning that the vault has a rudimentary time aspect. It will count down, and once it crosses the limit of the rune, it will pop up on every single teller position. They have the matching runes at eye level on their teller window pillars.”

“No way to circumvent it?”

“Rune magic, Armond. Solid as an old mountain. Carved runes are immutable. Unless you can get a runehammer to them faster than they can count down. Which is impossible. Those runes will only ever see the open air again when the bank is torn down. Sealed behind brick and iron currently. Void lockers are powerful enchantments, not to be trifled with.”

“They will know they were robbed.” Armond’s face fell a bit, somehow still managing to appear dashingly handsome.

“And that’s the beauty of popping the water. The bank was designed with this absurdly complex and powerful deluge system. And I mean a flood, torrential and inundating amounts of water… if the bank tellers are dealing with this deluge of fire suppression, I doubt any of them will be at their teller windows minding the vault status. That would be silly.”

“And giving us a chance to melt right into the madness.” Armond’s smile reasserted itself.

“Aye. Speaking of melting into the madness. I have muscle lined up.”

“Please tell me Frick said yes.”

“He did. Jumped at it, didn’t ask what the pay was,” Wick smirked, his best version of a wide smile. “He offered to bring Garbles in if we need him. I am not one for Sylvies, but Frick is not all that bad.”

Armond nodded in the affirmative. “Yes we need two for the doors. Garbles is perfect, not much to say, and stays that way. I love the troll work ethic.”

“So that leaves me running the tech dips, you doing the social work with the manager?”

“Obviously.”

“You said crew of six?”

“That leaves the driver and the fingers.”

Wick’s eyes went wide. “You knew about the runes.”

“I did. Parlor trick really. Tell you some other time.”

“And you made me sit here and explain it,” Wick made a face.

Armond chuckled. “Your voice is just so warm and inviting.”

“Fine. Driver… let’s see… uh we got Terrence? Or Nocke?”

“Terrance, Terrance? Is he the one that does the high speed stuff? Likes to sing at top volume?”

“Oh yeah, crazy shit man.” Wick laughed, his mouth still appearing to be mostly downturned.

“If we are going high speed, that means we fucked up along the way. I rather we disappear. Nocke is a fine choice. Reliable driver, help us evaporate.”

“That leaves the pinch out of the vault itself. Who are the fingers?”

“Well… what about Rashammonka?”

“Dead.” Wick shook his head.

“No shit?”

“Yeah, old lady killed him accidentally. Or at least that’s the story. Probably did it on purpose, he got around. More portholes than keys.”

“Ok… gross. Thanks for that. Stammin?” Armond tried.

“Went legit.”

“No fucking way.”

“Yeah, works up at the ‘Hill now. Doing well under Counsel Eseldi, you know, the old tree elf.”

“Good for Stammin. He was good. That’s a loss. Hmmm…”

Wick brightened. “What about Jack-de-jack?”

“Prison,” Armond replied shaking his head. “In for a tenner.”

“That old goblin finally got pinched himself? Shocker.”

“No, arson.”

Wick laughed out loud. “Let me guess? Fucking brownies.”

“Yeah, fucking brownies. Burned the entire building down. Unfortunately, it was an apartment.”

“Guy hated brownies though. I get it.” Wick chuckled it out to a fading sigh. “Well shit. I would say you since you are a talented pinch, but you have to handle that rune deck personally.”

“Yeah, I know. I know. We need to find some light and talented fingers.” Armond sighed heavily. “Alright, you keep on the tech, I will find us someone.”

“Where?”

“The place where fingers like to go walking. The wild nightlife of well-to-do Mercadia. Where else?”

“Do we have enough time?”

“Judge said we have time. Said that bag was deadholed in the vault. Not going anywhere. Even if I find a greenhorn, we can train them up a bit with some little stuff before we drop them into the cauldron.”

If you find someone. That is a big if.”

“Come one, Wick. When have I ever let you down?” Armond smiled proudly, tapping his chest with both hands.

“That one time with the Priest’s daughter.”

“Oh you had that coming my friend. Who am I to stand in the righteous fury of a father that was a man of the cloth and just so happened to know how to fistfight?”

“He was a former prizefighter, asshole. I am still missing this tooth because of it.” Wick lifted his lip, and he definitely did not have a tooth in the black gap.

