He clears his throat, adjusting his neat blue tie. It's always hard to tell how people are going to react — he's had more than a few doors slammed in his face this morning. But it's a job, and an important one.
He shifts his clipboard to his other flipper and gives the door three firm knocks.
She blinks a bit, folding up her laptop and stretching out a little, a timid little yawn slipping from her lips as she shakes away the morning grumminess and grumpiness a little, before flouncing out of her seat and toe-walking out to the door. Solicitors don't come here too often, and she always feels like there's more she's supposed to do with them, but really the least she can do is politely hear them out...
She swings open the door and blinks dubiously at the walrus.
"Hello!"
He gives her a jaunty little wave.
"Do you have a few minutes to talk about magic?"
"...Sure!"
Her shoulders fold up a little, and she sinks back into her hoody a little, before blushing softly. She steps back a bit, and hums.
"Would you like to come in or handle things out here? Never feels like it's the right weather to leave the door open, these days..."
"Oh, thank you! I'd like to come in, if it's all right. I'm not really suited for the climate."
And trudging up and down stairs doesn't really help. Luckily walruses can adjust the amount of bloodflow to their skin, instead of sweating. Much more civilized.
"I'm Hammond, by the way. Hammond Burns."
"And... you can call me Topaz."
She reaches out her hand on reflex to shake, before freezing a little in awkwardness. He can hold that clipboard fine, but it's rude to just assume he can do things like that.
He reaches out to put the tip of his flipper in her hand with the dignity of someone who has been dealing with handed people all his life.
"A pleasure to meet you, Topaz," he replies, gently shaking her hand.
Oh that's neat.
She ?squeezes? gently, and then bobs back, and turns and walks slowly past the entryway of her flat to her kitchen. It's a pretty empty space - flat brown walls and cheap porcelain tiling giving it a somewhat threadbare look.
She plops herself down at her simple kitchen table, and nestles back in her chair when she gets there.
He follows her into the kitchen, sets his clipboard on the table, and heaves himself up into a chair.
"Alright! So as I said, I've been sent around to ask you some questions about magic," he explains. "See, your world is ... call it 'cooked' enough that it's about time for it to start manifesting a magic system. But the form that magic is going to take here is more or less up in the air. So I just want to ask you a few questions about how you think it should work."
"Oh!"
She smiles warmly, a little childish grin on her lips and stars in her eyes.
"Sure! Really, it's the least I can do for advanced warning about that, much less a chance to make a difference."
And also she's a weeb but she is not going to volunteer that directly yetttttt
"Excellent!"
This is really a much warmer reception all around then he's used to. He picks up the clipboard again to review the list of questions.
"So my first question is a broad one. But don't worry if you can't answer it — we can skip any questions you don't want to answer. Do you think magic should be 'hard' or 'soft'? That is, should it be quantifiable, following mathematical or physical rules, or should it be more based on feelings, language, or another less formal system? And this is something of a spectrum, not just an either-or."
She bites her lip a little, and ponders.
"I think that depends on what you're looking for, and at what level of abstraction? Say... If we're talking about it on the fiction level, I feel like I tend to prefer the work of the kind of person who can and will write a 'hard' magic system. I think for a lot of people, a soft magic system is sort of... an excuse not to think too much about the economics of things and how it'd work out in practice? And hard magic systems are often better and more evenly distributed, and I like it when people can work together on big projects and make infrastructure. But on the other hand... Soft magic systems enable a lot of really cool things. So in that sense, I like soft magic systems, but you've got to commit to it, you know? Having arbitrary magic stuff that only works once and is never mentioned again is one of my biggest pet peeves, but having a world where the sort of skills and traits that aren't as easy to apply in a hard magic system are rewarded - or at least not punished - is good, I think."
"... not ... punished," he mumbles, scribbling on the clipboard.
Somehow.
"Okay — so would it be fair to say that you think magic should be consistent and repeatable? And what kinds of skills and traits do you have in mind?"
