Ranger Flo sighed. “Brooke’s not suffering from mana inflammation of a hyperproduction disease, just plain old fashioned fever and dehydration. She’ll be back to regular old itch, exhaustion, and general discomfort by morning.”
“We want to visit her!” the girl insisted, balling up her fists. “You just took her away and won’t let anyone see her!”
“You can visit her in her room tomorrow afternoon,” Ranger Flo said. “She might even get to come home with Danielle here tonight, if the two of them will both stop putting other things in front of their health.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault – wait, is she in one of those teeny rooms in the clinic, with all the privacy wards?” Danielle asked.
“That’s right,” Ranger Flo said. “You’re up. Go on in.”
Danielle looked back to the dome, where a slightly dazed looking girl was coming out. “Those clinic rooms are teeny tiny,” she told the girl next to her. “It’ll be a lot less annoying to visit once Brooke is back in her own room.” So saying, she headed for the Dome entrance. She managed to step wrong on an uneven spot in the grass and wobble to her right, catching herself on her staff. She could feel her face and ears turning red, but she kept moving. The best she could do was get through her tokens and things efficiently, and get back out so Melissa’s roommate could catch up to her.
Once the slight angle of the line to the entrance got her out of sight, Danielle started drawing her Skill tokens out of her token pouch into a pocket. She ignored the greeting text, put one hand on the pillar, used the other to put the two 100-mana tokens from Zephyr into the token hole, and immediately said, “Advance Skill: Detect Internal Temperature. Advance Skill: See System Info - Creatures.” She paused to slap a 300-mana token into the pillar, then another. “Level Skill: See System Info – Persons, using token mana. Level Skill: Active Camouflage, using token mana. Level Skill: Deflect Notice, using token mana,” she said, barely pausing for breath. Then she started loading Skill tokens into the pillar with her free hand, barely reading the notifications as they scrolled by. With each token, the System prompted her to confirm she wanted to add it to her active Skills, and she chanted “yes, yes, yes,” without reading the prompts – what Skill token did she have that she wasn’t planning to use, after all? When she had no more Skill tokens in her pocket, she started emptying the salad clamshell. The three Skills in the front corner were the random Skills to get her up to the right number, and then there were the actual epidemic handling Skills, and – there was a different message. Danielle barely stopped herself from saying yes without reading it, like she had all the others, instead blurting, “y-wait, what was that?”
The Access Point took that as a request to show her the confirmation messages for the session, for some reason – perhaps it wasn’t sure what she meant by “that” and was trying to show her what all the things had been. The last message was different, though.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Detect Internal Temperature (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: See System Info - Creatures (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill: See System Info – Persons has advanced to Tier 2, Level 2.
- ? Skill: Active Camouflage has advanced to Tier 1, Level 2.
- ? Skill: Deflect Notice has advanced to Tier 1, Level 2.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Alter Tag (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Ultrasight (T2) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Body Shield (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Step Light (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Scout’s Awareness (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Falconry Apprentice (T1) added.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Manadepth Perception (T2) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Carve Staff (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Leather Piercing (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applies. Skill: Spear Apprentice (T1) added.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Local Antihistamine (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Sterilize Object (T1) added at level 1.
- ? Skill Applied. Skill: Boost Recovery (T1) added at level 1.
- ? You have provided Skill Token: Detect Internal Temperature (T1). You already have a skill by this name. Do you want to replace Skill: Detect Internal Temperature with Skill: Detect Internal Temperature?
Danielle frowned at the message. Hadn’t she asked the quartermaster not to give her one of those? And why was the System even asking her if she wanted to replace something? “Um, are they different?” she asked.
The system responded “Skills of substantially similar uses may be adjusted according to the nuances of the personality and System instance of the person advancing them. Skill tokens retain the Skill instance of the person providing the Skill template at the time of tokenization.”
“Can you tell me what the differences are? Wait,” Danielle said. If it kept calling them both the same thing, it would just give her a headache. Actually, she already had a headache. It would make it worse. “Um, for purposes of this comparison, call the Detect Internal Temperature that I just advanced, “Danielle’s Detect Internal Temperature” and the Skill in the token “SA’s Detect Internal Temperature.” Now please tell me what the differences between those two Skills are.”
