Bella, a Nineties Kid™, has grown up aware that Phoenix exists and has all the magic in their grubby little hands. She doesn't know if she wants to work for them, or join some government task force that makes them cough it up and share, or get sent to another planet, but all of those are on the table.

When there's an incentive program to get potential tested that's enough to cover gas and a lunch out, she hauls to Port Angeles for it.

They do offer incentives when the well of candidates runs a bit thin. Fifty bucks, straight up. All she has to do is sit in front of the machine.

The operator sets things up, makes a confused sound, pages through a manual, fusses some more, and then she gets a readout.

"Eighty! Congratulations! That's 99.6th percentile."

"What does this measure exactly, anyway?" She's heard everything from 'innate magical ability' to 'nothing, it's just a way to get people to give them their contact information so they can hassle them with job openings'.

"Essentially, how strong your soul is? How strong you'll be if you get sent through? Though the soul is not the mind - I don't understand the full theory myself, this is just what I've heard."

"Huh. Do you have like, a pamphlet or anything?"

"Sure do, just a sec."

...The GPMG is your General Passive Mana Gradient, and is strongly correlated with magical talent and power after transmigration. It is an innate property of the soul that cannot be trained and can only change in exceptional circumstances. Due to the nature of Earth, only GPMG levels greater than 110 would be capable of performing magic unaided...

...GPMG is a logarithmic scale: A score of 90 is ten times more potent than 80, and a hundred times more potent than 70. Many of our clients have minimum GPMG requirements for their new hires, usually 85 or 80, though the standards can be slightly lowered for otherwise exceptional individuals...

...There are considerable practical and ethical challenges in bringing broader access to magic to Earth. Much like nuclear technology can be used for good or ill, magic is potentially extremely dangerous if used irresponsibly or maliciously, which is why Phoenix Reincarnations Incorporated keeps a careful watch over our research division...

"Thanks."

She gets lunch in Port Angeles, fills up the gas tank, goes home.

What's up on the Phoenix "open roles" page.

There's quite a few, actually. 

>Isolated Ecological Monitoring/Repair

>Facility Maintenance & Design

>Adversarial Training Simulation

>Airborne Systems Coordination

>Emplaced Security & Enforcement

>Tactical Animal Handling & Care

>Mobile Medical/Restoration Agent

>Immigration & Security Investigator

>Security Analysis & Implementation

>Scouting & Intelligence Ranger

>Continuous Exploration & Cartography

>Grassroots Emancipation Support

They're all phrased in corporate-speak and euphemisms for some reason, though it's not that hard to figure out what they're actually about with a closer look. Is she looking for anything in particular?

SHE WANTS TO DO GODDAMN MAGIC, THAT'S WHAT SHE'S LOOKING FOR. Without, ideally, cutting off the possibility of ever speaking to her parents again.

All of Phoenix Co's job opportunities involve the chance to learn magic! Though what magic, specifically, one might learn is not listed on the website. Though of the ones listed, only a few are specifically about magic - Security Analysis & Implementation is all about wards if you read between the lines. Being summoned to design and implement defenses against hordes of demons and monsters. The Mobile Agent job mentions magical training for healing and infrastructure repair specifically. Isolated Ecological Monitoring apparently involves lots of 'energy flow', which is probably magic. There's another one - hazardous energy disposal & handling- that is about getting rid of nasty magic, like curses and necromancy.

Mobile Agenting sounds promising? Especially if "mobile" means "home on Christmas". What's in the expansion of that one?

A Mobile Medical/Restoration Agent is expected to be conscientious, reserved, and diligent. They work in short bursts, occasionally under pressure, and tolerance for mistakes and errors is low; Incomplete work is preferable to bad work. Some skills and talents that apply well to Agents include first aid or medicine, project planning, civil or other engineering, and visualization/spatial reasoning. Agents will undergo a conversion for compatibility with Khintal, deity of civilization, infrastructure, healing, cooperation, and stoneworkers. Agents will be granted a small pocket dimension to live within, and be expected to answer summons by followers of Khintal on the planet Earthsea and trade with them on a regular basis. Khintal-aligned Agents have special advantages in learning certain kinds of magic, specifically healing and construction magic, so most summons request those services of them. Agents will receive six months' training in magic before being released to answer summons. The primary payment summoners offer is magical energy, which is used to sustain an Agent's existence and their pocket dimension, and can also be used for personal purposes or traded with other people in Khintal's domain, but services and objects may be accepted as well. Agents may negotiate in good faith with summoners and reject unfair offers. Khintal is a deity of cooperation and will support Agents if the Agents are acting in good faith. If there are insufficient summons or summoners are regularly acting in bad faith, Khintal will intervene.

Benefits are negotiable but may include (pocket dimension improvements, personal power increases, various tiers of internet access and other luxuries, and...) scheduled summoning during which no work is expected as 'vacation time'.

...yeah that looks really good actually? Is there any more information available about the conversion process or Khinatal?

Your soul (which again is not the mind but something different) stops being an incarnated-being type of soul and becomes an incorporeal-being type of soul; This is pretty irreversible. There are no directly mind-altering elements to the process, but new sensations and experiences do alter the mind. You will no longer have a physical body; It'll technically be a hollow shell made of magic. You can't have children, eat/drink, have sexual contact with others, or sleep normally (it becomes a sort of trance instead), without special arrangements. Many physical sensations like muscle fatigue or chill and warmth are dulled, without special arrangements. You will need magical energy to survive. 'Dying' as in having the magic shell body destroyed is painful and costs a lot of extra magic; Khintal will prevent you from dying of mana starvation unless you get ridiculously in debt and make no effort to fix it. There are kinds of magic that are especially harmful to summoned beings. There are still occasional magical dangers which can permanently kill you.

What special arrangements do you need to have sex or children or dinner?

Negotiating for it as part of your benefits or with a loan of magic from Khintal. It's easier to apply at the time of summoning, adding arrangements later is possible but much more expensive.

And what is Khintal like, as a person to have kind of attached to one's means of sustenance?

There's nothing on the Phoenix site about him other than that line about civilization, infrastructure, healing, cooperation, and stoneworkers.

Well, maybe she will send them an email asking about it, then.

Information on deities tends to be polarizing so we handle it carefully. We've had issues with various churches before. There are various kinds of beings that we class as deities. Broadly, ones that are more like people with specific wants and needs, memories, personal connections; and ones that are more like organizations with policies and precedent but lacking a social component for the most part. Khtinal and other deities native to Earthsea are of the latter type. Can I assume your interest is related to the Mobile Agent position we have open with Khintal?

-Mary, Phoenix Co

Public Relations

Yeah, it looked interesting, if potentially awfully drastic.

All our positions are pretty drastic and demanding. Things that are worth expending the effort of transmigration on are important. We try to make sure the rewards match it. I can get you an appointment to discuss it with someone in more detail if your GPMG isn't too low.

I got an 80

That's pretty good! Still too low for our most demanding positions but Khintal Agent isn't one of those. Where are you located? Can I get a phone number? If possible we'd like to have the same office you'd go to later on in the process do the initial call.

I'm in rural Washington, got tested in Port Angeles which I think is your closest location. 555-6034.

Okay, NW office then. Any particular time they should call?

I'm still in high school, so afternoons and weekends and not in the middle of the night.

We'll get someone in contact with you to discuss further soon!

The next day at 4:15 PM, she gets a call where the Caller ID reports 'PHOENIX CO'.

"Hello?"

"Hello! Claire from Phoenix Company here. I'm calling because you wanted more information about a position, Mobile Agent?"

"That's right, I'm considering going into magic instead of college."

"I see. Well, we do pay people for going through the testing even if we reject applicants later, if you want to try. What would you like to know?"

"I want to know more about the deity involved in the position, since it seems like it would be hard to seek an alternate employer."

"Yes, that's a pretty common ask when gods are involved. Khintal is an axiomatic sort of god- To human understanding, often compared to an organization following a set of rules like a bank or government office, or an artificial intelligence, though those are both imperfect analogies. In terms of goals, Khintal really just likes building and fixing things, and complicated systems running smoothly. People are interesting to Khintal because we also build things and form complex societies. He wants transmigrators both for high levels of GPMG and for your experience growing up in a modern society. New perspectives. If you don't want to take my word for it we can maybe arrange a visit from previously selected Agents, or a time slot on the godphone. Second thing is a bigger ask though."

"I'd love to talk to preexisting Agents, yeah. If I'm not cutting too badly into their constrained vacations back on Earth."

"It's a special extra, we even pay them with Earth stuff. We do it at every test day for this one."

"What kind of testing would I be looking at?"

"They're varied and thorough. Written tests, physical tests, team building exercises, problem solving. We want to get a really good idea of personality and aptitude before we select someone, to make sure it's a good fit."

"Physical tests? Wouldn't you be replacing my entire body with a space angel?"

"Yes. How you approach them is informative."

"I have a balance disorder."

