She doesn't take it seriously at the time. She laughs a little and moves on, the same way she does when she hears about lighthouse keepers or those people who maintain remote castles.

But she's curious enough to idly Google it, and the application page is pretty high up in the results, and she's bored enough to send one in when she discovers the form is surprisingly straightforward.

The most important metric is her GPMG score. If you don't meet that requirement, don't even bother filling out the rest. It's a noninvasive test. Phoenix Co will do it free, walk-in, at thousands of clinics, anyone with an ID.

Is she really this committed to the bit? Okay, fine. She'll go check her GPMG. The number is meaningless to her because she has never had any reason to pay attention to these things, but she puts it in the form.

She doesn't have to do anything, just sit in the machine. The resulting number is 89.

Congratulations, that's enough! Here's some fairly exhaustive college application-slash-security clearance paperwork. They want a lot of detail on, like, everything. Career, skills, residence history, criminal history, college and high school and middle school and grade school records, do you have any friends who use drugs, do you have any friends who are felons, what non-career skills and hobbies do you have (be thorough!), romantic and sexual preferences (optional but recommended), exhaustive survey detail on how often you drive or play video games or use makeup etc etc etc. It will take several hours to fill out and she should take her time.

She feels vaguely cheated by the several-order-of-magnitude jump in level of Annoying Forms compared to what she saw when she was idly dicking around on the internet. Probably this is on her for not clicking through past the big 'check your GPMG you fool' banner. She's too grumpy to lie so Phoenix Co will find out that she reads a lot of sci-fi and has dabbled in subjects ranging from web design to fanfiction, and that she does not use cars or makeup but does play a shit ton of video games. They're bound to end up throwing her application in the trash and selling all this info to shady corporations, but whatever, she's in too deep to turn back.

Two days later she receives a very official looking e-mail. It looks like there are some positions she could qualify for! They have rigorous testing periods, and also training periods, of course. The first one is just a daylong thing, the next one would require longer commitment. She'll get paid a livable but not generous rate just for doing the testing, increasing as she passes more rounds; They want the best and are willing to pay for it.

There's a scheduling app thing. Sign up for whatever day she wants. Or she could e-mail or call these office lines if she has questions.

Yeah no she's not making a phone call over this, what is, she, a boomer?

She does use the app though. Hey, if they're paying her to show up, she might as well.

They fly her out to Atlanta, Georgia. Business class, full comp. Luxurious. The Phoenix Co office is a whole tower to itself, and at the start of the day they're left waiting in a lobby after being dropped off by a company bus. A particularly observant person may notice that there are subtle cameras everywhere.

The energy of the room is low-key anxious, excited. Buzzing. Like the period just before an AP test, or a college fair. Everyone wants these kinds of Phoenix Co positions, it seems like. The people here are varied too - mostly young adults, but there's a 14 year old guy doing something computery on a laptop and biting his fingernails, and a fat old geezer who's literally taking a nap. People are wondering what the testing is going to be like. People are surprised they got this far. People are excited about the 'lowered standards' opportunities.

April ignores them all and plays Candy Crush on her phone.

There's a written test. The proctors explain that it's supposed to be extremely difficult. Some multiple choice, lots of short answer questions, an essay.

It is, in fact, extremely difficult. Also kind of random? Advanced calculus. Ancient Greek mythology. Military tactics. Logic problems. Arcane bayesian reasoning out of a particularly inscrutable scientific journal. Evolutionary biology. Some tricks and word-traps with the exact wording, where you can sometimes figure out the answer without actually knowing the subject matter by how the question is written.

The essay question is entirely open ended. It literally just says 'write an essay'.

April's level of knowledge of these things is... eclectic. She often has the right idea on something without being able to use the right vocabulary for it, or explains a half-remembered notion and then draws some tentative conclusions from it that are logical as far as they go but may either be wrong because she didn't recall her sources accurately, or wrong because reality did the surprising instead of the obvious thing. Her ability to understand and fluently operate mathematical concepts vastly outstrips her actual level of math education, and the same with logic and philosophy.

She's put a little on edge by the sheer force of anxiety vibes permeating the room, but mostly doesn't sweat it, just plods her way patiently down the list: first knocking off all the questions where she either knows what she's talking about or is confident she won't get any better than her half-remembered notions by thinking harder about it, then going back for a second pass on the ones that require more careful consideration.

When her second pass reaches Write An Essay (which she skipped the first time around), she thinks for a second, snorts softly, and then puts pen to page on an exquisitely insightful tear-down of a mediocre fanfic she read yesterday. She is uncompromising in her attacks on its mediocre characterization and poor grasp of worldbuilding, but praises it accurately for the one or two characters it got right and acknowledges the places where the choices it made that she disagrees with are really just matters of personal taste. All in all, her essay is not really in a classic format, but it does demonstrate thoroughness, attention to detail, biting wit, a remarkable vocabulary, deep understanding of her source material, the ability to treat something fairly even when it's really ticking her off, and a solid grasp of literary analysis in the fandom tradition.

Good work everyone! Break for lunch in the company cafeteria upstairs. There'll be physical and problem-solving tests in the afternoon.

Cafeteria is a well-appointed buffet style thing. People buzz and mutter anxiously about the test questions. There's a couple of cliques; A loud group of athletic types, and a quiet group who seem to think of themselves as Smart Guys. One of them supposes that Phoenix are probably looking at how they handle stressful situations more than anything else.

Seems plausible but if they want to look at how April handles stressful situations they will have to put her in a situation that stresses her. She doesn't say this, she just collects her lunch and finds somewhere to sit that is as uncrowded as she can get it so she can eat food and scroll Tumblr in peace.

