"On worlds where magic is well-entrenched, yes. It's a lot like college for other things though - there are a lot of mediocre magic schools that will train you up to be a basic leycaster or vegamancer, and a few great magic schools who can teach proper thaumaturgy."

"What are those things?"

"Leycaster - think of magic power grids. Vegamancers manage divination systems. Thaumaturgy is a catchall term for high magic, meta-magic, whatever you want to call it. It's sort of like learning electrical engineering as opposed to learning to be an electrician."

"Why does magic require a power grid? What is a 'divination system'?"

"Some applications need continuous input to keep working. City wards, magic ovens, that kind of thing. Anything that does divinations in a relatively automated way is a divination system. From a crystal ball that shows your front doorstop to the giant meteorological precog circles."

"Where does the input come from? Various mana all translated into universal format?"

"Not really... Generic mana can be inefficient over long distances. It's actually really complicated and I don't get called in on industrial type stuff much. As to the original source, either people generating mana from their own systems, some worlds have naturally occurring sources of magical power, I think some kinds of dragons produce a near-endless stream of the stuff and get paid handsomely for it."

"Good for those dragons. Man, I live in some kind of third-world world, don't I."

"Hm, maybe not as much as you'd expect. Technology can make up for a lot of missing magic. You're wearing mechanically woven clothes and understood my reference to electricity, for example."

"Yeah, we have those things most places. Magic's not even common knowledge, though. And while I'm not sure anyone's tried to industrialize it, it kind of sounds designed to punish attempts."

"I wouldn't know about local magic beyond what I saw on you, but it does seem rather... Harsh. Compared to the kinds I know."

"Are there any kinds I can just... learn and take home?"

"I am tech support, not a tutor. And most of them require an activation, drinking a certain potion or the like, and I don't have access to any of those without losing the door to here."

"I don't mean learn from you, necessarily, I could self-teach out of a book or something... most of them?"

"Off the top of my head, there is a brand of chanting and dancing that has impractically small effects for the effort involved, a discipline of mind arts that people can sometimes go from no measurable potential to a small amount of potential, and a variety of potionmaking that relies on ingredients you are not likely to have access to."

"Damn. Can I buy an activation potion for something later when I have a mattressful of spheres?"

"Yes, those are definitely for sale. You'll want a test kit to see your potential for them first. They're usually pretty cheap. I'll arrange to deliver a big old catalog to you in the next few weeks."

"Awesome."

He hands her a little red bundle. "This is the medevac veil. I've slipped it into the system under a nonkeyed ghost registration. You'll need to, ah, strip down and then put it on as snug as you can manage and it'll disappear and you can do whatever after that, it'll stay."

"Put it on in what manner?" she asks, tucking it into her bag.

"It's basically a half-ghost jumpsuit with the teleport trigger woven in. So, the normal way for clothes."

"What does it mean for a garment to be 'half ghost'?"

"It has ghost-like properties such as selective intangibility and entity-binding."

"Not particularly. It's a... Soft binding, closer to the way a key is made to fit a lock and not the other way around? I'm struggling to come up with a good metaphor."