“Labels applied,” the Access Point printed blandly. “Danielle’s Detect Internal Temperature determines the core body temperature of a person or other living creature and reports it using a minor illusion of the numeric temperature in the local default thermal units (currently: Fahrenheit). This output is universally visible and persists for 4 minutes or until dismissed. SA’s Detect Internal Temperature determines the core body temperature of a person or other living creature and reports it using a color gradient visualization corresponding to that temperature in the local accepted Thermal Sight color plan. This is a user-only visualization lasting 5 minutes.”
“Ooh. That’s really neat,” Danielle said. “Wait, if my – if the output of Danielle’s Detect Internal Temperature is an illusion anyway, can it also be the Thermal Sight color of the temperature it’s displaying?”
“That is possible. Do you want to adjust definition of Danielle’s Detect Internal Temperature for 10 mana?” the Access Point asked.
“Yes! I definitely want to adjust that as described for 10 mana!” Danielle answered excitedly. “Can I do that for any Skill?!”
“Manual adjustments and renaming may be requested during the session in which a skill is added by an Access Point, during the first Access Point session after a Skill is added without intervention by an Access Point, when leveling the skill to numerically significant levels 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, or 24, or when evolving the skill’s tier.”
“Ooh. I’m earning my researcher points today. So can I rename my Skill again? I want something easier to say. Or at least more fun to say! Um, rename Danielle’s Detect Internal Temperature to, um, to Numeric MedVet Thermometer.”
“Skill: Detect Internal Temperature has been renamed to Skill: Numeric MedVet Thermometer,” the Access Point confirmed.
“Can I still take the other one, if I want to?” Danielle asked.
“Name conflict is resolved. Do you want to add Skill: SA’s Detect Internal Temperature to your active skills?”
“Yes,” Danielle said, then as soon as the confirmation appeared, she told it, “Rename SA’s Detect Internal Temperature to Lightsight MedVet Thermometer.”
“Skill: Detect Internal Temperature has been renamed to Skill: Lightsight MedVet Thermometer,” the system confirmed.
“This is so cool!” Danielle squeaked. It was so tempting to shout or at least squeal with excitement, but she was supposed to only be doing a single token and a Class – oh! She was supposed to be taking another Class. She added another 300-mana token.
“Advance Class: General Enhancer,” Danielle told the Access Point.
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“Please select level one options for Class: General Enhancer.
? Choose one trait from: Mana Sight (T1-L1) or Symbol Seer (T1-L1)
? Choose one trait from: Mana Shaper (T1-L1) or Symbol Carrier (T1-L1)
? Choose one skill from: Copy Symbol (T1-L1) or Carve Symbol (T1-L1)
? Choose one skill from: Appraise Crystal (T1-L1) or Embed Crystal (T1-L1)
? Special: do you want to trade Skill: Mana Shaping and 50 mana for Trait: Mana Shaper?”
Danielle scanned the options quickly. “On the one hand, I regret not having more time to read all the options here; on the other hand, I’ve made some of these decisions easier on myself,” she said.
“Request not understood,” the System told her, and she rolled her eyes.
“Yes, trade Skill: Mana Shaping and 50 session mana for Trait: Mana Shaper,” Danielle said. “Select Trait, Symbol Seer. Select Trait, Symbol Carrier. Select Skill, um, Embed Crystal. I think all the crystals I have access to are pre-appraised right now. Let’s see. I think I’m doing OK with copying symbols, so let’s take Carve Symbol. If I have to come back for Copy Symbol, well, I’ll pay mana for it.”
“Please add ten mana,” the System requested, and Danielle called a 100-mana token to her fingers and slid it into the pillar. “Thank you. Processing choices,” the System said.
Danielle felt an odd, almost sharp sensation that she thought was probably related to the Skill trade-in; then her Mana Sense surged and she swayed dizzily as her sight was suddenly overwhelmed by a dense cloud of – of symbols. “Oogh, that was a sensorium Trait, wasn’t it? Hoo boy. End session,” she said.
