Awakening - The Last Science #1

Chapter 24 - The Second Summit of the End of the World - IV

  Rachel stepped outside the door to call Rika. The rest of the Summit waited in awkward silence. Jessica was looking around the room quizzically, trying to figure out why everyone had stopped talking. After the minutes dragged on and Rachel still hadn't returned, she chirped and tugged at Hailey's sleeve.

  "I don't know," Hailey replied with a shrug. Jessica held out her palm and walked her fingers across it. Hailey shook her head. Jessica leaned back against the wall and tried to get more comfortable.

  She pulled out a pair of tin-foil wrapped rectangles and held them up. Hailey frowned, then pointed at one of them and gave a thumbs up. Jessica nodded, and unwrapped them both. She screwed up her eyes and muttered something that Alden couldn't understand, even sitting only a few feet away. Suddenly, the scent of freshly-cooked pastry began wafting over the room. Jessica nibbled on one of them. With a satisfied expression, she bit down on it eagerly and handed the untouched one to Hailey, who similarly began to dig in.

  "Okay, is someone gonna explain what the fuck?" Ryan asked.

  "She figured out how to heat up food on the go," Hailey said, after clearing her mouth. "Really nice when we've been out flying all day."

  "Yeah, no, that wasn't the part that needed an explanation."

  "She can't talk," Alden explained, before Hailey had to speak around another mouthful of food.

  "No shit. Was that caused by magic?"

  "Yeah," Hailey replied.

  "Damn."

  Mason looked at her inquisitively. "A ritual gone wrong? Do you happen to know what kind of magic she was trying to enact?"

  "No," Hailey sighed. "We'd been doing self-modification magic, so maybe it was related to that? I wasn't in the room at the time. I only caught the aftermath."

  "And she can't tell you how it happened," Mason noted. Hailey shook her head. Alden wondered briefly if Hailey had more details she could get from Weston, who had been in the room, but he knew better than to reveal their existence to this group—particularly when the awakened were currently an endangered species.

  Mason went on in a lecturing tone. "Ritual magic is a complex active process, unlike the instant and reactive nature of spellcasting. The energy transfer between objects and people is much more bilateral by intention, and since the flow is so open it leaves one vulnerable to any sort of outside interference. In theory a single stray dust mote entering the ritual area could slightly change the outcome of one's intentions, though of course we've never measured any real change caused by such a minute actor. It usually needs to be something much more significant. Like, we once saw a ritual where someone wanted to be able to see clearly in the dark. We helped him research the necessary modifications to the rods and cones in his eyes. We tried out simple experiments on lab mice, all seemed good. We had to modify it a little for the ritual but it seemed to go all right. Problem was, some of the materials were flawed, and we rushed the actual casting."

  "Get to the point, Mason," said the young man seated next to him. Unlike Mason's shoulder-length unkempt brown hair, his friend had such a severe haircut he may as well have been bald. He was about the same height, and looked as though he were very familiar with this sort of tangent.

  "Right. Well, Joe McKinney's colorblind now." Mason shrugged. "The point is, a broken ritual's resultant damage is related to the original intent. So whatever... uhh... "

  "Jessica," Hailey supplied.

  "Yeah. Whatever Jessica was trying to do, it might have been related to language. Or communication."