"-I see. I'm sure we can make some arrangements. Are weight machines okay?"

"Basically anything I can do sitting down and some things I can do standing still are fine."

"Alright. It shouldn't be a problem." There's some typing noise in the background. "Can I ask what you're hoping to get out of the position, or answer any more questions?"

"I want magic and you've completely bottlenecked it for anyone who doesn't go through you, for whatever reason. I'm looking into this specific role because I'm generally in favor of building and healing, if you didn't exist I'd probably go to medical school."

"Ahuh. I won't just repeat the same bland platitudes at you, then. So do you want to go for testing? Day long event, every other Saturday. We do travel expenses and give you four hundred dollars."

"Yeah, I can be free on Saturdays. How many Saturdays?"

"One Saturday, and then a week-long camp if you pass the first round."

"When's the camp?"

"We get enough applicants to run them seasonally." She gives dates; Three in summer, three more spread around the rest of the year.

"Okay. Which is the next available Saturday for testing, and is it the same Port Angeles site?"

"This weekend. And no, it's in San Francisco. We can get you airfare, business class."

"Oh. I guess I can fly out after school Friday? It's a long drive to the airport so if you want me all day Saturday that's what I'd do, I assume you'll comp the hotel too?"

"Hotel, parking, meals, taxi while you're in San Fran if you need it, all of it. We can just organize the hotel booking too, if you don't want to fuss with getting comped later."

"That would be convenient!"

"I'll get it expedited, then! I just have to confirm name, address, phone number, email all match up. Hotel requires it."

She can recite this information.

"Okay, just a sec..." Typety typety. "Any other questions in the meantime?"

"Not a problem that I'm seventeen? Do you need me to call back with my dad to hand for his permission or anything?"

"-Oh, right. I hadn't gotten to that screen yet, yeah, if we're booking the hotel for you we need a parent or guardian's permission. I can email you a form to sign. And definitely if you get selected, and aren't 18 yourself by then. For the day trip itself, no, though."

"I'll be 18 in September."

"I see. Okay, sent you the hotel permission."

"Great, I can get him to sign that after his shift."

Further logistics later, Bella shows up to be tested of a Saturday.

There's a short orientation; The people here are excited at the idea of being ageless (several are old), excited about magic, excited about another world, anxious about the test.

There's a really rather excruciating written test with eclectic, almost random, subjects. Wrong answers are much worse than blank answers, but some questions have an option for 'this is how I would go about finding the answer' for reduced credit. And then a nice lunch in the cafeteria.

Bella has read lots of eclectic books but not the exact subset this test happens to draw on! She will leave answers blank or describe a research process when she has no idea.

In the early afternoon they have various kitschy team exercises like logic puzzles, escape rooms, a couple business negotiation type scenarios, which-of-these-three-building-plans-is-least-stupid analysis tasks with made up information, that kind of stuff.

One of her teammates for the last thing is really loud and annoying. He has an engineering degree so he should definitely be in charge, after all.

Well, he could be a plant, or just an annoying guy, but either way she isn't going to rise to the bait. She's seventeen and does not have the charisma to take charge of their team. She instead assigns herself notetaking duties and writes up pro and con charts and mostly doesn't try to talk around him so much as point things out to other parties in the group silently with the eraser end of her pencil.

The rest of the group sours on annoying guy pretty quickly. They can finish the task without anything resembling a fight breaking out.

Next up, time to meet Joe Henson, who was previously selected for this back in '97! He's sitting there at a conference table, looking surprisingly ordinary despite the blue sclera and hair, just kind of sitting there sipping on a can of Sprite. Her group is the first one in.

Magic dude! "Afternoon!"

"Afternoon, guys! How're you liking the boot camp?" He waves and chuckles. "So yeah, I'm here to answer questions. Ask away!"

"Why are your eyes blue?" Someone asks first thing. "Is that going to happen to us?"

"Nah, personal choice. And I'd be surprised if even one of you makes it honestly. Just the math of it, no offense."

"Do you make it to Earth often?"

"Oh, once every couple of months? I got an arrangement for weekends in Vegas. Aside from these quick hops I mean, I'm only here for like an hour to talk to you guys right now."

"Can you show us any magic?"

"Oh, sure. Everyone always asks, but it's seriously difficult on Earth. The air's heavy like you wouldn't believe, it's oppressive. So come close, I'm not doing this twice."

People scurry close. He focuses and cups his hands and- Nothing seems to happen, but the others ooh and aah.

"- I didn't - see? - was I looking the wrong way -"

"What? Ugh, maybe. Even cheap-ass illusions barely work here. Here, again. Look close now."

Now that she's expecting it, there's a little ballerina figurine made out of light spinning and flickering slightly above his hands. Or is there?

"Oh, this time I saw something, thanks."

"Sure thing. Some people are, like, naturally magic resistant, I think. That might be it. Apparently we all have secret powers and just can't show them unless we transmigrate. Not me, I'm still just a glorified plumber, but yeah."

"So you do a lot of construction?"

"Yeah. But never with my hands again, no more sore back! There's - telekinesis, stone shaping, that kind of stuff. Much easier."

"Cool!"

"Do you have pictures?"

"Yeah! You have to use old-fashioned chemical film for some reason but I digitized some of my favorites-"

He beeps on a wall TV and shows some pictures; Big stone temples with weird designs, busy city streets lined with wrought-iron lanterns and strange fashion, a dragon-lady wearing tons of gold and a wolf-guy wearing tons of silver having a duel or something, a jungle with a volcano looming over it and the distant figure of a dragon flying in the sky, some sort of parade of people with really elaborate armor and robes, waving and throwing candy.

"Are there other things like digital cameras that don't work there?"

"Semiconductors just don't work, apparently. Random voltage spikes. Or something."

Other people ask questions about the places he's seen, and he answers in a rambly sort of way.

"What's Khintal like?"

"He's not really a guy, he's like a bank or something. Or like a coworker you never see outside of work who refuses to talk about anything but work. Money, productivity, long term benefits, just... All the time. He knows we don't always care about that, but that's his whole - lens of seeing the world. Does that make sense?"

"...not really."

"If I tell Khintal I don't like the way someone talks he's like, well does that affect your productivity, did he break any laws or courtesies, you have to instead say it like- I'm going to charge more to work for him specifically, I'll be generally reluctant to do anything at all involving him for intangible human reasons."

"Huh... do you have more personable management or is it just directly reporting to Khintal?"

"Not really? It's not that bad, he's not mean, just kind of..." He shrugs. "If you say 'I need help, I need someone who understands my problem in human terms' he'll send you someone but it's mostly kind of a freelance thing? Except not really, it's more like- Well, everyone's got their own bubble, but hooking up to other bubbles is fairly cheap, so we hang out with each other a lot. People make their front rooms into bars and malls. You have your friends and you trade jobs and contacts around sometimes. The Earthsea can summon 'a Khintal angel', oh, sorry, 'Agent', and get someone semi-random from those taking summons at the moment, at Khintal's whim - so, powerful people with big offers tend to get more experienced agents. Or they can summon you specifically if you have a fixer give them your name or make good contacts yourself."

"Fixer?"

"Broker. Manager. They match people to jobs, it's a lot more convenient than randoms since they'll schedule you and give you people they think you'll get along with."

The others seem willing to go along with this course of conversation. It seems pretty relevant. A couple are taking notes.

"Are all the angels through Phoenix? Are the fixers?"

"No, no, most of them are natives. I know like three other transmigrators out of hundreds of people, all Phoenix. We get pulled for having huge magic power and new perspectives, Khintal likes the modern perspectives and infrastructure. Fixers are just people who like being a fixer. They're good at it, or they'd have to stop."

"What're the natives like?"

"I mean... What are French people like? What are Chinese people like? They're kind of violent sometimes, but the place is a lot more dangerous than Earth is, so fair's fair in my opinion. Even the guys who aren't human still seem mostly human if you don't pay attention to the scales or tails or whatever, if that's what you mean."

"I mean, like, do they have any particular tendencies to think one way or another about transmigrators, what tends to get them into angeling..."

"They kind of think we're young punks a little bit, honestly. Uh- Khintal turns people who pray to him into an-Agents, sometimes, and they feel like they deserve it more, at least at first. I might be overinterpreting."

"So there's a whole religion about it? What's that like?"

"They're all about working hard and learning things. There's a whole bunch of gods-"

"The only real god is-"

"Oh piss off!" He points at the middle aged woman who interrupted. "Call them powerful magical entities if you must. They exist."

"Well, I never."

Joe rolls his bright blue eyes. "It's pretty recognizably a religion. They have songs, and services, and stuff. Hard to sum up."

"Do they all pray to all the gods or do they pick favorites? What are the others like?"

