Country of Champions 17

Garret numbly laid the touchscreen on his lap and looked out the window, struggling but gradually succeeding to reel it back in. Preoccupied with personal thoughts, he either didn't know or didn't care that Orison looked over and saw the text with picture attachment.

The contents were pretty simple. Babs was informing him of what she had managed to hide away as their mom packed up what could be traded in for merits and tearing up what couldn't. The interesting thing was the focus of the picture. It wasn't anything of great value that she thought he needed to personally see but an old gaming console, nearly as old as Garret himself, that had been patched, glued and unconventionally fixed more times than it had any right to. The pop up lid had been laid to the side and a cheap kitchen knife could be seen rammed through the laser track with a few more puncture holes surrounding it.

The caption underneath read, "Can it be fixed?"

A few seconds of 'in through the nose, out through the mouth' later, Garret texted back that it couldn't and she responded that she was calling her grandpa. Orison was secondhand sad for them. He wasn't sure what the old console meant to them but it obviously was a lot more than face value.

Checking himself, Orison realized that he was getting mad, and not just a little bit. The orphan from Amoril had no context to understand on an emotional level what could be so special about the old console but Al definitely could and that part of himself was causing a little projection of exaggerated empathy.

The young mage thought, "You ARE still in there!"

After doing a quick search on The Weird, he said, "Driver, we need to make a detour to Home Entertainment Commissary H4-12. The delay will only be a half hour or less."

The lady driver said, "Kid, you got me til five if you like. With a three hour window from the moment you stepped into the back there, I could take you to Second, back here and still get you to short range teleport. This is a 3T tagged vehicle. So, we can use the tubes in it. Nothing would tickle me more than to sit on my can and let the vac-mag tunnels do the driving for a quarter of my workday."

Orison said, "What about Rio?"

The somewhat plain but curvy lady in comfy looking professional clothes said, "Please. I've gotten three visual reports on the kid. The only way he's not going to play 'beat the clock' at 7:59 is because he had to go to the hospital. He don't need ME for that!"

"Oh. Alright, then," the young mage said, unsure how to respond to that.

Can of conversation opened, the lady said, "What you kitting for?"

Orison's gears ground a little. "Kitting? Oh, uh, latest game console and some games. Maybe a living room monitor upgrade."

"You want to upgrade monitoring to private, you said? Okay," the lady blurted cheekily.

The back of the long cab turned dark before internal lights turned on and she said, "Look, get me on the tube instead of a short trip to the teleport station and back. If you do, I'll follow you into the commissary acting all official. If you bump your budget from that 20k you're trying to drop up to fifty for a full home, basic UTF tech compatibility home entertainment upgrade, I can drop a few lines that'll flip it up to full boat for no extra.

"That's like, 200k to keep me from having to act all prim and proper under visuals for a good two hours. Two hours of the six I'll be spending waiting for that half cooked shrimp to get fully cooked and decide he's had enough water slides and necking in the changing room."

Orison checked his account and saw that his debt was gone but LeStrange hadn't added anything to his actual account yet. "Do I get any kind of relocation funding at all?"

She said, "Sorry kid. Unless you dropped a million or more, fat chance, you can't because the place you're getting is locked and loaded merit free."

Orison coughed. "Let's assume I did. Would claiming that, void the original lease agreement? I sort of signed it over to an intake hard case, her daughter and the two other girls she's taking in."

She said, "First of all, don't be dumb again. Never lock a house down until you got your post papers. Secondly, if you signed it over then it's gone, little buddy. Thirdly, it just so happens that your ridiculous act of charity just might be worth a 100k return for every mil it cost you. Let me log a request...

"What the hell you do before you came to Avalon, find El Dorado!? Don't answer. I don't want to know... You barely squeaked by 200K but there's a little note saying that they won't approve things like premium satellite, full service housekeeping and daily catered meals as acts of charity in the future."

Through his gloomy funk, Garret summoned the emotional energy to give Orison a disbelieving and slightly judgmental look.

He said, "Don't look at me. They gave Rio 300,000 access to my account before I finished intake and I think he was bent on spending it all before I got there."

Solidly out of low fund danger for the time being, Orison reluctantly agreed to the driver's proposal. True to her word, a few misleading but completely true statements from her while they were in the commissary and the guy putting the upgrade package together mistook the young mage for an A-class elite being kept under wraps. Once the guy gave him an installation date and handed him the devices he could take with him, they were on their way to the 'tube'.

"Won't that commissary guy get in trouble for making that mistake?" he asked.

She said, "Under normal circumstances, yes. But don't sweat it. This time he'll only get a halfhearted slap on the wrist."

Orison thought. "Why? Is it because the mistake wasn't really a mistake? Probably tooting my own horn too much. Still, it's not impossible."