Some guy in a suit bumps her shoulder as he passes, while she's going to sit.

He scowls, mutters, "Jesus, watch it!" And then turns to continue.

She rolls her eyes and does not disguise how very 'whatever, asshole' her body language is as she keeps walking, but also does not say 'whatever, asshole' out loud.

Nobody particularly bothers her after that. There's a conveyor belt you're supposed to bus your tray to, and then they get on an elevator and change into provided workout gear and do intense exercise in a fancy gym! Horray! How fast a mile can she run? How much can she lift on various machines? How many situps? No, you need to do more situps. Now pushups. Can she do this obstacle course? This harder one? Faster? While being yelled at the whole time?

(One would think that their current physical ability wouldn't matter all that much, so maybe it's an attitude and determination thing. Maybe.)

There may be some people in this room who failed to bus their trays, but that honestly doesn't even occur to her; it goes neatly onto the conveyor belt.

She puts a solid amount of effort into coaxing a sane and reasonable level of performance out of her distinctly not-in-shape body. The obstacle course is fun the first time, annoying the second time, and when the yelling starts she visibly pauses to consider walking out entirely, then takes a deep breath, tunes it out, and puts in a sane and reasonable performance, thank you.

A few people have ducked out by now, scared off by either the test or the workout. Maybe half a dozen, still plenty left.

There's a chance to cool down, rest up, have a shower, change back. A break period.

After that is some an in-person interview in an intimidating conference room with three well-dressed employees, some of the same ones who've been hanging around so far. She has to wait a while for her turn.

While they wait, there is another optional test - some open-ended problem solving questions. A short video of a business interview; Can you trust the guy being interviewed, and why? A manual and some pictures of some unfamiliar device; What's wrong with it? Some graphs and charts of wildlife populations; What's causing the deer sightings to dwindle?

(Well, 'optional', but everyone's doing them very intently anyway. Some are grouping up and working collaboratively, some going it alone.)

But her turn comes eventually.

"April Turnberry? Welcome, welcome. Come, have a seat. Water? Coffee?"

"I enjoyed the literary criticism," the woman on the left comments wryly.

April is naturally suspicious of most human beings, great at reading manuals, and has, if not correct theories about deer population dynamics, at least plausible ones.

She'll take water if it's being physically offered but is not sufficiently thirsty to say words out loud on the subject.

When the woman on the left speaks up, she grins. "But did you look up the fanfic to see if I knew what I was talking about?"

"Maybe we'll do that later. It's really to get you to show some life and passion."

The guy on the right 'ahem's loudly. "This interview," he drones in an immediately boring voice, "Is to go over your test results thus far and discuss some of your options, interests, and answer any brief questions you might have about the program. Shall we?"

"Sure," she says, amused.

"So, your GPMG is 89. That's pretty good, but not amazing. It's one of the most important factors, and not one you can do anything about, sadly. It affects everything. Everything. Our usual cutoff is 85, though for some positions an 80 is acceptable. Even a 75 for an otherwise exceptional candidate. It's logarithmic, though, so like I said, you're in solid shape there."

"In terms of the testing, you made a solid effort even in the areas you don't have formal training in. I see no major red flags there, either. And your background check came back clean. We do match for personality as well, and I'm sure you can guess we've been watching carefully. But now, why don't you tell us a bit about yourself to cap it off?"

"I hate talking about myself, I'm only here because your ad caught me daydreaming about jobs with no human contact and unlike lighthouses and remote castles you guys pay me to apply."

"That lines up," flat-voice says.

"I suppose you're interested in the recent series of isolated terraforming positions, then? That could be promising."

"It's definitely what caught my eye! I did also spend some daydreaming time on Facility Maintenance & Design but only in the context of hoping it would be almost as isolated."

"From what I know, not necessarily. I'm not particularly clear on the details. We're not the final assessment - we're triage, I guess. I'll put you down for terraforming and tentative facilities." (He starts typing.)

"Do you have any questions for us? I know this is a lot to take in." The woman on the left asks.

"Was the guy who bumped into me in the cafeteria a plant?"

"I don't think we can tell you that." But their shared glances and a slight chuckle may reveal the truth.

"Figures."

"Nothing else? Or is just the thought of not seeing another person for years at a time enough?"

"I mean, I could ask about hazard levels but I assume that'll be covered when I get to the point of looking at specific opportunities. If I make it that far." She's not really bothered about the prospect of not making it that far. This is a daydream, not a life's ambition. She's taking the process seriously but more because it would be annoying not to than because she feels desperate about it.

"Well, I'm sure you've seen how well-remunerated these positions are. Let's not hold anyone else up then. Thanks for your time."

"Sure. Bye!"

And is that all, and do they in fact pay her?

Would she like cash or check? Just remember that she has to include it on her taxes.

She will take cash and be mildly annoyed about the taxes comment.

She's now $400 richer. Hotel's comped for another night, flight back is in the morning...

...The next afternoon, she gets another email. She's been accepted into the next round! This one is a month-long camp, and is the final round before she's officially accepted. She's being considered for the isolated terraforming position; They don't think she's suitable for the facility maintenance one. The pay is better and she gets it whether or not she ends up accepted. She just needs to clear a whole month in her schedule with limited affordances for leaving and contacting the outside, boot camp style. The program information mentions testing her performance under stress and isolation. If she passes, she'll get to do contract negotiations, then possibly more training, and then arrange all the details of departure.

As long as she can put off the camp until the summer so it doesn't interfere with classes, she thinks she might actually do it.

This summer is fine, but not any longer than that. Does June 7 work for a start date?

Suits her!