“Ending Session – all choices confirmed.” the Access Point announced.
“Yes,” Danielle said, reaching blindly for the token slot just in time to feel the token pop up. She put it into the salad clamshell and shoved it blindly into her bag before staggering out of the Dome. She bounced off the edge of the door, badly aimed through the visual clutter. As she crossed the threshold, though, she discovered that the blinding cloud of symbols was mostly limited to the Dome; the air beyond the line where the Access Point recognized and greeted people was blessedly clear, though symbols hovered around people – or people’s gear? Yes, that was it. The massive fence was also covered in symbols.
“Are you all right?” Ranger Flo called, as Danielle stood in the entrance.
Melissa’s roommate was marching determinedly towards her. Right, she needed to move. She slid to the right, where she could grab onto the rope to steady herself against a dizziness that wasn’t quite dispelled by the clearer air. “I think that one Class Trait was a sensorium Trait,” she said. “Thought I was gonna be blind for a minute. Oogh, I’m dizzy. Hi Melissa. Melissa is you, right?” she greeted the girl who had gone in before her.
“Yeah. Don’t put too much weight on the ropes, they just tip over the posts,” Melissa warned her. “Almost found that out the very hard way. Had to set a couple back up.”
“Thanks. I gotta move anyway – stuff to do. Ranger Flo, do I have to wait for an escort or am I supposed to just go?” Danielle asked.
“We’re waiting for Michael to come back,” Ranger Flo said. “Let me radio him to bring some help.”
“OK, waiting then,” Danielle said. She followed the line of posts back to where they’d come in, and leaned on the end post itself instead of the rope.
Ranger Flo made a radio call, asking for Michael to come back ASAP and bring a guide for Melissa and her roommate. Danielle was close enough to her party to talk at mostly-normal volumes, though, so Akari asked her, “Seriously, Danielle, are you all right? It looked like you almost fell on the way in and the way out.”
“You’re not really blind, right?” Jordan added anxiously. “Your sight came back, or whatever?”
“I’m fine. Well, I’m a little dizzy,” Danielle said. “On the way in, I just put a foot down wrong. Last thing before I came out, though, I took a Trait that adds stuff to my vision, and hoo boy was there a lot of that stuff in the Dome. I basically couldn’t see anything but the new Trait. I think it’s just because the Dome is an incredibly dense System, uh, thing, though. Once I got past the entrance it thinned out a lot. The fence is pretty bright too, though. I think I’m basically seeing enhancements – well, the mana structures that make up the enhancements? I wish Cassy were here. Except it might make her feel bad, because this is soooo much more than Mana Sight, and I don’t want to rub it in. Don’t you guys do that either!”
“We won’t, but are you going to be OK in the room?” Sadie asked.
“I’ll be fine. The room has a few wards, but it’s no Access Point,” Danielle said. “It’s like how I looked at a Ranger when I first got Detect Mana Source and it was like staring right at a light when it turns on in a dark room. The Access Point is just way too bright to this Trait. The Trait’ll settle in a few days, though, and I’ll use Sensory Tuning on it and then I’ll be able to glance at an Access Point without wanting to faint again.”
“What Class did you take?” someone asked.
“She said she was going to take Light Shaper,” Zephyr replied loudly.
The line was full of muttering; Enhanced Hearing allowed Danielle to pick out snatches of the conversations. Most of them were Systemists commenting on ‘the saint’ having an elevated shaping Class, and if it meant anything that it was a subordinate element. A few people were debating whether the Access Point had flashed at her for some reason. “Um, I do have Class: Light Shaper, but the Trait that gave me trouble was a general mana thing, not a light Trait per se. It got me because the Access Point is obviously very mana-dense and, um, System-dense. Don’t worry, I’m really OK, it didn’t actually do anything bad to me. It was just a little overwhelming at first, getting the Trait right there in the middle of all that.”
“Of course the System didn’t do anything bad to her,” someone else said loudly – a boy Danielle vaguely recognized as one of Birch’s friends, possibly a roommate. “The System aids and protects!”