"I think so. At least, unless there's some meta-rule about repeatability that is itself consistent, probably?"
Her eyes gaze down at the scribbling. Objectively, it's probably not weirder then a walrus that animate and/or intelligent, but it's still pretty baffling!
"Ideally, being - virtuous? Abstractly, I'm big on contractualist and - servicey - ethics, but really there's a lot of options that can work out okay with a bit of meddling and the ability to just totally ignore the normal need for proxy measures that a magic system would usually have. Being kind and welcoming and non-bigotted and congenial and wise and making people happier and..."
She sighs a little.
"I would love to say something like 'filial piety' but a lot of people's families are really profoundly terrible. But I do think that the internet enables opt-inable communities that are selective enough that I think they're fair, in the way that a family isn't, persay? So maybe something based on that sort of thing, or some sort of modified 'golden rule' heuristic or CEV thing. But speaking aesthetically, rather then making a good world... I think the thing is more that you probably don't want something too too overwhelmingly g-loaded? Always feel like in contexts where things aren't that selected that can just be depressing and - unappetizing to see, given how much that determines about people already."
"Hmm."
Hammond holds a flipper to his chin in thought.
"There's a lot to unpack there. But, just to be clear, you mean that you'd prefer a magic system where people can get good outcomes without necessarily being more intelligent in a general sense? And that instead, you would want the mental attributes that make someone suited to harnessing magic to be those virtues you mentioned? Or is it that you care more about the outcome being that people with those attributes prosper, and it's less important that the attributes be directly tied into how people use magic?"
"It's a little hard to answer that...."
She wrings her hands out gently against her thighs.
"Sorry if this goes against the point of your question, but are you asking for my opinion, ignoring consequentialist considerations? If so, I do like that - I really like intelligent people and honestly I'd expect I'd do pretty well in a g-loaded magic system? But that feels - kind of unfair, in some nebulous sense, because of how rich get richer it would be a lot of the time to be like that. But being intelligent is a virtue that I think you should be allowed to celebrate? But I think that just having it not be too negatively correlated is enough for that still to be true. So..."
She stimmily rocks in her chair.
"If you're asking more about if the outcome that I care about is specifically that people with non-intelligence virtues prosper in the world after magic... It's not that I care about that too too much? I just would want magic to make good things happen, and rewarding good people and people making good things happen seems like one of the more obvious ways to make that happen. But If we're talking about something equally good, in terms of some sort of levelized QoL years measurement or whatever ends up being the best way to magically reify morality, then I kind of like the idea of people being rewarded for that, though? I want everyone to prosper, including unvirtous and unintelligent people, but given a given 'level' of good, assuming away problems about marginal utility and disutility, I think it's okay and maybe even actively 'good' - even if we're kind of assuming that away here - to reward people for goodness, and I think I'd feel satisfied seeing that happen?"
"Hmm. So the thing—"
He trails off in thought.
"I think I should give you a little more background on this whole process. So the idea is that my fellow canvassers and I all survey people, and then we feed their answers back to the Will of Magic, who uses them to decide what kind of magic system to be. But afterward, the magic is 'fixed', and it works however it is that it works."
"So it's not that there's some maximum achievable 'level' of goodness that you can optimize toward with your answers here, exactly. You're being asked to give input on the systems in which people will live, but none of us have direct control over what those people will experience, see. It's like rule utilitarianism instead of act utilitarianism. But you can definitely advocate for systems that reward — or even just enable — the things you want to see. Does that help clarify?"
She rolls her head over to the side a little, and hums softly.
"In one sense, my answers are probably much the same whether my input is one in one or one in ten thousand of the - total input, here? Good is good, whether or not it's diluted. Though... I guess how much it's sort of... a conventional vote matters a bunch, and if so who's voting and how the votes are aggregated? There's probably a different answer I could give if the incentive from that is to gravitate towards the sort of options that other people would think to suggest and that other people would support, over what I'd prefer, myself? Mostly, my instinct is just to answer it honestly as a survey, but..."