Time passes. June arrives, as do her business class plane tickets to Phoenix, Arizona. (Where Phoenix Co does not actually have their headquarters, to some joking in the media.)

Well. Off to find out what a terrible idea this was.

They drive her to a briefing in a small office. She's going to an isolated camp. Instructions will be sent through a special computer terminal that only receives those instructions and sends reports, no outside electronic devices allowed. Bring nothing except one outfit (worn) (more will be provided), and the contents of a small purse.

She must do the work that gets sent via the computer to an acceptable standard, send daily reports, and maintain the camp if necessary.

There will be an emergency kit and emergency phone, so she's not actually in any danger if, for example, the water supply fails, but using these is disqualifying unless there's a real emergency. There is some risk in that if she suddenly keels over from a stroke, nobody will know until it's too late.

She's getting $600 per day during the test, pass or fail.

Does that all sound acceptable?

Presumably they have someplace really safe for her to store her phone which she did not leave at home when she flew here, but, on that assumption, yeah, sure, she'll go for it. She kind of guessed there wouldn't be much outside stuff allowed, so the contents of her small purse are mostly spiral-bound notebooks and pens, plus a travel sewing kit on general principle.

She can put it in the office's secure lockers or take it with her in a locked case.

She'll go for the locked case.

Sure. They seal the case with some sort of tamper-proof tape.

The drive is 3 hours in an SUV, half on dirt roads, to abso-fucking-lutely nowhere, desert. There's one big white building and two small ones connected by a covered walkway, an ATV, a big but not that big water tank, lots of rocky parched ground, and a fence surrounding the area. There's also a few piles of different colors of gravel around.

And then the car turns around and leaves, kicking up dust.

Well, time to explore her new home. Looks fun. Actually looks like she's going to very badly miss regular showers, but apart from that, looks fun.

Some preliminary observations:

It's really quite oppressively hot outside. Enough that you'd have to worry about heatstroke.

Luckily, the main building is much more comfortable. There's some AC. There are two floors- Some sort of workshop and storage area downstairs, with benches, tables, bins, and the computer terminal. And a closet and washing area. Upstairs, a living area with a bed, armchair, small dining table and kitchen (with a propane stove and a working, if weak, sink), and cupboards full of food, mostly preserved stuff.

There are two outbuildings. The first one is a sort of shed with an ATV, some gas, and various basic tools. Shovels, wrenches, stuff. The second looks like some sort of hydroponics setup, currently half-assembled and inactive.

The emergency kit and emergency phone are obvious and clearly labelled. It seems like a satellite phone with a lot of punch. Could fit in her pocket.

She does a quick tour to get familiar with where everything is, then drops her bag on the bed and turns on the computer to see what it has to say.

Short Term Tasks:

-Initial Inventory

-Daily Report

 

Long Term Tasks:

-Hydroponics Setup

-Esoteric Sculpting Simulacrum

 

Click each task for more information. Check back daily.

She clicks the tasks.

Initial Inventory

Confirm that all listed inventory items are present. Familiarize yourself with your supplies. Report any discrepancies in the daily report.

Inventory checklist is located in the Site Manual in locker 1.

 

Daily Report

Each daily report should include: A summary of work performed that day, indication of approximate overall progress on all tasks, daily weather report, work plan for tomorrow, any issues or concerns, and an assessment of your mental state and performance. A daily report template and weather station instructions can be found in the Site Manual.

Click here to type Daily Report.

 

Hydroponics Setup

By day 16, Hydroponics System should be operational. Task will then be replaced with Hydroponics Gardening. The Hydroponics Manual is in locker 2.

Sub-Tasks include [...]

 

Esoteric Sculpting Simulacrum.

Since the advanced energy manipulation equipment the position uses is not available on Earth, a simulated task has been created instead. Complete all Esoteric Sculpting tasks by day 30. The Esoteric Sculpting manual is in locker 2.

Sub-Tasks include [...]

Site Manual in locker 1, you say?

She fetches the manual, takes her spiral-bound notebook around to do the inventory check, picks up the hydroponics and sculpting manuals along the way, then flops on her bed to read all three of them cover to cover. She might skim a bit if time is tight, but she wants to be familiar with where to find all the information available even if she doesn't have context on all of it yet.

Site manual has an inventory list and a bunch of basic tool manuals. Here's how to operate the water system. Here's the thermostat controls, be mindful of the battery bank's charge level. Etc. Everything seems to be present, though she doesn't have enough semi-nice food to last the whole month.

The hydroponics manual sticks pretty close to the line-by-line factual instructional level. Set up the racks like so. Plug the pipes in like this. Set up the mixer like that. Check for leaks here and there. If plant A has discolored leaves, check solution nitrogen level. Et cetera.

The esoteric sculpting manual lists a series of mind-twisting logic rules for how to arrange various colors of gravel. The thickness of the bands, the arrangement of different colors, the exact radii of curves, all changing the alpha, beta, and zod levels. There's a few simple examples of valid arrangements - concentric circles, a weird Celtic cross sort of thing. The goal is to figure out valid designs for a bunch of different desiderata. And then actually go make said designs with gravel, outside. (If she actually reads it thoroughly, there's a slightly hidden note about how to bring up a sim/design testing tool on the instructions computer.)

They can't really expect her to be dicking around with gravel all day in that heat just to prototype things—aha, nope, there's the trick. Okay. Leaving that aside for now...

First she goes over the weather stuff, because that's actually supposed to go into today's daily report. Once she has a weather report prepared, she heads over to the hydroponics garden, figuring she'll prioritize that because if she manages to grow her own food sooner rather than later she'll get to dodge the distantly looming deadline of running out of the good cans of baked beans. Esoteric Sculpting can be playtime, at least until she outputs her first vegetable.

