Chapter 12: The CSLA Trials

Ridiculously, Rick was panting for breath.

He'd been short of breath after tough fights, but normally thought of himself as in good shape. His body was well-conditioned by his regular training and his Lucores reinforced it well. Generating aura from his lucrim was as natural as breathing. If he'd told himself that just riding a bike would leave him gasping, he wouldn't have believed it.

Yet here he was, struggling to pedal along a lonely highway stretching out of Branton. He'd started in 22^nd, the highest gear that felt comfortable, confident in his strength, yet as the ride went on and on, he'd found himself shifting down. The sheer effort required to keep his aura cycling through the lucrim bike for so long was getting to him.

When Rick pushed the lever to change gears again, he realized numbly that he was already at the lowest setting and barely moving. That had felt like absolutely nothing before, the pedals providing so little resistance that it was actually uncomfortable trying to pedal. Now they felt just as stiff as at the highest setting. How tired was he?

Yet there was nothing but highway in either direction. Rick forced himself to keep going, both appreciating and hating his past self. Trapped out here, still far from his destination, he had absolutely no choice but to keep pushing himself to his very limit. He only hoped that arriving there so drained wouldn't end up ruining his chances.

Since he was actually getting close to the location he'd been given, Rick slowed down a bit and looked for a place to rest. Even if he wouldn't be in perfect shape, he wouldn't make a good impression arriving sweaty and out of breath. Or maybe that was just his job search habits coming back.

This far outside of Branton, he could stop anywhere, but there wasn't much variety in the choices. A few areas were farmland, but plenty of others were left as natural wilderness in accordance with the local agreements. There wasn't much difference between a field of grass and a field of wheat to him, so he just kept pedaling and looking for something that stuck out to him.

Eventually he spotted it: an old gas station by the side of the road. It was so old that it didn't even have a standard convenience store, just a wooden building with a little shrine beside it. Rick turned off the highway into it and hopped off his bike. The construct condensing back into the black chip was now second nature, so he simply pocketed it and looked around.

The windows were too small to see much inside - he honestly wasn't sure if the building was a home or not. It had a bench that might be a comfortable seat, though, and more importantly a vending machine. Yet when Rick walked over to it, he was disappointed to see that they only had normal soft drinks, not a single type of serum.

"We don't have a lot of flashy drinks, sonny." An old man appeared from the door, leaning heavily on a cane. "I don't get the machine updated as often as I used to."

"Oh, what you have is fine." Rick gave the old man a quick smile. "I was just hoping to take a break and looking for serum."

"Ah, I see now. I don't keep that outside, but I think I can find something for you."

Though that was a bit suspicious, Rick didn't sense any hostility from the old man and he wasn't surprised things could be a bit quaint in the countryside. He handed over a bill and the man shuffled back into the house.

Rick sat down and waited. For a while he thought about how funny Melissa would find it if the old man just took his money and left with it, but it wasn't too long before the owner emerged. He carried two aluminum cans of serum, covered in condensation as if they had just been taken from a cooler. Accepting them gratefully, Rick made sure to bow properly.

"Thank you. Did you actually mean to give me two? They're usually more expensive than that."

"Eh, are they? Inflation these days... no, that's my mistake, so you drink up, sonny." The old man set bony hands atop his cane and shifted to put his back against the side of the building. "You sure were working hard coming here, so you could use it. Are you rushing out to that meeting of something or other?"

Abruptly Rick found himself reconsidering the man, wondering if there was more to him. The old man was dressed plainly enough and only had a generation rate of about 40,000 lucrim, with no special tricks that Rick could find. He opened the first can, sniffed it carefully, and then took a sip. It seemed to be normal serum, refreshing but not as good as Lisa's variant.

"It's a bit of a job offer," Rick answered eventually. "They're not giving us a lot of information, but this is just a trial before the real job."

"I reckon the CSLA is trying to clean up the place a bit. I don't know why they just don't use those big machines again, but I guess they have their reasons."

"Big machines?"

"Yeah, they used them... oh, a few decades back." The old man's gaze was distant for a while, focused on something long past. "Big machines that looked a bit like combine harvesters, but they floated and sucked up the lucrim spills. I thought things were getting bad again and wondered what the new versions would look like."

Rick hid his expression by taking another drink, but found himself curious. "So you've noticed a local problem? Like what?"

