Chương 24: The Mind Reader

Why corals? Aesthetics, partly. But a living structure has practical advantages too - chief among them the ability to change shape in response to the right conditions. The building grows with you, if you know how to ask it. - Mary Funall, Twentieth Principal of the Progenitor's Faction Beamer was still talking. Kara had deployed the passive component of his Fluid State skill, the Safe Haven skill, and a considerable amount of personal willpower, and Beamer was still talking.

He was beginning to genuinely consider taking the man up on his offer just to produce silence, when the door opened and Phinx walked in. The room's attention swung to her at once. She had walked in with purpose and authority both, and looking anywhere else suddenly felt like a bad idea. Beamer stopped mid-sentence. She looked over the room. Nine of them, Kara had counted.

"Congratulations to all of you on making it this far." Her voice had the same quality it had at the orientation - level, crisp, stating rather than performing.

"SDC has always been the hardest committee to get into by pure odds. Over a hundred applied. One will be selected. That's been consistent across every year of the committee's existence. And the people in this room are already some of the best in your batch." A pause.

"Most of you, anyway." The pause landed. Beamer's expression shifted briefly before he smoothed it out. Kara noticed several people sit fractionally straighter without appearing to decide to.

"Sixty-four years since SDC was founded," she continued.

"In that time, every single member has finished at or near the top of this University, and has been selected for the final-year dungeon dive. The member who graduated last year was among the top performers in the most recent dive. My senior is a near-certainty to be selected this year." She looked around the room.

"It has become an expectation. I'm telling you this so you understand what you're being measured against." She let it sit for a moment. Kara felt something shift in him quietly. He had come here for Gomot. For information about the dungeon cohort, about what had actually happened when they came out. He had thought the committee was a route toward that.

He had not fully computed what it meant that SDC members were consistently at the dungeon dive, that the graduating member had been directly involved in the most recent one - the one his brother had been part of. Phinx's senior would have heard everything. If not from the graduating member directly, then through the committee's institutional memory of the event. His stakes had just gotten a lot higher.

"You look ready," Phinx observed, a small smile surfacing as the room's posture shifted under her gaze.

"Good. Interview order is coming through now." The interface notification arrived. Kara was seventh. Nine candidates total.

"All the best," she said, and left. The first candidate stood, straightened, and followed. The room settled into a working silence, everyone doing the private work of preparation. Even Beamer had gone quiet, which Kara noted with mild gratitude. They left one by one. Nobody returned, which meant there was another exit from wherever the interview was held. He counted down: second, third - Beamer, who didn't hear Kara wish him luck, his mind elsewhere - fourth, fifth, sixth.

After the sixth candidate left, Kara used his Safe Haven skill twice in the space of ten minutes. The waiting set his mind running over every version of what was coming, and finding each one wanting. The prompt arrived: Please proceed to the fifth floor, Restricted Arts classroom. He stood, moved to the staircase, and found it was not where he remembered it being. Right - the building moved. He looked around, located the nearest staircase, and went up. The fifth floor held two classrooms, both large.

The Restricted Arts room was immediately identifiable - a transparent barrier ran its full perimeter, a material that didn't clarify itself but communicated that there were reasons for it. He approached the door, which scanned him and returned a prompt he had not anticipated. The test for the previous candidate is currently in progress. While waiting, please review the following profile: Name: Moghli Grade G, Tier 6 Background: Mentalist He read it twice.

A profile to review before greeting someone - so this was a simulation of the actual role. He would be expected to greet this person as a demonstrator, which meant he needed to know who they were. He searched the name in his interface. Nothing of note came up. He stood outside the door and thought about what he did know. Mentalist.

Tier 6, which was not that high for a demonstrator - or perhaps the point was that they weren't prominent, that the committee brought in people who were exceptional in their own field rather than merely famous. He prepared a greeting, ran through it mentally, adjusted it, and ran through it again. The door slid open. He stepped in. The room's interior had a reinforced quality - the walls carried a metallic sheen, and there were marks on them that suggested previous occupants had not been gentle.

A raised platform at the front. Below it, at some distance, was a desk. Behind the desk, was Phinx, watching him with the attentive expression of someone who had been doing this all day and was still genuinely interested in what each new candidate did. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. No sign of anyone else. Kara greeted her and took the offered seat.

"Why aren't you wearing formals?" Her tone was the same as it always was - level and direct. The question itself was the issue. He had seen most of the others in formal wear. He had registered it and moved on, reasoning that the SIC interview hadn't required it, that he had barely enough credits for it anyway, that nobody had specified. All of this was true and none of it was particularly useful right now. He apologised. Cleanly, without over-explaining. Phinx looked at him for a moment, then continued.

He felt the Fluid State skill doing its quiet work - letting him set the embarrassment aside without effort - the way you set something down rather than putting it out of existence. He was back in the room. That was what mattered.

"Two situation-based questions, then an activity. Ready?" He nodded.

"You're a member of the SDC. You need to schedule a demonstration. Walk me through how you'd do it." He thought for a moment.

"I'd start with the students' availability - check what's already scheduled, find slots that work broadly. Then bring those slots to the demonstrator and ask for their preference."

"The demonstrator isn't free on any of your proposed slots."

