Chapter 924: A Thing That Makes the Car Work

Anna and Susan sat on a park bench. It was early evening, and parents from the surrounding houses were calling their kids in for dinner. A nearby picnic table had a blanket draped over it, with a mix of mechanical and magical tools laid out. A leonid was tinkering with what looked like a Rubik’s cube, but with runes instead of colours on the sides. Anna had seen enough Leonids to mark him as a teenager, but he had the confidence of a professional as he worked.

A human woman walked over to stand by his table. She looked to be in her early twenties, but so did most of the population. An astounding number of Asano clan members were essence users, suggesting a staggering access to resources. Anna took a second look at the girl and her rank-polished features. It had been a lot of years, but she looked like—

“Emi,” the leonid said as she approached. “I told you that you should have let me look at these long ago. Your problem isn’t the magic, it’s the mechanics. The transitions aren’t smooth enough, so when you switch configurations, it’s causing wear on the… are you even listening?”

Emi had sensed Anna’s attention and turned to look back at her observer. She narrowed her eyes for a moment, as if trying to recall an old memory. She nodded to Anna, then turned back to the leonid.

“Sorry, Gary, you were saying the transitions are causing wear?”

“Yeah. Who’s that?”

Emi threw another glance Anna’s way.

“Someone my uncle used to work with.”

“I thought all the outsiders were stuck in the mushroom farm.”

“Not all of them. Wait, mushroom farm? They’re in the visitor dorms Uncle Jason made. That’s practically a palace, not a farm.”

“Yeah, but it’s still a place to keep them in the dark and feed them bullsh—”

“Just pack up and we’ll go, Gary. Your mother told me to bring you home for dinner.”

“Are you and Vincent eating with us?”

“Yeah.”

Gary put his tools and blanket away in a large backpack and they wandered off.

“Is that Jason’s niece?” Susan asked.

“Yes,” Anna said as they watched the pair walk away. “If the Asano clan’s isolation ends, there’s going to be a lot of attention on her.”

“And what about you? If you decide to become a part of all this, you’re going to be the clan’s diplomatic face to the world. Is that something you want?”

Anna leaned wearily into Susan’s shoulder.

“I don’t know where to even start considering it. Three days we’ve been going through it all. Three days of every new claim being crazier than the last. When you ask a guy if he thinks he’s a god, any answer but ‘no’ means he’s probably stockpiling weapons and trying to convince people to be sister wives.”

Susan laughed.

“How are you not blown away by all this?” Anna asked her. “I’ve been living in a world of magic my whole life and I don’t know how to take it. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you.”

“That’s the thing, love: this isn’t my first time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you said, you grew up with this. Your family have been Network insiders for generations. When you told me that magic was real, I thought it was some kind of prank. Then I thought you were crazy. Then you showed it to me, and I thought the world was crazy. Now, you finally know how I felt back then.”

“Okay, but the scale of it. How many times in the last three days did Asano say ‘I can show you once I’m there in person?’ Assuming that he isn’t lying — which is quite the assumption, given his claims — then we’re talking about a scope that dwarfs us. What is a country when he has his own solar system? A planet, when he’s rewriting the rules of the cosmos? If he’s lying about it all, that’s trouble, but trouble I can at least get my head around. If he’s telling the truth, then we’re nothing to him. He operates on a scale that makes everything we know a tiny speck of nothing.”

Susan nestled her head onto Anna’s shoulder.

“We’re not insignificant, love. Not you and me, and not the Earth. Not to him, or he wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of bringing you here.”

“But doesn’t it make you feel small?”

Susan considered a moment before answering.

“From how he explained it,” she said, “all of these great magic bibbity bobs—”

“Great astral beings.”

“…are there to make the universe work. They’re the mechanisms by which everything works, right? Life, death, time, etc.”

“That’s how he explained it.”

“Okay,” Susan said. “Remember that road trip we took on the Great Ocean Road, right before we got married?”

“Sure. That was a good trip.”

“Remember the car? Your old MG?”

“Of course. I loved that car.”

“Yes, you did. Would you say that car was a significant part of the trip?”

“Absolutely. What does any of this have to do with Jason Asano fighting a magic bird that stops universes from breaking open?”

“Stick with me, love. Do you think that the concept of internal combustion was significant to our trip?”

“Uh, no.”

“Exactly. Internal combustion is extremely important to a petrol car, and that’s what we were driving, but it didn’t matter to us. On a larger scale, it was significant, but it didn’t matter to us at all. So, yes, if you’re looking at these great space jibber jobbers—”

“Great astral beings.”

“…then we are insignificant. But if you’re looking at us, they’re the insignificant ones. Just a thing that makes the car work.”

Anna looked at her wife, then drew her in for a lingering kiss.

“You are amazing, you know that?”

“Yes, but you could stand to say it more often.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want it to go to your head.”

Anna leaned back on the bench, feeling more relaxed than she had in a week.

“If Jason is really as powerful as he claims,” Susan said, “then he’s bending over backwards not to rub that power in everyone’s faces.”

“He had Rufus Remore fly across the planet to hold a meeting where he explained how powerful Jason is.”

“Did he? I wasn’t there for that. Did Rufus explain everything we’ve heard over the last few days? Or is that something he’s only telling you?”

Anna tapped her lips thoughtfully.

“No,” she realised. “Rufus as much as said Jason was coming back with a squad of gold-rank powerhouses. He made a few implications — how could he not, with Jason tied to the System — but nothing like what we’ve been hearing.”