Even with the young mage's renewed understanding of High School level science, he wasn't sure how the 'tube' worked. As the car went through some minor transformations and was locked in place on a hovering 'tray' and sent rushing down the partially evacuated tube, he could only catch a bit of the combined maglev and vacuum principles. However it worked, after a couple of minutes, the car was breaking sound barrier speeds and still slowly climbing.

Tearing his fascination and slight horror away from the evenly spaced lights on the tube turning into a line, he looked at Garret and said, "It ended up going a little out of my expectations but I figured we could play one of these consoles for a little while, carve some love into it and give it some devaluing personality. Your sister's going to need some kind of distraction since she's dealing with your mom solo for a bit."

Joking around but with a tinge of real fear at the edges, Garret said, "Are you buttering me up to be a science project or an organ donor?... It's cool, man. Grampa Booger's got her... er, Birgir. He's in the independent country of Iceland. Bab's dad wasn't a Rowdy but he might as well have been... It's a long story."

Suddenly feeling a little embarrassed, Orison said, "Oh. In hindsight, I probably should have at least said something first. Well, take one of them anyway. If Rio finds out there's a free one up for grabs, he'll want it for himself and I don't quite think he has enough impulse control to avoid slacking off if he has one in his room. There's a certain part of myself I don't quite trust to have one in mine either."

Garret looked down at the sweet, sweet devil that was the gaming console.

Seeing a potential to spend even more time away from the water park after she got back, the driver lady said, "If it's just a matter of the spirit of it all, I can lower down a monitor. The two of you can belt out a few rounds of some fighting game or whatever. To seal the deal, your buddy there can put his big brother seal of approval on it and I can take it to your Bab's today."

After looking at each other, the two young men came to a silent agreement and an unwritten second entry was invisibly added to the list of 'banned from bedrooms'. In what felt like next to no time, they were forced to speed decorate the console a little because they were out in front of the new house. Orison was touched because Bab's wanted him to sign it too.

Over the touchscreen visual messenger, with a big smile she said, "Don't hurt my big brother and you'll be my hero for life!"

With dramatic disappointment, he looked at Garret and said, "Well, there goes my plans to use you as a guinea pig and sell your organs. A pretty girl's disappointment is my fatal weakness."

With wide eyes, Garret looked at his sister and said, "Sounds like you're MY hero, Babs!"

The girl made duck lips at the screen and said, "Don't you forget it."

Before the lady took off, Orison asked, "If it's done like this, what's to stop Janet from wrecking this one if she knows her daughter has it?"

The woman said, "Child protection watch list means that all common areas of the house are visually monitored sporadically. That smart cookie even requested the emergency camera in her room to be activated. As long as she keeps it in there, or in the living room if her mom makes her, Janet won't know if we're watching or not.

"If that...woman takes it into her bedroom and something happens to it, then she's liable for replacement under the Children's General Property Protection Act. She ain't the first woman to act a little crazy after her kids thwart her power plays and blackmails. Career baby mill is an institutionalized failure of our system with no real solution. If you figure one out, let us know. It would definitely earn you a civil meritorious service award, maybe even a Peace Prize."

Orison shot, "They could start by making the fertility clinic only available for storing adult samples unless there's outstanding medical reasons. Restricting access for people who have already had a child would help too."

"Oh, my sweet summer child... Sorry. Just got done binge watching an old series... That would only target about twelve percent of the problem and unfairly target the extended Rogers family legacy... Well, gotta get going." She said.

As she turned to leave, the young mage added, "Give me a week. I'll crack this and then start on world hunger. Interstellar peace will have to wait for next month but I've penciled it in."

After a parting shout through cracked windows that she would be waiting to hear the good news, Orison turned to Garret. "Your last name's Rogers, right? Do you know what she's talking about?"

Garret sighed and said, "I do but I hardly count as a part of it. I'm considered fifth generation but after filtering through two E-jects, er, E-class generational mothers... The thing is, you know that the third Triumvir represents mundane humans, E-class and the technologically enhanced? The Rogers family are under the third Triumvir. Care to guess why?"

Dully, Orison said, "Artificially manipulated genes. The UTF was trying to find a way to even the playing field. What stopped them?"

Garret shrugged, "What didn't stop the 'pre-UTF'? Babies couldn't make it to term. Mothers couldn't make it to term. Attempts to mature artificially would produce results that didn't live for long. That sort of thing.

"Moving to post production, after killing a few hundred young children with no result they moved to pubescent and finally young adults just past puberty. The East finally had a survivor that didn't die of various complications, and then experimented the whole family around that survivor into early graves but got it down to a decent standard. With little option and their survivor undergoing mutations that weren't...that good looking, they turned to the West.