She shrugs her shoulders.
Hammond sighs.
"Arrow's impossibility theorem strikes again," he laments. "To answer your question — I'm not sure exactly how many people are going to voice their opinion in time. You'd be amazed how many people aren't willing to talk to a canvasser. Or a walrus. You're actually the first person I've gotten substantial answers out of."
He sets the clipboard down again and leans forward.
"As for how the surveys are being aggregated ... look, technically I'm not even an emissary of the Will of Magic. Technically I'm a subcontractor, because the real emissaries ... Well let's just say that the way people react to walruses is a step up. But my bosses, they have some kind of method which I don't understand, but which they say produces an unbiased, unweighted aggregate of all the responses. It's not a simple vote-counting scheme because you don't have to just give me yes-or-no answers, but I'm pretty sure your incentive is to answer honestly."
He thinks for a moment.
"... I can also put down conditional preferences, if that helps? Like 'Eternal bliss for everyone, if possible, but if not I still want X, Y, and Z'."
She nods.
"That's a bit of a relief. And I can do conditions..."
She rolls her head back in thought and hums.
"Oh. I suppose there's another question there - how much can the - matured will of magic act on consequences rather than rules? I feel like the difference is kind of academic if the magic system is sufficiently omniscient, yeah? Certainly, I've read a bunch of stories with magic systems with comprehensive systems of destinies that support that kind of thing, but I shouldn't assume this 'Will of Magic' can, nesscarily?"
"That's one of the questions I'm supposed to get to in a bit, actually! The ultimate form that magic takes is bound by rules, but those rules can definitely be destiny-based, like 'everyone gets a happy ending', and the universe will be the kind of place where that is always true. But in order to do that in a self-consistent way, you have to give up on having universal, impersonal physical laws. Or you have to introduce a very smart entity tied into the magic system who can make it work," Hammond explains. "So how exactly it will work is up to you — and the other respondents. What do you think?"
Then he makes a face of realization and lightly bops himself with a flipper.
"Unless you meant on a meta level? Like, how much control the Will of Magic has over the consequences of what it will become? Because I think there's a pamphlet about that ..."
He starts flipping through the papers on his clipboard.
"It's generally good to know on all levels, I've found."
She hum hum hums.
"Everyone getting a happy ending is a good start - preferably within a decade or two, at least, though I'm not very firmly stuck on any particular time horizon, there, since natural and good quality ways to solve people's problems can be hard to find. There's a lot of weird edge cases - I don't think you mean some sort of direct happiness injection thing, but even beyond that, people are just generally weird... Probably you want to make it some sort of function weighing emotional fulfillment and a slate of happiness sub-sensations and satisfaction and reflectively endorsed appreciation of things. Personally, I lean pretty heavily to that last factor? But really, there's a pretty wide slate of options that I think would be very good, as long as things end up reasonably ungoodharted, and going in that direction should help along with that besides."
"I don't mind having non-universally impersonal physical laws? Though honestly, there's nothing wrong either with having entities associated with the power system that help out, too. Having a bunch of say, cute anime girls - and boys too, probably - with a connection to the power system pop into existence with a desire, capacity and great personal joy in helping people get happy endings is maybe a good start for a first pass..."
"Oh and... Do tell if there's any obvious hypotheticals to consider I'm missing or you'd like me to fetch you anything while we talk - I can get you some water, and I think I have some fish in the fridge somewhere... There's really just so much to consider!"
Her hands flap excitedly, before she bounces up in her seat to sit on them a little.
"Well, I'm not sure how well I can come up with hypotheticals. But it's part of a good canvasser's job to ask follow-up questions!" he agrees. "Let me just note down the things you said about happy endings ..."
"It's good to know you're not against having the magic system create helper entities. When you say 'anime', are you thinking in terms of visual style, being familiar-but-obviously-magical, in terms of personality, or ...?"