“Gives you character, Wick. A presence.” Armond grinned his own white impeccable toothy grin as he headed towards the stairs.

“Yeah, yeah. Like I need that. Fuck off, Armond.”

“Already am, my old friend.”

Short Story

The Mercadian Heist, Part III

This portion follows The Mercadian Heist and The Mercadian Heist, Part II

The day took forever to trod along its proscribed, droll route. The dead end suitor shoved off after the appropriate amount of empty courting, the staff buzzed about trying to make Jax’s mother, Mayzeri Deanna Armas, happy and mostly failing. Her mother was a force of nature in her own way, and if one had any wish to preserve themselves, they would need to find a safe distance and appear compliant to her whims and wishes.

Jacqueline Deanna Armas, known to Jackie to her friends and Jax to her colleagues, had learned early on that if you wanted to hold your own against someone of her mother’s ilk, all you had to do was smile, nod in the right places, and let her carry your side of the conversation as she saw fit. Most of the time, that worked.

Today was no exception. Jax nodded where she needed to, smiled where she was expected, and kept her mouth shut otherwise. She absolutely had to find out what was in the leather bag sequestered under the false decorative top of her armoire. The bag was simple in design, with two brass buckles holding the flap down, and the leather itself was well worn, weathered by either time or stress, but cared for along the way. It appeared to be a good bag.

Its shape was held firmly in her mind, and she ran her imaginary fingers over the leather, fingering the belted closures, wondering what was held within. Jax risked breaking the silence to find out. “Mother?”

Mayzeri looked up from her piles of court papers strewn across the dinner table. “Yes, Jacqueline?”

The staff hated when her mother used the dining hall for her work. Work that was better suited for the parlor or the office, and not where the smallest spill of food or drink could risk a verbal assault from the Lady of the House for something that was wholly out of their control.

“May I be excused for the evening? I wish to go to bed after having a day like today.”

Mayzeri raised an eyebrow. “A day like today, love? A day where you have to do your part for the success of your family in securing your future? Unfortunately, my dear, that will be every day for the rest of your life. That is the role of a woman in this society. Fight for what you are owed.”

Jackie sighed inwardly at the bait, but she knew it was expected to question. “What are we owed, Mother?”

A hint of smile at her mouth as she leaned back over her papers, “The world, my dear one. We are owed the world. We just have to stand up and take it. Good night.”

“Good night Mother,” Jackie pushed away from the table and nodded to Mr. Graves, the butler, as he opened the door for her. “Good night, Mr. Graves.”

“Good night, miss!” He smiled kindly.

Jackie pulled her dinner dress up to her calves and took the stairs at speed. She felt like a criminal in her own house. Never mind the fact that she had robbed a bank this morning. It was stealing her time back from her mother that made her a real criminal. She kicked off her shoes, picked them up with the free hand and practicing her silent run, praying all the while that the household staff where elsewhere. She turned the corner of the hall that had her room door off of it, spun inside her door, and locked it quietly from the other side.

Her sanctuary was calm, quiet, and empty. Mekka, one of the housemaids that was assigned to this side of the house, must have already been in here. The fire was crackling lightly in the hearth, and the bed was already turned down. Harrisa, her lady’s maid, would not be expecting Jax to ring for at least another hour, so she had time.

She tossed her shoes near the footing of the changing blind in the corner, pulled a chair to the armoire, and shifted the trestling of the false top to the side to free the bag from its hiding place. She pulled it down gingerly. When she had picked the bag up in the Mercadian Central Bank she had a felt buzzing in her hands, like there was an angry bee in the leather satchel. And now, here, she felt that buzzing again. She sat on the edge of her bed staring down the bag in her hands as if she was making a choice that would end the world.

Jax paused.

Should she open it? Would Armond be angry? What if there was something inside that was dangerous? A construct that could was beyond her understanding? She was not a magical person. Magic did not run in her family at all. There was an old rumor that she had a great-great Aunt on her father’s side that had a touch of it, and she had gone mad, living alone with a great number of cats and a live-in female friend.

Jax was mature enough to know exactly what her great-great aunt was, and mad was not it. That aunt probably had been a very kind and passionate person who knew exactly what she wanted out of her life. Just like Jax knew what she wanted out of hers. She wanted the same thing, in a way.

She wanted choices. And maybe a cat. Maybe a lover… someday.

