Firesign 1 - Wage Slave Rebellion (3 page)

“No way,” interrupted Gavi. “You brought up the topic, so you get to go first. I’ll start you with something easy. When did you decide to become a caster?”

“Ohhh,” said Mazik, settling back. “You’ll like this one.”

The teacher wrote MAGICK on the blackboard. “Can anyone tell me what magick is?”

Six of the ten low schoolers
⁵
raised their hands, but one of the other four blurted out his answer instead. “It’s what makes stuff explode!”

The class giggled. The teacher shook her head. “Please raise your hand if you want to answer, Mazik.”

The little boy raised his hand. “Explosions!”

“That’s only part of it. Magick is the use of mana to create magickal spells. Now, who can tell me what mana is? Raise your hands.”

More hands shot up. The teacher selected a girl in the front row.

“Mana is a naturally occurring, ambient energy source that fuels magickal spells,” she recited.

“Correct,” said the teacher. “There’s a lot we don’t know about mana, but we know it’s natural, it’s invisible, it’s everywhere, and it never runs out.” She drew a sketch of their planet, Aegis, and circled it. “Wherever you go, there’s mana all around you. Who knows what a spell is?”

Hands shot up again. The teacher selected a little boy.

“It’s the magick you can see!”

“Sometimes, but not always. Spells are any magick created by a person. They’re made by moving mana in certain patterns. And a caster is…? Raise your hands.”

The teacher selected a little girl in the back. “Spell caster,” she said, her voice quiet from behind her doll. “They make spells.”

“Good, very good!” The teacher drew a stick figure with lines coming out of its hands. “Most casters are humans or orcks
⁷
, but some animals can learn spells too.” She added a picture of a dog, with lines coming out of its mouth. The children giggled.

“Who has seen someone cast a spell before?”

All ten hands raised.

“Did they make funny movements with their hands, or say funny words?” The teacher wiggled her fingers.

“Yes!” said the children.

“That’s to help them make the spells work. Really good casters don’t need to say anything, though.” The teacher began adding more illustrations to the chalkboard. “There are lots of different kinds of spells. There are ones that make you strong,” a picture of a rippling bicep, “let you move far away things,” a hand, and a distant block hovering, “protect you from danger,” a barrier was added in front of the hand, “heal you,” wavy lines were added around the bicep, “and yes, make things explode.” The class giggled as the hovering block was obscured by a chalk explosion.

The little boy in front couldn’t contain himself any longer. He jumped up and started punching the air. “Casters are so
cool!
When I grow up I’m gunna be a caster! I’m gunna be strong and do all sorts of cool things and it’ll be
awesome!
”

“Mazik, please sit down.”

“You don’t
understand,
teacher! It’s going to be
so
amazing! I can’t wait—”

A sudden breeze ruffled the boy’s hair, and he fell silent. All of the children did.

“I understand,” said the teacher. A ball of yellow light hovered over her palm, glowing warmly. “Now, who can tell me—”

“So
cool!
” exclaimed the little boy. Then the entire class rushed to their teacher, all of them grabbing at her skirts and jumping up and down as they talked all at once.

*      *      *

Mazik yawned as he trudged down the street. It was the next morning, and back were his work clothes, his nice tunic and ironed slacks and his thick, heavy cloak, with the black case swinging loosely in his hand. Also back were his slumped shoulders and the dour look of a man who really didn’t want to be doing what he was currently doing.

Mazik was not looking forward to work.

He approached a drab square building on an unremarkable warehouse road, its brown walls and slightly upturned roof making it look like a cardboard box that grew up and regretted it. Scrawled in fresh white paint over the doorway were five words: T
HE
A
SSOCIATION OF
I
NDEPENDENT
W
EAPONSMITHS
.

Sometimes that made Mazik laugh, when it didn’t make him cry or drink. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have a single weaponsmith on staff, and bought their merchandise from a company running a string of sweatshops in Ghinaaro, a country where wages were cheap and life even cheaper. The Association of Independent Weaponsmiths just sounded better than what they really were—a group of amoral arms dealers who,
by company policy
, didn’t care who they sold their weapons to as long as they could pay.