Without trying to hook anything up to full functionality just yet, she consults the manual heavily and starts in on getting the racks all physically assembled and in shape for future use. It's soothing, like putting together IKEA furniture. If she has enough time, she'll proceed to actually try getting things to the point of growing plants in them, but she's not necessarily expecting that to be possible on day one.

As the sun starts to descend past the horizon, she heads back to the computer, logs the weather, writes up that she read through all the manuals and started on the hydroponics garden, reports her work plan for tomorrow as "fuck around and find out", assesses her mental state as "you're not paying me enough to assess my mental state", has a can of baked beans for dinner, double-checks her daily report to make sure nothing's missing or out of place, sends it, then plays around with the Esoteric Sculpture design software until bedtime.

Report Sent

And no further acknowledgement than that.

She can just about get most of the structure and racks assembled on what's left of day 1. Still has to put them in place and then run all sorts of pipes and wires, it'll take a few days at least. The design software is still finicky and annoying to use, less like a game and more like a CAD program. But it'll run the rules and tell her if she has an illegal configuration and the alpha/beta/zod levels. She has to meet certain targets while making certain shapes or using only some colors for each task. Zod is really fucking annoying. It goes up really fast when she does almost anything interesting, and almost all the tasks have a very low zod limit.

Her bedtime is entirely up to her. It gets dark quickly out here, and the wind whips at the walls somewhat. They don't flap, but they do flex slightly.

Hey, CAD software is totally a game if you approach it with the right attitude.

She's pretty cheerful when she goes to bed. In the morning she wakes up, has breakfast, goes to the bathroom, and heads out to the hydroponics building to keep setting it up. After spending the morning on that, she takes a lunch break, makes some notes for her daily report on how the morning went, spends a couple hours dicking around with Esoteric Sculpture and manages to get a design finalized for the easiest task on the list, then heads back out to the hydroponics garden until a little after sunset, when she has dinner and writes up her daily report. Her work plan for tomorrow includes at least one actual detail this time—setting up the Esoteric Sculpture she designed—and if she got far enough with hydroponics over the course of the day she might add an entire second detail, "finish testing hydroponics rig and plant something". Her mental state self-assessment is still that she is not being paid enough to assess her mental state.

She's perhaps sixty percent done with the hydroponics now. Some of the pipework is really finicky and getting each individual plant bed hooked up can only be done so fast. She could probably start planting things with the ones that are set up tomorrow, and finish the rest later.

On the morning of day 3 there's another short-term task: Take the ATV to these coordinates and take soil samples according to this manual. No specific time limit mentioned.

She'd been vaguely wondering why that was there. They know she doesn't drive, right? Whatever, it's walkable. She'll do it right now before it starts getting light out.

After that, and breakfast, she works on the garden for the rest of the morning and then repeats yesterday's pattern of lunch followed by a few-hour Esoteric Sculpture break followed by more gardening. In the afternoon gardening session she does end up planting in a few of her completed plant receptacles, though she wasn't sure enough of this plan yesterday to commit to it in writing. Then dinner, report (which mentions getting more stuff planted tomorrow), and—dang, she almost forgot to go out there and set up a pointless arrangement of rocks. She goes out there and sets up her pointless arrangement of rocks, updates her report accordingly, sends it, and dicks around with her fun CAD game until she feels like sleeping. By the time she goes to bed, she's pretty sure she's close to getting a few more of the tasks designed correctly.

They have fast-growing variants of some seeds. Lettuce and various other greens, like spinach or kale, would be harvestable within a few days. If she plants the tomatoes, strawberries, or peppers she may not see any results until near the end of her stay.

Day 4. Day 5. More of the same. Are they blurring together yet?

In her first few plantings she mostly goes for things she'll be able to eat later, but does give in to the temptation of tomatoes and strawberries, once each.

In general, she refuses to commit any intentions to 'work plan for tomorrow' status unless the task in question is extremely imminently doable, like planting in a hydroponics bay she's already assembled or laying out an Esoteric Sculpture she's already designed. A general intent to work on a particular thing doesn't make it onto the page because she feels like that would be pointless. She does, in fact, work on things, though, and she's good at Esoteric Sculpture design. She's on track to finish all the Sculpture tasks well before the end of her stay, assuming the later ones don't get too insanely difficult and assuming she can find it in her heart to go outside and physically move all that gravel around - definitely the worst part of the process.

The days do blur together a bit, but with her task lists to consult every morning, it's easy to stay on track. She munches her way steadily through cans of beans and works her way steadily through outstanding tasks and promises herself that she will take a whole-ass bubble bath when she gets home. Water conservation is maybe the worst part of this whole situation, though the heat is a close second.

Day 6, Day 7. She's ahead of schedule and they're going to deliver an additional water tank. Ostensibly for the hydroponics rig, but it's way more than that needs. An SUV drives it up and simply unhitches a trailer and leaves, no human contact. She has to connect the hose and pump herself.

No human contact, just how she likes it!

She gets the extra tank hooked up and does not get too indulgent about the implications for her hygiene routine, just in case they're going to want her to drive half that water out into the desert in a vehicle she cannot legally operate. (Should she actually try it, if they tell her to do something she legitimately can't skip the vehicle for? Eh, burn that bridge when she comes to it.)

Her hydroponics progress continues to be fast and her Esoteric Sculpture progress continues to be very fast, but eventually she will have planted all the plants and that'll be that until her first harvest comes in, and she starts to slow down on Esoteric Sculpture as she approaches the last bunch of tasks. Occasionally she spends her break time scribbling in her spiral-bound notebooks instead of playing with the CAD, writing fanfic and drawing spaceships and dragons and weird little doodles. On the whole, though, she's still ahead of schedule.