He'll talk about the gods a bit, though everyone else starts pushing her out of the question-asking position to ask about Earthsea culture, magic, etc, etc. Tsokhem is a god of justice, boldness, gambling, and monsters, and is apparently unusual for being kind of in the middle of the good/evil divide - his actions kill people, but he also gives them magic powers. Lorakh is goddess of motherhood, agriculture, sleep and dreams, and the home. Khevvo is a god of parties, drugs, sex, joy, and also rebellion. Georkh is a god of hunters, lumberjacks, wilderness, and animal herders, and claims responsibility for Megadeer (which are deer that happen to be as big as a house; He has a photo).

Do all these gods get along acceptably? Do angents - agels? - wind up in interdeity conflict at all or is the job strictly building and healing?

"Angents? Heh. Now, a lot of the other ones do, but Khintal - doesn't forbid us from fighting, or making forts, or whatever, but doesn't make us do it either and will punish people who try to force you into it, if you report it. I haven't heard of any god-wars, but I don't know if they have a divine Geneva Convention or what."

Bella's curious about the magic too and will add her attentiveness to magic questions from other people!

Using magic is kind of indescribable! He barely knows enough healing to close up scrapes, healing and construction are two entirely different branches. Construction-type magic consists of claiming 'motes' that exist everywhere, imbuing them with energy, and then willing them to do things in the right way to have the result you want, but it's more complicated than it sounds. Programming is just telling the computer what to do, he jokes. Some of the simplest work is making hard stone flow like clay. They can turn water into ice and then screw around with the ice. They can make spheres of darkness and light. They can blow air around, or fix the magic to a small tube and add firemotes to make a hair dryer- A lot of construction work isn't literally just putting walls up, it's setting up the magic appliances and making it so that people can refill them.

"Refill them with - motes?"

"Yeah, or no. The motes are the same, they have amounts of energy, like temperature but not. You make - siphons. They can do mortal kinds of magic at it and re-energize them."

"How long does it take you to learn how to do this?"

"It's a process. I'm still picking up new tricks and getting faster. They do a good job training you though."

"Five minute warning," calls one of the test proctors.

"Would you recommend the job?"

"Oh heck yes. One hundred percent. It's not perfect but nothing is, it's steady, it's interesting, and you get to help people."

"Most substantial considerations against?"

"Pocket dimensions get kind of samey. No chance of retirement or a career change any time soon. Though, that's also a positive in my mind."

She won't hog the entirety of the last five minutes.

The thing the guy misses most about Earth is Blockbuster and his PlayStation. And Vegas. The thing he likes most about Earthsea is seeing new towns, he always gets the locals to tell him stories or plays or whatever. Two of the last minutes are wasted by that same religious lady. He's telling a cute anecdote about a couple of kids who thought they were tricking him out of little magic toys when the proctor starts shuffling everyone out.

Next is physical exercise! Yaaaay. Bella gets different exercises than everyone else. If the others suspect something weird, they don't do more than glance between her and the proctors about it.

Bella will lift weights and stuff! She is not super athletic but she has been doing alternative gym class for a while.

They keep steadily upping how demanding the exercise is for a while.

Well, she doesn't need to lift anything heavier than her backpack on her way home and also probably they will let her take a break if necessary before she goes to crash in the hotel.

They give her cooldown time, yeah. They have changing rooms and showers for everyone, if they want it. After that everyone gets a quick interview with some of the proctors for any questions they might have.

Bella would like to know if the annoying guy was a plant or just an annoying guy!

"He was just an annoying guy. Mark Stroffer, if you want to look him up. These test days are mostly about seeing how hard someone is to work with, and their general attitude."

"I don't think I will look him up. Why couldn't I see the illusion the first time?"

"Mr. Henson's comment about magic resistance was accurate. Some people are magic resistant. You're one of them. Blank to some kinds of passive sensing, and apparently to illusions you're not aware exist. I see here the GPMG testing had to use an alternate long-exposure mode for that reason. It's a positive mark for you."

"Huh. And that works on Earth? Will it be more powerful off it?"

"It works on Earth." He looks to his screen for a moment. "It's the difference between passive and active, basically. A computer would not work on Earthsea, but a faraday cage would. It won't make you more powerful, though 80 is still quite respectable."

"Are there a lot of kinds of... passive sensing?"

"Yes. Magic is incredibly varied. We can't magically sense your emotions or where your attention is directed, or directly observe your soul. We don't know the full extent of this effect and more active testing would be hard to arrange."

"Do you not usually warn people who don't have this property that they might have their souls directly observed and such??"

"That's what the GPMG testing is. A soul observation. If you didn't have to sign the waiver, that's a problem we have to look into? As for sensing emotions and attention, there are a few employees in the building who have that as a major sensory modality, yes."

"You should probably check the waiver policy implementation at Port Angeles."

"Will do."

She typety types it up.

"This isn't the final word, but I think we're going to invite you to continue on. Ninety-nine percent."

"And I probably will, notwithstanding that you invited me into a building full of empaths without warning me about that."

"When on Earth, do as the Earthlings do? You're welcome to have the same argument with my boss, honestly."

"I might wanna do that, yeah."

"One sec."

Typetypetype.

"Yeah, she's willing to talk to you for a few minutes. Her office is room 4215, off to the left, and I'm gonna call in the next candidate if you're going?"

"Sure, thank you." Up and over.

This office contains a middle aged and tired-looking lady with lots of magnet toys on her desk and a tray of random candy.

"Hello, Isabella Swan. I'm Marin. Vice president of candidate confirmation if you care about my precise title, which you might not. Snack?"

"Sure, thanks." Snickers. She doesn't usually exercise that much. "I think you should have a policy of notifying people if they're going to be in range of empaths."

"When I tell my boss, head of selection, that we should notify people who might be in range of empaths he'll say 'should we also notify them we're going to be looking at them with our cameras and tracking their phones' wi-fi usage and smelling their perfume?'. We don't actually use the empaths as proctors or interviewers. They're not very good at it. You see, it's not the best-kept secret at all, here I am telling you after all, but there are a couple hundred Phoenix employees who are not from this Earth, and they simply go about their work as anyone else would for the most part. Refugees."

"Empaths aren't already in your typical applicants' model of how they'll be observed! If you had, say, hidden cameras in the bathroom, then even knowing cameras exist wouldn't make that part of the model, so that would be comparably fucked up to being theoretically able to learn that empaths exist but not expecting them here."

"I suppose they aren't. So would being informed 'there are sometimes empaths in the Phoenix Company building, but they have no particular reason to pay attention to or interact with you and they prefer to remain anonymous' have been satisfactory?"

"Assuming that I could then look up more about that sure."

"They very strongly prefer to remain anonymous. There's a fear that if people knew empaths to exist, they might be discriminated against."

"I don't need to know who they are as individuals, I'd just want to know how the power works. Though I'm also a little skeeved if they just go around in other settings."

"How the power works in what sense?"

"Range, amount of fine detail?"

"My understanding is that it's no more detailed than what someone paying attention to body language and tone of voice would pick up. Omnidirectional and floors and walls don't interfere, but fading rapidly with range - like looking through thick fog, apparently. No more than a hundred feet at the very outside."

"Okay. And I'm apparently immune anyway, so I guess I'll chill out. Just wanted to make sure it was on your radar, like."

"Yes. I know we keep a lot of things close to our chest, so to speak, and it's suspicious. Let's just say - and this is the party line, mind - the magic we do know works on Earth would be a disaster if it became public. Corporate whitewashing is too common for that to be believed just because we say it, and we know that."

Nod nod.

"Can you expand on feeling skeeved if they go out in public? Anything you give me is more weight when I bring it up. The bathroom camera threat model metaphor is a good one."

"I mean, it would clearly also be very costly to make them stay in the Phoenix building forever, I don't mean to discount that, but it's violating, to perceive things that were not understood to be perceived. Some people are pretty good at controlling their body language, some people go around wearing face-covering garments, some people are probably just assuming that if they're thinking about... sex, or a sad movie, or whatever, while they space out on the bus, nobody's going to know, let alone a stranger with magic powers."

Marin rubs her temples, then sighs and grabs a Reeses Cup for herself.

"I'll suggest the warning, or giving them their own floor. Or more time away from the city, maybe."

"Maybe they could have their own little company town."

She writes that down.

"There is something like that in a couple places. I don't work with any of these people directly, you understand. Hmm, anything else?"

"I don't know, are there more mentally investigative or controlling effects floating around?"

"Not in this building."

"I hope I may expect a complete rundown of what there is in that vein on Earthsea before I turn into a space angel?"

"Hard to be complete, but of what we know, yes. Later. You might be invisible to the godphone. It's telepathic. I've been assured that you can still be transmigrated fine unless something much weirder is going on."

"What would happen if something weirder turned out to be going on and I could not transmigrate fine? What's the upshot of being invisible to the godphone?"

"It'd mean you couldn't talk to Khintal and ask questions. And there's an examination by a magic researcher in your future to make sure. If you want, of course. If there's any chance it'll kill or strand you, we'll let you know all the risks. And transmigrating does involve technically dying."

"Like, biologically dying because I will shuffle off the mortal coil to be a space angel?"