“Yep. Sending Authority wanted us protected from mana pox, so they gave us more System Skills,” Danielle agreed. She studiously kept her eyes off the Dome or the Fence, and the dizziness subsided a bit more. “Now we just have to follow up by using those Skills to also aid and protect each other, right?”
“I’m back,” Ranger Michael announced from behind her. Danielle turned – too quickly, her head spun, and she had to steady herself between her staff and the post again. “Whoa, now, don’t knock over the ropes,” he said, holding out a steadying hand to her. Behind him stood a female Ranger Danielle hadn’t met yet.
“I’m good,” Danielle said. “Just a little overwhelmed. Nothing I can’t handle if I just remember to take it slow.”
“Are you looking to take her back to the clinic?” Ranger Michael asked Ranger Flo.
“I wish,” Ranger Flo said. “I have to take her back to the Station Manager. Just for the record, Danielle, you did get your official epidemic-defense token absorbed before you got overwhelmed by your Class Trait, right?”
“Yeah – oh, yeah!” Danielle said, remembering that she’d learned something exciting. “The quartermaster forgot that I said I didn’t need Detect Internal Temperature, and I accidentally tried to add the token after I’d already taken the Skill with mana, and it was so cool! It was different from my version and now I have both of them!”
Ranger Flo sighed. “Danielle, that’s impossible,” she said. “Skills operating slightly differently for different people is a known issue, but you can’t take two versions of the same Skill. It gives you an error message, and either you reject the second one, or it overwrites the first one. That’s probably what you actually did.”
“Yeah, but no, because the error message is about names, and you can change the names when you’re still in the Access Point,” Danielle said excitedly. “You can even change the Skills a little! So I did!”
“Danielle,” Ranger Flo said exasperatedly, “you’re not listening. That’s impossible. You’re dizzy and confused, but when you look at your Interface later, you’ll see that you only have one Skill called Detect Internal Temperature.”
“I will have zero Skills called Detect Internal Temperature because I renamed them both more descriptive things,” Danielle said, trying to give her a look of injured dignity, but probably failing, because she was swaying again. She adjusted her grip on her staff and leaned into it a little for stability.
“We are definitely stopping by the clinic on the way to the Sending Authority side,” Ranger Flo said.
“May I look at your Skills, Danielle?” Ranger Michael said. “Tell me what names you’re expecting me to find.”
“Sure, go ahead and look,” Danielle agreed. “You’ll see two Skills that both end with ‘MedVet Thermometer,’ and the first word tells how they output the answer, because that’s what’s different.” She tugged at her Mana Deflector.
Ranger Michael pushed his Skill at her hard, and she felt Mana Deflector give up, then the file-flipping sensation she was becoming entirely too used to. “Huh, there they are,” he said. “Numeric sounds promising; do you expect it to tell you actual numbers?”
“It said, illusory numbers everyone can see,” Danielle said. “And I made them also be the color that the other Skill uses instead. It’s a thermal sight color, which is so cool. I can’t wait to use the two versions together and compare them and their songs and everything!”
“Michael, don’t encourage her,” Ranger Flo said.
Ranger Michael shrugged. “What do you want me to say, Flo? She’s got a Skill called Numeric MedVet Thermometer in her System – you want to suggest to me what that might be other than a variation of Detect Internal Temperature?”
“I guess it’s probably just as well that this particular impossible thing I accidentally did anyway doesn’t touch Boost Recovery,” Danielle said. “Everything gets so difficult when I have stuff people think is impossible. To say nothing of having stuff that’s actually impossible.”
“Um, is this who I’m escorting?” the unknown Ranger woman asked.
Ranger Flo shook her head. “No, you’re taking the girl down at that end of the ropes, along with her roommate, who is in the Dome now. I’m escorting Danielle back to the clinic, now that Michael’s back to monitor the special cases line here.”
“Say hi to Brooke for us,” Melissa said from the other end of the rope line.
Danielle chuckled. “I will if I’m actually allowed in to see her, but I doubt it. Those rooms are tiny and well-warded for privacy. What they’re not designed for is visitors. Chances are she’ll never know I was in the building.”
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