Day 10, hydroponics set up totally complete. She can already harvest some small bits of leafy greens, if she wants. They don't deliver any more water but they say that her zod limits are all increased 50%.

Day 14, the computer is BEEPING LOUDLY. It warns her that a simulated storm is ongoing. She cannot leave the main building and can only go check on the hydroponics garden (and no further) if she's willing to wear a horrible padded suit.

She waits to harvest the leafy greens until they're a little farther along, but then has what is possibly the first salad she has looked forward to in her life.

On storm day, she trudges out to the hydroponics garden in the awful suit to complete the minimum necessary set of gardening tasks for the day, then sits down at the computer and gleefully knocks off her next five Esoteric Sculptures in an all-day design marathon. As an afterthought, she eats dinner and sends off her daily report. It lists her mental state as "downright chipper".

Storm ends on day 17.

Half of her dark blue gravel is gone. She'll have to refactor some designs to physically make everything.

That's convenient, because with little else to do except work on Esoteric Sculptures she has already given in to the temptation to go back and refactor some designs for materials efficiency. She wasn't optimizing for dark blue gravel specifically but it's not that hard to re-tweak things. She's very sarcastic in her Day 17 Report about the ~mysterious disappearance~ of her gravel, though. (Could she have been keeping it indoors this whole time...? Eh, she didn't have any reason to. And she would've been really tight on space if she had.)

They don't throw any more major curveballs at her, besides some additional "go here, do that" tasks, which can be accomplished without the ATV with some annoyance and sweat.

On day 25 she starts getting strawberries. They're growing fast.

On the morning of day 31, the locked-down terminal says 'Test period complete. Use the emergency phone now.'

Her strawberries are delicious.

When the computer tells her to use the emergency phone, she first has breakfast and goes to the bathroom and takes one last nostalgic tour of her hydroponics garden, then calls.

"Hello, April. I'm Yasmin, head of selection for this one. Keeping it short, you're selected. You're in if you want it. We can work out the details right now, or get you a trip back to the city for some luxury first, or get you some deliveries out there until the client's ready if you accept. Either way."

"I'll take that trip back to the city. I promised myself a bubble bath."

"Sure thing, I'll send the car out now. E-mail me for an appointment when you're ready. Congrats."

Click.

The car shows up a couple hours later. The guy driving it just opens the door silently.

April and her tiny purse full of spiral notebooks (and her phone!) cheerfully get into the car.

And she gets a silent ride to a room in a luxury hotel, closer to Phoenix. It has a hot tub and bubble bath stuff.

Ah, paradise.

Nothing bothers her for at least a day. Free room service, if she asks.

She will order food that did not come out of a can or a vat, and take a second bubble bath, and at that point she's pretty ready for the next thing to happen but in the meantime she can lounge in bed and play Candy Crush. Oh how she missed you, beloved crushable candies.

She has an email asking her to set up an appointment to go over the job.

Sure, she'll do that.

And then the appointment time will eventually arrive! A black woman in a suit will meet her in the hotel's conference room.

"Good afternoon. Now's high time for you to get all the information, and what we have to offer. Any questions before we start?"

"Nah, let's hear it."

"This is an offworld position, on a planet known as Thander. It's a one-way trip, with no affordances to return to Earth. Perhaps some day it might be possible, but not in the foreseeable future due to the intense technical limitations at play. The job involves using equipment to manage semi-automated terraforming processes, guiding and optimizing them over time. You can't just plop down seeds and call it good- The esoteric sculpting exercises were meant to stretch exactly the kind of mental muscle that you'll need, though. It's a long term position. Very long term. 100 to 200 years, with possible extensions. And there will be very little, if not no, social contact - just your superiors and possibly a few coworkers. That's what makes it a great opportunity for you. You'll be provided with an improved, unaging body and a full restoration and backup system. Our client for this one has done her homework, set things up very thoroughly. The pay, aside from transit and the job perks, is eight point two million dollars here on Earth, as well as a number of benefits on Thander, plus performance bonuses."

"Sounds shiny. How much stuff can I take with me, is it still gonna be a no phone zone? I mean, obviously I'm not expecting to make calls, I just want to know if I get to play Candy Crush while I'm out there terraforming planets."

"That's one possible perk. Essentially, I've put together a menu of sorts of the different conveniences or perks you could get. If you want something slightly different from what's listed, I'm sure we can try to accommodate you."

She slides over a paper.

Starting balance: 3

GPMG above minimum: 1

Diligent temperament: 2

Sculpting performance: 2

Total: 8

 

By default you will receive:

Artificial body similar in capability and need to a baseline human body, optional remodeling to 'ideal you'.

An MPSSA system in your home base will keep a constant mental backup, and automatically generate a new body in 30 days should you expire. Should the MPSSA system be damaged, you may be at risk of permanent death.

Access to global energy flow system to perform the work duties. Recreational/personal use also permitted.

Living quarters will only be fitted with extremely basic amenities by default, unless perks are applied. Rations consist of nutritionally complete prepackaged survival meals.