"Yes, precisely. The body will die, but your soul will be sent to Khintal via magic."

"Cool. Uh, based on what you folks now know about my personality now that we have done all these tests did I overlook any other positions that might be as good or better?"

"We aren't you... There's a few, uh, 'chosen one' type positions out but those tend to be much more active and dangerous. There are people who are better suited. A lot of the others have various drawbacks you'd likely consider worse, such as being mostly alone for likely two centuries, or being in the power of a god that is less predictable than Khintal, or turning you into a building. There's one for a librarian-mage to fight off a necromantic apocalypse... There's one where a psychic plague of some kind is taking over everyone's minds... A world asking for twelve people with the power of the Chinese Zodiac, to fight an alien invasion... A lot of the worlds we send people to kind of need the help. Spots like Khintal's are less common."

"Wow, do you get a lot of people who want to be buildings? I guess if there are any of those you'd be the only game in town. ...what's the librarian-mage and necromantic apocalypse deal?"

"There's a few. It comes with immortality unless someone demolishes you and some other stuff. Mm, draw magic power from your mobile library with a few different ways of moving it, catch the souls of people who die in the library and summon them back to fight the undead for you, find the guy who's causing all the undead stuff and stop him please and thank you. I don't understand why a library. They're just... Like that."

"Huh. Are the tests for that one separate, if I want to poke into it more?"

"Not the first round, we're basically just the asshole test. Don't want rapists or murderers with phenomenal power in another world, don't want to send our clients a lazy slob who won't actually do the job. Or someone who'd be miserable and regret everything. Some different stuff later on, but at that point we're handling you individually already."

"How did any of this screen for rapists or murderers?"

She makes a face. "Sorry, too flippant. We've got some observational data on what people get up to when they have sudden shiny power and a new world to explore, what they were like before. There was a particular incident where a transmigrator decided that certain people weren't people. No record of trouble or anything on Earth. But we pay more attention to personality over a longer period of time now."

"Huh. I assume you also do background checks and stuff - now I'm a little surprised you're up for considering me aged seventeen, nobody's suggested I should come back after high school."

"We do background checks and stuff, yes. It will be much simpler if we wait for your birthday, but we also try to be nice to people with a high enough GPMG to make it, so no pestering them about petty things like getting a silly certification, or being eighteen, if they are actually competent. You're worth millions of dollars to us if you go through with it."

"Keen. Khintal pays you directly?"

"Yes, summoners pay with raw resources most of the time."

"But what I mean is that you might be hoping for a more adult version of my personality to screen, assuming that letting somebody messed up through is worth negative millions."

"We do tell some people to try again in a few months, but there's also some pressure to choose decent people quickly. The pool of high-GPMG people who actually apply is not that large, we can't afford to be as thorough as the FBI or something, we'd spook people off."

"It's sure something that the FBI, which just gives people guns, has affordances to be more thorough than you guys, who give people magical powers."

"More selective, perhaps, rather than thorough."

"Kind of also says something that more people would like to work for the FBI but I guess the GPMG thing is really constraining you." Shrug. "Next step is summer camp? Does that change if I want to also consider the librarian thing?"

"Yes, that's the next step. Just different camp activities."

"Alrighty. Email me summer camp details, I guess?" She takes an Almond Joy.

"Mmhm. Keep asking good questions."

"Can do."

Bella goes to the hotel and sleeps off the so much exercise and flies home and talks to both parents about being a space angel or possibly zombie-slaying librarian.

She receives via email an information packet with pretty much all the stuff she's been told so far about being a space angel, plus a similar level of detail about the zombie-slaying librarian; Of particular note, the goddess trying to stop the undead says that the magic she's arranging to grant is shaped to require strong friendly or romantic bonds with many people for best effect, and isn't promising that she'll survive the experience.

Summer camp is in summer, and they will pay her to attend. It will mainly consist of business school type activities, project planning and negotiation and lectures from Khintal, to see how she handles and likes Phoenix's best facsimile of what it would be like.

She will go to summer camp in summer!

There's four others she recognizes from the training day, they've cut down a lot. The 'camp' takes place in a small suburb in Georgia. They have a curfew and day activities that leave only a few non-sleep hours of freedom. They have really good catered food. They have Khintal scripture to read and review (it's mostly about how easy it is to lie and cheat and destroy things, how such acts have a great many times greater cost than benefit distributed out, and therefore the social contract of charity/fair dealing is good for everyone). They have philosophical arguments and debate that seem semi-overtly geared to seeing if one is a "good" person. They have a few subtle tests of character in opportunities to quietly sabotage their remaining competitors, or help them where they're struggling. They have business planning and economics and generating-accurate-work-estimates activities. They squeeze in a first aid class or two and then have high-pressure strictly timed triage/first aid exercises with medical dummies. They have a few programming/logic puzzles and some mental dexterity type challenges- Overcoming optical illusions, or saying the color a word is printed in, instead of the word that's actually written down- These are supposed to be decent mental practice for magic, apparently.

As far as she knows this isn't even a competition, she has no particular reason to believe Khintal wouldn't take ten space angels, so she barely notices opportunities to sabotage. She's not great at strictly timed triage because she can't accelerate past a sedate walk without becoming a casualty herself, unfortunately, but she's good at the other stuff.

They're also interested in her stance on some of the debates/ethics bits.

Should white collar crime be punished more harshly than violent crime? When is it acceptable to steal? When is it acceptable for a government to censor things or invade peoples' privacy? If someone is shortchanging you payment for building something and the structure is currently unsafe and might hurt someone, is it ethical to leave it and stop working? Variations on the Trolley Problem, like harvesting someone for organs to save ten other people, if they're an innocent, a death row criminal, a volunteer. Should gambling be allowed even though gambling addiction can destroy lives? Do these various examples of scenarios count as corruption/graft? Why is corruption/graft bad anyway?

She'd want to like, look up statistics to support some of her intuitions on these? She's not sure if the ways white collar and violent crime are contemplated and committed is equally responsive to deterrence. But if you factor that out it seems like violent crime requires a lot more penalty to prevent recidivism - a white collar criminal can probably just get blacklisted from relevant industries whereas a violent criminal might be dangerous to anyone they were in contact with.

She is reasonably sympathetic to Jean Valjean situations and stuff like that. Like, broadly speaking, in ordinary situations, you should not steal. If you have a really good reason it is not as bad as most kinds of crime. Might need to make sure you're picking a target who isn't going to be in dire straits over the loaf of bread.

Governments mostly shouldn't censor things, like, at all. They could maybe preferentially withhold funding from places that say things they don't like? Possibly there are magic infohazards? Maybe there is some tension with people having a right to privacy and the government could find itself in the position of having to enforce that against malicious publications. Invading people's privacy depends kind of a lot on what the original expectations set were and what kind of privacy. People should be able to know in advance whether something is private or not.

Might be ethical to demolish or vandalize the structure so nobody goes in it while it's not safe? Might also depend on the wording of the initial contract and what arbitration resources are available.

People can volunteer to donate their organs upon death and also they can commit suicide, seems fine to combine the two though she'd change her mind if there was some systematic issue with people feeling pressured. Non-volunteers, well, it seems to be important to people to be able to decide how their bodies are disposed of upon their deaths even if she isn't super clear on why, so if they don't want to donate their organs then even if they're getting the death penalty they should not be donating their organs. Also might create fucked up judiciary incentives. Super no killing innocent people to harvest their organs, that has basically all the disadvantages of murder and murder is sufficiently bad that you should not do it even with this compensatory advantage.

People seem to like gambling and while, again, she does not understand this preference, it seems important to them? Analogous to alcohol. Probably ripping it out of a culture would be destructive in some illegible way. Discouraging or taxing it or having public service announcement campaigns or whatever seems fine to a reasonable point but people who want to do life-ruining stuff might just really value the life-ruining stuff and accept the risk.

Corruption is only bad if the thing that's being corrupted is good! It's better to be able to bribe your way out of a totalitarian regime than not being able to do that; people who can afford bribes aren't somehow by virtue of this okay to totalitarianize. Corruption of a good thing is bad because it makes the good thing less efficient and trustworthy.

Her debate opponent posits that censorship can do more good than harm in some cases by preventing slander/libel, stopping fraud and scams and scummy tabloid type practices, and hiding stuff like how to make nerve gas or nuclear weapons.

The government could conceivably also find itself in the situation of having to adjudicate slander and libel and false advertising, and in fact has done so many times on Earth, but she's not sure that actually has to be the government's job? It should probably be someone's job but it could be like, Snopes writ large or something. Nerve gas and nuclear weapons are as far as she understands it also hard to make in addition to being secret? Maybe there are magic things that are easy if you know them, hence the infohazard situation. Maybe infohazard is the wrong word since it's not like a basilisk.

Governments handling that sort of thing have been shown to work, ish, with some successes and some failures on being accountable for it, and snopes writ large wouldn't have the chance to vote bad actors out.