"Then I'd go to whoever owns the conflicting slot - a faculty member, an event organiser - and see if there's flexibility. If I'm asking them to give something up, I'd try to offer something in return. An invitation to attend the demonstration, maybe, if they'd value that. If that doesn't work, I'd go back to the demonstrator and ask about later availability." Phinx considered for a moment.

"Second question. You've offered the same set of slots to two demonstrators. Both want the same one." This was harder. He worked through it aloud.

"I'd honour whichever request came first - that's the cleaner principle. But if one of them is significantly more senior or more difficult to rebook, that might take precedence. The honest answer is that I'd try to avoid the situation by staggering when I sent the offers out, but if it's already happened, I'd communicate clearly with both and apologise to whichever one has to move." She didn't follow up. Her expression gave him nothing in either direction.

"Questions done. The activity." She glanced at him.

"You reviewed the profile?"

"Yes."

"The demonstrator has arrived on campus. You're greeting him. He'll enter from behind the stage." She sat back.

"Activity starts now." Kara rose, climbed to the platform, and turned to face the back of the stage. The man who stepped out wore a well knit brown suit, looking like he had dressed for the occasion without dressing for attention. His mask depicted a classroom scene in a style that was cartoonish - students at desks, a teacher mid-gesture, a window with light coming through it. He moved with a gentle warmth that seemed to settle over the room as he crossed it. Kara stepped forward, hand extended, greeting prepared.

"Kara." Moghli took his hand with a smile.

"Lovely to meet you. Hmmm. Good, I see you're not as surprised as most people are when I know their name. Part of being a mentalist - always know your audience." So much for his prep. He had intended to initiate the greeting. There had been a half-second of recalibration before his skill came into play that he was fairly certain Moghli had registered and was gently noting. He kept his face easy.

"Of course, Mr. Moghli. Thank you for coming. The honour is ours. I trust the journey was comfortable."

"Very much so. It's always a pleasure to come to a University that takes these things seriously." His tone was warm and easy.

"So - what would you like me to demonstrate? What would benefit the students most?" Kara had not prepared for this specific question, which was probably the point. He had assumed the details would have been arranged already, that his role was logistics and welcome rather than content. He tried the honest general answer.

"You're a renowned mentalist. I think any demonstration of your work would offer something valuable."

"I appreciate that. But I'd need some direction - what have previous demonstrators covered here? That would help me find the gap." He did not know this. He had not looked it up, and looking it up now was not possible without making it visible, and making it a visible problem was not the same as solving it.

"Let me get you settled in the waiting area," he said instead, "and I'll pull the full record of previous demonstrations for you, particularly those related to this field - that'll give you a much better picture than anything I could summarise from memory. Would that work?" Moghli considered, with the expression of someone genuinely thinking rather than evaluating.

"Fair enough." A slight smile.

"In the meantime - let me give you a small live demonstration. It might help you with your recommendation."

"I'd be glad to see it." Moghli held his gaze for a moment. Kara was beginning to understand that this look was different from ordinary attention. Almost like he was trying to take a peek inside.

"I believe you've been using a skill during our interaction this whole time. Let me see if I can identify it." He tilted his head.

"First letter - F?" A small thing moved in Kara's chest. He kept his face still and kept his attention moving, because if Moghli was reading from his thoughts, thinking about the skill was the problem. He thought about the stage, the room, the marks on the walls, the door behind him.

"Yes, F. Next - L?" The click was gradual. Not all at once - more like a mechanism turning. The way Moghli paused between letters, the way his eyes moved, the way each guess followed Kara's reaction rather than the letters themselves. He was reading the reaction, not the mind directly. Which meant that thinking hard about not reacting was itself a reaction.

"U," Moghli said, with a shade less confidence than before. He tried again.

"O? No." A pause.

"U it is. F-l-u... Fluid?" Kara thought about the harbour wall back home. About Bodo's trunk, the weight and warmth of it. He was starting to panic a bit, which led to the passive component of his Fluid state skill kicking in, which in turn led to him thinking about the skill. This was turning into a vicious cycle. Just as Moghli started guessing the first letter of the second word, he activated the active portion of the skill. Something changed.

A different skill activated, and he was now thinking about that skill. A small smile found Kara before he could stop it entirely. Moghli continued with the second word.

"S? Yes. A? Yes. F? Yes." He stopped.

"Four letters. Safe? Fluid Safe." He looked at Kara, puzzled. Tried again, arrived at the same place.

"Fluid Safe doesn't make sense." Phinx cleared her throat behind them. Moghli paused. Looked at Kara for a moment, appreciation and bemusement mingling on what showed of his face.

"Well. I'll concede the second word. I know I had the first, but - "a slight inclination of his head, acknowledging it" - I got the second wrong." His voice shifted to something more decisive.

"Phinx, I think we're done here. Kara, follow me - I'll show you the way out." He moved behind the stage. Kara followed into a small corridor with three doors - one on each side, one straight ahead.

"That way," Moghli directed, nodding to the door ahead, his attention already elsewhere. He moved toward the door on the right, something turning behind his eyes. Kara went through the indicated door and heard the other one close. He walked down the stairs and out into the corridor below, and stood for a moment in the quiet of it, turning over what had just happened and what it might mean.