 

Sample Perks:

Improved MPSSA (3 days respawn, rapid healing, extra durable): -1

Offsite MPSSA Mirroring (restore possible for any case short of destruction of the planet): -3

Peak Human Body (athlete improvements): -1

Hardened Body (reduced needs): -1

Hardened Body (toxicity & trauma resist): -1

Greater Energy Budget (double the available input from global energy flow system): -2

Energy Intuition (assistive adaptive system to improve ability to sculpt esoteric energy): -2

Heads Up Display (essentially a computer built into your body, guaranteed reliable): -1

Internet Archive (a snapshot of most of the current internet, including all major media on it): -2

Internet Downlink (live-updating copy of the internet and all major media, receive only): -5

Modern Basics (improve the supply of items like toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, clean water from bare minimum to sufficient if not wasted): -1

Improved Food (continuous shipments of good-quality raw ingredients, sufficient to live off of): -1

Food Delivery (regular deliveries of cooked food with some affordances for specific orders, known brands, etc.): -3

Land Rights (ownership of a land region after terraforming is complete): -X (variable)

There's no way she's not taking the MPSSA upgrades. After that, sure she wants food and toothpaste and toilet paper and the internet, but she should be taking the added energy budget aaaand either Energy Intuition or some body upgrades... "How much am I likely to need toxicity and trauma resistance?"

"If you don't do things recklessly, 75% chance over a century that they save you a respawn. Estimated. Very approximate. It's hard to tell for sure. And mind you, a century is a long time." She frowns. "I hesitate to mention it, but there are a couple of ways to get additional perks. If you forego any payment to family or charities here on Earth - An additional three points. If you commit to maintaining the ecosystem for longer, you could get additional points as well."

"Oh, I'm definitely interested in maintaining the ecosystem for longer if it gets me more points, what's the trade on that?" If she can never come back for her money anyway, she's potentially also willing to give that up, but it would be nice to be able to leave her family with eight million dollars as she fucks off to another world never to be seen again, so it's not her first line. But, if her points budget is less constrained than she thought... "And how does Land Rights work exactly?"

"One point per twenty-five years, up to an additional two hundred. As for land rights, well, Thander is going to be completely colonized and built up after the terraforming is completed. There are some very grand plans. Essentially, each point assigned to land rights will allow you to claim some land - depending on how valuable it is. Downtown in a city, perhaps just enough to build a mansion. A large neighborhood block in suburban areas, a few square miles of good farmland, or vast tracts of less attractive and marginal land. Whole islands, large mountain or desert areas... There's going to be a few hundred like you eventually, so it's restrictive enough that not too much of the planet will end up parceled out like that."

"I might like having my own island. I will take two hundred extra years for eight more points, and, let me see... Improved and Offsite MPSSA, both the Energy perks... all three Body upgrades, Internet Archive, Modern Basics, I think that leaves me two points for Land Rights, is that enough for a good-sized remote island?" She might be interested in spending one of those points on Heads Up Display, except that it is simply not the case that they can provide her sufficient guarantees of its reliability to overcome her fundamentally suspicious nature.

"Two points of land claim will get you, for example, Guam."

How big is Guam? She's not gonna ask but it definitely feels like it should be more land than any one person could conceivably personally use, which sounds about right for her purposes. "Seems legit."

"Without, necessarily, the strategic geopolitical importance of Guam. No custom requests?"

"I mean, I'm assuming 'even better immortality' and 'even better energy perks' are both concepts you've put a lot more thought into than I have, and if you're not offering any more in that area it's because you don't have anything good."

"Not really. Technical limits, logistical limits. I could get you a library of pre-made energy patterns, but that's it. You don't particularly need it."

"Yeah, I'll have more fun doing my own design work anyway. Does the Internet Archive include all my favourite dumb mobile games or are they not technically the internet?"

"It'll have any existing ones, jailbroken not to require constant connection, even. No updates."

"Suits me fine."

"Alright. How would you like your signup bonus distributed?"

"All to my parents." The thought crosses her mind that she could have some sent to Sean just to imagine the face he'll make about it, but that's probably not a good enough reason to divert part of her payout to her ex-boyfriend. And she would have to say out loud with her mouth that she wants to divert part of her payout to her ex-boyfriend. So yeah, that's not happening. Besides, what if he got inspired to get into the program and followed her to her planet somehow? Terrible. The worst.

"Okay. That's everything. We'll have the paperwork all ready for signing in a day or two, and then we can send you off whenever you're ready, after that. You can change your mind right up until the last moment. That's important to us, at Phoenix."

"Sure." Maybe she should send something to Sean. Not millions of dollars, just a quick email. Despite everything, she has this latent instinct that if the Phoenix sendoff was secretly a disintegration chamber or a chute into somebody's supervillain lair, Sean would find out somehow and wreak fiery vengeance for her. Honestly he probably would, if he somehow found out, but it's the finding out that's the real trick, isn't it?

Anyway, back to her hotel room to play more Candy Crush.

Nothing interrupts her luxurious, indolent hotel stay.

The paperwork comes up in a manila folder. Six pages of contract. Minimal legalese. This one says that they can send her off, and outlines all the terms. This one says they will handle her estate including the 8.2 million as described. This one says she understands there's really, definitely no way back.

In the end she does not email Sean. She signs the paperwork and shows up for her sendoff.

Some people opt for a party. They're definitely competent enough to do the opposite of that here. Bland SUV to a bland warehouse building. They get her up to a medical style exam table in a room full of weird equipment pointing at her. Businesslike nurses and doctors, setting things up. Unobtrusive reminders that she can back out at any time.

She only slightly has the visceral urge to start biting people. She's going through with it.

Well. The needle goes in, and she loses consciousness.

The magic circle embedded into the surgically clean floor shines with actinic blue light. The surgeons cut away at her body. Efficiently. Brutally. Ritually. The robotic arms lower brands, hot iron searing her skin. Two people are chanting. A wave of pressure - something not of this Earth, something unnatural and wrong - rises up and up and up.

She stops breathing. A terminal blinks green.

"Soul transit confirmed, pattern deviation nominal. Zero point zero zero one four percent. Great work, everyone. Let's get this cleaned up."