"Oh, just the usual. Dragon infestation is getting rowdier and jackalopes are showing up again. They're pests normally, but if they find extra lucrim they get bigger and cause real problems. Good on you for doing something about it, sonny."

"Honestly, I didn't know that. I was just hoping it would be a good job."

"Maybe so." The old man kept staring over the horizon and didn't seem inclined to talk anymore.

Though mildly curious, Rick never liked to pry into people's lives. When he finished both cans of serum without the old man saying anything, he decided that was answer enough. He thanked the gas station's owner for the serum, then headed back to the road and manifested his bike again. Getting some serum in his body and a chance to cool off made him feel surprisingly refreshed.

Part of him wanted to push himself to the limit again, but he had the trials coming up. Rick kept the bike down in 10^th gear and approached the location at a comfortable rate, looking for something amiss. There didn't seem to be anything too amazing, he just eventually spotted a number of cars parked along the side of the road or in a grassy field.

There were a lot of them... Rick awkwardly dug out his phone while riding to check the time, but he'd left plenty of extra. He was arriving early, just in case there were bonus points for it again... and apparently everyone else had thought the same thing. In fact, judging by the number of people already present, he was actually later than most.

A few smiled in an unpleasant way when they saw him bike up, but Rick just swallowed his anger. Their judgment didn't matter to him, only doing the best he could. The job was supposed to be entirely based on merit, so he'd beat them on skill alone if he beat them at all.

Once he reached the edge of the road he jumped off the bike, letting it slide back into the core chip before he hit the ground, then tucked it into his pocket. A few were still giving him nasty glances, but most had gone back to ignoring him. He looked through the clusters of people, searching for patterns, and didn't see any representative from the organization yet. Damian wasn't present either, unless he was being uncharacteristically subtle.

Since they were all apparently waiting, Rick just sat down cross-legged and went back to meditating. The serum had done a lot to restore him, but it wouldn't hurt to regain his focus as well. Most of the others seemed to have arrived fresh and many were armed as if they expected a fight. They'd obviously gotten antsy waiting so long, leaving them restless.

Minutes ticked by painfully until it was almost the appointed time. Still no Lucrim Authority representative, and though Rick kept an eye on the road for a sports car, still no Damian. He was so focused on the road that he almost didn't notice when eyes began turning upward.

He looked up and wasn't that surprised. Damian appeared to be skydiving toward their location, moving down at a terrible rate despite the large parachute behind him. Shifting back and forth a few times, he managed to line himself up with the center of the field. When he got close, he twisted out of the harness, leaving it to float onward while he landed on his feet.

"Are they running late?" He grinned and pulled off his mirror sunglasses. "And here I went to all the trouble of being on time."

Despite his ridiculous appearance, most of the others just glared resentfully or looked away from him. Rick focused on his meditation, not wanting to draw the other man's attention. In any case, they didn't have to wait long before a lucrim vehicle swept over the nearby field toward them.

This one didn't attempt to look anything like a normal vehicle, instead having the appearance of a folded paper crane. It had the strange grace of origami, too, tilting gently as it slowed down to a hover. Part of the bottom unfolded and three people jumped out: the woman in the green pantsuit from earlier and two men in gray suits so identical they might as well have been a uniform.

"It looks like everyone is early?" The woman glanced around at them and nodded as if she'd expected as much. "Good, then we don't need to waste time. We'll test your understanding of the technique three at a time. Order doesn't matter, so just line up."

The origami crane floated lower and abruptly refolded itself, becoming a sort of tent with three entrances. One of the representatives went into each one, so the way they were meant to line up seemed obvious enough. Rick headed for the line in front of the woman, since she was the one in charge, and was surprised that not many others seemed to think the same way. Did they know something he didn't?

"Most of them cheated, of course." Damian spoke from behind him and Rick jumped. The other man laughed, but Rick didn't care: it was damn alarming that someone could sneak up on him like that.

"What do you mean, cheated?"

"They got instruction from someone else. You don't think Mister Mysterious Vice President made that skill himself, do you? No, it was probably developed by engineers lower in the corporation. And while the CSLA isn't too corrupt, it's not above a bit of nepotism." Damian ran his gaze over the other lines contemptuously. "So they bought the information about the technique from somewhere else."

Rick eyed him skeptically. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Dunno. Standing in line is boring, I guess."