So what if there was something in the bag she wouldn’t understand? Armond would not have sent her home with anything dangerous. It was just a leather bag. A simple satchel with two brass buckles, and simple shoulder strap. If it had been dangerous, it would be in a iron box, or void locker, or something even more exotic. Whatever was in the bag was valuable, but not dangerous. She squeezed her braid, feeling the jeweled comm concealed in the many dark strands, and thought briefly about trying to reach out to Armond.

Jax heard her mother’s voice in her head, “We are owed the world.”

Damn right we are, Jax agreed. She had carried this bag from the the most secure vault in all of Mercadia all by herself. She had carried it out of the Mercadian Central Bank and through the city, under the watchful eyes of many sorts. Whatever was in the bag did not warrant a second glance from any number of magically-aware beings that she had crossed paths with. No troll or goblin had stopped her. How many Sylvians had she walked near? Not a single one had batted an eyelid in her direction. She had been a simple teenage human girl carrying her bag on her way to somewhere.

Jax made her choice, undoing the buckles and pulling at the straps. She took a deep breath and held the bag open tentatively, expecting something to happen.

Nothing happened.

She sat it on her knees and looked into the dark of the bag.

Wands?!

At least twenty. Of all shapes and sizes. What the fuck where wands doing locked up in a bank vault? Wands were focus objects for very specific types of magic users. Magic users often made their own based on their preferred specialty or focus of magic. And everyone knew that wands were about as useful to another person as a used through pair of shoes. Nothing special about shoes. They won’t make you walk any faster, or do your walking for you. They are just shoes. Used ones are doubly useless at that. Kind of gross to use someone else’s shoes. It was kind of gross to use someone’s wand. It would help focus in a pinch, but it would be off and not nearly as useful as your own.

Useless fucking wands.

Jackie shook the bag gently, and the wands all woodenly clicked and thunked together like a bundle of sticks. She literally had kindling on her knees. Useless, stupid, …worthless sticks!

Jackie felt a flair of anger. Why had she risked a bank robbery at the most secure bank in all of the city, just so Armond could get his hands on a bag of used, nasty, wands. Like what the fuck is going on here!?

There had to be something else in the bag. She ran her hands over all the edges of the leather, hoping to feel a hidden zipper or a secret fold, something that held a piece of paper with a secret, or a Elvish map to a dragon’s hoard hidden somewhere deep in a mountain. But there was nothing else.

It was just a bag. She rifled through the bag’s contents, her hands brushing all of them, and nothing changed.

Full of useless wands. Jackie leaned back, shaking her head in wonder at the monumentious stupidity of it all.

“Pick me up.”

Jackie screamed, throwing the bag off her lap. It bounced off the rug, and the wands scattered across the floor, sounding just like sticks being scattered from a woodpile. She held her breath, both hands over her mouth. She exhaled raggedly, her hands were shaking. She almost pulled her enchantment out and spoke the trigger word to disappear. Almost.

Her own voice was shaky in her ears, “Who’s there?”

The voice was soft, genteel almost. Like a soothing balm given voice and action. “Just a useless wand.”

Jackie nearly repeated her scream. But she tempered her urge, feeling her emotions running through her veins like fire.

“Good. You have control,” the voice reassured.

Jackie’s eyes surveyed the room of wands, and her eyes fell on one near the middle. She knew it was that one. A dark brown one about the length of her forearm, twisted like a grape vine, one end smoother than the other. No carvings, no jewels, no inlays or fitted handles like some of the others. It was plain. Utilitarian. Unassuming.

“Yes.”

“H-h-how?” Jackie stammered. She didn’t know what she was asking. Well she kind of knew. She kind of was asking all the questions, all at once. How did she hear it? How did it talk? How could a simple wand be anything more than a shoe? Did everyone hear it? Could it talk to anyone? Was it sentient? Was this a curse? Oh my god, is the wand a person? Can you even transmute a person into a wand? What the fuck? What the fuck is happening? What the fuck is happening to me? Am I crazy?

Oh my god, she thought, maybe my great-great aunt was crazy and not just a lesbian.

“Stop.”

Jackie stopped.

“Deep breath. Count to five. Release. Count to five. Breath in again. Repeat five times.”

“What?” Jackie tried.

“Do it!” The voice said with authority. An authority that Jackie respected, so she followed the instructions.

“Feel better?”