April slowly awakens, as if from a fitful nap, in a mostly comfortable armchair looking out a window on a hazy orange hellscape. Cracked ground, wavering heat-mirages, ruined trees.

She also has a brand-new shiny sensory modality! Energy, going by the briefing. She vaguely feels a deep pool of it behind her, and nothing from in front.

The presence of ruined trees is honestly pretty interesting. Implies there were trees to ruin.

All right, let's get cracking. Time to find out what she needs to be doing and then do it.

I cannot thank you enough for responding to my call, young one...

A voice in her head says.

Though the labor to restore my domain from its tragic end will be long and difficult, it will not be thankless. The souls of my people are safe, they only await a new world to be built for them. Your natural aptitude for magic will serve you well in the duty you have accepted. The calamity that wracked Thander was the result of viral spells, magic running out of control until all was consumed. The world must be rebuilt with braids of magic at its heart. We will do great work together, I am sure.

Huh. A more hands-on boss than she was expecting, but sure, she can roll with it.

"Where do I start?"

By learning the laws of magic, which differ from those I was able to express across the Void, and learning to cast basic spells. Once you are ready, you will use the Wellspring from which you emerged to push back the Miasma, restoring ground. I will give you plants and animals then, who will take the negative flows of magic expending themselves to keep the Miasma away, and produce more magic, a self-sustaining cycle that does not require constant maintenance. The true challenge will be the long walk, as more and more must be reclaimed, and the shifting balance as new areas tug upon old. It could all unravel again, if done carelessly. Alas, I will not be able to give you close guidance forever.

"Sure, okay. I can be careful, I've got time. Tell me all about the laws of magic."

The presumable-goddess does so! She expresses things with wordless intuitions that just suddenly appear, fully formed, in her mind. This is the sensation of pulling on the Wellspring. Here is how to focus your magical senses. It's gentle and chaotic, scintillating and sinuous, lightning quick and slow as molasses at times. This is the sensation of separating out kinds of magic. There's a hideously complex dynamic to the flows even at the macro scale; The true underlying nature of magic is not something she needs to worry about right now. 

The big thing to avoid is creating more Miasma. Lots of magic interactions create Miasma by default, and it's also just a sort of cosmic background radiation. This would be the 'zod' in the previous sims.

You can cast a basic light spell by enlutrating (poking, but like, in a specific symmetrical way) a spheroid of altax with a thin needle of soma, but be careful to kline (wobble?) the lissa that comes with altax, soma/lissa is an annihilation reaction. (All of this makes perfect sense if you stare at it long enough and have a goddess throwing qualia at you.)

It is, if anything, even more fun than the CAD program. She casts a light spell and giggles delightedly.

It's tricky, mind you. Like gymnastics in the mind - pay too much attention to one thing, and another thing will go out of control and screw it all up. Everything's flowing constantly- The sphere of altax is stable once formed, it pops into shape like a floating soap bubble, but if you don't do the two other things at just the right speed it'll fail. 

Her happiness tugs on the glowy sphere and rips it apart, creating a small burst of miasma!

Good work, she hears anyway. You're picking this up quickly, as expected for a summoned one.

Hmm, so if she wanted it to be more stable against minor perturbances, could she—or what if—

Taking the Energy Intuition system was definitely the right move, but she still really wishes she had a CAD program to test out her designs with. It wouldn't work as well, though, because these designs aren't static, you need to actively juggle them. She tries a smaller light spell so it'll make less miasma when it blows up, and sees if she can get it safely put together and then taken apart again.

With a few trials and errors, she can figure out how to take apart the light ball!

There's a sense of vague fondness, and of going-away-for-now, and of a braid of three strands of magic (altax-lissa-varo) she should practice.

"See you later!" she says cheerfully to the goddess, and settles in to twiddle with magic. She's pretty conscientious about not making unnecessary miasma, but doesn't get too discouraged when things fall apart on her.

Braiding magic is really tricky! The three-way braid is mostly stable-ish, but rotates and undulates, twisting. Pull hard to keep it straight and the strands touch, miasma. Let it wobble too much and the strands touch, miasma. But all the miasma gets eaten by the bright shining glow of her Wellspring, deeper in the little facility, no problem.

After a while of this there's a blueprint for the most basic kind of land restoration: Flood the place with bios, which will spread out like water and push away the miasma. You just need to form a tube for it to be drawn through, and wait.

Braiding practice is a delight and she could do it all day. But when the blueprint shows up, she switches to working on that.

Making a tube is hard!!! The approach that eventually works is making a hollow sphere, slooowly making it longer, like a big worm of magic, and then placing a ring of the braid she's been practicing, tied to itself, around the 'mouth' of the tube to hold it open at either end. It'll collapse at any moment without her being sharp, on the ball, maintaining it the whole way. (Has she noticed yet that magic structures built inside something solid are much more stable? Also sluggish, and behaving differently in a bunch of ways, but they'll sit still much more readily.)

Also, surely she'll get hungry eventually.

She figures out by accident about magic structures built inside something solid, and this leads her to perceive parts of her environment that are not shiny magic, which leads her to realize that she has a body she's been neglecting. With considerable reluctance, she leaves off the magic practice and investigates her surroundings in search of something to eat.

She has a smartphone in her pocket. The place she's in seems to be a large circular stone structure, almost like a somewhat short and squat tower. But a nice one, like a fancy vacation home that's designed to actually have modern amenities while still having that old-timey look. It's a comfortable temperature. She's currently in a sort of sitting room or living room. On the first floor is this room, a kitchen, a large pantry stocked to the brim with bland cans and sealed plastic bags and cleaning products, a small restroom indistinguishable from a modern one, and a large empty space by what looks like a heavy reinforced door to the outside. There are odd racks on the walls here and a few empty crates here and there. There's a staircase in one corner, up and down. The appliances have thin, elegant twists of magic inside them.

