lifes_sake | quiet, this is a library

Cam's in the library, waiting for Renée. "Waiting" here means "browsing until a quarter hour after ostensible meeting time". Renée is supposed to meet him here - on the way home for both of them, him from high school and her from elementary where she teaches kindergarten - but she is rarely punctual. Her co-workers or stray parents or the principal keep her after and Cam does notebooking, does homework, looks at the contents of shelves. It's a fine arrangement.

Today the contents of shelves don't seem so pleased with the setup, and one attacks him when he stumbles into a stack. Specifically, it tumbles onto his head. That's gonna hurt for a while. He picks it up to tuck it away again.

It says, So You Want To Be A Wizard.

Heh. Mis-shelved. This is a nonfiction row. Or maybe it's about stage magic or something? Cam's not going to find any use in that either, he can just about eat dinner without impaling himself on a fork and certainly shouldn't be handling delicate props, but it could be diverting while he waits for Renée and he wasn't finding anything else. He flips it open.

It's more interesting still than that; it's presenting itself like an actual guide to wizardry. This'll kill a whole afternoon with pleasant escapism. Cam checks it out, then turns around and spots Renée coming down the sidewalk. He bags the book and goes out to meet her.

At home, he takes it out of his backpack. The plastic film on it - it did have some, right? Just like every other library book? - is gone. Maybe it didn't have any. He didn't write it down; he's not sure. It doesn't look like a library book now. But it still says So You Want To Be A Wizard and he still wants to pretend to be a wizard for a bit, kill some time, put off U.S. History homework. He flips it open. He reads.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

lifes_sake

Cam gets himself some post-its. He doesn't feel nearly as urgent about naming the manual as he did about naming Gracenote.

He focuses on learning the language for now. Figuring out what to do with it will be more amenable to multitasking; he can do that while he half pays attention to English class.

He is irritated about having to leave off when Renée calls him down to dinner, and he takes Grace with him, though he doesn't try to write in it at the dinner table. He tells Renée that he found a really cool book at the library and that it is about wizards. She draws the obvious, incorrect conclusion. He lets her.

He brings the manual to school with him and manages not to break it out till lunchtime.

From:

pythbox

It's reorganized itself slightly; the primer on the Speech is noticeably thicker, and includes a lot more specialized vocabulary for dealing with minds. Maybe it's been talking to Grace about Cam's needs, or maybe it just observed what he tends to focus on.

From:

lifes_sake

Speaking of minds, can Cam improve his own? Maybe tack on a clause at the end of his ridiculous long "name" about how also, has a perfect memory and thinks ten times faster than the next candidate down?

From:

pythbox

He is strongly advised not to try it.

From:

lifes_sake

Awww, why not?

From:

pythbox

The only information the manual will give him about self-modification is that it's an advanced practice that can be dangerous to novices.

From:

lifes_sake

Okay, that's one for later then. Cam makes a little mark in Grace next to that line. (He's sorted his wants into personal amusement, instrumental value, and repair work, and sooner, later, and research project.)

A lot of the personal amusement and some of the instrumental value involves attaching superpowers to himself, is that just generally going to fall into not-sooner?

From:

pythbox

Yes. There are no preset spells for acquiring superpowers, although there are spells that let him mimic them in various ways - walk on air by making it solid under his feet, repel injury by warding his person against physical harm, breathe underwater by creating a magical air filter. Most of them are not meant for long-term use, even the ones that are focused on him instead of his environment; the personal wards are the most durable out of all of them.

From:

lifes_sake

Well, that's something, at least, he feels very positive about being warded against harm, he's always sort of wary around stairs and the fact that he seems to be in the process of winding up almost as tall as Charlie and no longer fully knows where his limbs end doesn't help.

At least Speech seems amenable to creating magical tools. There's Grace, who's awesome - and, it occurs to him, manages to sound like a girl because she's speaking with the voice he had before it dropped; they don't actually match anymore but she still feels himself-y when she talks; he might have to rename her if hers decides to crack and fall too. Maybe he could offload his processing wants onto a computer, if he had his own computer. (He should have his own computer. Maybe if he asks for nothing else on his birthday. Or can he just talk a computer into existing from scratch?)

From:

pythbox

Talking objects into existing is also not something wizardry is equipped to handle. It's possible to talk a computer into being a much better computer, but he'll have to understand computers pretty well before it will have much chance of working out to his satisfaction.

From:

lifes_sake

Well, hm. Will things other than books talk to him? Maybe he can buy an ambitious broken computer for cheap from somebody, have it tell him what it wants to be when it grows up, and Speechify it so.

From:

pythbox

He is theoretically capable of having a conversation with just about any object or creature he chooses, if he addresses it in the Speech.

From:

lifes_sake

...Okay, wait just one second, does talking to things make them smarter, or does he need to start figuring out how to live on fruit and ethically farmed eggs and dairy?

From:

pythbox

Talking to things does make them smarter - as does doing magic near or on them, with a cumulative effect over time - and even so, simpler life forms (or nonlife forms) will tend to produce simpler conversations no matter how eloquently they are addressed.

The manual chooses this moment to let him know that the Senior wizard in his area is a housecat.

From:

lifes_sake

...Okay. He's not going to be racist about the housecat thing. He can deal.

At some point he's going to see what the most intelligent conversation he can get out of a tater tot and one of those goats Renée's friend Lori keeps may be, not eat those individuals whatever his results, and feel comfortable eating as normal unless they're smarter than he expects.

He wants to know more about how this works, though. (Will he get smarter if magic happens around him enough?)

From:

pythbox

The manual rearranges itself to create an entire chapter on the side effects of magical practice.

In essence: yes. But perhaps not the way he thinks. Working with the Speech will make him better at understanding things - anything and everything, from his own thoughts to quantum mechanics to the conversations between the stars. It won't speed up his brain any, but it'll give him a little more room to store things, because the vocabulary of the Speech takes up a lot of space and brings its own extensions.

From:

lifes_sake

Okay, cool perk.

Whoops, that's it for lunchtime. He hasn't really eaten enough, and this is only partly because he's conflicted about being able to talk to it. He packs up the manual, chugs his juice for the calories-from-sugar to get him through to the end of the day, and goes to class, studying vocabulary words between interesting portions of lectures. This looks like notetaking to everyone else, so he gets away with it.

He goes to the library after school as usual. "Hi," he says to the librarian. "I took out a book yesterday - and, uh, yeah, it's not coming back, what's the replacement fee?"

From:

pythbox

"What book?" says the librarian.

From:

lifes_sake

"It was called So You Want To Be A Wizard, I don't have the receipt on me, but." He hands over his library card.

From:

pythbox

"Hmm," says the librarian. "No, it doesn't look like you have any outstanding books. Are you sure you didn't just forget you returned it?"

From:

lifes_sake

"...If you don't have it in your system, that sure does sound like an explanation, doesn't it!" observes Cam. "Okay. So I don't owe you twenty dollars or anything?"