She did. Her mind was calm, and the questions had started to take priority while the emotional responses had faded to a dull roar in the background. “Yes.”

“Pick me up.”

Jax did not move. “Why?”

“So we can communicate better. This takes effort.”

Jackie lightly stepped on to the carpet, and gathered all the scattered wands, making a point to not touch the obvious one trying to steal her soul or take over her body.

“That is ridiculous.”

“Ok. Stop. How are you doing that?” Jax asked, shoving the other wands back into the leather bag. “Invading one’s thoughts is impolite.”

“As a wand, think about this for a moment, a wand is not interested in stealing a soul or taking over a body. What use is either to a wand? I am a wand.” The voice said it as if it was the most absurdly obvious thing that could ever be said in the history of the world. “And the way that I communicate is profoundly easier and faster.”

Jax squatted down near the wand, still lying askew on the carpet, looking over it carefully while she shook the last of the wands into the bag, settling them back into place. “I think I am mad.”

“Not yet.”

“Great help,” she sighed. “But to everyone else that can’t hear you, witnessing me talking to a stick, I think it would be obvious.”

“Its temporary.”

“The madness?”

“The talking out loud part. You will learn to converse more directly in the future.”

“And that is why you need me to pick you up?” Jax tried.

“No. You have to learn things on your own.”

“Then why would I need to pick you up?”

“Because you need to make a copy of me, put the copy back into the bag, and then give the bag to whoever bought your crew to steal me in the first place.”

“I am not a wizard, I am thief.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” Jax said, returning the obvious matter of fact tone the wand had used earlier. “Only magic-touched folks can use magic. Most barely. Only the great ones are able to actually use it use it, in the way the stories are told. I am not one of the former, and definitely not one of the latter. I am not magic folk.”

“That’s a lie.”

“What’s a lie?” Jax was caught off guard.

“Everyone can use magic. Anyone. All living things are tied to the fabric of the universe. Why would magic only exist for a select few? Magic is not sentient. It cannot make decisions about who gets to use it. It is energy. Pervasive. Everywhere. All things are bound in it and by it.”

“So what are the Trials for?”

“The Trials as you call them are to keep the lie alive. Why would power invite competition, Jacqueline?”

“But everyone would know it was a lie, eventually, right? It only takes someone to come along and do it without the schools, the training, and the rest of it. Some hermit wandering in from a lonely mountain and using magic as if it was the most natural thing, that is all that it would take,” Jax paused and curled her lip into a sneer. “…And I hate that name.”

“Its what your mother calls you.”

“It is. And now you know why I hate it.”

“Pick me up, Jackie.” The voice was softer now, understanding.

“It’s Jax.”

“Pick me up, Jax.”

She reached out, letting her fingers graze the wood, expecting a great shock or a wave of power to wash over her. Nothing happened.

“Of course nothing happened. I already explained, come on.” It sounded annoyed.

Jax grasped the wand in annoyance herself and lifted it straight to her eyeline. “There! Are you happy?”

“My happiness is irrelevant. Now. Grab one of the junk wands out of the bag.”

“Junk wands?”

“They are meant to be decoys. To hide me from anyone looking without knowing what to look for.”

“Ok. This one?” Jax had pulled out a smaller, thicker, lighter colored wand with a single scratched jewel crowning a false hilt.

“It doesn’t matter. Now focus on what I look like. What the wood feels like. The weight of it in your hand. Think about how you feel the interaction of it through your skin, your fingers, your sight, your smell. Take a few minutes and create a representation in your mind. Include the most detail you can think of. Most important of all… think of what makes me ‘real’. Whatever that means to you.”

“Ok, then use a magic word or an incantation?”

“Of course not, I can explain why those exist later,” the wand was sighing even though it lacked lungs, air, and throat to sigh through. “Magic is old. As I said, is a part of reality, just as the interactions between things very large and very small are relatively the same throughout nature. It is only at the extremes where things are strange and incongruent. But the vast majority of the universe is made up of a single great fabric. Magic permeates that fabric. All you have to do is find a thread of it and grab on.”

“But how?”

“And that is why I am here. To show the way.”

“Wait. You are a dowsing rod?” Jackie wanted to laugh. “But for magic. Not water.”

“I AM NOT A DOWSING ROD,” the voice was borderline hysterical in denial.

“Says the dowsing rod.”