The first basement level looks to be a large storage and workshop area. Lots of shelves and boxes. A writing desk with a small note saying If you need crafts, write orders here and I will see what I can do. Small things only. There are some gardening basins that are fairly similar to her old hydroponics setup, and a few cages and pens, currently empty. There's a long ramp terminating in a big garage-style door. The second basement level is taken up almost entirely by the Wellspring. The source of the magic she's been playing with. It glows softly, light pooling and flowing, casting dappled light all over. It's insanely intricate, beautiful to her magical sense, and shot through with a flavor that can only be called divinity.

If she manages to tear herself away from that and investigate the upstairs, the first upper level has a large master bedroom and bath, with more magic fittings. The second upper level has a luxurious study with a PC tower set up and a large room with worktables and something weird and magical running throughout the walls, floor, ceiling, and furniture. The third upper level contains a stone structure in the middle, with trails of magic radiating outward. Like the wiring hub for her new house? The rest of the upper level is mostly bare, one large room with plenty of windows to look over the orange hellscape with. The brown fog prevents her from seeing far. There's a wrap-around balcony, but it would be understandable if she did not go outside yet.

She will not poke the magical wiring setup. She will not poke the magical wiring setup. She will not poke the magical wiring setup even though it's shiny and interesting and she wants to find out how it got stable enough to run a house like this, is it really that much better building inside solid objects? Maybe you can get it better if you refine the object? She's gonna learn how to do that and it's gonna be so cool and she should NOT start by taking apart her appliances because if she did she would not yet be able to put them back together and then she would have no appliances and it would suck.

Ahem.

Yeah she'll eat food now. She doesn't expect anything much from it; sure, better food would've been nice, but she's looking forward to gardening again and getting to grow her own food, and in the meantime she doesn't mind if it's bland. She should look into those familiar-looking basins, maybe dig around for a manual or ask her new boss if she can't find one. Hopefully there's manuals.

It's edible. It's even not entirely tasteless.

No manuals are in evidence, though the basins totally do have more magic wiring.

Not even if she checks her phone and her computer? Dang, sucks to be her. Well, time to get back to work on figuring out tubes, then. With the insight that they work better inside solid objects, can she manage to construct one that holds up? (Will it do its job from inside a solid object or would that require her to put the object somewhere impossible?)

Working inside solid objects is...... Messy. She can find an appropriate long piece of wood in the storehouse, along with some random other bits of raw material. Clay. Metal. Fabric. But naively applying the same techniques to sculpt mana in the air doesn't really work- Gentle nudges don't do anything, and forcing one small piece causes tons of turbulence all around it.

Okay, so she has to learn the whole landscape of interactions over again. Bring it, this is what she came here for. Do the different materials have different effects, or is it too hard to tell and she should wait until she has the basics down in one medium before trying the next, or what?

If her failures are generating significant miasma without her getting anywhere, though, she will go back to air-sculpting her tubes.

The miasma she's generating is honestly nothing compared to the constant background radiation trying and failing to creep through the walls of her new place. Like a shot glass in a swimming pool. It's even being pushed back some by the passive pressure from the Wellspring.

Different materials do have different effects; It's subtle, but of the dozen or so flavors of magic, altax particularly likes to cling to fabric, and bios flows more easily along wood than anything else. Even just sticking one end of a pole into the wellspring would probably do something.

...huh, so if she just straight-up physically crafts the shape she needs out of the materials corresponding to the right flavours of magic, how far does that get her? Though braiding the three different kinds is probably going to be funky, and she doesn't know yet that there are actually corresponding materials for every flavour, she should do a thorough investigation of that.

Not all materials have exactly one corresponding flavor of magic that likes them. But if she carefully lays down the magic in each one first, making a little physical braid of this soft thread, copper wire, and some sort of plastic cord(?) does make the resulting magical braid a lot more stable. She can make a little three-way braid of the material fairly laboriously, and have a pretty stable cord of magic out of it, only fraying at the ends very slightly.

She's probably getting very tired now?

But you see, she can't be tired, because she is doing MAGIC fine, fine, she'll sleep, she'll sleep.

And then wake up and scarf breakfast and immediately go back to investigating the intricacies of the correspondence between magic and material. Too distracted to hunt up actual writing materials, she instead takes notes on her phone regarding which magic flavours interact with which materials in which ways, gradually filling in a complete chart between all the flavours she knows about and all the materials in her workshop. She's going to need to get much better at physical craftwork, that's for sure. Also, while she's at it, she realizes that she doesn't have an explicit chart of the reactions between different flavours of magic, and she probably should. And she should check how those reactions are influenced by material, because she suspects they are influenced by material even if only because the magic will move differently through different materials and that might slow down or speed up reactions. Hmm, and on the flip side, having a chart of how the magic flavours behave by themselves and what shapes they like best to settle into and how easy it is to pull them between those shapes might also be a good idea? She isn't sure that there are any stark differences among them in that regard, but she isn't sure that there aren't.

Editing this spreadsheet on her phone is getting really annoying, but she is determined. For science. MAGIC science.

There are some pretty stark differences in how the different flavors of magic behave. Individually, the differences are comparatively minor - this one's a bit more sluggish, this one seems to vibrate back and forth more, this one is attracted to itself more strongly. But the emergent effects when they combine into larger structures are very different.

Soma in particular likes forming pointy shapes, and is good at nudging other magic around just by sheer proximity.