She sat up straight, frowning as she gamed out Jason’s agenda.

“Jason is positioning himself as a power, but one the existing powers here can understand. Come to grips with. Enough that he’s someone they have to deal with, rather than exploit. If they genuinely believed that he was as powerful as he claims, I have no idea what would happen. The whole planet would go into crisis mode. Some very bad decisions would be made.”

She leaned back again.

“He doesn’t want to destroy the world just by arriving in it. That’s what he said. And if he’s that powerful, he probably would.”

“Then let’s hope he is,” Susan said.

“You don’t think it would be better if there wasn’t a demigod with a history of anger issues and recklessness descending upon the Earth?”

“I think that bringing you here, telling you everything, shows us his intentions, one way or another. If he’s being honest about possessing all that power, it shows us that he wants to use it responsibly. To seek out sound advice, act with care and avoid mistakes when he can. But if he’s not as all-powerful as he claims, and this is all a ruse…”

“Then he’s running a game, with me in the middle of it,” Anna finished.

“Yes. But even if he’s lying, he’s still going to have a lot of power. This whole city is something he made and can change on a whim. If he comes to earth with ill-intent, he can cause immeasurable damage.”

“Which do you think it is? Honesty or lies?”

“He’s a lot like you, you know?”

“Like me?”

“I remember back when you were running the Network branch in Sydney. Not coming home for days. Arriving furious when you did. Frustrated that the people who should have been shielding the world from magic were playing politics. Isn’t that what happened to him, the last time he was on Earth? Trying to do the right thing, only to be undermined by the ambitious?”

“I suppose it was. This is you saying that you think he’s being straight with us?”

“This is me saying that if he really is like you, things have a chance of turning out alright. And if he’s not, you need to be here anyway, to ameliorate the damage of whatever he’s really up to. We both know that you won’t walk away and leave it to be someone else’s problem.”

***

Anna and Susan found Jason in the kitchen of the guest house they had been assigned. He was wearing an apron with pink flowers on it. As they entered the kitchen, his back was to them as he managed several pots on the stove.

“Come and check this sauce,” he said without turning around. “I can’t taste anything with this body, so I can’t manage the salt levels on my own.”

Anna looked at him from under raised eyebrows, but Susan moved forward. She tasted the offering from the end of a wooden spoon.

“Ooh, that’s nice. But yes, a little more salt.”

“Were you listening to us talk?” Anna asked.

“One of the most important things about power,” he said as he turned back to the stove, “is knowing when not to use it. If you have a hammer, it’s easy to look at every situation as a nail. But sometimes force, no matter how precisely applied, will only make things worse.”

“You’re good at that,” Anna said.

“Cooking?”

“Implying you answered a question that you did, in fact, not.”

Jason turned his head just long enough to flash her an impish grin.

“I think you and I could have fun together, Anna. I do hope you accept my job offer.”

“I am leaning that way, but I want a better understanding of what I’m walking into.”

“That’s fair,” Jason said. “And you will be forced to make certain concessions.”

“Such as?”

“No more supermarket bread. I know you and I have talked about this a long time ago, but a little bird told me that you did not heed my advice.”

Anna turned a glare on Susan, who did a reasonable job of looking innocent.

“We don’t have supermarkets here at all,” Jason continued. “It’s more of a permanent farmers’ market situation, plus bakers, cheesemongers and the like. It’s not as convenient, I’ll grant you, but it helps foster a sense of community. I leave management of the clan to my grandmother, for the most part, but this, I insisted on. The food is free, though. The staples, at least. Rufus has to import his jellybeans himself.”

“I was more talking about some verification of the claims you’ve made about the power at your command. If what you’re saying is true, you must be a legendary figure in the other world.”

“Farrah has been throwing the word ‘mythic’ around. But Pallimustus doesn’t have the same media saturation and mass communication Earth does. The powerful people know who I am, but the population at large doesn’t. My team is a lot more famous than me. There are a few places they know my name, but I can get away with using a fake one. There aren’t news reports and online videos to plaster my face everywhere.”

“Do they know, there? Just how vast the span of your power is? You claim that it extends beyond not just Earth or their planet, but the entire universe. Every universe.”

“It’s more of a potentially vast span, at least until my mortal power grows. I have limited ability to manipulate the System, although I do have some. Around my avatar and here in my domains. But I can’t just use it like it’s my personal toy. There are rules I need to adhere to. I spent fifteen years fighting to see them enforced, after all. That includes on me.”

“I know that I can’t test your immortality, or see this universe of yours.”

“It’s quite small, as universes go.”

“I would at least like to see one of the astral spaces, where your power is stronger. To get a taste of its full scope.”

“That’s easy enough to manage. There are portals in the admin tower.”

“Even with all that, though, this cosmos level power is hard to acknowledge.”

“Vast cosmic power is the term. I used to have it on a t-shirt, although I think Emi has it now.”

“The assumption is that the System is connected to you, but it could just be some cosmic force that finally reached Earth. You could be leveraging your early access to it to make us think you are in control of it.”

A window appeared in front of her.

-------

• [System Administrator] notification: I’m being as open as I can, Anna.

-------

“Cute,” she said.

He turned around from his cooking to look at her.

“Can I take it that you are at least provisionally accepting my offer?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Yes.”

“Good. Step one, you eat. Step two, an astral space tour. Step three, we figure out what to do with the minders you brought with you. They’ve been getting increasingly cranky, despite their accommodations being quite luxurious.”

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