“Stop it. Now use your imagination. And close your eyes.” The voice had returned to the teacher voice.

Jax closed her eyes, and made an image in her head of the wand. Similarly to how she had imagined the bag earlier in the day. She ran her mental fingers over the wand as she actually ran her fingers over the wood, feeling the grain, the texture. She smelled the deep oldness of the wood, an aged wax, something far off like a campfire and baking bread coming from deep in a forest full of light. Birds were in the trees, singing songs that were wound of magic, the vines vibrated as they climbed the trees, seeking the warmth of light above. The mists of the morning wound among the roots of the old ones, touching their bark hesitantly, sharing messages from the sky and the wind. Everything was alive.

She felt it in her heart, the tug, the pull, and the connection to the world around her. Her breath slowed, the pulse in her fingertips faded from her consciousness, and she understood the wand in her right as she held what the wand that wanted to become in her left. She understood all she had to do was make the movement.

She had to move with intent, like one would take a step forward with their body. It is just a moment of thought, and then a moment of action. The brain interpreted for the body, and the body made motion through a complex series of chemical reactions and coordination that the brain knew nothing about. Likewise, she felt the magic, the feel of what she wanted, and she just… moved forward.

“And you are done,” the voice came along as if in a dream.

Jax opened her eyes and her left hand held exactly what was in her right. It was indistinguishable.

“Mostly. If you know what to look for. But for your first attempt, that is a great result.”

Jax set them both down and rolled them back and forth on the carpet without looking, trying to mix them up. She stood and looked down at both of them.

“The real one is on the right,” she said with no hesitation or delay.

“Yes.”

“How did I know?” Jax tugged on her braid as she did done since a child, considering what needed to be considered. Her mother called it her ‘thinking face’.

“Because you know what is real. Intuitively. Any person that understood the basic nature of things would know. But the trick is that you will put the fake one in the bag, and no one will be able to have a basis to compare. No one will consider that a duplicate will have been made in such a short time, and no one will suspect the thief of pulling one over using magic. It is… ahem… the perfect crime.”

“Funny.”

“See you just communicated without saying anything out loud. You are a fast learner.”

“I did?” Jax said aloud.

“And you ruined it. Just practice, it will come naturally… eventually.”

Jax stood on the chair and shoved the closed bag back into its hiding place, carefully shifting the false top back into place. She pushed the chair back into place, and sat on the edge of her bed, with the wand spanning her two hands.

“What are you?” Jax tried again, focusing on saying her mind without vocalizing.

“I am a wand.”

“You are not just a wand. Just like my necklace is not just a necklace.”

“I don’t know what I am. There was a day that I knew what I was, and I was a wand. I have always been a wand. When did you become everything that makes you up who you are now?”

Jax shrugged. “Along the way, I suppose.”

“You feel that you came to be who you are sometime as a child, and then you had some experiences, and then someone died or someone left, and then you had more, but different experiences, and then one day you are in your bedroom having a conversation with a wand. I am like that too. Except much more static. I am a wand. My experiences don’t matter. One day I wasn’t, then the next I was. I have been the same since.”

“But someone created you?”

“No.”

“Bullshit!”

“That is not language becoming a lady of station, Jax.”

“So one day, you were just a wand. Where? Growing from the smart ass wand tree?”

“My first owner laid his hands on me, and I saw through his eyes that I was lying in the bottom of a crater on a pillar made of melted glass, and the trees all around the crater were on fire, as the stars wheeled overhead, leaving streaks in the sky.”

“Pillar? Fire? Crater? What about that sounds like he didn’t create you?”

“He did not. If he had, I would know. When I came to be, I knew everything that I know. That including the knowledge that he did not create me.”

“Circular reasoning, as my tutors had ever heard it.”

“I am what I am meant to be for the purposes I am meant to serve. I am an intelligence, but I am finite. I am a wand.”

Jax felt like she had a million more questions.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“You want to know. Everything. You want to be more than you were lead to believe was possible. You want to have power, but not for power’s sake, instead to make your life exciting. You want to live a life worth living. And the answer is yes.”

“What was the question, then?” Jax tried.

“Will I teach you?”

“Huh.” Jax sat back and laid the wand across her lap. Her eyes looked inwards, thinking about what she truly wanted. She swallowed heavily. “I guess I have a lot to learn.”