Damian didn't say anything else as the lines advanced, and in any case there was soon a new distraction: a lucrim scoreboard manifested over the tents, again showing everyone's ranks. Rick actually felt relief as his name plummeted down the list - now everyone could stop focusing on him.

It looked like the majority of candidates were getting 10 points for their performance of the technique, creating a massive tie at 12 points. Though Rick hadn't kept track of all the names, just by the math he knew that some were only getting 7-10 points. A few received only 3-4 points and some of those disappeared from the list soon after. Was that the cutoff, or had they chosen to quit?

"Looks like these pigs did a good job of cheating, huh?" Damian spoke entirely too loudly, drawing glares from those waiting in line and those who had already finished.

Rick amended his earlier thought: everyone could stop focusing on him if Damian didn't make things worse.

Before too long it was his turn and Rick stepped into the entrance. The woman in the green pantsuit was sitting in a chair made of the same paper-like material as the vehicle, making a moderate effort to hide her boredom. Since she looked impatient, he hastened forward to stand in front of her.

"Okay, just show me your best effort at the technique. Chop chop."

"Alright." Rick swallowed, then raised his hands and did his best. The flow faltered a bit at first due to nervousness, but he'd practiced the thing so many times, he soon got his act together. "There, that's the best I was able to do."

"Huh." She glanced at the aura flow briefly, then waved it away. "You actually tried to recreate it instead of just getting someone to tell you."

Rick stared at her, not sure how to take that. "Uh, is that a good thing? Was this some kind of trick test?"

"It doesn't really matter - we only care about results. I'll award you 8 points. You can step out now."

A bit puzzled by the interaction, Rick headed out. That put him at 11 points, well below the top contenders. He suspected that these early points didn't really matter very much compared to their actual work on the job, so instead he wondered what the purpose of it was. If nothing else, he'd learned a lesson about what the organization cared about.

Not long after, Damian scored a full 10 points. Rick had to wonder whether he'd accomplished it by cheating or not, but wasn't going to give the other man the satisfaction of attention.

As the final people finished their test, Rick began to hope there was a greater purpose to all this. If the technique had been meant to judge their flexibility, then the rampant cheating made it irrelevant. That rendered this a bit of a waste of time, and he didn't think that large corporations liked to waste time. Either the purpose hadn't been revealed yet or they intended to keep the real purpose hidden.

Abruptly the board disappeared, the tents folded back up into a crane, and the three CSLA employees strode out onto the field. The woman clapped her hands, again silencing everyone, and spoke once she had their attention.

"Those of you who have chosen to stay, you've now taken your first step as CSLA contractors. But beyond the basic competence you've shown, we'd like to show you the objective of your work. Follow me, please."

They did so, moving further away from the road and into the grassy field. As they walked, the woman raised her hands, effortlessly performing the technique. Except as she moved, the resonance between her hands was changing. Rick immediately realized one of the errors he'd made: the purpose of the skill wasn't to create a certain effect, it was to evaluate effects from the outside.

So it was some kind of measuring or surveying technique... for the types of lucrim anomalies that they wanted to find? That would make sense. He got his theory confirmed when he started to feel something unusual. There was a spark in the air that hadn't been there before.

Was this what ambient lucrim felt like? As a kid he'd imagined what it would feel like for the air itself to be overflowing with lucrim, but this was strange. He glanced to the officials and noted that all three of them seemed slightly disgruntled. Either their target wasn't there... or the wrong thing was.

"It seems we have a bit of a problem." The woman sounded like she was remarking on the weather, but she quickly caught everyone's attention. "Please prepare yourselves for combat in case this doesn't go well."

That said, she bent down, dropped the technique, and began working on something else. It was too quick and complicated for Rick to figure out exactly what she was doing, but now he could definitely feel a change. The air itself seemed to boil in a way he struggled to pin down, as if nearly invisible shapes struggled against one another. When he looked up, he noticed that the clouds seemed to be rotating.

Spinning around a point exactly above them.

"Oh dear." She stepped back with the mildest of disappointment. "It seems you will all see the scope of the problem sooner rather than later. Please defend yourselves."

A few people started to ask questions or shout, but it was too late. The roiling air suddenly condensed into a beast-like shape that crouched, then lunged at one of the fighters standing nearest. As it launched itself, it gained flickering but concrete form, ending in an audible snarl.

All Rick could do was put up his fists as the creatures twisted into being all around him.