"Really, it's all of the above? Or arguably, it's more about them being cute and aesthetically appealing than being nesscarily particularly 'anime'. That being said, I am really really fond of magical girls and magical girlfriends. That sort of... exaggerated stylishness is just really fun and exciting for me."
He nods seriously.
"Okay. So, to summarize: you want a magic system that guarantees happy endings for people — I've got the details on that — and you don't mind if that happens via non-universal or non-impartial physics, or via creating new entities associated with the magic system. But if there are entities like that, you want them to be cute, aesthetically appealing people, and you're particularly fond of magical girls and girlfriends."
He flips a few pages to another section of questions.
"What are your thoughts on mind control? Not, uh, for or against, but more along the lines of what counts? How aesthetically appealing, persuasive, etc., should the hypothetical magical girlfriends be? What level of engineered coincidences and so on are acceptable in bringing about a person's destiny?"
She blushes softly.
"Honestly I'm pretty permissive? I kink a lot on people being extraordinarily hot, honestly. There should probably be some cap, at least in public without a bunch of informed consent in limits, but you can be solidly superhuman in beauty and that's okay by me, especially if they can upgrade pre-existing people to their level. As for the persuasiveness... Personal instinct is to put them at around 90th, 95th percentile of the human distribution? Honestly it's scary enough what people can do there already. Still, there's maybe a bit of room for slight superhumanity if you can confine it relatively narrowly towards formal rhetoric, logic and empathy, especially if there's a sort of... defense bias in social combat with them? If we're talking a bit more literally about what counts... I'm fine with anything physically possible, and anything that's just sort of... 'input' to the mind, so long as it's not lying to you?"
"As for luck... I think that it's okay to do things that are one in a hundred nine times out of ten, at least? Really, the biggest thing is that it shouldn't... feel too coercive, and it shouldn't feel like the sort of thing that is so implausible it couldn't happen in a normal life? It's definitely okay for people to be 'lucky', but the situations where it's an absurd or comical barrage should be tasteful and relatively few and far between - the sort of thing that you hear about happening once or twice in your extended social circle, but not the sort of thing that a person would expect to happen to them in the next few decades."
"Okay — so not like a hard numerical limit, but rather one based on people's perception," he observes, scribbling this down. "What about events that happen in mutually contradictory ways for different people? Like two people both winning a lucky coin flip, and the fact that they both remember winning just doesn't come up because they move in different social circles? How much of that kind of thing is okay, and how important is it that everyone stays in one causally connected universe?"
She purses her lips and hums.
"I feel like at minimum that should be opt-in? I also seperately have an intuition that that's icky and not super allowed, but I also also have an intuition that weird time magic is fun and interesting? Probably the best synthesis for that is that there's some sort of selection effect around changing how you interact with time and casuality, such that if you want you can pursue that branch of magic, but that also unmoors you in a relatively symmetrical way that allows for some of that kind of weird stuff to happen, but I'm not the most sure of that..."
She fusses her fingers timidly back through her hair.
Hammond taps a flipper to his lip in thought.
"That kind of opting-in to a particular kind of magic — that ties neatly into my next set of questions. Are there other things that magic shouldn't be able to do? Are there limits on what kind of 'happy ending' destiny should be able to provide, given enough time?"
"Personally... I feel like there ought to be in principle a diagrammable map of how causality has happened? It might be hard to understand, but it should be notionally constructable and notionally reconstructable. Beyond that... probably make it impossible to kill people? You can maybe quibble a bit about that but I think that having some sort of stasis thing that you can set up that means that you can be resuscitated conditionally that you have to generate with a clear head, an honest heart and arbitrarily large amounts of thinking time is probably enough to cover those problems. There's probably more of that kind of restriction against certain very bad things happening that are perfectly colorable, but I feel less comfortable saying that I have a good enough solution, there. Honestly... I don't think you need any particularly absolute rules, there, as long as big bad things have enough of a defense over offense bias? There's no reason to say that it's axiomatically impossible to blow up earth if it's instead just sort of trivially stoppable, say. I don't want to prescribe any particular limits to the happy ending thing, beyond the 'no killing people' rule. I suppose you could add some sort of rule restricting creating conciousnesses that don't or wouldn't endorse existing? Arguably that's covered enough by the happy ending rule, though."