Well, democracies can have voters getting their info from Snopes in principle.

On the last day of the camp they ask everyone why they want, or don't want, the space angel job. Also, the people who've been selected will get the chance to use the godphone before making a final decision.

She wants to be magic and immortal and this seems like the best gig on offer!

Okay.

The godphone is in Phoenix HQ for North America, which is in downtown Atlanta. She and one other guy have been selected. It is telepathic; They think Bella will be able to use it if she focuses on wanting to, since she could see the illusion once she was aware of it. Khintal would see everything she is thinking during the conversation, and send her mental images that others have described as 'like a whole paragraph packed into a single word' and 'intense but informative'.

Does she want to try? Should they skip ahead to the magic researcher examination to double check that she can be safely transmigrated, first?

Oof. Can she pick up and put down the godphone during the conversation or is it one and done? Is this also how Khintal talks off the phone?

Yes she can pick it up and set it down, and no. The power needed to punch through worlds forces a wide channel. You can pray to him and get gentle(r) visions/nudges, after transmigration.

She will try it but write out a conversation agenda and get an annoying song stuck in her head first.

They make her go through some annoying security to get to the secure area. Biometrics, metal detector, passing through a soulscanner (with an appropriate waiver form this time), stern warning that fucking around will not be tolerated.

It looks like a glittery clear polished and faceted crystal the size of a fist, sitting on a simple metal pedestal.

And she just has to touch it?

"That's correct," the guard waiting in the corner of the room confirms.

She re-reads her agenda and pokes.

[HELLO]

Recognition of one-of-the-people-he-might-be-sent-soon. Anticipation that it will be a beneficial experience for both. Satisfaction from the prospect of gains-from-trade and giving-someone-tools-to-build-new-interesting-things-with. Summary of what-he-has-been-told-about-her that does not really fit into words. The notion that lengthy interactions would be more expensive in (energy-leeway-potential-attention-informationsecrecy); Conversation should be short unless expected value from longer conversation is (this high). Instant comprehension that she finds this stressful; Regret at the transaction-cost of this interaction, he will do his best to make it quick and efficient. An offer to commit to isolating this-segment-of-Khintal and forgetting everything except a summary of the interaction afterwards.

Whoa that's so synaesthetic and cool. It's very kind of him to offer the forgetting thing but will probably not be necessary unless he finds All Star with most of the lyrics mentally mumbled really annoying too. She would like to know what she can expect in the very long term! Is it theoretically possible to move on to another job later on after putting in some time with Khintal? What is being a space angel like? What is his long term vision for Earthsea?

[ETERNITY]

Khintal can discard irrelevant information at an almost-negligible cost in attention; All-Star mumbling is acceptable. Many relevant pieces of information are SECRET, and major omissions for SECRET reasons are flagged as such. Khintal wants things to last Actually Forever. His ideal long term vision for Earthsea is a planet covered in prosperous city where no wars, cults, monsters, criminal organizations, eldritch abominations, etc etc, are around to kill people and end civilizations. This is probably impossible (SECRETS) but he will not stop aiming for that end-goal. In the very long term (~billions of years) there is a SECRET nontrivial-nonoverwhelming chance that Khintal will die, or that his space angels will die from this or that, because tiny-risks-add-up-over-time-really-frighteningly. It is theoretically possible to move on to a non-Khintal related job (SECRETS). Khintal does not know what being a space angel is like since he is a god, not a space angel. However, would she like some simulated-averaged-and-anonymized space angel sensations with the caveat that they may be very confusing?

Confusing simulated-averaged-anonymized space angel sensations sound like a good use of this time.

[EXISTENCE]

All the scenarios have a dreamlike quality to them. Exact details are muddled, context is missing.

She's roused from her reading with the tug in the back of her head. Accepting with a thought, she appears in a dirt lot, looking at a hard-worn man in dusty clothes. She [talks] and agrees to the price; Simple work, just moving some heavy rocks around with magic, but the pay is alright. You can practically daydream right through it, the near-meditative motions of bind-and-shift.

She's working in a somehow depressing-smelling bunkhouse, moving from person to person and checking on them. Everyone's hurt, miserable, weak. A dozen aches and pains. Fractures, wounds that have yet to fully close, colds. She stabilizes them and wishes she could do more, but they only have so much mana to pay her with, it'd be entirely loss after a certain point, making her feel a guilty but reluctant squirm. Maybe she can take some thing else instead? Trade goods? She's heard that some angels do a little arbitrage on the side.

She's getting a mild dressing-down from a lizardman factory foreman for messing up the magic water-jet-cutter. You NEVER leave it running without direct attention, not even to wave hi to someone. Nothing happened this time, but that's just because you were lucky. Magic is a heavy force that can and does kill the incautious. She's relieved that it was a gentle reminder; Mangled work-piece, not a mangled arm or torso.

She's pacing around her pocket dimension, considering ways to make it feel bigger. It's fairly freely modifiable, not much mana cost either, as long as you let it move around when you're not looking directly. The false window landscape display upgrade is still kind of pricey, that's a lot of mana for what amounts to a pretty picture, but it'd be nice to sip tea and look at something other than walls or a work site for a while...

She's holding a tricky formation in her head, carefully keeping the airmotes and lightningmotes separate while slowly circulating the airmotes. They need just enough motion to keep the place ventilated. The lightningmotes, she doesn't understand the purpose of - but she's working off a blueprint, and there's not enough energy in them to hurt someone, so it's probably fine.

She's wandering through a large bubble, aware in the back of her head that this is someone else's pocket dimension, but it's fully kitted out like a large park center of some sort. The sky is pale blue, the distant wall has a semi-convincing landscape pattern, and there's even a gentle breeze. There are a couple cafes and stores, a busker playing by the lake. It's not that big all told, but it's a nice break.

She's carefully feeling the stream of expressionmarks in the pregnant mother, going over half-familiar patterns for anything that stands out. There's two layers here, one for her and one for the child. She's not touching the man right now. Ugh, so annoying, paternity tests... They always mean trouble. Nobody is happy afterwards, no matter what her determination is.

Wow.

She likes that, she thinks. Maybe one day she will want to grow up into something with more scope, but compared to being a human, going to college here... yeah.

[CONTINUE?]

More options for people to determine their path is a good thing so long as those options are constructive ones; Growing up into something with more scope is possible (SECRETS); Khintal is unsure whether there are any questions/topics of concern still yet to be addressed; Reminder of the transaction costs of this interaction; He will continue conversing until/unless it is more obviously a poor use of time, though.

She is curious about the SECRETS and wonders if there are like, representative made up examples of reasons things might be SECRETS. She thinks she will be done after that.

[NO]

Khintal wants to get to know her better before even hinting at SECRETS. Khintal does not like to take even very tiny risks with certain things.

That's legit, she supposes.

In that case she will take her hand off the godphone and, humming All Star to herself, depart the phone zone.

Would she like to get her just-in-case-double-checking soul examination today, or some other time?

Seems most convenient to do it today!

Okay then!

The magic lab is through this other set of obnoxious security. A young-looking woman with green hair and golden eyes wearing a button-down shirt and slacks meets her on the other side. It looks like an ordinary hospital examination room.

"Hey. I'm an alien, I'm not an empath, they cleared 'em all out for you. I'm the soul doc for today, I s'pose. Trisamine."

"- wow, that's... considerate? I'm immune, so I don't know if it makes sense, but it's considerate. What brings you to Earth, soul doc Trisamine?"

"Maybe they didn't do it for you, I just heard you're the one who brought it up. As for that... Let's just say demons. Lots of demons. Of the torture-you-forever kind."

"Wow, that sucks."

"Sure does."

"So how does soul doctoring work?"

"I can't tell you much of anything, they're really not lying when they say it'd be a bad fucking idea to let it get out. But I had an education before we evacuated, I do like twenty percent of keeping the isekai machines running - I love that word and genre, by the way - and we have data on failed and marginal transmigrations from the early days to compare to. Or did you mean for you? Like an X-ray, basically."

"Can I look at my soul after? Does it give you soul cancer?"

"No soul cancer. And anyway X-rays only marginally increase the risk of-" She facepalms and shakes her head. "Okay, none of that. Any particular reason besides curiosity?"

"I mean, no, but it's my soul and a lot of curiosity."

"This stuff isn't nearly as big a deal once you go, but until you do you can back out at any time. We're not gonna force you, that's one of the founding principles. So we have to be really leery. I'll think about getting you a picture, though."

"I'd appreciate that. Can you tell me in broad terms what soul x-rays show you, on the level of, like, 'an X-ray is white where you have bones and darker where you don't have bones and this shows dense foreign objects and fractures and stuff'?"

