Tomorrow's Golem

Chapter One

The world was a void.

That's a little melodramatic, don't you think?

The thief pulled a carved die out of the pouch on his arm. He found the side with a flame etched on it, and blew on the carving. A soft flame flickered to life. The thief rubbed his thumb on the various other faces to alter the properties of the flame. It turned red, and cold, and flat, like an LED. The spell illuminated a crawlspace for some distance ahead. The dusty concrete and wood of the walls and floor looked menacing, as if it were pushing intruders out. No matter. No normal thief could have gotten this far. No normal thief would have been stupid enough to try this in the first place. This thief was not normal.

He edged forward, finally reaching the trapdoor his earlier scrying had revealed. With a small piece of paper covered in complex markings, he cast a silence spell on the door as he wrenched the ancient latch open. Under the brim of his magically shadowy hat, the thief smiled. All that security, and he had broken in with a couple scraps of paper and a die. He clenched his teeth when he remembered why he had taken no chances with this operation. Normally, if he needed to do something illegal, he did it with his magic directly, so that mundane police would think it couldn't have been him - or his name simply never came up. This way, if he were caught, there would be absolute proof that he was breaking the law.

Time to get moving.

The trapdoor opened into a broom closet, which he already knew was adjacent to a stairwell. From another pocket, he retrieved a travel sized Etch-a-sketch. Intricate patterns had been carved and painted on to the edges, back, and knobs of the toy. When he shook it, a floor plan of the area of the building around him appeared on the screen. No moving dots. No people nearby. The thief hurried quietly up two floors, keeping an eye on the shifting display. At the last landing, a dot began moving along the hallway outside the door. Pressing himself against the wall, he reached into yet another pocket for a Post-it note he'd prepared earlier as a stun spell.

The guard's footsteps receded into another hallway. That was probably the only guard on this floor - these guys were seriously lax once you were inside. Without magic, they had good reason to be cocky.

When the guard's dot disappeared off the edge of the display, the thief eased open the door. The hallway looked like any office building - grey, nondescript, and the same in each direction. This was the kind of place you could get lost, unless you knew where you were going. The thief looked at the nearby room numbers. 204. He was close. Following the even numbers into the next hallway, he reached 216. The Etch-a-sketch still showed no nearby movement.

Through the door, a rainbow of LEDs blinked on and off in the darkness, barely illuminating their diverse set of machines and terminals. The thief closed the door behind him and flicked the nearby light switch. The room was a stark contrast to the hallway. Dust had settled over 3 decades of computer models, haphazardly placed all over the room - on tables, on desks, even on the floor. A large desk with a modern office desktop computer sat against the wall at the end of the room. An empty chair sat in front of it. Front and center lay a scrap of paper - torn, crumpled, and re-straightened, but with the thief's scrying spell intact. Next to that, a metal cube pulsed with soft green lights.

The thief put the spell paper in his pocket. Better not to leave even a hint of magic. Examining the cube, he noticed a USB port in the bottom. A charging cable hung limp from the power strip hanging on the wall. The thief plugged the cable into the cube, which immediately started blinking green faster and brighter. No sooner had he flinched and replaced the cube on the desk than a hologram flickered to life over it in the form of a transparent green woman.

"Hi! Did Dr. Hamish send you?"