A cheery little bell jingled overhead, instantly filling Mazik with murderous intent. He was not a morning person.

“Good morrow, Slick!” came a gratingly cheery voice from inside the building.

Mazik winced. “Mornin’, Chzack.”
Just my luck
, thought Mazik sourly. He wished Chzack wouldn’t be so cheerful this early in the morning. As is, he was one bad joke away from needing to hide a body.

“You look tired, Slick. Out late last night?” asked Chzack, a man whose sunny disposition was rivaled only by the shadiness of his business dealings and the size of his beer belly. Chzack slung a swarthy arm around the taller man’s shoulders. “Out drinking with your buddies? Or, perhaps something else…?” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Just the former,” said Mazik tiredly.

Chzack cocked his head to the side. He didn’t get it.

“…the first one,” said Mazik, suppressing a sigh. That was his fault. He should have known better than to use multisyllabic words. Sometimes having an education was depressing, especially when you worked with a bunch of people who did not. That this didn’t stop them from being better at their jobs than Mazik only made things worse. Things like that could drive a man to drink.

“That’s fun too, I guess,” said Chzack, clearly disappointed. As a married man who only occasionally cheated on his wife, he loved to hear stories from those who were still “in the game.” Mazik didn’t have the heart to tell him that even at his most popular, he never got as much action as Chzack. Of course, Mazik refused to pay for sex, so he was at a handicap there.

“Morning, Slick,” came another voice, this one from behind.

“Good morning,” said Mazik as the man walked past them, his bald head gleaming.

“What, no greeting for me, Picky?” asked Chzack, loudly and right next to Mazik’s ear. Chzack half-skipped, half-waddled over to the broad-shouldered man ahead. “C’mon. How ya doin’ this morning?”

“Fine so far,” said the man, whose name was Pickner. “I just came from—”

Mazik zoned out. Shrugging out of his cloak, he followed the others on autopilot.

“Good morning!” chirped the secretary, beaming up at him from behind her flimsy desk. Mazik grunted. She just went on smiling.

Pickner strode ahead and opened the next door, motioning for Chzack and Mazik to enter first.

Mazik remembered the first time he entered this room. What he didn’t know was, after having done it once, what possessed him to do so again and again, day after day, for longer than he cared to remember. When he first came to interview, the waiting room was bad enough, with its cheap wooden chairs filled with desperate, gloomy applicants, its meaningless paintings hanging from otherwise blank walls, and its single obligatory potted plant quietly wilting in the corner. The whole thing felt so fake, so
temporary
, like it was nothing but a thin veneer thrown up to make it look like there was a business where none existed.

But this room was another thing entirely. It had no furnishings. It had no decorations, no work supplies, not even a single painting or potted plant. What it had was three windows devoid of curtains, two chalkboards populated exclusively by the rundown dregs of the chalk herd, and people. A
lot
of people.

This room was called the sales floor, and it was where all AIW salespeople gathered every morning for announcements, practice, sales reports, and “motivation.”

It all had a kind of logic to it. What use was furniture to salespeople who would spend little time using it? This was a place for management and merchandise, more a warehouse than an office building, and pretending it was anything else would have wasted time they could have used to sell more weapons. Salespeople had no need to get comfortable, so there was nothing here for them to get comfortable with.

Somewhere deep in Mazik’s soul, he cried. Most of his nightmares started in this room. Or he was sure they would have if he could remember any of them.

Mazik looked around. Tall and short, thin and fat, male and female, and belonging to races and creeds of all kinds, other salespeople milled about in their fine suits and comfortable shoes, comparing techniques, swapping anecdotes, practicing pitches, and generally wasting time until things got started.

Not excited at the prospect of another coworker latching onto him, Mazik quietly slunk into the corner. He nodded. “Hey.”

