glowfic | Organizing Takkarash Creation

Ahrotahn hefts her pack and opens the door. She smiles a little at the texture of the knob; it's not sharp, but pleasantly uncomfortable, like the ten-Takkarash coin.

She steps through into the room beyond.

The room beyond is a rather snug office, with just enough room for a desk and two chairs.

A black iron chandelier hangs from the ceiling, capturing a dozen burning roses in cages of thorns. Their unsteady blue light casts odd, flickering shadows that seem to twist and turn.

A silver-haired woman sits beneath this chandelier, her fingers leaving glowing red traceries in the crystal of her desk as they dance across its surface. Her chair rises from the floor as a solid block of dark wood, as if someone had taken the stump of a lightning-struck hawthorn tree and carved out its heart for a throne. A vaguely-seatlike crystal formation sits across the desk from her. Someone has put red velvet cushions on it.

All around the office, the walls click, clack and whirr as thousands of gears slowly turn.

The woman looks up from her work, her fingers still absentmindedly flicking and swiping at her crystalline desk.

"Ahrotahn?"

Edited 2015-07-08 02:01 (UTC)

"I am." Ahrotahn briefly considers moving the cushions to sit directly on the sharp crystal, but decides that might be impolite, and just sits. "I wasn't sure if you were, ah, an enthusiast, so I wrapped the coins to make them easier to handle. From the look of this office, perhaps I shouldn't have bothered."

She feels rather underdressed, in a t-shirt and skirt and sneakers, against the room's infernal luxury. At least she has her old kit, its chain around her neck, set at a steady reassuring ten.

Eva swipes one more time on her desk, then looks up and catches Ahrotahn's rather pale face out of the corner of her eye - then stands immediately. "Oh! Sorry, I should have greeted you. Please, don't mind the decor - it's set by OTC-prime, and Takkarash are generally one of our more-traded coins, so it tends to look like this a lot."

She comes around the desk and offers her cupped hands for the coins.

"No need to take extra care with the wrapping - I have to handle larger denominations than this during my day job. About a week ago someone ordered a billion-takkarash piece, can you imagine that? And then they wanted one of the special collector's six-hundred-and-sixty-six takkarash coins, and they paid another ten lotuses for it! Let me tell you, sometimes I am very glad to have OTC sitting over my shoulder, even if I am a Sensate."

Ahrotahn blinks. "I don't think I can imagine that, no." She takes a roll of coins out of her pack, a wide cylinder the width of her hand and the length of her forearm, wrapped in coarse heavy cloth.

As she starts to hand it over, it transforms seamlessly into a pair of coins, each a ring of woven thorns around a deceptively sharp flower. She blinks, deposits the coins into Eva's hands, and returns the empty cloth to her pack.

"I didn't know I could do that. Or was that you?"

She tries to ignore the physical contents of her pack, and instead focus on grabbing "a hundred thousand Takkarash". Does such a coin exist?

Ingram smiles slightly, and then there is a ring of thorns biting into her hand. It looks significantly more vicious than the ten-thousand takkarash coin, especially with Ingram's blood staining the dark flowers amid the thorns.

"Careful."

She sets the ring of thorns on her desk, the coppery tang of her blood mixing with its ash-and-perfume scent. The desk glows a deep crimson wherever her blood stains its surface.

"Most people can't do that. You're something of a natural at coin-changing, even if I did help you along a little with that one. I'd be remiss if I didn't offer you a job, even though I expect you wouldn't be interested."

The silver-haired woman shakes out her hand, and the deep puncture-marks fade away.

Edited 2015-07-08 03:13 (UTC)

The remaining coins become five thousand-Takkarash pieces. Ahrotahn briefly flickers her kit to zero to heal the cuts in her hand; no sense in getting blood on things.

"So, safety." She crosses her legs and rests her hands on her knee in a businesslike fashion.

"My experience with the basic kit has been that the pain level consistently responds to my deliberate intent. It's not like a physical knob, where a careless accident could flick it to an unwanted setting, and it's not so sensitive that letting my mind wander will activate any amount of pain that happens to cross my mind. Can I rely on the same holding true for the lockouts, that the only danger comes from foolhardy choices?"

Edited 2015-07-08 03:22 (UTC)

Ingram nods.

"Yes, essentially. I can see from your history that you've bumped against your ceiling already. Now, ask yourself what would have happened if you'd set a ten-minute lockout on your automatic backoff before trying that. That's the sort of problem that comes up with reckless users."

She steeples her hands.

"And then there's the additional lockout you've had custom-added to your model, which of course comes with its own, broader set of issues - what if something genuinely important comes up unexpectedly?"

"I fully intend to be cautious with the lockouts. At a minimum, I'll never lock myself into anything I haven't done unlocked first."

She fidgets with the iron flower hooked into her chest. "As for the shape lock specifically... I can see how that could go badly. I'll be very careful." A pause. "Is it possible to set complex conditions for the end of the lockout, or to allow ending it early at some sort of a penalty? I wouldn't have expected it, but then I didn't expect the flavor library either."

The corner of Ingram's mouth curls up.

"Yes. We didn't need to spend extra time and effort just to put an extra timer on and copy over some spellwork. In fact, there's a rudimentary AI built into it now. It will even be capable of surprising you, if that's what you want."

Ahrotahn raises her eyebrows. "That sounds like it would be reckless."

Edited 2015-07-08 03:55 (UTC)

Eva shrugs.

"As I said, if. In any case, you seem reasonably appraised of the dangers. Would you care to have the waiver now?"

"Yes, please."

The silver-haired woman snaps her fingers, and a single small form appears in her hands in a flash of green.

She checks the parchment over once, then turns it over to Ahrotahn, along with a brassy pen.

"Sign on the bottom line."

It appears to be a simple waiver disavowing any liability for OTC or its subsidiaries from improper use of its home Takkarash minting kits.

Ahrotahn reads the form over carefully.

It seems to be on the level.

She signs.

Eva touches the contract, and it separates seamlessly into two duplicates, one of which vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

"Keep your own copy for your records. And now, I believe it's time for me to show you what your Takkarash have bought you."

She walks over to the desk, and taps its surface a few times. When she steps away, a small, lacquered-mahogany box is sitting on the crystalline desktop.

"Would you like to, or shall I?"

"I'd like to."

She opens the box.

The kit is gorgeous.

Resting on the red silk lining is a sharp-edged black rose, not on a chain but a thorny vine of the same black iron. As she lifts it out of the box, the vine branches and extends into a tangled bramble, spreading over her hands and up her arms to form long black gloves that bite deep into her flesh.

As she hangs the pendant around her neck, a pair of vines snake up her sleeves to join the central rose.

Ahrotahn beams. "Thank you. It's perfect."

Ingram smiles.

"OTC is here to please. If you ever need anything else, please, don't hesitate to call on me."

She pulls a crisp green business-card from her sleeve. Gold letters spell out: Evangeline Ingram, Local Branch Manager.

"Just hold this and think of me if you ever want to make another purchase in person."

Ahrotahn stands and accepts the card. "Thank you."

If there doesn't seem to be anything else, Ahrotahn will go back out through the door.

Ingram settles in back behind her desk. As the door closes, it shatters into thousands of tiny black splinters, which in turn evaporate into smoke.

And she's home.

Organizing Takkarash Creation

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