"Now this was in the early days and The League didn't have Avalon yet. So, they watched on in horror as the west produced a successful and publicly acceptable result. That was the Rogers family. There was a catch, though. None of the children were inheriting. They also would die or become deformed if a second attempt was made.

"The youngest survivor managed to get away with some help and had a little oopsie. Viola! The survivor who made it to the League found the solution. Ever trying to keep the moral high ground while still getting what it wants, the League decided that storing a sample til legal adulthood was good enough for them and here we are."

Orison took a leap of logic. "The third Triumvir's balance to the other two. The reason why baby trapping Rowdies is such a hard problem to solve. Rogers is the most common surname in Avalon?"

Pointing left, middle and then right, Garret said, "Maybe a little... How did you pass History class?... Third most common in the World after Wang and Smith but more because of a trend to change last names in the early days of the UTF. They made some dumb decisions back then and family tracking rewards programs weren't even high on the list of dumb.

"Little piece of trivia for you, since you're making me feel all special talking about my dad's family. Did you know that Rogers family hair is used in the whole fishbowl bath that everyone has to get? A joke that my grandpa used to make when he was still alive was 'There's a little Rogers in everyone.' In Avalon, it's actually true, at least for a little while. Mom used to call my annual hair cut 'Spring Break' because- Why did you pull a hair out?"

Orison's eyes that were starting to glow, dimmed and he looked back up at Garret. "Sorry but if I'm right, I'm going to make you very happy I did as soon as I can trust you... Your first mission, if you choose to accept, is to move all our junk into the house and pick out any bedroom but the master bedroom for your own. I'm going to check out the lab, guinea pig... It was a joke... A joke! Just the last part. Being the first to pick a bedroom is very real. Rio tried to take mine the first time. So, it's payback."

Once the young mage got to the alchemy room, joined to the magic training room several feet away from the house in a converted storm shelter, he summoned out a drop of vital water and did a little observational experiment. After that, he looked up the information on the original pre-UTF experiment Garret had talked about. After comparing it to 'the fish bowl' medical wash during intake, he went into a meditative half trance.

He felt like he was missing something. Going back to the information on the family, he tracked where lineage lines pointed and started looking into local lore around that area. At nearly four in the afternoon, he finally left to find Garret with a smile on his face.

"I love this feeling. I really hope going mid dimension later doesn't nerf this too hard," Orison muttered to himself.

He found the teen playing a fighting game on the console that had been hooked up a few minutes before on the one small monitor in the living room that had the right ports for it. "Geez. No need to jump up like that. It's not like I caught you beating off or something... Everything squared away?"

Garret said, "Yeah. Didn't even have to make my bed or anything. I hope we can switch around all this full house 'brown on green' thing going on. Not that I'm complaining!"

Orison shrugged. "Feel free to complain. I hate it. Well, not really but I don't want to see it everywhere. Forget about that, though.

"I've only known you for a few hours. You're probably bummed and weirded out by all that happened and I didn't really help by being a little too gung ho with the generosity. Truth is, aside from a misunderstanding at the beginning when I felt the off vibe between you and your one day girlfriend, my gut tells me that you're a friend worth making. Thing is, trust takes time, right? The harder you try to rush it, the less chance you'll get it?"

Confused but giving his best try to catch up to whatever speed orison was running at, Garret said, "I'm more worried I'm going to burn through whatever goodwill you have than weirded out. Playing along with mom in an endless line of whispered 'he might be your new daddy' acts was a pretty good warm up to asking a stranger to be one, at least on paper. I've been ragged on a lot but I hope that it doesn't make you regret this when one or two haters pop their mouth off at you about it."

Orison gave a saintly smile at the thought and said, "If someone takes it over my tolerance line, they'll be the one calling me daddy. Don't sweat it."

Garret gave a weak smile and continued, "On the trust thing... I play nice and I can be friendly. I know to keep my mouth shut and eyes closed to things that aren't my business. But yeah, trust isn't something that comes easy. People have shown me in just about every way there is, that it's a bad idea when you do."

Orison nodded. "Since you've been burned a few times, you know exactly how people can trust each other in a quick manner too."

Warily, Garret said, "Mutual dirt."

Saying it as playfully and non-threatening as he could, the young mage said, "Drop the shirt. Grab a towel and meet me at the bathroom. If I can't establish at least the base line of trust with you before I'm done, cleaning it for the next month will be my chore."

"Whose would it be?" Garret asked.

Orison smiled. "Well, you are the new guy. Consider it lightweight hazing."

"Then you've really got your work cut out for you," the teen said.

The young mage smirked. "No, that's you when it's Rio's turn. I've got my own bathroom."