"So no real limits, except that there is a way to diagram causality and there's no real death," he notes. "And you prefer making defense easy over imposing strict limits. What are your thoughts on afterlives? A lot of places seem to end up with those as part of the whole 'no true death' thing."
"Oh, bother," he adds, after a moment of jotting. "Do you happen to have a spare pen I could borrow? Mine's run out of ink."
"Here."
She walks over to a cabinet and pulls one out, and passes it over to him.
"I think they're a bit of a boondoogle, to be honest? I feel like there's no real need to have an extra special realm for activities to do while being dead, when you can just not be dead and do those things? I don't have any objection in principle to them existing, if you're not going to just ressurect everyone and make everyone properly immortal, but they're not nesscary for my ideal by any means."
He takes the new pen and makes some little circles to get the ink flowing.
"That makes sense," he agrees. "Indifferent ... to ... afterlives."
He flips back to the beginning of his list of questions and looks over them again.
"So, is there anything else you want to cover about the outcomes or broad approaches of magic? I feel like I've got a pretty decent handle on what you're picturing for the happy-ending destinies part, but there's another set of questions about aesthetics that I'd like to go through if you're amenable."
"I generally like more comprehensive systems of magic - it should probably be reasonably fast to use and at least a little intuitive to start people off with. Beyond that.. magic should be fun to study, I think? Having a bunch of different subfields that work best for those with different mentalities and virtues and all might be good. But I think that's blending into aesthetics, so!"
She meanders back into her chair.
"Hit me?"
"One way magic systems can vary is whether the magic comes from within an individual, from tapping into natural forces, from some purposive entity, or a combination," he begins. "Which of those would you prefer?"
"I mean... You've already established that the magic is going to ultimately come from the Will of Magic, right? But beyond that... personally like magic coming largely from a given person's soul and/or biology, with the rest coming from comsological forces or 'the spirit world' or something like that, mostly in connection with big rituals and really technical stuff. Feel like when it's just personal it can make things too white roomy and doesn't offer enough incentive to go out and touch grass, you know? But having it be in and of you is also important to me."
Hammond nods.
"The Will of Magic isn't really purposive in the way I meant it," he notes. "I was more referring to things like gods or spirits. But if you prefer a mix, that's good to know. I take it that you wouldn't want 'personal magic' and 'ritual magic' to be completely different subfields? You'd want them to have some level of crossover or synergy?"
"Yeah - something where as you slowly learn more you get more comfortable with group casting and tapping into those sources of power."
"Okay, that makes sense. You mentioned magic having subfields — how were you imagining those being arranged? In an elemental system, by what mental traits work with each kind of magic, or something else? And do you see the subfields being baked into how magic works, or arising more naturally as the product of people imposing structure on a more integrated fundamental reality?"
"I kind of like the idea of it being a mix of those? One way I was picturing it was that there'd be a certain amount of magic intuitive to people from the moment magic awakens that correlates with their character, but that 'fields' persay aren't strictly enforced? Probably there's some sort of classical elemental cycle and a few other things like that, but you can specialize or create new subfields arbitrarily by working with things mechanistically or doing weird things on a spiritual level. That's probably my favorite option, but you could also just have it be that there's a few different dimensions of magical potential based on the virtues you have and 'fields' coming out organically from different tradeoffs between the factors, and I could see that being just as good."
"When you say 'create new subfields', do you mean essentially giving a name to a space of possibilities that were already there, or more like creating a family of related techniques or spells by doing a big ritual?" Hammond clarifies.
"I was thinking for the former, but the latter is cool too, especially if it works to create spell subcomponents."
"Alright! Let's see ..."
He scans down the list of aesthetics questions.