“Hey,” said the man already there. His name was Tomar. Though only a little older than Mazik, Tomar sported a receding hairline and hardened cynicism that usually took a lifetime of bitter, caustic regret to acquire. He was Mazik’s best friend at work.

With greetings out of the way, the two said nothing. They preferred it that way. It was too early in the morning for friendship.

After an insufficient five minutes of antisocial peace, a small man blew into the room. Weaving around coworkers, he made a beeline for Mazik and Tomar. “Raeus
⁸
, I need to talk to you.”

“Morning, boss,” said Mazik.

Mazik’s boss was a small, wiry man with short-cropped, curly hair and a massive chip on his shoulder. He had what would have been called a Napoleon Complex, had a man named Napoleon ever existed on Aegis. Instead he had what Mazik thought of as a Rose Complex, after the man himself, Stahl Rosewat’r
⁹
. The “Rose” part wasn’t even some petty insult—that was the name he chose to go by, freely and of his own volition, which goes to show that he probably didn’t have the inferiority complex Mazik ascribed to him, or he had gotten used to the name, or he really liked flowers. Whatever the case, Mazik had no desire to find out, because that would have required spending more time with the man responsible for so much of his grief.

“I just got back last month’s sales numbers,” said Rose, holding up a sheet of paper.

Mazik didn’t groan. He pointedly did
not
groan. He felt like it. He wanted to. He knew this wasn’t going to be good, and vocalizing that dread would have made him feel better, but he didn’t because that would have annoyed Rose, and he had a feeling he didn’t need that right now. Instead Mazik said nothing, and waited for the axe to fall.

“Last month’s numbers were terrible for the company overall, thanks to the ore shortages, but yours were the lowest in our group. What happened?” asked Rose.

Mazik had prepared for this, so he had an answer ready, but you can never really be prepared for your boss dressing you down like you were a child.

“Well, like you said it was a hard month, so I was really trying to hustle to make up for it, and I had a few big deals that looked like they were going to go through but didn’t, so it could have easily been a lot better. I’ve got a few things going right now, so this month should be—”

“Those sound like excuses,” interrupted Rose, “but I guess we’ll see. How’s today looking for you?”

“Fine…?”

“Great, because I’m going out on your sales with you today,” said Rose. “I’d like to see what you’re doing so I can find out if there’s anything I can do to help. Sound good?”

“No! That sounds horrible! That sounds like a hellacious day full of stress and anger!”

…is what Mazik wanted to say, but he forced those words back and said what he needed to say to not get fired. “Sounds good,” he said, hating himself with every word. “Thank you.”

“Good,” said Rose. “I’ve got to talk to a few people after announcements, so I’ll meet you by the loading dock. I need to pick up more merch before we leave.”

“Sounds good,” said Mazik, though he needn’t have bothered. Rose, having lost interest the moment he stopped talking, had already left.

“Sucks to be you,” said Tomar.

“Yes,” said Mazik. “Yes, it does.”

*      *      *

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’re what we’re looking for at this time.”

Gavi’s smile froze as all emotion drained away from her face.

She had tried to prepare herself for this, of course, but it still stung. As Gavi floundered, the hiring manager smiled at her with practiced regret, broadcasting understanding and patience while he waited for her to respond.

“Of course. I understand,” said Gavi. She picked up the battered briefcase she had borrowed from her father, wiping her sweaty palms on her skirt as she stood. She stuck out a hand. “Thank you for taking the time to interview me.”

The hiring manager nodded. “It’s no problem, Mis
¹⁰
Ven’Kalil. I enjoyed speaking with you. I’m sorry we couldn’t offer you the job.”

“It’s okay. I understand,” repeated Gavi, because she didn’t know what else to say.

Gavi bowed, thanked the hiring manager again, and then picked her way through the crowded office. She opened the door, and then stopped.

“Actually, I have a question,” said Gavi, one hand resting on the doorframe. “Is there anything I can do to improve? I’d like to know for future interviews.”