"Hmm... So, the soul has size, density, shape, like a normal object in normal 3D space, and a bunch of 'colors', not actually colors, we just use them to make sense of it. And a 'polarization' that has innumerable different possible values. The polarization is like, what kind of magic you're good at. Colors are correlated with personality types but not strictly. Size and density contribute to GPMG and - resistance to being forced to change, basically - and shape is... Complicated, most people are just spheres, complicated. The transmigration assumes that the soul being transmigrated is not too large or small, not particularly polarized, and is close to a sphere. You can have stuff sticking into or out of your soul, or around it, that's beyond this level though."

"Will you be able to tell me my polarization and color and stuff?"

"Yeah, sure." Sigh. "Just please keep all this to yourself."

"My plan is to go on a whirlwind tour of the world with my mom and then get turned into a space angel, at no point in the process did I plan to pause and divulge classified information. Tell me now if I should skip Russia or something."

"You could probably sell just what you know to half a dozen different agencies. Let's... Just move on."

"Really? I know fuckall... sure, moving on."

"You can- Moving on. All you really need to do is lay on the exam table. I'll go in the other room and take some readings. It won't take five minutes."

"On my back? Do I need to hold particularly still?"

"Yes, that's easiest. And try not to move your torso if you can, get comfy before I start? Arms and legs fidgeting a bit is fine."

She starts arranging swinging arms with big white boxes and lenses on the end around the table.

She lies down.

Trisamine retreats into the other room, just like in a normal hospital X-ray exam. "Not because there's a risk of soul cancer for me, just because mine would show up too."

It takes about two minutes before she declares, "All done," and comes back out.

"Your soul is unpolarized - scattered in all directions - as expected. Khintal will polarize you for his sort of magic as part of the process. You're smaller than I expected, and denser, and you have a thick shell, this is going to be your immunity. So you are likely to have less raw magical power than your GPMG would indicate, but more - steadiness - even aside from your shell that seems to be giving you general mind-magic immunity. I think someone could detect the adrenaline in your blood still. While you still have blood, that is... You're pale cyan, nearly white, which correlates with an ordered and thoughtful mind and a calm, tranquil personality. I see nothing at all that would pose a risk to your transmigration."

"How far should I trust my shell?"

"...Real hard to say without live stress-testing. Against a random scoundrel, sure, against an elite mindfucker or an elder dragon or a god trying seriously, maybe."

"I will try not to anger elder dragons. Thank you for my soul X-ray. Anything else in this department?"

"Don't assume you're immune to, like, dark magic that makes you go crazy if you learn it. You might be, but probably not and that's playing with fire. Nothing else, I think."

"I appreciate the warning."

And off she goes.

They make her go through security again on the way out.

When does she want to take the leap? After turning 18?

It will probably work out that way because her mom wants to do SO MUCH travel. Can she have part of her payday in advance for this purpose? She super does want to be a space angel, it's just her mom thinks she ought to do a lot of Earth travel first since it'll be hard to spend much time on Earth in the future. Or this is an excuse for Renée to do a lot of travel herself, but either way.

Her parents can have part of her payday in advance as a loan with a generous interest rate and payback timetable.

That'll do, since Bella's going to dump a lot of what she doesn't spend on disease eradication charity on her folks and they will be able to pay it back then.

Off they go, around the world in eighty days!

Hey, that joke about staying out of Russia? Phoenix calls her at one point, and advises she stay out of South Korea. They have a tip-off that they might try to arrest her for bribe-from-Phoenix or information-on-Phoenix-hunting purposes. Sorry.

Damn, they did plan to hit South Korea but they can do a little extra time in Singapore then and move all the flights around. Oh well.

If the airlines and visas and stuff are bizarrely easy to deal with, it's not so obvious as to be suspicious. The whirlwind tour concludes without particular incident for her.

She shows up to her transmigration appointment after her birthday is celebrated with her parents.

She's had plenty of time already to consider which benefits she'd like to get out of it. There's a rough 'budget' she can slide around a bit.

Keeping the ability to eat/drink, have sex, and sleep normally are considered standard but could technically be foregone (bathroom needs are eliminated, but showers and baths themselves can still be enjoyed). The standard package gives her a decent three-room apartment instead of a tiny studio, six months of magic training before being put into an expected 40 hour work week, and four two-day summons to Earth in a Phoenix location per year (she won't be able to do any magic during these), each of which can be exchanged for three weekend summons to somewhere on Earthsea by one of Khintal's clergy if she'd rather. If there's anything weird or unusual she wants they'll see what they can do?

Are there examples to hand of unusual things other people have bought?

Read-only and starkly limited internet access plus a computer that works in their pocket dimension; A fate-twist that they'd be more likely to run into people who'd make a good girlfriend if they went looking; Extra time magic training before starting work; Limited shapeshifting power; Semisentient magic pets that are cute and cuddly and can do light chores; Magic spyglass apartment feature that is able to look at Earthsea with a bird's eye view (anywhere not warded against observation) for for a couple hours a day.

What are the internet access limits?

The speed is slow (like, dial up speeds) and depends on how much she gives up for it, but it's very read only. Stuff that requires signing up for an account won't work, stuff she already has accounts for will be pretty feature-limited.

Might be worth it just for Wikipedia. Maybe Earthsea will have an internet in a few years.

Will she magically speak the language(s)?

Yeah, that's just a feature of Earthsea. Everyone can speak Common, like a law of physics almost.

WEIRD. That will get through her shell?

Khintal thinks so and seems to have reasons that make sense, though nobody who uses the godphone about it can explain. The closest equivalent is that, yeah, it's a law of physics there that 'everyone can speak Common'. It's a fact about the world, not about people.

Can she get conditional extra language learning time before she starts work if it doesn't?

Sure, that makes perfect sense. No cost.

How do the pocket dimensions work?

Her pocket dimension is hers and consists of a small region of space. It's a magical axiom that exists independently of anything else, a tiny world with bounded walls. It generates its own gravity, fresh air, temperature control, etc. You can move around existing upgrades or change the aesthetics without much effort, like moving the sink, changing a shower to a bath, making a stove appear like gas instead of electric for a moderate mana cost. Khintal or other gods or other being sufficiently good at dimension magic can permanently expand a pocket dimension's capabilities; This is expensive both in raw power to make the upgrade and in service charge. You are aware of other people in your pocket dimension, you can open temporary portals to other dimensions that you know exist for a minor mana cost (if the owner accepts). You can reappear in your own pocket dimension for a minor mana cost if trapped, unless something extremely unusual is going on.

Does mana come exclusively from doing jobs on summon?

Pretty much. At first, at least. There's ways around that but they fall under 'expert techniques'.

But she'll have enough to operate her pocket dimension for the initial six month runway?

Khintal pays the maintenance during training.

People visit each other's, right, how does that work?

They get introduced to each other during training or on assignment or whatever, and then try to will a portal open, which costs a bit of mana and doesn't work if the other party doesn't want it to.

And does this bit of mana for such things fall under 'maintenance'?

She'll have a good chunk to start out with too. Signing bonus, as it were.

Okay, good. Does she design her apartment here and now? Do things like groceries appear by default the way water does from the plumbing or does she have to grocery shop in some way if she wants to eat?

Really basic groceries appearing is standard. You can upgrade it to nicer stuff. She can do it now or have a design session after going, either way.

What counts as really basic, they're sufficiently global that this might mean rice and no bread or something. Can she afford the upgrade.

Anything that counts as a staple, plus raw fresh produce and meat. She can afford to upgrade it to spices and seasonings and simple cooked items by sacrificing something else. Or to fast food and processed snacks for two somethings else.

Eh, if eating's optional she can learn to make her own fried rice and Swiss rolls, but seasonings are important... Can she buy this sort of thing later with enough mana or is this it right now?

Yeah, it's just a bit pricier later. A couple years of work, maybe.

And it wouldn't be too difficult to, like, borrow a pepper shaker from another space angel?

That shouldn't be too difficult, no. 

Then she will take non-upgraded food for the time being so she can afford Wikipedia.

Okay, it seems like everything's set, then? Her five point seven million dollars will be distributed between her parents and charities as specified.

She will keep some for herself so she can locally set up accounts for things on the internet during her visits home. (That will work, right?)

Ish. Might be buggy, and no commenting or anything.

Yeah, no commenting, but if she wants academic journal access or something she wants to be able to set that up while she's on Earth and have it function on Earthsea.

They can't promise it'll work all the time, depending on how the accounts are set up, but it should generally be ok? Extradimensional internet is extremely tricky.

It sounds it. Does she get a trade-in if it doesn't work at all?

It'll work, it just might not work for everything she wants to use it for. If it doesn't work at all? Sure, more earth vacations, how about.

Sounds good.

She lays out her apartment - loft bed above some bookshelves in a library-office-bedroom, kitchen-parlor, bathroom - calls her mom and dad to say she's ready to go and loves them and will see them Christmas -

- and goes and presents herself for transmigration.

They have her put all her accounts into a password manager type thing. They could theoretically break it open but promise not to.

Then it's off to another hospital like setting with lots of security. She can change her mind at any time, right up until the sedative goes in.