"What do you think using magic should look like? Is it a purely internal thing, or should there be gestural or verbal components? Do magical effects manifest as subtle shifts in the environment, brightly glowing special effects, or something in between?"
"I think it should probably depend on your mastery and what kind of magic you're doing? My thought is that most instinctive magic would usually require all those components and be just - flashy, but the more you learn the more subtle you can be and the more effortlessly you can do it. I do like big brilliant rune circles and flaring auras of power, though, so maybe make those optimal for big rituals and digging deep for raw power? I do also like big epic magic things that start off slowly, though, and some magics that are less blatant overall should probably be easier to hide. I like big rune circles too 'cause they're a natural starting point for magic research! Do feel a bit like a lot of that sort of thing just sort of comes out of thin air. Probably magic done with spirits is more subtle, since it's slower and more already part of the world."
He scribbles this down.
"How do you feel about fueling magic in different ways? Rituals involving sacrifice, or consumable material components, that sort of thing? Do you think magic should interact with mental or physical stamina?"
"I feel like most magic should be pretty easy? I get the idea of having sacrificial magic being a big useful part of things, but if we're trying to make things just work well... I guess it can be possible but just not very efficient, such that it's usually not worth it? Being more magical and using more magic if anything I think should help physical and mental stamina. Being able to 'overdraw' into your stamina pools is classical and a fine thing to include, but I think mostly that should be for extreme feats of endurance, sloppiness or competitions where very marginal edges matter. I just... don't like getting rid of useful things."
Hammond scratches his head with the tip of a flipper.
"When you say you don't like getting rid of useful things, what exactly do you mean? Just existing physical things, or more broadly? If there were some kind of resource that naturally regenerated over time that you had to consume to create magic effects, would that trouble you?"
"Mostly it's just that I don't like the idea of - some sort of magic being undoable, or magic being - something likely to be bad for you, if you use it a lot? I feel like a good, positive magic system should encourage you to use it a lot, and making it heavily lean on any resource besides maybe itself - even an internal readily regenerating one - kind of goes against that. Naturally regenerating resources are a little better?"
She taps her fingers against the table.
"If the regeneration rate is reasonable enough, a lot of the concern fades away, and I just have a mild dislike for it as a 'bookkeeping' thing, you know?"
She ducks her head down a bit timidly.
"Oh, that makes sense!"
He notes this down, apparently oblivious to her chagrin.
"That sort of ties in to the last group of aesthetic questions — you want magic to be used a lot; how long do you think it should take to learn magic to different levels of competence? How long do you think it should take to cause different kinds of magical effect?"
"It's hard to be even kind of comprehensive, but..."
She sways her head from side to side in thought, her arm swinging up around the back of her chair.
"Improving your body to peak human should probably be pretty trivial, with the magical girlfriend's help, or without it, if those aren't a thing. Learning magic should probably be kind of S-curvey? Though I think a big problem with a lot of magic systems is that you have to wait a good while for your 'character concept' to come online, and that just sucks. You should be able to do a handful of things in a given general field pretty quickly - within a week, probably, and basically immediate for really simple and primal things. But then probably it transitions to a long journeymanship of maybe a decade or so, and then a slower, steadier paradigm at the master level? Having that be something discrete could be cool, but that's not an opinion I hold super duper strongly?"
"By something discrete, you mean having specific levels of achievement that are actually set apart from each other, instead of being a continuous increase in skill?" he clarifies.
"Okay. So people should have some intuition for magic immediately, be able to quickly pick up basic magics, with progress slowing over time so that you can keep working toward mastery," he summarizes. "Potentially with discrete levels of achievement."
He ruffles through the papers on the clipboard, mumbling under his breath. "Let's see ... effects, aesthetics, entities ..."
"Right!"
He straightens up and gives her a smile.
"Thank you for answering so many questions! I really appreciate it. There are some more supplemental things I can ask, but that was really all the main stuff. Are there other things about magic that you want to request? Or do you have any questions for me?"