Nope. She will be sedated and wake up a space angel.

Eliding the rather brutal nature of the procedure from here...

Then she will wake up in her bed in her new pocket dimensional apartment.

Cozy!

Streeeetch. What is her body like now?

She's shaped just like she was before. She has healthy un-frazzled hair, and is wearing jeans and a T-shirt and underwear, all unexceptional but a good fit. There aren't any niggling aches and pains or discomforts. Her teeth are perfect, no hangnails, no weird muscle pulls, no skin tags or moles or freckles unless she was particularly fond of them. She doesn't feel particularly hungry or thirsty, nor particularly full. She still feels the breath in her lungs and clothes on her skin and heat and chill and everything else. She can feel a soft, gentle drain in the back of her head - like individual drops out of a tap, drawing from a big swimming pool. A bit of focus can put numbers to that feeling - 3 per hour, ticking up somewhat when she moves around, to sustain her body, and a stored well of 29999.7... .6, now. She can also feel motes on the edge of her awareness; Khintal's previous barrage of sensations make them recognizable, if muddled and indistinct at the moment.

Awesomesauce.

She hops out of bed. Where does she report for magic lessons??

She's supposed to pray to Khintal for that; The response is the sudden knowledge that her magic teacher would like to open a portal to her pocket dimension and she can either deny it or pick a spot for it.

Let's put that over there by her desk. She plops in her desk chair.

A door-sized portal opens to a large sandlot sort of area with a woman with thin features of some not quite familiar ethnicity - not quite Caucasian, not quite Asian, not quite anything familiar - and black hair in a neat ponytail, wearing black robes, standing there. One of the guys from the summer camp, a quiet one, is staring at some rocks in the background.

"Welcome, o blessed one," She says in a somewhat flat tone. "Come on through. Lessons in here, special purpose sub-dimension."

She steps through. "Hi. I'm Bella."

A slow nod, during which her bored, slightly distant expression doesn't change at all. "Hello. I am Loril. I've been tapped by Khintal to train many of his... Distant new hires. I have extensive experience with both motemancy and biomancy. I will teach you to the very best of my ability, because if you're going to do a job you do it well. I will answer your questions, I will show you how to do the work, I will watch you practice and see where you go wrong and how to stop doing that. Whether you make optimal use of this boon is up to you," She drawls, "But I would recommend doing so. And then our time together will come to an end, and I will return to my usual routine and may well never see you again. Does this make sense?"

"I think so. Uh, do you hate your job or something, is there a way this could be less unpleasant for you?"

"Why does everyone ask about my feelings?" Eyeroll, and a subtle mouth twitch. "I don't hate the job. It will be nice to have someone listen to me for once. I would have refused if I hated it. It's a job. What I hate are people who laze around when they should be working, try to tell me what to do, or ask the same question ten times. So don't do that."

"Okay. I asked about your feelings because you look super bored and checked out but maybe that's just how you look all the time." She braces her fingers against each other and stretches them. "Where do I start?"

She makes a dismissive gesture. "I would like to spend about four hours a day actively teaching you, and you should practice at least as much on your own too. In this special dimension, the mana you use doing magic is replaced, but you will need to learn efficiency anyway. Don't get sloppy. Do you want to learn biomancy or motemancy first? Both? Feel free to ask questions, just don't forget the answer and then ask again. I hate that."

"Can I have paper to take notes on, that'll help me not forget things. Let's start with motemancy."

Loril hands her a blank softcover-bound book and a black stick from an inner pocket.

"Nicholas started with motemancy as well. Very well, this way." As she walks she lectures, "Motemancy is the act of claiming and manipulating motes. Motes are present everywhere in varying amounts. The types of motes are firemotes, airmotes, earthmotes, watermotes, lightningmotes, metalmotes, lightmotes, and darkmotes. Motes can be part of either zero or one binding - a binding is a pattern or set of rules imposed on motes by a motemancer. Bindings can also have imbuement. The amount of mana that has been applied to them, which is consumed when the binding creates a change in the world. The bindings have imbuement - not the motes. That's important. For example, a firemote binding that heats everything in an area to a certain temperature will lose much more imbuement if snow is constantly poured into it. Here we are."

Loril has brought her to a tiki torch with a bench next to it. She sits. "Questions?"

"What affects how many motes of what kinds are found in various places?"

"The full details of that will take a long time to intuitively understand. Broadly, firemotes are found where there is heat. Lightningmotes where there is electricity or electrical potentials - though it tends to be easier to harvest them from the air, which is constantly producing fleeting lightningmotes. Watermotes in water, airmotes in the air, earthmotes in both stone and soil, darkmotes in dark areas and lightmotes in brightly lit ones. Metalmotes in metals or certain metal oxides, such as iron ore and blood."

Her teacher suddenly stares directly at her. "Bella. Do not take motes from living beings until you know what you are doing. It will almost certainly do them grievous harm. The exception is darkmotes, but anything with a shadow can produce darkmotes, so there is no need to risk it."

"No motes from living things, gotcha - does that mean from within the spatial boundary of the living thing, or given off by a property of the living thing? Fleeting lightningmotes, so they have limited lifespan, they don't just hang around?"

"That means from within the spatial boundary of a living thing. Claiming the firemotes and watermotes from warm breath is acceptable, if potentially unnerving. And yes, motes are constantly appearing and vanishing, unless claimed. They are influenced by physical matter, but do not obey the general rule matter does of sticking around in one form or another. Motes that you are actively holding or are in a binding stay. Bindings vanish if they run out of infusion, and even when inactive slowly spend infusion to maintain the integrity of their constituent motes."

"Where does mana come from?"

This merits a short pause and an eyebrow-raise. "What we call 'having mana' is more like negative entropy. Certain gods, cosmic processes, and most living things can affect the mana of the world in ways that reduce total entropy - with varying levels of efficiency, of course. This is known as generating mana. This density or order can then be 'consumed' in various useful ways to do useful work through mana engines - that being an academic term for any thing that uses mana to do a thing, not necessarily a device that exerts force against a resistance. It is not something most people actively concern themselves with. Your initial training does not require a detailed understanding. However, you... May... Borrow one of my books on the subject. If you promise to not. Damage. It."

"I would be very careful with it."

She looks slightly confused, then nods. "Anyway. We should mix theory and practice. Time for practice, I think. You're going to learn to snuff out and light this torch. Can you feel the motes around you right now?"

Well, can she?

She can feel ripples of motion in the breeze around her. She can feel the material of the torch, standing out in some sort of way as a weird outline, even if her eyes are closed. She can feel the solid carpet of dirt, the stone bench, the warmth both of she and her teacher are giving off - though the inside of both their bodies is just a void, nothing at all inside. It's sort of like being in a dark room after spending time in the sun, or vice versa, or wearing glasses with the wrong focus. Though the sense definitely isn't vision. It's slowly getting better.

"- am I correct in guessing neither you nor I count as alive?"

"That is correct. We're incorporeal beings doing a pretty decent facsimile of being alive. We consume mana, rather than producing it."

"Wow, that feels creepy with my new sensory modality actually. I think I can feel motes, or rather, I suspect that the thing I can feel is motes."

"I am going to light the torch now. Pay attention."

She reaches out with a copper wand that was hidden in her sleeve a moment ago, taps the tip, and - something stops in the torch, holding still. Then, fwoosh. The tip of the little wick in the tiki torch ignites as suddenly as a gas stove. There is indeed a lot more something spilling out from the tip of the torch, trailing upward like sparks from a firework now! It's kind of... Pretty?

"What I just did, was extend my will through the copper wand. I claimed the firemotes at the tip of the wand, then used those firemotes to claim motes along its length, then used the motes at the end to claim the few firemotes that existed in the wick. You can only claim motes you are touching or have a claim connection to. It's a kinesthetic sort of skill that gets better with practice. Then, I bound the firemotes in the wick to heat up, and then gave them a small amount of imbuement. The imbuement was spent almost immediately, creating enough heat to start the fire. You can feel motes at a distance, but not claim them at a distance. With exceptions for advanced techniques. You can't feel a binding unless you claim it, so you didn't notice that part. You might have noticed them holding still, but not the binding itself, I mean. Now, the torch is burning oil, which creates a lot of heat and a lot of firemotes."

"Huh. Claim connections have to go along - solid objects? Motes of the same kind?"

"Motes of the same kind. Air does not easily conduct motes other than airmotes. The working motemancer carries a staff or wands for this purpose. You can also move claimed motes away from your body and then work through them, but this consumes imbuement, and is a journeyman level technique. Or at least not a day one technique."

"Do motes move around on their own enough that you can kind of diffuse claim outward, or do you have to move them with magic or something?"

"It depends on the material. You can claim a whole mass of rock that way, for example, or perhaps a still pond, but would find it impossible with a moving stream. It's often easier to claim motes near you and move them with a binding. Motes do not have to stay in their natural environment. Many staffs have coalcharms, left constantly smoldering in order to have firemotes at hand. When one needs firemotes, one claims them, and then moves them to where they are needed. Moving the motes is a different primitive action than using the motes to move something else. There are two possible elementary exercises here. One, I give you a rock, and you claim the earthmotes. Two, I give you this wand, and you claim the firemotes inside it, and then some in the flame."

"Does the wand have a coalcharm?"

"No, but it gets warm where you hold it. That generates enough to start, and copper and other conductive metals transmit claims extremely well." She frowns slightly. "At some point you have to actually do magic."

"Oh, yeah, I'll take the wand and do the wand exercise, I just wanted to know how it worked." Wand?

Wand is handed to her. There are definitely firemotes in it. And a lot of another kind of motes, which are probably metalmotes.

"The attitude that tends to work for me, is that those motes are yours by right. How dare they not be yours? Don't they know who you are? You have to remind them."

Yeah, you hear that, firemotes? BELLA'S firemotes now. She's here to do magic and live forever and forever will take a while to get here.

These firemotes: Are Bella's. They are all holding still together now. They are drawing a tiny amount of mana to stay hers-and-holding-still. It's just... Obvious, like recognizing an icon on a screen.

And the ones next to them and so on and so forth, also Bella's, and a few in the fire where she's poking the wand: also Bella's.

It's easy to claim along the wand. Claiming the ones in the fire, constantly appearing and moving upward and vanishing, is a bit trickier. Going for just a few is a better strategy; Some of them are hers, but more are rushing through that aren't hers, still.

"Good work," Loril drawls. "It can be tricky to learn how to enforce different bindings. The natural inclination of firewisps is to heat things up. Making them do the opposite can take several attempts."

"Should I try one of those now?"

"I want you to look very closely at a small segment of the firewisps. If you examine them closely enough, you should be able to tell more about them than where they are and where they're going. People see it differently sometimes. I hear them humming in different pure tones."

Bella zooms in on some of the motes. They're different... colors...?

They're different colors! They're mostly slightly different shades of green.

"They're different shades of green."

"You can change their colors. All along the rainbow. Each shade causes different behavior. Deep blue or violet for absorbing heat through firemotes. Gently. Condensed airs are unpleasant."

"Won't the fire heat it right back up if I absorb heat?"

"If you remove the heat, the fire will die. Fire requires fuel, air, and heat. Any of the three will collapse it if missing. However, removing the air is a more advanced technique. Anyway, the goal is learning basic manipulation. Not putting out a fire."

Huh, she thought heat was a product of fire more than a requirement but she can look it up later.

Deep blue, motes.

The fire goes dim around these motes, wavers, wobbles, then snuffs out. There also seems to be frost or something forming around it, on the torch and wand, and is drawing a lot of imbuement.

Huh, is there an exact color where it'll take less mana to maintain?

The mana use drops sharply when there's nothing nearby left to chill rapidly. Also, the wand is getting cold.

"Firemotes can increase heat, delete heat, radiate heat, move heat from place to place - often more efficient, prevent the movement of heat. Conditional bindings to react to stimulus we will cover later. Relight the flame."

She regreens the motes, pokes the torch - how does this part work -

Green doesn't seem to do anything. Green might be the 'do nothing' color.

Loril waits a moment before making a small 'ah' sound. "-Red or orange. Sorry."

Red!

The drain ticks upwards pretty sharply again, the frost vanishes with little wisps of water vapor, the black tip of the wick crumples slightly-

And fwoosh. The drain stops again, now that the temperature is high in the designated area already.

And she can let the motes do what they want colorwise from here. Eeee!

"May I?" Asks her teacher, extending a wand towards the torch.

"Sure?"

Loril pokes the wand. Suddenly, the wisps are not hers anymore. It feels like there was a brief moment where she could have contested it, but it was over before she knew it was happening.

She nods, smiling. "You will have to learn what shades, exactly, correspond to what temperature. And learn the other types of motes, before we move on to complex bindings. And practice. A lot. However. Congratulations, apprentice motemancer Bella."

"Thanks! Is that what I should do next or should I do the earthmotes in a rock exercise next -"

Loril waves dismissively. "Practice binding, practice more gentle shifts, try cutting it off before it wastes energy. Practically anything is a useful goal this early. Practice for a bit while I talk to Nicholas over there. He's doing it wrong."

She turns and walks over to where the quiet guy is - moving a big blob of rock around? Making a rock wall of some sort?

Huh. She'd ask but she doesn't want to embarrass Nicholas. She will try claiming more motes and doing the fire exercise more elegantly and see what shades of the colors work best.

This is a skill that responds very well to practice. She's getting visibly better with each go.

Loril comes back after a minute of standing there talking, and touching the rock blob herself once.

She stares silently at Bella for a bit, then says, "You don't have to leave them the same color the whole time, you can spike output up and or increase it slowly. Heating or cooling things too quickly can shatter them. And see that bit at the end where the binding sort of hitches? The draw goes down a bit, and then jumps? That's a sign you can look for as a shift from a high demand regime to a low demand regime. So you can tell when an area is up to heat. Time to make a lesson plan, I think. Aside from the things I think you absolutely have to learn, what do you want to do with motemancy?"

"I want to make magic items. What do you mean by regime?"

"A regime is a general mode of operation used to model the behavior of a system. For example, high-demand regimes for heat transfer can be modeled with a fairly simple formula for the expected rate of change in temperature and consumption of mana, while the low-demand regime requires more complex calculations to fully predict these values. Another example would be the flow of fluid in a pipe. Laminar, or smooth, flow - versus turbulent flow. There is a clear qualitative change in how things behave, when the regime changes. Laminar flow causes less vibration, less pressure and energy loss. But also poor mixing characteristics and lower heat and mass transfer."

She blinks slowly. "...There are broadly two kinds of magic items as far as motemancy goes. Bound tools, and forged cores. Forged cores are extremely advanced and delicate work. We will have to focus on bound tools. Fundamentally, the process of making a bound tool is not a complicated one. Bound tools are nothing more than a binding that does not decay unless damaged and activates when a non-motemancer does something. But it does require the ability to create complex compound bindings, use conditionals, and very tidy control."

"Should I be looking at a formula table or graphs or something?"

"Later. The major branches of theory will be designing bindings for specific tasks - including quantifying their performance and mana cost, writing to and implementing from standard motemancy diagrams, mote interactions in a variety of conditions, understanding of common practical uses, and also architecture and construction principles."

Bella takes a minute to catch up on noting all that down. "When I'm practicing stuff like this sometimes it helps if I have a particular goal in mind, do you think it'd be useful if I worked toward being able to make ice cream with the blue firemotes?"

This earns a small smile from her. "Make yourself a treat and call it a control exercise? Motivating. You will also need airmotes and possibly watermotes. To get the proper texture. Unless you intend to whisk it by hand, I suppose."

"Huh, airmotes make sense but watermotes?"

"For mixing the ingredients without turning it into a horrible foam." She gives that same dismissive wave, almost identical to the other times she made that gesture. "Since you seem hungry for theoretical knowledge, how about we skip basic manipulation exercises on the other seven mote types for now and do the lecture early."

"Sounds great!" Notebook at the ready.

Loril walks around a small hill to a nicely patterned stone floor with a free-standing blackboard, lecturn, and four wooden desks.

She hands Bella a book - Introductory Motemancy - and proceeds to lecture for a solid half-hour about all the kinds of motes and the proper way to manipulate them. Each comes with cautionary warnings: Firemotes can create condensed airs, which are dangerous. And heat, which is also dangerous. Water jet cutters can cut off limbs and heads. So don't do that. Vacuum is not good for living things, and neither is carbon dioxide (which is just called 'exhalation' in Common). Unstable dirt and stone structures can collapse on people; Also, worked soil tends to be ruined for farming, something about proper aeration and microbiomes. Invisible kinds of light are often hazardous, so don't play too freely with lightmotes. Adding lightning to things is rarely good for it, and adding metalmotes can make things stiff and brittle and magnetic. The biggest danger of darkmotes is that they sometimes suppress other magic, possibly including shields and life support magic.

The uses of earth, fire, water, and air are fairly intuitive- Moving it around, changing its state and shape. Forcing water to ice regardless of temperature, and forcing air to separate into components, is possible too. Stone can be made malleable, shaped, and then re-hardened. Lightmotes are mostly good for light things, like seeing, and killing dustlife, and sometimes as sensors to detect when someone opens a door or whatever. Darkmotes make areas of darkness and, usefully, can be used to detect active magic. Lightningmotes are tricky to work with; Nicholas has many ideas about them but hasn't managed to make them work yet. Metalmotes are generally used to fuck with the material properties of things, a metalmote-bound rope can have astounding tensile strength so long as the magic lasts, for example.

Questions?

Dustlife is -? oh, never mind, she figured it out. Does adding motes to things change their chemical composition or just their behavior?

"Just their behavior. Though motemancy is used in a number of chemical and industrial processes, indirectly."