"Oh, I suppose one question I should ask is what's up with your system of magic? Was it made the same way as this worlds will be? Might also be interesting to hear a worked example."
"Oh! Yes, that's a good question."
He leans back in his chair and straightens his tie, trying to think where to start.
"Yes, my world gained magic by the same process. I wasn't around then, of course. That was years and years ago. But the way things work in my world is a little less ... comprehensive than the things you've gone for here. Basically, there's this ritual you can do to summon another person to perform a job. You need to provide the tools needed for the job—"
He waves the clipboard.
"— and in return the person who is summoned has to complete it. But when a request goes out you can kind of feel how much you'll enjoy the job, so people don't tend to latch onto summonings for things they wouldn't like unless they're desperate. Accepting a summons gives you the skills you need to accomplish it with the tools provided. Your first summon of a kind doesn't give much, but you keep them afterward, and they sort of build up."
"My husband is a carpenter; when he was first summoned he didn't get much more than skill with using carpentry tools. But he's been taking job requests since before we were married, and now he has instincts for how things fit together, wood-specific telekinesis, the ability to detect structural defects, and so on. He has a little shop with a permanent summoning circle so that people can come commission him for a job," Hammond explains.
"I'm more of a generalist, but I was excited to take this job because I think it's going to net me a boost to my manual dexterity. Usually I do deliveries, since they're plentiful — it's given me quite the turn of speed, when I put my mind to it — but I've also taken jobs as a schoolteacher, a butcher, a maid, a lifeguard, and so on."
"Oh that's interesting! Is the magic in the contractor, the contractee, or both? Could you give me the specification for the ritual and let me call you sometime after this?"
"Our magic system isn't really 'in' anyone; it's just the way things work. The talents say in the contractee afterward, though; they're inherent," he explains. "And sure! One nice thing about our system, which isn't always the case, is that it works into 'adjacent' universes, so you should be able to call me up just fine. That's how I ended up over here to start with. Do you have a big sheet of butcher paper, or a whiteboard, or something? The necessary diagram is a little complicated, so it's better to draw it fairly large."
"Don't have anything like that, unforunately? I've got a bunch of printer paper somewhere, though..."
"That should be fine; maybe we could tape four sheets together?" he suggests.
"The important part is really where you put the dribbly candles, honestly. But the whole thing goes more smoothly if you've got the circle right as well."
She pops over and fetches them, spreading them out on the table, and nabbing some tape to put them together.
"Honestly, there's not too much more I have to say offhand, beyond a quick thanks for how congenial and professional you've been? I might also be able to get you a few more addresses for people who I'd expect would be happy to answer these questions themselves, if you're not just bound to work down a list your employer gave you or something like that."
He sighs.
"The list is assigned, unfortunately. The bosses say it cuts down on sampling bias," he explains, sketching a diagram on the paper. "But thank you; it's always nice to hear that one has done a good job!"
There's a large circle for the contractee, with three smaller circles arranged around it. One holds the tools, one holds the description of the job, and one holds the summoner. Candles go at the intersections of a Fano plane to give the whole thing structure.
"The candles have to be dribbly," he warns. "Fresh candles don't work. Nobody's quite sure why."
After a moment he leans back, diagram complete.
"Make sure you properly define the job, or it won't take. If you want to summon someone in particular, you can sort of 'narrow' the request by putting things representative of them on top of the job description. A piece of paper with my name — Hammond W. Burns — and a drawing of me should be plenty to narrow it down."
"Thank you, Topaz," he replies, hopping down from the chair and collecting his clipboard.
"I'll get all your answers back to the bosses by the end of the day, and then the actual 'settling' of magic will probably take another two or three weeks," he warns, making his way to the door. "But sometimes it takes more or less time than that. Magic is like that, sometimes."
He gives her a last wave from the stoop, and waddles off. True to his claim, he vanishes into the distance a lot more quickly than a walrus would typically waddle.